This topic is pointless and is now about waffles.
How do you like your waffles? I like mine with a bit of cinnamon and maple syrup.
-BnooMaGoo.5690
Champs should not drop guaranteed rares- makes them too farmable.
Any loot overhaul should not reinforce the idea of farming, but instead allow a player to just play the game while naturally accruing the mats they need or want. Concentrating rewards anywhere is a bad idea.
Champs should give/have a better loot table, but more along the lines of guaranteed tier whatever crafting materials/multiple bags/slightly increased monetary drops/ possible uncommon food items/ slightly increased chance for lodestones-cores-slivers/ recipes/ boosts/ slightly increased drops of rares and exotics/ blc keys etc etc.
As you could read above it is not about me and how i handle dungeon :-) Finding group in 5 minutes on LFG is possible like for every other dungeon, but compare it with pre-patch AC.
You may like changes and i admit they have sence, but it really drove most people out of this dungeon. What will happen if they will change every dungeon this way?
I just try look in to the future. AC can serve as example how people react. They say we love this and after few months the dungeon is totaly empty. I dont think those 5 groups across whole europe on lfg can be considered as ,,full dungeon".
If changing one dungeon to require more coordination can hurt its population so much what can changing every dungeon do with population of whole game?
They uncompromisingly rewrite dungeon and result is empty dungeon. No matter changes are good or fun the result is bad.
Its not because of a lack of coordination that people don’t do AC P2. It is the chance that Detha bugs out and just annoying ghostbuster gun mechanics that simply isnt fun and wastes time.
As for 5 min finding a group, its usually like 10 minutes because by the time I tabbed back to GW2 the party is full. If I put up a LFG notice, it will be duly ignored. As for AC, its a fact no one wants to do anymore. At this point in time, it isnt because of buggy mechanics, annoying CC spam or inexplicable frame lags but its because everyone got what they needed and only do COF to farm gold. One can only conclude that in attempt to appease the ,,elitists", Mr Hrouda satisfied no one and wasted his design team’s time.
(edited by Khal Drogo.9631)
As to the Raids, if they achieve raids by making Dungeons scale, like dungeons in Wildstar, from 1 up to raid size, I’m all for it. If it’s “5 or 20”, or “5 or 40”, with no scaling from small to large, I’m not at all interested.
Others have brought up good points about content in general. GW2, at launch, got that fun trumped carrot on a stick as a motivator. Sadly, they seem to have forgotten how they created the core game and the principles it was built around, so it’s not a huge surprise that they might decide to fall back on the old design paradigm.
I don’t know what’s happening at ANet, but I don’t think there is any way the current ANet could create a game any where near on par with what GW2 was at launch.
As a counterpoint to the thread title, the day Guild Wars 2 turns into a gear treadmill is the day I leave Guild Wars 2.
So you want a gear treadmill like WoW?
Please, for the love of God, no.
Many of us neither need, nor desire gear grind in this game. GW1 vets didn’t desire it in GW1, and don’t desire it here. It’s not how we [loose use of the ‘we’ here, I am simply speaking for those I know, not for all] desire to play.
We do not wish to be locked into an endless cycle of never ending stat climbing. It does not contribute to the game, it does not make the game better. For those that would argue that you need stronger stats to take on harder content, I tell you plainly, no you don’t. You can have challenging content, without always needing to ‘prep’ for it by having to grind gear.
Please note that the keyword here is ‘challenging.’ Gear progression, aka stat progression, only allows for foes with bigger numbers. That’s not challenging. It’s not interesting. It’s simply going to be more of what we already have (what people are already kittening about). What we need are smarter AI, interesting mechanics, better implementation and required usage of support and control builds. Things that will require thought, tactics, and patience in order to accomplish the task. Simple stat progression and gear grind won’t do this.
Sadly, the day GW2 implements the traditional WoW hamster wheel, I will walk away and weep for what could have been a wonderful game.
Wow, that title was a bit pretentious. Sorry for that.
The game has been out for almost a year now. I’d like to take the time to review the direction the game is taking and discuss some improvements I’d like to see, and possibly some current features I’d like to see remain as they are. For lazy people, or people who do not care, at the end of each section will be a TL;DR blurb. Prepare your butts and buckle up, it’s Wall o’Text time!
1. World Bosses
They just don’t do enough. I’m talking about the dragon champions, shadow behemoth and fire elemental especially. I know, many people want to get in quick and farm them as fast as possible in order to move onto the next. I understand that, I do, but too much of me wants these to be far more difficult. Ulgoth and the Megadestroyer are not bad fights in my view, and the fire elemental used to be great in beta. Many of the other bosses need to be far more dangerous than they currently are. I assume it must be difficult to achieve given the numbers of players who turn up to these events. Preliminary ideas could be as follows:
Tequatl – Make his bloated creepers spawn more, and hurt more. Have far more risen rushing in to back him up (he’s just across the water from Orr, after all), forcing players to break off into teams to fight them more in order to hold them back. I remember TotalBiscuit’s review of this event way before release, and the idea of it looked fantastic, but now with 50+ players he’s far too simple.
Shadow Behemoth – This guy really doesn’t do anything, does he? He could spawn far more adds and require dodging to avoid a very obvious one-hitting attack. I know it’s a starter zone, and as such I guess difficulty should be dealt with more carefully, but gosh darn he needs something doing to him.
The Shatterer – See above, more or less. He could do to trap people in crystals more, a lot more.
I know ArenaNet supposedly increased difficulty of these some time ago but it doesn’t feel much different. I’d like to see them re-appraised.
TL;DR: Increase difficulty of some bosses! They don’t feel worth the hype, and they really should. They should be substantially more epic.
2. Exploring
I love exploring. I really love exploring. Back in November, when it had been only a few months since release, and you gave us a whole new zone to explore, the game felt really exciting. Living Stories have come and gone since then and, we’ve had a few small instances open up, such as Cragstead, but nothing on the scale of Southsun.
I’d really like to see some more small explorable zones open up. Something that reveals something that might not necessarily be related to the main Guild Wars 2 story, but something interesting. Anvil Rock, for example, I always imaged that mountain in Guild Wars 2, but was disappointed to find it wasn’t included. Statue of Lyssa in the ice caves would be another cute, nostalgic place for a half-size explorable area.
In addition – please, for the love of Dwayna, include Southsun (and any future zone) exploration markers (waypoints, PoIs, etc) in the overall World Completion percentage. You have no idea how much this irritates me. WvW is included, and Southsun is not. Why?
TL;DR: Release more explorable zones like Southsun. Include Southsun exploration markers in with World Completion percentage.
Continued in Post 2…
3. Gamble Boxes
Yes, I went there. Yes, I know it’s contentious.
I could whine for a long time on this but I’m going to try to keep it brief. I hate them. I – hate – them. Having pre-purchased Guild Wars 2, played every single Beta, every single Stress Test, completed every daily and monthly since their inception, I feel very disappointed and disrespected to find out that I have to rely on dumb luck, and personal (real life) wealth in some cases in order to obtain skins.
Some of these skins are really nice. Molten and Jade especially, and my luck was never with me (possibly worth noting I have never once received a luck-based gamble-chest skin… sadface ). Despite the numbers of people who shout on forums about how they obtained many tickets already, I really believe they speak for a very small minority. I can only think of one friend in-game who was lucky enough to obtain a ticket for the recent Jade skins, and he ploughed much real-money into obtaining one. Me? – I decided after the Molten fiasco not to waste more money on the gamble boxes. I understand the Jade weapons drop from regular coffers during the Dragon Bash, but the drop rate is meaning that some people (such as me) have opened thousands with no luck.
So how would I propose fixing this? I believe loyal players are worthy of some chance to obtain one of these skins without having to rely on luck. Loyal players build up Achievement points, which are not currently used for anything other than vanity, although they have always been mooted as possibly being used as a currency. For every achievement point a player earns, give them a spendable one. This will mean that achievement points can only be spent once, but a player’s overall total will not drop when they are spent. You can make around about 530 achievement points completing every single PvE and PvP daily and monthly every month. Including points from other sources, 800 Achievement Points to unlock a gamble-skin wouldn’t seem too steep, and give those of us who actually play the game a way of unlocking one (or more) during an event, such that we don’t feel like we totally lost out.
TL;DR: Hate gamble boxes. Feel like loyal players should be rewarded with a way of obtaining special event skins without relying on gambling. My solution: use achievement points (a finite resource) to unlock skins. Number of unlocks is limited by the number of achievement points you have earned. Proposed cost per skin unlock: 800 points. Points do not deduct your achievement point total, but rather reduce your available “spendable” points.
4. Remote Areas
I’m one of these players who loves remote areas, but this one is quite a tricky one for me to explain. I always loved places like Dreadnaught’s Drift, The Falls and Mineral Springs in Guild Wars 1. Yea I know, it was all instances and I was the only player there, but these places had something else about them. Perhaps it was psychological, knowing I was 2+ zones away from the nearest town, but they felt so remote, quiet, and peaceful (once you’d killed the mobs, anyway!).
Some places in Guild Wars 2 succeed in almost creating the same feeling. Northern Lornar’s Pass, and much of Snowden Drifts are two areas that spring to mind, but you’re always aware that there are 2-3 waypoints within a minute of you. I’d like to see, in upcoming areas, some more remote locations – some locations you need to want to go to, rather than need a reason to. It’s a tricky one to sell I suppose, but the world is large enough to contain such regions. Get far enough from a waypoint and the background music turns off, and you’re left with wind whistling over mountain tops. It’s not make or break, just something I’d like.
TL;DR: If you skipped to here this section is not for you.
Continued in Post 3…
(edited by Sarie.1630)
I think Guild Wars 2 requires MORE skill than Guild Wars 1. .
Your opinion = truth? Sure, continue. I don’t suppose you know term “subjective”.
Of course the main problem is that this MMO (like most of them out there) won’t let you be a Steve Jobs. Unless the Steve Jobs game equivalent is the TP flipper, but i consider them as much of an aberration of the game idea as the farmers are.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
For the Horde !
by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game.
We want everyone on an equal power base.”
Two of the game’s strongest duelist gets exclusive access to the new condition , punishing those who make a subtle attempt at movement whilst they’re insanely mobile and potent in trickery.
#Keyboardturnersrejoice!
I am going to have to agree thakittens pretty darn annoying. We do have the tools to address it, but if we are going to have arbitrary ways of increasing difficulty, I would rather Anet tone the CCs down and increase mob health/damage.
In WvW, though amount of CC that guards can dish out, on seemingly no CD whatsoever, is pretty annoying. Scouts constantly spamming blind is just annoying. All you have to do is switch to ranged, but it seems like the difficulty that is trying to be achieved could be done in much better ways. I cant WAIT for games to get AI to the point where one of those scouts could actually outsmart me.
I just think that Anet could make it just as difficult, but in a less annoying way. One of the things I enjoyed about GW1 was that mobs had the same skills as players, and worked on the same mechanics. It was really kind of a neat system, imo.
06-04-13
NEVER FORGET
Like several other people are saying, the problem isn’t how strong cc is or how easy it is to counter it, but how unfun it is when it’s so frequent.
CC takes the player away from the control of their character. It’s disruptive. When used at the right time, it can be great to increase tension in combat. When spammed by the basic AI, it’s annoying, frustrating and otherwise pointless.
Game Director
“Globs of Ectoplasm can now be salvaged into Piles of Crystalline Dust. This change should help Globs of Ectoplasm maintain a strong value in the economy and lower the cost of Crystalline Dust.”
Thank you. Now if we could have a solution for lodestones that would be awesome!
Additional ways for other items like lodestones will arrive later this summer, there part of a much larger reward overhaul (outlined in very high level detail here) we’ll go into more low level detail when we update the status of this blog: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/
The dust solution was a quicker low hanging fruit change outside of the larger reward system overhauls, so we figured we’d get it out quickly based on all of your feedback.
As always, thanks again for feedback folks!
so your advice to to level to 80 by farming CoF p1 to craft, just to be level 80 where all you will do… is farm CoF p1, have you even played the rest of the game, or do you log on each day to play CoF p1 for 6 hours?
Let me explain something to you. People don’t have to be rewarded for doing events, doing dungeons, exploring the game, etc. However, when you want people to KEEP playing your game with the EXACT same events, dungeons, exploration, you have to put in an INCENTIVE for them to repeat things they’ve already done. Sure, it’s fun for the first time or first few times you do something. But it becomes monotonous, repetitive, boring. There needs to be a reason that players should be repeating content that they’ve already experienced.
A sub-based game is built like this, because the longer players ride the merry go round, the more money the company running it makes.
GW2 is not a sub-based game. There ARE rewards which require a time-based commitment, such as running dungeons repeatedly for tokens to get a set of armor, or collecting mats for creating a Legendary weapon. But these are not the primary focus of the game, they are optional goals that are there if you want them, and have no effect on the game if you don’t.
The game itself is designed to be picked up and put down at will, and played in short bursts of activity rather than all day, every day. The problem is the approach players take – if you play the game as though it’s a WoW-clone skinner box, then the lack of rewards for time invested will eventually catch up with you. But if you play something else when it starts getting boring, then come back in a few weeks when the next chapter of the Living Story is released, there will always be something new to enjoy.
It’s up to you to entertain yourself, the devs aren’t going to make it rain just for you.
Most of the people who post here seem to hate social interaction. Raids would be a horror for them.
It isn’t social interaction that most people here dislike, it is social exclusion.
Don’t have this gear, get out.
Don’t have this class, get out.
Don’t have this build, get out.
Don’t have this level, get out.
Miss a dodge because the battle has been going on forever because you’re the only one doing good damage, get out.
You’re the only one not doing good damage, get out.
You haven’t watched the dungeon/event on YouTube beforehand to see the most efficient way to do every bit, get out.
In the end, everything where structured grouping is required in this game devolves to this. If you don’t hit an event or dungeon early, as in the first few hours, it gets progressively harder to find a group that you can play through it with. And when you do, you get one or two people that ragequit when it becomes evident it isn’t going to be a speedrun becasue it is the first time for one or more of the group.
And then it all went downhill. As if I’d missed something critical, everyone started to do what I most loathe in games – exploits. Not botting, hacking, or whatever – massive moments of “well, just another MMO….”. People stacking at the feet of a dragon, people shouting for Warriors in map chat, people pulling the boss into one corner, doing the same exact thing in every Fractal because of dumb AI (I’m not blaming the developer, these things happen in every game, but they’re usually addressed quicker) In short, it broke the immersion that I was playing something truly unique. In a moment’s notice, it was all about the grind, the whole thing had become a job, as any other MMO tends to do. What’re these people even farming? Skins? And, naturally, I became pulled by that notion, because when everyone you’ve ever played with is suddenly doing these farm events, you’ll join in if only for the sake of company. What’re you gonna do, explore Tyria alone? Roleplay? When the mass mentality is to grind, you feel left behind, even if there’s nothing to grind in actuality.
The world had lost its charm. I wanted to head back and take this game as I took Skyrim, but I couldn’t. Instead I started teleporting and waiting for dragon events only to double click the 1 key and do something else. I did daily achievements consistently for god-knows what reason. All of it felt hollow, void of enjoyment. Is this what Guild Wars 2 had become? The game I loved and praised as a true step forward for developers, had fallen back to where every corporate sellout wants his game to be – a constant method of income.
I now understand why all the content we’ve been seeing is temporary. It’s not a gift from A.net, it’s not the passionate work of designers who couldn’t care less about money – no, the sad truth is, it’s just an attempt to get people back in the game before the stuff expires. None of it is for the sake of lore or immersion, don’t let them bullkitten you – it’s the cold reality of a game that, like many, has turned rotten because of the desire of both developers and publishers to cash in on a product, rather than provide an experience worthy of remembrance.
Look, I love games and I realize you can’t make these huge projects with constant original content, you need grind, you need repeatable events. I’m not asking for dragons spawning in Lion’s Arch, I’m not asking for a new area – all I ask from you, Arena.net, is that you at least consider the promise you made to all those people who followed you back in August, and how far you’ve strayed from it. None of your living story additions, except for the Molten Legion Facility, made me in any way excited- the story was dry, the setting dull, it was as if a PR specialist had designed these levels. You made this incredible world and you turned your back on it. Your reluctance to fix CoF Grinding, mind-numbingly boring world events (except Grenth, which no one does now, I wonder why) is turning more and more players away. Why did you pigeon-hole us into these mindless zerg fests? The only part of the game that still holds a candle to the original fun I had in Guild Wars 2 is WvW, and that flame dwindles.
I wouldn’t have written this much had I not cared about your game, had I not wanted it to be the bold successor to World of Warcraft. I’m not just someone who wants to complain for the sake of complaining – I want the developers to see that they have a shot at creating a game people will talk about for years to come. Guild Wars 2, as it stands, is one of the best bang-for-your-buck games out there. You’ll get triple the content you’ve paid for, most times over. This is not about your money. It’s about the fleeing opportunity to be playing the best MMO out there, when all the developers have to do is put a little of that passion they had when first making the game.
EDIT: I’ve added a huge comment with possible positive improvements to the game, as well as some measured criticism. It’s on the beginning of page 6: let me know what you think!
(edited by Insignya.8625)
EDIT: I renamed this thread to better serve the purpose of what we’re trying to achieve. There are several long posts further down the comment section that explain the issues with Guild Wars 2 and offer various suggestions for fixing them. Feel free to contribute!
I want to enjoy Guild Wars 2 again, the way I enjoyed it when it was released.
This sentence will be the main topic of discussion here and as you see, I’m keeping a calm tone – this will not be a bashing of the game nor a childish outrage. This is merely the opinion of someone who’s already devoted almost 2000 hours to Guild Wars 2 and who, genuinely, feels crushed by what the game’s become.
What convinced me to play Guild Wars 2? I was not a die-hard fan of the original, in fact, I only played Nightfall. So that point aside, I take this franchise as any newcomer would – I became drawn to the idea of a fresh MMO that didn’t have that gray stamp on it that said “this is your job now”. I loved the manifesto, the deep lore presented, the charming world – and it’s all there! GW2 has one of the most engaging, sprawling and beautiful worlds I’ve seen in any game – for that alone, it deserves recognition. It could, at any point, have fallen into the stale, seen-it-a-thousand-times Eastern look of MMOs. But it didn’t. The A.net team have done what very few developers could – they broke new grounds in one of the riskiest genres to undertake.
In the beginning my enjoyment of the game was infinite – I hadn’t felt this strongly attached to a game universe since Fallout 3 and Skyrim. I would co-op with several low-level buddies and we’d go escort a caravan through Queensdale. Then, several more people would join, the quest would move on to a large group defense, finally culminating in a boss fight. No one cared that the loot was abysmal, no one wanted to “farm” events, people wanted to move on, see the world, explore, chat. In the beginning I had no idea there were town portals, so I wandered from The Grove in an attempt to reach Divinity’s Reach because it seemed so mysterious and enthralling on the world map.
Then, as I hit level 80, I purposely ignored the calls of my friends to abandon the game, that there was nothing to do, that it was all a pointless grind. I started going after 100% World Completion, I explored PvP even though I rarely do PvP in any game. World vs World felt daunting at first but, ultimately, learning how it all tied together was extremely rewarding. Despite my horrible framerate I started clearing camps, providing supply, just to be part of a greater effort.
This is where many people would find the game shallow but I was still mesmerized by all the opportunities. I farmed my full Arah set, I made 5 alts in addition to my main Sylvari Ele and I decked most of them out in Exotic Gear, my Ele and Thief in ascended even. To me, the Fractals were an amazing addition. I didn’t care about the pink item grind – none of them were arbitrary as most people claimed when they complained that A.net was turning the game into a grindfest. I refused to believe they could ruin such a magical concept.
(edited by Insignya.8625)
1) You shouldn’t be farming to begin with.
2) Nothing was changed, your perception is just different.
3) Nobody cares.
4) If you aren’t having “fun” anymore, then quit.