Guild Wars 2

I do like the progressive story and having something new every couple weeks to try out. I’m mostly just in a holding pattern based on supposed upcoming releases that will change the core game mechanics, like MF shifting from gear to account and such. The current large group bash missions are pretty neat and massive amounts of loot drops make it worth trying for stuff in the mystic forge. But my banks are filled up with all these items that I’m hanging on to because I’m not sure how the Magic Find changes will affect the game, my characters, the economy, etc.

If these “farming” events were after the game mechanics have changed and the economies have settled, I wouldn’t feel like I’m in a holding pattern, waiting for something that’s going to happen soon, yet I can’t do anything about right now.

As for the OP, I’d definitely like more intricacy in the event missions and more involvement as opposed to just following the herd from point to point to point. I do like the big battles, but I haven’t felt like a battle was epic since the southshore end event.

I do like getting the volume of loot drops as the current and previous event provide, but eventually it just had the feeling of 2 weeks of farming for the sake of farming. There was no goal, no objective, no purpose other than acquire loot and fill up bags to dump into the mystic forge or salvage for crafting.

These farming runs can definitely be part of the events, but they shouldn’t be the core of the event.

One idea that might be worth looking into would be to have events where they sort of guide the player base along doing the normal achievements that they normally wouldn’t be able to do. The dailies kind of do this, but they are objective based. I think it would be neat if there were, say an NPC who has similar achievement goals as the ones you and a group of people do. He says, “Ya know, I’ve always wanted to dive off of the cliff near X, would you accompany me?”. Then a random group of players who all need that particular objective head off with him across zones, going on adventures, finding misc things along the way that weren’t necessary a part of the original adventure, sometimes having a specific mob fest that happened to appear on your way there. Eventually, you make it to your original destination, but you’ve gone through many events along the way that added to your adventure and all contributed toward achievements.

Adding to the previous, it could double in pvp/wvw. NPC wants to do several different objectives that are in the pve areas, one in the pvp area, and 2 final ones in the wvw areas. That moves players through various normal objectives and achievements while exposing them to the various points of the game, and, at the same time, helping them along adventures similar to the main story arch. All the while having commentary and interaction with the player.

Anyway, there are many different approaches to making the living world more interactive, more fun, and more interesting. I, personally, really enjoyed the southsun event, the labrinthine area, and the queens pavillion mobfest. I also really liked the mad king boss fight and the southsun end fight (except there were too many people in a localized area and I rarely got drops or xp from normal enemies because I couldn’t cause enough damage to register as having contributed).

I look forward to seeing where Anet takes GW2 in the future.

Man, I have to agree with OP as well. I attempted to solo tier 2 and died (and lost all of my armor in the process) probably 20-25 attempts. Eventually my buddy came on and we tried to dual it. We had no success after about 10 attempts and another full armor repair (~25s). We quit in frustration. The next day I sat for almost an hour and sending messages in map chat and private whispers to try and get a group together to do tier 2. Not a single person was interested! That was beyond frustrating.

So then I tried Ellen Kiels equivalent (thinking it had to be something different than the opposing candidate). Needless to say I rage quit the game when I found out it was the exact same mission!

What’s even more frustrating is that the whole cutthroat politics event requires extensive pvp/grouping to complete the main achievements. I’m a PvE primary player and prefer to play solo or with 1-2 others. I dont have alot of time to play in general making me a casual player with limited friends (most of which are rarely on to begin with). I dont really enjoy pvp nor attempting to find groups who are willing to do dungeons or fractals. That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to do more PvE things in groups, but my skill levels are far lower than those who are able to play more often.

The Kiel arena events with crystal capture the flag was not fun for me. Every 2 seconds I was getting blown off the edge or falling off the edge from dodge rolling. It wasn’t anything I was interested in and I didn’t spend much time with it.

The Evon survivor thing was actually pretty fun once I figured out how it was supposed to be played, but I wasn’t any good at it. I spent most of the time as a spirit, waiting 10 minutes for the end as there didn’t seem to be anything to do after death. Sometimes I would just quit out, but ended up not getting credit.

Anyway, my point is that I just did not find the cutthroat politics event fun as there really wasn’t anything I could do without getting completely slaughtered in pvp or having no success in finding groups.

The Labrinthine area and aspect powers are really awesome. I really enjoyed jumping for shards and getting to the diving goggles. I really wish they had done more to really use the aspect powers beyond the Kiel arena. It would have seemed more worthwhile if the main achievements could be completed by either doing the pvp stuff or doing pve stuff. As it was, there were like 2 achievements that could be completed solo. The other dozen or so all required some form of player interaction which is just too challenging for casual players or too difficult to find a group who is tolerant of less experienced players.

I do hope that when they implement LFG functionality, they implement a check box for “casual” players. That way pick up groups know that they are intentionally casual or regular. I also hope that dungeons get a “casual” mode that can be completed by 2-3 players who are just wanting to do the story and have some mild runs with mild loot. There’s just not that much time available to me right now to really delve into anything that requires hardcore gaming core and all I want to do is have a casual challenge and complete something in a timely fashion.

I’d pay for a consumable that allowed you to un-soulbound an item back to account bound so if you wanted to do something like move an unbreakable mining pick from a character you aren’t playing at the moment, you could make use of it on a character you are playing.

Or if you have a piece of gear that is awesome, but has been surpassed by another, and you’d like to still make use of that gear on another character (ie uber rare pieces).

Overall, I enjoyed the phase 3 event, however, my contribution was not rewarded. Throughout the entire 3 hours, I only got xp/searchable mobs a half dozen times. The vast majority, I would sink arrow volley after arrow volley only to have the mob die and not get any xp or drop. Oddly, they all counted for my monthly achievement.

Along with getting almost no xp/drops, enemies would not display on my screen until they were down to about half their HP. I’d see the group shooting at “something” but nothing would be there. Eventually it would appear and I’d be able to target and fire at it. I died several times due to not being able to see my enemy until it was too late.

Ultimately, this made the event quite long and tedious with little reward, at least until the end. Once the end chest was opened, it made up mostly for the long unrewarding grind of mobs.

I have to agree that the “reinforcement phase” was bordering tedium.

In future events, it would be cool if there were multiple area coop objectives. Like if 4 trees had to be cut down at the right time and simultaneously by 4 distinct groups, that might be really interesting.

Another improvement for future would be the ability for melee-centric characters to be viable. In here, it just wasn’t viable to use melee, no matter how decent you were with your skills. All the time, the melee characters were dead or dying within moments of encountering a new mob. I tried my melee build on my ranger and didn’t last long despite my best efforts. Once my skills went to cooldown, it was generally all over.

Overall, one time events were fun (albeit I completely missed the first due to it falling in the middle of the standard workday in the US), but there is room for improvement in future iterations (also missed the second one due to just being busy… had this happened next weekend, I would have had a ton of time to play and enjoy all of the event items, but this weekend was doomed to begin with). Still, I had fun with the last one time event.

Somehow I missed this thread (right there at the top).

Change Item Link Keybind:

My suggested improvement is to remap “item link” keybind from “Left Control/Shift + Click” to something that is in a non combat sensitive area on the keyboard like “Right Control/Shift + Click”.

Very often I end up hitting shift or control and linking my mouse click which then activates the chat window. That makes every subsequent key stroke appear in chat instead of doing what I intend it to do (like dodge, move, generally things that will keep me from dying for the most part). A good 20% of all of my deaths have been attributed to this (my deaths are multiple hundreds atm). I wish I could Left Shift/Control + Click and not have it link items in chat. Instead, that “non combat sensitive” function would be better suited for “Right Shift/Control + Click” or have the option to bind it to another key sequence while removing it from it’s current binding all together.

My suggestion is to move Item Link keybinds from “left control+click” & “left shift+click” to “right control/shift+click” or some other non combat critical location on the keyboard.

All too often I bump control and shift during combat and click something “far away” in terms of finger reach (ie elite skill) with the mouse. Instead of activating the skill I clicked, I link the skill in chat. Subsequently, every button I press afterward goes into chat (with shift click) preventing any kind of movement, skill activation, etc and more often than not, results in my death.

Something that is not combat critical, should not be in the main finger placement locations on the keyboard (ie left half of the keyboard should be reserved for only combat critical functions). Further, all key actions should be customizable with the ability to disable.