Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
- The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)

- Grind: To us, grind means being required to do the same boring activity over and over again. In particular, the biggest reference we’re talking about here in traditional MMO’s is having to kill the same creatures over and over again to farm for levels or gear. In Gw2, you can gain exp and levels from a massive variety of game play, game modes, and content types. Same goes for the ability to acquire the gear to build up your characters. Similarly, ascended mats can be acquired from a wide variety of content types and game modes to allow you choice and options so you don’t need to grind to complete those goals. Our new mastery system continues to this promise as well, which we’ll go into more detail on soon.

See, this is the part of your quote that kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and kind of makes it seem that you’re either a bit jaded in how you see the game, or simply don’t want to actually admit to the fact that, yes, grinding Ascended Armor is just that, a grind.

You’re absolutely right, you don’t NEED to farm World Bosses, Champions, and Jumping Puzzles to get the drops that come from them…But then what are your other options then? Wait a month to get stuff from the Monthly Reward Track? Grind PvP Reward Tracks for them?

The other options are there, but they are so mind numbingly slow by comparison, that people feel obligated to farm the same Champion Train, World Boss rotation, and quick Jumping Puzzles to get the materials you need for your Ascended Armor, and that by it’s very definition goes totally against what you just tried to say.

I don’t have to kill the same World Boss each day for a hope at getting a piece of Ascended Armor, but I certainly did need to kill them each day back when I was working on it to get the Dragonite Ore needed to make the Ingots, just as I needed to the same for Empyreal Fragments and Bloodstone Dust.

Saying “You can do it in multiple ways doesn’t make it a grind” doesn’t work, when those multiple ways are either so unrewarding as to not be worth doing, or simply doing the same content each day to get the same rewards.

Honestly, if you really want to stand by the mantra of “You don’t need to grind to get Ascended Armor”, then there should actually be ways players can get the armor outside of crafting or paying to RNGesus that they get an Ascended Chest that has the armor type they need. Take a page out of your competitors, and let players by armor through Laurels, or offer more inventive ways to get the Armor though long quest lines or what not.

Because right now, yes, getting Ascended Armor is either a very expensive endeavor, or a very long grind of doing the same mundane tasks to get the materials needed to make the armor. Hiding behind the arugment of “But we have more then one way to get those materials” doesn’t work either, as like I said before those other methods are either just as repetitive (replacing World Boss grinding with Guild Mission grinding for Dragonite Ore, as an example) or so unrewarding (PvP Tracks), that there’s very little reason to actually do it.

I’m not saying that I’m not happy Arena Net is finally realizing Expansions for MMOs are good, and that they should probably make one, it’s certainly the kick start GW2 needs but…

I was really, really kinda hoping I was going to get to kill Modremoth and move onto a new theme that wasn’t man-eating plans that we’ve been dealing with for well over a year now. But, as long as this wraps things up this year, and we can move onto taking out those other Dragons, in particular Primordius, I’ll live.

But part of me worries, given how long this stupid Mordremoth plot line has been going on, GW2 is going to quickly become Mordremoth Wars 2.

It’s fine by me they’re dropping this ridiculous two week content push, and instead giving their development team ample time to make sure the content they’ll be pushing over the course of the next half of Season 2 is actually good.

I’d much rather have another two month delay then have it restart next month, and get nothing but buggy, half-finished, paper thin content. The first half of Season 1 was a HUGE leap over the garbage that was Season 1.

We’ve seen what happens when Anet tries to do a two-week release schedule without any time to actually develop the content, it doesn’t end well. Taking a more traditional approach towards their content development just means that Anet realized the flaw in their previous approach, and are moving to rectify the situation.

That said, I’d still much rather just get the full release of the Season 2 part 2 on November 4th, rather then having to wait every two weeks to get what are essentially chopped up bits of one giant content patch, but we can’t have everything, and I’m quite content just to see Anet taking a more serious, and patient, approach to their content release schedule.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

ipan.4356:

2 years is a long time for an MMO not to release anything.

I think you are mistaken. We have released content and features in the last two years on a fairly regular basis. Just because the content and/or features were things that you personally did not particularly care for doesn’t mean we didn’t release anything.

Please don’t trivialize the efforts of our design and development staff down to “nothing” because you didn’t like it. It’s fine to comment that you didn’t care for what was released, but don’t pretend like we’ve done nothing here for the past two years.

Not to sound rude Mark, and I don’t think anyone is triviliazing anything, but most of the content you’ve released in the past two years is not longer even in the game, thanks entirely in part to Season 1’s ridiculous temporary nature.

Clearly you’re fixing that with Season 2, and I applaud your design team for realizing just how horrid the idea of temporary content was in an MMO, but that doesn’t change the fact that over the past year’s worth of updates from Season 1, a very, very small percentage of has actually remained as permanent content.

So while it is true that you’ve released regular updates over the past year to GW2, it’s also true that the majority of those updates are no longer in the game in any way, shape, or form. And that simply isn’t good design.

But again, Anet has proven capable of realizing from their mistakes, and rectifying them with Season 2, so you are on the right direction, but you can’t fault people for being upset at the overall lack of permanent content they’ve gotten to the game up until now.

Sarrs.4831:

I think that at worst, it will be a neutral change.

For every malevolent player out there, there are half a dozen who do not understand, do not care, or don’t pay attention to dungeon ownership.

So basically, you don’t want to be held accountable for your sub-par skill in a group that may or may not be the cause of it wiping, but you’re perfectly okay kicking people who are “Meany heads” to you when they call you on your inability to play your roll properly to the group’s composition.

Sounds to me that if people like you are in the majority, this change to the dungeons is a very needed one on that level alone, to say nothing about the sheer number of technical hiccups this is finally going to fix.

Just because you started the party doesn’t mean you’re suddenly not required to live up to the standards people expect when running a dungeon, or are some how immune to being kicked because you want to play sub-optimally in a pick up group setting.

If this change bothers you that much, than just run it with your Guild.

Well color me impressed again. Anet is actually returning to the respectable company they were during Guild Wars 1’s run, and I applaud them for that.

A shorter season, but with more content in each episode, means that those that miss the full season won’t be paying out the wazoo for it when it’s all over as they wuold if it had as many episodes as Season 1, the breaks give Anet ample time to work on a polished release of the next half of the season and beyond, and it just seems to work out well over all for both developer and consumer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s still some things I feel they need to take a long, hard look at (the heavy monitziation of the wardrobe feature, for example), but Season 2 is proving that Anet is going back on the right track, so I’m crossing my fingers and staying cautiously optimistic that they may yet make up for all the damage they did from the game’s launch and throughout Season 1 to their integrity as a developer.

…Let’s not and say we did.

I’d rather have content permanently available to me to re-play whenever I’d like, instead of having the nonsense that was in Season 1.

I mean, would you have preferred it that, after you beat one of the expansions in Guild Wars 1, your account was permanently locked from ever doing those missions ever again? No, of course not, and anyone with half a brain wouldn’t either. And yet that is exactly what Season 1 in GW2 was all about.

I, along with so many others, are glad they’re getting rid of the ridiculous over use of limited-time content in the LS, and returning to their tried and true methodology of campaigns like we saw in GW2. This change actually kept me from uninstalling GW2, and have gone from having no interest in Season 2, to looking forward to having an entire campaign’s worth of content at my finger tips, and that can be replayed as often as I’d like.

Again, Devata, let me spell this out for you:

You, even if you are not actively playing, must log in once every two weeks, for less than three minutes, to permanently unlock the LS content, for good. That’s it. Even if you don’t regularly play, it’s not difficult at all, nor is it time consuming, to click on the little launcher icon, hop on, and go “Oh hey, new content, I’ll play it later.”.

The only valid complaint you have is, as you said, new players that are hopping in late. They’re going to find themselves behind previous story content, but they can also just buy it at their leisure. That is no different than someone hopping into an MMO five expansion cycles down the road, and having to buy the previous expansions to get caught up.

Anet will also likely offer some kind of bundle package when the season’s over for people to buy all the episodes in bulk if they missed it. And even if they don’t, you’d likely be paying around $40 for the entire set, which strikingly enough, is the exact same price as a GW1 expansion was.

You see what I’m getting at? You’re pulling at very, very long straws in your complaints on this system. Anet is quite literally offering you free content for just logging in for a few minutes every two weeks. And I’m sorry, no one totally forgets about a game they have installed on their PC unless it gets lost in the hundreds of steam games they may have.

Asking for 200 gems, which is the equivalent to what, $3, is no different than asking someone to pay for DLC on a single player game after they’ve purchased the game. A new player doesn’t have to buy the previous episodes, and can just jump into the story content where they begin. And if they like it, they have the option to either buy the story content, or ask a friend or guild mate to run them through the previous episodes sans-rewards.

Buying previous episodes is, again, made specifically for people that are completely unable to log into that week, for players returning to the game mid-way through the content, or for new players that want to see the old episodes. And even than, those people don’t have to buy them. They can just have a friend take them through the missions.

No one is being an elitist pro in this. We’re trying to explain to you, and so many others, how this system is one of the few times in recent memory that Anet has done something fair and generous to the community at large, and are directly fixing the biggest problem of Season 1, where if you missed content, you just didn’t get to see that content, period.

Would it be nice if Anet offered this content for free to players who missed it, sure. But then, I could say it’d be nice if Blizzard offered free expansions to people like me who have been playing the game since launch. But I don’t, because I don’t expect that from companies.

At the end of the day, you are getting content for free. If you are choosing not to log into the game in a two week period that it’s available and you are able, than you are making a conscious choice to do so, and there really should be no expectation that you’d get content for free when you could have spent not even three minutes hopping onto the game and unlocking that content for your account.

Devata.6589:

Blade Syphon.4325:

cesmode.4257:

My topic was closed. Not even moved. Thanks mods.

This is greed. Log in, or pay. Vs a sub based game where you pay 50 cents a day for a month(15 dollars a month) and get all content ever released. I can log into WoW right now and go do Baradin Hold dallies from 2 years ago.

Not turning this into sub vs free game argument. But I do think its crap that arenanet made the conscious decision to place this content behind gems(even if its 200), instead of making it free like they said it always would be.

I haven’t logged in to play for weeks, I dont plan on it for another few months. When I return, if I ever return(cuz Wildstar is awsome), I’ll be so far behind that I’ll need to dish out the $$. Or, I have to remember every other week to log in. Like a freakin’ chore.

..You realize that you’re complaining about Anet offering you content, literally, for free, and you’re upset because you can’t be bothered to take not even two minutes of your day to log into the game, unlock the content, and then log out.

You have to do that once every two weeks. Literally one time, every two weeks, for 2 minutes, and that content is forever unlocked to your account. You don’t have do the content that day, nor do you have to do anything other than watch the toast pop up saying “You have unlocked a new episode!”.

I could understand people being irate if you had to finish the episode to permanently unlock it, but you don’t. You have to, again, log in, and it’s yours. Forever.

There is nothing to complain about this system. Nothing, Nothing. The buying past episodes is strictly for people who have no access to their PC for that two weeks for whatever reason, and is there so that they don’t feel totally left out on missing content like they did in season 1 because they were unable to get on the game.

For those of us that aren’t interested in playing GW2, but still have it installed, we can simply click the launcher, log in, and in two minutes, new content is waiting for us whenever we care to play it.

I’m all for criticizing Anet for stupid design decisions, I do it plenty of time (see: Wardrobe, LS1, the Marionette, etc.). But this? This is not one of those stupid design decisions. In fact, this is probably the smartest decision Anet has made for this game since it launched.

I do understand the complains about playing 200 gems per episode. It’s not a problem for the active players but it is for those who did leave for a longer time or new players. For them it’s also much more as 200 gems so they need to pay much more for something that is important for the game (the story) but is not really expansion-like content. I do understand that Anet wants to have people keep logging in so that they sort of set a penalty for not doing so but then 200 gems to unlock all previous episodes would be better imho.

However I also don’t really understand cesmode’s point in this one. If you are willing to pay a monthly fee for a game then this should also not be a big problem one would think. Not to mention the login requirement to skip it because I can understand that if you are leaving for another game for multiple months you don’t feel like logging in, also not once every 2 weeks. You simple forget about the other game.

Again though, you’re entirely missing the point.

It is not difficult to log into the game once for three minutes every two weeks to permanently unlock the new LS content to your account. It’s really not. The 200 gems thing is literally just there for people who are completly unable to log in during that two weeks.

cesmode.4257:

My topic was closed. Not even moved. Thanks mods.

This is greed. Log in, or pay. Vs a sub based game where you pay 50 cents a day for a month(15 dollars a month) and get all content ever released. I can log into WoW right now and go do Baradin Hold dallies from 2 years ago.

Not turning this into sub vs free game argument. But I do think its crap that arenanet made the conscious decision to place this content behind gems(even if its 200), instead of making it free like they said it always would be.

I haven’t logged in to play for weeks, I dont plan on it for another few months. When I return, if I ever return(cuz Wildstar is awsome), I’ll be so far behind that I’ll need to dish out the $$. Or, I have to remember every other week to log in. Like a freakin’ chore.

..You realize that you’re complaining about Anet offering you content, literally, for free, and you’re upset because you can’t be bothered to take not even two minutes of your day to log into the game, unlock the content, and then log out.

You have to do that once every two weeks. Literally one time, every two weeks, for 2 minutes, and that content is forever unlocked to your account. You don’t have do the content that day, nor do you have to do anything other than watch the toast pop up saying “You have unlocked a new episode!”.

I could understand people being irate if you had to finish the episode to permanently unlock it, but you don’t. You have to, again, log in, and it’s yours. Forever.

There is nothing to complain about this system. Nothing, Nothing. The buying past episodes is strictly for people who have no access to their PC for that two weeks for whatever reason, and is there so that they don’t feel totally left out on missing content like they did in season 1 because they were unable to get on the game.

For those of us that aren’t interested in playing GW2, but still have it installed, we can simply click the launcher, log in, and in two minutes, new content is waiting for us whenever we care to play it.

I’m all for criticizing Anet for stupid design decisions, I do it plenty of time (see: Wardrobe, LS1, the Marionette, etc.). But this? This is not one of those stupid design decisions. In fact, this is probably the smartest decision Anet has made for this game since it launched.

I…I have no words.

Arena Net actually listened to us. They’re adding permanent content to the game, not garbage content that’s done and over within in two weeks. I…I am impressed.

Now, admittedly, I do think it’s kind of a blow to require people to pay Gems for an episode they missed to unlock it, and I do think that’s something that should be revised, but it seems to be in Anet’s nature to bring good news with a touch of bad, and it doesn’t strike me as unusual at all that they’d attempt to monetize this in some way.

But that said, a two week window is more than enough time for most people to log in for a second, unlock the episode, than play it at their leisure. I just feel that instead of requiring people to pay two-hundred gems, it should be unlockable for a small Gold fee in stead.

The sooner we can move away from monetizing everything with Gems, the better. But the Story Journal is definitely a VERY big step in the right direction of bringing this game to where it should be.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

They didn’t listen to any of the feedback/concerns leading up to the patch, why would they listen after the patch?

They haven’t responded to anything yet since the patch went live. Just basic bug reports and closing tons of threads.

This.

If Anet actually had any intention on changing things to the Wardrobe System and Dyes, to say nothing about the myriad of other problems this update brought to the game, they would have done so before it went live, and had a more direct feed back with their players on the forums in regards to it.

They didn’t, which means that in the coming weeks, all we have to look forward too is the next installment of the Living Story, and likely no changes to any of the issues this update brought with it.

In a way, this is going to be a very painful, and likely very expensive, lesson that Anet is going to learn. But, we can hope they DO learn from this, and actually take into consideration overwhelming feed back on the forums that says “We don’t like these changes, do not do them”.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

serenitygirl.1967:

“If you ask me its not cheap. With all the changes done, and like what I said a few post ago, The money that I may use to get transmutes is the same amount of money I can use to pay for Realm Reborn 60 day subs. Difference? The wardrobe skins there work way better than what happened here.”

My point exactly.

Most MMOs have a $15 a month subscription. For that, you get the whole enchilada.

You get the whole enchilada playing a free-to-play Aion. They use in-game currency for transmutation.

Yeah, this is what boggles my mind. Almost every other Free to Play MMO allows for free cosmetic changes made in game, with the only price being that you pay in-game currency for, and often times that charge is a very middling amount, if any at all.

Why Anet thinks it’s okay for them to charge players what other MMOs do for free is beyond me. And yes, I’m aware you can buy Gems with gold.. For 5 charges, or one armor set, it’s 150 gems which is roughly 15 gold.

Seeing as Gold isn’t easy to come by in GW2, that’s quite a bit of farming (read: Grinding) that needs to be done for a single change to your armor set.

That is not okay. The Wardrobe System it’s self is great. The UI is superb, and it’s awesome that you can now access all your gear in one easy spot for transmuting…What’s not okay is, as I said, charging people a rather expensive amount of in-game gold for a single costume change, or pushing them towards the Gem Store to buy some Gems with real money.

This, combined with making the only place to get Dyes being the Trading Post from other players, 5 laurels for one unidentified dye, or (of course) buying some from the Gem Store really does make me think that Anet looked at the fact that people enjoy the cosmetic aspect of GW2, and decided to nickle and dime everyone for it in hopes of some easy money.

I’m really preying this comes back to bite them in the end, and we can have these changes reverted to something far less money grubbing, and far more consumer friendly.

As someone else pointed out, and I’ll echo: Why should we, or anyone for that matter, feel that it’s okay for Anet to charge us real money (or a fairly extensive grind session for gold) to do something that is offered for free by their competitors, for an in-game currency price that’s equivalent to repair costs.

Latinkuro.9420:

Azure Prower.8701:

Latinkuro.9420:

• some people will complain no matter what goodness a.net gives them !
• a,net could give them 100g for dungeon completion and some would still complain jeesh !
• haters gonna hate and complainers gonna complain !

100 gold is meaningless if the economy is out of whack.

and the gold is NOT the point, the point is people like these will NEEEVERRR be happy they will always find something to complain about, even if you take them to heaven they’d complain that it is to peaceful there

I don’t think you fully grasp the point of the problem people have with the Wardrobe system. In fact, the vast majority of people in favor for it don’t seem to grasp what people, myself included, are upset about.

No one is complaining about the actual QoL aspect of the Wardrobe. Having all your skins stored in a single place for easy access is a great feature, and one I think everyone can agree on more games need to have.

What the majority of people are complaining about is the fact that all those awesome skins you’re unlocking are being locked behind a paywall, and not just a easy to bypass paywall either.

Assuming, and again this is all assumption since Anet has yet to even mention how Transmutation Charges will be acquired, that Transmutation Charges will only be acquirable through the Gemstore and possibly as a rare reward from Dailies (we still don’t know if Map Completion will still award Charges), it means that you’ll end up paying more for a skin you want to use than you would otherwise.

People on this forum are literally praising Anet for locking a system behind the Gem Store because..Honestly I have no idea. If any other game did this on the market, people would come down on it with a hammer and declare the company greedy, yet Anet is getting a free pass, and that bothers me.

There was zero reason for Anet to put the skin system behind a paygate like this. There is almost zero character progression in GW2 once you’ve hit the level cap outside of collecting dyes and armor to transmute.

The latter has always been locked behind the pay wall of gems, but now Dyes seem to be going in the same direction. Remind me again how this is okay? I’ve never agreed to Anet’s idea of locking Transmutation at 80 through Crystals that can only be acquired rarely through dailies or the gem store, and now they’re taking that and pushing it through all levels of the game.

Yet nearly every other free to play MMO on the market seems perfectly fine with allowing players to transmute/transmog their armor for just a middling amount of in-game currency, because their developers realize that doing something like that is fun, even for those who aren’t interested in end-game progression.

Anet’s already charging around ten dollars for skins in game, now they’re also going to be charging you for the use of them, as well as the ability to dye them.

This is what people are upset about, and the lack of clarification on Anet’s part in regards to how Transmutation Charges are going to be acquired is not helping matters either.

mtpelion.4562:

Blade Syphon.4325:

Zypher.7609:

I really can’t believe all the people that want the wardrobe to be free. Really so you get the skin once and can use it when ever you want free of charge? How do you think this game is paid for? You do not pay monthly, you do not have to pay for the April 15th patch. Really I think you just want a game you log into, gets updated when ever you want but then you also get every single thing in the game. Just for the heads up the people that do the updating would like to get paid for the work they do.

Just do some thinking before screaming greedy company.

Or..perhaps you should do some research on games outside of GW2?

I’ve said in another topic that there are plenty of Free to Play games that offer a Wardrobe system like GW2 without charging free players a dime to use it outside of in-game currency.

Why is it okay for GW2, than, to do something like this? Why do they get a free pass? People are upset because this is a system that is free in nearly every other game out there, including Free to Play titles.

Hell, Diablo 3’s expansion launched with a system that’s almost identical to GW2’s, and it doesn’t cost anything other than in-game gold to use. Remind me again why GW2 feels it’s okay to charge people for a feature that should be free?

Because they charge for other things. Every game has a different approach for monetization. This is the route GW2 took. Nothing is changing here.

And…somehow that makes it okay? I’m not really following what you’re saying.

Diablo 3 charges nothing now outside of the price for entry, and it’s doing just fine. Enmasse and Tera charge, quite literally, only for cosmetics or EXP boosts. You can buy really fancy looking weapon skins and armor skins, not unlike the system GW2 already has, yet it costs nothing in game for you to transmog armor that’s available to you in game.

It’s fine that Anet wants to make money off the Gemstore, there’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, however, is charging for a feature many people desire to use.

Anet could just as easily make a profit by selling purely cosmetic skins, character boosts, bank and inventory slot expansions, and the like, things that aren’t going to really make or break a persons’ enjoyment of the game, instead of locking something like the Wardrobe system behind a pay gate.

I think what people seem to be misunderstanding from the complaints to this system is that Anet is monetizing the wrong thing for their consumers. It’s great you’re unlocking all these awesome skins, but it’s too bad you can’t use them without paying Gems, or paying an increasing amount of gold to convert into Gems.

Remember that GW2 was supposed to be a game that wasn’t going to have features locked behind the Gem Store, and was going to simply offer cosmetic and character boosts through it. How quickly that’s changed.

I’m starting to worry people on these forums, and in game, would defend Anet if they started charging Living Story updates through the Gem Store as well.

Zypher.7609:

I really can’t believe all the people that want the wardrobe to be free. Really so you get the skin once and can use it when ever you want free of charge? How do you think this game is paid for? You do not pay monthly, you do not have to pay for the April 15th patch. Really I think you just want a game you log into, gets updated when ever you want but then you also get every single thing in the game. Just for the heads up the people that do the updating would like to get paid for the work they do.

Just do some thinking before screaming greedy company.

Or..perhaps you should do some research on games outside of GW2?

I’ve said in another topic that there are plenty of Free to Play games that offer a Wardrobe system like GW2 without charging free players a dime to use it outside of in-game currency.

Why is it okay for GW2, than, to do something like this? Why do they get a free pass? People are upset because this is a system that is free in nearly every other game out there, including Free to Play titles.

Hell, Diablo 3’s expansion launched with a system that’s almost identical to GW2’s, and it doesn’t cost anything other than in-game gold to use. Remind me again why GW2 feels it’s okay to charge people for a feature that should be free?

Mungrul.9358:

Great, they’ve finally implemented what a lot of people have been pining after for ages, yet they’ve also cynically monetised it.
This system and its equivalents are COMPLETELY FREE in other MMOs such as DCUO.
They almost had me back and playing again with this, but they had to go and screw it up with greed.

Pretty much my thoughts on this too.

So… GW2 gets a proper transmogrifying system, and one that should have been free for all to use…But instead they find a way to monetize it in a way that’s probably going to be worst than it is currently.

Remind me again why people are putting up with this? I’ve seen a few posts here comparing this to DCUO, and saying that DCUO can get away with it because the game has a subscription fee…

Yet..that doesn’t really apply. Because you can still use the transmoging system in DCUO for free, without being a subscriber to their VIP plan. Same with Lotro. Same with TERA, and even the same with Diablo 3, which has no cash shop period and is free to play online.

So..remind me again why it’s okay for GW2 to charge for something that all their competitors are doing for free?

Look, I love the new skin system for GW2, I do…But I’ll be honestly impressed if they offer free Transmutation Charges left and right after this goes live. If it turns out that you get a charge for free with every daily chest you open ,than great! That’s a fine compromise. Sure, it takes a bit longer to transmog the armor you want, but it’s still a nice enough compromise.

But seeing as in their Dye blog that Dyes will no longer be dropping in the world kind of paints a picture of the direction this is going, and that’s a shame. GW2 has a lot of very cool looking skins in the game, and sadly, now alot of people aren’t going to be able to be able to even use the vast majority of them, since it’s going to constantly cost Transmutation charges.

I agree with what a previous poster said: If they have to monetize this in some way, than just sell the skins on the store (while also allowing players to earn and unlock them in game as well).

GW2 is quickly becoming less of a Free to Play game with a single purchase price where everything can be unlocked in game, to a game where everything is locked behind a pay-wall in the Gemstore.

It’s changes like these that people should be voicing their opinion on and distaste for, like the forums did when Anet tried to see the Human Tier armor in the Gemstore as a “Redesign”. They listened then, they may listen now.

If not, than as much as I hate to use the phrase, we will be starting a slippery slope of slipperiness.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

-sigh-

From the March 4th patch notes:
A small release will be available on March 18, which will provide an epilogue to recent events. That release will show the aftermath of what players have experienced in the Battle for Lion’s Arch and will conclude the current story arc.

It was also stated later on this epilogue would take place in the Death End bar (forgot where) What did you expect?

Gee, I don’t know, good story telling? A fulfilling sense of accomplishment? Dialogue that didn’t sound like it was written by a child who just finished watching some terrible anime ending?

These last four updates were something that, over the past six months, we’ve been told would be climactic and make everything come together. We were told by Anet over and over that things were going to get better, and that the story was going to be an amazing experience full of never before seen content in an MMO before, found here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

And taken from the article:
“Concern: Story schmory! ArenaNet said the climax of Season One will rock Tyria to its core but I bet that’s overblown sales talk.”

Hell, they even had an interview put up a week before the first part of finale was introduced, with one section stating that this wasn’t just a big hype train, and that the ending would be so shocking and riveting, it would shake Tyria to the very core.

And yet, what did we get? A capital city besieged, (which has already been done, multiple times, by other MMOs), a lackluster final boss, and a terrible ending with another Dragon awakening, something we’ve all expected since, you know, Zhaitan died, and Destiny’s Reach said “Hmm, one dragon down, five to go! Let’s get cracking!”

Remind me again how ANY of this is rocking Tyria to it’s core? How is Lion’s Arch being besieged, and left a smoldering ruin, any different than what Deathwing did to Stormwind in Cataclysm, or what the conclusion of Mists of Pandaria did to Ogrimmar? How about Dynamis from Final Fantasy XI, or even Besieged from the Treausres of Aht’Uhrghan expansion. A game that’s eleven years old did it first, and arguably better.

I guess the concern was true, it was just over blown sale talk.

The Living Story started out alright, had moments of glory during the Zephyr Sanctum and Queen’s Jubilee patches, than fell into a complete stink hole from then on out. It had one moment of shining grace with the Toxic Tower, before falling back into an absolute mess of poor story telling and design decisions.

The Living Story has done terrible damage to the integrity of GW2’s story telling, as well as consumer good will towards Anet being able to put out good, compelling content. If Season 2 is anything like Season 1, than we won’t be having this conversation this time next year, because I adamantly believe GW2 won’t even be around than.

Magnus in LA right now has a rather fine line that sums up not just Lion’s Arch, but Guild Wars 2 as a whole:

“We’ll salvage the city if we can, but if it turns out we can’t save it, better we evacuate this sinking ship”.

webtoehobbit.4201:

Music was arguably the best part of the finale…. unfortunately….

This.

The music was far to epic for what it was paired with, which was a kitten ed shame.

Bread.7516:

Bunmaster.9734:

GW2 was marketed as not having the holy trinity. Why did you buy the game?

because he wants a re-skin of [insert typical spank and tank, no reflexes needed mmo].

again i ask – why do people want to get punched in the face?

He calls trinity system and mmos “hardcore” lol

..Because stacking on top of one another, zerging down a boss and ignoring nearly every mechanic involved therein, and then running past the trash to the next boss some how constitutes as skill and reflex-based combat?

Telling people to just Guest to another server isn’t solving the issue. Instead of just telling people to guest to another server to do content, we, as well as Anet, should be looking to fix this problem all together.

The biggest way of fixing this would be to, obviously, more accurately show how many players are actively logged onto a realm, not how many characters have been created on that in the world selection. It’s painfully misleading, and alot of new players, returning players, or hell, just people looking to migrate are lulled into a false sense of “Oh wow, every server is Very High, which means there’s people everywhere!” when this is very clearly not the case.

Of course, this only slightly fixes the issue by moving players towards populated realms. Those still stuck on low-pop realms need to have their problem fixed as well, and the only way to do that is to use the “dreaded” word: Realm Merges.

People shouldn’t feel forced to have to constantly guest to another server to complete content, nor should they feel as though they need to pay real money to permanently transfer as well.

GW2’s population is not as high as it was a year ago, and some servers are paying for it, especially when it seems Anet’s developers are either painfully ignorant of the population of their own game, or simply don’t care, and are making content specifically for TTS and similar guild, as well as for Blackgate.

As the game gets older, and more people get frustrated by Anet’s lack of doing anything, or care towards low population servers, the game’s going to only continue to sufffer worst and worst for it. Over Flows will become worst as everyone quite literally migrates to Blackgate or whatever other server is considered to be full, and the other servers are left abandoned, yet will still claim to have “Very High” populations due to how the servers record players.

Guesting is a bandaid fix, nothing more. Instead of telling people “Just Guest to Black Gate to do the event and get your achievements”, we should be telling them to Guest for now, while we continue to try to get Anet to realize the growing problem that the realm population is becoming.

Autumn Frazee.3158:

We are currently working on the difficulty of the Assault Knight fights; I realize that sometimes its hard to get a full overflow or that there are non peak hours where server populations will be lighter. Hopefully with the difficulty changes, it will also make it easier for a good server to get ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’.

Wait, I’m sorry…But easier for a “Good” server to get the achievement?

What does that even imply? That people that aren’t on populated servers are just out of luck, and should guest to another server? Why even have these low population servers anymore in the first place if you’re going to essentially ignore them, and just have players guest to high population servers?

Sounds to me you’d be better off merging them instead. I mean, it sounds like you’re designing these events and achievements around large servers like Blackgate and guilds like TTS, and that’s really not going to fly for your playerbase that aren’t in either.

At the rate Anet is going with this anti-everything but Berserker nonsense, they may as well just remove all other affixes and stats from the game, and just streamline everything to have varying levels of Power and Precision, because honestly, there’s no point in gearing up or speccing into anything differently.

And to me, that’s just wrong. There really is no gear choice or specialization in GW 2 anymore, it really has become simply “Go Power, Precision, Crit, or go home”.

What’s the point of running a condition build when most bosses are either immune to it, or due to the zerg mentality of the game, your damage craps out very quicikly since conditions share a community pool?

Toughness and Vitality? Wasted spots on your gear, since you’re better off just dodging the bosses attacks instead of eating any of them, and if you do go down, why the Zerg’s there to get you back on your feet in no time anyways.

And Healing Power? Well there’s the most useless stat you’ll ever find in GW2…Because having an affix that only affects, on most professions, a single ability, is ever so useful. Even the Professions that have dedicated healing spells have them on such a long cool down timer that it’s not worth it, at all.

Condition and Boon Duration may as well not even exist (especially the latter), considering how short most Boons last anyways (and again, how long their cool downs are), and since your using a community pool for condition damage, what’s the point of making our conditions last longer. It doesn’t help that these two stats exist on only two types of affixes, which happen to also be paired with two other useless affixes as well.

It’s gotten to the point now for me that I don’t even see a point in leveling an alt anymore, and playing just my Warrior, since any alt I make is going to be shoe-horned into the same raw-damage Berserker set up, since no other spec is viable. It kills almost any replayabiltiy this game has, and destroys any form of customization as well.

Honestly, the game’s entire stat system needs to just be revamped. Even with the (tiny) nerf Berserker is getting in the next update, it’s still going to be the superior affix compared to anything else, simply because every other affix is completely worthless, and Conditions are useless due to how they work.

…All I can really say is I’m glad I already killed the World Boss that follows the Knights.

Because it seems like if you missed doing it before this patch, your chances of seeing it have gone out the window.

Yeah…No, it really didn’t.

GW2’s “Story” in the Living Story was a hodgepodge mess that felt like a bad fan fiction at best. The character development was terrible, the villain was awful, the plot was all over the place, and there was almost zero direction. Every update sounded like the brain child of, well, a child that thought “Oh it would be cool if we had this this time!”.

GW2’s story did not put the RPG back into MMORPG. If anything, it took it out. Final Fantasy XI, The Old Republic, Final Fantasy XIV, and yes, even World of Warcraft all have done a better job at putting a narrative into an MMO setting than GW2 did.

Guild Wars 2 failed on almost every level compared to it’s predecessors in telling a story line in an MMO. There was nothing compelling or interesting about it, and to say that it was simply means you probably should get out and play some more MMOs outside of Korean grinders.

Hebee.8460:

Hebee.8460:

TC main failed cause blue went insta heal to full at 5-10%.
Red & green died though.
I got 6 gear champ boxes and a Static core

Other then the insta full heal/fail – I like it

Update on the 2nd run after the patch for TC main (I went to bed after):

- Completed & went smoothly.
- 1 commander at each knight with 10-15min prior the event. The commanders count all who are there & start announcing in map chat how many they have.
- Constant map chat update to each knights health. The HUD that shows you how much health each knight is at was bugged to the previous run, with red/green dead & blue at 75% since it was healed. Once blue got below 75% it started to drop, but red/green were showing dead whole fight
- Once a knight died, map chat announce its down & cheered on other knights.
- Announced to map chat for everyone to stay at their current knight to avoid scaling up since it was unnecessary to have more then 50 at other knights up.
- Blue Knight Commander made sure to assign people (most likely his group) to mender watch, just to make sure they didn’t get to watch knight. They go down easy.
- Rewarded with 6 gear chests, no cores, but other party member got a core (kitten my RNG! :P )
- After knights are down, had a nice gap then a cinematic that allowed players enough time to port onto drill without having to worry about getting shot, & losing out on achieves.

The 1st run though, I did notice (And I believe others have mentioned) that when failed, if your knight is still alive & others are downed – you get no reward. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED.

Overall – The fix is good, but minor tweaks still will make it a greater event.

The fix is good…If you’re not on an over flow, and the server you’re on has dedicated commanders and a group of people that want to actually complete the event.

Now that the Knights give very little loot, and require much more coordination to down, this event is going to fall to the wayside like so many others.

This update isn’t there to “encourage” people to split up, it’s to force them to split up, and while it works well in Anet’s imaginary world where there’s hundreds of people on each map all working together at the same time to do these events, in reality this isn’t the case.

Look at the forums, look at the map chat in any over flow server, hell look at the map chat in any smaller server. People no longer care about the Knights, and because of that, people won’t be doing much of the Holo-fight anymore either.

It’s great you had a good run through the encounter, but that’s not the norm, and saying that the fight is fine is not helping at all. It’s not, and all I can say is I’m sorry for those that haven’t had a chance to fight the Hologram yet, seeing as now their chance to see the fight is going to be greatly diminished unless they guets to a high population server that has an organized run of this, or get lucky on an Over Flow.

Outside of the over abundance of loot, this LS was the first time in awhile that Anet actually had content that was accessible to everyone, yet semi-challenging in the form of (optional) achievements. People were able to down the Knights and the Hologram just fine, but if they wanted the additional achievements, they had something to work towards, or in the case of the 6 minute knight kill, could organize a group and down them if they wanted it.

Now, however, Anet has decided to force people to play their way after throwing what could best be described as a fit that players weren’t adhering to their precious vision, and now no one gets to have fun anymore.

Honestly, with how easy it is to drop the Knights, the best way of getting the Bigger, but not Faster achievement is to simply wait until they first use the attack, go in and DPS them a bit, than run to max range, wait for the attack again, and repeat.

There’s zero reason to stay in range of the attack and pray you don’t mess up a dodge. Just play conservatively, DPS quick and run out, and let the mass zerg who either have the achievement, or don’t want it, do the majority of the DPS for the boss.

The same can be said about In Tune. If you’re after this Achievement, you should really only bother to DPS during the Prime Hologram Phase, and the Large Colored Hologram phase, and even than, you should be DPSing very conservatively.

Turning off auto-attack is a very smart idea, and you should be keeping an eye on the duration of the buff, stopping your DPS a good 5-10 seconds before the buff runs out to ensure you don’t accidentally hit the boss.

You won’t want to DPS period once the first mini-holograms start to appear, as one wrong Aoe or mistimed attack can break the achievement for you.

You’re going to need to kitten your DPS for this achievement, so there’s no reason to try to go all out and do mass DPS if you’re after it. Again, let the Zerg do most of the work for you, and just help when you can.

Obviously once the final phase starts, you can DPS as you wish, as you no longer have to worry about color matching anymore, but for the first two phases of the fight, you should be DPSing conservatively, and not using anything other than single target, non-dotting abilities.

Randulf.7614:

As they said, there will be a big feature patch sometime after the season 1 ends (prob mid-late march)
What will be in that? They haven’t given any clue yet, although the forums have been rife with speculation pretty much every day since the announcement. I suspect we will know more after this patch lands.

I’m pretty sure the Feature Patch contains all the sweeping balance and system changes they announced a few months ago. They’re probably not going to start adding more LS content until after the second season of WvW, as they said they’re taking a break from it at the end of Season 1.

Hopefully that means they’re revising whatever content they originally had planned to be less awful, temporary content and more peramenent, good content but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Either way, I’m almost positive the Feature Update is just going to be the system changes that were previewed.

TheFool.4589:

Jamin.6528:

TheFool.4589:

Again, who’s to say she didn’t afk during the duration of the event? You don’t know what she truly did or did not do. No one tells the truth when asked. Again, there’s possibly something your friend isn’t telling you. Just saying.
Point again being is they kicked afkers due to them hindering progress towards the events goal. Anyone caught doing so was reported. Enough reports, means gms take actions. Also of coarse devs have powers. That’s like saying retail workers don’t get discounts for working at their store. End of story.

Let me try to be more clear…

Her and I were in the same party. Her and I were in the same server [Lion’s Arch Blackgate]. Her and I were travelling together, farming heirlooms, events, and rescuing citizens where we could. Her and I were talking via voice chat on Skype. She suddenly disconnected. She reconnected, and then disconnected ~2 minutes after joining. She got back in, was kicked off ~2 minutes after logging in because “Someone else had logged into her account”. Now she is banned.

Even if she lied to me about anything, which I don’t think she did, I was there for the whole thing. The only thing she did that would have caused her to stop moving for a while is change her play list on plug.dj, which did NOT take longer than 5 minutes.

My conversation with Qt Spy was less than satisfying as well. If ANet isn’t going to be clear about this, then I can post my entire chat log with him and show everyone what he said to me. First he expressly said that people WERE NOT being banned for AFKing. Then, after more prodding, he said something along the lines of “But really, if she was banned for offensive behavior, then she knows that she was doing something bad”. Meanwhile my friend is still on Skype and in tears because she STILL doesn’t know what she did wrong. All we have to go off of is this one guy, acting like a vigilant, making his own laws. This isn’t DC, he can’t go around being the kitten Batman.

Post it then. And again who’s to say she didn’t do the event without you and went afk for it? You’re gonna take her word for it of coarse, but you don’t really know what she did. That’s all I’m saying. People are good at begging and complaining rather then confessing they did something wrong. It’s human nature. Side note, do you know her in RL? As in person? Or is she a guildy? If you don’t know her in RL then you really don’t know who she is or what she would do.

Dear lord, I’ve heard of people blindly defending Anet’s decisions for anything, but this takes the cake. Hell, this takes the entire kitten ed bakery.

He said he was playing with her The Entire Time, he was with her When She was Disconnected, He was there with her On Skype, talking about the entire thing, during the entire duration of the event.

And yet you still proceed to call him and her both a liar, and that Anet is perfectly alright with banning her. Even after a Anet Employee in this topic has out right said they don’t have the power, or the privileged, to use their GM commands without kitten ed good reason.

There are no words for you. You are literally arguing against the facts as they’re shoved right in your face, because heaven forbid a company you worship for whatever ridiculous reason is revealed to have a few rotten eggs in it that abuse their power.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Leo Paul.1659:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Leo Paul.1659:

If it’s an emergency would you really go back to your game to get your character out of LA? -_- Helping the community = forcing you to play a certain way? What if I just like going into LA for extra profit while playing the TP?

Good grief. Keep trying to defend AFK leeching all you want. Okay, yeah if your house is on fire then I guess it is okay to AFK. LOL

No one is forcing you to play a certain way, but if you take part in the LA event where a significant part requires actually participating then you should be willing to participate in one way or another. Unless you house catches fire. HAHA

Nothing in the mechanics require me to do anything to get the citizen supply bags. How does one measure contribution? I’m also playing the game, just not how you want me to. You want to penalize people because they’re getting rewards just for standing idly while chatting or for playing the TP or heck, have their houses on fire instead of saving citizens? Then they shouldn’t have designed it that way in the first place.

As the players who keep defending this like to say, it was a design flaw. Taking advantage of a design flaw is exploiting the game. Using an exploit is against the TOS.
So by the arguments given here my the AFK crowd, in their own words, they are using an exploit and should be suspended/banned.

End of story.

So…by your (flawed) logic, if I were to go into LA, and instead of contributing to any event what so ever, just ran around and cleared rubble piles to find Heirlooms, which don’t contribute to the rescued civilian count in any way, and also just farmed random mobs without ever once attempting an event, or helping a civilian, I’d also be considered an AFKer since I’m just taking up a spot and not doing anything productive to the event.

See the problem with your argument? Where do you determine a person’s value in this instance? Should everyone who zones in be required to participate in every event and make the civilian count go up? What about people that just want to kill mobs and farm Heirlooms? Are they not allowed to do that because they’re not interested in helping out others with the rewards?

I’m not agreeing that the people that go AFK in the zone should be awarded for doing so, but at the same page, I don’t think they should be banned or suspended for doing it, nor should players who aren’t actively contributing to the zone’s meta event be punished for not wanting to take part in the various events in the zone for whatever reason.

And besides all this, Anet has an easy answer to the AFK problem that in their infinite wisdom, decided not to implement: If you’re AFK for more than a few minutes, the game auto-kicks you just like it does in SPvP or Activities.

So…remind me again why Anet bothered to create this poorly made flash page to replace the Preview pages that worked just fine up until these last few releases?

No, seriously, what’s the point? Do they think it’s innovative or fun to have to click around the ridiculous map to find screenshots and inaudible sound clips? And really, anyone with half a mind is just going to go to Dulfy and view the preview screen shots and sound clips there instead of wasting there time with this mess.

Atleast Anet had the common decency to no lock the preview video behind a requirement to find all eight screen shots and a sound clip. This just feels like a poorly cobbled together intern’s pet project than something from a professional game development company, to be honest.

It’s likely going to be rebuilt after this is over for no other reason than to give Anet a place to continually recycle the holiday events.

They already said they don’t want to spend time and effort making each year’s holiday vastly different from one another, and having to re-do the events from scratch because LA went away permanently would kind of defeat that mission statement.

Either way, unless Mordremoth popping out of the hole Scarlet’s drilling leads to an explosion so great that it leaves Lion’s Arch a smoking crater, there’s nothing this event has done to the city that can’t easily be rebuilt.

Besides, as someone else said: Temporary content is temporary. We can’t just have a brand new Dynamis-style end-game zone to play around with until the end of time, that’d be forward thinking. The ruins will go away, and LA will return, and we’ll be rebuilding the statue…again.

A handful of good updates in a sea of mediocrity content updates, so little permanent content it could be counted on a single hand, terrible story lines, and poorly written characters so…

It’s not been a good year.

Nikked.7365:

So… has anyone here played the content yet?

People have to cover the map and be ready to move on a moment’s notice for the next event. It requires groups to work in unison. The tri-kill mechanic does seem to get people to group up on cross-swords events, but to really kick kitten in this map, you need players all over the place.

This event is a terrible place to zerg.

Yeah…I got my Tri-kill Achievement on the first over flow server I joined, with no one knowing what to do, and just zerging the events as the popped.

Already I’m sitting at 13/15 achievements finished through sheer force of zerging. Now that people are understanding how the miasma works, and how the instance doesn’t kick you out until 10 minutes prior to the hour, people are just zerging events as they pop up, and being very successful at it.

This map was designed with zerging in mind.

There’s two possibilities as to why the alliances are still following Scarlet, both of which lead to the same end result: Poor Storytelling.

The first is simply because they are. No other reason given. Anet treats them like two-dimensional villains of the day with no personality, and they follow Scarlet because they’re the bad guys. No other motives, no other reasoning, nothing. They’re simply bad guys, and thus they follow their lead bad guy: Scarlet.

The second is that Scarlet is secretly some super powerful being of almighty, god-like proportions and the Aetherblades comment of “She’ll slaughter us all” is a literal one, in that if they refuse her service, she’ll transform into said god-like being and obliterate them all. Of course, if that’s the case, than we have to question why she’s even building an army in the first place.

As I said, both result in the same outcome: Poor Storytelling. If it’s the first, it shows Anet sees everything in a two-dimensional fashion, and that they didn’t bother to actually come up with a reason as to why these alliances would still be following her after the Heroes face slapped them back to the stone age.

If it’s the second reason, that it just cements the fact that Scarlet is a poorly written Mary-Sue that bends the story to her liking so she can be made all powerful. We’ve had no hints, no lead up, no nothing to even give a inkling to this concept that she’s an almighty super god, so if she essentially goes super powered in the last episode, than well..yeah, it’ll forever place her as the worst villain ever.

It’s obvious that Anet was going with a Joker route with Scarlet now that we’ve reached the end of the arc, except they completely missed all the nuances of what makes the Joker such a terrifying, and powerful, villain. The Joker uses his own twisted version of subterfuge and deception, along with his absolute disregard for human life (killing his own subordinates just to prove a point or for a laugh in front of others) to instill fear in his men. He’s able to get rival gangs of other Gotham Crime Bosses to join him through shows of power and insanity, such as extortion, kidnapping, and on the occasion murder of some of Gotham’s seediest crime bosses without even showing a hint of concern or hesitation for his own well being, that makes even people like Black Mask and Two-Face step back and say “Okay…perhaps we should listen to him”.

Most importantly though, all these scenes and shows of the Joker’s abilities are shown to the audience. Anyone whose read, watched, or played anything Batman related knows how the Joker works, because he’s an exhibitionist, and the characters within the universe know this as well.

Meanwhile, Scarlet just says crazy things, and says she kills people for laughs, but we never see this, we’re never shown proof of this, and we’re simply told to believe it when Scarlet recruits the Dredge, Chaar, Krait, and Aetherblades into her fold. Essentially, Scarlet is the Joker, without any of the traits that make the Joker an interest, believable, and feared character.

Nick.6972:

Couldn’t care any less what happened to LA.
Are we getting any new real content? Dungeon? Instance?

This.

Congratulations, Anet, you’re doing exactly what most people expected you to do, destroy LA. You’re now jumping on the bandwagon that Blizzard started with Catacylsm, ableit a few years late.

And that’s all fine and dandy, but what does that mean for the players? Is LA going to become a new dungeon? Is this a new explorable “elite” area like the Tower of Nightmares was? What’s going to happen when this update is gone, is LA just going to be a smoldering ruin with a few angry mobs that no one will bother going to outside of world completion?

And the most important question of all: Is this the big, epic, sweeping change to the world that will rock Tyria to it’s core? Because if it is…Than once again, I am dissappoint.

It also doesn’t help that this is part 3 of 4 of the finale, and unless there’s some big, epic reveal at the end of it regarding Scarlet’s motives, than hey guess what, we’ll be going into the final update completely blind of what Scarlet’s plan is, and I’m sure you’ll shove it down our throats in one big paragraph instead of telling it a crossed the past year like you should have.

It’s really difficult to get excited for an update when the trailer posted for it has one minute of “Oh look pretty LA views with recap” and 15 seconds of actual new content featured. And as others have said, destroying a capital city in an MMO is nothing new, nor novel.

It would be really nice if we could go back to how things were prior to Origins of Madness, and have a nice preview page of what the update will entail a week before, instead of a minute long trailer that usually doesn’t even show anything other than 10-15 seconds of content.

KainRacure.1023:

TTS has encountered a lot if this type of attitude at Teq, mari and Wurm. It kinda comes with the fact that you need roughly 150 to work together to win. There is bound to be a couple people who have no patience and instaid of trying to help new people or trying to work with or even around clueless people if need be they rage.
We try to pull them aside and explain how it only makes things worse and how if they want this to work they need to treat these people nice so they learn and participate rather then go screw this half way through and leave possibly leaving things open to failure. But in the end if they won’t stop the only thing you can so is report them. That is what the verbal abuse reporting category is for.

The WORST thing you can do is “flame back” that only causes more issues, more chaos, more hurt feelings and more trolling.

Being nice only goes so far, however.

When a person is completely incompetent, unwilling to learn, and is directly influencing a group to fail an event, tempers are going to fly, and I don’t blame people for getting upset.

When players have no way to have quality control over who they’re playing with, and are forced to play with people that don’t give a kitten about anyone else other than themselves so long as they are having fun at the expense of everyone else, other people stop having fun, and this quickly snowballs out of control until everyone is essentially miserable, and just wants to quit.

This is simply a problem with open world content, and the only way it’s going to get fixed is if Anet allows us to make our own groups, go into our own private instances for fights like these, and be able to directly interact with the players we take with us.

No matter how nice and polite you are, people who don’t want to learn how to be better at the game are never going to change, and that’s simply going to lead to more upset people.

The mentality of “I can play this game however I want so nyah” is far worst for the community than those that are getting upset at said people. The enjoyment of one person is not more important than the enjoyment of a hundred, plain and simple. If I had the ability to remove player such as those from an Over Flow, I would in a heart beat, because at the end of the day their inability to learn and play the game in a skillful manner is having a direct, detrimental affect on the enjoyment of me and many others.

..I really don’t understand how people get so irate over the idea of having Anet add in a historian NPC that lets players relive the Living Story…

I mean, these people are essentially saying that they don’t want additional content in GW2, and are content with the pathetically hollow and shallow content we have now in the game.

Imagine if all the content over the past year of LS was still in the game. I would actually be praising Anet instead of constantly criticizing them for being able to put out that much content into the game over the course of the year. GW2 would be bursting at the seams with things to do, people wouldn’t feel forced to log into the game every two weeks and hurry through the story segments to start their achievement grind, and we’d have more PvP game modes than you could shake a fist at.

Remind me how any of that is bad? How would having the Tower of Nightmares instance present through a Historian NPC be bad? How would having the Molten Facility and Aetherblade Base present as new Explorable Dungeons with their own unique skins be bad? How would having the Zephyr Sanctum still be present, with all it’s fun time happiness mini games, be bad?

And of course, how would having what essentially amounts to a second personal story, re-playable whenever you make a new character, be bad?

Do people really not realize that when they’re arguing against the idea of having LS content be entirely permanent, they’re quite literally arguing against having more content in the game? Or has Anet actually managed to brainwash people into thinking the LS is a good idea, and that having temporary content is better than bucket loads of permanent content.

Bubi.7942:

Shpongle.6025:

lmao @ all the nerds arguing thinking arena cares

Did you read the red post?

Fail troll is fail.

I did, but I don’t think you did.

Anet is temporarily removing the rank requirement only because they didn’t accurately explain the new requirement to the player base. Once the rank requirement is gone, you’ll probably have a week or two to get your Gift of Battle before the rank requirement is reinstated.

Of course they might reduce it slightly, but there’s still going to be a rank requirement, which means you will still need to participate in WvW, as the rank requirements removal is not permanent.

Spoilers to Follow

Yeah, I cringed quite a bit when the big reveal at the end of this was that Scarlet was going to attack LA…you know, the plot we’ve all known she’s been aiming for since Dragon Bash? To say nothing about the trailer a few weeks ago for the Season 1 finale that ended with LA in flames…

The major reveal this chapter was supposed to bring was painfully underwhelming, to the point where I wonder if Anet thinks we’re all incapable of putting two and two together for such a simple story line (or god help us that they think this storyline is somehow intricate and sweeping).

The only thing this chapter really confirmed that we weren’t sure about was that Scarlet’s being controlled by a third party, either an Elder Dragon or one of the Gods. Had the LS focused more on that (Which I was hoping it would), I think this would have been a bit more impactful.

But I agree, this LS makes Jory, Kasmeer, and the entire party out to be a bunch of blundering fools who need us to spell things out for them, to say nothing about Kiel and the Lion’s Council.

Wasn’t Kiel supposed to be stepping up security in LA after the Dragon Bash incident, not saying “Naw, Scarlet obviously won’t attack the same place twice. Criminals never return to the scene of the crime!”. Of course there’s also the possibility of another painfully obvious plot twist where Kiel has been working for Scarlet all this time.

Right now, there is almost nothing the last two episodes can do to really sweep us off our feet and give us an epic conclusion none of us see coming. The end result that will change Tyria for ever is LA being wiped off the map, and whatever big baddy that Scarlet is working for crawling out of it’s remains.

I’m hoping against hope that the big baddy is going to either be a God, not a Dragon, or even better, a real twist in that Abbadon returns after somehow surviving the encounter in GW1, and brings about a second Nightfall with his return. THAT would be a nice twist, and the little finale by zooming in on the moon at the end of the preview trailer would be a rather nice nod in that direction if it were true.

But it’s likely going to be Primordius and his Destroyers. But could you imagine if it was Abbadon, and the Zones in GW2 during Season 2 became Nightfall Touched? That would keep me interested for another year far more than the more obvious route of what’s coming.

The concept was cool, and it was a nice way of recapping the story thus far but..

The “reveal” if it could even be called that was the most underwhelming thing ever. Everyone already knew what she where she was going to attack next, and if they didn’t, Anet flat spelled it out for everyone in the Finale Trailer a few weeks ago.

So much for the reveal of her end game being something exciting. The only question now is if the voice in her head is a God, or a Dragon.

I honestly do not understand the disdain towards making Raid Instances (or Lairs, or whatever the hell you want to call them) in Guild Wars 2 that accommodates 20 some odd people, I really don’t.

Nothing is stopping you, the casual player, from getting nineteen other like minded individuals and zoning into the Raid and attempting Tequatl, The Wurms, or Raid Boss #3, and with the good ’ole Group Finder system, you can easily flag your group, find a party, or merge your current party with another and get in there and tackle the content.

The only problem that I see, and I think this is the big issue, is that your chances of success are suddenly wholly dependent on your personal skill, and that small group you associate with, since you’re not longer that one person out of over a hundred riding on others success praying you complete the encounter, and at the end of the day, I really do think that’s the issue with these arguments of “Casual Vs Hardcore”.

Just because you’re a casual player does not mean you get a pass for being a bad player. I know of plenty of casual players in other MMOs and games I play that, while they may not be on as much as others, they still know their class, come to Raids and Dungeons with their A-Game, and learn the encounters before hand so they aren’t a detriment to the group. A casual player refers strictly to the amount of time they can invest into the game, it has no bearing on their actual skill.

However, players that have no interest in learning how to play their classes properly, tout the almighty “I play the game however I want” motto, and are actual detriments to their groups likely wouldn’t like Raid Dungeons, as suddenly they’re being held a lot more accountable for their actions, their gearing choices, and their individual skill. While I would love to believe in Anet’s optimism that events like these will change individuals such as those, it won’t, which is why the idea of instanced raid content likely terrifies them, because suddenly it’s content they can’t participate in because they have no desire to become a better player, and can no longer ride in the shadows of a hundred other people in a world boss zerg.

But at the end of the day, a group of twenty casual players, that know their Classes, how to use their skills correctly, and know how to dodge and follow encounter mechanics would have no problem downing a boss like the Wurm after a little practice, even in a pick up group, so explain to me again how placing these bosses in raid dungeons is a bad thing? Just start up your own group if you don’t want to deal with “elitism” or requirements that you can’t fit, but if you fail, you only have yourself to blame.

And really, is personal accountability really that bad of a thing to have in an MMO?

Pennry.9215:

Up to this coming release I’ve seen more complaints about the LS stuff being in the WvW environment than anyone ever saying they liked it. Remember WvW Season 1 achievements? Remember all the rage of people hating PvEers coming for achievements and “messing up WvW”? I do.

Why now is this suddenly “Ya! Free loot bags off PvEers!”? Is it because EotM isn’t part of the standard weekly WvW scoring? Is it because EotM is nothing but a glorified Overflow?

Lastly, so many posts of trying to get people to like WvW and help out – especially from those on “lower population” servers. Do you really think this grief is a good idea and will make people suddenly like the WvW game mode?

Because unlike the Season 1 LS nonsense, this has no bearing on any real competition. The second WvW season hasn’t started yet, so really WvW right now just for funsies and preparation to see which Brackets we’re placed in.

And if the Screen Shot from today is any indication, anything done on the Edge of the Mists doesn’t carry over to the Mist War, where the statistics actually matter, so this new map is, quite literally, just a WvW Players haven to dink around in until their queue pops for the Mists War.

For once, there is actually no harm from having the LS Achievement Hunters coming into WvW for the people who want to participate in WvW competitively, as opposed to Season 1, where people hunting for achievements (such as wasting/draining resources on walls that didn’t need it for the sake of the achievement) actually had a detrimental affect on those trying to compete.

I’m still not happy about Anet shoving LS into WvW, where it doesn’t belong and just distracts from what many consider the most enjoyable aspect of GW2, but atleast in this way there’s no harm being done to the actual Mist War competition.

BobbyStein.2315:

gidorah.4960:

BobbyStein.2315:

You’ll have to wait and see how we integrated story into the release. I think it works pretty well but I’m biased. I am looking forward to the feedback we receive next week.

you also thought scarlet was a good villain.

I also know the entire plot a year in advance.

Not to sound rude, but we are quite literally three updates away from being done with Season 1, and (thankfully) the Scarlet story arc.

I a highly suspect, and doubtful, that within these three updates there will be any major changes to Scarlet’s character and any major reveals to her plot that will make her a “Good” villain.

Sorry, but you’ve had a year’s worth of time to make this character interesting to the palyer base. You can call me biased as well to absolutely disliking this entire fiasco that has been a living story, but even if I wasn’t, I have a hard time believing at all that these last three parts are going to make Scarlet a likeable, good, and well written villain.

I’ll paraphrase another website’s description of Scarlet, and again I mean no offense by it, but it is something you should take to heart the next time you design a villain:

She is very much, or very similar to, the brain child of a first time role player who wants to make a character that can do everything ever, in a desperate attempt to make that character interesting, and in doing so, had instead made a mary-sue character that is not interesting at all, but in fact a poorly made, two dimensional character with no depth to them.

I don’t know what disappoints and saddens me more:

The fact that Anet is blatantly adding items to the Gemstore that give distinct advantages over other players that cannot be acquired by actually playing the game…

Or the fact that there are people in this thread that are actually defending Anet for this decision, and saying it’s okay.

As others have said, this has nothing to do with the fact that this Pick gives sprockets for using it. Read the title, Google the definition of Precedent if you have to, than come back and continue the discussion.

What this is doing is opening the doors, slowly but surely, to Anet adding more Gemstore items that do more than just add convenience to them. How long until we have a permanent salvage kit with a higher rate than any other available salvage kit in game to salvage ectoplasms from items? Or how long until the Gem Store offers the ability to purchase permanent Magic Find boosters? Or how about consumables, permanent or temporary, that allow you to get additional bonus chests from World Bosses a day?

Why stop there though. Why not just cut the middle man all together, and give players the ability to buy Ascended Gear for Gems as well, I mean, what’s stopping people from not saying that’s simply continence, after all.

And hell, if Anet wants, they can simply disable the Gem to Gold Conversion with some PR swing, such as saying it had a negative affect on the in game economy, than start adding all these Gemstore only items, where people now only have one option to acquire them: Pay real world money.

I actually thought Anet was going to turn the direction they were going with the Gemstore around when they took down the Human Tier 3 cultural reskin from the Gemstore, but here we are, with more “Convinence” items in the Gemstore that can’t be gotten any other way.

Remind me again why these items aren’t available in game as well? Why not make it so players could either buy the new Pick Axe, or craft it instead if they didn’t want to farm the gold or gems. Why are all these new skins being shoved into the Gemstore, when last year around this time, we were being offered them in game by actually completing the content given to us.

I mean, compare the Achievement Points we got back in the early LS days, before they added those stupid Reward Chests, to how many we get now from a LS. You’ve gone from 10-15 per achievement, to 1-5, with the actual meta rewards being a lot less impressive than what’s purchasable in the Gemstore.

The TC is right, this is a Precedent towards an even worst direction the game is already going in. Between the lackluster responses to the recent updates, the soon to be fiasco of shoving PvE content into WvW, ruining the experience for both players in the process, and now a possible Gemstore nightmare opening up, GW2 is not going in a good direction right now.

It’s becoming less and less about doomsaying, and more and more about speaking truth: If GW2 continues in the direction it’s going, the game’s going to be a ghost town come this time next year.

…Why are they putting PvE content in WvW?

Oh lord, I have a feeling this update is going to be the straw that broke the camels back.

Delvoire.8930:

All of this has been in the gameplay.. for the last 15 months.

This was merely a way for new people or people who had no idea what was going on, to get clued in.

This isn’t a re-playable single player game or multi-player game.. It’s an ever growing MMO.

Would you like a replay of the Karka Event that happened a few months after the game released? Perhaps this time you can save the lighthouse?

…You’re kidding right? Tell me you’re kidding.

Being an MMO has nothing to do with Anet’s ridiculous idea that players shouldn’t be able to replay old content. Every MMO under the sun keeps the majority of expansion content in place when a new one comes out, just in case new players come to the game and want to start from the beginning.

Yes, every MMO has limited time world changing events, but these events usually run for several months, and are used sparingly.

GW2 has taken the idea of having limited time events, and gone way over board with them by making their entire content based around it. This is not fun for a new player, at all. Nothing like coming into the game, hearing about Scarlet, and than hearing about all the cool stuff that happened that they’ll never, ever, get to participate in.

If Anet had actually kept the LS content in the game after each update, GW2 would have a plethora of content for people to participate in…but they didn’t, and instead we get the flavor of the week content to hurriedly rush through so we can have the next spoonful of (usually bad) content shoved down our throats.

Yeah…No.

I’d rather not have my enjoyment of the Storyline ruined by a fight that becomes ten times more difficult than it needs to be due to the randomness of people in the open world, being slapped on an Over Flow, Etc.

Keep the next Elder Dragon fight in an instance, just make the encounter more dynamic and difficult than the abomination that was Zhaitan. The Living Story updates difficulty should really be more in line with the Story Mode dungeons. This is content that people are investing a lot of time in to see, for better or worst, the continuation of the Guild Wars 2 storyline.

When you have a giant wall of a boss fight that isn’t actually difficult, but only made so due to people that have no business participating in it, the enjoyment of experiencing the storyline disappears really quickly. There is nothing difficult or challenging about the Marionette, yet it took me nearly a dozen attempts over the course of two days to actually kill it, due to having been constantly placed in Over Flow servers with players that simply did not want to listen to the basic instructions of how to handle each platform.

Major encounters, like the next Elder Dragon, or in the case of the current arc the finale against Scarlet, should be placed in 5-man Instances on par with most Story Mode dungeons. I don’t care if people want “Pro Zerker Only” in their LFG titles, I can simply ignore those groups, put up my own group that says “All are welcome”, and go.

Now for those that want challenge, things like the Wurms (which I still believe should be in a Raid Dungeon) are always welcome, and there’s nothing stopping Anet from making an “Explorable” version of a LS instance (like what was done with Secret of Southsun’s instance) that is significantly more difficult and awards shiny cosmetic gear, recipes, and what not.

Doing it this way, everyone wins. People who aren’t that good at the game have a Story Mode dungeon they can complete (even more so if it’s made in the scaling style of the Queens Jubilee instance), and those that want a hard core experience have one without having to worry about people showing up and ruining the experience for them.

But alas, we won’t get this. Instead, the next Elder Dragon will likely be a world boss that is ruined due to over flow, poorly geared and skilled players, and myriad of other issues. But one can dream, and prey, that Anet might actually listen to feed back such as this.

It’s fun and fine when used in moderation. When every single boss uses it in some way, it begins to get repetitive and stale.

This, please. For the love of god this.

Being able to run to something like this, see a Channel Browser pop up like the SPvP system, where I can see how many groups there are, when the next event is going to start, how full they are, etc. would be perfect.

You would still have that plug and play system that Anet seems to want for these style encounters, and a built in raid browser for those who want a more controlled environment. And since the game seems to be able to make more Over Flow servers at a whimsey depending on the need, if all the channels fill up, more pop up for players to join.

You’d essentially be selecting an over flow to join. It’s a wonderful thought, and I’d love to see it implement. Right now, the Over Flow is one of the worst features in the game, and is starting to wear down the communities patience with content like this. I mean come on, the GW2 servers can’t be so terrible that we still need this many Over Flows.