Guild Wars 2

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Having to wait until SO FAR into my character’s career to have access to a full ability rotation just feels awful.

This is why I will never make another toon. Thank the Gods I got my toons to 80 before this awful NPE came into being. Maybe, if they give vet players a way to bypass all that crap, maybe I’ll make another toon. If they don’t, I’ll just be happy with what I have and never make a new toon.

I’ve been playing my alt on and off after the NPE, and it felt like Anet is trying too hard to spread progression over 80 levels.

If the cap is 30 or 40, but I gain a trait point every level, I would be more excited when I level up.

As it stands I find it hard to get excited when I get stat increases or some equipment, especially the latter, which I think is more suited as rewards for completing quests and events.

The new leveling system sucks, so I use my new character for (named appropriately, “Bearer of Rings”) is to simply hold my 250+ ascended rings gotten from the paltry drops in fractal runs. Anet’s stupid RNG really sucks because it should account for prior run drops!

If you really want to improve the game given now you have collections and track what the player has already gotten from drops then use that information to influence future loot drops! Is that so hard now?

I’d like to quote somebody who previously brought to attention an issue regarding a tutorial.

For instance, rangers (you know rangers; bow, arrows, pets) only know what a pet is after level 10. It must really be hard for a person to play the profession they chose. If so… Well, time to reroll

I am dumbfounded how a main part of a profession’s mechanic can be left out. If your QA is made out entirely of… limited individuals, by all means get some average players to test it for you. If you don’t want to hire anyone with those qualifications then instead of giving us vague and inaccurate pre-patch notes, give something we can think about and look at the effing feedback, instead of throwing something out and hiding for almost four (4) months.

If you want to drawn in the most people you can get your hands on, a simple option (a simple If and End If), is all there is to get regular players that don’t need their hand to be held, and people who feel they need. Because I doubt anyone that is able to create an account on their own needs this kind of carrying.

I have a previous post regarding story spacing by level and other points, so I won’t go through that again.

Regarding new players, the game was just fine.

Four months… Four months and this horror is still the same. I don’t see many (if any) threads saying this was a good idea, so take hint already. I would really like to fill all my character slots with level 80s, but right now I have no fun whatsoever being insulted like this. It is limiting my options.

If i want to go all kamikaze against a really hard skill challenge, that is my right, my decision. If you think I should suffer a penalty, bring back repair costs. If I want to look at the mini-map and start doing my leveling passing through points of interest and vistas, it is my decision. No need to hinder it, forcing me to memorize the map, or open the full-screen map to see where they are. And what the hell? Why must I be killed immediately, instead of being downed, before level 5?

Also, as a fully fledged level 80 working on his Ascended set, I do not need, while killing Svanir Shaman or the Jungle Wurm, to be reminded that my HP is low and that I have a healing skill. It is annoying, and distracting.

If you’ve ever heard or read anything about a certain gentleman called Charles Darwin, you’ll see that he has some interesting theories about survival of the fittest and death of the stupid; if I go charging in on anything without reading my own skills, I deserve to die.

EDIT: minor corrections to grammar (again).

Honestly, I was levelling a character in the vacation and the NPE feels terrible:

At level 54 I still have no master trait and since I only play EOTM/WvW/PvP I do not have enough skillpoints to unlock all the skills and traits I want (Skills points should never have become “Trait points”). When my character level up in EOTM I do less damage and lose health. The entire leveling process feel broken and akward: like being told at late level 30s what rare gear is; seriously?

And if the goal was to make things easier then it was a failure, because having to unlock everything, including traits for a class you’ve never played before testing them, is doing the exact opposite.

It’s probably been said a thousand times already but anyway I wished to add my voice to the list of people disappointing by the NPE.

I hope in 2015 you get back on track, specially with new competitive content and PvE content for existing players.

So I have used several stacks of frostbitten tools (axe, pick, sickle) and they only give tiny snowflake and nothing else.

Is this a bug or intended? Should they have a chance at any other snowflakes? Or someone put wrong description (“Provides a chance for snowflakes when gathering” instead of “Provides a chance for tiny snowflakes when gathering”)

Or was someone lucky enough to get non-tiny snowflake?

“We’ve updated your bank with a Wardrobe Storage vault that includes every skin that you could potentially unlock! In that tab, you can sort, filter, and search to see not only the skins you have access to, but every skin available in the whole game. This makes it simple to look through every option open to you to find the look you really want.”

I do not know if this is intentional or not (and I really really really hope it is just a bug), but the new Shoulder Scarf skin is completely invisible in the Wardrobe Storage until after you have bought it. This brings along several problems:

• It is impossible to preview the skin in combination with light or medium armor without using external sources like gw2db to get the item ID. The preview option of the BLTC window for the scarf only works correctly for heavy armor classes. All other classes appear naked.

• The BLTC window preview is very limited anyway.
  - You cannot change colors unless you change the color of your actual gear
  - You cannot preview in combination with colors you do not yet own
  - You cannot preview in combination with armor skins you do not yet own
  - You cannot preview in combination with armor skins you do own but not wear, unless you use transmutation charges to change the look of your actual gear

But most importantly:

• Hiding new skins from the Wardrobe Storage completely breaks it’s purpose!!!
  Your own quote above mentions that the Wardrobe Storage is meant to give players an easy way to look through all the skins in the game. When trying to find the perfect style for my character, I always click through the whole wardrobe to preview basically everything. Once I have found the perfect look, I check where I can find the specific skins I want and then I buy them from TP, craft them, spend gems on them or do whatever is necessary to obtain them.
  The purpose of the wardrobe is to show us the skins we do not own. If I only wanted to see the skins that I have already unlocked, I might as well use the Wardrobe tab in my Hero Panel. If the wardrobe does not show me every skin, I am forced to use armor galleries from external sources again, just like I had to before the Wardrobe Storage was added to the game. And if I now have to browse these galleries again anyway, why should I even bother using the Wardrobe Storage any more?

Summary:
If this is a bug – please fix it.
If this is intentional and you want to repeat this with future items – please think about it one more time! I cannot see any advantage. You will break the Wardrobe Storage.

I wonder how many people end up getting this bug and don’t bother to post in the forums because well… Who wants to play a game that bugs at the start… So they get a refund of the game itself.

Anet you worked so hard for the NPE (which we all know is more confusing but besides the point) but this happens? Why isn’t this fixed yet it should be a priority and it keeps showing up in this forum. You are very likely losing money over this.

Well, they shouldn’t list them there if they don’t count. Put them somewhere else or specify in their description that they don’t count. Very confusing and frustrating.

Castrin.8972:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Wow. I thought OP was posting the oft-seen arguments for and against…not his own opinions. I guess I’m slow. Lol.

Rebut him, that’s what the forums are for. If you think there are better pros/cons or the list is just insufficient, speak up.

That goes for anyone. Don’t just say “he’s biased,” show everyone why you feel that way.

As for the list and summary, great work OP! Best I’ve seen so far.

Peace.

Nah it’s easier to dismiss someone’s opinion saying “it’s only your opinion” or “you are wrong” instead of providing arguments against the OP opinion…

As a list of topics the OP did a very good job, providing threads for all of them. A few comments now:

Mounts

Aesthetics: mounts will look silly with GW2 races and animals (giant norn on a pink moa). Mounts will make GW2 even less serious and more visually annoying than Moot, Quip and pink unicorn bows.

You forgot pink quaggan backpacks…. Although there is a chance mounts might look silly (if they use pink moas for example) why should they? There is always the option of having only “good looking” mounts in the game, and each one appropriate for a given race. Aesthetics is a vague area because you don’t know what type of mounts they will add, and we can have a healthy discussion on that.

You already have cosmetic mounts: broom, carpet, sonic device. You already have a minor speed “mount”: the Dry Top kites.

And that’s a reason for not having more of those because? We already have some, let’s add some more! Maybe this time with some variety in acquiring them and not only gem store related.

Like jumping would ruin a game designed with no jumping in mind, flying mounts will ruin GW2 maps (for example, think about jumping puzzles or vistas on mountains).

I doubt they will ever introduce flying mounts, before first introducing normal mounts, let’s do the flying mount discussion when that time comes and focus on land mounts first.

Expansion
You forgot the argument in favor of expansions:
“Expansions create lots of hype = more sales for the base game too, and lots of returning players to finish unfinished goals before the new big chunk of content is released. An expansion doesn’t even need to be released to affect the game in a positive way, just an announcement of it is enough. In fact no expansion ever (???) was harmful for their main game, at least until it’s actual release. After release it all depends on player expectations, how high they are set, and if the expansion failed to deliver. But before release? Expansions are almost always a good thing.

And an argument against expansions:
GW2 was released in China less than 6 months ago, 6 months is too early for an expansion, so if they want China and EU/NA games to be synced it might not be profitable to release an expansion while the basic game is still selling well in the new market.

New classes / new skills / new weapons / new races

Variety is a balancing nightmare. It is twice a balancing nightmare since ANet insists on not splitting skills for PvP and PvE. It leads to some classes being nerfed from a PvP point and becoming frustrating and unrewarding to play in PvE. Imagine what will become with balancing if new skills and weapons are constantly added? This might be too much to handle for a game with no subscription fee – two years into the game, old classes, old weapons and old skills are still being balanced.

Sorry what? If we have to wait for everything to be perfectly balanced to release new classes/skills/weapons/races then maybe we will all be old with white hair by that time. Not even MMORPGs with 5+ years since their release are perfectly balanced, yet they release new skills. IF the new skills offer more variety and fill different roles then there won’t be such a high balancing issue.

For example, adding 2-handed Axe for warriors as a melee aoe weapon (same as GS) is a sad idea, adding a 2-handed for Warriors as a condition based aoe melee weapon is a far better option, much how GS is the 2-handed power weapon of the Axe, the 2-handed axe can be the 2-handed version of the Sword (a condi weapon)

1. Mounts :
Not needed. WP System is the existing solution of going fast from place to place. Those who want mounts want just another tier of collectibles to get busy. Not a real use out of it.

2.Duelling : PvP in GW2 is built around teamwork and classes are optimized/nerfed/buffed around this system. Some classes are clearly superior to others and inferior to some. Duelling would be just frustrating.

3.Open World PvP : Reason for Trolling. Hate between players. Factions dont fit into current story of all against Elder Dragons.

4.Holy Trinity : Please no. 1 Step closer to generic MMO.

8 : DPS Meter. Inspect Gear. Inspect Gear is actuall a nice addition. DPS meter would just be one step closer to generic one best build/equipment approach. Destroys variabilty and forces everyone use the same build.

12. Player to Player Trading : Did you ever played Diablo 2? Reason for bans, hate frustrating and new chinese player explosion.

I really don’t want GW2 to become like this teacher in school who says you solved a problem wrong because “we do not use this method yet”. Even if the teacher is justified because you arguably have to learn this specific method and not the others, the game is not.

Right: “So far you’ve been defeating enemies by spamming 1, but here’s a guy that hits really hard, so if you have not discovered it yet, you can dodge by double-tapping the movement key.”
Wrong: “You cannot use this game mechanic yet because we feel like another button on top of the 5 you already know is going to overwhelm you. We care about your playing experience.”

There’s a fine line between “not flashing a ton of different tooltips in a player’s face” and “you can’t weapon swap before we let you”

Rangelost.4857:

This is December 2014. The change was introduced in September 2014. For 3 months now, players have been deceitfully promised apple pie, which of course they never got.

The pie is a lie.

Oh, and did I mention Farmer Eda? I’m sorry, I think I need to mention Farmer Eda. I’m going to mention Farmer Eda.

Alright, so Farmer Eda. We’re all familiar with that one. There used to be this task in Queensdale where you’d collect apples in an orchard, and after you helped her, she’d offer you some apple pie, and you could even purchase her own home recipe.

And somehow, apples being baked into a pie must have been too confusing for new players because they were removed. That’s right, apple pies were removed from the apple pie merchant.

So why am I talking about this? Well, have you even read the dialogue? Here, let me quote every word from the conversation.

• Farmer Eda:
  Like my orchard? The apples we harvest here make for delicious pies. My husband used to harvest the apples, before he passed away.
• Player:
  Pie? I like pie. Can I have one?
• Farmer Eda:
  Of course! You’ve been a great help around here. You’re more than welcome to a slice or two.
• Player:
  Yum. Pie!

And what does she sell?

A MEASURING SPOON.

THAT is IT.

This is December 2014. The change was introduced in September 2014. For 3 months now, players have been deceitfully promised apple pie, which of course they never got.

Can you imagine the confusion on the poor new players’ faces? Freshly starting adventurers, still dreaming to one day become great heroes, now haunted by a void in the pit their stomach, a void which will never truly be filled by the rewarding taste of a well-deserved apple pie…

My favorite wth moment is when, playing a new character, I walked up to the first SP you see in Queensland, and could do nothing with it. The idea being that it was too difficult to understand, I suppose. So now I have to remember, once I level up enough, to head back to the SPs I couldn’t commune with when my level was too low.

So bad.

I code for a living – albeit it isn’t game coding – but the design I would have for this is, in pseudocode (and I wouldn’t use an If statement, but easy to understand for demonstration purposes):

intLevelSP = 10
IF charLevel < intLevelSP then
objSkillPoint.accessible = false
else
objSkillPoint.accessible = true
EndIf

Then, in code, all I have to change is the intLevelSP variable. So, CHANGING this shouldn’t be such an onerous task. Just change a variable. So am at a loss for many of these things and why they are taking so long to fix.

I returned after awhile and find the NPE god awful.

“The cow goes moo..oh and you dance infront of it.”

For crying out loud, stop “fixing” stuff that ain’t broken. Making early game easier is about showing a player what he can do with stuff he encounters, not outright locking it in his face, “cause the poor thing may get confused”. If the game treats you like a kitten you have every right to give it the middle finger.

What you do in such cases is provide a nice optional, but easy to access tutorial when you encounter a new thing in the world. What you did is horrid! Examples:

1. Weapon skills unlockable with levels – what? That’s artificially slowing my progress down. And what about having a full set of skills on the weapons i didn’t use till now? The old system was great because it went along with my choice! You wanna learn the sword, no problem, equip a sword go and kill stuff. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be master of hammer from the get go. It respected my choice and in a non annoying way made me learn my weapon before i could go wild with it!

2. The simplified quests at queensdale farm. What. the. hell. I dance for cows instead of feeding them? I get plants back intos b shape by giving them…a massage?! When bandit set fire to hay i magically pop a water bucket by pressing F?
The orignal versions were great because they followed LOGIC and taught you there are objects around you can and should use. Water the plants? Well hey, there’s a bucket of water right next to the well! It’s like magic! Let’s grab it and water them crops or put out the fires!

I can remember when with a friend we were doing an event in queensdale that involved repairing the water pipes while bandits tried to stop us. It was not progressing at all. Moments later i discovered why. The worker fixing the pipe was K.O’d! It was one of the best moments in the game. I laughed my rear off at my kittened thinking, ressed the guy and got it done. When a game makes you realize you’re losing because you’re not applying logic, then that is a GREAT game and an example to follow, and not something to sweep under the rug!

Guild Wars 2 is Guild Wars 2. So stop trying to make it look like something else! When i go to a mexican restaurant i go to eat….mexican spicy food! Not chinese, not toned-down slightly spicy food. Stop gutting the game experience and be proud of your own creation, kitten!

Hm, let me clear something up before this original bug report goes in a completely odd direction.

The bug I am reporting has nothing to do with lag or players who are missing notes due to lag. These things happen in an MMO and are often ISP-related. So please do not derail or if you disagree: create your own thread ! (-;

The bug here is that when this occurs the game always interprets the pressed buttons as a miss, even when they are pressed at a correct time. Additionally, if no buttons are pressed, the player lives through the round and the score goes +100. Under normal circumstances he would also lose health since he missed the note and then gets thrown out of the choir wheel. But in this scenario, he does not. And that is a bug!

To put it in other words: I assume that the game thinks that the wheel fragment is empty, and starts playing the tune. Since the computer plays the notes, all notes are played correct (and would thus explain the +100 points the player sees). The player then gets put on top of this wheel, but some internal mumbo-jumbo prevents the player from being assigned to it. Hence the game still thinks the wheel is empty and thus does not recognize the player’s input

This bug sometimes (not always) occurs when joining the Choir Bell event. Sitting it out and waiting for the next restart fixes the issue.

Some other things I noted:
- It is not related to a specific position on the wheel. High, Middle and Low are affected.
- Playing during the interludes does heal you!
- Free play also works fine (i.e. no health loss)
- Switching to another position (NW, NE, SE, SW) has no effect, the bug still persists

Hope that this helps in tracking down the issue!

It’s been a few months now since the NPE was introduced, and it still feels like a huge bug.

That’s honestly how I see it. The NPE feels like it was never intended to exist, and was suddenly rushed and tacked on at the last minute to be included in the September 2014 Feature Pack. It’s a mess.

Let’s take a look at weapon skill unlocks, for example. It used to be that you could learn new weapon skills by using those you’d already learned. This would allow players to learn weapon skills one at a time, and use any weapons they’d like to try out.

What we have now is a system that “rewards” players with the ability to use weapon skills. This means that once they reach Level 10, they have access to all 5 weapon skills for all weapons. Equipping a new type of weapon will spam a bunch of unlocks on screen all at once, and the player is left with a bunch of new skills to learn all at once instead of unlocking them progressively. The irony is off the charts.

Why are unlock messages still there, anyway? They are no longer relevant whatsoever. When you unlock a new weapon skill, you’re told so by the giant modal window that pops up when you level up. And you don’t unlock the weapon skills themselves anyway, you unlock the slots they’re in. It doesn’t make any sense, and looks unpolished. It’s like the old, better and more intuitive system tries to continue existing, but can’t.

Speaking of which, what’s up with the starter zones? I understand that most of the first tasks were changed because teaching players about how the game works early on surely must be bad game design, but now was it necessary to leave the map as-is?

Let’s take the Golem Chess in Metrica Province, for example. That was a fun little mini-game you could play at any time, even after completing the task. Now, it’s been disabled because new players are afraid to see diversity in the game, and the reasons why we veterans were attracted to the game as new players in the first place are irrelevant. I get that. Then why leave the disabled Golem Chess boards there? Is to to confuse new players, or to mock veterans?

And of course there’s worse. There’s actual bugs introduced by the NPE that are just laughable. Let’s talk weapon swap. Before the NPE, you could unlock weapon swap at Level 7. Now, you can only unlock weapon swap at Level 15. However, you can still swap weapons once you reach Level 7 if you have weapons equipped in your secondary slots. How did that even happen? Are there literally TWO weapon swap restrictions coded into the game? And why does one override the other? Again, it’s as if the old, stronger system is trying to fight through the NPE.

And, well, I hope the old system wins. I am not a new player. This is a new character. I do not need you to hold my hand. Do not have Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t forget how to play each time I make a new character. All you have to do is check my account for a high level character, and get this anti-self-learning system out of my face.

When I was a new player, I thought the game was so fun, and I had such a good time creating new characters to try out different classes, I don’t even want to think how awful my experience would have been with this NPE. Just making a new character feels like a chore now. Give players the choice. It matters.

Plus i wish like the other dailies, you had more options then just 5/5 out of 6 options since apparently lots of peeps have issues with the JP and Bell choir. It seems odd and the variety daily is the exact same thing = NO VARIETY!!!!!

Ah. I haven’t actually previewed a lot of the Gem Store items, because few of them caught my eye like the scarf does.

Not a big deal in any event. Mostly, I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a thread with such a silly title.

This is also happening to me. I have had this problem multiple times now, really questioned my feeling for the beat

I found out the problem sometimes disappears when my health drops to zero and i’m forced to join again for the next song. It all works perfectly then

I believe the content was deactivated because of an exploit (reported on this forum) that allowed people reading the letter to cap stuff in WvW while being invulnerable.

So probably not a bug, I guess they are working on it to make the item only usable in PvE or something like that.

So I Pvped a bit and got the Ultimate Gift. Naturally, after every match, I open what I was rewarded and put it into my bank. Unfortunately, the ultimate gift could not be opened in pvp, so I tossed it into the bank for another character to open.

As I swap characters, I got on my war who was in pve. I opened the gift and choose the medium Rebreather in hopes of transferring it to my ranger in PvP.

Pertaining to questions that will be asked as to why didn’t you just go from pvp to pve to open it? The reason doesn’t matter, though I had been crafting and decided to open it on my warrior at the time.

The gift didn’t necessarily disclose >EXPLICITLY< the information that THIS ITEM, which mind you only gives the effect of water crystals from the ITEM ITSELF, WILL BE SOULBOUND ON ACQUISITION.

So I got a cool medium armored rebreather on my warrior that I will never be able to use. I’m not sure how any possible solution can be made because Anet most likely made the particle effect tied to the item to make players go for more than one, but I would love to see any initiative to help remedy my entire journey of suffering the useless presents from the wintersday track for an ultimate gift of regret.

Ayrilana.1396:

They’re working on the bugged meta chains. As far as the Pendant of Arah, it’s that much due to how few people actually run the explorable. If as many people who did the world bosses on a daily basis did the Arah dungeon on a daily basis as well, you’d see the price drop considerably.

Maybe … there is practically an army of people camping Rhendak daily but that doesn’t seem to have had much impact on the price either.

On the other hand it doesn’t seem very likely that anything from the home instance chest will give you anything remotely close in value to several of the items in the collection.

Ok so i enjoy doing the achievements and playing the game. And I understand why achievements are supposed to be hard. But what I can’t understand is why put in an achievement that is near impossible. If it was just a fact of a player’s skill then thats one thing. But I find it rather annoying to try to obtain random items from events when the events are bugged and do not seem to run. An event that can be done daily for an item I can understand. but an event you can only do when the system deems it feels up for it. That is something that should be dealt with. And the fact that more then a few items on this list have bugged events. And the marketplace charging over 400 gold for said items Players should have other alternatives if the event is not taking place as it should.

Not sure if this is intended or not, but several of the achievements in the “A Very Merry Wintersday” category don’t count towards meta progress. It’s not very intuitive to have achievements all lumped into one section, and be told to “complete these achievements” for meta progress, then have several of them not count.

I had no idea some of them didn’t count till I finished the scavenger hunt, which has two previously hidden achievements. I wasn’t all that surprised by those not counting, but according the dulfy.net’s guide the jump puzzle and snowball mayhem achievements also do not count.

I’m looking at a achievement category with 10 finished achievements, with a meta achievement telling me 8/11 are done. Is it supposed to be like this, or are there 4+ bugged achievements?

I have a related problem. I completed “Honorary Krewe Member” for my 11th acheivment and got a reward, however it’s not showing that I completed the achievement in the panel. I need that one to complete my 11th for meta.

I also completed two other repeatable acheivements that I thought would work towards the meta, but never counted….something that explains which ones count and which ones don’t would help a lot.

My initial understanding when reading the patch notes regarding the login rewards was that, for whatever technical reason, folks who hadn’t been online for that stated timeframe would be lucky enough to get the 1st daily login reward early (right after patch), and then folks who had been playing in that pre-patch timeframe would then get their 1st daily login reward after the daily reset, where then the players who had received their 1st reward early would then NOT get another upon that reset, so all players would be on the same footing from then on out.

Apparently I (and many others) misunderstood. I would have stayed away from the game for a day if I had known it would perpetually put me behind in this new rewards system.

My S.O. is definitely a day ahead of me in regards to rewards, and has been since the main patch on the 16th. Bit frustrating to say the least.

I honestly don’t see any reason for not getting a daily login reward if you were indeed online every day.

I was online before as well as after the patch that day but didn’t get a reward. I got my first “daily” reward a day after the patch and therefore am behind one day compared to people who were online less than me (just because they happened to not be online before the patch)…

Regardless of how irrelevant the rewards might be, I would define it as a bug, if a daily reward is not handed out on a daily basis. But maybe that’s just my logic…?

Just give the reward to everybody that was logged on the 15th after the patch. Why do you do such things ? You just complicate the thing for no purpose. It only creates frustration for people, like me, who just play the game every day. And now people doesn’t get their rewards even if they complete all the stupid conditions. And think about the new players : they logged in and they didn’t get the reward for logging in… It’s really confusing ! :o

Or, at least, can you give us the reason instead of spamming the patch note ?