Guild Wars 2

No offense to those people linking anything like “make this much gold/hr” or discussing how to farm or how it relates to the economy in GW2, but they are that mindset is exactly what is wrong with the game.

No fantasy (or anything other than “real world simulator online”) MMO should at its apex of content revolve around making gold, selling/buying or even an economy.

The crafting system is one of the least interesting I’ve seen in 14 years of MMO’s, and that’s saying a lot. Cooking at least has some interesting recipes, and ways to get mats via karma and gathering.

If your argument revolves around “you can make profit too!” or “if you’re smart you can farm to get what you want”, then you’ve already excluded yourself from the discussion.

Dragan.7568:

Other way of thinking might be that server points stop counting if there isnt anybody against you -> you could still cap, but the match would still be more even. Most of karmatrain-pvd people dont even care the score, so it would not be so bad. Problem is how to balance it.

I can’t think of a rebuttal to this argument other than guilds gaming the system, which Anet can then crack down on if it’s widespread (similar to bots).

Though there should be a cap of the population somehow, if there’d be a map with 60 people vs. no defenders, the 60 should gain no PPT from objectives. The only obstacle then would be how to gauge what a “fight” is, vs. arbitrarily counting population every x minutes.

Svarty.8019:

It’s nice to see the Badlands Order boys still have the same attitude!

Hey some of us were Destro too.

I’ll see your Order and raise you a WAAAGH!

I don’t think things like stomps actually help WvWvW itself, those are just player centric additions.

Things like having guild customization options for camps/keeps, such as converting a camp to have dredge only mobs (hidden underground until aggroed), or Kodan with knockback/knockdowns, others along those lines that guilds could theme themselves around would be a pretty good thing to see.

Even having visual changes to a keep based on what the guild claiming it chose would set WvWvW into a more dynamic experience (the race specific keeps from WAR).

Also having some kind of indicator as to which guild claimed which objective would help, for example entering Astralhome could have a line under it that says <Guild Name>, as it is the flags and banners may as well be taken out for all the good they do.

CuddleStrike.8215:

I believe they did…. But I can’t be too sure.

However, I’m dying from the oppressive heat.

I’m new to this bread business, is it in an oven being baked or is it fresh out and still scorching hot and you’re trapped inside it? A bread prison?

Server: Sanctum of Rall
League: Gold
Enjoyed Season 1: Yes
Should we have season 2?: No, unless achievements are reworked.

I personally liked the start of the season, but anyone who’s competed in any sport (or has common sense really) knows that you lock team/player transfers before the competition starts.

For achievements, they’re all things you do while on the offence, and there are none for defence except the repair achievement, which is a hit and miss because if your server is dominating, depending on when you play, you may never get the chance to actually repair anything.

With the account bound WXP and the chance for alts/other toons to come into play in WvW (hopefully less warriors/guards), spvp type achievements might work well (get 50 kills as a ranger, necro etc).

Every regular commander I’m sure really doesn’t want the sentry achievement in S2.

It’s http://www.wowwiki.com/Algalon_the_Observer peeking into GW2 of course.

Asudementio.8526:

Fannwong.3059:

Hello Polismassa,

Let me clarify a few things:

1. There is no morale superiority in not working overtime. It’s just the way SOR in general wants to work.

2. The focus is ALWAYS 1st on winning the fights, the 2nd priority is winning the ppt. PPT is important but it’s 2nd priority. We will want to win but looking at how EU has evolved, we recognize that some guilds want to focus on winning the fights 1st vs watching objectives/ppt for other time zones and we want to grow that type of community. So yes, we are still looking for guilds to field our time zones that we cannot cover because we want to win but not at the expense of working overtime.

3. I did some checks, the reason why we are gaining PPT is because quite a few of the guys and girls are back from ESO, nothing more.

FW

Polismassa.6740:

BAEK.8561:

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Kigera.9584:

DeWolfe.2174:

The only question I have is, when is the karma train starting? Holiday Karma train tomorrow???

Karma train? With how close SoR and TC’s ppt is?

Exactly, dont you know, they’re going to pull more 15+ hour shifts to catch up, then brag about beating a T2 server at the end of the week like they’ve been known to do in the past…. or maybe SoR’s a changed server, which would be awfully nice, and appreciates how actually close this matchup has been.

Edit: Ok JQ, you can take your boot off our throats any time now.

Are you sure? SoR is (generally speaking) not known to pull off crazy hours. The server known to pull off crazy hours is BG because their primary goal is to win. SoR has always been more about fights, rather than winning.

This old line again? Look, I respect SoR as a server, I really do. You guys rose up from a lower tier and have been excellent competition over the past 6 months of coverage wars and other BS between the big 3.

However, SoR is like any other T1 server in that you really want to win, if you didn’t want to win, you wouldn’t be in T1. That’s not a bad thing by any means, but stop trying to pull the moral superiority card every time your server is having issues.

Yawn, excuses excuses excuses. SoR refuses to just admit certain things and this is what tarnishes my opinion of them most.

Be careful about confirmation bias. FW is a pretty reliable person for a neutral standpoint.

I’m sure BG and JQ have guilds that are “all about the fights”, but chances are one server or the other will tend to have commanders that focus more on “taking easy objectives” for PPT than others. SoR just happens to have a few less of those guys than server x or y at certain times of day, just like pretty much any other server.

Please continue to make excuses. SoR has never been graceful or modest in giving advice, winning, or losing. May as well go out with the only thing attributable to your name- consistency.

Please stop generalizing singular people’s posts as the representation on one server. SoR isn’t one person. There’re plenty of people that have respect and like for BG/JQ (and when TC has numbers) for actually making WvWvW interesting and not the blowouts or PvD’s that have happened on the mid to lower tiers.

If SoR rebounds, awesome. If not, then what? JQ vs BG, and….it becomes a 2 server match.

Reverence.6915:

This was recently linked in our server forum

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/4-5-JQ-BG-SoR/

What they’re saying there about BG is what people are saying about SoR now. SoR will bounce back, I’m pretty confident of it. BG lost a lot more then than what SoR has lost now. If we can do it, SoR certainly can do it too. Especially with their strong core guilds.

I agree with you, but I’m hesitant about the parallel. SoR may not be losing as much as BG did back then, but the game and WvW was relatively new-ish.

Now other things are competing for people’s time, the holidays, beta’s, PS4, new releases etc. and attrition happens quite a bit more, and that’s not mentioning within GW2 itself with PvX guilds and players going to the new fractals next week.

It’ll bounce back, but this consolidation of population to the larger or winning servers isn’t healthy for the game in the long run.

MokoToko.6890:

snip

Could it have occurred to you that people stop playing GW2, and SoR from week X to week Y didn’t have recruitment drives to fill those gaps?

How exactly is BG having this PPT a good thing by the way? SoR by your account was one of your “best” competition, if SoR is no longer a good competitor, by your words, what do you think’ll happen exactly?

This can’t be the only MMO people have played and the exact same cycle is going on, one faction/server gets overpopulated/popular/unbalanced even for the short term, it snowballs and people move on, pvp system stagnates etc.

Its happened in every single MMO bar free-for-alls.

League has really turned me off WvW, besides the obvious forum vitriol, all these accusations and “drives” to pay masses of people and guilds to come to one server or another really kills any sense of “community”.

Having played Warhammer (as bad as it was the RvR could get pretty good), GW2’s WvW has been a letdown overall, but at least until transfers got heavy you could count on at least seeing the same people.

With league, all that plus the arcade-y aspect of WvW has gotten worse, I’ve logged in maybe 2 hours over the past 2 weeks, vs. the daily 3-5 last year.

I’ll pick on you OP since you decided to post such a loaded topic (for me).

Ashadow.6874:

Scarlet is the best enemy we could possibly have at the moment, aside from maybe the Elder Dragons.

Seriously, she rejected her place in Pale Tree’s dream, decided that only SHE would decide where or what her path was. She studied for eight years in the Grove, with Sylvari engineers and realized she wanted more.

This is of course, a subjective opinion, but compared to many, many characters in literature (all literature), she is objectively badly written. When you start off your character without a basis for her motivation, you should stop, rewind and rethink what made her take the action she took.

No exposition was made as to why she rejected the Pale Tree. Without some fundamental conflict that the reader/player has to know before the character acts, Scarlet is no more than a token villain thrown in because “we need a villain”.

Ashadow.6874:

So she went to Hoelbrak….snip.

So she moved on, and began to study under a gladium of the Iron Legion. snip

She went to Rata Sum, and she wasn’t just accepted in automatically…snip.

Afterward, she joined the Inquest…snip.

After she was thrown out, she learned alchemy from the Hyleks…snip.

Headmaster Omadd, seeing her potential even tracked her down and offered her a chance to the see more of the Eternal Alchemy, to know as much as possible.

Think about what you’ve written here in the scope of Guild Wars lore and the relative youth of the Slyvari. Explain why would one of these groups/people accept Scarlet into their trades, have enough time for her to master said trades and then never mention anything to anyone about this virtuoso who just so happened to move on from their cultures within the current timeframe of Guild Wars 2.

Ashadow.6874:

She wasn’t just some “instant genius who excelled at the Asuran colleges and was suddenly a genius.” She worked hard, she persevered, she pressed for every grain of knowledge she could. Scarlet is dedicated, and dangerous.

Even the Pale Tree tried to convince Scarlet to stop, even the Pale Tree is worried about what she knows, and what she is doing.

This is an example of exceptionally obtuse writing (not from you OP). We have nothing to have a basis that she did indeed, “work hard” or persevered through anything. If she was present in our personal stories for example, and was a ‘prodigy’, where we as players saw her potential, saw her disappear, her re-appearance would have a tremendous impact.

As it is, she’s, to me, the very epitome of a “Villain Sue” and a lazily written one, again, not being mentioned once by any of these groups she joined and excelled at.

It’s perfectly fine to enjoy a badly written character, it isn’t fine to pretend that character is anything else hoping that further ‘light’ will be shed on her motivations.

It’s a good thing that exposition isn’t ingame or we’d be in real trouble!

She is said to be tied to the Flame and Frost arc (apparently she was the one that manipulated the Molten Alliance although this was stated outside the game, inside the game it was never officially confirmed or stated, simply implied by their presence during her invasions).

Here is my problem with that:

The Flame Legion don’t have a great deal of respect for females. In charr culture they are the ones framed as the reason why the females weren’t present in GW1. It’s difficult to believe that such an organisation would listen to a female sylvari. To do so you would have to disregard an established theme for their faction simply to accommodate Scarlet as a villain.

The dredge are a xenophobic race. They have a history of slavery and despise other races as a result of it. Why on earth would they work for (or listen to) Scarlet when she is from another race and she also personally uses threats of violence to control and subjugate her armies (“Have you met my Aetherblades? They work for me, you know, because they like living.")? This portrays the Aetherblades similair to slaves. Why would the dredge work with someone who enslaves people?

What happened the leaders of the dredge and the Flame Legion? One of the themes of groups is that when one leader dies, another takes over. I was under the impression the dredge had a military dictatorship in place. I don’t think a new Imperator (leader) of the Flame Legion was officially established but the organisation has been around for hundreds of years, Gaheron can’t be the first leader to die and he likely isn’t the last. They aren’t just laying around waiting for Scarlet to come harness their unused forces, they are an entities in their own right but the story ignores that simply to use them as tools for Scarlet to be a villain.

What exactly is it about her involvement in Flame and Frost that you like? The story’s complete disregard of the Flame Legion and the dredge as autonomous factions in Tyria with their own identities? The apparent lack of a motive or story behind what Flame and Frost was all about? Not even an attempt to explain why two different factions were easily controlled by a single person neither of them would likely deal with simply to accomplish very little?

The way the story is currently being written, established lore is just a tool box for the writers to pillage when they want to make Scarlet seem more threatening. Now she’s making a conveniently vague deal with the Nightmare Court to infest another part of Tyria. It’s like the writers think “let’s take two aesthetically different things and put them together with total disregard of lore and racial culture because that establishes Scarlet as craft and inventive” regardless of what it does to established lore.

The world of Tyria is already on its knees. Humans used to be the most powerful faction in Tyria, now they are on their last legs. The asura have been pushed out of their old homes and forced to run away. The same for the norn who were forced to move south (who are also plagued by the cancer of a dragon worshipping faction). The charr are sieged on all fronts by ghosts, branded minions and the Flame Legion and the sylvari are dealing with the Nightmare Court and whatever dragon is most threatening at the time. If you think Scarlet is the biggest threat in Tyria you haven’t been paying attention, the small number of refugees caused by Flame and Frost is nothing compared to the migration of entire races that Primordius and Jormag caused. Zhaitan caused the destruction of Old Lion’s Arch and reshaped the land just by getting out of bed, Kralkatorrik branded a good chunk of Ascalon by simply taking a morning stroll. The final fight of the Personal Story may have presented an underwhelming experience when it comes to Elder Dragons, but Scarlet is a drop in the bucket compared to them.

I don’t know what criteria the OP is using for best, but it can’t be one that involved respectfully treating the existing lore like ti matters and doing justice to the stories that came before it, because Scarlet is like a wrecking ball.

I just have to say this was brilliantly written.

In short, Scarlet just does not work thematically. Whoever wrote her really has no clue on the various factions and themes working within Tyria. Dredge and Flame Legion may ally to invade Ascalon and the Shiverpeaks, to both their benefits, but neither faction would even think to ally with Scarlet.

Flame Legion are xenophobic, already have a leader, and would enslave Scarlet in any case. The dredge are communistic, led by quasi-dictatorships, oh and are xenophobic to an extreme. They would never follow a sylvari or any “surface-dweller”.

The Nightmare Court is the only faction Scarlet makes sense in joining force with, and even that’s a stretch, as she’d need to be exposed to the Nightmare, which until now, as far as we know, she wasn’t.

Scarlet is a terrible villain to anyone who’s so much as read any other literature other than MMO plots, or really anyone who took sixth grade English.

How about….just having one type of transmutation stone?

I never got the point of having one for 1-79 then a super special one at 80 considering most of the skins they’ve released since last year have been for 1-80.

People like the OP (one only needs to check his sig) are exactly what GW1 wasn’t catered for, and how GW2 is exactly catered towards.

If I understand correctly, he wants a list of pre-determined cookie cutters to join with him to farm so they can farm better.

Hechicero.3297:

I also like to watch how people behave during times of stress, by doing so you can tell who a person really is. It’s a proven fact that under stress your real self, the one that most people try to hide comes out to shine.

While I don’t disagree with your post per se, this quote is absolute nonsense, people are in fact NOT “themselves” under stress.

As stress hormones cause increased blood pressure, heart rate, and quicker breathing , people act more impulsively, and quite in fact are NOT “themselves”. Watching people who aren’t under stress who are making decisions rationally based on evidence and their own experience is what you can conclude is who the person “really is”.

Back to the topic, I can’t see anyone defending the current ascended crafting as being anything other than utterly lazy design from an RPG standpoint.

For example, to make an exotic greatsword, you need ONE hilt,ONE blade and the inscription made from 5 dowels and a bunch of secondary mats, and that was understandable and made sense.

To make a legendary, you presented “gifts” and a precursor to a genie and he gives you a legendary, it’s stupid, but ok, it’s not totally unimmersive.

To make 1 ascended weapon you do this:
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gw2-ascended-greatsword-crafting-32.jpg

How does that make any kind of lore, design or really crafting sense?

Chuo.4238:

You know, this entire thread would never have existed had ArenaNet not introduced tier gear, and a grind to get it, however large or small. Why? Because long before, Mike O’Brien said grind should be about cosmetics, not stats, and so many, many people bought GW2 with that expectation.

I seem to recall an 11000+ post thread back in November full of people saying “don’t do it, people don’t want that, and you’ll be called a liar if you do.”

Yet here we have it.

Would it be too childish to say “we told you so”? Probably. I feel like doing it anyway, though.

EXACTLY. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a +1 stat or not, it’s the time gating and the ridiculous grind doing a particular set of events to death to be able to just craft one weapon for one character.

Back in November, it wasn’t as big a deal I think, because you could just buy the trinkets for one character, play another month, get them for another character and so on and maybe you’d get a ring from a fractal if you chose to do it above 10 (with a pretty good drop rate).

All in all, before last November and until now, the only thing you’d miss if you didn’t play GW2 is laurels, and just skins.

Now it’s crafting, and weapons, and skins. “Log in today or miss out, because prices are just going up and up!” or “Don’t miss making your crystal or brick today!”.

GW2 went from a game you truly felt like you could hop into and step away from without missing a beat, to something that you need to log into a grind in just to keep up, and once again, worse than before, those with the ingame funds to control the market win out.

It’s starting to be a WoW vs. GW2 topic, and I don’t think it should be as it’s two different games that should appeal to two groups of people.

WoW again, made it to where it is by appealing to a LOT of demographics, and sadly Guild Wars 2 is trying to do the same and it just can’t, not in this environment where the players have dozens of games, not the least of which are MMO’s to choose from.

They’re not competing for our money, but for our time, and GW2 with the introduction of Ascended crafting and two week releases, basically boiled it down to “play a LOT (or buy a lot of gems —> gold) or you’ll miss these carrots we’re dangling”.

Assigning arbitrary numbers like 100 dragonite here and 100 ectos there to craft a sword makes no sense whatsoever. At least have some type of rpg element and make these craftable in places like the Orr temple that lend some type of credence that we’re playing in Tyria.

Vayne.8563:

Crapgame.6519:

Someone said:

Let’s pretent that the 400k concurrency number is from launch…well so what? Are you saying you can name an MMO where the bulk of the population doesn’t play less over time? Do you think ANY MMO has more people a year after launch than on launch day concurrently?

I’m not going to get into the middle of this cat fight but actually if you would recall, Warcraft actually gained subscribers (paying mind you) over the years. It increased year over year and only after cata and the 10 million mark has it subsided. Most would consider its current population of 6 million a success yet here we are talking about 400K active maybe at best and 3.5 million copies sold.

Look, not going to pee in the wind here but I do find it rather interesting that people ask “do you still play that game” (e.g. GW2). I really don’t know how it fits in the public space but for me, it is only really WvW that I care about and it is pretty much dead in regards to return on investment (playing time mind you).

Anyway – Figured I’d throw that out that at least one MMO grew. The others while good failed because they tried to measure success like the two ton heavy thing…

Actually, you’re right WoW did grow. But at the 1 year mark where we are now, it had less sales than Guild Wars 2 does now and it didn’t grow by that point to it’s high point. So how do you know what Guild Wars 2 will do in the same time period. If Guild Wars 2 has two or three years of updates, how do you know it won’t grow?

More to the point, Eve, also considered a successful MMORPG just managed it hit 500,000 subscribers…I think it was last year.

The fact that WoW was mega succesful at a time when there was virtually no competition and made a name for itself means what exactly?

EVE isn’t just successful because of it’s numbers, it’s successful because gamers, whether they play EVE now or have played it, respect EVE and CCP. They cater to a niche and they serve that niche, and serve it well.

I’ve tried EVE once and wouldn’t play EVE, it’s just not for me, but you know what? I respect it, because it’s not trying to be everything to everyone.

How many books or movies,or any medium really except MMO’s, do you know that cater fiction/non-fiction/science/fantasy/drama/comedy/horror/suspense all in one volume?

Developers in general need to stop making games that appeal to “everyone” because there’s no such thing as “everyone”. WoW was the only one to do this, and it was popular because of it’s polish and there was very little competition for it for years.

GW1 strength was unquestionably it’s PVP, and that’s been sidelined in GW2 not only for PVE but PVE that’s poorly written, poorly delivered, while the real meat of the game, WvW has been tossed in the backburner for a year.

Invasions, Rift does it better (and fits in their lore). Personal stories, ToR does it better.
GW2 needs focus, and less fluff.

That’s looks like either…Tom Scholes http://crayonboxofdoom.blogspot.com/
or Jamie Jones, though I don’t think Jones nor Kekai Kotaki work directly for Arenanet anymore.

Lambent.6375:

I think ascended gear should be account bound, it would help people with multiple characters out a bit.

If it’s account bound, I don’t think it will stop people from wanting to obtain new ascended gear because eventually they may get tired of moving the items between characters, and they will also want to use different skins, and try out different builds.

That would make sense seeing as how they’re time gated, and if they worked like the achievement tab, you could just give a copy to your other characters that used those weapons.

But then again, legendaries being account bound made sense too.

Theftwind.8976:

The sheer amount of materials required to fashion an ascended weapon is ludicrous. I have read fantasy novels ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper and considering “Stormbringer”, “Excalibur”, “Sting and Glamdring”, “Werewindle”, and “Callandor” nowhere could I find a sword that requires over 800 ingots of metal to create. (not counting all the other materials). One can overlook the 1,500 ingots used to create a Legendary such as Twilight as those are used to create a “Gift of Metal” which then becomes part of the sword’s creation. With Ascended however they do not even bother to hide the grind behind the story of a “Gift”, just throw all this stuff into a forge and you will get a sword light enough for you to wield with special powers.

They could have done it differently and still dragged out the process as long as they wanted to. Clues in the world to special recipes, certain beasts to kill for special reagents, skills that need to be required by practice, and so on.

Sadly game developers have lost the ability to tell stories in their games and to make those stories believable. That lack of believable storytelling is what turns great games into a grind. They take the easy/lazy way out by increasing or inflating the costs for items in materials or gold rather then adding real content and sadly this process exists in all games. A game starts out with great promise; there are new stories to be told; new discoveries to be made that fit the story being told but eventually they reach the point where that story no longer makes any sense. It gets lost in the inflation of gold/materials/time or more commonly known as the grind to fill in the gaps.

Single player games have a finite timeline. They have a beginning and an ending to tell a story and thus can be made to be more believable. MMO’s are meant to be ongoing so the timeline they can encompass does not end. The lack of a good story is filled in by the grind and this is a good example of that. One day, hopefully, a developer will begin to understand that the greater and more believable the story you tell the greater your game will be.

This game does not need more developers, it needs more story tellers.

No offense, but everything you’ve circled in that screenshot is a “minigame” within the game of Guild Wars 2.

Achievements are a minigame in and of themselves as you do various activities to “achieve” them, and even if you disagree with that, a game that has achievements as real “content” is absurd.

Liadri mini you circled, from a minigame within Guild Wars 2 that in no way connects to the 1-80 experience or the world at large.

Same with SAB, asura magic training box, within the larger Guild Wars 2 world, is not content.

The only thing I’d say you have right is the Dungeon Master circle because that is actually the Guild Wars 2 content that can count as real sociable content.

Theftwind.8976:

The sheer amount of materials required to fashion an ascended weapon is ludicrous. I have read fantasy novels ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper and considering “Stormbringer”, “Excalibur”, “Sting and Glamdring”, “Werewindle”, and “Callandor” nowhere could I find a sword that requires over 800 ingots of metal to create. (not counting all the other materials). One can overlook the 1,500 ingots used to create a Legendary such as Twilight as those are used to create a “Gift of Metal” which then becomes part of the sword’s creation. With Ascended however they do not even bother to hide the grind behind the story of a “Gift”, just throw all this stuff into a forge and you will get a sword light enough for you to wield with special powers.

They could have done it differently and still dragged out the process as long as they wanted to. Clues in the world to special recipes, certain beasts to kill for special reagents, skills that need to be required by practice, and so on.

Sadly game developers have lost the ability to tell stories in their games and to make those stories believable. That lack of believable storytelling is what turns great games into a grind. They take the easy/lazy way out by increasing or inflating the costs for items in materials or gold rather then adding real content and sadly this process exists in all games. A game starts out with great promise; there are new stories to be told; new discoveries to be made that fit the story being told but eventually they reach the point where that story no longer makes any sense. It gets lost in the inflation of gold/materials/time or more commonly known as the grind to fill in the gaps.

Single player games have a finite timeline. They have a beginning and an ending to tell a story and thus can be made to be more believable. MMO’s are meant to be ongoing so the timeline they can encompass does not end. The lack of a good story is filled in by the grind and this is a good example of that. One day, hopefully, a developer will begin to understand that the greater and more believable the story you tell the greater your game will be.

This game does not need more developers, it needs more story tellers.

This. If Guild Wars 2 with it’s massive lore/story background with Guild Wars 1 can’t even bother to rationalize how 500 pieces of shiny material makes a one-handed sword, then it has failed the “r” portion of “RPG”.

Exactly OP…it seems like 90% of the content you do, whether grouped or solo is…farming.
Farming to farm more efficiently, to get a shiny skin to continue farming to work toward that next shiny skin so you can show off while….farming.

I don’t know what the solution is, but either people are in denial about what they’re doing and rationalize it as “fun”, or they’ve settled into a mindset that this is what Guild Wars 2 is, and should be, which is even more depressing.

Farming in any shape or form should not be the basis of your game, nor what the majority of the time spent you do ingame should be. In Rift, I remember people being turned off by bots or certain players who seemed to be on 24/7 just mindlessly killing things to maximise profit, and now it’s like they’ve built a game just for that purpose.

Shriketalon.1937:

BobbyStein.2315:

I can’t comment on what Ree and Jeff are working on, but I can say that I’m ultimately responsible for the quality of the Living World story. I don’t imagine we’ll please everyone with our new direction, but that’s true of any story. That stated, I encourage people to leave their feedback. Just please be respectful.

Respectful constructive criticism attempt coming up!

I would describe Scarlet as well acted, poorly written. She herself is doing just fine. The voice actress is clearly having a blast and pulling off a nice maniacal villain, which meshes very well with her twisted choice of minions. It’s the exposition surrounding her, however, which doesn’t fit well.

You can’t impress people by injecting fake accomplishments into the world, it simply doesn’t fit and comes across as contrived. If the villain is extremely well known and amazing, they would have shown up on our radar far beforehand. More importantly, if you break the established norms of the world to try to demonstrate how super-special-awesome the character is, it feels forced rather than epic.

Let me give you an example. Say I showed you this character: Gragnack the Skulldecimator. Gragnack was an orphan charr who was raised by Norn and found to be an awesome warrior and mystic. He studied with the shamans of the great Spirits of the Wild and was requested by all four to become the new havroun, but rejected them all. Instead, he traveled across all of Tyria, defeating one of every powerful species he could find, and now invokes an occult power mightier than any known shaman’s strength that lets him bend all animals to his will.

Does this character sound amazing and impressive? Almost certainly not, because his power level and plausibility are completely insane. It takes everything we currently know about the Norn and the Spirits and turns it on its head for the sake of making one character sound super-special-awesome. If there were a charr shaman, we would know about it. If there was a charr shaman powerful enough to be havroun, he would have made a huge blip on the cultural radar. But when taken to the level of Best Shaman Ever!!!!, the character breaks straight out of the “rather implausible” and straight into the “bullskritt” category.

So, three points.

1) Fake accomplishments have no teeth. I don’t care if you tell me a brand new character just introduced beat up Jormag with nothing but a rusty can opener and a doylak skull, it still sounds like something you made up to make that character look cool. Because you did. Breaking the suspension of disbelief kills any possible appreciation for the new character.

2) You don’t need the character’s power level to be over 9000. The attack on the city was magnificent, but hearing Vorpp gush about the accomplishments of this super-special-awesome new prodigy was physically painful. If you had simply said “she was a sylvari accepted into the College of Synergetics who studied under -InsertPortalSpecialistNameHere-, then murdered her master and krewe and stole all their research”, it would have sounded perfect. Plausible but noteworthy, with a touch of cruel and villainous.

3) Show, don’t tell. Build, don’t force. If you want us to fear and respect the villain, have them do villainous deeds that instill fear and respect. If you want that villain to be grand and magnificent, build them up over time and use a series of events to instill a sense of grandiosity. Introducing a new character and telling us that they are important and amazing doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel real. If you show us the character being amazing and demonstrate how they interact and impact the world, it creates the persona of a grand nemesis organically.

I have to quote this wonderful response because it needs to be considered by the writing team.

I have no idea who made the decision to include your MAIN antagonist’s (for this portion of the LS anyway) background in a short story tucked away in the forums, but it was an objectively bad decision.

In games, we are supposed interact with the story and flow with it, not participate in it mid-plot and then move onto the next portion assuming things are so-and-so.

Scarlet/Ceara or her background should have been mentioned at length weaved into the LS or in the Sylvari or Asuran personal stories.

This isn’t a critique of her character (which I don’t find fits the Guild Wars setting), but how she’s presented.

I’m sorry but this is utterly shameful how people are acting towards others who want to complete the events for one reason or another.

I play on SoR, and logged on in Cursed Shore, saw the escort Arah event was happening, and went to the camp.

A ton of people were there, we got to the Anchorage and I killed the cauldrons, within seconds, I had tells, name calling, and was the only one trying to kill the champion with a billion hp, and was called even more names, and told that everyone should report me.

For apparently disrupting a champion train, and doing the event.

Before they add in this sort of content, they really do have to test it with all races., and fix the astoundingly bad camera.

As a norn, being inside a small dome basically obstructs 30% of the screen with your character, and if you back up just a bit toward the edges, you can’t see much of anything.

I was an ardent supporter of Guild Wars 2 until recently, but there’s just too much twisting of the word “content” that I find unappealing.

Mini-games that are totally detached from the world, and things that should have been in the game from the start (Champions dropping actual loot) are not content.

For PVE, things like a cleansed Orr that shows a change to people who’ve completed their storylines is content.

For WvW, it’s gotten a miniscule portion of the updates that PVE has gotten, if that. Don’t call WXP content because it isn’t. What about reskinning the borderlands and EB into Kryta, Ascalon, Maguuma, and Shiverpeaks?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I purchased GW2, I was not under the impression most updates would revolve around pseudo-holiday events,with mini-games, and platformer jumping as the main attraction of an MMO RPG.

I totally agree with this, each event adds more pointless minigames that aren’t even a part of the main game.

What about the beautiful world that’s stale and empty? Or events that repeat ad nauseam, and aren’t updated themselves? I love that they’re adding in new zones like Southsun (even though the zone itself leaves much to be desired), and Zephyr Sanctum but making minigames like Sprint, Survival and Arena a focal point of “stuff to do” is extremely in the camp of “2-week quantity over quality”.

Updates to WvW (maps, skins etc), changing the existing world so we see Orr after Zhaitan, or say the Aetherblades pushing other pirates out in the world would do a ton more than minigame after minigame.

I think you clearly missed the memo about Guild Wars 2 shifting over to an action platformer.

/sarcasm :p.

Seriously though, enough with the jumping puzzles. It was nice to have them around the world in nooks and crannies, but as focal points for two events in a row?

Priority for Anet should be working on more content (yes CONTENT) for WvW, and not some silly siege ability system, and working on making the rest of the still static world engaging.

Might want to edit that to…“flippin SoR’s outmanned 18 person defense with 6 golems”.

I think JQ might need the needle of free transfers off it’s bloat :p.

xiv.7136:

cNcHellShadow.7691:

xiv.7136:

It’s kind of interesting.

Just like real life.

If anything, more people should play GW2, understand its economy – and perhaps gain wisdom about real life they would not otherwise have.

Eh, no…A fantasy game where the end goal is to end a dragon’s life should NOT emulate real life. People play games to enjoy a “seperate” life. If you want the life simulator, play the Sims, or games similar to that. It should never be a job or a chore to achieve anything in a video game. And please do not confuse job/chore with challenge, as challenge is fine…as long as it doesn’t require you to make real life a second to the priority of obtaining an item in any game.

Here’s what’s really going to blow your mind.

Even in a high fantasy setting, people who aren’t fighting dragons or fighting wars against the undead will trade. Trading is an activity as old as human history. And where there are traders, there are market manipulators.

Even during famines, during plagues, during wars, even during dragon and undead invasions – the market remains.

And that’s a very real lesson for real life

Good point, however has nothing to do with an item called “legendary” in a lore based fantasy game that’s acquired not through your own feats, story, or gameplay but in manipulating and playing with the trading post.

Speaking as a mesmer, no other class brings one ability that you need to have in order to be competitive or play WvW in any meaningful way at the moment.

No one says “When is Supply Drop up?” or “Warrior X, is your fear me up?”, because no other class has one utility that is used as absurdly as portals at the moment.

If they input other utilities that match portals, they would be fine (like engineers being able to repair siege). As it is, groups without mesmers (if there are any, as every serious group even plays alt mesmers than maybe something they’d rather play) suffer a lot than those who don’t.

Limiting portal to 5 makes the best sense, at least that would require a bit more coordination and encourage people to act within their groups in a squad rather than follow and stack on the blue icon.

Cat Amiss.9463:

Bash.7291:

I think one of the issues SoR faces is that they try using portal way too much. It is almost starting to get predictable. Last night on SoS bl you guys tried portal bombing in the same place at ruins at least 4 times. The first time it got us. The other 3 not so much. On an assault on bay last week was literrally nothing but portal infront of the gate and turtle with the rams. Now that people are learning to counter them they are becoming weaker.

I’m sorry but i have to chime in on this, the major reason for SoR starting to portal bomb more is to counter the fact SoS portal bombs SO much…

and in no way am i complaining about it here or talking crap about SoS all I am saying is don’t frown on us for using it and saying that’s why we suck when I’ve seen 1st hand many of the major guilds on SoS use that as the solution to most everything.

Nod SoS does use portals a LOT more than we do, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but when coupled with rendering issues caused by it…every time I’ve logged into WvW personally it’s been damage —> downed --→ player pop up as I die, and that’s no fun.

Also the same thing seems to go with stacking aoe’s? In the field earlier I had no idea what was hitting me, and looking through combat log apparently it was a few elementalists aoe’s the same spot, yet no aoe circle came up. I don’t think they’re aware of it on their end but it’s a huge issue to be killed by invisible players/aoe at the moment (personally I’m not sure if anyone else gets this problem, though I do notice it coming from SoS fights only).

ComeAndSee.1356:

SoR isn’t tier 1 material until we get start getting some WvW guilds to step up. Right now we’re mainly pugs following commanders and it’s a handicap when trying to be flexible on the field. Basically we’re stuck reacting more than taking the initiative because all the pugs follow one commander.

PRX basically runs the show once they hit the field because #1. they’re freaking huge and #2. they got very good commanders on VOIP. I remember them on HoD and they were my #2 choice of a guild I wanted to join.

People, most new and some old, seem to forget that SoR got attention not because we dominated or had 24/7 coverage, but that our T3/4 matches (Darkhaven/Shiverpeaks) were awesome by all accounts.

My personal opinion is because we, at that time, took WvW for what it is, a fun open field battle against other servers.

Not to knock people who want whatever waits in T1, nor SoS (…though I find them to be trying much harder for no reason), but…it really won’t be the “fair” exciting matchups we’ve had, where pugs and guilds with or without voice chat came together at that time.

My guess is…from just reading :p…that whichever server gets to T1 eventually gets 5-6+ hour queues, infighting, and then transfers onto lower tiers, and as a native on SoR…I’d hate to see that happen to our home.

As a mesmer, I have to support having a limit on the amount of people being ported (maybe 5, the default group size), or having some type of restriction.

It’s just used and abused too much to stay the way it is.

Maybe someone has addressed this already..but I don’t see the correlation between the mystic forge…dropping 4 exotic weapons and gambling to get an item to then get more items to use the mystic for making a legendary to be…legendary?

When I first heard about the legendary “quest” I thought…ya, some item collection paired with a long and difficult questline, and maybe tied in with a special dynamic event (a zone boss specific to each legendary for example, lots of people helping one person accomplish the feat)

The process of acquiring a legendary doesn’t seem to connect with the rest of the game’s playstyle (which is explore, find secret hidden stuff, play how you want)…not…gambling?

Jandrea.4615:

I am on SoR and I would like to see more WvW this week, so I have a suggestion. Could TC and ET form an alliance against SoR? That is a reason for the three server system, so players can do that type of thing. I know not everyone would agree, but if the main WvW guilds agreed it might even things up quite a bit.

This would require people on all 3 servers thinking about very long term WvWvW health, and not just the here and now. Unfortunately SoR has gotten inundated with pug and (a few) guild transfers who don’t understand or care about that.

If we could organize in SoR not to push so much to allow TC and ET (as down as it is) to get some wiggle room and…get their morale up, maybe close the point gap at least this early in the week, we’d all win by having a more interesting match up where the opposing teams just don’t show up, or at least show up and don’t get demoralized.

Long term WvWvW health is up to us, not orb bonuses or transfers, we need less of this and to a lesser extent the 1v1 we had against SoS last week, and more of the NSP, Darkhaven matchups we’ve had that drew in all these transfers (who unintentionally killed that dynamic a bit).

A TC/ET alliance, with SoR not needing to own everything and defending what we have makes for a fun week, not 200+ people running frantically to get to that singular crossed swords near the southern camps.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Stay classy, SoR.

X-fers I think…I only recognize one of those guild tags….

Nanorin.9285:

Well SoR should not celebrate just yet. Whatever guild jumped to their server will just jump to another on friday, and SoR will get their kitten handed to them. Mark my words.

That’s if our past successes, not necessarily wins (not this week, but the previous 3) can be attributed to transfers. The guilds and people who have made those happen are waiting patiently out of WvW for this match to end, I think we all do.

What will make us lose, and any server really, are bots. In each borderland today, during prime-time, I saw at least, to my count 8-12 bots. In Sanctum Skritt area/Lake, and in the other’s Lakes.

That’s 8-12 people who aren’t doing supply runs, setting siege, paying for upgrades, defending i.e. playing WvW. It might not sound like a big number it can have a big impact on our future matches.

Darkothe.1253:

snip

And…I do apologize if you all get bored running around empty maps. It must be ever so demoralizing for you all to have no one to steam roll. I’ll be sure to log in later tonight and wave at you all for a few minutes before I get back to leveling my alt.

Generalizing an entire server’s population based upon your assumptions of the why’s and how’s of SoR’s dominance so far would work if you were on SoR at the moment and reached that conclusion.

I can tell you as a day 1 Rall’er (I like that name :p), that most of the guilds here remember the…struggle against Fort Aspenwood. (it might’ve been our first week long match, or maybe we had them for a few day matches over and over).

If you were on SoR, anyone can tell you the last 2 weeks of matchups, Darkhaven, Shiverpeaks, etc. were better than any 100k point lead I’d ever want to see, and anyone on SoR can tell you the exact same thing.

Why we had so many transfers in the past week, I don’t know, perhaps due to higher servers queue times, or seeing our last 2 matches being better (imo) than top tier matches, or just plain free use of the transfer system.

The only thing I’m sure of is I do see new guild I haven’t on SoR, which is more than welcome, but the sight of guild tags that I know I’ve seen as opponents during our last matches isn’t so heartwarming, so I would focus less on how SoR as a server is and look at the free transfer system.

I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this (it’s a long thread :p), or offered a rebuttal to the idea…

Wouldn’t a scoring system based on what the population of your opponent server has work well?

So…if you outnumber them 2:1 you would get half the points, etc?

Even teams would accrue even points, and it would even out the point gains for the underpopulated team?

Not sure if that’d work but it seems to not punish overnight players as it’d be directly based on if they’re fighting players or gates/npcs.

One thing to note I’ve noticed from SF (not representative of the of the whole server) is that some Latin American guilds (I assume because of names/tags), like La Hermandad(?) have a tendency to spawn camp with siege, and just overall act separately from the rest of SF.

Just a first impression not sure if that’s 100% true :p.

I do agree with the poster above, I think Stonemist’s north wall is far too close or at lest should have a cliff closer to it to ward off trebbing from the northern garrison. At worst your doors/walls fall, and at best you waste supply repairing it constantly, it’s icky.

Another Rall’er here, I have to add onto the top of the pile of how much fun it was (still is!) to have Darkhaven and Sorrow’s Furnace as opponents.

While our respective night crews may differ in population (we have a small but dedicated group I believe), the scores, and organization on all sides really made me appreciate WvWvW a lot more.

Going up against Aspenwood, having the outmanned buff more than a few times kinda got wearing but this week (and hopefully next) more than made up for that.

P.S. Also, the lack of spawn camping from all sides in this match (not driving to spawn but like…setting up siege outside for hours while owning the map) was good too.

Orr is fine as it is if the Orr we have now is like..the worst possible scenario where the Pact fails to make a landing, or are pushed off the island by failed events.

For example, I think there’s a mention that Risen pour through or rally around Grenth statues (which they don’t, it’s only mentioned for the event I believe), but I can understand this much Risen density if they controlled the Grenth statues.

Once we and the Pact take it over the Risen all around Orr should diminish or flee, similar to other DE’s where you drive off the invading force.

As it is, owning the temples really doesn’t give us much except a semi-safe spot, vendors and a waypoint.

Some type of buff, or better yet a real impact on the Risen for us owning temples should work perfectly, as it also gives us a big incentive to take and hold temples, as well as lightening the travel and combat burden in Orr.

robot.9134:

Porky.5021:

So I don’t understand why you bought GW2.

Were you under the impression that there was a long gear grind available that would differentiate you from the people who have less time than you by means of bigger stats?

A simple check of the GW2 site, the articles, the dev blogs, and the videos would have told you this wasn’t the game for you.

I’m not trying to be mean, but I don’t understand some of you.

The game’s design concept was clear: No lengthy grind for items with stats. If you wanted to look different from everyone there would be a grind available for you, but the top level items stat-wise would be available to all without a lengthy grind.

This was not a secret, nor was it ambiguous.

I bought the game with the mindset I have had with every other failed MMO that i have played in the past 4-5 years. “meh….$60 is well spent compared to console if it lasts me 2-3 months”

Expect the worst and hope for the best.

I was a bit curious about how it would turn out also. I am not disappointed about the core game although rewards could be MUCH better. I am disappointed with how the customer service and dev reaction times turned out.

Communication has dropped significantly. Patches are spaced out further and they are more quick to nerf than buff where needed even in desperate areas. Priorities don’t seem to be straight. Slow reaction to key issues leads to boredom in the player base and that kills mmo’s. If you are going to be slow at fixing the issues then you better be sure that the player base has something to keep them busy and at the moment…Orr is a disgrace.

You haven’t really answered his question (just pointing it out :p)

So to reiterate that poster’s question, why did you buy Guild Wars 2?

Any cursory check of blogs, notes, reviews or developer feedback would tell you this isn’t a game someone in your mindset would want to be involved in.

Also if you go into a game with that mindset you’ve described, well yes, nothing will ever be good enough because you expect to leave it in 2-3 months, which by the way is exactly what GW2 is about, it isn’t logging on every day because you “have to”, it’s doing what you want, play what you want and come back on the same level as everyone else.