Guild Wars 2

Is ppl/guilds moving away from DB before the league starts? The population in DB seems decreasing a lot since a last few weeks ago =/ We were on top of T2 months ago and now we are nearly back to T3

Shpongle.6025:

Siphaed.9235:

I converted 30g, completely earned in-game through the Scarlet Invasions (normal play and NOT FAIL FARMING), to Gems and purchased the Infinite Continue Coin. Not a single dollar shed from my pocket, yet I was still able to obtain this “Pay 2 Win” item. Curious how, if it’s truly “P2W” that it’s obtainable in-game?

P.S. Didn’t use it at all until I started Tribulation mode as the 5 coins Moto sent me -in addition to the 7 banked ones from April- were more than sufficient to do W1 & W2 in Normal mode.

Because you were forced to pay 30g for it, otherwise you couldn’t complete tribulation mode and get tribulation achievements.

You were not, my friends did it with about 40 coins per person to finish W1 Tribulation mode without the help of guides.

In previous and coming updates, PvE changed by adding new events (e.g. scarlet) and improving old events (e.g. bosses in coming update). These changes are good and I believe it enhanced the overall gameplay experience for most players. The coming update will increase the difficulty and make some currently existed bosses more challenging. These are good improvements and I would like to say thank you to Anet for all these.

However, based on the experience from the previous events, I believe these events can actually do more than just adding bunch of mobs on the world and asks players to kill them. The most significant part they can improve is the outcome of the event. Currently, not matter we successfully finished an event or not, there will not be any changes. For example, Scarlet is so kind to Tyria that no matter the player successfully defeat her force or not, they will leave the map without any impact. I bet the coming Teq event will be more or less the same, the map will back to peaceful not matter the dragon was defeated or not. This shows the world not really living at all!! I still remember in GW2 manifesto, Ree Soesbee said:

“As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you are doing. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

Isn’t this sounds similar to the boss we have now? The only difference I found in GW2 is that most bosses does not spawn 10 mins later but a few hours. Scarlet came event 3-4 hours and sometime player went to that map just for the sake of farming. Teq came to the shore and stand there for about 15mins before leaving. There are not much difference no matter we successfully defeated those bosses including Claw, Shatter, Maw, Wurm, Fire Sharman. Neither the player nor the boss care about the world, the boss will leave eventually and players only care about loots.

As the next update is going to make bosses more challenging, I suggest later updates should include event chains that punish players if these events were not successfully finished. What I mean punish is that if boss fight or scarlet events were not successful, there may be impact on the world. Including minor or major punishment.

For minor punishment events, this may be designed like the introduction of Southsun Cove. Players need to clears events and a tough boss at the end. During the event, we may include:
*maps occupied by related monsters (scarlet, branded creature from shatterer, underworld creature from SB, etc)
*NPCs retreat from maps occupied by world boss (or their minion)
*reduction in resources node from occupied map
*boss event will only return once the event from occupied map (players can no longer get nice boss chest)

If more maps were occupied (e.g. 3 maps occupied in same area such as Ascalon, Kryta), major punishment events kicks in, these may include:
*increase the amount/strengthen of trash mob in those area because the world boss has been strengthen.
*All NPC vendor selling price and BLTP transaction fee increase slightly because their vendors cannot do business in those area.
*WP stop functioning in those area because they were contested.
*Dungeons cannot gain access because NPCs were not able to do their research/task in those maps.

The currently Tyria is large and beautiful but empty. I guess these events can encourage players to go to different parts of Tyria but not only focused on those events that include a chest. However, the impact of these punishment event may be different in terms of the population of server. I hope my humble opinion can create some constructive discussion and inspires Anet game designers on how to improve the game.

Avatara.1042:

It is pay to win. Stop kidding yourselves.

If you got any opinion, give us some reason to support it. Without any reason, your statement is only trolling.

Yes they mentioned the chest got better loot such as ascended weapon.

No matter how it turns out, the current version is way too easy. I am looking forward for this update. Hope tsq and other bosses can give us a challenge and fun fight. Good job Anet!!

swiftpaw.6397:

LordByron.8369:

why should not be called easy mode a tactic that completely prevents AI to use the most Dangerous attack boss has?
Also helps you to ress faster downed players and makes sure that every combo field and buff is Always effective…..

Its legit, but its easier.
Anet should start rebalancing ranged combat….
WHoever did fractal did it way better than dungeon.

Risk/reward is way better there.
Ranged combat is usually easier (not Always) than melee but takes more time.
In dungeons ranged combat is usually harder but takes more time anyway so is pointless.

I say that because there is still a risk that it can go very very wrong. Spider can still use that large kitten attack if not pulled correctly or someone moves, lupi will kitten you up if you don’t dodge kicks and grubs etc. Many pugs will actually have a harder time in melee than ranged on bosses, especially if their dps is not up to scratch or they don’t time blocks/reflects/dodges that kind of deal.

I agree with this, those so call “quick” or “easy” method actually require high attention and cooperation. My group just wiped by spider a while ago because 1 member was a little away from the stacked group. This actually show the preparation is important and still require skill to perform. Imagine if the defender is not good enough to perform the 1-4 method in CoE, that group will never be able to perform that method.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I just wonder what is the actual reason for these arguments about dungeon. There is always a simple method to solve this. If you want to play with a group that like to skip, post in lfg.com and include “quick run”. If you want to play with a group that like to challenge, find similar people to play with. If you don’t even do the above and simply find a PUG to join, don’t complain here and sounds like there is only one way to play the game. If you cannot find people like those challenge (which seems not possible based on how many people in this thread said they like it), you join or open a guild to gather this type of players together. Now problem solved. Is there any reason to blame the community when your playing style is not the majority or should you do something more before complain?

Let’s get something straight here:
Exploiting isn’t a playstyle, it’s cheating.

Just because you do it with other people doesn’t make it a freedom of expression that should be protected or some kind of sacrosanct sub-culture we need to respect and preserve. That just means there happens to be alot of people cheating right now.

Exploitations like the ones we’re discussing in this thread get fixed, not accommodated.

I guess I am talking about those quick run which skip mobs or do things in a fast and smart way. In many case, those are not exploit. For example, stack is NOT an exploit because its part of the design of the game, skip mobs is NOT exploit and even dev said they design mobs that can skin. For me, I did dungeons in both way. For the first few months, no one knows how to do them and I did them with others without any knowledge. The challenge is great and fun. However, after so many months, things get old and nothing really can become a challenge when they have been completed for hundreds of times. I can understand the where you came from but there is no reason to consider that is the ONLY playstyle when others decided to do that in with quick method.

Btw, there is a group used legit way to kill Lupicus in 21 sec. Are you going to consider that exploit? I consider that as smart because that require lots of testing and experiment and coordination before it can be done. Most of the current “quick methods” are done by these types of people and learned by others. I don’t think there is any problem about it.

I just wonder what is the actual reason for these arguments about dungeon. There is always a simple method to solve this. If you want to play with a group that like to skip, post in lfg.com and include “quick run”. If you want to play with a group that like to challenge, find similar people to play with. If you don’t even do the above and simply find a PUG to join, don’t complain here and sounds like there is only one way to play the game. If you cannot find people like those challenge (which seems not possible based on how many people in this thread said they like it), you join or open a guild to gather this type of players together. Now problem solved. Is there any reason to blame the community when your playing style is not the majority or should you do something more before complain?

Saharan.4739:

Bloody hell, this thread. “Pay-to-win” does not literally only mean “give money, get gear, win game”. It can, but that’s not the only meaning. In contrast with purely cosmetic items, such as finishers, or clothing skins, or dance moves, pay-to-win items are any items that can bought with real-world money and give an in-game advantage to buyers that non-buyers cannot have. Things such as drop rate boosters, experience boosters, and gold boosters are the usual suspects in P2W MMOs (and while the former two exist in GW2, they last for such a short time they don’t cause the damage they can in other MMOs, some times lasting days, weeks, or in rare cases, a month long).

One thing that all three of my examples share in common is that they cut down on time spent grinding, and the fact is, for someone who uses continue coins regularly, I would wager that this coin cuts down on more time spent grinding than any other item in the gem shop.

Tell me the difference between grinding bauble for coin and grinding gold for ICC. Anet allows players to choose the way they want and provide extra option for the way they play. If Anet does not allow exchange gold to gem, I will call this P2W. But all of us can use that feature and 30 gold is not really that much (just 2-3 days doing events and dungeon). I have no idea about why players keep thinking this item is taking the fun away.

I just did SAB Tribulation mode with guildies that WITHOUT ICC. They simply prepared about 50-70 coins and we finished W1Z3 with around 30 coins per person. That not really hard and proved ICC is not a must.

stof.9341:

OnlyFate.8549:

Do you gain more reward if you finish it faster?

You know the saying? Time is money. The saved time is spend outside earning concrete gold coins :p

I agree with you, that’s why the infinite coin costs a lot. In my opinion, its fair for players to spend gold coin for earning time. If you consider that as P2W, people should complain when the game launch as the game also got a feature for trade gem to gold, why don’t people say that is P2W.

Farzo.8410:

fungihoujo.8476:

And yet, this item that isn’t pay to win- everyone so far who’s said they’ve beaten TM has had it.

The item saves you dozens of hours farming- which for your average player means they’ll be farming for the first three weeks in order to save up enough to give TM a good run.

So basically, you are saying that people who beat it faster than others must have had some kind of pay to win item?

Do you gain more reward if you finish it faster? You do not WIN others by finishing it faster. Also, for those who grinded lots of coins in previous SAB event can do the same.

I also found this problem annoying. I spent lots of time in last SAB event to gain all achievements and now they forced me to do zone 3 again. I think its not necessary and should be consider as a bug.

If the coins are able to sell in TP, I believe people will have be happy and no one will put that stupid “P2W” theory out. I was considering this infinite coin P2W but actually its not. If coins/baubles are allowed to trade, some players will farm coins and others will buy a lot in order to clear those hard modes. This example was not so different for infinite coin in BLTP. Anet simply acted as the exclusive seller of coins. Now players can buy infinite coin directly from Anet with a huge fee (and you can even choose either in real money or 30+ gold). If you believe it worth, you can feel free to spend your money or gold for the coin. If not, you can still farm bauble/coins by yourself.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The reason we did the 1 life thing is because we found that lives were not meaningful if you can just pop back in, catch up with your party or die once and catch up with them. Now they are. We also added Continue Coins in each Zone chest, and they are in JP chests as well. And you can buy 5 of them for one Bauble Bubble.

I don’t mind you consider that to be meaningful for the game. However, with the infinite coin in BLTP, I can only consider this change is to benefit your cash shop and make the game p2w. This is really annoying when the BLTP should not be selling items that break the game balance just for creating that extra income but upset the majority of your players.

It is stupid for those who think achievement is for EVERYONE. Some achievement is easy but some of them should be challenging or time consuming. If achievements are easy and everyone can get them all within a few hours, those achievement points and titles are no longer worth to have. 2500 points are easy because it does not require any difficult skill and only require a few hour playing the mini game. I have no idea why people keep complaining on everything.

I am also facing this issue. Most people in US thought its nice but they dont have lag. This mini game is not welcome us to enjoy.

I have the same idea as OP. Not sure is that because of lag or something else but seems I have lots of rubber band back (e.g. rubber band to mid air when I was jumping through platforms, jumping up cliffs, etc). Also it seems there are lots of lighting from no where. On average I got 5+ hits from lighting and sometimes have 10+ (sometime get hit 3 times within 2-3sec. I dont really think everyone else have the lighting except me. So far I have 10+ races and the experience is not really enjoyable.

iAmTheDuke.6201:

Man oh man…
Couldn’t take garrison even with two servers working together.
Such a shame….

I think that is exactly the reason for not able to get the garrison, both server fight each other and the remaining killed by Mag

Every time when I start a new dungeon, I am forced to watch the cutscenes even when I have watched it for a lot of times. Is it possible to add a skip button like all other cutscenes?

Darx.9842:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Another form of this is through special events, things like Halloween, Hunger Games, or Wintersday where content is available for a period of time, is removed from the game when that period is over, and could appear again in the future in some form to help provide unique and fun experiences in the game world.

Hunger Games? Did I miss an event?

Is this a typo, or could someone enlighten me?

A similar type of event called Hunger Royale was in BWE before the game release. The game did not have this event after release.

I am not sure why replacing the word “patch” with “Living World” and everyone become excited… What is the difference between Living World and other update patches in other MMOs

I am not sure what are you talking about. Dungeons in GW2 are way too easy. Its all about whether you know the “right way” to face these challenges. So far, dungeons are one of the most profitable PvE content. With so many player farming inside dungeons, I have no idea what you mean by hard. What you need to do is learn about the dungeon and find out the right way to go through them.

Congrats for your legendary.

1200 hour in 3 month which is around 400 hours per month. If you work 8 hours per day, its only about 200 – 300 hours working time per month with a few thousand as salaries. I am not sure this legendary worth 10k+ or what but I am not going to get this if this is the time required for a legendary.

Galen Grey.4709:

question unless you’re gunning for a legendary on each of your alts, why do you feel you need to finish each and every map on every character ?

Based on the design of the game, this is the fastest way to gain XP for leveling up a character (Unless you are in a very active WvW server). If not, it takes even longer to level up a character. Also, they actually encourage players to complete maps for more some gem store items such as Black Lion salvage kit, chest keys, etc. There is no reason for no completing a map when leveling a character. However, no matter how “fun” exploration can provide, after a few times for completing the same map, things get bored and there is no other ways to level up an alt.

@Mirta
I won’t say this happens to everyone. However, if you finished a map for first character, finish the map again for second alt, third alt, and forth alt. The exploration eventually become bored for fifth alt or more. In my opinion, after the first character finished a map, its no longer called exploration for other characters because that will be simply running for unlocking PoI and vistas just for the map completion. Due to this bad design, I have finished Queensdale more than eight times since BWE1. I don’t think its fun to keep doing the same “exploration” for every character. Actually I really want to know what is the purpose for forcing players to do things again and again.

@Tobias Trueflight
I agree that Jugs of Karma is used to reduce the amount of grind. However the main question I want to bring out about the current situation of GW2 is “Is that necessary to require so much work/time for a piece/set of gear?” As you mentioned, even for someone who can finish their daily achievements EVERY DAY, they need approximately 2 Months for a set of Karma armor. If you need to keep doing the same thing for 2 months just for a set of gear (with not that impressive look and not better statistics compare to other exotic), I believe this is very grindy.

Honestly, if I need to play 900 hours grind for the legendary. I rather focus on my job and paid a 1000 for the weapon. The required amount of time for legendary is crazy and not even possible for most casual players to get.

As I mentioned above, dungeon grind is actually not that bad compare to grinding for crafting weapons. However, Fractals of the Mists (FotM) created a new kind of grind that require people to do the dungeon from low level to high for EACH of their alts if they want to use different alts to do high level dungeon. For traditional dungeons, I can do explore mode with alts to experience the dungeon in different ways. However, if I want to do it with my alts in FotM, I need to do it from lv 1 which in my opinion is not necessary grind. That’s exactly why I think

In my opinion, if doing the same content is fun, I don’t mind to do it again and again. I won’t call them as grind. However the current situation is after you finished most of the content, the remaining is to craft some good looking exotic or legendary. If you play it without doing some targeted content again and again, based on the current requirement of those weapons, I am not sure anyone can reach that within a year or years. For example, lodestones can only be obtained in very limited area by killing certain types of mobs. In this case, you will not be able to get them from anywhere else. If you want it, what you can do is to grind in that area and hope for getting one for each hour. That means a hundred hour is a minimum just for one nice looking weapon. That’s why I said GW2 actually require much more grind than most MMO outside.

Of course you can say these good looking items are not needed to be competitive or will not affect the experience. However, for those who players finished most contents for a few times, this is the remaining target they can aim to achieve atm. I believe players don’t mind some grinding for good looking skins but the current grinding need is just too much for most players.

I believe one of the major reason for players choosing to play GW2 is attracted by Anet’s manifesto claiming that grinding is not fun and GW2 is a game that designed for fun. However, with more and more experience in game after 3 months, I got a feeling that this game actually requires lots of grind in their end game content. The fact is GW2 has not much differences compared other MMOs in terms of the way Anet try to keep their players playing the game. I will explain the grind that required first.

1. Grind for crafting
High end weapons (both exotic and Legendary) require huge amount of high tier materials such as Glob of Ectoplasm (ecto), lodestone, Tier 6 materials (T6 mats), etc. In order to craft these items, players either need to grind for the drop or grind for coins to buy the mats from Trading Post (TP). Tens to hundreds of hours (depends on the weapon) are minimum for obtaining these skins which is hard for most players. The major cause is due to either the receipt requiring huge amount or extremely low drop rate actually caused all these grinding. For example, 250 ecto is usually included in most receipts. Also Lodestone only drop once or twice if the player is lucky after grinding in certain areas for an hour or more. From my personal experience, I still not yet obtained a single Molten Lodestone from Fire Elementals or CoF even I have at least 20+ runs of it. In terms of legendary weapons, we already know the harsh requirement for crafting by reading the articles from those who obtained legendary weapons. On top of coins and mats, crafting legendary weapons also require huge amount of Karma for exchange certain materials. I believe most of the players either having a super long plan or actually gave up from obtaining legendary weapons. For me, the way to obtain those legendary weapons should be legendary (High difficulty quest? Achievements?) but not grindy.

2. Grind for tokens
Another type of grind is for tokens which given as reward after finishing dungeons. Tokens are used to exchange for unique dungeon gears. Each set of dungeon armor require around 1100 – 1400 depends on the dungeon set (my CoF set require 1380 tokens). For me, a full set means at least 23 success dungeon runs. The grinding required for dungeon runs is easier than grind for crafting but its still grinding and not really fun after running it for 20 times.

The new dungeon, Fractals of the Mists, provided more random elements but I think the way required to get to higher level is a combination of grind and regular work. From what I saw in the map chat, many players already reached lv10+, lv20+ or even lv30+ of the dungeon. For those who don’t have time to grind the dungeon since the last patch, they are now facing difficulty in finding a low level dungeon group in doing this dungeon. Further more, the nature of character bound progress of this dungeon forced players to focus on one character or need to grind from the beginning if they want to use other character to obtain ascend gear.

3. Grind for exploration
This problem actually not obvious if you are playing the first or second character because most of the content still can provide you with a fresh feeling. However, doing it for every alts cause this to become an extremely boring grind after players explored the map a few time to unlock those Point of Interest (PoI), Vista, and Skill Point. Also, even dynamic event gets bored after it repeated for lots of times.

To be honest, I don’t think this can be solved because even Anet can change the dynamic event within a zone, player still required to unlock those PoI, Vista, and Skill Point when they start a alt which ended up as a grinding pattern.

Grind or Fun?
In my opinion, this topic is for those who reached lv80 and experienced most of the content. Although Anet claimed the whole game content is designed as endgame, I believe many of us are participating in at least one of the above listed grinding. Before the release of GW2 Anet promised not to develop a game that use grinding but fun to keep players. However I think this game actually can be listed as one of the MMO that require the most amount of grind for end game content. Furthermore, Anet constantly nerf farming location either by increasing the time for an event to start or decrease the drop rate. This only cause the grinding become even longer which I believe harms both the game and players. Recently, I saw a trend in reduction in active players. My guild got a 50% drop in active player for the last month. I am worrying about the future of the game if this is what Anet is aimed to do and unfortunately the trends looks like more grind is needed after introducing Fractals of the Mists.

I would like to know what other players think of this situation. Do you agree or not worrying about it at all?

Eurlin.4256:

Is Lion guild still on Dragonbrand?

Yes, we are still on Dragonbrand

Human
Guardian
no speed boost

3 hour try