Guild Wars 2

And yet most of the nations have sat there and done nothing towards ending the Elder Dragon threat until Guild Wars 2 begins. In fact, none of the nations actively contribute anything to the fight, it’s all the Orders.

I’m a huge fan of Guild Wars, been playing since Guild Wars 1, etc. I’m also a huge fan of fantasy novels, and to me the world of Guild Wars seems very poorly fleshed out. Let me give some examples.

Religious Diversity=Religious Tolerance? Since when? Even if we already let go the fact that the Humans and Charr have hated each other for a VERY long time, yet have no issue with 3 fairly new races showing up, we still have to contend with the fact that each of the 5 major races has a completely different belief system. Yet, in Tyria there seems to be total religious acceptance and a near total lack of racial biases, beyond the occasional salad joke about the Sylvari or the longstanding Charr/Human conflict. This seems completely ridiculous that I have yet to see a Norn arguing with a human about the Spirits of the Wild versus the Six gods, or an Asura debating the eternal alchemy with a Charr.

Politics is the root of all evil…except in Tyria. Besides some personal story missions that involved some Human political intrigue, and the obvious difficulties with the human-charr treaty, there’s almost no mention of politics at ALL in the game. For example, how does the human ministry work? How are ministers appointed to their positions? How do the Sylvari govern themselves at all? What are the actual political borders of the 5 races’ territories? What about the Asura and Sylvari? Their nations are rather close to each other, and yet there’s no record AFAIK of any sort of regional conflict.

Those are just two examples that I could think of that really bug me. If I’ve missed anything relating to these two things feel free to correct me.

Let’s see here…

Mechanics

A lot of bosses are INCREDIBLY boring. Tank and spank. They only have 1-2 meaningful attacks, don’t change their strategies at all during the fight, and have incredibly large meaningless health bars.

This gets coupled with a lot of trash groups that are harder than the bosses! For example, there’s a trash pull in HotW path 3, the one just after the penultimate boss, that I’ve yet to have a group not wipe on(and I have full HotW armor). Yet, I’ve never wiped on a boss in HotW path 3. The trash should be challenging, but no where near as hard as the bosses.

Fractals of the mists actually fixes both of these complaints in a lot of cases. There are a few bosses with at least semi-decent concepts at low levels(I haven’t had enough time to see how these encounters evolve at higher levels). And the journey between these bosses is WAY cooler(examples like the jumping puzzles, or the hammer mechanic in Cliffside, etc.) Fractals however just shows how bad the design was for a lot of the explorable modes.

My suggestion is to make explorable modes more like Fractals from a dungeon mechanics standpoint. These mini dungeons encourage co-operation and have unique and cool mechanics. Regular exp modes don’t.

Drops

Can we get cool cosmetic drops from exp modes that aren’t the same as token gear? I know you’ve added trinket drops, but can we get weapons and armor too? It would add to the armor/weapon variety and give us reasons to run dungeons after we’ve gotten everything we want from them.

Happy customers tend to be busy enjoying the game. I try not to even come on the forums because of all the hyperbole and negativity. Rome wasn’t built in a day and so far A-Net has been the fastest company I’ve seen with implementing both new content and quality of life improvements. My only complaint is that there are still a fair amount of bugs in the game.

However, the people who are complaining ARE important too. If a customer is dissatisfied with a product they ought to say something. And this feedback is helpful too.

Right now, I know a lot of people who want/need to run story modes on their characters while leveling who just can’t find groups because no one wants to do them. Their rewards are only good the first time around, so most 80’s are focused towards Explorable modes. This makes it hard for people looking to experience the story in these dungeons, as well as people trying to get the Dungeon Master title.

I think this is a shame because a lot of those dungeons have really fun boss fights mechanically, and people are missing out!

So, why not tweak these dungeons a bit and bring them back as an explorable mode path option? Then players could experience the story and work towards their achievements, all while players gain worthwhile rewards!

Jestunhi.7429:

Gordunk.7289:

Rhyaehar.9504:

Perspective?

I bought a product that was supposed to have horizontal progression in it and absolutely no vertical progression.

but after I paid, suddenly I’m being server stuff with vertical progression.
So it’s okay because the price was lower than other games?
What exactly am I supposed to put in perspective?
I made an informed purchase, I’ve consulted all available sources to make sure I’ll get horizontal progression and no vertical progression!

I’m glad you like vertical progression better than horizontal progression, but while you might feel like a lottery winner when you got your favourite type of game while paying for something that was to be completely different (why didn’t you read product description I don’t know), the vertical progression is something I want nothing to do with whatsoever.
There is absolutely nothing to put into perspective here.

There is still Horizontal progression. Do you even PLAY the game? Stats matter SO LITTLE in this game. The difference in stats between a rare and exotic is so little that it doesn’t even MATTER. The only thing that matters in the new gear type is the infusion slots, which are solely designed for dealing with one mechanic from one dungeon, Agony.

Please, demonstrate some more straw man arguments about how the game is ruined in a yet to be released update.

If the stats don’t make a difference as you claim, then why increase them at all?

Because they do make a difference.

So then why do you even PLAY the game is a 5 point stat boost bothers you that much? Gear progression from white to orange was known WAY in advance of release. Arena Net’s philosophy is not “No vertical progression” it’s that not having proper gear shouldn’t lock you out of being able to do content. You can still do all the content in this game, including Fractals, without any problem(and doing Fractals will get you gear to help make fractals easier). so what’s really the issue here?

Because you sound like you’re just whining, not offering any actual constructive criticism.

Rhyaehar.9504:

Perspective?

I bought a product that was supposed to have horizontal progression in it and absolutely no vertical progression.

but after I paid, suddenly I’m being server stuff with vertical progression.
So it’s okay because the price was lower than other games?
What exactly am I supposed to put in perspective?
I made an informed purchase, I’ve consulted all available sources to make sure I’ll get horizontal progression and no vertical progression!

I’m glad you like vertical progression better than horizontal progression, but while you might feel like a lottery winner when you got your favourite type of game while paying for something that was to be completely different (why didn’t you read product description I don’t know), the vertical progression is something I want nothing to do with whatsoever.
There is absolutely nothing to put into perspective here.

There is still Horizontal progression. Do you even PLAY the game? Stats matter SO LITTLE in this game. The difference in stats between a rare and exotic is so little that it doesn’t even MATTER. The only thing that matters in the new gear type is the infusion slots, which are solely designed for dealing with one mechanic from one dungeon, Agony.

Please, demonstrate some more straw man arguments about how the game is ruined in a yet to be released update.

The point is obvious with the Oceanic players’ time not being worth the same as American players’ time. This goes against what A-Net has said regarding night capping.

Even as it stands Night capping isn’t an issue. The issue is that servers consistently win WvW matchups by more than double the points of the other two servers combined. And this model does nothing to address that.

Props though on doing all that numbers work and research. This is very well thought out, and it’s awesome to see community members going all out like this.

The other problem is that boons and conditions are very poorly labeled. Retaliation says “Reflect damage back to target” but it really isn’t a damage reflect, but a “thorns” aura. How much power does a stack of Might give? How much damage is my stack of 5 bleeds doing? Etc. etc.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Anyone notice how you move slower once in combat? I don’t get that, but it seems to take away from the whole positioning and strafing thing because you’re arbitrarily slowed yet projectiles can move all sorts of varying speeds.

It’s by design that you move slower in combat.

I think that the speed you move in combat is supposed to be the “normal” speed and that you then move faster out of combat to make exploration easier.

As for the combat, I prefer this to most “action” MMO’s that in reality become a game of circle strafing someone to death. I’ve found that positioning certainly matters in dungeons, and of course matters in PvP. The system in GW2 is more of a hybrid between a game like TERA and a game like WoW. There’s still some dice rolling and RNG, but the system overall promotes more “active” combat. Moving around while fighting makes you significantly better than someone who stands still and auto-attacks.

Projectile reflects work wonders. If you have anyone packing a form of projectile reflect, make sure they equip it. Feedback(mesmer skill) works WONDERS when timed correctly(and he very clearly shows when he’s going to launch fire AoE’s). I also tend to spend all my endurance dodging those when projectile reflect is on cd(two dodges one right after the other seems to be able to stop me from taking damage). Other than that, stay at range so that he doesn’t use the flamethrower AoE. It’s a very easy fight once you understand it, just very punishing if you mess up.

As a mesmer

These are minor nerfs. Calm the kitten down. Mesmers are an incredibly powerful class with a crapton of utility. Those abilities NEEDED CD change.

For those of you complaining about the Chaos Storm nerf especially, might I recommend shattering clones for AoE tagging, as it’s FAR more effective than Storm. I haven’t noticed a huge decrease in dungeon effectiveness, or in general.

Calling a game a [Edit] , completely insulting end game activities because you don’t like them, saying things like “I can’t believe the developers thought this would work” or “This entire thing is just a scam to get people to spend money in the cash shop” are NOT constructive.

There is such a thing as CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, and a lot of what I see just isn’t that. It’s easy to complain about something. Hell, I hate the DR system, or the fact that the only efficient way to earn money seems to be AoE tagging defense events in Orr. These are issues that a majority of the community has acknowledged. However, I haven’t seen many people providing input as to how to fix these and more issues.

I, like most of the people here, want to see this game be successful and get even better than it already is. Rampant complaining on already acknowledged issues does not help. If you have ideas on how to make these things better, please go to the Suggestions forum and post them. A-Net has already shown they’re more than reasonable at listening to the community for obvious tweaks(such as discovering from the collectibles tab, and reporting from the mailbox). Keep up the feedback and A-Net will listen. But, keep it well thought out and constructive.

As for the fanboys, accept that the game is imperfect. I’ve been patiently awaiting this game since it was announced in PC Gamer, and I’ve followed every video, read every blog post, etc. The game is not perfect. There are GLARING flaws actually, not the least of which that a vast majority of content is not working as intended. Beyond the bugs, there are other issues that I’m not going to get into in this thread. Stop pretending that the game is perfect, and instead help the rest of us that want it to be better.

[Edited by the CC: Inappropriate language]

Dark Night.5601:

Gordunk.7289:

I would love to. Jade Quarry is actually the server I originally rolled on before my friends made me switch to Borlis Pass. However, turns out that Jade Quarry is so awesome that it’s full! Crazy, I know

Terribly sorry. Good luck recruiting though!

Actually we have new members transferring over regularly on a daily basis. They key is timing. It’s usually best first thing in the morning. Yes it’s a busy server with lots of activity. Anyhow it’s something for you to think about. Just hit us up if you decide (and are able to) to make the switch to Jade Quarry.

Best Wishes!!!!

Dark Strength
Co-GM — Black Legion Mercenary Company

Huh, interesting. I’ll be looking into it certainly…my server is kinda crappy

I would love to. Jade Quarry is actually the server I originally rolled on before my friends made me switch to Borlis Pass. However, turns out that Jade Quarry is so awesome that it’s full! Crazy, I know

Terribly sorry. Good luck recruiting though!

Hey, I’m a level 80 Mesmer on Borlis Pass looking for a guild oriented towards PvE(mainly interested in farming and dungeon runs)

Pug does not equal unorganized. Talk in chat, use a voice chat service, COMMUNICATE. If you or someone else needs to step up to a leadership position to delegate responsibilities during a section, then DO IT. None of the Explorable modes have been shown to be particularly hard once people get the mechanics down. You just need to communicate with your group so that you know what you’re doing

That video shows that lol. A not entirely geared or hardcore group, but one who was organized and played very well, did the event using MOSTLY a kill strategy except for the very last bit.

This is what the developers have been talking about. Explorable modes are HARD. You need to be organized. You need to communicate. You can’t be going in in crappy leveling blues/greens that aren’t even level 80. Sometimes, you might need to switch a few skills around for a given fight(as was shown in the video).

We have not had access to the dungeons for long enough to know every trick, every strategy, etc. What you need is more time to study and come up with effective strategies, rather than giving up right away and complaining about it.

The point of loot design in this game is that loot should NOT be a barrier for entry in the game. It’s rather easy to get a full exotic set, on PURPOSE. The point in GW2, as it was in GW1, is cosmetic distinction.

I’ve been keeping up with the dungeons forum for a while now, reading all the complaints. I’m going to address the one I hear the least because I actually think it’s the most important to Guild Wars 2 as a game, but I’m going to start off with summarizing the problems people are having right now

1. “Dungeons are too hard”. Some groups, mainly PUG’s filled with inexperieinced and/or under geared players have been having trouble clearing both Story mode and Explorable mode. The latter doesn’t concern me, but the former does, and perhaps some slight difficulty tweaks need to be made to story modes, since they’re supposedly designed for casual play.

2. “The reward does not match/exceed the risk.” The repair costs/waypoint costs are astronomical in this game. It can cost me as much as 4 silver just to get to a dungeon entrance, not to mention I may spend upwards of 25 silver on repairs depending on how my group fares. Considering how difficult it has been made to get money, this seems like an unnecessary money sink, especially when me and my friends might be learning a new dungeon/path for the first time. This discourages people from attempting dungeons. The barrier for entry should be SKILL not MONEY on explorable modes.

3. “Dungeons are broken/bugged/exploitable.” For instance, today I witnessed a new exploit in the CoF Magg path in the same location as the old one. It seriously begs the question whether any of these were tested at all. When I’m unable to run Arah story mode last night because all 5 members of my party spawn into their own separate instances, we have issues. I’ve also heard rumors that Zhaitan is actually supposed to attack you during his fight, but instead does nothing. Again, no one tested the Zhaitan fight? No one looked at it and said “You know, this isn’t working right”. That SCREAMS a lack of due dilligence.

4. “Dungeons are not fun”. This is the one I’m getting at. I’ve played plenty of games with really bad dungeon design, pure tank and spank, mobs just have tons of HP for no reason, etc. The dungeon design in this game is 1 notch above that. BARELY. I hate to bring WoW into this, but the designs in that 8 year old game in terms of structured PvE are far and away better than GW2 right now. Dungeon mechanics are bland excluding mini-games, which actually have somewhat interesting premises. (ex. Dodging barrels and walls to hit the final boss in CoF Story, throwing boulders and dodging lazers in the final fight of SE Story, etc.) Look, it does not make me feel accomplished to kill a guy with a bigger health bar than the trash. And “By the way I summon adds” Is not a valid mechanic(which seems to be more than half the bosses I’ve seen). GW2 has some really unique systems in place as far as combat goes, and overall presents a more mobile, active play style, that is very much not utilized in most of the fights I’ve seen thus far.

The point is, that people would be complaining FAR less about the other 3 things if the 4th wasn’t true. People already have chosen to ignore the myriad of game breaking bugs this game has right now, because the game is FUN. Dungeons are, however, not, and need a serious overhaul if the system is going to improve. Right now, I’d rather go complete low level zones and work towards 100% map completion then play dungeons. That is silly.

TL;DR-Dungeons are not fun, your thoughts?

hashinshin.9271:

They do have snowball mechanics.

Just that the snowball mechanics help the winners win more, orbs.

This.

Orbs need a downside, right now they help snowball things too much. When I log on and see that one server has all 3 orbs I say to myself “Well, guess I’m not doing WvW this week”.

I should not at any point feel like I am unable to accomplish anything in WvW.

I disregarded your very first post when you tried to play a Guardian like a WoW Tank, and I disregarded your posts later when you claimed Colin said dungeons are “For the elite”. Colin DID NOT say that. His comments were in reference to EXP MODE dungeons, which yes, ARE supposed to be hard.

Now back to the first issue-It really boils down to your playstyle. Am I a really good player? No. Have I died numerous times on story mode dungeons? Yes. Have I cleared all that I’ve attempted? Yes. The story mode dungeons ARE NOT HARD. They require you to play the game with only SLIGHTLY more intelligence than regular open world PvE. They require things like dodging out of the clearly labeled red circles, watching for the obvious charging animations on bosses. Instead what I read is that you stood there trying to soak up all the damage on your guardian like a traditional tank. This game is about MOVEMENT. Except in cases that were already stated in this thread, such as enemies dealing more damage to moving targets, there is no reason why you should NOT always be moving unless you are channeling a spell that requires you to be stationary.

TL;DR-You have not yet adapted to GW2 combat, don’t hate the game because you seem to fail to grasp simple concepts.

Phaedryn.3698:

Sigh…this again.

No. Orbs are fine. ANet should not be making changes to WvWvW to compensate for the players poor attitudes or inability to organize. I cannot believe the attitudes of MMO players these days, it is really depressing to see what the player base has been reduced to.

I’m not saying they have to. What I’m saying is that Orbs provide a snowball mechanic that make the people who are already good, better, and make it harder for the worse servers to do even remotely well. This does not encourage better organization or better play, it encourages people to sit out WvW when they have very little chance of winning. It would be one thing if the matches only lasted 24 hours, but now that they’re up to a week and soon 2 weeks, it’s simply watching one server dominate for 2 weeks, when, realistically, WITHOUT orbs, they would still dominate, just slightly less so.

PLEASE tell me what orbs ADD to WvW, because right now I just am not seeing it.

Alright folks, we’ve seen a lot of craziness happen in WvW matchups lately, but I’m here to voice my opinion against a snowballing mechanic that does not aid the balance of the game in any way shape or form.

To start off, I play on Borlis pass, which is one of the weakest WvW servers out there. I consistently have no queue to get in(which is nice) and my server is near consistently in last place in every matchup, save a few other servers(which is not nice).

Now, when WvW was announced, we all praised the DAOC gods for 3 faction PvP. Why? Because 3 faction PvP is supposed to stop one faction from becoming too powerful, since the other two can team up on the most powerful and knock them down a peg. Which, in most normal cases would work.

Except for Orbs. Orbs give such a ludicrous buff to the controlling team, that when a team controls all 3 the game becomes “Well, guess I’m not playing WvW for the rest of this week(or soon for 2 weeks)”. I don’t particularly enjoy running out so that my server can get slaughtered, so I can waste my limited resources on repair bills, and get no reward, neither xp nor Karma, nor gold, against a team that not only controls nearly the whole map, but has a huge buff for doing so.

Not only that, but it seems that the organized WvW guilds are now planning their entire strategy around Orb rushing when the matchups reset. So, essentially, the outcome of a day long or week long match is decided in the first hour by whoever gets the orbs? Isn’t that sort of anti-fun? Then the two losing servers get to sit there for a week and not accomplish anything?

I also can’t imagine it’s fun for the winning servers to log into a ghost town, where they’re not opposed by any enemy players.

I have two ideas. 1-Controlling orbs either nets huge point bonuses or buffs the server wide buffs, BUT gives the opposing teams a very slight buff(like, 1%) in order to balance things out. It makes the orbs worth capturing, but also makes it more difficult for them to be held onto for long periods of time. Obviously this would remove the stat buffs the controlling team gets currently.

Option 2 is more simple-Just remove them. I think this would go a long way towards keeping WvW balanced in the long term.

TL;DR Orbs are an un-fun mechanic and should be nerfed or outright removed. Thoughts?

grifflyman.8102:

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, and I don’t really like the armor sets the dungeons offer so I find it very hard to even run dungeons to begin with.

I really feel that if dungeons also had a few unique drops they would be a lot more appealing.

I can agree with that. I’m not a huge fan of how everything comes from the Mystic forge and there’s only one Legendary per slot(and many of them look AWFUL).

I would like to see some unique boss drops, especially in terms of weapons.

Look, I understand that right now repair costs are absurdly high, and that it’s difficult to justify an Exp Mode run often times, I do.

But I don’t think the solution is to increase token drops.

I played Guild Wars 1, where it cost 75 platinum+Materials to obtain an elite armor set, the most sought after armors in the game. It was a huge goal, that a LOT of people worked towards not just 1, but several sets for their hall of monuments. These were the coolest looking skins, that when properly dyed, looked AMAZING.

I consider the dungeon armors to be just that-Elite armors, that require a substantial amount of time to acquire, and are ultimate bragging rights. They SHOULD require a lot of effort to obtain.

The real problem with dungeons is two-fold

1. Repair costs are simply too high. They scale too much when the money you earn does not cover it. This needs to be changed by reducing the cost, since right now people are still figuring out fights and are dying frequently. One could argue waypoints need to be reduced as well to make it easier for end-game PvE-ers to teleport around to events and dungeons without breaking their banks

2. Dungeons are NOT rewarding enough EMOTIONALLY. I cannot stress this enough. A LOT of fights in the game right now are just wacking away at cheap bosses with high health pools who do lots of damage. Mechanically they aren’t very creative, and quite frankly they do not take advantage of many of the unique combat mechanics GW2 offers. They feel just like dungeons in every other MMO. The difficulty is one thing, but the absurd lack of fun in both Story mode and Explorable mode is blatant. You say that we’re supposed to do things in this game BECAUSE they are fun, rather than because of any gear carrot. Well, then I say to you, MAKE THEM FUN. Make dungeons fun and rewarding, not a mindless chore.

Clones don’t deceive? Are we playing the same game? Staff #2, Decoy, dodging creating clones, etc. All these abilities and more make it VERY hard to be targeted in an sPvP match. Constant clone generation allows mesmers to survive MUCH longer in fights.

Not to mention the downed clone ability, which I’ve used to distract and pick myself up in nearly half my PvP fights.

Clones and phantasms are working as intended. Phantasms die incredibly quickly but do high damage, and clones do barely any damage but have more health and distract your opponent.

I’ve never had an issue with my phantasms “Staying out too long doing prolonged damage”, and I sure as hell don’t want them to go back to the old beta way where they only fired off one attack and then sat there.

Smackjack.5071:

Potent.2369:

I disagree. I think Jeremy Soule’s music is very evocative, particularly his pieces for the Elder Scrolls series. That piece by Jack Wall is hardly ‘iconic’, it’s just one big generic, space themed crescendo. And if you’re going to try and slam possibly the most revered band of all time in a backhanded comment, at least spell ‘The Beatles’ correctly.

Equalizing popularity with quality shows just how shallow people really are.

Jeremy soul copy/pastes his own music each and everytime in every game. even in GW2 you can hear 1:1 pieces of morrowind/oblivion and skyrim and not just little pieces but the meat of the older tracks. Like i said 1:1. its shamelessly copied and anyone willing to be honest about it would agree as it is unmistakable. someone should make a youtube comparison , then no one would be able to deny it anymore.

Oblivion had 1:1 tracks from morrowind ,skyrim had 1:1 tracks from morrowind and oblivion, GW2 has 1:1 tracks taken from morrowind,obvlivion and skyrim

See a pattern here?

With skyrim the main track “dovhakin” was so revered (and rightfully so) and most atribute this to jeremy soul. Problem is though that jeremy had little to do with the creation of the track other then the technical side of things. It was the main director that was responsible for that specific track. The rest was just once again a copy paste job by jeremy of his previous work while switching a few instruments out for others and change the BPM of the tracks.

Most gamers just repeat his name and hail it because they dont know any better and it is the only game musicians name they know and therefore he must be great !

pop effect.

I’ve been a classical musician for more than half my life, and I’m a huge fan of Soule’s work. If you had at all listened to all 4 GW1 soundtracks, you would not be rattling off your overly exaggerated opinion as fact. Re-using and re-combining themes and motifs is not the same as copy and pasting. The musically trained call it “Theme and variations”, a legitimate compositional form used by many great classical composers including Beethoven(see symphony #5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI).

Please learn something about music before making such an ignorant statement

Agreed. I just recently died twice on the Battle for Fort Trinity step, and I’ve died several times through story missions leading up to this point. You throw numerous mobs at us, at our level, with often either no NPC help, or NPC’s that are completely ineffective(I.e. they barely attack, they hardly do any damage with each attack, they have no skills they use, etc.).

If you wanted to make us feel kitten for killing lots of mobs, then you have to weaken them, or strengthen our NPC support.