Guild Wars 2

Orion.7264:

Aelelan.1639:

Orion.7264:

rikkus.8153:

Well maybe I am missing something here, but it seems people are complaining that they “have” to obtain these Ascended items to stay competitive but competitive with what? The only reason to have Ascended items would be to do the new Fractals at the higher levels? I understand it might give players an edge in WvW but couldn’t they just balance it out by releasing a PvP Armor set of comparable stats?

You realize that PvE is a competition? Getting into groups is already segregated between exotics/others, and now you can bet there will be the same with Ascended. At least exotic gear was reasonable to get. New content is also balanced based off of the highest tier of gear, so players in PvE without Ascended gear will struggle through more difficult content (yes, struggle, because the difference in stats between full Ascended gear and full Exotic gear is comparable to the difference between full Exotic and full BLUES) purely because they didn’t grind for months through RNG and massive gold sinks to get their full Ascended sets. Not to mention content that will be artificially gated and locked to players through bullkitten mechanics like Agony.

Based on how they have balanced previous dungeons, there’s no reason to assume that only people with Ascended gear will be capable of running new dungeons. As it is you can run the first 1-10 difficulties of the dungeon without ever using a piece of Ascended gear or even exotic gear for that matter. Hell you don’t even have to be level 80 to do early difficulties as it is. No content is gated by Agony because the only thing waiting for you after difficulty 10 is…the same exact 9 fractals you’ve been playing to get to that point. That’s the content. For 10 difficulties (arguably 13 according to some) you’ve been running the same dungeons you will see when you get passed the threshold into Agony difficulties. Nothing new is waiting for you therefore no gated content. You’ve already seen the content after doing 10 difficulties of the dungeon.

I’m sorry, but no. The only thing waiting for me after the first 10 difficulties is the reward for this dungeon: Ascended gear. It WILL NOT DROP in lower difficulties. It CANNOT BE OTHERWISE OBTAINED. That’s like updating the game so that current dungeons can be completed to a certain point without exotic gear, but require exotic gear to obtain the tokens. Content is certainly gated, reward is gated, and they have explicitly stated their intentions to continue utilizing such mechanics for future content, further requiring new mechanic-combating equipment to continue experiencing the game and the rewards thereof.

LOL that is kinda circular logic if the only reason to get the new gear is to be able to do a harder version of a fractal you have already done. You don’t “need” the ascended gear for any other real reason than that. This is very much similar to “Hard Modes” in WoW, SWTOR, and any other MMO. They have a story mode that everyone can complete and see the content and a Hard Mode for the more hardcore players .

dekou.6012:

It’s probably because loot scaling still doesn’t seem to work right. Killing ten weak mobs is much better than killing a single Veteran, even though AoEing everything down the Orr Zerg way is faster.

I agree too that the risk vs reward for killing any tough Veteran mob in the world is generally not worth it and with the double life of the Karka this can be an extra problem. I don’t however think that ArenaNet needs to balance this out by making them drop exotics or anything like that. I think what they need to do is factor the time involved in killing a pack of weak mobs vs one big mob. As long as the time spent on both are about the same, then maybe they just need to balance the drop % better. They could do this by having Veteran mobs drop more gold in a bag of cash in addition to the item a player would get. So if i attack a mob that is a veteran I have a smaller chance to get any loot (since its only one mob and killing a group would probably result in at least a few drops) , but if I “do” get the drop, it would be more rewarding in that it is a nice little bit of cash, on top of whatever i normally would get, that made it seem like it was worth it. Over time I think farming an hour of veteran mobs only vs an hour spent farming a bunch of packs of weaker mobs should balance out to about the same! The only difference would be that there is a chance of more small rewards for packs of mobs vs the one chance at a bigger reward with the veterans.

Well maybe I am missing something here, but it seems people are complaining that they “have” to obtain these Ascended items to stay competitive but competitive with what? The only reason to have Ascended items would be to do the new Fractals at the higher levels? I understand it might give players an edge in WvW but couldn’t they just balance it out by releasing a PvP Armor set of comparable stats?

And Finally My Last Post
Feedback – Suggestions for Improvement
Subdirector Noll is a minor issue and I have already stated how to fix a situation like that so I won’t mention him. The lag is a big issue and I think I may have a suggestion for how to handle such an epic event like this next time. I like the way that we have overflow servers and I think that is a good start for controlling a huge event like this but maybe what we need is a local overflow similar to the way the personal story is handled. When I go to a location and load into the personal story I am loaded into an instanced zone for me only, but what if we extended this idea to Big Events. So when the Karka invaded lions arch in phase one and my character went to defend Lion’s Arch I would go over to the location of the event and click a portal to zone into a local instance with not just me but several other players from my server or even other servers who showed up. This way you could control the number of players that were allowed to participate in the event as well as handle a situation where a player DC’s since the player could come back and zone right into the area he was instanced too. This also has the nice effect of being a pseudo LFG system in that it automatically throws players together to accomplish an event. Since players would probably be coming and going for whatever IRL reasons happen to draw them away from the event you would need to balance the event to handle the loss of people. You could do this two ways: First, by letting new players zone into the area if they choose to “Enter an event already in progress” and Second by making sure the event was similar to the Ancient Karka (of phase 3) in that losing people in your group didn’t mean you couldn’t complete the instance it just meant you would take longer to finish. Thus a group of 40 players could finish in an hour, however if another instance of the event only managed to get a group of 20 players they could finish in maybe 2-3 hours. I suppose you can accomplish this by making sure that the smaller groups aren’t decimated by the boss’s skills and the boss just becomes a big MOB with high HP that has to be taken down.
I would also suggest next time to make the BIG FINAL event (as in phase 3 of Lost Shores) available for a weekend or at the very least 24 hours. This will give people ample time to participate and avoids the problem of players feeling like they got left out if they miss it. Three hours just seems like too small of a window of opportunity for such an important event. I understand that for uniqueness you wanted it to be a one time only thing. I think you could possibly maintain that feeling by allowing players the opportunity to receive the big reward chest at the end only once.

Continued….
-The Bad
1. The Karka Invasion of Lions Arch: Having participated in the first event I will say that the lag was atrocious! It also was really unfortunate to have this happen when the free trial period was being offered and you’re presenting the game to new players. I also think that the free trial may have contributed to the problem of the increased lag. It seemed like someone there didn’t plan on whether the system could handle so many players concentrated in a single area, or account for the increase in population because of the free trial subscription players. That is a tough thing to predict so it’s understandable that it happened and I think it’s something that can be fixed in the future.
2. Subdirector Noll – While I did hear there were bugs with other npcs too, Noll was pretty much what caused me to stop and have to wait till phase two on the scavenger hunt. This was not fun at all and very frustrating. It also seemed like he may have bugged out too because of so many players concentrated in a single area? I have seen this problem before and never seen any other MMO handle this type of problem correctly. I personally, have always expected when something like this happens where you have an NPC on a quest chain fail, which would stop progress for the whole community, then the DEV’s should have a backup plan where the npc is removed and players are allowed to progress with the quest to the next part. For example in this case, you could have implanted the “emergency backup plan” patch and scuttled Subdirector Noll and then just sent all players an in-game mail with the item they need to progress on the quest chain and apologizing for the delay, maybe the letter would say
“We of the Consortium apologize but Subdirector Noll has taken ill and wont be available to assist you but please take this item so you can continue with your quest!,
-Good Luck Adventureres!
3. The Final Event – Ok I have already posted a little on this before and will admit that I have some bias, being that I did get to attend the event. I know there are a lot of people complaining because precursors dropped for a select few and those are really just people QQ’ing because they didn’t get one. I personally did not get a precursor and I am not upset at all. There was nothing wrong with the rewards offered here; nothing was given that cant already be obtained in the world as it is. While the ring and 20 slot bags were very nice rewards they are still not a unique thing since other players can just go buy a 20 slot bag or an exotic 80 ring off the TP if they want to. The reward was perfect for such a big event that made it feel very epic so GOOD JOB! The issues that I do feel were negative for the player experience was the lag and the limited amount of time of the event. The lag actually was not too bad for me but for some players with a poor connection getting DC’d in a 3 hour event and missing loot can be frustrating. It was also understandable for a portion of the base to feel left out when the event is only held for a small 3 hour window and may have to miss due to IRL issues.

Ok Dev’s, I would like to start by saying that overall this by far is the most fun I have had in an MMO and is the best game, out of all the currently available MMO’s out there. With that said I will give you a breakdown of the Good, The Bad, and some constructive Feedback for things I think you could do to make this go better in the future.
-The Good
I am very impressed with the rate of which you are continually providing new content to the players and I think that if you can maintain this momentum you have the potential for a winning MMO that everyone will want to play. These events are fun considering:
1. The Karka Invasion of Lions Arch : This was an epic concept which was similar to WoW’s Cataclysm, except better because you actually got to participate in the battle instead of just watching a cinematic of a Dragon blowing up the city.
2. The Scavenger Events: While the items received this time were not quite as rewarding as it was to receive the Memoires – “Burning Book Back of Halloween”, these scavenger events are still a really fun thing to do and have interesting lore to discover. It really is nice to go around and explore the world and find new things going on and things to see that weren’t there before, I really hope you continue with these, Good Job!
3. The New Map: This was awesome too! I think the people who are complaining that this is too small of a map need to realize that if ArenaNet is able to continue to provide a new area to explore, of this size every month, in new updates then that will be quite impressive. Over time this will add up to a continually building world that is changing all the time, which is very exciting. This can help keep the player base interested and also help to promote new players to want to try out this game. Also Devs, you don’t have to feel pressured to add a new map every month but could also drastically alter the terrain and landscape of one of the current areas. For instance, maybe an army of Centaurs takes over Gendarran Fields and decimates the zone (changing the events, hearts, and Points of Interests for that region) and heroes have to come take it back! I also have to say it was a great idea to have the new area open to New Players by scaling them to level 80. This is the opposite way of thinking that many other MMO’s handle new content that could distinguish you from the rest of the crowd!
4. Fractals (New Dungeons) : I haven’t done any yet so I won’t comment too much, but overall I think it’s great that new Dungeons are available and if you can also keep a good pace with a new Dungeon or Two every month you will quickly find that your MMO population will stick around and even grow as new players become interested.
5. The Final Event – Ancient Karka : What a great event this was and well worth attending! I managed to capture some great screen shots of the action. The confrontation with the giant Karka was truly epic and exciting! The Karka even managed to wipe the group I was with a few times since we didn’t have a Waypoint that was nearby! The rewards were also well worth the amount of time we had to invest in this event and I think that you should be applauded for a job well done with this one!

I don’t understand the fuss? I did the event and got some exo’s in value of about 8g, not including the sweet 20 slot bag, but I don’t think its unfair that some people got lucky on RNG and got precursors. That is just how it works in any game, when your in a dungeon in WoW and an epic drops and you win the roll it doesn’t mean everyone else in the party is entitled to an epic too. That would be just silly!

Also for those people complaining about missing the event, don’t you have the same chance of getting a precursor by farming mobs in the World? Its not like you missed anything exclusive that you cant get in game. Don’t worry there will be some new fun stuff to get next month! Be Patient! ^.^

Awesome Event! Was a lot of fun!

I did enjoy the clock tower event, took me 7 hours to get it, though that was not straight it was over 2 days with breaks and coming back again till i got it. To the ones who are unhappy with this event I wonder why that is? The reward of the slippers is available for purchase on the TP and the achievement is not necessary for the Emissary of the Mad King Title. So when it came down to it there is nothing special gained from beating it other than the sense of completion. The event is really more about fun as I had a good time and met some fun people during the event. The camera issues were annoying at first but you have enough time to let people go a little ahead of you and catch up later Little secret there! ^.^