Guild Wars 2

Catalin.5341:

You can’t attribute the decrease of players to the desert borderlands.

• A new expansion has come with big promises to wvw and people are still disappointed which can be a reason for not playing.
• Also you need to grind a lot for your guild and I know one guild that only does WvW and since the expansion was out they do more farming in PVE than ever to rush to the +5 supply upgrade of the guild.
• The new maps are challenging for commanders cause they need to go solo for 4-6 hours and figure out the map and then start leading people. But most don’t do this and they just follow the roads and end up in dead-ends, fall off high cliffs and die, get stuck in barricades, etc. So commanders blame the map for their incompetence and followers blame it too cause that’s the easiest thing to do.
• Old borderlands were not that popular back then either and people still prefered EBG. On SFR you would always had a 30ppl queue for EBG while the home map had some people, but the other 2 maps where kind of deserted. Some exceptions were made when a new season would start or the reset night.

Absolute nonsense.

• There are not enough players to find good fights in that large of a map most days of the week, even in tier 1 servers. That map should have been an EBG replacement, if anything. It is too huge and, more annoyingly, there is too much terrain that cannot be traversed directly that is blocking players from encountering each other, even if they want to fight. My first ten times in the borderlands I couldn’t even find people, and I was actively taking small objectives. You know, roaming. Which was easy to do in the old BLs. In these new ones you can solo towers and no one shows up. If it didn’t take an annoyingly long time to do it, it would even be worth it. But it’s not.

• Even knowing how to get somewhere, it still takes longer. Again, the map itself is bigger. Even if it were a straight line, which is it not, it would take longer; especially since people don’t sit around and wait for others to catch up most of the time, because it didn’t used to be that big an issue. They’re moving and traveling around giant, impassable terrain. This creates another problem: uneven fights. It takes longer to get their, so fights are shorter (more boring) because not as many people are actually in the fight to begin with due to the horrific map design.

• Speaking of terrain, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Almost all of it isn’t good for fighting around, contrary to what you said, because you can’t even get a line of sight on the people you fight half the time. That makes fighting worse, not better, because it turns into an AoE farm on the choke points. The whole poorly-designed map is practically a giant choke point. “Guys, I see movement! DROP SKILL-LESS AOE NOW!” Woo, such great content there. We certainly needed more of that. o.o And if you’re talking about different levels of terrain, you know even less than I thought. Because no experienced commander (a lot of them) takes a fight when they have the high ground. They get AoE’d and pulled off of the edge in chunks, all while they don’t have line of sight because of the edge of whatever they are standing on is covered in AoEs (hooray, more AoE choke farm). It’s like sitting on a wall in a keep. Fighting there is stupid. Even casual WvW players know not to stand on a keep wall. It’s the same principle. So yes, it is poorly designed and you should learn more about why before you start rattling off the praises and calling everyone else, the ones who obviously actually play, bad.

Only people who don’t know anything about how WvW (or sPvP) on this game actually works thinks this content is good. It’s not.

eh i like it how it is, they should just re-open free transfers. lots of guilds would leave, lots of new ones would come.

Yaks are pretty much useless right now. They give occasional supply, but they are less needed than ever as a part of the whole WvW exerpience.

I think this is a shame, because some fun yak-related shenanigans could be added to the game.

Recommendations:

Defensive:
-Ridable yaks that give ranged weapon slot skills. Have a shiled yak that can a player than can defend it while they are on the yak. Don’t have the yak controllable by the player, just allow the player to use a set of ranged skills (and have damage reduction) so that they can defend the yak. IMO, a person should be able to defend a yak 1v1 easily if they take the time to actually walk yaks. It isn’t rewarding, so at least give people that.

Offensive:
-Trojan yaks. If yaks are unguarded, give enemy players a chance to hide a player on the yak (so it just looks like a yak). Friendly players can “check” yaks by just walking up and shielding them, and if an enemy player is there, it will force the enemy player out of the yak. If a yak reaches a tower or a keep, the enemy player inside the yak will get put into the keep. Each new yak should only have to be “checked” once, and no enemy player should be able to get into that same yak after it was checked, until a new yak spawns. This would prevent abuse from zergs just guarding an enemy yak and getting a player inside a keep. But if friendly players just ignore yaks, it will allow enemies to sneak into towers and keeps. It would create another random/fun element in WvW.

Buy Some Apples.6390:

Yes we prefer them to the current ones.
But they are still 3 year old maps which have become stagnant.
Bringing those back will again just be a temporary measure to keep whats left here for just a little longer.

I want new WvW maps, not new EOTM maps!

People didn’t want new maps. They wanted new things added to the old maps. Don’t need a whole new map to add fun stuff.

For example; yak runners (god bless their souls) had been asking for changed to yaks for years, because protecting them was impossible if someone wanted to kill them, and there was no fun or real reward in doing so. But protecting them was supposed to be a part of the whole WvW package, and some people really wanted to do it for some reason. And if ANet had done it right, they would have been a point of contention!

Now that yaks are near worthless because they aren’t needed for upgrades, they get buffed. Why even do it now? It is a slap in the face of all yak herders! Those poor lovable bastids upgraded our towers faster, helped with tower fortification/repair, and a lot of other things. Now the only important things they did are pretty much automatic, and now is when they choose to upgrade the yaks. When it’s not even needed. And they didn’t even do a good job of it, the scumbags. It still isn’t rewarding; it still isn’t a major point of contention and it definitely isn’t a fun part of WvW,

Aguri.2896:

It was nerfed so we can play how we want by being forced to do events.

So much this.

My vice is WvW, but it has been crap all along compared to their forced PvE garbage.

Farming is a legitimate way to play an MMO. It’s basically like playing Diablo 3. Some people like to farm; why not let them? I would never farm. I hate it. But I know some people who love it, and I see nothing wrong with it.

And the same people whining about farmers are the same tools who will do Fractals a million times.

The thing that kittenes me off is, they are grinding just as much as anyone else. They just cry like babies when anyone gets anything even CLOSE to what they get. Everyone knows those kittens get the best content in the game already; money, skins, gear choice, etc. So if anyone else starts making money? “WAHHHH!!!!! They aren’t grinding like me!!! THIS NEEDS A NERF IMMEDIATELY, because this isn’t how ANet meant the game to be played! The way I personally grind is!”

Stop being complete kitten wads to everyone but PvE snobs already ANet, we are getting sick of your crap.

I don’t regret it just because i wanted new traits. However, that doesn’t mean I enjoy the overall experience. I still have characters I want to plat with using the new traits that I just don’t want to grind the HP for. It’s not even that hard, it is just a very big annoyance because I just want to WvW. The new expansion for me was all about the traits. I don’t care about the gliding or the other junk. Mainly because, and I don’t see how so many people don’t realize this, it’s basically like “Hey, want to have fun? We’ll make areas that are difficult to travel in! Then we’ll lock you in behind a mastery wall, so you can ‘have fun’ NOT traveling places you want to go! Isn’t that fun? Now you can challenge yourself by not going places…and then GOING places once you get these fancy new things! Isn’t it great?!” No! It’s not! You can keep you gliders and everything else. I just want to go places, get traits and be done with it. But I can’t. I still don’t have even 1/4 of the mastery points unlocked, because it’s just not fun.

And a major reason it’s not fun is they made events that require map-wide coordination. And that’s when you have enough people. Most of the time you do not have enough people, and not only do you not have enough, most of them don’t know what they are doing, which is fine because this type of content shouldn’t exist. It’s stupid to think that so many people are going to coordinate together. They have other stuff to do. They have mastery points to get, and hero points to get, and some probably don’t want to do the same garbage event for the 90th time in a row.

If someone doesn’t think the zone content is awful, they’ve got some pretty strong blinders on. The raid content and other content is fine. The map content is garbage, and that’s what most people are doing, for mastery points and hero points. And I don’t see them fixing it, honestly. The denial is heavy over there. They didn’t even want to give people a break on hero points (which people had a very legitimate reason for; wanting to experience the new content with the new traits) until like half of their player base quit playing until they fixed it. A mess up on that scale, and they denied it until people quit in droves. And even then, they didn’t really fix it, they just acted like they were doing people a “favor” by making it LESS annoying. And it is just annoying enough that most people won’t quit over it. It’s basically a zone or two worth of hero points, which is annoying but doable.

But what they AREN’T fixing is the annoying map-wide content. Look at Dragon Stand, for example. I have been there multiple times (on just one character; can’t get their with the rest due to PvE blocking….lame as fook). It’s an ENTIRE MAP, and 90% of the time you can’t even do anything on it at all! You have to get pulled into a map in LFG before the event starts, because just going to the map you get NOTHING. And the times I have been there, I have not even been able to get into a good map!! A whole section of their new content, a HUGE chunk of it, is almost completely inaccessable to me because I can’t find a group!! And by group I mean a whole kitten map full of people. Because that’s realistic for all of the content in a zone. And another annoyance; the groups don’t even have to be good! There just needs to be a ton of people, which you usually can’t get. How absolute garbage is that?

I am hoping a better MMO comes out before the next GW2 expansion, because this is the worst content design I’ve seen in a popular game. Definitely not as bad as other bad games…but to have this many people playing and buying crap from them, and completely eff up to this degree? There’s really no excuse aside from lazy development. They didn’t even test their kitten hero point system. That’s a huge part of the release, since apparently they wanted you to grind almost all of them before they even gave you your traits. Like what idiot could miss that? It ruins a major part of the playing experience. Like blocking the entire last zone behind a map-wide coordinated PvE event wall. Absolute idiots.

amiia.8139:

Curunen.8729:

The problem is what happens in 6 months time? When players return to wvw, pvp, fractals, raids, or whatever their preference is and these maps and up mostly empty? I don’t think the meta events in any of these maps will be attractive enough to draw a significant population by this time next year.

I have no problem with the difficulty of content in HoT. My problem is that elite specs should not be locked behind content that is contrived and has nothing thematic in common with the spec itself (no npc trainers, no elite specific quests, etc…). Therefore I find the hero point challenges and requirement excessive and a potential problem for players in the future once the map population declines.

And what happend in GuildWars1 when new xpacs were shipped? Sooner or later players will be in less quantity. Ask Yourself – You have our community for dumb guys that don’t have brain and will try to force solo everything? Or they are smart to team up or use map chat to ask for help? I never rejected player that was asking for help when I was near because this is not a reason to shame. Helping makes community stronger.

Getting together with people doesn’t make you smart, it means you like being lazy on average. And this game just so happens to reward lazy.

For example, on WoW if you could solo dungeons that were your level (probably stopped being possible in WotLK, pre-DK nerf), you got a much larger reward. You didn’t have to split gold between characters or share loot.

In GW2, the “richest” people are idiots who run in circles, literally all kitten day long, killing the same 6-8 mobs over and over, times several hundred. And what do they do? Right click the monsters once and cast an ability. I say AN ability, because the creature is usually dead by the time they can cast another ability. Ooooo, such team work. And the hero points aren’t much better. They are so easy with multiple players that it’s not worth considering it a challenge.

If anything, I am getting tired of you brainless sleeple ruining the game for everyone. You’ve already screwed the economy, and Fractals made it so solo players will likely never have as good of gear as you (at least anywhere near as quickly). And now you want to monopolize new content before other people get the chance? Screw that.

gennyt.3428:

Oh? New weapon + a handful of new skills = elite thus should have astronomical costs? As pretty as the maps are, the expansion largely comes down to hopping around on platforms with pretty much the same skills and weapons you had three years ago to stack up the XP in specific zones so you can keep hopping around on platforms in said zones, hoping and praying that you can interact with something that may or may not be out of reach. It’s great, provided that you like hopping around on platforms and hoping and praying. For me that’s just stretching content with time gated features.

So much this. Even the quests are nothing different. I just re-subscribed to WoW and bought the expansion just so I have something to do while they fix this crap, and the difference in effort from the developer is night and day. The quests and story actually feel unique and fun, not the same exact kitten that has been going on since level one, with platforming added.

Who the hell likes (non-Nintendo) platform games now? No one! Because they are boring. I had to exclude Nintendo, because those kittens know how to make a platform game. How they make it fun every time, I do not know. But Anet is no Nintendo. And this horrid platform element is tedious at best. And their glider isn’t even as good as that other MMO. I forgot which one. Really, gliders are stupid anyway; it’s just companies trying to copy WoW without directly copying WoW. I would take a flying mount any day of the week over these stupid waste-of-time gliders.

Not only that, they did gliders the lazy way. They didn’t update their old content so you could use the gliders there, to make your life easier. Can’t use the gliders anywhere but HoT content. Which makes it even more lame than it already is. Don’t get me wrong, it LOOKS pretty…but functionally, it’s just a bad platforming game.

But all of that I could forgive, and even be mildly content with….if they didn’t lock away the traits and new abilities behind a PvE crap wall. And the PvE is still crap.

You know why? Takes forever to do anything. Not only that, there are pauses in the story. Comparing again to WoW: I started the story, and already I don’t have to slowly cross a map and grind out stupid masteries just to continue the story (which I hear they just fixed? Don’t really care; still too slow-paced and not good). All of that grindy PvE horsekitten between story points, and the story isn’t even that good. And a large part of it not being good is you’re not a PART of the story…you just travel TO the story, through a lot of boring, horrible platforming crap.

Thegreatninjaman.5891:

why would you play an MMO solo? i mean the game is called GUILD Wars.

Uh, well funny you should ignore the entire title and just point out the part you want to pretend you have some context behind. I guess by your standards everyone should be in a guild and warring with each other, too. Who cares about dragons, after all, when there is war to be had with other guilds?

Also, I like to play solo because people are stupid. I don’t like them, and the feeling’s mutual, so I see no need to pretend to like them just so I can get mastery points that are locked behind bad content.

Nash.2681:

Thousands of replies already, didn’t read them all. So much was already said, so I keep it short:
People actually payed hard earned money for the expansion. Many of them looking forward to play the new elite specs right away. Then HoT goes live and they all get slapped in their face with a harsh “Kitten you! How dare you wanting to try out the new stuff without grinding first! What, you already got old Tyria complete and yet don’t want to rush in the new maps right away?! Down in the dust you filthy heretic!”

As if having to grind exp for the masteries wasn’t boring enough already (why oh why that ultra-lazy design decision? Why not some sort of skillbased challenges? E. g. to learn gilder basics, talk to an NPC who tells you how gliding works, just to give you a training glider and send you down a short training track, may be some sort of small hill with the simple task “glide down and land on the marked spot”. Once done, you have learned the glider basics. That’s a very simple example but I think you get the idea. Ofc, the more advanced a mastery progress goes, the more difficult the tasks should be.).
Right now, I so regret having spent 200 € for 2x HoT (for my wife and myself). At least I learned a lesson- good old GW1 Arena.Net is definetly and irretrievably dead and I will never ever pay a single € to them for pre-order again.

Here here!

Also, you might look into trying Wildstar until they fix this crap. It won’t cost you anything to try it, unlike this horrid expansion.

HtFde.3856:

tico.9814:

Can we hardcore players enjoy our content? You casuals already had your fun for 3 years, now that content is challenging let me enjoy it, too many selfish whiners. Anet better not nerf anything but instead they should mimic darksouls playstyle. Let me ask a question to all the whiners why have a good combat if the content is not challenging? What is the whole point of an excellent combat system if players don’t use it to it’s full potential, hell they even gave us action crosshair mode, I am glad content is challenging now, combat makes more sense now.

Impress me – go solo and do the Balthazar skill point. Map completition was a SOLO thing – and you cannot do that anymore. Never mind combat and whatnot – the way they implemented the hero points is lousy!

Just ignore that guy. Players like him are morons. Anytime you hear “hardcore,” and ESPECIALLY if you hear “Dark Souls” in the same sentence, just zone them out. They are absolute idiots, and act like they have some invisible, endless stream of currency that earns others’ respect. “Hey brah; us hardcores. You wouldn’t even KNOW brah! You ever Dark Souls, brah? Well…I did it WEARING A BLINDFOLD. You ever make it through a game, just by the sound of your characters pained screams? Well then…I guess you’re not hardcore. This game is for us hardcores now….huh? What was that? Sorry, nobody. Come back when you’ve done the worthless, arbitrary thing I’ve done (that you’re never going to do because you’re not an idiot that likes wasting his time)….then we can talk about how this game is for us.”

Just complain to and about the company and don’t spend money until you get what you want. It’s how democracy works!

Phy.2913:

Stop trying to rush them.

You can’t tell him what to do!

Also, you’re a kitten. Who wouldn’t want to unlock the hero points as fast as they could? Most everyone was hugely disappointed with how they handled hero points.

Chrono.6928:

Aytheist.9476:

Solo players cannot advance in the new content, and any decent publisher would disclose such a fundamental change prior to taking your money.

where are you at? I’m decently far and so far have solo’ed every story and exploring maps. A couple of skill points have champ bosses but even solo the game allows and usually has players around also doing it. While not as easy as the core game its not impossible either. Just requires some skill.

ps: dodge and animations are more important now. Changing traits and skills too. Using more range weapons than before. Doing it on my squishy thief but having 3 bars of endurance helps ^^ We aren’t meant to just run through everything and never fail. We are suppose to learn and play better. If anything I’m enjoying the challenge.

ps2: if still having trouble I would recommend minion type classes. With the 90ish% damage reduction to minions by aoe (unless targeted) they are very strong right now and would help “solo” as they take the pressure off of you.

but you can’t have the 3 bars of endurance until you solo a ton of champions. that’s the entire problem. Thief isn’t as bad anyway, all you have to do is repeatedly blind stuff like they’ve always done. You don’t even need the dodge all that much except when they do attacks that hit quickly multiple times, and even then you can take a few shots. Basically, killing anything with a thief is a joke, and everyone knows it.

It’s not a good response to say “Oh, well just play X class and soloing it will be easy!”

That doesn’t mean their system isn’t broken; it just means you’re playing an easy, OP-for-PvE class. There are classes that CAN’T solo this stuff, and there’s still wait gates (cooldowns), mastery gates, and story gates. It’s bullkitten.

The problem is they have been repeatedly trying to force the idea down people’s throats that earning hero points is somehow a necessity. After they already had to fix this exact same problem before releasing the new trait system. They gave everyone the traits for leveling and paying a trainer once. That was good. Then they completed effed over new characters. Old characters were fine; you got to keep your traits. Basically, everyone had all of the traits. The only people who were completely screwed by their idiocy were new characters and new players. They were trapped behind a PvE or gold gate. They had to spend a lot of gold, or do a ton of annoying crap, to get traits.

Yeah, their new players didn’t like being stuck behind a PvE gate either. And pretty much all of the existing player base also complained about it. “Why do I have to go do stupid stuff (map completion in some zones, etc) I don’t want to do, or have done on my other characters already, to get traits that used to be free to access, and still is free on my old characters?!”

The answer? They shouldn’t!! It’s kittening stupid! Traits were ALWAYS easily acquired until they RUINED IT. Additionally, they literally just fixed this problem a few months ago, and some moron over there, yeah, A MORON AND A kitten AT THAT, I said it, decides to go RUIN IT, not for the first time, but for a second time! And the exact same way they ruined it the first time!

Again, traits were unlocked through leveling and paying a trainer at the beginning of the game before they ruined it. GW2, before expansion, before all the patches, traits were unlocked with levels and talking to a trainer. It was never meant to be some tedious, annoying task. Until some random group of lazy kittenes, who can’t even tell that they’re doing the SAME MISTAKES PEOPLE COMPLAINED ABOUT BEFORE, decided to break it. Again.

KDRG Monster.2873:

Its bullkitten that we need to waste so much hero points on all the mastery’s JUST so that we can unlock the elite for 60 points, and then another 400 to complete it, kittening bull.

Agreed. I am just hiding in the boards until they fix the problem.

I hope Anet learns how much money they just gave away.

I re-installed the demon game that stole a large chunk of everyone’s like (World of Warcraft). It was all over map chat that people just bought the most recent expansion so they could hunker down while Anet decides how long it’s gonna take them to stop being d-wads. That’s a lot of $70 donations to King Blizzard that could have gone Anets way. And it’s probably not just Blizzard reaping the benefits; plenty of other fun games to try out there too. Wildstar is free now too. Pretty much the perfect time to try other games, IMO.

Also, what about the horrid first day gem store items? There were like 2 things to buy, and both sucked. I got the combo pack with the outfit, glider skin, and whatever else it had (if anything? it turned out so lame I don’t even remember).

All they had to do was give up the elite specialization traits, make some half-decent attempt at the gem store, and they’d have had at least $70 from me and the 20+ people I personally saw (which means there are probably hundreds more), just on that server, complaining about it. Really, how god awful a job do you have to do to get people to uninstall your game and play WoW again? The elite specialization problem should have been fixed day 1.

Oh well, back to playing the warlock.

Tatikios.1027:

Stoaga.8190:

We all share your pain and frustration, there is not one person that is happy about the new mastery system, trust me in this

I am ok with it. This system juts like lvlng in other mmo, you farms xp and get your reward – elite spec. I dont see any problems. If you can get +10 lvl in new expansion of some ofther games, why you cant get 10 lvls in HoT?

Except it’s not at all like grinding 10 levels in another MMO.

10 levels in any modern MMO takes like a day-ish. A week for casual players.

Experienced people (over 1500 hours on this game) playing this one for 5 hours got 1 kitten mastery point for their glider, let alone any hero points. The quests are nothing new (stand next to this NPC and hit stuff, WOO). The content is kitten. Even the glider (copied from another MMO) is kitten. It’s good for GW2; that doesn’t mean it’s good compared to other games. AND you have to upgrade it, so it’s REALLY crap before that.

Not only that, you have to grind hundreds of hero points. If you don’t like PvE, and choose to just level up more for your hero points in WvW, that’s over 200 levels for most people, just because they don’t want to do MORE kittenty PvE content (hooray; guard yet another NPC!) on a kittenty glider you have to upgrade (again, not as good as other games, and not enough to drag me away from WvW).

In essence, they just told about half their player base to eff off and go earn 200 levels (per character!), or go do the thing they hate most on the game for days and days….not just on one character, but multiple characters.

The whole experience has been bad for me. I don’t like how they got rid of a map to “add content” to WvW. I also tried the intro zone to HoT. The mastery system is awful. The glider perks should have been included from the beginning. Like the fact you couldn’t even glide at first was a horrendous decision. Everyone I met there was like “wtf? I can’t get anywhere.” Like you need the glider to get around easier so you can go to the events to get XP…but you can’t get the glider without first getting the XP. It’s moronic.

Not only that, the glider is bad without the upgrades. It’s basically a “don’t fall to your death” device with rank 1. So they intentionally made it bad….once they gave it to you at all…so you could have the “fun” of improving it? That is why I despise GW2 PvE content. They literally give you nothing without forcing their kittenty PvE down your throat. WoW had better quests in Wrath of the Lich King (seven freaking years ago!). It’s like, the only thing they could come up with in 7 years was a bad glider?? And they even stole that from another MMO (which has a better glider).

Not only that, WoW improves their old PvE content when new expansions come out to make leveling and doing other stuff more fun, or at least easier. This game? PFFFFT. “Here ya go; have a kitten glider you can upgrade to be slightly less kitten. That is, after you EARN the glider with our brilliant PvE!”

And what “new” quests do you do to get this glider? What brilliant “new” thing do you do? “Oh, this NPC you are standing next to has a NEW name! Yeap, just kill everything near him like you literally did with every NPC since level 1. That’s our new innovative PvE.” And they are trying to force it down your throat so you can get a slightly less kittenty glider, some speed mushrooms, and other crap. It is hogwash.

The hero points are, by far, the worst of it.

Several consistent issues for WvW is that it has never been as rewarding to contribute to WvW as it has been to PvE. There were multiple patches and multiple seasons in the GW2 before the expansion, and nothing equal stood out for WvW.

The gold for WvW is worse.

The weapons/armor for WvW are worse (no legendary just for WvW; much harder to grind out ascended).

The skins for WvW are worse.

The triggered events for WvW are worse (to my knowledge, there used to be only Siegerazer, and not all that great now either in the XPac)

Design has gotten better, but still needs work. It definitely needed better testing. The WvW maps are way too big now, aside from Eternal.

Other stuff: Hero points. I didn’t even get half way through my elite spec after clearing 3 maps worth of hero points today. I figured 135 (before grinding the 3 maps today) would get most of what I wanted before the expansion because I didn’t read about it. Nope. But I also only do WvW. If I had been doing PvE, I would have had the hero points I needed. A ton of PvEers had the points they needed for their main character. But even the ones who had enough points on their main character didn’t have enough for their secondary characters, and none wanted to farm them.

Please just give the necessary hero points with character leveling. There is no need to keep pretending people (in any way, shape or form) enjoy partial map completion.

I would like to point out:

Before the current trait system was put in place, what was wrong with the old one?

Everyone complained because they did not want to repeatedly do map completion on new characters.

People don’t like any form of map completion; it is terrible content and should not be forced on (currently) paying customers

They also did not want to pay a ton of gold if they did not want to do map completion. It would have cost people a ton of time or gold to get traits. They did not want it.

Also, there were more needless traits. There are still a few, but not bad.

So having fixed that problem…what the heck? Who gave the OK to give everyone the exact same problem again? How they could not realize it is the same problem is beyond me. It is like those politicians who keep trying to sneak in bills to force censorship on the internet. People said no already; it is like, “Please stop repeating the exact same problem. Please. It hurts to explain it again. This problem was already solved; it took months the first time.”

Don’t let it take months again, please.

The trait system isn’t much different at all. It just gave more points to use in a narrower field. The graphic for the traits looks prettier, but essentially, we have the exact same trait system. We have major and minor traits. We just got a few more points, and can only put it into three specialties. It also got rid of some awful traits and replaced some with better traits. Not all of the traits are good still, but that’s another issue. Aside from cleaning it up and making it look pretty, it’s the same system with a few bells and whistles added.

So we have essentially the same trait system. We had a problem with the old trait system: forcing people to do horrible, boring content no one wants to do (and that takes a long time to complete), and forcing them to do it on multiple characters.

And now, today, after the fix of the old problem and the release of the expansion everyone was super excited about…..we also have a problem: forcing people to do horrible, boring content no one wants to do (and that takes a long time to complete), and forcing them to do it on multiple characters.

So can’t we just agree that, whatever the thought behind the idea was, it was not good. That can be seen by how everyone is reacting. And it is the exact same mistake, using an almost-identical trait system. Can we please just fix it and not wait? The problem isn’t going to get better. I hate coming on the message boards to talk about problems. But this is game breaking for me; I bought a fancy collector’s edition because I thought I would be happy and have new traits to play with and fun would be added. It’s not fun, at all. I am not happy, at all. I would have been having fun still if the expansion I paid for and the traits I paid for were mine, but I paid and they are not mine. I am quite disappointed, and honestly a bit mad because this exact same problem was already fixed.

Please fix the hero point issue ASAP. That is the most pressing issue. I can’t enjoy the only content I paid for; new traits. I don’t care about the PvE.

And sometime down the road, please look into this issue:

People who run in circles all day, wasting their precious lives by right clicking a monster once and maybe using one ability and not having to do anything else, are rewarded more, for easier content, than people are who have fun with more challenging content.

I am talking about the huge gap because WvW gold income and PvE gold income. Any day of the week, at almost any hour of the day, people are running around in literal, nor figurative, circles. They right click a monster once, use an ability or two, and then teleport and run onto the next monster. They repeat this exact same thing, on the exact same monsters, hundreds of times a day. They are doing nothing at all to contribute to the fun of the game. They are partaking in something so awful I don’t even care to look at it. I know first hand that some people have hundreds (some probably thousands) of hours doing this, To the same few monsters. Over and over. Day after day. I think of those people looking back on their life in 5 years, trying to think what they accomplished. And it wasn’t having fun; it was earning gold in a video game, for items that give relatively little payoff for what they sacrifice for them. Thousands of hours of no fun, for what usually amounts to a skin or minor convenience.

It is more than business; I believe every designer at the company has a moral imperative to look at how people are rewarded for “playing” (not “working”) the game. Because right now people are rewarded the most for running around in circles, wasting hundreds and thousands of hours of their lives, not having fun. All because they want some item that they won’t be able to get playing a fun part of the game. How “fun” and “game” have been so out of sync in GW2 for so long is…well, there’s just something wrong with it.

All I ask is that everyone remember they are designing a game for human beings, and that these human beings will be on the game regardless of whether they are having fun, or wasting their life running in circles.

Thanks for your consideration.

I saw that Applied Strength and Applied Fortitude are being removed. I don’t like this because a lot of us WvW’ers rely on those buffs because we don’t PvE much and don’t have ascended and/or legendary items, where as the heavy PvE’ers who come into WvW do (but they traditionally didn’t have the Applied buffs). Some people do both, but a lot of us don’t.

One big inequality is that farming in PvE doesn’t require any real skill or specific armor. Some of the dungeons maybe, but for farming no. Too many people are there to carry the zerg. Anyone just needs to land a few hits on a mob and they’re home free. And there are zergs farming the starting zone, so people can start PvE farming within the first 10 levels, level a character and get better gold, karma (which can be turned into more gold or gear), and items.

It’s no more fun than running Dolyaks, but people who run Dolyaks don’t get anything, so no one does it (even though it’s supposedly important enough to get an update in the expansion). People who do pretty much anything in WvW don’t have anything to show for it, and what they do get is a lot less than people who do PvE get.

Also, why the double standard?

When new characters are leveling and go into a dungeon and die a lot, they aren’t handed free gear that will keep them alive. Or if their low damage is causing them to die out before they kill certain mobs, they aren’t handed free stuff. Nope. They’re told that they’re new, and that they need to learn how to dodge stuff, and that they shouldn’t use half level 30 armor in a level 50 dungeon. Or even the higher level dungeons, people are like “want full zerker (class) group for runs. Know how to do X dungeon or get kicked.”

So why is it okay for new people do not do good in PvE (even if it’s a gear/trait issue), but there’s bleeding hearts everywhere if they don’t do well against people who have been playing WvW for over a year with no gear, gold or anything else fancy to show for it but those (needed) stat boosts? Why reward the people who PvE a lot, but not the people who WvW a lot?

Won’t someone please think of the Dolyaks?!?!

TL;DR

Keep Applied Fortitude and/or Applied Strength how it is, or more gold/better crafting material for doing WvW please (to make it equal to PvE).

Also, please make Dolyaks fun.

Teon.5168:

Come on, Chemical, tell us how you really feel about Trahearne.

If I hear ‘this can’t turn out good’ from that whiny plant again, I think I may scream! My wife and I constantly berate him when we hear that while doing the personal story……‘Buck up, you whimpy plant!!!!! Quit be so kitten negative!!!! Show some plant cajones!’……ad infinitum

I love you.

Also yeah. I hate whiny characters more than anything, especially when it shows other characters rally around them. It reminds me of characters that are like “I just don’t want to fight, I don’t like fighting,” but are perfectly willing to let their “friends” fight for them. I always hate stories like that, and this one is right on that border. “Well, sure I know more about the risen than anyone, and yeah I know how to fight them…..but wahhhhhh I didn’t think I would ever actually be fighting them!” and then all of the other stupid characters are like “Oh he’s so good! Let’s rally behind him!” and I am thinking “….that mother effer was just sitting there when other people were fighting and dying around him, doing nothing.” He had to be peer pressured into helping people, and that’s the kind of stupid, moronic character they make the focal point of the game at your awesome character’s expense? I would despise this game if it were based solely around the story.

Best: Game itself is fun. I really like the ability to dodge stuff.

Meh: The traits work well, but the trait trees are just so boring. It seems like they just enhance your abilities that are already there and don’t give you anything new. Kinda lame, IMO. Sure there are a few noticeable and fun differences, but overall I gotta say, kinda boring.

Worst: Trahearne. Everyone I know hates Trahearne. He completely ruins the personal story. As one of my GW2 buddies put it: “After the first part of the story, it changes from your personal story to Trahearne’s personal story.”

He is a lame plant, he doesn’t really do anything at all that the player can’t do (you actually are doing basically everything, he just soaks up half the “credit” like a scumbag). He is pointless. He is lame. He is boring. He is ugly. His dialog and voice are annoying beyond belief. More importantly, he is the single reason that many people (myself included) never finished story mode. Please, for the love of God, get rid of that stupid, ridiculous plant from the story, and preferably the entire game. I don’t even want to see him as a Scarlet-esq villain who I can kill later; I am so sick of that accursed plant that I just want him gone! He ruined the story! Every single piece of dialog he is in is ridiculous. All of his story elements are beyond comprehension. Like the different orders:

“Gosh dern we don’t get along because we do things differently…..but my goodness do we ever need to….but we can’t! We just can’t get along! For some unknown ridiculous reason, we can’t put aside our differences so that we don’t all die! Wait a minute, guys…we found a solution. Let’s put a plant in charge and then we can get along for some other unknown, ridiculous reason.”

Don’t you see how terrible it is? He is so forced into the story that it’s not even funny. He has literally no reason for being there, and again, he completely ruins the player’s not-so-personal story. It’s like “Oh yeah, you are an awesome hero! But….you need a plant that doesn’t actually do anything to occasionally assist you with things you can actually do by yourself…and even though he only occasionally helps you, let’s make him the focal point of the story.”

He has ruined the story for so many people. I will never finish the story so long as that horrid plant is in it. A lot of people are leaving the game out of boredom recently.

Recommendations: Get rid of the cost to teleport places. The cost is so small that it doesn’t really matter anyway, but even still I find it deterring. In GW1 I used to travel all over the place and have fun. Now, even though I can easily afford the travel costs, in early game it was such a detriment that it really killed the feel for the game. Why would you even do that? Who’s bright idea was that? Sure it is cheap to do from one point to another, but I liked moving around a lot! I could easily do 50 jumps a day if it were free, and now that would cost over a gold for nothing, so I don’t do it, and I don’t have as much fun. The only reason you had to put in an LFG system was because you added in costs to teleport places. If it were free, people would have just hopped around until they found groups, because it would be fun and not cost them anything. But instead someone, not you reading this, but some scumbag decided add in a cost to teleporting. That made it so that some other poor guy had to program in a whole LFG system. Don’t get me wrong, I like the LFG system, but if I could port places and just wait outside and be like “Oh heyy, people are here, now I can start a group,” I’d have been having more fun and been a lot happier. AND leaving in the cost to teleport is also why you had to create the mega servers! Who is gonna teleport around when it costs them and they may not get a group? No one, is who. It was proven by the fact that everyone was just sitting around Lion’s Arch (RIP) doing literally nothing all freaking day. So not only did that make it so someone had to program an LFG system, now they recently had to create the mega servers for people to get on because no one was leaving the cities! And again, if the teleporting were free from the beginning, no one would have had this problem!

Also, get rid of that horrid plant.

I spent more time in the negative section than I wanted to. But that is what keeps me from playing anything other than WvW or sPvP. The rest of the game is either bad (teleport costs, horrible story, grinding gold endlessly) or….well, that’s about it. It’s just bad. I like the bigger world bosses, I suppose.

I know it has already been suggested to death, but hear me out.

I think that race changes should be put into the gem store. There, the dark horse is out! Please wait! Don’t kill me just yet.

The reason usually given for not doing it is:
1) “You can test races and their racial abilities in the mists (sPvP). There is no reason for you to be allowed to change whenever you want.”

I can see the perceived logic in that statement. People can do that. But here’s the problem: No one is great with a new class right away, because they don’t know the class. Also, not everyone wants to PvP with a class for a week just to “test” it. People want to get a basic feel for it, see if it’s fun, and be done with it. I usually spend maybe 40 minutes testing out a class, and I don’t even think about the racial abilities in relation to the class; I think about them in terms of their general usefulness across all classes.

I would venture to say that almost everyone does the exact same thing I do, and you know why? It is a hassle and a pain in the rear to do it any other way. It takes time to learn to play a class properly, and you have to know how to play a class properly if you want to make the best use of racial abilities.

That isn’t a “test run” on the mists; that is playing and leveling and learning a class, all of which takes time. Also, with the new magic find system being introduced, it is a needless time sync. You not only have to spend the time leveling again, you have to go back and get all of your magic find all over again. It is a huge pain, and it makes people annoyed.

Now I know that this would not be easy. There is the story mode to consider. But I say just give people the options (1/2/3) that they picked as their race and transfer it to the new one. It could be done, and people buying race changes would more than pay for someone to code the ability to do that for characters. And again, no one is forcing anyone to do it. No one has to do it. The only people it benefits are people like myself who, after playing a class long enough to get used to it, recognize that other racial abilities would be better.

I will use myself as an example:
Got my Norn ranger to 41. Norn has some decent racial abilities, but I want a charr. Charrs are not really “better,” their racials are not over-powered, but here is why I personally want one: I like the ability Hidden Pistol and I think it would be fantastic for a ranger; it would give an extra evade in their already evade-heavy kitten nal. I prefer the ability to jump into and out of close combat when I want, and while the ability does not do great damage, it is great for that kind of play style. I did not know this by playing a ranger for 30 minutes in the Mists. I had not played it enough to develop my personal play style. Now, even though I found a race to better suit my personal play style, I have to delete all of the effort I put into my ranger, simply because there was no forethought into making a race change ability. I think by this point I’ve leveled all but a plant person to at least level 20. I think, actually, I have an 80 of all the races except the plant people. I do not care a bit about the stories now. I just want to play a ranger, but I want a fun ability to suit my play style, one that I would pay to get, and now I have to sit around like “…..SIGHHHH….all the wasted effort….”

TL;DR: The reasons for having a race change available in the gem store far outweighs any negative aspect. Plus, more money for ANet.

P.S. Also another benefit is, ANet will get less messages from people who spent gems on characters they deleted (to make a different race for the same character) asking for gem refunds or the re-issuing of items. Why wouldn’t they? They spent gems, found a race they like better, there is literally no way to change races, so why wouldn’t they want a refund or to have those items again? It only makes sense. If I delete my ranger to make it a charr, I sure as heck will want all of the gem store items back I got for my ranger (i.e. the hair color change/appearance change/extra bag slot, etc). Just give a race change on the gem store, and all of that can be avoided.

Greetings.

My opinions on the matter:
——WvW and sPvP are, at their core, PvP. You get a PvP experience by playing either.
——sPvP eliminates a ton of things that are “poisoning” the WvW experience: it makes the dueling classes easier to handle (thieves and mesmers), if you’re with a team (not random players, but even then not bad) you don’t have as many number issues. Any isssues can be solved by simply finding a better server (which is just a few clicks away). There is always action, even during the “slow” days (like Tuesdays on WvW….slow as fooook), and a slew of other fixes/things that make the game fun.
——sPvP is easier on slower PCs (a big complaint for people who don’t want to be on the top-tier servers; “my PC couldn’t handle the zergs”).
——I’ve found that the best PvPers (in WvW or otherwise) are sPvPers who play regularly (especially when playing with a team of regulars against other teams of regulars). You get to fine tune your build so much that you generally just crush other people skill-wise. And people actually talk to and help each other there, and you can watch good people and check out their builds if they’re beating you and your build.
——sPvP is fun!! I have no idea why more people don’t do it. You are fighting much more often than you do in WvW. It’s an awesome non-stop kill fest with no annoyingly-long travel periods where your goal is to kill two Dolyaks and some NPCs. sPvP keeps you busy and is more exciting. The thrill of victory is nicer, and IMO there is no real “sting of defeat” there; you learn so much when you lose as well. Just an all-around enjoyable experience.

I play WvW a lot too, but you are really missing out on something awesome if you are this upset and are skipping sPvP, especially if you have a group you like to play with. Just get them to try it with you for a month, and you will be excited by life and find love again. FEEL THE GLORY!

And the good thing is, your server can be the smallest, most wretched server in the game and that doesn’t have to affect your sPvP experience. Your entire server can QQ, and you will feel nothing but exaltation and happiness. AND!!! (if that wasn’t enough) you will actually have time to do PvE! There is such an abundance of battle that is available at any time that you don’t feel the need to make it your life. People try to make WvW their full-time job, especially now that the “seasons” have started for WvW. You are doing yourself a huge disservice by falling into the “I have to be there!” trap. You’re wasting your time and your life in that keep that people may or not not show up to, and you’re wasting even more if you get mad that they take the keep anyway even when you’re defending it. Remember those 3 hours you spent defending dolyaks and fully upgrading that keep? Gone in one Golem rush. That is 3 hours you could have spent battling (the fun part of PvP) OR you could have even battled for an hour and then spent 2 hours doing PvE. You get to spend more time enjoying yourself with friends.

Let’s compare:

WvW:
Defend dolyaks for three hours. Gained maybe some herbs/ore, maybe a gold, a little rare PvP here and there, and a lot of boredom, followed by sadness when you see your tenderly-loved keep/tower taken easily by a single golem rush.

sPvP: Battled for an hour straight. Got some good ranking-up done, had fun. Then went and did 2 instances for 2 hours (accounts for travel time and finding groups; you could easily do 4 instances if you already have a group). Got 2-4 gold + drops.

So sPvP you got: Twice the gold, more than twice the epic glory, and none of it relied on where guilds on your server transferred to or did not transfer to, or how big your server is. You also sprout wings and fly IRL, because you are so elated and care-free.

AND!! they give new maps in sPvP more often than they update WvW in any significant way.

PLUSSS you don’t have to give up WvW if you don’t want to. I mainly play WvW at the moment, actually, because I like the guild I am in now and that is what they do (such amusing people), but if I were ever to get annoyed, I feel at peace with my inner self because I know that beautiful, glorious sPvP is just a click away, should I choose to take advantage of it.

If you’re upset with ANet or angry at anything in life, you’ve not yet lived, my friend. Take advantage of the beauty they’ve created in their Zen-like sPvP. Learn how to knock people off of lasers, not get noob-tackled, and you’ll be great and you will FEEL even greater, you soon-to-be mighty warrior of the mists!

Good luck, and good pwnage to you!

LOVE!
PEACE!
CHAR KITTENS!

Greetings. Guarding dolyaks is currently the least popular things to do in WvW, but it’s also very useful. I thought of a 5-tier set of traits that would help with guarding immensely, and would make WvW more fun.

1/5: While within range of the “Guard Caravan” quest, players gain 10 stacks of might.

2/5: While within range of the “Guard Caravan” quest, player and dolyak gain a 20% max Vitality increase.

3/5: While within range of the “Guard Caravan” quest, player and dolyak gain Protection.

4/5: While within range of the “Guard Caravan” quest, Dolyak gains a 100% speed increase (runs twice as fast as it does now; can still be caught by running at normal speed and easily caught by any speed increase abilities).

5/5: Players can ride dolyaks during the “Guard Caravan” quest, gaining access to unique abilities.

Examples for #5 tier: A short bow (like the hunter’s short bow, so it’s decent for power/crit or condition damage) for ranged attacks, an AoE ability to knock away melee, a ranged CC like a net, and a small heal for the Dolyak, and a dismount button as the 5th button.

Thanks for reading, hope you like the suggestions. Feel free to change any/all of them, but please add some kind of traits for guarding dolyaks. Thanks.

Edit: I thought some may think the traits are OP, but please keep in mind the range of the Guard Caravan quest is really quite small. And unless people are attacking the Dolyaks, no one really goes near them. Also, people usually attack dolyaks in groups (because that’s how people in WvW travel), so that is why I feel that those stat boosts are necessary, to draw in people to guard them. Keep in mind, people guarding dolyaks are going to be too preoccupied for other objectives, such as re-taking camps, guarding towers, etc. That is why no one guards them.

The WvW point gain for guarding dolyaks is very small compared to zerging. Even with the speed boost trait, guarding dolyaks is purely for increasing your team’s ability to defend keeps. It’s a rather thankless job. It is a job very few people want, but it is important. This would accomplish two things: It would draw people to the job of defending dolyaks, and it would make them into more important objectives. As it is, they are often ignored unless it is an emergency (finishing a reinforcement when your gate/wall is almost down). These traits would change that and make the game much more fun, in my opinion.