Guild Wars 2

Arctarius.2649:

Also while on the topic of weakening charge.. Please make it so that its before and after cast don’t completely root the character anymore..a new animation for it would be nice too.

The 3rd auto attack should have been the #2 skill to begin with, that way you could make at least some use of the reflect and whirl.

Weakening charge is lackluster (at least as it is now) in comparison.

MiniEquine.6014:

Pre-purchasing/pre-ordering is a bane on gaming in general. Too many games are sold like this now, despite the only reasonable option being to only wait until all information has been revealed and the only thing remaining is the game itself.

The thing is, gamers aren’t known for their high reasoning skills, hence the mess the industry is in now.

“Oh my lord, Call of Duty: Rehash Redux 2.0 – here, just take my wallet!”

Goraz.3754:

There is no hurry.
The smart move is to just wait and see what happens and decide at a later date.

Yea… that is not how gamers act, at all.

PuddingNL.7603:

I see a lot of reactions of: “If HoT was $50,- for only the expansion, people wouldn’t complain”.

That’s true!

But here is the big difference: Rather you are a new player or a veteran, you pay $50,- but as a new player you get the core game. As a veteran you already have the core game so u only get the expansion. No substitutes for veteran players. So this is really unfair to the veterans..

Some of the big problems I see here are:

- Not nearly enough information about expansion only features; while I think in general, 50$ for a B2P style MMO expansion seems fair, I’m not at all certain what exactly said 50$ would get me compared to what is being added for free

- No advance announcement for bundling the core game with the expansion; good intentions no doubt, but mishandled. Quietly editing the FAQ with no announcement is shady though

- As a result of the point above, “veteran” players get seemingly less value for their money compared to a new player. A free character slot (or gem amount equal to the cost of one) for veteran accounts would have been the obvious “deal-sweetener”. Considering that additional slots can be bought with gold anyways, this really should have been a no-brainer

It truly is astounding that they managed to step into all the easily imaginable potholes.

SoPP.7034:

In essence as a veteran player I came away feeling that non of the pre-purchase deals suited me and as a result I went away with a collective ‘hmmmph’ and still haven’t pre-purchased it.

This was my feeling as well, none of the options available suited me (a person already owning the game).

Then again, this isn’t anything new though, Blizzard themselves said WoW, for example, was like a “revolving door”, old timers leave and newcomers arrive at a steady pace, the number of die hard players who stick with the game is very small in comparison.

Just look at what they did with their latest expansion, they increased the price by tacking on a character leveling boost so that “newcomers can join the action”

Veteran players had no need for the boost (as no new races or classes were added), tough kitten, they still had to pay.

Spot the trend.

If you own the core game already, get a character slot (or gems equal to the cost of one)
If you are a newbie, get the core game instead

Boom, everyone’s happy?

I think someone simply kittened up royally somewhere along the line, a company with just a single product can’t possibly afford to be this foolish with it.

Then again, gamers in general are truly all bark without any bite, companies tend to screw them over and over and they just end up taking it.

Azhure.1857:

I think you’re over-reacting.

Understatement of the day.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The way I see it this item will either be useless or overpowered. Either way, it’s something this game doesn’t need and ANet could’ve used the resources otherwise but they didn’t. They chose to go for that extra money this item will grant them.

“Creating” this item most likely didn’t eat up that many resources or time even, there is really no way this could be “overpowered” that I can think of, I just see it as completely useless.

I think the new consumable is pretty silly in a game with so much fast travel, the only “challenging” bit about PvE they let you skip are jumping puzzles.

Unless you really, and I mean really, hate jumping puzzles and lack the achievements from doing them, why would you buy these?

manveruppd.7601:

At all costs please don’t bring back solo queue. It was a toxic environment, and its existence was completely illogical in a game mode where teamwork was such a huge part of the game. Its population was tiny, and composed only of ill-tempered, kitten-talking people who only cared about their leaderboard ranking, plus a few people trying out builds they weren’t ready to bring into team queue. It was 3 parts playing, 7 parts smack-talk. And now that we have an unranked queue, it’s not necessary .

I have no problem with the removal of YoloQ, if they fix matchmaking.

Courtyard just now, us 5 solo players against a full premade, 0 points for our team, zero rank points, got farmed till 500-0.

QQ

Simon.3794:

It is certainly very hard, if you go by basic logic.

Yeah, that is what internet and multiplayer gaming communities are best known for, their high reasoning skills and logic.

It’s as if trolling wasn’t a thing or nothing.

Terrorsquad.2349:

Are you suggesting the majority are voting just for the reactions? In a competitive game mode?

Such Esportz.

I wasn’t being all that serious, I apologize that intended levity wasn’t all that apparent.

However, is it really that hard to imagine some people picking the map simply to kitten off others?

Terrorsquad.2349:

While a small part of your point might be right, I do not think ppl just pick a map to see reactions, though.. not in Ranked Arena that is..

Are you really suggesting that people wouldn’t do things just to spite others? In an internet environment?

Such innocence.

People make it sound like you desperately need a full group of pure zerkers to get stuff done.

Well, you don’t. The majority of the player base just prefers it that way.

If you don’t like partaking in the “meta”, form your own groups of like minded players and go get stuff done. I’ve seen quite a few groups advertised as “laxed” on the LFG tool.

Having said that, personally I wouldn’t mind at all if the PvE environment (dungeons mostly) and character stats were remade to encourage better build diversity, making support builds a thing for example.

It gets boring quite fast when the only considerations you’ll be making most of the time regarding group composition are: A ) making sure everyone is zerker and B ) keeping necromancers out of the party.

People vote for it because it’s fast and to see the reaction of people when it actually ends up getting picked ^^

At least that is what I gathered last night hanging out in the mists hearing other people talk about it.

Have to admit, some of the reactions people have when they end up in it are priceless, way more than with Skyhammer.

That is how “heirloom” items work in World of Warcraft.

I wouldn’t be opposed to having something similar in GW2, when you’re leveling your 3rd or 4th alt you don’t really care about the armor and weapons you’re using before max level anyways.

Thanatos.2691:

Customer B uses a subscription fee and is monetarily invested in the game. This person has officially invested his or her money into the game itself rather than specific items or services offered through the gemstore. The company has more pressure to develop more content with the customer directly invested in their company.

That is just completely wrong (and somewhat naive).

If you pay a subscription to say, World of Warcraft, you aren’t buying shares of Activition-Blizzard. You pay to simply access the servers.

Thanatos.2691:

Unless ANet is terrified that they won’t have enough players to fill servers with this system, it’s a system that could easily work out for everyone if properly implemented.

Considering the (likely) possibility that introducing a subscription fee and forced segregation of the player base would lose them more players than bring in new ones, I personally hope they’d be scared "#%@les even if just thinking about it.

Thanatos.2691:

Living story is passable for free content, but is it enough to keep players interested and invested in the game? Everyone has differing opinions about whether or not the game is suffering from lack of substantial content development, leading many hoping for an expansion. A subscription fee could serve as an alternative to an expansion, giving paying subscribers more content which they desire while leaving the current free content (including Living Story) for the players who aren’t interested in a subscription.

This seems like a good compromise in my opinion, and I think most people against a subscription fee are paranoid that their free content will suddenly become subscription content.

Depends on what “extra stuff” exactly one would get for paying a subscription. Gating any meaningful content behind a subscription fee would only segregate the player base.

Besides, there already is a way to support Anet via a voluntary “subscription”, buying Gems. As far as business models go, GW2’s is one of the most consumer friendly ones out there.

Also it is worth mentioning that World of Warcraft, the genre giant with a subscription fee AND a cash shop, developed by Blizzard – one of the wealthiest game developer studios, just went through a 14 month period during which the game received no content updates whatsoever.

Echiel.8196:

20sec is fast? than after all people accepting the match-up having to wait 1 minute inside? Why is there a ready button if you have to wait another minute…. You go to toilet/for water, or whatever and you are afk at beginning. What problem did that solve…

Yes, 20 seconds is fast, if you are unable to stay at the vicinity of your computer for that period, or if you fail to hear the new sound “alarm” (which admittedly could be louder), you should be booted from the queue. Otherwise you’ll just carry on ruining the queue for others.

There is absolutely no reason not to “kick” people from the queue if they fail to press “ready”.

Especially given how fast queue times are, at least at the moment.

Justin ODell.9517:

I hope unranked will fill this place for you. I understand what you’re saying, and we are paying attention.

I seriously hope that if you are even entertaining the idea of possibly reintroducing YoloQ, that you wouldn’t replace any of the new ones with it, but rather add it as yet another option.

I’m personally liking the new system very much, I can actually play games with my buddies now.

Matchmaking is out of whack, as is expected, since there seems to have been a total reset? Not a big deal if periodical resets aren’t planned (as in WoW’s arena/RBG seasons)?

Courtyard needs to be removed, not necessarily because it’s a bad map/mode, but because it’s the only map/mode of its kind at the moment. People plan their builds and teams around conquest, as that is what the rest of the maps/modes are.

No problems with it if more DM and proper CTF maps are (finally) added in to the mix.

Full premade teams should only be matched against other, full premades, even if it resulted in (significantly) higher queue times.

Just polish and “fix” the animation, nothing else needed.

Same thing with Rush.

Charr Guardian.1497:

You have effectively crippled a class.

A bit over dramatic there, if anything, a small niche “build” got removed. Still, I feel for you since obviously you felt it was fun for you.

It’s fairly obvious the only reason rifle had bleeding on AA was to make use of the bleed orientated traits in the Arms tree (where you find the only rifle orientated trait as well), not because it was meant as a condition weapon, the hallmarks of the rifle are volley and killshot, power based abilities.

That being said, like you suggest, a new ranged weapon (xbow perhaps) could fit the role of a condition based, “precision” weapon for warriors.

BlackGhostz.2483:

In GW2 the instanced dungeons are pretty terrible and lack real rewards unless you essentially farm tokens.

The WoW community isn’t exactly happy with their dungeons either, talking about 5mans here. They aren’t rewarding and challenging. The “challenge” mode they added to dungeons is great for organized groups, but once you’ve done them once there is really no point repeating them.

In WoW you can essentially earn money by the means you choose to. If you want to farm crafting materials from enemies to sell you are not penalized by this. If you want to earn money by questing you can earn a lot of money on this alone. If you want to earn money by foraging that is also an great way. In GW2 the only way to farm. Yes, you can get 1 gold for a 10-30 minute dungeon but anything worth having costs 2000+ gold.

The thing is though, money is more or less “worthless” in WoW, it is so easy to earn you’ll never have to worry about becoming broke. Unless you are actively going for the most expensive mounts or BMAH cosmetic/vanity stuff, you’ll earn way more money than you can spend. Gold in GW2 still has value, which is a good thing.

High level gear in this game can really only be obtained by crafting and that means having massive amounts of gold, which involves massive amounts of farming. So pretty much only the people that play a lot of hours or spend a lot of real money can get legendary gear. In, wow it’s a lot more rewarding and you get to choose how you want to get your high level gear. There is raiding, PVP, crafting, etc.

Crafting in WoW is only a viable means of gearing up at the start of an expansion.

WoW showers you in gear, which you are expected to replace whenever a new arena season/raid tier/expansion hits. To me, the gearing up felt actually less rewarding, as I knew in a few months I’d be replacing it all anyways. Like gold, gear is so easy to come by it no longer even feels like a reward.

I crafted a legendary weapon in WoW, and it felt truly like an achievement. 3 months later I got quest rewards which were ten times better than said legendary weapon. It ended up gathering dust in the bank, and I wasn’t even able to transmute the skin onto another weapon.

MrFisticuffs.7306:

that’s good to know for wvw

does it work in dungeons?

It does, and you can actually “deal” pretty high damage with it in some dungeons, CM for example.

Kinda hard to fit the trait in to a proper dungeon build though.

minbariguy.7504:

So true. And even more true if they are careful to manage expectations by clearly communicating that upcoming feature announcements are not “promises” and are subject to change.

The thing is, though I’m sure this isn’t intended, their company policy reveals a sense of disdain for their players on behalf of the policy makers, as they obviously don’t think we are “sensible” enough to comprehend clear communication. Which is kind of offensive, when you think about it (so I won’t, lol).

Gamers in general are an irrational bunch, this fact can easily be observed by taking a look at the official forums of pretty much any game out there.

That is why game developers are very vague when talking about possible additions to their games. No matter how hard you stress the point that ideas aren’t set in stone, you’ll end up with a crowd raving about “broken promises” if something ends up getting changed or scrapped even.

It’s our fault it’s gotten like this, not the developers.

Having said that, I wish game devs everywhere would grow some balls and just ignore the irrational crybabies.

As has been suggested oh so many times before, CI would work better if it removed conditions as you build up adrenaline, say, a condition per bar gained.

Wouldn’t tie us to a single weapon and would fit in well with adrenaline being harder to build and maintain.

Rush would be completely fine if they fixed it, no need to actually change anything.

It’s clunky and buggy as is, needs fixing, nothing else.

ToxicToothpick.4396:

The second, and far better idea, is to have the targeting circle simply unable to move out of the range. If the cursor is out of the abilities range, instead of turning red, it stops moving further away and instead simply stays and close as possible within the range circle. Secondarily, there could also be a thin white circle showing the range while aiming.

This is the way it should have been from the start, similar skills work just like that in other games, for a very good reason.

silentnight warrior.2714:

I like the change on the range of eviscerate. we need gap closers on axes.

The range increase would indeed be most welcome.

On top of that, the animation it self could use some polish. Apart from WWA, warrior leaps and movement skills feel clunky when compared to similar skills other classes have.

To name a few, compare guardians GS leap to Eviscerate or Savage Leap, or guardians hammer slam to Earthshaker or RTL to Rush even. The animations are much more fluid, less buggy and as a result the skills feel much more responsive.

It’s my personal opinion that the animations need to be polished/reworked and all the bugs ironed out before making changes like adrenaline being expended when you miss a burst. Like Earthshaker and slight inclines/slopes anyone?

Immensus.9732:

yeah but you forget something important, when gw2 was in beta and players were asking for obvious things to be added in the game or fixed, nothing happened, carbine postponed the game launch for wildstar more than 6 months based on beta feedback because they actually listen to players. that for me is enough to say carbine is more solid team than anet.

It’s incredibly naive to think that “beta feedback” pushed the launch by 6 months, especially since Carbine is not publishing the game themselves.

I’m well excited about Wildstar, but it’s far too early to praise the devs or the game when it hasn’t even launched yet.

Mimizu.7340:

Ensio.8172:

Personally I’m more irritated by the obnoxious know-it-alls who bad mouth the “noobmanders” while they are learning the ropes.

maybe these “obnoxious know-it-alls” actually know what they are doing.

paying 100g for an icon does not make you a natural-born-leader, does not add charisma and does not boost social skills.

not paying 100g for an icon does not negate them either.

The “obnoxious know-it-alls” could just tag up themselves or at the very least help out the poor commanders making an effort instead of insulting them.

I never said the tag automatically makes one a “natural born leader”, but everyone has to start somewhere. When I look at some of the most appreciated commanders on my server today, I remember all the dumb stuff they used to pull off when they were first learning.

Except the “loaded gun”, in this case, is a tool to promote cooperative play. I still don’t see the problem with people getting them “too easily”.

Let the “noobmanders” wear their tags, learn to lead people (everyone has to start somewhere) and maybe they’ll get better at it after a while, benefiting everyone.

Personally I’m more irritated by the obnoxious know-it-alls who bad mouth the “noobmanders” while they are learning the ropes.

It’s not a “prestige” item, and it never should.

UmbraVictor.9842:

Full refund.

its co-operative play if you have a tag that is guild tag, so guidies can see only. I sometimes see noobmanders messing up the event and they do not give the right instructions. Most of the time its players without the tags that know what to do.

And for PvE Tags for everyone to see, it’s only applicable if you guild commander tag is around that event area. not just turning on all the time.

By that logic, the tag should be made even more easy to get, so the ones who know the tactics but don’t have it can afford it too.

It would be incredibly stupid to make tools that promote cooperative play in a multiplayer game harder to get.

Sure, some clueless people will buy the tag, but that doesn’t mean it should be made in to a prestige item, as seems to be your wish.

What I agree on though, is that guilds should have their own, separate commander tags, only visible to guild mates.

timidobserver.7925:

I bet that the new world bosses are designed to punish zerkers harshly.

Teq already is such a fight, so it’s a safe bet the new ones will also be like that, however the main problem is with dungeons.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Berserker, it has been pointed out for a long time already, and should be pointed out until Anet realizes it.

The problem is with dungeon/PvE design in general, there is very little point in defensive stats and builds when you can just avoid most of the damage. PvE isn’t boring because everyone is wearing ‘zerker’, PvE is just boring. You wear ‘zerker’ to make the boring stuff go by faster.

What is needed, is a dungeon revamp, not a nerf for Berserker.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So take that however you want. Personally I think the game is doing ok, but will not fare well once new MMO’s launch without something big to hold players.

Just how much of an impact the new titles will have on GW is anyone’s guess, as they are all going to have a monthly sub. They are more in direct competition with WoW as well as with each other.

Personally, I’d see my self playing GW2 and some other game with a monthly sub, instead of playing two games with a monthly sub.

Obviously, the amount of free time is a factor, some people might just want to focus on a single game, especially if that one happens to have a sub fee, just to “get their moneys worth”.

Baels.3469:

Most of the players talking smack in this thread probably have at least 1,000 hours on the game themselves. I hate PvE, I hate LS, personal story is a snore…. but between WvW, sPvP and a few other niche activities… there’s enough. Not sure why complaining.

There is actually very little “smack talk” in this thread, which is pleasant for a change.

However, the OP specifically mentions sPvP, and it really isn’t all that great in its current shape.

One solution could be adding “phases” and/or “stances” to boss fights, i.e a boss only has defiant (or stacks of it) during specific points of the fight. Like, at a point of the fight, you’d need to burn through stacks of defiant to interrupt a deadly attack or a heal or whatever.

I know people tend to get a hissy fit when anyone compares GW to WoW, but that game really has better dungeon bosses, largely due to the fact that they have a wider range of abilities and different phases.

Bosses in GW only have few abilities, mostly close range AoE, which hilariously enough is best dealt with by stacking up in a corner.

I agree wholeheartedly with “slower” combat in PvP, especially since there are no dedicated healers, but I also know that puts me in the minority.

I just hate the fact that both small and large scale PvP fights come down to both sides trying to just AoE each other down.

Jski.6180:

They said that they know its bad and they do want to revamp it in-fact they are going though and revamping all the dungeons. Sounds like soon we will see condition become a major player in boss fight in dungeons soon. Its just funny be careful what you wish for revamping often means it become more “fun” but the fun comes with a price of how hard it is to run and farm hehe.

Man, I must have missed that, where/when did they say they want to/are going to revamp the dungeons?

Vayne.8563:

Harder, challenging more serious content has always drawn less people.

A good game needs multiple difficulty levels, especially MMOs in order to have a large playerbase.

GW2 certainly needs more challenging content both for smaller and larger groups.

Sarrs.4831:

Ensio.8172:

Nothing, as the game doesn’t require you to do any grinding.

This sentence is devoid of meaning. Grinding to do what? Nobody’s forcing you to do anything. If you don’t get ascended gear, your kids aren’t going to be panhandling in the streets. The concept of a game “requiring” you to do something is nonsense because you can just not play the game.

You’re kinda blowing things out of proportion, obviously you aren’t required to actually play the game.

The OP makes it sound like, in order to gain gear in the game you need to run loads and loads of dungeons to get a set of armour and weapons. He calls it a ‘grind’.

I merely pointed out that there are other ways of acquiring gear, and that there is no need to grind for anything in order to just play the game (to get gear in this case).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m a bit confused by the title of this thread. You must have an account (i.e. have already purchased and registered the game) to post in the forums. Are you asking if you should buy a second account?

He says that he’s been too busy to play it after he bought it, misleading title yeah.

Anyways, if your aim would be to focus on ‘sPvP’, then it’s not really worth it, to be honest.

That’s about all the detail you need really.

ipan.4356:

The ONLY reason not to do this is to keep people grinding the same content over and over and over, because you need people on that treadmill to keep them busy because you don’t have enough content to satisfy them.

First of all, you shouldn’t use the term “treadmill” if you have no idea what it means.

You don’t need to run dungeons for the gear, you can craft items with the same level of stats, buy gear with badges or just buy gear straight from the TP.

We were told this is a non-grindy game, so what gives?

Nothing, as the game doesn’t require you to do any grinding.

The OP is looking at things from the perspective of people who are completely new to the game, and quickly find out that it isn’t their cup of tea, especially if coming from WoW-style MMOs.

And it’s not hard to see why that is if you’ve played WoW or others similar to it in structure. Adding more simpler, streamlined low and mid level dungeons wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if you make clear that they are meant as learning experiences, tutorials. They could grant a decent amount of experience as well, so new players would be drawn to them.

PvE players tend to like dungeons, and want to level up in them.

OmaiGodman.2098:

people only care for big events now that get them a lot of loot… the problem with the smaller events is that the seem so insignificant. you help a guy protect a fortress from skritt once, you come back 10 minutes later to find the place overrun anyway. Unless you need the XP, there is little satisfaction to get from that.

There are some smaller events that branch out to bigger ones, the one in Harathi for example, which eventually leads to a boss fight.

One solution could be if the pre-events for boss fights were made more complex, to require more effort. As it is now, 50 people wait around the boss spawn while just a few run the pre-events, partly because people are lazy, but mostly because they are easier and quicker to do with fewer players.

The whole thing feels backwards as it is now.