Guild Wars 2

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

This is the president of Anet saying the opposite of what ascended weapon is. One thing people forget about ascended weapon is that they do not only give better stats but also better base weapon damage. A exotic rifle have a max base damage of 1205. The ascended rifle bump that to 1265. For comparaison, a rare rifle have a max base damage of 1067. So rare to exotic is a 12-13% base damage boost. Exotic to ascended is a 5% base damage boost. It is smaller damage boost but still a non-negligable boost. So this is not just a continuity of the ascended trinkets that gave only a stat boost. And what does wvw players have to do get a ascended weapon and make sure their gear weighting them down ? Farm pve for the gold and mats or pray that the stats combo ascended weapon you need will drop in wvw. So either Anet clarify the situation and assure us that scended weapon have decent loot table that mean ascended weapon can actually drop in wvw (unlike precursor and this is normal cause precursor should be a extremly rare drop) or give wvw players a way to gain them with actual wvw drop (badges, laurel, could be gold and ecto too). You could make it that you need 1000 badges plus 10 laurel or 1500 badges and it would be a better way for wvw players to get ascended weapon.

I am starting to think that WvW should have just been a part of spvp with everyone on the same lvl, no cost to retrait, no cost for the base equipment (weapon, armor, trinket,sigil and rune) and the only thing that you have to farm, if you want them, is skins.

What’s cool in GW2 is the dark undertone to lore and the dungeons – there’s some seriously twisted stuff there like that Inquest dudes Dragon research, and Baelfire turning himself into a god, and all of the Orr stuff and Jormah/Kralk stuff. The world is literally collapsing and going to the kitten around people.

However I think GW2 focuses too much on being funny and cutesie, which boxes of fun and celebrations and toymakers all of the time.

This world should be dark and dangerous – humanity lives in 2 cities, the Norn have been driven South, the Charr are struggling against the Dragonbrand and Flame Legion and the Sylvari are having a civil war. The world doesn’t reflect the actual lore we are told which is a big shame I think.

All the world ending stuff is completely contradicted by all the goofiness of fun boxes and the bad humour in the world.

I agree, I don’t want to log in every day after a tiring day of work to collect X, or pass on the opportunity.

If there are timegated mechanics, either harvest them automatically (like EVE Online where characters automaticaly accumulate skillpoints in a chosen skill every second, logged in or not), or make X stack up every day until a maximum of 10 days, which can all be harvested in one go. That way I can log in for 5 minutes during the weekend, collect my 7 fused quartz crystals and harvest my crystal node 21 times and be done with it.

If I wanted to be rewarded to log in every day and mindlessly click on stuff, I’d play stupid Farmfille.

Time gating (I mean the Anet style time gating as done with charged quartz) is so kitten boring, do you guys really know what you are doing by adding more of it? Do you know how boring it is to log your alt into place of power and craft charged quartz every day? This is the definition of no fun at all.

I have seen some games before that do a kind of time gating that works well — the stuff happens automatically, you don’t have to log in and do it once a day like a boring robot. (And of course, using a bot or macro in GW2 to do it is the only intelligent way with such incredibly mind numbing game design, although I do not.) So, in other words, if you want to have a time gate on something like charged quartz crystal, players should be able to program that their character will charge one quartz crystal per day, then it is time gated and player does not have to jump through an incredibly boring hoop once per day before they begin enjoying the game.

This is not a new concept, it is at least 10 years old in MMOs to have games where player characters can automatically do a boring time-gated thing while the player is offline.

You do know that time gated boring grind is much worse than non-time gated boring grind, right? If it takes 8 hours to grind some crap out, you can kind of make a party out of it and find the right time and enjoy doing that grind for a few hours, but if it is a boring hoop you have to jump every day over and over again there is not way to make a party out of that it is just a kitten boring hoop, like adding some random button presses to the log-in screen. That is basically what you did with your time gating, add a bunch of boring button presses necessary for log-in screen. Whee fun, great game design.

This style of time gating that Anet is making into a core element of Guildwars 2 is sort of the worst of both worlds. You have games where your characetrs can do stuff while you are afk to avoid monotonous grind, then you have games where you just have to grind and grind, anet makes it so you have to grind, but you can’t grind and grind, instead of getting it over with when you are in the mood for it or you and your friends get together on the weekend and do it together or tackle a big chunk of it, no not like that it has to be slow, tedious torture of anet’s peculiar style of time gating.

All I’m saying is Time Gating is not fun by any standard, it is one of the worst game designs you can possibly have. Yet this appears to be transforming into s a core element of Guild Wars 2 style game play? (WTF.)

Time Gating Is – > NOT FUN

There are people that like to farm. There are people that like to grind mobs, gear, gold. There are people that like to program up their character to do things afk. There are people who like PvP and people who don’t like PvP, there are people who like town clothes and people who think town clothes are dumb but who liek to get the gnarliest looking armor, and there are people who think the gnarliest looking armor is boring but they like to have their pet minicat because they think minis are fun…… BUT THERE IS NOBODY ANYWHERE THAT THINKS TIME-GATE CONTENT LIKE LOGGING IN ONCE A DAY WITH ALT TO MAKE CHARGED QUARTZ CRYSTAL IS FUN! (And running to place of power is even less fun, same thing just more time wasted to accomplish boring bullcrap).

I will repeat it again, because ascended gear or not ascended gear, everyone can agree to this I am pretty sure:

Time Gating Is – > NOT FUN

Just wanted to point that out….

I enjoy sPvP a decent amount and am pretty knowledgeable about each build/role/playstyle, but I have to say that trying to watch GW2 Pax tourney is a joke. Trying to emphasize GW2 as an esport over implementing additional pvp modes like GvG/HA/etc, is a huge mistake. The overhead view doesn’t make any sense as you can’t really appreciate the plays made by the player, while the player view doesn’t provide enough information about the overall fight. It’s very messy to watch large teamfights.

Secondly, what is there to shoutcast for a GW2 pvp match? Half the time, the shoutcasters were talking about the cow stomp. There was very little strategy and alternative actions discussed, probably because there are so few options to consider. In big esports like LoL/Dota/SC2, there are different openers, resources to manage, player positioning, myriads of strategies and counterplays.

I just hope ANet realizes that promoting a mmorpg as an esport is very difficult (even WoW had a really hard time) and prioritizes player enjoyment.