Guild Wars 2

Hawkian.6580:

Just to be clear- your interpretation of what has occurred is that you are correct, and almost everyone playing agrees with you except for two people who posted right above you?

That interpretation is irrelevant. His signature itself demonstrates he can not be objective on the issue. I mean, you wouldn’t ask the guy with the anti-Obama sticker on his bumper for an opinion on the government and inspect any sort of actuality right?

I guess there is one thing that happened to the detriment of the community…that some people were so vehemently and vocally opposed to ascended gear before they knew anything about it, that they feel obligated to hold steadfast to those beliefs…even in the face of being wrong months later.

This past month I worked on map completion for an alt and did some low level story missions. I blinked and next thing I knew I had enough laurels for an amulet on my main. Not once did I say “ugh I need to grind dailies for that amulet”. Instead I just played the game and ended up getting there without realizing it.

Anyways, the OP will take away from this what he wants to. Hopefully he puts more stock into the sensible information posted here and takes posts from some people with obvious agendas with a grain of salt. Honestly though, it’s probably best to just forget strangers opinions on the internet in general and log in to the game for yourself to see if you have a good time.

Kumu Honua.2751:

I just want something that is actual progress. Not random chance. Random chance is merely frustrating.

It has to be random chance because people are kittens. Someone would find an exploit, or speed run, or wall glitch that would make any game-y way of obtaining them and take it for all its worth. Then you would have “pre-cursor speed clears”.

I’ve seen it be suggested that the scavenger hunt be one per account like the Karka rewards, then people would scream that they wanted to do it on an alt.

Or make it once per character account bound, like the Black Moa Chick, then people would scream that they can’t make two for things like incinerator. Or roll alts, and have guildies run it and then trash the character to do it again.

Or just make the items account bound/soul bound on equip…then they would be farmed for ecto or forge since the chain is a guaranteed exotic.

If they weren’t rare drops, and depending on the implementation of the scavenger hunt, the items themselves would be worthless, legendaries would be as impressive as CoF armor but would have a notable visual degradation on the game. Its hard enough to see in a zerg anyways, now imagine them all shooting unicorns, impenetrable black clouds and hearing a constant stream of pew-pew, all while your frames tank trying to handle the extra swath of particles and shader effects.

Random as much as it is disliked is the best solution. If you want actual progress, then do other things in the game that could lend to getting the precursor as a side-effect. Dungeon runner, outfitting alts with dungeon tokens, Guild temple/dragon runs, Fractals. And in the process, save your rares to forge because why the hell not? That’s how I got my precursor. And I accomplished a lot in the process. Had I been doing everything for the purpose of “farming a precursor” I probably would have had less fun.

If you are asking if everyone’s fears and conspiracies came true…they didn’t. Ascended items offer a small stat increase over exotics. They do not get normal upgrades and can only be infused, which is a +5 bonus to a single stat.

Players with ascended gear are not steam rolling players in exotics or even with the occasional rares. Players are not kicking people from groups because they don’t have two rings and a quiver (unless you get to Fractals level 30+).

Now you can get rings from using fractal tokens instead of relying on drops. So you can get any combination you want. They are account bound so a higher level character can feed the gear to a lower level character. The amulets, rings and infusions can be bought with dailies, so if you don’t want to do Fractals then you never have to set foot in one. But instead of two weeks to buy one with the respective currency, it will take four.

No treadmill happened. Ascended are exactly what they said they would be. Slightly higher end armor to work towards between exotics and a legendary. No mandatory grind was introduced. Get your daily within an hour of playing normally and you have made progress.

All in all it was a whole lot of community noise over something that ended up being nothing.

So this is a personal tier list based on your anecdotal experience? Tier lists are a pretty time honored tradition in adversarial or class based games. So it’s neat to see someone tried to do it with GW…

But those lists are also backed up with empirical data using universal controls. Things like frame data of normals, reach of normals, and dmg spread for each class, traited for maximum efficiency with Berserker and Carrion gear sets. Then you can have tiers based on vanilla offensive potential with actual data to back it up. Burst can be a whole different battery of tests.

You also need to do defensive. And then support. Which would mean traiting and comparing the like utilities of each profession with consideration to recharge and…well utility. For example, how would you rank smoke-screen, feedback, and Wall of reflection on a numerical scale?

Now set your brackets, average the offensive and defensive potential of each profession and break them in to tiers.

Sure, people will still disagree. People have been disagreeing with tiers since Street Fighter 2. But at least you have some physical, verifiable, reproducible metrics that can be discussed instead of “so ive played a lot and I think…”.

Someone should do this. Not me. It’s way too much work.

Why would there be an official Orr server? Its hard enough to get credit for killing event mobs on a med pop server. I can’t even imagine how frustrating it would be to try getting credit on a dedicated server full of guild groups and squads. Monsters are probably all disintegrated the instant they appear.

Im in exact opposite position of the OP. I have my precursor, but still months and months away from crafting the legendary.

I have 100% map completion, badges, gift of thorns, 400 huntsman and Jeweler and about 800k karma. I nearly have enough coins and ecto (based on wikis approximation) to make the clover attempt.

The hold up will be 250 of each T6 mat (currently have about 30 of each), 250 more ecto after clovers, getting back up to 100 gold for the icy stones, and I have 200 skill points but think I need 200 more.

It is a little annoying that I have the part that people consider is hardest to get and am still so far away. But I also refuse to make the game non-enjoyable for myself by farming out the same events for hours upon hours. I am going to do the stuff I like to do and know eventually I will have enough to get the legendary. Just like I had enough to get a T3 armor set and a precursor. As opposed to forcing myself to play in a way I don’t like, as a means to an ends, to get it as fast as possible.

No point in having the legendary if it represents something I end up burnt out on and resentful towards.

Bug fixes, performance fixes, content patches and the like are lumped together and distributed in one release. If they pushed an update every time something changed then we would be getting booted every day and downloading patches.

Emergency hot fixes are for things like crashes, connection issues, or really grievous exploits that effect everyone and the game as a whole.

I’d be surprised if it wasn’t fixed by now and they probably have it packaged with the next update. And that could be either early this week, if they do a weekly update, or on the 26th with the big patch.

The best part of this whole thing is that a lot of you probably played the “updated” and “better” version of the fight.

After launch when these same things were said the response was that the encounter was bugged and there was supposed to be more to it.

That more turned out to be an AOE attack and some mini dragon tendrils that come through the deck. So it was neat a few more interactive obstacles were added to the fight, except that you could pretty much ignore them since the AOE tended to happen in the middle of the ship and away from the turrets, and the tendrils either had negligible attacks, usually spawned well away from the players, or could all be handled by a solo party member not using a turret.

The fight was disappointing, especially in the face of the boss fights franchise fans are used to. I honestly think there was a lot more that the devs wanted to do with this but they just didn’t have the time and weren’t sure what would and wouldn’t work on that scale. I have a fair bit of confidence that the next elder dragon will be much better.

Darkdanjal.3401:

anyone who is actually saying it is a choice of the player has the gold already… seriously….and please dont tell me its easy to get…. it is at least 500 gold + to get the lowest precurser on the market….even with 2 000 daggers as rares it still wont get you to 2000 gold , Arenanet failed in this and to all the fanboys who actually got a precurser gratz but you all know it should be just as farmable as a total gamble

The lowest precursor on the market is under 150g. There are several that are under 200g. 2000 rare daggers is somewhere around 900g and thats enough to buy any of the precursors and still have enough left over to buy your icy-lodestones.

The first time I used the mystic forge for anything besides a mystic salvage kit and endless quiver, was Thursday night. I threw in 4 daggers and got Spark. Didn’t even buy the daggers, they were drops I had been saving from Fractal runs.

It was pretty amazing. Sold it for 600g, bought my T3 cultural set and now im saving up again to buy the Lover.

I also have traditionally horrible luck. In the original GW I never got a chibi Gwen mini, Frog scepter, Polar bear mini, Dhuum’s Scythe, or Voltaic spear. I had to buy rubies, sapphires and ectos for my elite armor because drops for me were non-existent. In SEVEN years, I never touched the rarer stuff in the game. In GW2 I think I might have had four exotic monster loot drops in 1,067 hours.

Moral of the story, save up your rares to forge while saving your gold to buy a precursor. You may even get it dropped from a chest while doing dungeons or events to get rares or income. The thing will come eventually one way or another, and probably unexpectedly.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

While doing Shelter’s event in Cursed Shore there was some player afk near where a bunch of enemies spawned. Needless to say they were dead. In an effort to finish their daily revives, a few people kept reviving them and over time she was a naked player character with broken armor.

This new daily encourages people to do this. Kinda sad.

People have always done this. So when players get back from AFKing and see their character naked, they know to AFK in a safer spot next time. Most of the time you’ll see AFK naked people standing near waypoints because they think thats safe.

Avatar.1923:

are the current dailies “fun” ?
thats the question, and really, that probably all that matters.

They are fun because they only require playing the game as the game is designed. If you are doing things to get XP, then you are doing things to complete the daily.

Fractals, dungeons, map completion, story, event chains, dragons, heart quests, crafting, unlocking skills, unlocking skill points, playing WvW…everything you could possibly be doing, other than sitting in down doing nothing, contributes to the daily.

You can’t say dailies aren’t fun, then suggest you get it for earning y amount of XP, because the things you are doing to get y amount of XP are the same things you would be doing to meet daily requirements!

Avatar.1923:

^

it actually promote you to tp everywhere on the map to get it done.
which is kitten.

dailies should be like an “event chain”, “mini quest”. not some random choirs.

This is what dailies were in GW. A specific boss hunt or mission. A small difference in accessibility is that you could reach lvl 20 in GW in a good day of play and just run (or buy a run) to the areas these things were at if you didn’t have them.

In GW2 the world is huge. And it takes a lot longer to get max level. So an event chain or mini quest would be out since not everyone could do it.

The nature of dailies are that they are just a superfluous thing that rewards you for completing specific activities. These can be completed by anyone, of any level, in nearly any zone.

There are already chains and events in the game, and most of them will complete the majority of your daily. Rikiti, Reactor, Plinx, Centaur Shaman, Shatterer Chain…the list goes on an on. Any escort event or any chain event will do. So just pick one and go do it.

Are gamers in general now so dependent on developer’s holding their hands and leading them along that they get totally lost in this because there isn’t a big icon on the map with flashing lights and an arrow that says “Daily here”?

If dailies are changing the way you play, then you are doing it wrong. They are something that should be completed as you are playing. If you have to aggro and dodge low level moa in a field because you can’t manage to dodge ten times in a dungeon or high level events with your guild while just playing the game…you are doing many things wrong.

I make 5-10 gold, and a handful of ecto, a day just playing for a few hours a night. I do my daily in Orr. If Shelt or Pen are up I do those but I don’t farm or idle for the events. Plinx usually pops when i’m there so I do that, as well as any temples that might be underway. Afterwards, I do the even fractal for the day and another run to level up if the group is fast. And then I might do a few dungeon paths with the guild or level up an alt depending on time. I play to play and am more than halfway to my own legendary without any particular grinding/farming.

The real question here is why you feel you don’t have the gold that you need? Dynamic events, and nothing else, are easily profitable enough to pay waypoint and repair costs.
Exotics can be crafted for nothing but the time to get the mats, or gotten for free using dungeon tokens. Ascended (if you’re into that kind of thing) can be gotten for free from random fractal drops, saving daily laurels, or pristine fractal tokens. Tier six materials can be promoted from lower quality materials. And ecto/rares are easier to come by since the patch that allows user level loot anywhere.

Everything you need to be effective in the game is easy to come by and has a gold cost of little to nothing. Things like T3 cultural, Legendaries and other shinies are things you don’t need to progress, qualify for content or play better. They are long term end goals for your character.

Some advice that might help you enjoy the game more: If its taking too long and you are getting impatient with legendary progress and money making, then forget it. Pick a new more attainable goal for your character that will lend to getting the legendary.

In my case, I decided I wanted fractal lvl 30. And on the way I would TP any exotic drops, salvage any rare armor drops for ecto, and save rare weapon drops to forge. I got a precursor from the forge when I hit lvl 27 and sold it in the TP to buy the one I want.

My character goal is still to hit 30, and hunt for a fractal sword because I wants one. And every day I am getting closer to my legendary and making more money, without stressing over not getting it fast enough or not making enough.

You can get the achievements by just playing the game and doing events. It really takes less than 20 minutes to do everything. If you are a player that does fractals, usually you will get the normal daily while doing the daily lvl 10+ run.

Honestly, it takes less time and is more profitable to get it by playing naturally than by trying to grind out dodges on a worm, trade suicides with a friend off of a cliff, or camp an npc that is prone to dying at some interval. So I really feel no sympathy or guilt for crossing a player that is trying to boost it. They are the ones trying to do some strange work while others are just playing the game as designed.

No one should be hesitant to help, rather players of that nature should be hesitant to be doing something silly to boost a daily item since they could be getting in the way of players that are just playing to play.

My advise if someone loses their temper over you killing a mob or stopping enemies in an event from killing npcs, just /laugh and /wave then move along.

I heard from a dude that heard from a dude that knows a guy on the inside that said long time fans might soon see a profession that never came to be that was originally going to be in an expansion that only kind of sort of happened.

Summoner or Chronomancer? O.O

Fiennes.9568:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

a tonic to become.. “a guild banner”. Underwhelming.

Yes, because by quoting just that you miss out entirely on the rest of the interview. Way to isolate a statement.

I think it’s amazing. I am going to use one by the fractal entrance in LA and see how many people run by and try to click me.

Realm specific forum sections would be nice. Rather than spam in game, guilds could just post times they plan on kicking off these events and the server could really rally behind it.

Players are going to post the info anyways. Likely here or in the players helping players sections. May as well create an official place for it to keep things tidy.

Every character carries its own fractal level. Have you been doing them on the same character? Can any of your characters progress? When you are in the dungeon is the Fractal level higher than your reward level? After you complete the run and go back to the observatory has the fractal level increased and your personal level stayed the same?

Sounds odd to have one or more characters in Fractal limbo.

I’ve never seen anyone try this and not get kicked. Even if the party leader said it was ok, they are booted while logging for asking a stupid question.

Would be a simple thing to adjust I think. Just change recommended level to required level. People would still be switching characters for tokens, but at least they would be switching to level appropriate characters that can still contribute.

My guild has boosted some guild mates this way, but that’s a different story. We usually know that’s the deal before we even go in and boosting that character will eventually be to the benefit of everyone. Pugs usually don’t say anything until the boss, it at all, because they know if they do they will probably just get replaced before it’s started.

The Ash legions production of Spy Kits has increased over 8000% percent.

There have been whispers of Ash secretly monopolizing Charr exports and Karma flow into Ascalon by using their new influx to buy out the supply of other legions karma goods and either reselling them or scrapping them for spy kit materials.

When the Blood Legion Imperator was asked to comment he only had this to say: “Blood legion don’t give a &*%$!”

One Iron Legion Tribune also had an opinion on the matter. "Until guns shoot Karma, Swordshadow’s pickpockets can have it. The more spykits they “sell” [finger quotes], the fewer mice I have to look at."

Meanwhile, inhabitants of Dinity’s Reach are more worried about mice they cant see. “Once the ne’er-do-wells get in on this business we will start seeing black market spy kits likely being traded to Skritt!”

So the Bouquet of Roses is a neat little Valentines day toy. And I guess the gem amount is reasonable. But its ACCOUNT BOUND!

No one wants to buy themselves flowers. People want to buy other people flowers.

That is all.

It resets every day at 7pm EST or 4pm PST.

Its possible to do two in an hour if you do one right before the reset and one right after.

This looks like a cannonball attached to a chain that is almost unnoticable. And it causes stun. Its from the steal ability…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mace_Head_Crack

Shouldnt be spammable though O.O

Rhaps.8540:

Something that will finally put the neverending debate to rest.

Yah get me? :P

Ever hear of the phrase “never say never”?

Anet gets lambasted anytime they implement something new or make a change that could be manipulated or viewed in a specific way that maybe makes it appear to go against something they said in passing during an interview, con panel, forum post, video, magazine article, or to a random stranger in a Starbucks that told someone else that tweeted it later.

Two years from now, if an expansion comes out that has an on-rails mission where we ride on the backs of Glint’s off spring to fight Kralk, and Ruby said here and now there will never be mounts, someone would inevitably link back to this post and call the entire studio vile liars. And that would spin off in to a 300 page thread of misguided rage, mostly from people that can’t conceive the difference between a scripted ride and controllable mount.

That is one hypothetical situation among many that could apply. When Ruby or anyone else tells us something isn’t happening, take it as not in development, not in the design, and no time in the foreseeable future. As for the unforeseeable future? Why make any definitive declaration that limits your possibilities, when you don’t know what might happen because its the unforeseeable freaking future.

Narkosys.5173:

What I got was another grind that I didnt want.
Want to get gear faster do more dungeons (IE monthlies). BIS gear shouldnt be tied to grinding a dungeon or activity over and over and over again.

You don’t have to grind an activity over and over and over again. On any given day you have to kill x things, kill x things underwater, craft x things, harvest x things, do x events, talk to y npc, res x people or dodge x attacks.

…Essentially, you have to play the game. Most of those activities can be done clearing an area, doing story missions, running dungeons, or even while in WvW. And collectively take under an hour.

And with the Feb update you even get to pick which things you want to do x of.

So yeah, sorry to tell you, BIS slot gear requires you to play the game for a decent amount of time and requires a variety of stuff that is accomplished by doing practically anything except for sPvP.

At least I can kill the dragons (._.)

Those chickens are killed immediately as soon as they can be touched. If I try to anticipate them being active, I cluster bomb them and get the “Invulnerable” message. If I wait a second later, they are disintegrated in a cloud of pink mist and fire before my character can draw her bow string.

I have much better luck with spiders at the other end of the tunnel.

I agree with Dragon loot and chests being increased. A chance for a precursor and named exotic(which I think is already there), a guaranteed rare, and guaranteed fragments of some sort would make them more enticing. At least then we would know that some progress either towards gearing/crafting/forging can be gained from a once per 3-4 hour event.

It’s foreshadowing a new event that will be coming to Black Citadel and Hoelbrak…DOLYAK RIDES!

In order for the refugees to start rebuilding their lives, they will be charging 10 copper to ride around on a Dolyak in a circular pen. Completely non-interactive as Dolyaks navigate themselves, but its great for the kids and 100% of proceeds go to a charitable cause.

Prepurchase your Dolyak ride tokens and make your family reservations today.

Looks like Tirzah likes leaving her mark all over the game. Isn’t she the same designer that carved that she wanted a cheeseburger into the bell at the top of the Mad King’s Clock tower?

Tachenon.5270:

Anyway, I got the crazy notion that Final Rest might be the Scepter of Orr, the whereabouts of which are unknown. Back in GW1 the White Mantle found it in a tomb in Majesty’s Rest, so I thought maybe it somehow ended up back there.

I thought the last person to have the Scepter of Orr was Livia, and as of yet, we have no idea what she did with it?

Anyways, scepter of Orr is a scepter with a green gem. Final Rest is a staff with no gem as far as I know. There would be a pretty big ret-con one way or another to make that make sense.

eisberg.2379:

A co-worker of mine has one, he got it 2 days ago, and he isn’t telling anyone how he got it. =D

Pics or didnt happen.

Homonavn.6348:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Hey guys, just some food for toughts…looking at final rest on wiki it says req. lvl is 80 which probably means it has to be from lvl 80 boss or event (probably both). Id say Cursed Shore or Malchor’s Leap should be logical place for search.

You are either new to this game, or never been low zones when you are 80. Low level monsters, bosses and events can still drop lvl 80 rares and exotics…

Was this true up until recently? Since the patch, you get your own level loot from lower level areas. I can confirm that includes exotic rarity after the Bloodwitch in Viathan Lake dropped a lvl80 exotic focus for my thief last night.

Before the patch i’ve never really seen any loot drop from a mob that was higher level than the area and definitely not exotics. Dragon chests possibly being the only exception.

At least that was my experience with a lvl80 thief with map completion, lvl80 guardian, lvl55 mesmer and lvl 30 necro. I guess I could just have really poor luck?

I think it’s a fair assumption that Final rest is in one of the 65-80 area if the weapon has been in the game since before the loot scaling patch and is only dropped by one boss. If multiple bosses can drop it, post patch, then Homonavn has a point in saying it could theoretically be anywhere in the open world.

My favorite trick people do with Kholer is kite him to the Troll if that spawns. Watching those two duke it out is a good time, and things get crazy when one breaks aggro.

Last time I ran AC the troll broke off to attack me and mid pistol whip I seen Kholer come flying through the air behind it to cleave the Troll in the head…and then they were back at it.

As for dodging his pull, I only really get caught by it when I am trying to res someone or all of the particles and ’splosions around him make me miss the backswing animation. I can dodge the wires themselves on reaction when I see them coming, but not with 100% consistency like I can if I see the backswing and know they are coming.

…This guy is kidding right? Was the OP meant to be satirical or ironic in some way?

We knew server transfers were going to have a fee since months before launch. But we would be allowed to guest for free. That was a big deal.

Guesting wasn’t ready at launch so they let us have free server transfers while they finished it up. That caused its own problems since people abused them and overflow for WvW and events.

But this entire time…for the last six months, it was no secret that they were working on guesting and free transfers would end. They posted on the forums, they posted on their website, facebook, twitter, there was a message on the login client, and I believe an email went out…all letting people know they had 2-3 weeks left to transfer to the server they wanted permanently because charges were going to go in to effect with the new update.

I just can’t fathom being, genuinely, that clueless about something the dev team and players have been talking about regularly since well before launch.

LameFox.6349:

fellyn.5083:

In my experience most people will go out of their way to revive dead/downed players if they can manage it. GW2 has a pretty kind community as far as that goes.

Wait, that’s why people do that? I always just found it an amusing way to trivialize their deaths…

Yes…except on those occasions you see a guy fighting a thing and losing, so you jump in to help and he runs off without so much as a word when it’s dead and looted. Then a few minutes later the situation is reversed and instead of helping, he just runs right through the middle of your fight. Later that day if you should see him again, on his kitten hand raised in a desperate plea for help while a vet or skill point boss is mercilessly curb stomping him into goo…I find it completely acceptable to stand in front of him, /point, /laugh, and then go on your merry way.

Ressing downed players also counts. So WvW, Dungeons, Fractals, Dragon events, Orr temples, Orr DE chains, Hirathi Shaman Chain, Champion Kol….this list can keep going.

And of course there is ressing NPCs if you are feeling particularly lazy. The reactor has little Asuran bodies all over the place that will let you boost it.

Not to mention you already need dungeons for the monthly, and events for most dailies. This category is done naturally just playing while pursuing the others. If you are just wandering around Queensdale with a finger up your nose waiting for players to get downed in front of you…you’re doing it wrong. And as inefficiently as possible.

Yesterday I looted rare pauldrons, rare gloves, a rare mask, three different rare lodestones, a rare shield, rare dagger, rare spear, and an exotic soldiers dagger. I seen at least one essence and one ascended ring drop.

This was over the course of two runs. Now not every single person you have talked to have only gotten green/blue.

edit: both runs were in fractal lvl 10, so there was a maw chest and when the Grawl fractal came up we also got the first shaman chest. Because someone will undoubtedly count.

Coldtart.4785:

AcidicVision.5498:

1.) if you dont do dungeons than what do you need one for anyway? Most of the game scales you down and the parts that don’t weren’t designed around those stats. Ascended gear is for the higher difficult content, ie dungeons.

The entire reason people wanted a way to get ascended without wasting time in group pve was so they could have it for wvw. These monthlies, which get you an extremely significant boost to your laurel generation rate, require wasting time in dungeons.

‘The whole game is the endgame’ but only if it includes forced group pve. ‘Play the content you enjoy to get the same rewards’ so long as you enjoy rolling your face around against scripted targets.

Wasn’t a retool of the honor merchants, and the addition of ascended gear coming to WvW along with the other big changes in the February patch? I think you might be jumping the gun a bit there.

When you decide to post about not liking an achievement, stop…and think about what an achievement is and the nature of the thing you are complaining about.

It is effectively a challenge. Do X in Y time and get something extra for it. It’s meant to get you to try new things, see new stuff, play different ways.

If you don’t like the requirements, or can’t meet the challenge then you can still finish your story, get a character to 80, craft/farm/buy exotic gear, unlock all your skills, explore all the zone, kill dragons, feed cows or do whatever else floats your boat.

“But I have to do monthlies if I want an ascended amulet…”

1.) if you dont do dungeons then what do you need one for anyway? Most of the game scales you down and the parts that don’t weren’t designed around those stats. Ascended gear is for the higher difficulty content, ie dungeons.

2.) If you could craft them, they would need to be expensive enough to be comparable to the two months of time needed to buy one with Luarels. But you would still have people complaining on one side they are too expensive, and on the other side that ascended is now pay-to-win since you can buy gold to buy the mats while people that don’t spend money have to get achievements for weeks on end on every single character.

3.) They could just make ascended gear as easy to get as exotic, undermining the entire purpose for it to be included as something that takes a while to get after exotic but can be gotten faster than legendaries. And then players will complain their characters are all maxed now and they are bored because there is nothing to do, no progression, and nothing to work for.

“But I am a completionist and it bothers me I have to do something I dont like for achievements or the best gear.”

1.) Completionists care about the end goal and will suck up the requirements to get there, even if they don’t like them, because the end result matters more than all else. If your desire to not want to craft ten things, or do five dungeons in 30 days time is greater than your desire to fill a little status bar, get a little icon or title, or get a specific item in a specific slot, then you are not a completionist.

Moral of the story…if you want the stuff from the laurel vendor bad enough then play outside your comfort zone and make the effort to achieve a specific goal thus achieving something. If its not worth the effort, then you don’t need it. Nor should you get it some easier way specifically tailored to your liking, because that trivializes the achievements and effort of others and likely someone else wouldn’t like your way either; thus they now need to be catered to in kind which leads to a never ending cycle of kitten everyone off while trying to make everyone happy.

Deified.7520:

So please Anet give us some more info.

No no no. This is the stuff guilds, and communities build themselves on. Secrets, discovery, experimentation. You young’ins may not recall, but the popularity of Mortal Kombat was largely built on top of kids trading info on the latest Fatalities, or hidden fighters. Earlier Final Fantasy games had a special mystique because there were hidden weapons, summons, or party members that could be completely missed and word of mouth or vague hints in magazines were your only real clues.

It already sort of sucks that we can just preview any armor or weapon in the game for any class at any level. There is no “wow” factor when finding a new skin because they are all available to window shop from level 2.

Game needs more things like this and more mystery. Get the players thinking and working together instead of following a list of instructions to get the thing they want. If you want specific, explicit instructions to duplicate in order to get a prize, then bake a cake.

I will not end up buying anything with Laurels. Because as soon as I do, they will add something or prices will be patched and I would have been able to get more or something better.

So I will do my dailies and monthlies and perpetually horde Laurels so I have enough to get the next thing when it comes around. Or the thing after that.

It’s a curse (._.)

I like the changes. And it should be kept in mind that it is an achievement. So it’s expected you might need to do things that are a little out of the ordinary.

I think they might actually be a little too easy as far as achievements are concerned and would like to see some categories that are more challenging or profession specific. Like “Kill three enemies with one cluster bomb”, or “spread one condition to five enemies with epidemic”.

Seems like some people sorely misunderstand the word “achievement” and just want to get special rewards for logging in and too-ra-loo-ing around with little to no effort or thought.

This is pretty much whats running on mine most of the time. Chrome tabs may vary, and replace Hulu with Netflix when the queue is empty.

Edit: little tip for multiple monitor users. Holding the windows key and pressing the left or right arrows will line up windows to the left or right of the monitor. That’s how I keep my windows nice and tidy.

Yeah, definitely a shady deal. I ordered the original soundtrack from them some years ago and was never able to download it and never able got any answer from support. I didn’t request a refund because I had found other means by which download it.

I was hesitant about ordering this soundtrack from them, but figured wth, I could use Paypal to get a refund easily. At the time delivery was set to 6-8 weeks but I figured that was because it was meant to coincide with game launch. Intentional or by coincidence my soundtrack shipped out on August 28th. And surprisingly, I could even retroactively apply the code from the CE.

Everything was fine and dandy until I seen the packaging. The “case” is flimsy poster-board stock paper and the clear plastic seats glued to it, for the CDs to sit in, seem to be made of the same thin and cheap plastic that 8oz bottles for spring water are made of. I ripped the songs and then put the original in storage because Im sure it would just fall apart after being opened and closed a handful of times.

On a sour sweet note, Jeremy Soule isn’t doing the music for GW anymore, so no more direct song in the future.

And when transfers were free you could hop servers and harvest the same node for that daily. Or you could buy a bunch of white items from a merchant to salvage for agent of entropy. Or you could have some friends run a dungeon and wait by the entrance until the end for survivor.

There have always been silly ways to get achievements requirements that were not exactly “as designed”. They were usually sillier and took longer than the intended method. For example, there are a ton of events you can do that involve NPCs to res that will also get you marks for dodge, kill variety and daily event completion at the same time. Why you and a friend would choose to waste time and jump off a cliff over and over for progress in a single mark is beyond me. But to each their own I suppose.

Its not a one time event and it’s not a race. So what is the issue with when it starts? Regardless of what time it is, there will be people at work, school, or busy with other obligations.

Also, it was in the patch notes:
“Heralds
Starting shortly after the January 28^th^ update, heralds will begin appearing in cities across Tyria. Their task is to keep adventurers apprised of the events currently underway that are driving the Living Story forward. Be sure to check in with them if you need direction.”

So there you go.

The daily takes less than an hour on a level 23 character. I don’t see how they could make it much simpler and still require interacting with the game to some degree. The monthly, I could see some amount of legitimate grief because it still requires PvP and Dungeons. But on the other-hand, it’s an achievement for things that are either useless pixel candy or can/will be available by other means. So if you don’t like it, don’t do it. But the daily can be done passively by just playing.

And something to keep in mind with the dungeons…when the game launched there was a lot of QQ about how they took too long and were too hard and nearly impossible with a pug or without voice chat. A few months later people were regularly clearing them, doing speed runs, clearing with little to no interaction and experiencing few if any actual deaths.

The same thing will happen with these new changes. A lot of complaining and over-reacting about the difficulty that will be a moot point because people will have adapted.

A PTR would be useless in GW. Anything that could be tested can be tested internally.

For example, how are you going to test overflows? WvW? The trading post? Guesting? PvE or social crossrealm features?

Not to mention framework changes to allow more than one character to have an independent server, making sure a character from ptr cannot guest, make account bound progress, share storage, or mail anything. Those are large changes to core systems in the game to allow public testing in an extremely limited capacity?

There is no benefit to that at all. Especially when the tones of a lot of the people that request it seem to be coming from the desire to get access to stuff earlier instead of legitimately testing. All that results from that is instead of “You said the patch would be the 28th, its the 29th in some countries. LIES!” you would have “You said the PTR was getting the changes on the 14th, it’s the 15th in some part of the world. LIES!”

Anyways, after the thousands of people screaming about launch times and early patch notes for Halloween, Lost Shores and Wintersday, you would figure everyone would get a clue. Anet releases patches to world-wide servers, simultaneously. Patch notes come with the patches. That’s the reality of it. That’s how they have been going things for about 8 years now and it’s not going to change for you. My friendly suggestion is you find another hobby to hold your attention while you wait to scour over patch notes instead of faulting someone else for not catering to your impatience on the internet. Thats going to give you wrinkles.

I hear Whittling is nice. Requires concentration, calms the nerves, and time just flies by. Underwater basket-weaving is also supposed to be good for the soul.

The Drunkard, Party Animal, and Sweet tooth achievements/titles in GW1 took much longer and were much more expensive to max out.

They are sticking to tradition. Some achievements aren’t meant to be gotten in a few hours or a few months. They are meant to take years to achieve as you play the game, content updates, and expansions. The holidays and special events usually yield the biggest progress boosts.

The food based title has always been easier and a good deal cheaper because of the availability and mass quantity of sweets you could get. In GW1 this was from events. In GW2 it’s from cooking. Party animal was a bit tougher and drunkard was easily the most expensive if you tried to do it all at once.

Working as intended.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Drunkard
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Sweet_tooth
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Party_animal

I can’t speak for every let down GW1 fan. But I think many of them would agree with my perspective of it (I actually know they do from previous threads similar to this), so let me try to clarify a few things.

…GW2 is not a bad game. It’s an amazing game. It can get boring because of the challenge that GW1 players are used to, but its not a boring game overall. It just doesn’t feel like a sequel. It feels like more of an entirely different game with some fan-service thrown in as a nod to long time supporters.

Without getting in to the obvious gameplay and design differences and to give some examples people might relate to:

Persona 4 was an RPG with a huge and loyal fan base. Persona 4 Arena was a straight up fighting game made by an entirely separate studio, years later. Even though they were different genres, they both still felt like Persona. Even if you were to remove the key characters from the fighter and replace them with new ones, you could still say…“This is a Persona game”. Whatever that magic formula is, Arc Sys nailed it.

Goldeneye was a defining game in a lot of our childhoods. Its one of the most universally beloved games of my generation. When Rare couldn’t do another Bond game, they made their own IP instead called Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark was the sequel to Goldeneye. Even though they were completely different properties, you could tell the moment you started playing that the same guys made it, that it had all of the same awesome as the original with some more awesome caked on top. When you think of O’brian’s basic statement – to take everything loved about the original and add stuff to make it better – Goldeneye to Perfect Dark is pretty much the poster-child of that sentiment.

So you have a property that retained its identity across genres, and you have a sequel that retained the spirit of it’s predecessor. The Guild Wars franchise lost its identity between games, and the sequel has none of the spirit of the original. And that is why a lot of the veterans have become dismayed with it.