Guild Wars 2

Swagger.1459:

Well, to be fair, Anet can’t carry a staff of 200 while only generating around 15 million per quarter.

Lets say 300 people cost $100K average each year. That is $30M a year.
A few million due to expanses.

$15M a quarter is $60M a year.

Also part of that cost is classed as investment (future expansions, etc).

Anet needs to drink a few coffees and wake up a little, but so far one can’t say much more than that. (and we already saw a few changes)

Ensign.2189:

This occurred because A.Net’s internal decision structure and politics were such a disaster that nothing could get done otherwise, and the result was an immediate downturn in the quality of balance in the game that it never came close to recovering from. This is not an example you should be pointing to of why you should be splitting skills in GW2.

The first skill split in GW1 happened on the 22nd May 2008, more than 1 year after the announcement of Guild Wars 2.

By that time for how long had GvG been dead and buried?

Claiming that the PvE/PvP skill split had anything to do with a GW1 downturn in quality is far fetched.

The skill split like other changes to Anet stances (like the increase of 4 heroes to 7 heroes) happened because most of Anet staff had moved to GW2 and the handful of people left in charge of GW1 (the real reason why there was a downturn in everything) had different ideas.

PvE had an interesting period of toying with forgotten skills.

nacario.9417:

bump, any fix?
/15 char

It is working for me now.

The digital doesnt give much.
The ultimate gems are at a good price.
I bought the ultimate.
IMO it is either the basic or the ultimate.

I think we need both types of maps.

Random Dynamic events mean it is possible to go for a while without one. I remember before the megaservers loving the apps that let me know when DE were about to start or ongoing because sometimes, especially when you have a fully explored map, you don’t have too much to do.

Notsoperky.2348:

Swoo.5079:

Seemed fine just a hour ago.

Excellent, a screen of an event where people moved in from other maps by taxi.

I don’t know. I logged in and there I was on a map where stuff was happening.

Anyway this was a comment on a thread stating the swarm has left hot. Maybe I’m really lucky and the game keeps tossing me in the maps with the swarm.

About your HP problem.
Have you tried advertise in LFG?

The couple of instances I arrived at a HP and no one else was there I advertised in LFG tool and map chat. Less than 5 minutes later I had more than 5 people.

About your 10 minutes “wasted time”. I call it fun exploration.

Seemed fine just a hour ago.

I signed in metacritic and gave it a 10 review since it is absurd those 0s&1s reviews.
It is not a 10 (I would rate it a 8.5), but the absurdity of people giving it a 0 because you have to play the game to get full elite spec made me give it a 10 to balance it.

And the haters are lucky most people that fun do not care about these things or it would be closer to 10:1 positive:negative.

By the way, just to let everyone know masteries ares account bound, so it is a chore but only once.

maybe.5086:

I have the same problem and now I have two chest like that.

I have 2 like that as well.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So from the same guy who said dungeons in GW2 were so hard that no one in the Anet QA team had ever beaten them before launch… yeah I think i’m safe lol.

Considering players complained that melee was useless back then…

Challenging content that requires builds other than zerker, stack buffs, max dps and timely dodge?

Sure.

Raids a la WoW, Rift, WildStar (the hardcore 40 man raid game every hardcore gamer out there wanted)?

No.

First there are two different terms.

Trinity and Holy Trinity.

Trinity refers to the different aspects of combat – dealing damage, healing damage/mitigating damage, crowd control/support.

In old EQ it was actually 5 aspects – damage mitigation and healing were split and so were crowd control and support.

Holy Trinity refers to the single role a class executes in combat- tank, dps, heal. During an encounter the tank won’t start healing or the dps will become a tank – spec changes generally occur out of combat.

With the advent of WoW and games inspired by WoW, holy trinity and trinity became synonyms for many (most) people.

But Colin uses the original definitions for trinity and holy trinity.

People can say “look many (most) use them as synonyms, so why is Colin causing confusion”?

But how does one describe the aspects of combat without the term trinity?

Colin reddit post is pretty clear.

It works the way we intended: you can play control, support, and DPS actively. To folks who prefer to define by the holy trinity, Gw2 doesn’t force you to pick one of the three from heal, tank, or DPS and only do that – it blends a mix depending on your build and allows you to actively swap roles or soft play between roles. Our goal was to remove the forced singular role per you’re locked into, people often mistake this as saying gw2 has no trinity elements, that isn’t true – we just don’t believe in a forced role per for Gw2 for the reasons I covered in the live stream.

Notice how Colin clearly makes the distinction between Holy Trinity (role lock) and Trinity Elements (different aspects of combat).

But we all know that for PvE it mostly devolved into buff stacking, perfectly timed dodges (and other active defense) and max DPS.

If all of the aspects of trinity (dealing damage, healing/mitigating damage and CC/support) are to be present and have similar importance, encounters need to be redesigned.

Again Colin reddit post is clear.

It’s that the mobs and encounters we have provided so far very rarely allow/encourage you to make use of the combat system as intended.

Other than people thinking Trinity and Holy Trinity are the same thing, there is no room to misunderstand what Colin said.

The pre-pruchase of the original GW2 did get you in the stress tests (not sure if the earlier ones).

MiniEquine.6014:

Swoo.5079:

MiniEquine.6014:

That’s a baseless opinion. The traits do affect the other aspects of PvE. Just because they are affected less than against a champion or a dungeons doesn’t mean that they don’t affect it at all.

Yeah that 2 siphon of vampiric auras is really useful when you hit for 80.

If you are going to respond with sarcasm, it only goes to show you have nothing to stand behind. You are intentionally being intellectually dishonest. At level 80, you have 27 traits; which is 27 more than a level 6 has. Even if you only took defensive traits (difficult, but possible), then you are still far better than a level 6.

It is a 68% damage difference all of it needs to cover.

At least you are trying to prove the level 80 is still more powerful, so you at least agree with my expectations of a level 6(80) being more powerful than a level 6.

MiniEquine.6014:

Swoo.5079:

The fact level 80s don’t touch low level areas is due to the fact that there are few rewards – removing champions and such didn’t help.

Some of the boosts seem to not work either, like the sigil of bloodlust.

I still don’t see a need to use any kind of rotation, enemies die fast enough.

Why do you keep bringing up Sigil of Bloodlust? This is not the only sigil out there. Put a Sigil of Fire and Sigil of Air on your equipment and I guarantee you will see larger damage increases. If it literally does not work, then it’s a bug and you should report it to Anet for them to look into. Also, there are still traits that apply similar effects.

Again, if you choose to not use a rotation, that’s your choice. That’s no reason to say that down-scaling doesn’t make sense though.

You think the superior sigils of air and fire blast for more than the minors at low level areas?
They don’t.

One thing that works good is stuff that trigger when you are hit, like superior rune of strength.

I didn’t say that down scaling doesn’t make sense, just that the base primary attribute of a down scaled max level makes no sense.

MiniEquine.6014:

That’s a baseless opinion. The traits do affect the other aspects of PvE. Just because they are affected less than against a champion or a dungeons doesn’t mean that they don’t affect it at all.

Yeah that 2 siphon of vampiric auras is really useful when you hit for 80.

MiniEquine.6014:

Swoo.5079:

MiniEquine.6014:

So if you’re not upset, what, exactly, is the problem? The level 2 mobs are not going to kill you, and you are going to kill them just fine. If you choose not to play with your traits and utilities that you have to get those boosts, that’s fine, but that by no means invalidates the fact that they are there and can give you massive increases in damage even over a fully twinked low-level character.

You cannot ignore those boosts and simultaneously state that damage is lower from an 80. It’s disingenuous and doesn’t tell the full story.

To expand, no, I do not simply stand there and press 1. I dodge, I pop my utilities for fury, swiftness, and stability. I use my elite skills often on CD to burn through low-level enemies because it is faster. If you want to clear low-level stuff faster, do it.

Why do I have to be upset to talk about this?

Was the previous game state broken? Did I just miss the huge thread and the huge reddit on how level 80s were destroying the starting areas?

Why is there always the talk “if you cannot do it”?

Anyone can do it – PvE is easy.

The question is “why the change”?

You literally just answered your own question with the bolded section. The previous game state was broken; there was little to no reason for an 80 to touch a <80 area, and when they did, it was not fun. PvE being easy is the problem. PvE can be easy, but it shouldn’t be exclusively easy. Making it more difficult for skilled/high-level players makes it more engaging.

I’m talking about this because I find it silly.
I expect my level 80 toon to do as much damage when is down scaled to level 6 as my level 6 toon with an auto attack.

Apparently that is a crazy expectation.
Don’t you expect your level 80 down scaled to level 6 to do as much damage with an auto attack as when it was level 6?

I do expect to do at least as much damage over time. You have only ever compared the base damage of auto-attacks, but have outright refused to acknowledge any boosts from acquired traits, skills, or armor/weapons. All of these things have a significant impact in the amount of damage you deal, and, when you factor them in, a level 6 will never out DPS a level 80 that is geared.

One can say “well this doesn’t change much, so why should Anet waste man power looking at this”?
It is true, it doesn’t change much.
On the other hand why did they waste man power changing the previous state in the first place?

“Was the previous game state broken? Did I just miss the huge thread and the huge reddit on how level 80s were destroying the starting areas?”

The fact level 80s don’t touch low level areas is due to the fact that there are few rewards – removing champions and such didn’t help.

Some of the boosts seem to not work either, like the sigil of bloodlust.

I still don’t see a need to use any kind of rotation, enemies die fast enough.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Swoo.5079:

Vizardlorde.8243:

he also has more crit chance, more crit damage, skills and traits >.>

4% to 8% crit chance is meh.

Level 40s also have skills and traits and is better level 20 than a level 80 is a level 20.

wana test if a lvl 40 guard can kill a lvl 40 champ faster than my downscaled lvl80 guard?

I already said that champions and dungeons are the only places in general PvE that more traits matter.

ekarat.1085:

Two responses — one snarky, the other serious.

Snarky:
I will believe that scaling is a problem when lowbies dominate WvW. (Actually, I’m curious what happens if someone tries this.)

Serious:
It sounds like Anet tested this and found that if a level 80 had the same stats as a lowbie, then the level 80 would vastly outperform the lowbie. So, in order to make things more even, they had to have the level 80 have lower stats to compensate for all the advantages they have.

I agree that it’s counterintuitive for the lowbie to have a higher power stat (at the cost of weaker other stats — yes, the lowbie can better approximate a glass cannon because their gear only has 1 stat instead of 3 — we haven’t tried to equalize all stats yet and see how they compare then). However, this ends up giving the desired result.

The comparisons on the blog are artificial — the average lowbie will not have perfect gear, as it’s too much time/effort/money to constantly replace your gear as you level. Similarly, the downscaled character did not use anything that lowbie didn’t have access to — eg no elite.

In short, a twinked-out lowbie can do a better glass cannon than a downleveled 80, so the lowbie will have higher non-crit damage. However, in practice, lowbies don’t feel overpowered and downscaled 80s don’t really feel underpowered now. So, while I recognize that the stat difference seems odd, it is what is necessary to give the end results, and I care more about the end results.

The thing is that a real new player will be still be doing half the damage of a down leveled player and a third of tweeked low level toon.

So it doesn’t really sort the difference.

It seems to me that is just a nerf to dungeons (never cared much about them) and world bosses (still easy, just a bit more tedious) without stating it.

Basically they introduced a hard cap on how much of each stat your level 80 character can have if down leveled based on the rarity of its gear.

MiniEquine.6014:

So if you’re not upset, what, exactly, is the problem? The level 2 mobs are not going to kill you, and you are going to kill them just fine. If you choose not to play with your traits and utilities that you have to get those boosts, that’s fine, but that by no means invalidates the fact that they are there and can give you massive increases in damage even over a fully twinked low-level character.

You cannot ignore those boosts and simultaneously state that damage is lower from an 80. It’s disingenuous and doesn’t tell the full story.

To expand, no, I do not simply stand there and press 1. I dodge, I pop my utilities for fury, swiftness, and stability. I use my elite skills often on CD to burn through low-level enemies because it is faster. If you want to clear low-level stuff faster, do it.

Why do I have to be upset to talk about this?

Was the previous game state broken? Did I just miss the huge thread and the huge reddit on how level 80s were destroying the starting areas?

Why is there always the talk “if you cannot do it”?

Anyone can do it – PvE is easy.

The question is “why the change”?

I’m talking about this because I find it silly.
I expect my level 80 toon to do as much damage when is down scaled to level 6 as my level 6 toon with an auto attack.

Apparently that is a crazy expectation.
Don’t you expect your level 80 down scaled to level 6 to do as much damage with an auto attack as when it was level 6?

One can say “well this doesn’t change much, so why should Anet waste man power looking at this”?
It is true, it doesn’t change much.
On the other hand why did they waste man power changing the previous state in the first place?

MiniEquine.6014:

You guys are seriously upset that we have downscaling?

There’s a number of things wrong with arguments against:

1) Traits do make a difference – Your traits add flat crit boosts, damage-reduction boosts, range boosts, speed boosts, auto-spellcasts, etc to your build that a level 2 would never have.

2) Heal/Utility/Elite skills do make a difference – Your H/U/E skills can deal lots of extra damage, or if it’s not damage, then it offers you either boons or an ability to have fun with your combat more than just “press 1 and AFK”.

3) Stat distribution does make a difference – Even a maxed out twink will still only have stats in one category. If you gear your twink in gear that matches your 80 in ascended, you will find base damage values to likely be very similar. Fact is, you are also comparing damage per hit, when you should really be comparing damage per second. If your twink level 6 never crits, then they have an effective loss of dps ([Base DPS – Crit%] + [BaseDPS * Crit% * Bonus Crit Damage]) – Base DPS. Assuming Base DPS of 100, Crit% of 40%, and Crit Damage of 150%, this boosts the DPS to 120, which is a considerable amount you are refusing to consider. Never mind builds that grant fury, extra crit damage/crit% with certain weapons, etc, which can boost Crit% to 100% in some cases (meaning sometimes overall damage boosts of 1.6-1.7x, or more).

4) Gearing does not work like it does in your example most of the time – You could buy the max-level gear for your character every single level, with the latest runes, sigils, rings, amulets, trinkets, etc. Frankly, it’s a waste of money though and I would wager that not many people care about min/maxing their twink’s gear; it will just be replaced soon.

TL;DR: If you are being out DPSd, not out-damaged per hit, by a level 2 or even a level 6, then you are using a build with low damage or your don’t know your class. You also have many more skills than them and can easily make a build that completely destroys low-level enemies.

No one is upset.

Is leveling hard in this game? No.
What you do to level is auto-attack, use aoe vs multiple mobs, position yourself to take advantage of pierce/cleave, occasionally dodge.

Are you really going to do rotations to get fury and might and whatnot in general open world PvE?

The mob dies in 3 hits (or 2 of the twinked character).

PS: Still waiting for someone to come with an image of a superior sigil of bloodlust adding any power to a level 6(80).

Cause my 3 stacks of it apparently do nothing.

Vizardlorde.8243:

he also has more crit chance, more crit damage, skills and traits >.>

4% to 8% crit chance is meh.

Level 40s also have skills and traits and is better level 20 than a level 80 is a level 20.

RedZebra.2345:

this thread is really funny, i had a good laugh.
a new player will never have all best gear for his lvl ( this is just theoretical)
and if he has , 10 min later it’s outdated because he lvls to fast.
fo me they can even more downscale lvl 80’s, still way to easy in low lvl areas.
@Kennedys if you ever will have that chat with a “<80” i would change my playstyle

That level 6 has gear level 0.
Still beats the 80 with exotics.

Baldrick.8967:

So, my traits, runes, not to mention the 250 extra power I can get from bloodlust rune as a downscaled lvl6 compared to your 50 maxed minor bloodlust doesn’t count?

Can you show me that 250 power on a lvl 6?
I think you will have a surprise.

Carighan.6758:

Dinks.2478:

Attached is my level 80 mesmer vs my level 21 mesmer in full level 20 greens except not accessories and a backpiece because they don’t seem to exist at that level.

My level 21 Mesmer has 64 more power than my level 80 in full level 80 exotic gear and ascended accessories. That is a 28% difference in power…..

Convenient also (see my quote in the post before) how you forgot the nearly doubled critchance and the added health. Yeah your downleveled char is so much weaker…

But why can a level 40 down to 20 mesmer have traits, skills and have more power than a level 20 while a 80 can’t?

Last time I checked you can easily level at 20, 40, 60 without traits, utility skills and crit procs.
You have power and you dodge if you need. It is that easy.

The only stuff affected is some dungeons and champions, where full traits and skills might be of some relevance, so a slight nerf to max levels there.

Evans.6347:

Are you saying people are going to stay away from low level zones beccause they are slightly less op? If so, thats ridiculous.
This affects nothing other than some egos.

I have no idea what is the reason Anet sees to require ascended armor to match level 20 toughness given by a level 20 blue armor (exotic will be a few points off).

I see no reason for if you use the tome to level your character to 20 in the tutorial that character deals less damage than when it was level 1.

Again, those 2 necros are both my characters. It is not two different players.

I’m not sure what kind of starting areas you play in where you see level 80s parading for newbies. This is not WoW with their duels.

I don’t see what egos are going to be hurt.

I just expect my level 80 necromancer to be at least as strong as my level 6 necromancer. Again, both my characters unless the ego you are talking about is of my toons.

I also don’t see why my level 40 necromancer with level appropriate gear can be stronger than my real level 20 but my level 80 can’t.

Loboling.5293:

Swoo.5079:

Loboling.5293:

I have no problems with maxed gear lowbies having some extra of the stat/s they build for. At 80, gear comes with 3+ stats, at low level it comes with 1. Do this same test at level 60 and we’ll see. I feel very strong at 80, stronger than I did while leveling. You know why? No one spends 5-10 minutes at each level to fully regear their character. The diffrence is small, and while its nice to buy a few upgrades while leveling, the idea that an 80 downscalled is competing with a level 2 in maxed gear, like the weirdest situation ever, is ridiculous. Downscalling may not equalize every stat perfectly, but it does a good job of making the content enjoyable regardless of the level. I’d say its not broken. Again, do this with any level where stats start dividing into 3, and we’ll see how it works out. Going 100% power at level 2, compared to an 80 that doesn’t even have that option is silly. The 80 has precision and ferocity, as well as any defensive stats. 80s are stronger than lowbies, and quite close when lowbies spend way more time than needed to gear up. You can be as strong as an 80, level and have to replace every piece to reach that same point. (this is also without traits, and possibly all your skills unlocked)

Seriously, if guild wars pve is too hard for you at 80, get a friend who plays games to come and help you kill your enemies. Instead of two shoting your enemies alone, you can one shot them with the help of a friend. I mean the only deaths I’ve had at 80 in open world are from fall damage, afk and a handful of times dying to group content. I had one npc put 62 stacks of bleeding on me with one ability since the update, was shocked and I just died in a few seconds cause I forgot to bring cleansing I should’ve brought a maxed out level 2 with me for some assistance. Oh wait….

Let me talk about the second paragraph first.
I’m not complaining about the difficulty of the game.
I’m complaining that it is easier with a true low level character than with a decked out down scaled max level.
It is fine if the low level and the downscaled are as equally powerful but it is just down right silly when better gear and higher real level translate into worse.

About your first paragraph, if you follow the links you will see examples at several levels.

But I’ll leave you with (example from the links) a true level 54 with green gear on the left and a mix of level 53 rare gearvs an ascended level 80 character downscaled to 54.

I appreciate that you took the time to bring up relevant pictures. However, I still don’t see the issue. The geared 54 vs the geared 80:

70 more power
7% more crit chance
62% less crit damage
1500 less hp (18% of total)
Missing some utilities
Missing most traits

So while the 54 has slightly more critical chance and power, he’ll still deal way less damage, and lack a lot of utility and survivability. And as soon as he goes anywhere that is not level 54, downscalling will affect him as well. Thirdly, in an hour of playing he will have lost strength compared to the 80, unless he spends more gold and time getting gear for each level.

Again, I don’t see the issue with downscalling. It is working well in my eyes. There may be a couple locations on a map where a lowbie who is decked in top gear will have slightly more of 1-2 stats, while the 80 will always have all his traits, and utilities, and never feel kitten .

Either way, last time this complaint was brought up, changes were made that made leveling even more faceroll, I don’t want to see that happen again, but it may be inevitable.

Engineer vs Warrior which explains the health difference.

Look at the following picture (again from the blog why i game).

But as we go up in level the difference will diminish.

Khisanth.2948:

Haven’t noticed much difference on my damage oriented characters. Might feel a difference on my ‘hits like a wet noodle’ guardian.

Simply comparing numbers is also slightly inaccurate. What you need is the aggregate damage. For example my engineer shoots out an extra rocket every 10 seconds. Has increased crit chance(not reflected in the character sheet since it is based on distance to target). Can bleed and burn things when I crit. Spawns mines on crit which deals additional damage. There are also defensive stuff.

So what you are saying is that the max level characters need traits and efficient game play to be overall as effective as proper level character.

For some reason that reads to me as Anet telling me “abandon the lower level areas if you are 80” (not that I’m there often).
Maybe that is the objective (with the added bonus of slowing world bosses?) but I remember when the objective was to bring back the high level characters to the low level areas.

Jaxom.7310:

from your comment, dinks is a good name for you. less qq, more pewpew. if you are struggling more, then your build might need work, theres places to look for help w/ that. if u just miss 1 shotting mobs, then we have diff opinions on fun. i never enjoyed how easy it was too roll thru lowbie zones when thats where new content was being released (ls stuff). altho, i haven’t had any probs w/ the new scaling either so, i’d say its prob your build

He can still one shot mobs. It is called new level 2 tweeked character.

Why is it fine for a tweeked character one shot but it is evil if a level 80 character does so? They are both piloted by a veteran player.

I would appreciate if this thread remained about why a real low level character > down scaled max level character.

So at level 6.

With level 0 gear with +10 power runes.

80 damage with level 80 scaled down to 6.
132-135 with real level 6.

It is 68% more damage.

The power figures are slightly off in the image with the attacks since the staff of the level 6 has minor bloodlust and the level 80 necro is under the influence of 2 sacks of might.

The second set of images show the normal stats.

So the level 80 has a bit more armor (10 armor), more precision (6), more crit chance (3.75%) and crit damage (6.12%).

The level 6 has 68% more damage, more health (11), more power (57).

At this level I would take way higher base damage than a bit of crit chance and slightly higher crit damage.

The level 80 needs 3 hits to kill the wurm hatchling. The level 6 needs 2 hits.

Terrahero.9358:

eldrin.6471:

Go look at some of the test results. the normal low lvls are doing more dmg that the down scale lvl 80.

So let me get this straight.

Subject A
17% more power (17stat points)
No condition damage
No ferocity
Only two weapon skills
No weaponswap
No utility skills
No elite
No Traits
No Profession mechanic (Deathshroud)

Subject B
75% Greater critchance (8.4 vs 4.8)
14 condition damage
156% crit dmg (vs baseline 150%)
Weaponswap
Two fully unlocked weaponsets
3 utility skills
1 Elite
3 full traitlines
Deathshround completely unlocked

And you’re telling me Subject A does more damage?

All that suggests is that either the test was complete bogus, based entirely on just autoattacking at best instead of actually using your skills.
Or power scaling is utterly broken and needs to be nerfhammered into the ground if so little can outperform so much.

Subject A is level 2.
Subject B is level 6.

Attributes now increase +7 per level up til level 10.

That means that subject A will have +28 to all stats at level 6, making it pretty much equal in all other stats and have +45 power.

I’ll level it up to 6 in a bit and post screens.

Loboling.5293:

I have no problems with maxed gear lowbies having some extra of the stat/s they build for. At 80, gear comes with 3+ stats, at low level it comes with 1. Do this same test at level 60 and we’ll see. I feel very strong at 80, stronger than I did while leveling. You know why? No one spends 5-10 minutes at each level to fully regear their character. The diffrence is small, and while its nice to buy a few upgrades while leveling, the idea that an 80 downscalled is competing with a level 2 in maxed gear, like the weirdest situation ever, is ridiculous. Downscalling may not equalize every stat perfectly, but it does a good job of making the content enjoyable regardless of the level. I’d say its not broken. Again, do this with any level where stats start dividing into 3, and we’ll see how it works out. Going 100% power at level 2, compared to an 80 that doesn’t even have that option is silly. The 80 has precision and ferocity, as well as any defensive stats. 80s are stronger than lowbies, and quite close when lowbies spend way more time than needed to gear up. You can be as strong as an 80, level and have to replace every piece to reach that same point. (this is also without traits, and possibly all your skills unlocked)

Seriously, if guild wars pve is too hard for you at 80, get a friend who plays games to come and help you kill your enemies. Instead of two shoting your enemies alone, you can one shot them with the help of a friend. I mean the only deaths I’ve had at 80 in open world are from fall damage, afk and a handful of times dying to group content. I had one npc put 62 stacks of bleeding on me with one ability since the update, was shocked and I just died in a few seconds cause I forgot to bring cleansing I should’ve brought a maxed out level 2 with me for some assistance. Oh wait….

Let me talk about the second paragraph first.
I’m not complaining about the difficulty of the game.
I’m complaining that it is easier with a true low level character than with a decked out down scaled max level.
It is fine if the low level and the downscaled are as equally powerful but it is just down right silly when better gear and higher real level translate into worse.

About your first paragraph, if you follow the links you will see examples at several levels.

But I’ll leave you with (example from the links) a true level 54 with green gear on the left and a mix of level 53 rare gearvs an ascended level 80 character downscaled to 54.

Silverkey.2078:

I don’t think that is bad. You have less power but more of all other stats + a full set of specialization + all your skills. So at the end, you would still beat the actual lvl 2. Going to lvl 2 zones with your lvl 80 characters in the past was not easy, it was trivial, basically one shot everything. I haven’t tried myself but I guess now it is somewhat fun.

But it is a level 6 vs a level 2. If you follow the links you will notice at same level 6, the real 6 is better than the downed 6.

Yes, it was trivial with both a twinked and a level 80. Now it is faster with a twinked than a level 80…

Should at least be on par, and I have no problem if they decide to increase difficulty, just low level > down scaled char.

Jaxom.7310:

plus u should have more experience in game w/ ur character than the low lvl player, so your skill should be > than theirs, giving you another edge in the fights.

I have the same experience with a low level character than with a max level character but until level 70 or so, my lower level character is more powerful.

Previously a down scaled level 80 would always be overall more powerful than a real low level character.

With the patch Anet said it was reducing the power of a down scaled character and increasing the power of an upscaled character.

So far so good.

But after reading others people testing and doing some testing of my own, a low level character can actually hit harder than a down scaled character.

For example a level 2 necromancer wielding a staff and wearing the best blue armor a level 2 can have with power runes can have 114 power. A level 80 down scaled to level 6 necromancer with berserker gear with runes of strength has 97 power.

Against a level 2 plains wurm hatchling that means the level 2 necromancer is hitting for 100 damage while the level 6 (80) necromancer hits between 80-91 damage.

A blogger has a more detailed investigation.

https://whyigame.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/gw2-i-think-downscaling-is-borked/

https://whyigame.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/gw2-further-experi-adventures-in-downscaling/

I didn’t see a topic on this subject in a quick survey around this forum and the bug forums and that is why I started this one.

If Stronghold is a new game mode it makes no sense to have to queue for a mix of 2 modes.
If one can down vote all but one map, that is fine.

While HoT is nice they should have gone with Game of Thorns, which abbreviates as GW2:GoT which is not bad either.

Yeah, I want to be able to check the progress as well.

Please Anet give us someway to access the interface.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Testing was done predominantly in the west focused on players who played guild wars 2 today, people who played gw2 at launch and left, people who heavily play other MMORPG’s, and people who heavily play RPG’s. We did all of this testing ourselves in the west, I’ll just kill right now that this is a system developed for China. It’s a system developed for the global game, period, because retaining new users at early levels wasn’t just a china problem we needed to solve, it’s a problem in the west too.

God who the heck are those players?

I just want all the goodies/tools/options from the get go.

Garambola.2461:

I have just one problem with it. It has to be in the inventory. If each character got a copy of it, I would buy it. With just one being passed around no deal for now.

Same.
Convenience that is fiddly and is used as a chain to buy more items from the shop is something I will not buy.

Eggman.1405:

Gimli.9461:

Only thing that would change is me spending less time, and not spending extra 3 silvers to port to bank; which shouldn’t be a huge deal I think?

Not exactly the only thing that changes, ANet gets less money.

Well, I’m not buying any until the tools like the OP suggested.

Why?
Because I want my convenience to be hassle free and not revolve around some convoluted method of waypointing/travelling to WvW or double dipping for bank access/golem.

So it is a question of how many tools less they would sell to people that buy them for multiple characters vs how many more tools they would sell from people like me.

People only had 9 years to know about the existence of GW1 by now.

And it isn’t as if you need more than yourself to play GW1 – in fact solo or duo are the best GW1 modes imo.

I was under the impression people kept requesting new permanent zones.

There has been mention of a GW2 expansion in NCSoft earnings conference calls since ever.

It seems obvious that the original plan for GW2 future development changed with the higher than expected amount of gem store revenue.

It might have been focused on expansions before release, but now, while expansions aren’t completely out of the picture, it is quite possible that Anet/NCSoft figured that free episodic content, with or without occasional expansions, will be more profitable.

juno.1840:

IndigoSundown.5419:

“Rewards content development” assumes two things. 1) That ANet is not currently producing new content at the speed that their budget supports; and 2) that ANet is deliberately producing content whose quality is below what their best effort could produce. That’s the cynical part of your assumptions.

No not quite. You touched on the current problems, but then went and added stuff like “ANet is trying not to succeed”. That’s not it at all — not even close. I’ll do my best to clarify:

ANet does not produce enough content (rate, size, etc) required for a long term, successful MMO.

So why is that the case?

Your guess might be as good as mine, who knows. I think one possible answer is “not enough budget”. Monetizing content solves that problem (and if it doesn’t, then the ship sinks anyway). Another possible answer is “development resources used elsewhere”. These are really the same — but the bottom line is a profitable company assigns resources to maximize the profits (by increasing revenue or decreasing expenses).

If you sell content, that encourages all the “good” things required for a successful MMO. If you sell other stuff (such as convenience enablers) you ultimately design your game to “make” players buy that stuff. I’d rather my game be designed around what I find the most fun which is content.

Anet doesn’t work like that.
NCSoft invests money upfront on Anet.

At the moment NCSoft is probably investing $35-45M a year in Anet (350+ workers at an average of $100K/year + $10M for offices and expenses).

And Anet keeps expanding, so NCSoft keeps investing more.

If all that Anet produced last year was the Living Story, NCSoft might as well close Anet.

Let me offer an alternative theory.

Anet wanted to produce some content to keep people playing and buying stuff from the cash shop.

The cash shop generated so much revenue that they decided to have a 50-100 people team dedicated to the vanilla game.

The Living Story content is not that amazing if produced by all Anet, but for a third or less of the Anet staff, with many of the them being relatively junior, isn’t so bad.

The cash shop kept churning so much more revenue than expected that they start
actually debating if they were going to release the content the rest of the team was creating (remember Colin talking about a couple of GW2 related projects going on the background) as an expansion pack or some other way.

Not only that they have to sell the idea to NCSoft, that seemed to be convinced that the model would be heavy release of expansions (vide the 2012-early 2013 financial calls of NCSoft).

So we will have to see what Season 2 content actually is.

If it keeps being season 1 type of content either they will release an expansion soon or there is something pretty wrong going at Anet.

Add to that a shortcut to “consume/use entire stack”.

Basically it is the following.

Everything mmorpg players want, they don’t really want.

If you have an instanced game “we want a open world game”. Then they complain the game is not instanced base.

“We want harder content”. “We cant do it first time, too hard, big fail”.
“We want open world bosses and dungeons”. “Actually we want to control everyone that is in there, so private instance please”.

Devata.6589:

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

Without having the exact number I am pretty sure most people are in guilds or communities (at least it’s a huge part). That can be people who just are member of guilds and so guild-missions and or other things with the guild. It can be communities on specific servers like RP communities of people that go to a specific server because of country or language or because a server is WvW focused. Even people that seek out the lower populated servers are in a way a community (together they are looking for a specific type of game-play or type of players to play with)

So that are all different type of communities and for sure most people do belong to one or more of them. Not saying they are always busy with the community, they might do a lot of solo playing as well.

Of course there are people who completely random pick a server, never want to join a guild, never want to do organised content and only play together with people they randomly come across in the game at that moment (or a few friends). Yes for those Megaservers works great… if those people like crowded servers. But it’s not like that is the vast majority and there are just a few that belong to some community.

There are solutions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-MegaServer/3966755 that work good for both but the current implementation does not.

Crowded servers are crowded for a reason.
Also people would guest to crowded servers for a reason.

Of course some big guilds and communities are know to move into less populated servers.

It is clear that there could be easier ways to allow big guilds to do their guild missions and world bosses in isolation, but since it is clear to us, unless Anet is filled with idiots (which is doubtful considering the success of their products) it should be clear to them.

So it is a choice.

Although I’m confident we will see improvements that allow the same party to arrive in the same zone together (not that affected me and my parties so far).

Karuna.1357:

Swoo.5079:

I would like to know exactly what the people that haves PCs that can’t play with megaserver were doing during the Living Story.

Because this is no different than Living Story on patch day in every single map.

There were also some comments about most people being in big guild and communities.

They aren’t. Most people solo and play with a couple of friends.
And with the megaserver it means those people have no need to join a big guild or community.

The people who pick up the game and then quit within a few months tend to be the same people who run around solo, don’t join guilds, don’t take part in community events, and don’t communicate with their server-mates.

While I don’t have exact statistics either, I would say with confidence that out of those people who have been playing this game for any significant amount of time, the overwhelming majority are in guilds. And have at least at some point, they have probably taken part in a large, coordinated group event of some sort.

The whole megaserver ideal of ‘who cares, who needs guilds/communities/etc’ works great if all you are concerned about is maintaining a revolving-door clientele. People will buy the game, level a character to 80, get bored and leave for whatever other latest and greatest thing is being hyped.

However, it completely contradicts the goal of maintaining a loyal fan base. Those player-initiated levels of organization and social grouping are what make the game fun for the longer-term.

Because we didn’t have huge communities and guilds leaving GW2 a few months after release?

Being in a guild is different than being in a community or guild that will spend gems to change server or will be doing guild events every day of the week.

I remember that when Guild missions were introduced there was quite a big outcry in the forums.