Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the hard work guys. It seems that since Colin left, you guys finally went back to the roots and are making this game enjoyable again. I am glad to be back after 3 years and ready for the PoF journey.

Build templates must be really hard to implement, otherwise I don’t see why ANet devs would be against it.

someone kill me now!!!

I just got to this puzzle and after 45 min I had to quit. I hope the person who designed this puzzle never gets to design anything else in his/her life.

yes git gud, learn to dodge, blah blah blah

How is this OK that a spider or a little mushroom can two shot my level 80 warrior fully geared in knight armor with all the specializations skills unlocked?

I know the game hasn’t raised the level cap since launch, but are these new mob types in HoT (not talking about elite, or champs) really level 80? the amount of damage they do is way beyond the normal mobs in tyria. How is this acceptable for players not feel that the gear makes zero difference? Does ANet really want everyone to run berserker adjust spam dodge? or skip mobs?

I would fire Colin Johanson…

RedDeadFred.1256:

Trash/nothing of value? Are we playing the same game? The items themselves aren’t worth much, but the materials from breaking them down add up fast. It’s ridiculously easy to make gold in this game. Unless your point is more to do with rewards not being flashy, in which case I completely agree.

However, the direction they’ve gone in is basically choose your own rewards by amassing currency. Map currencies are also very easy to get with the one exception being bloodstone rubies. Most maps only require one meta whilst opening various chests, pods, etc. along the way to afford just about anything in the map vendor’s inventories.

Which maps are you playing?

HoT maps

As a returning player after 3 years, I can’t help to notice that the reward in this game is still terrible even for the meta events which can take up to 45min -60min.

ANet’ strategy to have the game constantly pop up exotic chests on the screen, only to contain some green/blue items worth 3-4 silvers and some cheap crafting materials worth less than 1 silver, plus more useless currencies that would take forever to add up and be worth anything, is a cheap way to create an illusion for the players to believe that they are actually getting rewarded for their hard work.

If ANet is worried about the inflation of gold or whatever then they can just make the reward account bound and add some pets, skins, gliders, etc to the chests. Or at least remove the stupid chests and just give more XP and some extra currency.

Another Ex-WoW elitist player complaining why the mobs don’t one shot him…

TurtleofPower.5641:

I think it’s they just don’t know what they’re doing as a company. They don’t know what’s MOST important in their values. Is it WvW? Ongoing events? Expansions? PVP? Story and world depth? Guilds? Character building? Community? They try to cover this lack of plan with new currencies, new systems, rewards like dailies and log-ins, etc… but it’s still a lack of a true solid plan and I still don’t know what kind of gameplay I’m supposed to “count on” from them.

In short, seems like they aimed to serve too many masters and the end result was it’s not really panning out, so add more grind to keep people playing a wee bit longer. To me though that seems like a cycle of diminishing returns.

Well said. As a MMO game studio, ANet seems to have no solid roadmaps.

First with the living story, then changes to PvP, new specializations, expansion, unnecessary changes to dungeons and fractals, too many changes to the trait and skill changes making things more complicated, etc….it seems ANet changes their decisions too much and I bet it’s due to the short financial outcome of everything that Anet does and doesn’t do…and possibly the pressure from the big boss and investors. It feels to me that ANet is constantly looking for a way to survive rather than a way to continue making MMOs…

Personally I think they should have stuck with the living story. The most fun I had in GW2 was during the Living Story Season one even though the content came under heavy criticism mostly by the elitist players who hated zergs. There was weekly challenges and events, the rewards were good, there was a decent amount of achievements, zerg and solo contents, etc….everybody was there doing the events and enjoying the game. Then the game took a big 180 degrees shift and the rewards got nerfed, the events started having timers, the community got separated, the zerg contents were not enjoyable anymore, etc…

A game studio that can’t stick to their decisions, right or wrong, will not survive. Changing the game too much from it’s core only causes more problems rather than improve anything. What I’d give to go back and play GW2 4-6 months after it’s launch?

GW2 used to be an awesome MMO, but now its just a shortcut sitting my on desktop waiting to be moved to the trashcan…

Haven’t played HoT yet and probably never will, but Destiny had the right idea for an expansion in the taken king when introducing the new specializations. You basically do the new story mission and after the third or forth quest, you unlock the new specialization. Not a big fan of Destiny and not defending the game but at least they managed to do that right. GW2 on the other hand is a much bigger MMO and needs to hide it’s lack of content behind it’s grind.

This is not a good sign for HoT….

Tyler Bearce.3427:

For Heart of Thorns, we are rebalancing the WvW Lifetime achievement requirements to much more reasonable numbers. At the same time we’ll also be updating many of their associated titles.

• We are not changing the Realm Avenger (“Ultimate Dominator”) achievement requirements or title, as some players have actually obtained it and it’s a bit of a status symbol.
• The “Yakslapper” title will remain, but the requirement is being reduced to 2500 yaks.
• As an example title change: “Ultimate Liberator” will become “Kingmaker”

So for the Heart of Thorns or whatever its called you guys fixing some achievements that were set poorly 3 years ago? Can you explain why this has to be in HoT or why you mention HoT at all for this change? How is this even related to HoT? Isn’t HoT already hyped enough that every single fix has to have the words “Heart of Thorns” in it? I mean really?

I have had my good share of MMOs in my gaming lifetime and honestly GW2 is one of the least rewarding game out there.

During the GW2 “no content down time” this year, I went back and played some of the available free to play MMOs out there (not going to name them here) and doing a low level quest in those games felt more rewarding than running a level 40+ fractal or a dungeon.

I don’t expect a precursor or whatever rare RNG drop but the whole game just feels under rewarding in every aspect. It’s like the developers want the players to hate the game by constantly getting screwed for their efforts. Anyways my advise is if you play GW2, don’t play it expecting any rewards or achievements. my two cents…

It’s amazing how many people feel that they have a saying against ANet’s decisions and are entitled to something.

Please remind yourself that as a player you are worth less than the dust laying down under the carpet in ANet’s office. Just because you played the game since day one, paid $60 for the game, spent $1000 in gems, etc…doesn’t make you a shareholder or an investor in ANet. They can do what they want with their game and you can go cry in a corner. Afterall all MMOs are the same busienss model and year after year we see more MMOs failing or going free to play. If you haven’t been exposed to the business model before then you can learn the hard way now.

ANet and its management might not have any clues to what they are doing but its not yours or my place to judge them or make their decisions for them. Personally I was burned by ANet a while back and expected this to happen and if you still had high hopes for this studio then I am sorry for you and you only have yourself to blame.

There will always be supporters of the game but today that number might have been slightly reduced.

“It’s just business, nothing personal”.

……title

Brother Grimm.5176:

A piece of software cannot damage hardware….

Please describe the “flickering” better (when it starts, ends and exactly what you mean by flickering….the whole screen goes on and off, etc.).

Does this flickering persist after the instance loads? (and if not, how is this an actual issue?).

It is better explained here a and with some help from the redditors I was able to get rid of the problem by starting in windows mode:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33pedo/screen_flickering_when_starting_gw2_since_the/

Is anybody else experiencing screen flickering when starting GW2 since the recent updates? I have tried changing my display and also re-installed the game with the new graphic card drivers and the screen still flickers when starting up the game or changing maps? I am not 100% sure but this might have damaged one of my displays and have caused constant black flickering on one of them.

GW2 runs on outdated NCSoft servers which is shared with all their other MMOs.

The lag is here to stay no matter how much they reduce the cap for WvW or optimize the netcode because the bottleneck is the hardware.

That is how cash shop MMO works and GW2 is no different. The reward is locked inside your wallet and that is it. You want rewards for your hard work then go play a real MMO.

ANet had a very decent and intelligent WvW team which understood WvW very well. But unfortunately that team was moved to drawing skins for the gem store content some time ago. Also the awesome people who developed EoTM are now working in the art team drawings Scartlet all day.

Be glad that there is a separate TAB for the crafting materials. Not a lot of MMOs give you this luxury.

A trick I used was to start my own personal guild and upgraded the guild bank and now have 100 extra slots which didn’t cost me much.

Do you mean living story 3 packaged all in one big patch called an expansion? I doubt I would buy it…

The forums are the end game contents in GW2. So deal with it.

OK so basically everything that already existed when the game launched.

It is not really about what ANet got right or wrong…Its more about how ANet lacks solid decision making, plans or any direction.

When I think about GW2, I see a MMO that has a solid core but still in alpha state with nothing really to look forward to….It seems like the whole company has no management and a lot of changes are forced on to the players based on who knows what. During the last year we received so many changes that nobody had requested and meanwhile we didn’t get a lot of the requested changes or features…all those CDIs were basically a big waste of time.

It is hard to explain, but GW2 is like a lost ship in a black hole with everyone trying to save it but a stubborn pilot who doesn’t listen to anyone and moving towards self destruction.

Everything is still RNG…

The good:

• EoTM

The bad and ugly:

• Everything else.

RNG is not a bad reward system for certain items and most MMOs use it; however RNG in GW2 s#cks @ss because everything valuable in game is based on RNG. For example, I can never do an extremely difficult challenge for a good reward because guess what? RNG. Or I can never have something as a goal (like getting a specific precursor for legendary) in GW2 because of RNG.

Why would ANet release an expansion? With their current business model, it makes absolutely no sense to have the living story plus an expansion. An expansion will kill the bi-weekly gem store contents and the living story…

The only thing that would make sense at this point is that if the living story leads to an expansion which would never happen because ANet has lost too much creativity and passion for the game due to focusing on making the gem store as the top priority. It is a shame because with better management, GW2 could have been an epic MMO rather than a flashy world with paid skins.

I still play the way I want, because GW2 is not my only option.

Nobody is forcing anyone to play GW2 and if you feel you are forced to play a certain way then move on to something better. That is what I did a while back and still enjoying my gaming time, and I play what I want, the way I want…

I still visit the forums time to time because I still have some hope for this game.

ANet changed the game to an achievement grind fest for almost everyone when they introduced the achievement rewards and living story meta rewards.

I have never seen any other MMO that so much of the rewards depended on the achievements points…At the end its just a number but some dev had this bright idea to turn turn everything into the d@mn achievements.

It is an MMO. You are not supposed to team up with people….

I don’t understand why people go through all the efforts to make these long posts when ANet clearly never listens to anything and continues in their own path of destruction.

Wanze.8410:

Thats because all the people who really enjoy the festival, rather spend their time in game than on the forums.

I am having a blast and also made lots of profit on the tp today.

And somehow you are on the forums…

haha I look at that picture and think to myself how ANet’s servers catch on fire if that was the case in WvW.

Didn’t read the whole thread but adding mounts requires a lot of work which ANet would have already done if they thought it would be doable….just think of the gem store mounts possibilities….mounts for 1600 gems? why not….

Cybrdroyd.7610:

I hope you all don’t mind, but I just have to say that this game has been the best mmo experience I’ve had since the first day I logged into Everquest 2 and WoW. Now, I am not here to promote those games, but out of all the mmos I have played, few have given me that sense of epicness like GW2 does. I am a new player and I am currently playing as a Norn warrior. I am about level 13 right now.

Frankly, and I think we can all agree on this, there are a lot of crap mmos out there. Thankfully, GW2 is not one of them. I just want to say bravo to the devs for putting together such an amazing mmo experience. Most mmos grab me for about an hour before I get tired of playing. This game, with the story arc, I was riveted for several hours as I worked to finish the story quest today.

What a fun game you have here.

The game has an amazing core and the original team who designed the world of GW2 needs to be praised for creating such a great MMO. But unfortunately the game is managed very poorly and the whole management department is clueless to everything that game can offer. That said, lets talk in 6 months after you level a couple of characters and run what the game offered at release….

Again another feature/change nobody had asked for….

I wonder if ANet studio even has more than 20 developers working on stuff not counting the voice actors and the gem store artists.

that said, I hope in 2015 we get some ground breaking announcements….

Season 2 finale will end with a 4 months break and a couple of WvW seasons thrown in as content fillers…

ANet can barely get a 15 minutes LS chapter out in two weeks and some people still expect an expansion at this point. That said, there is tons of work which goes into that 15 minutes of content….

But up until now, EoTM is still the best piece of content we got since the game was launched 2 years ago which they said it took 1 year of development. The living story drives the gem store business model and that will not change….

Edit: I honestly don’t understand why ANet doesn’t just come forward and announce that there will not be an expansion and put an end to all these discussions…

I really don’t understand where ANet is going with this game and LS….I mean except reddit’s GW2 fanboys, how many players actually care about the lore of GW2 at this point? GW2 always had a weak story and lore….so I’m not sure why ANet is forcing this on the players…The whole living story idea was never planned very well and the guys at ANet really need to sit around a table and re-think their whole strategy because at the moment, they have no clue where they are going with this game….

Good luck searching for your pre loot chest on the ground during a zerg fight….

It has been mentioned before but I say it again: The game needs to mark the exotic drop on the map with a different color or at least make a sound so that you know there is a good drop on the ground somewhere. Diablo 3 does a good job at this by marking the legendary drop as a golden star on the map. I really don’t see how hard it is for ANet to do this, but then again ANet wants you to buy the pre with gems so they will never do anything about this issue.

An expansion will never happen in the lifetime of GW2, because ANet depends on constant cash flow from the cash shop and needs to produce contents that would promote the cash shop stuff. They cannot just sit back for one year and create an expansion which people would run through in the matter of days and then ask for another expansion and so on.

If ANet ever decides to develop an expansion then its needs to introduce some VIP program to keep the cash flow going while developing an expansion. Honestly at this point I doubt anyone would pay a fee to play GW2 and a VIP program can easily ruin the economy in game.

The living story model is here to stay if you like it or not. At the end its just business, nothing personal. You don’t like it? there are subscription MMOs out there that have expansions. The question is, can you afford it?

WvW and PvP has become a filler for contents between living story chapter. That is all….

Lightsbane.9012:

well if you ever want to find the least skilled players in the game, EOTM is the place to do it. and by that i mean be a guardian with a hammer and press 4.

how do you know who is skilled and not skilled? did you 1v1 every player in EoTM and win?

EoTM was released more than a year ago and it is still going very strong.

Benefits of EoTM:

• Progression in WVW ranks
• Nice looking map
• Fast karma and XP train
• Active 80+ zergs most times of the day
• PvP
• Achievements
• N#@b friendly
• Less harsh map chat compared to WvW.
• Decent loot and lots of chests (WvW rank chest sometimes very rewarding)
• Lots of champs and Vets and events (Perfect for getting the daily and monthly)

So why ANet doesn’t create more contents like EoTM? They have the best example right in front of their eyes.

No Walking.6349:

Zylonite.5913:

Season 1 zerg contents were always buggy and ANet couldn’t keep up with the number of bugs they had to fix on each release. So they went back to more solo or small group contents which is less buggy because easier to QA. I doubt we will see ever contents like season 1 anytime soon. Also they are focusing more on the lore and back story fillers which honestly I couldn’t care less about…but at least we have less bugs…

I don’t remember any bugs during Season 1 at all. Them not wanting to work as hard seems like a bad excuse.

haha…made my day

ColinJohanson.2394:

Right now we’re sort of splitting out things you can “spend” between three different places: Your inventory, your bank, and your wallet.

At its core, we need to decide on one of these to compliment your inventory and call it good. As we’re continuing to introduce more items like the geodes and bandit “hello my name is” crests, this has obviously become even more of an issue

Ultimately, we either need to let you spend materials from your bank directly at vendors so you don’t need to keep them in your inventory (and then make geodes/crests materials) OR continue to make the wallet larger and larger. Or option #3 we haven’t considered yet you might think of in this suggestion forum!

Either way, we’re aware of the need and will address it “when it’s ready™”.

Just make a new LS currency tab like you have for collectibles. How hard is that?