Guild Wars 2

Hey! I’ve read quite a few of previous comments and just want to write that I agree with a lot of what has been mentioned here. Many of the NPC outfits, typically those you can find on “name-less”-NPCs in the big cities would be great to have available for us players and our characters. There has been countless times that I have come to envy the outfits of those stranger NPCs wandering about in the cities. Whoever designed those outfits did such a good job!

I think it’s a great idea to have a vanilla Guild Wars 2. Just make sure when you do it Anet to remove the wardrobe, updated crafting UI including the ability to craft from stuff in your bank, remove the 2 gold per day for the dailies, reinsert the falling bug that occurred when you ran downhill, makes sure you can’t salvage by right clicking a salvage kit, oh and make sure you can’t preview anything on the trading post.

Pretty sure that some people are seeing vanilla Guild Wars 2 through rose-colored glasses.

All of vanilla Tyria PvE on a char that doesn’t have an elite profession is the place you can play vanilla gameplay. Source: An account of mine that doesn’t have HoT and an account that does but has chars that don’t have elite specs.

Other than that, I’m not sure why ANet would want to revamp the game to make whole new maps shards for people that haven’t played in over a year and who don’t want to play with anyone whose bought the expansion and uses elite specs.

You know, I play this game no differently now than I did 3 years ago.

What was I doing three years ago? Whatever I wanted to do. Now there are just more options.

I play HOT pretty much the same way I played the open world. I go to a map and start doing events. If I want the meta, I will look at LFG, but it takes a few seconds to get over to another map and then I’m playing the same way again.

HoT feels a lot like Orr did to me, and I welcome that kind of thing. There were places in Orr I had trouble doing stuff by myself too, but they got done. Temples, some events. that were group events. This was fun for me. And the same situation exists in HoT.

I don’t have to min/max (and I don’t). I don’t need to run a specific build (and I don’t). I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.

Do you know how I leveled by masteries in HoT? By doing events in the zones. The only thing I did differently was I used boosters and food. Beyond that, I played the same way.

Healix.5819:

Danikat.8537:

It’s an interesting concept, or at least it is to me because I’d been thinking for a while I’d like to see an RPG without any kind of level system and this is about 1/2 way there.

They originally didn’t want leveling in GW2, but ended up abandoning the idea because it didn’t feel right.

I know. I can understand why they gave up on it, because it would make for a very different and probably kind of weird game. But I’d still like to see it done because I think it could be interesting.

One Tamriel is an update to The Elder Scrolls Online. (Tamriel is the name of the world where the game is set.)

It’s basically game-wide level scaling. Players and enemies on all maps across the entire game world are always scaled up to the maximum level. So you still gain levels and therefore skills and abilities and can equip better equipment as you level up but it doesn’t gate you any more – you can go anywhere any time you want.

It’s an interesting concept, or at least it is to me because I’d been thinking for a while I’d like to see an RPG without any kind of level system and this is about 1/2 way there. It gives players a lot more freedom – if you want to you can still follow the storyline through the maps but you can also go anywhere at any time. One of my characters is only level 11 but he’s been around more of the high level maps than my level 30 character.

A lot of people struggle with the lack of structure and the loss of a sense of progression that came from unlocking new maps as you levelled up.

The internet has a lot to answer for, we used to just play and enjoy games, now we feel the need to recommending changes – in this case for a game that has had millions of toons pass through the leveling experience already. The trick with good mmorpg is that its not about ‘pacing’ (a term that came from games that are all about getting to ‘end game’) its about simply doing what you enjoy in game. My advise is diversify what you do in game while leveling:

1 Most important, Dont watch xp bar!
2 Try exploring in high level zones gaining XP from node gathering and discovery and dodging fast death from mobs
3. Don’t use map, speak to npc and get into your character
4. Look at what is at offer in LFG
5. WVW
6. Crafting and discover – the xp gains can be quite satisfying if you are so inclined and max level gear and food that you craft is always relevant.
7. Do achievements as you go

no worries mate! T1 still has the largest pop of hibernating fairweathers that think they’re actually good at the game! You just gotto get that ktrain hat on! or label it as a “Fight Guild” like all the other cool rejects have been doing for the past 4 years!

Anet doesn’t control fairweathers. The T1 culture of hibernating and coming out to ktrain is the players fault. One week BG is crying it has no pop. Another week they got 24/7 map queues. lulz

i thought the siege was disabled…
….my heart pounded for a moment

A week versus FIVE French servers without siege disablers.

You win, Anet. You win.

Topics like this always make me think “Well, they could always hire someone to play the game for them…”

I agree being able to classify green sigils and whatnot as “junk” for vendors would be a simple and appropriate solution.

This thread is so silly, I can’t even.

And so we enter that awkward overlap where the US has changed but the UK and Europe have not.

It’ll be good to be in the same time zone as my brother in Washington State, but yeah, I always have to pause and think if family is now the same time or an hour earlier.

Why in the world you guys would want another hour of sunshine is beyond me! :O

Sorry I can’t see half the thread, someone just used their new glider. ^-

Djinn.9245:

Why would Anet allow people to use a DPS meter that can measure someone else’s DPS? Talk about inviting toxic behavior into the game. Terrible idea brought about by Anet trying to make GW2 into an “Esport”.

DPS meters have nothing to do with esport. And ANet has never worried about making GW2 into an esport; it’s purely a marketing tool.

Besides which, ANet hasn’t allowed people to use a DPS meter to measure someone else’s DPS; they allowed people to use a personal DPS meter.

The whole DPS meters cause toxicity thing is a fallacy. Meters are a tool and blaming the tool is not the answer. Well before DPS meters were a thing people still got insulted and/or kicked from groups for a perceived lack of skill, poor performance, unoptimized builds and a number of other reasons. Toxic players exist with or without DPS meters.

thefinnster.6904:

Rising Dusk.2408 next youl be suggesting i uninstall the game ?

No, next I’ll be suggesting you join a guild with a similar mentality to yours that doesn’t use DPS meters. If you insist on playing in public groups you need to be ready to deal with what the group expects.

On topic: ANet would have to write new code to hide the ability to show damage (while still calculating it for the game and display it to the player). It would be complicated and subject the game to a lot of potential bugs. Doesn’t seem worth it, when there’s already an alternative: form your own group (and kick out people using a DPS meter, if that’s what you want).

thefinnster.6904:

i do see other players being harrased or kicked out of groups for low dps and i dont agree with that

Players have always been kicked for seemingly-arbitrary reasons; DPS meters haven’t changed that. If anything, it means commanders and squadies can learn about mutual incompatibility without investing as much time.

thefinnster.6904:

the fact that Anet has allowed this elitist tool

Whoa. Slow down. The tool isn’t elitist (if anything, it treats everyone the same, something that observation alone cannot do). Elitists will use the tool to serve their elitist principles, sure. That’s a social issue, not a technological one.

thefinnster.6904:

in game that sees there own player base being excluded from content just astounds me

Where did you get the idea that the game excludes players from the content? It is we who make the choice to participate or not. Last PvP season, anyone who was willing to spend some hours in PvP would get 5 pieces of ascended armor — I wasn’t “excluded” from that reward; I just wasn’t willing to spend the time. Similarly, anyone can gear up for raids and join (or start) a training team to learn the mechanics.

I don’t mean to suggest that it’s easy; on the contrary, raids were designed to be challenging. It’s simply inaccurate to translate “difficult content” into “exclusive content.”

This kind of thing is why I rarely PUG. I didn’t know much about DPS meters, but I had no idea they weren’t just for one’s own performance.

I agree, bad idea, ArenaNet.

The roles do exist, but there is not a Holy Trinity, because each profession simply have to do much more than that. Even if you were able to truly capture each role exclusively into specific builds, you’ll still will be lacking a 4th role, and even a 5th…

Tank means sustain, keeping aggro, defending and kiting. You can have those through different means, but doing only that is a lose for the team. Most tanks in GW2 are also clear healers or DPS, breaking the trinity just by mixing roles.

Healers also mix a lot with offense and tanking. A pure healer will hardly find a spot in a common raid comp.

DPS in GW2 is not just DPS. You need Power and Condi alternatively, or in combination, and the builds don’t let you be good at both at the same time. So you have 2 roles instead of one.

Then you have mobs that must be pushed around or keep in place, and that pesky CC bar… Control is a real role to cover in GW2, a role that you can take as your speciality, but is normally divided between some members of the team… like most of the other roles.

Then you have the support, with every single one of the players piling different boons, cleans and boosts over the squad.

So even if you try hard to see figures and convince yourself that there is a Holy Trinity in GW2, the truth is the lot is very mixed, and tend to resemble a pentagon more than a triangle.

I will bite on this topic because as someone that hated raiding and recently tried GW2’s version of it I have my own view on the matter.

The biggest issue right now is that raiding is harder than ever to reach because of certain difficulties with getting the materials to earn ascended gear. While ascended gear has become significantly more easy to earn in season 3, this is still a huge problem with not enough gear dropping to help people catch up and start their experience in raiding.

I was fortunate, I had just enough gear to make a viable and very well geared PS warrior which has managed to down Vale Guardian and do the Escort encounter yesterday.

But I can understand the frustration and difficulty of ALOT of people trying to get into raiding, including me, I took -ages- to finally try, and it was only through a friend I got in.

Some people dont even have friends to -get- into raiding, and that can be the biggest problem. There is a very toxic attitude pug raiders have towards new people and thus they wont help people grow and develop unless you find guilds specifically devoted to training runs, who tend to be quite friendly and relaxed.

Raiding is a two sided blade, it is something that has become moderatley more accessable, considering wings 3 and 4 are alot easier than wings 1 and 2 by comparison for certain bosses and encounters. But theres many issues with it, many issues that are downright silly.

Story Gating is a bad idea, we need a story mode

Story Gating content behind raiding is -bad- end of story, it is just a terrible method of forced grouping that means those that dont get involved feel left out and its not encouraging for them, its off putting.

A-net needs to recognise this, and add a story mode to raiding, something that can be done entirley solo, but removes all the game based rewards. Also, something that DOES unlock the raid mastery (while not rewarding mastery points for downing bosses) as it allows people to actually start investing into it in pre-prepairation.

Secondly, We need better ways to get Ascended gear

The grind to get a vision crystal is hard enough without the thousands of other materials you need to even craft “one” item these days of ascended quality. Unless your lucky and have money for the gemstore, you’re pretty much doomed to spend Months, farming.

This just isnt healthy for GW2, at all. Id say we need a significant reduction on the cost of ascended quality materials, and previous quality materials considering that its expensive to even get to max crafting as it is.

Alternativley, redesign the system, so that crafting becomes account wide, and you can in essence, learn every crafting skill.

Raids are only 1 tiny part of the game. If you’re not interested in raids there’s all of the open-world maps and story in HoT and all of Living Story Season 3 (including 4 new maps and counting) which has come out since. It’s no different to before HoT came out and some people chose not to play Fractals, or PvP or WvW.

If you insist on limiting yourself to only one area of the game then yes you’re going to find there’s not as much to do and a lot of releases will be full of stuff that doesn’t interest you. (And it does happen, I know one person who will only do open-world PvE, not even story instances and hates that she’s “forced” to play the story to unlock new maps.)

But skipping just 1 area isn’t as much of a problem. I’ve never even entered a raid and I don’t do PvP and I feel like I’ve got plenty of stuff to do just with the new maps and achievements and story, and stuff I didn’t finish from HoT.

I also disagree that masteries are the equivalent of a gear treadmill. I still don’t have most of my masteries finished (because I haven’t bothered to get the mastery points) and it doesn’t prevent me from doing anything. Sure it’d be more convenient if all my drops collected themselves and I might like whatever those Fractal Instability things are, but it’s not like I can’t do new content until I have the right masteries. In that sense it’s less exclusionary than the previous system of Agony Resistance in Fractals.

As for the trinity I have mixed feelings on that. My understanding was that when Anet said there isn’t a trinity in this game they meant that any character can fufil any role and you can switch your build to suit whichever you need. In some games if you make a particular class you are then locked into a role – a monk is always a healer, a knight is always a tank, a thief is always a damage dealer and so on (or you might have a choice of 2 roles but you have to pick 1). If you want to play a different role you have to make a new character. If your friends are doing a dungeon and need a tank but your main character is a healer and your tank alt doesn’t have the right gear then, oh well, too bad, you can’t go and your friends will have to try and find someone else.

Whereas in GW2 you can build a support warrior or a tank warrior or a DPS warrior, if you have the equipment you can switch your build in about a minute and any group composition can complete any content. Of course in practice that meant almost everyone tended to focus on damage with just enough healing/defense to keep themselves alive (which if you’re good enough at active defense could be nothing).

My understanding is that’s a bit different in raids – if you go in with a full group of warriors, or different professions but everyone using glass cannon DPS builds you’re going to have a much, much harder time than a more balanced group with people fulfilling different roles. But I know some people complete raids with smaller groups, so presumably they could fill the remaining spots with anyone and still complete it.

But it still only applies to raids. If you want to go and play on the new maps, or do the story you can do it solo using whatever build you want (even I can do it with my terrible novelty builds) and it’s still very easy to find a group for Fractals or Dungeons who will take anyone because they haven’t changed, so it doesn’t matter what you use.

(As for how I’d convince WoW players to play GW2 my main argument would be based on the time required – you can get to level 80 and get a full set of exotics very quickly in this game, without using the booster – and then you’re good to go for anything you might want to do. If you take a break for weeks or months or years the only catching up needed is familiarising yourself with the game again, you’re not going to have to grind out new levels and equipment. That’s the main criticism I hear about WoW – that it’s a huge time commitment, especially if you want to get into the end-game.)

I really dont understand the logic of , I must be able to do all the content in the game , or the game is no good.
No MMO has content that 100% of the player base will ever do.
I came from WOW as I got burned out by the raids in it , and I dont do the raids in GW2 simply because Im sick of raiding, but the fact that raids exist in the game doesnt fuss me in the slightest.
Ill never do all the JPs either, but the fact that they exist again is of no concern.
You dont have to do everything.

I’d say its lost identity isn’t inherently the type of content they’re releasing but kind of the nature of how they’re releasing it.

GW2 was originally all about fun no matter what you did. Very open and exploratory systems in general.

The case now is just it seems very narrow in its scope and intentions for each piece of content while not considering the greater game, with many of these narrow-scope releases, and many of these new releases just aren’t fun for a large number of players. At least not to the initial mass-appeal crowd the game tried to cater towards at release. This is particularly true for sPvP/WvW and the casual PvE scene.

So while I don’t necessarily think they’ve totally lost their vision, I think ANet has lost control of its game. There are many “un-fun” things still around from multiple years ago. Critical reworks to keep the game fresh and exciting and just generally more fun for everyone have yet to come. The game’s stagnation is very much against ANet’s original philosophy of trying to make the game very lively and ever-changing.

So while LS’s may not be a maintainable content delivery model due to the stress, the issues extend into almost every aspect of the game. ANet’s trying to do too much while pushing out new content, and not fixing what is in some areas a crumbling underlying foundation.

I’m a soloist. I enjoy GW2 due to it’s PvE lack of required teaming on 95% of it’s content, it’s PvE design philosophy that you should never be afraid to see or help another player, and it’s flash mob world events.

But there is this other community of players who want content that required skill and team coordination. We see this in groups that devote themselves to activities that require formal parties such as dungeons, fractals and now raids. I don’t begrudge them their own content just like I don’t begrudge PvP players from having theirs.

The trick with these party activities is to find a group with similar beliefs to yours and it’s highly unlikely to find them in PUGs. It’s much better to find a like minded guild.

As for HoT, yes, open world PvE was a lot tougher than core Tyria. But then again large portions of core Tyria weren’t level 80 and the game’s downscaling in lower level areas still left level 80 characters as tiny Gods. You get reminded of that everytime you level up a new character through play than shortcuts. It’s unlikely your level 80s were just doing Orr and Cursed Shores exclusively. With HoT everything was level 80. VB was a nightmare to travel, you had mastery gates slowing your progress and it certainly wasn’t as solo friendly when it comes to exploring. So yes, it played very differently to Core Tyria. But last April’s patch fixed a lot of that, at least for me. And the new LWS3 maps are also less … abusive for solo players.

Most of the salt I see are players being upset that the devs devoted any time to an aspect of the game that they don’t care about. How dare they try to make PvP into an e-Sport, unlike how it was in GW was for a couple of years. How dare they add 10 man “raid” content even though it was being asked for. And really how dare they reward those groups with their own exclusive shiny things as rewards. Cosmetic things.

Has GW2 “changed”. Yes and no because a 4+ year old game has to, it’s not populated by a majority of new players with first time lower level characters anymore. It’s full of grizzled vets looking for something interesting to do. But GW2 has always been a game where you set your own end goals, that hasn’t changed. It’s just some of those things require a bit more of an effort than before.