Guild Wars 2

Okay, I’m game. I’ve done it about 20 times and I still have only a bare idea of what’s going on.

How do I reduce the minion levels or help with portal closings? Because I don’t know if it’s my computer’s ability to display the game or what, but nothing I do seems to affect those things in any way. I go help kill minions, the bar doesn’t reduce. I walk away, suddenly it goes down quickly. I’ve been watching the bar to see if it goes down when I’m with a group that completes a major event (closing a portal, killing a champ nightmare, destroying a bunch of twisted horror remains). I see no visual evidence that any of this matters. Is the clue being delayed and I’m just missing it?

When a portal closes, sometimes people say to move on, sometimes people stick around and kill more minions. I see no visual indicator of which one is best. By contrast, it’s very obvious to me what causes champs to spawn, when and where they spawn, and what the best way to get loot is.

I’d like to help kill off the minions, but understand that when I run four portal closings in a row, kill a bunch of minions, smash their remains and the bar doesn’t seem to have gone down at all I just end up deciding to farm champs like everyone else. There’s no incentive when my actions seem to have no effect. It doesn’t help that I’ve asked people in my guild and in various maps during and after invasions and no one has answered the question yet.

I notice a bunch of people complaining when an invasion fails. The usual complaint is that people are busy farming rather than completing. If you want more people to help complete, tell me (and any others like me who aren’t getting much in-game) what to do.

Prior to this update I was starting to lose interest in the game: I was getting into a regular rotation of world events + dailies ( + guild missions 1 day/week) that was quickly growing stale. I feel this update has done a lot to prevent that, and I want to congratulate the developers and point out a few things which I hope they will keep in mind for future updates/living world/expansions/whatever.

Feel free to jump in and add, expand, disagree—though I would prefer this thread focused on what is going right. If you think the answer to that is “nothing,” may I respectfully direct you to the rest of the GW2 forums?

1) Interesting gameplay challenges in the Gauntlet: many, if not most, players have had to put some thought into skills, gear, tactics to beat all levels of challenge here. I know I did. Getting players out of their usual comfort zones is a Good Thing.

2) Focused farming in the Pavilion: I suspect this event is a little bit of a troll of all those players who said “omg anet nerfing all farm spots they hate fun!” It’s just too perfect: ridiculous and convenient magic find buff + slices of game content like a little rat maze + champ rewards / event rewards / chest rewards. But then you get in there and you can’t just use autoattack and pay no attention (this ain’t Great Jungle Wurm, bro) or you die. It gives farmers a bit of what they want, but also drags them into a little map where they don’t even affect anything else in the game world. (Is Anet laughing at us? I know I am.) This was an interesting way of giving some of the players what they wanted.

3) Champ rewards make PVE content worthwhile again: Cursed Shore is back. There are reasons to go places and kill champs now. This is quickly being overused by players to the point of absurdity and will likely be dialed down in the near future, but the basic idea of providing stepped up rewards for killing high-level PVE enemies like this is sound. I now have the feeling that I have options when I play the game. It’s not just “World Event chain, daily, log off” anymore. Again, the basic idea of making more content viable through providing less closed-fisted rewards is a move in the right direction, even if some future refinement will probably be necessary.

4) Dungeon reward system encourages trying more varied content: COF1 hasn’t gone away, but it’s now part of a rotation rather than a be-all/end-all moneymaker. I’m seeing more requests in Guild Chat for AC, TA, COE, HOTW, and Arah than I saw before. I suspect the rewards will need to be tweaked further (80% of paths I think give the 1g reward, which is probably not where it should be), but player feedback can help guide this. Encouraging players to try out more game content is also a Good Thing.

5) Token wallet: thank you for this. Like the AOE loot option, this has improved my experience subtly but significantly. My main was regularly engaged in Inventory Management Wars and now… isn’t. Issues with alts not having enough money/karma for something and needing to grind them to get there… gone. Some bugs will need to be fixed, like Karma Spender achievement (if it hasn’t been already), but this is the kind of addition that adds to enjoyment of the game by removing pointless hassle. Well done.

I was unable to log in from work yesterday to explain, but basically a full computer restart cleared the issue. Updating drivers this weekend and will give the monitor a look tomorrow as well. Will post again (for those who might have similar problems on their machines) if anything interesting pops up

Starting today, logged on and my screen was full of flashing lines and color panels and other visual artifacts (screen shot attached). Not sure whether this is something game related or computer related, but it’s effectively game-breaking.

Any ideas on how to deal with it?

The Grenth Chain appears to be bugged on SoR. During the event to destroy the four “pods” at the lighthouse with Jonez and Ambrose, one of the pods shows the crossed swords target icon above it but the game object itself is not rendering. I tried to blow it up using AoE to no effect, it doesn’t seem to register damage.

June 19th, DC’ed 3x during Teq fight (got the message that I had lost contact with client, and dropped to character selection screen).

June 20th, DC’ed 2x in the 5 mins prior to Teq fight (and noticed serious lag before then). DC’ed 3x again during the fight.

No chest either night.

This wasn’t just me, either, multiple players reported the same problem. I asked a few for details and all reported noticing it since June 19th (or so, some weren’t sure) and all noticed it only in that zone.

Could be something to look into if others are having the same problem.

It seems to me that what ANet is going for is farming in the context of playing the game. For example, running the Grenth chain, getting drops from mobs during the events, silver + karma + xp from events + chest reward at the end (pretend the event ends successfully, okay? ;P). They should be encouraging this sort of “farming” more.

What they’re trying to reduce is basically mindless farming a la Union Waypoint: i.e., group up + guardian staff 1 + collect loot + repeat (I’m speaking hypothetically, of course, I would never engage in such a thing myself). This kind of farming is fun (to a point) and lucrative, but it’s also a bot magnet and guaranteed to collapse the economy in the long run due to a greater than intended proliferation of materials.

The thing is, the kind of fun places like Union provide is very short term. It’s “hee hee, I’m getting stuff for little effort!” I suspect ANet will try to discourage this given that a) people tend to enjoy things more when they have to put a little effort in, and b) they make more money when there is a minor scarcity of materials rather than a super-abundance.

Having said that, when they nerf farming spots things usually swing too far in the scarcity direction (the current situation with T-6 dust is a case in point), and players have a legitimate gripe when that happens.

So in general, when players cry over nerfed farming spots… I sympathize. I (hypothetically) miss the old Union Waypoint. But what you’re crying over is super-easy mats and money. Get over it. In the long run, if getting mats and money is that easy it’s not going to be as fun a game.

I think I see what ANet is saying about finding a sweet spot between effort and reward, and I agree. But they ain’t there yet. Nerfing farming, while I see the reasons for it, is not the whole solution. Maybe if there was also a modest upgrade to rewards for doing big events there would be less grumbling…

Last night I came across poor Plinx halfway through his mission to the chopper signal, lying on his back and surrounded by Risen. There were about 15 of them around him and no players in sight, so I left him there and shed a single tear for the days when he would’ve had a dozen or more escorts slaughtering Risen and Ooze by the dozens.

Whatever the reason for it, Orr events are more desolate now than ever before. Something ain’t right. Here’s hoping the latest patch changes this somehow…

Big thanks to JQ and BG wvw’ers who made their way to the Obsidium Sanctum last night. Y’all were the best farm since Union Waypoint and a lot more fun.

Nice blend of difficulty and reward, decent variety of events, new area gets a little bit more interest to it = good job, team. Compared to the event when Southsun was first introduced this was much smoother, more interesting, and more trouble-free. Keep it up.

The heart of the reviewer’s complaint seems to be this: the game is played by stereotypical MMO players: “grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters who are more interested in having something worth grinding than in having fun.”

The key line in the review is also the best line: “It’s a pity that ArenaNet has focused so much on making a game in which it’s so easy to play with other people, only to have it filled with people you don’t want to play with.”

Very nice turn of phrase. Powerful conclusion. Unfair.

Most “hardcore” players—that is, players who fit the reviewer’s description most perfectly—seem to agree that GW2 is unfavorable to them. They regard it as a game for “casuals.” Grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters seem annoyed by GW2 (some still play, of course… duh, they’re addicts). Who’s right?

Let’s look at how GW2 tries to fight against the very players the reviewer says are its true base. Farming areas is discouraged by DR. Grinding dungeons is discouraged by having the entrances become contested. Farming world events is discouraged by limitations to the bonus chest. Grinding game content is discouraged by Living Story additions and temporary content.

Grinding still happens, of course; I’m not saying it doesn’t. I suspect mildly unfavorable loot tables and RNG contributes to that. The discouragements I mentioned above all have work-arounds or limitations, too. But it’s clear that ArenaNet has made considerable effort toward “encouraging” people to do more than just run the same things over and over again. Do people nevertheless run the same things over and over again? Yep. This brings me to my next point.

Grinders, farmers, exploiters, addicts… these aren’t absolute categories. We all fall somewhere on a sliding scale on these points—some of us have more tolerance for grind than others, for example. Anyone who plays computer games has some tendencies toward pellet hoarding and compulsive behavior. That’s the nature of the medium.

My experience with the game, my observations above, and the proliferation of threads full of people who fit the reviewer’s description complaining about the game, all suggest that GW2 caters less to people who fall on the extremes of those four points than the reviewer thinks.

This was an interesting review with some valid criticisms of the game and its players; nevertheless, I disagree with several details, and I think the conclusion is unfair.

With regard to hearts, I think the designers did a decent job of taking much of the grind out of this content. Many hearts involve transformations, picking up “experimental asura weapons,” or something similar that involves new skills or approaching the game in a new way. Heck, there’s one heart where you can do math problems. That’s not grinding. Since hearts aren’t repeatable content the way dynamic events are, I feel they’re more of a bridge from traditional MMOs to the world of GW2. For each character you do them once and then they’re done while the events remain available.

Regarding the Personal Story, while I agree with much of what the reviewer says here, I’d say that while it’s one of the weaker points of the game, it actually works against the reviewer’s main point about GW2 and its community of “typical” MMO players (more on this later). Because the Personal Story emphasizes the player as an individual becoming part of something larger (just as each of the major races and the three orders do) rather than himself becoming super-legendary. This is a little different from what MMOs and video games in general tend to do, as many people before me have noticed. But as I learned from another MMO which will remain nameless here, having a “good story” is meaningless if the gameplay isn’t worthwhile. GW2 has very good gameplay and a weak storyline, but that storyline at least attempts to do something a little different.

Jumping puzzles seem to be another minor element in the game which deserves inclusion. Personally, I thought these were nicely done (for the most part), with some interesting variety in terms of both gameplay and appearance. Getting high up on the limbs in Secret Garden, wandering through beautiful Scavenger’s Chasm trying to get all the orbs, even trying to dodge through griffons in Griffonrook Run (arghrhrgh)… the puzzles present different and rewarding challenges. Many are fun to do more than once. This isn’t grind content.

The in-game description of Death Shroud tells you: “Entering this form removes other spectral effects.” The “Enter Grenth’s Domain” debuff necessary to kill shades counts as a spectral effect for DS purposes.

You can use this to your advantage by avoiding the insta-downed on 25 stacks of debuff that can surprise unwary shade-fighters.

I’ve experienced this bug as well; it seems to work exactly as the OP described. I think I’ve experienced the bug during the Grenth boss fight as well.

Reminder to self: do not attempt Griffonrook Run any time soon.

Patch notes to the contrary notwithstanding, this event remains bugged on Sanctum of Rall. It’s stuck at 2/5 tests completed, harpies keep spawning, etc. Whatever fix was implemented either didn’t take or didn’t address all the issues surrounding this one.

Overheard in, I think, Frostgorge: a dredge leader announces to the others “We may wobble but we will never fall down. We’re like Weebles!”

(Weebles are an egg-shaped roly-poly toy with the slogan “Weebles always wobble but they don’t fall down”)

After about the 12th time Logan died on a CM run I realized he was running the ever-elusive Glass Popgun build.

You haven’t learned to hate the Dredge until you’ve been knocked off of one of those narrow walkways mentioned above just before getting the blasted vista (sometimes after a wonderful daze attack). Or dodged away from a tunneling excavator right into a respawned veteran gong boy and his comrades. Or bumped into a mining suit after narrowly escaping another fight – but just before your health bar refilled. Or…

I could go on, but all I really need to say to trigger your PDSD is: “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”

It was said earlier, but it’s worth repeating because it seems to be the best solution:

When you block a player’s account, that account should no longer have any in-game access to information about you (whether you’re on its friends list or not).

This would severely limit stalking behavior while requiring only a small change to the game that few players would ever notice. Everybody wins. (Except the programmers who have to implement it, but that’s what they get paid for, eh?)

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” — The Dredge Fractal (and pretty much every Dredge ever)