Guild Wars 2

flog.3485:

One hour and half to play at best ? That’s hard to handle. If I were in your situation, I would just quit playing games altogether.

Honestly, I cam’t imagine a life so devoid of family and activity that an hour and half seems like such an insignificant bit of time that it would not be worth trying to do anything with it, while here I am thinking that if I can get 30 mins to escape and play I won something.

flog.3485:

STIHL.2489:

flog.3485:

Azoqu.8917:

STIHL.2489:

The main thing you are missing here, is that I could have done 3 paths AC, and walked away with 4.5 gold and called it a night, and moved on to doing a daily fractal, thus dungeons we an easy addition to paying the game.. now for that same time investment I get 1.5 gold, or I need to commit to doing 8 total paths of dungeons, it goes from being a nice addition to game to an obnoxious grind.

“I don’t care about the dungeons themselves, just the easy money”

More like “content is only good because I can turn off my brain”. Stacking in a corner and DPS the mobs down with powercreeped elite spec 1 (and 2 soon) is just not fun @STIHL

More like “being stuck doing dungeons for the next hour and half” is not my idea of fun.

But don’t let my reasonable motives stop you from making all kinds of off the wall assumptions. None the less an above poster already explained with dev quotes what is exactly going on with dungeons, any other assumptions are wrong.

I never denied the fact at some time, devs tried to push us away from doing dungeons. You can’t deny however that they reverted their stance of “making dungeon content worthless”. My point is, if dungeons became that easy and people likes/d doing this easy content, you shouldn’t be having that much gold you got back in the time simply because they developed more content that are labeled as endgame content as of today.

You basically complained earlier in the thread that they killed the “dungeon community”, in terms of LFG. And as I can understand (please correct me if I am wrong), you like what dungeons has been offering in the past. So now you are telling that you don’t like being stuck doing dungeons for an hour and a half. See the disconnect ?

Look, maybe you have several hour blocks of time to play so an hour and half does not feel like a dent in your play time, I don’t, if I am lucky I might an full hour to actually play, after being logged in for 2 hours, due to life distractions.

In that time I can try to get into a dungeon group that will be a solid one and half hour rush, which I will never be able to commit to, or I can join a daily fractal T3 group, and in 3o min, I get something like 9 boxes of loot, and whatever the actual encounter gave me.

Anet set out to make dungeon rewards unappealing, and they have done just that. Its not that I don’t like them, they are just not worth the time investment anymore. Doing them at this point in the game would be just for the giggles of it.. and the bugs and other problems.. ruin the whole “Doing it for the love of it”

They need a face-lift and some TLC, which is also something Anet will not be giving them. They are dead content.

Now for the topic at hand, I just can’t agree with with how dungeons are relevant in terms of story. Simply because, in my experience (of casual pug runner), I have absolutely no clue of what story is being told in dungeons.

Story Mode for all Dungeons coexists, continues, and expands upon your personal story and the reunion of Destiny’s Edge.

Each path after that, deals with the aftermath of the story mode. IE: In AC, after killing the Ghosts, They realized that the Ghosts had been keeping the Skelks at bay, and now you have to deal with the Skelk problem, which is a greater threat then the ghosts.

They all really do have a great story them.. pity all you learned was how to stack in a corner.

flog.3485:

Azoqu.8917:

STIHL.2489:

The main thing you are missing here, is that I could have done 3 paths AC, and walked away with 4.5 gold and called it a night, and moved on to doing a daily fractal, thus dungeons we an easy addition to paying the game.. now for that same time investment I get 1.5 gold, or I need to commit to doing 8 total paths of dungeons, it goes from being a nice addition to game to an obnoxious grind.

“I don’t care about the dungeons themselves, just the easy money”

More like “content is only good because I can turn off my brain”. Stacking in a corner and DPS the mobs down with powercreeped elite spec 1 (and 2 soon) is just not fun @STIHL

More like “being stuck doing dungeons for the next hour and half” is not my idea of fun.

But don’t let my reasonable motives stop you from making all kinds of off the wall assumptions. None the less an above poster already explained with dev quotes what is exactly going on with dungeons, any other assumptions are wrong.

There is always that subset of players that want to turn every game into work, to make something that should be fun into a chore. These people truly ruin games.

Azoqu.8917:

Concerning dungeon rewards, back in the day it was the following:
3 AC paths for 4.5g
2 CoF paths for 2g
3 CoE paths for 3g (Charged cores/lodestones)

This would get you 9.5g and 480 tokens. Nowadays you’d get the following:

3 AC paths for 1.5g
2 CoF paths for 0.66g
3 CoE paths for 1g
Extra 5g for 8 paths

So you will now get the following of 8.16g and 950 tokens. So the difference nowadays is losing 1.34g for 470 tokens which is totally worth it imo. Yes there was a time when you didn’t get the extra tokens or the extra 5g and that was terrible, but nowadays the reward is pretty much the same or better. So dungeons are now dead because people keep saying they’re dead and the community moved on.

They are dead because of that time when you didnt get the extra tokens or the extra 5G. That was the time when the community “moved”(forcefully) on, Anet took away almost all the gold reward for dungeons for a period of time and just left tokens behind. It was only after massive amounts of complaints that they even added that in. Unfortunately it never made a recovery, probably never will.

Azoqu.8917:

Concerning dungeon rewards, back in the day it was the following:
3 AC paths for 4.5g
2 CoF paths for 2g
3 CoE paths for 3g (Charged cores/lodestones)

This would get you 9.5g and 480 tokens. Nowadays you’d get the following:

3 AC paths for 1.5g
2 CoF paths for 0.66g
3 CoE paths for 1g
Extra 5g for 8 paths

So you will now get the following of 8.16g and 950 tokens. So the difference nowadays is losing 1.34g for 470 tokens which is totally worth it imo. Yes there was a time when you didn’t get the extra tokens or the extra 5g and that was terrible, but nowadays the reward is pretty much the same or better. So dungeons are now dead because people keep saying they’re dead and the community moved on.

Edit: And this math is with doing AC for 3 paths, the gap gets even closer once you ignore AC for 3 other paths except Arah.

The main thing you are missing here, is that I could have done 3 paths AC, and walked away with 4.5 gold and called it a night, and moved on to doing a daily fractal, thus dungeons we an easy addition to paying the game.. now for that same time investment I get 1.5 gold, or I need to commit to doing 8 total paths of dungeons, it goes from being a nice addition to game to an obnoxious grind.

Which was Anet’s plan, to make dungeons unappealing, and thus drive people away from them, They have succeed.

TexZero.7910:

katz.8376:

so yeah. no matter how you try to slice it and no matter what wordplay you try to employ… Anet killed dungeons.

Except that they really didn’t.

Player perception killed dungeons. As is in their current state dungeons are every bit as lucrative now as they were in the past. The only difference is how you generate that reward.

Instead of being rewarded for playing CoF p1 50 times a day, you instead play 8 unique paths (which now includes story) and get a repeatable gold and token generation source of your choice.

But yeah people keep saying dungeons are dead, it’s really helping that community come back.

You must have missed the whole era where they flat out killed the rewards, on top of that, Anet has openly admitted they don’t want the Dungeon community back.

FrostDraco.8306:

STIHL.2489:

FrostDraco.8306:

Dante.1763:

narcx.3570:

You most likely don’t have any of the Fractal masteries… Once you have those you easily make 25 gold in the 30-40 minutes it takes you to do your dailies—and that’s on a bad RNG day.

And that’s not even counting the fractal 40 farm, which has by far the best Time/Gold ratio of anything in the game.

You arent wrong, i can only do tier 2 fractals at the moment, and im making easily 30 gold a day just doing the dailies + the ascended chests that drop occasionally. The amount of AR though…i really wanna get into T3s.

However, i will agree that i wish dungeons still had a place in this game. i like they way they where setup, and i hate the fact they decided to defunct them for Fractals and in the process utterly destroy the dungeon community the way that they did.

They didn’t destroy the dungeon community. The dungeon community (especially the casual side) just moved on.

That would be what destroying the dungeon community would be, the community that used to do dungeons.. moved on.

You don’t seem to understand the syntax of what you said. When you say “destroyed the dungeon community” you are placing blame on Anet, not stating the dungeon community moved on of its own will and volition, which is what happened.

Also they didn’t defunct dungeons for fractals. They had decided long ago they weren’t doing dungeons. And the fractal team, is new. That’s like saying they defuncted the dungeon team for raids, when the raid team didn’t exist then, and they NEVER had a team for dungeons.

It’s not simple semantics, as the word choice and order says different things.

I think the proper question would be to ask of Anet to create a dungeon team, in addition to asking why they didn’t before. But since we already know they considered the dungeons a failure, and have abandoned them, that would be fruitless. However i do think dungeons deserve a one time rework every few years even if they do not get continued support, as they are still a part of the game, and are different than raids and fractals.

Purposefully creating an environment to encourage the dungeon community to move on, “of their own volition,” carries responsibility for the dismantling of that community.

If one actively attempts to make people want to leave, then you are at least partially responsible if they do so.

I guess I’m old enough to be able to identify myself to a character I play regardless of his or her gender. I usually play whatever I think looks cooler to me, so males in Bioware and Blizzard games, females in Square-Enix games and GW2. And I have no problem bonding and identifying to my characters, or others identifying me to that character.

For GW2 I identify easier to a female human than to a male charr or norn. But then I identify even better to an asuras of either gender than to a GW2 human because I’m the mathy/science type and I just love them for that.

For me I got 10 characters and got a 50/50 split of ladies and gentlemen. No reason in particular at all and not sure why I do it but eh it was sort of a little thing I wanted to do. Though I kind of wish I didnt have 10 characters because I mostly only use about 4 of them and the rest are bechwarmers. Ironically enough out of those 4 I also have a 50/50 split!

i like having a mix,
i like my stupidly huge norn warrior dude and i like my sleek and sexy lady chars.

i dont see an issue with playing either

its not like when i choose to make a lady char i think i’m a woman,
infact if you think about it, its the more manly option!
because it means i’d rather spend my time with a scantily clad babe in the middle of the screen than a guy! XD

Years ago a friend of mine said these words
“Well, if i have to play a game and watching my character’s kitten then i prefer to watch a female one”.

Well, i do agree though i play also male characters.

I have roughly 50% of each gender. I even RP on an opposite gender toon. The trick is to remember it’s a character, not you!

I suppose it depends on how you see your character/s.

I know to some people their character is a representation of themselves in the game world, so they not only play their own gender but typically only play humans (or races that look like humans) and try to make the character look and act like them.

I do pretty much the opposite – to me they’re characters in a story, no different to if I was writing a book or acting out a play. They are fundamentally not me so there’s no reason for them to look or act like me. Instead I think about the kind of person I want to make and ‘match’ everything to that. I’m equally liked to make a male or female character (in GW2 I currently have 5 females and 4 males).

My 1st/main character is usually female, but thats because she’s usually a recreation of the same character I play in all western RPGs (obviously race, class and skills will change between games but the overall theme is the same. But the only other thing she has in common with me is that when possible I give her waist length hair, but hers is black and straight instead of brown and frizzy like mine.

As for how people treat female characters honestly the most common problem I have is people assuming I’m male regardless of the character. Sometimes I correct them, sometimes it’s not worth mentioning. I’ve very rarely had anyone hit on me or otherwise act appropriately. (And once when it did happen, in a different game, I was not only playing a male character but playing an old, overweight, heavily scared guy with one eye and a grumpy expression. That was odd…dunno if they were into that or just flirting with everyone.)

Sometimes, when people tell me it happens all the time, I wonder if it’s just that I don’t try to make my female characters pretty. It was weird when I realised that – I certainly don’t try to make them unattractive either but pretty certainly isn’t my first concern (and according to my husband the results are mixed). Or maybe it’s the way I act when I’m playing them, or the people I talk to. I don’t know, but it’s certainly extremely rare for people to either try to flirt or to give me a hard time for playing a female character.

I play only female toons. No male ones and i’m male.

It really has to do with how secure you are with yourself. Why does it even bother you? You need to really think about it.

As for me. If i’m going to be looking at something for hours on end I’d rather it be a females rear then a mans lol

mcjolliboy.1769:

Dr. Strange … I think I’m the only one excited to watch that movie next year.. and yes he is a Mesmer

What cap and shirt is that on Dr. Strange?

I’d love to try a raid. But unfortunately I find the raiding community completely inaccessible. I have watched videos, read and studied the walkthroughs. However I can never get into a squad that will accept me or be happy to guide me through my first experience. Training runs are few and far between (I have seen zero so far) I have literally spent hours over many days trying to get accepted into a squad. (EU server experience).

Right now the only way I am going to unlock the raids mastery line is by having to pay 800 ecto’s for the priveledge of potentially getting scammed in a selling run…

It’s quite sad really, the raiding community seems to be a polar opposite of the rest of the GW2 community.

STIHL.2489:

Manijin.3428:

STIHL.2489:

You’re about 2 years late for the kind of care to have that discussion anymore, and truth be told, I have zero desire to repeat what others before me already said, since for the most part, they said it better then I could.

I am sure the Topics are still round here someplace, maybe in the HoT sub forums, feel free to peruse them, I am sure there might be still be a dozen or so left that only got locked and not deleted.

So… basically, instead of answering my questions, you claim that I don’t really care?

No. I am claiming that I (me) don’t care enough to rehash old arguments. It was not fun then, I doesn’t feel like fun now.

It was a subject that spanned thousands of posts, I doubt it was an ‘easy answer’. As for HoT, it still feels like the same old Rat-Maze it felt like when I first played it.

I took a break from HoT and pretty much stuck to Tyria for quite a few months. I was overwhelmed. Slowly, I built up my gear, learned the mob tactics and improved my playstyle. I’ve only finished the maps on one player just recently. I still don’t prefer those maps, opting instead for the LW season 3 maps, which I think are much more fun. My favorites are Ember and Bitterfrost.

I think PoF will still require knowing mob tactics and making your tactics to deal with them. It doesn’t seem so crowded that you get ganked because you can’t find a safe place to think for a minute like HoT was. The sampling of events during the demo weekend was encouraging.

Expecting it to be like Tyria would be wrong, I think. I play solo almost 100%, but I’ve learned to discover or attract groups to get things done. I think that’s the best part of GW2, the casual players can run up to join in open world activities to get things done and then go on their own way. Others can still stay in structured parties and knock down objectives as a team.

I think ‘get gewd’ is annoying and harsh, but there’s a grain of truth in it. Anet is pushing us a bit. It started with Dry Top, Silverwastes and Labyrynthine cliffs. Then HoT dropped a bomb of higher difficulty content. HoT was scaled back a bit and reworked, plus the game stability eventually returned.

In addition, we now are getting regular fresh content. So, stay with us, stand with us and conquer the new stuff. There are so many willing to help with no strings attached.

I am casual, this is due to being a Paramedic and working around 60 hour shifts usually 12 hour days.

I litterally have enough time during the working days to login do dailies then fall to sleep after shift, i then play 4- 6 hours on my rest days.

Now im not complaining, i have no issues taking longer etc.

What does annoy me for example, ive taken over 3 months to aquire a full vipers set of trinkets over 3 LS maps, faming jades/ berries / wood.

To have the goal post now move, so it seems after expansion my Neco Vipers main will not be meta, and i will be forced back down the power ruit, and really the time involved is putting me off… ive become disheartened with all this and not logged in for 5 days

I am another one that is back to try Path of Fire. I like the connection back to GW1. The mount that I got to try was interesting. I like the idea of learning to get better with your mount.

HoT on the other hand was a very anti casual and elitist focused expansion. I have played a lot of different games and Heart of Thorns is easily my most disliked expansion. After how much I liked the base GW2, HoT was truly a disappointment.

Edit: I am a person who does not have a large amount of time to play. Crossing the HoT maps is extremely tedious and not fun. Mastery points were the mobs respawn faster that my under geared character can kill them really irritated me. Heart of Thorns was like Arena Net statement that casual players just do not count.

maddoctor.2738:

STIHL.2489:

Last I looked before I left, less then 20% of the player base even tried to do raids, They claimed it was as it attracted 20% of the players, as opposed to the typical 3 – 5 % among other games.

Where is that 20% coming from?

Yea, I don’t believe it’s even 20%. I’m in 2 major guilds that don’t even have 1 raid team in either.

zoomborg.9462:

It’s quite a surprise that no1 mentioned the big big QoL update anet released last spring.

That would be because I left the game before that came about. I did mention that I have noticed that HoT is easier then I remember, while it still feels like a rat-maze, it’s much easier to just move about, explore and get around it now.

Djinn.9245:

AliamRationem.5172:

This is such a bunch of nonsense. Where has the OP been clear about his definition of casual?

In several posts, including just before your post here.

AliamRationem.5172:

He took his own advice and left, but he never got over it and he’s back to argue the merits of it. Has ANet remembered the casuals? Yes. But that doesn’t mean the OP is going to get what he wants.

If you actually read the OP’s posts, he’s back because of PoF and wants to determine whether Anet has changed direction any from HoT. It’s actually pretty clear.

Well I thought it was pretty clear. which is making me wonder why it is acceptable to say things like “Learn to Play” or “git gud” when a player is struggling, but when people can’t seem to follow a simple point on a forum post, saying “learn to Read” is considered insulting and wrong?

Ardid.7203:

The OP didn’t used the word “Casual” in the opening post to clarify his point and elaborate a clear question.

Quite the oposite.

He used the word “Casual” to give an artificial weight to his general opinion in the thread through a false sense of representation of a certain “group”. Then left an open ended question to generate debate.

His specific definition of “Casual” came in much later, when the thread had already devolved into a fist salad.

As I am starting to see, so the problem with this topic is that I did not start it with one of those big red Q’s, as such it seems that many of the people coming to this topic can’t seem to figure out that I was asking a question, not making a statement.

I’ll have to keep that in mind in the future, and now it suddenly makes sense why Anet put in the option for those big red Q’s.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Djinn.9245:

Dashingsteel.3410:

already been through it???? What did everyone decide the definition of casual is?

Read the thread.

I did and I’m still don’t see where people agreed about the definition. It’s a poor word choice to get the OP’s point across and I really wish y’all would stop using it.

I didn’t say we agreed about the definition, I said we had been through the discussion about it. Yes there were a variety of ideas about “casual”, but the general rule of forums is that you stick to the OP’s topic in a thread. The OP has defined what he means by “casual” so nothing more need be said. This thread is about the OP’s definition of “casual”. If people don’t agree with the OP’s definition or don’t want to talk about “casual” as the OP defines it they should not be replying to this thread. They should start their own thread. The only reason to continue arguing about “casual” is to be pedantic.

Sigh, i miss my Everquest bard. It was my favourite MMO character. The mechanic for the songs and instruments was very unique. I could usually keep 3 songs twisting. On a good day 4.
So much fun using my Blackfeather Wardrum to speed boost up to the speed of the games fastest mount. Or to use it to kite the giants in Ro and kill them with the beat. Or, when i wanted to explore without confrontation, to use my flute to turn invisible and/or to levitate.
Back when GW2 was coming out, I was ecstatic to hear about the minstrel class. Then, a little disappointed when it turned out to be the mesmer. But, not too disappointed as I main mesmer, along with ranger.
I think Minstrel has the potential for a lot of fun.

Djinn.9245:

Dashingsteel.3410:

already been through it???? What did everyone decide the definition of casual is?

Read the thread.

I did and I’m still don’t see where people agreed about the definition. It’s a poor word choice to get the OP’s point across and I really wish y’all would stop using it. It distracts from the very conversation you’d like us to be having.

It would be better to restart the thread and state clearly, from the outset the things that the OP liked about the original game and which they haven’t found in HoT. In some cases, there might be a misunderstanding that can be cleared up; in some cases, there won’t be.

Also it would be better to avoid making claims that anyone can speak for anyone else. There are lots of different playstyles, lots of different ways of paying attention or not paying attention.

Right now, this thread is mostly people holding to their point of view and being unwilling to even consider changing their mind based on what others are saying. That’s not very useful to ANet and not all that interesting for those of us who would like to discuss what works, what should have worked, what doesn’t work, and so on.

Some people are confused, some people aren’t.

Djinn.9245:

Lokki.1092:

STIHL.2489:

Rhanoa.3960:

STIHL.2489:

Djinn.9245:

STIHL.2489:

maddoctor.2738:

STIHL.2489:

Well I spent a little time back in VB , and I have noticed there are a lot less mobs floating around, and they seem much easier then I remember.

They did not change mob spawns in VB it’s same as it was at launch. As for difficulty, the only thing I remember changing was the itzel shadowleaper ability to evade ranged attacks, it know evades projectiles not all ranged attacks if I’m not mistaken. If anything, at launch it was easier due to the number of players around.

Of course if you were trying to move through while the dozens of players were fighting in events, it was more than likely you had to fight event-scaled mobs and maybe those caused you all that trouble. Spawning scaling mobs is the normal thing to do even on core tyria maps, try moving through the area around Tequatl when the event is active and you will notice mobs that 1-shot you, or moving between the Penit-Shelter waypoints in Cursed Shore while either event is ongoing. That’s not HoT-specific

Humm, well it felt like such a slog the first few months I tried to play, to the point that exploring was not so much about exploring and seeing the zone and looking at what was about, it was all nothing but these endless stupid hard fights… all the time.

Also I did a flamethrower engineer for the stability boon in HoT, because all that stuff has those stupid knock backs.

Understand that what you are responding to is an opinion presented as fact. There is no hard data on exactly what was changed. It is my opinion that people who liked HoT quickly became acclimated to the mobs / maps and so didn’t find them as difficult as I and many other casual players did in the first place.

Well I just got back over a long absence, and have no idea how most of m skills work.. as such my play-style at time looks like this.. .

And somewhere in there it’s the games fault, never the player.

Wait, so what you are saying is that it is the players fault for any game they don’t like?
or put another way, you are saying that it’s your fault for no liking games like Archeage and Blackgold?

Well, I an’t say I will agree with you, but if blaming yourself for every game you don’t like works for you.. keep at it.

Seems like the implication is that you seem to be admitting you have no idea how to play your class, or this game.

That doesn’t mean the game is hard, it just means you have no idea how to play (by your own admission).

Coming to the conclusion that the game is too hard and therefore a bad game, seems shortsighted and placing the blame on someone else rather than yourself.

I’m not responding to Rhanoa’s rude post because I hope it will soon be removed. However, both of you seem to have failed to read STIHL’s words about not playing HoT and not playing at all from HoT intro until recently. STIHL’s skills now have nothing to do with his original comment about HoT. R.I.F.

You are always on the ball. I have got to give you that. Yah, I thought I made it clear that I was returning after a years absence.

But you know, some people just always looking for something to jump on.