Guild Wars 2

Sin you can’t use gold to buy most of these prestigious armors. So after you get exotic weapons/armor gold is pretty much useless in this game.

Exactly on the point Gray. This game needs that freedom of choice because that’s what made Guild Wars so fun and was a big part of it’s longevity and it worked. Anet knows it worked yet they chose the “common MMO” way instead. That makes absolutely no sense to me. None whatsoever. It’s like downgrading. Why the hell would they do that?

The freedom of choice being how you can acquire each piece of armor. Don’t give me that “You don’t have to get that set of armor!” You should be able to get each and every set of armor multiple ways, exactly like it was in GW. And you can’t do that with dungeon armor, you do the dungeon or you don’t get the armor. That’s stupid.

It wouldn’t be as bad if you could get tokens off of the dungeon mobs themselves. But Anet doesn’t even give you that. That’s fun, why would they take away something fun?

If you want to get the armor right now, you should be able to do so without the amount of grind that is currently in the game. There should be some grind involved obviously but they need to do something to correct the amount of it.

It’s possible to make the “I want it now” and “I can wait for it” people both happy. Or at least come to a better middle ground. Make tokens universal or give them a chance to drop off mobs in the dungeon. That will go a long way to cheer some folks up and it doesn’t hurt any one elses style of play.

Sylv.5324:

“Yeah but Guild Wars lasted a lot of people 5+ years just on that. So it must have done something right.”

They had several expansions. This is the first release. Chill out.

I’m not asking for more content, I don’t need more content right now there is enough. My main point delves on the fact that Guild Wars did the grind game right, (when you wanted to grind) and this game didn’t. This game should have followed the grind game the way Guild Wars did and Anet abandoned that which doesn’t make any sense.

Now it’s time to make your character look pretty and play other games. Because you can’t make your character look pretty any time soon in this game without an extremely boring grind.

Anet doesn’t want you to play this game for more than a couple hours each day. For what reason’s I don’t know.

You can PvP if that floats your boat.

Try completing achievements, though not as fun as they were in Guild Wars, it’ll give you something to do to burn time.

I would say rack up money, but there is no point. You can’t buy any of the real special armors. But you could do each dungeon 1 time per day, any more than that and you’ll get bored before you can get the armor pieces you might want so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Level up alts and experience the content with different skills.

Sazgo.9842:

I would rather explore the world getting 100%. Or just roaming between 3 orr zones doing DE’s to grind karma, doing a few dungeons than doing smite crawler runs for weeks. This is a better grind than gw1.

Well yeah I agree I wouldn’t do any farm in any game for weeks, but that’s what was nice about GW. You could get the mats with money too, so you could do anything in the game almost and earn some money, sure it might take longer but..that’s where the effort thing comes in.

For the armor in this game you get 1 way to do it, a stagnant amount of times you have to do it and 3 different experiences. So eventually it’ll get extremely stale but that’s the only way you can acquire it.

Like I said, I don’t want the armor to require less tokens. I want there to be more ways to get the tokens, give the tokens a chance to drop from any mob in the dungeon or hell make the dungeon’s more fun overall. Gives a little bit more incentive to actually want to do the dungeons. I’m sure some people enjoy them right now, but they could do certain things to make others enjoy them as well and keep more people happy…which doesn’t really have a downside.

It’s all about the email. If you use the same email account for Guild Wars and anything else, your chances of getting hacked greatly improve.

iniside.4736:

Aven.7295:

iniside.4736:

Sekai.5708:

DusK.3849:

They touched on a power plateau at max level around the time they had the ele reveal. Countless blogs and discussions in the years after that. You mean to tell me that somehow, when you “read everything on their site plus a couple reviews and beta videos”, you somehow missed all of that?

Here’s a link to a blog post by Colin touching on how a gear treadmill will not be in the game.

Colin Johanson

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Here’s Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum in a video a few weeks before release talking about endgame.

So basically, yes, ArenaNet has said gear progression past max level will not be in the game. So if you bought this game expecting a gear treadmill, you might as well go out and buy Battlefield 3 expecting it to be Quake-esque arena shooter since you insist on being an uninformed consumer.

Correct. I did not read two random blogs released just prior to the game before buying it. I read what was on the main website, specifically the dungeons section which is very much in contrast to “aesthetics only,” and did a couple hours of research otherwise, most of it before June 19th, which would make coming across that information rather unlikely. Calling anyone that didn’t hunt down every last blog about the game uninformed consumers is ridiculous, and judging by your other posts in this thread you are either a rabid fanboy or a bad troll anyway, so kindly take it elsewhere. Neither I nor the OP nor many of the people concerned about the lack of endgame are saying GW2 is a bad game, but we would rather not see it be the next Warhammer, which is what it will be without some form of post-80 character progression. That actually does include things outside of the “gear treadmill”. AA/skill points that only work in certain areas so as to keep pvp balanced, heroic bonuses that only apply to heroic dungeons, there are numerous possibilities that could be implemented with minimal effort and without disrupting the other aspects of the game.

There was no post level 20 progression in GW1 either. Only cosmetic progression.

So just.. deal with it. There won’t be any power increase after level 80. Which I’m really glad I’m tired of games where I have to endlessly chase new carrot to be on pair with everyone. I have no incentive to do it nor time.

If you want endless progression. Go play WoW, RIFT, Everquest and countless other MMOs.

GW1 also had enough content to support the original intention and had Replayable content. Also it wasnt NEARLY as bogged down with anti farming codes. Please actualy know what your talking about before you say it. Ive played every single one of those mmo’s, gw2 at its core, is actualy a worse grind because we cant actualy farm.

GW1 had less content than GW2. If claim otherwise. You just haven’t been here from start or you memory working in really picky manner.
What you cloud do in GW1 ?
Complete Missions.
Do Quests (less than Events in GW2).
Do PvP. I can agree that there was more PvP Modes on start (HA, RA, and GvG).
Ohhh.. And that’s it.

Yeah but Guild Wars lasted a lot of people 5+ years just on that. So it must have done something right.

The armor/weapon cosmetic goal and then later achievements is what it was all about. They made farming enjoyable, and it did get testy at times but overall most of the farms were an enjoyable experience. Especially when it was a solo farm. That’s partly what made Guild Wars last as long as it did.

But they totally abandoned that concept in this game and they shouldn’t have. People like to farm if there is a reward for it, and while there are minor rewards in this game, they aren’t as rewarding as they could have been and I don’t know why Anet would pass up on a chance to make something more people would enjoy. A percentage of this unhappy customer base would become happy if the loot system worked a little bit more like it did in Guild Wars..and it would hurt no one.

Regarding dungeons, all I’m saying is if you want to grind them it should be fun. They made grinding in Guild Wars fun, for the most part. So why not in this game?

All I’m saying is the optional gear grind in this game shouldn’t be harder than it was in Guild Wars. Why would they go a route that makes more people unhappy. The unhappy people in this thread were happy with how Guild Wars did it. The happy people in this thread were happy with how Guild Wars did it.

So why the hell would they want to make one piece of the customer base unhappy when they didn’t have to?

It’s perfectly easy for them to adjust the mobs in each dungeon so they have a chance to drop the tokens required for the armor for that dungeon. Kind of like the majority of the mobs in FoW had a chance to drop shards.

The grind lessens, people who want it right away don’t have to endure something that Anet shouldn’t have implemented the way they did in the first place and the people who want to take their time can do that as well.

gurugeorge.9857:

Vargs.6234:

Endgame PvE options at level 80:

-Get 100% world completion. This is pretty fun most of the time, but it’s over quite quickly unless you’re sitting around waiting on bugged skillpoints, or for your server to change WvW positions so that you can pick up PoIs/vistas.

-Do events. But why? They’re really just the same old “mindlessly mash 1 against waves of harmless enemies that run straight into the AoE killing fields” sort of thing you’ve done from 1-80. It tends to be more than a little mind-numbing and I don’t really know why I would spend my free time doing it. You can get some money and karma for ugly orange gear, but that doesn’t seem like a great motivator. I already have enough cash/karma to buy full 80 oranges but I haven’t even bothered. My 78 oranges are worse by a whole couple stat points and don’t need fine transmutation stones.

-Do explore mode dungeons. These are extremely frustrating, buggy nightmares, and that’s assuming you can even somehow manage to get 4 other poor idiots to waste their time to lose money and get 1% closer to some armor set. Considering how difficult that can be, good luck getting all of the massive amount of tokens you’ll need, especially when only a small fraction of the playerbase is even good enough to make progress in them. I want to like dungeons, but they are incredibly unfun and very reminiscent of D3 Inferno.

-Get more crafting professions to 400. There is absolutely zero reason to do this unless you really like throwing money away. Save time and just give it away.

-Get a legendary weapon. Haha! Right.

I don’t really know what to do at this point aside from play alts, which doesn’t seem particularly appealing. Already defended enough circles against 7 waves of centaurs. Mashing 1 to try and tag everything isn’t gonna be all that different on a warrior than a thief.

LOL, that’s absolutely hilarious – poster deliberately reduces the gameplay to the most boring, mechanistic thing he can possibly do, and then complains that he’s bored.

Genius!

Outside of WvW and PvP, there is nothing else to do at the end game that doesn’t get boring faster than it should.

Like I said, Anet needs to go back to Guild Wars 1, see what they did for end game content there..realize people did it for 5 years and it was working..take those few mechanics and implement them into this game and then profit.

Haishao.6851:

Gareth Porlest.7209:

The problem Haishao is they make the things that take a little more time to get, not fun to get. In Guild Wars, it was fun to get those things that take a little more time. They knew how they set it up in Guild Wars, so why did they do something totally different in this game? Something that follows what many MMO’s do. They did it right with Guild Wars, why change it?

Dunno. FoW and Vabbi armor weren’t something you could get in the first month after game releases.
Dungeons armor are basically that. Just that now there are more than only 2.

Yeah I know you couldn’t get them that fast, I’m not asking for these to be gotten right away. What I said was it was a lot more fun to do the grind required to get the FoW and Vabbi armor than it is to get the armor in this game. Not to mention the different ways you could acquire them, either farming the mats for them or getting the money required and the different ways to do that. In this game, you get one way to get those armors. Just one. That seems like Anet is taking a step backwards and going in the footsteps of other MMO’s rather than trying to stand out from them.

Why would they change the way they did it in the original Guild Wars? It worked there, and worked pretty well.

I just wish the end game wasn’t regulated to doing things that are extremely tedious. Why oh why didn’t they follow the brilliant way they handled Guild Wars, in that aspect.

Exactly Goose. They should have made this the same as they did in Guild Wars. The amount of times you needed to run FoW to get Obsidian armor wasn’t a stagnant number, it could be 20 times, it could be 50, it could be 15.

But in this game, it is a stagnant number. It shouldn’t be. I don’t want to have to run a dungeon 70 times, all the time to get the armor. I want a chance to have to run it 45 times or only 50 times..because the tokens drop off mobs. I just don’t understand why they didn’t design it that way..that’s the way they did it in Guild Wars and it was fun. This isn’t. Why change something that works well?

I mean you guys played Guild Wars right? You know it wasn’t as bad as this and I’m sure some of you even found it fun to get the certain armors. Why make it so much harder in this game? Why take the randomness out of it all?

The problem Haishao is they make the things that take a little more time to get, not fun to get. In Guild Wars, it was fun to get those things that take a little more time. They knew how they set it up in Guild Wars, so why did they do something totally different in this game? Something that follows what many MMO’s do. They did it right with Guild Wars, why change it?

Crysto.7089:

Have fun.

Those things you mentioned preventing you from having fun? Play something else if that is the only way you can have fun.

There is a problem with this. This game wasn’t supposed to be “have fun doing this, and this..but none of these things.” It was supposed to be “have fun doing this, this and this..and all this as well.” But if they do certain things to stop you from having fun doing what it is you like doing..that kind of defeats the purpose of the game doesn’t it?

These people designed GW 1, they were with the game for a long time. They know exactly what people like to do and what people did in that game. Yet they try and take it away for this game, why?

My main qualm with the game are the dungeons and how they are handled reward wise. Right now I feel it’s not worth the effort. I think they should be looked at. I threw some suggestions around in a few other threads over the past 15 minutes but I’ll put it here too.

I think the chances for rares/exotics at the end of each path should be raised a bit. If a person gets one, most of the time they’ll want to go back and try to get another. If you make them drop at the right percentage this will keep the person doing the dungeon and somewhat happy. Maybe raise it a bit for boss battles as well, though not as much.

The most important thing though, I think, are the tokens you get. Right now I feel that it will become a boring grind to get the armor you want, when it doesn’t have to be. As was witnessed in GW 1.

Instead of just having a stagnant amount of tokens drop each path, make it so they can randomly drop off the normal mobs as well. Silvers having a higher chance to drop them of course, same with golds and then bosses dropping a random number. IE if the boss was supposed to drop 5, now he can drop between 5-12. That random chance will keep people doing the dungeons and it won’t be AS grindy as it is now.

It will also make the dungeons a bit more fun to do, even with the current difficulty. “Yes it’s really difficult but hey each mob has a chance to drop that token!” That’s how it was in UW and FoW, and I’m sure some people got sick of it if they did it every day more than 2-3 times. But 95% of the time I did FoW I enjoyed it and I ran it numerous numerous times in groups and solo.

It will still require effort to get the armor, but it won’t be as painful or boring and that’s always a good thing.

Null Unit.4375:

Well, you are going to get some harsh responses. So, I will lay it out for you in a nice way.

Guild Wars has always been a pretty princess simulator. Those dungeon sets are for looks. And looks are the only thing Anet makes a grind for. You buy crafted items, or whatever you think has the best stats. Then, you transform the looks with the dungeon sets, or whatever you like the looks of best.

It’s a weird setup for anyone who is not familiar with the Guild Wars franchise. For those that are, it’s not news in the slightest. Again, the only grind in this game is for aesthetics. And that means the grind is entirely optional and not needed to compete in anything other than pretty princess contests.

Yeah that’s true and I’m okay with that. I’m not okay with how much worse they made the grind compared to the grind required to get the “top tiered looking” armor in GW.

It required money, or you could farm the mats. Mats you could only get one way by farming (but it wasn’t a boring farm). Money you could get in many ways. This game? You have to do a certain dungeon, sure they have 3 paths but that only goes so far. You don’t get the tokens as drops, you get them after boss battles, a stagnant amount, always. I can do that 5 times, then I get bored. Why would they change the process? It worked beautifully in Guild Wars…why go backwards for this game?

There’s a simple fix for it, make the tokens a random drop in the dungeons on top of the tokens you get after a boss battle. So you know, instead of getting 25-30 per run, you could go in there and come out with maybe 40 or even 60. Knowing you could get a larger amount would make it a bit more fun to do..or at least keep the drive going.

Or they could make them tradeable but I’m sure everyone would hate that..then everyone would have the armor and people wouldn’t be snowflakes anymore.

I’ll probably be logging on to it for a year or more. But actively playing it? 2-3 months. There’s just not enough fun to be had after you get to a certain point. Guild Wars lasted me 2-3 years (with a few breaks) on the actively playing scale. Few games do that, I don’t feel like GW 2 is going to do that. I enjoy the game but I don’t know if I’ll be able to enjoy it more than once over with the way that things are right now.

The problem stems from the fact that the dungeon grind isn’t fun at all and there is way to much of it required to get the armor piece. They should have followed the way they did it with Obsidian armor in GW 1. That was grindy too but it didn’t feel like it at all. Even when farming shards for it. Maybe because you knew you could get a lot in a run?

In this game you know exactly what amount you’re going to get (tokens) and you always get that amount..there’s no randomness to it and that makes it kind of boring after the 15th time. If you could get a range, say 5-25 per boss encounter and then a low chance at a random token drop per mob..it probably would be a hell of a lot more fun to do the dungeons.

I just don’t understand why they went backwards in this aspect. Guild Wars had grind for the best armor but it was a fun grind because everything was random and you could get it all within a week or it could take months depending on how you did things. But you could have fun both ways.

With this game, you can get it soon or later, but trying to get it soon requires you to have no fun at all..if you can have fun doing a dungeon 20 times in a row+ then more power to you I guess but still it’s quite ridiculous.

Now this is all my opinion of course, but I had fun grinding for my armors in Guild Wars 1. I don’t have fun doing it in this game. That tells me they went the wrong way (for me) in this game when it comes to that.

The longevity that Guild Wars had isn’t present in this game when it comes to the grind/farm game. Which means as long as it stays like this, it won’t last for more than a month for me. Which is sad really because they were able to keep me entranced with GW….so why not with this game?

Premixed.4567:

/cringe. It’s WoW’s headless horseman all over. (I dont know what came first, or if there is reason they chose pumpkin heads). There’s no lore to justify that beyond some contrivance to have a Halloween event.

Guild Wars had this going on since 2005’s Halloween. I’m not sure if WoW did it sooner but I don’t think they were trying to copy it.

The Halloween event has been going on for 7 years and it has some lore relevance behind it, so I would hope that we would see an event in this game as it was a big part of the first game.

Yeah but your teams always kills the other mobs in 5 seconds? What happens if they’re alive after that 5 seconds? You have to sit there for up to 25 seconds (20 or so if you spec for it) taking damage, and throw in one mace block for good measure. I think that’s to long especially with the damage the dungeon mobs throw out.

But I suppose as long as you have a good team there’s no problem with anything.

Hey, now I’m sure there will be those who disagree with me but I feel at this point in time that this skill is completely useless most of the time in PvE. I don’t know how it stacks up in PvP but unless you’re using Frenzy in PvE..why would you even bother with this skill?

Especially in a dungeon situation. Warriors really don’t have any decent damage blocking abilities. All their blocks have to long of a recharge to make a difference, and don’t last long enough. They block 3 attacks at most, and those 3 attacks recharge before your block does=you die. Endure Pain lasts 5 seconds, so that’s about 2-4 attacks blocked and has a 90 second recharge. So you get hit with those 2-4 attacks about 8 times=death. So you use blocks and endure pain together and you die then too. So you die.

Anyways, 90 seconds is way to long of a recharge for a skill that lasts 5 seconds. Most mobs either die and you don’t need to use it, or kill you after you use it so it was pointless anyways.

So I think the recharge should be reduced so it becomes somewhat viable. 40 or 45 seconds maybe. That is still quite a long time, but no where near as bad as 90 seconds.

Next on the list, elites. There is one viable elite, one somewhat viable elite and then the rest are garbage. Most people I know use Signet, the banner has some use in group events and I like to use that as well even though I feel the recharge needs to be reduced a little bit. Juggernaut needs to do more damage or have a reduced recharge/increased active time. Because right now, the signet is just better to have than all the elites in almost all situations (IE group events and the banner like I said).

But really what I care about more than anything is Endure Pain because Warriors don’t have a lot of survivability especially against high health mobs and I feel pretty useless when I have to walk around shooting mobs so I don’t get tagged and then instagibbed because I can only sustain damage for 8 seconds every 30 seconds. (You usually die between 9-29).

Hammer is good in certain situations. I find that for exploring around it’s a bit to slow for my tastes so I stick to Axe/Mace or Dual Axe or Greastsword. But I like it in dungeons, using the abilities right to CC the enemies.