Guild Wars 2

There’s been a lot of complaining about the way that the tickets and various weapon skin drops have been handled and how it’s all a giant slot machine designed to drive “empty” purchases in the gem store.

I get that, and I care about that, and I understand the frustration, but something else has also occurred to me.

Every event now has had these skins drop. Halloween, Karka invasion, Wintersday, F&F, Southsun Cove….

Why, exactly, does anybody think they deserve to get everything from every event? Why should they?

Each event has had some permanent indicator of achievement, whether it be titles or special items, that everybody was able to get through sufficient participation. Each event has also had some low chance at some special skin, the Sclerite weapons being the current carrot-on-a-stick.

Now, I disagree strenuously with the use of the gem store to hold out this carrot and this behavior is EXACTLY what I and many others warned and worried about when the gem store was announced, but ignoring that, everybody has had a shot at the skins each time and that appears to be a thing that will continue with new skins coming for Dragon Bash.

Point being, if you try for all of them, the odds you won’t get at least one of them are very low. The odds you’ll be able to carry around a skin from all of them is also very low. And why shouldn’t it be?

Why do some people who play MMOs feel like they must have every possible thing? Why can’t some things be special? Why must every “special” item actually be so common that you can’t go two steps without seeing it on somebody’s toon?

I don’t like the way that the skins are distributed. I am strenuously opposed to baiting players to spend real money on such frivolities as virtual dice rolls. But at the same time, I’m not opposed to the low distribution rate. Some things should be special and not everything should be achievable solely because you decided to sit on your butt in front of the computer for eight hours a day for two weeks straight running back and forth between two events. That’s not an achievement and it’s not something you should be proud to show off anyway.

Keep the low rate. Change the way they’re acquired. Make the gem store useful and stop distributing slot machine-like crap.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yes, there is a bug with the achievement that we are working on fixing.

But why? Why must we go through this almost every time?

Achievements seem such a simple thing, and you guys must test stuff before you make it live…I’m away for this week, and whilst I took my laptop away I’m playing with extreme culling and a 1Mb internet connection. I made the effort to come online to gain these achievements, and there’s yet another bug. Oh yay, I get to have to endure this again.

I actually don’t mind the fight itself, but losing a lot of patience with ArenaNet’s constantly buggy updates. There always has to be some kind of problem. This one just happened to be more of an inconvenience for me, which is why it’s provoking me into being more vocal.

…..6….. Have seen better.
-Game Hero.

Sort of a rant there but I’m getting to the point eventually:

Generally the drops in this game are just bad or uninteresting.
Have you ever equipped an item that was dropped by a monster? Me never!
Have you ever had a mini drop in the game world? NO. An ascended Amulet? No. etc.

But this is due to a worse problem: stats on weapons and armor are totally generic – obviously computer generated : 60 of this and that, 90 of something else…
You buy transmutation crystals, replace 60 vitality for 60 toughness and your not even sure if there is a difference.

How about an weapons that has 5 stats instead of 3? How about precursors having 1% more total stats and legendaries 3%. It’s not like it’s going to unbalance the game since obviously they want some class to be totally overpowered compared to others (thief vs Elementalist for example). Some weapon stats imbalance would do some good to the game/market/loot actually.

Now the nerf to Tier 6 material drop go into that same tunnel vision as the equipment stats: Anet suddenly realized we found a spot in the game (Manchor Leap) where we could get Crystalline dust. Instead of encouraging people to look for places where they can get good drops and the drops they are looking for, they nerfed it to the ground like everything else; making sure we do not get what we need.

It’s a huge mistake. First of all, because of that attitude:
1- I am never investing again real money on the market place
2- the game world is getting equally uninteresting because you have no reason to go to a specific area to get the required item.

What Anet is telling us is: The game will almost never give you interesting drop so repeat the same dungeon to make gold and buy what you need on the market place (which is what we’ve been doing since day 1 but it’s just getting worse).

But seriously, the farming nerf is dramatic for the following reason:
At Malchor Leap you could get the 750 Crystalline dust required for a Bifrost within a few weeks. Now you have to find 300 gold (and its rising) just for that one Tier 6 material (there are 7 others mats required). This will takes 10 times longer and in all honestly many of us are no longer sure we have the patience required.
Since by the time we are done a new epic MMO will have been released Anet should rethink their angle on nerfing loot.

SoR had a dormant wvw population, just that they showed up more often because of higher morale, just like JQ’s and BG’s.

Warrior is a strong class if played right. Sadly most people just like to run either full zerk or full tank.

They can be tanky with tons of DPS, especially with GS/Axe+shield

Precursors are a myth!

The Stain.4169:

The OP’s (Vol) post is a bit long, but sadly I agree.

The nerfing of the farming locations is ruining this game for me. I don’t farm all the time, but when I have 30-45 minutes to waste, and don’t feel like the hassle of putting together a dungeon group, I like to farm. There is something relaxing about the repetition and reward of farming…particularly when I am not in the mood for challenging content.

For Anet to pretend “you’re not supposed to farm in GW2” is disingenuous…everything about the game from the ground up encourages farming, almost demands it, and they know it. I honestly believe the nerfing of all the farming is just an attempt to increase revenue to the Gem shop….nothing more.

I suspect they figure if they lose players who get gold by farming rather than buying gems, what have they lost?

But at any rate, I can definitely feel these changes draining my interest in the game.

I used to be the same and stopped playing for months, when I returned my drop rates were ok. Prior to that mine were so crap that they were on Tigirius’s level, why I stopped playing in the first place for those months. The magic was lost on the first loot nerf (Nov 15th?), I won’t ever come back in full after that.

So with the new match randomization this upcoming reset may be the last time us 3 face each other. A few things and then the trolling may continue or perhaps realizing this is our last week will bring us together to dominate our lower tier servers and rise up again .

Despite all the Forum Warriors arguing, name calling, accusations and what not. This has been a great match up overall.

As a Rallian I want to thank both BG and JQ for bringing the pain as we first started our battles in T1. At this current time JQ and BG are just experiencing the lack of coverage that we were experiencing, which I am hoping recovers quickly for more epic fights. SoR we have been there and if you are stepping on these fellow T1 servers we are no better than the trolls at the time that was us. Many times it has been said stay classy T1.

A bidding farewell to you JQ for the time being and until we meet again after next week. JQ is still the King even if ranked differently no one can argue the amount of time spent in T1 and golds. Much respect for all of the guilds I have seen, from the mega zergs to the very organized havok squads. The weeks of battle have turned your militia force into a monster and fine tuned our Soldiers as well. Get those PvErs back into the fray and get them to be soldiers. One day SoR will have as many golds then we will have to compare Silvers…. which brings me to,

BG, I remember the first gold and how it was used to show dominance over SoR. “Where’s your Gold, nuff said” were constant remarks. Please show up in force for our last week Hurrah!…because if we win a Gold we will be tied and then we would have to go off of Silvers we all know who took second more….and will rarely get a chance to test it again with the randomization. (my poke to you BG, you guys fight harder when provoked:P)

Also to throw us in there too, so no crying from trolls. SoR let’s do what we have always done and just fight. Don’t let ego of 2 wins cloud our passion for good battles and forever developing our skills. We only won 2 weeks with a series of events effecting JQ, and morale effecting BG (just saying… I got bored not seeing you guys the first half of the week, TY for coming back Tuesday). A win on weaken foes is not a “true” win that we want, we’ll take it but it proves no challenge. I do not want to tick at +300-400 almost all day (JQ and BG please stop this tick next week lol). The challenge (my loot bags) disappear as the PvErs no longer log into WvW or the maps that don’t have a presence of their server . Be proud we made it to #1 but defending #1 is the true challenge, brag after 9 months if we can stay interested. Our true test has just started.

All in all i hope for epic fights, this is where the top 3 servers of NA fight for the last time guaranteed. All our powerhouse WvW Guilds contending for the best (Which is all of us, or we would not have made it to T1.). This is bragging rights week guys! So let’s get out there and fight all week long…don’t complain about coverage on the forums..log into the actual game (unless at work) because being on the forum your causing at least 1 person not to be on the battlefield. Pick up your big boy/girl pants, stop crying and FIGHT! Past does not matter. This week is for this week! (Mindset for the future match ups guys)

Go ahead , pick out all the things that are wrong, troll, whine and whatever. Those that actually WvW know that we want fights and do respect each other no matter the server. And if you read that whole page…go to sleep, go outside or play the actual game. Sheesh.

(part 2)

The second big problem is progression, or lack there of. AN should be congratulated for trying so hard to break us free of gear grind, a situation where players play the same dungeon over and over and over again for a 0.05% chance of a piece of gear. It’s such a waste of time and when you stand back its actually really sad. Turns out, most players still want this reward system. There’s no denying it, Guild Wars 2 is painfully lacking in high level content that an entire guild can take part in, up until guild missions it been WvsW. I love guild missions, they are awesome and add so much.. but it’s not raiding.. MMO players want raiding, it’s that simple. Raiding that is hard to beat, that rewards players with nice items, this then adds a necessity for players to be in a guild. I remember players desperately fighting to get raid spot in WoW because they knew only the best guilds would get them through the high end dungeons.

On a side note I saw Shatterer killed in 40 seconds yesterday, it’s so easy to kill now. Oh how I would love it if one day all the farmers turned up for their quick win and it landed and wiped the floor with them. These epic bosses need to have their difficulty really looked because in the context of a challenge they are devoid of any.

Lastly I’d just like to mention WvsW. Initially I was bowled over by its scale and brilliance but now I’m seeing the big flaw. Nothing counts for anything, every victory can be undone within minutes. For some (me) the sheer joy of the fight is the fun part but is gutting to see all your wins undone by the time you log back on. I think we really need some new objectives that make players want to fight for them. Imagine an objective that gave you 20% off items on the gem store..

Ok so if you’ve not gone blind yet then stick with me I’m almost done. While many players have already moved on from Guild Wars 2 I suspect many like me still remain. We love to just be in the game world and admire it for what it is. For me this is what AN need to focus on.

- adding more player controlled content like player housing (take a look at what Wildstar is doing, housing that has an actual use)
- guild housing that acts as your own Guild vs Guild arena
- a new skill system where you gain skills from bosses you beat. You make these encounters very difficult and in turn give guilds a reason to exist again. We need to be able to offer our members more than a TS server and some good music
- give players something to play for (I know your already doing this in many ways) like big objectives in WvsW
- make content tougher to beat
- a dungeon finder! I have never understood why this isn’t in the game. Having to spam LA is not a worthwhile interaction I’ll miss

I posting this not because I’m unhappy with Guild Wars 2, but I can see the problems it’s facing and I want this game to be a success.

Thanks for reading my post.

Heya guys,

I’m hoping this post gets read by the developers of this game as well as my fellow players.

Ok, I love Guild Wars 2. As soon as I saw it in beta I knew the developers were really pouring so much into this game. There are so many great features that we just haven’t seen anywhere else. They have also tried to break us free of the insane gear grind WoW has brainwashed us with, they even attempted to try a game outside the trinity.

The game world itself is beautiful, sublime and crammed with unique places to find. Having the ability to dive into the stunning water is just the icing on the cake. Massive server vs server areas with a fully working siege model, interesting classes that look amazing and so much more. On top of all this, free to play! In short I thought all our MMO wishes had been granted.

So here we are months on from launch now and all around me people are leaving Guild Wars 2. So what gives?

Have ArenaNet dropped the ball? Well no, not really. On top of an already huge game we’ve been given an almost unbelievable amount of content. Lost shore, Halloween, Christmas were three big ones all with themes, items, activities and all designed with such detail and scale it seems insane this stuff isn’t permanent. Also we’ve had Fractals, Superbox and now the living story (which is finally starting to get going finally). We’ve also seen so many other fixes and improvements such a culling fix and so much more. I think AN have really kept to their promise and then some.

I think the problem is two fold. First up what I thought was a massive plus now turns out to be a problem in the long term – free to play. As a guild officer we’ve struggled to keep our members interested in the game and over the last month less and less log in. As a big PvP guild we are in contact with many other guilds and this pattern is being seen across the board, this worries me as ArenaNet don’t seem to be acknowledging this. The recent price drop makes me wonder if they are just keeping their poker face up, which is fair enough. If I’m honest I’m not really sure what they should do.

Krosslite.1950:

I found the OPs statement to be very profound. Sad only deaf ears have responded for the most part.

I’ll go a step further.

Get out of your chair and experience the real world. if it is too much for you, don’t look to have the void filled by a game.

If you feel it is a spiritual thing you require. I will chat with you in private messages

I’m so tempted to go and edit Wikipedias definition of the word “irony” to accomodate your post.

Irony: People on the internet telling people on the internet to go outside.

ColinJohanson.2394:

To all the Karka in the place with style and grace.

You sir, your arrival has made my night. Lol.

What’s even better is that I often go about shouting these things on my Asura Mesmer. Her name? Mini Smalls.

Zacchary.6183:

Sabelle.2159:

Throw your claws in the aiyah, if you’s a true playah.

I herd u liek karkips?

Hmm.

Throw your claws in the aiyah, if you’s a true playah.

A little bit of backstory: The server I play on has apparently been locked in combat with the same two others for months. One of these outnumbers my server, favoring zerg ‘tactics.’ I find my server’s tendency to try to hold indefensible locations from an unstoppably massive horde frustrating, and this got me thinking. The result is the plot below. Bear with me – it’s long.
Phase 1: Everyone split into teams of 3-5. Party up with 2-4 others, maybe get into a squad, to promote unit cohesion and keep track of each other. Strike lightly-defended locations, but don’t commit siege resources; this is a decoy plot. Leave supply traps (sparingly – they halve supply carried, no point halving more than twice) around captured locations and resupply from captured depots.
Phase 2: When the enemy zerg is committed to a particular location, all teams consolidate forces on an easily-taken location far from the zerg, using as much supply as necessary to take the location as quickly as possible.
Phase 3: Having taken the location, the goal is not to keep it, but to let it be retaken as a distraction. Place more supply and stealth traps along choke points and the stairs toward the lords of the keep, and wait for the enemy zerg to arrive to retake. Nonadventurers should waypoint out once this is done. All adventurer classes should place as many traps or turrets as they possess near the keep master’s location when the gate’s health is nearly gone, and upon completing this, should waypoint out if possible, or run like hell if not. All in the keep should make it their goal to take all supply from the keep’s depot, using as much as necessary to do so. Goal is to leave the enemy undersupplied and frustrated, while using stolen supplies to build defensive fortifications (arrow carts, ballistae, oil cauldrons) in strategic locations, reinforce a captured base for a proper stand with more defensive fortifications, or to build siege for phase 4 and 5. 
Phase 4: The team scatters again, once more into small groups. Each group selects a target, but does not attack yet, instead either awaiting the signal to strike or building siege while awaiting the signal. 
Phase 5: The team farthest from the last-known location of the enemy zerg attacks its target, in whatever manner it pleases. This is to draw the enemy’s attention, and bring the frustrated zerg running across the map. Recon units should alert this group when the zerg appears to be fully committed; it’s up to the group whether they hold the location or scatter. 
Phase 6: When the enemy zerg reaches the location in Phase 5, all other teams strike as effectively as possible (with siege, if necessary) at their targets, in order to take them as quickly as possible; if a location is taken, place antisupply traps and ransack the depot. If the takers choose to hold out, they should build as many arrow carts as possible along the walls, both to waste supply and ensure that there is always one cart not on cooldown.

If, at any point, a strategically valuable keep can be taken, it should be, and held for a time, with several roving teams refraining from joining the countersiege in order to continue acting as bandits. From this point on, the walls should be lined with defensive fortifications until all supply has been exhausted; this will aid in the defense of the keep by way of allowing bombardment of aggressors while also reducing supply available to the enemy, if they eventually take the keep once more. 

Eventually, the enemy will get the idea and begin putting greater emphasis on recon and defense; this will possibly reduce the number of soldiers in their zerg. They may also mimic the strategy, if they’re clever, but as the goal of this post is to inspire improved strategy all-around…

I would rather they fixed the god kitten “SKILL DELAY” before anything else.

This youtube vid should answer your question.

Lol, Mistfire Wolf.

<3 motoko

For me there are several problems with the game atm.

- Lack of a guild/team based ladder. I have no interest in my personal ELO, and I have every interest in my guilds ELO. I want to feel like a team is a team, not a random combination of 5 players who enjoy playing with each other at the time. My accomplishments should also be as a team including the rank.

- Lack of a proper observer mode. While the GW2 spectator mode is quite well done in its functionality, it is still terrible. The only things that can be spectated are scrimmed games which are then not saved in memory and if I am not mistaken, there is a cap on the number of people who can watch the match at a given moment. If you do not have access to the server you may also not spectate. As a competitive player, I want to get my team together, hit “play now” and get paired vs an equally skilled team, and afterwards have that match displayed to the rest of the GW2 population in an accessible and lasting manner. Sound familiar? Yea, that was the GW1 observer mode. Easily better than what we have here. You knew the teams competing, their rank., and could then observe it at your own leisure. Although props to Anet for introducing much better spectator features inside the match itself.

- Weak game format design. As many others state, I like to play with my team, because we are…. a team. That does not mean sending someone to bunker a point, sending someone to contest far and then having a few roamers/duelists. Sure there is team play, and at its pinnacle you may even encounter a 5v5 over mid, but very rarely do I get to fight with my whole team. By extension the combat is also not good for this, a death match is a clusterkitten of clones/rock dogs/pets/minions/thief summons and whatever other crap clutters your screen. When I play the game, what I see on my screen matters a lot to me, and when its just pure chaos of animations and multiple objects I just dont enjoy it. Team fights however do encompass skill, but it feels nothing like the skill cap of fighting 7v7 in GW1 at the flag stand. Things are over very fast and there is little room for team synergy at the same level we had in GW1.

- Tournaments. How has this not happened yet? When they put in the daily ATs and Monthly ATs back in GW1 back in 2007/8 I figured they were setting up the ground work for their sequel and that it was testing. The system worked quite well to be fair, so how exactly is this not in GW2 yet. Just a time during which there is the highest density of skilled teams playing with a high chance of systematically getting paired vs each other based on success. Then the goal of qualifying for something more which motivates people to play actively (Qualifying points, or rating back in the days of seasons). To this day I ask my Guild mates from GW1 if they wna join in for spvp on skype and the answer is “do they have a monthly tournament yet?” and when I say no, they just laugh at me. Like how is this not yet in. Honestly even if I were to spvp, I have nothing to play for atm. Some really badly designed ladder? E-fame(like what, so I can stream and have 50 or 100 players watch me? pathetic.) At least now we have some 3rd party based tournaments, but you would imagine with the cash Anet have that they could afford to do it themselves….

If anet were to just provide the above, namely the functionality of GW1 then I imagine quite a lot of players would be more active. This doesnt even begin to touch on bad map design or bad winning objectives (killing a guild lord was miles more fun than playing to 500, winning clauses cause dynamic play and strategies such as splits/lord rush/timer suicides/hard pushes, the same can be seen in LoL with nexus kills). So yes there is a lot more for me to complain about, but at least Anet have to give me a reason to want to get good at their bad game design (which is very easy to master tbh, it would take me about 3 days to a week to play any of the classes at a top 50 spvp level and I have already proved that before).

Finally, GW1 players are mad because they were a loyal fanbase which made the franchise as famous as it is now. You think without the exceptional quality of players who competed in GW1, that GW2 would be anything? I doubt pvp would even have been worth funding had those players not made it what it was. The level of competition demonstrated in GW1 is exactly what inspired the developers to try to continue with the e-sports concept. The sad part is, in their efforts to make better they only made worse. But keep in mind the game that some of you enjoy and tell us to stop complaining about, is only made possible by the GW1 fanbase. And yes, without a shadow of a doubt the top GW1 had to offer is leagues ahead of anything we see in GW2 skill wise. Comparing a team like Team Paradigm or Made in Meta to a team like Rebel Rising would just be an incredible insult to rawr.

Personally, I say always vitality if you had to choose, simply because conditions ignore toughness, and certain bleed/burning classes can absolutely destroy toughness stacking warriors. If it were up to me, however, I’d probably just use some PTV + zerker accessories/zerker traits. Mix and match is awesome.

Again, so much use of the word “exploit”. I prefer to think of it as advantageous terrain use and knowledge of enemy AI.

Summoned mobs not dropping anything is pure bs, if it can kill it should drop loot. when barracuda’s suddenly summon 2 adds they can kill you a lot easier yet you no longer get extra rewards for it.
and once again it has been over a week since this topic started and not a single reaction yet.
Starting today im gonne send a bug report about it a couple of times each till they get fed up and either ban me or fix it.

ShaiHulud.7410:

But how you will know that DR is gone if not farming again? Because going to dungeons and waiting for a rare to see if the DR is gone may be not relevant if you are on a bad luck strike.

Will you guys look at yourselves? Look at what you’re saying!

You don’t have to accept this kind of game design.

Every forum of every type on this site has the same things: posts that support the game, posts that hate on the game, and posts that many times offer thoughtful or constructive ideas for improving the game. The one thing that is consistently absent on the forums is Arenanet. Official responses or really any feedback of any sort is so few and far between it begs the question: WHERE IS ARENANET???? 99% of the time a post with the Anet tag is simply a mod shutting down or moving a thread. When players come together to offer serious suggestions for improving the game – Arenanet ignores them. When players offer legitimate complaints about seriously broken aspects of the game – silence.

Arenanet, I am asking you to start communicating with players and the community at large in a more active and meaningful way. But I’m sure that instead of actually being responsive or addressing issues….you’ll just infract my account or delete this thread.

Thanks.

One thing that would help us players:
The first game would let you know when DR was kicking in (or “Anti-Farm Code” as it was called in those less spin-controlled days).
So how about GW2 flashing up a message to let you know that DR is kicking in and that you should maybe move on to something else?

Or maybe you’re scared players will quickly realise exactly how aggressive your DR algorithms currently are?

Bloodstealer.5978:

Sorry to say it but.. I think your taking a collection of pixels on your screen way to serious… if your having to place so much importance on a material drop rate for what is nothing more than a game, then maybe open the curtains, open the window and smell some fresh air and look upon the new day once in a while.

Oh! But i wrote this at work dear sir. I can assure you that the air is quite fresh out here!

And by the way, Judging from your posting history maybe you should consider taking your own advice.

Specifically you recently wrote: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Bloodstealer-5978/showposts

“I would be more inclined to think its actually AN that has the Bots farming the mats and selling the items – nothing better than to be able to manipulate the price points in game so that players at both end of the spectrum can be herded in to buying Gems / Gold for real money from the TP.”

That doesn’t look very good on your resume.

You were saying?

Thats right. Now go in peace and let whoever likes to discuss this in a mature manner do so.

I would prefer they group the available fractals into three distinct groups based upon difficulty and/or length and ensure that you get one of each group during a run. Getting dredge, grawl, and cliffside all together really sucks when compared against the luck of getting underwater, swamp, and ascalon, if only because you’ll take twice as long (or longer!) on the former versus the latter.