Guild Wars 2

I’m less bothered about the Exalted and more about they just dropped the Master of Peace’s actual goal like it was nothing. You had most of Season 2 revolving about the mystery of the whereabouts of Glint’s Egg and you spoil it before the game even comes out?

Ironic, how the sword autoattack for rangers uses attacks that inherently require a lot of movement, yet it roots you.

After playing the raid with entire squads in full ascended and still having trouble beating the boss, I’m now very concerned that raids truly will be reserved for the hardcore elite 5% of the game’s population.

While trinkets aren’t much of an issue to get (just time-consuming due to laurel or fractals grinding,) armor and weapons still aren’t purchasable at vendors and require crafting 500, which can be ridiculously costly and time-consuming for some. It gets even worse when some classes like druid, reaper, guardian etc. may require two sets for a raid, (and this is where Anet really needs to give us a proper build editor where we can choose builds/sets on the fly for raid encounters because it takes a while waiting for a few to properly gear up.)

Maybe something like a fractals layout would be better, where ascended is only required for higher scaled raids with better rewards, while lower-scaled raids are reserved for exotics?

All in all, I did enjoy the beta raid content and the improved difficulty overall, but I don’t like the grindy gear treadmill/powercreep direction that this is going in. Sort of goes against their original manifesto, and it’s going to rule out a large number of their new and returning playerbase – especially if the majority of ascended gear is still only obtainable by shear luck or heavy crafting.

Skywing.4836:

Windsagio.1340:

There’s been a lot of math on the gains of ascended gear vs the gains of class/play.

If they actually tune it so tightly that that 1.98% extra you get from ascended armor (as vs weapons and trinkets) is necessary for top players, it’s going to be utterly inaccessible to everyone else, and then the mode will fail.

I don’t want it to fail, I don’t think they want it to fail, They can’t tune the cnounter that tightly — if it’s possible to do so at all, given the ‘active combat’ element in GW2

Of course not. The entire thing has been blown out of proportion. There’s vid of someone SOLO all 3 guardians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLTe3OzDM98

…so, he soloed the three trash mobs that are there just to teach you mechanics of the actual boss, then failed the real boss (the only one that counted).
Good job soloing it (not!).

If you haven’t noticed, the actuall boss has an enrage timer that makes killing it difficult even in a 10-man group that pulls all mechanics perfectly (and seems to be tuned for zerker/sinister stats).

Just check the reddit, there were several groups that did everything right and still failed, because they came up short on damage because they weren’t running zerker. The timer is very close, so the 10% damage more from ascended is important.

I’m bumping this because it’s totally relevant to what is going on right now. ArenaNet, You dropped the ball.

The reason this is a bad approach to raiding in GW2 is simply because gear and the time youve spent grinding crafting are not indicators of skill nor do they have anything at all to do with difficulty. It is an artificial way to make raiding LOOK more difficult than it actually is.

Stat-based System Creates Illusion of Difficulty
In WoW, there is the infamous gear treadmill. As bad as that would be in this game, it serves an important purpose in WoW raiding – it allows fights to be difficult day one and become less so as time goes on.

In GW2, instead of a gear treadmill, we have historically relied on a(n awesome) learning curve system instead. Tequatl/Triple Trouble/Aetherpath/Liadri were difficult at first but as the community and players learned the fights, they became less so.

By introducing enrage timers tightly tuned around ascended stats, they are moving toward the WoW gear dependent model without the necessary treadmill – and actually DIMINISHING the importance of skill and learning.

Encourages Lazy Fight Design
Gear stats should not be that important in this game. They even told us that when they introduced ascended gear, insisting that the increase would be very minimal – which is no longer the case.

Even worse, it encourages bad raid design. It allows the developers to be lazier in designing future boss fights because they know the illusion of difficulty will still be there for the majority of the player base because of the stat gap.

The difficulty should come from fight mechanics, not stat disparities.

Possible Solutions
There are actually a couple of solutions that would address this. One would be to make ascended gear MUCH easier to get. A better solution – imo – would be to narrow the stat gap between ascended/legendary and exotic gear to a miniscule amount (2-5 percent total difference). This would take the emphasis off of the gear grind and put it back onto the fight mechanics where it belongs.

TLDR –
relying on stats to provide the illusion of difficulty is just that – an illusion – it sets up unnecessary barriers for friends wanting to raid together and it encourages lazy fight design.

Important note – I write this having multiple (6+) full sets of ascended gear in my bags. This has little impact on my personal ability to raid. However, I know many highly skilled players who, for whatever reason, do not (most common is that they do not enjoy crafting). They may have, at best, one set – but what happens when we need to theory craft and we need someone with tankier or more support based stats?

I will need those people (those FRIENDS) to fill out raid groups when the content drops. An arbitrary gear grind shouldnt diminish our ability to raid.

Lian Olsam.9541:

Agree with linfang

No one force u to raid if u dont like harder content, no one force u to get ascended gear, just do something else for one year then go on youtube and look how to do it naked
Pretty easy

I hope ascended will be REQUIRED for higher wings, and even with full ascended will be harder, because when u fail once twice etc etc isnt beauty, but when u do the “impossible” the sensation is awesome.
This game has too many noobs stuff, grind maps, 1111111 on boss etc etc… I’m ok with this variety is ever the best way, but this game need something really hard, and i hope raids will be

problem with your theory, is ascended armor is a fairly large grind. And funny part is the solution is legendary armor/trinkets/weapon. But in order to get legendary armor you will need to invest in ascended armor, which will then become obsolete.
genius

gw2 throws away the gear treadmil, and creates the gear skyscraper stair.

SkiTz.4590:

Since when did raids becoming REQUIRED or FORCED onto every single player?

The entire kittening content known as RAIDS ARE OPTIONAL, THUS ASCENDED IS OPTIONAL.

Irrelevant.

ArenaNet has said that:

ArenaNet

“We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

- The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)

So yeah, saying that ascended gear being grindy is ok because it’s optional is completely irrelevant – by ArenaNet’s own definition, it was not meant to be grindy. Despite how it is.

Now, it’s a well known fact that raids are a niche activity. You could even try making a game focused on raiders, but it would be nothing if not a big failure (Wildstar says “hi!”).

We also know ArenaNet is starved for resources. They have put content production for GW2 on hold while they work on the expansion, they are releasing a very expensive expansion with just four maps, they have admited that they won’t release all content with the expansion, and so on.

Ergo, what they are doing with the raid is using their (little) resources for something we all know is a niche activity.

That is pretty much a recipe for failure. There’s no way around it.

They should reduce the barrier entry for raids so it’s not as niche as raids usually are. Instead:

• They are saying themselves that only players who have ascended gear should bother with raids.

• They are saying that players need to have grinded specific ranks of the HoT masteries before bothering with raids. Which is pretty much a kind of attunement system.

The great majority of players will not bother with raids – we know that from historical data based on players’ behaviors in MMORPGs. What ArenaNet could have done is make it so at least more players would try the raid, but by increasing the barrier entry, they are condemning their own creation to irrelevance.

It’s funny to see how they keep talking about support roles being useful in raids and in WvW. With the current state of WvW and how dead raids will likely be, the predominant meta in the far great majority of the game will continue to berserker, with the Druid, the Herald and alikes being the most useless thing in GW2.

Raids are going to be semi-dead content within a timeframe of a year.

Look at TA Aether path (hardest/longest Dungeon), high level Fractuals (50+), Arah (Hardest Vanilla Dungeon).

These things don’t have large participation. Fractals 50 might be done by 10% of the playerbase, Aether less so and Arah maybe a bit moreso.

These are, right now the ‘hardest content’ in the PvE game. And the playerbase by and large, isn’t playing them.

The thing is a good 90% of Guild Wars 2 playerbase are just like 95% of the game – casual players. They don’t want to do the hardest content.

And while some excuses can be made for Aether (Pointless/Long) and Arah (Long/Pointless) Fractals are the end-game right now for PvE and once you get up to a certain scale (Like 41+) the population starts thinning considerably.

If Raids are as challenging as they are being hyped up to be (Mostly by players with side comments from aNet people) then it’s going to be content the majority simply never bothers with.

So two things are going to happen:

The people doing the Raids quit due to boredom (Doing the same thing over and over and over) and Raids eventually die;

aNet nerfs Raids to bring in my players, thereby lessening the challenge of said content.

I know the GW2 playerbase. These people will play this game and do whatever casuals do (World Boss, SW Grinding, etc.) until they get bored then they’ll move on to the next game. They won’t enter Raids or level 80+ Fractals.

And the people doing that content will make it all they do. You’ll have them log in once a week to run their raid (‘Raid Night’) and eventually a new shiny will appear and they won’t log in at all.

I cannot see Raids being successful in this game with this playerbase.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

None of it should require ascended.
Ever.
EVER.

Ascended is a totally optional only needed for high level fractals stat level.
The instant it becomes required for anything else, ever, outside fractals, and we’re back to them violating the promises about stat tiers and ascended being totally optional.
Requirement creep is just as bad as power creep.

^This

If there’s one uber high-end raid for such things all good but if I can’t complete 99% of the game in exotics as I can now or if it creates player segregation based purely on gear I’m out. I play GW2 specifically because it’s not one of those games.As it stands I can switch to alts easily for any content and gear them out as such cheaply. If this changes I can’t see myself playing much, if at all.

It’s also a terri-bad way to ascertain player skill. I have friends who play purely to grind and farm out gear, they have multiple characters fully geared out with ascended and legendaries yet struggle in any content that they aren’t familiar farming 24/7 while on the other hand I know players that completely ignore such things and steam-roll everything in the game naked with a rusty spoon.

Gear is by no means an accurate barometer or indicator of player skill. It simply means they have farmed…a lot.

Terra.8571:

Astralporing.1957:

Terra.8571:

But simply basing the encounter’s so that the bosses/ mobs do damage against players assuming they had the BiS gear available, for the hardest content in game, seems logical.

Ascended acquisition was so far balanced around it not being required for any content beyond fractals – and even fractals weren’t balanced around ascended stats, merely around AR.
If the above doesn’t hold true, then all the acquisition methods need to be rebalanced in order to make that tier more easily obtainable.

They’re not required now afaik. The tweet never said it was physically impossible to do in exotics, she just said she think’s ascended will be needed because that’s what the Dev’s have required to beat them.

SO? Devs think it is required now. The same devs that earlier balanced ascended acquisition around it not being required. Since by their own admission that previous assumption no longer holds true, i believe some rebalances are in order now.

SkiTz.4590:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

SkiTz.4590:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

SkiTz.4590:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

lordkrall.7241:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think too many people forget this. Probably because many play the game 40+ hours a week like it is a job.

sigh

So, why not give everyone everything for just simply logging in then?
It is not a job after all, thus everyone should just get everything from the start, right?

Yes Krall, lets give everyone everything and completely negate the entire reason to play what so ever. /sarcasm

Seriously, no one asked for, or even implied, that. Quit shoving words in other people’s mouths because you can’t comprehend the basic point being made.

This is exactly what people are asking for/ They want raids to be doable immediately upon hitting level 80 and getting exotic gear. This takes less than 30 hours of playing the game to get to this point.

Do you honestly think someone who just bought the game 2 weeks ago should be able to complete raids? Because the only thing that separates someone who bought the game 2 weeks ago from someone who bought the game 3 years ago is ascended gear, a solid guild, and experience.

It has already been established that the people in this thread think casual players should be able to beat raids, so there goes the experience part. It has already been said they should be able to pug them, so there goes the solid guild, and now people want it to be done in exotic gear.

So yes that is exactly what they are asking for, and it is absurd.

No one is asking to make it easier which is what both you and Krall are implying. Content can be done in a challenging way without requiring an additional tier of gear.

If they have the skill set, why the kitten does it matter when they started playing? Why does it bother you that joe schmoe picked up the game 2 weeks ago can raid because he’s just “good.” This kitten should have nothing to do with whether or not you have GEAR, rather whether or not you have SKILL.

SKILL > TIME!!!!

Ugh talk about lack of creativity.

“How do we make it harder George?”
“Uh… give the boss some one shot hits, up his HP, up his defense, and give them a new tier of gear to chase to compensate a tiny bit”

Please people. This kitten is WoW (and every clone since) all over again.

Lemme know when they add another tier above Ascended, than I can believe the bolded statement.

Until than, you are ridiculously overreacting.

Anet CLEARLY stated raids were going to be the endgame ppl were asking about. They said it a while ago in the HoT reveal that this was content made specifically for ENDGAME CHARACTERs.

Not for anyone to create a character and a week later, poof, they can now accomplish everything.

Its an MMORPG. There is grind in every MMORPG.

Deal with it or leave.

The only ppl whining about this are the ones that are hellbent on making sure they don’t have to do ANYTHING to get access to 100% of the content anet decides to create.

News flash, 90% of the things anet has added in this game for the past 3 years required little to no effort to do, to progress, etc etc.

You gonna seriously think they are gonna start making it where everything they add is going to require a grind now??? get kittening real.

You open world pve lovers are getting plenty in HoT.. anet is at least trying to give EVERY type of player what they want…. whether they be casual, hardcore, PvPers , WvWs, etc etc

Stop your bs whining and demanding anet create 100% content that you can access immediately.

They have, to a limited extent, told us that there won’t be a tier above ascended. So long as they hold to that stance and don’t change it, as they have their other views over the past 3 years.

However, the point is that the top tier of gear was exotic. Ascended came after, and we were told time and again that it wasn’t necessary for anything except fractals. Now, lo and behold, it looks like it might be required for raiding as well. So much for those assurances that it wasn’t necessary for anything except fractals.

Yes raids are one end game, but they could be that without the ascended requirement. Because now that supposedly optional gear is again being forced in our faces. So much for being optional right? How long before they simply balance the expansions as a whole around ascended armor? Still optional right?

I don’t mind grind. I’m well aware that it’s a necessary component of any MMO. That’s not the point here.

Oh, and just so you know. I HAVE ASCENDED GEAR. Technically speaking, I could be right there in line with the rest of you when the wings open. So assume some more.

Since when did raids becoming REQUIRED or FORCED onto every single player?

The entire kittening content known as RAIDS ARE OPTIONAL, THUS ASCENDED IS OPTIONAL.

Its not designed FOR 100% of the players to have IMMEDIATE ACCESS to.
There’s nothing WRONG with making content for players who have grinded and played a long time.

Anet took the stance of “if you wanna play and complete raids, you have to wear this tier of gear” Anet is allowed to make restrictions if they are waranted… which they perfectly as seeing how this is THEIR VISION OF ENDGAME….

They are only actually optional depending on how much story is actually tied to them, and how much that story matters to the greater scheme of things.

I did not state that raids are required. I did state that by them requiring ascended gear, the supposedly “optional” gear is again being forced into our faces. There is a difference.

As for ‘thier vision of endgame’ puhleeeeez. They are giving us raids because the traditional mmo base whined incessantly. They have given us a bit of their own spin on it, but even that is quite close to the standard raid set up (gear requirement, weekly lock outs, grindy prepare to play).

no way!??! anet is making a business decision to create content to attract NEW TYPES OF CUSTOMERS to the game?!!? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT!?!?!?

Except that’s not what the game was billed as. There are numerous games out there for those types of players. Anet billed GW2 as something new, something different. Instead, they are simply turning it into another clone. One component at a time.

Unfortunately, GW2 will likely run into the same issue as all those other games. Those people that whined that wanted these things still won’t be happy because GW2 is not whatever ‘x’ other game they desire, and they’ll end up leaving anyway. We’ve seen it time and again with the other clones out there. I’m not sure if that just kittenes me off or makes me depressed, because I do love this game.

They shouldn’t announce things like this without also announcing new sources for Ascended mats so that the prices remain stable.

lordkrall.7241:

Raids is a single VERY minor part of the game. The vast majority of the content will still be fully possible to do for everyone.

Fair? So someone that plays for 10 minutes a day should have the exact same things as someone that plays 10 hours a day? Why should anyone bother playing any more than 10 minutes a day if everything could just be done and accessed with that time?

I love this thread. I REALLY do.

It reminds me of the early days of WoW. The elitism, the entitlement, all is back.

I love how this tweet gave the Manifesto the last final blow, here we go, sorry 99%, you are too casual for this content.

If you did not grind your back off, or you are a newer player, god forbid you rolled a new character or own the wrong armor stats, you are too casual.

This thread shows the rapid decline of the forums and this will happen in the community ingame too with raids being the new shiny thing.

I hope I have enough popcorn for all the drama – well played ANet.

“Earlier wing bosses can prob be killed by top tier players in mix of asc/ex. Last boss should be full asc.”

key words

Not surprised.

I’m not happy necessarily, but definitely not surprised. I will reserve judgement until I can try the raids and see how much ‘side story’ is tied to them.

Edit: So much for Anet’s stance on “preparing to play.” So much for not gating content behind gear, cause that’s exactly what this is.

They’re increasing the spread between Exotic and Ascended stats to 10% with HoT. Anyone who thought “Challenging Content” meant it would be designed so you can do it comfortably while missing the top 10% of available effectiveness was fooling themselves.

so much for “no gear treadmill” and “we will never make ascended gear mandatory outside fractals”

I’m not sure how the hell they will balance them, considering that there is only a 5% difference in total stats. if they balance around DPS, then zerker will be required due to the DPS requirement, if they balance around mitigation, then it becomes impossible for glass cannons to survive and makes mitigation required.

the ONLY way it could work is if they balanced around celestial, or made a new type of raid infusion for armors instead of rings and necks

Development time going to fixing quaggan animations, but human females are still missing their idle animations.

NPCs more important than player characters.

Nope we’ll blame PvP because this game is balance around PvP no matter how few play it.

Hello all,

I have scanned the forum and I am not sure if anyone else noticed the Revenant’s auto attack with staff.

As a martial artist, I have never been bothered by any weapon mechanics in this game. Sure, I have taken Haidong Gumdo and understand the mechanics of swinging a two handed sword, have learned how to fight with a staff for Tae Kwon Do, trained in Shaolin Kungkittenusing staff and swords, etc. However, my beta Revenant (a human male) using staff’s auto attack bothers me because towards the end of the chain, mechanically, he would hit himself in the head.

I am not sure if the body adjustments need to be made for human males or any other races, but I felt it worth providing the feedback.

I have included videos below the last couple paragraphs for review. They are short videos with simple forms and movements. Notice the positioning of their heads when swinging the staff overhead; subtle tilts.

Now for the specs of my computer, Dell Inspiron 3000 (Popular Dell Computer for 2014), graphical and video settings for the last Beta Event were set to medium for game play.

If anyone else noticed this same movement on human male Revenants, please comment so ANET may fix it.

Gav.1425:

What happened to “shaving power” through gradual, balanced nerfs?

What happened to not making entire skills useless?

LOL

Yeah but then they couldn’t drop they mic and looks so cool for the 13 year old fan boys. And really isn’t that what it’s really all about?

So our Elite spec will be designed for raids, which are participated in by about 5% of a game’s playerbase (based on stats from other MMOs).

I knew bringing raids to GW2 was a bad idea, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad.

Kirschsahne.2081:

Dradiin.8935:

Umm where did i say i wanted to be a zerker? or that i expected it to be that way with my character ? I play a ranger as my main, it has been mistreated by A-net since day one and has received the garbage end of the shaft for 3 years, of course i am not gonna be pleased that the only way A-net can make us semi useful is to turn us into HEALBOTS.

Zerker my rearend, you have read into something i never said or even eluded to, but thanks for putting words into my own sentences.

Play a Ranger as yer main and you tell me how fun it is to get refused good groups.

Ranger is my main char as well and i don’t think its as bad as you make it.
I have absolutely no problem to get into dungeon groups or fractals or whatever.
And i use the lfg tool as everyone else.
Maybe it helps that i am not a serious gamer and just enjoy the role of a ranger instead pimping it to the top of possibility.
And dodging rangers are feared in PvP as well.

It is a nice adition to an already nice class and nobody is forced to play healer

I respect that you can find your niche in the way you play, my hope for druid was that i would be set on par with the rest of the classes and there new elite specs, but we have been thrown to the wolves, and we will not get in the higher level Fractal groups 40+ unless we are healbots.

It affects me and many others who were hoping to be allowed to join in those groups without having to pay for the privilege.

Now if i want my ranger to be allowed into those groups i will be invited but only if i am healing others the whole time, i left other MMOs because i got tired of the healbot life, i play a ranger because i like the class, but the ranger has been neglected for way too long.

This feels like a salmon slap to the face.

Shadow steps and teleports should honestly work the way they work in other games. i.e. if you can place the target circle there, you can teleport there.

Would it break the game? Definitely. Would it be less frustrating? Absolutely.

Not being able to shadowstep/teleport to any place you can’t walk to without jumping is just stupid. Why bother teleporting when I can just walk?

I honestly believe that some accounts are flagged for better drops that others upon creation.

They say they didn’t do it that way, but it also took six months of proof being posted daily before they admitted to a bug in people being flagged for loot.

GW2 has, without a doubt, one of the worst, if not , THE worst system for loot in all of MMORPGs….

All you do is farm scraps (salvagable junk like blue-yellow gear, and champ bags with more junk)
You can’t even go to a particular spot to farm a certain T6 mat you might need for legendary, or a certain skin or dye you might want.

No, you farm scraps and you sell/salvage those scraps until you have x amount of gold, than you purchase whatever you wanted….

Exotics? lol. Majority of them are barely worth a few gold.

No one gets excited about a drop in this game. There are FAR too few drops that make you go “ahhh finally, it dropped!!!”…

Its gotten worse and worse.

Look at where we are at now. Majority of the players just farm in silverwastes/chest train. Farm as much “scraps” as possible, sell it, than buy what they want from TP.

That is not a fun loot system…heck its not even a loot system. I don’t even consider that crap loot, unfortunetly, its the best way to make gold in this game, and gold is the quickest way to get what you want.

Missing some T6 mats (or any crafting mat) or lodestones? farm scraps and buy it from TP.
Want a particular dye or armor/weapon skin? farm scraps and buy it from TP/gemstore.
Want a particular sigil/armor rune? don’t bother trying to craft it, just farm scraps and buy it from TP.
That’s what this game is right now. It’s a terribly boring system imo….