Guild Wars 2

Now a quick aside before my main point:
Right now is the holiday season and the company likely has most of their staff on vacation or going home, so it’s understandable that they have been quiet lately. They have families and are humans too, so allowing them to spend time with their loved ones seems sensible. Don’t worry about the recently terrible PR and communication, they have acknowledged the issue before and are trying, I actually have a very long memory of them starting new initiatives and attempting to reach out to their communities so to be objective and fair, I’d agree with the statement that they do try and talk to their players. People don’t have an individual, one-on-one with them, but let’s not disrespect the efforts of Gaile Gray or other developers and support specialists who troll the forums, I recall conversations with several of them, both in-game and on the forums. Simply saying they don’t try isn’t a fair statement at all.

My main point:
The pessimism is Real. It’s always been there, since day 1. Yes, I admit it. I am one of the pessimists. But what people forget is that the pessimists leave, and its new groups of people complaining, getting upset, getting told their opinions are invalid by Anet supporters, and they get fed up and leave. Here we are over three years later, and we have had multiple groups of people standing up and leaving again and again, and the playerbase has obviously shrank. It’s to the point where almost nobody is happy, and that is because the people who keep defending the mistakes are doing damage to the conversation and now allowing any kind of critique which lately, is apparent that needs to desperately happen.

Check with any player from the Beta, and I have both IRL friends and online friends, and they can spew off a list of valid reasons of why they stopped caring about the game or how they felt slighted in one way or another. My personal list, is about 20 items long of factual events that directly caused me to have less enjoyment in a game. The reason the game is even around now is because they focused on gathering new players to replace the older ones (who were malcontents) and gradually through this process the new(er) players have themselves become malcontents.

What I am really trying to say is that Anet is going to be in trouble if it is already NOT in trouble, and before it’s too late, as a community we may need to come together to examine and itemize, critique, their entire history and come together to offer suggestions on where they could improve. Overhauling the game may even yet be too little, too late.

Thank you for reading my long winded commentary. Back to the shadows I go..

I have not been on the forum in literally months, and have uninstalled the game, due to discontent. On a whim, I came back to lurk some topics and see what the conversations would be about, and after reading some people’s comments, I couldn’t resist from posting.

These are my own personal opinions on the matter, from someone who has played this franchise since Sorrow’s Furnace over 10 years ago.

The forums and playerbase have been afflicted with many people who are always agreeing with Anet and those who are satisfied with the product oftentimes, in my experience, seem to be newer players or not of the ‘hardcore’ or longtime veteran crowd. They continually have faith in the game, but for those like myself who have been around for such a long time, there are many, many players, friends, etc that have left the game, like myself, due to discontent.

The people who are standing by Anet need to seriously re-evaluate exactly why they are so dedicated to the product, because anyone on the forums posts here because they care about the game and seeing it grow and improve in their own way, and immediately attacking ‘whiners’ or anyone who has any complaint is disrespectful and destroys any objective conversation about the game and it’s direction.

Also, someone said that Anet doesn’t release their financial data and how is it that anyone can know of their profit margins; to that person I scoff at them and laugh, because they publish their financial data during their stockholder meetings and some conventions, and it’s actually pretty easy to find online. Anet is running their own game into the ground because it is making them money. Someone out there is dumping money into armors and the cash shop and this model is profitable in a short and medium term investment, but ruins goodwill amongst their own playerbase.

I am going to split this post into two parts. Lol

Mini Glory Of Tyria.

As some constructive feedback,

I believe that the story team focusing on the dragons was one of the biggest faux pas that occurred, in retrospect. They set up the entire world and regions and factions, and then neglected them in the Living Story and created all new lore (which we all agreed had bad execution) while disregarding the prior game entirely, and the potential written into the main campaign with every race (norn and their struggles with icebrood, humans with centaurs, charr against flame legion and ghosts, etc.). Of every direction they could have gone, it feels like they chose the least impactful one. I think the living story model would have been more successful if they focused on resolving more ‘closer’ issues to home, such as developing more of their pre-existing stories; for example the ‘guild wars beyond’ was wildly successful because it continued and developed stories of previously established characters and wrapped up loose ends satisfactorily while creating a few new ones to look forward too. Season 2 of Living Story feels like they are getting off to a slow start trying to establish that, now, but it’s already too late over two years into the game and having lost a significant amount of their veteran players.

I think this is one of the two biggest problems that Guild Wars 2 suffers from, with the second one being that the sequel to the first game lacks many of the most enjoyed features and content that was already created and established (guild halls, capes, build templates, raid type content, etc.).

I will have some faith restored for sure as a veteran if they manage to resolve those issues within the next 6 months to a year to propagate long term success for the future of the game.

Also Cantha.

I think this infographic is also relevant to this post:

http://dl.pcgamer.com/other%20files/dna2.jpg

An Idea:

Since so many of the gw1 fanbase lost faith in anet and they jumped ship and left, do you think as a sign of good faith offering returning players a discount (with linked HoM)?

I think it would be a great PR campaign for them to regain some lost momentum with their veteran fanbase.

“Had gw1? Had gw2 and wasnt happy? Well we didnt forget about you! Get new Cantha expansion 15% off because Anet loves you and we want one more chance, baby!”

What?

Wow busted. My female norn mesmer mule is just that…. how did you know… lmao..

Why is this not stickied yet?

First I would like to express my appreciation at the responses in the thread I received, every time I post I aim for it to be meaningful and well thought out but many times it is just simply ignored (for being too wordy maybe?)

Now to the topic. Why didn’t anyone at Anet think to ask the community or at least play testing them before the new implementation for such a drastic gameplay experience change that would affect virtually everyone? If the complaints are so widespread (in multiple languages, even!) why would they not take the time to address these changes in a more timely manner instead of letting this go on since April 15th?

Just hitting 1,800 hours, no pre…

Well then let’s look at another aspect of his post, the NPE.

I understand Anet needs to retain new people and make sure they are not turned off from the game due to any unintentional difficulty curves, directly affecting long term retention and possible gem store purchases (this I realize being a huge motivator to maximize profits so that once we have gotten people here into the game, we keep them; I am sure there are numbers out there which say how much the average player spends in gem purchases in addition to the box of the game over time). Some of the OP’s points are valid, such as ascended crafting (I played 20 hours a week and stuff had issues understanding it for a long while and hence never took the plunge, the presentation at the time was awful beyond the blog post introducing it in my opinion, clearly defining the time gated materials and how they worked would have been much easier);

Of all the complaints that I see and did see on the forum, people complaining about the new players and their experiences was something I do not recall ever reading. I do not recall posts about anyone becoming frustrated with any of the basic or introductory systems (some people during the beta) but of the two years, I recall complaints about everything from clipping, glitches not being fixed for months at a time, the economy, dungeons, drop rate, class balancing, lack of high level content, upscaling problems, and all kinds of things I am sure everyone is familiar with.

My main question is this:

What was the exact source of complaints or kinds of analysis that were done that decided it was a good idea to spend resources reiterating a system that was seemingly fine above other systems in the game that seem to have more visibility as being ‘problematic’ to the playerbase? Was it a good decision to disrupt the most deeply entrenched players (those who have multiple alts) by making their experiences less enjoyable compared to a previous implementation of a system (i.e. trait hunting, skill point scroll / gold sink creation, altering of personal story)? Do you think there is a better and more constructive way of having implemented an assistance program to aid new players?

From what I understand, one of the main bonuses that I don’t see really expanded upon up top is that your party members get boon and field priorities instead of just having them randomly assigned, in addition to all the other positives mentioned. This should mean blasting a water field assigns those boons to party members in a more organized manner.

I could be totally incorrect though.

A question:

How would everyone present to this conversation like to see any changes implemented? Would you all prefer an expansion (meaning a large time gap, shelling out additional money) or would you rather have them come gradually over time with Living Story (for free but no more then 2-3 features over the course of a year)?

I also wanted to throw my two cents in.

I agree with the OP and many of the “Pro-GW1” camp because I too played the game since three months after the game’s release. The nostalgia from playing gw1 from time to time is so intense, because that game had so many positive memories for me while in gw2 I went into this game having some expectations that they did not live up to due to the changes. I kinda wish we had a “veterans salute” thread where all the people who say they are done over time could have posted and we said goodbye to them. The gw2 experience is admittingly improving but it’s not up to the quality that I recall from my experiences with the first game. The lore dumps via text, the feelings of elation after beating certain notorious missions and that feeling of camaraderie, countless hours build/theorycrafting….GW2 has it’s own fine moments (world exploration, racial diversity between the 5 races, etc) but I am sure myself and many others would have had a stronger devotion to gw2 if they it stuck closer to gw1. I also understand that making the game this way made far more profit, and money rules everything, but having a product that could have satisfied a different audience, the gw1 audience, would have been spectacular.

I personally think Precursor crafting should be added because of how frequent it comes up as a debate topic. Not saying I have an opinion on it or not, just stating in general that as a controversial topic, it appears enough to get a mention.

Thanks guys, I got distracted and couldn’t comment back for awhile but I lost the post and they covered where I was going anyway. LF Tank was a thing, as was LF nuker and LF healer before the introduction of heroes. People would sit in chats and spam LF monks for hours (Thunderhead Keep, I’m looking at you). You may not consider gw1 a holy trinity game, but it was. The same way that you may not consider elite missions raids, but they were. Originally gw1 tried and successfully broke the mold of the generic mmo formula at the time and that is why it was so successful, by redefining certain gameplay aspects.

That is truly where I wanted to put this conversation, that GW2 strayed from the GW1 formula too much and the primary things the community is asking for were already present in the previous game and it’s as if the community is asking for what they already had back. That’s why there is so much controversy and why so many veterans left, because they are ‘missing features’ they already had from the 6(8??) years prior.

I just wanted to compare the lists of what we are asking for against what we did have so that there would be a clear comparison as a humble insight for Gaile if she wanted to pass it on internally. Essentially, focus on features from the first game that had positive reception or ones that we could improve upon now and that will build significant faith back with the playerbase if done well, and will satisfy both new and old players both.

You know, like a Cantha Expansion

In the most respectful way possible, Mad Doctor, I must disagree with you. To be as clear as possible for the ’Had/Did not have" count, I expanded into some detail behind your talking points. The drama around each of these features is not being discussed, but the actual presence of them within the game was what I wanted to specifically name as being included or not.

Open world PVP was not present but as I stated, the entire game was based off instancing anyway and having an open world pvp system wouldn’t even make sense, but I counted alliance battles because they waged war for map control 24/7 with locations guilds could own and resource control, so all the effects of open world PVP with instancing, kind of like wvw, but that’s a digression.

There was a hate mechanic: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Aggro
“Aggro, short for aggravate, is an internal measurement for how much of a threat the AI considers an individual player to be. The more aggro a player holds, the more highly that player will be prioritized for attacks and skill usage by the AI. Understanding how to gain, hold, and break aggro is called aggro control or aggro management.” Click the link for more, but there was definitely a hate mechanic and holy trinity was definitely there with variations. Not to be offensive but what you may consider certain things is a very stringent definition. The game’s character creation literally has “a warrior, an elementalist (black mage), and a monk”. How much more can a game have a holy trinity? Just because those classes can do other things (primary and secondary) doesn’t take away from the fact that the game had the holy trinity roles in their mechanics, and the build diversity Guild Wars 1 had (one of it’s best features!) allowed multiple classes to fulfill the roles while some were more efficient or geared towards those roles than other classes. The fact that the game had so many variations meant that all classes could expand to cover two or three or more secondary roles effectively as well outside of their basic descriptions.

I am aware there is no level cap, but the game was based on player skill, skins, and skill acquisition. Whether those skills ruined originality or not is a separate debate, the fact was that the game did have a type of progression associated with skills, which would be how many you had unlocked on your account, which meant buying campaigns or expansions to stay competitive. Being highly controversial or not still didn’t mean the game didn’t have it, in a cut and dry fashion. Also the game had many titles to track player superiority. The prestige of a higher level was simply moved from a numerical number to titles that would command the same level or respect among players that saw it only by using those titles as a parameter, and not the level number itself. Some of those had more tangible benefits as well when tied to skills..

And the game had it’s raid, or it’s raid level content, (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elite_mission) which were titled the elite missions. Party size was locked normally for balancing, but all the parameters that would make the definition of a ‘raid’ are still present and are essentially the same. Each of them took specific builds, party coordination, prior knowledge to execute in a timely manner which would otherwise be huge time commitments, multiple quests and bosses, reward ‘checkpoints’ along the way, multiple zones to complete, and were instanced. In some way or form each of these elite missions fit some or all of the definitions of a raid with variations, either with completely different instanced zones, higher party limits, etc. Collectively, the following certainly fill the ‘raid’ role of other MMO’s:
- Underworld/Fissure of Woe
- Urgoz/Deep
- Sorrow’s Furnace/Tombs
- Mallyx
- Slaver’s Exile

*edits for clarity, spelling, etc.

I would like to point out that many of the things that are on this list that people are asking for are features from “that other game” but that other game was the original Guild Wars. That is most likely why people are always upset, because they had these features before and had them taken away instead of improved upon.

1. MOUNTS – Did Not Have
2. DUELING – Did Not Have
3. OPEN WORLD PvP / FACTIONS – Had ( kurz / lux, no open world pvp. I’ll count alliance battles though, since gw1 was instanced based to begin with )
4. HOLY TRINITY – Had
5. EXPANSION – Had (EOTN)
6. NEW CLASSES / NEW SKILLS / NEW WEAPONS / NEW RACES (Absolutely Had, minus races)
7. GEAR PROGRESSION / LEVEL CAP RAISE (Had – in a non-traditional sense progression was not gear based and skill based which was the intent of the game, also with regular/elite skill accumulation)
8. DPS METER / INSPECT GEAR – Did Not Have
9. GUILD vs. GUILD (GvG) – Had
10. GUILD HALLS / PLAYER HOUSING (Had; but no housing)
11. RAIDS / GUILD RAIDS (Had, urgoz, deep, tombs, etc)
12. PLAYER TO PLAYER TRADING (Had)
13. (GUILD) CAPES / WINGS / SCHOOL UNIFORMS / SWIMSUITS (Had, minus swimsuits or school uniforms, wings)
14. MARRIAGE (did not have)

So from my count, of the 14 things that were listed, the original game had at least 7 of them fully implemented, and 3 other things that were only partially implemented.

Is it obvious why people have so much unrest and controversy? By moving to GW2, there were not many of the most enjoyed features that people were expecting to make a return.

For the record that seems to be all opinion and I enjoyed all the games and expansions, each one for different reasons. Prophecies itself was a great title which may have had a few too many missions, but the story presentation did an excellent job of establishing the world. Factions had the ‘pointless fighting’ as you say but the story definitely served it’s purpose for gameplay reasons which it executed very well and finally nightfall was a higher quality and the direction they chose to go in did a good enough job of ‘arc welding’ everything together. I sound like some kind of defensive white knight, but hey they did a good job and included literally hundreds of hours worth of lore and reading. GW2 has nothing like that at all and why I stand by my statement of incorporating more previously established lore, because it’s at least available. GW2 has extreme lore potential and it’s fallen flat with season one and season two is getting better but only time will tell.

I just appreciate the fact that she is here now and she seems to be respecting the lore of the world, especially GW1 lore. That is actually one of the few reasons why I continue to play this game, because the original game managed to enthrall me so much. I was heartbroken as well at how many mysteries from GW1 went unresolved or left unclear. Hopefully with Leah she will love the GW1 wiki and it’s many, many pages of lore and will find ways to incorporate them into new content, like the datamine of the world map that is currently being translated. That day was christmas!

So I think that we should take special note that when the topic is presented that the OP had some bias and his perception of the community consensus may be skewed or needs some editing, but the content itself has some value.

I firmly sit on the opposite side of most of these negatives, but I also understand from a development and resource side they are not feasible (such as open world guild housing, or dueling). Certain other things I do think need to be reworked, such as opting out of the NPE (and not making this crazy skill trait hunt perm for people who have all these alts. I’m working on my 8th or something like that and trait hunt is bull, and blowing scrolls which did admittingly need a sink is dumb as well). I think many of those topics could also potentially be some good CDI threads or at least deserve some kind of final ‘yes/no’ from an Anet official to put them to rest. For example, “we will NEVER do XXX so you can stop asking” and we can get an official redirect and say “go to the thread” but many of these topics do not get killed off completely. Also, we should add the Cantha thread in to this equation because that historically is the largest and longest thread we have maintained here and maybe some other features could be rolled into that? Of all the most requested things, Cantha is tops.

Also I would like to say that personally, as a long time gw1 veteran still sticking around alot of these expectations or ideas that come up in the thread do seem valid, since the original game did have some of these features and were implemented wonderfully (trait build templates, alliance battles, gvg, instanced guild halls, etc). Personally I cannot fathom why such useful features and game modes were taken out that people enjoyed so much instead of having them expanded. But that’s just my two cents. That’s probably where alot of unrest is originating from, players want things that were present in a previous experience and having to ask for what they already had is a bit frustrating, but that’s another topic for another day.

My lengthy academic dissertation on the matter came down to what the previous poster above me just said. I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH WHAT THEY SAID. I’ll try to summarize it briefly because I cannot recall the entire commentary but feel that it was still meaningful and contributed.

Gold. This should be buffed as a reward because the current gold rewards we have do not reflect inflation in the marketplace/trading post, and this isn’t preserving a time/effort/reward ratio for the vast majority of players. I also think that relatively, gold should be buffed since it has the highest buying power because it can translate into the most game modes or uses and still keep value. Everything from World versus World to the Gemstore in the game can be bought (or enhanced) by gold. I personally feel that implementing some kind of methods in which to invest gold into aesthetics other than skins for legendaries (currently the highest value items in the economy, used here as a benchmark) would alleviate inflation partially while allowing players depth through adding customization options. Hypothetically, what if we could unlock more attack animations for our weapon sets? Two warriors of the same race doing different animations for hundred blades, for instance, seems like an aesthetic touch that would please many people and would be only moderate resource use internally from Anet.

Karma. As a currency is highly informal, since most of the rewards are now reserved for obtaining aesthetically pleasing skins, and this is now applies to ‘subjective’ judgement. So my personal ideal of value for karma is every 21,000 karma is equivalent to 10 obsidian shards, which are used for ascended crafting. This makes karma as currency feel "of little value’ as this is one of the prime uses for karma, or Temple Armor/Orrian boxes which drop loot normally under 10s. So karma effectively is worth “very little”, especially since karma rewards are so prevalent yet actually applied towards very little which has an economic value we can objectively discern.

Experience. This is meant to help players and to generate skill points, however experience rewarded truly only benefits characters at max levels since most people are using their level 80 characters due to the community and game at large giving large statistical benefits to players at max level. Therefore, experience directly translates into skill points, which can create an arbitrary value of around 23s by combining averages of using the mystic forge output formula for piles of crystalline dust, the only crafting material that can be consistently synthesized by using items bought with skill points and a cheap resource, piles of incandescent dust. As a way to increase value of skill points without increasing scroll drop or experience gain, why not introduce additional utilities or weapon sets which need to be unlocked with skill points? Just like before we were gifted with the alternative class healing options, virtually nobody complained about that because it met the needs of the players and created depth and diversity. Introducing this is also a moderate internal resource investment from Anet, but it would generate good will and increase the overall enjoyment of the game, only requiring having the new skills be balanced. This could even open up new opportunities for gemstore items (sell skill point scroll maybe?).

Loot/Drops. This also is a huge topic that I will keep short and simple. Drop percentages across the board are paltry. My magic find is not awful but I salvage almost every single blue and green that I obtain in the hopes of ‘hitting it big with RNG’ and still only have 118% since the introduction of the system. It’s almost double what the average player starts with, yet I don’t get over 3 exotic drops in anyone one week, ever. What is this doing for me? I have played since beta and took a 4 month session off, but besides that I devote at least 15 hours a week, if not double that. This is not a whine about precursor drops, that’s an entirely different subject. Most low end loot is trash and has no purpose, yet we are consistently given them and expected to treat them as if they have value.

As a proposed solution, the idea I have is to either make the types of ‘rewards’ that we get more easily transferable between game modes so that we can have a more ‘connected pool of resources’, such as a solid gold/karma/experience conversion rate, or to maybe implement some kind of system where players could use a slider bar to choose a focus on their type of reward. Let’s say Gold/Karma/Experience/Magic Find all have ratios of 100%/100%/100%/100% and we could artificially increase the sliders for gold, while lowering the percentages in the other categories? This way players who are farming can attempt to boost their magic find, while people trying to make money or earn karma can get better rewards from that activity, or leave everything the same for regular reward amounts.

CuRtoKy.8576:

chaosdeity.6287:

Otherwise, I do agree generally with OP to an extent about dungeons needing a revamp, but those are completely different reasons. I too have never played a game where the most optimal path involves borderline exploits or blatant memorization of enemy spawn patterns in order to completely bypass those encounters, due to the time investment/reward ratio for this game is way off (several other conversations, not going there).

How is it an exploit? Is it an exploit to funnel mobs into a narrow hallway and stack AoEs and kill them all? Is it an exploit to use a core profession mechanic to accomplish something (e.g. thief stealth). Is it an exploit to pull the entire room into one spot and AoE bomb it to clear.

How is it bad to memorize things in games. Have you seen the speed run of old games like Mario. Part of that is skill and part of that is memorizing what you have to do. Why is that bad? If you don’t like it may I suggest PvP (sPvP or WvW). Even then you memorize or at least know your own rotations and what to do against certain professions. You memorize tells and such. You can’t expect PvE to be completely different every second it is scripted. So after doing it for a while everyone will memorize things.

chaosdeity.6287:

Dungeons need to be reworked so they are more fun, allow for more build diversity (almost every dungeon has a DPS check, hence the popularity of ice bow, this allows any character with it to dramatically increase their output temporarily). And of course some of the longer dungeons deserve higher rewards in gold to keep pace with the rate of inflation in the game economy.

But hey, buy moar gems..

Define fun. I find it fun to skip and dps really high while having to pay attention to use active defensive properly. DPS is the main thing in everything. You take out bosses. A boss’ health isn’t going down without damage. In the same way, a zerg ball in WvW isn’t going down without someone doing damage to that zerg. And in the same light, if you want to take out someone on a cap point you have to kill them hence doing damage to take out the threat.

Ice bow is working as intended. That is what conjures are for. They are used to give someone else a different set of abilities that help them do something. What do you suggest Ice Bow should do that wouldn’t make it useless.

Your final comment suggest to me that you only care about what you said. So what if people buy gems that is their choice. Why are you forcing your own definition of what is good onto other people?

Hey I can respect if you find things fun different then I do. It’s just generally accepted across the board that dungeons in their current state are mildly dysfunctional, from design to loot. But hey, I run most of them every day and I benefit from this so I’m not exactly complaining. And that exploit comment was referencing the entire last year and more over dungeons, not just their current iteration. Many speed clears and paths relied on players learning exploits (CM cliff glitch, as an example). Hallways and stacking are actually good mechanics, Line of Sight is good, but there are specific certain encounters that people blow through by using absurdly high DPS and that’s one of the only ways to clear a dungeon in any relatively quick method. What I am saying is certain fights are so out of line, mechanically and design wise, that they force very specific team set ups, which is fine. But not all the time (I am looking at you, Zerk meta). And before we go along with the “filthy casual” argument, I have a zerk war and participate in those runs myself. I also have almost every other class maxed and understand other roles. But this isnt made to be a zerk conversation, I was looking at dungeon mechanics themselves. Active Defense is another great OPTION, but shouldn’t be an entire tactic.

I also want to say this thread should be deleted. Two people are coming here to argue about a dispute in a dungeon under the guise of productive commentary. That doesn’t enhance anyone present.

I had just typed up a 2000 word essay about this. And i didnt save it and lost it. Forget it. So mad.

I want to feel like I am making more then minimum wage playing a game. At that rate, I need to be making 42g an hour or more. And I am not.

Boyd.5438:

here is what happened… sry i dont post on forums much or warrior here alot but here is what happened. screenshotted. if interested can request to post whole convo.

So….you got blasted for being told to learn to play?

And then came here, where you were told to….learn to play?

Yeah Ok.

Otherwise, I do agree generally with OP to an extent about dungeons needing a revamp, but those are completely different reasons. I too have never played a game where the most optimal path involves borderline exploits or blatant memorization of enemy spawn patterns in order to completely bypass those encounters, due to the time investment/reward ratio for this game is way off (several other conversations, not going there).

However, I suggest those who have not done so to take a peek at the dungeon forums and how they are now essentially dead because Anet never checks them and they let go their lead dungeon designer around a year ago and merged the remaining dungeon programmers into living world teams (i wish i could find the quote where they said this, but it’s true).

Dungeons need to be reworked so they are more fun, allow for more build diversity (almost every dungeon has a DPS check, hence the popularity of ice bow, this allows any character with it to dramatically increase their output temporarily). And of course some of the longer dungeons deserve higher rewards in gold to keep pace with the rate of inflation in the game economy.

But hey, buy moar gems..

I am going over right now to enjoy the tears. Thanks anet!

I’ve invested over 400 hours into my guardian alone, re-rolling a new character to get some altered attack animations, re-investing all that money into gear, maps cleared, etc etc seems like a daunting task. Not to mention for an example, my thief who has full travelers and a commander tag. Why should that be such a permanent choice up front whose significance or differences are not clearly annotated? I do not want to sound like I am complaining or feeling slighted, I am just trying to create healthy discussion.

For example, let people sample attack animations (hundred blades as a charr vs asura vs norn). I am not going to lie, my motivations are purely cosmetic, and who actually does personal story anymore anyway? I’ve maxed at least every class (except necromancer) and I stopped doing personal story universally. Not to mention it merges after level 30 anyway, and all characters have the same choices. Is there no way to reset the first three chapters for players or make them go through it again on the re-skinned character?

Salutations everyone!

I believe this was brought up or mentioned before, but I am going to put this out there into the universe anyway.

As the topic describes, is there a possibility of Race/Class change items being implemented in the gemstore? With the April 14th patch alot of my aesthetic choices are now inferior since I have more control over my avatar in-game; and because of this I would like to be able to race/class swap my characters around, along with their gender.

I think before this was brought up and Anet said something about Personal Story being a factor in that not being an option, as well as there being an issue with armor types. Has this been alleviated in anyway now with the implementation of the wardrobe system and transmutation charges? Is this currently being worked on at all, or are there no future plans? Does anet not want to take more of my money please?

P.S. Guild Housing Please.

P.P.S. Cantha Please !

Cheers!

Quaggan Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo

That is all.

Is there a specific reason why commander tags were character locked instead of account wide from the beginning? Was it a design philosophy or a technical limitation?

Thank you for answering part 1 and 2 of my question, too.

I know there were some changes mentioned upcoming in the feature pack, and I was hoping to get some clarity on a few questions myself and a few others had. I checked the forums by search function but didn’t get too many results and decided to post. I apologize if this was asked elsewhere.

Will commander title be account wide/merged as well with pvp/pve rewards unification?

If not, is this being planned in the future? If so, can we get an ETA?

And finally, if not, what is the reason for the character specific locking?

Thank you in advance for any time devoted towards answering these (hopefully not) asinine questions.

*Edit for clarity: I understand commander titles unlock on the whole account but want to know if they would be unlocked from being character specific

Wow this thread, I had no idea people despise ranger so much

I am now going to use my ranger in more dungeon runs just so that I can help fight the negative stigma people have with ranger. Alot of these mistakes are pretty terrible and I do know how to support a group in a dungeon and I want to help improve the community and change things.

What I am aiming at is not really the build or characters, (im running dungeons my characters are qualified for) but just the nasty behavior. I have run dungeons consistently for months and played since the beta (brief 4 month break around this time). I had been kicked from a PuG once the entire time. The last two weeks its happened far too frequently. I am not saying this has happened even inside the dungeon but before getting started or even saying a word. What kind of community is this? I have been rushing my ele to 80 just so I can actually play the dungeons regularly.

Prime Example: While writing this post I tabbed in-game to do SE1 in the LFG and found a group, and by the time I wrote it and came back from the loading screen I had been kicked when warping to instance. My lv 74 ele is sad

I am just playing regular with my alts trying to level, not like I dont have 4 max level characters. People see a non-80 and flip out, not like I dont have my characters looking good. I just wanted to see how many others were seeing this side of PuGing

Hello all!

I just wanted to talk with other fellow players and see if anyone else was having shared or similar experiences with the LFG tool of late. I have been seeing an increase of elitist posting and people being rude and kicking others (including myself) and general unfun gameplay. I recall that one day I even told someone that you can’t buy a dungeon master title and they should listen to my advice.

And we promptly wiped.

This is a vastly different experience from my usual late night dungeon tours I run with pugs and random people I encounter who also do the dungeon tours 2-5 times a week. Many of us are feeling a certain ways about this influx of unpleasant player types. What stories do you have from the past few weeks? What do you think is causing this?

Part #2

I am sure many people have torn this topic to shreds, but I too wish to add my voice to the clamor and give my own personal view with some constructive criticism, which is completely well meaning, just like a concerned parent.

1.) Change/dissolve/modify living story as a priority. The quality varies but adding temporary content to a product that still is lacking core substance is going to burn people out. Quality over Quantity.

Alternative Suggestion: There are many areas of the core game that need improvement, such as bug fixes, PvP, certain events are still bugged since beta. Maybe focus on fleshing out existing areas to give players a reason to revisit them [READ: SOUTHSUN], extend story lines of meta events, create new chains altogether, rework certain maps to incorporate themed mechanics with unique/worthwhile rewards..this could be doubly beneficial by giving staff less initial work and the opportunity to polish upcoming content since a smaller percentage would be created from scratch.

2.) Expand logistical support. The last I heard/read there was a financial analyst and a single person doing many of the balance changes for the game, which literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people participate in.

Alternative Suggestion: allocate more resources to investigating alternative ways of providing rewards to players other then random (which is a big point of controversy). Normalize the trading post. (Random idea: limited amount of transactions per hour to dissuade market control by elite “Vabbian Princes” of the trading post?). Make all content feel equally rewarding, don’t force people to do specific types of events to stay competitive in a monetary/gear sense (champ trains, fractals, dungeons). Give the team doing bug fixes/coding more support. Or some assistants. Trained Monkeys would probably be beneficial at this point, events that were broken in Beta still get stuck to this day, over a year later.

3.) Give the Players what they want. People are becoming dissatisfied with the game because we as participants are continually given content that we never directly ask for but are expected to enjoy. And naturally, we do for a time because of a cycle of expectation and disappointment, but that is only going to go on so long before people become burned out. It’s an abusive relationship.

Alternative Suggestion: Give the players what they want, even if it doesn’t revolutionize any previous industry standards. People want new weapons and utilities for their classes, they want meaningful content with high replayablity, they want new land and maps to explore, they want story and lore that feels significant and is compelling, worthy of an adult audience. Some of the most well received patches this year all met this criteria: Super Adventure Box and Bazaar of Four Winds. Why? New maps, new skills, moderately appealing rewards, permanent content (belcher’s bluff, sanctum sprint), compelling story (Super Adventure Box back story was very entertaining and grounded; the elections could have used a bit more staging but I digress). Both of these updates had amazing visual presentation, well written explanations in-game, expanded the vastness of the world, and were simply pleasures to participate in. These offered the same sense of exploration and awe that the original Guild Wars offered, as well as what Guild Wars 2 gifted players originally when leveling up for the first time in a vibrant world, a world where anyone would be genuinely excited to reside in, if even for a small amount of time.

Final Suggestion: If players had to wait two-four months between updates to get high quality expansions on par with SAB or BoFW (of course more significant content due to the extra time allotted), and quality of life improvements were worked on in the intermediary time period (fixing camera problems, fixing condition damage scaling, etc.) the game would immediately see a resurgence in loyalty and this could attract more people to the game who are willing to pay money to keep the game alive, without using gimmicks or bi-weekly sales to drive revenue. These massive patches could then be turned into advertising and public relations strategies to attract new players to the game or to stage massive box/online sales to match seasonal events in the real world.

In closing, I feel that the developers are approaching an impasse where a major shift in mentality needs to occur (and it needs to be transparent to the community, naturally) if we are to set this wayward child on a straight course to a long, productive, and fruitful life.

Attached Image below summarizes my feelings precisely:

Part #1

[Disclaimer] I don’t post often but I do read a variety of forums, both official and non-official, YouTube videos, developer live-streams, etc. I also played guild wars 1 for years, BUT i am no way an expert, but I did want to voice my opinions for once. I ask my audience to respect those wishes and I will treat anyone kindly in turn.

I could go on about all the ways that I was disappointed in the fractal storyline that many of the lore fans and GW1 veterans were expecting, and some of the ‘upcoming dragon hopefuls’, but the one point I have not seen anyone bring up was how the planned book for the Thaumanova Incident and the fleshed out origin stories of the Infinity Coil Reactor were completely scrapped for Scarlet, despite the general consensus of mild annoyance to fits of rage towards her character.. I think that was one of the biggest disappointments that occurred today, because a chance to get insight into a project that was planned and subsequently scrapped would have been an amazing lore opportunity. This was a massive letdown for me personally. In the previous game, they hinted at events and then delivered massive lore, back story, and extremely polished high quality, immersive content. (The introduction of Cantha as a new continent is a great example, it was always referenced as ‘A Place’ but actually getting what we did for how little emphasis was placed on it originally was incredibly hard to comprehend at the time and was more then a pleasant surprise).

It seems that a vocal faction (large or small who knows?) of the player-base is never satisfied, but with each release it seems to grow more and more, even to the point of second level news outlets and YouTube personalities openly criticizing elements of the game, a game they obviously are invested in, and a game that obviously many players have strong feelings of hope about because they care about its continued development and growth, and continue to invest their time and money into, just like a child.

To me, Guild Wars 2 seems to take the roll of the wayward child, one who lacks any sort of Filial Piety to the original product or vision.

“in Confucian thought, one of the virtues to be cultivated, a love and respect for one’s parents and ancestors”

Guild Wars 2 seems to constantly stray from it’s roots time and time again, from the decisions made which could be seen as going against the manifesto (I understand time and circumstances change), to including and using limited amounts of lore from the previous game (which I understand is intentional); yet these incidences are becoming more consistent (armor re-skins which devalue those who worked for the cultural armor, be it through gold or real life money invested in gems) are not reassuring to the community (scaling back fractal levels, as an example) and the overall lack of substance from updates.

Okay very cool, glad I am not the only person experiencing this. Was about to flip out like “my 30 gold! I paid to look so cool! And now it’s gone! Oh no!”

Hello,

Here to report a potential bug I am experiencing. Upon buying the charr cultural T3 heavy lv80 dreadnought helm, I noticed it was gold rarity and I wanted exotic stats, so I purchased a lv80 berserker exotic helm so that I could use the lv80 transmutation stone and upgrade the helm, and once I did I made sure to select the proper skin (it retains the name and everything) and upgrade it to exotic for the stat bonus. My issue is that when I do a preview of the helm, it displays the incorrect skin of the exotic skin instead of the dreadnought skin (which I just paid 30 gold for). This also happened with the pit fighter leggings, I attempted to transmute pit fighter lv78 onto lv80 gear for the stats, but it still kept the skin of the lv80 gear without merging the lv78 skin (even made sure to use a second transmutation stone and rebought everything again). This character is still level 25, but I will not know that the game is displaying the incorrect skin until 80. Attached is the picture of the icons and the preview pane showing incorrect items. I wanted to know if this is documented or there was any way to fix this so that I could get the stat/skin combination I wanted, because I did just spend real world money on transmutation stones that are not working as well as the 30gold to get the helm itself purely for the looks.

I feel like this thread should get posted to the top, it is extremely informative and helpful. I even learned some things I did not previously know.

I am already appreciative of the advice!

I really was looking for a statistical breakdown because I have not seen one before, and I know other classes such as ranger have done charts and graphs on their classes and I had not seen a Guardian one yet. If I knew how and had the gold I would do it myself, but alas.

Celestial does sound awesome, but the one stipulation is that I am not a fan of magic find after having put time into researching the exact amount of benefits that it gives; therefore I try to stay away from it in all my gear because there are other, better alternatives out there, at least that is personal opinion.

Also the guy that is asking about comparing all the classes in a support role is having a great thread, seeing as I also have an elementalist and mesmer

Hey so I have been using my guardian as my main class for awhile (about 3-4 months) and am loving it, but I have full exotics and knights, yet I have issues killing things (primarily in dungeons). I have been searching a little bit, but I have not seen a chart statistical break down of armor ‘break points’ that can be used to optimize my build. Quite frankly, I feel that I have too much defense and not enough offense. What are some common break points for armor before diminishing returns sets in? is moving from 3.3 to 2.8 a huge power leap? What are some other links or guides on other websites, or charts/graphs? All help is appreciated and will be taken into consideration, thank you in advance

…Vote Consortium Dolyak.

That is all.

What makes all of this particularly interesting?

If one were to meditate on the implications of the Inquest and their machinations, they have the potential to have one of the most complex storylines in the game, and fleshing out their backstory could have serious lore benefits for players, and that is why having Ellen for a representative could be advantageous, not just because of the one incident of the Reactor Explosion, but because of the potential for elaboration of various other subplots within the game, all tied to one of the most far-reaching organizations in any game world. The possibilities for exploration are nearly limitless and are a much stronger platform then to revisit a segment of game history that has been done before in a full previous expansion. I am not saying there are not merits in getting some hazy details clarified, but to me it doesn’t truly have the potential move the plot of the Living World forward in a way that is meaningful.

After watching this lore video, (it’s a very entertaining watch for anyone interested in Asuran Lore) the implications of having more revealing asuran content is very appealing. (Bear with me now) If the Asurans and Mursaat are related, the events of the Reactor could allude to a revival of the Mursaat/Unseen ones who already do have Janthir Isles and Janthir Bay on the map, which could actually set up for more content in expansions; not to mention the Nightmare Court/Bandit/Inquest alliance in Brisban Wildlands with the Level 80 Fort of Vandel’s Claim which could lead to both the realm of Mordremoth (the 6th dragon per Subject Alpha’s attack naming in Crucible of Eternity)….

Tangents aside, in my opinion Inquest Subplots specifically deserve additional attention because they seem to be the most entrenched faction in the game world, with far reaching influence to almost every corner of the map, with vast resources and lots of hints towards classified information such as the underwater/deep sea dragon for instance: Thaumanova Reactor (aquatic areas), Infinity Coil (Zone Blue: Under Construction) Crucible of Eternity (underwater aquarium which is suspiciously empty), Jinx Isle Base in Malchor’s Leap, all have these locations accommodations for underwater or nautical research into the Deep Sea Dragon. Another purely speculative point is the Aetherblades, we know they have teamed up with the Inquest who have some serious financial backing (personal speculation: Almuten Mansion Residents?) and how is it a multiracial faction can steal, hide, and maintain airship outposts? Not to mention they have a steam theme, which coincides with the steam creature enemies who come from an alternate reality of a mad asuran inventor..

I wrote that all just to provide examples of where the plot could go very easily and be completely appropriate for the game world, and the creation of a Fractal for the Reactor could be the first step in a long line of highly rewarding player experiences if executed correctly.

Sure, you can say that it’s “just another lab explosion” but the complexities that could be interwoven into that event are incredibly curious. Sure, one could “Fight A God!” but there is an achievement that sums up my opinions on that

“Been There, Done That.”

I do not post often but I do read the forums alot, but this was one thread that I could not help but have the sudden urge to post into. I am no lore aficionado, but I most certainly did fall in love with the lore of this game and have played GW1 since the first 3 months of release and have spent countless hours researching lore for this game, purely for fun. This is my own humble and personal opinion, and I am not looking to change any minds, but just to share my opinions with hopefully other like-minded individuals.

“I am a huge Ellen Supporter because I want to see her fractal.”

Why?

There are a variety of reasons, let me start with the more practical ones, and then I will move into other explanations which are more of my own opinions and are more speculation and ‘what-ifs’ that could progress the entire game plot forward referencing other sources, both in and out of game.

Reason #1: Potential To Uncover Omitted Content

The third book of the planned Guild Wars novels was originally intended to be about the Reactor Incident, to have been titled “Crucible of Eternity” which means there could have potentially been alot of unexplored lore out there about both the Thaumanova Reactor and the Infinity Coil Reactor.

Reason #2: Guild Wars 1 Content about Abaddon

No offense to anyone, but there was an entire campaign in the original game devoted to exploring the origins of abaddon as a god and his downfall, rehashing ground that has already been traveled would be a shame when there are so many potential other story paths that could be tread, not to mention a wealth of information in the gw1 wiki which pertains to that subject.

Reason #3: Inquest Plotlines are some of the strongest content in the game [subjective]

For a fantasy MMO, the inquest have some of the most engrossing and dynamic lore for any faction in almost any game. They are highly technologically advanced, have the resources and fiscal backing to establish research stations all over the known world and probably more beyond, and have the ability to coordinate their efforts to create truly awe-inspiring complexes. (Could one imagine the infinity coil reactor in real life minus the fantasy elements? Do you know how much money would need to be invested into that? Years of labor? Manpower? Electric Bill?).