Guild Wars 2

Anymras.5729:

Guhracie.3419:

Well, I won’t be advising anyone to buy new character slots, and I’m glad I didn’t buy any in the last sale. My new alts are officially going to be running around without traits until level 80, and then I’ll only get the ones I need for my build. If the intention with free trait resets was to allow for more build diversity, that has failed horribly.

If you’re going to have 100% zone completes unlocking things, at least have it unlock all the adept traits in a certain line. Having it unlock a single trait is just punitive, especially when it’s high level zones for low level traits. This is just SO. BAD. And has anyone done the math on the cost in gold and skillpoints to unlock all the traits at the vendor? I want to say it’s around 450 skillpoints and 100g per character.

Did the math. Unless I’ve made an error (which is entirely possible):
10s 2sp x30 [3g, 60sp] Adept
50s 5sp x20 [10g, 100sp] Master
1.5g 10sp x8 [12g, 80sp] Old Grandmaster
3g 20sp x5 [15g, 100sp] New Grandmaster

Totals up to 40g, 340sp.

Well, my estimate was high by quite a bit. Thanks for this! It’s still pretty punitive, though.

Please no, last thing we need is achievements where 60 randoms where you have no control over need to work together.

My final thoughts are ones of bitterness and a growing sense of disappointment. I’m actually a little mad at myself for playing it a long as I did seeing it go absolutely no where, and for spending as much as I did in the cash shop. I feel I invested in a dead end project that doesn’t really have a future to speak off, or at least not one I have any interest in being a part of.

And going from a position of absolute praise and joy to bitterness and resentment, is just staggering. I don’t think I’ve ever been so let down in my life…. thou that has more to do with me never really expecting anything, as wise policy it seems.

While it is conceivable that I might, and I stress ‘might’ with a bag full of salt, play GW2 again in the future, as I will try and keep up to date with it’s on goings and such, it’s going to take something pretty significant for me to get over my lump of disappointment. And since I have massive doubts that Anet will do this anytime soon, it’ll probably be a long time.

While I still respect many Arenanet employees, esp Chris Whiteside, I have however lost a great deal of respect for Anet as a company.
I don’t know where they are trying to take this game, but I honestly don’t care anymore.

~ Kind Regards

Yoh

Meaningless Multiplayer
And this is the second and exceedingly jarring issue I have, how utterly meaningless and trivial multiplayer is in this game. Which as far as MMO’s goes I consider this to be a cardinal sin. If your multipler gameplay in a massively ‘multiplayer’ online game is poor, then you’ve kind of missed the bloody point haven’t you?

Which is exceedingly bazaar, since in many respects Anet actually did a wonderful job of making it easier then ever to actual play with people without silly little hurdles or contrivances getting in the way, which is fantastic. And yet when you actually do play together, nothing of note ever actually happens.

It’s like everyone is in a bubble roll-a-ball, you can see each other and occasionally bump into each other, but you can’t interact in any meaningful sense. You have no roles, you can’t rely on anyone to do anything specific, nor be relied upon.
You can’t effect anybody in any meaningful way.

Everyone is designed to only ever care about themselves and only themselves, screw everyone else around you. Even if you wanted to help others, you can’t. Not in any direct, or effective ways. At best you have entirely indirect, impersonally, and often trivial means.
The only direct help you can offer is rezzing their sorry backside. Which naturally takes no skill or effort whatsoever.

And what is maddening is that the game is so bloody close to actually pulling off a new and innovative way to have support/cooperative multiplayer interactions, in a way that could be tremendously fun. And yet it just doesn’t. It has everything it needs to work, the door is wide open, and yet it refuses to take the steps to go through.
It seems Anet are so scared of making mistakes that they instead opt to do nothing at all.

Overall I think multiplayer is a few steps forward, and a few steps to the side and off a cliff. You undermined the entire point of multiplayer, and that is bloody disgraceful.
I never thought you could screw it up this badly, but apparently I was mistaken in giving you entirely too much credit.

I’ve had a much more involved and enjoyable multiplayer experience in Dark Souls 2 kitten .

I figured it was high time I took the time to explain why I am no longer playing GW2, and I seriously don’t expect that I will be back anytime soon.
It’s the responsible thing to do I think, since most players that leave simple go silent without saying anything. So take this for what little it’s worth.

I used to be a tremendous fan of Arenanet’s, since Guild Wars built up a large amount of good will with me. Sure it had a few missteps and wasn’t a perfect game by any stretch, but it did good by it’s player base, and had a fair bit of depth to it’s mechanics.

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And as excited by Guild Wars 2 as I was, and as good as it was at launch, it has since then just become a continuing source of disappointment. It squandered all of my good will, to the point where I simply just don’t bloody care anymore.

I could list off my considerable list of issues I have with the game, but I will restrain myself to only my two biggest bug bears.

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Direction of Content Creation
First is how Anet go about their content creation, or rather how they don’t.
Anet seem far, far more preoccupied with polish and temporary content ala the Living Story then permanent content to the world or professions.

As small as the world is, is a small as it will continue to be. And your stuck with the same old content between LS content, which is take it or leave it at best. And any innovation or improvements to content, such as better telegraphing never makes it’s way to the rest of the game. It’s like an entirely different game that’s be cut off, it’s very odd.
And there is only so long you can play the same content before it’s no longer interesting, assuming it was interesting from the beginning.
The pace in which actual new permanent content is added to the game is lethargic at best.

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What’s worse I for me is what has been done with professions, which is next to nothing. They occasional get tweaks and balance changes, which is expected, but half the time they when they fix something they break something else or don’t actually fix it.
Many bugs and dead skills/traits have been so for at least 6-12 months, sometimes longer. This might not have been as much of an issue if Anet continuously added content to the professions, since they did go out of their way to future proof it.
But of course they haven’t.

The amount of content that has been added to professions coming on two years now has been absolutely laughable…. if it wasn’t so pathetically sad.
And coming from Guild Wars which had a great deal of content to this poultry amount is jarring to say the least, I don’t even recognize them as the same company at this point.

Needless to say, but I’m going to say anyway, I am not a fan of this approach. It’s going nowhere fast, and I can’t expect it to improve. And no amount of polish is going to rectify this.

A good user-interface is a user-interface where you can access what you need easily and smooth with as few clicks as possible, unless you’re doing something deeper.

Overall, GW2 has had a flawless user-interface and things have still been improving since release. But now, something finally bugs me.

Whenever I want to access my equipment panel to overlook my stats or change some pieces of equipment for other stats it brings me to the recent hero panel I opened or to the root panel. This puts the equipment panel 1 button press and 1 or 2 clicks away, and since stats are mandatory values in an mmorpg I feel this panel in particular should be the prioritized panel.

Small note since I’m starting to feel ungrateful:
Overall, I have been enjoying this recent patch a lot, a big thanks to everyone who brought us all of the new features and changes.

Made an example of where I’d want to go when I open the Hero-panel.

I really like the idea of megaservers on maps; having activity out there is great! However, not being able to select between megaservers is tiresome; it’s made playing with one’s friends a chore of grouping and ferrying – when it works. This system would work much better with a selectable district system such as from GW1 so we can all tell each other “Go to Metrica Province 3” and we all just select the third district of Metrica and voila! All together, no muss no fuss.

Selectable districts would also solve a lot of the issues that are being had with subgroups, such as communities that speak languages other than English and roleplayers, if they just knew amongst themselves to aim for a specific district so as to find people who are playing the game in the same manner of socialization as they are.

We were honestly fine before with guesting and proper dynamic event chains.

Are these many people in cities expected with the Megaserver system in place?

Because I can’t walk at all, the lag is so much I go at about 0.15 FPS.

I agree, OP. ANet build up to much hype on most things in the patch. I do have programming experience, and most things would indeed be a switch changing “when you equip weapon of ascended rarity, it becomes soulbound” to “…account bound” (if prgrammed well).

The wardrobe has to be thought out well, since the UI is very important for it. And the Rune and Sigil changes require careful balance.

However, most of all, I think Arenanet should have released all of these features one at a time over the past months as they were finished. This would have satisfied many players. It feels now as if they’re only doing these changes now to satisfy the new China players.

The worst thing however is that Arenanet presents these changes as if they thought of them. This is not true, since players have been asking for them for months. I have seen very elaborate, detailed posts about how the wardrobe should work. Now they say things like: “We think these changes will lead to a healthier game and more long-term fun.”. Many players thought that months ago…

Too little too late, I fear.

QoL mainly, and adjustments, that will only target new players?

The stuff we have seen so far is as game changing as the introduction of pets not all being moved to the bank with the ressources. Sort of nice, sort of totally forgetable.

And removing the cost from repairs? A feature? Did anyone ever complain about that fee ever? It was so tiny, that I always thought the WP fee was the penalty for death.

Basically, Anet has put the consumer aka the player base in a very un comfortable position with this title.

A lot of things were promised and many of such promises never came to fruition.

Also, Many players are frustrated with the direction of this game for the past year.

Anet has basically made the player base paranoid and very reluctant to trust anything they do

In fairness I think they are finally starting to realize that changes are needed and required to keep this game a float. So we will see how this all pans out come the feature patch.

I am hopeful – but very skeptical.

holy kittening kitten if this is a real thing i’m out forever

Arena net, if you really want money from us – give us expansion. Not this abomination.

This sure is constructive.

They could have made a better killing making the hair style added to the character customization for new character and halved the price of the make over kits to go along side the new styles coming out today for at least a week

Because GW2 is not really a B2P game that focuses in sale of the game and expansions for income but more of a F2P game (that you need to buy) that focuses on cash-shop as income.

So now they do this sort of bad thinks to make money.

Try not to buy any gems, that might help them to shift back to a real B2P system where everything is available ingame but where you pay for an expansion every year year and a half.

The extreme cool-down times on most skills annoy me to no end.

I pretty much spec my characters around skills with cool-down of 30 seconds or less. What’s the fun in conjuring fire and hurricanes if you can only do it once every two minutes?

At least have more utility skills, or something. Maybe it works for your balance equations, fine, but you have to consider having a bit of fun in this game, too. Let me cook more than one Green Moa per minute with precision lightning, or something!

1. I agree with you.

2. The lack of customization makes me sad.

3. New skills are on the way soonish I think…?

4. People are gonna chew you out for this thread because
—-A.) You criticized GW2, and B.) It’s been discussed a ton already.

It would be better if there was no story. The “story” reminds me of a bad episode of the power rangers , Scarlet being Rita Repulsa.

From my perspective, the Living Story releases appear to be getting progressively more buggy, and sloppy.

In this current release (Clockwork Chaos), we have already seen the following bugs/mistakes.

- Mini Watchknight disappearing
- Portal devices not working
- Dailies on login screen not displaying correctly
- Culling description mistake
- Scarlet following/harassing some players
- Parties being spit up into different overflows
- “Fixed an issue which caused Vorpp to play his completion line incorrectly.”
- Temporarily reverted karma consumables to their previous values.
- Corrected character model options text to no longer specify WvW only.
- Fixed various crash bugs.

..and probably more (I’m tired of looking).

Now, I realize that bugs are inevitable when dealing with complex software, but there has to be a point when you just have to say, “Something isn’t working.!”

Even if we put the bugs aside for a moment, the amount of sloppy mistakes in this release is really odd. From incorrect descriptions, to completely forgetting to inform the community of a major change to Karma, resulting in a roll-back for the entire thing, these types of mistakes are something I expect to see when things are being rushed.

I’ve made a few posts about this since the Living Story started, and it still doesn’t seem to be improving. What is worse, is when these bugs go ignored for the entire event causing issues for everyone, or worse, are “fixed” leaving all the players who didn’t rush to the content with often a harder time (with no compensation, or roll-back).

There needs to be a point when ANet realizes that you can have things quick, or you can have things done well. If they want to continue the “quick fire” Living Story, then I feel they really need to dedicate more time into quality control and testing.

Anyway, I am curious to hear your thoughts on the bugs, and whether they’ve affected you or not.

I love how they don’t nerf this stuff quickly, either. They give just enough time for the hardcore players to get a massive amount of farming in, make hundreds of gold, and THEN nerf it.

Poor form, Anet. Very poor form.

Reisinger.4203:

I enjoy long walks at Southsun, candle lit dinners…

… and not being such a fail ranger in WvW. :‘( I’ve tried looking for the “classifieds” section on the forums but nope, non-existent! Are there any full zerker WvW rangers that can coach me for a few sessions? I’m playing on the Henge of Denravi server at the moment.

My build + preferred playstyle is very similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRFszeYiXWg so extremely glassy and essentially a thief magnet.

After getting melted countless times in WvW, I have come to conclusion that I’m really just a joke of a glass cannon. Is there any hope for me?

How awesome to see that my berserker vid is inspiring people.. :-)

However, you should always keep in mind that with a build like this, you want to keep the times you are hit to a minimum (since you really can’t take too much hits as glass).
So this build will work when you encounter a player 1v1, depending on the specs of the other one.. I normally can make quick work of a same built berserker ranger, but as you indeed mention: Being berserker ranger makes you a bit of a thief magnet.. Thank god we can now also stealth..

(so the mentioned combo in the vid for Longbow: #4, #3, #2 —> change to #4, #2, and keep your #3 for the dire need when you need to make a quick escape)

Reisinger.4203:

I’m picking up a rabid set soon just to see how well I fare with the added toughness.

Well, a condition build (as mentioned by Indoles) will indeed also work very nicely.. However, it will take a bit longer to get the NPC’s at a camp down. On the other hand: Condition builds are very powerful against players (since in WvW especially I see lots of players with a lack of condi removal).

My first armor set was Power/Precision/Condi dmg, and it worked nicely also.. Still very glass, but imho the Power can be replaced by Thoughness and the Precision by Healing Power (referring to the infamous Spirit Ranger build, so commonly met in PvP nowadays)

Reisinger.4203:

I have been using the suggested combo since using a personal variant of your build and it has indeed worked great in WvW (I commented as Achiox on your vid) ^^ just very squishy in team/zerg fights :’(

Completely correct, a glass cannon isn’t made to get into the big team/zerg fights.. However, a tactic you can use when zerging (or in my case when running with a large guild group) is to be the sniper of the team.. Just keep full range and attack (LB with piercing arrows works nicely against groups). And when all skills are recharged (read: your burst is ready), jump in, choose a target, bring him down and get the hell out again.. (another player will finish the work)

“Hit and run”, the best tactic for a zerker ranger.. :-)

The busty substances issue is expected…it’s the upskirt…now there’s a thing. Not sure what to make of that

we got into a fight with a mesmer.

Got mesmer down. was about to use the stomp.

I had 12 k hp left of my 20 total..

I saw a poff of smoke.. and then i was dead. looking at the target that killed me.
a Thief…

My first reaction was… wtf realy ?? 12 k hp.. insta killed. on heavy armor… seriously.

WTF is wrong with the Designers that should balance this game.

On top of the supreem mobility on a thief. it has invisibility. that not even Dots uncloak… they dont even leave a bleeding trail or anything… just… gone.
And Also thieves have this stupidly insane op burst dmg, wich you cant realy protect yourself against… your dead before you react.

Because the fight is like this most of the times:
I target a thief.. i start to shoot at him..he notice he gets dmg and vanish…
switch weapons to prepare melee…
2 seconds later. you see a poff of smoke around you.. THIEF…
You start to swing.. “my hp is fine, i get this”… “WTF.. iam down already ? its 2 seconds into fight”…

My warrior in 20 k hp.. have actually been 3 hitted by a thief..
It was the most stupid thing i have ever seen.
Sure, that thief had full zerker gear and low hp…
but who needs hp if you can 3 hit 20 k hp…

Feck, i dont want to know the dmg they can do against Light armor.
But i heard ppl in my guild getting 1 hitted………..

Maybe they should increase our base armor ? (like alot)…
Or nerf the thief insane dmg abit ?

I usualy find my thiev very boring to lvl… but iam REALY starting to think about joining the stupidly op side and lvl my thief to 80 also.

one in my guild occupied 6 ppl for 15 minutes…then they got lucky and could chain lock him.
So thieves are also super trollers… REALY good balance by A-net…

John Smith.4610:

Ensign.2189:

Conncept.7638:

And voila! Suddenly, people actually have to price things intelligently as in real world sales.

Because power traders make all kinds of money from putting items up for sale at prices where they don’t sell.

Power trading is a cash flow business. The faster your items sell the sooner you can re-invest and repeat the cycle. Power traders also become intimately familiar with the ebb and flow of prices in the markets they work in. If your item is sitting there for days on end you’re already kitten ed off from eating the 5% fee of having to re-list it on top of your money being locked up for those days.

Everything you just described would have very, very little impact on power traders (beyond volume restrictions, which would just make the bulk commodity markets a pain to work with) but would be even more punishing to the casual player that can’t keep up. You may have spun it impressively well, but there’s nothing here.

Except for the part about my feelings (I just got back from crying in a corner), everything Ensign says is correct.

So how about something that adds to the topic at hand? No offense, but that was kinda a peanut gallery remark from someone that shouldn’t be in the peanut gallery.

Would limiting profit potential from the tp have any negative effects on the game?
Does leaving tp profit potential unbound have any negative effects on the game?
Is the profit potential of the tp balanced with the rest of the economy? Does it matter?