Guild Wars 2

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

This is the most disrespectful response to a customer base I’ve seen in awhile. You DID ship half of an expansion although I’ll go as high as 60%. Half of what came out was just reworks on core systems (many of what came out for non-HoT purchasers too) and the new region was 3 and a half maps. GW2 managed those same things in feature packs before you announced expansions. Those were free! When you get $50-$100 per person, I expect that the least you can do is finish what you promised on the “box” and you hire more people if needed. Sad…

kirima san.3760:

I’ll have to agree with the others here. HoT was advertised to contain 16 new legendary weapons, 2 legendary back pieces and a set of legendary armor. The weapons were supposed to arrive at regular intervals.

Half a year later you delivered almost nothing and tell me you are suspending the development after you took my money? You cant even spare six developers to develop what I paid you for? If these weapons dont come out before the next expansions, I will not buy the next expansion.

Well done.

Agreed. I rarely ever come on here but when I heard that something we paid for is cancelled (of course without giving money back) I had to put in my word. When you sell a product that says it includes “this and that” then I expect when I buy it that I will get “this and that”. GW2 is starting to feel more like a kickstarter game where the developer can’t follow-up on promises after taking the money.

They manage to come out with dozens of skins on the gem store but they can’t manage something we already paid for? But of course. It’s cause they already have our money. Why aren’t these employees fired? The legendary team will take “years to come” to finish a single set? And you prioritized short bow? Guess Colin left for a reason. Abandon ship. Wonder what happened with things like the mace where most of the work was done but will never come out. Waste of time and resources.

Now we have a few random legendary weapons instead of the promised set, 1 of 2 legendary back pieces (with the pvp one being timed to season 1), and legendary armor (stuck only in raids and also unreleased). The description for HoT actually still has your old promise written on it (they’ll change it when they realize they need to hide that promise). GW2 spent time creating and advertising a new system for creating legendary precursors. Now that is wasted time.

Fractals, WvW, PvP, Open World, etc are all behind on promises. STOP promising what you can’t do. Raid team seems like the only ones who work which is aimed at a minority faction of the game. Great…

I miss GW1 version of ANet. At least they had employees who worked for their money and released true expansions. Now we get 60% (if generous) of a large paid patch that costs just as much as a full game. Funny he tries to use the manifesto now when almost every part of that original promise is gone. Now we have 6 people who are moved to another team and I am SURE we won’t see any change. They already proved to be slow. You pretend to have all these ideas, but the list of what you have accomplished is way smaller than all the broken promises and cancelled ideas.

Good News: Anet is adding more “quests” for items

Bad News: It’s a gemstore item so in the end it’s still something you buy instead of earn. Now you just have to buy to even get the option to “earn”

If only they would add fun quests with a story for skins instead of these collections that are just “spend x amount of gold to unlock the items”. When I heard about a quest for our precursor for example, I pictured an exciting lore quest with story. Instead we got RNG drops from random mobs to fill a collection among other disasters. I miss the GW1 Bonus Mission Pack for skin idea that I thought was a test for future GW2.

Personally, I like that they added new icons. It makes it feel more like a true evolution of the class. Like you’re no longer a ranger. You’re a druid for example. Makes sense then not to still have the ranger icon.

RapidSausage.4620:

Basically, when grenade kit is traited, the grenades strike twice, and grenade barrage receives like 12 grenades.

So in essence each grenade is twice as effective, and grenade barrage is 4x as effective.

People combine that with throw elixir S to catch people off guard and instagib then with zerker gear.

Oh wow haha I can see where that’s an issue is pvp/wvw. I mainly do pve (spent lat 2 days looking for gold badges in silverwastes which was fun) so harder to notice. Thanks for the explanation. As much as I would enjoy being more powerful that’s a bit much and probably ruins pvp.

Also, for me at least, I didn’t look at the copper fed salvage-o-matic in it’s cost of gold. I looked at it as $10 and had leftovers instead of eating out that week. Practically free to me then. Had since it came out and is well worth every penny.
Also use Mythic Kits for rares/exotics due to stacks of stones in my bank and have an entire tab of those black lion kits as well I could use. All free from getting AP and daily chests.

Speaking as someone who rarely goes to the website and mains an engineer, I’ve been using that trait because I like grenades and use them as my main source of damage since launch with condi gear. Its fun for me. I didn’t even know they were bugged or given too high damage or whatever the issue is (I actually don’t know so if anybody could calmly describe the issue I’d love to know). Much different than exploiting something to profit. Many of us playing weren’t even aware since so much changed last patch. Hard to know whats intended for those who don’t pay attention to numbers.

I tend to support Anet on most things but have to agree it’s sad to see most skins added as BL Chest skins but at least you can sell them on TP. At least they did add the new armors in game (but through grind instead of accomplishment).

Bubi.7942:

I just give up.

You are talking about an inconsistent mess, yet you change the subject in each of your posts, contradict your self within them, selectively answer to what you feel like, claim half-truths and just hide away facts. Nice.

Noticed that when he/she picked one sentence out of what I said instead of discussing anything in my post. Think it’s a troll XD

Season 1 added one zone which was poorly designed with no reason to stay, story took forever and was poorly written, took forever to have interesting events (started with repairing sign posts) and most of the main updates came from the feature patch and not the actual living story. Season 2 added two zones with different mechanics, story has been amazing (echos of the past is the best example if you haven’t played it yet), and patches been interesting events. Think you mix seasons of living story with updates since you mentioned Holidays (which were meant to be repeats), SAB, fractals, etc. which were all outside of Season 1. Although I think I get what you mean. The game could use some big new features.

When I entered the labyrinth for the first time I died within 30 secs. Once I realized how to play I could go everywhere and get to the center no problem. Was a really fun game and cool addition to the map. Sounds a lot like complaints about something you’re not good at. Got tons of blues/greens and a little over a dozen rares. Nothing amazing but fun and not like it’s hard. Repair is free everywhere (you may have been mistaken about a cost), waypoint is around 1 silver (waypoints always been based on distance and free within capital cities since launch), and the flower ability is a fun mechanic to add strategy. If you don’t enjoy it (or just aren’t good at the labyrinth) then keep farming chests. From this thread sounds like most people really enjoyed it. Why would you want a game that doesn’t change and mix things up?

For me, I always would buy the new items each week with real money then convert whatever was left over into gold to use since I work a lot and can’t farm for gold. Supported the game I loved with thousands of dollars spent and helped me keep up with gear/items I wanted. Now I’m stuck with having left over gems that can’t convert to gold directly since there isn’t an option that matches it. Only options are waste money and have random gems left I can’t use or stop spending my money. It’s an easy choice for me and means I can use the money elsewhere at the cost of a few less skins.

I opened around 20 chests, mostly free from key farming but bought 5, and got 2 whole tickets directly and enough scraps for a 3rd plus 7 left in my inventory toward a 4th. My next 1000 chests might not have a single scrap. Its RNG and should be for fun with no actual expectation of “winning”. Still better than the lottery. You get something at least XD

Like some others here, I bought the unlimited tools with cash and did it for cosmetic and convenience reasons. Bought this for my necro as well as the jack-in-the-box tool. Hope to gear all 8 of my 80s with a full set themed to their class some day because that’s what I enjoy. If saving gold is your reason, no it’s probably not worth it.

Lightsbane.9012:

i would love to see an….expansion.

Haha best response I’ve read all day. Here’s hoping to Season 2 being amazing at least. As for the topic, I’m certain they will have this again someday. They’ve had those on sale many times since launch.

Anet did great with lore in gw1 and I think season 1 of the living world was just a way to test and experiment without messing with lore fans actually cared about. Season 2 will probably update you too (the current instance you can watch in LA also sums things up). As for the map, it will expand over time. There are lore reasons we can’t go some places like far north (a dragon is there and even too cold for the norn now) and others have no reason other than not designed yet. There will be more lv80 zones and as mentioned before, GW2 scales so that every zone is worth being in with world bosses everywhere too. Welcome to the game!

Relshdan.6854:

agree….and they would fit perfectly into story journal as “instanced” 5-man content. cap it off with a boss at the end that also has a daily world-boss chest (along with the one-time story reward/skin) and a few really tough achievements.

I agree many of these mini dungeons would be great instanced. I’d say instead of 5-man though make them solo or best, scale based on how many in the party, so that they can be played years down the line when others don’t care or everyone got their daily chest after reset. SO much they could do with instanced content if they could add in scaling. Right now, whenever I’ve gone into these mini dungeons somebody else is already there and I just walk up to the end chest and get a free achievement and loot.

While it can make things more difficult for other players, the other replies are right in saying there is nothing saying that players can’t AFK wherever and whenever they want. Anet usually puts in a short AFK timer to kick players when it really matters like in PvP for example.

Technically we don’t have any guarantee that there are only the dragons known to the player. Mordremoth hadn’t woken up yet before this patch and wasn’t even known to most of the characters beyond potentially the Inquest based on the CoE. For why Mordremoth, maybe there is a deeper connection to the Sylvari we don’t know yet and Scarlet was able to be corrupted when she left the protection of the pale tree. As for the wiki I’d assume that’s all player edited but don’t quote me on it.

If they can prove that the loss of LA changes other conversations, mail, etc. then it can truly be a living world and show the possibility to finally cure Orr as well. It’s kind of sad that a poorly executed personal story could keep the world from progressing and having a better story in the future.

Matthew Oswald.3082:

The cinematics that you see in the personal story where 2 characters talk to each other on a stage-like environment have been…retired.

I’m really glad about this. I just couldn’t enjoy those types of “cut scenes” no matter how hard I wanted to like the dialog. I actually am okay with the simple watch from above but my favorite by far are the mix of artistic and cinematic style like the collapse of the tower or when we met Marjory at the Dead End. GW1 had a great story but the cut scenes were honestly just a pan-over of the game without the UI. I remember seeing a minion attack the enemy as the characters have a conversation. Still better than the personal story style though.

While ranger does need help from anet, the problem here is more about the players. My main is ranger and I know to use passive pets and swap between my bow and sword based on what’s going on. People like rangers in any game often for bows and pets and the dps issues are something for anet to look at. Rangers causing a lane to lose are the players fault.

Haha my favorite part of the patch XD

1) Leveling is fun for me and tons of other people and gives you more to work toward with an end goal. I feel satisfied when I hit a new level and get to spend another trait point and get new skills along with a small increase in all my stats. Plus, GW2 has a fairly quick 1-80 and plenty of ways to accomplish it.

2) Exotics are already practically free. I agree on that some types of stat combos are limited in how you can get them, but you can always test out builds in pvp too. Over time they will have more ways to get stat combos and most are available on the TP. Even GW1 had a small cost for max gear but stats were done differently.

3) Eventually we will have Legendary armor where you can change the stats. Exotic was too easy to get so Ascended added an actual sense of progression. However, not everyone likes Ascended but the stat increase is minor and only really needed for Fractals and maybe WvW (although that isn’t designed for 1v1). Only issue I see is if they raise the level cap, that is a bit too much work for gear that can become worthless although it would also be another reason to make Legendary gear more valuable as it will always stay BiS.

4) No. They are getting rid of glory and pristine relics can be broken down now but everything through karma is way too easy. The currencies are rewards in different areas of the game. I like earning laurels when I finish my daily and guild commendations are a good incentive to interact with the guild. Tokens show work in certain dungeons and Badges of Honor just need more to get with them as it is one of the few things exclusive to WvW.

Overall, either of us just have an opinion. I like the long-term goals and feeling I can progress a character in some way no matter how much time I put in each day. Other like you seem to want less need to do something to become stronger in maybe a more similar design to GW1 (tried to make sure I’m not sounding like you are wrong and just stating we have different viewpoints). I played GW1 for years and miss a lot of it but I personally enjoy these new progression systems better as I felt the low level cap and easy to get max gear worked for the almost single-player style of GW1 but would get boring quick in a true MMO.

As a PvE player for about 80% of my time online, I support the WvW players with this. I have to enter WvW for map completion and JP achievements, taking up space and having to run around with the Zerg until I can get 100% of the map. With this new WvW season, I want to actually participate and help the server win but I still mainly focus on getting the achievements to receive the rewards at the end. Don’t know a better way to determine who gets the season rewards, but this system brings in a lot of players just there for themselves.

I’m not trying to be rude or say anyone is wrong, but I’m curious why everyone seems certain about who will win against who. If it was a for sure victory or loss, why even play? JQ could easily loose against any two other servers in the league that work together and I think they are loosing right now as well. I know the point of the post is saying they will have “easier” matchups, but how is everyone so confident in that they will be easy?

The game needs way to get gold out of the economy. This is a great way to do that and it’s a pirate election after all so buying votes is expected. A status bar would be interesting but not sure if that would make one side loose even worse due to people giving up on trying to support a candidate that falls far behind. Being blind, we can sink as much as we want into someone in the hope we win and make the winner announcement exciting. To answer the OP, runners won’t all vote for the same person so it won’t matter.

Since Kiel and Trahearne are equally boring and annoying, plus they both steal credit for everything, I saw we hook them up and ship them both off to Orr and tell them they can come back when all the Risen are gone.

Yaos.4528:

I’m going to vote for both candidates and get all the achievements. >:)

Haha I know its sad but so will I until I get all of them, then I’ll start going for a candidate. It was poorly designed to make exclusive achievements if you don’t want to vote for both.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Truth be told, I’d rather get the outcome of:

Reactor, Abaddon, Aetherblade/Molten

I agree. They have two potentially great fractal ideas and instead we get a return of two we already had in game, one that I hated (Aetherblade). But nothing we can do about it now. Sad to think we’ll either never see the Fall of Abaddon or get lore on the Reactor. While I personally prefer the GW1 lore returning, having both could have made everyone happy and I wouldn’t mind getting new lore too (even if it is more Asura).

I like the original posters attitude. While I’m voting for Evon due to preferring all his bonuses (yay for Southsun Survival and Abaddon!) I’m not going to be angry is Kiel wins. I would like to see Evon on the council due to a more interesting character than what I’ve felt Kiel has been, but that is personal preference and nothing more.

Plus my other reason is I’m tired of Asura stories and labs.

While I’m voting for Evon, I wouldn’t say he is guaranteed to win. The 4 week discount on WP’s will get a lot of players who don’t care about the Fractals or mini games. Personally, I prefer the key discount although I won’t buy many unless they’re cheap, prefer the Abaddon fractal, and prefer Southsun Survival since the Hunger Games style game was my favorite in the betas. In the end, I’m set on my vote but many aren’t.

What Serious said. If you’ve been neutral until now, maybe one of the mini games is better for you. Lucky for me, I was voting Evon and he has my favorite game from the Beta … Hunger Games style survival!

I just can’t take another Asuran lab dungeon/Fractal and curious how well they can handle some pre-GW1 lore. The biggest disappointment I had with GW2 was the lack of ties to the original game, but I also don’t expect the Fractal to be as amazing as many thing it will be. But compared to another Asura lab, Abaddon gets my vote hands down.

While this was basically a very long rant to try and support Kiel, you can flip it and say Evon is more story focused due to it actually using any real ties to GW lore instead of more Asuran stories like more than half of GW2 uses. I see it as voting over an interest in connections to the original game compared to making up new lore. While I’m supporting Evon for the lore, either way is going to give more monetary things added to the gem store and more Living Stories going forward. This vote is basically just for the Fractal you prefer.

JayMack.8295:

At a guess, Kiel told some influential Asura that if she won, she would fund research into the Thaumanova Reactor in exchange for them reducing waypoint costs for a time.

What has me more interested, though, is that a Charr is interested in the fall of a Human God.

Ya that’s kind of what I was thinking. The whole Asura thing has been done a million times but ANet must have some interesting plot on why a Charr cares about the fall of a human god. My vote mainly came down to I’m done with Asura plots.

I have a feeling the winner will be the one with more focus in the story going forward and Kiel is way to boring a character. Sadly, like many said, they had to make the Fractals the true argument because the characters aren’t compelling enough to care about otherwise. The Abaddon Fractal is too cool to pass up and I honestly can’t stand more Asuran stories, so I’ll be stuck voting for a Fractal instead of candidate too. Both Fractals should have been made and had much more minor promises with story reasons to vote instead.

I’m voting Evon because Ellen is way to boring a character and I’m tired of Asura stories plus we already have a Fractal for them. No matter what experiment went wrong, the story comes down to a big moment is history versus an Asuran reactor.The WP and key discounts mean nothing and aren’t even worth mentioning. Too bad they can’t just do both and have different reasons for us to vote like actually preferring a candidate due to good story telling. If neither lore story is vital to know, I’m voting for a major event that helped determine the entire Tyrian calendar from year 0.

Since the WP reduction won’t mean anything in reality and I won’t be buying keys unless they’re super cheap, my vote will have to go for what will make more interesting story lines. Having the Black Lion owner on the council seems like it could have cool potential compared to Kiel who feels like another Trahearne (and steals all the credit for everything we do). Plus, a fractal about the fall of a god compared to yet another Asura disaster grabs my attention. No matter what happened at the reactor, I just can’t bring myself to care about more Asura.

- A deep, complex world and lore
- Interesting storyline
- Hench/Hero system and/or solo-able versions of content for story
- Trahearne wasn’t born
- Not exactly an answer but I want more ties to GW1

On that last point, I wish we could have had met heroes through a personal story (that was written better than the one we got) and we could party with them for dungeons and get to have deeper characters and plots. “Sky Pirates”? Really? Why not an attack by the White Mantle cult or the Tengu for changing the meaning of the Dragon Festival. Ashford was a fun touch but it didn’t last long. Living Stories can be amazing if you can actually tell a good story.

I strongly support at least story mode being solo-able or scale. That’s what I even expected it would be like with explorables for groups. Arah even more because its the end of your personal story with four random people suddenly acting like their as important as you are haha GW is known for great story and lore but its not friendly to experiencing it all. A major plus for GW1 was the ability to have an AI team you customized if you didn’t have real players and you could see every bit of content that way. With Merch Heroes we could even make our own alts as the team. Just scale rewards to almost nothing for solo play to reward teamwork but offer a way to see the content either way.

Already commented but I agree with those saying it should be added to the home instance. Gives us more purpose to go there and spreads us out to our capital cities we never visit.

Also wanted to add that this is a great idea even for those who attended the events. Lag was horrible for a large population of the players. Even though we were there, it was like watching a slide show and didn’t make anybody feel like the heroes we’re supposed to feel like.

Love the idea! GW1 had something called a Bonus Mission Pack with Durmand, the man who started the Durmand Priory, who would have books that you read and got to partake in important moments in the past. Once you completed the mission/flashback you would get a token to turn in for a weapon skin of your choosing.

Darkace’s idea of putting it in your home instance is a great idea too. If they added this for past GW2 events as well as slowly adding in events from GW1 and lore before it and between the two games (destruction of Lions Arch by dragons, Searing, Foefire, etc). I’d even pay for the historical missions like we did in GW1 (keep the stuff like recreation of Karka event free though).

I’m loving the direction the living story is going in terms of storytelling. If they had done more in-game cinematic scenes like they have with the Living Story in our Personal Story, I’d have enjoyed it more. The side-by-side dialog scenes can be used on occasion, but prefer this new style.

On a side note, I loved how it took your place in the story into account with the war counsel letting me through on characters that were commander of the Pact. The new characters and event style missions give me a lot of hope for the future of GW2 in terms of storytelling compared to how much I loved GW1.

I really like how titles actually show up without clicking on someone now, but I’m not against those that want an option to turn off as long as the rest of us can continue to see them like this.

Morena.9604:

*If you like gear progression… this game isn’t for you
*If you like playing a certain role in trinity… this game isn’t for you
*If you like raids… this game isn’t for you
*If you like mounts… this game isn’t for you
*If you like amateur pvp with different modes… this game isn’t for you
*If you like semi-amateur pvp with ladders etc like wow… this game isn’t for you
*If you like pro-pvp like moba… this game isn’t for you
*If you like real open world pvp… this game isn’t for you
*Most importantly if you like to have a goal… this game isn’t for you

1) We have gear progression, just not WoW tiered style
2) If you mean challenging large-scale fight, yes. World bosses are cool though but agree on this point.
3) True but important to mention Waypoints as a faster form of travel than you can do in other games
4) PvP is growing, making sure that every mode works as intended before adding more. Going to have to disagree with this after the addition of the newest maps with unique objectives to just conquest.
5) No clue what moba is so can’t comment and I don’t do pro-pvp
6) WvW took open world pvp to the next level, putting standard world pvp to shame in my opinion.
7) I try to be nice and open to thing but had to laugh at no goals. Need to change the wording on that because there are a million and one goals in this game

Just wanted to put my input in as we’re all welcome to our own opinions.

I’d enjoy it as something in an expansion. They’re working on making the actual world more interesting and meaningful, fixing bugs, and getting pve/pvp/wvw to where they want right now. Player housing would be cool some day though. Could even show accomplishments like the HoM in GW1 did or something and fun for RP. Not something to focus on now though.

I would be fine with mounts as much as player housing. Don’t care either way except for one issue…mounts would exist in the open world. That means more things for the server to show and an increased lag for a lot of people. Since mounts add no use beyond cosmetic, it’s not worth it. If the team wants to dedicate a few people to stuff like player housing, I’m fine with it. Fun stuff for those who want to RP and it stays in an instanced area. That my opinion on this.

Vayne.8563:

First of all, you can only really compare Guild Wars 2 to Prophecies at launch.

While I dislike a few parts of GW2, when I read this statement, I had to think about it and think it’s important to note. My biggest sadness was how weak the story was compared to GW1, but a lot of the deep lore came after the world expanded and connected these various lands together. While I still enjoyed Prophecies compared to the GW2 Personal Story, I’m going to be a bit more patient with how many ways GW2 can improve.

While I did a huge giveaway of my 200k+ in platinum, mats, and other things to help with peoples HoM an hour before GW2’s launch, I’m happy to help bump it as its a good idea for people who want to. I got to 40/50 and didnt care enough to get the last bit.