Guild Wars 2

Schumi.4285:

Like friend A may play from 8-12, friend B from 12-4, friend C from 4-8 etc.

Also called shared accounts.
Which were quite common for a lot of things not to long ago. We even had a steam account waaaay back then, where 3 guys would purchase games on it so everyone can play em :s
Not to forget If it was allowed I always shared all my MMO accounts with my close friends. We’d play different roles/accounts every other day and had loads of fun.

Nowadays, often it is forbidden. Sad actually.
Though I am almost 100% sure that there have been shared accounts on halloween that had a 24/7 uptime.

Schumi.4285:

An official statement would be nice though….

Indeed.

Shieldbash.5304:

You’re the greatest ever! Now go back to staring in the mirror…

I held back, but this was my inital thought of this. :s
Sorry OP.

3. More examples of natural RP:
Lets take a look at WoW, Aion, GW all those large MMOs. Crafting is something that everyone can do today. Just pick up a profession and level it up.

No such thing in Lineage. You wanted something crafted? Seek a warsmith dwarf. A Class specifically desigend to follow your around the battlefield and be the ONLY one of all classes that can craft high level gear.
To bad this is not where it ends, because somewhere you also need to get the materials for it. Alrighty, lets pick up another dwarf whos class sepcific job it is to debuff mobs that they would drop any meanigful amount of materials.
Now if you were a tank thats not where it ends: You’ll likely need atleast one Nuker to actually get Some damage going, prolly some support buffer aswell.
Thats already 5 Players that work together for Days(!) Only to get something crafted for one person.
At some point this is how friendships were born left and right within a huge online world.
No such thing today anymore. Even for dungeon groups its a “one time task” and then you never see them again if it were random guys.

And I never said, min maxing gear cannot exists within an environment like this.
Infact Lineage was heavy on the gear, though it was kinda balanced because you dont go out alone, ever.

There are probably many more things that made games simply better back then. But it would not want to write a novel right now.
Games used to be more complex and challenging, even though they were simpler in their core structure.
When I play Guild wars today, I feel pretty isolated, even though I farm champion mobs between hundres of players. Its just not the same anymore.
No meaningful interaction anymore, no adventures to go on with friends.

PLAYERS made games.

brokenrabbit.6538:

Flitzie.6082:

Welcome to 2015.
Where MMORPGs are less and less about role play what it once used to be.
Sure some people still force the role play but the game itself does not encourage it.
Most MMOs today are quasi-single player games with a set story and course of events.
Once you are through with this there is instanced PvP and grinding score points of some sort.

(snip)

I’ve been MMOing since UO beta, and RPers have ALWAYS been a tiny, tiny minority. What is this golden era you speak of?

If you want to properly RP it isn’t going to happen in a video game anyway. Find a DM near you and start collecting dice.

Vayne already answered that for me but I want to add something to shed some light on what I mean.

I’ve play UO and Lineage a little bit back then (I prolly was to young) then eventually LineageII was my next/first big MMO (played it a total of 6 years by now), So my experience is based on those games.

Lineage, LineageII especially had it different than most MMOs and still consider it to be the best example on how to create a game of that genre.
Of course I might be biased a little bit because of nostalgia etc, anyway.
_______________

1. The game encouraged Roleplay on its own. Essentially it took so long to level up characters that you probably only ever played one during the first years or atleast heavily focused on one character.
This is important imo. Because you somehow grew onto your role. For example me being a Tank. If you would talk about me, you were talking about the tank of clan XY. Everyone had a very specific rule, and there were many jobs to do considering there are a total of 26(?) classes back then. Today the game has a total of 30 classes.

Today in Guildwars everyone plays all those characters with largely different names and you hop around between them everyday. There is no real connection to your toon anymore. Not to forget individual classes have no importance at all, but thats just a GW issue because of the riddance of the holy trinity.

2. Lets dive into it a bit more. Lets talk PvP. Look at all those games even WoW today. PvP is meaningless. You just slaugther or get slaugthered and thats it.

I remember when Clans split up because they actually had conflicts in Real life! Then they would go on and PK each other. And this is not only some “yea lets kill each other now.” I remember my first clan splitting up because the leaders, a married couple, had a horrible divorce. Of course its a sad story! But the impact it had on us ingame was impressive!

Suddenly you had to fight for your leveling spots, and many more clans were into it. Who wants to get the low exp mobs? Pk to claim the good spots. Even raids.
Not to forget that you could even drop your own gear that you farmed weeks for when you got caught with karma.

Heart-racing was a common issue when Pking someone. an “Oh kitten” moment when suddenly someone was after you.
This is no more in current MMOs.

Lastly, there was no way to escape all of this. The entire server was open world, no instances, no channels(!). All one world with the same players every day.
Today every game has multiple instances and channels were you can just avoid troulbe if you want. Its boring and socializing happens less. Wether its aggresive or friendly socializing.
Sad.

Look at guildwars, do you know anyone besides your guild?
Are there people you stumble upon regularily that are not within your clan?

But wait there is more considering Role play Pvp. You play as an elf? You see a dark-elf around your favourite spot? Noone would Invite a dark elf to his party as an elf. This is an open invitation to Pk him.
What happened with all of that?

Lol, there were many Open world MMOs prior to WoW.
Infact even WoW is not fully open world as it has instanced areas aswell.

In games like Lineage and LineageII even the dungeons were part of the open world where you could casually walk into like walking into a cave. Those are probably the prime example of true open world.

And there are many more examples out there where raiding was part of the game but not the non plus ultra or raiding just simply did not exists in the way we know it today.
Not to forget Ultima online indeed.

We really need to go back to those times.
Some game are already going back at it it seems. Archage is fully open world, no? (Havent played it) and Black Desert online(?) seems to have it, aswell. Not sure.
Now make them more hardcore again like it used to be and count me in.

Edit: <- Topic derail master. :<

Your experience with crafting legendaries
- Lol, next question please.

Never got to make one, waiting for expansion myself now.
Current legendaries look aweful anyway. Just my opinion.

Well. I would have loved to see the sword/sword duals being a fast paced power/crit setup with multiple hit skills.
Sadly we got conditions

But yea, as it stands now the burst on sword is pretty fine for Condi and power specs.
Either change the whole concept of the warriors sword or leave it as it is.

Vayne.8563:

There aren’t many games (anymore) that really focus on the open world instead of raids.

fixed that for ya

“Great I swung my sword, great I swung my sword again!” – GW2 trailer.
Appareantly this is not fun they said, so we can’t grind for anything really. Sad.

Servanin.5021:

While its possible that they have different teams working on different things, I dislike the transient nature of GW2’s content because well… it has no long lasting changes. GW2 came out a little over two years ago. In that time span, most games become completely alien.

GW2 is largely the same, possibly worse due to NPE. Its not 100% identical, but if you quit a month after launch it would still seem mostly familiar.

I have to throw in a word here.
If a game is well made and long lasting I WISH not for it be alienated. Sadly this happened to every MMO I ever played.
Updates usually end up unfitting with the rest of the game and the quality gets worse with every patch.

Its actually quite refreshing that GW2 does NOT do that, quite honeslty I love that.
If just the core structure of the game would be more… appealing?!

Just as I said. Its essentially a singleplayer walk through.
When I first heard about “living world” I thought its going to be some major open world events that have huge impacts and I was super hyped. Turned out it is an instanced single player story.

True. Though I have to say that I perform a lot worse with LB then with my roaming axe+sh/GS setup.
I dont like how slow the LB is, and without any condi damage its weak. Using it ONLY for the condi clear is a waste aswell imo. Better use the new GS burst with its large AOE.
I generally dont understand why so few people use the shield. Its awesome.

But I am only rank 34 or something. So I dont know, things might get difficult with better opponents.

Edit: oh yes, visuals are always important for me. Skills need to feel strong or it just wont cut it. I was really upset that we got the standard hammer swing animation for the new GS burst. In the preview it looked a lot more powerful.

Milennin.4825:

I just want to experience the Living Story at my own pace. If I stop playing GW2 for whatever reason I want to be able to get back into the story when I return to it.

True, it botheres me having to keep the game installed and to casually log in to unlock my story. I am back ingame now. But I was on a 3-4 months break on which I had to login to get the updates from time to time.
Its not really THAT bad… Still, it really must not be like this.
Its just another way to generate money sadly. Then again, the game has no subscription…
Meh

Welcome to 2015.
Where MMORPGs are less and less about role play what it once used to be.
Sure some people still force the role play but the game itself does not encourage it.
Most MMOs today are quasi-single player games with a set story and course of events.
Once you are through with this there is instanced PvP and grinding score points of some sort.

There is no more focus on making your own story/journey. Exploration is meaningless, everything is being spoonfed to you. Games full of micro rewards as a cheap excuse to cut short on actual meanigful content. No punishment for anything. Its boring.

But still, Gw2 is the most enjoyable among all of those bad games today. Atleast I thinkg that way.

It all quite sad if you think about it, because Less is more.
Developers would not even need to grind their butts off and create personal stories and what not. Its irreleveant.
We need to go back to a more sandbox approach in MMOs where the players and world build themselves a story.

The only thing it really needs a little bit of background information you put into a wiki and then off we go.

I remember the time where clans made up their own stories and view of the world. Times where relationships expand beyond the border of the game, where you are a personality within the gameworld and you fullfill one certain role… and not play XY alt-characters by the side.. urgh.

I could continue on but who cares…

Interesting.
I always thought warrior is the only profession that feels right and natural.
Not to forget its responsive, fast and action packed.
Sure the damage is nerfed to hell but the warrior is still the only class that has some weight behind its animation. The attacks ‘feel’ powerful and strong.

Imo the other classes are far less entertaining and kinda off.
- The guard does not know what it wants to be and feels weak.
- Rangers are your pet careworkers and you cant even stay on your longbow for longer than a few seconds in a fight because there is no way to disengage?!
- Elementalist.. lel. Muh 4 elements but not even a single target ranged nuke as a default attack? What kind of a mage is that.
- Thief wields two wet noodles… It literally feels that way.
- Engineer… Flamethrowers, guns, explosive packages. Yea no thank you. This is not CoD.

Necro and Mesmer are actually quite decent. Mesmers are a fresh and new class and necros are your average summoner.

Quite honestly though, GW tries to be TO unique…
This is why I can pretty much only enjoy warrior in this game which is a shame cause I usually enjoy playing archers, daggers and mages. But they got completely screwed over :<

Too soon?

/15chars

Edit: crap I forgot the burst skill, haha!

May I propose a different solution to this problem:

We keep everything as it is but the expansion will be free of charge since we have to buy a new mouse.

Jk, supported.

I love how everyone is *****ing their pants when the topic open world PvP comes up.
Obviously if you were to intergrate something like this, which is never going to happen simply because of the way the map is designed alone, you would not just enable PvP and be it.

Simply allowying it would create distrust, fear, griefing, spawnkilling and a lot more like PK farming, groups of players dominating enitre maps etc.
THIS is not the kind of PvP I would see working.

If you ever were to enable a PvP/Pk system in Guild wars a lot of things would have to change beforehand:

- Larger areas: Group up all areas in a region, for example: Ascalon. Get rid of the gates (loading screens) or just make the entire map open world entirely because in a world full of segments and instances and server-channels there can never be real PvP.

- Karma-sytem: Get flagged (attack someone) and you are open to being killed. Kill an unflagged player and you go red.
If you go red you drop items (Inventory and equipped with a radnom chance) upon death by another player.

This is a must have to prevent griefing and mindless Pking. Nobody wants thousands of karma points by killing a low level and being afraid to drop ascended stuff.
To get rid of your karma you’d have to kill mobs or do events. A ton of them!
So aslong as you dont fight back, you most likely wont get killed all the time.

- Implement Guild-Wars (lol). What I mean by that is to have a system that allows players to pk memebers of other guilds without penalty/karma.

Now implement some meaningful spots to Pvp for. Cities to capture, castels to take over, farm spots to protect. Maybe a boss to fight over.
Remove the WvW map and you have an actual “guild wars”.

The concept of server vs server is old and outdated and it never works…!
Its always going to be unbalanced etc.
It’d be a lot more meaningful to have guilds fight against each other over territory in the overworld. You’d also create a much larger number of enemies.
Obviously we’d need a maximum member count to prevent guild-stacking and dominating.

EDIT: I Forgot something…
Remove AOE skill.. A lot of them. They are boring and encourage blobbing. And could cause flagging problems.

Its most likely going to be like that yes. Only available in the new zones which is imo a very bad move. But who cares.
You spend so much time developing new awesome content and then lock it into a single zone?… Waste of development potential.
But we’ll see how it works out.

Offtopic:
I am still wondering how everything will turn out to be for players who dont purchase the expansion.
- Is new content just grayed out?
- We’ll they still be able to play the new class because of ‘esports’ in pvp.
- Will only be the story and new zone be locked for them?

Flitzie.6082:

Awesome, that is exactly what I was wanting /sarcasm.
Lets see, what do we know so far?

These dailies have a 28 day cycle.
During this time you can earn 35 laurels.
Monthly have been removed – so no more than 35 in 28 days.

In the previous system you could earn ~38 laurels in 28 days.

Thats just kittening awesome. I’ve been screaming for more ways to get laurels because its pretty much the only thing slowing you down when crafting ascended gear and now we get even less than before…

scrap that!
My fault!
I suck!
My sources had been incomplete.
You really do get more with the final chest. Yup kittening awesome, indeed now
It pretty much kills the competition because laurels are the most valuable currency, but yea, there ya go.

Awesome, that is exactly what I was wanting /sarcasm.
Lets see, what do we know so far?

These dailies have a 28 day cycle.
During this time you can earn 35 laurels.
Monthly have been removed – so no more than 35 in 28 days.

In the previous system you could earn ~38 laurels in 28 days.

Thats just kittening awesome. I’ve been screaming for more ways to get laurels because its pretty much the only thing slowing you down when crafting ascended gear and now we get even less than before…

Enough the talk, lets see the builds!

Offensive WvW roaming setup:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJEQNAR8cjMdU2ZXImhwJaAmgCdnPBfwx0OAU+EfOA-TVCFABVfQAa4CAAwDAoQ1fuSJISK/ST3QL7PswRAIAACwNvZ2sNDG6QH6QH6Q7m7coDdnLnMAMLA-w

Balanced WvW Roaming Setup
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJEQNAR8cjMdU2ZXImhwJaAmgCdnPBfwx0OAU+EfOA-T1CFABVfQAa4CAskSjmUiAwDAoQ1fQSZUWKBTT3wCHBgW2fIAACwNvZ2sNDG6QH6QH6Q7m7coDdnLnMAMLA-w

In my very own opinion the balanced version is a best in slot gear setup. I am running exactly this, Except with Axe/shield and a Perception Sigil in place for the Air Sigil.
(You however dont need the perception stacking sigil since you dont need to push the 100% crit chance for burst skills because you dont run Eviscerate. Its better to take the Air Sigil to get a bit of the lost damage back that you are missing on the Sword auto attack compared to the Axe Auto.)

For PvE you can stick to whatever you chose of the above but change the traits to the standard: 65003 – with FGJ, Banner and Signet of Fury.

Final notes:
I assume you know all of this already given you’ve been around for 2 years but it might help some others lurking this:

The mobile strikes trait that you chose looks great on a first look.
Realistically if you take the runes, food and traits I presented to you, you wont need it since you sit at -93% Immobilize duration, lol.
Better take DotE. Yay, more damage.

You might have noticed the base power on those builds is pretty low.
Don’t be dissapointed. ‘Forceful Greatsword’ is the essential heart of your damage source. It pushes you well over 3k power easily! And you get to keep your high crit chance.

Bulls rush overshoots sometimes. If you think it happens to often, try bolas. But dont use it at range. Leap in with the sword and throw it in melee for an easy 100b.

If you do not face a condi enemy, do not panic if you go low on HP. You have the passive endure pain pumping any moment.
(I see way to many warriors at 30% life run away from my half dead ranger only to waste their full endure pain while I can easily catch up and pew pew with LB)

Ok, let’s give this another try, shall we?
You seem pretty serious with your build, I LOVE build-crafting and got some time to kill

List of guildelines for this build:

• WvW Roaming/Skirmish group – Open world PvE
• Must be GS/SS

If we take a look at the weapons it becomes clear it is going to be a full power build. No condi.
As much as I would love to present you a condi or even hybrid build I think It would never reach close to its full potential with the weapon choice.

The reasoning is rather simple. If you dont utilize a longbow you can forget about conditions.
And if you go Condi the GS looses a lot of its power and is useless.
A hybrid build is rather weak aswell. GS needs as much offensive stats as possible to be any viable and Sword bleeding wont even be close to enough to justify the investment into condition stats.

However, as we both realize a LB/SS warrior, possibly with sinister gear could be pretty decent. Hell, I’ve even seen people solo arah with that.
But lets scrap that idea, its not your preferred weapon choice.

Now, in PvE everything works, but zerker stats (especially for the warrior) are overall the most useful. So you’d want to get something like that, but also make it work in WvW.

If you like theorycrafting you should take a look if there is any ‘Base’. A ‘must have’ that you need to slot no matter the build.

Since we talk power-builds it would look something like this for WvW:
http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR8siMdwJKgqgC5iHAA-TFgYAYC-w

The obvious signets – 2 obvious traits and the most effective buff food.
(I’ve tried other buff-food, the entire stock almost. Nothing comes close to the anti-condi food. On non-LB builds its a must have for roaming)

The Next obvious step would be to take a look at what the meta for roaming is:

• Full zerker (Some toughness gear if personally preferred)
• GS/Axe+Shield
• 04602 or 4060Traits

This setup rocks.
I am using a modified version of the meta that pushes my crit chance to 90% (100% on burst) with a cost of a sigil slot and push the armor by 500 up to 3000 for the cost of 9% crit damage.

Today, I took my setup and changed the Axe+Shield to SS.
It works just as great, and If I were not such a bad player I think it would be even better than the Axe/?? meta.

Now, it ultimately comes down to comapring the two weapon sets:

1. Eviscerate and final thrust is pretty much the same, except for the higher cooldown on final thrust. If you miss you are punished.
A long cooldown or having to build up adren again.
Its likely that adren will generate quicker than 15 seconds of cooldown.
And the low cooldown can be a game changer against outnumbered odds.
Pro Axe

2. Sword has better in-combat mobility and if played correctly can replace the melee blocks on the shield. Sword blocks only once in melee range but its still just as effective against a rangers rapid fire for example.
The mobility can be a game changer though. Noone will catch you.
For overall survivablitly I’d say:
Pro Sword

3. Setting up the burst is always a problem. On the one set you use shield bash for eviscerate, ALWAYS. Dont even try without it. The final thrust therefore must be set up with either Bulls charge or flurry. Which is totally doable. As its overall less fluid and clunky to use and requires more skill I’d say the axe is in favor but in reality is up to the player.

4. The fact that the sword torment actally hits really hard and is often used even on non condi specs speaks for itself. Its around 3100~ damage if they move around.
Pro sword

I’d say both sets work very well, but the Axe+Shield combination is just SO much easier to play. Thus its often preferred.

Hammer is a control weapon. It sure can dish out some crazy spike damage but it is mainly used for all the CC and stuns, thus its more of a PvP weapon.

In PvE you cannot really CC any bosses or higher tier mobs with that ‘unshakable’ buff and trash-mobs die rather quickly anyway. It ultimately makes the GS stand out because of the superior sustained damage.

In PvP/WvW it is actually not uncommon to run a Hammer/GS setup.
You might want to try that if you ever get into that.

Oh btw, Rifle is kinda lackluster(?) I have always preferred the Longbow for a range weapon. Even in dungeons, fractals etc. Give it a try.

I dont really have any valuable feedback atm.
But I’ve wanted to look at the new sinister gear for a while now.
Maybe that is something you have not thought of yet.

A S/S setup with sinister gear atleast sounds kinda awesome. However, I have no idea if its any good in reality ?! Maybe you want to play around with that a bit. If you did not know yet, ascended sinister accessory can be aquired for free upon finishing all the achievemnts in some of the new story parts.

O.O The word “LOT” really stands out of your Wall’o’Text

Yes, the camera was the first thing I complained about in PvP.
I had ‘switched’ from WvW to PvP very late and was sooo used to the open space of the WvW maps that I had constant rage when playing PvP the first days.
You simply cant see kitten at some spots. Your camera is blocked by some stupid tree or whatever really.
I died often because I was unable to read the battle due to the camera movement.

Eventually you learn to avoid those spots, if you can.
Its not something easy to fix at all so I am not really expecting any fix either.

I once got aksed if I ran full zerker.
I posted my zerker amulet and they believed me fully.
Little did they know at the time this had been my only zerker piece alongside a lot of soldier or knights pieces.

Eventually I gave in myself ankitten ow running full zerker. Then again I never really worried about it. Just play as you like.

Thank you Deimos for the post formatting of OPs. I have to say, your spacing is placed very poorly

Hm, I can see how this is a problem. It scares off new players for sure.

I must have been lucky because the only negative words thrown against me were something like: “You suck. And Your pet sucks, change it to a krytan dog”, I only humbly answered: “I know what I am doing, thank you.”
Siamoth rules, you hear me fellow hater?

Its true though. Occasionally we make fun of other players, too. But its strictly only for our ears and entertainment in Teamspeak. I would never go as far as actually typing it down for the enemy to read.

Then again this toxic behaviour is nothing new. Its human (for some atleast, which is sad) and real. It happens everywhere.

Edit:

For my part, I’ll make an effort to keep my temper under control and to remember that Rangers didn’t set up that OP longbow and are therefore not at fault.

Hihihi

Hi guys.
This should be rather easy to fix and would help making the whole thing more visually appealing and clear.

Ever tried to look for an open world group? A Taxi maybe? Some open world boss?
The group tabs keep flashing and fading in and out from the right.
It is especially noticable in the open world tab.
Sometimes I fail to read the description of a party for a good few seconds because it keeps fading in and out all the time.

It is really annoying and makes party descriptions hard to read or keep track of.

The Suggestion: Please turn off those fading animation effects entirely. If you insist on a visual notification that a party had been updated you could implement a flashing border or background with a very light and neutral color so that it wont hurt your eyes

Thank you for reading and please share your thoughts!

I had a good chuckle over main hand shields…
It would need to restrict the offhand being a shield aswell.

Oh I can already see the infamous double shield warrior bunker builds.

We certainly need two-handed axes next. We are being teased with this custom brawl axe thing. So yea, animations are done already!

Besides that what I’d rather like to see is multiple skills for each skill-slot of any weapon.
For Example: You dont like the iconic 100b skill? Click the little arrow on top and change it for an Aoe ground target slam.

Stuff like this.

Welcome former WoW player!
You are at luck! You can play whatever class you like.

There really is no such thing as tiers in gear that you got used to like in WoW etc. You dont need to farm long for a full set of equipment.

You may or may not have noticed, yet, the two highest armor tiers are exotic gear and ascended gear.
Where ascended gear is only approx. ~5% better than exotics.

Once you reach level 80 you’ll probably already have all the gold you need for a full set of exotic gear. Maybe you’ll have to add 2-3 days of farming if you level up fast.
Just buy it off the TP, or run some dungeons and aquire dungeon armor!

Acended gear you’ll be able to get via crafting. This is a bit cost intensive but well doable in a months time. 2-3 months if you play veeery casually.

That being said, you’ll only need to worry about gear when running around in the WvW maps.
If your aim is to play a lot of PvP you wont need anything at all, since everything is being given to you upon entering PvP. You can choose your stats via an amulet and equip all the upgrades free of charge.

Remember, this game is not about stats, its looks. Looks/skins are the real gold-sink. Everything else is pretty much free if you are used to hardcore grinding like it was once in WoW and other grindy MMOs.

Filaha.1678:

But it doesn’t really matter what you want from the game.

This thread is about my opinion and what I think/wanted out of GW2.

Filaha.1678:

Some people play games with stat progression and don’t really care about raiding. Would that make games with shops where you buy stats not pay to win because some people don’t care about achieving what is supposed to be the end goal?

I see where you are comming from. Something like this would indeed be Pay2Win.
GW2 is not pay2win. Even if the goal of GW were to obtain all skins in the game (which is not the case). It would be pay2lookshiny, if at all.

You see. The word ‘win’ just does not fit in with the concept of acquiring skins. You dont win anything if you have all of them, except that you look ridiculously shiny.

Filaha.1678:

By spending money, converting it to gold, and buying your legendary or mats for your ascended gear or even just exotic gear instead of farming it out, you have an advantage over someone who had to play the game to earn it.

That is generally true. You do have an advanatage if you’d buy mats for ascended gear.
Then again, its not like you’d autowin against anyone in WvW if you have ascended gear and the enemy only exotics. Thus you dont win(?)
There are other games where having an armor of 1 tier higher than your opponent you can literally auto-attack them to death with ease. In those games it would be pay-2-win.

You see, there is a lot to look for, not just the sole fact that you can buy gold and then use it to fund your crafting.
Thus, payers dont really have any advnatage over non-payers in GW. Or lets say, the advantage is slim its hardly even questionable or worthy of mention.

I am sorry if our opinion on this are different, but you asked me

Filaha.1678:

But GW2 is pay to win.

I mean, considering that the only way to “win” in GW2 is to have those shinier skins since there’s no such thing as progression…

Well, lol. Skins are not Pay to win at all.

You can only ‘win’ in a competetive environment. You dont ‘win’ because you have a more expensive skin. Besides that, it all comes down to personal taste anyway.
I’d never want wear any of those legendaries. They just look stupid imo.

Pay to win is usually a term exclusively for PvP. Even in PvE you cannot ‘win’. You might clear some mobs faster, if you bought gold for the best gear. Great, what an achievement really…
Considering PvP or WvW this game as no pay to win whatsoever.
Maybe PvE does with this copper-salvaging-thingie… but thats really not something to worry about, is it?

Edit:
Regarding Acended gear. How is that a grind? The ONLY thing that limits you are laurels and they cant be bought from cash anyway, right? (And possibly time gates, too)
Exotics are for free, ascended gear requires slight effort.

That being said. There are two types of pay 2 win.
- The first being items on the shop that you Need to progess or beat other players because you cannot obtain them within the game itself.
- The second being items that would just be easier to get if you’d buy them from cash but can be obtained through regular play aswell.

Both ways it sucks, but with the second option you have atleast a chance at what you want. It would all come down to how much of a grind certain things really are without cash to rate the game as p2w or now.

GW2 has nothing of that.

Palador.2170:

What did you want out of GW2?

I am going to list the major things that I’d want out of every MMO I play.
I have not found the perfect MMO until all the criteria is met. (Rating of 8 or higher)

• Combat that is more then just point and click – Check
  GW2 Combat is actually super fun, fluid and loaded with action – I love it
  (Rating: 10/10)

• Equal pvp. Open world pvp. Gear should only matter little or be easily obtainable even on high levels – Check
  - PvP modus is awesome in this game. Except for the generalized amulets and the lack of gamemodes its really great and even.
  - WvW is also a heck load of fun. Its semi-open world but its generally acceptable for me. Gear does not dominate either. Great work!
  I’d prefer a hardcore server version where open world PvP Is all over PvE maps. That game is not really ready/built for that hence it wont influence my personal rating.
  (Rating: 9/10)

• My two favourite profession need to be playable. That being an Archer and a Tank. – Semi-Check
  - While the ranger is generally pretty neat, I am not quite fond of the pet that I have to deal with.
  - The Warrior roaming meta suggest a shield+Axe. Its super fun and kinda looks tanky. I understand the stats are mostly full zerker but warriors got great sustain anyway. While its not perfect I can deal with it.
  (Rating: 7.5/10)

• A lot of depth, with great sotries and secrets to discover. It needs to feel alive. – Semi-Check
  - While the story-content is generally pretty nice. I like the different races (except asura, they can go to hell) and I like the gods that watch over this world.
  - The game does not really feel alive though.
  The entire game is based around a very competetive system. Go fast or get left behind.
  Its ironic since there is no real grind for anything, yet I felt forced to level up my first characater super fast because it actually is fast(!). If I can get something quick, I need to. If I cant I might aswell slow down a bit more because if it takes me 6 or 8 months to max level does not really matter anymore.
  This lead to me missing a lot of litte things and areas even though I got world completion 3 weeks into the game.
  Even today I discover new things, which is pretty nice actually.
  - Mega servers did only harm. But I understand that server-merging is neccessary at some point.
  - The music is great, the community is awesome.
  (Rating: 7/10)

• Fully Open world. Player driven world. – Failed
  - Its not open world. That sucks, period.
  - Instanced areas suck, they need to go! I hate the current MMO dungeon concept.
  - WvW, PvP and PvE area all seperated. Would help greatly for an ‘alive’ feeling world if they’d get merged together.
  - I’d wish the players had more impact on the world. Political system maybe? Make PvE Matter for pvp guys. (Would make the world a lot more alive.)
  We need something like clan-wars that battle each other for bosses etc.
  The PvE world is great but its wasted potential, really.
  - The living world events that happen everywhere are a joke. Its just some random quests on a timer.
  (Rating: 4/10)

Final words:
The game is really awesome, the major things I look for being great PvP fun and equality are given and very well made.
Even the PvE world holds great potential but its poorly executed.

How would you rate Gw2 compared to the other games you have played?:
- Second best. There is just a lot of crap games out there.

What is your favourite MMO that would meet most of the given criteria?:
- Lineage II. No competition so far. Its a lot of grind but the good things outweight that. At the end of the day it had a few problems too, of course.

Edit: Some things I’d like to add that dont really fit in the post above.
Of course I was also lured by the exprimental concept of GW2.
I felt the need for something new in the MMO-scene.
Breaking the holy trinity, opening up new ways and doors. It all did sound very nice.

In the end, what can I say. It was probably the last experimental MMO for me. (And probably the first and last western MMO) GW2 is still great fun but after that I am going to go back to the holy rule set that has existed in MMOs for many years now.
I’ve been playing MMOs since Lineage1 and have seen many rise and fall and tried a variety of them.

Breaking the base-structure of this genre is no good thing, at all.
Its what makes or breaks games of that genre.

You cant play a realistic military shooter with water guns either.

Edit2:
OOOOOoooooo (-Quaggan)
I forgot something very important!
The No pay-to-win system. Thats another (100/10) for GW2 right there.
Anything thats even remotely pay-to-win is a game not worth looking at for me.
It’s sad that many current MMOs that go f2p feel forced to go p2w with it. Ironic, isnt it?

GOSU.9574:

Old PvP Armor (completion of track reward chest; Tribal, Stalwart, etc. Wardrobe Armor Unlocked Skins)

I’ve been requesting this numerous times and I wont give up.

And I just bought one 2 days ago, fml. haha

:3 YES! Muh stalwart, bring it on!

On a more serious note.
Its about time we get the old armor types as a reward again.
I always hated the concept of one time exlusive items that never return. Or call ’em legacy items if you want. I hate that.

Extensive hype leads to tremendous disappointment. Always.
Even if the content/updates are actually really good.

Thats some crazy damage buffs for the swords.. Wow. 10-20-30% on Sword auto. Sweet jesus.

I do like the look of all of this but It would need some serious testing first
The only things I’d currently like to see getting changed are:

• Sword Hornet Sting: Instant please, like the warrior sword leap. The delay is horrible imo.

• Axe (Off) Whirling Defense: Its duration is currently to long, we cannot move and it feels clunky and very situational. Remove the channeling. Make it a 3/4s cast time and then it spins on its own for the full duration while we can move around, attack and even swap weapons. As a compensation, maybe lower the damage?

And give the ranger some sort of 25% movement speed that is not a signet or rune. Then rework signet of the hunt passive for whatever. Attackspeed maybe.

In all honesty, if any profession should have baseline +25% move speed then it is the ranger. Isn’t a ranger all about being in the woods, mobile… running around, kiting ?
If thats too good, make it a minor trait in Marksmanship or Survival or something.

Interesting.

I never really thought about this, but looking at my characters, 90% of the time I use 2 sigils of the same type. Wether it be ‘on crit’ or ‘weapon swap’ etc.

I like the suggestions MonMalthias has given/quoted.
Though, I belive its probably not as easy as that. I can see where the popularity for Air/Fire sigils as a combinations comes for.
Its a straight damage buff that some builds (imo) need to do any acceptable damage, while its a complete overkill on others.
If something like this were to be implemented we’d have to take a look what builds and why they are running this combo and how we could give them a slight damage boost as a compensation.

I am cool with the battle sigil suggestion. Great stuff.

#weaponswap sigils are kittening awesome.

To many blocks: I dont think so, except for guardian I never see people blocking all that much. Its fine.

To much immunity: Meh, its on a long cooldown. Just kite. I don’t see this as a problem whatsoever.

To many dodges: Oh well. Maybe a full acrobatics thief has 1 or 2 dodges/teleports/stunbreakers to much. Sometimes I really struggle against great mesmers, too. Crazy movement and damage mitigation.

In general though. I don’t see this as a problem, either.
When I first started out on my warrior (first char) I always thought people went super lucky all the time dodging my big hits. I was so unexperienced I could not believe someone would actually be able to read an eviscerate and dodge it in time so it lead me to believe the dodges were random.

Now though, after many hours of Pvp. Its not that random after all. It just takes practice.
I agree on one part though. In a group clash there are bound to be random dodges at some point, but there are numerous counters to that, too.

What about non-faked DCs? Like daily router resets, someone stumbling over the net-cable or power shortages?
Luckily this only happend for me once so far and I was able to reconnect in time (We even won.)

A friend of mine just recently had a random DSL-connection failure and DC’ed for a minute resulting in a loss that game.
No problemo – right back into the next, its not like its gonna happen again anytime soon? Guess what, after 3 tries of playing with us in a match he gave up and still had another 20 disconnects because his provider kittened up.

I really think its time to punish actual leavers and rage quitters but as it is with everything, it comes at a cost.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You know, often, when accounts are re-instated they get the ‘we will overturn it this time, but…’ response. Whether it is the first time or not.

Maybe, I hope so.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Oh, and if you have perused the rules, you might remember that posting threads discussing actions taken against your account could be moderated.

Yes, even if they might take this one down. Its not only just about myself.
I think this is an important issue in general.
It’d just be sad if someone got banned/accused for something that they were not involved in. I dont want that to happen to myself nor to someone else.

The problem is, no system is perfect, thats just the way it is. Its normal.
And thus possible problems should maybe be addressed.
That is the way I think.

lordkrall.7241:

They also rather seldom outright state what you get suspended for, simply because that information can be used in order for botters and such to avoid detection.

Yes, that true. That why I said I understand that they cant give me any clarification via email.
I’ll probably stay away from t6 farming if its that of a hassle to not look like a bot.

Yup. The only activity that comes to mind is my extensive mob grinding.
The only things I do in this game:
- T6 farming
- PvP with friends
- Solo roaming WvW

I found LeCreaux’s comment really amusing since there is alomst no room for me to do anything against the ToS. I am not even using the chat.

And I always try to not look like a bot, anyway. If someone of Anet is oberving me and feels like I am botting the first obvious thing would be whispering me and see if I answer.
Its infact the first thing every player should do before reporting a bot.
Its common sense in my opinion.

See, the major problem I have right now is that I am left in the dark. A simple “Yes you were looking like a bot” would be enough. I could convince anyone I was not botting. Infact you’d see it in the game logs. Since a bot does not doge attacks (?) and I’d get rid of the flagged status.

It’s really bothering me playing on a last-warning. Because the simplest thing, like that of today could mean the end without me being at fault.

Haha, I see where you are comming from.
I did read the ToS multiple times. I would not make the decicsion to post this public in the forums if I were not 100% sure I am not at fault.

Well of course I was doing that earlier, too.
I am not really a fan of champion-trains, dungeons or anything else really when its about getting gold.
If I need some cash, I farm my materials.
It a great activity to do that does not really require me to pay much attention. That way I can fcous on the more important things like some great discussion with my friends in Teamspeak.

For exmaple:
Yesterday I was making my first sets of christmas cookies. Those 20-30 minutes each load was baking in the oven I spent farming T6 until the cookies were ready. Been doing that the entire day pretty much. 30 min kitchen – 20 minute farming.
Hell I made almost 80 gold casually just like that.

If this kinda stuff gets me banned… wow.
Its a usual routine around christmas for me every year and I’ve been doing that in so many other MMOs over the years.

lordkrall.7241:

Especially if you are behaving somewhat similar to a bot (such as just walking around farming mobs for long stretches of time).

We’ll I’d say its quite easy to distinguish an actual bot farming from a player farming an area. I already said, I doubt that was the cause of todays ban.

Ugh really? See, this is the kind of thing I’d like to get some clarifcation on.
I really appreciate the great security systems of this game but if things like constantly changing IPS is only hurting me instead of helping I might aswell stop it, or else I’ll loose my account.

This is really frustrating.

Well, now that is interesting Grimm.
I am certainly not new to this whole scene but the Authorized Networks have always puzzled me.

As mentioned, I have to verify my login every time. Wether it be the forums or the game.
The authorized networks have always shown multiple IPs with different locations.
I never really bothered since my Ip changes constantly and thus its hard to track any log ins that are not mine.

Edit: I’ll contact the support to change my email. I’ve meant to do that for a long time now.