Guild Wars 2

They need an “underflow” system. I’m sure this has been mentioned plenty of times in other threads. Overflow occurs when a certain population threshold is reached on a map. There should be a system in place that merges maps together when the population is below a certain threshold.

People who are compelled to play even when they don’t want to play, or who farm tirelessly for an item but don’t find farming fun, or who grind for a reward and hate grinding, are mistaken to blame the game’s design. You all need to take a hard look in the mirror and take ownership of your own behavior.

Stop acting like a victim. The game is giving you a way to earn a reward, which is completely optional and of no consequence in your ability to play the game to its fullest. Your choices and your behaviors are what’s making you dissatisfied.

Dailies are an excellent addition to mmo’s in my opinion – they allow players, particularly casually minded players, to obtain items at a pace more suited to their needs without any form of grind whatsoever (there is no grind in the current dailys at all, not even slightly).

Dailys like the GW2 ones work because the reward you with things which you don’t need to progress. The argument of laurels for ascended is moot since ascended provides virtually nil advantage in open world play.

Forcing is the wrong word. Encouraging is a better one. MMO’s need people logging in. No matter how strong the content can be, MMO’s need little gimmicks like these to keep people logging in to their game – that’s why they exist and why they work so well

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

I hope Anet adds quests that actually create interesting combat scenarios, with any resemblance of structure to tell a short story or express a bit of the world’s lore. You know, like GW1’s quests.

Hearts are terrible “kill x rats” kind of quests.

I think Anet is realizing that the MMORPG player that WoW has created doesn’t care about good game or level design. They don’t even care about fun, really.

They’ll do any old boring thing if it gets them a shiny at the end. Is it a bonus if it’s fun? Yeah, maybe a little. But they’re not willing to play something fun without that carrot there. On the other hand, they’re more than willing to play something that isn’t fun—or to an extent that it stops being fun—if there is a carrot.

It’s not their fault that this is the modern MMO player and has been for nearly a decade now, but maybe they should’ve seen it coming too.

They need to make acquisition of legendaries completely skill based and not grind based.

The only thing in this game that is worth anything are the old Qualifier Point titles from sPvP, because they were somewhat skill-based.

As of now, the only thing skill-based in this game is still PvP. However, it cannot be tied to sPvP rank, because that is still a grind-based achievement.

Perhaps something like participating and winning 50-100 “high-ranked,” PvP matches.

or Completing all dungeon paths faster than 99% of the Population.

etc.

I maintain that the absolute biggest failure of Guild Wars 2 is that anything and everything achievable in this game can just be grinded. This is obviously to please the “Everyones a winner!” crowd, but honestly, it cheapens the value of everything in the game.

Esplen.3940:

Erasculio.2914:

What does that example show us? How time spent, by itself, is not worth a reward. The idea that grinders deserve a reward, for doing easy and mindless content over and over (aka “dedication”), comes from classic MMORPGs, in which developers wanted people to keep playing, and thus paying, every day.

If ArenaNet were to reward something, it should be skilled play, not time spent

So we should all just sit in a corner and dance because time spent doesn’t give us anything. The best player in the game can play for 1 minute a day and get rewarded just as much as the worst player who plays for 16 hours a day. The worst player who plays for 1 minute a day will get rewarded just as much as the best player who plays for 16 hours a kitten

… I know its hard for MMO diehards to understand the idea of playing a game because it is fun to play. What you are actually implying here is that sitting in a corner and dancing is preferable to anything else GW2 offers, and you need a carrot to make the other stuff worth bothering with. Not to mention, if a game rewards skill, I don’t think you are getting any more skilled by dancing in the corner. Just a thought…

I predict that the Aetherblades will attack the party and try to kidnap the Queen.

They’ll show up, their ships appearing in the skies over Divinity’s Reach. The captain of one of the ships will appear before Jenna and demand her surrender. I expect the conversation will go something like this:

Captain: “Congratulations, your Majesty. However, you seem to have forgotten to invite us to your party. So, if you don’t mind, you’ll be joining us instead.”

Jenna: “How DARE you!”

Captain: “Oh now, don’t be like that, your Highness. I’m sure you’ll be returned to your little party soon enough, once the people of this fair city give us what we want.”

Jenna: “Miserable cretins! You’ve knocked over the table with the food, broken the glass roof over my new stadium, and worst of all, you’re thirty minutes late!”

Captain: “Typical. We’re here to kidnap you, and all you care about is… wait…. what? Late?”

Jenna: “Well, yes. I expected you lot to show up half an hour ago, and I’m paying charr cannon crews by the hour.”

Logan makes a signal, and false fronts fall away from several buildings on the walls of Divinity’s Reach, revealing charr with turrets ready to blast the Aetherblade ships out of the sky

Captain: “Ummm… hell.”

At that point, the new mini-game is revealed to be a shooting game to see how many Aetherblades you can gun down with a spare turret.

I’m indifferent to Legendary wielders. I like some of the Legendaries, but I’m not getting them on my characters due to clashing aesthetic goals. (Bifrost on a grim, dark, minion master Necro? Really?)

If someone is using a Legendary because they like how they look on their characters, I’m happy for them. If they’re using a Legendary and they want me to tell them I’m totally wow’ed and in awe of them, then keep moving. I generally don’t care what other people are using. It’s whether or not the person likes the Legendary for itself that’s important, otherwise you’re no different to that guy who buys expensive cars and drives around just looking for compliments about his car.

mtpelion.4562:

I wonder if someone decided to censor kitten with kitten and started an infinite loop of censorship.

It’s Kittception!

But yeah, the bug is really annoying. Hopefully they can fix it soon.

As someone with HoM rewards, I don’t care. At all.
I wouldn’t care even if they were letting everyone get the straight HoM items themselves and not just reskins.
The need to have something others can’t get is terribly juvenile.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I play FOR myself, and not the approval or adoration of other players. I couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks of the weapons or armor I’m using; as long as I like what I’m wearing, that’s all that matters to me. Sometimes I will see someone with a particularly humorous or bizarre armor/weapon combination, and in those cases I’ll take a screenshot, but I have never messaged anybody wielding a Legendary/Infused backpiece/some rare title/whatever and thought, “Wow, that player is so pro!” I honestly do not care what other people are using or displaying.

Well, my final thoughts. I want this game to Succeed. My positive experiences with ANET far outweigh any negative. I post because I believe that they do read, they do listen, and things do happen, maybe not my preferred direction, but, they do read. When periscopes where pwning noob players left and right, several of us posted that, a number of times. Those of us that did got the usual.. go back to wow, working as intended, stop whining, just deal with it, etc. And ANET just quietly fixed the scopes, having seen the issue themselves.. or by reading player input. That is the crux for me, not what other players think on topics.. but what ANET thinks. What they do will probably not reflect the positions of the complainers… or that of the white knights, but instead something thought out from both aspects. When I judged horse shows, certain events were judged by 5 of us.. and the low and high scores tossed out, leaving the middle 3. I am pretty sure that ANET does the same. I doubt the “rubber stamp everything” crowd is listened to any more than the “I hate everything” crowd.

Its actually a pretty enviable position.. the majority of people that post are not asking for more WoW, more Rift, more EQ or whatever in this.. they ask for more from another ANET game. All of us doing the GW1 vs GW2 are arguing ANET vs ANET, not a competitor.

Games evolve, companies evolve, changes come, it isn’t the exact same ANET that made GW1, but, I continue to hope that they will drag a bit of it here Much of GW1 won’t ever fit in GW2, but I think eventually we will see a bit more. Who knows.

Its a pendulum trying to find balance. Even GW1, Proph was one game, Factions was another, and tried to change aspects of Proph, leveling speed, 2nd profession and max armor available earlier, cash gain, etc. Probably went too far, and NF throttled some of that back and left some alone. People who didn’t like proph had factions.. or NF.. 3 different standalone campaigns.. and then EoTN.

There are a lot who will say, Oh, I loved GW1. But NF/Factions, oh, it was terrible.. GW2 doesn’t have that luxury yet.. it is all one style of content. In time, I think it will add more of some of the things GW1 fans are missing, changed.. but more of the style of it.

As much as I complain, I still have faith. Far from giving up on this game, (although I think forum goers would have a little party if I did)

Vayne.8563:

It’s one thing to have Colin talking about one thing, Ree talking about something else and editing making it confusing (which was clarified).

You mean, like…

“I went to the village and swung my sword. Then I swung it again – hey! I thought they were too busy grinding to get to the fun stuff, like in most villages, but ten minutes later they told me I was the best kitten sword swinger they’d seen in the last ten minutes. They remembered.”

Vayne.8563:

It’s another to say that Colin on one paragraph where he defines a word, means something different the second time he uses it. It’s not reasonable.

Yes. Let’s change the way people view combat. Instead of swinging swords and swinging them again – hey! – let’s dispense with the boring grind associated with subsequent sword swinging and make combat more dynamic and fun. Let’s have the players actively kiting and dodging and casting on the run. Won’t that be fun stuff, guys? Yes! Fun stuff indeed!

(And they threw in a heaping helping of red circles to make the dodging even more fun. I particularly enjoy dodging out of one red circle into another one. I find it quite stimulating. And innovative.)

Then, in a dramatic (and potentially confusing) turn of events, they took many (note: ‘many’ does not mean ‘all’) of the things we are going to use all this fun and innovative combat against and turned them into a boring grind, and while they were at it, they reduced a great deal (note: the phrase ’ a great deal’ does not mean ‘all’) of the other fun stuff to the (itsy bitsy teeny weeny but fortunately not yellow polka dot – yet!) chance of getting something cool (and fun) when the non-boring, non-grindy innovative combat is over. Or stuffed it into one box in a bajillion (note: imaginary number – see also: hyperbole – used for dramatic effect). Or made it so that getting it requires mass quantities of boring (but not necessarily combative!) grind.

So. Did they change the way people view combat? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Attempts to settle this would be, I suspect, in vain. Ahem. In the end, however, combat is still combat, it’s still swinging a sword, and it’s still swinging it again, over and over (and over and over) until the boring grind you’re combating is finally dead (at least until it remembers to respawn ten minutes – or less! – later), at which point you’re probably going to get some blues or greens that you probably can’t use anyway, or maybe even nothing at all, unless you’re one of the fortunate few who get precursors for killing rats.

Yes. Yes, it’s all so very clear. How was anyone ever confused by anything in the Manifesto?

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

There’s no reason in the world to suppose that in the beginning of the paragraph Colin meant one thing by grind and by the end of the paragraph he’d suddenly changed his definition of grind.

No? Someone around here claimed they blamed the, shall we say, manifest confusion on bad editing.

The video editing, that is to say, taking Colin’s bit and Ree’s bit and interposing them to make it more interesting/exciting. But both mentions of grind where in the same segment here. The same paragraph. There’s no confusion in the English language here.

It’s one thing to have Colin talking about one thing, Ree talking about something else and editing making it confusing (which was clarified). It’s another to say that Colin on one paragraph where he defines a word, means something different the second time he uses it. It’s not reasonable.

You’re the one who’s been unreasonable.
It’s very easy english, and you still refuse all logic.

You’re defending that they were intelligent and correct in their english usage, and we are uneducated for failing to understand their extremely organized speech – that was somehow poorly edited.
Let’s take a look at that “correctness”, shall we?

They don’t define “Grind” as “doing boring things to get to the fun stuff”.
They use “boring” + “Grind” + “to get to the fun stuff” in the same sentence, wich clearly indicates they are three different things – so “boring” is one thing, “Grind” is another, and “boring” + “Grind” + “to get to the fun stuff” is another thing entirely.

You don’t say “undry wet” or “huge big” or “stinks with bad smell” – as you’re placing words with somewhat similar meaning together.
Likewise you wouldn’t say “boring Grind to get to the fun stuff” if “Grind” meant “boring things to get to the fun stuff”.

This CLEARLY means that when they say “We simply don’t want players to Grind in GW2.” they do NOT mean “We simply don’t want players to grind to get to the fun stuff in GW2.”
It’s simple, it’s obvious.
Grind is grind, and it’s still Grind when they say it in this sentence.

Would you expect ANet to go “kitten , you’re right, we kittened up.”?
Ofcourse not. They choose what they believe to be the lesser evil – to say what they meant was something else.

But all of this is beside the point.
The game is a shadow of what it set out to be.

There is no feeling of hero. You feel more of a nobody than in most MMOs.
The dynamic events are mostly meaningless and rotate every 15-60 minutes.
The big bad events – elemental, dragon, shadow, etc – are extremely simplistic.
They took away skill hunting and didn’t add anything meaningful in its place.

GW2 has lost almost everything that made GW1 awesome.
And for what?

My Necromancer summons a void inside the warhorn, creating a gate into the Locust realm. Then he uses sound magic to mess with their senses and make the enemy look like corn to lure them out and into our world to feast. Unfortunately they can’t survive in our atmosphere very long and eventually disintegrate.

Celtus.8456:

it creates a certain community

Yes, it does. That’s part of what I’m afraid of.

Just let there be an option to be turn off dueling requests and not see duels happening. I don’t care otherwise.

Can we all forget about dueling?

Galen Grey.4709:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

@Galen Grey
snip…

Part 2

“Freedom of Choice. Again, SWG pre NGE. No professions, only skills. " I dont know about this, never played SWG as I said before. But a little searching disagrees with what you’re saying. according to this:
http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Professions_
There were not only professions that had distinct skills Commando has no access to healing skill trees which medic does. But within each class there are also specializations.

You missed the very first line on that page:

“In Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided you must have a profession and you can have as many as your skill points allow you to have”

I will reply to this, basically because you totally misunderstand it. Yes, those are the list of professions. From which you could choose skill based hybrids, by using skill points. Jedi was an unlocked, separate char.

My main was a Master Carbineer/Bounty Hunter/Pistoleer with a bit of Ranger.
One character was a Master Dancer/Tailor/Creature Handler
A good friend was a Master Carbineer/Doctor/Creature Handler.
Combat “medic” was rarely a medic..they rarely took the full heal line. Poison tossers, usually with other combat professions mixed.
Doctors were.. by and large, craftsmen. Worth far more making buffs and heal packs than healing in combat. TBH most Doctors were Doctor/Rifleman to harvest their own buffpack components.
People were largely self sufficient re heals, with stimpacks and pre applied buffs.. There were no roles until CU tried to scab them in, and no “dedicated” anything.
32 professions.. and the ability to hybridize your build to be a mix of any of them, using your skill points.

If your theoretical Commando wanted heal skills, they could put points into a healing profession skill tree.

That is freedom.
But its not important. People didn’t like freedom. They didn’t like not being told where to go, what to be, what to do in combat. We won’t ever see that level of freedom in an MMO again, and that includes this game. We wont see the freedom of personal customization again either, as the game was a database monster, rarely did you find even two people with the same mix of professions, armor stats, weapons stats, and buffs, full body customization.. all being wildly variable according to each player. Perhaps, far in the future, we may, but I kind of doubt it.

I feel a bit for people who did not experience pre WoW MMOs. Wows success homogenized the entire industry, with old games scrambling to be a bit more WoW, and new games trying to out WoW Wow. For example, SWG, post WoW, became a structured 8 class game with roles, defined Quest paths, Trinity, and generally required little player thought. WoW became the success benchmark, and niche mmo gaming died, with the exception of EVE. I guess thats why I was so fond of GW1, even though technically a CORPG, it was different enough from WoW to be fresh and unique in a lot of ways.

Bottom line is, today, in this industry, if you can play WoW you can jump into any MMO offered, Save Eve, and play with little to no adjustment and that also includes GW2. The benchmark has changed, since WoW games have tried to be enough different than WoW to attract those in need of change.. and yet similar enough to WoW to attract the demographic that made WoW such a huge financial success.

For example, take 2 futuristic space games. STO and Eve. If you have only played WoW, you will jump into STO with very little shock, there isn’t much difference. Put that WoW player into EVE, and they will be gibbering, curled up in a fetal ball. EVE is very Niche, with possibly the hardest learning curve left online.

GW2 is possibly the best of the current batch.. working within those restraints. I have to say, however, I do not think it is the best the industry, or ANET, is capable of creating. Developers are not striving to be as innovative or original as they could be, faced with the possibility of financial failure.. and the 500lb gorilla of WoWs financial success looming large in the room.

Already , in this game, we see the creep. Bits of Vertical Progression. Bits of Gear gated content. (agony). We see the possibility of Raiding. Level Cap increases. Only a year, and the manifesto is crumbling, not much, but bit by bit. The demographic that expects those things is huge, and will be catered to. It is just economics.

tolunart.2095:

Kreslin.6832:

tolunart.2095:

You can continue to transmute the armor onto new sets as you level or if you want to change the stats of the armor. You just need a supply of yellow stones (level 79 or lower) or silver crystals (level 80). Both are given out as rewards for dailies and map completion or can be bought from the gem store by exchanging a few gold for gems.

In other words, just like I’ve just toled, GW2 has many tricks which make playing in this game more complicating than it was in GW1.

It’s a completely different game. Computer technology changes and improves over time, so it’s common for sequels to games to be much different from the original. I go back and play older games now and then, if you look at Skyrim and compare it to Morrowind or earlier games in the series it hardly looks like they have anything in common. Even Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II are very different games, despite being developed close together and having a similar look, the game interface is completely different and the stories are unrelated.

You didn’t get the point. Computer technology… did you listen what I said?

By saying “more complicating” I meant – more expansive and much more grinding.
In GW1 armors don’t have any stats. If you need stats, you can get them from the npc, which are pretty cheap. That’s all you need! Very simple, and not grinding. If you want another stats, you simply buy runes from the npc and add them to the armor replacing the old runes. Simple. Or you can buy the same armor and use different runes and you will have 2 armors with different stats. Simple.
In GW1 armors have the same quality. So you can buy the cheapest armor and you’re done. There aren’t more powerful armors than what you’re already have. The prestige armors are all about skin, nothing more.

In GW2, for getting the best armor set, you must grind. It much more harder to get top set in GW2 than it was in GW1.
In GW2 armors have stats. So if you want this armor have different stats, you have to do a lot of work, much more than in GW1. You have to grind another armor set, and than, you have to buy transmutation stones from the game store. And after that, you have to eliminate one of the armors, which were not easy to get.
And in GW2 we have rings, amulets, jewelry, which add you more extra work for getting the full top set.
Feel the difference?

In GW2, if you want use different builds in a decent level, you have to get armors and weapons for them. It means that you have a lot of work to do. Grind, grind, grind, grind, and grind. A lot of work to do, just for getting decent armor sets for different builds.
I don’t remember such a headache in GW1.

So I don’t see what I loved in GW1 in GW2 at all. Manifesto was lying.

Mouhappai.5406:

I have a genuine question for those who set the volume slider to off forever; what is it about in-game street performers and musicians that make you hate them so?

I don’t hate them but here is why I turn the slider to mute:

1. Many of the people that think they play good music don’t.
2. Many that are fairly decent at it play the same song over and over.
3. Often I just don’t like the songs being played.
4. I am listing to other music on iTunes.

Basically you can thank the nimrods that think they are being cute by standing in the bank or TP and spamming the same note over and over again for this. It’s bad enough when these goofballs stand in those areas spamming their weapon effects non-stop. Then you throw in the instrument spam and it gets very obnoxious very fast.

Players should not have to go out of their way to avoid hearing music or in many cases just noise. I can understand those that have taken the time to learn to play music being frustrated. However, play your music where you want and the people that like listening to it will hear it because they won’t have it on mute. It has not disabled the instrument all together it just lets people opt out. If they don’t want to hear it to start with I don’t see much in the way of loss for those playing the music.

I’m with you Lord Byron. How many people here know the reference?

And I’m older than you by the way.. 30+ years of gaming

Every company makes good and bad decisions. I think the worst decisions come out of putting too much effort into working from feedback instead of making the game what they all know is right.

It’s anti fun if you don’t like it. It’s my favorite jumping puzzle in the game. We do this with my guild, usually takes about ten people. If you can’t get ten people together on your server, don’t do it. It’s not required.

But saying only PvE people deserve jumping puzzles, so putting them in PvP is not fun because it’s not fun to you isn’t great. Dungeons aren’t that much fun to me, but I acknowledge there are people that like it.

The dungeon wasn’t designed with mobs…it was designed with traps that one side could use against the other. In other words it was designed to PvP in. And for those who like that, it’s certainly fun.

It’s anti-fun to you because you’re not a PvPer. The answer here is simple. If you don’t enjoy PvPing, don’t do the puzzle, because you really don’t have to. It’s a choice.

I did it several times this week, just to help out guildies, even on days when I already had gotten the chest. Every time I beat it it was a rush, moreso than any other jumping puzzle in the game.

Edit: You need a bunch of mesmers in that group….so you can portal people up as they fall. That’s what we do.

Arkham Creed.7358:

None of you understand; they put this time gate in place because of the community’s “I want it right now!” attitude. The community has a nasty habit of grinding and farming everything to get it as fast a possible, and this has two very real negatives.

I’m afraid you’re the one who doesn’t understand.
Before all the people from other MMOs got to top level and realised there was only gameplay with very little of what they would term “progression”, GW2 had none of this stuff.
It was only when they all threw paddies and left because GW2 wasn’t exactly the same as their other MMOs, that ArenaNet panicked and started trying to woo them back by catering to their tastes almost exclusively.

And I hate people who try to label others as petulant children when making an argument. It weakens the strength of said argument and only causes to inflame the situation.

Tell me something.

I come from a traditional competitive gaming background where everyone is on equal footing as far as availability of tools is concerned.
ArenaNet are trying to sell GW2 as an “esport” to the competitive community, something I have very clear ideas about.
Why shouldn’t I be upset when the tools I require to play at a competitive level are restricted to those who simply have more time to play than I do?

The only things that should require any degree of timegating or grind are prestige aesthetics.
The tools to compete should be readily and easily available to everybody upon hitting maximum level. Otherwise, you create a very uneven playing field. The economy changes to reflect this, with Berserker’s ingredients being some of the most expensive.
People are afraid to experiment with other builds or even professions, as it requires too much time and money.

ArenaNet got sloppy in trying to woo back people who have twisted ideas about what makes a game and its players great.

What is stupefying is that they continue to make the same mistakes even now.

It was 1hr in-game time, duh.