Guild Wars 2

Finally, I absolutely have to praise the addition of this option. Not because it affected me that much, strange enough I was fine with my 2 sylvari main telling me how roselike they are, but I swear I was close to commiting centaur genocide just so my human characters would forget about them.

I love arenanet giving us the option to specifically deactivate the dialoge. I bet with a small break for most it will be nice to hear the VO again in the future.

Now if there was an option to have the Replica Job-o-Tron Backpack VO without actually having to have the skin active… Best line ingame: “Score—update: gravity—1, you—0.”.

Acquisition of certain stat combinations for ascended trinkets has been all over the place in this game. I would like to see more acquisition consistency across all stat combinations. cough jeweler cough

And for the love of god, stop gating stat combinations behind raids.

Thaddeus.4891:

Vayne.8563:

Nor does it make it pay to win. The argument isn’t good or bad. The argument is about pay to win. People tend to take words at face value but face value doesn’t actually give you a good definition of what words mean. As long as people use words that I feel are wrongly used, I’ll repeat it. And why not repeat it. Not one single person has given me an answer to the question. So repeat it I shall.

More to the point, pay to win, as a phrase was created by a specific purpose. If you want to take it literally all games that aren’t free are pay to win because you have to buy them to win. That’s paying to win. But that’s not the definition of the term and no one would use it that way, unless they were trolling.

You can argue if this set up is good or bad, but it’s not pay to win.

Play Maple Story if you want to see what pay to win really is.

Ok I’ll answer your question directly then. Yes, most if not all MMO have pay to win aspect in them. It’s not the worst kind of pay to win, but if an expansion give you more powerful stuff, not balanced with the core game, it is pay to win. Some MMO mitigate it by segregating the player base between expansion owner and core owner. Usually this is more about PvP.

It’s not a on and off switch. There is varying degree of pay to win aspect to games.

Perhaps it may be pay-to win now. But when the next expansion releases, HoT content will be free. If everything goes according to expectations, upcoming elite-specs will be about equally as strong as the current ones. In that regard, one will not have to pay to be elite-able.

In GW2 there is no correlation between the amount of money you spend in micro transactions (RL cash → gems → stuff) and the advantage you have in the game over others. That is what PtW is, and that is not GW2.

HoT is an expansion. It is a one-time purchase that gives you more options in your profession; there is no ever-increasing amount of money to spend for an ever-increasing advantage.

Also, there are plenty of posts and threads about people rocking PvP, WvW, and PvE w/o using the elite professions. Given all that info HoT is not PtW.

~EW

It’s as if some people have never played an MMO that had expansions.

We get CGI movies because they are pay to win?
Because they sell well and are easy to make?
Pretty sure one of those statements doesn’t make any sense and the other one isn’t true.

There was a thread a bit ago saying if you’d made an elite version of something because you’d bought HoT you were OP in PvP and that was P2W. I think I used all those properly. Then there was a second post that said “if you are being beaten by an elite you aren’t PvPing properly”. But that might all have been forum PvP.

Your problem is you only play wvw and want everything to be available with laurels. As that would impact the other game modes I think it’s unlikely that you’ll get those stats in the laurel vendor. Not until the next expansion at least but who knows.

Thaddeus.4891:

Vayne.8563:

Name an MMO where an expansion doesn’t give you advantages? Pay to win has always meant to cover having to regularly spend money in the cash shop. Every time I see this I ask people, tell me what MMO is not pay to win by this standard? It’s ludicrous.

You really need to spot to repeat that same thing over and over. It’s lazy design to cater to the players that want progression. It’s bad in other game and it’s no different in gw2. It’s the exact same reason why we got CGI action filled blockbuster movie. It sell well in the immediate and it’s easy to do. It doesn’t make it good.

Nor does it make it pay to win. The argument isn’t good or bad. The argument is about pay to win. People tend to take words at face value but face value doesn’t actually give you a good definition of what words mean. As long as people use words that I feel are wrongly used, I’ll repeat it. And why not repeat it. Not one single person has given me an answer to the question. So repeat it I shall.

More to the point, pay to win, as a phrase was created by a specific purpose. If you want to take it literally all games that aren’t free are pay to win because you have to buy them to win. That’s paying to win. But that’s not the definition of the term and no one would use it that way, unless they were trolling.

You can argue if this set up is good or bad, but it’s not pay to win.

Play Maple Story if you want to see what pay to win really is.

Sequekhan.2091:

I’ve been running in successful Tequatl maps for the last few months, I know the mechanics and don’t appreciate the ’we’re not asking you to do this, we’re telling you’ attitude I got from the recent attempt today.

My favourite class is Ele, and I’ve found I’m more suited to defensive teams / turrets as I’m typically never downed by anything there. And really, telling someone to rack off from defensive, or they’re not needed? Any other time people are begging for hills and boat teams.

People want to start crying and abusing other players, that’s fine. I just laugh and do Teq at daily reset. Don’t be surprised if you can’t get the numbers if yall gonna get abusive.

Did it occur to you that that specific defense team was full and any extra people are not helping but actually hurting the event because they scale the mobs up and make them harder to kill, thus endangering the event?

No, I don’t think it did. Because you play how you want and kitten the other people trying to get organised and not fail an event, you gotta have your way and nobody can say anything, amirite?

People these days, smh…

I think the problems here all center around one word: communication. Ever hear the phrase “you can catch more bees with honey than you can with vinegar”? Now before the typical responses of “we shouldn’t have to because ____” arise, think about this. When guilds that typically do Triple trouble begin to set up their teams, they often ask if anyone wishes to a: join the map, b: join the squads, c: learn condi/block/reflect and join that aspect, and c: please stack on the campfire for a headcount. now, no one argues about this because they want the boss kill. the commanders or hosts ask, and people answer yay or nay. the majority, at that point, asks questions pertaining to the teams, if teams are set up, and when will it begin. At the moment the commanders split, people will generally go to their desired wurms, no harm no foul. and during the setup, the commanders will nicely give explanations of how each wurm is to go down. at that point, most commanders will even go as far as ask if there are any questions. hell, I’ve seen even the silliest of questions answered as best as possible. and win or lose, people have a generally good time.
now…
when the wurm fails… an interesting thing happens. people don’t complain. why? because it takesw a lot of coordination and everyone doing their part on the wurm to take it down and even with all that in place, sometimes it goes haywire. what you don’t see? is a lot of complaining or qq or anything like that because everyone playing knows how hard it is to kill that boss.
taking that into consideration, let’s look at teq.
Tequatil requires coordination as well. it requires solid defense teams as well as the pew pew crowd to take the beast down. and that’s just the setup. if the battery defense goes south, the event has an even greater chance at failure. if turret operators don’t descale or cleanse, the beast will make everyone have a bad day. and most who command know this.
but here’s where it gets wonky. if tag is doing the same work as the rest of the people there, there shouldn’t be any ill concieved notions that people aren’t doing their assigned roles. and when someone uses one or two-word commands, like stack, descale, etc, it’s not demanding you to do it… if you put yourself in that position, that’s what you are required to do for a successful kill. Can the tags get mean? yes. and that sucks, because if they are tagging they are automatically giving themselves a bullseye on their heads for people to rage towards. can the other players get upset? yes… because sadly these days it’s all about the win and the ap, not about the battle itself.
and i get it… all that effort to win goes down the tubes if the event fails. and that is frustrating. but Guess what, the events repeat themselves, giving us a chance to try again. and it gets frustrating to constantly see people hollering in map or in say or even in squad to do this or that. generally it’s because they see kitten and are trying to fill it quickly while doing their part. does this mean being rude and elitist is required? no. but it happens. and you can respond to it in two ways. first, you can ignore it and focus on what you are doing, and accept the defeat as a learning experience, or you can fire back, causing more drama and either making yourself look like a horses’ patoot or cause unwanted attention to yourself from the trolls of the game.
Honestly, I think the old addage in the game in general is the same at the bosses. Don’t be a _______ (expletive intentionally left blank), and that includes the guys and gals leading the charge as well as those following.
and worse comes to worse? if it continues and keeps annoying you? pick another map and another timeslot. or… start a taxi of your own and try to take the bosses down your way. that’s the beauty of this community.

Claridiana.5230:

I dont know, none of those 3 names seems fitting, and i just couldn’t vote for one of them. All three names are “epic”, but these guys are more like a gang of psychos, not a band of legendary heroes.

I second that.

As far as I’m concerned the entire GW2 story is atrocious. Played GW1 since Prophecies and GW1 had many lovely characters players cared about. Who cares about GW2 “heroes”? They are scripted like teenagers and have no hero qualities.

The only character in GW2 that I can think of, who is genuinely a positive and likable character, is Caduceus. His manor is also the best looking place in the entire game, the guy has taste. No wonder that ANet creators of psycho characters don’t like Caduceus and made him into a bad guy in their own story. The same thing goes with Ascalonian ghosts and separatists, and NPC’s in Ascalonian dungeon. Those NPCs there are the heroes. They should’ve been on the side of the player. But no. I even needed a help of a guildie because I couldn’t do one part of the storyline without killing Ascalonians, which I refused to do.

I would pay for the game content that allows me to side with the real heroes and good guys (Ascalonian ghosts, Caduceus) against the bad guys.

So, “Boaty Mac Boat’s Edge” is out of the question?

I think the reason why there are so few hats is the (totally bumming) technical limitation of turning people bald. The hat is your hair and when you put it off, the hair is your hat.

Maybe the fact many players with massive hairstyles would never wear hats. I am lucky that my favourite hat IRL and in all games avialable, top hats (the ring maker’s hat), are acceptable on Asura, despite I lose my little sideburns.

But a Norn or Human female suddenly losing 30cm of her hair – nope. They wouldn’t wear any hat.

The system isn’t broken, you are just recruiting the wrong people and the image upon you pitching your guild on might be not what you are wanting your guild to be. It has to be handled much much differently than it does in other games, you have to be competitive with other guilds and even have high standards for membership.

From what I found being a guild leader, if you are trying to build a community guild where nearly everyone reps almost all the time, it takes a very strict and focused strategy. In my experience over half the ppl that inquire will not fit the bill. You don’t want people on your roster there to mooch upgrades, use u as an alt guild, or as just an extended LFG list. Just because influence is not a thing anymore doesn’t mean rep isnt important to a community guild. It shows people are committed, people that are looking for a main guild won’t have a problem repping. If you are building a community, why even have members if they aren’t committed?

I lead a guild I keep capped at 200 members. I seek out people that will treat us as a main guild, and yes, that means “majority” (not to be confused with 100%) representation, while we strongly incentivise 100% rep. If they can’t they don’t get in, if they don’t after the fact they get kicked. Currently, we have 200 members with about 50-60 online every night. There is hardly ever a situation where more than 5 are not repping, mostly everyone reps.

So how to you go about getting people to commit?

Well first of all you need to get rid of people that are not committed and not repping. Nothing will kill your activity and dedication faster than these people. Think about it from the flip side. You are a new member, you see that the roster of the guild you just entered are filled with people not representing or contributing to the guild. Why should you? Why should anyone if there is no standards for membership? This is an impression that will hurt you more than not having those people there.

Your recruitment should focus on people looking for a community and a main guild. You will want to kind of give people an informal interview. Find out what they are looking for in a guild, get to know them a bit, learn their name. Make sure they understand and accept what you expect from them to be a members of your guild, as well as being able to provide what they are looking. If they do not, or can’t, don’t be afraid to decline entry. When you do recruit them make sure you follow through. Being able to retain members is much much more effective than having a revolving door.

All that being said. It is important for you to have goals that can be reached together. It can really be anything as long as they can be reached as a guild and be celebrated upon when you reach milestones of these goals.

Really, the system isn’t broken. Infact it can be used to your advantage. The multi guild system lets people try you out and have otherwise dedicated members that may have a small interest outside of what you are able to provide. I can’t tell you how many people dedicated to dying guilds I converted that would never tried us if it was a single guild system.

I don’t understand what you get out of people repping now.

Before repping was needed to build influence so the guild can purchase upgrades.
Repping before was also the only way to see guild chat.

Now: You can see all of your guild chats regardless of who you’re representing. The guild doesn’t need players to rep to build currency.

If the problem is people now showing up for guild events, then maybe they shouldn’t be in your guild. Guild members SHOULD be repping during scheduled guild events, but if people aren’t showing up then either it’s a problem with the events the guild is putting on or the people in the guild.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Behellagh.1468:

What does repping buy the guild post HoT? Repping gives the player access to GH services and bonuses but right now it’s favor from doing guild missions and material support for upgrades are what’s important to the guild. Or am I missing something?

I think it’s more about repping for longer periods, compared to repping here and there. For example, before HoT, the guild you repped would get influence for the events you do, the PvP kills you do etc as long as you repped for that guild.

Now, you only have to rep for a few minutes at the most for the services you’re pointing out, meaning you can equally help more than one guild each day now.

That’s what I’m getting at. Before guilds may have demanded 100% rep because influence from the masses was their primary currency for upgrading and buying guild wide bonuses. But now that isn’t a thing anymore. Any guild that demands 100% rep are dinosaurs who don’t accept the new guild paradigm. Members aren’t a resource the guild mines daily any longer. Guilds are resources for their members.

STIHL.2489:

warbignime.4610:

WvW: definitely no where close on dying, we are seeing huge queues across most servers on peak hours. WvW is in amazing shape after spring update.

While this is true, it’s because they merged the servers, scaling the system from 8 tiers to 4. While the people that still play WvW have more people to play with, at one time, there were 8 tiers worth of players, and now there is 4 tiers, so there is distinctly less overall players, playing WvW.

Not sure how you figure. The bottom tiers haven’t had enough people playing WvW for ages. It seems to me entirely likely that a whole new generation of people, including free to play players, can now avail themselves of something that was just no fun before because there were very few fights.

You’re think it’s like a full server, and another full server. It’s not. It’s a very high server added to a server where almost no one played WvW…and not they can.

So unless you have more information than just server merges mean less people playing, I’d love to know your source.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Yay semantics. Helping out, playing what you like or whatever you want to call it.

If we’re going to count scaling then noone is helping out anyway. Everything just scale things up beyond 5 players.

And that’s why you do the ad-spawns in one group of 5 players each. Seems like you understood the concept.

Helping out means making the evens succeed quicker or more safely than if you weren’t participating. Now let’s say there was a dedicated group for each spawn:

• Would you killing the ads make the event succeed quicker? No, since the time determining factor, Tequatl’s health, is unaffected.
• Would you killing the ads make the event succeed safer? No, since the group of 5 people can already handle it. You might even make things harder for the defending group by spawning a champion.

A well organized map can handle champion spawns by stalling the champion and sending another group over once they finish their spawn, but that’s time they could’ve spent attacking Tequatl. And yes, on a Tequatl speedkill even the defending groups use the time between ad-spawns to attack Tequatl.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that this is what OP did. From his post alone it’s impossible to tell whether he was helping or unintentionally hampering the event.

What bugs me is the guys who go to some events, and just stand there … doing next to nothing. If you don’t know … ask. Most will help.

Was doing AB yesterday to get the remaining commendations from east/west … when I did east, there was – no joke … a guy sitting in the corner by the bouncy mushroom (enemies don’t get into it). Didn’t move for all the event, sat there … waited till final burn then joined in. At least he was afk at east, which is generally a simpler route. That must have been one long bathroom break o.O

FrizzFreston.5290:

Not that anyone is going to do that anyway, but it’s equally ridiculous to judge the one person helping out in the way they want to help out. It’s their free time, their time spending time playing the game. No one has ownership over any map instance, the one random dude you either tolerate or you move yourself.

You seem to have an unusual definition of “Helping out” if you think scaling up events and making it harder for everyone else through excessive lootless champ spawns is “Helping Out”.

I never tell anyone that they can’t help out with a defense event — I just point out how many are already defending and how much harder things are if we scale up to champions

If the person insists on remaining, then I’ll leave (or ask someone in the defense to do so) — it’s not worth an argument. (And yes, I’ll make sure someone in the group pings me if the ‘extra’ vanishes later — just to make sure we have enough either way.)

The OP wasn’t specific about what else was going on, so it’s hard to tell if they were ‘extra’ or if others nearby misunderstood or … well, it could be a couple of dozen different things. Accordingly, I won’t speculate about what they OP should or shouldn’t have done, except to remind them that /block is really great.

tl;dr life’s too short to argue about stuff like this. Explain or move away; /block or ignore.

Sequekhan.2091:

I’ve been running in successful Tequatl maps for the last few months, I know the mechanics and don’t appreciate the ’we’re not asking you to do this, we’re telling you’ attitude I got from the recent attempt today.

My favourite class is Ele, and I’ve found I’m more suited to defensive teams / turrets as I’m typically never downed by anything there. And really, telling someone to rack off from defensive, or they’re not needed? Any other time people are begging for hills and boat teams.

People want to start crying and abusing other players, that’s fine. I just laugh and do Teq at daily reset. Don’t be surprised if you can’t get the numbers if yall gonna get abusive.

First as many have mentioned, verbal abuse is never apropriate. Report and/or block people who do this.

Second I do sense a certain attitude problem coming from your side.

If you are so versed in the exact mechanics of the Tequatle fight you’d know how the turrret events scale, meaning 1-2 people more than needed causes elite and eventually champion enemys to spawn. Which in turn requires more dedication than the standard 2 groups devoted to them. You intentionally sabotaging or negatively impacting the success of the world boss fight will draw hate from other players.

There is always 2 sides to each argument. If you are so fond of running the defensive teams/turrets, make this known early on and join one of the defensive squads. Those positions are usually the last to fill. Barging in at the last minute and demanding you get a spot on these events will get exactly the reaction you have been experiencing.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Try telling a map orga of 100+ people to move maps if you’re annoying them… Don’t know if that’s confident or conceited.

A decent map orga will jump maps beforehand to get an empty map… which is not needed at Tequatl because that event is so easy it won’t fail even if 50% of players kitten about.
Which is also one of the reasons I have no sympathy for members of organized groups who get abusive towards other players there.

It’s unlikely that a few people, even on the same map and even co-ordinated in their abuse are going to make a world event fail. For every person like that there are nearly a hundred ignoring them. I agree it would be nicer if everyone was just nice but some people get all antsy about failing.

Some of my favourite Teqs have been where one guy has decided it’s a fail map and people have turned against them and given them a really hard time for their attitude. And then we’ve easily won anyway because it’s not that hard.

If it’s not a commander or an actual organiser saying it, it doesn’t count. Backseat angrykid drivers should be added to your ignore list, they aren’t saying anything important.

Well, Ts organized maps tend to have teams assigned to defense and turrets, so any other people are not only not needed, they are even detrimental since they needlessly scale up the def events or make a canoneer stand idle by wondering whether that random will use the turret or abandon it halfway through. In addition to not dealing damage to Tequatl.
The easyest way to identify such a map is by counting commanders. Since defense is handled by designated groups they don’t use commanders there, which results in only 2 commanders for the whole map.

Now from your post I don’t know what kind of map you were on, but the chances of you really being unneeded for defense or turrets are not 0.

Dante.1508:

5 guilds access is bad..my reasons are a player can never really give 5 guilds their full attention..

You don’t need to give guilds your full attention. Guild chat shows up all guilds. If one guild is busy soloing stuff and just making casual conversation and another suddenly announces a TT run or an AB farm or whatever.. you see all that and can do all things. Why would you need to give anything in this game your full attention?

Dante.1508:

Chat

My main guild keeps it PG-13. That annoys some people but suits me, you will be told to keep it down when it gets out of hand. If all you had was one guild you could never let off steam in, you might take offence. With 5 guilds you can go be offensive (or funny.. ymmv) in the grown-up one, doesn’t matter if one guild is quiet when you have a chat channel you can see ALL your guilds in. This is another vote for multiple guilds.

Dante.1508:

Sharing

There can’t be thefts if you set your bank up properly. My main guild is set so that you can deposit and then you have to ask a higher level to remove it for you. We have a “you can have anything you can see” tab and a “for scribes” tab and a “for guild rewards” tab. Guild rewards are for guild fun events like hide and seek, quizzes, lottery etc. I’m also impressed when I see some of the stuff in there, it does go a long way to setting the tone of a guild.

Dante.1508:

Guild hall mechanics

You do know you can have nodes in your guild hall, right? We have several in my main guild. We also have a tavern offering free buffs and the scribe table acts as a bank and the various NPCs offer other stuff you can take advantage of.

Dante.1508:

Help

The point here isn’t to keep everyone happy. That doesn’t do you any favours. You are a guild, you exist. People will join because you advertised and stay because you turn out to be what they wanted. If they want to leave.. let them. My main has a website which clearly sets out what we offer and when in terms of guild missions and raiding (training and clearing). If someone wants to spend a week not talking doing achievements.. let them. If they spend a week PvP’ing in another guild, so what. You don’t need to involve them in everything, the guild life will carry on around them and they can join in when they want to or leave to PvP full time.

Dante.1508:

Voice chat is BAD…

I doubt guilds are using voice chat outside of organised activity. One or two people might be but generally guilds offer voice chat for raids/missions/etc and guild chat is a typed activity.

Well, here is how I roll, I’ll let you guild leaders sort this.

I have a guild I am in For PvP, another for PvE, and another for WvW. When I am in that game mode, I rep that guild.

I have tried that “Oh we are a PvX Guild” and.. thanks, but, no thanks.

I joined a WvW guild, because I know everyone in that guild likes WvW, I know guild chat is going to be about WvW, and if I need advice on WvW stuff, I know I can turn them for insight, as ALL of them are involved in WvW, and while they all might also like to do other things, they all enjoy WvW.

Same hold true for my sPvP guild, I know everyone in that guild likes themselves some sPvP. While they may all like and do other things, everyone of them, enjoys sPvP. If I need insight on sPvP, those are the lovable crazies I turn to.

Same with my PvE guild, yah, they may all do some WvW, or sPvP, or whatever, but everyone of them likes PvE, so when I have questions about PvE, whatever it may be, those are the people I depend to provide.

With the ability to read all the chat, it’s pretty easy see who is saying what, and chat back and forth among them, to see what is going on, one way or another.

Now, if any one of them demanded that I leave my other guilds… that would be awkward, and it’s not because I don’t love those loons, but it’s simple that each of those guilds fills a position in my game life that none of them could really fill totally.

Now, if you are a guild leader reading that, take that into consideration, if they are not representing your guild, it’s up to you to find out why before you make any demands.

And yes, in the end, it comes down to what you provide, as a guild leader, you need to really ask, what does your guild offer the people that join it, what do you a leader provide, what do your officers provide?

Do you have Guild Missions? Do you lead them?
Do you Lead a Raid Night with your Guild?
Do you teach Jumping Puzzles?
Do you run Daily Fractals with your Guild?
Do you do WvW? Do you Command?
Do you have Legendary Workshops?

You see, you need to have something someone wants for them to want to be a part of what you have.

In my case, each guild I am in, is very involved in their specific game mode, so I feel inspired to do that game mode with them.

If they do add anything to Runes/Sigils, I’d prefer it be a Mystic Forge recipe converting a full stack of any given rune/sigil (plus some other expensive things) into an account wide unlimited unlock for that rune/sigil.

I’d also like to see runes/sigils made salvageable for fine and rare materials.

so wait, are we talking about the Tequatl where we usually just zone in, gather a bunch of people, chill, chew the fat a bit, then leisurly kill the dragon with 9-10 minutes to spare on the clock?
And people obsess over how big or small the turret defenses are? Wow, I’m certainly glad I don’t happen to come on to those maps…

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind.

I know my problem is a personal L2P issue.

Everyone has their own speed. The great thing about GW2 is there are game modes and areas for everyone. It is exceedingly casual while also offering challenging content.

Some are great learners under pressure. Some enjoy overcoming their shortcomings. Some like to role play with no combat at all. Some like defeating real players. Some like following the game’s story. Some like coordinating a winning strategy.

As long as GW2 can offer new challenges and content for each of the many subsets, it will do well.

Seera, focus on completing just one task. One you have done that, then work on another. Learning is incremental. We all get distracted and daunted by too many tasks.

BRA has been at this a while and is farther ahead in learning skills. We, the players, are all spread out; not just in skill but in preferences… subsets of ‘skill’ where one player who is terrible at PvP and PvE may own a large chunk of the BLTC stock.

You do not have to compete with others. Just find challenges that interest you. Maybe you want to lean guild missions, or craft, or trade, or grind champs, or map areas, or grind events for loot and xp and karma, or build rank in PvP; decide on something and work at it.

From a game design PoV, satisfying the most customers fir the least cost is their game. The best we, as players, can do is explain how our ‘suggestions’ and opinions matter in terms of growing player base; more specifically, gem buyers and client purchases.