Guild Wars 2

Speaking entirely within the confines of PvE, I personally find little difference in build diversity between GW1 and GW2. In GW1 I remember the time I reorganised my saved build list which lead to a significant number of builds being collapsed and condensed into one 5 (or 4) skill template leaving the other 3 (or 4) blank ‘utility’ slots to be filled on a situational basis. The net result was a surprising small list of core build templates which I have always paralleled to GW2’s weapon-based skill sets. Mind you, in GW1 one of my professions was the elementalist which was highly restricted in many builds by having to dedicate 2 to 3 skill slots purely for energy management.

Please note, I do enjoy diversity, but GW1 simply took it to an unwieldy extreme for me. While I appreciate that many loved the ‘buildwars’ aspect of GW1, I have little doubt there were many other players who simply wanted a more self-restrained skill system that could still facilitate a manageable selection of fun, effective & efficient builds that allowed them to get on & play the ‘kitten’ game.

Certainly from my recollection of GW1 the fun times happened after establishing a small selection of core builds either through player suggestions, forums or PvXwiki. I personally took no pleasure in fighting through a massive skill list filtering out all the PvP focused, downright useless, repetitive or situational specific skills just to establish some sensible and decent PvE builds.

Unsurprisingly, I find GW2’s skill and trait system much more manageable while still providing me the same playstyle diversity feel I got from GW1.

Each to their own!

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The problem is that, however it might sound like hyperbole, people don’t WANT their defenses to be party-wide, because then that means responsibility is shared. They don’t want to be the guardian who uses a hammer to reduce all incoming damage to the party by 33%, because then EVERYONE gets that defense buff, including the DPS. That in turn means that they’re no longer “the tank” which means they have no special excuse not to contribute. […]

Speak for yourself! Guardian is one of the professions I play and for sometime have exclusively ran with a hammer as the primary weapon, because I enjoy knowing the build I run is maintaining permanent 33% damage protection to PuGs while still pushing out reasonable damage/vulnerability stacks. I find it satisfying noticing the distinct damage reduction which becomes all too noticeable when playing on my other professions in PuGs without a hammer guardian.

Having skimmed read this forum thread, I personally feel some posters here need a reality check on thinking they know what the majority of the player base wants. While the forum maybe a litmus test of players’ reactions, it is just that, a litmus test that can still give a false positive.

Personally all I see now is this; which should really come with it’s own achievement rewards at this point.

Lambent.6375:

But dungeon runners who secretly wear MF are probably just a small minority of players who wear MF, so why are they being used as the basis of what is fair and unfair?

Welcome to the wonderful world of internet discussions where pitching the extreme case and treating it as the norm is the way forward. Let’s be honest, adopting a more balanced view would pretty much undermine a lot of posters’ arguments; the proverbial shooting oneself in the foot.

After all, its’ not like magic find was not available to all or the notion that a lot of players likely run around with a non-magic find set that they switch to for more challenging content (e.g. dungeons). Of course not, anyone who acquired magic find gear has been wearing it 24/7 leeching off the rest of the community.

Hell, let’s forget the notion that Arenanet themselves have been sending mixed signals with the release of celestial recipes with magic find just days before they stand up and reaffirm that magic find is not a ‘fun’ stat on gear and thus will be removed at some point in the 2013. A ‘fun’ fact which was pointed out by numerous fans months before GW2 was even released.

Personally if Arenanet is going to go to all this trouble it seems ridiculous they do not take it out of the game completely. Normalise drop rates thus ensuring every player gets an equal chance at a dropped item irrespective of whether they have been playing the game since retail release or the last month. In addition, removing the need for Arenanet to try and balance drop-rates around a weighted average magic find ratio spread across the entire population.

Original poster,

Can you keep us informed of your progress, key milestones like … oohh … say your 10 millionth run?

:D

Azure Prower.8701:

Did you know you can max all crafting professions on one character?

I’m sure no one objects to having to pay 40 silver every time they wish to switch to an alternative crafting profession from the two current active ones. Please note, assuming the switching fee cost remains unaltered, this will increase to 50 silver when reaching the new max of 500.

SynfulChaot.3169:

[…]Most accurately stated, it is that rangers had a place in the meta. […] Regardless of where you were going, a ranger would be a boon. […]

Indeed, they were such a boon they were precluded from any half sensible PvE team make-up and even PvE PuGs would frequently wait on another profession to turn up rather than take the already present ranger(s), unless said rangers proactively initiated setting up a group. In GW1’s twilight era prior to the seven-hero update the LFG tool only highlighted the wider community’s apathy towards the PvE ranger, understandably so.

It was not that the GW1 ranger was in a critical state in PvE, hell after the seven-hero update you could run a four-way ranger bow team set-up and still complete the last section of Slaver’s Exile on hard mode in a respectable time. It was the fact that other professions were simply better in achieving a desired role than what the ‘toolbox’ ranger could offer. Other professions could achieve the same result without having to have another part of the team built around their presence or could deliver better results with such synergy (e.g. warrior).

I will politely step away from this particular aspect of the discussion at this point. Other than to make the closing personal view that there is a perverse echoing of issues and community attitude pertaining to the PvE ranger from GW1’s latter years into GW2.

I can predict the answers, but 2 more questions to the original post:

5. Will the use of transmutation crystals in a magic find set be refunded?

6. Will any gold spent on purchasing the celestial recipes introduced in the most recent content update be refunded?

With regards to point 6, the primary reason for purchasing these recipes was due to the presence of +MF%.

SynfulChaot.3169:

[…]But rangers ran spirits better than rits, IMHO, when you didn’t need to use them as a wall due to being able to cast them more often and more cheaply.[…]

No offense, but that logic only made sense when a GW1 PvE ranger was attempting to justify a spot in a group for anything perceived as remotely challenging. Most spirits were on a thirty to forty-five second cool down, couple this with ‘Spirit Syphon’, ‘Summon Spirits’ and the fact 3 spirits were derived via a signet and any channelling ritualist could manage spirit up-time equally if not better than the perceived energy management benefits from ranger’s Expertise.

This is ignoring the fact that a PvE ritualist could attain 16 attribute points in channelling making everything in that line more powerful – including ‘Spirit Syphon’. Assuming a channelling ritualist was not selfish and avoided ‘Communing’ opening up a slot for an additional spirit spammer; the subsequent heavy investment in ‘Spawning Power’ not only increased spirit health but increased weapon spell duration allowing a ritualist to front load, on to a couple of physical-based party members, ridiculously powerful weapon spells like ‘Splinter Weapon’ and ‘Great Dwarf Weapon’.

In my opinion, there is an ironic reminiscence between the GW2 and GW1 ranger with regards to PvE, their presence in a PuG very much dependent on group tolerance rather than some objective desire to add one.

lockheedlight.5910:

[…]And please make the celestial armor sellable instead of account bound after crafting, the account bound thing is stupid.

I have to admit I am perplexed by Arenanet’s reasoning to make the celestial crafted items account bound. Notwithstanding my own indecision on whether the time bound nature of these recipes is a positive step, I am still considering the potential positives it could create in adding a new dynamic to the long-term demand for crafted items.

Aristio.2784:

Pretty much this. Remove the Minor Trait Instinctual Bond and replace it with:
Survival Instincts – Pet gains 1 second of Invulnerability whenever the Ranger activates an Evade.
Works with all evades. New ranger by the way, I love traps.

Personally I am not even sure why it should be made a trait. Maybe others can spot the flaws but I can only see positives by giving pets their own PvE endurance bar and with it an additional hot-key to activate a short duration pet evasion to all damage.

Furthermore, I have to question how difficult is it to program pet AI that ‘cheats’ the system by allowing it to automatically register the occurrence and response to AoE DoTs while establishing a ‘safe path’ back into combat or simply await for said ‘safe path’ to recommit. A response which can be over-written by the player via the ‘F1’ pet command.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

[…]What’s not obvious is whether they could have done something better than Ascended to retain players—not all of them, but enough to make a decent profit. […]

In certain respects I wish I could answer despite the fact I initially believed – wished for – a more horizontal gear progression system. That conceptual idea of a long term goal of working towards multiple cosmetic gear sets that emphasise certain build styles such pure offensive, pure defensive or balance of both, conditional damage orientated and even magic find for the easy stuff.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

[…]If they couldn’t, and it really was the best option available, then there’s no hope for this game being horizontal progression based. Basically it means this genre needs to be grind-based to survive. (Which is just sad. I already grind all day at work. I don’t need more grind when I have a few hours to play here and there.) […]

There is a certain expression here that echoes a personal sentiment that seriously questions the long-term sustainability of MMORPGs – whether that is subscription or cash shop based – from an individual gameplayer’s perspective. It is understandable why ‘themepark’ orientated MMOs pursue some form of artificial mechanic that tries to enhance the natural lifespan of residing game content despite the personal opinion this leads to increased individual intolerance to such mechanisms.

In brief, GW2 constitutes my personal wall of intolerance and non-sustainability. I hold nothing specific against GW2 or the up & coming releases like of WildStar, ESO, Archage or EQNext which I am sure will acquire their own proponents and opponents. In the end none of these games really have me in mind which is perfectly reasonable as I sit here sporting the proverbial ‘Been there! Done that!’ t-shirt. Once I am done with GW2 it will likely be well overdue to step aside and allow a new generation to support or pour scorn over the next wave of MMOs.

Fortunately for me after seeing E3, there may be some new appealing stuff on the horizon with the likes of Tom Clancy’s ‘The Division’ which I seriously hope will land up being as good as the jaw dropping footage showed. Reckon I could play something like that for an age. ;D

Guns and Giblets.9308:

[…] I appreciate what you are trying to do, but Anet is the one who needs to be responsible for following the original vision of this game despite the fickle whims of some of its players. […]

The potential problem is that statement could very well understate the scope of the problem that faced Arenanet in the first few months. It is the idea that Arenanet came unprepared for the rate at which a material portion of the player base consumed content, acquired the ‘BiS’ exotics and with it spend increasingly less time playing GW2 due to the growing lack of anything reasonable to work towards. Let’s be honest, this is an undesired state for Arenanet since there is likely to be a reasonably strong correlation between the likelihood of an individual purchasing, directly or indirectly, gems and their level of in-game activity.

If I was to put on my ‘feathered unsubstantiated speculation cap’ – looks rather swish if I say so myself – I ponder whether the rate at which the ‘Ascended’ item was implemented was a reaction to their own perceived screw up regarding ‘rare’ and ‘exotic’ item acquisition. I have vague recollections of early beta rumours that suggested trying to obtain full exotic dungeon armour set was going to require a veritable marathon number of runs. Couple this with Tier 6 crafted exotics requiring a hitherto new rare crafting material in the form of ecto and GW2 had significant opportunity to time gate the acquisition of ‘exotic’ over ‘rare’.

In the end, I can shamelessly speculate the notion that Arenanet panicked concerned by the public relations fallout if it went live with perceived ‘gear grind’ when their manifesto implied the opposite. Arenanet was concerned about the potential reputation damage from ‘exotic’ gear grind even though ‘exotics’ were not actually a necessity to play GW2. After all, I have read numerous posts both here and on other forums stating that GW2 can be ‘easily’ completed with even just ‘rare’ items, which to me was the original intention. It is the notion that the game was designed around ‘rare’ items being more common with players gradually working towards ‘exotic’ over a period of months.

In my opinion, Arenanet was being entirely genuine with their comments regarding the planned implementation of ‘Ascended’ items but I am also suspicious of them stretching the truth. Just consider the name – ‘Ascended’ – it literally sounds like there should be lore behind it, a full blown story and with it new amazing content. ‘Ascended’ to me sounds like something that should of and was originally intended to be implemented in a full blown content expansion.

Fiontar.4695:

[…] On the development side, we have seen a complete failure to build on the game’s biggest asset, it’s massive game world. Last Fall, they talked about doubling or tripling the number of DEs across the world by the end of year one, with the intent of making the game world feel alive via the constant evolution of Dynamic Event content with in each zone.

That was a recipe for success. […]

Are you sure?

The reason for this challenge is to question whether the general gaming base would really care about a bunch of new dynamic events inserted in an existing zone. Consider the fact there is a very small and finite number of event types and then couple this with a reward system that has to go out of its way to purposefully incentivise players to turn up.

Consider these two aspects and would anything but a small minority know about, let alone care about, a bunch of new dynamic events in, say, Mount Maelstrom? New events that ultimately land up being more of the same from a game play experience perspective, and thus largely ignored and forgotten because “Oh look, a new escort mission, not like I have not experience dozens of those already!”.

This does not mean it could not work but I believe would require something special, a zone wide interaction of dynamic events leading up to an epic finale with suitable rewards as an incentive. Except it could be argued these are already present in the game and hugely inconsistent ranging from the good, the bad to the downright ugly which is reflected in their relative popularity. In my case, I still hold a degree of affection for the dynamic meta-event in Harathi Hinterlands and wish we could see more of these types of intertwining dynamic events strewn throughout the world.

Unfortunately I take a more pessimistic approach regarding the size of the game world, seeing it both as an asset and a curse. On one hand, it provides this phenomenal foundation and framework to be filled with changing content while providing a more immersive world where geographical and geological environments can be more believably phased together. Although to this day the environmental transition in GW1’s ‘Eye of The North’ expansion from the very northern Shiverpeak area down to the Ascalonian Vanguard/Charr area is in my cool gaming experience category.

However, I also see it as a curse for the simple reason it becomes near impossible to make anything but a small portion of the world relevant to the ‘consumerism’ attitude of the wider player base. However, that is not to say there are not ways or means, I genuinely believe GW1 found its solution within its game design in the form of the ‘Daily Zaishen’ challenge. Up to the 7-hero update outposts across all four campaigns would occasionally fill up by players looking to group up and complete the daily PvE story mission or boss bounty.

Unfortunately, due to the game design implementation of GW2 such as the personal story the GW1 approach is not really a solution in itself – although the boss bounty could work with dungeons.

In my opinion Arenanet’s stance makes little logical sense from a pure mechanical standpoint. A number of poster’s have commented on the relative immateriality of the 40 silver cost because it can be easily circumvented via craft-focused alternates. But when I read such statements, rather than defending the 40 silver cost it actually highlights the irrelevancy of this switching fee.

Correct me if I am wrong, but any low level alternate can learn a profession all the way up to 400 with no other restrictions. Assuming this to be true, what does the 40 silver cost really achieve when any player can bridge their crafting requirements by utilising one of their character slots for a craft-focused alternate? For many players such utilisation could be inconsequential because they are not using, or planning to use, all 5 available slots.

Bug report submitted.

Two separate runs, the final battle to ‘Find Queen Jennah’ requires 3 separatists to be killed. However on both occassions only 2 were present or the final Captain is not being counted as the third.

As a result the final objective is stuck on 2 of 3 separatists killed with no means to complete it and thus the story mode dungeon.

Unless anyone else can shed some light on the issue?