Guild Wars 2

There is no reason for those rings to be unique. It is the only place in the game where you have to pay attention to the tag Unique, and the only thing that it does is create a pointless newbie trap.

Adding a grind without adding anything interesting to grind on is not an endgame. The “endgame” is still all the same grinding kitten that people were doing before. No one is coming back to the game to up their stats by a small amount to continue doing the same content that was in the game a year ago. At least, the dead guilds in my guild list remain dead.

I have a couple problems with Anet’s highend grinds.

1. Changing appearances is cumbersome and I would constantly have to be mulching items and buying into the gem store to swap appearances. Fix yo appearance system Anet.

2. Gated solely behind grind. People say GW2 is much less grindy than other games, but I spent 2-4 hours a week raiding in other games, doing fun activities that required competence, and it took less time to upgrade a full tier than it’d take to pound out ascended armor. I’m okay with a grind route, but give us something challenging that we can do for more reward.

I have honestly never been a fan of currencies and money in games. Worry about that kitten enough in real life, let me have a path to loot by slaying tough monsters instead of being a capitalist market baron.

3. Very specific stats in a game that has a ton of build flexibility. Kinda a bummer to do a huge grind if it turns out I want different stats in WvW, or that there’s a new fractal that demands a certain kind of setup, or they actually made condition damage worth a kitten and now I want that too.

Personally I don’t think Anet skimps on effort. All of their content updates have had absolutely beautiful artwork in them. I spend probably an hour each content patch just running around ogling the scenery. As people have noted, the ascended armor is actually really intricate in terms of detail work.

I also really doubt that their goal is to move transmutation stones. The amount of transmutation stones used on ascended armor has to be a drop in the bucket compared to all the other virtual items they’re moving. I think they’re trying to make cool armor and falling flat in some regards.

It’s a bit puzzling because before the game launched, I assumed that the gem store would be like a virtual fashion show that everyone would buy into. Now I’m surprised if I see something that looks cool every couple months, a problem that’s compounded by having a charr in medium armor as my main character (I really wish I could reroll human or norn sometimes).

Make cool stuff, make it cheap, make it reusable and unlock on multiple characters, print money. Granted, that’s easier said than done, given everyone’s fashion tastes vary wildly.

Samuirai.4561:

Of course more data would be more accurate. But if it is 1%, 0.5% or my 0.8%, it shows, that the probability is not 0.0001% and not 10%. And that is worth something, I guess

I was just teaching someone binomial probability today! Neat that I can actually use it for something.

Assuming Anet just has a set probability for each combine regardless of what you’re combining, there’s 95% confidence that it’s within .32% of .79%, so your sample is pretty accurate!

Doing 10000 samples would decrease the margin of error to around .173%, and if we combine your data with that other person who did 8000ish attempts, we get pretty much exactly that.

So unless Anet is screwing around with the probabilities based on (specific weapons/how many drops you’ve gotten thus far/phases of the moon/first letter of your character’s name/what direction you’re facing/if you’re doing the YMCA at your computer) then we have the drop rate pretty well nailed down.

Don’t remove content unnecessarily.

A super tough zone like SAB tribulation mode isn’t something I want to splurge on, it’s something I might play once or twice a week. But I’m not given this option. Instead of having an extra piece of awesome content to play at my leisure, I barely get to play it at all.

Temporary achievements are a buzzkill.

I’m more extreme about this than most — I even hate dailies and monthlies. When I log in and a game tells me “you only have a couple days/hours left to pound out these tasks and get a reward” I am a big step closer to never playing it again. There is never a time when I log into GW2 and have less than 3 different task timers counting down. Feels the opposite of relaxing. Better yet when the daily timer rolls over right in the middle of my play session.

Event currencies are a buzzkill.

It’s a royal pain to figure out what kind of appearance stuff I can make, what items I’ll need, and the complicated, grindy path to get them. I don’t think I’ve spent a single event currency on something interesting yet. Another problem is that most currencies equate to gold, so if I buy something it’s always at the expense of something else.

Event items: soulbound, prohibitively expensive, or kinda lame.

Pick at least one of the above. My favorite so far is shockingly the balloon from the jubilee because I can whip that out and mess around with it whenever I want.

The “old world” is entirely subsumed by the “living world”.

The absolute most fun I’ve ever had in GW2 was my first time leveling a character, exploring the world, finding jumping puzzles and just having a relaxing time. I still make a point to get my dailies done in Lornar’s Pass or some of my other favorite backwaters when I get the chance. But the pressure is to zone to whatever zone a temporary event is taking place in and knock out the temporary achievements. The game even pops up flashing messages to that effect. Again, it feels the opposite of relaxing.

But wait…

Realized I typed up a full post of negatives. Just wanted to mention that I appreciate that an IMPRESSIVE amount of work goes into these updates. The ART DESIGN in particular is amazing. This is the only game I’ve ever played that I log in and just look at the beautiful scenery. The airship from wintersday, the colosseum, the bazaar… so pretty. The couple factors above just make it hard for me to enjoy.

This is definitely a problem for me. If I could buy gem store armor once and use it on any of my characters in a costume slot or some kind of LotRO-like appearance selector, I’d definitely be dropping gems on it. As it is, I will never buy gem store armor. So they’re losing money on me for sure.

Orion Magus.5348:

Saying “just run ahead of the pack” is asinine. There is only so fast you can go and if other characters also “run ahead of the pack” then the whole pack is actually still in the same spot. This works only if one or two ppl do it meaning everyone else is SOL.

You’re coming up with some theoretical scenario but I promise you if you learn to do the first part quickly, you will very very very rarely have more than one or two other people jumping with you. Usually it will just be you. If you are in some troll instance where thirty enormous norn with speed buffs are blocking you then leave and come back to a different instance.

If you do not learn to do the first part quickly you are not going to make it to the end anyway.

If you are going fast enough to make it, other player’s models are not really a problem, so just work on learning the first 10s of the puzzle after the wall breaks. Once you get that down you will be alone 90% of the time and the puzzle becomes less frantic.

I finished it the first time on my asura, and my norn wasn’t really any different, easier or harder.

Skills 6-9 put a debuff on the enemy and if they don’t do the emote it says to do before it expires, they take a lot of damage and get stunned for a second. They’re actually really powerful because it makes them either stop to do the emote or take loads of damage.

There is an event that pops up in those three zones every so often, you will see it on your map, when the event is completed all the doors pop.

Points that stood out to me as needing improvement:

• I wanted more interaction with my racial mentors. As a Norn, Eir didn’t feel like much of a character. I gather that she was the leader of Destiny’s Edge, and she made some decisions that lead towards some deaths, but in my story all I got was her moralizing at me and complaining about being friendless and lonely. Maybe have some “mentor missions” that everyone can do to learn more about their mentor. Give us some insight into who this character is, and have them confront difficult problems. If Eir is reluctant to lead again because of what happened last time, put her into another situation where she has to make a difficult decision and breaks down and my player character snaps her out of it. Have her confide in my character. Flesh out her history — does she have a lover, was she a great warrior, is her family dead? What’s up with her ice carvings?

• My Norn felt like a child in an adult’s body sometimes. I’m a grizzled adult Norn yet I’m being taught these incredibly simplistic morality lessons. At the end of the early quest series we have a little “what did we learn here today?” moment about knowing when to fight or honoring the ancestors or whatever. It feels like my guy is a five year old in an adult’s body sometimes, running around shouting things like I AM THE MASTER OF LIFE and getting lectured about being a good person. I get that this is part of the Norn’s flavor, being He-Man or She-Ra running around drinking and boasting, but there’s a way to do it that doesn’t make them feel childish. For the record I thought the “Dude where’s my tank” quests were hilarious — comedy is GREAT and some of the high points of the game are comedic, but my character shouldn’t feel like a child. Unless they’re Sylvari of course, in which case they are kinda full grown children.

• The Pre-Order storylines felt a bit logically inconsistent. You’ll get a choice like “Should we have the Priory rescue the children, or have the Vigil protect the city?” and I’m thinking “Why are these mutually exclusive?” It doesn’t make sense. With a little modification though, it can become “Who do you want to go with?” rather than “Which one should we do?”

I should mention some good points too, because there’s a lot of them!

• Ambient dialogue in cities and quests. I can’t praise this enough. The random people you can talk to and the random conversations you listen in on are great. The event dialogue is great. One part that really stood out to me is when Destiny’s Edge meets up again, the children when you first enter do a hilarious scene where they play pretend as members of Destiny’s Edge, but it’s also catching you up on the history of the group. This was awesome. In general the text conversations from talking to people in instances were more informative than the actual cutscene dialogues.

• A lot of the mini-storylines were pretty cool too, and the choices give you some fun variation in gameplay. I enjoyed most of the mini-plotlines: my human noble politicking, lost parents or sister, drunken Norn fiasco, Asura invention gone awry, and the Sylvari’s “Act with caution” storyline. Aside from logical inconsistencies, I really liked the pre-Order storylines for all the races I’ve tried too — the setup where you pick a faction to follow for each mission is a great way to get you familiar with them before you choose them. I liked the variation in gameplay from my choices.

• The main cast is pretty good in general, and some of the supporting characters are GREAT. I like Zojja, Caithe and Rytlock a lot. I don’t even mind Logan that much — he wears some very apparent flaws on his sleeves but at least it makes him a character. Some of my favorites were supporting characters though. I wanted to interact with the leader of the Queen’s personal guard and my sleazy noble buddy more. Tybalt is amazing and hilarious. I loved when my character’s voice actor was audibly slurring his words after the drinking contest and the person he was saving was scoffing at him for her drunken rescue.

Basically you have some amazing writers, but it seems that something in the way that you structured your writing team for the main storyline made it fall a bit flat for me.