Guild Wars 2

I agree with OP, except I love pvp. The problem here is that WvW is really just zerg vs. zerg right now. Even if you join a big WvW guild or organize an awesome team, the battles come down to just whose zerg is bigger, or who’s closer to the guards/wall/anti-infantry. That’s just not fun. There’s no skill involved when the outcome is determined by how many players felt like queuing up.
They could leave this kind of achievement in and solve the problem by making it simply kill 50 players in PvP. Meaning it’s not limited to WvW. The flag capping in structured right now is still a little zergy, but at least its fun.

Again, to make my point clearer, I was disappointed that I couldn’t get September because I tried. I really did. I logged in to WvW at least every other day for the latter half of the month. When we were winning, our players were too spread out to organize on assault (which you needed at least 20 to get through the defenses), and the only enemy players were defending, meaning no stragglers or counter zerg.
When we were losing, the enemy was overwhelmingly crushing. Most of the time, we didn’t have enough players on to make any progress because the enemy’s zerg was always bigger. When we did have a sizable force, we failed at the gates because they had more people defending OR not a single player was inside (because they left to go zerg somewhere else).
I find it rediculous that it’s so difficult to just get a kill when there’s a billion players on. You can’t pick someone out of a zerg easily, and they’ll just move back to the wall or keep if you overwhelm them, and retreat entirely if you win.

It sounds like you’re missing the point of (or just not enjoying) casual pve, wvw, and spvp.
The idea is that you can jump in and out, play how and when you want, all while being self reliant and able to help other players.
You can’t just do one thing, like heal or tank, and expect to be a beast in that role. It’s all adaptive and situational. It sounds to me like the part you’re not enjoying is how easy it is to zerg through everything when there are a lot of good players doing the same task.
But that’s the casual side. Maybe you’ve been in some overgeared PUGs in the explorable dungeons or with some really skilled players in pvp , but I can guarantee it will absolutely be easier, faster, and more fun in a cohesive, organized group. The game does its part by bringing people together with common tasks (events, pvp tourneys, dungeons), but it’s ultimately up to the players themselves to form a stronger force by coordinating. There’s so many things that work toward this goal. Combo fields, area buffs for your allies, traits that focus on reviving and teamwork, adaptive difficulty… not to mention the guild system and squad system.
I’ve very rarely seen players literally NOT help each other out when they’re nearby. On my warrior, I’ve swapped out a skill for my banner of discipline, and I can’t tell you how many random players follow me around after seeing I can give them swiftness and fury while we do the local events/exploration. Playing in dungeons, I find myself always preferring to, if not downright NEEDING to, stand in a AOE heal/condition remove circle. I can’t put one down as a warrior, so I’d say that’s a combined effort.
Join a guild that does group events and tourneys, or has a squad in wvw. You’ll see the coordination.

While in whole this post was good and informative, there were a few things about it that really bothered me.
First of all, the ‘correct charged battery horse’ or whatever example he used to demonstrate what apparently Anet considers a ‘strong’ password. IT IS NOT.
Just set GW2 aside for a second and think generally. A password is a password. The only time you -should- use a weak password is for a website or forum you absolutely don’t care about. If there’s ANYthing important on an account though, especially anything that can be linked to another account of yours, you should use a truly strong password.

From a professional standpoint, there is only one way to keep a truly strong password.
1. do NOT use simple words or phrases that can be scanned, guessed, and/or found in a dictionary/database (such as in Anet’s example)
2. use different characters, not just letters and numbers. Caps and symbols.
3. a random string of these combined will always be the strongest.
4. change your password every so often.
5. DO NOT browse malicious websites or download torrents on the machine you access these accounts on. These can become infected with a keylogger, which even the strongest, longest, most random password in the world fails to immediately.

Other than the simple word example, Anet’s advice is sound. And I’m happy they’re rolling out a form of authentication. I just feel like the simple word example is ultimately giving the less learned player the wrong advice. Am I overthinking it? Yes, but I wouldn’t want someone to take this advice and, say, go make their bank/investment account just four simple words.

VakarisJ.5619:

I never asked for “realism”, I’m just asking for a bit of consistency – zombies, by default, are slow-moving corpses without magical abilities because they lack any at all willpower.

Were you the one that started the zombie trend, VakarisJ? Last time I checked, zombies were creatures of fantasy, meaning there’s no “default”. Whoever creates them within context can make them however they see fit.
Some of the best zombie games have them sprinting towards you. L4D, dead island, etc.
I love it when people complain because one thing is unique and not like EVERYthing else.

Key binds, multiple digit codes, and complicated combinations are the wrong way to go about this kind of system in such an action oriented game. If implemented, it should be more similar to valve titles like Left 4 Dead, where you press a single key and then the direction you move your mouse next determines what you say.
I can’t find any examples on yewtewb but it’s like, you press and hold X, a popup would show the directional chatter options, nudge the mouse ever so slightly in any direction to choose what to say, then release X to say it.

I Karnor I.1823:

ROFLMFAO, there is absolutely no way anyone should need to reformat their hard drive or re-install windoze to play this game or any other game.

I agree. But you can’t say reformatting and using a fresh install with fresh drivers doesn’t solve many problems!
I know reformatting is a pain. But refreshing an OS and its drivers at least once every few years is a good idea.

I understand your frustration, but it’s not worth giving up until you’ve tried everything. Have you:
Reformatted your hard drive?
Reinstalled windows with the latest service pack?
Not install any unnecessary background programs?
Download and install all the NEWest drivers for ALL of your hardware, including your bios, chipset, ethernet, usb, audio, and most importantly GPU?
Install GW2 fresh to the hard drive your OS is installed on?
Run GW2.exe as an administrator?
Changed graphic settings around in game and out of game in your GPU’s control panel?
Try all other available drivers for your video card?
Made sure this is an isolated occurrence, and all other programs/games run as expected?
Install and run an FPS/GPU/CPU monitoring tool, such as fraps/precision?

Again, there’s only so many suggestions I can throw out without knowing your specs.
EDIT: sorry, I see you added more to your last post while I was typing this one.
All I’m getting at here is, ultimately, there’s no point in ‘demanding an ETA’, because the team working on these issues probably hasn’t found an exact solution yet. If you want to be more than disappointed, that’s up to you. I just wouldn’t let it ruin my day, considering this game has no subscription fee and you can always check on it in a few weeks.

First, it would help if you specifically mention whatever problem you feel is worth making such a hostile post about.
If it’s about framerate/performance/crashes,they’re not ignoring you. As the devs have said in earlier threads about these issues, the teams know about these and are working on fixes.
Whatever problem I was having is being worked on (low fps with a 680), because I’ve noticed with every recent patch, I get more stable fps. Still not optimal, but we’ll need a new Nvidia driver for that.
If you really want to help, expain exactly what problem you’re experiencing, post your specs and settings, submit 1 and only 1 ticket (you can update it), and bump your post occasionally. If your crashing, send the reports and record error numbers.
The team posting on the forum can only relay info between us and other teams, so if you’ve given them everything you possibly can, it’s just a matter of time before it’s fixed.
And again, instead of coming off as entitled and hostile, you could have been typing in great detail what you were experiencing, and devs or even other learned players may be able to help you. For example, I know for a fact running an antivirus/firewall program in the background can be a cause of crashing/poor performance, but many players don’t know this and end up in your situation.

Eternalglory.1682:

which driver u using

306, the newest beta one. Reference gtx 680, i5 3750k.

Hey all, just thought I’d mention (and thank anet for) an increase in performance after the latest patch. Perhaps it’s just the map I’m in or because not as many people are on at this time, but I feel it’s significant because in very similar areas with similar amounts of players, I had dips in FPS.

More specifically, I have an nvidia 680. From launch, I’d average 40-50 fps on max settings, but it would dip and stutter whenever I’d turn the camera. After this patch, I seem to be getting a consistent 40-60 fps, with no dips, and even better performance in less cluttered areas (up to 120 fps underwater). Although not optimal (I’m still expecting 70 fps single card average once the optimized drivers are out), I’m very pleased!

After the countless threads, including the one with official respose (now merged with the “Crashing” thread for no good reason), it’s safe to say that in the majority of cases, those of us with kepler cards, SLI, or both are experiencing less than optimal performance. I’ve posted specs in the other thread to help out, but I thought I’d add in here that;
Anyone with 600 series cards in SLI or a 690 should be getting well over 70 fps at 1080p. So although 40ish is playable, it’s clear there’s still something wrong.
What I’ve noticed, is that, on a 680, when I turn my camera and the fps dips, the power draw acts up. Like literally, my lights flicker when I turn the camera. No other game does that on maxed out settings….

It depends on your stats and trait allocation. And if the battle calls for single target DPS or AOE.
The greatsword is one of the highest, most balanced weapon for a warrior, because the damage output is steady and easy to learn. It also has decent splash damage. However, you sacrifice some utility, and also are not capable of dealing as much dps to foes that are strong against direct damage.
The axe has more AOE capability than the greatsword, and outputs similar dps. But it has little utility.
The mace outputs decent dps and has a fair bit of utility, with stuns and blocks.

The sword, my personal favorite 1 hander, is an interesting beast. On the surface the DPS seems low, but you are applying bleeds like ugly on an ape. If you stack condition damage, this will be the best 1 hander for long, drawn out fights where you have to move in and out of melee range. Also, it has what I would think is the greatest utility out of all the 1 handers. You have a leap on a very short cooldown, a hamstring, and in the offhand, a powerful block and ranged attack. Again, a pair of swords can be your best friend in a situation where you can be smashed to pieces at melee range, because your bleeds will tick as your crippled enemy attempts to chase you down. Then when cooldowns are up, throw your sword, leap right back in, restack the bleeds, riposte, rip your sword out, hamstring, and dodge right back out of melee range.

Warrior DPS against powerful foes is all about adaptability and knowing when to swap weapons. Anet didn’t emphasize weapon swapping with the sigils, runes, and traits just because they were trying to force the mechanic as original. To have utility in any group, pvp, or high level situation, you HAVE to be able to adapt as a melee class. You cannot outheal damage like a guardian, and you can’t dodge in and out like a thief.

AshleySegovia.3948:

Thanks so much for the reports everyone! Just know that we haven’t forgotten about you all and we’re still looking into this issue. One thing I would like to note, however, is of the many causes for low performance for players with high end graphics cards is that their PCi-Express GPU is plugged into a 1x|4x slot rather than a 16x slot. For players who have recently upgraded their video cards, we recommend ensuring that the GPU is plugged into the proper PCi-Express slot for maximum performance.

Just thought I’d clarify on this a bit.
Chances are, if you have the money and have done enough research to know which of the available cards are ‘high end,’ you probably know what she’s talking about here, and the 1x link bug probably isn’t affecting you.

PCIe lanes are always wired differently, depending on motherboard location and manufacturer specifications. Usually, the very first PCIe lane to the south of the CPU socket is wired for 16×. This is what she means by a 16x socket. Following that, the rest of the PCIe lanes are almost always wired for 8x or 4x, and the very bottom is usually wired for 1×. If you simply just don’t know and can’t find documentation online, you can physically tell how it’s wired by just looking inside the socket at how many gold contact points there are. In a nutshell, a 16x socket will always have gold connectors across the entire length of the plastic.

And as for you guys at Anet, thank you for a reply like this, it’s a welcome change from other developers being silent about problems til the very last minute. But obviously, this bug is not what the majority of high-end graphic card users are suffering. The game is not optimized for kepler cards, and especially not for SLI. It would be nice if Nvidia could give us an ETA on a gw2 optimized driver.

i5-3570k @ 4.3
8gig corsair vengeance
Nvidia GTX 680, reference/GTX 680 OC/GTX 680×2 (sli)
Win 7 64 bit
All on RAID0 SSDs
Graphic settings: Everything max, including supersampling (lowering any settings does NOT improve performance)
Nvidia drivers: 306.02 (all 300+ versions give the same performance for me)

I’ve read plenty that kepler cards are not optimized in any way for GW2 yet, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating when I see my 570 get better performance and stability than my 680s in SLI. Currently, I am only using one stock 680, and average 40-50 fps, with 30 fps lows. That is -playable-, however, whenever I move the camera around, it stutters badly. The stuttering is significantly worse in SLI, which is why I’m only using one card. Also, SLI provided absolutely NO improvement in framerate.

Other than the stuttering, I’ve also noticed that GPU usage is very poorly optimized. My card won’t push past 75%, and prefers the 50-60% range.
I know my rig is fine otherwise, I get the expected performance in all other titles, with the best being in dx11 optimized applications.