Guild Wars 2

…and I’m okay with that. Actually, I’m kinda glad. I’ve been doing WvW on and off when I was bored and just didnt feel very successful at it. Today I came upon this guide: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw2TnwV1r2mpNzFNRDZwakV2SFk/view?pli=1

I read though it and it finally hit me. WvW is not the game I want to play. I always thought it was about large scale PVP battles. Well, its not. Its about a complicated set mechanics and strategies. And that’s cool! Its just not for me.

I’m pretty sure I’m just a PvE player that likes to dabble in action packed PvP. I will likely just fill my PvP itch in the PvP bouts rather than WvW. I’m a little sad that less complex large scale WvW or RvR isnt in my future, but at least I know now to avoid it rather than take up a spot in the WvW queue and fail miserably at it.

So, what is your take on WvW? Does my story sound familiar? Have I got it all wrong? I’d love to hear your $0.02.

Habib Loew.6239:

wintermute.4096:

Any chance we might get a chance to the slightly awkward badges system we have right now? Moving the bags to the feet of the player is nice and all, but it doesn’t help much in a thick battle, and I’m sure most of the players actively engaged in wvw have had their share of lost bags. AFAIK, there once was an answer among the lines of “we don’t have the tech for that now”, but I can’t really see how this should prove to be unsolvable…

As a suggestion: Couldn’t we just get rewards based on a slightly modified monthly tracker? You know, the one that says “players killed in wvw” – just add an npc that hands out as many bags as the counter says and resets it back to zero.

In the beginning players killed NPCs and found loot on the NPC corpses. That setup is nice because it makes sense (gruesome sense, but still sense). If you kill a dude where is his stuff? In his pockets of course (see also: The Hobbit). If the corpse decayed then a bag was left behind so players would have one last chance to pick it up (it doesn’t hurt that rendering a bag is cheaper than rendering a high-poly character model.

Then WvW was born and players started killing players. At first we left the loot on the corpses as before but then a thousand player voices rang out and said “WTF man? I can’t jump down off this wall to get my loot because there’s like a hojillion enemy guys down there waiting to plant me like a tulip bulb!” or “WTF man? I can’t get up on top of that wall to get my loot because the whole point of a castle is that people can’t do that stuff!” We heard those pleas and, after some internal arguments (er, design discussions) we decided that realism could go suck it because getting loot is awesome.

So why did we put the bags at your feet rather than just dumping the items into your inventory? Part of the answer is that it was the smallest possible change that could work (programmers like stuff like that). We already had the bag spawning system so we could just reuse it. Another part of the answer is that picking up loot can be a bit like unwrapping a present and we didn’t want to ruin the unwrapping for everybody. Finally, if we just start putting loot into player inventory then we need to deal with a bunch of edge cases and at the time we had more pressing issues to work on. For example, when your inventory fills up items you receive go into inventory overflow and your character becomes encumbered. That makes you move really slowly and that didn’t seem like a nice thing to do to people in the middle of a fight. There were some others that I don’t recall off the top of my head, but suffice it to say there were some thorny design questions about the best way to handle it.

We have tossed around some ideas for ways to improve the system but it’s relatively low priority so nobody is actively working on it right now.

Can you at least make the bags stand out more? They can be pretty hard to see in the heat of battle. Can they be like glowing red or something instead of small tan bags? That should be SUPER easy to implement.

I just wanted to put in my two cents for this conversation…

I’ve been a tank or healer in all of my mmo career. I got tired of it. I thought GW2 would bring something different without the roles. It did, but not for the better. I miss the trinity. I miss having a role and responsibility in combat. I miss the TEAMWORK aspect of it.

My Oaken Manifesto:

I want a real ROLE that I play in PvE and WvW. Real in that you have to gear/spec for it and that it makes a substantial difference. This doesnt have to be traditional Tank/Heal/DPS. But I want clear and defined roles that matter and are needed.

I want a real LFG tool. I cant for the life of me understand why this doesnt exist yet. It is easy to develop and one of the most used tools in mmo’s. Arenanet should be embarrassed that there is a website that most players use for this purpose because they wont do it themselves.

My $0.02.

I dont need trinity per se, but I want real ROLES in dungeons. That is what makes combat feel like you are part of a team. Every organized sport has roles and positions. GW2 feels like a free for all with 4 other people.

I want real roles.
I want an instant action/lfg tool.

I’m not playing until I get at least one of them.

My $0.02.

9/10 – One of the best short-term live events I have ever seen. Not perfect, but truly awesome. Just wish I had had more time recently to do everything.

Thanks Anet!

Same here. PLEASE FIX!

Knuckledust.5621:

Anyone who says the Shield is OK either doesn’t play with it or never used Focus.

100% agree. I am a shield lover (in concept) i just think of the shield as an iconic aspect of “guarding”. I tried soooooooooooooo hard to make shield work for me, but I just cant. Focus is WAY better and works so well with a ranged option like scepter.

I’ve had to give up the idea of playing the kind of guardian that I really want because shield just feels so kitten.

(edit: i love the fact that the system changed my gim-to-the-p word into “kitten”, ha!)

down for me

Unable to log in also. Sad panda.

Amen!

15 characters

Really great stuff here. Great read. Thanks for doing all that home work.

Ouch, that’s pretty bad. I think you should post this in the bugs forum too.

Eochaidh.4106:

oaken.6382:

I just wanted to throw in my two cents that Melee if at a severe dis-advantage in all fights. Would this be true in real life? YES. However, this is a game. People play fantasy games to, among other things, swing swords and use shields.

I’m not sure what the solution to this is, but it certainly feels broken to me.

(edit for spelling)

There is no solution, defending a point at range will always be advantageous. It’s not easy to break through archers/artillery to attack a position at melee. Range is more strategically efficient, melee is not. Everyone can bring a ranged weapon or use artillery either way. Melee is useful for combat on the field, and melee generally does more damage than range.

So, your solution to melee being ineffective in these situations is: “Go ranged!”???

I guess I can understand that, I have two weapon sets for a reason. Just feels kinda lame to roll a melee class just to have to go ranged anyway. Plus, my guardian ranged skills are super limited and suck. I guess I could run around and play support.

I’m not a fan of 1 shot mechanics either. My biggest worry is that I often cant tell WHAT it is that is killing me. Was it a 1 shot? Bleed? Fire? What?! Before I can figure it out, I’m down on the floor.

I think this could all be solved by making it more obvious when a big one shot mechanic is about to be or has been executed. Make conditions more obvious and bad AOE areas more noticeable.

BTW: I’ve done a few dungeons and sometimes I see a pulsing red target under my feet that moves with me. Anyone know what that is? I cant seem to figure it out.

WOOT!!! Grats ANET!

I just wanted to throw in my two cents that Melee if at a severe dis-advantage in all fights. Would this be true in real life? YES. However, this is a game. People play fantasy games to, among other things, swing swords and use shields.

I’m not sure what the solution to this is, but it certainly feels broken to me.

(edit for spelling)

I paid 125 gems for 5 transmutation stones that i never received. Not many details to report. I:
1) pulled up the gem store.
2) went to collectibles.
3) right at the top were the stones.
4) i pressed the gem sign next to the qty.
5) pressed confirm
6) gems were deducted
7) nothing after that. no mail. no pickup. nothing.
8) :-(

Please refund or send them to me.

I have the primeval set and bought it at level 1. I applied it to my cruddy starting gear and have used stones (transmutation stones) to transfer the skins from armor piece to piece as I have gone up in level and got better gear. I’ve even starting mixing it with other sets to make a cool and unique look.