Guild Wars 2

Karl McLain.5604:

Critical Damage:

• We’re adding a new stat to the game called ferocity which affects your critical damage multiplier, similarly to how precision affects critical chance.
• All existing percentage critical damage stats on gear and items will be converted into the appropriate amount of ferocity, which will then factor into your critical damage multiplier.
• We expect that in the most extreme power DPS focused builds this change will account for a maximum reduction of about 10% damage.
• This change will not affect PvP, as critical damage is already at a much lower value and item attributes will be adjusted in order to compensate for the changes.

While I agree that the berserker meta needs to be addressed, I fail to see how this can be considered a solution in the slightest. Allow me to explain why.

Berserker gear is popular because it offers the most bang for your buck. The harder you hit, the quicker things die, and the faster your team is able to complete a dungeon. Even with the effectiveness reduced by 10%, that fact will not change. Berserker stats will continue to offer the highest DPS and therefore remain a requirement.

What will change is the efficiency of your group. You’re not hitting as hard, so things aren’t dying as fast, and that decrease translates into you spending more time inside of a dungeon.

What does that solve?

From what I understand, people dislike the meta because they enjoy having the option to play different roles in combat. However, this idea struggles to find a place in a game where there is no holy trinity. With support and control utilities readily available to even the most damage-centric builds, there is little reason to defer from maximizing your offensive potential.

However, that’s only half of the problem. I believe that content is the other half. Current dungeons do not offer any advantages to players who opt out of the berserker meta, and these are the aspects that should be focused on.

Restore it to what it was for the first 14+ months of the game. I assume it’s a bug, as there was never a patch note, developer blog, or community team member response to long, heated 1000+ post thread (T3 Cultural Outrage Style) that sheds any sort of light on why it was changed.

Since there are probably some people that enjoy your bug, consider making running animation a character trait, just like hair style of eye color. Something you pick at character creation. Can be changed with a make-over kit. Those of us who would like to be changed back to the old way can submit a ticket for a free kit. Then you can start dreaming up things like a ‘skipping Asuran’ for people to buy.

Choices and options please, not force-fed values.

Or, in this spirit, if it’s not a bug, you could just honestly explain ‘why’ it was done. I would like to know the ideals and values of a company I’m doing business with so I can best decide how that relationship will continue.

As stated, my friends and I came to Guildwars 2 with a small and tightly knit guild. Since our 1 year+ of playing, our group has not really expanded. In fact, many of us have lost interest in Guildwars 2 and have been doing other things to kill the time.

We all agree that there is a strong lack of social activities in Guildwars 2 due to the following:

LACK OF DEFINED ROLES AND TOO MUCH INDEPENDENT CLASS POWER

Roles are not defined in Guildwars 2 and the zerker meta continues to hurt the community. In other games, players are forced to become dependent on other players in order to survive. In Guildwars 2 certain classes are so independently powerful and are able to do so many overlapping roles by themselves that the need for other players is extinguished.

Rather than promoting group dynamics, players instead group up with independently powerful classes that are easy to play (heavies) and steamroll content before simply disbanding.

In other games, where roles are defined, you added tanks and healers to your friends list because you needed them. Forced group cooperation helped to foster player relationships because players HAD to work together to succeed. People in your group offered things that you could never do on your own. In Guildwars 2, you don’t need the other players but instead they are there to simply bolster your own independent power. When classes under perform independently, they are unwanted (ex: ranger).

While Guildwars 2 does many cooperative things right (combo fields, rally system), it does too much more wrong (single classes able to do all the roles of the party [warrior: damage/heal/boon/tank/control]). Players are not promoted to make strong relationships or depend on other players because other players bring very little to the table that they can’t do themselves.

Guildwars 2 does very little to capitalized on its teamwork systems (i.e. some of the most powerful combo field attacks being able to be done just by one person [engineer turret aoe healing], Guardian hammer spam on self-dropped fields).

Extending into WvW and PvP. The mesmer and thief are so independently powerful because of how stupid the stealth mechanic is that they just abandon players that attempt to fight along side them due to their access to an infinite number of escapes. The extreme 1v1 capabilities of these classes leads to them to be superior due to power creep and only encourages them to align with other thieves or mesmers to troll.

Other players attempting to roam with these classes in WvW just end up being deadweight.

LACK OF GUILD ACTIVITIES:

Aside from the limited Guild dailies, there are no raids, no GvG, and no content that focuses on guild cooperation. Instead we have large zerg events where the scale is so huge that the independent contribution of a smaller player party matters very little. There is no way to isolate the rewards to the players who promoted the most teamwork when there are 200+ people participating in a giant lagfest that usually encompasses pressing 1 for 30 mins.

Havoc squads are the closest thing to organized small group combat, but they get crushed by large zergs that do little to promote team skill. Certain escape classes simple abandon allies when this happens to lone wolf.

ENTIRE GAME REVOLVES AROUND MELEE:

All the group buffs in the game are 600m or less on average. There are very few targeted area heals. Players are encouraged simply to stand next to each other and stack heavy boon classes (warrior/guardian) to achieve near godlike status. The gameplay does not promote any kind of strategic positioning. In fact, positioning barely matters at all in Guildwars 2 unless your ranged and out of the “god” temple of your companions. Then you are told you are playing wrong.

This just leads to a boring dynamic that encourages stacking and button mashing with very little strategy or teamplay.

OVERALL SHALLOWNESS AND TL;DR:

Overall the failing of the above systems (too much independent class power, lack of roles, melee focused gameplay with no teamwork, very little guild support/content) makes the game feel like a very shallow cooperative experience. As a result, most of us in at least my group, have lost interest and just check back every now and then to see if things ever got better (only to find more Scarlet Briar while larger issues are ignored or not being solved in a reasonable time table [1 year, same problems or empty promises in the shunned classes forums]).

Ultimately the current systems of Guildwars 2 promote very little cooperation and instead result in selfish gameplay. Large zerg events do not promote teamwork and are too large and chaotic to reward team synergy.

I like the dark and brooding tone of the two older trailers.

It sure feels a lot different than quaggan back packs and bows that shoot unicorns.

Take a screenshot, print it off and send it to arena net in the mail along with a written letter asking them why they haven’t done kitten about this yet.

not really a question since the answer is “it’s not here”
but just for discussion, why was it not included? was it considered?

the mechanic:
in GW1 while your character was using a bow you would gain additional (and scaling) range and damage if you were at a higher position to your enemy,
so if you were several feet higher you’d likely see no difference, but stand on top of a castles walls and you’d really see a benefit!
this was brilliant and added a point and purpose to holding the high ground.

one of my favourite experiences in any game was defending fort aspenwood in GW1 as a sniper ranger, really feeling a sense of a home-field advantage.

(for anyone who didn’t play the original GW i’ll help you imaginewhat it was like,
imagine if the keep walls in wvw were 1000 high (so enemies need to get right up close to hit the defenders on top of the walls with their 1200 ranged weapons),
now imagine that your range from on top of the wall is 2000 (and you have a damage increase of 25%), allowing you to hit people as they approach your walls before you enter their range, thats how it was in GW1, you really felt like you had the advantage of a castle’s walls.)

GW2 is missing this sense of a home-field advantage, if your base is being attacked by a large zerging force there is nowhere you can attack from where you are’nt instantly dying to your enemies spamming the walls with aoe.

height enhancing range/damage adds a real depth to strategic positioning, and makes holding the high ground a really epic experience!

Just going to c/p something I said in another thread….

Before the Teq update I remember seeing so many threads about how everything was too easy. Anet is trying to please their entire playerbase, including the people who wanted more hardcore content. There are still TONS of more casual friendly content out there, far outweighing the hard content. And this MMO, though it can be grindy and does include some hard content, is by far the most casual friendly MMO I have played.
If people killed these bosses as soon as they launched (didn’t marionette go down the first night?), we would see more people complaining that the LS content is always too easy. Hell, in my opinion, I still see marionette as pretty casual-friendly. There are really only two perma world bosses that have any real difficulty. One is still killed multiple times a day, the other was just released.
As said before, Anet is trying to please all groups of people, PVE and PVP, casual and hardcore, and just can’t win. Which is unfortunate, because in my own opinion, I think they did pretty well in doing so, and are continuing and improving this.
Edit: And just to add, I have not killed the wurm boss. I’m okay with this, and don’t expect to for quite some time, if ever. Let those people that get enjoyment out of coming up with specific strategies to complete puzzling and difficult content have their fun too. If it wasn’t fun for them, they would not be doing it.

We need a lot more of these difficult bosses so people will figure out they aren’t entitled to win every encounter added to the game. You can spam 1 to win 99.9% of PvE; don’t complain when good content is added. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. But a lot of us are loving this stuff.

pinkbunnies.4620:

Im a civil engineer and I Work 60-70 hours a week in the field. I love this game and really enjoy the time I get to play it. Ive got 4 level 80s, two with map completion, all in at least exotics or better. I unload real money on the gem store regularly.

Im getting discouraged by content like tequila and the worm/marionette because I have not completed any of these, not even once. I realize that if I log at the exact right time after guesting to the correct server and sitting in the zone for an hour+ to get a spot then maybe I have a chance to complete these but that’s not realistic for me.

I have a wife and a 3 year old, they need my time too.

At least I have Spvp solo Q, hot join. If it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t have to gear grind to be on equal footing Id have never bought this game. On a side not that’s why I don’t do WVWVW, because of the ascended gear power creep they implemented.

Back before I got a real life I loved to spvp in WAR and later SWTOR and Rift for a time. So I consider myself a kitten fine player.

Please make content for people like me. We are the ones who actually bring money into your pocket with our real jobs and gem store purchases.

cut out the garbage with the power creep gear grind nonsense, make some more content that I as a great player can do on my own schedule without needing to depend on having no life and the stars aligning.

So, they put in a couple of fights that you can’t just queue up for and do “on your time” and by your utter convenience and suddenly this is a big deal? You think you’re the only type of player who plays this game? Plenty of people here are willing to put in the time, casual and hardcore, and try and down these events. Nothing is stopping you except for your own real world commitments which is not anyone else’s problem.

The majority of the game is very casual friendly. It’s not dependant on gear. It’s not a hardcore raid or die game by any stretch of the imagination. Most content is catered towards people like you, and people who just want to take the game at their own pace.

They put out less than a handful of bosses that are challenging and can’t just be done in a night and out come the wallet warriors and people who, with a 60 hour a week schedule, a wife, and a small child, have no business playing a video game anyways.

Geez. Reminds me of WoW, except this time there is no excuse for it, because like I said, this isn’t a raid or die game by any definition of the term.

First off, just want to say these events have been amazing to play through. Me and my friends all are always giddy with excitement when attempting these events. However..

Personally I have not completed both events. I have done the Twisted Marionette at least 10 times and failed it. How many times have you guys completed it? My only concern is that it often comes down to a small group of people wiping on a platform. I am not saying they suck, but it just a bit frustrating.

What are your guys opinions on the 3 Great Jungle Worms? I only did it once with a extremely large group. But after splitting up, my group manage to place only 1 set of 20 kegs of explosives. Everyone started dying and it looked like everyone just ditched.
Have your servers got it down? Or are your groups still struggling?

Just a side note, even though these attempts are failures, I still prefer these events a thousand times over Shadow Behemoth for example, where you just press 1 to win.

Casual. Oh you mean 90% of all of the games content? The majority of events, dungeons, and world bosses? Okay.

ArenaNet should rework all the zerg world bosses and make them into organized raid encounters instead. Just look at Karka Queen and The Shatterer. That’s 100% zerg and a lag fest. It’s not fun.

These two new bosses are really fun, especially Twisted Marionette. Wurm is very hard but also fun when you have enough people to do it.

TL;DR: Rework zerg lagfest world bosses.

It’s a great concept, until you realize that it will effectively trivialize the whole thing. Lets say there is a non-ideal setup of 20 people in the lane. That should be five groups of 4, but because it seems to use some nonsensical measure it makes three groups of five, one group of four and a group of one. The guy in the one is screwed, obviously.

One of the groups is beast though, and they trash their warden easy. Now they pop into the other groups. It was one of the five groups, and now there are two groups of six, a group of five, and the loner is up to three, cause it worked out this time. The two groups of six finish their wardens soon after. Now we have a group of 9 and a group of 11, both for fights expecting about five. One of the groups happens to destroy their warden a little faster than the other and the last warden, the one that had been the loner is looking at twenty guys.

As each warden falls the following wardens become more and more trivial. The only way to make this a reasonable measure is to use ninja rules. As each warden falls the remaining wardens have to increase in difficulty, until the last warden can actually be a challenge for 20-30 people. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily fun either, since we are still looking at a timer.

I tend to assume this is why they let it go the way they did. It happens every other hour on the hour so there are plenty of opportunities to finish. It’s going to fall short for some, but ultimately it probably works out.

They could add proper raiding to this game so easily using their existing instancing, overflow and scaling technology. But, they don’t want to.

So we continue to count down the days until the next few MMOs are released…

1. Keep on doing Living Story but make it permanent.
2. Make ascended gear stat-switchable
3. Expand PvP with GvG, random arenas, deathmatch ….

If you do that GW2 will be king.

Peace!

UPDATE 06-06-2014

LS becoming permanent step 1 of 3 complete, two more to go

If GW2 keeps heading in the direction it is (raid bosses on the open world instead of their own instances), something NEEDS to change with overflows.

I won’t go in detail, but we all know how painful it is to even join a fight right now. You need to wait a good hour just to join your server.

The solution to this problem would be to allow us to see the amount of players in each overflow, and name the overflows (districts… where have I seen THAT before?) as well as allowing people to choose one to go to.

So you would have a small drop down list going for example :

Jade Quarry : 135/135
Overflow 1 : 135/135
Overflow 2 : 118/135
Overflow 3 : 40/135
Overflow 4 : 7/135

And then you just pick and go to the one you want to. You could even choose to queue up for a specific overflow if you wanted. You could also choose to leave the main server for an open overflow.

Another option that would be great for big guilds like say TTS, is to add an option to create your own private Overflow like an instance, and the only people allowed in would be people taxi’ed in AND people in the same guild.

As I know this feature is not something ANet wants (I imagine it would require a lot more servers for them), the ability to create a private overflow should be a guild unlock/consumable like the guild buffs. The Guild Leader or assigned person would enter say Bloodtide Coast, and pop the consumable and get a prompt asking if they want to create a private instance of this particular map. This instance would last until everyone in it leaves, or for a maximum or 24 hours or something like that, so that guilds wouldn’t have to constantly make new instances like that.

So your list would now be :

Jade Quarry : 135/135
Guild Overflow : 98/135 (private)
Overflow 1 : 135/135
Overflow 2 : 118/135
Overflow 3 : 40/135
Overflow 4 : 7/135

And you would only see that overflow if you are in that guild, but you could still be taxi’ed to it by friends even if you aren’t.

This would allow big guilds to actually prepare perfectly, instead of searching endlessly for empty Overflows. And PUGs could just go to overflows where it’s close to full and I’m sure random teams would form as usual (but it would now be easier to organize). Honestly there are quite a few huge guilds in this game and this would really make a difference in establishing team work.

This system would allow ANet to keep their overflow system like they currently have, but give a lot more options to players and communities for teaming up properly.

In order for a game to be successful, it should be entertaining to play alone.

Not necessarily without other people – but as a single player perspective it should be entertaining to play.

GW2 once you reach end game becomes a thing where you simply ‘catch up’ on living story content – then grind a handful of fractals.

A lot of people leave this game because there ‘is nothing to do’.

Sure the temporary content is nice, but beyond that, the game is lacking really fun replayable content.

I think one of the things that is the cause of it all may be the lack of good rewards. Everyone has more-or-less end game gear. The arguably best-in-game visual items are all store based. People seem to be wanting to find exotics only to put them in a mystic forge – never to use.

What kind of a reward system is that? “Heres your reward, now go throw it in the toilet”

GW2 needs to dramatically rethink their rewards system for end game. Put tangible rewards all over the world – not just in fractals.

A player needs to have incentive to play beyond friends to play with. The combat has dissolved into dodging red circles and without more mechanics is no longer the ‘reward’ for good playstyles. Itemization has dissolved into upping agony resists in order to get what? More agony resists? The fact people play so many fractals is an example of how people are desperate for an ongoing reward system.

Vayne.8563:

So you want linear progression. If that works for you, that’s great.

I don’t particularly want linear progression. If I’m good enough to do a higher level dungeon without doing a lower level one, I should be able to.

linear has nothing to do with it. please don’t put words into my mouth, then argue against those. it doesn’t need to be a line. it can be more like a tree with branches, and that would actually be preferred. just some form of tangible progression that has nothing to do with grinding out new gear. i want goals and activities, not new shinies.

there’s nothing like that in the game currently. fractals don’t count because they’re the same thing over and over and over and over. the horizontal/vertical gear grind doesn’t count, because those are just carrots on sticks. they’re not content, and they didn’t even get horizontal gear progression right. horizontal progression is about adding ability variety, not aesthetics. but they crippled their ability to do a proper horizontal progression by making every stat and piece of gear solely about combat. combat should be just one category of many, with subdivisions underneath of it that correlate to the general build concepts.

so, there’s no activity progression (no, the LS isn’t activity progression. it’s story progression, which is usually just watching a movie in tiny chunks) gear progression is a mess. there’s no goals aside from “grind for higher pointless numbers”. whether those numbers are unccessary stat boosts from gear, the “achievement” points that are just a measure of how much someone’s grinded, some form of currency, most of which are useless (anyone remember the last time they needed karma?), or you can hop into WvW and grind out WXP because power creep it always a great addition to a PvP based game (sarcasm), or hop into sPvP to grind out glory that they’re apparently getting rid of. i don’t enjoy grindy games.

Lots promised before and after release; very little delivered. Lots of interesting ideas (e.g., Living Story); terrible implementation. Also, extremely grindy.

Sad because so far its been 16 months and…

No instanced raids
Hollow (skin)progression
Story content that adds nothing meaningful.
Dull PvP
Zergfest WvW(now with boring grind!)
Same bugs/exploits since day one
Same bad mob AI(mossman can still be exploited)
Lack of defined roles for classes(and diversity)
Constant imbalance
Anet cares only about PvP(hence imbalanced pve)
They went from an amazing 2012 Halloween to a forgettable 2013 one
They didn’t bring back the skins from 2012 Halloween(1800g ghastly grinning shield? wtf)

I feel like it’s an ok game, but an unfortunate sequel to a much better game.

you mean builds farm 2?
everything this game was supposed to be, it isn’t
you can tell there are people at arenanet implementing things to fix the problems we’re all noticing, but it’s always a back seat to pacifying the cash-crop crowd of customers..

the best example i can think of is gw2 as an end of the line railway boomtown, it may seem quick and prosperous, but if the game continues to lack depth, the more dignified players are just going to move on

how do i feel about gw2 right now?   fingers crossed

grindy. and too similar to other mmos.