Guild Wars 2

How to make raids more accessible?

Get rid of the elitist raiding community.
It’s honestly the only way it’s going to happen.

More people would be willing to try and fail if ANet didn’t make the mistake of saying that you needed full ascended gear to participate 6+ months ago.

Now the prejudice has stuck and you can’t set food inside without people gatekeeping because they want their raids to be easy, and simultaneously call you lazy for not having ascended gear.

There are some improvements on obtaining the new HoT gear in the April update but it won’t resolve the issue of having some builds difficult to gear than others until Living World Season 3.

Source: http://dulfy.net/2016/03/05/gw2-reddit-developer-ama-summary/#Items

[/quote]

Sooooo…. any update on this? Felt it was worth a bump since Freshwater Pearls and the like are still untouched. Is there some new way to get them or reward I’m missing?

Healix.5819:

The majority of people are likely just going to login and play. They won’t even think of using the LFG tool to taxi – they’ve probably never even used it before. As a result, a lot of these people are going to find themselves on inactive maps, which is going to cause a poor experience.

Taxi’ing only worsens the problem for everyone else. They should start by removing the reserved spots for party joiners and volunteering should work in reverse with a much greater incentive (maps fill to ~125% capacity, then split, ideally into a duplicate map in terms of progression). Teaching players that group events are in fact scaled for 3+ people, not just zergs, and displaying how many people are near an event would also greatly help.

I’ve never intentionally taxied, and this game is pretty miserable as a solo player looking for on-the-fly group content.

Ever since TTS ruined everything with Taxis at marionette, tequatl and triple worm, and seeing a populated map of people who could have finished the event on the map they were one just vanish as an event was spawning, I kinda refused to be a part of that. I’ve never finished any of the content because of the taxi mentality existing.

I dunno, it makes everything about the game sucky for me, doubly so since I want to play support, but I absolutely don’t want to have to ask permission from someone on a map or in a guild to participate in world content.

Tooltip for the insignia uses the new concentration stat for boon duration but upon crafting the set, it still creates the old 1% flat rate pieces.

tobascodagama.2961:

ChrizZcE.5981:

I always see tons of people in the new zones. You just have to use LFG and use a taxi.

This is a big problem, though. How many players know how to find and use a taxi? How many know how to use a taxi but simply don’t want to?

Taxiing isn’t a game mechanic, it’s a side effect of the megaserver system that players have learned to use to their advantage. ANet shouldn’t be relying on it, they should be tweaking event scaling and megaserver sorting so that taxis aren’t necessary.

Maybe if all these people weren’t using taxis, the dead maps would be less of a problem? The problem being is that the overall community wants an overwhelming mob to complete the maps and for all I know, maybe that is what you need to finish the events. Being said, I’ve never taxied, and coincidentally I’ve never seen a map event complete. Most of my time is spent with barely 1-2 people seen every 30 minutes until a big event happens or a commander tag pops up who didn’t taxi, and then maybe MAYBE I’ll see 10 people in the same place.

Arantheal.7396:

question, do you run full zerker gear?

Zerker isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom.

If you don’t play zerker, mobs take 5x+ longer to kill and that’s 5x time longer to shadowstep, stun, blind, instagib you. You can’t outheal or outlast it, and since some of the mobs (frogs) spend 90% of the fight immune, stealthed, shadowstepping to range, or stunlocking/fumbling you, you’re in for a bad time.

This is one of the things that I get a huge distaste for the game from.

I had worked hard and farmed up mats to have full givers sets fro most of my characters at the time, simply because I loved boonsharing builds. they were fun for me and gave other players amazing boons and I felt like I was contributing in a way other than yawn snore berserker meta.

Then the talent patch killed most of the boon builds I used.

Fast forward, I heard about a new set of boon gear in the game… What? There’s already a Giver’s set. Ok… times change. how do you get the new set? kittening mastery gated Itzel in Verdant Brink.

If you want people to keep playing in the game you need to quit kicking them while they’re down.

(% drop chance of a precursor)/10

DaShi.1368:

Let’s look at what we did see during the beta weekends. We got full elite specializations available. We got smooth access to the maps that they wanted to show off. We got the impression of a game that appeared to start out strong and could only get better. People were excited to start playing their elite specializations and explore the new maps. And they thought (maybe wrongly) that this was just the tip of the iceberg of HoT. Rather the beta’s were the end game of HoT. What you could expect to play after hours of grinding hero points and masteries. Not the thrilling beginning we were promised, but a disappointing end state that doesn’t live up to the hype.

This part specifically.

If the beta weekends had included the mastery/400hp grindfest, none of the elite specializations would have got tested by the playerbase and they knew it.

No hands on experience = no hype
no hype = no sales.

It’s bait and switch.

elfos.2109:

“Come on guys, 400 is an insane amount.”
400 points is 40 hero challenges (each is giving 10 points), and that’s the worst case that you’ll only be in if you don’t have any hero point right now. You most likely will only have to complete about 20-25ish of them if you’ve played the original game.

Except you can’t actually get to any of the hero points I’ve seen without having arbitrary mastery skills unlocked. They simply don’t work or straight up kill you for trying, or even better, you can’t even get to them.

This wasn’t mentioned AT ALL in the deal, and that’s a good part of the reason why everyone is mad.

Another slap in the face to people who play alts.

Yeah, no. Way too much grind for no reason other than to give the illusion of content – except you’ve walled the content behind grind to begin with.

Voting with my wallet, no cash for anet until this is changed.

So since guilds can spawn certain bosses off their timer… and those bosses are all currently in zones that aren’t affected by the megaserver…

Great job catering to TTS again and leaving small guilds in the dust or outright killing them off.

Can’t remove runes from gear without destroying the gear or using a cash shop extractor.
Can’t guarantee getting a rune back salvaging unless you use the cash shop salvage kits.
Can’t move runes to new gear because of the transmutation stone changes.
Can’t salvage certain gear at all, have to buy extractors.
Or go buy new runes from the flipper’s paradise. I’m sure they’ll love your business.

Why would anyone want to play a game that puts you in this situation?

timmyf.1490:

Bravo, why not just salvage them off with a BLSK? I have tons of those left over from dailies and world completion. If you have new gear and the skins are in the Wardrobe, salvaging the old gear for runes/mats would be the obvious next step, right?

I want to keep my gear and the runes since everyone is scalping everything currently. Plus, there are likely some people out there in karma gear whom -in the same situation- wouldn’t even have the ability to salvage it.

I currently have the option to go pay 5+ gold + BLSKs for a new set of gear, or 5+gold for a new set of runes.

Half my roster is ruined. I don’t feel like I should have to regear/respec/resocket all my characters and help fund the scalpers in the auction house just to be on par with what my characters did a day ago due to no change of my own.

This is just insufferable.

Having 3+ of my characters hit by this, and knowing that I’ll have to buy new runes from the scalping auction house, and that I can never get back to my original builds potency, makes me want to play even less.

Some builds only could work with 100% boon duration, especially as support.

On top of that, I’d have to buy extractors if I can’t afford it in gold because I can’t transmute runes into new gear anymore thanks to the new transmutation system. That’s just great. >:C

rip, protection auramancer
goodnight sweet prince, might share mesmer
vaya con dios, vigor/protection ranger.

Magic find has never worked for certain accounts/characters and is merely a placebo.

I would post pics of bags full of greys and not much else or just simply empty, but really, what’s the point?

I’m lucky if I get one yellow a month. Greens and blues outside of champ chests is rare as well. I ran max MF whenever I could, and have nothing to show for it.

Mochann.5298:

Swagger.1459:

Stuff like this only serves to alienate more people and I see it as another bad move considering the quarterly numbers keep dropping.

Where do you see these quarterly numbers?

Anyway, I find this change mostly unnecessary. It’s no big deal. I honestly don’t care if it’s there or not. Getting to rank 30 is easy and something you will hit naturally if you just map out WvW. Anyone who isn’t cheating the system somehow will hit rank 30 naturally.

The change is easy, easy, easy to do. Hitting rank 30 is practically effortless as long as your playing WvW.

If you hate WvW, tough luck. You don’t deserve a Legendary if you can’t even play to a minimum acceptable level in WvW.

Already mapped out WvW, no wvw ranks because they didn’t exist when I was forced to run around that gawdawful flash gank mob paradise.

Hitting rank 30 is a time gate for PvE and WvW players, but it is not a equal time gate it part of the problem.

Personally, I’d love to exclude you out of content just because you don’t like participating in a game mode as well.

“Oh, waypoints? You don’t deserve them unless you are a respectable PvE’er.” – This is how silly your claim is.

Welp, grats to everyone who is going to jack up their prices on completed legendaries due to the bar being set even further away from a casual player.

Great work on fixing the whole legendary problem. It’s only gotten worse day by day since the initial notice that Dusk was selling for 600g and this was ‘worrysome’.

I had the lightest amount of interest in the new wvw map since it didn’t seem like a siege gold sink, but to think I’m going to be forced to play it dashes my will to play even more.

Traveller.7496:

The idea that Josh Foreman and ANet had here that the event would be difficult enough to teach people game mechanics – or make them WANT to learn game mechanics – is a noble one. But unfortunately it’s unrealistic. Most people don’t want to learn or have a capacity to learn. They will press buttons and go on their way, not caring either way.

After attempting this marionette on my home server over 20 times with no win, I’m certainly looking at other games and ways to pass the time.

I don’t expect to be carried, but I equally don’t expect to have to rely on other players for personal rewards/achievements either. I’d rather play a game that properly rewards my time and or skill.

At least SAB still has that right, even if the rest of the game is careening towards impossible-to-casuals group content and layers of RNG on RNG.

Necro: Dhuumfire was confusing in the first place, adding a condition at the end of the power tree, Now it will require to be in Death shroud as well and on a slowly moving projectile? Maybe if life blast piercing shots also applies burning to all mobs hit.

Warrior: Don’t really like any of the warrior’s heals, the Signet was just the ‘least bad’ of the bunch. Outside of a purely defensive build, (which no one runs outside of bunker pvp) the proposed rebalancing of it seems unwarranted.

It’s funny seeing how many lanes don’t even bother putting them up. After finishing Lane 1’s reactor event I end up picking up the hammer and putting up barricades for any lane that missed them.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Gene Archer.8560:

Risingashes.8694:

Josh: Love the Marri- despite the frustration caused by watching a group of baddies fail.

Can I suggest a more focused training program for the individual for a future patch?

You’d need to make it essentially mandatory, either by rewards or locking Legendaries, level 80 or something behind it.

Have something that specifically teaches dodges, something that specifically requires trait swapping, something that specifically teaches positioning.

I’d love some harder content, and if the only way to get it is ensuring the playerbase is competent then it’s really up to you guys to actively push it forwards systematically and not just hope people pick things up while being carried by others.

The moment you do any of this, it stops being a game and becomes a job. It becomes work.

That isn’t fun, period.

I’m sorry, challenge seekers. The time of the WoW raid and excluding content from the masses is over. You can’t force people to get better. You can’t keep turning games into jobs.

I agree with you on excluding content from the masses for not having specific things…but they’re right on that open world players need to get a lot better. Dungeons, Fractals,

PvP, WvW, all of these require players to dodge, react quick, adapt, etc. You don’t see any of that in open world PvE, which is part of the reason for the less skilled players. In any of those fields, I have to keep aware of my surroundings, and use everything I can just to survive. Open world PvE however…I don’t even need to use half of the skill I have in those other fields, I don’t need to dodge much, I don’t need to be aware of my surroundings, that’s how much of a difficulty (and by extension, skill) gap there is. It’s time we brought open world PvE player’s skill level up.

Complete anything other than open world PvE, and you’ll see the skill level the average players of those fields are at, the skill level Anet made the Marionette for because they expect open world PvE players to also be at that level.

I did the hardcore raiding thing in multiple games. I picked up GW2 because it sold itself as AVOIDING those end game raiding conventions. I didn’t sign up to have to go find the cookie cutter raid spec du jour just to fight X boss on Tuesday and spend hours farming up #gooseberries to fight Y boss on Thursday.

Now we’re being told that oh hey, that whole raiding thing that was missing for the first year of the game? We meant to have it, it’s not our fault all our playerbase are bads.

I had my elite raider moment in the Sun. I don’t want to have to be a cutting edge player anymore to not be at a mathematical disadvantage to other players. It’s just frustrating that ANet is taking the offer of a game like this off the table this late in the game.

Celeras.4980:

As someone who has beaten Marionette maybe 5 times thus far, I think I can honestly say that the success rate is far above 1/10. 50/50 seems about right with in my personal experience, and I think that is fine for this kind of content.

As someone who has never beaten Marionette, I think I can honestly say the success rate is much lower than 1/10.

See how that works?

Also about the traits and spec changing thing: I’d be much more willing to change specs, gear and utility skills if I could do it on the fly without having to pay the gem store or lose my spot and warp to LA and then back to an overflow to inevitably lose anyways.

Lasica.5068:

This seems to be the current excuse for failure. Oh the event’s only been out for a week people will get better.

Having done it 35 times now the attempts are getting worse as time goes by, not better. When the event first came out it was common for 3-4 chains or a kill and a generally supportive map chat. Now it’s 1-2 chains and people sniping at each other and whinging.

Most people are coat-tail raiding with certain servers/boss guilds now.

If you haven’t got your Marionette win by now, and lack the moral ambiguity to bail on your server to stack a specific overflow on a specific server, you’re probably not going to get it.

Not fun at all, in my honest opinion.

Milkduds.7109:

I defeated Mari last night in an Overflow. You guys are going to fail at this a few times, maybe many times, but eventually you’ll get it. You just have to try and try again. People are learning it the same as you.

I’m going to hold you to this when the content is gone and I still don’t have my achievement due to the solo ranger running around in circles.

“Keep trying and you’ll eventually get it.” – Things people say when your success relies completely on outside forces that you can’t control. You know, like precursor drops.

Could someone with more money please confirm this, because at 50g+ for the ascended recipes, and no other way to get them than by RNG or TP purchase, I’m really skeptical about the Zealot’s set as a push to the gem>gold conversion store.

I’m lucky if I get 5 fragments per event, not counting the pity ‘you tried’ box after you fail.

Yay return of more bad rng. :C

Liza.2758:

why it’s all about TTS
Deso and Blackgate have been doing very very well so far. . .
if your server / community are terribad then move on bros

---

— > Blackgate <—

80 necro / 80 Guardian / 80 Warrior / 80 Ranger / 80 Engineer/ 80 Elemental / 80 Mesmer

I think I see your problem here…

Aww yeah two days of no wins because of single players being forced to fight champions.

“Well Designed”

Looks like I can just file this event along with Tequatl under “Things my server will never get done.”

Ryan.2758:

Finish the fight, win or lose, and you get a kitten ton of loot. Not only from the bag you receive, but also from the chests you can unlock REPEATEDLY with the keys you obtain.

I literally had 20 + yellows and a few exotics from playing today. Mind you I have 30% magic find otherwise.

Loot is certainly not the problem.

Hmm…. and I got no loot for playing today and over 80% MF, funny how RNG works, right?

Even getting the shards to get the keys is nigh impossible. Thanks for giving me 3 shards, event that has 30 champions swarming players and killing them to the point that everyone’s gear is broken. It’s a slap in the face.

Loot is certainly a problem.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

…but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

If it takes more time to earn the equivalent money to buy said mats/items than farming it yourself, isn’t it technically still a time gate?

Just because the choice is there, doesn’t make it a viable option for some of us.

Legendaries: Barred by RNG and cash. Well beyond the means of any average player.

Ascended: Too much time investment to be at the whim of patch nerfs/buffs. Unnecessary time-gating and mat gathering to encourage cash shop conversions.

You made it a lot further than I did OP. The game has turned in to a completely unnecessary grind. I actually had to laugh at the Halloween Event. I wonder if anyone actually got one of the weapons.

Another year of bad RNG.

Why do we expect anything different?

The new bags post-patch are exceptionally more worthless than before. At least with the old bags I could have decked all my characters out in Celestial for near free.

• Unsuspecting Foe – Moved to Master Tier

Well, thanks, now I can’t take Unsuspecting Foe and Blademaster without taking 30 points in Arms and being unable to take the new Last Chance which doesn’t look terrible.

I just hate how I have to completely change my gear and runes every update, even though I don’t use the cookie cutter specs that the nerfs are intended for.

Every patch day is collateral damage for warriors.

Any chance in making non-timed non-vanishing-steps versions of these jump puzzles?

I did them both already last year, but refrain from doing them again because the stress is just too much for a ‘fun’ activity.

Are your bags seriously overflowing with ascended items to the point you need a 20 slot box for it?

If so, I quit, because I’m lucky in getting a yellow a month outside of boss events.

Zero.

The traits and skills are getting changed too drastically, killing specs and bringing about new overpowered cookie cutter builds. Also with the prospect of new skills being added just makes it less feasible to lock myself in to one gearset.

There is seriously no point to get ascended just to have your spec killed before you finish getting your gear.

It takes too long, is too expensive, does not solve the problem of filling the time gap between Exotic and Legendary since it uses the same mats as Legendaries you’re literally just elongating your grind by making ascended.

In short, it’s another thing that feels like it was only added to keep people grinding longer, not to actually benefit the player.

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

Little.1635:

Seriously there should be other ways to obtain it rather than wait 8-9 days just to have enough to make ONE charged quartz not to mention it being account bound and craft-able once per day. Not to mention it takes 42 days mining that node in your home instance just to make 1 exotic inscription.

few silver each on the tp right now… no need to wait days to charge 1 quartz

Don’t support the tp flippers. Quarts was under 50 copper before the insider leaks and speculation made people buy up all the cheap quartz and resell it at 1000%+ profit.

My only hope is that quartz isn’t involved at all and those people will have lost all their ill-will potential gains.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

This is not considered a bug.

The Fractal Skin Box is not dropping for the Fractal levels currently available (up to level 50).

It’s not accessible to anyone at this time.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Also, at higher Fractal levels the weapon skins become more common, and also start dropping in a container that lets you pick the one you want.

Nothing was mentioned about these higher levels not currently existing.

The carrot on a stick isn’t even attached to the stick yet.

Putting the increased chances behind the mystic forge mechanic in which you still have to use the auction house to participate in doesn’t make it any better.

Put the drops on the mobs, not the auction house.

You still have your beloved terrible rng, except you’re encouraging people to play the game instead of playing other players.

Concurring the essence of “It’s just not fun.”

Meglobob.8620:

I think ascended armour will be Anets gift of xmas to us…

You won’t be able to unwrap your present until the end of January because that’s how long you will after grind your kitten off 24/7 to get a full armour set…it will also cost you a arm and a leg…which is good because that’s 2 armour pieces you won’t need!

I haven’t even bothered with ascended weapons yet because of this reason exactly.

Things get changed and nerfed/buffed so quickly that I can’t consciously warrant going to go grind items or money for a month just to lock myself into a spec that might be dead before I finish building my set.

The only moderately safe bets are building PVT, Zerk or Celestial, and concerning the first two, the playstyle dynamics are really boring to me.

Tried at least once a day due to the purchasable keys, and since no one is in the tower anymore to farm it past the first week and the drop rate is terrible other than farming the hybrid.

So yeah, just another temporary event with locked down RNG rewards in which you can never guarantee that you’ll receive the rewards.

Feels a lot like the Flame & Frost Jetpack.

Anyone else not get anything interesting from the chest/event/etc yet?

(inb4 “buy the mini and backpack from the tp” – I refrain from helping flippers get richer whenever possible)

Riathen.2641:

I’m finding runs 40+ are taking half as long as runs in the 30 range. It could be bad luck but every group I’ve ran with in the 30’s has taken 2-3 hours. But why exactly would PUG groups be killed? Like Lopez did I leveled to 50 with complete randoms in the span of 2 days. It’s entirely possible.

• 40-50 is taking half as long as 30-40.
• 30-40 has taken 2-3 hours per run.
• Minimum amount of time for 30-40 is 20 hours. Maximum is 30.
• 40-50 by your reference took anywhere between 10-15 hours.
• You reached 50 over two days.
• You somehow played between 30 to 55 hours in the course of 2 days/48 hours.
• Assuming a minimum 6 hours of sleep per day best case scenario is that you had 6 hours of not playing Guild Wars over that 2 days.
• The content has only been out for 5 days at the time of your post.

Its exceptionally likely you were playing with people who were seasoned fractal veterans before the update. Those weren’t the colloquial definition of ‘pugs’.

Ambush.9420:

Wetpaw.3487:

They change.3526:

Is it true Nexon bought a part of NCsoft? If this is true I can see why the community is complaining about this game becoming P2W. Well, I think I just lost motivation to continue playing. I will have nothing to do with Nexon.

It’s not P2W, it’s pay to look good. Looking good just happens to be the endgame.

Good thing you can buy gems with gold

Good thing you can’t casually make gold fast enough to keep up with gem inflation.

Stalima.5490:

Pariah.8506:

The truth is Anet has no idea what they’re doing:

but i like my new antitoxinspray that ive never used properly

Complimentary obligatory ‘2013 adding new skills’ post. I don’t see much else happening in December, other than somehow expecting Scarlet will be shoehorned into Wintersday.

Such truth on the “What did I miss?” other than the feeling of ‘Oh, i’ve gotta do this grindy uninteresting content so I can get a recipe just so I won’t be price gouged on the BLTC if I ever want one for the rest of forever because, as shown in Fractals, rewards never come back.

It just feels like an endless cycle of: Make content, remove content, Re-add content, remove or reduce rewards, players ignore or begrudgingly suffer through content, get-meta-get-out, players wait for new content.

Halloween, SAB, Fractals…. probably Wintersday…

Edit: I really really love SAB, but I recognize other people saw trib mode and the nerf to baubles and just walked away for the month.

I’m more inclined to believe that ANet lowers your drop rate the more you post negative feedback on the forums.

lordkrall.7241:

Enjoyluck.2618:

THe new fractales ar enice but agony resistence is a pain to get.

Funnily enough it is MUCH easier to get agony resistance now than it was before the update.

Not really? You can’t even use the new infusion system unless you infuse your ascended items (with rng drop items only in fractals) or get a rng drop in high level fractals (not guaranteed).

Low level fractals are currently giving less tokens than before, so that’s certainly not ‘easier’.

I’m not sure where you’re coming from other than ‘I got mine already so it’s easy!’

zamalek.2154:

Apart from Jade Maw (and, er, I guess the other new bonus bosses) ALL agony WITHOUT exception can be dodged. If you want to avoid the bonus bosses play odd-numbered fractal levels.

You might want to go read patch notes… or play fractals apparently.

Your info is severely outdated, both about dodging agony and boss frequency.

The point that needs to be made here is that now that Fractals is a gear/ar check, less people will be willing to bother with the content, making groups harder to find and making the content obsolete.

OP has problems already finding people in his guild willing to do fractals because of the time and money investment needed.

“Oh, but you can buy AR now!” you say. Yeah, but you have to infuse your items to use the new slot. Getting an infused item isn’t guaranteed even at 30+. Plus the new ar combining costs money. Infusing your rings is RNG locked still, completely dependant if you can get vials to drop. Infusing your backpiece, even if you got the southsun event one is another huge money sink.

I know you guys want hardcore content, but you need to realise that without the casuals and random pugs doing the content, the turnover of hardcore players is so quick that no one gets to enjoy the content if it’s all about time/money/rng gates.