Guild Wars 2

Artemis Thuras.8795:

A week before gw2: heart of flames gets announced, including heart of thorns for free.

Ahah I was here too, glad someone still remember, what a bad move it was.

Back on topic, we don’t know, but you can check for anet official retailers if want to save some money https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/

Same, my bank is full of ascended chests I don’t need (armor) dropped over the years and not getting any more chests for ages (can’t even remember how long since my last drop).
tin foil hat on I wonder if there is some kind of check on your unused chests that make them drop less.

This happens to me too.

Even if I don’t really like the name, guys we are ACTUALLY guarding a Dragon.
Remember the egg?

I would be ok with a slight change to differentiate genders, but no boobplates on asura and charr please, not on the legendary armor at least.

Rasgalinj.2763:

Check the event timer site on the gw2 wiki, go to the zone around 30 min before start and at the same time monitor LFG for taxis. That should get you into a full map. Works every time for me.

I liked the new patch overall, but wasn’t what you are writing basically what anet was trying to avoid with part of it? :|

Tarasicodissa.7084:

[…] Anet never denied it, they always meant elite specs to be superior to regular ones (guess why they’re called elite). […]

It’s the other way around, totally. I’m not sure how could you have missed that, they hyped them as a form of horizontal progression for sooo long. If you’re not sure about what you write, please refrain from misinforming people at least.

Anyway about the OP, p2w is a pretty generic term, many would say that mmorpg are becoming more and more pay to “convenience” which is in my opinion just another way to spell p2w.
To me anything that falls under our 3rd party software definition of “advantage”, but it’s granted through an ingame store, classify a game as p2w one.

Is gw2 p2w? Probably just partially and for sure one of the few game around with a store with a relatively low impact on the gameplay.

I don’t even care about legendaries (too grindy for my tastes), but I understand why many people would be furious about this topic.

My suggestion:
For now just implement weapons, without any story.
Release them with the old RNG + Recipe format.

Reward players again with Spirit Shards (or any other new currency that only HoT players can gain) for the “level up” and make each attempt for the new set of precursors require 3 rare + X spirit shards/new currency.

Rework dungeons reward and let them contribute greatly to the EXP gain.

New f2p players will have finally something casual to do, experimenting dungeons and gaining some gold to invest in the “old” legendaries, while HoT veteran will run them for the new ones.

Old players will show off the new legendaries while running dungeons > new players will want them too > new players will buy HoT > new players will became veterans continuing to run dungeons > and so on…

GG, you just killed two birds with one stone :O

MauChann.3081:

For me it didnt fix anything. The known issue tracker also isnt updated.
It actually even got worse for me, its affecting my fps greatly, i already went through the entire troubleshooting with the support team so there is nothing much i can do about it,
All we can do is wait really..

Sorry to hear that, I hope you’ll find a way to solve it :/

Right now for the first time in a long time my characters are not stuttering.
I changed nothing, did this last patch fix it?

reikken.4961:

you aren’t forced into builds by the devs. You’re forced into them by other players. people who only want to use the setups that the first raiders cleared with

Not always true.
How is not the rune of the chronomancer not a forced option for a chrono?
The #6 bonus should have been a trait at least, and even so it would have been basically mandatory to be efficient.
Phalanx for war? Etc…
Why should we choose sinister over the grindy viper?
They’re not different, the second one is basically a better version of the first one.

A lot of things in the game are set in a way that strongly encourage their use.
You can choose to not use them, but most of the time you’re just crippling your team doing so, that IF any team will accept you.

The lack of build diversity is real in this game, at least for what concerns pve.
Not that you can’t enjoy it anyway, but imo just one or two optimal ways to play your character for most of the classes is too little.

edit: also specializations shoulnd’t have basically killed the core classes… if anet was serious with the “horizontal progression” we could be using many more builds right now…

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Andulias.9516:

Can anyone take kitten like this with a straight face? Since when is PvP a good indication of the game’s popularity? What’s better, a PvP room! And has your wife ever heard of taxiing? Because if she hasn’t, please do tell her that if she doesn’t taxi she will be transported to a low pop map and that has NOTHING to do with how many people are actually playing the game!

Are we honestly supposed to take your post seriously?

Given that the room has been always full, no matter the hour, yes, it’s a pretty good sign. Been that way, off and on, for the last week since a certain game came out. And yes, my spouse tried taxing multiple times. Is that not a given when I said she couldn’t find a full map?

I know, I know. I shouldn’t believe my experience, but I should definitely believe yours.

At this point, most log in to get their three dailies, and then log right back out to do something else . . . if they log in at all these days.

Yes, I know. Doom and gloom. Funny thing to call reality, but sure. Keep telling yourself the game is fine. Been through this with enough MMOs that ’it’s fine’ is the anthem for anything but fine.

But, again, far be it from me to inject reality and reason into a forum discussion.

Fractals were meant for people who liked this kind of “progression” and still, in the past, (because there were fewer levels) you could play them with multiple characters with relatively little gold investment if you were not aiming to run level 50.
Right now they are really alt unfriendly.
(Imo) It’s one of the countless failed moves anet made with HoT.

They thought that killing dungeons, which was the casual endgame for a lot of people, would push them into the fractals, and then ultimately into buying HoT.
Really a poorly thought idea.

It could have worked IF they had reworked completely the AR system (like making it work like MF and enabling % of it based on how many ascended pieces you’re wearing on a specific character and using a soft cap, limiting the need of a full set only for the very last levels) OR IF they improved the rewards in terms of ascended drop.

On one hand they implement things that are alt friendly, things that let you think this game is REALLY alt friendly, then they introduce some kind of grind, gold sink, currency here and there that make you wish to play a single character.
Schizophrenic, right? But maybe they think or know that this make them earn more, no idea.

They said they want revamp (un-nerfing) dungeons rewards.
They said they want to rewamp fractals rewards.
They said they don’t like the current AR system because it’s too confusing so in a very distant future we could get a totally different one.

But again they said a lot of things in the past, delivering in a very twisted way our wishes, so don’t hold your breath, play what you feel it’s worth playing or take a long break untill they decide to change the game to something that may suit you.

Same problem here.
Gliding, running, walking, whatever… everyday is stuttering.
Quite annoying, fps are fine, ping is fine too.
Fix please.

By these reviews basically the brainstorming process is something like this:

Thanathos.2063:

Don’t worry, everyone can get lost in the numbers from time to time.

Thank you for your understanding

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Erick Alastor.3917:

Simeonus.9237:

Experience you receive is based on your character lvl. Full map gives me about 600-750k experience on my 80 Revenant(lvled with tomes).

Wait, less than what I estimated? O_o
It should be at least 3kk.

By “full map” he means exploring a single map. For example, mapping out Dredgehaunt Cliffs from 0% to 100%.

Your calculations fail to take into account that XP earned scales. This isn’t true just for kills, as you mentioned before, but also for discovering new areas, completing hearts, reaching vistas, and so on. A level 2 character might get 100 or 150 XP for unfogging a new area on the map, when he only needs 3000 XP to gain a level. A level 80 character will get 3000-4000 XP for unfogging a new area on the map.

Because the XP you earn from exploration increases as you level, it certainly can be a viable way to earn Masteries. Will it be the most efficient? Not necessarily, but it’s much less boring than many of the other preferred ways.

Given that (checking on wiki) looks like hearts awards you a fixed amount of XP (but it’s not true) and I coulnd’t find info about an UPscaling system on the remaining elements I tougth those where not influenced by your level, but reading all these feedback it seeems I was wrong.

Nephziel.6053:

Erick Alastor.3917:

Moral of the story: don’t believe in people who say they maxed their masteries just exploring once.

I loved this part.

You talk about people deciving someone but you are trying to do it with your false information.
Why don’t you actually test the mastery exp gain on level 80 character per map before you make a post like this.

This was not absolutely my intention, I was just trying to save people from wasting their time, doing something they believed was efficient, but it seems I failed to gather all the right informations.

If what I read from this feedback is true, I’m positively surprised, and deeply sorry about the mistake.

600k PER map may not be optimal, but are absolutely viable, and less tedious than running in circles inside cof.

I’ll still refrain from suggesting it myself to my friends until I’ll give I try first hand.

Simeonus.9237:

Experience you receive is based on your character lvl. Full map gives me about 600-750k experience on my 80 Revenant(lvled with tomes).

Wait, less than what I estimated? O_o
It should be at least 3kk.

synk.6907:

Kill something at level 5.
Get on an 80 and kill that same thing, in the same place.

The XP reward is different.

Doing 100% map completion at level 80 is not going to mirror the xp-required-to-level graph.

Your main point likely still has merit, but the reasoning needs work and more accurate numbers (i.e. power-leveled 80 doing 100% map completion at 80 and not before).

I’m not totally sure and can’t support what I’m going to say, but I believe that the exp gained from killing here is pretty trivial because this kind of process takes into account just all is needed to complete the map, so no DE, gathering and killing random mobs.
Since most of those things can be easly avoided by people believing that they can complete their masteries faster by aiming straight to 100%, which is not true.

edit:
tl;dr: It may be.
I looks like I didn’t take into account a sort of upscaling system that should reward you more on your power leveled 80 chara.

So if you’re a new player, maybe you could level by other means and explore open PvE once you hit 80 to get the most benefit from it.

If it’s true that you can get ~600k XP from a single map (at lv 80), you may consider exploring as a viable (even if not optimal) choice of training your masteries and completely ignore what I wrote before this edit.
______

tl;dr: And indeed it isn’t.

Lately I’ve heard many people saying that you should not make a grind out of the XP needed for the masteries, that you should take your time and enjoy the “journey”
(through your old contents).

Many even stated they already completed their Tyrian tracks without joining the mindless farm which is CoF P1, but just exploring the world with their newly created revenant.

Now I’m gonna tell you why those people are just deceiving you and why you shouldn’t try to start exploring to get 100% map completion (if you believed them and just wanted to max out all your masteries following their advices).

At first I thought, wow if it’s true it’s cool, I hate killing the same things over and over and over. At least the core game has many things that can keep me awake and I can enjoy with my friends, but I always double check any info before even move a single step.

It had to do a bit of research and then draw some conclusions.

You can complete the full exploration of the core game being around level 73.

Now let’s assume that you have a brand new character and you power level it ’till 80 using tomes, you will be able to destinate all the explo experience to your new mastery grind tracks.

73 means 3.335.359 XP.

~3.000.000 XP, and to unlock all your Tyrian masteries you need ~30.000.000 XP

Assuming that you have enough new characters level 80 with zero exploration done, you would need to repeat the exploration process almost 10 times.

One of the fastest full exploration took around 32 hours.

This means that you can complete your mastery grind journey with “JUST” ~320 hours of most efficent exploration routes.
Realistically it will probably be around 400 hours or even more.

Moral of the story: don’t believe in people who say they maxed their masteries just exploring once.

If you want to explore, explore for a legendary, for that silly star, or whatever, but don’t do it expecting to max out your masteries.

Chpoit.6498:

Not once a week, that’s crazy it’s even less than what we have now. I already have enough trouble finding dungeon groups, don’t make it harder.

Make dungeons give the old gold rewards but limit it to once per week ( or two weeks) per account. After that first once a week run, they can reward the current values.

I like the idea.
Will happen? I doubt it.

Zaron.1987:

the rest of this game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff
we just dont want players to grind in guild wars 2 noone enjoys them noone find them fun we want to change the way people knew combat

oh wait a second now its time for Heart of Grind

“I grind a hero point i grind a heroe point again heyhe i grind it again thats great

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrwtWAGGGB4#t=1m24

I like the name Heart of Grind. I’ll start calling it HoG because it suits it.
When around 8 months ago I said this was gonna happen, nobody believed me, and now many of the people who were skeptical are crying.

To quote myself:
_____________________________________
If there will be enough content to provide experience points without the need to repeat the same tasks over and over I could be ok with it, but I strongly doubt this will be the case (there is RNG Cox behind the creation of this system).

Also they want to tweak the peace based on the BWE where basically all players are the “most dedicated guys” in the game?

Everyone should know by now that most of them are people that rush like there is no tomorrow to complain there is nothing to do right after.

I’m astonished by how this community once formed by players who hated the mindless grind of standard mmorpgs turned over time into a blob of fellas asking for more time-gated stuff to feel they achieved something.

Probably I’m one of the few who still remember when they said they wanted Guild Wars 2 to be a game like Halo or COD: you turn it on, look at a list of games, then you get in and you play.

Still thinking about what will happen when my friends will be on that platform asking me to fly over there, but I will not able to reach them because they grinded 24/7 their masteries.
_____________________________________

Check the gif.
“In regard to gated content via gear then I think this is something we are going to give more thought to”.

They have been thinking about it the whole time, then decided that the word “gear grind” was a bit too hard to force on the gw2 playerbase so they changed it to “mastery system”. We should be happy to play WoW with better graphics.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Ok. Name it Mastery XP. Whatever you want to call it, we acquire it the same way; by playing whatever part of the game we choose.

That article is a bit out-of-date. Though, we know longer get rewarded in the same way for accruing XP, we still do accrue it, and use it to ‘fill up’ our Mastery bars in the same way (though not at the same rate, always), we did our former XP bars.

I doubt it will be the same as the current EXP.
Right now you can progress and reach the ceiling fast and doing a HUGE amount of things (I hardly doubt an expansion can delivery what the core game did), and all of these give you the ability to face any challenge into the game being basically top tier (excluding fractals where you need expensive sets to be at the top).

To my understanding HoT, instead, make you grind mastery one by one, it’s not like you explore and your masteries will improve depending of what you’re doing roaming around, there will be tracks and you can choose to fill only one at a time.

Also it seems content will be gated behind these overincreasing levels points you will need, essentially it’s almost like they were expanding a fractals-like system to the whole new pve content, which in my opinion is an awful idea.

Even now everytime I propose to new guildies to join me in fractals most of them won’t come, because they don’t wanna spend “so much” gold and time to play with me in high level content. But I have no problem bringing with me anyone to do ANY dungeon.

I believe that’s the difference between the original system and what they are trying to implement with HoT.
Restrictions over restrictions to make some players (probably those who spend more money to play and the ones that almost live within the game and keep company “for free” to the first ones), feel like special snowflakes.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

We get XP no matter what we do in-game. How is gaining XP a grind? To me, anyway, any progress on a Mastery line is just bonus.

Though, I guess if someone did not want to leave the Heart of Maguuma to visit Pact Tyria, or vice versa, and be awarded XP in that area, it would be an issue. Still, it sounds like there will be new reasons to visit Pact Tyria (at least, for some – new Map Rewards, etc.).

Maybe, it’s just me, though. /shrug

The experience bar is going away and is being replaced by the mastery training bar. This training bar is in no way tied to experience.

Rozbuska.5263:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zalladi.4652:

Also, I hope that collecting all of the masteries will actually take a little longer than originally leveling from 1 – 80, unless they are able to introduce new masteries a lot faster than when they expect players to be completing the original 7 masteries.

Not sure where this info came from on it taking the same amount of time as getting from levels 1-80 -> but simply put it’s incorrect.

A) We haven’t decided how long it’ll take to earn them all, and are doing beta weekends to help decide a good time length.

B) Currently as timed in game today, it would take a good deal longer than that in total game hours to earn all the mastery lines.

Ultimately – check it out this weekend and let us know what you think!

Good to hear this. It definetly should take at least 10 times longer then level up one character. Actualy imo every single mastery line should take at least same time as level up one char.

Not good at all in my opinion.

If there will be enough content to provide experience points without the need to repeat the same tasks over and over I could be ok with it, but I strongly doubt this will be the case (there is RNG Cox behind the creation of this system).

Also they want to tweak the peace based on the BWE where basically all players are the “most dedicated guys” in the game?

Everyone should know by now that most of them are people that rush like there is no tomorrow to complain there is nothing to do right after.

I’m astonished by how this community once formed by players who hated the mindless grind of standard mmorpgs turned over time into a blob of fellas asking for more time-gated stuff to feel they achieved something.

Probably I’m one of the few who still remember when they said they wanted Guild Wars 2 to be a game like Halo or COD: you turn it on, look at a list of games, then you get in and you play.

Still thinking about what will happen when my friends will be on that platform asking me to fly over there, but I will not able to reach them because they grinded 24/7 their masteries.

I see, ty for the info. :/

Lately I’ve noticed that using GS #5 Illusionary Wave with the trait Imagined Burden often results in a knockdown and not a knockback of 450 units.

At first I thought it was because of the cripple condition, but it’s not like that.

1. If you use the traited Wave on a standing still target, he will be knocked back.
2. If you use the traited Wave on a moving target, he will be knocked down.
3. If you use the traited Wave on an already crippled moving enemy, he will be knocked back.

I think point 2 may be a bug.
Opinions?

DarkSpirit.7046:

Erick Alastor.3917:

@DarkSpirit:
Honestly I believe that implementing what I suggested would go in a completely different direction than the “gear grind”. Indeed it will reduce the cost of new sets and help people to experiment with more builds. It wouldn’t be like adding more power to your current set, but just more flexibility, which is (imo) a form of horizontal progression.

And that in itself would be an improvement over the current situation. It doesn’t make sense that precursors for legendaries would have to be 2 tiers down and that players would have to choose between its cheaper ascended and its better-looking but more-expensive legendary.

THIS already goes against what GW2 is about if you look at the numerous examples where you upgrade an item using its original, as part of the recipe, into a more advanced version.

As far as the 5/10% is concerned, I have absolutely no qualms removing the ascended if exotics stats would be the top tier. Why didn’t they stop at exotics if they really believe in what GW2 is about? Otherwise, if ascended is really supposed to be the top tier and a lot more expensive to craft than exotics, then make ascended items really worth crafting for crying out loud! I don’t see how making a top tier that is BOTH expensive craft but not actually worth crafting to be upholding what GW2 is about.

This is also why players have been asking for bloodstone eater, empyreal eater, and now dragonite eater. Many of them are avoiding to craft ascended items because they don’t feel that ascended items are worth their while to craft! Is going the “eaters” route then the solution to the broken ascended tier and is that really what GW2 is about?

You’ll see, with time, ascended will became a lot more easier to obtain, they are not the GW2 end-game, its (pve) end-game will be legendaries and masteries.

And you can bet both will be extremely grindy, the first ones providing just fluffy effects and build flexibility, where the second ones will really make the difference on your gameplay/power.

Imo GW2 will never be what they say GW2 is about.
Proof is that any change is slowly moving from horizontal progression to disguised vertical progression (i.e. masteries locking you out of portions of the game behind and artificial wall made of numbers similarly of what AR does with fractals).
But they are also moving from “soulbound progression” to account bound to mitigate the players reaction.

They are revolutionizing the whole traits system and are making us pay to respec because of what they will broke.
Remember the one time free change on the exotic with MF? Forget it.

And people are even happy to be able to pay to change their ascended stats (that were just fine few instants before) because anet wanted to redesign all.
I’m for changing things, but not for reverting progression and even charging players for it.
This remind me of the fractals rollback, but back then people were not that happy about it.

Still, not considering this reset, maybe, the ability to change stats like this is a decent option (even if not optimal), but it all depends from the market, because you always have to take into account the loss of all your upgrades.

Bah, time will tell.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Erick Alastor.3917:

They could even evolve in the legendary tier when you “unlock” them all.
Let’s say ~20 sets: ~500g for the first set + ~50g per set “upgrade” * 19 = 1450g for a full unlocked ascended set that would became “LEGENDARY” (at least in its functionality, not asking for the cool skins).

Overwriting != Progression.

I hear this many times where people ask, “Should I make ascended weapons or should I save up for making legendaries”? If the ascended tier was done right, that kind of question wouldn’t even be asked at all! Ascended should have been a natural progression towards legendary but yet they are designed as a separate alternative to screw with us.

And I don’t buy this BS about “it goes against what GW2 is about” which is a statement designed just to make the anti-gear grind crowd feel good. If they truly care so much what GW2 is about, then they shouldn’t have introduced ascended gear in the first place!

The ascended tier right now is a broken tier, neither here nor there. Too expensive and not useful enough to compel most players to craft them. They might as well just scrap it!

Honestly I believe that implementing what I suggested would go in a completely different direction than the “gear grind”. Indeed it will reduce the cost of new sets and help people to experiment with more builds. It wouldn’t be like adding more power to your current set, but just more flexibility, which is (imo) a form of horizontal progression.

Justice is done. Thank you for listening or reading your numbers.

p.s. Poor WKs, now they have to enjoy the outcome of our whining
Anet should give them a way to refuse such an awful addition that will drive this company into the ground forcing devs’ families into poverty and exclusion. /s

Edit:

I hope you people realize that the extra character slot is for pre-purchase only as that release stated. Which means if you want to be a smart consumer and not buy things sight unseen and no reviews….well…screw you.

kitten …

simplesimon.2084:

How did you get a +10 agony infusion on your armor. It was my understanding those could only be applied to infused rings or back items.

I shouldn’t have add it, I know, it’s just a guess, because if they intend to raise the fractals level cap I believe it’s not so unlikely they will let us infuse even other pieces.

Let’s suppose I want to morph my Saphir (assassin ascended) armor to Zojja (berserker):
- 5 ecto (1.89g) * 6(pieces): 11.34g
- 1 zerk insignia (6.85g) * 6: 41,1g
Let’s suppose I’m using even just 1 +10 infusion on the armor: 57.99g
And that I’m using runes of strength (8.98g) * 6: 53.88g

164.31g right now to change ONE SET, ONE SINGLE TIME.

Cheaper yes, but not impressed.
With this implementation I woulnd’t be surprised in seeing this process to double or triple in price when the demand of mats will rise.
Ascended should be some kind of “boxes” in which you “add” your stats, not where you overwrite them.
They could even evolve in the legendary tier when you “unlock” them all.
Let’s say ~20 sets: ~500g for the first set + ~50g per set “upgrade” * 19 = 1450g for a full unlocked ascended set that would became “LEGENDARY” (at least in its functionality, not asking for the cool skins).

Overwriting != Progression.

Test.8734:

Erick Alastor.3917:

Anet was somewhat different, and this change, always in my opinion, is (again and humanly speaking) in the wrong direction.

I think ArenaNet has been going in the wrong direction since release.

Indeed. My “was” is not meant to point out that anet did well before announcing this change, all started 15 november 2012.

But untill now we were not doing that bad. I my opinion Scarled was not poorly designed, but poorly implemented, the story in general is nice, but they couldn’t find the right way to narrate it (I find most of the dialogues/choices a joke).

The creation of zones like SW are slap in the face for me, but I woulnd’t care about them if devs didn’t let us understand that most of the HoT will follow that formula…

Masteries will be delivered by Cox, that if I’m not wrong is the person in charge of the reward system… we all love… you know the RNGesus.

Sadly I think they can shapeshift this mmo in a WoW clone 2.0 and everything would still be fine for their income at this point.

I’m still here crossing my fingers, because this franchise was the only one that interested me. If this will fully became a generic mmorpg, I’ll probably just quit playing online :/

And just to remember what happen back in 2012:

Chrono.6928:

Test.8734:

Amazing to see so many people defending ArenaNet by claiming this change isn’t bad… While there’s next to no one saying why it would be good.

I guess it speaks a lot about the quality of the game’s updates when people are happy that a change isn’t making the game worse, even when it doesn’t make the game better.

its just the times we live in. reading this post actually reminded me a lot about politics. lol

Not too amazed, it’s almost the norm.
In my opinion people today are being regularly brainwashed by the mmorpgs industry, a business that is slowly killing/reducing any social interaction and challenge in their virtual worlds to ship contents that relies heavily on people void and deleterious addictions.

Because it’s safer to cater to a mass that chase some virtual goods (weapons or armor tiers/masteries,/skins) delivering a narrower variety of activities and requiring the players to repeat a content over and over and over to reach the “cap” or to obtain what they want.

Reached the cap or the achievement of something, players realize that there is “nothing left” (as if other players are nothing else than npc you bring along to complete a specific content) because they had no time to really socialize and/or the ability to impact the game in a meaningful way, then they try to play a little more to find that, ignoring the virtual reward, that content is not so fun to keep them interested.
(Yes, there are people that create solid bounds in mmorpgs, but they are usually a minority and people that have a lot of time to spend on them so they can both clear contents for the virtual rewards and socialize)

Luckily for the developers of this sector is possible to release few more things to make people grind more when the hype if fading and repeat this strategy till the end of time.

This genere is selfdefining itself, it’s not players’ fault. It’s a business.
And there is no courage left, in any company, to think out of the box because it’s a lot easier to make money this way. Why should they invest in something else than things that keep players playing and paying and why should these things require a lot of manpower and investment?

Anet was somewhat different, and this change, always in my opinion, is (again and humanly speaking) in the wrong direction.

The only thing that could counterbalance it would be adding the stats swap to this tier.

I was worried because the switch button was hidden during the streaming and english is not my main language so I though I may have missed it even if they said something about it.

Ty for the info.

while in combat or we’re limited to the GS if we’re using this elite spec?

Fun impacts decisions. Every time you finish a dungeon you get tokens you can trade in for reward items that you want, rather than having a small chance of getting it as a drop, because it’s more fun to always get rewarded for finishing with something you want to have!

By Colin Johanson June 19th, 2012

Test.8734:

It’s as if ArenaNet were trying to make people stop playing GW2.

They’re trying to do quite the opposite. But if you’re a gw1 player, yeah they are slowly pushing that target away since november 2012. Sucks to be one of us.
Here have a hug.

Hidden Arcana Blogpost 01

Masteries are contextual. What makes this system different? [from the traditional VP]
The abilities you’ll gain through the Masteries system can be employed in content designed from the ground up.
This provides a better sense of progression by letting players power up their character to challenge specific content instead of building generalized, stat-based power through gear and levels.

So we can call it a vertical and contextual abilities treadmill.
Many people complained that this game has no “endgame” and they will give us what grinders asked for.

Hidden Arcana Blogpost 02

Visual progression, expanded options, and difficulty progression are all important, but without real changes to how the player interacts with the game, progression systems are much less motivating.

Where motivating (probably and sadly) stands for lucrative.

GJ with the camera improvements. I was waiting for them since day -3. >_>
Could you also check the “look behind” option? If a cutscene starts while holding the key my view get stuck backward.

Another solution:
- Require interaction with something at the start of the jp to get a key.
- Let all skills be available (portals too).
- Place checkpoints (like the silverwastes flag system) along the jp.
- Open the chest at the end consuming the key.

This will not alter the current jps and bad jumpers could be still helped, but will remove the campers issue, consenting anet to tweak a bit the reward, that currently is severely lacking.

Vayne.8563:

Milennin.4825:

Nexon has been influencing design decisions in Guild Wars 2 since launch. It’s pretty obvious if you look at all the things that are bad about Guild Wars 2, the majority can be blamed on what Nexon would have done.
It’ll only get worse once they are given more power.

Evidence of this? Because I don’t see it at all. People who played Nexon games before have said how much worse they are. This is just more tin foil hat stuff.

There is always something much worse.

Vayne.8563:

Milennin.4825:

Oh, I don’t know… character bound dyes, RNG boxes, gear grind.

And before you say dyes are account bound now. Yes, I know. Only 1+ year after launch and after they broke their promise made in their pre-launch blog post. Little late with that. They probably had a good reason to make them account bound: incentivise collecting all dyes for your account, buy all the dye packs in store NAO!

In Guild Wars 1 the dyes weren’t even that. They were one buy one use. Did Nexon do that too?

Ah right, I remember when you could access some dyes only through the cash shop and resell them in spamadan for gold to other players that got that gold without even playing the game and acquiring it directly from the cash stop with the gems to gold conversion, oh no wait… gems to platinum right right.

Milennin.4825:

Nexon has been influencing design decisions in Guild Wars 2 since launch. It’s pretty obvious if you look at all the things that are bad about Guild Wars 2, the majority can be blamed on what Nexon would have done.
It’ll only get worse once they are given more power.

Well at least it’s not like they put Cox, responsible of the (imo horrible) gambling system of the game, in the dev team that is working on the playable content. Oh wait…

Jerus.4350:

Vayne.8563:

Erick Alastor.3917:

Jerus.4350:

I can very much get behind that last sentence. I just really don’t want to have GW2 turn into the same feeling I get in other MMOs where it’s like “kitten… I can’t even do this because I took a couple months off and now I’m behind a months work in older content people aren’t doing as often” That’s my fear and why the entire idea of vertical progression annoys me, because again that’s one of the big things I love about this game is the escape from that.

This is horizontal progression, as horizontal as creating a vertical progression graphic then asking people to lie down on their side and watch it again.
Well anyway we still don’t know how much time it will be required to collect points, but when they said they see this system as a long term goal I can’t help worrying about it.

See I don’t get this. What is worrying about something taking a long time.

People play MMOs to be there a long time. If there are no long term goals, then people stop playing. Not all people but enough people. If enough people stop playing, there is no MMO and you have to find another one.

All any MMO ever is is a list of things to do. Guild Wars 1 was even like that. Once there’s nothing left to do, people leave.

You stay with or leave an MMO based on how much you like the list of things to do.

That’s the beauty of GW2 currently though. If I had quit 6 months ago and came back today the only thing I could be missing are some styles, no functional power. So I could hop in and play with my friends on whatever they are working on without having to jump through hoops first.

I tried dabbling in one of my other games a little bit back, I simply couldn’t care enough to spend a month farming to catch up.

Of course the devil’s in the details, we’ll see what these mastery’s have in store. But artificially locking content through months of farming… what happened to the “this game isn’t grindy”, at least we now know why they emphasized that so much in their presentation, they knew they were going to get called out on it.

Mike O’Brien
Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

“ …if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars"

GW1 did it successfully and if it is a wasteland now it’s because of GW2 and the fact that no new CONTENT (not grind) is added.

You could grind ranks to enhance a little bit some of your skills, but in no way that was required by the game, you could form your party and complete whatever content you wanted with your own not copypasta builds.

Excluding ascended gears + fractals (almost a failure system considering how many lfg for fractals you can find compared to dungeons), Guild Wars 2 didn’t force you to grind to be able to experience the real challenges.

Well to be honest, SAB2 did and thus (combined with the horrible lag at that time plus the almost p2w token) had a huge loss of participants and Queen’s Jubilee too required you to grind for tokens before you could access to the real challenges, but at least those two game modes are not permanent contents.

Anyway we still don’t know if this new system will split the population just like AR splits the fractals audience. I deeply hope this will be not the case.

Jerus.4350:

I can very much get behind that last sentence. I just really don’t want to have GW2 turn into the same feeling I get in other MMOs where it’s like “kitten… I can’t even do this because I took a couple months off and now I’m behind a months work in older content people aren’t doing as often” That’s my fear and why the entire idea of vertical progression annoys me, because again that’s one of the big things I love about this game is the escape from that.

This is horizontal progression, as horizontal as creating a vertical progression graphic then asking people to lie down on their side and watch it again.
Well anyway we still don’t know how much time it will be required to collect points, but when they said they see this system as a long term goal I can’t help worrying about it.

I don’t really like pvp and wvw, but I would like to have an option for duels in open PvE.
Mainly because I don’t like to chase almost dying players to finish them off, but duels feels (to me at least) something more dignified. You are face to face with your opponent and both agree to test your skills. It’s not like “Oh look that passing by ele with 5hp left! Let’s finish him, zerg follow me!”.

Obviously there should be an option to disable it, and about the immature players, that I believe are a minor portion of the population, yes they COULD try to bother you, if so just ignore them (or report them if you really feel it is needed).
Anyone can say what the kitten they want to me (just like I’m free to report them), in the end it doesn’t matter at all what they say as long as they can’t interfere with what I’m doing.

They call names in mapchat? Then what? Are they threatening my reputation in an online game? I laugh at them. Duels in PvE are not what will change PvE.
The community here is far better than in other mmo and that’s because many of the core gamers bought and buy the game knowing it was/is a cooperative mmo.

About the balance, watch a few duels in pvp using the spectator mode, before saying it’s not possible. Any class can beat any class as long as you’re using the right build and have the ability to counter your opponent.

In my opinion duels would just be a feature and PvE would continue to evolve in a cooperative direction as always if devs will continue to provide that kind of content.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Minor nitpick to your minor nitpick.

The game world in GW is not persistent. Only the towns/outposts (i.e., the lobbies) are.

Towns/Outposts were and are part of the world and the platforms that promoted social interactions. There were mobs to kill there? No, but that’s another story.
An online world is not by definition a place where you have to/can kill stuff.
Anyway this thread is not about GW1vsGW2. Feel free to prove that I’m wrong in what I say, I don’t care, I’ll stop now derailing the thread. Have a nice day :*

Vayne.8563:

At the time Guild Wars 1 was created there were no free to play MMOs out at all.

False.

Vayne.8563:

And even though Guild Wars 1 itself wasn’t an MMO, it filled the niche of an MMO type of game for many people.

False.

CORPG is a term invented by anet. GW1 IS an MMORPG. You don’t need the ability to create a “zerg” to kill mobs in a persistent world, you need a virtual persistent 2D/3D world that let you meet and interact with many other people supported by a system that facilitate social interaction and roleplaying.

I bet one day the term will be even more extended of what it is today (that is even more complex of what wikipedia suggests). Mmorpg are not all about grinding, quests and killing respawning AI, mmorpg are (and in my opinion should be more) about people.

We can discuss if GW1 it was more closer to a sandbox or a themepark of what GW2 is, but not if it was or not an mmorpg.

By the way, back on topic, regarding the no grind philosophy I do fear the mastery system and the idea that you will be facing some challanges that you won’t be able to overcome not because you lack of skills, but because you lack of mastery points. What will happen if I have all the points required to travel to a specific location of the map, but a friend of mine, after stopping playing for few weeks will come back? Will we still be able to enjoy together the new content? Or will I have to wait untill he will have grinded all the points he needs to reaches me?
If he’ll need to grind, won’t this fracture the popolation? Isn’t the same as introducing a gear treadmill? Those are all the questions running through my mind.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Zero Day.2594:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

With no grind, they mean no mandatory grind. There is no gear threadmill.
You don’t have to grind in order to keep up. All the grind in this game is just for cosmetics. Sure there is ascended, but that’s only like 5% better than exotic so you don’t really need it.

So is there grind for just cosmetics or cosmetics and stats?
5% is 5%, it’s there, it exists, you can’t deny it. You can choose to ignore it, convince yourself it’s not needed, attempt to convince others it’s not needed, but the fact of the matter remains, it’s a 5% increase in stats.

Yes, a useless 5% is a useless 5%. And I never denied it’s existance, I merely pointed out the fact you don’t need it. I know it is not needed as all content can easily be completed without it (except fractals, but that’s because of agony resistance, not the stats itself).

You can try convincing yourself that this 5% increase is a big deal, but I know it is not.

Where this 5% came from?
Just comparing this with this I can see at least a 9% increase in the overall dps. I may be wrong tho. Some even say that the difference can reach around 14-15%.