Guild Wars 2

Josh Foreman.8250:

For those commenting on a lack of Baubles in W2, I “dug up” (wakka wakka!) the numbers.

World 1 Dig Baubles: 665
world 2 Dig Baubles 1560

Just curious- are those numbers for World 1 the same as the first release of W1? Because I swear there were a ton more per dig in W1 in April.

I will say that looking back on 2-2, the gong part is “easily” bypassed by a party, a fact that I did not consider when I was playing it/writing about it. Solo though it was INCREDIBLY frustrating. As an aside, I did Tribulation 1-1 and had a blast. Sure, it was death everywhere, but it didn’t feel like buggy death, it just felt like exploring the only safe way to go. I have nightmares about Tribulation W2.

I’m not going to make a long post, but I would like to say a few words. I do feel that World 2 is significantly more difficult than World 1, to the point that as it stands now I don’t think most of my guild can or will want to try completing it. I am currently gathering baubles for the waterfall, so I can only comment on zones 1-2.

In zone 1, the only problem I had was with some very frustrating “warping”. There were a ton of times where I landed clean on a rock only to get thrown out as if I were hit by water. And yes, I am sure that I was on the rock, I have a good judge of distance with my character, but I guess you will have to take my word on it. The “rapid effect” was occasionally very buggy as well, showing me stopped against something for a few seconds, then I “warped” much farther down stream. At this point I just gave up the life.

Aside from those weird spots in the farthest rapids, I really enjoyed 2-1. Yes, it was harder, but for the most part it felt like fair hardness. My beef is with 2-2. First off, it was too long. It’s not that I don’t love the content, but the length of an individual stage directly correlates to the solid block of time you need to commit to it in order to beat it. It’s not the content as much as the inability to step away. When I got to the massive arrow trap pagoda with the gong, I was incredibly frustrated, but I was so far in that I couldn’t take a break, else I would have to do it all over again. It probably took me 2.5 hours.

Now, onto the arrow traps. I mean, first off, they were pretty frustrating, but I was able to accept that. Getting to the top of the pagoda felt good, and once I got the hang of it, it wasn’t that hard. So far, so good. That gong run though…. that was what took the cake. My biggest problems were that the hitbox of the safety area behind the gong was incredibly unclear, and due to the way that it sort of insta-rotated 90 degrees and you needed to switch sides, I ended up getting zinged on basically my foot at some of the junctures, even though as far as I could tell I should have been protected. The way that it did the instant 90 degree turns was extremely frustrating for me. Also as a side note the jump to get into the pagoda from the bottom was pretty obnoxious, but maybe that was just me.

Overall, it felt like fine design, but it felt like bugs or certain animations could make certain parts incredibly frustrating. The length is good from a content perspective (more to do), but frustrating from the fact that it is all-or-nothing, and the prospect of losing an hour or more of work when you really, REALLY need to take a break is kind of a pain.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Rhysati.4932:

So you have helped out small-guilds who simply couldn’t GAIN or BUY the influence. What makes you think these guild can then DO the guild missions as they currently stand? That’s the problem you are missing here.

Haven’t missed it. I’m fully aware of this perspective, however, we have always said that these guilds who are extremely limited in number will have to work together to attain these goals. That’s what this content is about. That’s WHAT these rewards are about.

There’s a huge variety of content and rewards available in the game. And while some rewards can be attained several ways, others are reserved as merit for specific tasks. This is no different from dungeon armor, achievement titles, or the map-completion badge. Certainly we would never give you those things for completing guild content.

Here’s my problem with the bolded statement. Before ascended items became part of this game, all of those things that you mentioned were cosmetic and/or on the same scale of power. All the different ways of getting gear all gave you the same quality of gear (exotic). The skin was different, yes. Walking around in full Arah dungeon armor was earned, and was respected. Having that little star next to your name for world completion was neat, and respected. If you didn’t want to do those things, you could still be on the same level as them when it came to statistics.

When ascended gear entered the game, we saw a shift in methods of gear attainment. Ascended gear is flat out statistically superior to exotic gear. When fractals came out, it was no longer a question of being able to play the game the way you wanted to play and still be on a level playing field, it was “Play fractals, or be worse statistically”. This was a massive departure from the pre-ascended tone, message, and motto. Before, you could earn something cool by doing something hard. It was cool, but it wasn’t better. You could earn other cool things by doing other tasks. Again, they did not improve you, they merely let you show off the work you had done.

When laurels came out, there was finally a new way to get ascended items. Except that it didn’t cover back slots. So really, you still have to do fractals to get an ascended back slot. When guild missions came, so too did yet another set of ascended items that were unique from there (and laurels). For those of us in small guilds, the message was basically “Nope! Better join a big guild and leech off them to earn these.”

Laurels are an inadequate solution to providing alternative methods of gear. They are heavily gated on IRL time. In order to get one character geared using Laurels you have to spend ~5 months of getting every single daily and monthly achievement. By the time you’ve done that, I’d wager that ascended armor and/or weapons will start entering the game. For someone that has played over a thousand hours, if you don’t like Fractals or are in a small guild, you will never be able to gear multiple characters in ascended gear unless other methods of attaining them are introduced. Again, pre-ascended there were a multitude of ways that you could invest time to make your character unique, cool, and maximally geared. It’s not a matter of not wanting to put in the time, it’s a matter of not wanting or being able to do one specific kind of content and not having any realistic alternatives.

So to wrap it up, my problem is largely with ascended items. There need to be more ways of acquiring them than whatever specific new content you come out with any given month + laurels. There has been a paradigm shift with regard to how players are awarded for their time, and in my opinion, it is for the worse. I don’t care if I can’t turn into a guild banner because I am not in a large guild, I care that I am gated from getting earrings for two months per character.

Maybe there is something in the works. Maybe there is some grand plan that I don’t know about or is taking longer than expected. All I know is that as it stands, I’m giving up on gearing my characters despite playing them for hundreds of hours because I don’t want to be funneled into one specific kind of content in order to earn the most powerful rewards. I respect that you’re coming on here to talk to us about this, and I respect that you are trying to find a solution that benefits everyone. I think this goes a long way towards helping, but I feel that this entire Guild Mission drama has really highlighted how problematic many players feel Ascended items are and where they might be going. I hope I haven’t been overly aggressive or offensive here, I’m just trying to express my frustrations in a clear and cogent fashion.

So great to hear that it’s unintended. I was quite miffed about it. The fact that it’s unintentional makes me completely satisfied. I can wait until the devs figure out the fix. Thanks for the heads up Martin.