Guild Wars 2

Add me to the list of players that didn’t receive their chest – Henge of Denravi since beta, silver 1st place – no reward.

Seriously, Anet -this is ridiculous. I started this game with 4 other family members/friends, added a few more as time went on (9 of us total), but as of right now I have only 1 left who plays semi-regularly . Most of the others have either quit or drastically reduced their game time, and this is the reason why right here. When I try to “rally the troops”, I’m met with comments like “I’m over it” and “what’s the point?” – and these are Guild wars 1 veterans, who were excited by the prospect of Guild wars 2.
Now I can’t get them near the game, short of divine intervention – and I’m not sure if even that will work.

As I said, ridiculous. What’s the point, indeed.

Fix this.

Eulolia:
Actually, it will matter quite a bit. The forum states that there is a 10% increase in the relative stats between an exotic weapon and an ascended one. A 10% increase is not insignificant. Yes, for PvE it doesn’t matter, at least for now, but WvW it will make a difference.

I am aware of the existence of the six ascended slots, as a matter of fact, it is just those slots that I base my opinion on. I run a mesmer, and started WvW with all exotic gear –
and did ok, maybe, but was getting killed way too much. So, I took a look at the build, and decided that I needed the addition of some ascended items. I added 3 of the six, and I am currently running all exotic gear except for the rings and amulet. Those are now ascended. And the difference has been amazing. I survive, and am able to down opponents, much more effectively with the addition of just 3 ascended pieces. Therefore, clearly, they do make a significant difference. Without them, I was lacking in some aspect – power, or armor, or health; just enough to have a problem. With a few, problem resolved. I’m not saying I an unbeatable or anything like that, but my survivability and ability to down an opponent increased noticeably with just the 3 pieces. This has been noticed by the people I game with as well, so it’s not just my opinion. it’s a marked difference.

Just take a look at the builds posted for the game – how many of the current builds posted don’t use ascended items? Pretty much zero. Why is that, do you think, if they make so little difference?

An increase in damage of 5% or 10% – whichever it is – is significant in WvW. The players who have the time to grind out the Ascended weapons will have a distinct advantage. I am a casual player, mostly hanging around for the WvW, since I WvW with a small group of people that I have gamed with for some time. All of them are casual players, without the time or the inclination to grind. We are now discussing leaving this game due to the imbalance this Ascended gear is going to create. The attraction for us in GuildWar 2 was the advertised no grind, no gear treadmill, no power creep mentality -that’s all gone now, and this game lacks anything of substance to replace it. I already have a full-time job, and now this game is starting to feel like a second one. No thanks.

So, what happened to play it the way you want? now it’s play it our way; if you want to be competitive, then you must have this ascended gear. To do that, you must join the champ train, do world bosses, and grind temples. Otherwise, you are going to fall behind the power curve. You will become a liability in WvW. So grind, grind, grind.
Blah. Oh, well, it was almost good for a year. Might be time to move on now. We’ll see.

What I’m noticing is that the people who seem to favor (with a few exceptions) this new system of match-ups are also people who are on servers that are either still competitively placed and can at least engage in some satisfactory gameplay – even if they don’t win – or they are on the winning server, steamrolling the other mismatched servers. As mentioned by Insane pancakez: : “. Stop whining, enjoy the week and just know it will be different next week! I mean, for example: I’m from Ehmry Bay. We beat BP and AR 13 weeks in a row. We got bored as you could imagine. Now we’re facing Maguuma, and FA. Like Devon said, tiers are old now but if you want to look at it with the old system FA is T2, Maguuma is T3 and ehmry is T5. We are losing horribly. But we love it.”. Great, but then, you are coming off of weeks of winning, so a few losing streaks doesn’t break morale; it’s just a change of pace in the short term. After all, there’s a chance that you will be matched against 2 previously lower ranked servers next time, and you can win again. That chance diminishes the lower your rank was previously, and the very lowest ranked servers are now continuously facing servers who so outman them that they essentially are incapable of accomplishing anything.

This is not a good situation. I am on Henge of Denravi, but I didn’t get into WvW in the beginning when the henge dominated WvW, but after the TITAN alliance fell apart, when the Henge was in freefall with the loss of the major guilds. So, my experience was mostly with losses week after week. Oddly though, this didn’t bother me, as even though we lost, the battles were mostly interesting, with some tightly contested skirmishes – and even some victories – involved. And let me just say, the players on HoD are some of the best to run with, having had to learn the hard way how to play after the mass exodus, those that are left are a tight group that know how to WvW – I’ve seen smaller forces hold off or defeat larger forces repeatedly. Ultimately, there is just so much that you can do, however, when you are so grossly outmanned; and that is the problem with the current matchup system.

The system now in place is punishing for the “weaker” servers, pretty much locking them out of the WvW experience as they are being completely shut out of the majority of the maps. Look at the screens being posted: EB completely dominated by one server, who in many cases has the majority of one of both opponents battlelands as well. This is not enjoyable in any sense; and after all, that’s why I (and I suspect many players) play: for pleasure. To relax. To enjoy themselves. It’s not a job, it’s not supposed to be frustrating. Yet it is.

This leads to a problem: already, some of the people I usually game with are calling it,
with comments like "this is pointless, why are we doing this?’ and “this is B****, I’m over it”, and the rest of us grow continually more frustrated. Yes, I could go back to PvE, but then, I’ve got map completion, and the content there is not compelling enough to play the maps again. Frankly, its boring – GW1 had much better PvE content; and the living stories are the same thing over and over, basically: Find something. Fight something. Dungeon! Thanks, but already done that.

Again, I don’t expect to win all the time, and ranking means very little to me; I just want some good, clean battles in WvW that are, most importantly, FUN. Because this is a game, and I don’t play games to be frustrated. After all, isn’t WvW/PvP the designated endgame? Shouldn’t that endgame be compelling? Right now it isn’t.