Guild Wars 2

Still not even a reply on this? I have to manually remove the cookie each time I enter the forums. Only other alternative is to not allow cookies here at all.

Most problematic browser atm for me is Chrome, but the problem lies w/ the forum.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Cassio.9507:

Flytrap.8075:

Get ready for a flood of “OMG this game is free-to-play, they need to make money somehow, ANet is my lord and savior” posts.

Yeah indeed. But Anet seem to think it’s a good idea to waste a big part of the incentive to play by putting sought after items straight in the gem shop instead of having it in the game like it should be. Then they would see actually entertained players enter the gem shop to buy more bank/char slots and similar.

When my interest faded (again) about two months ago I had been struggling with space for quite a while, but I never found motivation to buy more space cause I wasn’t happy w/ the game. If they would’ve just put more of the well crafted items in the actual game I wouldn’t have hesitated to spend money on gems.

Same gems, different mentality. Their loss.

Hasn’t stopped me from making my 12th character, and 3rd Ranger, during the middle of the current LS. Just because you’re not entertained doesn’t mean no one is. I even bought the slot with real money instead of gold.

Glad you’re having fun still.

I have also spent real cash in the gem shop. What I’m saying is that I would still be doing that, not that I would start.

I’m writing about a change that I think would’ve made the game better, and you immediately feel the need to defend the fact that you still play. Wouldn’t it in fact be a better, more entertaining, game if these items were in the game rather than in the gem shop? Considering you actually do spend cash on char slots and similar Anet would still get money from you and likeminded players.

Flytrap.8075:

Get ready for a flood of “OMG this game is free-to-play, they need to make money somehow, ANet is my lord and savior” posts.

Yeah indeed. But Anet seem to think it’s a good idea to waste a big part of the incentive to play by putting sought after items straight in the gem shop instead of having it in the game like it should be. Then they would see actually entertained players enter the gem shop to buy more bank/char slots and similar.

When my interest faded (again) about two months ago I had been struggling with space for quite a while, but I never found motivation to buy more space cause I wasn’t happy w/ the game. If they would’ve just put more of the well crafted items in the actual game I wouldn’t have hesitated to spend money on gems.

Same gems, different mentality. Their loss.

Good news. Finally. But it’s too far away!

thehipone.6812:

How about not. Gift of exploration/mastery is pretty much the only thing keeping legendaries from being 100% gold grind or credit card warrior items.

Agreed. Especially with that motivation.

The absolutely mesmerizing aesthetics and scenery is what keeps me in the game. Gorgeous landscapes for sure!

Lane.3410:

Not to mention that, at the time, no one knew what the chest reward for completing the S1 WvW meta achievement was. I highly suspect if people had known that not so many would have bothered, achievement points or not.

Very good point. This was actually the carrot at the end of the stick for me. The anti-climax that followed upon opening said chest felt like the same carrot coming back up again after a late night out.

Lane.3410:

Regardless, LS is the single best method of acquiring achievement points, which is the main reason I participate in it. It’s certainly not because I enjoy the content. The writing is atrocious and the activities are not even remotely quantifiable as “fun” for the most part.

Yeah, this is the same for me. However I’m getting close to zero willpower even when it comes to that. I logged on today, got the patch mail. Read that it was about Scarlet and two zerg events and couldn’t even be bothered checking either out right away. Just felt like “good thing I have time to deal with this later”… Not exactly what one foresaw when looking forward to playing GW2 for such a long time.

Lane.3410:

Unfortunately, I’m betting for every player like myself with 100% LS participation Anet sees a success and thus no reason to change the status quo.

Indeed, and this worries me a lot. I’ve said many time before in similar threads that I really hope Anet uses other means to measure actual fun factor than AP accumulation and time spent in zergs.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Cassio.9507:

It [WvW] was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…

While I don’t disagree, it’s easy to criticize this aspect of the game than to come up with an alternative to “bribing” players to log in and participate. The “not worth it without rewards” mentality is so prevalent that developers have to come up with something, hopefully without giving “whatever it is” away too soon, but also without creating the impression of grind.

I’m not trying to defend ANet per se, I’m pretty well stumped.

I guess we’re derailing the thread a lil bit here, sorry about that. There’s quite easy ways to make WvW more interesting than it currently is (= make more players gladly participate):

1) If another season comes then make the achievements more flexible. Instead of just caps, add the option of actively participating the the defense of a structure during a “tick”. All of a sudden we’d see a lot more interesting fights, as the zerg Commander symbols won’t just steer the lemmings away to allow structures to be capped again for recap later. It would be fun to defend instead, and more motivating to actually upgrade and setup defense rotations.

2) Stop stimulating the zerg behaviour. Possibly by applying conditions if more than x ppl are in y range of the same commander. A few top realms actually apply this themselves by using more than one commander at a time and then have proper squads. This makes everything more interesting as things happen in more than one place at any given moment.

If players don’t want to do things, then I believe it’s wrong to try and force them todo it rather than try and make it more fun first.

Antara.3189:

I was given a bunch of the pieces to this supposed plot, but had no “glue” to put them together, which would have given me a better understanding on what’s going on. This current story has me waiting to get “smacked” in the face with the glue that puts everything into perspective.

So in reality, by the time we figure out everything we will get excited and say hey! but in the same time it’s over. So the enjoyment of the entire story was held off until over a year later.

So true. I still hope that the ending will be as awesome as is being hinted at, but that still doesn’t take away the fact that we’ve had to spend one year in a coma state story wise. Not giving any hints whatsoever as to what’s really going on. That is bad writing, or lack of proper dramaturgy to be more precise.

Very well phrased, I agree wholeheartedly.

However, I hope that Anet actually have been taking our feedback to heart and that this interview reply was just badly phrased.

Subpar writing, rushed releases due to the two week update cycle and then crammed achievement requirements to give the illusion of player interest through activity. Like I’ve said before in other threads, I sure hope Anet uses other ways to measure fun factor than AP accumulation and time spent in zergs.

Again, nice post!

100% agree w/ OP. Well phrased as well. The living story starts to make sense when everyone knows there’s a meatier, real expansion on the horizon to look forward to. Then the LS can function as what sets everything up for the next big thing kinda, and keep us entertained meanwhile.

I’d personally also much rather pay for expansions than see item incentives that should be in the game, as parts of end-boss-item-tables and similar, simply being added to the gem store for easy “ca’ching” sales.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

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

Interesting read, thanks for linking. Overall it seems like Anet actually do listen to the community’s feedback on the LS. Glad to hear that. A few comments on the article though:

Eurogamer.net article:

By its conclusion, Season One will have been developing for 15 months. What ArenaNet wanted to create was a complex plot that kept people theorising and speculating in the same way a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that) does – to have “people realise what the power of having a video game that can tell a story like a television show is”.

Sadly they failed here, and this was possibly my biggest gripe w/ the entire thing. (Second being the zerg mentality everything turned into at every step…) I’m normally a lore fanatic. I love to speculate, put out theories, read between the lines and so forth. However the Living Story, Scarlet in particular, was so bland and uninteresting. Nothing story wise caught my attention whatsoever. I didn’t even play GW1, but I can still sit and listen to WoodenPotatoes GW Mysteries clips on youtube and be completely mesmerized. What the heck happened?

Eurogamer.net article:

The first WVW (server versus server versus server) competition made the player-base go “through the roof”, apparently. “That was maybe the biggest thing we did in the second-half of the year to affect player population. When that league was going on, when the world-versus-world season was going on, WVW was just packed.”

It was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…
…and another single use backpack skin to take up a slot in the bank. (Where’s the Wardrobe to motivate horizontal progression Anet?)

Let’s hope this finale really do become memorable, it sure sounds like it. Let’s hope so!

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Wanze.8410:

Arnon.1563:

The sad thing is there needs to be ways like this to farm linen and silk.
What I’d really suggest is a way to toggle the level appropriate loot to zone appropriate loot.

Silk drops from light armor and heavy bag drops from lvl 70-80 zones.

If you dont have a lvl 80 character to farm silk, you dont need askended gear.

While silk is becoming a problem, linen scraps are worse.

Far worse even. It’s like noone thought at all here. Requirements per bolt of damask should’ve been 10 (max) instead of 20. You know things are broken when demand highly outranks supply, and prices of regular T4 materials are higher than T6 equivalents.

One can argue in infinity that ascended gear wasn’t supposed to go fast. I really question is this is the way it was supposed to be interpreted. Smash piggie bank, convert from gems to gold and blindly buy up all existing before everyone else?

Other MMOs have severe grinding elements as well. GW2 was supposed to try a different route. Nowadays we have the mad grinding here as well, but sadly not much of a carrot when it comes to longterm motivator on the horizon. I wanna play the game as it was pre ascended. Atleast the way it was implemented.

Ayrilana.1396:

Cassio.9507:

Ayrilana.1396:

Vick.6805:

Ayrilana.1396:

And many players were able to finish Fractured. Some players were not able to finish Fractured just as some players were not able to finish other living stories.

That argument is entirely invalid, as the only way to complete the full set of Fractured achievements was relying on RNG. It wasn’t just a question of time dedicated like other achievements.

Umm… no. The argument is completely valid; yours isn’t. Many people completed the meta for the reward AND completed all achievements. Whether it was RNG or not doesn’t matter; many people still finished all achievements.

So, w/ that logic applied, you’re saying that the major contributing factor to whether one manages to finish temporary content should be luck?

You’re inferring something from my post that isn’t there. Please read the previous posts to understand the context of what I was arguing.

Am I really? I re-read your most recent posts, and I still come to the same conclusion. You’re basically saying that it’s okay for the Fractured achievements to rely on RNG since many ppl didn’t manage to 100% previous Living Story updates.

What we’re arguing here is the sudden introduction of RNG, or “luck”, when it comes to even being able to finish off certain achievements. Add to that the quite short time span to actually “get lucky” within.

edit: Also don’t forget another important part of this discussion. Since Fractured isn’t a central part of the Living Story, it wouldn’t have changed anything at all just keeping it in the game til late January. An incentive to do some fractals wouldn’t be a negative thing now that we don’t have that much to focus on for quite a while.

I see a lot of the problems w/ achievement focused playing is the way the achievements are phrased. I know there’s limited space here, but why didn’t they simply do the Fractured boss achievements something like this:

“Do either of the end bosses five times. x / 5”

This way you’ll feel lucky when you get the boss you want. You’ll be satisfied if you only get the boss you know is a decently easy kill every time, and you’ll even be satisfied if you never end up getting one of the newer ones. The latter simply because there’s no rush anymore! You’ll get to face one of the new end bosses eventually.

Ayrilana.1396:

Vick.6805:

Ayrilana.1396:

And many players were able to finish Fractured. Some players were not able to finish Fractured just as some players were not able to finish other living stories.

That argument is entirely invalid, as the only way to complete the full set of Fractured achievements was relying on RNG. It wasn’t just a question of time dedicated like other achievements.

Umm… no. The argument is completely valid; yours isn’t. Many people completed the meta for the reward AND completed all achievements. Whether it was RNG or not doesn’t matter; many people still finished all achievements.

So, w/ that logic applied, you’re saying that the major contributing factor to whether one manages to finish temporary content should be luck?

I don’t mind but I still don’t understand why we’ll have more than one more month to complete Nightmare Ends and Winter’s Day when Fractured was removed after only 14days. Many of the Fractured achievements are highly based on RNG depending on what fractals you get later on. It would’ve been nice to keep at it over the weekends. Also as a motivator to get guildies to tag along.

Agreed, very well written article that summarizes what many are thinking.

Vexander.9850:

It might just be better to have more Living Story such as the Four Winds Bazaar. There was nothing really hectic about it. It was fun, relaxing. There was no big bad threatening everything you know and love. I sometimes just spent hours at the top of the air ship just enjoying the music and atmosphere.

As did I, that is the feeling I had leveling my first char in the game when it was released. Calmly leveling at my own pace, taking in the atmosphere and enjoying myself.

I loved all the temporary skills you got from the crystals too. Higher jumps, teleporting, dashing, etc…

All you write is true, but also what describe is an example of filler content. This is the kind of stuff everyone can enjoy while anticipating something bigger/meatier on the horizon!

We’re getting to a point in GW2 where many are getting burned out from AP hunting, or simply losing faith in the longevity of the game (some by judging the current gem store focus, earn every buck possible before it dies!). We need smth to look forward to at this point, and Living World won’t cut it in its current form. Scarlet might become interesting in half a year, but why do we have to endure her as it looks right now? Why not atleast hint at something bigger at play behind the curtains? Not knowing, or atleast having some anticipation going, not being able to speculate based on hints given. This is the big problem, in my honest opinion of course. “Do Not Touch!” pillars only hint at another pointless, upcoming mischief by Scarlet…

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

I am getting completely burned out and have reduced my gaming frequency. I play on GW2 much less than before.

I like doing fractals so I don’t mind these achievements, but I got burned out from doing the tower ones. I will probably stop chasing achievement points, which is sad, but I can’t do this anymore.

Just give us an expansion already and stop with 2-weeks achievements. Even 1-month long releases would be better than 2-weeks long!

Exactly my feeling.

As it is right now they’re wasting extremely well made aesthetics/settings on mostly empty content kinda. As it’s been for me, the last 2-3months, is I enjoy the content for ~30-45mins, then I spend 4-5x that time, in a brainless zerg, finishing off the achievements for meta.

If you don’t have the content to sustain the fun factor long enough, then simply forcing more participation through demanding achievements is not the way to go about it. I totally understand that making this content takes time and effort, but I’d be happy if the achievements simply reflected this by being toned down (and not temporary!).

Also it sometimes puzzles me how content is wasted sometimes. All might not agree w/ me here, but consider if the Nightmare tower had been a 5man instance instead. Gradually leading to the top, w/ demanding bosses on each floor along the way. Consider if these bosses had drops everyone craved, so proper incentive to do them over and over again was there. They’ve already made the tower, it’s just there as another location to “zerg w/ randoms” or stealth your way to the lotto chest at the top.

There’s a lot of current discussions going on in many threads about the exact same subject. Doubt ArenaNet even reads them though.

(…and yes, I totally agree w/ you.)

Uvatha.5476:

I’m sure in IRL your AP doesn’t even equal that of Brad Pitt or Bill Gates and I’m sure you’re not busting your hump to keep up with them so why have that mentality here? Just play the game as it comes and do what you like. No need to be kitten about every item, title, and AP point. Your mentality is souring this game for you not the stream of content.

I challenge you to skip a LS installment once. Just once. You might find it liberating.

Would half a year of skipped LS “installments” in between February and August suffice? Also don’t bring in a real life factor into this. You know as little about my life as I do about yours. Games is where we flee to for a break from everything else, no matter how hectic our lives are (or superficial judged by your interpretation of “real life achievement points”).

I have no problem what-so-ever skipping the entire game, it’s just that I’d prefer not to. The current LS model is stimulating an unhealthy gaming mentality that’s not even rewarding enough when it comes to fun factor. This is not something the pre-LS-GW2 did. Post LS your participation in the game is much more forced, if you don’t wanna miss out on the gradual continuation of the (supposed to be) main story of the game.

This is the effect temporary content has on the gamers. It introduces a stress factor that wouldn’t be there if the content was permanent.

All of you who say that we should just ignore the LS completely and focus on the other aspects of the game, you are aware that LS is the only way the game has progressed this last year right? You’re basically saying we should just focus on new toons/alts and enjoy the core game over and over again.

Great well phrased posts everyone.

midnight tea.3681:

I’d also argue that the frantic pace of the LS and the limited-time window achievements is encouraging unhealthy playing habits. Remember back in GW1 where the game would actually encourage you to take a break if you play for more than two hours at a time? What happened to that philosophy? Is it going to take GW2 being scapegoated by a news program to ratchet it back a bit?

I agree here, completely. During the Halloween 2013 zerging for candycorn I actually started feeling a pain in my wrist again, something I haven’t had a problem w/ since many years back. Realizing just how much you’d have to grind for one single 20slot bag I gave up eventually. It was just faaar from worth it. Rewards from doing tasks during festivities shouldn’t be that cumbersome to reach. I never expected GW2 to become that grindy, especially looking back at announcement videos and interviews.

There are more examples here ofc, the above is just one.

midnight tea.3681:

SirMoogie.9263:

I guess I must ask what are you looking to get that you need the meta-achievement rewards? I have full exotics, no ascended backpiece or weapons on my main. I just stopped caring about these things like getting monthlies, dailies, or achievement points. I now just log in to see what new every two weeks, which is usually less than an hour or two of playtime to see. My only loot goals are to finish my infinite light to complete my knight in shining armor look. This will come in time, as any activity generates money slowly and I’m in no rush so long as more content is released. What has burned me out is the quality of the releases, not the feeling of having to do these things (as I don’t have those feelings).

I just want to say that I think you’re playing the game the “right” way. You’re there for you. I wish more players were like you. That would result in better content I think, too.

Totally agree! That sounds healthy. For me though, I’ve always considered it to be up to the player to find enjoyment in an MMO. I myself need to be the driving force, and not finding any enjoyment participating in some content and skipping other, I quickly end up in “achievement maniac mode”. ANet really did their best to remove the reason, and need, for pushing hard w/ grinding (diminishing returns). No real gear progression to speak of. No “unique drops” to really farm specific mobs/bosses for. Zhaitan, the climax of the entire personal story and you hardly take part in the fight.

So it surprises me to see them introduce achievement grinding w/o the real carrot in it other than “if you don’t do it now, you’ll miss out!”. Also stimulating this unhealthy behavior w/ official leaderboards. Imo the game should be driven forward by a strong main story, the absolutely gorgeous (!) aesthetics and a world to simply have fun in.

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you don’t find the content compelling enough to do, don’t force yourself to do it just for the achievement points. It’s better for you and it’s better for Anet because you won’t mistakenly get counted in their metrics as someone who loves the content.

This is a very interesting argument actually. I just hope that ArenaNet finds a better way to measure “fun factor” than AP accumulation and time spent.

Zanthrax.6538:

have you guys ever considered that ANET are still learning what works what doesn’t etc etc….there is literally no other MMO out there or has been out like GW2, elements have certainly appeared before but GW2 is completely a unique MMO.

Indeed, and I really think they are learning. Hence our feedback! To any company, no matter what business they’re in, spontaneous customer feedback is extremely valuable. (Or should be that is.)

Zanthrax.6538:

What if the next year they take all they have learnt after killing off scarlet ( yes they have confirmed scarlets story arc has a definitive end ) and make the next year of gw2 amazing!

Let’s hope so! But nothing we’ve heard or seen teasers of hint at a change, and that’s a bit worrisome. If we just knew what’s on the horizon, or got some feedback ourselves about what Anet’s thoughts are on the 2013 progression of the game.

Zanthrax.6538:

Just bloody relax ay, if you don’t find the game enjoyable at the moment fair enough I get it, but theres no harm in taking a break, everyone in this thread seems to feel rushed like omg 2 weeks must get everything done OMG! Seriously? they are achievement points? Are you an achievement whore? Why do you feel forced to complete them? They gain you no statistical power above others so wheres the problem?

A big part of me knows that you’re right in what you’re saying. Problem is that I still love the X factor of the game, and every time I take a small break from it I hear I just missed the best temporary content so far…

Great replies guys, thank you for venting.

Many argue that threads such as these don’t represent a majority opinion. Such people claim that it’s only a very vocal and negative minority speaking up. With a thread such as this, and the huge amount of similar ones, I really hope ArenaNet realizes that we’re actually fans that are worried. I personally see soooo much potential in this game, and I’m beyond worried about the direction it’s taken. I really hope they take that to heart. The ones who bother to formulate and write replies such as the one above this one are your true fans. Nothing else.

Something has to change, or I worry we’ll see a totally different kind of migration in 2014 than what ArenaNet has in mind.

Thanks a lot for replying guys! I’m glad to see I’m not alone in feeling like this.

Dark Jericho.8609:

The achievement grinding they have addressed and have “plans” to make them less grindy and more favorable to both hardcore players and players who don’t have much free time so they both can the meta completed while being satisfied, but who knows what that will be and when it will be implemented.

Sounds good. They could simply tone down the amount of achievement grind we get each two weeks. Give more points for less “zerging”. It’s all relative after all. Everyone gets more, or less, to grind each week depending on what amounts they set when the achievements are defined. I think we can all agree that the balance in time invested is very weird sometimes inbetween achievements. Another instance of questionable playtesting. Just look at Candycorn from the 2013 Halloween and what you need to grind for the bag.

Dark Jericho.8609:

I’m really hoping they can turn things around and squash these bugs and ease up on the achievement grinds some more.

As do I. But they need to announce a bigger change coming in the future, get us thinking about what’s to come. Get the lore speculations going, and inject into the playerbase a sense of “let’s prepare for the next big thing”.

lordkrall.7241:

The main issue here is that people somehow feel that they MUST do every single thing released.
Is that the fault of the game? Might be.
But mostly it lies with the player.
If you don’t feel like you can handle it, simply don’t do it. You won’t be locked out from the game for not having done certain events and so on after all.

This is very true, and I have myself to blame for part of this. It is however stimulated by ArenaNet in the way the game progresses now. You either take part or you don’t kinda. This ties into my reply below.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Nobody is forcing you to do anything though. It is all you, don’t blame the game for your own faults. Nobody is asking you to rush through maps, you can take your time and explore. The game is not going away anytime soon

Both true and false. The game will be here, but due to the “temporary content” we’re presented w/ each two weeks many feel stressed to take part in it before it goes away. “What if I miss out on X!”.

Compare this year’s Halloween w/ the one in 2012. The achievements from 2012 were NOT reintroduced. Much of the good stuff from 2012 was simply ignored and left in the historical section.

Look at the different incentives for reaching the meta achievement w/ each release. Titles you’ll never see again, gas mask skins you need to grind for to get. “What if I want that up ahead?! Maybe it’ll never return!”.

ArenaNet both stimulates this stress behaviour, but they also kinda make it demoralizing from another perspective. Look at the leaderboards for instance. If you ever took a break from the game, then due to dailys/monthlies and temporary content you can forget about catching up. It will simply never happen. Things might return due to popular demand, but it’ll be in a different shape than it originally was presented.

With the exception of the ascended weapons/accessories we don’t have a gear treadmill in this game. Most looks are either purchased or acquired through achievement grinding. If we don’t have an interesting main story that progresses, and want to ignore the stress achievement hunting brings, then what do we have?

Amazing work compiling this, and like everyone else here I would play your revision for years to come. Awesome ideas and ways to move forward with the story. You phrase yourself very well!

ArenaNet: I simply can’t keep up anymore. When I was looking forward to this game for years, I didn’t expect it to turn into a stressful craze of achievement point hunting through often rushed temporary content in massive, brainless zergs. I wanted to calmly explore the wonderful world! Get hooked on the lore and fantasize about the dragons. Look forward to difficult fights that required coordination. Not shut the brain down and join a zerg, focusing on being quick enough to “tag a mob” before it’s dead.

I think this every-two-weeks updating is a bad idea. You waste beautiful aesthetics on meaningless, mostly temporary, content. Playtesting must be dodgy by this high release pace, as can be seen in many places and situations. You really should go back to monthly updates, at max! This way we get more time on better content to enjoy, and breathers inbetween! I’d personally rather wait 2-3months for a proper expansion than having these kinds of updates (Tower/Scarlet Invasions…) at all. Living World updates should be occasional bonuses, not the only way the game progresses!

I’m currently almost burned out completely, trying to get the meta from the WvW season one. And I don’t even enjoy PvPing that much. It’s all about the massive amounts of achievement points in there, and the hope of some decent rewards from the meta key later on. We’re 500 ppl in our guild and only 4-5 online now. I was looking forward to the new Fractals, but I haven’t even been able to find the energy to try yet nor have enough players online to give it a go. This wasn’t a problem 2-3months ago, and it’s hardly about not having enough todo. It’s just that what we get to do ingame doesn’t enterain as it should.

One can easily argue that achievements can be ignored. But looking at this year’s Halloween it’s quite obvious that this is not what ArenaNet intends. You had to get the meta to even progress! Compare this year to last year’s Halloween, the differences are MASSIVE. Last year was fantastic, this year was abysmal in comparison.

Don’t waste the massive potential this game has! Calm down the production cycle, and focus on a real update. Give us something to look forward to, and that really impacts the story.

Manasa Devi.7958:

You need to make the climb 2 times in order to do all achievements, because there are 2 dives.

You could also group up w/ another player, do the jump outside the instance and meanwhile have him que for entering. Then you get back up again and inside, do the last boss, go out backdoor and do second dive.

Can we at least get a reply to this Anet? :/

Same here, 6 out of 5 dailys done even and no chest. My game even hardlocked while trying to display the daily achievements panel before the patch.

Will we get reimbursed I wonder. :/

Ameepa.6793:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/bam/Stop-dying-to-Grand-High-Viscount/first#post3039343

What Ameepa linked. You’re not doing the fight right, stand in the brown candy and get coated. Then you not only survive Viscount’s AOE, you’ll do a lot more damage to him as well. Just look at his HP meter when the brown candy ends up right on the melee. It’s no coincidence that it starts dropping down quickly then.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Redenaz.8631:

I think Sonder the Seller’s new rewards have been a disaster for morale all around. They give new options for spending candy, which sounds like it should be pure upside…but those options are out of reach for most everyone who isn’t filthy rich, which is worse than not being presented the option at all. Maybe the supply will go up before the end of Halloween, but right now it’s looking even worse than Dragon Bash’s Jorbreakers, which were at least mitigated by the fact that their prize could drop randomly.

This. People took one look at the materials needed to get the new skins and realized they were impossible to obtain. I think it sapped a lot of enthusiasm out of the event.

True, but then we’re talking about pure grind goals. I detest the lemming / zerg mentality w/ intensity. All this halloween event seem to be about is an endless zerg inside labyrinth to gain meta achievement. Where’s the exploration from last year? Why work so hard to make chokezones out of the game by gathering everyone there? Reuse old content (fine), but refuse to bring back the achievements? Why not continue to build upon last year instead of turning it into an insane grind mess for unreachable goals. The 20slot bag should be a perk for participating, not 4x more expensive than a usual 20slotter.

Add to that the kittened amount of HP on the legendary bosses inside the Labyrinth. This all feels rushed to me, and w/ an almost sniper lvl of attention added to remove every inch of incentive to actually have fun doing things.

Sadly it seems they didn’t bring back the achievements from last year. It’s a bit weird though, seeing as most content from last year is actually part of this one.

I got 100% of last year’s achievements, and they’re all still parked in the Historical section. I doubt you’ll get it unless Anet changes smth.

Same experiences as OP here, “Who’s in charge” is the only thing I have left since two days back. Would really (!) like to see how the play testing went on this one, or rather, obvious lack thereof…

Vague description in achievement to say the least. What’s even more demoralizing is that almost all sources we find, trying to see how others managed seem to be getting it randomly by bug/glitch.

What we gathered last night was that it seems like noone is allowed to die. If someone dies, then noone gets the achievement.

Pajco.1624:

Desolation, NOW !!!

Not any longer.

Love the fight, hate the fact that it’s not instanced.

Wraith.9426: Thank you for a very well phrased post. Also, thank you for trying to give an example of what keeps your interest up.

I just personally feel that already being done w/ my character (so to say, cosmetics aside) leaves very little left to help stimulate enough of an interest. The story of the game has however always been interesting. I just wonder if it will ever be enough again to actually restart my interest. I miss the game a lot actually, and it’s frustrating.

AntiGw.9367:

No WoW-like gear was one of the major features of GW2 and it was always heavily advertised.

You bought this game without doing proper research, so you have only yourself to blame.

I guess you’re referring to the gear-treadmill here, and I wouldn’t really call it a prelaunch announced “feature”, rather an absence. I was actually looking forward to see what a fresh new approach ArenaNet would use to solve such an integral part of what gives an MMO longevity. In the end it seems they simply ignored it.

However, there’s certainly no absence of grind goals. Just look at the equal-stat-legendaries. It’s just that you get nothing out of it, rather than a shiny new skin to brighten up your backside while idling outside of the Lion’s Arch bank area.

And no, I didn’t buy the wrong game. I loved leveling, and playing the game for quite a while, but then the sense of a lack of longterm motivator set it and that’s what this thread (and this one) is all about.

Bame.7963:

@ HumaCarrionEater.8254

So let me get this straight. This games intended design was for players to level in a combat oriented environment for 2 weeks (or until 80.), and then shift focus to farming clothing for the rest of their existence?

What’s the point? just buy a barbie.

Yeah, I really think ArenaNet intended Guild Wars 2 to be a niche product, satisfying specifically those who didn’t want to put any effort into it all.

BTW Bame, remember one thing when argumenting further here. My hunch is that you came into the game quite late, and only recently hit the “lvl80, so wth do I do now?”-situation? Most of us got here a long time ago, and it’s just pure chance I decided to check the forum out today for the first time since January. The absolute majority of the ones replying here will be ppl who still play regularly, so the discussion will (!) be very onesided. Just don’t get discouraged by that.

Bame.7963:

I’m sure Anet appreciates all of you who just say “this game isn’t for you. The door is that way”. I think you fanboys are worse for this game than the actual game itself.

It’s been sad seeing you fight solo in this thread, but I’m with you on this. Fanboyism very rarely yields anything positive whatsoever btw, being ignorant and refusing to see a discussion for what it is. It’s just pointless. A constructive discussion however, now that’s how things turn into a successful merge of different opinions, in the end yielding a result that as many as possible are happy with.

One guy earlier referred to the prelaunch speech “If you like MMOs you’ll wanna check GW2 out, and if you don’t like MMOs you’ll REALLY wanna check GW2 out”. I too was hooked on this. I was the leader of a very successful hardcore raiding guild in WoW from launch up til early WotLK. I had simply had enough and pulled the plug, decided that I was done w/ MMOs. I watched the GW2 teasers and was hooked on it, wanted to try it out based on the promise of smth new and the adorable aesthetics.

From GW2 launch and up to and including the Xmas events I played daily. I got most of what can be found in FotM, World explorer (“Been there, done that…”) etc. In the betas we were around 20-25 of my old community PvPing together in BGs having fun, then about the same followed into the game but they gradually dropped off out of lack of motivation to continue. After the Xmas events it was just me and one more, and those who logged on a few times a month. Trying to boost these guys in FotM w/ the old fragmented lvling system in there wore us out, and we decided to break til a fix was implemented. That break turned into more than half a year.

A few days ago I could no longer stop myself from logging on to see what the game was like now. What I see is pretty much the same, except for some minigames being implemented regularly. Looking at Lion’s Arch quickly, what I see are players similar to me dedication wise, simply standing still outside the bank idling. The ones actively running around are new players who haven’t dinged 80 yet, or possibly alts.

As I was one of the people who really got a kick out of GW2 for such a long time, and now see a big problem w/ longterm motivation, what do you guys do to entertain yourselves ingame if you don’t wanna see any changes done at all??? Roleplay in various locations in the world? Take screenshots of the scenery to print and hang on the wall? Replay the same instances over and over for nothing? WvWvW indefinitely?

Agreed, excellent post.

I loved the Fractals when they were introduced, fantastic idea. Sadly the individual Fractal lvls inbetween us all quickly got too fragmented to handle, that we ended up waiting for the “fix” that’s now present in the game. During that time we all realized that the carrot to log on again and play was completely missing.

Such a fantastic game with sooo much potential. Sure the Mario Kart like racing minigames and similar, being added in regular updates are somewhat entertaining for a while, I just truly hope we’ll see more difficult core content in an expansion soon, filled to the brim w/ things to stimulate infinite character progression. (One can hope!)

Hehe I don’t think so either, we were wondering about that as well. Tried /bow and /kneel etc under the star.

The way up there sure hints at smth tho.

ArenaNet simply have to introduce some kind of system that lets our friends who can’t/don’t play as much to still tag along.

I run a small guild where, very sadly, only a fraction of us (2-3ppl) actually play on a regular basis. The rest are stuck on various lvls inbetween 3 and 8, and we’re constantly struggling to boost them. We WANT to play together when they can play, but unfortunately they can’t even play at the same time so we end up boosting them individually (!) one lvl at a time.

Last night we only had time to do our lvl10 daily so the two of us able had to ditch the rest to get a chance at it.

I suggest the following:

Allow anyone (!) to tag along at any lvl set by the highest lvled player. However, let them keep their respective (lack of) droprate on ascended rings etc and let it be our problem to compensate for their lack of Agony resistance. Once the run is complete have everyone ding a lvl.

Amazing. I’ve been on the same server since headstart and didn’t even know I didn’t get the bonuses or anything. Heard guildies compete about getting extra hits on gathering nodes and never really gave it much thought. I have NEVER had the chance to use a node more than once (unless rich node), nor have I ever had a crafting critical despite maxing out professions from left to right.

Logging on tonite post jumping-broken-patch I noticed that my HP was weirdly high w/ no food buff or anything. Calculated that it was ~6% higher than what it was supposed to be and started checking the forum. Came across this thread and all of a sudden I feel like such a loser. Since day one, nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Thank god this is finally fixed.

Confirmed by me and guildies as well. Anet please rollback to previous build and wait w/ releasing it til everything works again. You’ve made a game that’s very focused on jumping after all, this is a core feature that’s stopped working properly and needs serious attention.

neoxide.7320:

Some parts were fun but the fun was ruined by the grind. My overflow was sick of farming waves of karka not even halfway through. We pulled our hair out when the wave event repeated itself further down the road.

However the parts where you load geysers with rocks, trigger a landslide, and open the volcanic holes was fun. The final battle wasn’t half bad either.

If the grindy parts took a third of the time, it would have been a pretty decent event.

Completely agree here, this is how I felt as well. The geysers/landslides and volcanic holes were actually unique and fun, but the grind parts almost became unbearable. Especially the last one before the “geyser wall”.

Also I have to add that while the Karka events were a bit 50/50 on the fun scale, I absolutely love (!) the Fractals instance(s)!

I wholeheartedly support the OP’s requests!

I very often open threads in new tabs that I intend to read when I have the time, but then I have to login again and each tab is returned to forum index. It’s so easy to do what Revelstoke says and grab the referrer from the header. Re-logins wouldn’t even hurt then.

Also a tip for those “suffering” from this til a fix is in place. If you know you’ve got to login again and you have thread(s) open, then go to another fresh tab/window and login to the forum there. Then you can refresh the other tabs/windows w/o losing the open threads.

Phoenix.3416:

you are moving down the ranks this week. So should be able to fix your issues

Sadly it seems we dropped not only one, but two ranking spots and are now green.

I’ll never get those two POIs it seems. Should’ve realm hopped like everyone else when there was no cooldown or just 24 hours, it just felt wrong.

Let’s hope so Lloantix! I’m one of the unlucky few who missed when we had most of EB a while ago. Been sitting on ~100% exploration done w/ the exception of just two POIs and one Vista north of our section in red’s zone (Jade Sea if I’m not mistaken) for more than two weeks now.

I actually really enjoy the WvW, but having focused for quite a while to finally get the 100% done and over w/ it’s frustrating to pop in 3-4x a day and never seeing a change. I’ll start participating more for real once this is finally done, been refusing to “cheat” and swap server and being this close I just refuse to do it now. Especially w/ the increased cooldown added to transfers.