Guild Wars 2

khorren.3702:

Randulf.7614:

Death.9268:

You can use the portal from both directions. Harati is the right pronounciation I think.

It is one way. I exited to Harathi, but could not return to Lake Doric from the same side.

You can go Hirathi to Doric. Talk to the villager on the boat, she’ll take you back

Good to know!

Frediosz.2718:

Canach was my hero since he released Karkas in Southsun.

I really wish we had more of a chance to do anything with him in LS1. Imagine him snarking through the Breachmaker.

Stand The Wall.6987:

yeah i agree the constant barrage of rancid garbage is very annoying.

Yeah, that’s why I stopped coming here . . .

Oh, and the stuff Mawdrey spits up is terrible too.

I don’t think it was said specifically there would be no grinding, only that the grinding was going to be limited in scope to “things which weren’t power”.

Given that Ascended already stepped over that line, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they’ve been exceptionally shy about even peeking over it now. What you (mostly) grind for now isn’t exactly power – it’s convenience, or cosmetics, or things you don’t necessarily need “but are kinda cool”.

90% of the game can be done in Exotic gear. I’d hazard a wager the raid can be done in Exotic gear if you pushed yourself to be very good and attuned to what was going on. You can get Exotics fairly simply through playing the game or cheaply off the Black Lion auction house. I mean, Trading Post.

And as someone who was trying Sweet Tooth and Drunkard in GW1 . . . and someone who played Factions, if people want to claim there wasn’t grind in GW1, I have a bridge to Cantha to sell tickets for crossing.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hmm…I guess one could tell if one did not get a Map Bonus Reward, but never (except for those odd valuable trophies) if one did.

. . . you can see it if you set a window to log your “drops/pickups” or whatever. It will log EVERY item you get, even through map bonus or bonus chests. Given the Map Bonus items are chosen from a small subset, it becomes easier to pick them out.

It’s still not easy to parse unless you’re keeping track of the log in the corner of receiving things.

Fengzhou.9853:

This is a reason why I have like.. 60 black lion chests just sitting in my bank.. lol

60?

I have 154 sitting there right now, and trying to keep it under a stack is the only reason I sometimes will spend money on keys out of a paycheck. Well, a paycheck I don’t spend on MTG.

. . . talk about ‘gambling’.

Jana.6831:

The plasma string has got a safe spot for the arrow and fingers

. . . this still brings me to question – why? Though it’s not far off from what the Glyphic set is supposed to do, I suspect.

arenta.2953:

BobbyT.7192:

I like most of the plasma weapons, love the lightsaber feel to them, Staff should have been more of the double-bladed lightsaber type, but still pretty good looking.
Only real disappointment are the bows, they could have animated the strings at least,

WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING THE BOW STRING.
its made of PLASMA

xD

WHY make a bow string out of plasma?!

. . . oh, right, asura. Forgot for a second.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Even if it makes no sense and is a complete retcon of previous evidence. >.>

. . .

The Searing was an inside job!

(runs away)

RoyHarmon.5398:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Jeffrey.1426:

Or you didnt play living world season 2 or you rush thrue youre story

No, Mordremoth’s name didn’t come from anyone anywhere until I think Marjory dropped it casually. It didn’t even exist in game except as part of a skill name for a boss not everyone is going to fight and see the text naming the skill.

“Marjory”? Really?

Wow.

It was the player character. Out of the blue. Remember?

No, not really. That’s how quickly it went by.

Jeffrey.1426:

Or you didnt play living world season 2 or you rush thrue youre story

No, Mordremoth’s name didn’t come from anyone anywhere until I think Marjory dropped it casually. It didn’t even exist in game except as part of a skill name for a boss not everyone is going to fight and see the text naming the skill.

MAYBE the Grove is the only one I could see getting it.

Every game treats GMs differently and bestows on them different levels of power. Invariably, there is some GM who has power who screws with the players in ways from benignly minor to gamebreakingly and facerendingly unfair.

In Meridian 59, there was a GM who decided to just summon people into a boss room to get killed, then summon them again and again. There were also reports of them simply deleting inventory off players or otherwise interfering.

In EverQuest, there was a GM who summoned players and made their respawn location at the feet of hyper-aggressive raptors at the high end of the level spectrum. There was also multiple cases where they would ban first and ask questions . . . never. “Guilty until we feel like checking if you were innocent.”

ArenaNet made the decision early on to not have active GMs who could access that kind of power, so incidents like these or worse could not happen. I mean, imagine if a disgruntled/trollish GM decided to simply use his account to remove all Precursors from the TP. Or force-fail Dragon’s Stand. Or to reset random guild halls.

The price we pay for the safety against such actions is the inability of them to do anything.

Pride.1734:

@Tobias Trueflight
delicious salt

I’m not sure where you got it from, but you should probably double check that’s actually seasoning and not reason.

I told you before, you’re picking a fight with the wrong numbers.

Vayne.8563:

Pride.1734:

@Tobias Trueflight
Comparing what HoT gave us is the very point here. All of HoT is less than 50% of what dungeons give us.
If they had given us a decent armor selection to begin with they could have added ten new outfits in the cash shop daily for all i care. But the way it is now this just seems overly greedy and takes out a good portion of the content that people aspire to get in GW2.

Hot gave us the ability to glide. That’s worth about 150 armor sets to some of us. Just saying.

You got to compare all of it, not just the things you care about.

That’s not his argument, his argument is all about very very carefully picking his numbers to support what point he wants to make.

Pride.1734:

Sorry dude ain’t gonna do any more pea counting. Count or don’t count whatever u feel like. My argument stands.

So your argument is that we have lots of skins in the base game so there is no need to add some in expansion? I don’t agree at all, quite the contrary. Fashion is a core pillar to gw2. Not expanding it in an expansion is laughable.

That’s not my argument . . . at all, and you’re not paying attention to what I’m saying . . . at all, so this is where we part ways.

That’s . . . I know that symbol . . .

Cantha confirmed!

Pride.1734:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We did get a decent armor selection to begin with. I listed them all off for you.

I am obviously talking about HoT

I’m obviously pointing out you’re not being obvious when you use phrases like “to begin with”, which implies going back to the beginning. Which I did. And we still have too many outfits to armor sets.

So how about you do your homework and list off what outfits we got, and what armor sets were in HoT. And if you list the Lunatic Guard outfit I will volunteer you for a cleaning krewe for Rata Novus.

Pride.1734:

@Tobias Trueflight
Comparing what HoT gave us is the very point here. All of HoT is less than 50% of what dungeons give us.

That’s your choice of point to make your stand on? I’m sorry, you really do think small.

If they had given us a decent armor selection to begin with they could have added ten new outfits in the cash shop daily for all i care. But the way it is now this just seems overly greedy and takes out a good portion of the content that people aspire to get in GW2.

We did get a decent armor selection to begin with. I listed them all off for you.

Khal Drogo.9631:

With so many new big releases of games now, do you guys have time to grind in GW2 and GW2: HoT?

Well, I have a full-time job, and the house has a newborn in it so . . . no, not really. Luckily enough, there’s no need for me to do much in the way of grinding. Only what I feel like knocking out when I log in for an hour and a half on average per day. (Because some days I don’t log in at all, and some days I go try Vinewrath again.)

Pride.1734:

As stated above its all a matter of how you count the peas. My mesmer got 3 new armors and 3 new armorsets. But even if you want to count them differently its still a laughable content addition for an expansion.
If you like outfits better than actual armorsets thats fine i’m not knocking your opinion even though i dont agree.

I didn’t say I liked outfits better. I haven’t bought a single one.

And I said it’s . . . not fair for you to count only the expansion when talking about armor sets and outfits. Because there are thirty outfits right now.

There are roughly 24 basic armors, and 27 more crafted armors. I say roughly because I haven’t double-checked if Ascended is in there twice.

There are 24 dungeon armors; eight dungeons, three weights

There are 16 “Karma armors”, available off the Karma vendors.

There are 15 Cultural armors, and I am not sure but I think they look the same despite weights? If not, then that’s 45.

There are two (only) WvW exclusive armor sets. There are two (if you want to call it two) armor sets for PvP (the one for the tournament win is just palette swapped.)

There are 27 Gem Store armors only available through the Gem Store. (And people got so p/o’d about this we got outfits instead. Yay.)

There’s the Carapace Armor, the Luminiscent Armor, and the Heritage Armor. That;s another nine.

I’m probably missing some sets, so I’ll round it up with four more.

Roughly 150 armor sets, 30 outfits. That’s one for each five armor sets, total, across the game. With the count being a little liberal on how many there are.

If you want to complain about too many outfits, start from there first, not just Heart of Thorns. If there’s any problem I have with your argument, it’s that you’re not starting it in the right place.

Personally I think it’s a terrible ratio which should be a little higher towards one in ten, but I don’t make the game.

Pride.1734:

@Tobias Trueflight
You put them on your body and it changes your look. They defenitely fulfill the same purpose. There is everything about them to be compared. Except one is like a cheap 1 seat car and the other one is a nice one with 6 seats. Basicly we used to get real nice cars now they pump out the cheap ones instead of giving us real fashion content.

There are no nice cars which have six seats. Your analogies really, really don’t hit a good target.

I mean, if you want to be honest in your comparisons you’d note there are almost a 1 for 2 ratio of outfits to armors.

Frank.5764:

There are no clues that I can craft only 1 precursor.

Don’t most of the items come out of collections rewards? That should have been a clue . . .

mukage.5970:

I disagree about there actually being good armors in the game lol. ANet is just now allowing us to grind for decent armor. There are only 3 styles of ascended armor when there should be way more especially if you are grinding to craft it (same as those weak kitten ascended weapon skins that only vary by color per stat set).. The gem store has SOME decent armor sets but I think there could be A LOT more variety in the game as far as armor goes

Remember, those aren’t armor sets – you can’t piece it off so you can have . . . say . . . Armageddon heavy armor and that flashing Lord English flaming head. (A crying shame, really.)

At least it’s not as terrible as elite armor sets in the original. Wherein the only one I saw my ranger wearing was, yes, a longcoat. Similarly there were absolutely none I liked for assassin or ritualist. None.

Pride.1734:

@Tobias Trueflight
Yes outfits are an abomination introduced with the wardrobe system and basicly a cheap way for anet to make a quick buck. Armors require a decent amount of work and give players much more than any outfit ever could.

Also sure i’ll include the legendary armor that we get the first part of the precursor for. Betcha by the time we get the actual armor we will have gotten 6 new outfits…

I’m still struggling here . . . are you claiming outfits are armors and should be counted as something against armors to compare, or not? Clear that up for me, will you?

Also, it should be noted (again), ANet making a quick buck through the Gem Store is kind of, maybe, just a little important to keeping the game funded so it can continue to be buy-and-play instead of requiring players to pay regularly. When you buy Gems with cash, that’s funding the game’s continued existence.

As for “decent amount of work” to earn – I’m thrilled my Cabalist set is such a worthy challenge to acquire, it really sets me apart from those n00bs wearing . . . pfft . . . outfits! I had to loot four chests for the main pieces for my Cabalist, that took all of like twenty minutes of hard grueling labor.

I don’t even think the White Mantle exists in the same capacity as it did in the past. The Flame Legion does in fact still exist in the same strength even though it’s been battered back and charr society has moved around their existence.

Krytan humans just plowed under the White Mantle and anything left seems to be a pathetic remnant trying to be still relevant. While being overshadowed by centaurs as a threat, and that’s assuming Minister Caudecus is party to any of this. (Not that there will be proof short of him admitting it in a public space. He’s not that dumb.)

Pride.1734:

As stated above, if you want to count each armor class then do the same for the base game and the same comparison stands. It literly doesnt matter which way you count the peas.

For what it matters anet themselves call it 2 new sets.
http://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/maguuma/

For what it matters, “outfits” are not “armors” any more than endless tonics are.

Also, if there’s any armor sets inside Raids then those should be included in the HoT count. Since, you know, that’s part of the expansion.

I keep loving it, but some days there are times where I feel like I’m expected to be ashamed I love playing the game for a short burst of two to three hours after work to calm down.

Maybe because that’s all I really want out of the game, or its predecessor . . . not a way of life, but something to amuse myself with.

If I want something to sink a whole lot of time into, I got CBT and MTG.

BobbyStein.2315:

RubberDougie.2750:

Lol, still no developer response. They must be so ashamed.

Or maybe we already did in another thread from a year ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Naming-Mordremoth/page/2#post4236417

I wish I could +1 more than once.

Steel Courage.1250:

Well this is very uplifting, i guess ill just have to make one of each a day

That’s how I’ve been slowly reclaiming storage from Dragonite Ore stacks. One stack a day.

Steel Courage.1250:

Ayrilana.1396:

You could always farm the ore.

What ore? for what? its the ingot i need and its time gated

The ore used to make the ingots which are then melted down and made into the alloy known as Deldrimor Steel. It’s not that difficult and can happen between time gates – there’s more than enough ore floating around out there you can grab in two hours’ time just rapidly going around Tyria. Just keep an eye out for nodes doing the World Boss Grand Tour if you’re doing that, or hit up similar locations along the way.

RubberDougie.2750:

Lol, still no developer response. They must be so ashamed.

Or maybe they just don’t feel like stepping on landmines marked “please let me explode” . . .

Madman.6912:

Never, ever, anywhere that happened

“Never” he says, and I have to point out the one case I know of: “Forever Red” from Power Rangers, made with the assumption of a fan-fic “Scorpion Reign” (I think that’s spelled right) being canon when it never was absorbed into it.

There’s also the butchering of character development during “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” cut during editing which made the movie a lot more solid. (It didn’t save it from being strangled to death by effects shots and dead air.) It made some connections between scenes/characters a little baffling.

Similarly, “Star Trek: Generations” contains plot points galore which were hefted over from the TV series and not explained adequately in the film.

Of course, this doesn’t also address serialized television before the advent of VCRs/Betamax. God help you if you missed an episode of Twin Peaks and tried to see the next week . . . similarly, Doctor Who . . .

Serialized content is always a huge gamble that people won’t be able to experience it in serial fashion. At least, at least, we have the option to catch up at all with Season 2 . . . though adding an NPC to the start of the prologue explaining all of LS2 would be great to see.

Sort of like what they had to do with Season 1, which nobody will be able to experience yet except the small parts translated over into Fractals.

I sell greens, basic salvage blues (they don’t create Runes/Sigils to fill my inventory), master salvage some rares and forge others. I save Exotics to kit out alts, or to forge them later.

Palador.2170:

I hate the Pale Tree.

The Pale Tree is the one that pushed us aside and forced Trahearne into the lead. When he objects, she basically tells him that if he doesn’t do it, nobody can and everyone will die. She then takes the sword, this artifact level weapon, and gives it to him. Not to the player, who’s the far more effective combatant and with such a power boost would be able to clear huge swaths of Orr all alone, but to her precious Firstborn Trahearne. His knowledge could make him a powerful adviser, but being stuck with the sword means he has to take to the front lines if it’s going to be used (as it must be, at least for his Hunt).

Hmm, except he didn’t take the front lines except in cases where it was thought that Caladbolg might actually work. I count that being twice during the Orr campaign – the rest of it the player was bolstering the charge (not quite leading it, but backing everyone up and ensuring success).

It’s debatable if the visions which are meant to draw Trahearne into the role of Pact Marshall are manipulative possible futures or actual envisioning of what happens if he shrugs aside his destiny. (It is debatable when prophecy enters into a story, every time, because there’s always fallacies involved in the prophecy which make it . . . less than clear. See also Glint’s “flawless” Flameseeker Prophecies.)

It’s been shown that she strongly favors her Firstborns, and can be dismissive if not downright negligent of the latter-born sylvari. The Firstborn were her special children, and Trahearne is her most special of all.

I don’t think that’s the case; I think she values all her Firstborn equally, even Faolain despite how twisted she became. Caithe is given enormous trust by the Pale Tree even as she does a very curious and questionable act – taking the egg deep into the jungle’s tangle.

That’s why she pushed us aside and forced him into the leading role. She made him the most powerful man in all of Tyria, even if he didn’t really want to be. In Season 2, she kept secrets that could have saved countless lives, just so he could stay in that position instead of stepping down for a non-sylvari to lead the charge.

I think that’s a very . . . slanted view, which is based on the uneven foundation I pointed out above. I think her keeping those secrets were not to protect Trahearne’s position . . . but all her children, the sylvari race. A very misguided attempt to do so, because the Pale Tree is many things but she is not perfect.

No wonder Scarlet hated her.

Scarlet hated her because of what that rogue learned and saw elsewhere pointing to how the Mother wasn’t telling the whole truth . . . and in that wasn’t preparing her children to resist what would be coming for them.

There’s also the whole Mordremoth taint which was going on, but she was seemingly fighting that to the end.

Straylight.7529:

No matter what profession you play, you’ll not spend most of your time auto attacking.

I kind of do using Ricochet, because it does a lot of what I want it to do – multiple target damage and tags up to three targets for me. Also if it’s only two targets it hits one of them twice. Add in the boon it gives me, and that with proper traits it can start off some conditions . . .

Not every auto-attack is created equal. Sometimes it is a legitimately useful thing to let run.

Test.8734:

And to some people everything is going to be “perfect” and they’ll be the first atop the wall to cry it the masses.“No, no don’t try to improve the game! ArenaNet is perfect and cannot make any mistake!”.

Oh they make plenty of mistakes – Ascended was one, how they handle Fractals is another, and trying to make an MMO is their third and most heinous mistake at all.

But I’d rather they make the game they want to make, than the one the masses want it to be turned into – that is how Ascended got added as it did.

MrRuin.9740:

Granted that’s a specific genre, but technology has not held back that mapping system or the platforming from being utilized within an MMO (which IMO is the kind of mapping system GW2 needs in areas with multiple levels.)

Is it worth noting that Metroid Prime also was more a collection of rooms strung together with doors, and not really an “open” world? It could render only one room and the doors functioned as “loading gates” to allow the Gamecube to load the next room before it opened. (And we hate gated content here, don’t we?).

As interesting a technical achievement as it is, another example would be Descent (the first and second) for having a nice 3D game experience going on. It also was one of the examples for how this was an incredibly disorienting thing to do to a player used to thinking in 2D for shooters.

Gliding, as far as it goes for MMOs, really has kind of existed since EQ with the old “Levitation glide” technique for getting around into all sorts of places you weren’t meant to go. But that also was kind of . . . let’s say could cause bugs

Yseron.8613:

I encourage you all to continue to say that it’s normal and/or nothing to help me make my point.

. . . but this isn’t news, and it’s not solely related to HoT. Ascended is one of the worse parts of the game, because it’s practically unnecessary for play outside of Fractals. But everyone wants to pick on it, due to the workload.

Should have been handled better.

Now, if you had decided to go for a different fruit, like the prerequisites for starting the “Flameseeker Prophecies I” collection? I’d be less miffed.

. . . also acceptable? A 15 second gif/vine of pocket raptors.

Test.8734:

warbignime.4610:

Pretty well thought and insightful review

This one more is more insightful:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns

Although I think the game deserves a somewhat lower score than what they gave it.

I think games should stop getting scores, or get something like “bananna/10” . . . numerical scores say nothing about a game and more people pay attention to “he gave it 4/5 stars” than what the author actually might write.

Reviews which try to boil down into a numerical scaled score are almost as useless as box quotes on DVDs. Why? Because a game has to be pretty specially terrible to merit anything lower than a 5 on a 10 point scale . . . which means it’s really a five point scale. And invariably then it starts becoming a matter of personal taste concerning the review as far as whether or not they liked the game as opposed to whether it was done well or not.

I’ll take reviews a la Shamus Young or Howard Taylor over PCGamer or such.

Phy.2913:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

Kyrne.1590:

Enjoying it so far. Dont mind taking it at my own pace. I do have a question though. I thought we could only make 1 pre? Or can we do more?

You can complete each collection, and craft each precursor, once. You can’t make the same one multiple times, but you can make each one.

Why do you need to make multiples, aside from visions of Precursor market crashing running through your mind?

2 quips, or 2 zaps, or 2 w/e the flaming sword is.

Dagger, and it’s Incinerator.

As for the topic:

Twilight has a bugged item from the Ulgoth which is still mixed up. (I thought it got fixed but was mistaken.)

Sunrise has a bugged item/event/description, in that the event never fires for rescuing the quaggans from the krait – either that or it directs to the wrong event.

Bolt has a bugged event, Explorer Loanna seems to not be starting her event.

The Flameseeker Prophecies requires Scribe items which are Account Bound and not craftable initially. This is kind of a serious overlooking or a design choice which is kind of “not cool”.

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

Kyrne.1590:

Enjoying it so far. Dont mind taking it at my own pace. I do have a question though. I thought we could only make 1 pre? Or can we do more?

You can complete each collection, and craft each precursor, once. You can’t make the same one multiple times, but you can make each one.

Why do you need to make multiples, aside from visions of Precursor market crashing running through your mind?

PopeUrban.2578:

It’s to make the system less rigid.

Sounds half like a “tech tree” setup

Dengar.1785:

I mean, sure, I’ll acknowledge that he’s not Forgal, but please, the guy never actually did anything wrong and the haters are just enticing eachother to keep hating without looking at the facts.

I’ve analyzed this many many times out loud so this is a lot of repeating myself but here goes – It’s not what Trahearne did, or does, or said that has people annoyed. It’s how the story for the Personal Story was handled. For players who did not start as a Sylvari, he comes out of nowhere and is suddenly a major key character on par with Destiny’s Edge and apparently your mentor knows who he is . . . but for such a figure, there’s no open knowledge about him. (Necessarily, if he spent all his time hanging around Orr and studying that place.)

The Personal Story has a ton of instances where characters who are apparently important show up, and then filter out as the Player Character continues – Trahearne on the surface appeared to be that sort of character but then the story threw the curve of not getting rid of him immediately. (Even the racial mentors from Destiny’s Edge filtered away faster than Trahearne did . . .)

So what we have here is a character which, for most people, came out of nowhere and got more exposure than Destiny’s Edge – who were built up to be the biggest badkitties out there as far as adventurers go. It rubbed people the wrong way, and they had to explain why . . . so they seized on the only thing which was apparent: Trahearne was present more than other NPCs. For a lot of old GW1 players, that was Kormir all over again . . . and she was reviled for “stealing” a godhead.

No small surprise everyone decided Trahearne was going to do that, despite it being left obvious that wasn’t going to be his arc. And the saner minds knew once Orr was over, Trahearne was going to have to filter out of the story somehow so the focus could pass off a Sylvari who had completed their Wyld Hunt.

Therefore it was obvious he wasn’t going to be around much longer, so it was a matter of wagering “how does he go, quietly or with a bang?” And he went with a whimper.

. . . yeah I called this jokingly to a couple friends.

And it doesn’t make me happy that people think he’s a glory hound when he’s not, and specifically dissembles to allow you spotlight. Not to mention the Pact soldiers respect him but will trust the Commander and follow them to the end of the road (at least as far as Silverwastes), repeatedly offering praise and support.

It’s worse than what happened with Kormir, who had a plot arc easily understood and necessarily set up for similar reasons. And is still hated for it, while Rurik who was doing the actual spotlight stealing for a long time is more fondly regarded.

stale.9785:

+1 for Sir Miles

Not “Sir”, “Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan”.

If you please

In other news, water continues to be wet, pet AI continues to be broken, and Mad King Thorn still has a pumpkin for a head.

Rhyse.8179:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Posts like these make me wonder what I spent six years playing before GW2 opened up . . .

For one we apparently did very different things in GW1.

I am so glad you know what I did in GW1, better than me. It really takes a load off my mind, you know?

None of those things involved grind by any standard, except maybe gearing up the heroes part. Now, GW1 had lots of grind, and apparently those are the things you chose to do. The point is there were many other things to do as well. GW2 has nothing that doesn’t require a grind, and now that HOT has locked content behind elite specs, that grind gates content as well. It’s nothing like it used to be. More importantly, since I can forgive change, it’s nothing like what was (and still is) advertised.

. . . “nothing that doesn’t require a grind”? Are you going with that, then? And GW1 not having grind except for things by choice?

(sigh)

The required Faction farming in Cantha to progress the story. The required Sunspear farming in Elona. Very likely not reaching Level 20 before the end of Prophecies. Skills requiring being purchased with Skill Points, which you would need to earn in order to learn.

Now, I don’t know about you but GW2 by comparison has significantly less grind than people want to claim. Most of the open world does not need to be ground out any more than GW1’s did, and there is significantly more things to do than the endless slog of fighting similar mixes of monsters in GW1’s trips between towns. (EOTN did get better about this, though.) The primary targets people choose to talk about grinding would be earning Ascended armor (unnecessary for anything outside Fractals for the Agony Resist), Legendaries or other shinies (which are comparatively as expensive as it was to build Obsidian Armor during the height of GW1 if you compare the economies), and now Heart of Thorns (which I can’t evaluate due to, well, not having time in the last seven days to sit down and strip through all the content . . . that in turn due to, well, enjoying being paid so I can keep eating.)

And, of course, Silverwastes. Which was designed on a base level much like WvW was and that’s completely evident – and as we know, WvW is nothing but repetitive actions with no actual consequences. Therefore you could call it a grind . . . but also one you do not need to subject yourself to. Which sounds familiar, but I can’t place where I heard that before . . .

Can we please stop pretending there wasn’t grind in GW1 and GW2 is nothing but grind? Both games can be excruciatingly grindy (I still do not have Obsidian armor nor do I have a full Hall of Monuments) but just playing the fricking games don’t force you to do any of it . . . this is not Final Fantasy.

. . . and I don’t mean 14, I mean any of them.

roachsrealm.9284:

GW1 with better graphics and features, honestly.

There is a lot to like in GW2, but the longer one plays it the harder it is to keep doing so. I was looking forward to a world I could wrap myself up in and also challenge myself in. What I got was a daily theme park with nearly endless grind.

Guild Wars 1 was like reading an excellent book series.
Guild Wars 2 feels like I’m at a chuckie cheese.

You and I played a very different Guild Wars 1 then, because it wasn’t like that at all for me. It was nice, but it wasn’t an excellent book series – there’s no Lord Vorkosigan, for one.

And endless grind pretty much describes all the achievements/titles in GW1 . . . plus Obsidian or Vabbian armors . . . not so much for progression here.

Posts like these make me wonder what I spent six years playing before GW2 opened up . . .

Test.8734:

Instead of improving dynamic event design, ArenaNet actually gave up on using them to tell a story, and turned them into just a grind. Take a look at the Silverwastes – it’s basically the same three events being repeated over and over on four different places, with no story development, no overall narrative, nothing. It’s just a grind pretending to be a “dynamic event” when it’s anything but dynamic.

I dunno, I find there is a story going on in the Verdant Brink. There was some going on in Dry Top too. But picking on Silverwastes as terrible and grindy is a cool thing so . . .

And the storyline became even worse than the original personal storyline. Instead of building from the lore originally present in GW2, ArenaNet chose to add a very Mary Sue villain out of nothing, Scarlett, and it only went downhill from there; the way cutscenes and dialogue was built meant that our characters had to stay in silent and hidden most of the time, so the story basically became about a bunch of poorly written token characters instead of being about our PCs.

Your mileage may, nay, does vary there, I think.

Really, this has been nothing but a massive disappointment.

Eh, a lot of that I watched develop because players voted with their feet and their actions . . . for every two people who were posting here “we don’t like the grind” there are eight more happily just going at it for the chance of shinies. (There may be some overlap, there.)

People didn’t like the personal story because reasons, and one complaint put forward was how characters seemed to come and go with no consequence. So we get a persistent crew to move through the Living Story now, and that’s now somehow worse.

Honestly, anything is going to be a “massive disappointment” to some people and they’ll be the first atop the wall to cry it to the masses. “No, no don’t be having fun! This is terrible!”