Guild Wars 2

Star Ace.5207:

It’s just incomplete-a work in progress. Sad but true. But as I said, it makes me see no point in acquiring any current available gear, because it doesn’t apply to my builds and playstyle. We were given an Ascended gear teaser of sorts-though it doesn’t really make sense why would they release odd stat combinations before the common ones that people have used for a long while?

The thing is pretty much every patch has been incomplete/a work in progress.

I haven’t played in nearly a month (last day of the new instances in Wintersday), but I’ve been following patch notes and such, and this patch doesn’t make me want to log back in.

It’s been nearly 3 months since they said they really should have had Ascended items available everywhere (not just FotM), and from what I can tell, this patch adds amulets that are only available via laurels (again, limiting acquisition to BiS items to one activity).

And again not all stat sets are available?

I don’t get the impression that Anet is really learning as they go.

Another event patch with very limited in-game info (from what I can read on various sites) as to what to actually do, leading you to almost have to get info from outside sources, and then the actual info on the Anet site is vague and needs clarifying.

John Smith.4610:

Actually about 15% of the population finds making money very fun, irrelevant of the uses of that money. Ever gotten unnecessarily rich in a single player RPG like Skyrim?

I clearly fall in the other 85%, then.

Playing the AH/TP/whatever equivalent there is in any MMO has always been one thing I really take zero pleasure in.

To compare to WoW (the only MMO since EQ2 I made any extensive use of an auction system), I find that I dislike GW2’s TP quite a bit more.

That is because in WoW, where I had 5 85’s when I stopped playing (a couple weeks before LFR was introduce to give a timeline – though that was NOT the reason) and each of those had a couple of maxed crafts (I did have a duplicate or two, as I did not have every craft at max), I found that I only ever used the AH if I was feeling impatient about something. WoW was a game where I felt I could easily just go out and do whatever it is I needed to do to make whatever it was I wanted to make.

I don’t feel that way (at all) in GW2. DR coupled with the randomness of some of the drops, coupled again with the vast quantities required for many items in the game means that the best way is to farm gold somewhere and buy whatever it is off of the TP.

I don’t enjoy that in MMOs at all.

In a situation where I need X amount of whatever mat to make Y product, I’d much rather figure out how much of Z mob(s) I need to farm to get X, instead of figure out how many events/dungeon runs will yield Z gold to BUY X mats.

In GW2 I found (I haven’t played since the last new instance appeared for the Wintersday event) that by playing the game how I enjoy it, the long-term goals I have/had got further away, as the cost of the mats on the TP were increasing at equal to or greater than the rate I was making gold.

But that’s because I didn’t find the most efficient ways of making gold in GW2 very much fun (as far as I could tell, that was farming certain dungeon paths over and over).

I will start by stating that I, generally, do not care about mini-pets in GW (either 1 or 2). Not sure why, as I did in other games.

That being said, here’s my answers.

1 – Hard. From gifts – never saw one in around 800 (total guess) opened. Did get an Infiniarium from the gem boxes. I’d rate this as, overall, hard. Too hard from gifts, but about right from gem boxes, so hard is a compromise.

2 – Undecided. As I stated above, I don’t really care much about mini’s in GW.

3 – Yes. I mis-read the price on the 10 pack (due to having my UI scaled down), otherwise the answer would have been no. I won’t be buying anymore, though.

4 – No.

Honestly, specifics are hard, as the mob type and location seems nearly everything and everywhere.

One place I have never noticed it is in the WvW maps.

But I have been working my way into a cave, and fighting everything along the way, and have had a mob respawn exactly where I killed one within 2 seconds multiple times. So often, in fact, that easily the best way to get deep into a cave is to just run in until you think you’ve hit a relatively safe zone, and wait and see what’s still chasing you, and then kill those mobs.

Like when you see a rich node in a cave. It’s not a deep cave or anything, and guarded by a vet and a couple regular mobs (in aggro range of the node). The path to the node will have 5-7 or so mobs spaced along the way. If you take those 5-7 mobs out gradually as you go into the cave, by the time you kill the vet and his lackeys and mine the node, those 5-7 will have to be refought when you come out.

Assuming you don’t just run past them (easily the best way to deal with them).

I don’t know the exact time on the respawns, but the entire scenario replays all over the world, with all types of mobs. It honestly feels not remotely interesting (as most mobs drop basically nothing worthwhile the vast majority of time – even with full MF gear and food).

It’s the “what? I just killed these things and they’re back?” feeling that makes lots of stuff feel totally not worthwhile doing.

Happens a lot when you’re trying to find your way to a vista or over a mountain or something, and you go up one path, killing stuff along the way, and once you realize it’s the wrong way, going back means you have to kill everything again.

For every path you choose until you get there.

I’m not saying it’s in any way hard in the “I may die here” aspect. It’s just frustrating in the “why do I have to kill all these worthless mobs again for no gain” time sink aspect.

It really makes exploring the world incredibly frustrating, as generally these spots are not near where people are commonly found.

It seems like a half-baked fix to two problems that really shouldn’t have existed.

For starters, the fix to DC’s in Fractals not letting you back in is coming two and a half months after the Fractals were released, when the other dungeons that pre-existed the Fractals didn’t have this problem.

That is…not encouraging.

Why they chose a different system for Fractal connections vs every other dungeon in the game at that point is beyond me, but that decision seems a very bad one.

The increase in level for everyone will be nice, assuming the highest level isn’t too far ahead of everyone else, or is fine with karma farming. Depending on how much karma one can gain from this, it’s unknown whether anyone will see this worthwhile as a karma farm.

Still no mention of Ascended gear coming from anywhere else besides the Fractals – which is bad. It wouldn’t matter AT ALL that Ascended came only from Fractals if, other than Agony resist, the stats were identical to exotics, but these rings are still the best rings (provided you have the ones you want) for any activity in the game.

And they are only available in Fractals.

Which was admitted to being a mistake.

And isn’t getting changed before the end of January?

Fractals are likely still to be kind of reliant on being in an overflow to some degree even after these changes, and also reliant on a 3rd party website as well.

The level range idea is much better (although seemingly not going to be implemented), and account Fractal level would be much nicer, as well.

These changes will make trying to get a group to run Fractals less awkward, but it’s still going to be plenty awkward compared to other dungeons in GW2 and pretty much any dungeon in any other MMO.

But I’m still kind of in awe that it’s going to take 2.5 months to fix the DC issue.

Have played Guardian and Mesmer to 80, and while both are just fine for leveling, the Guardian will mostly likely get everything done faster, and at 80, if/when you start farming mats and the like, the Guardian will do it faster.

That being said, everything will be much more interesting if you do it on a Mesmer, but if by “best” you mean either easiest or most efficient, then I’d go with Guardian over Mesmer.

Can’t speak for other classes, as my next highest is 38 Elementalist, but my experience thus far with Ele is that it’s somewhere in between Guardian and Mesmer, and this is with my Ele having the benefit of crafted gear all the way (Tailor, Weaponsmith, Artificing, Cooking, Jewelcrafting all at max), while neither the Guard or Mesmer had this benefit.

Electro.4173:

All of the in-game gifts drop stuffing and glue, although its relatively rare.

Rare enough that while I got two Endless Toymaker Tonics in the gifts I’ve opened (approx 700 to 800 – not exactly sure), when I did the fifth daily dungeon for my fifth frame, I had 5 extra stuffing and 0 extra glue (I was at 505 stuffing and 750 glue after the 5th day’s dungeon).

I don’t even think those 5 wads came from a gift, but from a random mob drop.

Shadow.3475:

Listen to what they say instead off making up stuff, they want to make ranking system better rewards and so on but [bold]they need to figure out how to do it[/bold]

The game has been live for 3.5 months now, and I sure hope they’re not in the “we have to figure out how to do this” stage of something that probably should have been in at launch.

Just like sPvP and it’s desire to be an eSport – 3.5 months in and much of the very basic stuff needed to be an eSport still don’t exist – just how did they expect sPvP to be an eSport with the features there at launch?

Rin.1046:

My advice, Malediktus, would be to leave the gem store well alone until Anet can sort all the issues they keep having. With buggy events and ridiculous exchange rates, it’s really not worth you wasting your money. If you really want items, do like you said and wait until the end of the event and get them last minute, otherwise you run a high risk of being disappointed.

Alternatively, you can realise that these items are completely optional, and therefore not worth spending real or in game money on, and just enjoy playing the game.

I’d go with this.

There hasn’t been a bug-free content update yet – why would you have expected this one to be different?

I know Anet is trying – but so often what happens in-game is not quite what they intended. Six weeks on and a DC in FotM means you have to start over…

flow.6043:

I agree with KyleQuest.
People tend to overrate how much mf can make a character weaker. And there are a lot more things that factor in when it comes to finishing a dungeon quickly.

I think the overall point is that while it’s debatable how much a character wearing MF gear may hurt a party, it’s not debatable that MF gear simply NEVER helps a party.

It may make you 10%, 5%, 1% or 0.5% less effective, but it will absolutely never make you even 0.1% more effective.

I think that is a pretty decent article.

Overall I like GW2. I have some issues with it, sure, but overall it’s pretty fun.

But to address his points – I think I agree with them all.

As for no trinity – I played a healer main/tank alt in pretty much every MMO I’ve ever played. I’ve never had any problem with the trinity system because I’ve rarely been stuck for hours LFG. I’ve always found DPS rather boring, to be honest.

In GW2, my overall feeling for the group dungeons is that they are simply chaotic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s an actual improvement over the trinity – it’s just different. Asheron’s Call 1 was like this (well, not really, there weren’t even parties, but there were also no tanks or healers).

And the kiting/dodging nature of this game causes mobs to reset during fights quite often – because while the combat system is different from other MMOs, the mobs don’t seem to be designed with a different combat system in mind. Early on (and still occasionally now) on my Mesmer, I’d be fighting something and dodging/kiting, and even though I wasn’t running away (just trying to avoid being hit while hitting the mob) I’d inadvertently go out of it’s leash range and it’d reset. Pretty annoying.

And to the not explaining things – GW2 fails to explain a LOT about the entire game – not just class roles.

As for the dynamic events – again I tend to agree with him. They are, basically, repeatable quests that you can’t, generally, control when they start. They’re often buggy or broken (basically any event that involves NPC allies with their poor AI and/or scripting).

For area flow – on my first character, leveled up to 80 before Labor Day, I had absolutely no problem outleveling a zone before I 100% it – and that’s how I approached it – I’d go to a zone my level, and 100% it. I was never less than at least 1 level above the zone when I finished it – I’m guessing due to so many dynamic events completed due to so many people in the zones.

On my 2nd character, leveled to 80 some time later, nearly every zone I would 100% at least 1, if not 2, and sometimes even 3 levels below the level of the last heart. The zones were, and still are for the most part, barren of other players. It was either Gendarran or Kessex where, on this 2nd character, I started the zone 2 levels above the level of the lowest heart, and finished the zone THREE levels below the level of highest heart. It was a zone I had done on my 1st 80, so there was that, but there was not a single dynamic event to be found the entire time I was in the zone. And this was with XP food (from my main) on the whole time.

Crafting is, like nearly every MMO out there, nearly useless. It’s great that it provides character XP (I have a level 38 ele with 2 max professions, and I have a level 2 war that will max my last 2 professions – I have 2 maxed ones on my 2 80’s), but keeping your craft level appropriate isn’t easy, and you really don’t make anything useful until you can make level 80 rares/exotics. On that first character, I simply did not find enough drops to keep 2 crafts (with one being cooking) up to my character level – but this was when the TP was down, so there was no way to get the mats besides asking via mail or farming.

Sure you need crafts to make legendaries, but since you can apparently just buy legendaries from the TP, that doesn’t matter much.

The story – one of the worst stories in an RPG I’ve ever seen. I’ve only advanced one char to the level 71 step and that was only because at the time you needed to get there to get a POI – no longer necessary, so I won’t be doing the story on any character unless I complete everything else there is to do in-game and every other video game, book and TV show in existence is destroyed for some unknown Mayan-esque apocalypse reason.

Mistranslated JRPGs from the 90’s have much more interesting and engaging stories than GW2’s story.

Overall GW2 is a good game. I don’t particularly like the grinds needed to do so much of the “content”, but for the most part that stuff isn’t needed, and as long as there’s other stuff to do, that’s ok. I do not, at all, like the idea of vertical progression (if I want to play a vertical progression game, TBH I’ll do it in a game that does it well – not GW2’s RNG FotM vertical progression), and I think they have gone way overboard with the incredibly low RNG stuff all over the game, but there’s quite a bit to love about GW2.

Whether it stays that way (lots of stuff to love) really depends on the forthcoming communication and development that was promised a month ago in O’Brien’s AMA (and really hasn’t appeared in any form since).

Great minds?

15

I’d love to see Magic Find just removed completely. No matter if it helps/hurts a group, it’s a purely selfish stat that can NOT help others.

If it must be kept – move to to only craftable consumables, and put it on every craftable consumable there is, with the % based on the rarity of the consumable used.

But the idea of a complete selfish Magic Find stat in a group game is a terrible one, IMO.

I know the idea is that you guys want to keep the UI as small as possible, and while I agree with that totally (I had 9 hotbars on my screen on my shaman in WoW), it would be nice if there was a special button or something that you could put a clickable item in.

Just off to the side in some corner where you could have a button you could click to summon a mini, or use a tonic, or maybe the bell.

It just seems really clunky to have to dig through inventory to use this stuff, IMO, and one solitary button that performs like the 6-0 buttons would be nice – with anything in your inventory of the type in the scroll of options.

While I was finishing Been There. Done That. a couple of days ago, I was in a lowish level zone (either Lornar’s or Timberline – or maybe both) and watch these things destroy a couple of little outposts.

Not really worth fighting at all, IMO.

Are they killable? Yes.

Are they killable in any sort of timeframe that makes killing them worth it? No.

Grab present and run – they’ll despawn in a couple of minutes (after wiping out any NPCs in their vicinity that will attack them).

There is something slightly odd about this achievement. It’s definitely doable (got it day one myself and have helped others get it), but each time I’ve been there when it’s been done, the last thing needed smashed was something that looked like it had been smashed already.

For my own run, it was just me and one other person in the zone, and right after I attacked an area (Guardian GS AoE) that did zero damage, the other guy attacked the very same spot and we both got the achievement. I didn’t visually see anything change, though.

For the other run, the two people that needed it (there were 3 of us left) reported the same thing – they were in the same spot, and one of them attacked and the achievement dinged for them both – but neither saw anything visually change from undestroyed to destroyed.

For my run, the last item seemed to be a part of a fence that was partially in the geometry of a hill. Not sure what the other run’s last item was (or was supposed to be).

I’d like to echo the old crafting screen. Why was this change made? The launch screen was just fine, IMO.

I’d really like Anet to emulate what every other MMO that I have ever played has done and when the party leader leaves a group – pass leadership to someone else in the instance instead of kicking every player out. Changing things up from other MMOs is fine – but not if you are changing something that works everywhere else to something that is easily griefable.

I’m willing to bet most party leaders who leave have absolutely NO IDEA they are the leader (as the person who enters first) or that they are screwing others over by leaving. But random people get screwed over by this every single day.

I’d like the Fractal dungeons to be like every other dungeon in the game – you are able to re-enter. Again – change can be good, but changing from something that works to something that doesn’t really makes no sense.

And the fact that it’s 5 weeks on and there’s no sign of a fix in sight and….

I’d LOVE to see Ascended gear stats reduced to match Exotics – but since that won’t happen, how about the promised “other ways” to acquire the gear? The AMA basically admitted the Fractal/Ascended instance/gear was released not as intended, and over a month later, it’s still unfinished (and buggy).

I’d like to see remnants of holidays held over. While Wintersday is awesome for being so long – I did so little of the Halloween events due to the shortness of the event – and I’ve been able to play a lot of the PvP event this time due to no real time pressure – unlike the two PvP events at Halloween.

I hope to never see a “one-time only” event ever again in GW2. Been to all but one of them so far (was at work during the launch of the Cursed Shore thing on the Friday) and none that I’ve attended has worked as intended. Wintersday has been, for the most part, lag-free (some exceptions in Bell Choir – but that’s not critical, IMO) and it’s been wonderful.

I’d love to see some sort of real fix to culling. While I enjoy WvW, culling makes it so that often it simply can’t be taken seriously, since the overall design of the systems encourage a zerg, and culling makes much of any zerg simply invisible.

Last but not least – I’d love to see RNG’s importance reduced as much as possible. I hate it, and I simply stop doing stuff if I feel I’m overly punished by RNG, as I end up feeling that it doesn’t matter what or how well I do anything – any reward is simply down to luck – so what’s the point of making real effort? Quick example is that I’m 0/12 on FotM 10 daily chests, and I know someone who’s 3/3 and gotten the exact two he wanted. I’ve done over twice as many fractals as him, and have almost nothing to show for it, and he’s “done” because he as the rewards.

Overall I’ve enjoyed this event quite a bit, but sadly I know much of that enjoyment is that I was lucky with RNG (2 tonics turned into a bell and some extra gold).

I was about to post about this.

I’m nearly 100% positive (though not quite) that even if you pick your profession twice (both the first time you can, and after the timer) it still can sometimes reset randomly when you land.

I found it odd that I’d suddenly be something I had specifically not chosen so often.

Overall I found this PvP event fun and finished both achieves, but this was a bit confusing until I realized what was happening, and I liked that there was a class-specific skill still there (though I personally found the Mesmer clone much more useful than whatever my Guardian was getting – the only 2 level 80’s I have – so much so that I don’t remember the Guardian skill you get).

Sarmach.1547:

The bells are in C major. I have a reddit thread where we are figuring out pieces to play on them. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/14w8be/choir_bell_songs/

Thank you for this link!

Thanks for the info!

Made a post asking about this that can hopefully just be ignored now!

Just looking for some information in making these, and what they do – especially the forged tonics.

Mostly curious about emotes and such – I don’t want to forge a tonic and find out the emotes or something about it are annoying and I’ve spent money on an item I’ll never use – so any input would be great!

I’ve looked at dulfy and the wiki, and if the information’s there, it’s not linked from their Wintersday pages.

Luriyu.6873:

Euler.3259:

Yea, until this game manages to get the rewards on events right, I’m just doing the ‘get the achievement, then play something rewarding’ thing. Everything in this game is so incomprehensibly out of reach I don’t even want to try. Sure the journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step. But why is it a 1000 miles before I get anything?

because, why does everything ever have to be about instant gratification? you feel better after working really hard to obtain something you want. plus this is how anet makes money… people using real money to buy fake money to buy another type of fake money.

Well RNG is the total opposite of “working hard”.

For example – fractals and ascended rings. I’m 0/12 on opening level 10 daily chests. I’ve seen others go 3/3 and stopped, because they got the rings they wanted.

Who “worked harder”?

Who got the rewards they were after?

If the answer isn’t the same (and it isn’t) then there’s nothing rewarding about “working hard”, but just luck.

Is it not possible to make other players invisible?

Other players in the way (IE, not being able to see my own character) is easily the most annoying part of this and the Halloween puzzle.

So I got one of these – not by RNG, but by getting TWO everlasting toy tonics and selling those, and buying the bell.

RNG is RNG (and it’s absolutely terrible – 12 level 10 FotM daily chests opened and still no ring of any kind), but I’d say I opened around….800 gifts in total to get my 2 toy tonics (which sold for about 15 gold more than I paid for the bell).

I did notice that within minutes of the dev post here stating the drop rates were the same in all gifts that the prices for the 2 gifts (small and medium) that were under 1 silver suddenly shot up to around 2 silver, and the giant is there, as well. The large seems to still be around 3 silver – probably due to the drop of the more expensive snowflake.

Yak’s Bend server.

The gate is closed, there are friendly NPCs just inside, but unless there’s a secret entrance, no one can get in.

Vigil Warmaster, Vigil Crusader, Priory Explorer and Whispers Agent visible just on the other side of the gate – just standing there.

Edge.4180:

I’m trying hard not to roll my eyes whenever someone claims the zones are “empty”. Do we have the same definition of the word “empty”? Because I’m hitting zones of all levels, and when an event starts and a dozen players swarm the space around me in a matter of seconds, I have a hard time describing that as “empty”.

Do some people seriously want to hear the population described as “there are so many players around me at any given moment I can’t even score credit on a kill”, because that’s exactly the opposite of what I want.

I can only speak for my own server, Yak’s Bend, which was listed as “Full” until yesterday.

I’m working on world completion (86% now), so have been doing lower level zones lately. The zones I have been completing the last week or so are (in no particular order):

Metrica
Wayfarer
Kessex
Snowden
Diessa
Dredgehaunt

I still have Lornar’s, Timberline and part of Mount Maelstrom left to go (and 3 of the cities to finish).

Wayfarer and Metrica weren’t too bad, but I never saw more than 3 other people at any one event, and the map chat was decidedly lower in Wayfarer than Metrica.

Dredgehaunt was nearly a ghost town when I did it, as was Kessex. There were other people there, but not too many (I would say I actually saw less than 10 other people on each map while 100% them).

Snowden Drifts – I did not see another single soul last night when completing this map. No one. Not a single map chat from anyone else, either. I don’t know if I was the only person on this map, but I was the only person I ever saw the entire time I was there.

Diessa was pretty active, though – more than either Metrica or Wayfarer.

Also, while my server has been High or Full for at least a month, I have not had a WvW queue in at least that long. And until recently Yak’s Bend was in the 3rd tier of WvW matchups (basically we were ranked 9th out of 24 US servers – now we are 10th and in the 4th tier). I didn’t have a queue at all this past Saturday, either, when the matchup was fresh and we were finally winning (we had come in 3rd in our T3 matchup 3 weeks running – though never getting destroyed).

I haven’t been to Orr zones for a bit (as doing map completion completes the dailies), but around 2 weeks ago, certain spots of Cursed Shore seemed pretty full still (Penitent Path and Fields of Gold), but most other waypoints were contested (including most Temples).

Lots of people still show up for the 3 dragons (last weekend was the last time I was doing these), but obviously not nearly as many as during September.

That’s what it’s been like on my “full” server, but my activities aren’t what most people have been doing.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

did you report him? Because we do ban for that type of behavior.

We’re always working on ways to keep people from trolling and exploiting others. We recently made it so that the party leader can’t leave the group and kick everyone out without his instance being destroyed, so this is just the latest iteration in people trying to abuse other people. I will alert our programmers to this if they are already not aware.

Why would you guys NOT make it so party leadership passed to someone else in the party?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’d love to hear from you folks about this thread

I’d also love to post in the thread about what some of our plans are, but there is a time and place for everything.

Time – adjust the time of the various paths to be roughly equal. When I hear that a given dungeon/path takes anywhere near an hour, I simply don’t do that path. I don’t want to raid – if I did, I’d be playing a game with raiding.

Fun – much of the combat in dungeons (especially the non-Fractals) simply isn’t very fun. Simple boss fights with tons of health that take forever to kill but aren’t really a challenge aren’t fun. Overhealthed trash mobs that pose no danger aren’t fun. If you want players to enter your dungeons for fun, they should be fun to do.

Rewards – much of the trash give nothing worthwhile, but only serve to steal your time. And once someone has what they want from a dungeon, why is there a reason to go back if they don’t consider it fun? Something useful to do with any extra token would be nice – be it some sort of consumable, or some way to exchange them, or anything, really.

RNG – Just…no. The RNG design of the Ascended rings drop is just…very lazy design.

Bugs – the AI of your NPCs, throughout the game, is bad. I don’t know if their AI breaking is the cause of all the various dungeon bugs – but one of your other posts hints that it is. Design your NPC AI around things that people WILL DO, not around the one way that you guys expect people to do things. If skipping mobs breaks NPC AI (and therefore the dungeons), either make mobs unskippable or adjust the AI so it can handle it. People WILL skip what they can, especially if that something either rewards nothing (trash) or isn’t worth the trouble for the rewards (some bosses).

Dungeon finder/better LFG tool – it doesn’t have to auto-group me, it doesn’t have to auto-port me to a dungeon, but it has to make it EASY for me to find the other people playing the game that want to do the same thing I do. Overflow hopping in LA shows that there are dozens of people (at least) that want to do any given dungeon at any given time, but your game provides no way for them to know about each other. At minimum this tool should match the functionality of the lfg website – at minimum. If it doesn’t, or if it does, but is harder to use, people simply won’t use it, and you will be wasting dev time.

Pre-events – please disable these.

Whatever too Anet implements needs to be cross-server.

It doesn’t need to be auto-join and auto-port you to the dungeon, but it does need to let you state very specifically what you are looking for, and if it isn’t auto-join, it needs to be very browsing friendly.

Basically, it needs to be equal to, at minimum, the LFG site, or will be largely useless and wasted development time.

Namu.5712:

Your turn. 330 am friday night…. game looks pretty populated to me. Thats not even primetime hours lol.

And there’s absolutely no way those servers were “full” at that time, either – if full means number of players logged in.

My server is listed there, and I was online, and at that time there were no WvW queues, no Lion’s Arch overflow, and pretty much no way to get a fractal group of a specific level (due to no way to change overflows).

I also went to Metrica (working on world completion) around that time, and it was desolate.

I’m not saying there was no one on, but the number of people logged on at that time last night was very, very tiny – for a “full” server.

If there were that many people on – I am curious where they were?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Can you think of a less fun, entertaining or enjoyable way to get these rings?

I know I can’t.

I’m 0 for 10 on daily chests (have mostly stopped doing them, but every 3 or 4 days I get stupid and think “maybe today”) and failing to see the entertainment value of Agony and Agony resistance, since combatting it is all down to RNG.

Karizee.8076:

Yes, the population changes throughout the day, even on the full servers.
You may have to watch for it very late at night/very early in the morning on the full servers to catch an opening – transfer quick if you see one!

I’m curious where all these people are, then?

I’m on the OP’s server, and the number of people I encounter in the world has dropped quite a bit since the end of September (except during the Lost Shores event) on the server.

WvW queue times are way down (or non-existent). Karma farmers are down in Orr (even before Fractals). Dragon attendance is down a bit. Starter zones are pretty dead, too – compared to the first month.

If all the people “on my server” are now currently in Lion’s Arch overflows or Fractals instances – are they really on my server?

I know the vast majority of my (rather large – we hit the 500 cap in September and had to do a cleaning out in October) guild aren’t online when I am (roughly 20% max during Lost Shores of just over 300 members at any one time).

If Yak’s is listed as “full”, well, I’m wondering where those people actually are at in-game, because it doesn’t appear to be in any persistent Yak’s zone or the WvW zones.

Karizee.8076:

How on earth can you say more was broken than fixed? One new bug was added. One. Which they are working on.

Well, to be fair, there’s a lot of bugs they’ve been “working on” for months that still aren’t fixed.

Now I have no doubt the jumping bug will be fixed ASAP (because it breaks so much of the game), but people have been DCing and not being able to re-enter Fractals for 2 weeks and no fix yet.

And many people (myself included) have not ever had WvW bonuses on our characters, since launch over 3 months ago, until today.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

I changed the title to reflect that it is a personal opinion.

It’s one that I, personally, largely share.

I’ve completed the level 10 daily 9.99 times (the 9th run we actually all got kicked to Lion’s Arch with Maw at like 30% because someone fell through the world and couldn’t die, so they left the group – apparently they were group leader?) and no ring.

Meanwhile I get to group with people who are complaining that their 3rd/4th/5th rings aren’t the one they wanted.

RNG is so amazingly awesome!

(actually not – my will to log in is kind of gone now – I had a complete day yesterday with nothing to do, and not once did I think of logging into GW2)

I would agree that content bugged and/or poor since day 1 should have a higher priority than new content that is also bugged (the whole of Lost Shores is/was bugged to some degree).

While the actual encounters of the Fractals are mostly nice (and much more interesting than the limited experience I have with the launch dungeons), the surrounding systems around them (and Ascended gear) seems totally unfinished – even with today’s patch 2 weeks after their release.

The AMA even stated that they (I’m putting the Fractals and Ascended gear together here) were, basically, released before they were done (no way to get rings other than RNG luck – forcing anyone not doing dungeons to grind these fractals for the best gear that DOES have an impact everywhere else in the game – bar sPvP).

I don’t know why these Fractals are substantially different than the other dungeons, but something must be pretty different if there’s no fix for not re-entering after a DC after 2 weeks.

Not to mention the complete fracturing of the /LFG spam crowd in Lion’s Arch (without even mentioning that Lion’s Arch is now pretty useless for anything other than spamming /LFG – and that if you /LFG more than once like every 3 or 4 minutes you suppressed for kittens only know how long).

RNG gating and not seeming to have any idea what this would do to the players (other than knowing that there would be backlash) smells of either not really understanding how MMOs work, or releasing content knowing it’s not finished.

For example – why was the current /LFG tool even implemented into the game? What possible function can it serve? You are unable to state what group content you are looking to do. You are unable to see people LFG outside of the zone they (or you) are in. And most people don’t even know it exists. And yet the biggest new content is all about needing a group, and a very specific group (fractal levels), and that specificity is so tight that people are finding ways to hop overflows and using 3rd party sites just to be able to find other people to do the content.

Meanwhile the first patch to this new content tries to remove all possible benefit the players can derive from playing something “not as intended”, but does nothing (that I can tell) of removing any negative affecting the players that is “not as intended”. And adds a couple more negatives as a bonus.

Having played quite a few MMOs (but no “Asian grindfests” – but games like WoW for years, tried Rift, ToR, WAR, Vanguard, EQ2, and also FFXI – which is the next closest to GW2), I think GW2 is the grindiest MMO I’ve played, if you disregard the PvP gear grinds in WoW and ToR (at least at release – I don’t know what it’s like now).

I put PvP gear grinds as a separate category because they are REQUIRED grinds to be competitive, and I have never heard anyone say they are “fun”.

A big part of GW2 appearing to be such a huge grind is that everything “else” to do, apart from heart quests and dynamic events – basically anything that leads to an item – requires massive amounts of X, Y and Z item, and there simply aren’t the events to acquire the items needed in “regular play”. And by regular play – I mean just going around and doing whatever and getting the drops naturally.

Take a set of karma armor – 250k karma. If you do every event in the game once – is that even enough karma? Disregarding that so many events are still bugged, and in lower level zones you get such a small amount compared to Orr, and is it any wonder people farmed the Plinx chain?

Or crafting – I hit 2 brick walls leveling my first character up to 80 and trying to keep my craft current (my other was cooking at it was very easy). One was the T2 mats, and the other was the T5 mats. At the T2 mat stage (first week of release), there was also no TP, so my only option was to let armorsmith lag behind, or go farm mobs for drops. I chose the farm mobs for drops option and was constantly hit by DR. So not only did I have to grind for crafting, I was also punished for it.

Strangely, on my 2nd character, I hit the exact same brick walls at T2 and T5 blue mats (tailor especially – artifice wasn’t so bad once I found a good guide). I’ve gotten 2 more crafts done (weapons and jewel), so I have only 2 more to go for master crafter, but I’m 100%ing the world on my 1st character, and I’m going to run into the exact same problem again – I’ll have more than enough of the non-fine mats, but not near enough fine mats, especially in the T2 and T5 ranges. Of course I’ll have the money to buy them off the TP, but if I didn’t, my only option would be to grind.

I think if much of the horizontal stuff worked at launch (or even now) and was fun to do, people wouldn’t feel like they are grinding so much, but doing 100% on my character (I’m 73 right now), it’s not only Orr that’s buggy with events – it’s most zones that are above the 25 range (and they’re also mostly devoid of other players – at least on my server).

But when you see the mats cost for many things (250 x, 250 y, 250 z, 250 a, 250 c), it just screams grind.

I’m curious, as I’m 8.99 * level 10 fractals done and no ring, how many who seem to be having amazingly bad RNG luck like I am are also NOT receiving any WvW bonuses?

I’ve also, seemingly, never received WvW bonuses, and it seems that 8 days ago they announced a fix “in a future patch”, and I wonder if these could possibly be related. I’m secretly hoping so as I’d really like, one day, to get an Ascended ring, and as there’s no actual announcement of alternate methods, and FotM isn’t cooperating, I’m not sure how that’ll ever happen.

• The 0.99 was my last run, where one of our party somehow fell to the bottom of the overall zone and couldn’t die or get to any mob, so left the instance, and did this when the Maw was at like 30% and the 4 of us remaining instantly got ported to LA – at that point I decided that I was done with this buggy dungeon until it works properly.

I’m making this thread to ask if I’m testing this correctly.

First off, my understanding is that you only receive WvW bonuses on your own server, so you do NOT get them in an overflow zone.

Is that correct?

My next understanding is that when you hover over the WvW icon at the top left of your screen, similar to the guild icon, you should see your bonuses?

Is that correct?

So just now I was in Lion’s Arch, in an overflow, and my health was reading 14,525 (Guardian in my magic find gear).

Queue popped to travel to my home server’s Lion’s Arch, and so I did.

My health stayed at 14,525.

Currently my world’s Robust boost is +7%, so should I not have 15,541 health on my home server? And should my boosts show up when hovering over the WvW icon?

Traveled to Frostgorge Sound and health stayed at 14,525 after zoning just to be sure (I don’t there’s been a non-LA overflow zone on my server in weeks, so LA is the only zone I can think to test this in).

I’m asking if I’m bugged, or how to find out if I am, because I think I am.

Relentliss.2170:

The game did not have enough horizontal progression, acquiring skill, skins, titles, abilities, perks, conveniences, to keep people interested long term.

Why not? Well part of the problem is the very limited way they are handling classes. The classes are very streamlined and offer the players little flexibiity. This lack of flexibility really limits the options for horizontal progression. I had every worthwhile skill a month after launch.

Therefore, they sat down a month after release and said ‘Oops Wtf now?’ and plopped in this Ascended gear to keep people busy. Why? Because it is easy and cheap, not because it is good gameplay or fits with their Manifesto.

I would agree with this point.

The game at launch really didn’t have enough horizontal progression to offset the near complete lack of vertical.

I was looking forward to a game with no vertical.

To be honest, if I want to play an MMO with vertical, I’ll play an MMO that knows how to do it (IE, not a game from Arena Net). I did that for years in WoW.

Part of the problem with the launch was that much of the horizontal progression was just plain bugged and didn’t work (DE’s, dungeon bosses, etc). And so much of that bugged launch content is still in the exact same state as it was 3 months ago.

How many people still can’t complete their personal story because the event/Arah just doesn’t work? The Balthazar event is always in progress when I’m in Straits, but even now, every single time I see it in progress (double digits), it’s bugged.

Add in that so much of the horizontal at launch was just grind, grind, grind, and then RNG Mystic Forge chucking, and while there are so many zones that people won’t see along their way to 80 – because of the sheer amount of mats/karma/gold needed for some of this horizontal – those zones are, basically, worthless for someone going for something that needs loads of karma, gold or T6 mats. The content is already there, but many people view it as simply not worth doing because of how little it helps for some of the more grindy grinds in this game.

While I haven’t tried sPvP, WvW really needs some love – but the engine itself seems to be the limiter with culling. Since launch, there are 2 noticeable changes made to WvW – elimination of the Orbs and removal of karma from escorts. That’s it. There’s loads of things that could be done to make WvW better, but none of them are happening (and all the dev posts promise things “in the works” and “soon”.

I thought the Halloween event was good (barring not being able to see my character in the Clock Tower – I spent maybe 30 minutes total trying and just didn’t find blindly jumping fun), and there were even 2 PvP mini-games added. But they’re gone. They were there for a limited time, and I would love to play them now, but I can’t.

Throw in Lost Shores (what part of that is/was NOT bugged?), and it seems like the team is incredibly understaffed for what they are trying to do, and there seems to be a real lack of direction as to where things are going.

Like I said above – if I wanted to play a game with vertical, I’d play a game that does it well. The Fractals do NOT do it well. The encounters themselves are interesting, but every system around them is buggy, ill-thought out, tried and abandoned years ago by other MMOs, and just plain grindy.

While I haven’t played any “Korean grindfests”, I’ve played quite a few Western MMOs, and this is, by far, the grindiest MMO I’ve ever played, with a huge does of RNG on top of it. I don’t quite get how Mr. Whiteside can even say they ATTEMPT to avoid grinds, as this game is simply full of them.

nachtnebel.9168:

People wouldn’t exploit FotM that mutch if it wasn’t the worst grind they have seen in a long time. The design of some fractals is greate, but the grind behind the whole dungeon is just stupid and therefore the biggest incentive to exploit whenever possible.

Arena Net is to blame for that, not the players, they are just acting in “self defense”.

QFT.

This is a buggy POS design – just got kicked to Lion’s Arch from a FotM 10 fighting Jade because someone fell through the world and during the fight decided to leave.

Apparently they were the group leader.

I love wasting an hour or so due to a bug/awful design.

I love completing level 10 8.99 times and still not having an Ascended ring.

Seriously, it’s awesome, yeah?

I so want to spend MORE time fighting trash mobs.

Prima.3512:

Well you are not forced to do Fractals, do other stuff instead. As for ascended gear, they are only usefull in fractals, and they will add other ways to get them:
“Our intention is to deploy ascended components and gear across the whole of the game rather than focus it in one particular location” – Studio Design Director.

That’s just simply not true. Ascended items are best in slot (assuming they have the stats you want) everywhere in the game. The added Agony resist also makes them essential for higher level Fractals.

Going with only the games I’ve played, I would just put down whatever the developers were doing when both Vanguard and The Old Republic were being developed.

Having played both, I’d simply question where the money went. I don’t know if they’re 2 of the biggest financial failures in MMO history, but they have to be close, don’t they?

As for on-going games that made an abrupt change – while I didn’t play SWG, the NGE is something that has to be listed.

Azjenco.9425:

But as question nine states, as of now ascended gear doesn’t fill that gap efficiently. It’s far closer to the legendary grind than the exotic ease of attainability.

It also pushes the Legendary even further because it uses the same mats, and for some of them in the same quantity.

Let’s just say that pre-Ascended, exotics were a week away once you dinged 80, and a legendary was 6 months away.

So they add in Ascended, and it looks like a piece is like 2 months away (using the above time scale) for an infused piece. But that also pushes a legendary to now 7 months or so.

So much of what they say really doesn’t make much sense and it feels like they simply haven’t thought anything through.

If you want to fill the gap, the gap filler really needs to be something you can do concurrently with a legendary, not as a “precursor” that pushes the legendary further, because right now each piece of infused Ascended does push that legendary a bit further, just widening the gap.

Everything about this patch just oozes “We know this patch isn’t ready, but we MUST put it out before Thanksgiving, no matter what” and we’ll just fix it later. Every aspect of the patch is/was bugged, just like so much of the 3 month old content that’s sitting around not being done (especially now that FotM has best in slot for 3 slots).

Except they haven’t done anything for a week now, and the AMA really doesn’t say anything beyond “yeah, we know we messed up, we’ll get to it, promise!”.

ASB.4295:

I’m pretty much an exclusive PvE player, and playing PS2 with a focus on repairing turrets and healing teammates is a sufficient replacement. I don’t feel like spending any money on games at the moment.

Bregah.7365:

They could have just made Ascended gear identical (in every way) to Exotics, but with an added Infusion slot, and I don’t think there’d be much of an outcry.

Infusions have stats other than infusion resistance. It would’ve taken the community a bit longer to realize the treadmill, but there would’ve still been an outcry.

True, forgot about that.

Reaver.9256:

Sounds like you want to play an adventure game or some sort of single player rpg with online like gw1 or a diablo. Dark Souls is pretty good.

I haven’t played Dark Souls yet, but Demons Souls was absolutely amazing.

Ditton.3149:

Jabronee.9465:

I dont know bout you guys but this mmo called RIFT is the closest to GW1 in terms of Skill Combinations. But over there they called it Souls Combination.
But its specific to a class. For example a War cant use Mage skills for his build.
Unlike GW1 its all around skills combination.

But be warned! RIFT is a grindfest… but they are easing up on the grind with the recent Storm Legion Expansion. Meaning new players could level up faster than before and get new items or equipment that is way powerful than those who had maxed it out before the Expansion.

Just a suggestion. Since you asked

rift is a complete and utter treadmill…if you dont like what little power curve this game is creating you will HATE Rift. Oh..and its gated too..by several factors across the different roles for classes.

Yeah, while I think Rift is by far the best WoW-clone I’ve played, it’s still a gear treadmill WoW-clone.

GW2 was supposed to NOT be this, which I why I (and quite a few people) are here.

I don’t know why Ascended has to have better base stats than Exotics. They could have just made Ascended gear identical (in every way) to Exotics, but with an added Infusion slot, and I don’t think there’d be much of an outcry. You would only need Ascended gear to do FotM (because they’d only be best in slot inside the Fractals), and if you had no interest in the Fractals, you could just ignore them.

morrolan.9608:

BabelFish.7234:

To be honest before this AMA I was very concerned with GW2’s general direction but a lot of questions which needed answers got them. There was no silly PR cover up al la BioWare, there was no arrogance. there the “hey guys, this didn’t turn out exactly as we envisioned it. We’re working on fixing it.”

Some people might not find that reassuring but I do, it was down to earth and it was communication which was needed.

I’ve still got concerns:
1. From the AMA I get the feeling that what they regard as a grind and what I regard as a grind are quite different.
2. Its good that he’s taken responsibility for many of the issues but IMHO they never should have been implemented in the first place, as a result I’ve got concerns over the way they implement new features and live support, and they won’t be allayed until new content gets rolled out that doesn’t have the same issues and demonstrates that they are paying attention to their design philosophies.

I would agree on both points.

For grinding, I consider getting an Ascended ring, for me, thus far, a grind. I don’t have one yet. I’ve completed 86 fractals, and either 7 or 8 level 10 tier daily chests, and no ring. I’m grinding because I’m not doing content I haven’t done before, and I’m not getting rewarded for doing it (in a way that I would deem acceptable).

I’m just being RNG gated from progressing to further Agony levels by not having a ring that many people already have multiples of, including duplicates they can’t even use.

By every definition I can think of, that’s grinding.

As for the 2nd point – the problems he’s taking responsibility for were, for the most part, predicted before the patch went live, and yet it was still implemented. Just read the 10k + thread for what people were saying, and much of it is already true. The fact that they either couldn’t foresee these problems or willingly added content knowing these problems would exist says they’re either not very good at predicting MMO behavior or so intent on getting this content out when they got it out that they simply accepted it was subpar. Either one of those possibilities is a bit scary.

deSade.9437:

Funny, isn’t it. They fix one, hundreds break. You squish a bug, twenty more pop out.
Enjoy. They’re busy preparing the Wintersday patch.

I am very surprised just how many bugs from launch day are still in the game, and yet quite a bit of new content (for a game this new) has been released – although that content has been also largely buggy and/or seemingly untested.

Just wanting some ballpark figure – I’m now a week of level 10 tier dailies and no ring, and honestly getting tired of content gated by RNG.

I realize that even if I get a ring, it’ll be one bad for my class/build, but at least I’d have some agony resistance with ANY ring, while I have guildmates who’ve only run 4 days of the dailies and already have 4 rings.

Just now ran a 10, and the two people who were on their first level 10 both got rings. I’m 0 for 7 or 8 and getting kittening tired of RNG.