Guild Wars 2

nottsgman.8206:

1 gold for 24 hours is more than cheap. for something like this I’d expect it to have a gem cost, or a much much much higher gold cost

edit to add: 1 gold is half the 10 minute daily, which is nothing compared to the amount of gold I’m sure ‘high end’ players are raking in.

This is true, but at 1g/24 hours, people would actually use it, like the game more, and have a better time, whilst this service would still take a significant amount of money out of the economy. I mean, 1g is more than my daily teleporting usually costs, for example, even playing all day, and I know Anet consider that cost to be a significant and valuable gold sink.

Put it much higher, and people just won’t use it, but WILL be angry because they’re having to open all their bags etc. by hand because they’re not super-rich. So that’d be a net loss for GW2.

Grimheart.2853:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

snip

It’s not a matter of my personal subjective storytelling preference in the slightest. There is an objective answer and it is that Trahearne was a bad character, just like beforementioned Skarlet and Kormir. People liked then too, doesn’t make them good characters. He was, shoehorned, half- kitten d, partially marry sue and generaly useless. He wasn’t a real hero, he wasn’t a well written character, he wasn’t truly important and he didn’t deserve any credit he recieved. It’ not about thay ‘your’ protagonist isn’t ‘the protagonist of the story’, it’s about this whole thing being objectively poorly made.

There’s plenty of memes and ironic references to this guy and his “spiritual bretheren”, and they in no way deal with the egocentric tendencies of those parts of the community either.

It is subjective.

You shouting the word “objective” over and over will not turn your subjective opinions into objective fact. That will never happen. Your criticisms are largely subjective. Doesn’t mean they’re invalid, at all, but they are, fundamentally, subjective. Maybe this is a language barrier thing? I don’t know what your primary language is but your spelling and grammar errors are consistent enough to suggest it’s not English (probably Northern or Eastern European?), and maybe in your primary language objective and subjective translate to something that is NOT the same as what they mean in English, where they are very certain terms.

I actually agree with a lot of them, but I have enough sense to know I’m being subjective here too.

Also, Kormir, what the kitten dude? Kormir was the same trope done extremely well. She was a very good character, interesting, fun, and didn’t hog the limelight or make the player feel unnecessary or second-rate. I liked Kormir every bit as much as I disliked Trahearne.

As a dungeon master for pen and paper RPGs, I had to learn how to run NPCs so they didn’t make the PCs seem worthless, but still make some NPCs plot-important (the PCs can’t be every king, queen, high priest, martyr, revolutionary or whatever), and Kormir is an example of how to do that decently. Trahearne is an example of how to kitten it up horribly on multiple levels.

Scarlet was a character with problems, I agree, but they’re different problems, because she was an adversary. She is thus incapable of being a “Mary Sue” or the like. She is also not a Villain Sue as we never really see stuff from her perspective. In fact, trope wise, her problem is not the same at all – she is in fact more of a Generic Doomsday Villain – http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenericDoomsdayVillain

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m not sure he was meant to be an inspiring person, exactly. He was a scholar who knew a lot about Zhaitan and he was chosen for his knowledge, not his ability to inspire. Basically, they choose an administrative person for a leadership role over troops.

I’ve heard this argument before, and it’s ruined by the fact that the OTHER NPCs absolutely do act as if he is this terribly inspiring and exciting and dynamic person, when he is nothing of the sort. And anyway, he shouldn’t have been. GW2 becoming “The Tale of Trahearne” was a bum move. Luckily it ended with the personal story.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

My personal feelings is they should have chosen one of the mentors to lead and had Traehearn as an adviser and companion to you.

That would have worked out rather better.

Crab Fear.1624:

grooming seems pretty natural, considering most animals do it in some fashion or another

Looks like someone doesn’t know what natural hair means… or maybe doesn’t know how much “grooming” it requires (hint: it’s a lot more than straight hair!).

On topic generally, yes, we really do need more, especially if we’re going back to Elona. That does give me hope at least – presumably they’ll need to create more to give the NPCs there more different-but-appropriate hair, so that would translate to more being added to the options for players (via gem store of course).

Danikat.8537:

I also disagree. Especially that the height and distance you can jump is unpredictable.

You’re somewhat wrong to disagree, on a factual level.

With the way collision works in GW2, the difference between making it up onto something and not can often be non-visible. It’s very easy to demonstrate this – for example in Ember Bay, I can jump up out of the lava onto stuff that looks like it’s 3-4 ft high. Whereas in the old world zones you’d be lucky to make it on to something that’s 2.5ft high, from water/lava. And it’s not just water/lava, but all the jumping there. It’s not consistent.

Jump distance is largely consistent, but even then whether you will actually get on to the thing you were jumping at, esp. if it is above you, is not entirely consistent.

Moonyeti.3296:

Orangensaft.7139:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Djinn.9245:

I personally wouldn’t even comment on JPs if they didn’t have content locked behind them. If they were purely optional, I wouldn’t care how hard they were as I would simply not do them.

I totally agree with this. JPs where originally optional content, now they are required just to complete a map. More and more content locked behind them and made harder and harder.

which jp is required to complete a map?

None of them are required for map completion.

A number are actually, including Skip up the Volcano in Ember Bay. Even if you limit it to the old world there are at least a couple.

Meiko Isamura.6352:

Hi, thank you for your thoughts. You make a few assumptions in your reply that are not correct or appreciated though. We do try to teach players tactics and some of the other aspects of the game I mentioned in my original post. There are many ways to play GW2 and we include in lfg posts what tactics we are playing, I hope other players do too. I agree that Eurhetemec and Doam make good points in their posts as well.

You do, Meiko, and that’s cool, but the thing – you’re not representative.

You’re unusual. That’s the problem here. That’s why skill levels are declining. Skills have to be maintained by passing them on to new/returning players when other players leave. You help with that. Most people do not. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people – they often the sort of people who will save you when you’re down or fighting something dangerous. But they’re not interested in actually explaining or the like.

Combine that with a game, that, itself, is deeply uninterested in explaining, and which actively hides a huge amount of stuff (just look at the number of gear recipes which are not found in the normal crafting list – many of them the most important recipes, it turns out), and you have a recipe for a situation where skills are going to get lost or aren’t going to be gained.

And what’s sad is, if Anet tries to help, tries to make the game clearer and so on, people are just going to scream that it’s been “dumbed-down”.

Re: including tactics in LFG, that’s good, but you get that a new player may not even understand the words/acronyms you’re using, right? And may just try to join your group because it’s for the content he wants to do. Now, I don’t know what you do, you’re probably nice, but I do know what most groups do, and that’s be rude/nasty with them, or at best, say nothing and just reject/kick them. And groups doing or claiming to do “expert” stuff are usually the majority of LFG entries for most content.

Tren.5120:

No one cares if you’re a new player or a veteran. ANet’s job is to make everyone’s gaming experience enjoyable. A lot of “normal players” were extremely unhappy with the way they’d go into a dungeon and all people [like you] wanted to do was skip literally everything and rush to bosses in record times. Not everyone wants to do that. The majority of people don’t want to do that. This is not Diablo III.

What complicates it further is that a lot of new player would eventually like to be that good, and able to skip content and so on, but they just can’t and don’t want to be thrown in at the deep end, as it were.

I mean, I’ve been playing MMOs since 1998. I’m familiar with skipping and wall-running and all sorts of exploits from all sorts of games, but if I get in a dungeon hasn’t even specified that it’s some sort of elite speed-run group and its’ GOGOGOGOGOGOGO and people are making crazy jumps, following elaborate paths, doing weird tricks and so on, I’m going to be pretty traumatized! Sometimes you can find groups which are noob-friendly, or start them, but even then the amount of hostility you have to deal with can be bizarre. When I start a group which says it’s noobs and learning and stuff, and someone joins and starts yelling at us – not explaining, just abusing, it’s like, what the hell? That’s not a one-off weird event either – almost every “noobs learning”-type group I’ve started has had at least one person join who wanted to turn it into Speedfest 2017 and was mad when it wasn’t.

And GW2 seems to have the elitism disease worse than any other MMO I’ve played, which is very weird, because it’s not a super-demanding game unless you make it into one. When people do talk you through stuff, what’s remarkable it is usually totally doable. Videos and stuff help, but they’re inevitably outdated, and often groups are using an entirely different methodology. Even nice people in nice guilds are often so deep into jargon and obscure knowledge and tricks and weirdness that they have difficulty explaining to or coping with people who new or even returning. Particularly they just often assume you know something that the game has made no effort to communicate to you – indeed that the game has actively hidden.

Money issues don’t help either – newer players have a huge amount of difficulty making the sort of money that steady/veteran players tend to take for granted. Building a suit of Vipers may simply be a time-sink for a Veteran player, but for a new one it can be a hideous combination of time and just money that you will not make in that time unless you play many hours a day or get incredibly lucky (or know some obscure money-making technique people intentionally keep obfuscated!).

Meiko Isamura.6352:

The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time, and this is making it less fun to play as a veteran player. It is more and more difficult on NA servers to find players who know their class, their blasts, movement skills, and positioning.

Meiko, I think you need to accept the role that player elitism and the obfuscation of knowledge, both by players and Anet, players in this problem.

It’s a lot larger than people not knowing the precise details of their skills and skill interactions, too.

The fact is, a lot of players of GW2 have a very negative attitude towards anyone who isn’t both a veteran, and expert, and preferably in absolutely top-notch gear. They don’t want to teach people, they don’t want to explain things, they are unwilling to accept anything less than serious expertise.

That’s their prerogative. If that’s how they want to play, so be it. I won’t tell them they can’t. However, it impacts the playerbase pretty badly, because it means that when a skilled player leaves, as they inevitably will (no matter how good the content, churn is a thing, in all MMOs, always has been), they simply start picking from an ever-smaller pool of players, rather than steadily training people up.

This isn’t just in fractals/raids, either (though it is there), but also in meta-events and the like. I’ve seen people being screamed at plenty of times with those, and the people doing the screaming are not willing to explain or help people – they just jibber jargon at people who obviously don’t know what it means (and much of it isn’t even well-documented jargon that you can look up). Sometimes you see the exact opposite – someone who tells people what to do, helps, and so on, but nowhere near as often as say, three years ago.

On top of this, so much about the game is basically hidden. I came back recently after being away since before HoT. I’ve done that before with other MMOs, and I was always able to find the relevant changes and so on in a matter of days. Here’s it been weeks and I’m still turning up new stuff. There don’t seem to be good guides to really much, at all (as nice as the Wiki is, it’s very fragmented, and one often finds stuff out by stumbling across it). There’s lots of good efficiency-related and autocalc information, but finding out what you should be doing or what is possible is a lot tougher.

Danikat.8537:

But what is ‘proper player housing’?

Would you be happy with a system like Elder Scrolls Online has where it’s literally just a house themed instance you can decorate with furniture? (And only objects the developers have designated as furniture – if you see something out in the world you really like and there isn’t a furniture version you can’t have it, if you find a cool weapon or armour piece or trophy you want to show off you can’t put it in your house.) And then once you’re done decorating you can…look at your furniture. Maybe see if you can persuade a friend to come and look at your furniture. That’s about it really.

A lot of people in that game kept saying they really wanted housing and it’d be amazing to have housing but apparently all of them had very distinct and quite different ideas about what ‘housing’ meant and what they got wasn’t it.

Some basically wanted a walk-in bank where they could store inventory items. Some wanted a private town with access to the bank, a merchant, crafting stations, daily quest pick-ups etc. Some wanted features to hold a guild party (I’m still not sure what exactly, I assume decorations, consumable food, customisable music…that kind of thing.). Some wanted to set up merchant stalls and services so other players could visit and use them. Some people don’t seem able to articulate what they want, but what they’ve got very definitely is not it.

I think simply asking for housing runs the risk of ending up with the same problem here. What people at Anet think of when they think of player housing in an MMO may be very different to what you’re thinking of.

The thing is, historically, various games show that housing can fulfill multiple different roles at once. There’s nothing to prevent you having a housing system which essentially supports all of the above.

No-one reasonable expects you to be able to randomly grab items from the world, I would suggest. It’s a given that the developers will determine what the furniture is.

But after that it’s very easy to add a combination of features that make housing attractive and interesting to a diverse pool of players. Dark Age of Camelot did a decent job, for example (with caveats). You could buy a variety of different sizes and shapes of houses, which existed within housing zones, so you could actually be near other people, rather than existing in some sort of hyperspace, and which helped make it feel more like a place.

The housing also offered significant extra storage, which was a boon – obviously this competes slightly with the P4Bankslots of GW2, but they could easily add a bank the size of your base bank without really impacting the sales of those (and then potentially sell expansions to that too).

You could have crafting merchants and the like in your house, which yes “took people out of cities”, but only to a limited degree – and that was part of the joy – you could have a semi-private space, which was just really pleasant some of the time.

Then they had trophies from bosses, which were very fun to collect and arrange about the house. They didn’t drop to everyone all the time, so you actually had to try and farm them and you know what? That didn’t suck.

Decorating worked passably well, and other games have done better. The only thing GW2 would need to avoid with decorating was their own self-harming urge to monetize everything cosmetic to the very maximum possible degree. BDO does that with housing and it’s kind of a kitten-show housing-wise as a result. Allow crafters – preferably existing crafters, not a new skill, to make a very wide variety of good-looking stuff, with at least the racial styles and maybe more as drops. Let chairs and beds and so on actually work. Food and music you’ve noted and that sort of thing could be great, and music could reasonably be monetized if it’s stuff beyond what’s already in the game (for god’s sake don’t try to make us pay twice for that, Anet!). Once you have a really good customization base, then you can sell ridiculous fancy nonsense for gems – I’m sure some glowing four-poster bed which floats and is accompanied by little cherubs or whatever could be sold for a good number of gems. But if you start trying to sell every bed beyond the ugliest chunk of wood and straw, as some games do – that’s not a good decision.

The big decision with GW2 I think would be whether housing was per-account or per-character. RPers will want the latter, but it may not be practical. I’d suggest making it per-account but allowing people to own multiple houses (at great expense).

Anyway I don’t anticipate it happening with expansion 2.

I’ll go ahead and send them a ticket. It’s just the most boringly typical pay-monthly plan possible. Never switched companies or anything.

EDIT – Scratch that – I guess it was some kind of bizarre temporary error (like a pretty kitten long temporary, but whatever!), I decided to give it one last go before writing the support ticket… and it worked.

I have a boringly normal O2 phone number. I guarantee you support O2 if you allow UK mobiles at all, given they are one of, if not the, biggest mobile phone provider.

Yet your thing insists on telling me “This phone number was not recognized.” and to check it.

It is correct. I can add the zero on the front, but your program deletes it. What is going on here? Looking at previous answers on this has proven useless as it’s all directed at people with obscure providers or not-actually-mobile or the like.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Wuselknusel.4082:

I’m not ok with the game getting more casualized, but ANet wont change their mind on this one.

They will have to someday. Casuals come and go very fast and their supply is not infinite.

It’s a helluva lot higher than non-casuals, who come and go just as fast, despite their protestations to the contrary.

Purple Miku.7032:

xbutcherx.3861:

NikeEU.7690:

xbutcherx.3861:

NikeEU.7690:

Why couldn’t you run a Sinister warrior in a dungeon?

Because they are very bad maybe? I would insta kick cond warrior.

They aren’t as bad as you think.

Yes they are, applying 25+ stacks of bleed takes a while, raw zerker damage is the new meta.

Well here we have it boys!

Finally, after three years…

Zerker raw damage is the NEW meta.

Indeed, we learned a lot of astonishing things here!

1) Zerker is the NEW meta.

2) Nike is allegedly not a good source of information on the Warrior meta despite being largely responsible for the information on the Warrior (and other) meta, and should disregarded (?!?).

3) Condi Warriors must be kicked from groups despite them doing superior DPS and providing superior utility to the full-on meta builds for a number of other classes. Apparently dirty facts and filthy realities shouldn’t get in the way of kicking people on general principle!

I feel like I’m in some sort of Soviet Communist Party meeting in like, 1926.

Coulter.2315:

Kreejaffa.3682:

Chilipadiboy, I agree with you. The average gamer does not really enjoy dying over and over with nothing to show for his/her time. They like rewards. They like winning. The recent hp changes are not bringing things like that. They are making things much more frustrating, and time consuming. That’s not fun or rewarding when you have to put in more time and effort for the same reward you got before, and now are more likely to not even be rewarded.

I would mention that this is what turns people from average gamers into good gamers. People have no need to improve if they just get given things for free.

No, it isn’t.

I can say that with confidence after 34 years gaming, 20 years online multiplayer, and 16 years of MMOs.

What turns average gamers into good gamers is engaging content that’s personally challenging to players, and rewards enough to make you want to keep trying and improving. That’s something I’ve seen to be absolutely true through time. Easy to learn, hard to master, and rewarding on the way.

GW1 was chock-full of that content. GW2 has relatively little (though not none). Teq and Triple Trouble are absolutely not that kind of content.

Spiuk.8421:

If they indeed wanted to do the bosses they would just do them as there is an endless supply of daily runs at anyone’s fingertips, understanding English (which is given in this case) and 5 minutes to apply for a guild is all it takes.

If you can’t see how this is a serious problem, you don’t understand how MMOs work.

You’re saying, and it’s true I agree, that instead of playing well in an MMO, to get a reward, you just have to apply to a guild (which I note, “can take several days” to process your application), and simply turn up.

So the reward is effectively “for TTS members”, not “for people who play GW2 well”.

That’s messed up. That it’s easy to join TTS does not mean that there isn’t a fundamental and serious design problem.

Bloodlust.3672:

GW2 needs a new graphics engine, as the current one is looking very old and dated. I really want to see cleaner sharper lighting and the addition of ambient occlusion shadows. Overall, I want it to look more like an Unreal Engine 4 game—something next gen looking .

Also, on a related note, I want to see the current messy UI graphics get overhauled and be replaced with a cleaner sharper one. I know it was orginally trying to go for a unique style, but in reality it just looks lazy and low budget. Even GW1 did the UI graphics better.

I hope we can see such an update after the GW2 Heart of Thorns expansion.

NOTE: I already run GW2 on max graphics at 1920×1200 on a pro IPS monitor.

Last I heard, the expansion was going to add a number of new graphics settings, but we don’t know what those are yet, so this thread may be a bit premature. There were rumours that SSAO was part of that, but I can’t find the links right now.

I wouldn’t expect a major UI overhaul until the next expansion at the earliest. The current UI is functional, attractive to most people (your objection is a purely personal aesthetic one, and not a common opinion), and isn’t going to change much until it can do a significantly better job. Even then, they’ll probably retain the painterly style, rather going for some pixel-perfect precision UI.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Updating the graphics engine is usually so costly in terms of resources it usually only happens when there’s a new game (and even then, some sequels reuse the previous engine). The game is 3-years old; I expect it to have 2012 graphics, not 2015.

This is a pretty gross simplification, and worse, does not apply to MMOs.

MMOs update their graphics engines in a different way to sequel-series-type games (and you’re describing the latter).

Most MMOs update their graphics engine periodically. This often coincides with expansion releases, but not always. WoW, for example, over the years has gone through many updates to the graphics engine. If you have been playing for the last decade and still have all your screenshots, you should try looking through them.

WoW, too, has added the two main features the poster is requesting:

1) A sharper lighting engine (they’ve actually done this multiple times).

and

2) Ambient occlusion as an option.

Now, what doesn’t often change are the TEXTURES. Those are a massive effort to create and to update, but the engine itself? It’s not as significant. Indeed, GW2 has seen engine updates before, a number of times, just not ones quite this big. I would expect that we will see another, either with the expansion, or in the year following the expansion’s release. GW2 hasn’t quite started looking “dated” yet, but it’s getting there, and that means it’s time to update the engine.

Fermi.2409:

Just because something is the best option doesn’t make it overpowered. That’s a ridiculous thought.

Something could be meta because it’s OP, but not the other way around.

Very true!

Fermi.2409:

It’s not fun if you just chase the meta

Speak for yourself, I enjoy contributing as much as I can

The meta build isn’t always contributing the most unless it’s noticeably overpowered, because builds don’t exist in a vacuum. The most optimal builds may rely on other builds with them, for example, and an optimal build for one content isn’t for another.

I mean, you know this, MetaBattle covers it well – most group-oriented builds have some “If X then Y” build elements – but it does get overlooked a lot.

Also, if the meta isn’t overpowered at all, the difference in contribution between “meta” and a merely solid build is likely to be single-digit percent (easily eclipsed by skill, lag, gear, etc.). So there’s that.

They could even introduce a whole separate weapon-dye system like DAoC did (“tinctures”), which would add another thing to chase and so on.

Randulf.7614:

serenke.4806:

I hope they won’t be congratulating themselves for sorting out what they should never have broken in the first place.

That implies a deliberate break. It was unforeseen, so whilst in an ideal world it shouldn’t have broken, it was clearly unavoidable

Well, let’s be clear – the bug wasn’t unavoidable. It was absolutely avoidable, and better QA should have caught it before it happened (as I’m sure they’ve caught countless other epic bugs). Indeed with a proper PTR it would probably have been caught (very odd because Anet clearly want one, but don’t have one – begs the question why?). They were also unprepared for the type of fix they’d need to do, by their own admission. But these things happen, it was unforeseen, and that’s okay so long as it gets fixed within a reasonable time period.

What was unavoidable was shutting down HoM whilst they fixed it. That’s irritating but fair.

Of course it is rather dragging on at this point. Suggests it isn’t a priority.

velmeister.4187:

Beyond this obvious issue of cost, min-maxer will always, I repeat always, come up with 1 combination of gear set regardless of what ANET does. It may end up being 2 pieces of zerker, 1 sinsister, 1 giver, 1 apo, 1 sins etc. etc. to fill up all the slots to find the optimum balance for most of the content. And, believe me, many of us will copy that build and follow, thereby moving from zerker meta to another ‘combo’ meta.

You’re presuming all content would have the same meta, though – which is kind of true right now but that’s a design problem with the content.

A combo meta would be an improvement in accessibility, intuitive-ness and also mean that gear was priced in a more even way on the AH, which I would say were upsides.

daksh.2176:

ANET PLEASE NOTE
“Harder” doesn’t mean more hp and attacking quicker. It means having interesting and challenging mechanics and less predictable AI.

Sure but that IS a good way to give people a reason to diversify their gear and approaches without nerfing ’Zerker.

Obviously if you want run in ‘Zerker gear and never have to get other gear you will hate that, because it’s the “hard counter”. So you are showing some balls but also some serious bias in demanding they not take this route! Cheapskate!

Attacking quicker is absolutely valid design, too – I mean, basically anything that could happen in PvP and that isn’t totally unfair, should be a risk in PvE. Sometimes that means facing attacks too rapid to just Dodge-roll or Block all of them.

Larynx.2453:

Ilien.5302:

So, now what is the viable build for PvE? Greatsword, again?

It’s amazing how people prefer actually prefer axe over greatsword. People just have some sort of hipster-appeal with the meta. If it’s popular and good, then I don’t want to use it, regardless of actual gameplay or mechanics.

Axe is a lot more fun than Greatsword, I think that’s the issue. GS is just mind-breakingly dull, especially after 2+ years of it.

Carmello Yello.4875:

I haven’t made full ascended. I want a reason to.

If 5% isn’t enough, 10% won’t be, imho, given the difference between Ascended Trinkets + Weapon + Exotic Armour and Ascended Trinkets + Weapon + Ascended Armour is what, 2.7% stats even with the 10% version.

Carmello Yello.4875:

I’m arguing against WoW, your response sounds like a WoW players.

WoW is vert progression because level cap changes. We do not need to worry about it. Once you have ascended, you’re done for good. That is not vertical. It is both horizontal and vert, a plateau if you will.

Make points, not whines

It’s vertical. A 5 or 10% increase is purely vertical. It is not also horizontal. That is not open to debate. It is simply wrong to claim otherwise.

It’s not WoW-style progression, but it is vertical progression, so do you want to rephrase?

Ascended gear is literally and unarguably vertical progression. Small vertical progression, but saying it’s not is denying reality is a bizarre and rather bananas way.

Also:

A) You first make the vertical progression bigger! (“It is a challenging goal that should be rewarded.”).

and then say

B) Then say Ascended gear is for bads (“You can play in Rares and handle the content if you’re good enough.”)

I mean, man what? No sense was made.

Also lengthy grind != “challenging goal”.

Sold Out.7625:

Fix your camera settings to not stare at the floor with your camera an inch behind your character at the lowest possible height! An increased FoV, character height scaling, and a vertical notch up go a long way for something as mundane as wings to not take away from your field of vision for dungeon bosses at all!

Here, have some recommended settings. Maybe you’ll be less issued by a few backpieces then.

That doesn’t address the core problem – that visibility to monster wind-up animations and general visibility of what is going on in combat is obscured by these huge and often hideous back confections.

It’s not just bosses – smaller enemies are particularly hard to see when some oaf is running around with ginormous wings.

There literally is no way to solve this problem except letting us turn off other people back items. I’m sure Anet is extremely loathe to do it, because they paid real money to look stupid and cover up what is going on, but the fact is – they’re causing a problem, and it’s getting worse as these sort of things become more and more common.

What Anet perhaps doesn’t appreciate is that, long-term, this kind of ugly visual clutter, whilst pleasing the owners and even being amusing in town, damages the overall look and consistency of their game (in a way that very rare pink-dyed bunny-rabbit-looking norns do not), and makes it less playable. They’ve gone too far and it’s going to be a bit of a pain to rein it back in.

Ideally we’d be able to just ban wings/tentacles – i.e. stuff wider than the character and which is visually a big deal.

Galen Grey.4709:

The problem is your assumption that its just 3 maps, as its been pointed out numours times now Anet havent revealed how many maps there are. All they said is there are 3 biomes and personally I cannot understand how people expect a single map per biome when the core game has 5 maps per biome not counting the cities.

That’s true but you have to admit that Anet’s silence on this is pretty deafening.

I’ve only once seen an MMO company be so quiet and vague about the content of their upcoming expansion. Mythic with DAoC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. Which was an utter disaster.

So why not put us out of our misery and give us some details, eh, Anet?

DirtyDan.4759:

First World Problems

All problems with computer games are first-world problems, pretty much, Dan. So I better never see you complaining about anything with any game! :p

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, I really wish they would get going already and spare us the melodrama. Fish or cut bait already.

There’s no melodrama here, there’s people whose opinions are different to yours, and you’re getting upset about it.

No-one should be leaving until HoT releases. They could change things until then. Personally that’s how long I’m giving them to fix the issue, and I’ll feel free to stick around until then.

Ohoni.6057:

It dries up, but that’s not an issue because the whiners, while loud, are insignificantly few to impact the revenue streams.

By this logic, no game has ever lost a serious amount of customers or money, or gone under because of any feature that was ever complained about, because “the whiners” as in people on the forums, are always a very small percentage of the player base.

It’s true that they are.

But historically they’re usually the tip of a much larger iceberg. You’ve not even seen how many angry casuals who don’t usually read the forums there will be on day 1 when they find out they can’t play their shiny new class without paying $10 extra.

Greymelken.1892:

ITT: People who didnt read the EULA.

Coles notes version:

You agree to buy what we sell you when we sell it to you, however and whenever we want to sell it to you, as is.

Click accept or reject.

or leave.

That’s not in the EULA. Coles notes doesn’t mean “make up some nonsense and claim it’s what the EULA means”. We don’t agree to buy anything. That’s the point here – we have a choice.

We can just, y’know, not buy it. That’s what I’m doing.

Greymelken.1892:

Look in a mirror and decide if its really worth the stress

Er, buddy, it’s no stress for me. It clearly is for you, though so… take your own advice?

abc.5790:

Eurhetemec.9052:

abc.5790:

Eurhetemec.9052:

abc.5790:

$50 expansion may seem expensive to some but it’s still very reasonable.

Very reasonable by what standard? It’s expensive for an expansion, period. It’s very expensive for an expansion that does not let you play all the content without deleting a character or buying a new slot for another $10.

I think it’s just your opinion that it’s “very reasonable”, not a fact so you may want to chew on that.

abc.5790:

Why does it bother “veterans” that new customers get the base for free? If you’re a so called veteran, you had a 3 year head start. You experienced content that’s now retired, content that will never be enjoyed by the new buyer.

Simple fairness when we’re paying money for something. It’s not complicated.

My bad, I didn’t know people on here were ignorant on the price ranges of gaming expansions. Is this your first game?

$50 is reasonable because it is within the range of a typical expansion.
$5000000000000000 is unreasonable though.

Oh dear lol.

So you’re the arbiter on this, with all your what, 14 years of wisdom?

14 years more than yours

No doubt, son, no doubt. You’ll teach us grown-ups a thing or three.

abc.5790:

Eurhetemec.9052:

abc.5790:

$50 expansion may seem expensive to some but it’s still very reasonable.

Very reasonable by what standard? It’s expensive for an expansion, period. It’s very expensive for an expansion that does not let you play all the content without deleting a character or buying a new slot for another $10.

I think it’s just your opinion that it’s “very reasonable”, not a fact so you may want to chew on that.

abc.5790:

Why does it bother “veterans” that new customers get the base for free? If you’re a so called veteran, you had a 3 year head start. You experienced content that’s now retired, content that will never be enjoyed by the new buyer.

Simple fairness when we’re paying money for something. It’s not complicated.

My bad, I didn’t know people on here were ignorant on the price ranges of gaming expansions. Is this your first game?

$50 is reasonable because it is within the range of a typical expansion.
$5000000000000000 is unreasonable though.

Oh dear lol.

So you’re the arbiter on this, with all your what, 14 years of wisdom?

MiniEquine.6014:

GeekDavid.2786:

Yeah, if you feel you’re getting a raw deal, don’t exercise your right to speak about it, just stay quiet and take it or leave it. But by all means don’t disturb the fanbois.

At no point did they say not to complain about it, just that, in their opinion, the complaints are somewhat out of hand. Speak out if you feel like it, but it really has gotten to some ridiculous levels (like trying to file a class-action lawsuit? really?). Anet owes us more communication, clarification, and possibly apologies too, but this forum has been almost literally nothing but repeat threads about the expansion price.

Someone always files a class-action lawsuit or threatens to, it’s just the USA for you!

This forum isn’t just about that, but you’ll notice the majority of smaller threads are actually people like this guy, complaining about the complaining – you don’t get to whine about forum littering whilst doing that.

Ohoni.6057:

It is what it is, if you don’t like it, there are other games.

That’s precisely what I’m going to do – it’s what this thread is about, in large part.

If they don’t sort it, they not only don’t get my $50, they also don’t get my $XXX of future gem-store spending.

That’s their decision – if they really think making a deal mildly more attractive to new customers whilst upsetting older ones is the right way to go, then should go for it, but I can promise I will not buy HoT at the current price as an expansion to my game.

abc.5790:

$50 expansion may seem expensive to some but it’s still very reasonable.

Very reasonable by what standard? It’s expensive for an expansion, period. It’s very expensive for an expansion that does not let you play all the content without deleting a character or buying a new slot for another $10.

I think it’s just your opinion that it’s “very reasonable”, not a fact so you may want to chew on that.

abc.5790:

Why does it bother “veterans” that new customers get the base for free? If you’re a so called veteran, you had a 3 year head start. You experienced content that’s now retired, content that will never be enjoyed by the new buyer.

Simple fairness when we’re paying money for something. It’s not complicated.

Vayne.8563:

The expansion doesn’t cost more than the base game at launch though. Comparing a new expansion to a 2.5 year old game, when all games go down in price, is a bit strange to me. I’m pretty sure it sold for $60 when new.

Edit: Anyway if you consider expansions from most games as a percentage of the price of the main game and take into account how much content they add, there’s virtually always a massive imbalance.

HoT effectively costs $60 to access the new class for most existing users (or throwing away dozens+ of hours of play on one of your 80s). So it’s pretty much identical in price in practice.

Historically expansions are typically 25-60% of the original game’s original price.

It’s fair to say HoT is a pretty expensive expansion for what it’s known to contain, which is to say “not a great deal”. Of course there may be a ton of stuff we don’t know about, or far more content than expected but the way Anet has been “managing expectations”, it seems like there probably isn’t.

Honestly I’m worried at this point that HoT will be GW2’s “Trials of Atlantis” (the infamous DAoC expansion), because it shares the two key traits with TOA. First off, the devs are very very secretive about what’s actually in it, and second off, it’s changing the entire endgame design from “do what you want” to “huge PvE mastery grind”. Hopefully not, but knowing so little, the similarities loom large.

ProtoGunner.4953:

The problem is they can’t change the price anyway. They can however offer a discount in the future and I highly doubt people are gonna wait that long to buy it.

…and at the end they’ll buy it anyways.

They don’t need to change the price – just add to the packages – it’s been done before by many companies.

As for “people won’t wait lol”, well, actually, they will, historically. They’ll just likely stop playing GW2 until the HoT price drops. Most people aren’t addicts.

A lot of casual players will buy it and be very annoyed at the lack of a slot for their new class, too (which they will not anticipate, I guarantee it). That’s going to be another little kittenstorm for Anet to deal with.

ProtoGunner.4953:

There was a thread; how much real money you invested in this game, mainly in Gems. And there were numerous people who didn’t pay one cent! And I am sure the outrage is the highest amongst those people.

Sure, but they’re the majority of the players, and thus the majority of your expansion sales. So if outrage is highest among them, you have a problem.

Enrif.7359:

Arkblue.6129:

WoW has 50 character slots, ten per server, raised to eleven with the addition of the monk class. Also, you can create one character per class.

Where do you get your sources?

still, my statement is true, they didn’t added a new slot for the first new class. How many Slots are avaible is irrelevant for this statement. As i could say GW2 allow for 64 Slots.

It is not irrelevant.

Not including that information is a form of lying – https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Lie#Lying_by_omission

If you can easily create a character because you have so many slots, which you can in WoW, then the number of slots isn’t a big issue. Indeed, before DKs, WoW had more slots/server than classes, which is why they didn’t need to add one (people rarely playing more than one character of the same class on the same server).

Not including a slot if Anet’s choice, but it means the real cost of the expansion is $60 to most players if they want to play the new class.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This is the buff because of the removal of stats from trait lines. We’ve known about it for months now… Sorry you missed the memo I guess…

There was no memo – this change has never previous been announced and is separate in the patch notes from the general armour stat boost – indeed 5% is 5% is 5% so there should have been no change.

serenke.4806:

Eurhetemec.9052:

spoj.9672:

Its a two in one deal. You do the daily 21-30 and you get a free daily fractal at the same time. If you dont want to do any daily involving fractals when its on double then dont. Its only 10 AP for christ sake.

“It’s only 10 AP” cuts both ways. Why force this particular thing? It’s the antithesis of GW2’s “do what you want” design.

It’s not. It’s not “do what you want”, it’s “play how you want” and you have thirteen (13) options to choose from to play how you want. Twelve dailies and the option to not get the daily 10 APs that day.

Same difference – in reality on many days your only way to get 10 APs is:

1) Fractals

2) sPvP

3) WvW

PvE is simply not an option any two-fractal day. Despite it being the core and bulk of GW2’s gameplay.

It’s clear they’re abandoning “play how you want” for “play all bloody content even if you hate it OR ELSE!” (like many MMOs).

Safer Saviour.9685:

Marriage as a concept is something that’s not present in all Tyrian societies. Religion as a concept is something that is outright rejected in some Tyrian societies. A wedding chapel would be a bizarre novelty for these people. At best.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting it’s universal so that’s a bizarre objection.

spoj.9672:

Its a two in one deal. You do the daily 21-30 and you get a free daily fractal at the same time. If you dont want to do any daily involving fractals when its on double then dont. Its only 10 AP for christ sake.

“It’s only 10 AP” cuts both ways. Why force this particular thing? It’s the antithesis of GW2’s “do what you want” design.

Danikat.8537:

Just get together with some friends, pick an appropriate location and some nice clothes, make up a ceremony and get going. Maybe buy or craft each other rings, or pick another object to exchange. And of course remember supplies for the party afterwards.

Very true – helps to have a nice chapel though.

Of course in GW2 you’d have to send the rings via bird, which is a bit weird but there you go!

spoj.9672:

LumAnth.5124:

Why couldn’t they have just stuck with the 20,60,80 trait books and left hero points for elite specialization… I also haven’t made a new character since the NPE was released, wasn’t going to bother with that train wreck.

I have 3 mains, 2 of them have 100% map completion, the other only has 35%. I have 10 alts, who have roughly 10-30% map completion.

This is honestly really annoying. Why would they lock up content, especially something so important to the game that has been there from the start (and was readily accessible through the purchase of 3 trait books)

I think the saying, “don’t fix what isn’t broken” matches this problem.

If all of your alts have between 10-30% map comp then you probably wont have much of an issue. Most of your characters should have enough hero points to unlock everything right off the bat.

Nah – 10-30% at L80 can easily mean 0 to 20 Skill Challenges done because it usually means lots of waypoints and not much else.

Hannelore.8153:

When you have two people playing, it becomes alot harder to manage your loot, collectibles, money and other possessions. Playing solo is far easier, when you get something you only have to worry about getting it for yourself, not getting a second copy, and never sharing it or having to debate over what to do with it.

Playing as a pair is a lot more involved than most people realize. That is why marriage systems exist, to ease that burden with the “whats yours is mine” concept and vice versa. Granted, they have their risks, just like anything.

The bottom line is someone who plays solo will likely be unable to understand.

Let me put this in a more simple way. When you sell all of your collectibles on the trading post, how much time does it take? A long time, I bet. And you no doubt encounter the “selling error” that throttles sell attempts to stop bots.

Now imagine the time and effort taken and then multiply it by two. And that is just a mild example of what managing so many resources is like.

I’ve played in a duo with my RL wife for more than a decade now, and this appears to be complete and utter nonsense. You’re not even making sense.

mcwurth.2081:

please no, if you want to marry other virtual characters it might be time to take a break from the game or go play a total different game. (e.g. second life or something)

That’s a rather hilariously ignorant response – in-game weddings have featured in MMOs since there were MMOs. I guess the “RP” part of “RPG” doesn’t mean anything to you.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

DarkOcean.8746:

Also, people keep saying leveling is easy. This is true. However, easy =/= fun or exciting.

True but you’re talking about two different complaints. OP is saying it’s difficult to level. It isn’t. Anyone with about 100 gold can level in 4 hours. And many other suggestions were made to level EASILY and QUICKLY. None of those options, however, may be fun or exciting.

No, he isn’t. Don’t misrepresent him.

He specifically says it’s not hard. Read his posts, and retract your claim.

He didn’t say it was it was hard, he said it was boring. If his first post confused you, he clarifies later on, and is very clear.

Guilty Cross.2706:

i appreciate the genuine reply, not instantly calling someone you dont agree with a kitten. thank you.

to be completely honest in answering your question however, i will say that i cant quite put my finger on whats so different or why exactly im bored to tears with the lvling experience in gw2.

im clearly not alone as a few other posts here agree with me. most people nowadays just craft or tome to 80 it seems.

No problem, I think I get where you’re coming from.

When I started my Ele a couple of week back, I expected to be bored by mid-30s at latest, but the combination of factors somehow meant that 1-80 flew by.

It might be worth spending some time thinking about what bores you about GW2 leveling, or probably better – what’s more fun in other games. Then you can work out if there’s even a way to make leveling in GW2 fun at all.

As for buying 80, you effectively CAN buy level 80 in GW2. Just buy Gems, convert them into gold, and maybe buy some crafting boosters too (if you don’t have some lying around). If you have an instant-20 scroll from a character’s birthday, you use that, then you’ve only got 60 levels to get.

So then you just find a bunch of crafting 1-400 guides, buy all the materials you need from the AH with all the gold you just got from selling Gems, and mindlessly follow them until you’re L80 (my advice – buy some 15-slot bags too, means you can break/sell much less often). With 60 levels to get, and 1-400 getting you 8 levels (last I heard – used to be 10 before 1-500 crafting but oh well), you’ll need about 7 and a half crafts, and conveniently, there are 8 in GW2.

Each one going 1-400 should take well under an hour if you’re following a guide, maybe under 30-40 minutes, and you can watch TV or whatever whilst you do it. I know that’s several hours, but it’s pretty fast and very easy.

If you don’t have a instant 20 scroll because your account is less than a year old, then you’ll only be in your 60s. So that’s less awesome, but I would suggest just doing all your personal story, and any events you find on the way to personal story locations. Those plus the exploration XP will probably get you very close to 80 if not all the way there.

If you’d rather play, two other things which really helped me avoid boredom:

1) Don’t do boring/slow Hearts. If a Heart requires something tedious like schlepping objects around, to hell with it. Just skip it. I focused on Hearts I could level by killing things because then you’re getting XP from that as well.

2) Don’t do zone completion unless you feel like it. I know all the guides want you to. I know everyone says it’s smart. If it’s not fun, though, it’s not smart for you. Going 1-80 on my Ele, I completed maybe 2 zones, if that.

Anyway, hopefully you manage to work out what’s actually fun for you, then you can either plan to level via that, or accept that GW2 is just really never going to be fun to level for you, and either play a different game or play your 80s.