Guild Wars 2

Wanze.8410:

Tea.7025:

This game however, seems to only monetize cosmetics. Which means that as a person who derives enjoyment from cosmetics (putting together outfits and collecting pets) in the games they play, I’m expected to either spend all my time farming gold or pay way, way, way more than my fair share.

If your only enjoyment is to customize your character with armor, weapons and minis (pets dont cost anything to acquire), you can do so for free from the wardrobe and in the preview window.

I guess what you want is to show it off in game. If you are good and creative in styling your character, you can put together great appearances on a budget and make get the same WOW! effect form your fellow players.

But most players just admire rare and expensive skins and minis because they are rare and expensive, not because they are particularly cool looking.

I dont know if you would like the game any better, if Anet would unlock every skin and mini in your wardrobe and you would have nothing to work for anymore.

Because once you obtained everything you ever dreamed of in game, all future rewards you get will suck from a personal perspective.

I’m somewhat of a roleplayer (Piken Square represent) and I enjoy having various outfits for various scenarios or even just non-rp content. Love to come up with thematic things or do stuff like “dress appropriately” for the terrain and weather my character is at the moment. Same with pets. While I have some cool stuff around, it hasn’t changed much since the launch of the game. Most additions have been gem store or even worse, lockbox exclusive. These things are so expensive or around for such short time that Ihave the opposite problem of getting everything. Namely, everything feeling out of reach.

I don’t want everything unlocked but I would like either more things to be earnable through actually playing the game (like the dungeon or karma sets) or rewards to be increased for content that involves skill or deliberate player cooperation but is much less profitable than spreadsheets or activities that only require minimal effort and almost no or absolutely no socializing.

What I’m saying is, it feels odd that silently running in circles in Silverwastes or AFK’ing at world bosses is a lot more profitable than completing a dungeon, a fractal, an event chain or a jumping puzzle.

I might not have expressed my point clearly. I don’t think we should get everything for free (why is that always the go-to counter argument?) nor should rewards be increased across the board. I like the cash shop model because in theory it’s supposed to let you pay for the content you like instead of paying a flat, mandatory “take it or leave it” fee. In theory. This game however, seems to only monetize cosmetics. Which means that as a person who derives enjoyment from cosmetics (putting together outfits and collecting pets) in the games they play, I’m expected to either spend all my time farming gold or pay way, way, way more than my fair share. Since the developers know that very few people can play the market and grinding is extremely off-putting after a certain point, they count on players like me becoming whales. Yes, the company needs to make money and I’m alright with setting aside a monthly stipend for it but the truth is, that gets me almost nothing whether it comes to items or gem → gold conversion. While in other games, it either gives me the whole experience or enough to make it worth my time.

No problem, one could say. I will just supplement that real cash with in-game one that I farm up. Here comes the catch. The activity most profitable is not playing the game but playing a sort of stock-market mini game within it. The second or third most profitable activities? Content that is simple, repeatable and requires as little attention or effort as possible. Like parking characters at JP chests. Logging in for laurel rewards, buying mats with them, cashing in. Or chest farming in Silverwastes. Players are encouraged to interact with the game as little as possible. Dungeons, fractals, jumping puzzles, events all around the world. Not profitable.

I do those things regardless because I find them fun. However, the game doesn’t reward me for them nearly as handsomely as it rewards the first two groups so, even with real money investment, I fall behind and everything ends up feeling out of reach. I could dedicate more time to grinding or learning market trends then exploiting them but I don’t want to. Not because I want everything for free or right this very instant but because my time is limited (by my own choosing, of course) and I think too much of it is already taken up by things I don’t enjoy. Perhaps if the currently marginalized activities got a bit of reward boost? Or more rewards tied specifically to them.

Again, not blaming the game for this or asking Arenanet to do things differently. I’m just an average gamer with average time and average skill and little understanding of game design. Just wanted to comment to show the viewpoint of someone like me. Thank you for the detailed answers from all of you!

I just want to chime in. Not as an economy or psychology expert but as an average player. Working towards most goals in this game isn’t fun because they directly or indirectly require huge amounts of gold. Making gold isn’t fun. You either play the market (something only a select few can do or otherwise there would be no profit in it) or do the easiest, fastest, most profitable but boring and repetitive content until you can’t stomach it anymore and ultimately end up dropping not only the content but the game itself.

The game needs income. People purchasing gem shop items or gold with real money. Something which I’m not opposed to. However, the amount of items coming in through the gem shop only and the frequency they come with and the in-game things that requires a high amount of gold makes it so that the amount of real money required for someone who likes these things but can’t or doesn’t want to do the two most profitable activities (playing the market or dedicating entire days to grinding repetable content) ends up so high that they might as well be paying several monthly subscriptions. To just one game.

Going to chime in as someone with both long and short-term memory loss issues. I absolutely love Silverwastes and Guild Wars 2 event chains in general. I tend to regularly forget what I did or what I’m doing, even in the middle of doing it, and too many variables make it harder for me to pick up where I left off.

Repetition calms me. So I do the same activities over and over to relax and it’s great. Don’t think I ever really tire of them, precisely because they feel new yet comfortably familiar at the same time. It’s not stupid. Unconventional but not stupid.

Straylight.7529:

Tea.7025:

I play GW2 to have an MMO that’s not focused on competitive, instanced content.

I’m sure the expansion will have plenty more to offer than raiding. Think of it as one more feature for people who’re into it. Since there is no gear treadmill you won’t have to raid in order to keep up with everyone else.

My problem is that high quality, challenging, instanced content (dungeons, raids) is not something an intern can whip up in their free time. A lot of money, energy and time have to be invested. However, that ends up being a waste if said content is only played by 10% of the playerbase which is the usual participation rate in other games.

WoW suffered the same issue (Original Naxxramas was awesome. Or at least that’s what we heard. A whooping 0,1% percent got to enjoy it.) and instead of making high quality content for the non-instancers, they simply pushed everyone into raiding and dungoneering because that was far more cost-effective. The current expansion’s end game gives you a choice of running the same raids on 4 difficulties and the same dungeons on 3 different difficulties.

That’s what I fear that raids will bring here as well. This game has always mainly targeted casual MMO gamers. So Arenanet will either design content for a small part of their playerbase and cross their fingers that raiders like using the gem store (They usually don’t since there is no “prestige” in credit card swiping.) as to make entertaining them profitable or they try to peddle their raids in any way they can to draw in the crowd and justify the expenses.

I do hope that won’t be so.

I play GW2 to have an MMO that’s not focused on competitive, instanced content.

I bought the game less than four months ago for its full retail price of 35 pounds. Expansion was announced shortly after. Not only do I have to pay another 35 pounds to access that (if only I would have waited about three weeks!) but now my original purchase was rendered meaningless less than four months after said purchase. I wouldn’t be so disheartened if I had bought the game when it was discounted but I paid the full asking price so recently. That’s a lot of money when you’re moving countries since every bit counts until everything is settled.

Just have a bad taste in my mouth overall, especially after the downscaling nerf that made the game noticably harder for me.

Thank you, Donari! Going to try my luck with dulfy’s guide and see where it goes. As for what is there to explain? The logic behind the coordinates. I have read the scattered Asura notes around the area but I’m baffled as in how I’m supposed to figure this out.

Edit: Solved it. Was teleported to a random hillside with no chest. Going to assume this is broken and file a bug report.

Second Edit: Went back. Got the correct coordinates again. Now I was actually teleported to the chest. Tried again after that, just to see what happens. The third occasion (with the right numbers) ported me somewhere random.

On the first and third try there was someone else in the room, attempting the puzzle at the same. Not sure if that has anything to do with it since both the interactable panel and the portal are supposed to be phased to you. Hence why you can’t simply ask a friend to do it for you.

I really like him, actually. Kind and modest. Not to mention that out of all the NPCs who ever accompanied me throughout my personal story, he is the only one who got me back on my feet when I was downed. Even if he was miles away, he would immediately turn around and come to help. While everyone else was idling around my dying body, looking on impassively.

Can anyone lend a hand and explain the titular puzzle to me? Even with the wiki cheat-sheet, I’m stuck and can’t figure out the bit with the coordinates. This is quite possibly the worst puzzle design I have seen and I played the King’s Quest series.

Tried to ask a friend to help but apparently the portal only works if you adjust the coordinates yourself.

Miss Lana.5276:

Plus a lot of languages in Europe are very closely related so if it isn’t the exact language they speak, they’d be able to pick parts of it out, or enough to actually play and understand the basics of the game.

Miss Lana.5276:

very closely related

Miss Lana.5276:

able to pick parts of it out or understand

I’m not sure how to react to this. You’re thinking of the Scandinavian countries perhaps?

I’m someone who is rather bad at action combat due to physical limitations. I didn’t mind this as much as I knew that upon leveling to 80 and getting a full set of exotic equipment (courtesy of a lovely guildie) I will be able to manage most things at least outside of Orr. Which is exactly what happened.

The nerf is noticable for me. Now it feels like I’m much closer to the pre-80 and pre-exotic period of my character’s life and I yet again find myself dying over and over to everything. Have to resort to constantly asking others to help me out when I would like to explore or do jumping puzzles because I can no longer handle combat situations I could before. It’s not fun.

Back to WoW for the time being.

I can’t really add anything more to what the others before me already said (block the offenders, look for a nice guild) so I’m just going to say that if you’d like some laid-back company then I’d be happy to get to know you and hopefully play with you.

I’m playing on the EU side so if you’re on the US, I’m afraid we’ll be limited to just talking. (I’d really like it if we could guest between the two regions for precisely this reason. Pretty please, Arenanet?)

I’m one of those players who bought the game recently, less than a month ago to be precise, for its full retail price of 40$ and I’m not bothered about the base game getting bundled together with the expansion. It will entice more people to give it a whirl.

However, the expansion being 50$ for even those who already have the base game makes me wait with the purchase. Most likely until it goes on sale. Not because I wish to boycott it or disagree with Arenanet’s pricing strategy but because putting down 90$ on a single game in a month is just something I can’t justify. That’s half a year worth of subscription.

I’ll continue to support the gem shop through a 10$ gem purchase each month but the expansion is a no-go for now. That being said, I wish Arenanet luck with the launch and I do hope that those who buy the expansion will enjoy it.

This is the first time I hear about the harvesting limit. Could someone shed some light on this?

I was planning to purchase a set of unlimited tools for my main character so that I can run around higher level zones and harvest for hours on end without needing to stop by a town several times. Hunting down nodes is a very relaxing activity and I enjoy doing it in every game I play.

If I’m understanding this correctly, I won’t be able to harvest for hours uninterrupted because diminishing return kicks in fairly quickly and makes the nodes not reset until the next day? Which would make the unlimited tools rather pointless.

I just wish jumping puzzles were a bit more rewarding. Sometimes porting to the area costs more than what I earn from those.

I like them. They cost no transmutation charges and I can toogle between them at a moment’s notice even in the middle of nowhere without multiple sets taking up an awful amount of slots in my inventory.

sirsquishy.8531:

that’s nearly 5 months with NO serious content update to the game that wasn’t a game play change or bug fix.

And you all think the game isn’t stagnant?

and we have another 5, 6, or 7 months to go before the Expansion will be released (My Best guest based on other MMO/Expansion Releases over the years). If we don’t get any Content updates between then and now that’s nearly a FULL year with no serious updates to the game.

WoW has released zero patches for 14 months before the current expansion dropped. The difference is that there I ponied up cash every month for the experience of running the last raid over and over for a year because there was nothing else to do as, unlike here, the rest of the world and previous instances became irrevelant with each patch because we got increasingly better gear. My hunter was constantly on conveyor belt duty on one of the bosses and after two months of that I saw bloody conveyor belts and walls of fire even in my sleep.

It is something that you have to repeat several times during the encounter. Imagine doing this multiple times every week. And paying 13 euros each month for it. Never thought I was prone to motion sickness but Blizzard proved me wrong.

While Arenanet may not provide us with new content at the moment they sure as heck don’t make us pay to meanwhile access and enjoy the already existing content.

Going to be honest.

Haven’t seen such an outrage over the inability to dress up one’s own character as a playboy bunny for a long time. Not since the Elin got their panties covered up in the western version of Tera.

I’ve been talking about this with a friend just the other day and we arrived at the conclusion that we’re not getting anything for our money in subscription games because they focus almost entirely on instanced content as that’s what keeps the gear treadmill going which in turn keeps the subscription flowing.

Guild Wars 2 focuses on the story and a casual open world PvE with some fairly well balanced PvP to match it. Funding the game is optional and I get a small perk or two of my choice for each purchase. An economic minded guildie invests his money into bank and bag extensions, another one converts the gems to gold to fund her massive crafting sprees, my friend goes for toys, dyes and outfits. Everyone is satisfied and Arenanet turns a profit as well.

Katalos.5038:

Now I understand why players in the forum are so paranoid when I mention “open world PvP”. By open world PvP, I simply means PvP in open world. The only harm it can cause is killing mobs that are meant for leveling players. I am totally against forced open world PvP. In all the MMORPGs I played, we have the option to turn on dueling mode (I think this is what it’s called here). Players in dueling mode can attack players in dueling mode. Players who are not in dueling mode can neither attack nor attacked by any players.

Now it makes sense!

Yes, open world PvP in the western gaming lingo usually means free-for-all player killing throughout the world. In most games towns are a safe zone while in sandbox ones you can be attacked almost anywhere. More hardcore ones (these are very often of Asian origin) make your character drop some of their items upon death.

Dueling is a feature that lets a player challenge another (even allies and party members) then duke it out between each other. No one else can attack them.

What you mention is an optional PvP toogle used on PvE servers, giving the option for the player to “flag” themselves for PvP and in turn be able to attack others who are also flagged. Now that’s something I can agree with! Enjoyed the peace of PvE servers but sometimes friends and I liked flagging ourselves and participating in world PvP as part of an RP event.

Katalos.5038:

I don’t see how players controlled town make the game difficult.

You mentioned that the guilds which control those towns can ban players from them at whim. That’s a problem if the player in question wants to enter those towns for whatever reason.

Katalos.5038:

Since there isn’t forced open world PvP, there isn’t the felling of dread too.

That depends. Did all players who attacked a monster got credit for it? Were the resource nodes used for those skills (lumbering, for example) shared? If no, that means that players still viewed each other as a threat. Even if the other guy can’t kill you, he can still tag and take all the monsters you need or beat you to the resource nodes thus preventing you from advancing in the game.

Not saying competitiveness is inherently wrong. It isn’t. But it’s not for everyone and in my opinion far too many games are built on the idea that players will be absolutely thrilled to go against each other.

Katalos.5038:

And no, I did not ask GW2 to change to the game I used to play. I am here just to point out things I like and dislike.

I have read and even commented (I think?) on your previous thread where you actually DID say that you’d like to see some of those features in GW2. Reading the opening post gave me the impression that you were still aiming for that.

Thank you for clearing that all up and apologies for the misunderstanding. Wish you luck and I hope we meet somewhere in Tyria!

Katalos.5038:

The game is also exceptional hard (that’s why it died :C, new players have no patient to play it). So, it is not possible for mean players to cause trouble. There are just not enough mean players to overwhelm the alliance.

Ah, I see. It’s a shame that it died because I would have loved to see that community in action. Just a sneak peek.

There’s a big issue here though. As you mentioned, the game withered away as it couldn’t attract or hold on to new players due to its difficulty. A lot of that difficulty no doubt came from the forced open world PvP, player controlled towns and overall feeling of dread whenever you saw another player and had to guess whether they’re there to help or hinder you.

A small, loyal, dare I say hardcore playerbase isn’t a bad thing in itself but only if the game was created with that in mind to begin with. So budget, update frequency and the in-game system itself has to lend itself to only being made for and supported by a couple thousand or even just a couple hundred people.

While some of your thoughts and ideas sound good on paper, if Guild Wars 2 went the way of games you used to play then it would either die rather quickly or get transformed into a product that bears no resemblance to the current version.

Why do these dyes cost so much to begin with? From what I know, they used to be very expensive even before the news of their retirement. I saw some pictures but can’t spot any special effect that would warrant such a price.

Seeing people spending in the hundreds and even thousands makes me feel a bit guilty about not being able to contribute that much. Thank you guys for shouldering more than your fair share of the financial burden!

Currently living in a country with an extremely weak currency and saving up for moving abroad so I don’t have much to spare but I do make sure to get at least 800 gems each month as that’s around the same price as a standard MMO subscription and this game deserves at least that much.

So that’s 10 euros each month.

Katalos.5038:

I see you made an assumption that there are no friendly OP players.

I see you made the assumption that I made an assumption.

I played games with your favored system. It was a disgusting experience that almost made me give up on the genre. I met the occasional kind power player but most of them were raging donkeys intent on ruining the game for everyone else around them.

As for who is nice and who isn’t… you’d be suprised if you knew that most of the trash-talking and lowbie ganking players ARE adults. The rich kid stereotype was never true. There are rich kids riding their parents’ credit card, don’t misunderstand me, but they’re the exception and not the rule.

By the way, I’d be really interested in knowing when and where you experienced that utopia of yours. A game that is ruled by good people who enforce fair rules and the majority agrees to those rules? Amazing! If we could round up those players in real life then we might just achieve world peace!

Katalos.5038:

As a weak player, I can join alliances with friends and guilds to beat the shxx out of that OP player. It is just like raid dungeon, only the boss is a player this time. I think it is fun.

Well, let me tell you how that works.

The alliance of valiant heroes attempt to take down the mean lone wolf. They perhaps succeed. It turns out that wolves come in packs so the overpowered player contacts their overpowered friends and together they camp the valiant heroes for the next few weeks.

Most of the time the alliance doesn’t even have a chance to form and rise up against the big bad because the overpowered players spend most of their time massacring lowbies who then either quit out of sheer frustration or join the gankers. What else would those pixel gods do? They’ve beaten probably everything the game has to offer, that’s why they’re so overpowered to begin with.

Coulter.2315:

Actually sex is a very important part of intimate relationships.

Not always and not for everyone.

Or you’re saying that couples who never consummated the union for whatever reason or couples who have stopped having sex for whatever reason are actually not in an intimate relationship?

I’m somewhat suprised that the immediate reaction to the possibility of inter-species couples was something along the lines of “but what about teh smexy times, amirite?” which is a bit, well, shortsighted.

You don’t have to shag someone to have an intimate relationship with them.

In fact, I’d love to see more inter-species families. Because there are very few bonds greater than that of child and (biological or non-biological) parent.

ArchonWing.9480:

we can’t seem to stop anything from happening; just cleaning up the mess and watch as people die

Guild Wars 2 confirmed to be the spiritual successor of Game of Thrones.

Carbon Footprint.3421:

If you have the impression you can “buy it any time” you may never buy it. But if it only comes up twice a year you may be more likely to purchase it, even if not discounted, because you don’t want to spend another 6 months without it.

It’s a dangerous game though. Most players I know simply lose interest in things if they’re not available for a long time so when the items do get re-introduced, those people don’t purchase them.

Got it from a close friend of mine as a suprise gift. Out of all the minis, this little calf is the dearest to me.

Beldin.5498:

Just look at all those post about people that are not able to read the bottom of
these scam-mails where it is clearly stated that the mail is NOT from ANet.

And the problem is maybe also that even if people read it, they simply don’t
understand it.

Functional illiteracy is actually as widespread nowdays as illiteracy used to be back in the medieval times.

Katalos.5038:

There aren’t arguments between players and there aren’t big guilds fighting against each others.

Good riddance!

Not trying to jest at your expense, don’t misunderstand me, but the reason I and many of my friends originally gave the game a try and now came back to it is because it’s so peaceful. It was built on the idea of cooperation instead of competition. What you’re suggesting would turn this into yet another one of those MMOs where people are encouraged by the game’s design itself to resent each other.

Encountered a support guardian called Boontylicious.

Actually choked on my drink when I saw it.

Apologies for the late answer!

I’m not sure how infrequently it’s supposed to happen but I experience it at least once an hour. Usually after an explosion-like skill, which tends to be much louder than the rest, is used near me. Either by a mob or another player.

On the bright side, for me the sounds always return on their own with no client restart needed. The time varies but these ear-ringing episodes are never longer than a minute.

I’m not sure if this is a feature or a bug but during combat my sounds disappear at times and don’t come back for a while. By that I mean the audio of the enemies, the sounds of my own skills, my character’s shout-outs (On my guard!) and the noises gathering tools make. Instead I hear a faint ringing. It’s like my character just went deaf.

Been trying to test this and from what I can see, it seems to happen when an explosion type skill is used near me. So it might be a feature?

Could someone shed some light on this? I tried changing the quality of the audio in my settings but it didn’t help.

Beldin.5498:

Its always soooo funny when people ask for more enemy AI in trinity games.

Enemies beeing dumb as hell is the only reason that trinity works. If they are
not totally dumb they would simply kill the healer first, then the DDs, and
ignore the tank till the end.

And at that point any trinity game would suddenly be unplayable.

I still remember when the pre-expansion patch for WoD launched and we got a taste of the revamped Upper Blackrock Spire. Namely the third boss, Commander Tharbek. The fight begins with a gauntlet event with adds spawning and swarming the team. An upcoming boss observes from afar and gives commands to the trash. One of her calls is “Kill the one in the dress!” at which point the mobs turn on the healer. There were many deaths. Same thing happened back in Burning Crusade with O’mrogg who was immune to taunt and lashed out at party members at random.

Everything falls apart as soon as an NPC shows any sign of common sense or unpredictability which is what makes trinity rather trite on the long run. It may require more strategy or better organization than the system GW2 has but it’s boring!

Ayrilana.1396:

If anyone is going to claim that skipping enemies that drop trash loot, if any at all, is not playing the dungeon properly, please prove it. By this I mean a post from Anet that clearly states that it is not playing the dungeons properly. Otherwise it’s just your own opinions and your situation can easily be rectified by using the LFG system to create your own groups specifying the way that you want to play.

To be fair, if the developers who made the dungeons didn’t want us to fight those enemies then they wouldn’t have put them in there to begin with. They probably thought that managing trash mobs that have crowd control abilties and often managing them while dodging enviromental dangers (gargoyles, spike traps, poison gas, etc.) or completing objectives (collecting items, protecting an NPC, etc.) at the same time would make for an exciting encounter.

They weren’t wrong either. It’s just that when someone is running the instance for the reward and not for the fun of it, which is the case for the majority of players at this point, then they will want to make that run as efficient as possible.

Tigaseye.2047:

Well, I disagree.

I think the skill in a game should be in the way you, physically, play it.

Which will, obviously, gradually improve over time.

Not in the “skill” of googling optimal builds.

…and intellect plate will, obviously, seriously nerf warrior, whatever build they choose.

So, I have no idea what you’re even try to saying with that.

Other than to try to describe a new player and your, apparent, desire to make them perform even worse than they would already do, in that new situation, by providing them with red herrings.

I know you said “drunk”, but it doesn’t matter how drunk someone is; unless they’re a very new player, they won’t gear a warrior in intellect plate.

Just to reiterate – I think there should be choices, just that none of them should be considered bad/unusable.

That is where our opinion differs, I believe. In my view there are no bad, let alone unusable, choices in this game. Not all the options will work for speed clearing dungeons but the game is called Guild Wars 2 and not Dungeon Cleaner 2012.

With the intellect plate warrior example I was trying to emphasize, though with a bit of exaggeration, that when you equalize everything, you make it so that players don’t have to think about what choices they make. Funnily enough, you no longer can equip intellect plate on your warrior by accident because quests, vendors, loot bags and instances not only automatically reward you with the optimal gear/stat combination for your class/spec but the stats adjust when you switch specialization.

“You liked to run around in a mix of agility / defense leather gear and intellect accessories as a restoration druid because you enjoyed having better damage / defense while still having access to your entire healing kit at the cost of weaker heals? Too bad for you then! It’s not optimal and we at Blizzard Entertainment know what’s good for you. You’ll have access to nothing but healer gear from now on and you’ll be pleased about it.”

Condition damage isn’t useless. Healing power isn’t useless. Toughness isn’t useless. Vitality isn’t useless. Nor is any of them bad. Will you want to bring soldier gear to dungeons? Probably not. Will you want to bring berserker gear to world bosses? Probably not. Can you still do? Yes. Can you succeed? Yes.

There are choices. Don’t try to force yourself on the groups that wish to play the game differently than you. I can’t dodge worth a hoot so I will never play with berserker gear on and never join groups that demand me to do so. On the other hand, I love healing and play a healer/supporter in every game. There’s no healer role in GW2 but I have the choice to get shaman or magi gear on my elementalist and go to town in water attunement, swapping to other elements between Geyser/Healing Rain cooldown to give buffs, cleanse debuffs and cast debuffs. It’s not optimal but it works and works well enough for me to have a place in any content I wish to do.

As for newbies… this game is perhaps the most newbie friendly I ever played. Especially since they revamped the new player experience. I didn’t have much trouble back when the game launched and now coming back with a new account and new character I have zero issues. Features are unlocked slowly instead of being heaped up on you at the start, the pop-ups are more extensive (also, better timed) and tutorials are better integrated into the game itself, like the dodging challenge.

Tigaseye.2047:

On balance, I prefer what WoW did, in this area.

They try to maintain balance between classes and specs – so, they’re all pretty viable for PVE (as far as I’m aware), which is great.

No one should have to abandon a class, or spec, they love and relate to, just to maximise their DPS, or whatever.

Same with talent builds – they’re all very close in terms of effectiveness and the choices are mostly about flavour and/or are slightly more situational and that is how it should be.

You can still, in theory, improve DPS/HPS etc. by choosing one over the other.

But not to the extent that anyone in a PUG group will feel the need to try to force you to change, or kick you from a group of you don’t.

False choice is no choice and just leads to animosity and upset amongst the playerbase.

http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/statspve-classesrepartition-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html

I actually do play WoW and have played it since Burning Crusade. The balance between classes, specializations and talent choices was worse back then but diversity was much greater than it is today. Blizzard initially designed encounters in a way that each one favored a certain setup but was doable by non-optimal teams as well, just with more effort. A protection paladin didn’t perform too well against single targets but was godsend in packed places like Arcatraz and Shattered Halls, for example.

It was Wrath of the Lich King when the homogenization began and it hasn’t stopped to this day. It makes the game incredibly boring to play. One caster functions more or less the same as the others. One tank is like any other as well, just with the usual tanking kit (taunt, AoE taunt, resource generation, defensive cooldowns) renamed. You can’t make a raid where you don’t have access to all the buffs, crowd controls and other utilities because each one is provided by at least three characters at any given time. It’s hard to put together even a dungeon group without covering all buffs!

The problem is that it was all for naught. Feel free to look at the link above. Certain class/spec combos dominate in certain situations and by quite a large margin. So class, skill and talent diversity was ruined for this. Somewhat better balance. Somewhat.

I agree with you that false choice isn’t choice but even in BC you had the choice to use a cookiecutter build and look for ways on thottbot to cheese dungeon mechanics OR experiment with your class and do encounters as they were intended. If you didn’t want to follow the meta then you played with friends and like-minded individuals.

You can do the same in the current WoW but you no longer have the same diversity. That is what I’d call a false choice. Giving the player a supposed choice to experiment but giving them nothing to experiment with since everything is streamlined and homogenized.

“Here, you can pick between three effects that are equally minor and contribute very little to how you play your character because we didn’t want this guy to accidentally perform worse than that other guy, even if the former one is just drunk and picks talents at random while equipping intellect plate on his warrior.”

The ability to choose is good but making every choice an optimal one is bad. It ultimately makes the decision and thus the options themselves more or less irrelevant.

Wanted to give this thread an update!

She just logged on and was absolutely overwhelmed by all the letters that she has received! I’m very fortunate to have heard her be so happy and I’ll forever be in the debt of all of you wonderful people who made her birthday so much better.

She’s screenshotting each one and typing out answers. I suspect she’ll be busy with that for another few hours.

Once again, thank you!

PS: I just saw that my thread was moved from General to In-game Events. Apologies to the moderators for not opening it at the correct place to begin with!

Icdan Sevaen.4628:

Will be happy to! Just to make sure, what date is it exactly? Dont want to be too late/early.

It’s tomorrow but you can send it whenever you have time or whenever you remember. It’s really the thought that counts.

Grabbing the chance to yet again thank everyone who has sent her a letter! Whether you have commented here or not, my appreciation goes out to all of you.

Going to weigh in as someone who isn’t a veteran of this game but has been around the MMORPG scene for many years now.

There is always a meta in every game. The developers can discourage it by attempting to equalize and often, sadly enough, homogenize gear, stats, traits, abilities or encounters. There will still be an optimal choice and the best case scenario is that the difference between optimal and non-optimal setup is less than five percent. Which, as I mentioned, is most often achieved through homogenization.

I’d rather have a meta that I can opt out of (the game itself does not restrict me from any content based on my gear) than balance achieved by forcefully evening out the playing field and in the process botching diversity.

Athena.3579:

That seemed to work

Wohooo!

Tea does a little dance.

DarkOcean.8746:

I couldn’t send the message across the void using the character name information.

Possibly if I address it to the account instead? I’m not sure if that will work.

Hmm, we could try!

Levefre.4503 is her account name.

baconcupcaxe.4208:

I believe we can send msg across NA/EU time vortex. Will do when I get home

Thank you! I appreciate it!

I rejoined the game on a new account so I could have a fresh start along with my friend (also forgot the old accounts’ details… khm…) so I don’t yet have much to offer but anyone should feel free to poke me. Either to ask for help or to just chit-chat. I’ll aim to repay this community’s kindness in any way that I can.

Hello!

I’ll try to make this short and sweet so that no one has to take critical damage from the much feared “Wall of Text” attack.

A very close friend of mine is celebrating her birthday tomorrow. She has had some very rough and lonely years behind her and the ride ain’t over yet, so to speak. Trying to make this birthday memorable for her but we live very far away from each other and I’m often offline, working 10-12 hour shifts at my job. Gaming is our shared hobby and we joined GW2 recently. (Re-joined after years of hiatus in my case.)

Since I’m just one woman, I’d like to ask you lot to help me out with this endeavour. The greatest treasure of this game is after all, in my opinion, its community. Largely thanks to Arenanet as they built it around sharing and caring instead of cutthroat competitiveness. I’m still puzzled as to why more companies haven’t taken that route. Anyway, back to topic…

If each one of you who reads this could send her a short letter with a birthday wish, it would mean a lot to her and her happiness means a lot to me. Just to avoid misunderstandings, this isn’t a plea for free gifts! No need for gifts. Just a few nice words.

Her character’s name is Nathair Littleleaf.

We play on Piken Square, EU. She’s an avid roleplayer and loves coming up with new character concepts. (Hint: Roleplayers, poke her! Seriously! She’s great at what she does. I often just tag along and stare in wonder.) I suprised her with an explorer outfit from the gem store, fitting for her adventurous Sylvari, and she got herself a harp to bring music to the denizens of Tyria. Meanwhile my own Sylvari just sort of trails after hers, being confused about… everything. I was supposed to be the more knowledgable between the two of us, gosh! We both love doing dynamic events, failing at jumping puzzles and plan to eventually get into a massive WvWvW clash.

Thank you for taking the time to read this (rambled a bit, haven’t I?) and I’m eternally grateful if you do decide to contribute to the well of well-wishes!

Have a hipster Sylvari!