Guild Wars 2

I am a huge GW2 fan – I’ve brought many people to the game and have been playing since beta, but the reasons I’ve had to come back to this game between every other MMO are pretty much gone.

I’ve played every major MMO from it’s launch through it’s content at launch. Some games (SWTOR, for instance) I get done with all available content before they’ve even finished the intended starting content, so I leave… and I don’t come back. Ever. Other games take a while longer (like WoW expansions, which I stopped buying after Cataclysm or Rift), but when I left, I left. It was done. Finished. Over. GW2 has been my mainstay since it’s launch and, sadly, it won’t be for much longer due to the fact that I can no longer experience all it’s content without being in a guild. A big guild, at that.

The primary reason I kept coming back to GW2 was that I could see all of it’s content without having to deal with people (I’m always a guild/raid leader in other games and that just wears me down) and still be as relevant as I was when I started a break – sometimes a couple of weeks, sometimes a couple of months; I knew the same great game would be waiting for me when I came back. And I put a lot of hard-earned cash into this game because I loved it so much and it earned it.

That has changed and this is why:
https://goo.gl/ZXBiva
I made a little spreadsheet of the required materials just for Resotration 1-affiliated builds in the Guild Hall. This isn’t nearly a quarter of the materials needed to get to the actual content like Weaponsmith 2’s, which require completion of nearly all builds in restoration 2 and a guild level of 40.

So, basically, not only can my small guild not even claim it’s own Guild Hall with it’s 2 or 3 people (family – pretty much the only people I can stand any more), but we have to get to guild level 40 and get an insane amount of materials – like completely impossible within the expected lifetime of this game (my kids will be through college before I was able to grind out all materials)- in order to fully experience the game.

I’m done.
I’ll play until I leave (again) for another game, but this time, I’ll have a WHOLE LOT LESS reason to come back. Right now, the MMO field is pretty sparse and dry, so I’m good for a while…. But I’m extremely disappointed that my refuge game is now just another game in a pile of grindy games that require I pretend to like other people. I just won’t do it. Unlike some people, I’m not a pretender… I really am incapable of feigning interest any more.

I quoted this ongoing conversation:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/As-your-average-casual-player/5780197

You: “Casual players can still enjoy all aspects of the new maps.”

mcwurth.2081: “if we turn into hardcore players”

You: “Change your build up and experiment with new builds, join a guild, ask in map chat for help. None of these things make you hardcore and soon you will be back to pressing 1 and winning just like the old days.”

You made a misinformed statement and followed it by patronizing someone because you apparently don’t have a clue what it means to be a casual player.

Hello!

It needs 5 Charged Quartz Crystal to craft 1 Celestial Intricate Gossamer Insignia.

what were Anet thinking?

That’s why too much, for me to get a full set of Celestial, it will take me 1 month to get that. That’s just inzane if you compare to all the other exotic insignias.

/Dan

Alteraphim.4629:

mcwurth.2081:

Alteraphim.4629:

Casual players can still enjoy all aspects of the new maps.

if we turn into hardcore players

Change your build up and experiment with new builds, join a guild, ask in map chat for help. None of these things make you hardcore and soon you will be back to pressing 1 and winning just like the old days.

Casual doesn’t mean unskilled.

Casual players are immensely hindered by the ridiculously long meta event cycles tied to the real-world clock. Casual players don’t plan their playing hours. They log in, and play.

Some of them are skilled enough to deal with any challenge in the new maps, except the challenge of needing to be online at specific times to participate in the only significant content on offer in the new maps.

While running around tyria, I see SO many players on the map. There was one or two vets I was having a bit of a time with, took all of 10 seconds to ask for and get tons of help with the thing. LOL, you would of thought it was a champ.

The point of my original post stands, you SHOULD be able to solo anything you want, you SHOULD be able to enjoy the game, look around, discover stuff, and keep a eye open for events if you want to join in a big crowd fight. Just like tyria, I can run around by my self, have a blast, and if in the mood, go join a big crowd for a dragon fight, good times.

HOT really needs the nerf hammer, I paid 50 bucks for the game, and I should be able to enjoy it by myself, and not spend all my time running for my life, and FINALLY finding a hero point only to get stomped by a mob, or a champ spawn.

Blackreign.1365:

The features of the expansion offer more depth, complexity and challenges. Specializations, master traits, a new character class. All seem to be centered on burst damage, delivering maximum amount of damage in the shortest possible time. This is great for hardcore gamers.

For the casual gamer however this sucks donkeyballs. I always enjoyed playing elementalist. Now he has been rebalanced in such a way that survivavility is completely gone. The tempest specialisation is near useless in PvP since nobody is going to sit there for 4 seconds while you charge to unleash armageddon. With this expansion, where the elementalist has low health and other classes gained huge damage boosts, the elementalist is completely unplayable for the casual gamer.

Please fix the balance for the casual player!

I cannot agree more with you.

ANET consistently is catering to the Hardcore players. As if hardcore players are the majority. This is the problem when developers are running the company.

In GW1 we had a very nice feature. A switch that would turn the game from Normal to Hard Mode.

We need that switch in GW2 !

This would allow us “Casual” players to enjoy the game while the “Hardcore” gorillas could pound away at the more difficult events and enemies.

BRING BACK THE SWITCH !!!

Very well written and summarizes my exact feelings towards HoT too. I even have the time to do all these metas and raids if I wanted to but it is way too exhausting and stressful. I play video games to de-stress not adopt another job

I played thieves 100% and you make me reach enlightenment and know how foolish i am well nothing matters anymore i will just accept it and move on like an enlighten monk

Edit:Typo

A long time ago I was a hardcore raider in WoW (vanilla, bc, & wrath) and have conquered server-first boss kills, etc. I’ve since then accumulated a lot more real–life responsibilities that limit my play-time and make my schedules unpredictable. I am unable and unwilling to make commitments to guilds and to raiding because I do not want to feel that pressure to have to log on, to have to do this, to have to do that. I can’t keep up with that type of gaming anymore even though that itch is still there, it’s just not possible.

Guild Wars 2 never had any type of hardcore commitment; there was no monthly subscription either so it was always pick-up and play when you wanted. The game was designed around that and that’s what always kept me coming back. It’s why I’ve had the game since pre-release and I purchased the $100 copy of HoT.

The thing is HoT has moved the game in a much different direction than what GW2 represented to me and was to me prior to the expansion.

GW2 was a game where I could do anything at pretty much any time and have it feel meaningful while not having to dedicate a huge chunk or time or make a major commitment.

I could level up an alternate character through zones, story, crafting, EotM, or use the tons of tomes and scrolls I have lying around OR a combination of all of that OR only one of them!

I could PvP, WvW, Dungeon, Fractal, Explore (JPs / Other Achievements), or even do some World Bosses if I was on at the right time, pretty much at any time I wanted to.
I could do this on any of my characters with any type of gear and mostly any type of build.

HoT has changed all of that.

I have about 800-900 hours on my warrior (who is my main) but then I also have an additional 800 hours spread out amongst my alts. I have an 80 of every class (except rev). A few of them I have leveled up through story and map completions, some through EotM (somewhat recently but before HoT) and then I have a necro I leveled up with scrolls/tomes. Most of these characters I don’t play often enough to give them more than one set of exotic gear. In fact, even my warrior only has one set of gear and its exotic with some ascended trinkets, amulets, etc. and Twilight (which I FINALLY made a few weeks prior to HoT).

My point is, I play every aspect of the game and on a wide array of characters because not only do I enjoy it but because GW2 supported it and made it possible.

However, with the implementation of raids, the design of the new zones, and the destruction of dungeons and WvW I feel like I cannot do these things the way I used to and how the game was prior to HoT.

The design decision to have map-wide meta events tied to specific timers is extremely frustrating for me. If I do not log in or am not in a zone at a certain time I am out of luck for the next few hours if I want to complete it. I understand that they did not want map-hopping like SW but then maybe having 4 zones in HoT ALL with meta events was not exactly a great design.

Don’t get into a dragon stand map within in the first 30 minutes of the timer good luck finding one. Nobody attempts DS with an hour or even 90 minutes left on the timer.

Get into a fresh AB? have fun waiting about an hour for that Meta and it’s even longer with VB.

Oh, you need to complete VB event chains but log in during night time? Well, sorry, you have to wait 45 minutes until they begin.

This also ties into adventures being constantly locked due to map times and event progression. Need gold for those mastery points? You must progress the specific event for it and hopefully you have enough time to hone your skill at it before it closes!

Wait, you mentioned all the HoT zones but left out TD. Well, TD ties into two issues I have.

One, Guild Wars 2 was always about play how you want but in order to complete the Meta in that zone you must be a zerk meta advocate and spec’d specifically for DPS. Condi builds, GTFO, you can’t dps fast enough and your CC’s end up breaking the bar making the Gerent move which results in a dps loss for everyone.

Two, ANet talks about how they want you to be able to play how you want but then create a DPS race at the same time as saying they’re moving away from the zerk meta end-game.

Something doesn’t add up.

(I actually do not have an issue with Gerent, but I feel its poor taste to say one thing and design the opposite and then having the completion required for some collections/masteries/etc. despite the way it alienates players.)

Not only that but then they go ahead and create raids – the opposite of playing how you want. Raids are a pretty exclusive thing and a great thing for highly organized and structured guilds and players with manageable schedules. However, if you have been playing GW for this long I don’t think raids were something you were missing because the game has never been about them or designed with them in mind.

GW2 was always about doing what you wanted when you wanted and how you wanted.

You want legendary armor? You HAVE TO raid, you have to conform, you have to designate time in your schedule and study/learn boss mechanics . You need to have ascended gear because the Devs said it’s been tuned for such so no guild or PuG is going to let you in without it.

There are ways to create challenging group content for organized guilds for more than 5 players. Look at TT and even look at Gerent.

Honestly, ANet has just completely changed directions with the game and I personally do not like it. If I wanted a cookie-cutter raid based game I would not be playing GW2 there’s a million other games out there that have that and have it implemented better and were built around it as one of their core pillars. Throwing a raid into a 3 year old game with no supporting features around it is just poor design.

If they wanted to cater to the hardcore progression player, well, you already have fractals, too bad they can’t seem to get that right either.

Too much time and effort and tuning and perfection is required to create unique meaningful and challenging raids. ANet doesn’t have those types of resources and almost no game company does, look at the MMO landscape these days, every game gets chewed up and spit out when they resort to raiding as end-game.

I just do not understand what ANet was thinking when they decided to go in this direction with HoT and with the game in general.

I am not complaining about the value of the game. I definitely have gotten my money’s worth and do not feel cheated. I willingly paid the money for it and would do-so again. However, I just do not agree with the direction I am more and more beginning to realize that the game is going and wanted to voice my opinion and that fact that I may not be supporting the company in the future.

Yeah, the wyvern and the tiger being gated behind a huge meta event is really stupid and bizarre.

I try to not qq or anything, like pitching middleground ideas, and can sympathize with gamedevs because I’m aware of how the industry and fans can be towards the creators. That being said, I was a bit irked today about something. inc rant

Little Electric Wyvern is potentially the most obtusely hidden pet for rangers, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why. I was surprised glancing through the topic names, none seem to reference it. When I first heard about their location being on the last map, I figured it was just being treated as an end-game-expansion treat. As I finally finished Dragon’s Stand while preparing to do the end of the story, my mate as Druid went to get a Wyvern. Now I’m rather peeved because I know those who designed this stuff are better than the padded gates and artificial time limits involved.

¹ Actually reaching the region in Dragon’s Stand involves having a map set up enough to complete the meta-event. If you don’t have a good map, you’re stuck spending time surfing lfg and getting lucky with getting into a good map. Key word being luck, because the player has little control over this. What doesn’t help all Dragon Stand maps are in synched timers, so if it takes too long for them to get a good map and it’s too tedious, might as well just wait for the next cycle… in two hours.

² Once you get in a good map, you now have to run with a zerg down the lane and see the event through to the end. From my experience, it took about an hour to reach the final area. I believe that’s considered average. So now in addition to getting a good map, you’ll most likely have to be on that map for another hour and hope that the groups suddenly don’t suck somehow, your client crashes, or disconnects. Even if you have a party friend to bring you back, you’d now have to fight everyone else on that instance and it’s lfg slot competition all over again.

³ So you made it to the end, beat up the boss, and everyone’s high fiving and stuff. Now you have to go and actually get Electric the Wyvern. But your map did good. The boss was beaten an hour before the map is closed. But despite your map doing fine, you’re still limited with 15 minutes to get your new friend. Map completion with 15 minutes for the average player is another topic. Any rangers who didn’t look up where the exact spot for wyverns are will ultimately end up asking mapchat. The environment isn’t exactly the most straightforward with everything in sight, so you’d be flying around a lot to try and find a path to where people might tell you where the wyverns are.

⁴ Which leads to the next issue. The reoccurring Masteries gating. Due to the experience curve for higher levels in Masteries, Advanced Gliding takes a lot of labor. Even the chain events begin to feel like they’re giving mere slivers as time goes on, and nothing can even really be done about it. It is possible to bypass this by channeling your inner Mario and pretending some tricky flight and jump tricks to reach the island, but it isn’t obvious, and most likely not intended. The player still has 15 minutes every time they’re there to even have a chance.

tl;dr
Your ability to get an Electric Wyvern is gated by luck of a good map instance, staying in that map for about an hour (or constantly trying to enter a party member’s instance), and require you to know exactly how to get there due to an arbitrary 15 minute crunch time no matter how well the map performs. It also demands L4 gliding mastery which, due to the slow nature of higher mastery levels, are gated by grind. Better off to do glide and jump shenanigans to get to the island.

While I’m not familiar with the Guild Wars 2 Pokedex of locations, I feel like it’s safe to say no pet is as poorly placed as the Electric Wyvern (I don’t know if Tiger has a similar problem. Tigers aren’t as adorable as wyverns so I haven’t researched). Fire Wyvern was sensibly placed, and I personally don’t see why Electrics weren’t on another island in Verdant Brink like that. Or in literally any other area that doesn’t involve gates, timecrunches, waiting, and luck.

So to sum it all up, was this really necessary for a single pet to be so difficult to get? (reminder to designers and players alike: difficulty != challenge)

inb4 git gud

I agree with OP, the expansion burned me out from the whole game, I was content before HoT, farming boss, fractal, dungeons…but now I just don’t have the motivation or energy to play this game anymore. I have moved on to Fallout 4 and I’m not sure I want to come back, Hot left a bad taste in my mouth.

I have a question
Can i have my money back from Anet? i dont even care if i lose my account, i really feel like i have been robbed by Anet, really im serious.

The irony of gating content is for ARENANET to prevent people from finishing fast, ended up, it still get finished fast by many people. And caused hardship for those trying to play the content at their pace.
So, ARENANET in their quest to stop those fast finishers, ended up backfiring. GG ANET.

I would think Druid is definitely the worst out of all those. The ranger class has been screwed left and right and now Anet made them a dedicated healing, actually it’s pretty comical.

I really enjoyed the first time openworld levelling experience, in this game.

It was kind of relaxing, in general, but reasonably challenging in parts.

I looked forward to logging on and exploring new areas.

I liked that you didn’t have to do every quest, or event, in an area and could move on before you got bored.

I’m not feeling that way about HoT, at all and really have very little desire to go there, most of the time.

Some of the areas are really nice (some less so), but it’s just way too anally retentive, constantly intense and repetitive for me.

It’s not that I can’t handle hard mobs – I can.

I just don’t really enjoy feeling I’m permanently on duty.

There are not even many places where you can stop and admire the view.

It’s just fight, fight, fight, with mobs that respawn almost immediately.

Original Tyria lifted you up, whereas HoT wears you down.

Gotta love paywalls.

It’s not burn out, there’s just no content there. No new fractals, just 4 zones, a 2-4 hr shallow story. It really is 1-2 weeks worth of content.

Once your done with your elite spec and got your armor pieces from the TWO new sets (yep that’s all), there is nothing left to do.

In less than 3 weeks, I’ve hit the wall with GW2 HoT, tired of the long Meta Events, sick of 75% of the maps and way points being contested. It’s just run like hell from one event to another, it’s getting old way to fast, Even Orr is relaxing compared to this!

GW2 with HoT is becoming too much of a twitch game for me.

After playing the expansion since release I’ve come to the conclusion that it feels like a collection of four large open world raids. I’ve completed the maps (all except Dragon’s stand) on all nine professions, did Tarir countless times (commanded south since the first days when people didn’t know what to do), helped on countless occasions during the Tangled depths meta event but I still have a feeling like I am not important as an individual player. It all comes down to the question if you have the zerg (or zergs) to do the event or not. It is virtually impossible to fail a HoT meta event if you have enough people on the map which know how to at least press #1.

However what really struck me was the nerf that was done to the dungeons. I am (or at least was) a really avid dungeon player. I’ve done every dungeon path at least 50-100 times and found myself lately teaching beginners how to play them. The gold and tokens (the amount before the nerf) were just enough to make it worthwhile for all of us. Now not only is it not worthwhile anymore but the dungeon LFG is actually completely empty most of the time. I don’t like fractals (never actually liked them) so making them more attractive by killing off dungeons is in my opinion a really bad way to do it.

The elite specializations are interesting. Some actually made me finish off map completion on professions I didn’t like before (most notably guardian with Dragonhunter). But the elite specializations weren’t made equally interesting for all professions so my main’s Berserker feels way underwhelming compared to lets say Dragonhunter, Herald, Reaper etc.

I maxed all 9 professions in hero points for their elite specialization and am finding myself back on Skyrim. I thought the xpac was supposed to give us more to do, but after unlocking specs I’m dead bored.

-Dungeons are completely dead, pretty much removed from the game with the rewards nerf.

-Fractals gave us double the work and grind + mastery grind for less rewards. There are also NO NEW FRACTALS. Just the same old boring rotation with number tweaks and existing mistlocks buffed. Fractals were not expanded upon at all with the exception of a bleh legendary backpiece.

-World Meta events take HUGE amounts of time (2 hr+ each meta), fail regularly, and the game spawns dead maps faster than then the U.S. Treasury prints money. Either I never have time to finish an event from 1 hour of map hopping to find an organized one, or spend 40mins before realizing there is no hope at all that the map is even going to make it to the end phase. Rewards like the bladed armor chest are RNG at the end, so you can go through it all and get nothing.

-General focus on world events creates this feeling that I don’t have control over my own progression, that I’m sitting here waiting on 200 people on a map to do their stuff right so that I can get anywhere. As player, I generally don’t feel important anymore. Getting anything in this game seems to be just sheer luck. Whether is getting a precursor drop or getting into a good map. There is no player control over their growth at all.

-Rewards in general suck and seem to become less and less with each update instead of more. Cost of ascended gear has skyrocketed to the point of making gear for new characters an impossibility. If you weren’t and early bird that got your crap early, your pretty much screwed. Don’t even think about trying to make celestial gear… if your a ele then your double screwed.

-EVERYTHING is expensive. Whenever I’m standing in front of the TP, I feel like I’m living in the Great Depression and standing in a breadline with a 20$ just to buy one loaf (a.k.a one single strength or scholar rune).

-The expansion is pretty small, I blew through the story in less than an hour and don’t really feel compelled to play through it again just to get slammed with bugs from the last boss. The quality of the storytelling was very low as well.

-From the master system to the above problem, to the length, the game DEMANDS MUCH but RETURNS LITTLE. I feel like my time playing is wasted.

I used to run dungeons and fractals dailies, now one got nerfed very hard, the other is a gold sink and gated behind the expansion on top of it (can’t get past lvl76 without grinding a lot more because of masteries…), and the only way now is SW which is annoying because of how many times I did it. Let’s not forget PvP too with the unbalanced Elite specs…
There’s also TP flipping but it ended badly, I made a stock of Tattered Batwings before the end of Halloween, hoping that the price would go up a lot but it decreased by 100% of it’s initial value two days after…

I know this is to make the expansion more appealing, but so far I don’t think it’s worth 40€ (25€ seems more like a fair price), I’m waiting for Raids and the rewards for doing these aswell as the changes in Fractals rewards, but otherwise I’m not tempted to buy it, there’s too much content that have not been finalized within it like the story, some missing components etc…

I agree that it’s too expensive. Not that I can’t afford it, I could buy it with gold or cash or a mix of both, but I don’t think 20 extra bag slots is worth that much.

So I don’t buy them. 100 slots is enough 99% of the time. Even on my main who carries around a bunch of tonics and toys, consumables like the bank and merchant express, 3 extra weapons and some other odds and ends the only time I have trouble is if I’ve done something like Silverwastes from beginning to end and tried to open bags as I’m going along.

I understand that ANET has to make money (believe me, I’ve given them plenty), but 400 gems for one bag slot for one character is crazy. I think the fair thing here is to make bag slot purchases account bound.

Andraus.3874:

This is why a lot of responses here are like “grow up, get over it, Ect.” Because to counter this type of negativity you have to rise above it and realize it isn’t worth getting upset over so you simply block report and move on.

Actually, the “grow up, get over it” crowd are the very people that would get silenced/kickbanned if ToS they agreed to when they bought the game were enforced properly. :P

Sephas.8793:

Miku.6297:

I really don’t understand why the OP doesn’t simply just block someone they are offended by.

This

Because everyone, including you, should be able to enjoy the game without being harassed or verbally abused by people who are blatantly breaking the TOS. If increasing numbers of people are so quick to dismiss the TOS, to which they agreed to abide by, then perhaps its time for Anet to strengthen its enforcement and enhance potential punishments along the lines of what the OP is suggesting (other options are possible).

For all those that are saying, “block and report”, I agree with this course of action but to suggest that the OP needs to “man-up”, you seem to be confused. A “real man” does not remain silent when he sees something wrong happening (like bullying), a “real man” takes action to improve the situation. A popular phase/quote comes to mind:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.”

By creating this thread, perhaps the OP might contribute to raising the awareness of Anet to this issue (if indeed bullying is happening more often in the game which I can not confirm or refute).

It’s why I’m so repulsed by PvP. You can read the other team’s messages and sometimes there are people that will just get aggressive and rude with you for no reasons.

I don’t ever want to play PvP because it makes me hate the game, and it’s annoying that the new legendaries require the tokens from PvP.

Yes, lets disregard story and character development for the sake of inclusion and furthering agendas. Hell, lets put in a straight relationship (of all things!) in while we’re at it.