Guild Wars 2

Lokki.1092:

STIHL.2489:

Rhanoa.3960:

STIHL.2489:

Djinn.9245:

STIHL.2489:

maddoctor.2738:

STIHL.2489:

Well I spent a little time back in VB , and I have noticed there are a lot less mobs floating around, and they seem much easier then I remember.

They did not change mob spawns in VB it’s same as it was at launch. As for difficulty, the only thing I remember changing was the itzel shadowleaper ability to evade ranged attacks, it know evades projectiles not all ranged attacks if I’m not mistaken. If anything, at launch it was easier due to the number of players around.

Of course if you were trying to move through while the dozens of players were fighting in events, it was more than likely you had to fight event-scaled mobs and maybe those caused you all that trouble. Spawning scaling mobs is the normal thing to do even on core tyria maps, try moving through the area around Tequatl when the event is active and you will notice mobs that 1-shot you, or moving between the Penit-Shelter waypoints in Cursed Shore while either event is ongoing. That’s not HoT-specific

Humm, well it felt like such a slog the first few months I tried to play, to the point that exploring was not so much about exploring and seeing the zone and looking at what was about, it was all nothing but these endless stupid hard fights… all the time.

Also I did a flamethrower engineer for the stability boon in HoT, because all that stuff has those stupid knock backs.

Understand that what you are responding to is an opinion presented as fact. There is no hard data on exactly what was changed. It is my opinion that people who liked HoT quickly became acclimated to the mobs / maps and so didn’t find them as difficult as I and many other casual players did in the first place.

Well I just got back over a long absence, and have no idea how most of m skills work.. as such my play-style at time looks like this.. .

And somewhere in there it’s the games fault, never the player.

Wait, so what you are saying is that it is the players fault for any game they don’t like?
or put another way, you are saying that it’s your fault for no liking games like Archeage and Blackgold?

Well, I an’t say I will agree with you, but if blaming yourself for every game you don’t like works for you.. keep at it.

Seems like the implication is that you seem to be admitting you have no idea how to play your class, or this game.

That doesn’t mean the game is hard, it just means you have no idea how to play (by your own admission).

Coming to the conclusion that the game is too hard and therefore a bad game, seems shortsighted and placing the blame on someone else rather than yourself.

I’m not responding to Rhanoa’s rude post because I hope it will soon be removed. However, both of you seem to have failed to read STIHL’s words about not liking HoT and not playing at all from HoT intro until recently. STIHL’s skills now have nothing to do with his original comment about HoT. R.I.F.

Vayne.8563:

Djinn.9245:

I think that it’s obvious from the context that Anet meant that HoT “did not perform as expected” in the negative sense of that phrase. And so people are taking license with the language to say that “failed to perform as expected” is essentially the same thing. Which it is. So in that sense HoT failed. That doesn’t mean it was a complete failure, but I don’t think that most people claiming “HoT failed” have insisted it was a complete failure. We know that many people like it so it would be silly to insist it was a complete failure. But it obviously did fail to perform financially as expected, AND it was a failure to various degrees for many other players.

What Mo actually said was that free to play players didn’t upgraded to HoT in the numbers expected. Nothing else was every said explicitly about HoT failing or even not meeting expectations.

So you could say hot failed to sell to free to play players, which doesn’t mean it’s failed, anyway. That’s like saying a restaurant failed to keep vanilla ice cream in stock so the restaurant failed.

@ Vayne
The quote “did not perform as expected” was from the NCSoft report from Q4/15, published in January, 16. The report even went on to amplify that free players did not upgrade in the numbers anticipated. Nothing was said about expectations of paid players upgrading, but you can bet there were such. Somewhere in Q3/15 there was an article which cited 1,5M distinct monthly logins to GW2 prior to PFF, rising to roughly double that number after PFF hit. HoT sales at that time were closer to 500,000 than 1.5 million. Now, maybe seeing ~2/3 of semi-active accounts not upgrading was expected. Maybe laying the disappointment solely at the feet of free players not upgrading is over gloss.

@ Djinn
While I appreciate that you do not equate “failure” with “complete failure,” I suspect that you might be giving too much credit to random people on the internet, where assumption, exaggeration and hyperbole take center stage.

Vayne.8563:

STIHL.2489:

Rhanoa.3960:

Vayne.8563:

STIHL.2489:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Daddicus.6128:

Rhanoa.3960:

Has the game really failed? Far from it.

Nobody said it did; well, nobody other than you.

We said Heart of Thorns failed. Which it did.

It did not, not by any reasonable measure. It didn’t do as well as predicted, which is very different.

You realize that not meeting predictions, is Failure.. right?

forecast that’d we’d make a certain profit, but something would happen and we made less. But the business wasn’t failing. The prediction didn’t take into account certain realities we’d be unaware of.

Based off the OPs statements throughout this thread, I really hope he is not a hiring manager.

I’d be offended, but, I read what you think retaining clients means, and the fact that Vayne does not seem to grasp the very profound difference between RoI and just making a sales goal… I simply can’t be.

In order for HoT to be a failure, you’d have to prove a couple of things. First, that more people left because of HOT, or stopped playing because of it than people who came back or started ;playing. That’s almost impossible to prove either way.

You can say a certain percentage of people didn’t like HoT. It’s true.

As for ROI, unless you work for Anet’s account department or management, you have no way to know the ROI on HoT. You’d be guessing at best.

The nice flat casual friendly maps of PoE.. tell me all I need to know.

Rhanoa.3960:

Vayne.8563:

STIHL.2489:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Daddicus.6128:

Rhanoa.3960:

Has the game really failed? Far from it.

Nobody said it did; well, nobody other than you.

We said Heart of Thorns failed. Which it did.

It did not, not by any reasonable measure. It didn’t do as well as predicted, which is very different.

You realize that not meeting predictions, is Failure.. right?

forecast that’d we’d make a certain profit, but something would happen and we made less. But the business wasn’t failing. The prediction didn’t take into account certain realities we’d be unaware of.

Based off the OPs statements throughout this thread, I really hope he is not a hiring manager.

I’d be offended, but, I read what you think retaining clients means, and the fact that Vayne does not seem to grasp the very profound difference between RoI and just making a sales goal… I simply can’t be.

Rhanoa.3960:

STIHL.2489:

Thornwolf.9721:

STIHL.2489:

Thornwolf.9721:

If we get a Bard I want a tamer for my ranger.

Two pets out at all times, spec focuses on making them kittenes and loosing the ability too switch between them. Id prefer a rifle as a weapon but pistols will do perfectly fine, call it “The Huntsmen” and its done.

No offence, but that does not sound very “Bard like” it sounds more like a Ranger with a Sidearm.

Its not supposed to, I was saying if you get bard then I Want this. Sorry for the misunderstanding there.

Why should anyone have to get something else if they put Bards into the game?

If they put bards into the game, then you get the chance to enjoy playing a bard in GW2, which should be it’s own reward.

You’ll need Mastery Points to unlock Bards.

Why? if it’s an elite spec that would Hero Points, not mastery points, and if it’s and added class it would be unlocked with Cash, not mastery points.

DeanBB.4268:

What is the average skill activation time? 1/2 second? 3/4 second? Your bard would get to play 1-3 notes, maybe. And auto-attack would drive me crazy, methinks. Or do they sing? That would be worse.

Unless a bard in an MMO doesn’t work via music, in which case perhaps your vision of a bard needs further explanation. And saying “a bard like Game X” isn’t helpful.

Or maybe the bard would just shove their mandolin up your kitten while you are trying to cast a spell on them?

But… 16k APs and 5 legendary’s? Casual?

mbhalo.1547:

Djinn.9245:

I’m honestly curious: why do you list all those things and call yourself “casual”? I mean what version of “casual” allows you to accomplish all that and still think you are “casual”?

Because i don’t tryhard and farm, i play on my own laid-back pace.

I wish I could accomplish all that by not trying hard :/

mbhalo.1547:

STIHL.2489:

But, if you really had not idea of the many thing that were done that made HoT unfriendly towards casual players, so much so that you needed to ask this question, I am going to wager that you are nowhere near close to being a casual player yourself, so, no offence to you in any way, but it would be impossible for you to gauge if PoE was in fact casual friendly or not, thus you really could not answer my question.

I consider myself a casual player – 4000 hours played, 16k AP, 5 legendary weapons + legendary backpack, do T4 fractals almost every day and here and there dabble into raiding.

I’m honestly curious: why do you list all those things and call yourself “casual”? I mean what version of “casual” allows you to accomplish all that and still think you are “casual”?

mbhalo.1547:

STIHL.2489:

But, if you really had not idea of the many thing that were done that made HoT unfriendly towards casual players, so much so that you needed to ask this question, I am going to wager that you are nowhere near close to being a casual player yourself, so, no offence to you in any way, but it would be impossible for you to gauge if PoE was in fact casual friendly or not, thus you really could not answer my question.

I consider myself a casual player – 4000 hours played, 16k AP, 5 legendary weapons + legendary backpack, do T4 fractals almost every day and here and there dabble into raiding.

With that resume.. you are very much alone in thinking you are a casual player.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Good luck on the Devs considering your suggestions, whatever they may be.

I didn’t make any suggestions.

yah.. well.. this is awkward.

For those mocking this player because he thought the HoT maps were too difficult, there were many people that agreed with him. It was kinda annoying to go from the core game to the HoT maps and find that I couldn’t explore it without encountering things that killed me as soon as I ventured into the map, at least until I had achieved masteries. It would have been one thing if event monsters did this, but things like pocket rapters, etc, killing you before you could outrun them kinda sucked. I enjoy those maps now, rarely die in them, but I found it very frustrating and I regretted buying HoT for quite awhile after I had made the purchase. I still have HoT complete map completion on only my main character. I am not into hero point trains, or running to keep up with other players, or haunting hero points until someone shows up to help me get through it. The only map I really mastered was Verdant Brink. The others I just lost patience with. It isn’t that I couldn’t do it, it is just I didn’t want to do it. And I have Tyrian map completion in over 12 characters.

Daddicus.6128:

STIHL.2489:

Which now begs the question, if we always understood that “casual” was a mindset when talking about any other activity, why do we suddenly get so confused when it gets applied to games?

That’s easy to answer: hardcores didn’t like being grossly outnumbered on the forums and even more-so in-game. So, they artificially broke up the definition of casual so they could argue against specific subsets of casual play. Thus, they “won” the arguments more.

Unfortunately, ANet believed them, and almost destroyed the game trying to cater to them.

But, being crushed in the marketplace caused ANet to reconsider, and they’ve moved back much closer to where they were in the beginning. Except for mapping, and for failing to nerf HoT mobs a little bit more, I think they’ve done well. They can’t go too far in the casual direction, because the game does have many hardcore players. They don’t want to alienate them any more than they did casual players with HoT.

Anet wanted to be more hardcore because they were introducing raiding, and the PvP “esport” idea. “Esports” didn’t work out well either. So now they have driven off many of the casual players that loved GW2 from the beginning. Even if they make PoF more casual friendly, they aren’t going to get all those players back as they have moved on to other things.

My Reapurrrrrrrrr (Fectious Blackblood)

Edit: Has Nightfury, Chiroptophobia, Batwing-Backpiece, Vampire-Bat mini, and is build for life-siphon.

I have a new alt, finally made a Revenant and leveled him to 80. Haven’t quite unlocked Herald yet but his initial set up is:

Mistward Headwrap – gold/flare
Ascalonian Protector Pauldrons — tarnished silver/pyre
Mistward Plate — tarnished silver/tarnish/dark chocolate
Claws of Koda — tarnished silver/midnight ice
Primeval Legplates — Glint’s isolation/white gold/cocoa
Warband Boots (cultural) — tarnished silver/midnight fire

Using the Cavalier sword and currently auric axe and ambrite hammer, though weapons/armor are a wip.

Can’t levitate though :>

Magnus’ Left Eye Patch
Leystone Vestments
Embroidered Pants
Winged Boots

Such a simple set and i just love it

@STIHL: Like I’ve said many times in this thread, I like sticking strictly to the lore (so names like plant names won’t work for me) and the vast majority of good name generator names that adhere to that, are unfortunately taken (for asura/sylvari anyways) and are generally… just not that good to begin with. I didn’t actually name my character Knox + a bunch of X’s btw… just to make that clear to people. I was just shocked when I saw how many other people DID. I have never seen that in an MMO in my 13 years of playing MMOs, not even in WoW.

While I appreciate you trying to help, the point of this thread is not to try and help me come up with better names but to actually discuss the naming system and ways to improve it in itself. I can easily think of names, whether those are names I want to actually use is a different story. Your post could have been summed up for the most part with just the last paragraph.

Edit: After seeing your sig, I wonder what possessed me to even post in these forums anyways. Because it’s so true lol (heck, look at my sig… I’m no exception)

One only needs to look at OPs signature “I’m only here because sometimes I just like to watch things burn.” to understand what this thread is really about.

katz.8376:

unfortunately most fights in GW2 are pretty simple tank and spank variety of varying difficulties.

I realize you wrote a lot more then this, but I am going to have to disagree with you on this point.

Coming from very “role” based MMO’s, one thing I noticed being very different with GW2, was that most boss encounters in GW2 are not Tank and Spank, since there is no actual abilities that allow players to control agro, to use EQ, as an example, there is no “taunt” or “jolt” on GW2. So players really can’t control agro outside straight up DPS which makes Tanking, pretty much passe in GW2, just like since everyone can self heal, the role of Healer was also vacant in GW2.

Not to mention that a lot of boss mobs have mechanics where you can’t build something tough enough to Tank them, they either can insta-down you, or stun lock you, so there really is no way to be able to just stand there and take it, hence the rise and continuation of the ‘Zerker’ meta, for most of GW2.

So I am going to have to slightly disagree with you that encounters are “Tank and Spank”, since in reality, while there is often copious amounts of Spanking going on, there is very little to no Tanking.

I would say, most encounters in GW2 could be summed up more as Dance and Spank where everyone ends up having to deal with Agro equally, as opposed to just letting the Tank handle it.

There are some encounters that do make for the use of agro control like the lovers in AC, for example, but even those, are a game a agro control, not so much a tank role.

However, I have to agree with you about VG, havnig a very traditional Tank and Spank feel to it, because it has a very distinct mechanic that allows for an actual Tank role to be played, with the Boss getting agro locked to the person with the highest Armor/Toughness, not to menton that the Boss in VG, does not do a lot of actual damage, so it can be tanked to start with. As such, at least for me, it quickly become a very stereotypical Tank and Spank encounter, reminisce of Yesteryear’s MMO’s.

Otherwise I agree with most of your other points.

I know this might sound off, but since gliding was put into Main Tyria, is there any chance we could be able to gain exp towards some of the HoT Mastery Lines, without needing to do HoT maps and Content, like say, have a HoT Reward Track for WvW/sPvP that gave Tomes of HoT mastery Exp.

I personally would like to be able to just pick any mastery line and work on that no matter what I am doing. It’s not like this would hurt sales, as I still would need HoT to be able to select the HoT mastery Lines.

Just an idea I would like, maybe make the game easier and more fun to everyone.

Absurdo.8309:

It’s fine to give your opinion, but it’s also valid to discount it completely because you don’t actually raid.

Be honest: would you actually raid if ley line gliding wasn’t a requirement? And keep in mind that only 1 out of the 9 raid bosses will actually require the mastery.

I know that player, mainly from WvW, and they do raid, how much I do not know, but I do know that they raid.

I’m hesitant to use an analogy here because they are nit picked to death. But try to empathize: How would you feel if I, who play 0 WvW, criticized a WVW-related decision? Take server-linking for example

As someone who is very heavy into WvW, I can honestly tell you, feel free to toss your voice into the storm. And I can say with certainty that at least some of us, will be far more polite to you, then you have been to us.

NikeEU.7690:

Actually, we aren’t trying to convince you to drink the wine.

Go read the other posts.. yah.. you are.

We don’t care what you choose to do.

If you really didn’t care, you would not spend all your effort trying to attack the people who don’t like the change instead trying to talk about how excited you are for the change among people that agree with you. Both kinds of people exist on this topic, so why are you only talking to one of them?

Bysvyken.6235:

I do wonder if a lot of the whiners have even beat vale guard?

I am more wondering why all these elite raiders feel the need and urge to attack other posters for simply expressing their feelings on the matter, which is rather ironic, because it seems that people who raid, are the first to attack all other game modes, and put them down, but if anyone says anything negative about raids, they just can’t let it go.

If someone says “Well kitten this, I’m out” they were not talking to you to start with, they were talking to the OP, you’re not gonna change their mind by calling them names, or insulting them, so… why do it?

Why don’t you instead just talk about your opinion of the change, and just let them express their opinion?

If your tastes are so refined and specific (e.g. “i like to raid but I absolutely refuse to get 30 mastery points”) you should have the self-awareness to realize that your tastes are so specific and not have unrealistic expectations of being catered to. It’s fine to only like wine produced in a certain region during a certain year by a certain vineyard, but don’t flip out when you encounter a restaurant that doesn’t offer it.

NikeEU.7690:

If your tastes are so refined and specific (e.g. “i like to raid but I absolutely refuse to get 30 mastery points”) you should have the self-awareness to realize that your tastes are so specific and not have unrealistic expectations of being catered to. It’s fine to only like wine produced in a certain region during a certain year by a certain vineyard, but don’t flip out when you encounter a restaurant that doesn’t offer it.

Equally so, someone else should not tell me I need to enjoy some other kind of wine.

In regards to raid difficulty and it’s place on the “end game” tier, the truth is, they could have avoided all this nonsense about who the raid was for by putting in a hard gear check, like requiring a 155 AR, But all the ‘elite raiders’ complained that would be too much work.

I guess everyone has their point when they suddenly feel that it’s too much work, who are you to tell someone else where the line is drawn.

NikeEU.7690:

STIHL.2489:

Equally so, someone else should not tell me I need to enjoy some other kind of wine.

That metaphor doesn’t work. The restaurant (anet) offers a selection of wines. You as the consumer can either order from what they have or choose not to have wine with your meal.

What people are doing in this thread is berating the restaurant for not offering the specific vintage they want by posting incredibly whiney (no pun intended) reviews on Yelp.

Not at all, what is going on here, is that the Restaurant (GW2) at one time served the exact kind of wine they liked. So they frequented the establishment, gladly enjoying everything on the menu.

Then Anet changes the menu and their wine lists, and does not include the wine they like, so they tell Anet that since they no longer serve the wine they like, they will no longer be ordering from the menu.

Now, that’s all well and good, and everyone should have the right to do just that. Equally so, if someone wants to go in and enjoy the new wine list, and order from the menu to their hearts content, praising Anet, no one is stopping them.

The problem only arises, is when some people can’t handle the fact other people don’t like the wine they like and as opposed to just accepting that, they opt to berate those people who have expressed they don’t like the new wine list by saying something along the lines of “What is your problem, this wine is the best! It’s better then the old wine, you’re just some uncouth savage that could not appreciate good wine if it got shoved up your kitten”

Yah. That’s how most of these discussions go.

And that is why, unlike reddit, the posts about problems stay around on this forums, because some people can’t simply just move on and accept that someone does not like the kind of wine they like, and as opposed to continuing to talk about how much they like the new wine, they just attack those who don’t.

Ubi.4136:

If you are not willing to put in the time and effort necessary to clear a raid, don’t raid. (doesn’t that sound familiar?)

Except this isn’t time and effort spend actually doing the raid, but preparing to do the raid. It’s grinding to get to the fun stuff.

Getting leyline gliding doesn’t make you more worthy for raids, it doesn’t necessarily will make you better at raiding, it’s just another hoop to jump through in order to do the 3rd raid wing.

Obviously, it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, and with the way with stray (possibly) leyline energy going about being absorbed by people and animals, I’m sure it’s more thematic and mechanic.

Just shouldn’t become a “feature” that should be praised.

Absurdo.8309:

STIHL.2489:

ProtoGunner.4953:

If people haven’t maxed out gliding by now they should reconsider their playstyle. If they are so lazy why bother playing an MMO anyways.

What if they simply do not like the HoT maps? Ever think of that?

For many people that enjoy WvW, or EotM, Mainland Mastery Line was super easy because WvW rewarded Mainland Exp. many of us capped our mastery lines before we even knew what they were about, and some people were just doing mastery lines because we didn’t want to waste the EXP. Now, if game modes like WvW and EotM had rewarded HoT Exp as well then it would have made sense that they also had their HoT mastery Lines done. But for people who enjoy WvW, they would need to stop doing WvW, and go do HoT exclusively to cap their mastery lines.

Now, I get that people who only do PvE may miss this, but for people who do WvW, all the time they are spending grinding some stupid PvE content, is time they are not defending their borders, time they are not contributing to their side to win. It’s one thing to put aside maybe an hour a week right before reset, to go do a bit of PvE content, it’s a whole other thing to demand they put away the time cap a mastery.

Honestly, these kitten responses by PvE players, really make me wish they would bring back WvW map Completion for Legendary Items.

You can get HOT exp by actually doing the raids. This argument seems more theoretical than practical.

It’s not hypothetical at all, because I kittening hate the HOT maps, I honestly really can’t stand them, the only way I got gliding to tier 3, was because it was the new shiny and I was willing suffer though a few maps, hoping that it would somehow stop sucking after a point… it never did, it ended up just sucking more and more with each additional map I unlocked.

Now, you say you can level a full mastery track just doing the raid, ok fair counter point, so, I guess the question now is, is it really feasible to gain the 13 million Exp doing just the raid?

ProtoGunner.4953:

If people haven’t maxed out gliding by now they should reconsider their playstyle. If they are so lazy why bother playing an MMO anyways.

What if they simply do not like the HoT maps? Ever think of that?

For many people that enjoy WvW, or EotM, Mainland Mastery Line was super easy because WvW rewarded Mainland Exp. many of us capped our mastery lines before we even knew what they were about, and some people were just doing mastery lines because we didn’t want to waste the EXP. Now, if game modes like WvW and EotM had rewarded HoT Exp as well then it would have made sense that they also had their HoT mastery Lines done. But for people who enjoy WvW, they would need to stop doing WvW, and go do HoT exclusively to cap their mastery lines.

Now, I get that people who only do PvE may miss this, but for people who do WvW, all the time they are spending grinding some stupid PvE content, is time they are not defending their borders, time they are not contributing to their side to win. It’s one thing to put aside maybe an hour a week right before reset, to go do a bit of PvE content, it’s a whole other thing to demand they put away the time cap a mastery.

Honestly, these kitten responses by PvE players, really make me wish they would bring back WvW map Completion for Legendary Items.