Guild Wars 2

It would pretty much affect game play a lot… not sure, but it sounds kind of interesting. WvW with night-raids having a surprise moment… O_O

Chaotic Storm.2815:

What happened to the days when an achievement felt like something. whats with all this every day stuff earning us points I feel like i’m being spoon fed these points with no actually effort.
where are the achievements for killing so many creatures in a set time, killing a boss in some crazy fashion. Speed running a jump puzzle. where are the actually achievements we can be proud of?

Wasn’t that the point of achievements in the first place to be something we could show of and say “hey look what crazy thing I managed to pull off”

gasp man, let me give you a manhug… I miss those too :’(

it’s already quite visible, some people will always ignore it

Elbegast.6970:

I’ve tried for months and I have finally given up.

the more nonsense I read from you, the more it get’s obvious that you’re just trolling. Took me 10min in gw2lfg last time to find a group, all of the players laid back and easy going fellas… was quite fun.

you’ve mentioned “for months” a few times now, what I think: you haven’t played that content “for months”.

I keep it short and simple: The focus on dynamic meta events instead of shorter dynamic event chains makes maps feel empty.

Let me explain:

When I explore Queensdale I never know what happens in a lot of areas. Bandits could raid the farm, there could be a worm-invasion or even a worm queen might appear. You are encouraged to explore because tons of events can happen at any given time.

Now when I’m in one of the new maps it’s all about pushing a meta to the end. Exploring rarely has any surprise events popping up. Masteries also seem to be quite shallow, I haven’t seen a new event started by any of the masteries.

In short: When I’ve done the meta, I feel like I’ve seen it all. I rarely had that experience in the classic maps. I hope the living story brings more depth into the HoT-maps (because the maps itself are the best I’ve seen in any rpg/mmo-game I’ve played so far)

Xar.6185:

This is not what we are currently getting. Its more like
“Hey, awesome, you killed Gormash, the Slayer. What did you get?!”
“Hey, I got this ummm… I dont know what I got… I depostied collecables.. have to go to my bank and check”
or
“Hey, I got this <TotallyEventSpecificCollectable> that if I gather enough of I can exchange them at a vendor for something”

Unique skins are still a reward option. Like what they added to the champion bags. But adding a collectable for every single LS update. Is that what you want to continue?

By this time next year, if the pattern continues, they will have added 8 more collectables.

Oh and I forgot baubles and bauble bubbles plus I’m sure I forgot some more too.

Karma is the currency used at heart vendors. It would be a really good fit here I believe.

Karma would be interesting, if heart vendors would sell lv.80 equipment (exotic) for huge amounts of karma, so that you had a karma-sink again. The karma-skins in major cities were an awesome first step and I don’t get why this hasn’t been continued. They could also sell practical things for huge amounts of karma (like 22-slot bags, a permanent portal-stone to one totally random waypoint so that you won’t have to pay a waypoint fee for porting there anymore etc etc.)

Well we at least agree that loot isn’t very interesting in this game. The interesting loot is far too rare and buying it on the trading post is not very exciting imho. I’d make droprates higher but souldbound on find.

I also agree that the temporary nature of the collectibles isn’t very fun. Imho they could add these collectibles permanently to the loottable of specific enemies. Then decrease the droprate after the LS-chapter. This way you could get these cool LS-items even after the event (and not by buying black lion chests for a random chance of tickets). What do you think?

Europe player here, I was in overflow at 1:00 a.m. on most days during the last week
Tons of players
Player numbers are quite fine – http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7432/Consistent-Steady-Growth-Puts-Us-in-a-Good-Place.html/page/1

Consistent-Steady-Growth-Puts-Us-in-a-Good-Place

I really like the idea that many zones have 2-3 slots for a guildhall. You can build your guildhall on this spot; when someone occupies that space already you still can, but you can only see your own hall when it’s built. Others see a random guild’s hall. You can set favourites though, so that you’ll always see that specific guild’s hall when you enter the map.

What I’d also like to see is the prices proportional to the size of the guild. A wooden hall would cost 2000 pieces of wood logs for a one player guild and 2000×100 = 200000 pieces of wood for a 100man guild. Bigger guilds will have bigger halls though.

The advantage of this open world guild hall: other players can participate in events, even if not member of that guild. If the hall got damaged from npc-enemies, every player around can donate materials / do events in order to repair the halls. Fully repaired halls and other done objectives might start meta-events on open world bosses etc.

I had to smile when I saw the reddit-thread of the new patch and the most top-voted comment was about how minis now stay in the bag when you deposit your collectibles…

it’s the small things that matter to a lot of people, and I think Anet did a huge step with this release

• interesting dialogues of the main characters, even the Quaggan lovers from Kessex Hills reappear
• a lot of (lorewise) interesting stuff in Scarlets hideout, which gives the character a lot more depth imho
• a new golem-model for the new Asura-main character… so awesome
• Kasmeer and Marjory holding hands… aww….
• stuff to unlock (Scarlets journal) that sounds sooo promising, not just a chance for another piece of rare loot
• Jungle Worm minis, each has it’s own animations
• a new icon for certain weapons like Infinite Light
• a hidden mysterious probe in old Lion’s Arch
  …

I really have to say I find this patch amazing, so much love for the details… sure, I like the boss-battles too, but sometimes it’s the small things that make me feel good.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

just something for players who think they aren’t good players:

a good keybind AND/OR a nice gamepad work wonders. I absolutely saw a huge increase of skill when I look back at the release compared to now. I use this: http://img.clubic.com/02283070-photo-logitech-g-series-logitech-g13-1.jpg and it’s like magic. The best thing: my thumb controlls my movement WASD via the small joystick. The gamepad is great for every PC-game also, so I’d recommend it to everyone out there who still plays with the keyboard.

just to give some casuals hope, you will get better. You will get a lot better using keybinds / gamepads. You may not notice it that much because it consists of thousands of tiny steps, but others can see the difference clearly.

This sounds amazing. I’ll be saving up for one. I’ve often wondered how players I admire seem to keep up the constant motion while firing off skills at the same time (not saying this is how they’re all doing it, of course), whereas even at high level it seems others were much less fluid with their multi-tasking. I thought they must have a third hand or something, lol.

Thanks – and thanks for the encouragement. GW2 is definitely a game I want to become good at.

My pleasure! Believe me, it makes a huge difference. I tried the keyboard first but when it didn’t work out I felt bad and was quite convinced that I’m just a bad player. I had problems strafing while pressing other keys and F1-F4 were rarely used. Now I cycle through the Ele-attunements nearly too fast… it’s so handy. I don’t even have to use shift+commands, every single skill can be used with pressing 1 button. I even have a hotkey for the map, the charactersheet and my inventory.

if you haven’t found it yet, look here:
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-G13-Programmable-Gameboard-Display/dp/B001NEK2GE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

it seems a bit expensive at first, but I use it for every single game and imho it was worth it. If it would break somehow, I would buy the same again and again. Believe me, when you have the keybind in your head (configured how it is logical for you) and don’t have to press multiple commands with the same finger while trying to move with the same, you will become much better.

this is my personal gw2 configuration on the g13:
http://i.imgur.com/pteyNyB.jpg
G14 – V is the most important one. Having “Dodge” on one button instead of double tab is so much better.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

This said I personally feel that there is room for maneuver and a policy adjustment to be more inclusive.

I am really looking forward to seeing how the next CDI goes as that could lead to some more open discussion for sure.

I wonder if it’s even in our power to make policy adjustments possible in the future. The thing is: I don’t have the feeling that you devs don’t want to talk about your work, but that you aren’t allowed to… and I’m not sure if the person who is responsible for that policy is even interested in a change.

if you say it’s possible, I guess I have to trust you

personally I’d be happy with a compromise:

Everyone has to unlock the traits/skills with the new system again BUT those unlocks would be accountwide. So leveling up your 2nd tief would have all the thief skills/traits unlocked you got before.

Also hero-challenges could be accountwide as well, so you don’t have to do a hero-challenge in the world twice. (do a hero challenge with a tief unlocks these hero points for all of your other characters). You still have to level up each of your characters for the most of the hero points though.

(the problem with this compromise: you’d have lv.1 characters which already have hero points to spend from hero challenges, so new characters would have access to tons of skills/traits already.)

it gives me the feeling that they aren’t listening… I mean the press, the players… everyone seems to be against this temporary stuff. They introduced a new zone with the Labyrinth Cliffs. It makes sense that the airship flies away again, but does it make sense that the zone itself disappears? They could add more content to that zone over time like they did with Southsun Cove. Hell, I miss more events everywhere… I thought they’d add such to the whole game after release. Instead we see little new events, the events we see are very basic (kill waves of enemies) like there has been no improvement over time at all.

I’m curious what happens to the crown pavillion after this month. They can’t possibly just take it away, can they? The challenges would have been awesome if players could do them in their own pacing. This just builds a lot of pressure.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

No, it should be Stealthed players can see Stealthed players. That way Thieves become instant counters to Thieves in any 1v1 situation.

I love this idea, I’m not sure of all the rest of your suggestion though.

which seems understandable… you need a reward for your hard work. Last time I fought against veterans in Orr and got not even a grey drop I was pretty frustrated. There needs to be a balance for risk-reward. RNG for the chance of better loot isn’t that rewarding in that particular situation.

Instance content is the only way to go

absolutely disagree. Instances are a breeding pool for elitists and I REALLY enjoy playing with random guy XY, even though they are not best geared top skilled players. It’s awesome to find new friends that way and sometimes you feel like being a hero when helping not-so-skilled ones.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m at 185% MF, and drop rates are fine. In the attached picture, all the Ecto you see were salvaged from Rare and Exotics (btw – Ecto salvage rates are fine too). I’ve gotten multiple Precursor drops from monsters and from Zommoros.

Your picture only proves that you play quite a lot and that you’ve probably seen hundrets of thousands of drops, not that RNG has a positive effect on your drops.

Prophet.6257:

Maybe a good time to reintroduce that tribal armor we saw in PvP for awhile.

it certainly fits the jungle-theme… maybe drops from a new Hylek tribe? ^^
Well I guess it’s wishful thinking, we haven’t heard a word from Anet about it’s stance on peoples opinion regarding the lack of set-skins from drops/rewards.

example:

Not only ancient lore can be “captured” like this.

You wander around Southsun Cove. You enter the Karka Lair and find the petrified Karka Queen. You go to the section “Southsun Mysteries” and press the “discover button”. Suddenly you can see some objects in the area which can be interacted with. Interacting with the Queen herself unlocks a lore entry about it’s origins and a piece of artwork. Interacting with all the discoverable objects in that small area unlocks more entries and a piece of the Southsun Puzzle.

This can be done in 12 locations on Southsun Cove (and Lions Arch) – where the Karka attacked. Collect those 12 pieces of the Southsun puzzle and complete it in order to unlock all of the lore behind Southsun Cove (which now can be found in the codex).

This was the “raw lore” – the novice puzzle. It’s the very basic lore. Now you can find other hidden sites with similar mechanics (but maybe more difficult riddles) to unlock the apprentice and master puzzle.

Once you’ve completed all 3 southsun grades you unlock story-missions on SSC – just like the bonus mission packs in GW1. You play as Canach who has a dark mission. You play as Ellen Kiel who tries to hunt down Canach. You play as yourself to replay the battle vs. Canach.

actually I think that he looks exactly like the artwork and I love his look. I love the untypical face, yay for a new face-type (is it accessible in the character creator?) and yay for a new hairstyle (same question).

More variety is good, I would have hated it if they had used an existing face/hairstyle again. Roxx on the other hand… it looks like an existing option but with extreme slider-usage. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Roy, have you considered a unique title or some other reward for players who go the more effortful way of the adventure?

Mike said:

when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

would it be against the policy to talk about what you think is important for the game and the community? Your priorities?

I mean, even if there may be some cancelled development, we could be sure that it’s still important for Anet and that they are probably working on it.

I think there are quite enough cool event-chains in those zones. My suggestion (I’ve posted it quite a few times) would be to bring people from the city via an expedition to the start of those eventchains.

So people see this NPC in the city, he opens a portal to the next occuring chain-event and you go through and can follow the event-chain right from the start. Since the portal has no name on it you won’t know beforehand where you are going to… could be a meta-eventchain in Kessex Hills or the pre-event to one of the dragon-encounters.

things that would go hand in hand with this:

• dragon-encounters can’t be predicted via dragon-timers anymore. Instead you are either there when it happens, or you use the expedition to get there. —> less players —> no too-big-zergs to break those events
• you’d need events and/or minigames in the city in order to keep people busy while waiting for one of the portals. (…well, it shouldn’t last long)

yesterday I saw 4 people standing next to the holo-projector and doing nothing. I watched them for a couple of seconds, while standing next to the thing. Well, I decided to open it and they burst down the mobs while I was laying on my back…

I’m definitely not happy to see those guys again

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are getting close to the formulate section of the thread now and you will see more opinion and metric based discussion from me and everyone else.

Chris

This really gets me excited Chris, I think we need a bit more direction from you devs what works and doesn’t work for you in order to develop good ideas together.

Wahaha.7938:

I would definitely prefer to have fewer legends with more swappable skills, than to have more legends with a fixed set of skills.

I agree since you only can switch between two at a time.

it’s better to have this option:

Legend A (1,2,3,4,5) take 3
Legend B (6,7,8,9,10) take 3

than this option

Legend A (1,2,3) you have to take those
Legend B (4,5,6) you have to take those

I ask myself this: what is worse?

• the scenario after the delay of precursor crafting
• the scenario when no one knows how the future of GW2 will look like

In the first scenario at least we had a bunch of things to look forward to, to focus on – and most of them implemented (which means: happy customers). In the later scenario we have no idea what to look forward to and are afraid of the things they might not add ever. There might be new features added along the way, but our focus is still on other things.

… and think about how scenario 1 could have been better if Anet could have clarified exactly what it is that makes it last longer – open brutal honest communication.

Skan.5301:

Ahlen.7591:

After reading the forums for awhile, I’ve come to the conclusion that GW1 players are the whiniest player-base to ever inhabit an MMO.

When you’re told “everything you love about Guild Wars and more” will be in the game and instead we get what we have here, you will understand.

Imagine your parents telling you for your 13th birthday, Ahlen, you will get a console, and instead of getting a PS3/PS4, you get the original Nintendo. The one where you had to blow into the cartridge to play. Wouldn’t you be disappointed?

I bet you’d whine.

How ignorant must a person be if he thinks that he has the only valid opinion in what is good and what not. Anet has the data on what most people want, they see numbers changing, so it’s their right to act according to those numbers to have the best solution to the main playerbase. People kitten about ascended gear for example, but they forget that it’s our fault that it’s in the game entirely.

It was pretty clear for me that Sylvari are dragon minions when I saw this:

Mysterious Vine:
“This vine, while appearing to be touched by Mordremoth, has been grown from seed under the good influence of a hero of Tyria. "

From all we know about Ronan, Ventari and the origins of the seeds of the Pale tree it all makes sense.

stuff like this should be rewarded with a cosmetic set… not playing the trading post for weeks in order to buy a legendary (for example)

I don’t like this. A cultural set available to all races for half the price? Now this makes the real t3 lose it’s value for me.

Anet stated that they don’t want to include the jetpack etc in the new versions of the dungeon because it’s would be unfair for everyone who got it in the past. Now they do this… Kind of inconsistent.

how do those team-setups inside Anet actually work? Are there people from the dungeon-team who assisted the holiday-team? I heard the dungeon-team is currently working on other (dungeons?)… hmm. I was quite impressed how well designed this dungeon was, small things like the freeze-machines, the stressed-buff, the hidden items, the following prisoners, the escape race at the end (even though it could have been a bit harder),… so much great ideas. Then the courage to take ideas from other games to implement a decent boss-mechanic. The learning-phase which is the first boss. MAN.

Are you doing dungeons again in the future, Paul & Team? Is there a possibility to fuse with the actual dungeon team to work out (instanced or perhaps some non-instanced) boss-battles / dungeon-scenarios?

People are enjoying difficult open world encounters like the god-temples, I think there could be much more though. Perhaps you could help redesigning the Meta-Event bosses

Crazy idea no3:

Dr. Heinemanns critter box: Dr. Heinemann is a NPC who sells critter boxes. Each critter box has 8 empty slots for 8 random critters (the small neutral mini-animals all around the world).

• find those 9 critters and put them into the box
• bring the full box to Dr. Heinemann and exchange it for either 2g or a random mini from Mini-Set 3 (which you can only get from this activity) (chance to get a rare mini).

You also get a bestiary from Dr. Heinemann once you’ve traded with him 3 times. From now on each found and traded critter will get an unlock in the bestiary. A full bestiary yields the title “Crittermaster” and a special Mini.

NOW I’M HAPPY AGAIN:

Colin:

It isnt intentional, we were happy with bwe2 difficulty. We will have to investigate what suddenly made it seem easier – was not the plan to do so.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3nc080/the_reason_why_they_nerfed_bwe3s_open_world/

^this really makes me happy

I love the implementation of the first set of champion weapons (those which drop rarely from champion bags/boxes,…).

Some people (me for example) think that there could be more reward in the open world, since most of the time drops are quite underwhelming. What if Anet “simply” (sorry) introduces set 2 of those champion weapons. The chance to get one of those would be doubled (as there are twice as many in the loottable) and we would have a higher variety in weapons available.

so this posts goal was to give a feedback about the champion-weapons. I really loved the first set. Having non-set weapons as drops with specific names also increases the “personality” of those weapons if you ask me (see the Legendary weapons like Glamdring, Narsil, etc. in the Lord of the Rings series).

What do you think?

I’m very fine with 200 gems per episode. As long as I can test each of them via asking others to group… no problem at all.

personally I love the downed-mode. It’s an awesome opportunity for even bad players to play an important role in battle and have those interact with others more. Imho an option to kill yourself faster / kamikaze would be nice though since some players prefer waypointing back to combat as fast as possible.

nexxe.7081:

GW2 needs new full armor sets that can be acquired from within the game. I’ve been saying this for almost a year, and it never happens.

Please elaborate. There are a lot of problems with various implementations of this. Also: technically you already can since gold is earned within the game and you simply turn it to gems and buy it.

I guess what you guys mean (correct me if I’m wrong) is that you’re missing the context. That a fiery weapon should drop in a volcano area from a destroyer (simple example). An other viewpoint: you miss the stories about the rewards.

what else needs to be considered:

• dungeon token skin sets – not everyone likes dungeons and people want to see more nice rewards from open world content
• karma reward – people have accumulated tons of karma and just buying the stuff for karma feels quite underwhelming when you still have half a million karma in your wallet after the purchase

This is why I tried to suggest zone specific (story context) drops which are accountbound (can’t take a shortcut by being rich).

@ people who want more skills (me included): Currently professions have about 70 skills (here: Guardian, included underwater skills). To develop that number of skills the devs needed literally years…

… and then guys come along and demand 40 new skills per profession. Seriously? How can this be feasible in any way? I’d love 40 new skills per profession, but I think more realistic would be a new weapon (3-5 skills) per profession and maybe 1-5 utility skills… and I assume this takes quite a while to design and balance.

even though I have no time I had to try the dungeon… it’s one of the best in the game yet. I’d say on par with AC story. What I don’t get: is this correct that not the dungeon-team but the holiday-team is responsible for this? O_o

lol

btw. I love the new map, the sandstorm is keeping it quite dynamic

Currently I find it hillarious that people are complaining about the 200gem price in case they’ve missed the episode.

…and then the same people complain about not getting an expansion. Sigh.

I appreciate that must be very frustrating to work around the clock, just to experience criticism in forums again and again… I hope you and your crew won’t burn out on that, hearing from other people how things need to be done and that you still haven’t changed this and that. I don’t think I could manage this load of negativity… :-/

back to topic, the thing I was thinking about is not “best gear aka Ascended gear” but rather stat-combinations. At the moment WvW-vendors sell pow/vit/tou-gear which is nice for staying alive longer, but I imagine that professions which are all about condition damage or healing power would rather wear other equipment. I see that you have the trading-post available in WvW, but in order to get enough money to buy it from there I would have to have quite a lot of money (exotic). I actually forgot crafting, but I’m not sure if you get enough mats for crafting in WvW (can someone clarify?). In order to spend your Karma on Carrion-gear you’d have to go to Orr and finish those dynamic elite event if I’m not mistaken.

I just wonder, do you plan on methods to get varied gear in WvW? Karma-vendors when defending a castle for example? Or even new ways to get loot other than badges?

I would be interested in the priority ranking Anet has. What are their top priorities currently?

It would have probably been less toxic if they had announced that their top priority is the new player experience… months ago. We players would have also had the chance to give suggestions, maybe a CDI on this topic… We would have known what to expect with the next feature patch.

If they are currently focussing on Guild Halls, Raids and GvG it’s exactly the way I imagine… because those CDIs are happening currently (and will happen soon) and devs can collect a lot of our ideas and things they don’t like in those CDIs.

Anet could say: it’s very likely that you will see one of the 3 topics currently talked about in the CDIs adressed in our next 2 feature-patches. Other top priorities are X, Y and Z and these might take the place if our schedule shifts. We will keep you informed about our priority shifts and the reasons about those.

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s highly likely the precursor concept will involve playing varied different content all over the game to gather numerous content specific materials that are combined together to make a precursor.

Thanks Colin for the update, it’s certainly not taken for granted since you obviously spend a lot of time working on the game.

I’d like to adress a question since I wonder about this basically since I’ve seen the implementation of Legendaries in GW2: do you like the idea of having a lore-component to the legenaries? Killing 1000 WvW players without reason is experienced quite differently than if you would say:

“collect 1000 souls from your foes to feed the unsatiable thirst of Zhaitan which lives in the blade-shards of the broken sword-edge.” and you’d see the souls coming from killed players homing in on you.

I feel that the current creation of legendaries is quite detached (don’t take it as offensive, it’s not meant that way) from the weapon itself. With the exception of the lodestones; there is no explanation but it seems logical that you need charged lodestones to create a charged weapon.

in my opinion 95-120s is just not fun… you are more or less forced to move on and when staying in an area for what reason ever, it feels that you’d made no difference.

I’d suggest: increase mob density in certain areas so that people think twice before enganging a battle (like it was in GW1 where you had to plan your movement in order to avoid too hard battles) but decrease respawn rate significantly. You should be rewarded by intelligent pathfinding and some places should be difficult to reach because of mob density. If you made it through those enemies, you should feel rewarded by being able to move freely in this “cleared” area for a couple of minutes – long enough to explore the now new available area. Other people who come by would see what you had accomplished and it would feel natural that there are no mobs for a certain time.

To respawn enemies for a heavy infested area it would be plausible to give the player a kind of alarm, so that he wouldn’t be surprised by invisible creatures spawning in his back. For example a loud centaur-horn 1min before respawn starts. A loud wolf-howl before a pack of wolves returns. Those groups shouldn’t respawn in one place but spread around the area in huts, caves… and they should then meet at a location, form a group and the cycle begins anew.

The way it is now pacing is mostly fight fight fight fight fight instead of fight fight rest explore plan fight fight

LostBalloon.6423:

This is even worse than not having any red in the thread. It’s horrible and gives people the impression they are being totally ignored, which is what that ANET employee, Regina Buenaobra, did. And I’m not trying to single her out, she’s an example, she’s far from being the only one that does that.

I don’t get it, Regina answers directly to a question (which wasn’t posted here, taking stuff out of context, great guys!). Here again the original quote:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

So far, this feature patch is great for new players, but, what about the veteran players? It doesn’t seems to offer much to make us stick to the game.

Regina’s answer:

More information will be released next week about features that are more suited to veteran players.

HOW IN THE WORLD is this actually “ignoring the players”??? Do you really wonder why Anet has a hard time talking to us? I do not.

there was also an answer from Colin about a similar thought:

Stupidbookah: It’s almost as if Anet is re-launching Guild Wars 2 again for the people who quit during the first month or haven’t bought the game yet.

That’s nice… But what about the playerbase that has put hundreds or thousands of hours into the game over the past two years and are looking forward to the next step in the development of GW2? :< I almost feel like I would’ve been better off not having bought the game at launch.

his answer:

Colin Johanson: I think that’s a totally fair question, as a veteran user I’d wonder that too – why does making the game better for new users benefit me when I want features that benefit me?

The simple answer is: by ensuring the game foundation is solid for new users, we’ll be in a place after the feature pack where we can do the kind of things that excite both veteran and new users simultaneously, and we’ll be able to retain a much larger percentage of the new or long returning users when they show up. Can’t say anything more than that yet – but that’s the thinking, you don’t need to agree with it, but it’s important to know why the decision was made!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35jpy?context=3

1.) the lack of storytelling / depth in open-world events
2.) generic item drops
3.) lore releases in form of blogs instead of ingame

I’d rather say Anet implements better rewards not for grinding, but for doing a variety of different content and rewarding exploration. I’m not talking about dailies. I’m talking about the core-content of the game: dynamic open world events / open world exploration

So how to do this without the grind? Rewarding players for exploration.

• find and finish 20 unique events in a zone to get rewarded with a new lootbag (lots of rare mats and chance for lodestones + loot). It’s not grinding, since a lot of events are not obviously on a linear path. Suddenly solo-players can be equally effective than big rolling zergs.
• reset this after each 20 events
• rarely spawn hidden artifacts for an incentive to not use waypoints. Each artifact could be sold for 50s OR collect a whole set and turn it into a new skin (e.g. the new champion loot skins). Don’t forget that artifacts also are items rich of lore.

about the rewards: remember: 5min of world boss = 1 guaranteed yellow (or orange). Make it really worth it finding 20 unique events which can last longer than some might think.