Guild Wars 2

Hawkian.6580:

Freyvin, I can honestly sympathize with the game not living up to your expectations. By nature it couldn’t do so for everyone, but you have absolutely every right to be disappointed. It lived up to mine, but we were merely looking for different things in the end and that’s more than fine; in fact it’s a necessary component of the process of delivering an MMO that some people will be satisfied and others won’t.

I want to stress that I didn’t reply to you in defense of any particular qualities of the game. Your question about “when forum posters would not be the minority” stood out to me just because of the objective facts of the case; that, right or wrong, they always will be.

It’s also important to draw a distinction between “success” and your personal enjoyment. By all reasonable metrics- critical and commercial- the game has already been a fairly resounding success. Of course we will see how things go from here, but watch the horizon for numerous Game of the Year nominations about to be announced in the next few days and weeks.

Where it has not succeeded is in being enjoyable to you and your friends (past a certain point- one imagines that during your 670 hours across three 80s, you enjoyed some portion of the experience). And that is regrettable. I’m just saying that perspective is a very important thing.

I leave you with this thought (I’m sure you’ve heard it before, and I don’t mean to be redundant): if you feel the game right now is boring, grindy, and stale, but look forward to a day when it is not those things to you any longer- there’s nothing to be lost by simply taking a break until you hear about significant changes and then coming back and giving it a try. I don’t mean this at all in the “if you don’t like it, then don’t play it” sense- I mean that obviously you want to like it, but there’s no sense in having to strain to do so, and you’re not struggling to get your money’s worth at this point. You might like the direction things go one day, and you might not.

A perfectly good and thought out response Hawkian and one that I concur with. Obviously I liked the game on some level to invest those hours in it, but now I log in and I’m kinda wondering “why”. You summed it up great and for someone who writes books on the side you’d think I wouldn’t get so emotional over such a first world problem as having a game developer’s promises in some dev diary fire me up, but for whatever reason (probably the creative ego to think I could do better) it does.

I want one thing clear, I want this game to succeed, I want it to be fun again and not feel boring stale and grindy. I want to look forward to skinning animals or whatever for upgrades instead of standing in Frostgorge Sound about to rake my eyeballs out killing snow trolls, but right now it just isn’t. So Hawkian you and I are on the same side, I just happen to get irritated about all the concepts and promises that weren’t delivered. I guess I really believed the hype this would be “better” and that old DAOC RvR would be back.

Hawkian.6580:

ArenaNet isn’t a publicly traded company :-S

Seriously if you’re messing with me, I tip my hat to you in earnest.

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=036570.KS

You were saying? It’s under NCSoft.

Hawkian.6580:

Perspective is everything and “from where you stand” is absolutely the key phrase in that paragraph.

You provided some anecdotal evidence that the game is going down the tubes. If I thought there would be some tangible impact, I’d respond anecdotally that my guild has far, far more than 8 regularly active members, and that fewer than 8 of them actual post here (and who could blame them, really? :P), and that thus everything is actually going just fine and this hysteria is nothing more than hysterical.

But instead of responding with anecdotal evidence I just wanted to point out the obvious: that forum posters will always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always be the minority. Of course ArenaNet pays attention to these forums, and of course they reply at a pretty decent rate, and even announce priorities and clarify whether or not things are intentional on these very pages, but on the whole, THIS sort of thread is not indicative of… well, anything. We’re not polling data; we’re noise. I know this is hard to accept, but it really is the truth. And while that may be bad news for you, it’s not bad news for everyone.

Look people still play EQ1, it doesn’t mean the game is trending the correct direction. The same people claiming SWTOR, Warhammer, Age of Conan etc were “fine” and that forum posters were minorities with real grievances were just “trolls” or the game was “fine” were wrong. Are you? I work in software support for a living, and let me tell you if our customers hated our product half as much as this forum and my kids/friends do, it would not look favorable on the stock price. What’s that ArenaNet Stock has been falling recently? Do tell.

Look I’m not doom and gloom, I’m saying their economy is a thinly veiled cash shop grab with how they “nerfed” the potions (err im sorry patched) and have nerfed other such “rare” drops lately. If you need cash SAY so, hell i’ll pay a sub if it means you don’t sneakily try to get money from me.

The grind is even worse to me than the stupid cash shop. It’s bad, it’s blatant and they said it wouldn’t be in the game and yet here it is like some Korean grinder.

Hawkian.6580:

Freyvin.5690:

So at what point are forum posters NOT the minority?

Serious question? Sometimes I still feel like I’m just being toyed with constantly around here.

I understand the technical term minority, and I saw GW2 official poster say forum users ARE a minority, but I am saying that I represent the expressions of eight players. Sure of two million that seems small, but I’ll go on record that MOST people that come on here kittening are voicing their own grievance, but also of friends and family that have played or play this game as well. So eventually we’re not a minority we’re polling data and right now GW2 is trending down faster than the GOP from where I stand.

My main three reasons, the fractal grind, the horrible badge drop grind, the tokens that don’t allow purchases from any dungeon but the one you are in, grind and the horrific economy. Nothing I do or make in this game (I have 4 400 level crafters) is worth anything. The whole economy is based on farming/grinding the same kitten creatures over and over again.

In all I’d say the developers missed the mark on most of their promises that I remember reading over the phone to my brother and sons that were so excited about what this game was going to be.

Hydrophidian.4319:

TWMagimay.9057:

SirMoogie.9263:

It’s a usage of the term among English speakers ¹, oft heard in common parlance in the phrase “the daily grind” ². It was also defined this way by Chris in his recent AMA ³.

¹ – Grind – Definition (v.tr. 6 and n. 4)
² – Daily Grind
³ – Reddit AMA – Grind Definition

1. Nothing about enjoyment
2. Nothing about enjoyment
3. Smb’s personal definition, not the official one. Since this is the only one that actually mentions lack of enjoyment as part of the meaning, you should’ve said “by Chris’s definition” instead of the misleading “by definition”.

Re: 3 – Firstly, the somebody in question is not some random shmo, but is the Design Director for the very game being discussed. Context matters. Secondly, what he’s related in the quote isn’t so much a personal definition as it’s the understanding of the word in the common language of the industry and culture. He’s the design lead on an MMO, for pete’s sake. Ask the question of anyone else in a similar position and you’ll no doubt get more or less the same answer. It’s just that obvious.

Re: 1, 2 – Lack of enjoyment and fun is implicit in words such as laborious and uninspired. Grind is dull, routine, monotonous. In other words: not enjoyable.

In the context of MMO design, this is obviously what the word is meant to convey. Trying to create ambiguity around this point undermines the fundamental premise of the discussion. That is to say, to assert or imply that grind can be enjoyed is to contradict the underlying assumption of this thread, as well as the larger dialogue about the subject, in which the game’s developers are involved: grind is not a good thing. This is the foundational point on which all in the discussion agree. In the context of this exchange, it goes without saying.

So, if you don’t agree… if you’re challenging the notion that lack of enjoyment is a defining attribute of grind… and if you’re trying to redefine the word’s common usage in the context of MMO game design… you should really be putting that in its own thread. It’s a different topic. Good luck with selling that, and I’ll look forward to seeing the cited definition that supports your claim.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to operate under the understanding that grind is uninspired, laborious, dull, etc, to wit: lacks enjoyment, by definition. And as such, is something to be reduced or avoided completely, which is allegedly the intended design goal.

This is exactly where I stand right now. I logged in last night, had a friend lead me to a jump puzzle (I have 3 80s and 670 hours in the game), helped him with some quest chain to hopefully get a drop (as usual just a chest of blues/greens) and at the end I looked around and was bored kittenless. I checked the WvW map and couldn’t bring myself to wander in that circle again.

The game is far more grindy than WoW and that’s saying something. I have purchased three versions of this game and two versions of all XPACS for GW1 for my kids. My kids won’t play much GW2 after loving GW1 (I didnt like it) because it’s boring and a “grind”. My oldest son said this by level 10, by the time you’re level 80 the game is plain dull. My entire guild except one guy has left, we are all LONG time MMO vets and just are bored out of our mind and refuse to keep grinding karma etc for no good rewards.

So I will say I’m a forum poster posting for eight people that are no longer playing or playing VERY sparingly. So at what point are forum posters NOT the minority?

The issue is that the amount of time/effort required to attain Badges are not sufficient compared to PvE methods. I’ll have to log in to check my account again but with almost seven hundred hours in the game and over half that time in WvW I only had enough badges to buy two accessories with about 250 badges left over. Not to mention the WvW gear is only good for a Pwr/Vit/Tgh set and lots of builds don’t run that set-up.

In all the WvW, which to many like me, was the primary reason to play the game, is boring and without Realm Ranks (Dark Age of Camelot) or other incentives to keep coming out, I can’t be bothered to log back in.

PvP for PvP’s sake, fine, but I have War of the Roses and BF3 for that, which are far superior games for just PvP. In a MMO I expect to progress at least a tiny bit for my efforts and right now gearing a character in WvW isn’t viable unless you want to zerg on Friday Nights to take/hold keeps while the taking is fast and rampant and buy karma gear with it.

I’ll keep my eyes on the forums because with three 80th level toons, I can’t be bothered to log in anymore. Same thing happened to me in GW1.

I have a 80 ranger, 80 thief and 80 guardian. Geared in the opposite order because the ranger was my first 80 and yet least geared of my toons. Why? Because they are boring and lackluster at anything except solo PvE content (see: gold farming).

Heck make the speed useable ONLY outdoors (IE WvW and in PvE) and not in dungeons, SPvP or caves.

Why should the Master of the Wild not be the absolute best scout in the game? Someone explain this to me. Thieves have speed and stealth, the ranger should at LEAST have speed and I argue shadow refuge (hiding your party in the woods from prying eyes) should have been a ranger skill to begin with.

OR give a ranger tracking….including tracking of stealth or “see stealth” on a short cooldown.

Agree 100%, the master of the wilds should not be the 4th best scout. This was my exact topic today in the office. My argument is thieves should have a viable ranged counter and rangers could/should fill that role.

This one change could go a long ways to fixing a lot of the “broken” perception the class gets and allow us not to have to run a bloody warhorn everywhere when I made a Norn ranger to wield a greatsword/longbow and that isnt viable in WvW because we need speed to scout.

Stay with your build in my opinion. To completely change your play-style over a couple gimmicky bosses seems like a bad idea. I personally was able to handle melee on the Dredge guy, just rolled a lot.

Being a big, strong character is penalized. From a purely min/max, every advantage angle games like GW2 with no inherent strength bonuses to Norn and either penalties or non-bonuses to Asurans make playing a Norn nothing but a penalty.

Let’s take the racial elites out of the way because let’s call them “even” to be fair, because 1> they are pretty even and 2> most people dont run them.

The Norn in WvW and SPvP is an easier to click target, easier to see as a thief or mesmer and gets none of the reach, strength, or hit points to compensate.

I understand the argument that “I don’t want to be forced to play a Norn warrior,” but as it stands unless you just want to be big because you hate the Asuran look/style then you would be better served as an Asuran for almost every profession.

This really needs looked at because as it stands these games are favoring small to large in every way with no compensation for the big guys.

Another major reason turtling works, the downed state. If everyone is nearby if anyone does happen to fall, the max number of people are close at hand to bring them back up. This is just as important a factor as the culling and the prohibivitely short (600) range of guardian shouts. There are a multitude of factors for this tactic beyond the obvious (and most important) culling.

May I say, that I looked at the bunker build and that has to be one of the most boring playstyles I’ve ever looked at. You have become a sponge.

PinCushion.7390:

Meaningless? Seriously?

Serverwide buffs in PvE and WvW are meaningless?

Power of the Mists may seem like small boosts, but they really add up. By participating in WvW and helping to earn points you get to give everyone on your server a constant buff to everything they do all week long. How is that meaningless?

I NEVER notice them, ever.

Rhyis.7058:

Maguuma, a server full of pugs. An underdogs tale.

/golf clap

To say I want a rematch is an understatement.

Relentliss.2170:

bourrain.2034:

Instead of talking about the DAoC system, can you explain it at least? …

Yeah you hide in a zerg for months and months hoping no one kills you. Eventually you get enough rank to buy a class defining skill so you can actually enjoy the game. Did I miss anything?

Then you weren’t very good. Hide in a zerg? Good grief I’d run around solo as a reaver at rr3 and do just fine. This simply isn’t true. Now if you want to say a RR11 vs a RR1 was OP, fine, but I think ANET has proven they wouldnt give bonuses that “that” over the top.

saiyr.3071:

Freyvin.5690:

I have personally gotten pretty annoyed with Maguuna this week. I have felt it was a zerg-type server and have yet to fight many players that had a ton of skill. Now, that said I’m playing a GS/scepter/focus ret-noob type guardian, so perhaps “skill” is relative. It’s been a frustrating week after coming over to this server a few weeks back and seeing it make solid gains and feeling like our small guilds were making a decent impact. This week I’ve felt we were swimming upstream every map we go to.

Isn’t the point of WvW that individual skill doesn’t matter as much?

Jamaz.9837:

Rabh, we may end up fighting again sooner than you think unless Maguuma can pull out a substantial lead against Crystal Desert and Darkhaven. Ehmry Bay is fighitng Henge of Denravi which is in the same free fall situation as Eredon Terrace, meaning our rating will only go up even if we lose to Dragonbrand.

I think he was saying the same thing as you, in two matches. You are probably not fighting us again next week at this point.

We have fought Crystal Desert before. I think it was two 24h matches where we won once and got stomped once, but I can’t really remember anymore.

I was unaware that WvW had a point at this time other than “server pride”. I think honestly that individual skill should matter more even in WvW. I wish this game had more skills that allowed smaller groups to handle larger groups if they were more organized like DAOC had. AOE mezz (breaks on dmg) comes to mind.

I have personally gotten pretty annoyed with Maguuna this week. I have felt it was a zerg-type server and have yet to fight many players that had a ton of skill. Now, that said I’m playing a GS/scepter/focus ret-noob type guardian, so perhaps “skill” is relative. It’s been a frustrating week after coming over to this server a few weeks back and seeing it make solid gains and feeling like our small guilds were making a decent impact. This week I’ve felt we were swimming upstream every map we go to.

First, I am a guardian shout build with extended boons. So while I’m not a pure “tank” support I am a support guardian that happens to do decent damage. So to the people saying Ebay is a server of thieves, yeah and no. I think we have too many (because they freaking suck in zergs), but right now they are also one of the few classes that down people really fast. We do need more elementalists that is for certain.

Here is my “old man” (I’m 37) take on how this week shook out.
I am the GM of a small guild of older guys [Old] Old Age and Treachery and we have teamed up with BT [Blackthornes] in vent/TS3 for the past few weeks and primarily with our numbers have harrassed supply camps, yaks and veteran guards. We were out on Friday, helped turn the map blue to the point it was boring, ran a dungeon and went to bed with 500 points rolling in and a comfortable (we thought) lead.

I woke up, logged in and Mag had overtaken EVERYTHING we had worked for the night before and we just lack the numbers to retake anything larger than a tower. A lot of us are non-zerg type players and don’t really enjoy “public mumble”. I think EBay has a lot of this type of player. We typically can win vs superior numbers because we are LONG time gamers and use solid tactics in small fighting that is akin to WoW arena, but honestly none of us are experts on “where” to place siege, not place siege and we find running trebs BORING as kitten. I also will admit to wanting badges and being annoyed when I’m not getting a steady supply. Why? I don’t know, maybe years of WoW has reforged my once DAOC mind (although I was a Realm Rank glutton even then).

At this point in the week, being a small team isnt fun at ALL because Mag is outnumbering us horribly to the point they are so desperate for a fight they’ll camp us in Eternal spawn or if we try to take one supply camp they swarm it hungry like dogs for a badge/karma. So it may sound defeatist, but I’m not about to keep feeding them badges all week when 1> our guild while trying to be helpful isnt really the “sit back for an hour and siege a wall” type of players bc we’re older with kids and the time we have online we want to be action-packed; and 2> We lack numbers to do anything but a futile take a couple camps for an hour or so giving us 180 pts instead of 160.

P.S. A lot of us don’t have a TON of gold at end-game and we find sponsoring things prohibitive in the money department. So this isn’t a whine, but maybe a solid “reason” as to why the numbers have dropped off the back half of the week.

I would be happy with more frequent badge drops, and realm ranks with titles and looks" for gear. Something to hold my interest as seeing as this is a RPG progression is generally needed, even if it’s lateral. The problem is the badge drop rate is awful. It should be 1 kill 1 badge. I asked a simple question and I’m beyond old enough to have played UO, DAOC etc well before WoW which yes, I did play.

I’m just trying to get a sense after 1000+ badges (which are about useless) and running in circles capturing shiz night after night if anyone else is kind of bored with this without anything like a Darkness Falls (DAOC) dungeon to fight over and realm ranks to advance our characters.

Once you’re in full exotics and spend a week out in WvW it gets pretty stale because I can’t make my character any more powerful.

It is overall a pretty fun game, but it just lacks a stickiness factor. My guild has all been groaning about an overall boredom from running in a circle in WvW without realm ranks, new gear or a dungeon to fight over. We don’t even have orbs now. My guild is an older crowd and most of us don’t care about doing each heart in some lowbie zone or feats like that. We want our characters to keep progressing but here we are with full exotics 120,000+ karma with nothing to spend it on and losing a reason to keep running around in WvW. I’ve leveled 2 guys to 80 and another to 56 and I’m asking Arena Net to add another tier of gear or alternate advancement of some type before everyone moves on. It’s not a threat but we are pretty bored.

P.S. The dungeon tokens need to be universal so that I’m not stuck grinding one dungeon over and over to get that look of gear. It would be a huge boon to be able to collect badges and spend them how I choose on any set.

Please explain why it’s a nerf PvP wise if i can close ground 25% more often and most fights dont allow me to just stand inside a small symbol on the ground for more than a second or two? I’m speaking from WvW open ground fights and skirmishes between small groups, NOT SPvP or dungeons. I can see in dungeons how the dps loss would be felt, but in WvW I personally would rather “leap” more with a blind attached and “ok” damage.

Thank you! So it’s a curse word? That’s what it’s replacing? LOL I read a guardian post yesterday that had kitten used at least 10 times.

What is this new ‘kitten’ term? It might be the singly most annoying thing I’ve ever seen sprinkled randomly throughout posts. I’m not trying to troll or flame, but what words is this replacing? Nerfs? I’m reading posts and still don’t see a consistent use of it by context clues.

I know people get in habits of using terms, after reading arena junkies and other forums for years I’m well aware of “gamer terms” but this one is lost on me.

Please enlighten.

why does this site seem to over-inflate stats?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAS7dlYg67WFSKEmIFSuAbBYPwoMC+ueQRYIDB;T8AA2ynEOJdS9kyJqgMeJ8ymjLIZOrPGgszA

If it’s possible to have that kind of vitality pool and still have those numbers for crit/crit damage and power, i’m sold.