Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

What do you guys think about forging them?

Assuming they can be put into the Mystic Forge…

Forging them would be great- I don’t mind holding on to a few until I can forge them. If they aren’t currently forge-able, can you look into that?

Thanks!

Vyrulisse.1246:

It won’t last. Pretty much everything is broken right now. Scourge is ridiculous for example.

I sure hope you are right… currently it is crazy stupid. Yes, make the new stuff nice enough to make folks buy the expansion, Anet is a business after all. No, don’t make it so that a few builds crush everyone else.

My take so far— this really is not fun in sPVP.

Heapheaus.5238:

As the screenshot show; deadeye obviously does too much damage compared to other thief builds. I recommend making trickery baseline and increasing backstab’s damage so daredevil can stay competitive.

Nope, they need to increase deadeye damage. It is clearly too weak.

Thanks for the clear follow up, Ben. It always helps to know why something can’t be done rather than getting silence.

Happy hunting.

At least the 2 tix price is on a skin I don’t like in the least. Interesting but… ugh.

Great addition- seemed unbalanced with all the new HoT masteries and no new Tyria ones. This will actually get me to finish my legendary masteries and work toward those.

It has been fun so far. I liked the scenery- true to Orr but still with some new bits. I liked some of the new things like the dynamic updrafts. The story was good but seemed actually rather short and with odd pacing. I do intend to spend more time there and work on some achievements.

Overall, this is my 3rd favorite of the season. Good but not quite great and a little disappointing for an xpac kickoff.

Aryan Arlande.6184:

Look at the bright side :

There’s no need to hunt or buy keys anymore

That’s my upside. I had been looking forward to buying a bunch of keys to get scraps for the weapon set. At 2 tickets per item i longer feel the need to buy keys. It’s okay with me. I really shouldn’t buy the keys anyway

Lots of options on the classes but I think ele or ranger work well and are useful later.

Class aside, on the HoT zones, they were not really well designed but do grow on you eventually. Be prepared for a frustrating initial experience but one that is reasonable eventually. Don’t venture into HoT land without exotics, though, unless you have a good guild to run in a pack.

Lahmia.2193:

Dishonour on them. Dishonour on their family. Dishonour on their cow.

I’m good with them and family but the cow!?!

What seems to be working well, among those builds?

I won’t say no to more material storage but I was happy enough with the current scheme.

Regardless, I do want to give you a big thank you! I can’t tell you how much I like hearing from the devs explaining what they are doing, why they are doing it, offering to take feedback, and all with clear descriptions and timeframes.

In this case I love the proposed improvements (nicely done) but even if I disliked the changes, explaining them this way goes a long way to smoothing any ruffled feathers.

This is very well done, please keep it up!

grind is fine. having to play game modes I dont care for so much

How about an option in search in the trading post to only show dyes, minis, skins, etc. that we haven’t unlocked on our account yet? Seems like that might help boost TP activity as well as make it easier to browse so those who want cosmetics.

Vayne.8563:

I never felt raiding belonged in this game. I think some of the grind for certain items is too high for casual players, combined with timers and having to use LFG to get into specific maps, which seems to offend some people, even though I don’t mind it.

At the end of the day, with the new content, without a timer site and using LFG, it’s much harder to get stuff done. Half the playerbase doesn’t realize it.

…

This game was once more pick up and play. You can still play it casually but you need to know a lot more.

“much harder to get stuff done” pretty much nails it for me. There is much I like about the game but it is hard to progress at the goals I am interested in pursuing at a rate that feels fun. That to me is what they broke with HoT. The content I want to do feels locked behind timegates and content I don‘t want to do.

I wouldn’t mind working on another legendary for instance but i need to run fractals to get masteries and to unlock the collections and a bunch of other things that might appeal on my terms but not as a must do.

It is all made worse by the lurking sense that they knowingly wedged everything up to try to mask the somewhat limited content in HoT

…followup- not finding the episode worth pursing, to be honest. And judging from the fairly lackluster followup on this thread, probably have a fair amount of company.

Leaves me wondering about gw2- is this just a momentary glitch, a little hiccup over the holidays? Or is the game in a downward spiral. Will check back in a few months for an anwers…

The transition to HoT was very poorly done. It is hard. you could try to find a guild. but the best thing to do is to stay in the old world until you are very well geared and then try again. Ascended gear and strong famliarity with class make a big difference. Also give yourself sometime to get used to the new zones.

This is honest feedback from someone who has really enjoyed episodes 1-3 of this season.

So far, I don’t find the story and zone very interesting. I think episodes 1-3 were some of the best LW and I can appreciate that this episode might have been planned to reuse more material than usual due to the holiday season.

I do intend to finish it but I don’t really feel very compelled to do much with it now.

It feels like a lot of re-used foes and zone models. Again, given time of year, I can understand this one wasn’t planned as a heavy lift but I would have reused mobs or zones, not both.

That said, it isn’t terrible, just not as good as some of the recent ones that set a very high bar. Looking forward to finishing it and looking forward to more.

Yrch.5491:

I enjoy GW2. I think the base game (before HoT) is a lot of fun. As a casual player, I can’t stand HoT. It is too difficult. I am in a pretty good guild that when I need someone they will generally come help and I have joined HoT map trains once or twice, but most of my play time is solo, where I like to log in and run around and do stuff by myself.

It probably hasn’t helped that I am a squishy ele, but HoT is really tough to log in for some casual game play. I find the maps hard and confusing, different events shut down parts of the map that one minute ago were open, but now are blocked. I frequently die to mobs that in my opinion hit way too hard. It’s just not fun.

I had a similar experience as a casual player mostly on my ele. I even quite the game for quite a while after HOT. Since returning, though I have quite enjoyed it. it does take getting used to the new zones and it is very helpful to either run with a friend or be well geared.

I liked Colin but I think this really was a separation due to creative differences. One creative view isn’t inherently better than another in an abstract sense but in this case, Colin’s view made the game a lot less enjoyable for me and I like the new direction.

Overall, I think things have improved.

Missy.6803:

A handful of people not taking the time to do the puzzle shouldn’t merit the devs taking a Wintersday event out of a Wintersday achievement. . . practice other jumping puzzles first if you’re not comfortable with your character.

Agreed… if it is a handful. I bet it is more than a handful. In the end, the devs need to decide what sort of uptake they want. I don’t think this ach was meant to be an easy one so as long as they are happy with the rate of participation, it’s fine.

Of course, they probably wouldn’t have asked the question if they were happy with the rate. But rather than nerf if it and annoy the folks who did it the harder way, if they don’t like the participation on this event, they should just keep it in mind for future such events.

As I mentioned, I thought the Ember Bay puzzle wasn’t worth the time and decided not to worry about most of the rest of the related achievements. I’m perfectly happy with that and I am not one of these demanding they remove the JP. If the achievement completion was more attractive (same applies to Winder’s Presence), I would spend the time to master the puzzle, which is the only really challenging part.

One note on the Winter JP- for me, I’ve found mouse steering pretty hard on the puzzle because of the time constraint and I think I might have to retrain to keyboard steering… which I could do if I really wanted the shoulders but I don’t want them that badly. Again, I’m not demanding the devs remove the JP, I can just live without the shoulders, although they are nice.

Now, why would the devs want to change it?

A) They want a certain level of participation in the game so the base stays happy and some portion continues to buy gems. So too many things that people write-off may depress participation. But only Anet has the numbers so it is their call.

B) The drink part of the ach is probably a good real-dollar maker for them. I know I would probably finish out my drinks by spending some money on gems to buy drinks. So, again, they can decide if the gem store cash flow is okay without it.

I’m guessing participation is probably fine, as is the gemstore, so if I were Anet, I wouldn’t nerf it. Makes some folks happy, annoys those who did it the previous way, who may not be a large percentage but are clearly a dedicated percentage and should not be lightly annoyed, simply for business reasons if not also for fairness.

I’d like to see:

• A lot more new zones
• A lot more new armor skins
• Increased value in doing small instance content like dungeons
• More spec viability in PvP. If that takes new elites, that’s fine but I’d be okay with an overhaul meant to make non-elites equivalent
• Nice looking gear that does not require playing every type of content
• Options in xpac and event achievements, e.g., 8 of 10 things to do to get ach, rather than having to do all 8.
• More with crafting- I enjoy it now but would like even more to do: missions, craftable gathering implements (maybe use-limited versions of the gemstore ones), etc.

Stuff that I’m sure I’d enjoy but not expecting or hoping for:

• New class
• New race
• New raids
• New dungeons
• New WvW zones
• Fractals, unless AR is ditched or reworked. Specifically, I don’t like to have to dedicate an ascended set to fractals per armor type (makes it hard to switch between toons). Not saying fractals aren’t enjoyed by folks, just not my thing as currently structured. Not saying you have to dispense with AR either- maybe you have AR per slot per account, or some non-weight-specific AR overlays you can move around to any toon. Or you leave it alone but doubt I’m the only one who doesn’t do fractals for this reason.

Things I’d rather not see devs waste time on:

• Underwater content
• Gear and collections that require players to execute every type of content to get
• Putting most new material behind long time gates or requiring coordinated open-world activities
• Character companions (actually I would like that but not if it was a half-hearted implementation so probably not really worth it)
• Mini-adventures

To put this in terms of HoT, I would have liked the legendary weapon collections to make one type of game play optional (i.,.e., I had to do dungeons, wvw and pve, but could skip fractals, or any combination there-of). I would have preferred if there were more new zones with most of them like VB, but still a few of the harder zones.

And while I like the elite specs, I don’t like that the only viable pvp builds are built around elite specs. Gets old after a while.

I’d like the shoulders myself and may finish out the achievement at some point. I do find the JP annoying as well as the drinks

That aside, I have always liked gw2 for its variety, including some easy stuff, some hard stuff and even some grind.

If i get my 10k drinks I’ll spend more time on the puzzle. If not there are other things to do. Never felt the luminescent gear was worth the trouble either.

I’m sure Anet monitors who does what and tweaks as needed. I’m not sure i would change this one.

That said in general I do prefer a few options. Cant say I’ve done the ember bay jp either which means i spent a lot less time there not doing the other achievements. If i am not the only one and they want more people doing content like winter festival and ember isle then make changes. If they are happy with participation leave it alone.

Offair.2563:

Ask a friend/guildie to help ya out on this, its quite easy. Clear mobs till last room, you stay on top while your friend/guildie makes the boss ram the mobs.

Or even just spam for 4 others. In a group, this is pretty easy, trash and all. Solo, it is beyond aggravating…

Hi all,

I’m looking for a west coast based guild, specifically, one with a PST guild leader. (I know EST guilds try to accommodate but it is just too early for me). My ideal guild is active 8 to 11 PM PST, does mostly PVE, is mostly active in chat rather than voice.

I’m friendly, low drama, happy to help out. I’d call myself “dedicated casual”, which means I’m on-line a lot, I like PVE, WvW, and PvP. (Full disclosure, at my best I’m passable in PvP but never going to stand out). I’m willing to do fractals and dungeons, not really interested in raids, although may help out on raids from time to time needed. If your guild never raids, that’s perfectly fine with me.

I’ve got all professions at lvl 80. Max’d on crafting. Full ascended on all armor and weapons.

I’m mostly interested in finishing achievements on PVE content. Prefer a guild where most socialization is in chat (because I like to listen to music). Happy to help out on various PVE activities and on casual PVP. Like WvW but I’m not hardcore.

I’m Yak’s Bend but would move servers if the guild is reasonably active in WvW. (YB is too pro for me )

Thanks!

I like Braham being a jerk but… I don’t like not really having an option to respond to it. In the old paper and pencil RPG trope: I’m being railroaded. I just get to watch what happens rather than respond and choose a course of action.

Specifically, I’d like the option to tell him to go off and get himself killed while trying to prevent others from joining him in death.

Plus: his behavior spurs real emotion in me
Minus: I can’t do a darn thing about it

I know it is a lot more work to do a branching story and I accept that but please don’t expect me to get too worked up about the drama if I can’t actually influence the outcome.

That side, love the latest installment, please keep it up. Just let me at least slap him in the face of something

I really enjoyed it. It’s one of my favorite LS. Aurene and some of her achievements were fun. The new zone had some interesting elements and in places is quite striking. Really appreciate the little touches like the friend you can get for your home instance.

Nice job!

May not finish all the achievements. I have most but not sure the gloves are going to motivate me enough to get the two boss achievements (mostly due to the time consuming trash to get to the boss).

I know it isn’t in the cards (it’s expensive) but I’d really like a new race or two.

Failing that, one of the great disappointments for me in HoT was fairly small number of new skins. I’m sure it is cheaper to do weapons than armor but:

a) reclaimed weapons are the definition of ugly. At least add some nice new ones.
b) one of GW2’s strength’s is attractive characters. Play to that by adding new faces, new bodies, new armor. It can really keep folks coming back

Other than that, new pvp arenas and wvw worlds would be outstanding. I just ask you to keep in mind that a good chunk of your player base is casual… don’t forget us please.

After dabbling in WoW and SWToR, I’ve returned to GW2… have to say I am enjoying it. Living story added a reasonable number of ways to get more HoT mastery, the LW itself is rather nice and its fun to be back.

Note to devs: a big draw for GW2 is both the cool combat system and the superior graphics. My recommendation is to lay off the outfits and go back to making skins. It’s really one of the strengths of the game.

Anyway, nice job on LW, looking forward to the xpac and more LW chapters… just give us more armor skins :P

Doam.8305:

I suppose another question could be is it HoT or was it the late response and lack of communication after HoT. People who left don’t want to hear that things can be soloed now or that things are different after months of silence after the launch. They look and they will see Raids and they will see E-sports along with dungeons, underwater, fractals, and so forth tossed under the bus and forgotten because Anet is on their next big kick.

Interesting question- immediately after HoT, for me it was the lack of communication. I left in a huff and returned about 3 months later. Initially, I found the CEO communication (after the creative lead left) positive and the April patch promising but now… I’m just board with the game.

So, in the end, it was both (for me). Lack of communication was a big negative but even when that was removed, they did mess up the game’s enjoyability for me.

With the old GW2, I could play all sorts of different content, as the mood struck me. Usually, I’d play WvW for a month then sPvP, then various PVE or instances. But now, only sPvP was appealing and that eventually got old (as does everything) but there was nothing else to turn to.

The analogy for me: GW2 was like a nicely tuned old-style jeweled mechanical watch. With HoT, they threw a bunch of sand into the mechanism, things that slow down game play. They can either rebuild it or pick the sand out grain by grain but neither is very fast.

I’ll keep an eye on the quarterly updates and in the meantime play other things. I had a lot of fun with GW2 and hope to again… just not really sure that will happen.

BTW the WvW desert maps were bad for WvW but they are gorgeous maps. They should just put some non-WvW content on them.

Tumult.2578:

I’m playing the game, but waiting for changes before ever trying to complete certain content, and there are plenty of others doing the same. Nope, I have no idea what the Mastery number is behind my name because it’s not important to me. It could become important though.

Good reply; thanks for the follow up.

I was patiently playing while waiting for some changes as well but at this point, I think I think I’ll wait it out doing something else. It doesn’t feel like I’ll miss anything going else where for a while and I am pretty sure they will address at least some of what I’d like to see at some point.

Was thinking more about what has got me turned off at this time. It’s a number of things but it mostly having to do things I don’t like doing. This is supposed to be a form of entertainment, afterall.

It’s not that I don’t actually like grind at times. I remember grinding out the frost saber in WoW (after the first nerf- it still took 2 months). So what is it about masteries and hot zones? I think it is the frustration of the grind requiring so many things I don’t like. Each mini-game requires its own little grind to get good at something that will never matter again. If it was just a do once and you were done, probably okay (but not thrilled) but it isn’t- it requires hours sometimes to get through these. Plus there’s the difficulty of getting to a minigame: I might be mentally prepped but by the time it is available or I manage to reach it, I’ve lost the will to do it.

And the lack of new skins is a fairly big problem for me. I’m not a big fan of gear treadmills (for stats) and I do like the old GW2 focus on doing stuff for fun and aesthetics. But HOT added hardly any new gear compared to the number of old sets (which I do have most of) and the ones they added do not tickle my aesthetics fancy except for some of the new black lion ones (and not even the recent ones) and those aren’t really farmable anyway- they require keys from the cash shop for more than 1 or 2 a month.

Anyway, for those enjoying it, have at it. I think I’ll sit it out for a while and see if Anet makes the logical changes. As I said, for me the current effort to fun ratio is way off. It was only a memory of former good times that kept me going for a while. Once I stepped back, it wasn’t a hard choice. Again, this is my personal feeling. Doubt I’m alone though.

I’ve loved GW2 and hope to love it again. Some things I’ll be waiting for:

• More options for mastery points that don’t involve being forced to do content I don’t want to do (mini-games,. dungeons)
• Less arbitrary gates of content (2 hour zone cycles, content behind master gates, agony resistance)
• More skins: either a game needs end-game gear grind or cosmetics to go for. Currently, there is neither

Fundamentally, the game’s effort to fun ratio is way off. I’m up for grinding things (just finished fossil weapons), so I am not averse to some repetition but currently, the things to work toward and the goals available, do not work for me,

I fear Anet is in a death spiral: too much content to support, spread too thin. The recent, “we’ll pay you a gold for opening a black lion chest” was just sad, kind of drove home that currently, there’s insufficient dev mass to do anything.

Hope it changes; I’ll keep an eye out but time to do something else for now.,

These aren’t gemstore items per-se but they might boost gemstore sales.

• A mobilty skin tab, like the miniatures tab that puts you on a magic carpet (or whichever you select) when not in combat
• An in-town transformation tab that, somewhat like the finishers tab, uses permanent and oneshot tonics. Perhaps it could have a second tick box for using permanent ones when not in combat outside of town, too
• A ‘toy weapon’ tab that replaces your weapon with one of the toys like the birthday gun when not in combat.

As a case in point, I love miniatures but never purchased or collected them until there was a mini tab because it was way too annoying to find them in the bag and use them. As soon as you added the mini tab, I made wide spread use of them.

Make it a lot less painfull to use the mobility skins and the tonics, and like minis, I bet the market shoots way up. Would give you a lot more to sell in the gemshop.

I think a lot of stuff piles up in banks because there isn’t a convenient way to use it when you want it and bag space is always a premium (I guess you could give everyone a toy bag for free but I prefer auto-use things anyway.)

Daroon.1736:

It’s quite simple – If the maps were full, no one would need to play ‘solo’ and virtually all of the HOT Unplayable threads would vanish.

I mostly agree with the OP and Daroon is right about the full maps. I disliked HoT so much I dropped the game for some time. Since returning, I have had some enjoyable moments in the HoT zones when I happen upon busy maps but otherwise I still mostly stay out of them. If it was more likely that I’d find active maps, I’d certainly return more often.

farsight.8269:

HoT is still to painful for dailies, especially solo, let alone progressing your character.
Spent over an hour doing the “soloing” daily event completion in HoT region, when on any other map, I could complete ALL PVE dailies in under an hour or quicker if zerg-fest was in motion. Had a hard time finding events in HoT….let alone finding a group large enough to complete the event.

Well… I will confess that the HoT zone changes are part of the patch I have not sampled Like dungeons or fractals, I’m glad they exist, I will probably go back to them at some point.

However, right now, since they were a big part of the frustration that made me leave GW2, I have no great desire to rush back into them. Too many memories of missing the event clock or running around trying to find an active zone instance. I’m probably not the only one to feel that way. Maybe that’s why you’re still finding lower pop numbers there.

If they make it so that you don’t have to rely so much on zone taxi for a good zone instance, I might go back. Until then, I will only go back if I get bored with other options. Currently, I’m sPvPing and doing zone completion on my rev (mostly to get better at playing it). Once that tires, I will probably go back to WvW. HoT zones aren’t currently on my list but I’ll keep an eye on what people say about them after this and the next big patch.

I like the update. First, regardless of whether you liked any specific change, you can clearly see that they read the forum feedback and tried to address a lot of what folks (like myself) were complaining about. Even if they overlooked an area I care about or a change fell short, the mere fact that they are listening and trying to do something about it carries more weight for me than any specific change.

That said, I like most of the changes although I’ve yet to try them all out. Some, like the WvW paired servers one, I’m skeptical of but, while it took many years I’ve come to realize my initial assessment of something isn’t always right. Who knows, maybe it will turn out okay. Certainly worth a little experimentation, as long as they are willing to continue to make adjustments (as they seem to be).

Anyway, I saw the April update as a huge step in the right direction. I left GW2 after HoT for some months, quite determined to find something else to replace it (I didn’t but I sure tried) primarily because it did not seem like Anet was listening to any negative feedback about HoT. I came back, willing to try GW2 again in small doses but was not going to spend any money on it. With the announcement a while back of the April update, I was very encouraged but still not quite sure if GW2 was going to hold me indefinitely. With the magnitude of this patch and the attempt to address so many issues, color me completely happy again.

All I want out of a game is a base level of fun-per-hour playing it and a sense that the devs are trying to continue to make it fun, not just by dreaming stuff up in a vacuum but by listening and adapting to player feedback. The contrast to this, which you don’t have to look far across the spectrum to see, are games with terrible execution, or focused on extracting money from the players to the exclusion of all else or some combination of the two.

At the moment, PvP but what I really like about GW2 is there is a lot to. When I tire of pvp, there’s collections, crafting, wvw or open world pve. I’ve only dabbled in dungeons and fractals, but I know those options are out there as well.

TGI FRIDAY.6275:

So the new patch is out. Yay. I took a break a few months ago however I did log in for an hour or so just to try out SAB because I missed it the first time. Didn’t like it. How are things with the game now since Colin left? Is it still dark in the tunnel or is the sun shining on our face yet?

I haven’t tried everything they patched (by far) but it sure seems like they tried to address most of the things that bothered folks. They tried to make dungeons worth running again. They made the HoT zones easier to navigate (some WPs no longer get contested, some trash mob adjustments). They also changed the HoT reward system so you don’t get so locked into a 2 hour track to get full rewards. Also made adventures less locked and I think easier. Lots of class balance updates.

I’d say it is worth looking at it again. Even if they didn’t change everything you did not like, they are clearly trying to listen to the player base and do something about concerns. One of the reasons I took a break after HoT was the feeling that Anet did not care at all about the things in HoT that really bothered me. There’s way too much contradictory player input for devs to address everything. All I ask for is that they listen and make some attempts to address the things that seem to bother the player base as a whole the most.

warbignime.4610:

nop, this is exactly what I love about gw2. even im max level, low level maps still bring a kittenallange and stay relevant.

Agreed- one of the great things about this game is you can go to any zone and have some fun in it, including challenge. Admittedly, it is more rewarding in higher level zones. Every time I try an MMO that doesn’t scale and level more than one character I am reminded of how much I like this feature.

I don’t mind raids being in a game; the more types of play and players, the better.

Myself, it isn’t fear. I just don’t enjoy them a whole lot. WoW cured me of raids: the grind & waiting around far out weigh the rewards and the achievement boost.

I still wonder why devs haven’t tried harder to mix things up in instances- more randomization, less scripted nonsense. The epitome of that was WOW boss timer mods that told you when to hop. It’s like a giant game of simon-says, which was a blast in 1st grade. Now, not so much.

With the script approach the huge amount of dev effort spent creating the instance has to last a while, which means mechanics that slow progression, which means lots of wipes, waiting for respawn and the like. If they just mixed things up, they could get a lot more out of the same content and keep the players happier. Sure, I might have to react to the luck of a really bad draw of random mobs but it sure would make it more interesting.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

As a long time gamer, I’d like to fix that for you:
The most important thing is the entertainment value, which is a combination of reward, story, combat, social system, customization, progression, and more.

Agree with your other points but here’s seconding the entertainment observation because it’s amazing how often both devs and gamers seem to forget it (to their peril).

If people are not having fun they will move on to other things. And as you and the OP mention, it is the sum of a number of things but one thing I’ve learned for me: after many years of gaming, arbitrary content gates are definitely not fun. They smack of devs rationing out meager content or a lack of imagination or both. That said, I am hopeful things will change for the better in the coming months and in the meantime, I am much happy playing GW2 since I decided to ignore the HoT zones.

Ok I Did It.2854:

There seems to be 2 groups of people now forming in this community, the “I love raids and everyone else can suck it” and the “I hate raids I want them gone”

I haven’t raided since my WoW days but I don’t mind them in the game if they don’t starve everything else for dev attention.

The reason I do not do raids anymore is that I don’t like waiting around for a raid to start and reconstitute after a wipe. I find it boring. Sadly for me, HoT introduced a large amount of very similar “wait” in the HoT zones. But they coupled it with instance headaches: it’s hard to even know if you are in a viable zone without wasting a lot of time on top of the timers.

Avarice.2791:

Perhaps, you should put more than 10 minutes into this expansion before you write a lengthy thread. Trust me! After a few hours you’ll get the hang of it along with the other hundreds of thousands of players who did! No pressure!

It’s pretty clear from the OP’s first and later posts above yours that she put in more than 10 minutes on HoT.

I think her complaints are perfectly legit. So, too, those who were asking for harder content. Which dominates more for Anet is up to Anet but given their CEO’s recent statements, it’s clear they want to dial it back some.

With HoT, Anet made a choice to take the game in a certain direction. The CEO claims this was not intended to impact the more solo-players. Whether that is true or not, folks can decide for themselves. But Anet, per the CEO, does appear to recognize they alienated a certain player base and seem to want to do something to make the game more appealing for those players.

I’m one of the alienated but I’m also encouraged by the recent statements. As a player, I do not object to content that does not appeal to me (for one thing, it might appeal to me down the road but for another, a big game with multiple player types is almost always healthier than one with limited player types).

I think they did over do HoT and undercut players like myself and the OP. They say they want to fix that. I like GW2 enough, I’m willing to give them a chance to do it, even though I expect it will take a long time.

Vayne.8563:

Sure it’s how the human brains is wired. We look for patterns all the time in everything. Part of life is learning that that often doesn’t mean anything.

Very true.

Pattern matching is one of the strengths of our brains. Someone dies every time we use a particular waterhole? Let’s use a different one: maybe there’s a crocodile in the old one.

Trouble is, we’re too good at it, thus various superstitions and the like.

That said, there could very well be a link between Colin leaving and HoT. When a major new project does not meet expectations, it isn’t exactly unusual for the lead to move on or to be asked to move on. It could be something planned long ago, it could be he doesn’t feel like making the changes it is now apparent are needed, it could be he was asked to leave. While we don’t know for sure, some linkage is more likely than not.

Not knowing for sure isn’t the same as not having a suspicion

Great comment.

I think they identified a need to suck some mats and money out of the game. Plus regarding all of HoT, a recognition that they didn’t make all the content that they wanted (maybe they spent too much time trying to get raids right?).

Their solution was to set slow mastery rates, make content gates, make guild hall stuff cost a lot. Sure, if the players would accept that, that would keep us busy for a long time. Trouble is, this is a game. We don’t have to accept it. And mostly, we haven’t.

This isn’t the first game that this has happened to but what was really disappointing was that the GW2 devs had seemed to previously demonstrat that they understood that balance was important: sure the good stuff can’t be too easy to get but it can’t be too hard, either. It has to feel like you are making progress at a reasonable rate.

HoT just feels to me like it is completely mis-tuned. The recent AMA gives me hope they recognize that and will do something about it. It gets hard though- if, for instance, you drop guild hall costs, what do you do about all the stuff already purchased?

Aranvar le Voyageur.7521:

GW2 quite was casual player until ascended stuff came…

I guess I’m a weird kind of casual- I don’t do many dungeons and fractals, did do a lot of WvW pre-HoT, pvp and the like. Didn’t really find it that much trouble to get a few sets of ascended.

But I do hop around on toons a lot and because of that, I don’t feel the instances are all that casual friendly: I have 9 level 80s but I have no desire to get 9 sets of ascended gear or to spend the money to switch the stats around when needed.

For instance, to do fractals, I need agony resistance which pretty much means I’d need to stick with one toon for fractals. While I’m not completely opposed to that, when faced with the choice of building a dedicated fractal toon or hopping around on toons in spvp or wvw, the latter has so far always appealed. And that’s true even though all I need to finish Mawdrey II are a few fractals.

HazyDaisy.4107:

You can also tome up a freshly created toon which gives you enough points for the base specs (you need to train them before you unlock elites). From there you need I think 250? points for fully unlocked elite spec. Which can be acquired in the HOT maps quicker since those HPs are worth 10 pts each whereas core tyria HPs are only 1 pt each.

It can be frustrating to get the points to max elite skills in HoT due to the content gates behind masteries. Doable for sure but you might want to level by tomes and then do HPs both in the old and new world depending how things are going for you.

A lot of HoT points will take a mastery or a group to get. For the group ones, do ask for help in chat if you need it. You can almost always get some help and it usually just takes 1-2 to help out.

Dantert.1803:

-A good number of new armor sets and weapons skins

I like the other suggestions but more skins is top of my list, especially since HoT was so thin on new skins.

Qugi.2653:

I think start a new character and start new sound like good plan. Good way to discover new thing and learn way around game again.

Good advice. I always start a new character when returning to a game. Helps get back into things, even if I eventually go back to a leveled toon.

Highness.9061:

It’s doable , but it’s annoying , please ANET do something about this . i log in the game to have fun not to be frustrated .

My take-away from the recent AMA was that they do recognize this is a problem and will address it, although it may take some time.

Re: the poster with the “get good” response: it isn’t a get good issue. Devs made a choice to push group content on a game where that was not previously required so much. Of course it is going to annoy people.

Myself, it did annoy me enough I left for a few months. My return to GW2 has been quite positive, mostly because I haven’t set foot back in the HoT zones again I’ll go back at some point but I’ll probably wait until a patch or two. Part of the reason I left was frustration with finding viable zones. The zones I did find had little to do in them solo. And no, I’m not going to waste an hour looking for a good zone and waiting for an event timer to kick-off. That doesn’t rate very high on my list of fun things to do in my spare time.

Sure, I don’t die solo but wade through overly touch trash with zero to show for it is about as much fun as cleaning the bathroom.