Guild Wars 2

This update brought me back to the game after a very long break. I think the new levelling experience is excellent. I haven’t had the chance to check on every feature but so far thigs are looking really good.

0. Gear progression. (stick with it and make it work or drop it like it’s hot)

1. Living story vs. Expansion. (I hate living story. I would pay for a well-made expansion)

2. Lore. (more, better, related to events in GW1 and don’t be shy to throw us something to read, we’re not all brain dead)

3. Player housing. (have trophies for houses, collected pets around the house, things that make you go all over the map for them; and no RNG, reward exploration)

I wanted to care. I wanted to get involved and immerse myself in the world and the lore, but it’s been a big disappointment so far. I am not interested at all in the living story so the only slight hope would be to see things fixed in an expansion. Unfortunately, ANet seems determined to go on with the living story…

Hi Chris, gonna say a few words here even though I don’t do much posting on the forums. I am a fairly casual player who’s pretty much lost faith in Guild Wars 2, even though not completely. I think a couple of things can still be saved and, in hoping this, I keep playing and enjoying the good parts of the game.

I realize it must be very difficult for ANet not to read all the posts, but to take action where the community is split and there’s a lot of debate. Also – and some people might call me naive for this – I don’t doubt you guys actually read our messages and hear our pleas. However, there is a tendency to offer vague responses from what I’ve seen.

Admittedly, not all matters can be solved immediately or get an answer straight away, but there are some critical points where I would really like for Arena Net to make a stand. Let me give you an example: gear tiers. From what I’ve seen (I might be wrong so if a fellow poster can correct me, the better) the response to this matter is something in the lines of " hopefully this will be the last tier we’re introducing".
Now, this is a critical part to Guild Wars 2, and from my point of view a mistake has already been made with the Ascended Gear. And I am going to be honest here, the last thing I want to hear as an answer to this problem is something starting with “hopefully”. This should be a clear yes or no, being one of the pillars of the game. I realize a clear answer can result in a loss of players, but vague answers won’t do much good either in the long term.

Also, I think it would be great if you find a way to gather more feedback from the players. I haven’t read all this thread, so it’s possible someone suggested this before; if that’s the case, I second his/her opinion. Take into account that there are a lot of players who aren’t posting on the forums but still play the game. Thousands upon thousands of silent people who play the game, maybe read the forums, but never post a reply. With a few exceptions, I am one of them. If these people were to be asked directly to participate in a survey, I think a lot of them would gladly do it.

So why not have more surveys? They’re easy to make and they don’t even have to be long. Two or three questions related to a specific subject and that’s it. Advertise these surveys on the website – not only in the forums section – so you get people’s attention, maybe build some hype around them, give the respondents a chance to win an in-game prize (pets, consumables, little things) and do whatever it takes to gather as many answers as possible.

I am not sure if the technology permits it, but if possible, have these surveys in-game, sent by email or something. You can then organize the answers and make them public with graphic pies and stuff like that, show transparency with the statistics. Ask people about living story, about gear tiers, about expansions and whatever is important.

Again, if these things have been said before in this thread, then add me to the numbers :p

This is the best post I’ve ever read on this forum. ProxyDamage, I really hope ANet grabs that achievement and takes notes. I, for one, thank you for taking the time to write this message, I wholeheartedly second everything you said. I too feel my enthusiasm with GW2 diminishing and I would like for them to address the issues the games has. I was on the verge of quitting, I uninstalled the game for the first time since I bought it just a few days ago and then reinstalled it because… well, I realised I don’t want to quit GW2, I want it fixed. And by this time I don’t even want ANet to fix everything, I would settle for only part of the problems solved.

There’s always this talk about “core gamers” and I believed these were the people drawn by the ideas expressed in the Manifesto. Now, considering the amount of MMOs on the market – and more to come – there probably won’t be a “WoW killer”, where millions upon millions of people fill the coffers of a single company. A lot of people will always be drawn to what’s new. Right now that’s FF14, in a couple of months that will be Wildstar and the next year it will be TESO. So I guess if those people leave then, in the long run, you’re left with the “core audience”. Thus I wonder, if the core audience is those people that responded to the manifesto, then why not please them?

I wonder if this is where the problem lies actually and ANet needs more people to buy the game because the existing players can go by not further contributing to the company’s earnings? Of course, there can’t be a single reason for the shift in ANet’s mentality (at least that’s how I perceive it) but I, for one, can’t figure out a clear answer. And truth be told, I shouldn’t. It’s not my business to mind the inner workings of the company, my job is to play and pay for the product that has been advertised in the manifesto.

1. Lack of lore
2. Lack of lore
3. Lack of lore

And please don’t give me that “go talk to every NPC” angle. Best you get that way is two lines of dialogue and off you go. I am talking about meaningful lore, the kind that builds a back-story and sets you on the move, hunting for pieces of story to put together and discover ancient mysteries or fragments of important history.

This is such a beautifully crafted world and it looks amazing but I often find myself wanting more substance to it. Place a description next to a point of interest, make a connection between POI, establish a network of information between all these great areas the game has. Tell me some great hero died tens of years ago on top of that mountain I go exploring, tell me this war between two great lords took place near the village I’m exploring, give me a bit of history about lords, factions, races, conflicts.

Gonna give an example here, Star Wars: The Old Republic. There, you have these codex entries where they do exactly that, build the lore for the universe. They tell you about the planets and the questing areas, about the beasts you encounter, about the balance of power and so on.

All these things would be optional, so people who don’t feel like reading won’t have to. But you could give the lore hounds something to do, you could also tie in new achievements, collectibles, activities etc.

Congrats to ANet for the effort, really! I am glad to see this game alive and kicking, evolving, becoming bigger and better. I am sure there will be bad calls and small failings because nothing is perfect, but for how hard they’re trying I commend them. I lost some faith in them after they introduced the ascended gear, but they’re slowly making up for that.

No, they’re just fine. I play a couple of hours a week, I don’t want to dedicate all of my game time hunting the monthly achievement. I am not forced to, of course, but if everything in this game would just be hard to achieve – as some people suggest – I wouldn’t log in at all.

I think it is and I thank ANet for that! I’ve played WoW, LOTRO and SWTOR, with various degrees of involvement, but GW2 is the only mmo I plan on playing for a long time, specifically because I don’t feel forced to catch up to someone. I hit 80, I have a set of exotics from crafting and that’s it, I’m on level with everyone. (Ascended gear is a nice touch but from what I understood it’s benefits are mostly for a specific dungeon).

There are also parts that I find more difficult, like explore mode dungeons or pvp, but I don’t feel actually forced to do that to be competitive (at a fairly generic item level).

Overall, I’m really pleased with how casual-friendly this game is and it’s the no.1 reason I plan to stick with it for a long time.

I always see this as a bonus and it’s quite ok for me to look forward to getting ascended gear at some point. But I dont’ feel like I’m grinding for it, just like I don’t feel like I’m grinding for exotic gear. I find I do this ting in MMOs, I always set up goals – and most likely I’m not the only one doing it – so dailies and monthlies feel more like a natural progression for me, it’s a means for me to achieve those goals. But to say I’m feeling forced to do it would be like saying I’m forced to play the game.

I guess it would be more of a problem if GW2 had 10 tiers of items, each more powerful than the other, but as it is now I find it acceptable. When ascended gear was first introduced I was quite displeased beacuse you could only get it by doing dungeons. With dailies/monthlies ANet has provided another oportunity and I think it’s a step in the right direction.

As for the ability to buy ascended gear with gold, I think ANet won’t do it and probably shouldn’t. People would buy the items right away and then come to the forums complaining they have nothing else to do in the game. They’ll need something more and we’ll start all over again with the gear grind debate.

Not sure if they’re worth of an expansion, but what’s most important to me is that ANet is constantly working on the game, trying to improve. They can’t do everything at once and I, for one, wouldn’t even require that. No matter what they call these patches and what comparisons they make, the fundamental thing remains the same: they are improving the game and that’s enough for me.

Last week or so I hit 80 with my ranger and if I am to look back at the process I would say it wasn’t hard, but more like demanding. Now, at first I told myself ok, this is how the game is meant to be for all classes. But reaching the higher level zones I got to team up with more and more people and found myself in difficult spots more often than before. And then I witnessed the power of warriors… where I was struggling with a mob and had to use all of my skills and abilities, switching between weapons, dodging and all that, the warriors came, hit the mob three or four times and that was it.

Being a rather casual player, I haven’t noticed this difference before, but getting into tougher fights now I feel the ranger is a bit broken. I couldn’t back this with any stats or charts or whatever, but the difference I witnessed between ranger and warrior was big. The thing is, I really love this class, this playstyle, with bows and pets and traps, but I never imagined the ranger a class with low dps. It would be great id ANet would make ammends.

Nope, subscription is the reason I quit other MMOs before. I have no problem paying for the box or for expansions, even if the price is higher than usual, I am also ok with the idea of buying some gems, but no monthly fees.

I think it’s a bit early to talk about this, but yes, I would. I think ANet are on the right track and they seem commited to improve this game.

I still have faith in ANET. Every MMO needs time to mature, it’s a work in progress and the best we can hope is that the devs are commited to improve this game in every possible way. I had my ups and downs with GW2, but didn’t regret for a moment buying it. A friend of mine has this thing when deciding if a game was worth buying (not sure if it’s his idea or taken from the net): if you’d lose this game, would you buy it again? For GW2 my answer is definitely yes.

ANet, I DON’T WANT VERTICAL PROGRESSION! Like many have said it, if I want that, I will get back to WoW, to SWTOR or whatever else. I am a casual player looking to have fun for a long, long time in this game. I know the stats increase are minimal, but isn’t this just the first step, a sign for things to come? What about the Manifesto, guys? Many of us love this game so much exactly because it’s different.

And you know what happens when you please the players who are hunting for stats? They want bigger stats! Just wait for two weeks and you’ll see the same ol’ threads pop up. And meanwhile you’ll slowly start to infuriate your fanbase.

So if this item progression was just an experiment to test the community, my vote is: drop it. You guys proved that you have a ton of imagination, there must better ways to fix this end-game debate.

I was really curious about this post when reading the title, because I ended up loving this game and I plan to invest a lot of time in it over the next few years. So, as far as I am concerned, it’s my game also. However, while I understant and respect Spiky’s point of view I find out that OUR game can mean a lot of different things.

From what I understand, one of the main issues would appear if ANet made the game easier or, let’s say, more casual-friendly. This seems to be a thing that plagued WoW over the last years, according to the hardcore members of it’s community, but I wouldn’t want to turn this into a comparison between the two.

But for every game, and even more so for MMOs, you have two strong sides of the community: the hardcore players and the casual players. The secret is probably in finding a way to please everybody but that’s quite hard to achieve. From what I’ve seen – though I could be wrong – the hardcore players will always be the more vocal ones. I am not sure if for Guild Wars 2 there are more hardcore players than casual players, and hopefully whenever it comes to arguments there are opinions from both sides.

This being said, I am for the more casual side of things in GW2. I would like for things to be relatively easy to achieve, I don’t want for this game to become a source of stress for me. I don’t want to be frustrated by it after a hard day’s work, I would rather have it challenge me with an amazing story or with it’s lore rather than with tough fights and frustrating mechanics.

The OP seems to be a hardcore player and I am asuming this because of the 700 hours spend in the game. And while it’s cool to be able to play this much, I wonder if after that much time spent in any game one is not getting tired by it. On the other hand, I understant that had he played only 50 hours some other people might’ve jumped at him for not having an informed opinion. Which leads me to my next point.

If a casual player only has 40 hours in the game his opinion should not matter? Because there are a lot of people who aren’t posting on the forums and play maybe even less than that in a month’s time. And they will continue to play. And being on the casual side of things, they will probably want things to be easier and definitely less frustrating.

I, for one, play MMOs to relax. That’s my definition for the genre somehow, a social and easy game where I can achieve something no matter how much time I invest in it. I wouldn’t want that to change, and if there are too difficult spots in the game then I vote for ANet to make them easier so I could continue playing in my own way. Like I said, I’m looking to have fun and relax, life frustrates me enough, I don’t want for a game to start doing this and if it happens I usually drop the game.

Wall of text alert, I guess.

Hi guys, I am a lvl 40 ranger and I only managed to make 1.2 gold until now. Now, I went to my trainer and noticed the second manual for traits costs 1 gold. So after 40 levels of hard work I am about to get broke again. I am not mad or something, and actually my question is: am I doing something wrong?

I am 130 in hunstman and leatherworking so maybe this is a problem? I try hard to gather the mats myself and not buys them but sometimes I really need something from the trading post for insignias and the sort. Also, I try to sell stuff that I don’t need and salvage items in order to get more mats.

Is there some secret for making in-game gold at lower levels or I should just get used to being broke? Thanks in advance to anyone willing to answer.

PS: In case there is a similar topic for this problem, please direct me there and delete this one.

Hi guys and thanks a lot for the answers! It’s really helping me in knowing what to expect from the game, the good and the bad, I definitely feel my choice will be easier to make due to your great feedback. I don’t have a huge amount of time on my hands and playing both games might seem overwhelming, but I’m in no hurry. I’m not planning to play any other MMO for a long time and dunno, GW2 really put a spell on me, I find it amazing and I constantly want to find out more about Tyria. If there is one thing lacking in the second game it seems to be the lore, but between GW1, the links you guys have provided and the two GW books I might just turn into a fanboy.

Cheers everyone!

I am currenlty playing through GW2 and having an absolute blast. However, I feel I know too little about the world and I must start with the beginning, thus I plan to play GW1 next to GW2. I know it will take an awful lot of time to “finish” the first game, but I’m in no hurry.

The main reasons to do this would be story and lore. I know there are resources on the internet, videos on youtube and the sort but somehow I feel like experiencing the full story by myself. I don’t have any friends who want to play this game, and I am not sure I can commit to a guild, I play on and off, sometimes with long breaks, more so since I have no plan of getting fast through the content.

My question would be then: can I experience the story in this game until the very end by playing alone (hiring henchmen, heroes)? I am aware that by doing this I lose the MMO part, but that’s no problem for me, since I got GW2 to provide it. More specifically, what I would hate would be for me to get to end-game story missions and not be able to complete them because I would need a full party of real players and the henchmen/heroes wouldn’t suffice.

A side question would be, since I am not 100% sure with my plan, is it worth it? Not if the game is good or bad, but would you advice me to go with my plan and play GW1 in order to fill all of the story/lore gaps or would you rather recommend that I just go on with GW2 and watch the lore videos on youtube?

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to answer.

PS: I wasn’t sure where to place this thread on the forums so if needs moving there’s no problem at all.

I’ll start by saying that I love this game. It’s cool, is fresh, it’s stunningly beautiful, and it’s the first MMO i want to play for years to come. I think ANet did most of the things right, but there is one that I find insufficiently explored. And that’s lore.

I understand ANet’s philosophy of not forcing people to read, of making everything easy and having things presented in a visual manner. And it’s cool, I won’t criticise that. I just wish they had a little something for those of us who want more. I know that some people will tell me: do the hearts, talk to every npc in a location, but I’m already doing it. I also check what the scouts have to say, when they’re not bugged. However, even so, there seems to be very little information for someone who hasn’t played Guild Wars 1. I know some things because I’ve watched all kinds of lore videos on youtube or checked wikia.

My suggestion would be to add some sort of text to the points of interest maybe. You get there as a player, mark the point on your map and maybe afterwards when you mouse over that point you get this little floating text with bits of lore. Or maybe even better, add something like the codex in Star Wars: The Old Republic. It would be something optional, people who don’t want to read those things are free to ignore them, but the lore nerds will be mad to collect all that information.

I am not sure what the best method would be, but I feel there is a lack of lore in an amazing game with an amazing history, and it feels a bit like ANet ignored the backstories of it’s own universe. Yes, there is the personal story, but it doesn’t tell me much about the lore, it’s telling a present story, or I am interested in all kinds of crazy deeds from the past, old heroes and places, who build Divinity’s Reach and when, how many wars did it witnessed, what wars were fought in Gendarran Fields and so on. It would add a layer of depth to this great game that I would very much like to see.

Not sure if enough people feel this way in order to justify a change, but this would be my suggestion so thanks for listening.

I think comparison with WoW, and not only, can be useful. The GW2 community should maybe compare this game also with SWTOR, Rift and whatever else there is out there. I remember one thing that jumped at me when Mists of Pandaria introduced area looting. I was like look, they stole that from swtor, how could they?! Of course, they didn’t do something illegal, they just kept an eye open and got what was best for them from other MMOs. It’s an open market and the competition could only benefit us gamers. If we like something that’s also is in WoW or SWTOR maybe we should ask for it, but I completely agree with Arathor, let’s not trash something just because it was in another game. If it works for GW2, let’s use it! If it doesn’t work, let’s state our opinions as fans and let ANet see what the majority wants.

And if I can be a bit melodramatic, people need to hate something. SWTOR fans hated WoW, WoW fans hate Guild Wars, GW fans hate everybody else and so on. I’m exaggerating, of course, but if instead of that hate we would use the better part of our brains and come up with constructive criticism that would be great. And the fact is, it wouldn’t be great for ANet or for NCSoft, it would be great for us as fans of this game, as people who want the best experience and are willing to spend hundreds of hours in the game and have fun for years and years to come and tie friendships and whatever works for us.

Cheers!

Having mounts is something that sounds really cool, specially after we’ve seen them in every possible MMO out there. However, I am not sure if they would work as well in GW2, first of all because of the WP system which allows you to fast travel everywhere and second of all because every area seems to be packed with monsters, events, crafting nodes, points of interest etc. I, for one, wouldn’t find them very useful, because as soon as the "mount"animation is done I would take three steps and then watch the “dismount” since I just found something to do.

However, I would have a suggestion: use mounts as end-game rewards. Some people have been complaining about running out of stuff to do once they hit the level cap and they would be willing to grind for something, if need be. I don’t like for that something to be gear, but maybe some reward needs to be there for somebody who’s playing this game more time than I am, why not mounts? Looking in retrospect from level 80, you could travel Tyria on a mount just to brag, passing by points of interest without stopping by, because you’ve already been there. And say you’re hunting for events or want to farm something more quickly, there you go, you now have a mount to do this. Or you could just take cool screenshots as a mounted warrior, whatever works.

I didn’t have the time to read through all replies, but I will express my opinion to the point of this thread. I am fairly new to the game, just got to level 30 a day or two ago. I am also a casual, mature player, with job, family and the sort. My playing time is somewhere around 10 hours/week on normal conditions (aka most of the time).

More importantly maybe, I am not a fan of MMOs. I could never get into games like WoW for example specifically because of vertical progression. I wouldn’t mind gear grinding per se, as long as is optional. Unfortunately, it never quite really is. The direct and unavoidable consequence of that is the fact that a casual player like me never got to experience the end game properly. I never got to do any raids for example, because I couldn’t find the time to gear myself properly and be admitted in a team.

This is one of the main reasons I bought Guild Wars 2, I thought look, finally an MMO where I can actually experience the whole content even if I am a casual player. I can understand and respect the OPs point of view, but from where I am implementing a vertical progression in GW2 would almost ruin the game for me. In the end, horizontal progression is one of the things that make this game what it is, setting it apart from other MMOs.

This being said, I’ve seen many people desiring something more from end-game, so maybe ANet needs to make something up, compe up with a new, cool idea and like Azaziel states, give people something to brag about. Me, I’d be happy to roll a new toon, I am 50 hours into this game, only one character, and explored 9% of the map or something like that. As far as I am concerned, I won’t run out of things to do for a year in GW2.

Cheers everyone!