Guild Wars 2

The first sums it all up and how I feel too.

GW2 has deviated soo much from the original game, all games are suppose to evolve but I’m not sure if this is the right direction, I don’t even think GW2 is an MMO if I’m completely honest, I’m not even sure what it is…. is it a platform game? (sheer amount of annoying jumping puzzles and super adventure box.), mobile device game in a desktop format? (adventures, and let’s not try to glorify them with the term “adventures”, they’re mini-games), the first person mode.. is it a FPS now?! is it a solo RPG? with co-op elements.. so a co-op rpg?!… is it a MOBA of some kind (dragon stand/ tangled depths lane type metas), and not to mention the massive push on the gem store over the past few months, but really what makes this game an MMO? it certainly doesn’t feel like one..

I loved the GW universe and adored the original and it’s expansions, but GW2 just seems like a distant world from that.

vespers.1759:

HoT story summarized:

1. Go visit frogs and never see them again
2. Put an egg on a pedestal for some reason.
3. Go to Rata Novus and learn nothing
4. Go for a walk in the woods to find your friends.
5. Come across mordremoth very suddenly and murder him.
6. The end

Epic as kitten.

THIS!
I had no idea what the hell was going on in the story if I’m completely honest, it didn’t feel very grand at all, some of the events that were suppose to be “big” didn’t feel big, like finding the lost city….. and I question ANET’s definition of “city”, even the Exalted City didn’t feel like a city either thinking about it, both of these places felt more like an “Outpost”.

Also I don’t understand the reasoning behind the Chak… they seem like a big presence but it’s like they get zero attention in the story…. I feel so much work has gone into the development of the zones but as you go through them I always start to wonder… what is the point of this? why is this there? …

Aomine.5012:

the whole jungle is easily soloable by all classes if you trait it right and play your class well.

I think a lot of players would disgaree with you there, the majority of HP’s aren’t soloable and even if you do want to try it takes a while to make a real dent in the champion’s health bar on your own, plus the whole “play your class well” ….. you know what I’m not going to tug on that thread.

I think ANET have made the jungle feel dangerous, the sheer amount of mobs at every corner (which I think is way too much) and the absurd amount of damage they do can be quite annoying.

Like most here I find Verdent Brink the favourite map of the expansion, it has nice pacing and the depth of the map is great and I wished the other three maps were like that.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Leamas.5803:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Leamas.5803:

Yes, granted there are some that are very high and you will die regardless. But some, such as Dark Reverie you can survive and with Dark Reverie, if you die and don’t have someone to res you, you have to redo Morgan’s Spiral to get back to it. Dark Reverie has the worst jump of all the JPs in the game. Anyone who has done it has died there at least once. You have to get it just right…that one is a 19/20 pixel jump.

GW2 is too big to worry about the stuff you can’t do…focus on the stuff you can do and enjoy.

When you need MPs the only option is this crap or pull out the credit card to get gold for all the stupid collections.

How’s a credit card going to help with MPs? I don’t like the collections either…so I don’t dwell on them and do do the stuff I enjoy.

Pull out credit card, buy gems with credit card, then buy gold with gems you just bought with credit card, then buy items needed for collections with gold you just bought with gems you just bought with credit card.

some collections give MPs

or pay a mesmer to do it for you?

I think the dev went a bit overboard with the whole idea of jump puzzles, probably because they didn’t have it in the original game so in this one they probably thought… yeah lets show these players that we can create an engine that allows jumping and we’re going to make you jump!

I’m all in for them don’t get me wrong but I just don’t feel they work as good as they could, especially as the 4 races are different in size so spatially it feels really different with each race.
I only do them if neccessary and even then I’m thinking “why am I doing this?!” haha

The manifesto was probably a PR stunt, MMO’s are suppose to be grindy anyway, they’re suppose to keep you locked in the game for a long as possible so they gain your money.

I think the problem is, the grind is very often not worth the rewards and it needs to be made in a way that is rewarding for the player so it doesn’t feel like a grind.

At the moment creating “end game” gear.. or skins? is not just a grind, it’s a complex grind.. you craft this you need 4 core items but to get these 4 core items you need to get 250 of this and 250 of that but to get 250 of those you need to do this and that but wait! to get that! you need to do this and then that before you can do that…..

seriously wtf?

Danikat.8537:

The animation might go on longer, but that’s irrelevant. As soon as the materials are in your inventory you can run off.

The first 2 harvest of an ore and lumber node is relatively quick but the final one before the node is considered mined takes a while and you get it after the song has reached it’s climax, sometimes it even bugs out and you have to reharvest.

I have to admit, it does feel slow.

Grim West.3194:

HoT is a blatant and cynical cash grab. One of the worst expansions in the history of mmos. It destoyed a great game in GW2.

It’s so bad that the devs are hiding from us. Refusing to tell us what they are going to do to fix this garbage.

Gliding is great though! I sometimes just go into a HoT map just to glide… it soothes the mind and you get to look at pretty stuff

Ronin.7381:

What bugs me is the forced-emphasis on crafting. I’m someone who hates tradeskills with a passion. So when I found out about collections, I was excited. Now I can be rewarded with items for my collection list that help me progress to my legendary but if Tier 2 and Tier 3 require mats so you can craft – that just annoys me. Figured they’d just rehash the same method to get the pre-reqs =/

Yeah I really don’t get the emphasis on the crafting too, it seems to be the “new idea” they have because it makes it easier for players?
I never really liked the whole crafting system in this game, it just seems needlessly complicated and convoluted, though then again I’m not a fan of the original method of obtaining legendaries either, it’s just pot luck.

To me the only method that felt rewarding to obtain a legendary weapon was in WoW’s questlines in their last expansion.

Gold is hard to get these days, there’s not really a “clear” way to earn it.

I agree, TD is a very confusing place to navigate and the meta is just as confusing, whilst it’s beautiful to look at and to go through you’re never always sure exactly where you are. I’ve spent a fair few days in it already and I’m starting to get use to it as things become memorised but when I look at the map I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed, especially when I’m trying to find out where I am using the map layers.

I’ve not seen many organised metas going, sometimes random people just turn up to fail to get the crystals. I think most have given up on it, I’m only in to do the map for the story and work towards map completion, I’ve stopped participating in the events and stuff, the map is just far too big and complex to get anything organised going, especially when you compare it to VB and AB.

sasoriaka.6348:

epicness was all over the place.

Agreed, for the first time since the Molten Facility final boss, this finale felt like a world changer, great delivery in the story for these last chapters, thoroughly enjoyed it!!

Meijo.7415:

dronzer.8392:

Balgus.3468:

worst part is the unskipable cut scene lol i’ve failed a few times, so i’m kinda tired of the cutscene now lol

This!

Making the cutscene not skip-able is clearly an awesome design and creative decision….

—
Tried on a few classes, Guardian was easiest for me:

-Judge’s Intervention to Scarlet (Do not move forward after cast, stay still, attempt a stomp, moving further ahead risks you getting knocked back)
-Orange circle appears, count 1 second and use Renewed Focus (Invulnerability)
-Retry the stomp, should get it this time.

Was told that the renewed focus isn’t working to help him do this.
Any other tips for guardian? D=

worked for me and this was shortly before I made the edit to that post, as soon as I saw “invulnerable” on my screen indicating that I was hit, I immediately interrupted the cast and smashed that F button.

The fight with Scarlet was a nice and a refreshing change – reminded me of some raid mechanics in other popular MMO’s.

Every LS story release seems to follow a very similar formula and doesn’t deviate from it much, there is usually one “master event” and a bunch of smaller events that contribute to this “master event” and you’re right, it’s just constant fighting for this 30-45min period, not much of a change of pace.

@Konrad, it’s hard to get team work going when the variable is a large number of players who don’t know each other is participating, I think what you’re after might be more dungeon/fractal related where there is more flexibility in that kind of thing, in a world/zone boss, it has to be made easy so even the dumbest of players can complete it, this is why these encounters might not be super challenging, though I gotta say these fights are getting better.

Balgus.3468:

worst part is the unskipable cut scene lol i’ve failed a few times, so i’m kinda tired of the cutscene now lol

This!

Making the cutscene not skip-able is clearly an awesome design and creative decision….

—
Tried on a few classes, Guardian was easiest for me:

-Judge’s Intervention to Scarlet (Do not move forward after cast, stay still, attempt a stomp, moving further ahead risks you getting knocked back)
-Orange circle appears, count 1 second and use Renewed Focus (Invulnerability)
-Retry the stomp, should get it this time.

Believe this is a GW2 server issue, always during primetime since this recent patch that things become unplayable, either I get stuck on a zone loading screen until I error out, or if I do manage to get in, the lag is just ridiculous I might as well not bother.

Obviously something has changed with their coding since the last patch, prehaps some of their optimisations they might have done to help cope with the demand from this patch might have caused some conflicting issues.

Either way for me, it was all working fine pre-patch, I hope this gets resolved before my interest starts to fade.

audio playback is not amazing in the game, as a consumer i feel it doesn’t compliment the environments well at all, things that should feel epic don’t.

Sound quality in true surround is really bad, the balancing of the playback through each channel hasn’t been optimized at all, it’s passable on emulated surround but honestly though it feels this games sound engine is designed for stereo/2.1.

Too Long Lost Interest

to be honest, the lag is probably going to be manageable if its ends up attracting player numbers like in the scarlet events – what is more of a concern, which to be honest I don’t think has been addressed is the sound issues when large crowds are together, you know when it cuts out and then at times never plays anything so you sit in silence or get sounds that don’t play correctly.
It’s an important aspect to a game and it seems to be severely overlooked since launch…!

the last time i raged at a video game was when i was 14 or 15…. TM has no place in an MMORPG imo… but hey, they gotta to cater to the 0.1% though…

no real uses, just gimmicks…. the only thing that is truly useful is the stick… what they should have done , instead of giving useless items that have maybe one or two uses throughout the worlds (ahem 400 bauble torch!) – and especially since it’s taken themes from Zelda, is the upgrading of the main weapon… much like Link’s Master Sword…..

I’m sure they considered it but it’s down to development time, since they’ll need to build the content for each scenario, it’s a lot of work for the short turn around time from production to release and doing this could dilute the content.

I think they’re on the right track with what they’re doing with the Scarlet character and am looking forward to seeing the story unfold, what they’re doing is fine, having a “bioware” approach to storytelling would be interesting, though with their current resources I don’t think we’ll see it happen anytime soon.

Merendel.7128:

Its really rather trivial to get that number of baubles if your smart about it except if you run the whole thing on infintile. go to dufly and follow one of their guids to the world 1 dig spots. Even after the nerf from the april version you could still easily get 400+ baubles once a day going through and hiting them all, only downside is they dont show up in infintile.

Asside from the requirement of the torch I really cant see how they could make infintile mode any easier for you short of just puting a button where you zone in labled press F for loot and achievements. I ran it for the achievement after I’d already done tribulation mode and compaired to the 4 hour slog of learning that with no guides it was downright dull. Do you even have any achievements for the open world jumping puzzles that didnt involve a mesmer port? because I cant think of many that were easier than infintile mode if you disregard having to fight the storm wizard at the end.

And ya, torch might be a waste for only 2 uses if you just want to clear on infintile but you need it alot more to uncover all the secrets in the zone. If your really wanting to be stingy just partner up with someone thats already got it, they can open the door for you.

I think your answer is pretty heavily biased and one sided here, especially since you’re saying how easy and dull TM is, objectively speaking it is very true that there such a huge spike not only in difficulty, but also in length and higher progression barriers as well as upgrade costs in comparison to the first world, there doesn’t seem to be a median between to the two, it just suddenly went from , “oh that is cool, fun and straight forward” to.. . “uhhh, what the hell…” – at least that was my first thought, I generally run achievements first from hardest to easiest so my first stop was in infantile mode, I was pretty surprised as how lengthy it was, especially in W2Z3, whilst the pretty rainbow takes you to the end it is still quite a trek the first time you do it, and that Storm Wizard boss, I like the design of the fight minus the charge ability, but I hate how the skills work for the encounter, the “push” has a ridiculously slow animation and makes it feel clunky and worst of all it’s key binded to 9…….. , and the hit boxes of the enemies are small, it makes it feel unresponsive, especially when you’re wacking the lightning balls.

As for the torch I definitely agree that it was by far the most stupidest barrier to add and I can definitely see how frustrating that is for casual players or those that didn’t also farm the living hells out of World 1 back in April, the cost is just a bit on the silly side.

Though once the zones are done on a regular basis, it all falls into place and it becomes easier as you begin to know the routes and enemy distribution.

Though I do feel World 1 was perfect, World 2 seems at least to me has fallen into the trap of quantity over quality, some parts just seem un-necessarily long.

Oh for Baubles, if you can muster it… learn the route for 1-1 TM, you’ll get 250 baubles for the end (daily) chest and doing this over several days you can build up enough to afford the upgrades without the feeling of “excessive grinding” if you know what I mean.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You’re right about the new Goldsinks. Crafting to 500, and salvaging Exotics to get rare mats are going to be hugely expensive. I wasn’t expecting this when John confirmed he had plans to address the current month’s Gold making events. We do have a few days before the patch hits, so it’s time to farm farm farm!

Yeah things will get pretty expensive, though there is still some exotics on the TP that give great value, at the time of this posting , “Scepter of the Highborn” is a good investment at 1.5g, with a BL salvage kit you can recoup around 1.3g from the sigil and have a good chance to walk away with some ecto’s, it has some risk but it’s minimal in comparison to other items.

yeah , the rise made me wish i didn’t offload a bunch last week, i lost money… – glad i’m not on wall street

the item will usually have a ! tag if it was time limited and read “available for xx days” at it reaches its finale.
it doesn’t have this tag yet which i suspect its here to stay, though if you’re sitting on the fence for it- it means you’re clearly thinking about grabbing it, might as well just go for it and not have to worry about it going away – otherwise you’ll just have to keep a keen eye on it.

You could be right, his linkedin profile suggest that he has left the company, marking his current position at ANET as : "March 2011 – August 2013 (2 years 6 months) " , if he was still at the company, it would read “March 2011 – Current”.

Shame.

underwater combat isn’t that bad, though the issues i dislike with it is the Z-depth targeting and enemy hit boxes, most times when you target something with your spear and you wack it , it doesn’t always connect and it’s hard to distinguish your position in relation to the hit zone, though the issue with a trident/harpoon gun is less problematic (despite the really low dmg it does).

The only MMO where I’ve seen underwater combat successful is in WoW’s Cataclysm expansion, the Vashj’ir zone was really nice and became my first destination to level with in alts, the Z-depth/speed and fluidity of it felt much better, though no discredit to ANET dev’s, it’s fantastic what they’ve done so far, just not really feeling it from a player’s perspective.

i think that in the future, that if they ever do decide to introduce another pick, they’ll update the ones from the gem store to work with the latest iteration of the pick – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t, given the cost of owning a full set and it’s soulbound condition.
Though a consequence is that if they don’t it could severely break consumer confidence if they do release similar items like this in the future.

I’m still surprised the sound issues haven’t been resolved yet, this has been a problem since launch and one year later one of the most important technical aspects of the game still lays a problem, this breaks the immersion so much.

check the patch notes..

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-20-2013

Mad Rasputin.7809:

sazberryftw.3809:

Anet have said they will have infusions and sigils.

Where did they say this? I am unable to find this source. Not saying it doesn’t exist, I just can’t locate it.

I read it on Dulfy’s site , was source link too, though I didn’t click it.

to be honest, players had plenty of time to redeem the fused weapons, don’t really know why people sit on the claim tickets so long, it’s like buying a lottery ticket, win a cash sum and never claim it…….

if i’m really honest, if you lose your chance to claim, you have no one else to blame but yourself.

Solo.9027:

Crystals are like 50 cents each, just skip adding cheese to your whopper for a couple days.

This made me LOL out loud for 2 minutes!

Quick Mouse.7635:

Guild Halls, GvG.

This and Hall of Heroes

Algreg.3629:

Treeline.3865:

Algreg.3629:

yes, it is frightening. Burglars will come to your home this very night, put a gun to your temple and make you buy those minis.

That argument is as empty as it gets.
A burglar will also come and tell me to stop playing GW2. But like the game itself we happen to care about a lot of things within the game. Surprise.

yes, and minis are the centre of the game. You really have to have something because it is just there and not doing much. No, my argument is not empty. It was a satiric exaggeration. The complaint was “oh no, they introduced something new to buy into the game, I have to buy it”, in plainer words, my reply is: well, you are not forced to buy anything.

I honestly don’t see the appeal of Mini’s ? even in the original GW, infact I actually rarely ever see anyone during my time in the game run around with one constantly active- their function seems very trivial…..

Ridley.3691:

2) The invasions are pretty exhausting, after doing a few and having to go around being in combat most of the time, only getting a quarter of an hour break before going an doing another.

3) The events get boring quite quickly. There’s not really much variety, it’s just ‘Kill a bunch of mobs’, then waypoint and ‘kill another bunch of mobs’, for 40/45 minutes.

These so-called leechers miss out anyway though, since by not doing the events they don’t get all the extra champ chests.

Exactly these points, I’ve seen a fair few doing the same and I can see why they do it but they only really get the reward at the end, if any the number is usually pretty small that it doesn’t generally affect the outcome of the farm zergs or those actually wanting to complete the event (though the conflict does lie with those wanting to farm and those wanting to complete).

Constantly doing them all the time burns you out, don’t get me wrong it’s really fun when doing them the first 10 times, then the next 10 it’s like.. ughh… then another 10 you begin to not really care and so on.

It’s hard to separate the group of “leechers” because you get a group that do it purposely for every event, then you get the group of those that do it partly for an objective, i.e the daily achievement that requires you to be there or the LS category.

As I said previously, the offending number seems to be quite small that it doesn’t really affect the outcome too much.

Psychol.5783:

Selling or not selling is a gamble like everything in this game. No matter what will you do you’ll be gambling.

Yep, ANET are training a new generation of brokers and traders! when you guys make it to wall street – you better not cause another economic crisis!

lordkrall.7241:

Changing gem-store item after people have bought it would be extremely stupid.

Indeed.
It won’t happen, I’d be willing to say that a change now would probably upset a lot more players than those asking for the change, they’ll be massive pitchforks at ANETs front doors asking for a refund for those who committed to several sets.

don’t think it’ll happen, a lot of people probably have already bought multiple sets for their alts when these were first available , making it account bound now would be a PR disaster for them.

Adam.4103:

No chance, if you want the skins do Fractals and hope you get them. Fractal skins should be obtainable in a better way for people that run Fractals on a regular basis. People that don’t do the content should never have access to them.

exactly this- some skins need to stay exclusive to the content.
we already got “welfare” pinks, which I still think should have remained exclusive to Fractals.

Buttercup.5871:

It makes no sense in that forum either. The person from Anet that posted it had no clue about this issue.

People that naturally redeemed tickets – as there was no info that they could be used after the (winter’s day/fused) event – got punished twice for doing so. First for having to choose a skin then as opposed to later, and second for not being able to sell that skin now. Meanwhile people can bug the system by buying a skin on the TP, stacking it with their account bound skin and…. voila, both can be sold.

Ps. the winter’s day event had rare weapon tickets too, but you could also buy the skins directly in the store.

I think the use of the term punished here is wrong and a bit strong in your reply – you can’t predict the future and honestly though back then the skins were not really in a trade-able sense nor did the community suspect so, those that really wanted a skin back then gambled in the RNG boxes for personal use, not really for the profit gain half a year later, if we all knew about this change ahead of time pretty sure we’d all be doing it right?

Those that bug it like you said could be exploiting it and you know how that’ll turn out.

DeWolfe.2174:

I think LA can be called LA. Everything else needs more clarification. Say “DR” and I’ll not connect it to Divinity’s Reach because I rarely ever go there.

Humans…. think the whole world revolves around them. #smh

;)

I agree, when one of the NPC’s used DR as an abbreviation in the dialogue I was thinking… what in the blue hells is DR? and it only hit me towards the end what it was referring to.

It’s good to see that these cultural cities are used in the Living Story, haven’t visited Divinity in a while so it was good to see it again, and populated too.

It’s a shame thinking about it, cause the artists have spent a great deal of time building these cities and most of them aren’t even used, though as common practice players do tend to stick to the city that has the most connectivity to the game world, in this case LA.

Though back on topic with this stage of the LS, it’s great to see the numbers in the maps, especially in LA, feels more like a city now with the culling off, before it felt like a small outpost if you know what I mean.
The invasion event has been the most fun I’ve had with the LS since F&F’s final dungeon.

got booted out when i tried to warp to DR.
:(

marnick.4305:

It took 4 years for GW1 to fix ranger pets in PVE. Don’t get your hopes up. Even in PVP their primary function was to die (iway, necro factory)

Pets were a pretty vital part in the IWAY combo from what I remember- so vital that even the Warriors took them.

But yeah I find pets in team play quite troublesome and that’s partly due to the pets AI being mostly automated, it needs a system similar to WoW’s pet system.

I think it’s been removed from the dailies cycle, intentional or not, as of this posting there isn’t a usual daily available for the pavilion living story, looks like you may have to complete one of the other achievements to get the meta.

i hope you saved a screenshot

DeWolfe.2174:

No thank you… Being a mature adult, I don’t need to explore or entertain such childish impulses.

Oh no he didn’t!

Aeolus.3615:

Next step!

Asuran Space Agency, puddle jumpers and portals in space, fight the space dragon and space pirates.

PUDDLE JUMPERS!
I haven’t heard that in a while!

We just need the Asura to build a city in the ocean and were set!

the game has always had lag when you have a lot of people in one place smashing action skills……

panzer.6034:

Idk if i’ll use any of them, but they are clearly Art Deco in origin.

Yeah it’s something you’d hang on a wall or a stand, like those Japanese Samurai Swords.

Tachenon.5270:

He got so busy researching stuff to talk about during missions that he forgot to water himself and wilted away.

Please let this be true!