Guild Wars 2

That stinking fail of a tiny expansion has a whole of 4 maps – and most of those maps can´t even be played without managing my playtime after a not existing ingame-timer (third-party tools ftw) and relying on an ingame lfg-tool which is much worse than most fan-made third-party tools.

And if I wasn´t reading the forum I wouldn´t even know by now that something like a TD-meta even exits.

Shame on Anet for their awfully bad gameplay-design, shame on you elitists for not using your brain on how this will work out for the population of the game (and no, making it maybe to hard is only the last of their fails here).

Sarie.1630:

There is solo-able content out there.

But mostly only in VB. Atleast almost all of the repeatable stuff and what the HoT-maps are finally about is focused on map-wide coordination and timers, DS is even almost shut down without massive coordination.

They´ve gone too far, even more with all the issues which hinder that coordination.

Sarie.1630:

There is solo-able content out there.

But mostly only in VB. Atleast almost all of the repeatable stuff and what the HoT-maps are finally about is focused on map-wide coordination and timers, DS is even almost shut down without massive coordination.

They´ve gone too far, even more with all the issues which hinder that coordination.

With the addition of 3 evenings, 4 meta-event participations, 4 disconnects during the dragonfight and a lot of cursing I finally was able to do it (thanks to being in a group – while being in a squad just gave me wrong error-messages instead of taking me back to the right map).

As also mentioned earlier in this thread, leaning was the problem as permanent leaning really lowers the gliding-distance (very unlike to other parts of GW2 where being faster adds more moving-distance).

GlitchyBat.3682:

I was surprised glancing through the topic names, none seem to reference it.

I mentioned it in another thread but my post was deleted as I also wrote what I think about the intelligence of those who made the decisions for all that gating.

I had no problem to reach that heropoint with the weavern on my DH maybe a week ago (with gliding rank 3) but in the meantime they obviously added some invisible walls to that tree where the dragon dies. I looked it up in the wiki and watched a linked vid but wasn´t able to make it anymore with my ranger.

As someone else stated: all their gating was useless as the hardcore-crowd still has their masteries finished within a few weeks, while it´s a big annoyance for those who want to take their time and play just for fun.

Decrypter.1785:

I would much rather see patches of fixes than Red texts anyways . So lets see what tomorrow brings 17th patch day , n cheer up

Actually I feel like I wasted good ten minutes of my lifetime reading that wall of text aka the patch-notes – which almost nothing even half important in it.

But that´s enough complaining for me – because I don´t care much for the game anymore.

TD sucks because it is mostly a tunnel-level with a lot of dead ends on top, doesn´t feel like “open-world” to me – even more as my shiny new gliding skills are almost useless in there for crossing that area.

Another bad point: the blocked access to Dragon´s Stand is a major design-sin for an almost full-price expansion which offers only 4 new maps in total and for how hard it is to get rid of the blocking.

Terrahero.9358:

WeedyZeGreedy.8635:

you cannot solo dry top or SW either which were the initial zones

But you dont have to in order to unlock traits, weapon skills and utility skills.

So there’s that.

With this change to 250 HP (which I appreciate) you could also get more than 210 without even setting a foot into HoT-maps – and the remaining 4 Hero challenges in HoT can easily be cherrypicked without much fighting at all.

Trayzer.7268:

anyway, i forced myself through some hero challenges, wasted a few gold for TPing from wp to wp to find accessible ones that didn’t pop up the stupid “you need mastery XY before you can access this area” window and with only 25 HP left to fully unlock reaper i’ll head back to wvw / core tyria to get them.

I also am easily frustrated from gating like on some hero-points, either through masteries or too hard mobs. But knowing myself well enough I waited for video-guides to do them (and to choose which ones to skip), though it feels almost a little like cheating as a lot are very easy to get that way.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Actually, since WOW, most of the MMO’s open world content is soloable other than some elite missions and bosses.

That´s not true for GW2 anymore since they introduced champs and elite-mobs to ordinary camp-defend-events in Orr.

And even more since SilverWastes: you can´t succeed on that map without some kind of organisation or atleast a good amount of other players.

Ordinary HoT-events are even clearly easier and downscaling better than defending a fort in SW.

A good method of uncovering Verdant Brinks is using one of the choppers (when they are available) to bring you up into the treetops + gliding down from there into the direction of the undiscovered Areas.

Also during nightcycle there are a lot more mobs than during daytime.

Generally speaking, I feel like you have to be much closer now to a loot-drop to be able to get it than before HoT.

I had situations in the Mad King´s lab while “farming” one of the doors with a big group where I didn´t even get the loot-message from a drop on the other end of the door.

In Europe it´s 45 Euro directly from Anet and compared to the price and size of the original game I would say this is to expensive.

I bought a key in some internet gameshop for 30 Euro though and I think so far: that´s a very justified amount.

I must add that I didn´t really play anymore for almost a year and didn´t even plan to buy it, even more given the posts about the 400 hero points and gating of hero challenges.

While I still think that Anet has it overdone with 400 hp and all the gating (masteries, hero point challenges, interdependable and maybe to hard events and adventures) there are a ton of new things added – but it´s in the end up to personal taste what someone prefers.

For me:

- the new maps to explore (only seen Verdant Brinks so far; yes, complicated and large but makes it longer interesting; complex and beautyfull piece of art for a game´s map imo)
- gliding skills for moving around on the maps
- a ton of new materials and receipts for crafting
- new stats for armor and weapons
- new weapons and elite-specs for old classes
- Rev as a new class

not so much for me:

- guild-halls and -features
- raids
- new storyline (I personally really hate doing the story)

I suggest looking through YouTube-vids from players, best help for making a decision.

Derigar.7810:

Engineer: Hammer:

1.
(A) Friction Swing: Swing your hammer and gather heat.
(B) Heated Swing: Swing your hammer again, gathering more heat.
(C ) Blasting Cap: Smash the super heated hammer into the ground, detonating the blasting cap on its tip.

Giving the engineer another almost useless autoattack – sounds like that could be true.

Even on my guard I don´t like the hammer-aa-chain – and he has a lot more stability and condition cleaning options than my engineer.

While hammers might sound cool for engineer because of looks and theme, imo they don´t fit the gameplay of an engineer in GW2 because of the above restrictions.

Andred.1087:

It’s OK everybody, I bravely took the plunge and risked everything by not doing my dailies yesterday, and it turns out I’m still breathing. No thanks necessary. Keep trucking out there.

Funny thing, I recognized the same. Upon realizing that, I concluded that I could even risk to not play GW2 at all for a few days – worked out well so far.

Vayne.8563:

People speculation about the game dying but it hasn’t happened and doesn’t look like it’s going to anytime soon.

One of those topics where the answer depends on how you read the question: of course GW2 will exist as long as servers are running – though that´s not what most players will mean.

And on top of all the speculation one thing is certain: GW2 lost around 20% of it´s sales in 3rd quarter 2014 compared to 3rd quarter 2013.

http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx

So maybe the game is not dying soon – after what definition ever – but it`s also far from beeing stable. There´s a good economic reason for the NPE and daily-revamp (while those are lacking as part of a solution in my opinion – but that´s another topic).

McSlappy.1372:

ROFL with Lineage and WildStar which has been regarded and mostly a failure is beating out GW2………………………….

Given, that the WildStar-number must contain release-sales in the second quarter, I would say the numbers are bad for WildStar.

What seems more interesting to me is the rather heavy decline in GW2-sales itself up to the 3rd quarter 2014 (in your second link).

And if I compare 3rd quarter 2013 to 3rd quarter 2014 GW2-sales decreased also around 20% – even with Living Story 2 being released in summer 2014. Not the best outcome for the Living Story as driving force in my opinion.

Tachyon.5897:

I’m posting this on behalf of my girlfriend. She wan’s to know how she can do today’s three PvE dailies when one is to do events in Frostgorge Sound and she doesn’t have a character of higher enough level to survive in that map?

What´s the highest level on her account? There was another post, claiming an account with max-level 41 had Southsun events as a daily, so maybe there´s even an issue with level-scaling?

Teon.5168:

Something like 3ap for doing one, 6ap for doing 2, and 10ap for doing all 3.

Interesting post – and looks like a good suggestion.

Rozbuska.5263:

- They are company and companies want create money dou you think they have 300+ employees on paycheck what do nothing? Dont be fools guys.

Dry top and SW with all those new mobs, events, new mechanics, new receipts, new stats and a ton of other new stuff are by far the biggest content-addition since release.

These 2 maps were certainly not built by a 20-person LS-team within a few months (who probably did nothing else but the instanced and cutscene parts). Probably these 2 maps were at least an important part of the big projects they talked about.

China release, all those more or less lucky changes we received this year (feature patches, trait revamp, wallet, NPE, daily-revamp, updated festivals, . . .) certainly took a lot of time on top of that.

Another hint are dungeons: an expansion certainly would bring new dungeons, still we heard in summer, they are not working on some or have plans to do that.

So looking into my crystal ball I still don´t see a full expansion 2015 – though I would be happy about that (well, not knowing Anet´s design-decisions for one, most probably . . .).

So I hope to be able to play Camelot Unchained Beta in summer, but except that I also don´t see much alternative MMO´s for me (maybe Black Desert, may turn out like Archeage though)

Vayne.8563:

By my calculation they’ve been working on it for almost a year already. That’s how long the big names have been silent for.

This would be a 180-degree turn from Mike O´Briens statement within a few months – so maybe you´re even right?

Ardenwolfe.8590:

“We don’t need an expansion to pay the bills, and we’re not focused on an expansion right now. I won’t try and predict the future, maybe someday we will do one, maybe we won’t. But for now we are focused on the living world. We believe we can update the world and adapt the world in any way we want to through these bi-weekly updates.”

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Are you not fully aware most expansions, from the start, take a minimum of two years to storyboard, write, create, and polish? We’re not even talking alpha and beta testing to weed out the kinks.

I don´t like that outcome but Ardenwolfe has the best arguments here.

Since the above quoted Anet statement is from mid-2013 and I also believe that it would take atleast 1,5 – 2 years to make a full expansion the best logical guess is: no release in 2015.

Saint.5647:

I’m absolutely stunned right now. Can people really not do the choir?!? Barring genuine disabilities, I don’t understand how that’s possible.

100% honest question: If the choir is too difficult and the Wintersday dailies are too much of a challenge, what can you do in this game except the zerg world events?

Don’t take it as a hit or anything, I’m actually just curious.

Don´t know about you, but I want to play a MMO and not Guitar Hero. I also would have to remap my keys everyday to be able to do it.

So it´s not difficulty or challenge, it´s simply annoying for me.

I´ve done the daily a few times with the JP which I found to be more of a challenge to my taste (and JP´s are atleast GW2-content from start and are about moving your character which for me is a lot more tied to actual gameplay) but overall it gets old to do the same tasks every day.

yolo swaggins.2570:

But restricting existing features will only irritate the playerbase more than motivate them to explore other parts of the game. You simply can’t push players into content. All you can do is attract them.

In my eyes, this decision is meant to suppress the hunger for content by getting players used to content they would not normally try. It is not going to work as well as they want.

- good statement

I remember WvW-season one and what it did to cues: it´s also not always the best for the specific game-mode to force players into them. The same goes for the new pvp-dailies, calling for special classes can be bad, going in as a new player, beeing stomped all over can be bad.

Improvements to pvp and wvw are the real way to go.

Over all I have mixed feelings concerning the daily and would appreciate more Pve-options. I was also someone who never did the old full 10 AP-daily – but it still was nice to receive a few AP for actually playing the game.

Besides the rewards it gave some structure to my playing time while still giving enough room to play where and whatever I wanted and left atleast a little feeling of accomplishment – while a part of the new dailies often is too much of an annoyance and waste for me.

The wintersday-meta is simply a bad joke in a MMO and makes me ask the sanity of some decision-makers – and of future metas.

Almost the same goes for the mostly failed trait-revamp and how they can leave that mess that long while on the other hand they want to bring new players to the game, who really suffer from those changes the most.

There is a good amount of things that can be frustrating in there, still I prefer it for the Wintersday daily to Bell Choir.

Maybe another tip: I want to see the full legs of my character, makes the aiming and timing of jumps a lot easier for me.

Doesn´t look like the NPE did was it was supposed to do . . .

To be fair, as far as I know, the Chinese version has a lot more aggressive gemshop and Kongzhong received a lot of bad feedback for that and on other issues from their side.

lordkrall.7241:

OMG, today they force me to CRAFT stuff. Exotic and up even! How dare they?
I refuse to craft, pls fix!!!!

/s

Really impressed with your great input, please maintain your immense efforts to keep reasonable discussions and a community non-toxic and healthy. But, on the other hand, what else could be expected?

Vayne.8563:

Because now, without doing anything, you’re actually better off than you were under the old system.

. . . while the old dailies where a better tool for Anet to make people actually play instead of only logging in and out and as most of the new dailies are too restricting for a lot of people to give a good replacement. So I´m not really sure if this will pay out for Anet in the current version.

From personal point of view I would say World bosses for dailies are ok, timed world bosses are ok – but the number of available daily Pve-options is awfully bad and the real problem.

Traced.3495:

Locce.8405:

Dailies used to count toward festival meta events, so that an avid player could easily skip festival activities that he did not like. But this Winterday they do not count and we need 11 of 11 available achievements…

I just learned about this and I’m pretty shocked. Why this kind of step backwards? I thought the festival worked brilliantly last year. I got a lot of it done with the dailies. Doing things I wanted to do anyway. :/

The lists:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/A_Very_Merry_Wintersday_%28achievements%29

Usually I don´t care for achievements but this years meta-reward is something I actually want.

Now I´m left to decide to hate Anet for not getting the reward or for forcing me to grind 500 bell-choir-notes in a MMO (of course even with adjusting my keymapping every time I work on it; would rather do the jumping-puzzle achievemant than that)

However one interprets “play however you want”, what really matters is that the current direction is clearly much more restricting for gameplay than before.

I just have a hard time to see how restricting options should attract more players and hold the vets interested – and why the usual crowd thinks it´s a good idea to kitten off players instead of pleasing more with a few easy adjustments and more options.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

hydeaut.1758:

DaveGan.8065:

Halthur.9654:

I personally was using the dailies for my alts exp.

Now logging in every day for 28 days gets you 10 levels worth of tomes. I suspect you can pick even more tomes with the 28th day bonus.

I have my issues with this change, but experience for your alts should be the least of your worries.

If you take the tomes you lose laurels compared to before.

Also I was using the XP for low level alts/keyfarming, where 1 daily achievement gave more than on high level.

And concerning the AP, as you already stated 5 are better than none.

On the other sides laurels are easier to get now and also additional rewards from the new dailies.

In the end the change has also downsides for me and I ask myself if that dev-time wouldn´t have been better spent on something else.

Doing the achievements still gives the same amount of exp (5%) but now in a consumable form which is account bound. You can just save these, give ’em to your lowbie and level up like that.

I guess you mean that new XP-scrolls for the new dailies?

At first such a scroll gives a lot less XP than what a daily achievement gave before on low level (maybe half of that former XP, if at all; already had a look on that, hoping it would be some kind of replacement for the lost XP).

Second, you still have to do the new dailies to receive them – and most of the new dailies are not worth the extra time for the XP given while before I could manage most dailies with normal gameplay and some even only finishing on my alts (4 fast events on 80 in SW, 5th event for finishing the daily in queensdale).

DaveGan.8065:

Halthur.9654:

I personally was using the dailies for my alts exp.

Now logging in every day for 28 days gets you 10 levels worth of tomes. I suspect you can pick even more tomes with the 28th day bonus.

I have my issues with this change, but experience for your alts should be the least of your worries.

If you take the tomes you lose laurels compared to before.

Also I was using the XP for low level alts/keyfarming, where 1 daily achievement gave more than on high level.

And concerning the AP, as you already stated 5 are better than none.

On the other sides laurels are easier to get now and also additional rewards from the new dailies.

In the end the change has also downsides for me and I ask myself if that dev-time wouldn´t have been better spent on something else.

I hate that I even have to deal with that crap if I want the wintersday-daily, good job!

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Devildoc.6721:

If you make it a circled area then you’ll NEVER convince dead people to waypoint and run back, since they won’t want to get screwed out of the reward on the run back.

From what I’ve seen, they don’t waypoint back regardless.

I recently died at the Indigo-Teragriffs (after killing Copper; jumped into the middle of the breach-hole and BAAAAM – instantly dead, probably because atleast 1 Teragriff was standing there, great fun) and realized on respawning that my buff from the extractor was gone (wtf? even more fun!).

As a result I took another extractor to be sure to receive the reward for the whole breach event, while it was already to late to get back. Next time I will also keep laying dead for the rest of the event.

lordkrall.7241:

I would say it is rather unfair to include companies that actually haven’t released anything yet.

Zenith.6403:

Unreleased game is always the best game, because your judgment is not based on facts and merits of the game, but manipulations of clever marketing.

I´m also not sure if Camelot Unchained will be a success, but the way CSE handles their community and communication obviously is. In other words: Mike O´Brien is wrong.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/11/massivelys-best-of-2014-awards-best-mmo-studio/

Started yesterday and therefore likely will still change but currently CSE (City State Entertainment) is clearly leading with almost 30% of votes while Anet is somewhere in the middle with about 5%.

CSE is Mark Jacobs´ kickstarter-project for Camelot Unchained which currently is only pre-Alpha. As a kickstarter-game it has a very high level of transparency and there are e-mail-newsletters almost every week about what they are working on, screenshots, concept-art and so on.

In my opinion this shows a clear message:

- many players are fed up with the direction most of the industry takes (following metrics instead of experience and inspiration, ingameshops, . . .)
- transparency and open communication are the way to go (CSE wanted to be Alpha already in Summer, didn´t hurt them to be late)

wasted.6817:

Frankly, to completely fix this they will need to do a complete remake of the whole system, which is obviously not gonna happen.

I also wouldn´t be surprised if further options for effects would simply be limited by how the GW2-engine works – as this was discussed before and we received only a general option which doesn´t do much.

And I really wonder how Anet will perform in designing raid-encounters if they aren´t even able to give us such options – which I would consider as “must-have”-basics for raids.

“It takes 1 year for a new map” – if I´m right, something like this once was in a dev-post – though I also find it strange given the original size of GW2.

Still, the point is: a LS-team of 20 people certainly didn´t build these maps alone (if they even were involved in something else than the instanced part of LS).

And you know the words: size alone doesn´t matter . . . The new maps are rather small but filled with a lot more than vanilla-maps or Southsun.

A lot of speculation in this topic is based on what we heard about the number of people working on LS (around 20?) and the number of all Anet-employees (around 300?) which leads to conclusions like: the rest of 280 people must also work on something.

What´s probably wrong in this conclusion is the definition of LS and LS-team: I´m quite sure that number of 20 people was not ment to include those people working on the Drytop- and SW-maps and all the events, new mobs and other things coming with them (“it takes 1 year for a new map”).

I wouldn´t be surprised if Drytop and SW were the “big projects in the background”.

Dweia Tulenhenki.8127:

It took 4,5 h to find that loot chest, but that skritt wasn’t there

The Skritt-Vet comes out of the chest after opening it (you can find parts of the key in the surrounding of the chest).

I find the JP a great addition to the SW-area – but probably would have gone mad without a video-guide

Linda The Furious.8431:

- Austria
- ISP: A1
- After 19:00 basically not able to play anymore

There are already several posts in the German Forum about that internetprovider from the last days.

I strongly believe in this case it´s due to the recent introduction of netflix and Amazon-prime-videostreaming in Austria (available since around 1 week, with 30 days trial period) – and an internet provider slacking strongly, selling a bandwidth which it can´t really keep (traceroute shows me a timeout even to their own server, a1.net).

Of course it´s also an issue with GW2 and probably it´s netcode because other onlinegames still work better (Battlefield 4 runs, shows even a good latency – but also feels wonky and skewed)

Vayne.8563:

You can’t go back in time and capture the bulk of the market share now. You had to be there at the time.

Still GW2 sold how many copies? It also had a good share of the market after release I would say.

If anything, only an expansion might bring back a meaningfull part of those players, no NPE or Living story will be able to achieve this on it´s own.

That place in the center of the labyrinth has 2 entries and the shortest way is not always the best.

And I´ve opened the big pod there about 5 times so far and always received one rare and some other things. But Necromancer for sure isn´t the best class for the labyrinth, that´s certainly a little downside.

It depends very much on the class.

I also wouldn´t want to go in there with my guard or necro but had a lot of fun on my ranger with greatsword and on engi with elixir S and rocket boots. A thief with stealth-skills probably should be able to get through without much dying at all.

And of course it helps to learn the ways and to keep an eye on the mini-map for the wolves.

I also found it surprisingly funny to hunt for the pods, bringing class- and weapon-skills for moving faster, for stealth and for being invulnerable while avoiding or stunning the wolves (of course some classes should have a much easier time in there than others which leaves a little bad taste).

After all it felt like a nice change to the SW-events with constant pounding on high-toughness/high-hp mobs while struggling with their annoying and partly flawed mechanics and large numbers – just to see them rise and attack again a minute later.

Rewards seem also not thaaat bad, at least if you have a key from the Breach for the big pod.

But I would also say 20 minutes feel a little long, 15 minutes + more small pods (or shorter respawn-times for them) and maybe 2 – 3 wolves less would make it better imo.

I find it very strange that the driving force (contentwise) for a MMO has turned into instanced singleplayer-content.

If I wanted to play a singleplayer-game I still have gems like Witcher 2 or Skyrim lying around unfinished – and I simply can´t see how GW2 Living Story season 2 should be able to compete with games like that. That´s simply not where GW2 shines as it´s outstanding features are the open world and events.

The ONLY reason I can imagine why someone would really care for LW season 2 is because of the lore-driven story – which I don´t care about at all, in fact characters like Braham or Taimi riding her Golem (Bioshock anyone?) are borderline immersion breaking for me. Kidwars 2 ftw . . .

joe.7684:

I guess whoever was saying earlier that they’d talked to an ANet dev on-map who said the spawn rate of chests wasn’t working the way it was supposed to was telling the truth after all.

Don´t believe that “we fixed a bug”-lame-excuse, they simply didn´t think about whole maps cooperating on chest-digging.

1. tuning of graphic effects

the GW2-engine has no real option to tune down the effects which often makes it impossible to see the boss or even the own character

2. condition cap

makes condition-builds, -weapons, -classes bad for larger encounters

As long as you can´t fix these basic points all raid-design is based on swamp

spoj.9672:

My main annoyance is getting unfairly fgs rushed by teragriffs whereas we can no longer do that ourselves. :<

That teragriff-attack is even worse than fgs because they can´t drop down from walls -add to it those “artillery-plants”, which also have a very hard hitting closerange-attack and just like in real WvW, walls are more deadly for defenders, mission achieved . . .

Flawed mob-mechanics are always a big fun factor with only one waypoint, though falling to death in the Breach is still my favorite . . .

Duke Blackrose.4981:

hydeaut.1758:

And no waypoints make a tiny map feel big . . .

In attempting to refute his argument, you literally just explained why fewer waypoints is a perfect system.

I would rather say it´s a lazy system to artificially make tiny content look bigger – because a small map stays small, no matter what.

That´s also where your argument for exploration fails – one evening and I´ve seen it all, the single waypoint will stay as such though.

“Best” experience in your perfect system so far: after taking back a castle, I was stuck in an instantly repaired wall, all I could do was porting to the waypoint. Of course it was a wall in the castle in the West and the timer for the underground Boss-events started shortly after that . . .

Fernling.1729:

Yeah, the waypoints make the world feel tiny.

And no waypoints make a tiny map feel big . . .

This map needs a ton of players and coordination to beat it, lack of waypoints and mechanics like damage over time in lost castles won´t help to fill it in the long run.

This will probably end with an empty map – except for planned, coordinated runs like Tequatl or dry top rank 6.