Guild Wars 2

Rauderi.8706:

A:
I don’t hate the game. I just hate the HOT “content.”

Oh look, everyone’s AFK in Dragon Stand. Such compelling gameplay…

This.

I love my Dragonhunter. I love gliding in Tyria.

I hate the HOT zones and HOT content.

Of course Longbow damage is going to be nerfed. The devs have repeatedly shown that they don’t like it when Guardians do anything well.

Given what happened with snowflakes last year I immediately put my snowflakes on the auction house as soon as the Wintersday event was over.

Does anyone know if there’s a way to get “PvP Leagues Are Active” off of my screen?

I’ve tried every in-game option that I can find. I don’t care about PvP Leagues, or Forsaken Thicket for that matter, I’d just like to get that junk off of my screen.

And yes, I’ve picked every single option in Options – General Options – Content Guide. None of them make the words go away.

Thanks in advance.

JustLetMe.4369:

BUT, I have an idea, if every guardian were put why they need the 25% movement speed increase at the bottom of there post, after they talked about statement or opinion, then we would eventually get what we want.

No.

If ArenaNet has proven anything it’s that they will do whatever they feel like doing regardless of what people on the forums post. Especially when it comes to ignoring Guardians.

I’m not trying to tell you what you can or cannot do. I’m just trying to let you know that even if you drown the forum in posts demanding improvements to Guardians it won’t alter ArenaNet’s actions in the slightest.

I have two problems with this Wardrobe Update.

1) Functionality was removed from items that people paid real money for. If this happened with any other product (such as the dealer removing the air conditioner from a car I’d already purchased) the company that sold me this item would be subject to lawsuits and possibly criminal prosecution, but because it’s a video game (the media’s current whipping boy for violence) nothing will happen.

2) By removing functionality from purchased items ArenaNet has shown me that nothing is safe. I might purchase something from the Gem Store with cash and then, at some future date, ArenaNet may change the item or remove things from the item that were the reason that I purchased it in the first place.

Until ArenaNet shows me that they will no longer remove functionality from items that I’ve spent real money on, I will not give ArenaNet another penny.

I logged on, just a few hours after this went live, and, when I asked people in map chat if they knew what to do to defeat the worm in Bloodtide Coast their response was, “Read the guides online.”

Are these raids? Because if they’re raids then I could understand having to research and prepare in order to defeat them. But these don’t appear to be raids, these appear to be open world content designed for what are essentially PuGs.

So, despite being part of the “Living World Story”, there’s no story. There’s just these two boss fights in two different zones. Both of which require more coordination than can be achieved by PuGs. And, once again, the story isn’t conveyed to the players [b]in game[/i].

I’ve really enjoyed the Living World content so far. The fast pace at which it rolls out, the achievement system, the way the developers have listened to player feedback. I do have some observations/feedback regarding my experience with the Tower of Nightmares open world dungeon.
____________________________________________________

1) The Tower of Nightmares doesn’t seem to be designed for team play, it’s designed for zerg play. If you’re online during the 4-6 hours that there’s enough players to form a zerg then the content is great fun, if not then you might as well skip it.

2) The open content (within the tower) discourages players from helping others. A player, or team of players, often won’t stop to rez downed or defeated players because they know that if they do they’ll just be killed themselves. This discourages players from working together, unless they’re part of the zerg, and seems to be contrary to the way content is designed in the rest of the game.

3) The tower is set up in a way that not only enables, but actively encourages, griefing. I’ve spent at least some time in the tower every day since it went live and every single day I’ve seen multiple examples of people intentionally leading mobs around to grief other players.

4) The griefing, the long mob leash range and the fast mob respawn rate, combine to actively punish intelligent game play. A team of players who carefully looks around every corner, is careful to engage only the number of mobs that they can handle, and supports and helps one another, will suddenly find themselves either surrounded by mobs that have respawned or by mobs that have been dragged to them by other players. This means that the best way for a team of players to survive to reach the top of the tower is for them to just run through and grief other players by dragging mobs onto them.

5) I do realize that this is an MMO and I’m not complaining that I can’t solo everything. Nor am I even complaining that the Tower of Nightmares is too difficult. My experience is simply that this content doesn’t seem to be designed to encourage team play, it appears to be designed to discourage players from helping other players, and seems designed for zerg only game play. I don’t think that that was the developers’ intention, but that has been my experience. At least on my server.

It IS a bug.

4 people attacking the cocoon couldn’t destroy it before the Champion Spider Queen did the kill and healed herself to full. And she kept doing this repeatedly, making it impossible to do more damage than she healed.

And yes, she would cocoon players that were in melee range.

And yes, I did report it in game.

The Champion Spider Queen inside the side mission instanced in the Tower of Nightmares cocoons players and then eats the cocoon in order to heal herself up to full.

She cocoons so often, and the cocoons which are clearly designed to be destroyed in order to prevent her from healing are so tough that you can’t break them before she uses them to heal herself, that it is impossible for a 5-man team to damage her enough to win this instance.

Also, once the entire team is wiped, there’s no option to waypoint out or “restart from checkpoint” so our entire team has to log out from the game after a team wipe.

Achievements
I like that the meta achievement took some effort, but wasn’t too difficult to get. And that the repeat achievements were 3 times instead of the usual 10 or 20 times. There’s only so many times that I want to repeat content, no matter how cool it is.

Rewards
Meh. The same old account bound bit of ascended crafting material that I don’t care about and can’t sell and a couple of level 80 greens. Not bad, but definitely not a motivator.

Gameplay
It’s challenging and fun, as long as you roll with a zerg. Just like the last dozen or so updates. It’d be nice to get some non-soloable content that didn’t also require the presence of 30+ other players.

Story
The final cut-scene was very entertaining, and I like that it can be watched again from the console, but it’s bascially just a recap. Worse, nothing is actually explained. We still have no idea what Scarlett’s doing, or why or how. Yeah I know, the story’s not over yet. Problem is that it’s dragged on for so long I’m starting to not really care anymore.

Favorite Element
The randomness of the chamber instances. Well, except for the fact that Spider Queen is currently bugged to be unkillable.

Least Favorite Element
People and zergs griefing others by dragging groups of enemies to them. I think that most of this is accidental, but I’ve seen several instances of it happening on purpose. I don’t think this would be a problem if the mobs’ leash range weren’t quite so long.

I did receive the mail with the 3 pieces of the mysterious key but, after a patch, that mail disappeared along with the pieces of the key.

Several friends and guildies have told me that the same thing happened to them as well.

Josh Davis.6015:

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers/Necromancers

Just because Jon didn’t include any changes regarding your profession in the above post doesn’t mean we’re done making changes.

Please continue to leave feedback – we’re still listening. We’ll keep you updated as things come up.

Thanks!

Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.
I realize that you guys are trying to improve this skill, but while this change buffs the Zerg, it’s a nerf to Guardian themselves. If I’m using it as part of the Zerg then great! It stacks and the Zerg gets more Swiftness longer. If I’m using it for myself I’m either trying to chase a fleeing target to get the kill or flee an incoming Zerg. In either event I certainly don’t want to sit around in my circle waiting for the buff to stack. Which means that for the Guardian you’re about to nerf the duration of this by 50%. So please don’t keep insisting that this change is a buff to Guardians.

Guardian’s highest damage output comes from melee weapons and the problem, at least in WvW, is that our low mobility makes it extremely difficult to keep the target in range long enough to do significant damage to them.

Please read the thread in the Guardian forum where we’ve been discussing these upcoming changes: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-December-Patch-Preview/

The biggest problem that I see with the Guardian, and with these changes, in PvE is that it doesn’t seem like they have a defined role. And yes, I do believe that it’s possible to have a defined roll without having the ‘Holy Trinity.’

The biggest problem that I see with them in WvW is that the changes to Shattered Aegis and Symbol of Swiftness aren’t buffs to the Guardian class, they’re buffs to the Zerg. It seems like you definitely want to give the Zerg reason to desire Guardians. I believe that a better idea would be to provide motivation for players to want to play Guardians in WvW. Buffing the Zerg isn’t going to accomplish that. Buffing the Guardian however, just might.

Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes.
While Guardians do well in both roles in all forms of PvE, they can’t do much of either of these things in WvW. I see two reasons for this.

1) They’re not as ‘tanky’ as Warriors, and they’re not as supportive as Elementalists. So if I want to do one of those in WvW why wouldn’t I just play one of those other classes? What does a Guardian do that would make me want to pick it over a Warrior or Elementalist?

2) Mobility is a real problem in WvW. Guardians don’t deal well with being immobilized and they have problems with speed. This makes it difficult to keep up with your target and with your teammates.

We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be.
So do you want them to become melee warriors or thieves without stealth but with support abilities? Wouldn’t it be better to make Guardians either more ‘tanky’ or more supportive? Isn’t that why people play Guardians?

Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
So you acknowledge that Guardians don’t do well with a condition spec and you’re addressing that by removing one of the ways in which we apply conditions?

Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
And then you add it back with this change. I don’t understand why. Are you trying to make Guardians burn more often, but reduce their ability to apply burst damage?

Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
This ability still won’t be worth taking because it isn’t competitive when compared to regeneration or simple healing.

Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
That small increase to the one condition that we can reliably apply still leaves this in the useless category.

Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
Once again, the change to Zeal V makes this improvement less useful.

Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%
As others have said, when this first fires off it’s useless because the Guardian is at full health. It should be a Regen, an HoT, or perhaps with a delay of several seconds before the heal is applied.

Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%. AND Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
Nice buffs. Much appreciated. However, without the ability to keep my target in range of my weapon these abilities are useless. Which brings me to the final and, I believe, most important part of my post:

Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.
I realize that you guys are trying to improve this skill, but this change only buffs the Zerg, it’s a nerf to the Guardian themselves. If I’m using it as part of the Zerg then great! It stacks and the Zerg gets more Swiftness longer. If I’m using it for myself I’m either trying to chase a fleeing target to get the kill or flee an incoming Zerg. In either event I certainly don’t want to sit around in my circle waiting for the buff to stack. Which means that for the Guardian you’ve nerfed this by 50%.

Everything is IMHO, of course. And I apologize if my post ‘sounded’ in any way sarcastic or insulting. That isn’t my intention. I’m not angry or ranting. I’m simply trying to calmly state my point.

I couldn’t agree more!

I’ve played a lot of free-to-play MMOs and realized that, for many of them, the business model is ‘annoy the player until he/she breaks down and gives us some money.’

But ArenaNet’s business model seems to be ‘make a game that’s so fun and well-designed that the players will want to buy things off of the store.’

Thanks ArenaNet developers, for realizing that we play games to have fun, and building your business model around that.

hyman.7526:

BTW, I’m really curious to what lvl and gear you are using to not be able to face tank the oozes.

You’re right that “Stand your Ground” doesn’t get locked out by most knockdowns, but it did get locked out, repeatedly, by the pull/knockdown from the Oozes in MF.

My character is a level 80 Guardian with exotic Knight’s Draconic armor, exotic weapons (Greatsword, Mace/Focus), and some ascended trinkets.

And I’m not exactly a n00b either. I’ve played a bunch of MMO’s over the last 10 years, and I’ve played a lot of GW2, including WvW, and spent a bit of time on the wiki learning the numbers and the mechanics over the last couple of months.

This is why I was so confused about the encounter with the oozes, which I actually found to be far more difficult than the battle with the two bosses at the end of MF. And why I wasn’t sure if it was something we were doing wrong or if we encountered a bug.

Given that we have so few options to mitigate knockback/down in this game, perhaps some people can understand my frustration with the multitude of chain knockback/down’s that appear in many of the dungeons.

I play a Guardian. And no, we didn’t just rush blindly into the room. But when one of the oozes gets aggroed they’re all aggroed. And we kept getting pulled into the room. By the oozes. And then the cycle of constant pull/knockdown/power lockout/rinse/repeat begins.

Milennin.4825:

In the case of the Oozes: If you play Thief, you can just teleport away, or roll for initiative. Playing Elementalist use teleport or Mist Form. Mesmer can use distortion. Guardian can use blocks etc etc.
Stunbreakers, stability and projectile reflects are your friends.=P

Once again. How am I supposed to use any of those powers when all of my powers are continuously locked-out? How do you get those powers to work when every single power on your powerbar is showing that count-down?

So… has no one else experienced this? Is it possible that it was a bug?

I do understand that you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it. Perhaps it would help if I explained the exact situation.

In the Molten Weapons Facility there is an encounter with a Champion Ooze and large group of normal Oozes. They all have a PbAoE pull/yank/whatever you call it.

So the encounter went like this. One of the oozes pulls our entire team to it. Then, all of our powers are locked out for 2 seconds or so while our characters are going through the getting up animation. Then, right before our powers come off of lockdown, we get pulled to another ooze. We’re taking damage the entire time, of course. Then, right before our powers come off of lockdown, we get pulled to another ooze. This happened repeatedly until the entire team is dead.

So… can someone please explain to me how I’m supposed to interrupt or dodge roll or fire off “Stand Your Ground” when all of my character’s powers are locked out repeatedly until dead?

If there’s something that I’m missing here, please. Someone explain it to me. Without the “lrn 2 pla n00b” comments, if that’s possible. Because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

I don’t enjoy the Molten Weapons Facility for the same reason that I dislike the several of the dungeons in this game.

The constant knockbacks/knockdowns.

It’s pretty widely accepted that allowing enemies to stun-lock-kill players is a bad idea, because there’s few things that will cause players to stop playing your game faster than the frustration that comes from being able to do nothing other than mash your keyboard while your character is killed.

So I don’t understand why the ArenaNet devs think it’s ok to have a group of enemies, or a boss, that constantly pulls/pushes, knocksdown/knocksback the entire party, repeatedly, locking out all of your abilities the entire time, until your character is dead. How is perma-knockdown death any different than perma-stun-lock death?

Challenge I understand, and in fact I kinda wish that the open world was a bit more challenging at times, but I don’t understand where the challenge lies in having all of your attacks and powers locked out while you’re knocked back and forth across the dungeon until you’re defeated.

John Smith.4610:

Making new characters for Black Lion Keys is NOT an exploit. Have fun all!

Wait, what?

So . . . repeatedly making an item that can be sold for in game money is an exploit, but repeatedly getting an item that deprives ArenaNet of real world money (no need to buy keys if you can farm them), and also provides items which can be sold for in game money, isn’t an exploit?

No sarcasm or trolling here, I’m being completely serious. I just honestly don’t understand the logic behind this decision. Can someone smarter than I am please explain this to me?

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean, but it’s not a one-time thing. A note on tigirius’ suggestion—it’s something we’ve been trying to do, but it’s not automatic and does require some hand-scripting so we haven’t done it everywhere yet. During the story steps, for example, we often have an enemy ignore combat while it appears, then aggro normally once it’s completed its animation. (Undead spawning in a cloud of putrescence, enemies leaping out of trees, etc.)

Killing an enemy and then watching it pop right back in while you’re just a few feet away fighting his neighbor is something that I see a lot on certain maps, and it’s annoying having to kill the same enemy several times when you’re just trying to get past that area in order to reach a certain destination.

So why not code standard enemies to not respawn at all if any player is nearby but exclude certain event and world bosses from that code? This prevents what I described above while also preventing players from being able to grief others by deliberately blocking certain enemies from respawning.

mulch.2586:

Also true that we’re waiting still for crucial functionality, had some disillusionment and backward steps…

The term ‘crucial functionality’ implies that without said functionality the software will not function, since said functionality is crucial. Now since we both know that Guild Wars 2 does actually function then your statement is simply false.

Perhaps you really meant ‘important features’? Like a group finder, more guild systems, etc.

So basically you’re disillusioned because the game isn’t perfect or doesn’t have 8 years worth of additions and expansions at launch?

ZaiTh.6378:

Hmm, what do you make of this? This is on the same page at Massively. Do you have any idea how bad that makes them look? Discuss.

This question is answered in the article that was linked to in the OP.

May I recommend that in the future you actually read the article before you make a comment that makes it so clearly obvious that you didn’t? Discuss.

Massively’s MMO of the Year: Guild Wars 2

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/19/massivelys-best-of-2012-awards/

Congratulations ArenaNet!

UPDATE:
Best MMO Studio of the Year: Sony Online Entertainment and ArenaNet (tie)

Congratulations again ArenaNet!

Slow Clap

msalakka.4653:

Is there anything I can do to keep it together when things go haywire?

Soldiers, sailors and policemen have been asking themselves this question since the dawn of time.

The best advice that I can give is to make an effort to breathe slowly and not to worry about things that haven’t happened yet. Keep telling yourself that you will remain calm.

Keep picking your targets and taking your shots. Events will sort themselves out.

It also helps to remember that it’s just a game. People may get upset if there’s a team wipe, people may even try to blame you for it, but in the end no one’s actually be harmed or killed. It’s just a game.

Hmmm…

At one point we did try pulling them out of the circle, but it’s entirely possible that none of us were inside it. Perhaps that was the problem.

Thanks very much for the answers everyone. If we get the chance to play it again we’ll try pulling them outside while making sure one of our guys stays in the circle.

In Tixx’s Infinirarium, entering from Divinity’s Reach, we encountered a game stopping bug in stage 3, retake the princess dolls’ hamlet from the skritt.

Screenshot: http://oi50.tinypic.com/5scvq.jpg

My friends and I killed over 6 Veteran Skritt and a lot of the normal Skritt, while inside the mission circle, and the bar for the event didn’t move at all. This happened right after the patch. When we did it before the patch killing the Skritt inside the mission circle did cause the bar to move. This makes me wonder if something in the patch broke this event.

Is it possible that we were just doing something wrong?

I keep reading/hearing that Guild Wars 2 has no vertical progression, but when I check the market every few levels sure enough I see gear with better stats than the gear I currently have. So every few levels I buy and equip better gear than what I currently have, just like in every other MMO I’ve ever played.

It sure looks like vertical progression to me.

Or am I wrong? Could I just keep the gear that I acquire at level 10 and play with that all the way up to level 80? Because if I could then that would be ‘no vertical progression’.