Guild Wars 2

It is not uncommon to sell an expansion and ship the base game for free with it. Age of Conan’s first expansion “Rise of the Godslayer” came with the core game included but only one key. So new players got the core game, the expansion and a free month on top of that for the purchase, while veterans got the expansion and nothing more and people didn’t complain about it as much as they do here.

The real problem is that ANet sells the expansion at the cost of a full game, while we – as far as we know – will not get nearly as much content as we got with the release of the core game. So this makes the offer look like a rip off.

Look, if ANet sold GW2:HoT for $30, including the core game, noone (well there are always some) would complain. Everyone expected to shell out 30 bucks anyway. But $50 and most every veteran will have to buy an additional character slot, which makes the expansion cost more like $60, that is just blown out of dimension.

And that is the problem.

Ironically I was playing the first 9 levels of ESO and thought, “Why the kitten am I playing this kitten?!”
I have not seen such an uninspired start in a MMO for years. Somehow the game gets entertaining past level 10 and I like to punch stuff in first person view, even if it still needs improvements in that area.

You are right, GW2 is boring. The LS arc is nearly over, which provokes a bit of hope, but it is still ANet, so, there goes the hope down south.

I fear, ANets silence is the only reason why people are still here.

If the one patch people await will be less than uber awesome, people will get mad. ANet probably is afraid to see the reaction on what they have to offer.

Yeah, make all the three dragon bosses deserted wastelands on the main servers all together. Sounds like a good idea to take away the open world prime content from the open world.

I see the joy in game and on the forums.

This is not a beta, this is a demo for a) tricking people to pre-purchase the game and b) actually rewarding people who got lured into the trap.

The area to play in is so tiny that there should be no surprises for the QA team, the duration is too short to get any valuable data from the “test”.

Real beta testing is a thing of the past or – in rare cases – some more serious companies than ANet, this is just a teaser for the hype.

Feel free to send feedback, but don’t expect anything to change.

Beta test weekend my kitten…

lordkrall.7241:

Raids is a single VERY minor part of the game. The vast majority of the content will still be fully possible to do for everyone.

Fair? So someone that plays for 10 minutes a day should have the exact same things as someone that plays 10 hours a day? Why should anyone bother playing any more than 10 minutes a day if everything could just be done and accessed with that time?

I love this thread. I REALLY do.

It reminds me of the early days of WoW. The elitism, the entitlement, all is back.

I love how this tweet gave the Manifesto the last final blow, here we go, sorry 99%, you are too casual for this content.

If you did not grind your back off, or you are a newer player, god forbid you rolled a new character or own the wrong armor stats, you are too casual.

This thread shows the rapid decline of the forums and this will happen in the community ingame too with raids being the new shiny thing.

I hope I have enough popcorn for all the drama – well played ANet.

Uh, I feel honored. Thank you guys for promoting my guide. ^^

I would keep feedback on cooldown. It causes a lot of damage on ranged mobs, so it would be a waste if it was on cooldown for a combo. Half of the enemies out there are ranged ones anyway, give them back some of their own! ^^

Crafting in GW2 is the second biggest disappointment in GW2. Uninspired, boring, predictable. It is set up so difficult, that figuring it out by yourself as a newbie, you will waste tons of ressources. But if you understand the system behind it (or just use a guide), it is the same simple scheme put over every level of every profession.

In other words, it is stupid to spend time on it, and in the end, the only level a profession is worth something is the max level, as they made ascended items account bound (seriously, crafting stuff for yourself is the goal of crafting professions?). So everyone has to level professions for themselves, or they will be left behind – awesome game design, should give a reward. That’s how crafting works in reality, all those expensive clothes are only worn by the designer themselves too after all.

The biggest disappointment though was, wait for it, ascended items.

Now the core progression of the game combines the two biggest failures of GW2. Thank god for the steam holiday sale!

Donari.5237:

Clearly this is not the whole of the news for the update, merely the need-to-know stuff.

Clearly.

Source?

Thank god we only had one beta weekend. Look how great the druid works, obviously more testing would have just been a waste of time.

This is a really sad joke.

Because NPC = master race!

To be honest, I think 8% is a joke. 25% would be more reasonable.

Duelists dps is sooo much higher…
/roll eyes

God forbid there are situations with more than one enemy. Never seen that before.

colesy, you are a bit like schroedinger’s cat… Good luck in your box. ^^

- A great evil noone has seen since forever is getting stronger and with his power spreads his threat all over the world.
- This great evil send out his minions to cast fear and destruction all over the place.
- A fellowship.
- Freeing a big bunch of trapped ghosts.

Am I the only one who is curious what will be the one ring and where we will find mount doom in GW2?

Maladon.5760:

You guys should stop playing video games and get better jobs

This is not about money, this is mainly about value. There is a difference.
If you have grown up in a very consumer heavy society like North America, throwing money at over-prized stuff is part of your daily life. The value of a product is secondary as long as it is the up-to-date “thing”.

In other societies the value of a product consists of both, the cost and the degree of satisfaction in regards of expectations. $50 here is a dinner for two, $100 if you want something better than pizza. Even though you could say that is fairly expensive, together with the experience I see enough value to pay for the experience.
I don’t care about the prize tag, as long as I see the proper value in the product.

Which right now I see not in GW2:HoT, and neither does my wife. Two less buyers of the expansion for now.

Who is running TA Aetherpath anymore. It is not efficient. It is not profitable.
Isn’t it funny that ANet is trying to shift away from berserker meta, but people do no longer want a change?

The PvE meta is berserker DD melee. Anything out of that is not going to be fruitful for a long time. It will only get worse with ascended armor. People will grind out a set of berserker and than expect it to work for all PvE content.
There is no easy way to switch, so PvE has to work. Or people will get upset. Very upset for “wasting all their hard work”.

Too late, the damage has been done.

Hey! Sorry that I didn’t answer to your PM, I am fairly busy with my new third member of my family lately, so GW2 is not a priority.

Unfortunately, I have only written a leveling guide for Mesmers, as all other professions I leveled felt fairly straight forward and easy.

I once thought about writing a necro leveling guide so maybe if you need help with that, I could offer some ideas.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Gehenna.3625:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The problem there is that, as many have pointed out time and again, GW1 is not a MMO. It can not be used as a standard by which we judge GW2, which is a MMO. On the other hand other MMO companies have done similar promotions, which does set precedent.

Except this is not about the genre but about the business plan. It’s much fairer to compare the game to GW1 than another MMO because of the B2P approach which other MMOs don’t use. They use F2P or box + subs or combinations thereof. Totally different approach and in other MMOs I’ve played they didn’t do it this way. Some MMOs give expansion free to subs, others give different package deals for just the expansion or a combo price for core + expansion.

What I’ve not experienced is an MMO that comes out with it’s first expansion and just before it comes out suddenly decides to thrown in the core game free with it. But maybe you have an example of that.

It would’ve been wiser to do this differently. Now a lot of people are upset. More than needed really.

Again, this is not the first company to do this type of promotion (and thats what it is, a promotion). Other companies (not just MMOs) have done the exact same type of thing and it was perfectly fine. So why is it suddenly an issue when Anet does it?

The issue is that you’re all using the FAQ and calling false advertising. Stating they lied to us when no such action has occured. The question asks if the core game is required to play the expansion. It is answered, yes, it is required. No where do we ask if we are required to purchase it and given an the answer of yes. No where do they commit one way or the other in regards to us needing to buy or not buy the game, and that is done intentionally.

Nope.

There are three versions of the expansion offered by ANet and other official retailers offer one version (the same as the $50 version of ANet).

All version will work on purchase without a GW2 core game. There is no other option, no other expansion version.

Fact: If you buy any version of the so called expansion, you do not need the GW2 core game. Therefore the only answer to the question in the FAQ actually is: No, whatever you buy, as long as there is Heart of Thorns written on it, you do not need anything else to play it.

ANet is using semantics to make it look like Heart of Thorns is an expansion, but in fact, it is a GW2 2.0.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As Colin mentioned in this blog post, “Due to the size and scope of the final four story releases in season one, the next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished.”

More information on this feature release will come available after the current living world arc wraps up.

Sorry, I cannot see an expansion sized patch in what is called a large “feature only” release.

Doesn’t seem to be the same. A large patch is a large patch, expansion sized is a whole different kind of expectation.

tkalamba.2541:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

tkalamba.2541:

kistell.5684:

" So say you’ve completed a few fractal runs and have access to scale 3 difficulty, your group disbands, and you head back into Lion’s Arch to form a new group. If one of the group members is currently only at scale 1 difficulty, that will be what the rest of the group is set at until you complete more fractals to advance the difficulty scale higher "

So how can any one say players will not be locked out, this is not a gateing mechanic.

Say i take a break for a few months i come back all is see is

LFM FOTM lvl 13 only!

Talk about dividing your community.

People will hit a difficulty wall in an infinitely scaling dungeon. You will need to go back to lower difficulty runs, which will mean there will be a demand for low difficulty people.

Who are you kitten. In a grind, players go the most efficient way. They will do lower level difficulties with higher gear level players to farm faster. If you think they will just take “lowbies” with them, you might be very young in matters of MMOs…

Do you not understand how this dungeon works?

The difficulty will increase constantly, and is determined by the LOWEST common level of difficulty. 4/5 guys can be at level 15 difficulty, but 1 at level 2, the dungeon will then be at level 2. This means you will NEED lower level people for efficiency. You can’t just toggle the difficulty, its based on the a common level achieved. If you entire group is at level 15, the difficulty will be 15, and if you can’t progress, you have no choice but to take lower level people.

From the preview it looks like you can set the difficulty level lower than your level. So you can probably just set the difficulty on your own, as long as it is the same or lower than the lowest member.

We got a new map? I thought that shoe-box sized desert was just the personal story instance. If the maps get any smaller, my character won’t fit in anymore.

The whole micro map is nothing else but a jumping puzzle, and to be honest, I do not play MMOs for jumping puzzles…

kokiman.2364:

Arnath.2319:

It makes me so sad to say this but currently Guild Wars 2 has the worst PVE in the history of MMO’s.

What’s the second worse MMO PvE wise?

Must have been Asheron’s Call 2.

To be honest, I like PvE in GW2. It just misses the stream of new content. Seasonal content is sort of OK, but it feels so unrelated to the story.
I want more story, be it personal, living or whatever. Just make it happen.

Direct link:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Kai-s-Complete-PvE-Compendium/first#post2848343

^^

Prerequisite:

Get not placed in a random overflow (probably the hardest challenge).

No, he just realized that we have all been made one-dimensional in PvE, and that there are no roles, because the system is so shallow.
If everyone is doing the same, the game gets boring, and if the game gives you no choices, it will stay that way.

Players in RPGs like playing roles, this might come as a surprise.

Nage.1520:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

In the end, the thing that people can not deny is:

This “Big Feature Patch” offers very little for existing players. Most of the changes are a result of the China release. Some minor QoL changes like a wardrobe, accountbound dyes (should have been like this from day one) and the loss of the laughable repair fee.

The new trait system would have been good if it was part of the release, but now? Who cares? They reworked it for the China release, and now they just put it in the Western version too, even though it makes litte sense. It punishes new players and give old players an edge. How does this make any sense?

The only thing big about this feature patch is the way, ANet has announced it. Calling it big was one reason for the hype. They should have called it a minor upgrades to some game systems.

But ANet tends to suffer backlashes from their own marketing constantly and they seem to not learn from it.

What stays is a bad taste in the mouth, disappointed players, and happy developers of other online games.

Thank you ANet for the “Big Troll Patch”!

GG

I couldn’t disagree more. New traits, changes to rune sets and changes to sigils including being able to use two on two handed weapons is pretty big. We have no clue what this will do to the meta.

And you know whether they’re making it for China and we got it too is completely 100% irrelevant. What’s relevant is that we got it. It doesn’t matter that in your opinion things should have been in since launch. They weren’t and now they are.

You don’t like and haven’t liked this game for a long time. So when a patch comes out that doesn’t change the features you like you say its’ s a small patch. There’s nothing at all small about this patch.

And we don’t even know everything about it yet.

The first few new trait after 18 monthes is a big thing? One per trait line? It is nearly as impressive as all those new skills we got…

Not being able to use two sigils in 2h weapons was an oversight that has been a topic on the forums since beta. What is this going to change? And the runes, they now give you less freedom for your build. The meta was melee DPS in PvE, the meta will be melee DPS in PvE. PvP meta won’t change either even though I do not care for PvP anymore.

And you got one thing wrong, I actually like the game itself, just the fact that it has not evolved over the last 18 monthes is really frustrating. This game is going nowhere.

Everything in this game is a DPS fest. I wonder that you are surprised, I truly do.

God forbid, some people would try to see the whole picture.

Somtimes on this forums, I feel like I am surrounded by the three monkeys of Nikko, when obvious things should be obvious.

Well, if people say everything is ok, then everything must be ok. Good.

The druid is one-dimensional, while people expected complexity.

Of course it feels boring.

That’s why they put different signs in there.

So that the color blind people can fail to enjoy this event as much as the others…

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll go into more detail soon, just to re-iterate so it’s clear:

“The next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished.”

A feature release is not an expansion, it’s a release focused on game features. Examples of game features we’ve done in the past would be: guild missions, account achievement system, spectator mode, new pvp maps, daily world boss chests, removing culling and giving visibility options, the WvW WxP system, etc.

Thank you, those speculations get out of hand fast…

Opened the five boxes of Scarlet.

All of the boxes were filled with crap. The greatest villain of GW2 and she is a horder?
Now she makes even less sense. Why did she not salvage this crap to get some resources for her machines.

Seriously, I would have prefered if there were just the journal pieces in it. Or some real reward. But that…

You just don’t design coordinated encounters for big groups of random people.

The day, ANet accepts this, will be the day they put these abomination of events in raid instances.

I love open world and stuff, but as soon as things get difficult, it will simply not work.
ANet throws these events at the playerbase, because they do not understand how resilient players can be against teamplay, if they do not decide to do so by themselves.

If you join a raid, you go for the kill. You try to kill the bosses to get the rewards, this is motivation enough in most cases.
If you join an event, you go there out of curiosity. Maybe you need some achievements if you even care, but the least thing you care about are the 100 other people around you.
You don’t know them, you don’t mind them, why would someone give a kitten.

Getting a bigger box with the same crappy loot for trying, why would it even be worth it?

Well sorry I am not convinced.

If you set the mark as high as saying “content worth a paid expansion”, people will at least expect some new areas.
All people begging for bugfixes and burst in joy now ANet vaguely confirmed them as part of this “expansion” may rethink of what they expect from a game. I expect bugs to get fixed anyway.

Furthermore the January and February update were meant to be the size of an expansion, but it looks like all we get for January is a minor update. I am fine with the delay to February/March, but just say it is so.

We still do not know what we get though, let’s wait and see if it is worth staying… ^^

Nice troll.

In fact you get everything for free in this game. The more you play the more free things you get. That’s your chance. Simply play more and get more free stuff. Show ’em!

There is no “guy” who offers you “money” so that you do “the work” for him – this is a game. If you think this is a job, try some real work…

The Living Universe will finally bring us an expansion worth of content.

Sounds familiar.

Thank you for bringing shatter back. I am so happy that I will work on my guide again as sign of support. I want to give back.

Honestly, I see a lot of complaining incoming. PvE was strictly separated from PvP in this game.
While the Wv3 people tend to call the PvE players “loot bags”, the PvE players must obviously be the majority and have more voice (we will see how many players are on the Wv3 maps tomorrow)…

PvE players do not care about the stupid zerking around on a map for hours, they want to see the story.
Wv3 players do not give a dime about story, they want to bash other players heads.

Two worlds will collide, oh so much friction…

Guild Wars 2 now ist more or less just Guild Wars 2 at release.

That is OK, if you buy the game now, it is still a fun little game. This would be OK for any single player title. And that is how I see GW2. A title, I can log back in, like in other single player RPGs, after I finished the story, doing a side quest here and there and log out.

The LS and the temporary events have hardly been worth the time, in regards to their quality compared to the original game. Some sub-par content “updates”, mostly fire and forget.

In the end, GW2 is a MMO, that tries so hard not being one, that it feels as stale as a single player RPG, after you have finished the main story. Just without all the cool stuff, single player games have, like things actually get destroyed while you are on a mission, and not you just arriving after things are destroyed (like LS in LA).

Potential? Yes. But after close to two years not using this potential, hope is on diminishing returns.

Honestly, it is still in the game. I can specc my Mesmer to facetank most mobs. The trinity is gone in terms of class roles. It is not gone in terms of gameplay.
I can specc my Mesmer to be a healer. Or a tank. Or a supporter. Or a damage dealer.
If you want to play as a trinity, get some players, coordinate setups and builds and you will be fine.

The Great Collapse

This area was originally a completed Canthan district and included a blend of Asian architectures. However, this mix of styles received negative negative feedback from China and Korea, since those gaming markets traditionally prefer a uniform design. Due to time constraints the district was replaced by the Great Collapse.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Great_Collapse

Asians didn’t like it, so they got rid of it. All of Cantha probably.

Zelyhn.8069:

My point is that the Fractured patch showed one thing: Anet does not care.

They did, they fixed the content for you. They updated it and gave you new toys to play with.

With the reset (I’d call it a rollback because of MMO rule #2: Exploit early exploit often), they leveled the playfield for everyone. This sounds like caring to me.
They would REWARD exploiting if they gave something for everyone.

Don’t blame ANet (wow, that’s hard for me to say) blame the people who exploited the system.

But a meh story is just not really enough for a game that was built (promoted) around a personal story. This is my story! Ah kitten, let’s go back to grind mode.

Still cannot see, how this update combined with next month will be “the conent worth an expansion”… For now, it has to be the worst story expansion ever since the invention of asia grinders…

Right now, the game has very little to offer.

No LS, quality aside, at least it gave a reason to lock in and play a bit.
No new content at all, like zones, dungeons, professions or whatever.
No rewards.

Right now you only have the same old same as you had forever. I see very little motivation to play what I have seen before, multiple times, for monthes and monthes.

I can offer you the help of my leveling guide found in my signature. If the gameplay guide won’t work for you, at least the tips of faster leveling might bring you an advantage.

Galen Grey.4709:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

“Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.”

This was written in Linsey Murdock’s announcment here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/
before ANet thought it was a good idea to change it a bit. With some google skills, you may find the original though.

Yes and that progression was sticking ascended items in the middle! I hope its clear to you as it is to me that the progression Linsey was talking about there is about the amount of effort required! (exotic has same stats as legendary so there was no progression gab in terms of power, the progression gab is only in terms of effort required).

do you feel that ascended armor isnt enough to fill that gap?

But if exotic and legendary items had the same stats only the latter were much more difficult to get, why wouldn’t they just introduce a new tier with the same stats that was harder to get than exotics but not as hard as legendaries.

Why introducing stronger gear, why updating the legendaries, why all the fuzz if not for creating a gear-treatmill? Call it progression as long as you want, if it ends in a grind for better gear (and well, running FotM 20 times is a fair grind) it is nothing else.

Ah, my bad on the qoute, but you got the point. ^^

longshot.1397:

I really, realy hope, if/when they introduce legendary armor, the ascended stuff will be equiv of precursor. Heck, we got soo much invested, it would make sense.

Why would ANet waste another chance to make you grind for weeks? That is their idea of long-term content.

So you will start from scratch when they continue the gear grind with legendary.
Crafting to 600 probably, not with me though…

Sure – show me how to solo my way to the electric wyvern and tiger pet.

Thanks.

No deda, you missed the point.

In a condition heavy meta, mesmers have to play a glass cannon shatter build to be competative.

ANet tries to push the mesmer a bit towards the meta, so they can start playing with the big guys and on the forums, hell breaks loose.

So ANet tries to push an underused weapon and an underused specc for an underused profession. For every person with at least half a brain, this change sounds reasonable.

Oxstar.7643:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

In matters of gold farming: ANet is doing the right thing to shut down methods to earn gold by farming. The gap between casual gaming gold earning and farming is already way to big.
Class balance is playing with number, and unfotunately we do not have them. ANet will try their best, though nerfs will always cause nerdrage anyway.

What’s wrong with people making more money if they actually invest the time and patience into the boring repetetive work that it takes and save up? Isn’t that how the world works?

Also ANet needs player input before they launch class changes like I’ve said a million times now, that’s why they need a PTS server. If a class is yay or nay depends on it’s situational use in actual PvE and PvP content, not numbers done on a dummy.

If the inflation keeps on going by this pace, the only way for new players and casuals to keep up is buying gems and change them to gold. While this might look like profit for ANet at first, it will cause people to stop playing the game because it will feel like pay2win.

This is not what ANet wants. They try to fix their broken economy and I hope they can succeed.