Guild Wars 2

“Hate?” Yes. It used to be the game I recommended to friends, the one I got prople to try out. It used to be a game I logged into every day, knowing I could find something interesting and fun to do.
Then they decided to gut the guild I was in with a few other casuals.

I disliked the new direction of making things harder to solo. I really disliked the idea of adding exclusive raid-only rewards, because it leads to raiding being the only “right” way to play. I really disliked the new event timers that rewarded those who could stay logged in for long periods and punished those who did not.

But the Guild Hall? Removing, permanently, the rewards we had already earned and putting up roadblocks to prevent us from reattaining ANY of that functionality unless I wanted to abandon the core guild or recruit ringers to help? That made me hate it.

Nowadays, I tell anyone who will listen that I hate the game, that it has become a game of timesinks, goldsinks, real-money sinks, gated content, and treating casuals like they aren’t important to the game at all (catering instead to the hardcore, and only them.) I have gone from wanting the game to succeed to wanting this new game dead, actively wanting it to fail. That’s a bit extreme, but I’m being honest here: it was something I really liked, and the devs took it away and changed it to fit people who never appreciated it for what it was.

I haven’t logged in since around Christmas. I keep hoping that the devs will change their direction, but see no reason to log in to a game I can’t stand playing anymore.

Thing is, it’s not really a punishment. You don’t lose anything but time. It’s annoying, and serves no real purpose. Teq, for instance: does it really add to the challenge of the fight to have people running back from the nearest uncontested waypoint, instead of the nearest? Does it really make a difference in the fight at all? If you agree that it doesn’t change the fight, then it’s pointless. Worse, though, it FEELS pointless. You can do all kinds of things to draw out fights, draw out content, whatever, but if the players NOTICE you wasting their time for no purpose other than to waste their time, you screwed up somewhere in the design.

Hannelore.8153:

Contested waypoints are the only salvation the waypoint system has. Waypoints are used excessively in this game, to the point where many of the community requested that as much as half of them be removed during the Dragon’s Reach update, because they cheapen pretty much everything in the game.

If not for contested waypoints, it would be even cheaper. Bosses like Tequatl would become extremely easy because you could just waypoint zerg it over and over again. This is why most of the contested waypoints exist to begin with.

Hostile zones are meant to be hostile. You are in the dragon’s domain. There’s no point in taking away challenge, immersion and sense of danger for all other players so you can save a minute or so on a glider flight. Approaching these maps knowing that you can die and have to start all over again makes you think twice about everything you do, helping you play better, and increases surrealism.

I’m saddened by how easy everyone wants games to be these days. :/

I’m sad that people think “just add more wasted travel time” is in any way related to it being a challenge. Adding things that are there JUST to waste our time and add neither challenge nor fun to the fight is just bad design. See also: Fear spam that doesn’t serve any purpose in the fight but to draw it out. Looking at you Claw of Jormag.

I can’t run the 64-bit client on an old machine. We have 3 computers, 3 setups in the house, and all 3 had regular client crashes with the 32-bit client. I’m the only one who has NOT upgraded to 64-bit, and it does help a lot, but it won’t help me on a 7-year-old machine running a 32-bit OS.
The new maps:are you sure? I’ve crashed on them during Wyvrn Patriarch and during normal meta-event progress, and always log back in to 0% participation and a random map that may or may not have the event going on.
And yes, I submit crash reports. 6-10 on a day when I actually feel like playing. Less on days when I just don’t want to put up with the crashes. And I have been doing it for a long time. Each big releas seems to make it bad, then they fix crash issues, and it gets better. I think I only crashed 3 times today before getting annoyed that we had Teq at 20%, crashed, then logged back into a map with Teq at 100% and < 5 minutes left on the timer.
Edit: I see, you specifically said you need a party and someone still ont he map. Yeah, that’s a workaround, but you don’t always have friends to anchor you, and you shouldn’t NEED someone to act as an anchor against random client crashes, should you? In 2015?

Since HoT launch, I’ve been crashing every few hours. It occurs to me that almost every other MMO out there has a grace period: if you get DC’d for one reason or another (like a client crash) then it remembers where you were and what you were doing for at least a few minutes. This is tech that’s been standard in the industry for a decade or more: WHY can this game not use it?

It wouldn’t have to be long: 5 minutes or so should suffice. And if you get DC’d, and relog, it would remember which instance you were in, what your map progress was (for those maps that have a meta progression), and if there’s an event you were participating in, what level of participation you’ve had. When you log back in, those are just set back to last known values.

I’m so very tired of losing all map progress, or losing in the last few seconds of a world boss like Tequatl or the Karka Queen. I don’t expect ANet to actually fix their game, the client crashes have been gonig on for years now, but adding this QoL fix that’s baseline for most MMOs out there would go a long way towards relieving some of the frustration about the buggy, crash-prone client.

Crashes. Multiple crashes each say, usually after playing for a while. This means losing any and all progress on the maps that take hours to do. It’s frustrating to be 3/4ths of the way done with the Patriarch and lose all progress. Or to have 200% because you stuck with one outpost for an entire day cycle, just to be DC’d and the servers can’t remember that you just spent all that time on something. Can we PLEASE at least get a timeout where it remembers our progress for a few minutes in the event of a DC? I really don’t expect the memory bugs to be fixed, they’ve been in-game forever now.

Absolutely regret buying it. It takes the game in a direction I’m extremely unhappy with, and I’ve made my displeasure known here and to friends. I have gone from being an avid supporter and telling people how great the game is, to telling people that it is trying to become another failed WoW clone: raids, content that nobody enjoys, content locked behind massive grind, content locked behind time gates… Not the game I supported for years, not the game I bought originally, and not an expansion I would have bought if they had been up-front about all the changes they were making.

Wildkitten.3872:

GreyWolf.8670:

@Wildkitten: Sorry, I have no interest in discussing this with you anymore.

I’m not surprised in the least. I’m sorry that you can’t accomplish guild things solo anymore, but there is no reasonable argument to be made to be allowed to have solo guild stuff.

Except that it was possible last week? And for 3 years before that? And now, with no warning on what exactly was to be changed, many of us in personal or very small (1-5 people) guilds have suddenly found ourselves no longer able to advance our guilds.
There is no reasonable argument for taking options AWAY unless it benefits the game as a whole or a significant segment of the playerbase. Neither argument can be made here, because there is no benefit to anyone, anywhere, from this change. It’s all downside.

stale.9785:

Ability to adjust particle effects. Every option from

[] Show All
[]Show Self Only
[] Show Allied Only
[]Show Enemy Only
[]Show None

This one! Also, the option to hide backpack skins on other character models. The big wings are annoying and there’s currently no way to hide them.

Copestetic.5174:

kankanKk.2748:

I see the future, Anet will nerf raid because lots of forum warrior QQ

This is a lot of people’s fear, and it’s rightly justified to feel this way. The same people that gave bad reviews and complained here and on reddit will do a repeat of that to trivialize Raids.

Which wouldn’t happen if they didn’t put exclusive skins behind the raid content. Those of us who don’t care t all about raiding, but do care about he rewards, have no reason to say a single thing about raids if we can avoid them while not shorting ourselves.

Todd.6573:

Pockets.3201:

It also tells some players that they can’t play the endgame, so they should find another game to play.

Im just going to assume you are for the whole “everyone wins!” mentality during school competitions (is it even a competition if everyone wins?)

It’s now a competition? It hasn’t been for 3 years, but now that we have raids, the community gets divided. Amazing how that elitist attitude instantly turns things toxic, is it not? (edited, stupid kitten filter)

Todd.6573:

More content for people that like a challenge and people screaming for some form of coordination requirement is amazing.
If players dont want to do that (lets face it, they are not excluded, they just simply dont want to or dont bother taking the time to learn how to raid) thats fine. Just dont argue about needing to get everything for free. Some rewards hidden behind actual skill will be a breath of fresh air.

You want challenging content? Fine. Nobody here is saying “there shouldn’t be raids.” That’s a strawman. What I and a few others are saying is “Raids shouldn’t get exclusive, desirable rewards.” If you enjoy raiding, then by all means, raids are there. If you want to divide the community by saying that people who enjoy raids are special and should get special treatment, then there’s a problem: it creates an unnecessary division in the community. It alienates LOYAL CUSTOMERS who have no interest in raiding when you decide that they don’t matter.
Toxic? Yep. Turning “everyone who plays this game” into “raiders” and “non-raiders” and making it into “a competition” turns a game where everyone wins into a zero-sum game where some have to lose. Since it hasn’t been this way for years, the sudden change in direction is likely going to be disastrous.

paintpixie.7398:

Edit: If you read one link, out of the slew of the ones I posted, read this one:

http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/we-dont-need-you-anyway/

It has the most relevance, I think, to this topic in general, and thus can best be applied to this game in particular.
Quoted from one of the comments on the above article:
“The absurdity of the Rick Heaton numbers was pointed out by many people in many ways. It was a terrible move from a customer relations standpoint as well. I think the final nail in the coffin for that argument was Turbine’s own actions two years later as they, after a mass exodus of players, began making group instances and are now releasing a new PVP map. If only Rick Heaton were still around to face the players as his ‘resource allocation criteria’ were contradicted by Turbine’s own development.”

I read that one. The thing that stuck out to me was this one:
“Yet I would argue, that in these times of MMO tourism, where playerbases are incredibly transitory, raiders and PvPers are likely two of the types of players who are invested for the long term, and have probably been playing and paying for a while. That’s got to be worth something right? What sort of community are you left with when a large segment of your long term players are gone, effectively told the game isn’t for them anymore?”

Raiders and PvP players tend to stick to a game. They don’t pick up a 3-year old game for a single raid instance and then stick to it: they go back to the game they’ve BEEN playing, the one that has been serving their wants and needs for the last several years. meanwhile, the people who HAVE been playing GW2, who have been enjoying the game for what it is, are being disenfranchised. We are being told that there is shiny new raid content, which is fine. There are also new rewards, which are gated behind the content that we really never wanted and never missed not having.

There have been a lot of MMO’s that,somewhere along the line, decided to change their core philosophy in order to chase some demographic. It rarely works out well, because the people who are ALREADY playing the game, ALREADY enjoying the game, and ALREADY making the game money are unlikely to enjoy a paradigm shift away from the game that they like. Meanwhile, the new demographic almost never materializes: they have games that were built from scratch that meet their needs already, and no incentive to simply uproot themselves to a new game where their favored content is just a bolt-on addition.

Games that have included raids for the last 3 years have raiding communities. They have far more than a single raid instance worth of content. They have guilds built for raiding, experienced raiders, a dev team that has spent years refining and developing those raids. Why in the world would raiders come to a game that has none of that? I made a prediction in another thread that the raiders will come, they will beat the content, and they’ll basically say “And that’s it? I’m going back to my main game, then.”

If GW2 becomes all about the raiding, where if you don’t raid, you don’t matter, then as a long-time player of this game, I personally will have to move on. I bought a game I enjoyed, and if this game is going to become “raiders are more important, they get exclusive access tot he best stuff,” then it is no longer the game I bought, and no longer a game that interests me.

I won’t be raiding, period:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-show-backpacks-on-low-character-models/first#post5284812

I have an old computer that has issues when a ton of particle effects are going. I start getting a slideshow in 5-man dungeons, to be honest. But I could ignore dungeon content, do what I wanted to do, and not miss it all that much. Similarly to how I can ignore sPVP (for the same reasons: I even had troubles in the Dragonball arena with things not rendering and small but noticeable lag spikes due to poor graphics.)
What I worry about is that going forward, ANet will decide that those of us who do not raid, for whatever reason, do not matter. And the exclusive rewards are a part of that: they’ve decided, long before launch, that it’s perfectly fine to prevent me from getting those rewards. That I and all the others who will not be raiding can be discounted. That raiders are more important, and therefore get everything they asked for.
So, from the day raids were announced, I have decided that I won’t spent a single penny on this game: I refuse to support them. The only reason I haven’t tried to get a refund on the HoT purchase is because of their obnoxious policy of cancelling accounts if there’s a chargeback.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I think raids are Anet’s new shiny toy, and it will be the targeted content. I hope I am wrong but considering legendary armor, exclusive skins, exclusive minis, and a whole lot of lore gated behind these raids it seems to be their target content. I hope I am wrong about this. If raids are truly “challenging content” and they are harder than high level fractals this means that a small percentage of the community will be doing them. It would be sad if most of the targeted content was for the small minority.

And the very worst part: the people who really wanted raiding in the game left years ago. There are tons of MMO’s out there with an established raid system, raid community, and raid content. Adding a single 3-wing raid to GW2, locking all those exclusive rewards behind it, and hoping that the raiders come in droves will work… for a few months. And then, the cries of “there’s nothing for me to DO!” will resume, and the raiders will go back to the games that were built from the ground up to accommodate them.
I won’t be raiding, but if others enjoy it, then that’s all good. But I have left games before because raiders were treated like they deserved everything, and anyone who did not raid just didn’t count. It looks like this game is heading that way: If you want the really cool stuff, you have to raid. There is no alternative, there is no choice: raid or GTFO.
I’ve already gone from telling friends how great the game is, to telling them that the devs aren’t trustworthy and that I hate the new direction of the game. I log in less and less, and I’m pretty vocal about REALLY not liking the raid-exclusive stuff. Too bad, I loved this game for years, but going forward, it looks like the game I loved is gone, replaced with yet another second-rate WOW clone.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

TL/DR; there will be people incapable of doing raids, but there are no people incapable of farming (well, at least at the silverwastes level – i am sure there will be people farming and grinding raids after all).

Here, read this again:

Suppose that 10% of the GW2 population will finish the raid and find it enjoyable and “content for them”. My main concern was that the other 90% wasn’t failing the raid because they were incapable to do so. Maybe a 20-30% of that 90% won’t be capable of finishing the raid no matter what they do. That leave us with a 70-60% of players who are perfectly capable of finishing the raid (or any other challenging content) but they choose not to.

You’re only counting a skill cap there. Time and organization are a factor. I don’t doubt my ability to do challenging content. I doubt my ability to join (or form) a group with a set time and raid until it’s done. Of that 60-70% you hypothesize, how many would WANT to do it, if it didn’t take hours of dealing with other people in a schedule?

SkiTz, why are you even still in this thread? You haven’t made a relevant post in 10+ pages, you just step in to personally insult Ohoni, without actually adding anything to the discussion. I wanted to leave this thread alone and just watch, but honestly, watching you interrupt actual discussion with insults every page or so is irritating. Try to at least follow the conversation. We know, you think Ohoni’s dumb and his ideas are dumb. Thanks for your contribution.

Ohoni: you’re trying to argue with people who really, truly believe that something they earn can be diminished by letting others have it too. Logic and reason won’t sway people who insist that they need to feel special by making sure nobody else can get what they have. If that means 90% of the players can’t get something, they’re fine with that. They want unique rewards for the content they enjoy, and expect everyone else to either do their favorite content, or go without. That’s who you’re arguing with. They’ll attack your motivations, but never acknowledge that their own motivations are purely selfish too.

Here’s something I’d love to see: ANet makes the announcement that each raid wing will have 3 full sets of skins: the very first boss kill will grant a full set of 18 skins to each player involved. For 24 hours, each boss kill will award 1 set (heavy, medium, OR light) to each player involved. After 24 hours, those skins would retire and never be in-game again. Now THAT would be incentive to be the very best, and be a truly unique (limited-time, skill-gated) reward. I wonder if the people who are arguing for “unique” rewards would be for this? Especially knowing that they might actually NOT get it, and might never.

And you’re missing a big problem with your analogy: the PGA doesn’t rely on golfers directly to make money. ANet does rely on its players. If ANet had another revenue stream, advertisements and sponserships for the big-name raiders, people who wanted to watch the raids, the it would definitely be beneficial to create rewards for those who bring in the ad dollars.
However: since we are all customers, and I doubt official competitive raids are in the pipeline, ANet really needs to pay attention to the players who bring in the most money. They have to dedicate their development resources to content that attracts and retains those players. As a business decision, this only makes sense if raiders, per person, spend more money on average than other (also enfranchised) players. Keep in mind, this means completionists who buy every single weapon skin and armor set, although I doubt there are large numbers of those.
I don’t expect ANet to change on this. I’ve pretty much said I’m unhappy with it, given a few reasons WHY I think its a bad idea, and I’ll leave the thread now with this prediction: raids will go the way of dungeons: Not worth continuing because although fans are very enthusiastic about them, not enough people play and enjoy the content to justify spending more time and money on it.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Gene Archer.8560:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

You’ve been informed wrongly.
.

Actually he’s been informed correctly.

Frostmourne has never been available as a drop from the Lich King on the official servers. The only way that could have happened is on a private server.

I see. You’re right. It was just an example anyway. The point I made still stands though.

WoW has many extremely rare exclusive rewards, many of them being iconic weapons with a story and lore behind them. Getting such an item as a drop after beating a difficult raid boss is a joy, not just for the person who eventually gets the item but for the entire guild involved. Even for people outside of the guild it’s exciting to see someone with an incredibly rare weapon that you’ve never seen with your own eyes before.

So that whole story about giving the sword to your guardian was untrue, but that doesn’t matter, because the POINT was the reactions of the people who all saw this (imaginary) sword that you worked so hard to get?

I actually looked up the LotRO article mentioned earlier in the thread. Raiders were a large majority of the forum posters, and easily the loudest voices. When they stopped making new raids, the numbers came out: raiders were less than 10% of the entire community. I’d LOVE to see the numbers for GW2 in 6 months, in a year. See how many of the raiders are still raiding, see how many people are actually doing this content they spent however much time and effort on. I bet we see similar numbers.
If they have to make the raids drop exclusive loot just to get people to play them, then that’s the way it goes. I’m willing to bet that raids go the way of dungeons, eventually: not enough people playing them and enjoying hem to justify spending more dev time on them.

And “you have to do what I did to EARN your right to this weapon skin” makes you sound like a smug elitist. Not that you’ve said that, but others have. I see the game as a game: meant to be entertaining and fun. I HAVE a full-time job where I do things that I sometimes don’t enjoy to earn the things I want. It’s called “work” and not “play” for that very reason. I log into a game to enjoy some downtime, NOT to just spend yet more time doing things I don’t think are fun to get something I want.
Challenging content can be fun, don’t get me wrong. But when you have to do the content for the reward and not because it’s what you want to be doing, then it’s a flaw in the content or a flaw in the reward system. And as I mentioned before, just because its traditional to lock good rewards behind raids, doesn’t mean that it will work for GW2, which has been almost aggressive about giving players options, alternatives, and choices about how they want to play the game.

Edit: It isn’t “they shouldn’t get exclusive things.” It’s “nobody should get exclusive skins.” Titles, sure. And I’m not pushing for exclusive skins for my way of playing and for nobody else: that would, to me, be stupid, selfish, and unnecessary. It creates conflict within the community for no real benefit to the game. But that’s part of what I’ve said before too.

Fox.3469:

And btw, saying “other games” with such a despise for them, clearly shows why you don’t understand most of the playerbase. You seem to be of the impression that people who like GW2 and people who like Wow and Swtor and Wildstar are entirely different groups of people, while allot of players just like mmo’s in general, seeking one that fits them best. GW2 wants as big a piece of that pie as possible, they have been wanting that since launch. I can guarantee you over 50% of the playerbase will have played another mmo prior to this one. Some even multiple ones. In fact most people i know in the game have taken a break from it somewhere in the last few years, playing other stuff instead.

Felt this needed to be called out: I used to play other MMO’s. I found the culture that rewarded raiding more than any other activity to be toxic. Any attempts to change that other game were doomed to failure, because it WAS an ingrained part of the game. Here’s it’s being added after 3 years. There are some of us who bought the game BECAUSE the whole concept we were sold didn’t include “Raid or GTFO.”

If you want to see what raids bring to the community, look at this thread. Toxic comments, personal insults, declarations that anyone who wants to voice their desires as a consumer and as a player is an “entitled, spoiled little chld.” BTW: name-calling isn’t generally how adults operate, but whatever.

Fox.3469:

This needs to be singled out, because you clearly don’t realise wich minority group 1 guy in particular is really vocal about not wanting these rewards, i’ve talked about this with my guild, all players since launch, and most played the original guildwars before that. I’ve not heard anyone saying they hate that raids have exclusive rewards. In fact the only people i’ve met that think this is a problem is a vocal minority on the forums.
You are the one being vocal, almost on your own here… You are the minority.

I can’t keep up with the thread all the time, and quite honestly, Ohoni seems to be doing well enough defending his position that people are reduced to attacking him instead of his position. I agree with most of what he’s said, and would add that even before the raids are live, they’ve had the effect of polarizing and dividing the community in a way that only the introduction of Ascended armor did. Ascended armor was a big deal because it felt like it was a reversal of what the GW2 team promised, and so does this. Remember, some people are STILL not happy with Ascended gear years later.

Fox.3469:

And btw, their continuing to play is not of any real importance to you, it is of real importance to Arenanet. You don’t care for these players, so you expect everyone to agree that they aren’t relevant, and quite simply, we don’t.

He said that the people who were serious about wanting to raid generally left after a few months. This was true. What I’m personally worried about is that GW2 was never meant to be the same type of game as those ones where raiding was THE end-game, full-stop. Adding raids is fine with me. Making the raiding rewards good is fine with me. Making the raiding rewards the ONLY way you can get things is not fine with me. I mentioned before that this disenfranchises customers who bought this game BECAUSE it wasn’t a “get to max level, then raid” type of game. I can really only speak for myself here, but I preordered GW2 more than 3 years ago, and have supported it since, partially based on the fact that it is NOT that game. And not only am I angry about the exclusive rewards, I’ve been quite happy to tell anyone who cares that the game looks to be losing its identity to become a second-rate clone. GW2 is a great game, but not when it tries to be something it isn’t, and never has been.

Windsagio.1340:

Interesting experiment for the loot discussion: Try describing the current system without using ‘earn’ or ‘should’.

Me First:
They want to encourage the players to use the gametype, unique loot is a strong tool for that
There’s a tradition of doing it that way.

Raids reward people who can and do raid. Anyone who cannot, for any reason, cannot get the “unique” rewards. Customers who feel disenfranchised are not loyal, happy customers, and customers who feel alienated or tossed aside are generally VERY vocal about their displeasure. “Tradition” is not sufficient when a large number of the most loyal customers bought this game specifically BECAUSE it broke with traditions.

maddoctor.2738:

I think the examples people are giving are hardly on-topic anymore…

The best example on the topic is every other RPG ever released so far in gaming history, that doesn’t use a 100% pure random loot system. In every such RPG ever created, items are rewards behind content, very very specific content. Usually the hardest dungeons and the hardest bosses also have the best possible loot. That’s how every RPG ever works, video game or even not video games, like p&p RPGs.

The game masters make dungeons, and they add dungeon-appropriate rewards for them. Usually in a lot of RPGs, since they are single player, and not meant to be repeated, you get the exact item the boss character is using. You want that Staff of Awesome Time Bending that is held by a powerful Lich Wizard? Well you will probably have to go and kill him, or infiltrate his castle and steal it. Farming his minions that plague the countryside won’t reward you the item no matter how many you kill.

You want that epic gemstone that is part of a Dragon’s hoard? You will probably have to infiltrate said hoard and either kill the Dragon or find another way to get it, still doing the actual content. Farming the random goblin army minions won’t give you the item.

Yet in MMORPGs players have this weird idea of everything being available to every type of gameplay although this thing doesn’t exist in any other RPG, so why should it in MMORPGs?

Because “Play your way” was one of the marketing promises? The ability to do what you ENJOY, not what was REQUIRED, and to be able to enjoy the top-tier rewards. Because for 3 years, we haven’t had raids with exclusive rewards, and quite honestly only a very small group of people even wanted them?

Now, ANet has drawn a line in the sand: raiders are more important than non-raiders, and get exclusive rewards that can’t be earned anywhere else. If that’s their decision, well, it’s their game, but its not the game I bought, and not a game I’m interested in supporting.

With this announcement, is it possible to cancel a preorder? I left WoW because they catered so hard to the raiders, and treated anyone who couldn’t or didn’t raid as second-class. I have no desire to support the decision to cater to a minority who enjoy raiding and force everyone else to endure something they don’t enjoy, or go without.

Better that they remain just a title. Giving in-game bonuses, no matter how small, leads to them becoming just another piece of equipment. Giving them cosmetic effects leads to the same problem we currently have with backpacks: people with slower computers can’t actually turn them off, because they aren’t a part of the base character model. just leave them as floating wors that do nothing.

Claw of Jormag: Doubled knockdown time, doubled fear time, both now bypass stability and heat shield. Nobody thinks this boss is anything but a troll in dragonscales anyway, might as well make it official.

Behellagh.1468:

Backpacks and weapons are not considered part of the character model. Turn your Character Quality Setting to Low and everyone will have generic models of each profession yet the weapons and backpacks will still render in their proper form. They are separate entities from the player model and only the player model is affected by the quality setting.

Since they obviously have different models for each race/class/armor type, I wonder if they could (or would be willing to) add a “default” backpack and one for each weapon as well. Since the lowest settings only show things like “human male heavy armor”, could they add a simple check that if settings are low enough, it shows “default greatsword” and “simple backpack” instead of showing Eternity and the white wings?

None of us have that information, but I hope ANet sees this and maybe considers adding it.

The wings are the most noticeable, but things like the burning book and the fervid censer also have their own special unique particle effects to go along with them. Massive framerate drops happen to a lot of people, and since I tend to do world boss trains a lot, I just leave the settings low. Since weapons can’t be toggled to show generic versions either, even at lowest settings the stuid effects for Legendaries still render as well. Any one effect is negligible, but when you get a dozen, or a few dozen, all rendering at once, you start to see big hits to performance.

I generally run around with lowest settings available, especially at world bosses (and have had the client crash when I try to increase the settings.) I tend to see everyone as generic characters in generic armors, with little to no variation.

There are 2 exceptions to this: Weapon skins are always shown, which seems perfectly fine, but why are the backpacks shown? Especially when everyone is now running around with the big ugly wings? I can’t think of a reason why this specific piece of outfit would always be shown, when nothing else is. Is there any chance that they can given the same treatment that armor gets, not being shown when charactr models are at the bare minimum?

2 hours later, right on schedule.

• Error Logs <—*
  es referencing skill 10170 use multiple weapon-types.
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×0f7d64
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10218 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10168 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10285 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10285 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10285 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10328 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10328 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10328 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10285 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10285 use multiple weapon-types.
  The skill-palettes referencing skill 10169 use multiple weapon-types.
  Texture ‘0×03539b’ dimensions too small
  Loading ‘0’ texture failed
  Model ‘0×0e8624’: Permutation ‘sword’ not found, auto selecting permutation
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Model ‘0×082245’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Model ‘0×082243’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×00d956
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×00d95a
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×00d95c
  Model ‘0×082245’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Couldn’t find missile launch point for gadget ‘’.
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×00e689
  Model ’0x082245’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Couldn’t find missile launch point for gadget ‘’.
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Model ‘0×082245’: Failed to resolve AimIK bone indices.
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’
  Texture missing mip chain: 0×00e689
  Couldn’t find projectile effect for skill ‘Aw3PF.xcnwE’

I’ve sent in literally a dozen or more automatic crash reports, with a lot of them having some snark in the comment section because evey single one of my characters has had it happen: Click on a map location outside the current zone, and the game hard-crashes to desktop. This happens after a few hours of play, and when I get a day to ssit around and play, I usually get it 2-3 times in a normal day.

I know there’s nothing much the community can do without the actual bug report, but a gamebreaking crash that’s had many, many autoreports and logs sent in, and I’ve never heard a word back. I just crashed again, that ‘s the first one tonight, and I’m just trying to get a bit of attention to it. Next time it happens, I’ll try to post the log, or most of it.

It’s almost like this feedback thread jumps back to page 1 every single time people see double fractals. And the response to them is overwhelmingly negative. And ANET has made exactly no changes based on the feedback from this thread.
Disappointing, but not surprising, I guess.

As an activity, it’s fine. If you enjoy it, go nuts and have fun with it.

As a daily achievement (2 of them, in fact,) it SUCKS. I admit that I’m one of the people who are just hoping to finish 2 rounds and get the heck out. I run an older computer, and lag issues mean serious rubberbanding, including “OBSTRUCTED” while they hit me just fine.

At least I can go in, get slaughtered (I have won exactly one round and do 2 rounds a day,) and get out so I can do something more interesting. Or, like today, just get so fed up that I logged out after dailies were done.

In the now-defunct City of Heros, DoT’s stacked, and debuffs (-damage%, -hit%, -regen, etc) all stacked multiplicatively. it was possible, with enough debuffers, to completely floor even a boss’s stats so they hit once in a blue moon and for very little damage. Meanwhile, you could debuff the kitten out of their defense and damage resistance as well. “Support” builds were weak one-on-one, but godlike when you started force-multiplying.

Rotscale, Destroyer of Vanquishers

I have 2 characters from each race, except for one. The one that finishes the set will have to be a Norn male.

1: Condition damage overhaul. Make it worth doing in large events, without making it even stronger in WvW and PvP. Increase stack cap to 250 and let condition damage specialists stack just as well as direct-damage specialists do.

2: Crystal Desert. GW2 has absolutely beautiful landscapes, and I want to see what’s happened to one of my favorite areas from the original. Tomb of the Forgotten Kings was always fun, so let’s see it redone.

3: Closure on some storylines. Specifically, let’s END the Scarlet/Mordremoth storyline, possibly give some closure on the Ascalon Ghosts, and gear up for the next dragon (Jormag, maybe, while setting up the Shatterer for the future?) Buildup is nice, but too many plot threads have gone on for far too long.

4: New weapon skills, or old weapons repurposed to new professions. More options are always good.

Iron ore, Silk cloth, Soft Wood. Iron ore and Silk cloth repersent the most money I’ve spent on mats in the TP, with Silk probably being the highest.

Favorite: Grenade Engineer. I love the way you can make grenades hit things they have no business hitting.

Least favorite: Elementalist. Tissue-paper armor and slow slow slow cast times. Elementalist was the slowest class to 80 for me, and I just hate everything about playing it.

Going to recommend 2.5, myself. Being able to claim any sort of progress towards a goal is a big step towards correcting the system. I’ve never seen a precursor drop, after 1.5k hours, most of it spent wandering. Been There, Done That twice, and just today dropped half a million Karma on Obsidian shards to keep working on crafting. That’s a pretty serious investment of time and effort, and it’s small change compared to some of the people in this thread who have many times that amount invested.

For people who have had that kind of luck, the RNG has added exactly nothing to the game experience. And I know that if I log in tomorrow, none of that makes any difference either. It’s not a good feeling to know that RNG makes each roll “all or nothing,” heavily weighted towards “nothing.”

Another one who won’t be getting the daily completionist today because of the double Fractals. I got 2 of the 3, then had a choice: Do a game mode I really hate just for the daily, or log out. The fact that players are on th forums complaining instead of in the game playing should be a clue. The dailies need to be expanded to a few more choices each,.

What happened to “play your way?”

Adding another voice to this. If they’re going to keep adding more and more currencies, the wallet needs to be updated for it. Also, if they’re going to require hundreds of a currency type for a single purchase, a stack of 250 isn’t going to cut it. Add Geodes and Crests to the wallet, set up a nice tabbed design that can be expended for the next inevitable currency, and let us get on with playing instead of micromanaging inventory for this stuff.

Hope that this is on the list of things to fix. It’s made levelling a new chef a lot harder than it needs to be.

Dark Jericho.8609:

I enjoyed the fight and thought it was way better than the buggy modrem boss outside Fort Salma in the last episode.

Kas and Marjory decided to walk away in that fight for me. I didn’t find out untill later that they were supposed to be there helping…

The statue fight isn’t difficult, really, but it feels like you’re trying to do everything yourself: your allies can’t do any significant damage to Barradin, they ignore the fear wards, can’t kill the ghosts that are attacking them, and if you value your sanity, don’t count on them to do anything about the menders. So you’re stuck running back and forth, killing menders and trying to do some damage to the statue, while the archers ignore your useless companions to hit you with crippling shots.

Overall, the fight just seemed to take too long, and I think it’s because you spend so much of the fight running and dodging between “kill the mender” and “hit the statue.” It would be nice if you didn’t have to run the entire length of the room, dodging orbs, archers, and fear wards, twice every 30 seconds (however long the menders take to spawn.)

I eventually got sick of it and when the statue was at about 1/3 health, just ignored the menders and killed the statue. Took less than a minute for me to kill it from there, even though Smodur had been hitting it ineffectively for almost 10.

Rastille.8610:

It is bad enough if I am DCed after the ten-minute deadline – but it is soul-crushing when it happens near the end of the 45-minute period. No rewards, no achievement updates and always the threat that it might happen again next time.

Surely there is a way of coding in a grace period for getting back into the instance should a player become DCed. Come on Anet – this is basic stuff!

THIS. THIS. THIS.

Having this happen utterly ruined the event for me. I don’t even want to bother anymore because it just feels like gambling with my limited play time.

Third time tonight. Each one after half an hour of working towards the event, only yo have the client crash and get credit for nothing.

“The other common overlap is the God Mode Sue, with a ridiculous power level, forcing the heroes to hold the Idiot Ball, and/or requiring Deus ex Machina in order for the protagonists to stand a chance of defeating them”

ridiculous power level? yep
Forces the heros to hold the idiot ball? yep
Deus ex machina? We’ll see.

Villain Sue. From Nobody to Nightmare, too.

My contribution to this: I avoided it from the beginning because I KNEW this was going to be nothing but frustrating for me. I went in today because the daily required it.

I KNOW the first boss has an easily-seen 1-hit KO. And here’s my screenshot from about 2 seconds before he killed me with it. Anyone want to tell me what build or gear changes can help me fight an invisible enemy? Or one that can one-shot me during my latency period?

One-hit kills are bad design, a nod to being difficult without actually having to design any challenge. The devs don’t know how to create challenging encounters without breaking the rules of their own game.

Zeph.5927:

The OP is not talking about the gauntlet guys. Read his post. He’s talking about the champions guarding the balloons.

And I agree OP. The champions have WAY TO MUCH kittenING KD. And if you’re forced to solo one, you spend 90% of the fight on the ground. There isn’t enough kittening stability in the world to remotely help. But, I didn’t expect anything less from Anet. All they know how to do is make mobs KD you and one shot you. It’s the only kittening strategies they know how to implement. So freaking sad.

Actually, they know “confusion stacking” and “stun-spam” too. The OP has it right: the most annoying thing a developer can do is take away control. When you have no choices to make, no options open to you, then you might as well not be playing the game.

Harbinger.8637:

Having guards with Stand Your Ground helps a lot. Overall the golems was the best part!

Try is without SYG. The golems become the worst part, the thing everyone is complaining about. “Bring more stability” is great for a few classes. For the rest, it means “bring another character.”

After the new dungeon, I don’t want to support this Living Story at all. Not with money, not with anything positive to say about it, nothing. Logged out and doing something else. (Yeah, complaining on the forums- it MIGHT help.)

The pulling is the only thing that makes this unfun. Dodging, moving, thinking ahead about where you need to be and when, those were all a blast. Problem is, any strategy can be completely negated by a single pull. They hit, you die, instantly.

i have a problem with dungeons in general because the devs seem to like the idea of CC’ing players with stuns and knockdowns constantly, but disallow those same tactics against the mobs. Aren’t we supposed to be the heroes, not the chewtoys? I hate being helpless because the devs can’t make a reasonably fair fight, and have to cheat with ridiculous amounts of CC. Pulling here is just another example of what I hate about he dungeons.