Guild Wars 2

To quote Shawn Schuster of GuildCast (waaaay back) – “Saying people in the forums are complaining is a bit like saying people in the pool are wet.”

Not so much offended as annoyed. There’s a lot of visual noise in this game and it does detract from the experience for some of us.

An option to toggle off auras is a reasonable thing to ask. Asking to limit what other people have bought and liked isn’t.

GW2’s difficulty is fairly unrealistic… when compared to other MMOs.

Most MMOs balance their solo content for the majority, making the difficulty similar to Queensdale. Any difficulty is usually faked using vertical progression, where you simply need to obtain better gear to go back to trivializing the content. GW2 however was always intended to be more challenging, as ArenaNet has always been for the gamers, but the problem with continuously increasing the difficulty without an alternative is that they’ll lose players because of it. GW2 does offer an alternative however, which is grouping, but the problem with that is that most people want to play solo.

Because ArenaNet already allows groups to trivialize the content, there’s no reason not to make it easier for everyone. The simple solution is to make it easier depending on how many times you’ve died, such as giving you a 10% damage reduction every 3 deaths. Then they could do achievements for not dying solo.

Djinn.9245:

atheria.2837:

Dante.1763:

I…i want to know what bosses you are having trouble with?

The only one ive so far needed help with is the final battle with mordremoth due to their stupid prison idea which i kittening hate. Im also running a full vipers/sinister, so i have no defense. Theyve also nerfed them a bit already, both the core story(which has been nerfed really hard) and HoT.

There is only one toon I’ve been able to go from beginning to end with little help but I still needed help at the end.

Other than that one toon, there’s no way I can do most of it without help. LFG is a joke for this kind of thing so one ends up begging in maps – I’ve done it and I’ve helped dozens and dozens who have no one else to play with either and would have preferred to finish the story ‘alone’ to feel accomplished, but nooooooo.

Yep, it shouldn’t be so hard to participate in the GW2 Story.

People who answer this type of thread that “Anet can’t keep making the game easier” – I’m not sure that anyone in these threads is asking for the entire game to be easier. What I see, and what I personally wish, is that the STORY bosses were easier. I play GW2 for the story and it boggles my mind that Anet, who goes to the trouble of creating this rich story, is OK with a large percentage of their players never fully experiencing it.

Yep, I’m absolutely talking about the story which is one of the main reaasons I play any game.

If the story is faceroll (and in many cases if you made it easy enough for some people complaining, it would be too easy for me), means that I couldn’t take the story seriously and I was lose my reason to play the game. Or at least my main reason. I want to feel challenged by what I’m doing because if beating a boss is dead easy then there’s no real purpose to it.

The only thing I can think of that would solve the problem is having some sort of easy mode that provides the story with no achievements or options of trying to get those achievements.

What people are saying in other posts is I want to do this myself and be heroic. But mae it really easy for me, so I can be heroic in my turn. Of course, the easier it is for those people the less heroic I would feel.

Blue.1207:

The endless amount of flashy gliders and auras is starting to get a tad ridiculous, or rather, it has been for some time now.

I just logged in to make a post on this very issue, but you spared me the work.

Blue.1207:

There are far, FAR too many gliders that are not only obnoxiously large or only offer a gimmick in their existence, but the particle effects that these new items give off are absurd.

Yes, this exactly.

While some of those gliders per se look very well designed (although I wish one could have seen the actual clef on the Sheet Music Glider rather than having tons of paper covering it, then I might have purchased it), their insane size and effects are 100% unsuitable for a glider.

Most of your own view gets blocked while using those, which is unpractical. What’s even more obnoxious, though, is how people using those monstrosities are also blocking other people’s view, who happen to fly behind them! Having someone like that gliding in front of you not only irritates the eye but also makes it feel like driving a car while wearing a blindfold.
.

I get how ANet has developed a taste for the extravagant, they seem to enjoy exaggerating their designs to a degree where they become truly absurd (or downright ugly, in case of armor for instance). But impairing other players’ gameplay (e.g., when wearing some gigantic backpack while doing a jumping puzzle, so that the person behind you will miss their target because they can’t see kitten) is a true annoyance, to say the least.
.

P.S. Also, this:

I remember a time when particle effects were getting toned down across the game, Mesmer wells were more or less deleted, Ele Auras were gutted, heck even Rev skills were toned down. And for what? Only to go back on your design philosophy and start making your game look like an off brand generic MMO?

Wheres the cohesion of the items with the in game aesthetic? […]

ANET please, PLEASE consider moving away from these design choices. People will still buy good skins from the gem store if they’re not over the top and obnoxious. And more importantly, please don’t repeat this with mounts.

I second that plea.

To each their own indeed. I totally agree.

However, if you look at this game and erase all the players from sight for a sec. you see that the entire design is about a sort of medieval-ish Fantasy style and some Asura and Charr Steampunk thing going on.

The Asura are colorful but not in an eyesore way. The Charr are proud warriors clad in tough armors in mostly earth colors. Humans are … humans and the Norn are somewhat of the same palet as the Charr. The Sylvari are more colorful but in a stylish natural way.

If you then put back the players it’s like someone pulled open a can of exploded clowns. Not all of them of course but enough to ‘spoil the picture’. Big Charrs glowing white to the point of blinding, with pink manes and Angelic wings. I mean seriously?

Every Daily event map there are at least a few dominating everyones visuals. Basically a handfull that ‘ruin’ the view for all.

So in the spirit of ‘to each their own’ i vote for a special effects switch to turn off all the fluff.

Meanwhile i’ll just do my best to ignore and pretend it isn’t there.

Edit: The Angelic Charr Rangers look like grotesk surrealistic Cupids… “Love or i rip you to shreads!” hehe :P

i would pay real money for some good historical style skins for example “Maximilian plate armour” Swords that look useful not over the top Give us the options to allow our toons to look like historical knights

I use the SAB Cloud glider and SAB weapon skins since last SAB festival. I remember wanting it like mad as I love any SAB themed stuff with it’s silly humor and bright immature graphics, as it positively makes me remember the games of that time.

But with that said, SAB stuff origins from a world which does not fit into Tyria – you’ve separated it into an “adventure box” on purpose. From the last things I heard, Tyria rather tries to be a realistic looking world, delivering a thrilling story about magic, dragons, (infamous) gods, alchemies, warbands, lessons in racial and cultural differencies, all in a lore spanning thousands of years with it’s own®evolutions, even covered by 3 serious novels so far.

It totally fails this the moment someone opens needlessly oversized raven gliders with their supersaturated colors and effect – or the cloud glider with it’s incredibly loud Game Boy like fanfare.
It makes you realize it’s just another game trying to provide something of everything for whatever anyone likes to generate cash, and mashes it together in a now seemingly fake virtual environment disobeying any rules of previously mentioned evolution.
And I’m only mentioning 2 gliders here.

Of course there have been errors in said evolution in the past (simple example being that nobody in their right mind would make the number 1 a / and the 2 a // in a writing system where he needs to express combinations of 1’s and 2’s later on). But those were marginal or could be fixed by “thinking about it a different way”.

For the raven or cloud glider, there’s no “different way”. They look out of place at all times.
“Moto created a portable holographic emitter creating a solid cloud allowing you to glide with no physical but probably magineural explanation, attaching speakers or bending air around it to create a fanfare” Please, that just sounds like overjustifying techno-babble known from bad Star Trek episodes when Janeway turned into a drake-like thing and made babies with her officer.
“The raven glider is some Norn ritual creating such flowerfancycolorpower around them like no other ritual ever caused – epilepticants should probably close their eyes while doing so” also just sounds like a quick way to annoy people with.

What can be done, the damage already happened, Tyria looks like a kindergarden at times now where everyone tries to be the loudest and literally “brightest” kid on the grounds. I even observed same players continually camping near a TP/Bank/Merchant apparently annoying everyone on purpose with loud bee effects and huge auras, not even actively using the game and not replying to any messages written to them.

You cannot tell players to stop using what they love, but you can allow annoyed players to believe they stopped.
Practically said, a game option to not only “mute” other player’s projectile SFX, but armor SFX or any lighting / transparency GFX – simply keeping the bare armor looks and custom dyes with default sounds, which honestly still give enough chance to “get attention” from others.
For the gliders, another option would force the default glider on everyone at all times, as gliders sadly cannot be “toned down”.
Creating a category for “serious” or “less childish” armor or effects to filter those out would probably not be a good idea as the next thread will be about “why is X muted, it’s fine in my opinion and I want others to see what I love”. If the filter applies on what everyone understands as “light / transparency effects”, everyone would know what falls into it, and you could still tell them “it’s a performance optimization for older PCs” for justification purposes :P

Suziana.3759:

To each their own. I personally like flash, and stay away from the boring stuff that look like starting gear and weapons. I play this game for the fantasy, not real life simulation.

Fantasy worlds also need to have some internal consistency. Too much flash and even the strongest suspension of disbelief begin to crumble.
Also boring is relative. Wings on everyone are one of my more hurtful definitions of boring.

Truth is people like them and buy them so they will keep with this theme.

I am personally tried of seeing so much flash in this game and have always been kinda ticked that we have no options for flashy effects such as only show own, or show own plus party.

Originally, the Gem Store used “New” to indicate both new items and old items that were newly restored to the “inventory” of available items/upgrades. This caused unnecessary confusion and dismay in parts of the community.

I just noticed today that there’s a new marker for “returning” items, e.g. Bloody Prince’s Outift, Gwen’s Attire, Mad Scientist Outfit

(of course, maybe it’s been there a while & I’m just too slow to notice)

I’m looking forward to seeing “returning” added to the pull down filter (currently limited to “ending soon” and “new”, which, unsurprisingly, includes “returning” items).

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Obvious solution. If you think it’s ugly
1) don’t look at it
2) don’t do it.

/problemsolved

I’m sorry but this is not a solution. And not looking at something that spread to 80% of the screen is impossible.

For the sake of argument, let’s ignore the OP’s specific suggestions about price or AP and focus on their goal: requiring a demonstration of competence/knowledge before allowing someone to obtain a commander tag.

That seems like it could be a good idea — people shouldn’t command unless they have show that they know the content and/or know how to lead.

However, since that hasn’t been required for five years, there are probably half a million accounts that already have a commander tag — changing the requirements today won’t make any of those people suddenly more competent.

Besides that, we also know that most people become good at leading by, you know, leading. Some people are naturals at it, so they reach their peak more quickly; some struggle and it takes them longer, learning from their mistakes. And every leader can get better.

So perhaps it would be better to lower the requirements and provide more opportunities for more people to practice commanding, rather than create some artificial floor that proves nothing and discourages some potential leaders from even trying.

tl;dr leadership can’t be “proven” by gold or achievements; good commanders demonstrate that they are good only after tagging up.

I read Hamsters… I need some rest. Kappa

Ya lol wvw map completion…

If you rarely won a match, good luck on aldons, jerrifer and lowlands.

The history is more complex than people have been saying. It’s true originally we could buy the gift of battle with badges of honor, But it’s also true that originally we had to complete all 4 WvW zones as part of world complete, which depending on your server could sometimes take months.

Back then badges of honor didn’t come in achievement point chests, so we had to get them by playing It’s a pretty good bet you’d have needed 8 hours of playing in WvW to get a legendary when the game launched. Achievement point rewards like badges and not having to do map completion in those zones changed the landscape.

It’s not any harder now than it was at launch.

At launch players had to do WvW to get the gift so I don’t see what the issue is.

It was a mistake a GoB only require 500 batches after wvw was removed from map completion. Then they have tried to add a wvw rank restriction but it was not successful as 14 wvw rank is very easy to obtain. Finally they’ve made wvw teward track….

I still remember my first legendary required to map wvw as well for the GoE, where i was strictly pve only. It took me 4 months to finally take that final poi at the borderland north west tower where it was almost always under enemy control. I got killed countless of time when i travel to the tower whenever it was avaible. I missed that poi until that borderland finally became my home bl.

It is more frustrating than that merely couple hrs of reward track, epecially one can finish without walking outside of spawn.

Justine.6351:

If I have to do garbage like map completion of tangled depths and adventures for hours and hours and hours then you can spend a few hours in wvw hiding from enemy players. At least in wvw you can smash buttons and still get progress.

Indeed. I personally enjoy both WvW and map completion (at least HoT anyway) so it makes no difference to me. But it does seem like there are so many entitled purist pvers that demand to get gift of battle without any effort whilst purist wvwers have to still do map completion (either HoT or central tyria) which takes a hell of a lot longer to do than GoB, and is arguably more tedious.

As a non wvwer and non pvper, i supported this change. Legendaries should involve leaving ones comfort zone and spreading the content across as many modes as are accessible. Ive had to do fractals, jumping puzzles and achievements i would normally avoid, as well as wvw and before tokens were cheap, pvp as well.

500 badges still required doing wvw anyway. We also have edge of the mists which is just a train of capping pve camps to help. Alongside dailies, there are enough options to avoid the worst of wvw if you want to. Sure it is a bit longer, but in the grand scheme of making a legendary, it is a blip.

Look at it from a wvw and pvp point of view. Those guys have to leave wvw to play pve for legendary weapons, more than we have to join wvw for ours.

got mine in 5 hours of roaming in Wvw this weekend, its not that bad honestly. max boosters + killing everything you come across + taking keeps towers when a zerg would siege one. The amount of WvW rank you can gain in a day is incredible, and it can be fun, which i wasnt expecting.

Shirlias.8104:

That said, i doubt they are gonna change the way we can acquire a gift of battle, but still what is your problem in thinking that “have to play” 8 hours “a specific content with a specific track” is better than getting the item almost instantly while you can do what you want?

Really sometimes i find myself speechless while i read threads.

People (PvE folks, at least) aren’t saying that it is better, just that it’s not as bad as it seems at a first glance. In other words, most non-WvW people don’t like this change, but it’s not something to get bent out of shape about.

Really, sometimes I find myself almost speechless when I read comments.

I’ve done a number of non-flashy looks over time. But here’s my most commonplace one, he’s a young man who recently left home at a decrepit winery for the first time, carrying a beat up family heirloom sword and a vinyard pole for a staff (mesmer). Last pic is his new profile since the Elonian faces came out.

I have no idea about World vs World or Open-map massive scale PvP really works, but…

It sounds like the main reasons for people to hate DL is the same reason why they would hate vanilla Planetside 2 or some other open-map massive scale PvP. If the fighting doesn’t happen instantly, it’s boring.

Planetside 2 was actually, in a sense, far more like Desert Borderlands than Alpine. But the game designers actually changed it around a lot so it became a lot more like Alpine. All the smaller things like transporting your troops across the map through ground and air transportation got replaced with instantly re-spawning on the same area and getting back into the fight immediately. If I remember right, their way of implementing securing and escorting supply routes (like the dolyaks) was highly unpopular. Planetside 2’s World PvP design transitioned from a few massive scale fights and mostly smaller scale fights in many parts of the map to how Alpine Borderlands sounds like now: Big fights all the time in one place.

It seems many of the people I knew and on the game’s forums, they all quit because all the cool stuff that made “realistic” or “interesting war pvp” were gone. However, many people still play it, most likely for the awesome fights you get in large scales. The only thing that stayed at all and always did was the environment. They got wide open plains to choke points to lower or higher elevation, with each different map being massive AND having differences to the other when it comes to terrain.

What I wonder now is that is there a really “wrong” or “right” way to this? I think both sides apply to different preferences of the consumers. Indeed, the way vanilla Planetside 2 and Desert Borderlands is delays or prevents massive fights from happening all the time, but people do seem enjoy having mechanical and environmental variables to consider when it comes to capturing and winning objectives. On the other hand, many people will hate this because they just want to get straight to the massive fighting, and having many mechanical and environmental variables will only delay that.

By the looks of it, it seems many people prefer the latter far more than the foremost as Planetside 2 changed drastically to appeal to the consumers who just want to get straight to large fights, and it looks the same for Guild Wars 2’s WvWvW. Is it wrong or right? That all depends on your preference. But according to the mass, it seems World PvP similar to the Alpine Borderlands is the most favorite kind of World PvP.

Honestly I don’t think there’s anything exceptional about that. I’ve been part of a lot of online communities and you always get arguments over the most trivial things, whether it’s balance in a game, which songs ‘deserve’ to have been on an album 25 years ago or which movie has the best tag line.

I know of one Internet community entirely devoted to people rescuing and rehabilitating abandoned baby animals where certain people won’t even speak to each other because they’ve had screaming arguments over which brand of puppy milk is best. I think it’s safe to say they’re all good people and there’s nothing wrong with them or their community, but when you’re talking about something you’re passionate about feelings tend to run high and then you add the anonymity of responding to words onba screen instead of a person and its not surprising people get worked up.

Meh. Official forums are nigh ALWAYS a den for the dissatisfied. I like to recite a bit of advice I learned from a Development head when this sort of topic comes up,

“If you were to judge every game by its official forum, you’d reach the conclusion that every game in the world is utter trash and should never be played by anyone.”

Because the people who tend to frequent the forums are the “hardcore” veterans, who have very little patience and empathy. But that’s okay, because they make up for the lack of those traits with a bloated sense of entitlement and a very loud whine.