Guild Wars 2

Same here. Never had lag or latency issues before. Assumed it was my internet, but it literally only affects GW2. I suspect something with the last patch is the cause of this because I was able to play perfectly fine up until then.

Republic of the Casuals is a brand spanking new guild looking for early members to help the guild grow and promote a friendly, mature environment for players to play and learn with other players. We accept all friendly players whether you’re a newcomer or a veteran, a casual or a non-casual.

Our ultimate guild is to obtain a guild hall. We will be organizing weekly guild missions and recruiting more people to get to that point. We hope to have a large group to share the journey with!

If you are interested or have any question please PM me @ darkm.4839 or my co-founder @ Mistress Domke.2639

It’s not just him. I just had a hell of a lag spike. Sat for about 5 minutes before my character finally responded to prompts. During this time I was able to open my laptop and load google, look up the server status, get on facebook, message my fiance, and load a youtube video. It wasn’t my end.

Ashen.2907:

darkm.4839:

You’re going to have raids. That was the promised challenging content. The base maps in the expansion shouldn’t be that challenging for the average player. If you re-read my post you’ll see that I said exactly this.

The problem with a statement of this sort is that it can just as easily be written as:

You have the majority of the game. The base maps in the expansion should be challenging for the average player.

I paid $50 for an expansion to a game that I enjoy. It is very reasonable to expect similar content from said expansion. I found that the content is not to my liking, and I am voicing my opinions and concerns. I don’t think it would be wise to continue this practice. It’s essentially saying “this new content is only for the elite, the average player need not apply.” Should the average, casual player not purchase future expansions? What do you think that would mean for the future of ANet?

Dual.8953:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Vayne.8563:

Frankly I think that anyone who thinks the zone is too difficult, should avoid it and go play in the old zones, which are very very easy.

This is such a lazy man’s argument and gets trotted out blithely any time a discussion of balancing the HoT content comes up.

Many people bought this game based on the content available – core Tyria maps were a huge part of this – so it set the tone for the game, and people based their decisions to buy largely on it. This is simply logical sense.

Then the content and the maps change significantly and people express their concerns about it. And they’re told not to expect to be able to play any of it or even bothering to buy new content or expansions. They’re told to just keep playing content they’ve done over and over without expecting anything new. This is ridiculous.

When you spend your money using the evidence available and see a game and say, “Hey, this game is fun and terrific for my playstyle,” it isn’t exactly surprising if they would like to have some new content in line with what they based their buying decision on in the first place. This doesn’t make them bad people or stupid people.

They certainly deserve some respect and not the cesspool ideology of “go find a real game to play” and “stop being a stupid, worthless noob,” “L2P,” etc. ad nauseum the kind of stupid, pointless things people say because they need to feel superior to anyone disagreeing with them.

And what of those of us who like the difficulty? Are you suggesting we should stand idly by and let those with grievances suck the fun out of the new zones, reducing them to a bland husk, of more enemies who are trivially easy to ignore?
This is a problem where either one group needs to up their game, or the other will find the content dull.
Players can improve their skills, lowering one’s skills is significantly harder.

You’re going to have raids. That was the promised challenging content. The base maps in the expansion shouldn’t be that challenging for the average player. If you re-read my post you’ll see that I said exactly this.

Canakun.8031:

tl;dr the content you consider to be grind is the content i consider to be meaningful gameplay.
maybe you feel like you’re grinding because you’re not having fun, in which case: stop playing the game if it’s not fun to you.

If grinding away is your idea of meaningful gameplay, then fine. It’s not to me, and it’s not to a lot of people. Which is why they made Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 with a “no grind” philosophy. Which frustrates me that they keep adding meta-events with rewards that require you to grind those meta-events. It wouldn’t be a problem if it were a map or two out of 5 or 6 maps. But it’s every map. 3 of 3 maps. A disappointingly small amount of maps, all of which are grindy in nature.

I don’t have fun grinding meta-events. I have stopped playing, but I do love and enjoy Guild Wars 2 in its core. Hence my thread giving my opinion and criticism of the content provided.

I have never crashed once in Guild Wars 2…

… Until the release of Heart of Thorns.

Now I appear to crash at least once an hour.

I came here with legitimate concerns and desires, but I know how these forums work. Before anyone flames me for being “too casual,” let me tell you that I’ve been playing since the game launched. I’ve done the dungeons, I’ve run the bosses, I’ve gone through fractals. Why then don’t I have millions of achievement points? Because I don’t like grind. I do things a few times, and maybe a few times more if I really enjoy it. I made an exception when I decided I wanted ascended armor. After I finally got it, I felt really burnt out and didn’t want to play anymore. I came back a while later and decided I wanted Twilight. After I got that, I felt burnt out and I didn’t want to play anymore. Now HoT is out, and it’s as grindy and repetetive as ever. That, and it’s not a lot of content for the price, and it’s all just too difficult for the average player.

I didn’t get super duper hyped about HoT when it was announced. I purposefully avoided most of the news and hype surrounding it, in order to avoid the ultimate disappointment I would feel when the expansion failed to meet my hyped up expectations. I did the same thing for Halo 5, and I’m doing the same thing for Fallout 4, and I do the same thing for most games I love to play. My disappointments are not a result of raised expectations.

When HoT released, I bought it and played it day one. I was eager to get into the new maps, I had some fun exploring with the waves of people flooding Verdant Brink. It’s a little over a week after that now, and I’m starting to have doubts and worries.

One issue I have at the moment is the apparent need to create a meta-event for every single new map. While it is good that something is always happening, it’s also very annoying to me. There are constantly mordrem attacking this place or that place, and constantly a lack of large groups of people trying to do them, so they never get done. This is my personal experience, anyway. I have personally tried to do it, but failed because I was literally the only person trying. If you have different experiences, then I envy you and you should count yourself lucky that you somehow always end up in a populated and organized map. While it’s like this, it is impossible to explore areas with mordrem everywhere. I like to explore, and I don’t mind fighting things, but when exploration is met with constant battling the exploration loses its fun. Any fans of Final Fantasy might know the frustration of wanting to take two steps without having to fight something. I feel this a lot in the new maps.

Another issue I have is the ramped up difficulty of everything in the expansion, even outside raids. They promised difficult content, being raids. Apparently what actually happened is that they made all the new content extremely difficult, and from what I expect raids are to be nearly impossible unless your live revolves around this game and it’s all you know. This is a problem for what I believe to be the majority of players. I’ve repeatedly seen complains in HoT map chat, in my guild chat, and even in core Tyria area map chats that the new places are brutally difficult. The difficulty of the new mobs coupled with the constant meta-events are turning people off of exploring the new areas.

Lastly, despite the size of the maps, I have a problem with the lack of new areas to explore. I don’t find much appeal in having super vertical maps. It makes them more confusing to traverse for new players, ultimately turning them off. It makes things just more tedious when you do know where you’re going. It all has the same theme and looks pretty much the same everywhere. It just doesn’t feel like a lot to me. For kitten expansion I really don’t feel like that’s worth it. You could argue that there are also masteries and elite specializations. I would argue that most players have a favorite class and will ultimately stick to that one. Masteries are really just an artificial way of extending the life of HoT by requiring you to grind the meta events in the maps to level them up and unlock them.

I love Guild Wars, and I want to see it succeed. I want to find myself still playing in another 3 years time. I don’t think that will be the case if future content will be repeats of Heart of Thorns.

In summary (and TL;DR) I would argue that not everything needs to be meta, and not everything needs to be difficult to an elite level. I hope that in future patches and expansions they will releas content for the average player. Of course, there should be challenging and rewarding content as well. I feel that the challenging content should not be ALL of the content, and it shouldn’t all be super meta.

I get it. It was destroyed. If it was destroyed then it is no longer there. If it is no longer there then why even have it show up on the map? What’s the point? Just remove it. No sense in showing it as contested if it’s GONE!

When you think of what a quest is in a traditional MMO setting, you probably imagine going up to an NPC with a large exclamation point over their head, who gives you some arbitrary task to complete. “I want you to kill 50 pigs. Don’t ask why.” So off you go to kill 50 pigs, just because. “Bring me 10 ‘herbs.’ They’re for… Studying.” So off you go to get those funny looking herbs, and you get the feeling that he doesn’t do much studying at all.

What has Guild Wars 2 done to get rid of the grindy and arbitrary questing? Renown hearts are essentially the same thing. “Kill bats and spiders.” So off you go to kill bats and spiders, but you’re not sure how many you need to do. All this really does is cut out the middle man in questing. Just do the task and you’re done. No picking up or turning in, just -BAM- done.

After getting to level 80 players are often faced with the “what now?” dilemma. You can run fractals over and over, or dungeons, or bosses or whatever. Ultimately there’s just not a whole lot to do for endgame in GW2. I started to wonder why there are no more hearts, which are essentially quests, after you get to level 80 zones. Because you don’t need to level up anymore? That’s not what quests are ultimately supposed to be about. And I could always use more skill points and karma. That is as someone who hasn’t spend 24/7 in the game since launch and is actually having a hard time getting SP and karma. There are more avid players who have so much that they don’t know what to do with it. They’re more hardcore, and that’s ultimately not what Guild Wars is appealing to in the first place.

So what is this forum post all about? Well, I’d like to see an ACTUAL questing system implemented, minus the arbitrary and pointless grind quests. Once a player reaches level 80, I feel like the world should be absolutely littered with things to do, but it’s quite the opposite.

Here’s my suggestion: I’d like for there to be quests added as endgame content. Quests that tell a story, are fun and challenging to do, give new rewards and can be done with friends. I’m absolutely not suggesting to replace renown hearts with quests, or for there to be quests added alongside them for lower levels. This is absolutely only for level 80 characters, and they are to be challenging experiences.

I had this thought as I was looking through the map and wondered why there aren’t any hearts in 80 areas. I thought what it’d be like to have level 80 hearts, and my mind wandered. I thought this would be an excellent idea. I wanted to post this in the HoT forum, but with the expansion as far along as it is I don’t think they can add what I’m asking for in such a short amount of time. I then wondered if the “adventures” they spoke of would essentially be what I’m thinking. Even so, I’d like to see this added to all level 80 areas of the game and not just to the Maguuma jungle.

Sorry for the wall of text.
TL;DR – I’d like to see quests implemented as endgame content. No arbitrary grind quests, just fun and challenging content for level 80 characters in level 80 zones.

In a sort of sense it is a scam. Kind of. They used you for their advantage and kick you right near the end so you get nothing out of it. I would not be too happy either if I were you. Something similar has also happened to me in dungeons, though.

I don’t understand your concern. Or what you just said. I literally didn’t understand a sentence of it.

I’m guessing you think that this expansion is going to dramatically change the game’s current content, similar to a WoW Cataclysm type of expansion? Because that’s not what’s happening, and I don’t know where you got that idea.

I agree. A couple of trolls or ignorant kids who don’t read chat is all it takes for the whole event to fail.

There’s also a problem where when everyone goes to fight the big meta boss at the end, EVERY ONE AND THEIR MOM ends up at south and there’s like a handful of people at north. Every. Single. Time. Splitting up like that is an interesting idea, but the way it’s executed means that nobody goes where they’re needed. I’d prefer it if there was a sort of auto-balance where you talk to an NPC and it divides the people into 3 groups of even size randomly. With this idea there’s then the issue of needing to fight the south boss, but getting thrown into north every time against your will. It could be a dialogue box showing the 3 options and how many people are in each group, allowing people to visually see where they’re needed, but having the freedom to choose where to go. I just want something in similar events that help divide people evenly.

I came up with the same idea, and made a post about profession specific armor. Turns out there are a handful of people who refuse to allow something to be in the game which they can’t have all of on one character. People started demanding that if it were implemented they should be able to wear necro armor on a mesmer or ranger armor on an engineer. While I can see their point, I still would like to have class specific armor and weapons similar to GW1, implemented much in the same way as race armor.

Malthurius.6870:

darkm.4839:

I’ve been put off of making legendaries for a long time because of how tedious and resource intensive it is making them. It’s not “easy,” I’ve been at it for months and months. If you have any way I can get the materials as easily as you did, please enlighten me.

Well… Tedious=/=Hard

Time shouldn’t be the one and only gate for a legendary; skill should be part of it too. Mind you, I’ve never had a legendary, but I don’t like the fact that you can be a terrible player and still have what should be a “prestige item”.

I can understand what you’re saying here.
Normally when people complain that it’s too easy it almost sounds as though they’re demanding a change to current legendaries to make it harder. Maybe it’s not their intent, but that’s always what it ends up sounding like.

What I think could be cool is if the current legendaries stay as-is, and they add a couple new ultimate legendaries which require you to get gifts from all of the dungeons and even do fractals to a certain level, and more.

There are a handful of players who cry that legendaries are “too easy” to make. I imagine these people are the same sorts of people who scoff at anyone who died once in Dark Souls and insist that it’s way too easy of a game when you get the hang of it.

I’ve been put off of making legendaries for a long time because of how tedious and resource intensive it is making them. It’s not “easy,” I’ve been at it for months and months. If you have any way I can get the materials as easily as you did, please enlighten me.

Almost all of the armor in GW2 is too mesmer-ish. There’s not enough to suit a necromancer or elementalist. Especially necromancer.

How about removing WvW from map completion simply because it’s not fair to everyone on every server. There are players on some servers where they go against a GINORMOUS server with thousands upon thousands of players, and they only have like 20 people on at a time. Being required to do WvW is not only not fun, but also not feasible.
The idea that “oh they should have to switch servers if they want it” is ignorant and wrong.

I’d like to have it included, BUT I don’t want it to be the bulk of the expansion… I think my frustration in that instance would speak for itself.

runeblade.7514:

darkm.4839:

All armor in GW1 was profession specific. I liked it, because you knew who was what. There wasn’t a problem of all warriors looking the same because there were several sets of armor you could mix and match. This is essentially what I want, 3 or more sets of armor per profession that are specific to that profession. It doesn’t have to be a hard grindfest to get, it could be as easy as visiting your trainer and picking it up for similar prices as the race armor. You could mix and match to make your own look AND represent your profession.

So what happens when the enemy team does not use profession specific armor even when nonsense like this is added? Do you still get confused? GW1 profession specific armor works because it was heavily restricted. You are suggesting only 3 sets of armor for each profession. I can wear Barbarian armor to make you very confused on which profession I am playing as.

You shouldn’t have the attitude of “I want EVERYTHING IN THE GAME on one character,” because that’s never going to happen. If that’s the only argument you have, you might as well demand to have every profession and armor class available on one character too. That will never happen, and I pray it never happens because it would essentially kill the replayability of the game. There would be no incentive to make a new character, no benefit or reason whatsoever.

Strawman argument.

We are not arguing for every profession on one character. We are arguing against profession specific armor which is needlessly restrictive.

I couldn’t give a toss about PvP or WvW, I don’t understand your argument with the “other team” thing. How am I confused? I think you are the one who is confused.
It’s not “needlessly” restrictive, it just makes sense. There’s already race specific armor, why not have profession specific armor? It’s no different. If you want that armor, get it on the profession it’s meant for. No sense in a ranger running around decked out like an engineer, or a mesmer wearing a necromancer’s garb.

However, if you were in charge of putting content into the game and had it the way you insist, I would still be happy having profession armor that could be shared across characters. Not AS happy, but as long as I can make a ranger that looks like a kitten ranger and not like some weirdo wearing a trench coat I’m fine.

I’d actually like to see a lot of armor from GW1 make a return in the form of profession armor (or just period). I loathe the look of lower tier armor in GW2, and wish we could get more customization.

I might be in the minority here, but I find plenty of the game content challenging. I’ve died on several occasions just trying to do personal or living story. I’ve failed group events because a couple of people didn’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do every dungeon in the game because learning them is hard, especially when nobody will teach you because “lol u noob” kick.

Red Queen.7915:

darkm.4839:

If you have a thief and a ranger both, why would you be upset that you can’t have both sets on one character? You might as well demand the ability to use every weapon in the game, too, because it’s nearly the same thing.

Well, it’s both medium armour, which is always the same, while weapons are… well, not the same? That is a flawed comparison. And I’d hate it because I farmed tokens for certain sets so more than one character could use the skin. So I’d have to do it all twice or even more often for a single piece of armour of the same kitten class? No thanks.

All armor in GW1 was profession specific. I liked it, because you knew who was what. There wasn’t a problem of all warriors looking the same because there were several sets of armor you could mix and match. This is essentially what I want, 3 or more sets of armor per profession that are specific to that profession. It doesn’t have to be a hard grindfest to get, it could be as easy as visiting your trainer and picking it up for similar prices as the race armor. You could mix and match to make your own look AND represent your profession. You shouldn’t have the attitude of “I want EVERYTHING IN THE GAME on one character,” because that’s never going to happen. If that’s the only argument you have, you might as well demand to have every profession and armor class available on one character too. That will never happen, and I pray it never happens because it would essentially kill the replayability of the game. There would be no incentive to make a new character, no benefit or reason whatsoever.

runeblade.7514:

Can I wear Ranger armor on my thief? Can I wear thief armor on my ranger?

If the answer is no. Then I say NO to your suggestion.

The answer is no because it would be PROFESSION SPECIFIC.
If you have a thief and a ranger both, why would you be upset that you can’t have both sets on one character? You might as well demand the ability to use every weapon in the game, too, because it’s nearly the same thing.

In Guild Wars 1 nearly all armor was profession specific. It made sense because you could only play as a human, so there needed to be ways to be able to distinguish and all that.
In Guild Wars 2, you get 3 armor classes. No matter what profession wears the armor, it’ll appear the same, giving all rangers, engineers and thieves the same, exact look. I don’t particularly like it, but that’s how it is.

What I’d like to see is a few sets of armor per profession that are profession and specialization specific, very similar in function and stats to race specific armor. People could wear the armor as a skin (or just wear the armor) as a show of pride in their profession, and it also helps distinguish a mesmer from a necromancer.

What does anybody else think?
Any ideas to build on this one?

Sebastian.4610:

maybe they should just give everybody legendarys for free. they are already easy to make and are being made easier with craftable precursors.

I vote they increase the difficulty of crafting legendarys so they are actually kittening LEGENDARY.

If they were so easy to craft everybody would have one. While a lot of people do have them, you can’t say “more people are getting it therefore it’s easier to get.” More people are getting them because the game has been out for 2 years, and people who have been playing that time have been saving up mats and were able to craft it. Talk to a new player about getting a legendary and they’ll say “SCREW THAT!”

I’m happy they’re making the precurcors easier to get, because having them be extremely rare, random drops is annoying. There’s no skill involved in that, there’s nothing grand about it. It’s either be EXTREMELY lucky or pinch your coppers for months to save up. That’s simply unlikely, and not fun.

Malediktus.3740:

I heared WvW will be removed from map exploration

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2v20dl/less_to_explore_in_hot/

I don’t mind doing map completion, but I loathe WvW. If this happens I would be SO FREAKING HAPPY!

I have been hoping to see a profession-specific armor set. It would be great if they introduced profession AND specialization specific armor in a way similar to GW1.

I’d personally like to see them expand out to some of the area on the map which we can’t yet explore. Fire Islands, Crystal Desert, Far Shiverpeaks, Woodland Cascades… I would really enjoy it if there were tasks to do, even if they’re level 80 areas. I feel like the level 80 areas seemed a bit more barren and boring without any tasks. Level 80 tasks could be more difficult to do than normal tasks and give greater rewards, maybe?

Some new skills for all classes would be much appreciated.

A new class would be even more appreciated.

A new race would be great, but with my bias towards human characters I personally wouldn’t benefit a whole bunch. I do know that a lot of people would love it, though.

And for the living world story, I feel like they could do better than the whole Scarlet thing. I really didn’t care for that bit, and I didn’t bother doing any of it because to me it felt like they just said “here’s a new bad guy” and then quickly threw together a grand scheme behind all of it that didn’t really fully explain itself.

After having this happen to me 3 times in a row with no firewall/anti-virus, I was about to call it quits. But this might work, and it’s a lot faster than deleting everything and restarting from scratch. I’ll give this a go, hope it works. Thanks for the info.

This is my third time trying to install the game. The first time I was at work, got home to the error. Decided it’s no big deal, just delete everything and restart it. It happened again, and at this point I was a little irritated but I had the rest of my night left, I thought I’d give it another go. My most recent attempt ended, yet again, in the same failure. 99% finished, 1 file remaining, 0.00Kb per second. I REFUSE to wait through that again, at least for a few days. 4 hours each time, it’s downright mind-numbingly frustrating.

I have no firewalls activated, all my anti-virus is turned off, and there is NO reason it should be doing this.