Guild Wars 2

Well, I thought Meagservers would hurt random RP out in the wild.
But actually they destroy even the most basic and static bar RP.
You stand in the empty Flagon…is it empty or just full on another map?

Someone explain the Yak Parade to a Pikeneer, RP in WvW has always interested me.

After spending a few hours in the Flagon with all the other staff only to THEN be informed that all the patrons were in another shard…

I would like to renew my demand of everything that was named in this post.

kuscheldrow.6415:

Well… what they are doing at the example of Divinity’s Reach doesn’t seem too bad, after all, if they manage to bring the system to every map out there soon.

I logged in today (Riverside) and what I saw in our little prestigue terrace were all the people from riverside that usually hang around there. Well, that’s fine.
Then I felt that it was time to RP. So I did change my character and did guest on Drakkar-Lake, the unofficial German RP-Server. As soon as I logged in I was greeted by a couple of emotes. Great!
I created a group with one of my fellow RPers later on, and then got disconnected due to a heavy storm out here. When I logged in again, off course did I forget to guest, but guess what? I was placed on the same map where I was kicked from by dc, and where the member of my group still stood.

This seems very encouraging. In fact, it takes a huge weight off my heart. I’m still with all of you who want cities to be excluded from the Megaserver for comunity’s sake, but I can’t deny that the changes really look promising.

Can’t wait to see this happening in other cities and maps as well!

While this might seem like a glimmer of hope, but let’s remind ourselves:

1. What helps you is not the megaserver system per se but said system behaving as if we still had fixed home servers, i.e. this system did not exist at all.
(Statement for the record: I think the megaserver system – as it is supposed to work, rather than how it works (not) – is a splendid addition for everything that is not RP.)

2. Even when the sorting mechanics with guild and friends list etc. eventually work, this will still not fix the problem which was initially discussed in this thread, which is the one of random RP with strangers being made much less likely.

edit ps.: Please add an identification to the map of the shard like it was done with Overflows so at least we know which shard we want to go to to meet our friends rather than randomly running around until we realise its wrong.

I have never spoken of high quality of writing, don’t pin that on me.
I am not an RPer either.
I just feel your entire post failed to address that problem.

Ilthuain.5634:

blablablablabla

You failed to understand the problem entirely.
The problem is this, and this exactly:

By RPers being no longer bound to land on the same map as they used to when they could pick the map of “the unofficial RP server” on purpose, the chances to run into RPers who are utter strangers to you randomly outside of the cities are diminished.

ps.: When the random assignment is applied to the cities, the same would be true for cities.

Shyhalu.4891:

I am fine with as many personal insults as you’d like to throw at the rest of the community that isn’t one of your precious RPers. If you all want to hold hands and pat each other on the back over how wronged you have been and how you are the true reason that MMORPGs exist, then go ahead. It isn’t true, but if that is what this thread is for, then I’ll leave you to your hand holding.

I have played plenty of MMORPGs and participated in RP events and I haven’t seen this level of ‘poor us’ in a long time. I support everyone who said that they are in favor of keeping COMMUNITIES together.. of all sorts.. but not those who feel that RPers are the special children deserving of extra attention and catering too.

Riiiight, let me reiterate once more:
1. You have here a thread of customers of a service provider telling that service provider how they want said service to be while pointing out that part of the service they initially paid for is no longer provided.
2. You come in and tell them they are whining.

One question and one example to you:
1. What are you actually trying to accomplish?
2. Imagine there was a cable provider. He restructures his network, suddenly some people are no longer getting the sports channel. They complain that they no longer get the sports channel though that is why they got the cable package in the first place.
You, in this thread, that is as if you went to those people and said: “Stop whining just because your sports’ community doesn’t get its channel anymore. Everyone else is getting their film and cartoon channels.”

Once again: What is your motivation to post in this thread?

What the blazing hell is wrong with people who come in here and tell RPers to stop complaining. Let me line out how that generally goes:

Arenanet: “Here is this feature we think improves the game.”
RPers: “This feature is making our preferred playstyle impossible.”
Random idiot: “Stop complaining, others are affected too.”

O…kay. So…?

A word on entitlement:
With an MMO being an ongoing thing where Arenanet tries to generate income from us over the initial price of game-acquisition…
Let me enlight you how capitalism works:
We demand.
A provider can then either supply or not.
He who supplies will have revenue, he who does not, does not.

Arenanet being a capitalistic company and we being customers, us demanding is really the most basic and desired form of interaction with Arenanet. “Feedback” is nothing but demand. This demand could be “continue as you do”, but currently it is: “Enable RPers to play on the same shard.”

Legit as kitten.

Ps., an anecdote:

Yesterday, while sitting in my bar in Piken Square, the bar my guild runs since motherkittening BETA, I met a guy from Slovakia. He had spend 35€ ($48 US) on gems to transfer his account onto Piken Square for the sole and single reason that he wanted to find RP.

And you know those people exist, Arenanet. In Germany there is a saying “Der Kunde ist König” (The Costumer is King). Stop acting like the kittening French Revolution towards us.

So let’s recap:

1. Anet announce a future feature.
2. People voice their concern how/what the future feature might obliterate their favourite playstyle. They provide a very simple solution to the problem which costs Anet nothing but a day or two of programming. (RP-Flag)
3. Anet, rather than do anything about the problem, tells them to wait whether the thing they are concerned about actually happens.
4. It happens.
5. DUH.

I begin to feel more and more that the magnitude of neglect the company shows towards the RP community is one step short of them actually going out of their way to harm the RPers.

I am no avid RPer but I chose Piken for a reason. (Partially because I play GW constantly since 2006 and have learned by countless encounters that the non-RP community of this game in general is much more insufferable than in others, probably because the lack of payment invites more teenagers.) Just to add to the number of voices I’m going to voice my concerns which reiterate points repeatedly made already.

1. RP relies on random encounters with strangers which must be facilitated by RPers being in the same map.
2. RP guilds are content-restricted and most RPers already have the maximum number and could easily pick 5 more to accomodate their characters. (ps.: And given the specifics of the situation situation is just a general insult to RPers to tell them, who are several hundred/thousand people, to guild up.)
3. There is more than one RPer who does not play the game at all and solely uses it for RP. Those people also have a habit on making Gems rain for the fancy skins that Arenanet likes to put out.

So I concur that they should add an “RP”-tag which overwrites every other number when it comes to map assignment.

Bump. Bumpety Bump. Seriously, someone? Someone from ANet?

I can join another player if he opens the instance, but I do not get a pop up to enter myself. Ever, under any circumstances, nothing fixes it. I do not know how long this persists already, but I only noticed it after killing Scarlet.

Does anyone know anything on this?

At no point in my life I even considered for a splitsecond that she might not be bald.

HELL YEA!

We got 3 long hairstyles: Swept back (acceptable), surfer dude (acceptable…if you’re a surfer dude) and…let’s call it…“this evening is going to include red wine and lube”. Mostly preferred by unsavoury necromancer guys.
Plus the new one on sylvari which, if translated into normal hair for humans and norn, I would consider perfectly acceptable long hair.

So how about we get a…“normal”? Or…“curls”. Louis XIV me, yho! After all, I want to identify with my character and neither do I look like like some Navy Seal (buzz cut) nor like a shampoo model, nor like an Arabian Oil Money disco kittenbag (seriously, why did you do that)…
I’m a guy with normal long hair. Let me continue to be that online.

Coming late to the discussion, I’ll just post my idea about the potential sub-class system or skill-and-trait-unlock system.
I will stick to the subclass idea, as the other one can be extracted from that:
If I get a subclass, I want to get a new classname OR a title to show what I achieved. (Engineer > Grenadier)
This should be the result of some work and either the finish line of all efforts (you have mastered grenades, you are now a grenadier) or the early middle (you are now a grenadier, master it).
The unlock-progress should have at least some scripted story part which gives an idea of the flavour of the class.

Examples set, here is what I want in a more abstract level:
1. A certain feat unlocks a story.
2. The story introduces me to the option of picking a certain subclass.
3. The story is interspersed or followed by more free tasks over the map which are related to the playstyle I am going for. Tasks include:
a) The Tracking Down of mobs.
b) The finding of hidden places.
c) The completion of Jumping Puzzles
d) The finishing of meta events
e) The acquisition of certain items, possibly as a result of meta events.
4. The completion of these subtasks introduces me to new skills and traits. If possible, there are instances with mini-missions that require me to apply these.
5. The newly acquired sub-class skills/traits are the key to finishing the story.

But the most universal and important rule is this:
The progress of my character should be the reward of a feat, not a grind.
I want to be rewarded for doing something right, not for doing something repeatedly over 20 hours That means: No currency, no skill points. Force me to play this game in its whole variety.

Coming late into the discussion, I will not make new points, but rather cast my vote for what was said, entirely out of context:

1. Stats are independant from skins.
I would go hunt all the skins that I do not care about now if there was something like the PvP locker in PvE.

2. Naga-hide sofa (Introduce trophies/story-driven customisations for the home instance.)
You have already started this. I have a human and at the beginning of my personal story I chose which priest sits in my Salma. When I finished the hunt for Krait Shards, I got one too.
There are also “story items” in my personal story tab that most players probably are not aware of. You could make these actual items in the home instance. Etc.

3. Unlock new class versions.
Engineer > Marksman > Grenadeer…. sure, who’d not love that.

4. Account-bound dyes.
Would give me more to hunt for, I’ve always wanted this.

5. Remove the rigid skill system.
I did not like the current skill-system when it was announced long before release. I gave it over a year of playing now. I still dislike it just as much.
I do not like having five fixed weapon skills. (When I had what? 25+ per weapon in GW1.) I do not like having a set number of three utility skills. I do not like having to take an elite skill. I do not like having to take a heal skill. I do not like the lack of freedom. I’m sorry for whoever designed it, but I gave it a try and it did not grow on me.

Also: Normalise dyes.
On one character I can wear pieces of six different armours, all made of metal. On these pieces I can use nothing but one single dye and still look like a patchwork-jester. Each dye should have one look on one material. This is currently preventing mix-and-match in many instances – and prevents points 1 and 5.

Actually, the title might be earned because you’re the only non-Seraph partaking in the fight, while all other civilians run or need to be escorted to shelter.
You on the other hand just barge in randomly and slay centaurs, when you obviously are not even from town but from behind the safe thick walls of the Reach.
So with some humour the title probably must be taken as a nod to your not-required-of-you wager of your life.

Sadly, I dragged my PS out too long so I lost overview. I went through the chatlogs on the wiki but I just cannot find the event/line that explains why Trahearne chose me as the second in command, even though I remember that it made sense to me back then.

If someone please could remind me why I was a sensible choice, I’d be obliged.

465 skills per character. Skill trainers strewed across the lands. Stealing skills off bosses.

Want. Want. Want.

Anet: Go.

No, because I am an oldschool GW-player.
I played GW1 because it cost nothing, I play this game because it cost nothing.
I did not, do not, and for some time will not have any money spend on gems, nor does anyone in my country have the credit card required to get them.

So I have to grind my 30 hours to acquire the gems I need for character slots.

My thoughts: The points towers give should increase with the time held.

I do not have thoughts on the upgrade level relating to points.

This would be a way to encourage defensive play.

I will quote myself from another thread here:

1. There are instances in Divinity’s Reach. They have separate maps.
2. The same areas exist, fully animated and stuffed with NPCs, in the uninstanced map of Divinity’s Reach. You cannot enter them, because they are shut off by visible, and since the last update also invisible, walls.
3. ????
4. Profit.

Like the Minister’s Mansion, the Flagon cellar, and some other places, my game/PC/Loading Screen Of Doom has to fully load this area (Salma), while I am not able to enter it.

I lead a guild and am in 3 others and I got it too.

I didn’t read the doc, but those 22 points do sound very good. Someone do this.

quaniesan.8497:

" And Arenanet already admitted mistakes and vowed betterment" – when/where is this? Did I miss something?

During the PvE CDI people would not stop moaning about Scarlett so three or four times they admitted they went the wrong way with her.

First of all this is not a Scarlet-hate-thread and I would like to encourage everyone who wants to rage on her to go elsewhere or just keep their trap shut, I am tired of it. And Arenanet already admitted mistakes and vowed betterment.

Arenanet stated that their intention of the Living World updates were supposed to be like a cartoon show.
You have your Big Bad Of The Season (Scarlet) sending the Minion Of The Week. I am amused by that concept, it’s just like in good old Power Rangers or Sailor Moon.
And the conclusions of the implementations (Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat, Tower of Nightmares) were novel and interesting places and had proper boss fight mechanics. At least to my not-too-critical boss fight taste.

However, Arenanet did two mistakes by putting Scarlet into Thaumanova:

1. That kind of TV show now and then puts in a special episode (trip to the beach, flashback to the past, romance side story etc.) to prevent the pattern of “The Big Bad Attempts It Anew” from becoming boring.
Seeing the same face every week gets repetitive after a while, so you need at least some variety.
This was the perfect chance. Please do not botch such a chance again. I did honestly not expect Scarlet to be here and I was genuinely surprised. But not in a positive way, because the reason I did not expect her was that it is detrimental design-wise.
As said, I never minded her being behind everything, but this was just one time too often, you should have put her on a holiday until January and let players enjoy the season of goodies.

2. The Big Bad Of The Season is never responsible or involved in backstory.
You do not take a passing enemy and make him a stock character/lore foundation. The backstory/main characters (and I will count big places like Thaumanova as a character of sorts in the game world) get their revelations in the above-mentioned one-off-episodes or in a separate story arch that serves no other purpose and is cut towards that kind of revelation.
In the case of GW2/Scarlet, the mistake is even graver:
a) Let’s face it, a lot of people hate Scarlet.
b) Let’s face it, you’re going to kill her off.
c) Let’s face it, players who start after killing her off will never get to experience her the way we did.
-> Future generations will see this huge part of a region (Thaumanova) with this weird stuff happening and all the explanation they will get is some random two lines of chatter from a weird sylvari they have no connection to.

Which is why you just don’t take a passing character that was not specifically created for lore-building purposes and put lore on its shoulders.

The other half will consist to a great part of players who look at this as a blemish in the lore.

As a solution I would propose not only to have some break-things-up releases in between like Bloody & Madness and what-Fractured-would-have-been-without-Scarlet but also to throw in a release about the greater lore (a tidbit on Dragons, permanent politics, or one of the permanent areas itself) now and then.

I hope this was constructive.

Mochann.5298:

Anet didn’t create that disparity. — you did. If its such a problem why don’t you transfer servers? Stop having a victim complex and go out and do something about your problem. Nobody is gonna be a messiah to save you if you just whine all day.

Dude, we didn’t create anything. Most of us chose a server at random and found our friends there, and you know, some of us have some…what’s it called, old military concept…oh, right. Loyality.
The solution to a botched system is not to make everyone who fights for their server because it’s their server to be driven out by hordes of roaming bandwagoners, you know.

Mochann.5298:

…
If the problem is “People stealing supplies from siege to repair” then stop whining about people not defending points, that’s what this guys is doing you know!
…

Now, buddy, I know you mean well and all, but the instances where Repairing is part of defending a place, rather than making its defence impossible, are the minority, really.

I touched on this earlier, but why not take the chance:

Most favourite release: Bazaar of the Four Winds
1. It added a new area to the game. (…that sadly disappeared again.)
2. That area was also new in that it looked like nothing else in the game before.
3. That area had tie-ins to original GW in it was clearly Kaineng ported to GW2.
4. It added features (aspect skills) that were completely different from what we had before. (I do not even mind that they went again, they were fun while there and went before they got stale.)
5. The quests were more varied, partially due to better design, partially due to the new Sanctum Sprint adding more options for achievements.

Least favourite release: The 2nd Southsun Series
1. I did not get to participate in the first Southsun stuff, so I had no idea what’s up there.
2. It was SCARCE on information. I went to Carnac’s (however he’s called) Lair and killed him. YET, I have still no idea who he is or why I did attack him… (He seems to have rallied the beasts, but how and why and why do I even care, being busy fighting dragons?) … nor why we knew where his lair was, nor who Kiel was, nor what the Consortium is about and why people settled there….
3. I cannot even remember either the rewards nor the required achievements, so they cannot have been very interesting either way.

Now, I’m sorry for the team who got to do the work on this, but it simply didn’t grip me at all in any way. That is a shame, the Southsun area is VERY interesting, the Consortium is VERY interesting. I’d like to see a future release that roots both better in the world and gives them a proper outlining and outfleshing, so they can have a transition from Content Of The Week to Part Of Lore. Everyone loves exotic places and seafarers. Build on that.

(And if you ever have far far far too much time on your hands, add “Lion’s Arch” as a sixth race, i.e. you can pick any race but get L.A.-stuff for a personal story.)

Woah, woah, woah, this thing is one year old? I thought it was the next CDI bit for a second.
I guess what was said initially still holds true, as it was confirmed in the CDI about world populations anyway.
As a loyal patriot of a T1 server, who chose his server long before he knew what WvW was and who is not going to leave because of said patriotism…and who has 3 hour queues….I’d like to say to all those server-hopping guilds:
Stop being kittens. Pick one and if you cannot be successful there, you’re just leeching off our numbers anyway.
Rewards are solely based on placing first of the matchup anyway, there is no additional gain for you in being on a T1. (‘cept from, you know, 3 hour queues and being roflstomped by Vizunah now and then.) So one would think if you are out for rewards and what have you, you’d take your 200+ guild to a low tier server and gank them for rewards, without making life harder for everyone on the unlucky fat cow of a server you hopped onto like a parasite because it is good at this hour.
I’d rather be T5 with a server full of people who fight for the server because of that server than win stuff with a zerg of people who could very well be on the other side next season.

Land-Spear!
I wanted it since GW1. Not the throwing kind. A proper military spear. Just take the water ones and make them available on land, I’ll even take them if the only skill is “stab your pet accidentally”.
How can I be a proper ranger without a ranged melee weapon? How can I be a proper hunter without a spear?
How can I be at all without a spear?

Random sidenote: The current Ranger Greatsword skills would actually fit the fighting style of a spear (deflection+quick counter attacks) most perfectly. Just exchange them. Nobody will notice. Come on. Now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

… It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely…

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’kitten =)

What a bizarre way of thinking. The value of the jet pack is having a jetpack not others not having a jetpack, nor is the value taking advantage of players by selling them items for tons and tons of money that they cannot otherwise get.

If you want to reward people who started playing the game earlier than others, then make it easier for them, not impossible for the others.

Since the Dev-Gods now made rather clear that they actually read the forum, I thought I might as well make my voice heard.
Here’s a synopsis of my post: Use the achievements to steer the playstyle of people in WvW away from zerging.

First off I want to say: The required numbers do not relate to the play reality of a T1 server at all. I am on Piken Square and in 7 weeks I capture about 500 towers (required: 30) and kill about 45 yaks (required: 225) with normal play. Because in a zerg you cannot tag a yak unless you’re lucky and in the front.

At first I was angry at this, but since I want the key, I went yak-grinding.
I actually enjoyed finding ways to kill at least 3/4 enemy yaks in one quick swoop and by the supply denial I was also doing something that actually helped my server.

Then I realised what achievements are: They provide a tool to force players into doing useful actions.
Properly set achievements could encourage players to get out of the zerg a bit.

That said, they have a dark side: The Repair Achievement.
Here is what it does to people who grind this achievement: They get hated by everyone for taking supply from Stonemist.
Here is what it does for the server whose people are grinding this achievement: They lose Stoneist.
Remove it. Now. (Wee, that sounded quite harsh.)

For the Achievements for the 2nd season, I would be happy if you considered what kind of playstyle you want to encourage and design the achievements around that.
An example: Instead of the Repair achievement, make a Defender achievement which baits with high rewards for doing things like:
Repel enemy attackers X times; Kill X players with cannons; protect X caravans…

On the topic of quest design:

The Sanctum offered a genuinely new game mode (Sprint), that was good.
It added a novelty feature (3 aspect skills), which had quests designed around it.
That was good too.
And I think on the Quest-side of the Living Story, there is one thing that needs to be either reworked or cut:

Quests of the sort of “Touch 50 X”.

In their worst form, they are a tedious grind that has you run across maps randomly in order to tag the thingies you need to touch. The crystals in the sanctum, however, were actually fun, because of simple reasons:

1. The area has to be limited.
You did not have to resort to the wiki to find out on which of the 50 maps you had to seek, you knew they were there somewhere.

2. There needs to be a high density of the objects.
You always would find a new one after a few minutes, so you had a constant stream of moments of success.

3. You have to be able to find the locations by thinking.
You knew the crystals had to be in high places or places that are hard to access and the narrowness of the area made it simple to check your assumptions, it did not consume much time either.
This is also somewhat true for the Krait Obelisk Shards. It requires you to think (They have to be where krait are), to know the game a bit (where are krait?) and then they are scattered a bit. I could live with them being less scattered, but that might be personal taste.
This rule is utmost important. Nobody enjoys running through the cities 20 times to kill the same old piñatas, nobody enjoys to randomly run through maps to find effigies to light. That is grind.
Going Sherlock Holmes and using given informations to deduct your traget…that is fun. (It also allows you to not apply rule #2.)

Summary: People will like the Living Story updates more if the quests (“achievements”) are not the ones they did a dozen time with just another skin.

Time for my two cents then: Living World updates have two sides: Writing and Mechanics.

I’ll start with the writing: You have three kinds of stories:

1. Hero stories where you are not the main guy. (AKA Trehearne)
I will use Mister “Claw Rye Land” as an example, but since there will be other stories like this no doubt, it should be useful anyway. There are two simple rules:
a) Make abundantly clear why I am not the boss man.
As it was laid out on the forum, it makes utter sense that Trehearne is the leader of the pact. He is a scholar of Orr with experience, has good standings with all order Big Wigs and is yet not tied to one order more than the other.
Frankly: You should have stubbed our noses into it more.
Have him say wise things about Orr now and then, have the Big Wigs once or twice flat out say: “He is a very reasonable choice to plan our moves into Orr because he has great experience with that and knows Orr better than anyone else.” (Only less bluntly, of course.)
This would have created some antagonism towards him (…well, more) since the player would have felt even more unimportant, which brings us to rule #2:
b) Make abundantly clear why the boss man’s success solely hinges on me.
From what I read it was supposed to be like this:
Trehearne is the most reasonable choice to lay out plans for moving in(to) Orr because he knows most.
He is a hesitating scholarly guy and hence relies on you (the battle-hardened adventurer) to pick the option most effectual and then lead it to success. The field commander, the Iron Fist of the Pact on whose shoulders the outcome of all those make-or-break missions rests.
…
Profit.
This could have worked perfectly if the dichotomy of The Thinker (him) and The Maker (you) would have been more clear. Then it would have been a sign of now-it’s-all-or-nothing when The Thinker went to battle with you on the final assault. (Rather than the glory snatching it seems to have been perceived as.) I think people can accept not being The Head of the whole thing as long as they are brought to understand that they are The Honcho.

2. Hero stories where you are the main guy.
No problem there.

3. Non-hero stories (AKA Zephyr Sanctum)
What I saw in reactions all were positive towards this release and I liked it most myself too. There was no task, no quest, no threat, I was just given a very interesting and genuinely new (design, location, background) place to explore and play with.
Which is because and brings us to the design bit…
For which I will use a separate post.
Those features (new design and background etc.) was also well done in the Tower of Nightmares, it was like nought we saw before.
ps.: A bit more of a tie-in into the Personal Story would be nice. I understand you want to establish separate storylines from the main one, but rather than having it be me, some Random Dude Who Is Sort Of Busy Leading The Pact, going “Jim Dandy to the Rescue”, it should be something along those lines: The disturbances in that area require the local Vigil soldiers to protect it. That prevents them from moving to Orr as reinforcements. Please see if you can sort it out because you are the 2nd in command for the Pact and all that, you know.
That kind of tie-in.

Rhyse.8179:

Re: Rangers Overall and the Class Mechanic
…Shift Ranger pets from a DPS-first role to a Utility-first role, and leave most of the DPS in the player’s hands….turning a pet of this type into a mini-trait…

That. I like that.
It cannot dodge, it cannot react to red circles, ergo: It cannot survive. If 40% of my DPS actually does come from that, it just means I do 40% less DPS.
Turning the pet into an advantage rather than a foundation of my build seems very attractive to me, especially since I didn’t want a pet in the first place.
I had two builds in GW: One without pet at all, one in which my pet did 100,00% of my DPS.
I understand the point of class-mechanic/uniqueness, but – and I’m solely using the phrase because that is the name of the trope – at the moment, due to the high pet mortality, we are “blessed with suck” #3, quote:

Sometimes your power sounds really, really cool at first, but it turns out to have a lousy limitation or weakness, control problem, lacks the Required Secondary Powers, or (in the worst cases) has very dangerous side-effects.

Not implying pets were all of the above, but fact is what everyone else already said.

Ceres.4569:

Why not just make it so that you can only claim if your guild has an active Art of War WvW buff running? Claim auto removes once all buffs are gone.
Doesn’t add another money sink to WvW and prevents those without buffs from claiming.

Great idea, here’s how I would implement it:
Once you researched the buff, you can activate it. Activation gives you an item(buff token) in your inventory which you can trade to the keep lord. This trade claims the thing for your guild. As long as the object is claimed, only people from the same guild can hand in further buff tokens. If the last buff runs out, a new guild can turn in their buff token and receive the claim.

ps.: Keep that restricted to the keeps and maybe stonemist. The poster above me has a point.

Neither icons nor names match the PvE items and part of the items is not implemented into PvE.
So I just spent a good deal of gold on stuff only to find out that my well-picked combination is not POSSIBLE because nobody could be kitten d, in a year’s time, to insert the (unintentionally, I read in some dev comment) missing skins from the locker into PvE. (I’d assume that is because you don’t get to collect many cash money gems for them.)

This complete neglect of the most basic first-day bugs (along with the one of everything being always obstructed for ranged weapons) is soul-wrenching.

There is two quests where you have to destroy risen ships.
What am I supposed to do there?
I don’t deal any real damage against the ships, nor does the canonade.
The risen don’t really seem to focus the submarines, and I cannot fend off the attacks from their ships, which do the main damage.
So what the freaking hell am I supposed to do?

I DPS that thing with a bow or sword.

In the last two days I took Stonemist (2 gates) a few times and several towers (1 gate), as you do in WvW.

Yet I only have “1/10 Walls and Gates destroyed”.

So either that thing is bugged or the description doesn’t fit the requirements.

There is a strict imbalance here:
Low-activity servers get more players. Good.
High-activity servers get 2+ hour queues. Bad.

1. Queues and their handling.
2. Zerg-focus/numbers over skill.
3. Gold rewards.

The “Protect Hodgins” bit where you have to destroy burrows and keep him alive.
Every burrow is constantly “obstructed” when I attack it with my shortbow/longbow.
Forcing me, a RANGER, to go melee…and die, because I’m not a godkitten tank.
This basically makes this piece of content unplayable for me.
I don’t mind much, but this bug has been there FROM kittenING DAY ONE.
So a very obstructive and very plain-to-see bug has not been fixed in a whole 365+ days. (And, it feels like, an equal amount of send-in tickets.)
Contrary to apparently everyone else on the forum, I have no real problem with anything that is in the game, but this one single piece makes me lose hope in humanity.

Because at one point, the servers will shut down and GW1 will no longer be an option.
And by then we want GW2 to be an alternative that isn’t flawed with a “but…”

DigitalKirin.9714:

marnick.4305:

Forst.5863:

But I’m good at playing the game the way I enjoy it.
And that way is rather unrewarding.

The reward would be fun, enjoying the game. I’m rather good at doing triathlons, but it’s unrewarding financially (not to mention it costs money to one).

At my job, on the other hand, I prefer to be efficient to get the rewards.

Hit the nail on the head.

Well, yes.
I actually feel better now that I’m reminded that I chose the social part over earning money.
But I think this is exactly what Arenanet said they would not want.
The cost of “doing what you enjoy” should not be “not getting nice things”. It should be “getting nice things later than those who work for them”. (And I do not mean " many months later", which is basically the same as “not getting them”.)
The path to reach the things in the game that you fancy withinin a reasonable time should not be treating the game as a chore, let alone as a job.
The difference between a “professional” farm-group and your friends should not be the one of 2,4 gold per hour and 30 gold per hour.

I think people are massively missing (and proving) my point. So I will make it again in a clearer statement:

Casual gameplay is not rewarding enough given the policy-aims Arenanet stated.

I do understand, and agree, that a superior effort of coördination should be rewarded. I do not want to have gold shoved up my behind.

Yes, if I do CoF with a group of people who know what they are doing, I can do CoF in 10 minutes (skipping the bridge-part of the content) and make 3 gold.
But I happen to have a lot of friends, who happen to have a lot of friends, and many of them are new to the dungeon. If 3 people don’t know what’s going on, how the rocks roll etc., it takes longer, end of story.
“Do not play with your friends” does not seem to be the proper solution to that.
Let me illustrate you why I find it noteworthy to make this point in Guild Wars 2

1. Arenanet rescaled the events to encourage high level players to discover low level areas.
However, farming in Orr is much more rewarding than farming in Brisbane. Farming CoF P1 is more rewarding than farming SE.
This might as well be, but given that Arenanet wants to encourage low level content to be replayed, it seems counterproductive. [edit: …to have too big a gap.]

2. I am not given the liberty to create my own build. I have 5/3+2 weapon skills (one set per weapon), I have a heal skill, I have 3 slot skills, I have an elite. And I have no choice about that.
I used to have a free choice from 465 skills to be put into 8 slots.
I am being restricted that much because Arenanet (as they said!) does not want to give players the option to make a build below a certain level of quality.
So I see it to be a fair point, to question whether we should then be allowed to have a dungeon run below a certain level of reward. When I am not allowed to make a 3-skill-run build, I don’t want to be allowed to only earn 80 silver in half an hour.

When I play, I do not sit on my kitten and stare at walls.
I use most contents. I run dungeons, I do WvW, I do events in the world, I do the special arenas. I simply play the game.

As said, you may call me an noob and say I’m bad at earning gold. (And you certainly did.)

But I’m good at playing the game the way I enjoy it.
And that way is rather unrewarding.

Right, as a final word on this matter from my side, I’ll start by quote-editing your former post:

colesy.8490:

I’m being descriptive.

Let’s see.

1337

I read that.

PvX

I read that.

BUILDCHECK

I read that.

GEARCHECK

I read that.

Closest I’ve seen to “buildcheck” is a request for experienced only, or no noobs. Everything else, well you just sound mad at people wanting specialised groups.

Every single one of these terms has been used by players to describe themselves. (Given, 1337 is rare.)
I am not mad at those people, and I didn’t think I sounded mad either. I wanted to underline that the people who have the most amount of currency are those who undergo exceptional efforts of coördination within restricted parameters (gear, builds) in oder to achieve a setup where they can earn the gold they need for their fancy desires.
The point behind this being to show that there are people who feel the need to do so in order to access the more desirable items.
I see the gap between the earnings of restricted/dedicated farm groups (who can do CoF in 6 minutes) and a non-coördinated group of friends (20 minutes is the normal time for that dungeon where I play) to be big enough to warrant a mention, contrasted to Arenanet’s aim to let you play the game in any group-setup you like.

As a note on being mad: Had you followed my instruction of reading the post in a calm and friendly tone, I wouldn’t have sounded mad at all.

colesy.8490:

Assuming that I play this game with…you know…my friends and the characters they want to play rather than a 1337-PvX-BUILDCHECK-GEARCHECK!!!!-group

You think you’re being funny, but you’re not.

I’m being descriptive.