Guild Wars 2

I’d love to have glasses for my Guard, they would look great on her :p

Upham.6137:

Suddenflame.2601:

To get to 10k Achievement points is not by any means easy, and you actually had to play to get those points.

Time consuming doesn’t mean hard, just time consuming. Most 10k AP players I see in dungeons are as bad as 1k AP players, with the difference that they have useless legendaries, expensive skins and fancy titles.

I agree with this. I think I figured out achievement points meant nothing when…achievement systems first became big.

A player is either good or bad, whether they have 1k or 10k AP. I have seen nothing to link AP amount to player skill in any game, and especially in GW2. I think most of the hate for low AP players stems from a frustration of having 10 times their AP but not being any better of a player, when they feel all the work they have invested should make them better.

Gibson.4036:

Not sure how many people are aware, but dyes were originally intended to be unlocked across the entire account. Kristen Perry, who was responsible for designing the dye system, blogged about it in late 2010.

Then, in 2012, a post announced that ArenaNet had changed their mind, and were going to make them unlocked per character. The reasoning given was that they wanted dye unlocks to feel like a part of individual character progression. Oddly enough, this was not posted by Kristen Perry or another game designer. It was posted by Crystin Cox, the “monetization manager”, known for her previous work in developing Maplestory’s cash shop.

Hahahahahahahaha oh my. RIP Customer Service 2012.

I know it’s not funny, but it’s really so bad and such a horrid way to treat the people who pay your paychecks. It’s just so bad I can’t stop laughing.

velmeister.4187:

D@mned if you do, d@mned if you don’t.

BLTC Gemstore could generate more revenue thru micro-transactions by providing consumers QoL or cosmetic enhancements without impacting the gameplay. It could also become a central-piece of the game where all the content is developed and distributed just to earn revenue though it

Trading Post could serve a great purpose by meeting needs of all the players across multiple servers but, it could also force the players to maximize their gold/hour route to stay solvent.

Character progression could be just an illusion thru constant mudflation or it could be meaningful where a character’s achievement journal tells the deeds as one embarks on an epic and challenging journey in Tyria

Achievement panel could be a great reflection of one’s deeds and abilities or it could be a mere checklist of items to do for getting tier based rewards.

Zerging could be a great open world experience where a world boss dominating a zone need to be subdued by overwhelming force or it could be used to trivialize every single content in the game.

Temporary Content paves path towards ever-changing world with new things to do, new places to explore. It could be an Epic journey like LOTRO’s epic quests. It could also be reduced to checklist completion.

Tank and spank could be a great teaming experience in a holy trinity setup or could be the mundane experience that every MMO has to offer.

Dodging and position Play could be very challenging by propoer use of setting up combo fields and utilizing them with apprpriate finishers or it could simply be ignored by using brute force glass cannon berserkers.

This is a never-ending list of things that exist in this game. All of them can be used to enhance user experience or to kill it. Sometimes what looks great as a concept may fare poorly during implementation; something that seems to be a great idea can fail miraculously during execution.

GW2 is suffering from poor execution of great ideas and failed implementation of interesting concepts.

Probably that’s why many people are feeling alienated from this game.

Good post here. +1

Ision.3207:

Hello Anet Devs … here’s an idea that I think BOTH you guys AND the players will like:
Create an OUT of combat ONLY +25% run speed foot/boot skin and sell it for 600 gems or so. Make it so it does NOT work in WvW or PvP …

Many players (myself included) dislike having to constantly click the utilities with swiftness just to run around Lion’s Arch or the open world PvE zones … so I’m pretty sure there would be a large market of players for an out-of-combat PVE +25% speed skin. And since the speed-boost skin would be out of combat only, it would have ZERO effect on builds.

As to what skin to make it, don’t know. Perhaps a simple “invisible” skin will do. Or, you guys could create a specific skin that changes the foot-gear appearance and add an on-off option like you do for back-pieces.

I think you guys could make a nice little bit of coin by adding this simple Quality of Life item. And I think the players would be appreciative.

Thank you.

I fully support the idea of a permanent speed boost in PvE for gems. I might actually buy gems again for the first time since June.

No need to make it an item, make it an account unlock.

Lexandro.1456:

How is someone removing it cutting time in half? The removed infusion is useless, unless placed in another slot. Removed infusions CANNOT be used to create increased stat, only +1infs can be combined.

And as I said I use boosters when I pvp or WvW. They are of little to no use in PvE as almost all of the content is faceroll easy, or its zerged to oblivion.

Your argument has been shotdown again and again. Just be adult about it and admit your error and move on.

Just because your opinion is to shoot down his opinion doesn’t mean he made any error. No error was made in having his own opinion.

Try to be a little less insulting as well. It goes a long way to making people agree with you

Straegen.2938:

They should boost the rewards for small teams and solo players rather than “nerfing” zerg rewards.

One sentence. Simple solution. I like it.

Wow. Never thought I’d see the day when people advocated P2W. This is amazing. Good luck OP, here is some flame resistant armor

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Aeonblade.8709:

It’s very pay to win. Grinding an hour gets you what? 2-3g on average? Or I can go to work for an hour, buy 800 gems with lots of money left over, and be 5 times richer, in game and IRL.

That is the purest definition of P2W.

What are you winning in this scenario?

He got to play the game for an hour while you were at work.. seems to me like he’s the winner.

/facepalm

I have easier to access to things in game because of that work, so while he grinds mobs for 8 hours for money, I work an hour for the same amount of money to buy bought through gems.

I have a net gain of 7 hours over this poor random guy where I can just go do whatever I want in game and not have to farm to get the gold.

If it’s just looking different, no stat increase, that’s horizontal progression, not vertical. Just an fyi.

Lexandro.1456:

Its not pay to win, not even close.

Gem Store = / = Pay to Win

EVERYTHING in the gem store can be purchased using in game gold which you can earn from playing.

And on top of that getting “back” infusions is even easier now with the new gem store item for removing upgrades to gear. Which again is attainable with gold.

It’s very pay to win. Grinding an hour gets you what? 2-3g on average? Or I can go to work for an hour, buy 800 gems with lots of money left over, and be 5 times richer, in game and IRL.

That is the purest definition of P2W.

It seems like people would be excited if WoW released today based on the hype I see for stuff like WildStar (WoW style MMO.)

It’s not really important either way, because we have no way of knowing, but just on the ip alone they would get 2-4 million right off the bat from warcraft fans in general. I think it’s silly to say no one would play one of the biggest franchises in gaming.

Here we go, my humble opinion:

• Lack of skill/weapon choices. Weapon skills should be slotted just like your skill point skills. All weapons should be available to every class.

• Lack of build choice and class diversity. The game feels like most classes are the same minus the color of your hot buttons and a few flavor abilities

• Emphasis on long term grind. This is a big one for me. Some grind is fine, and to be expected with the genre, but this game goes above and beyond most of even the worst MMO grinds.

• Reward structure. The game needs to feel more rewarding for the time you invest in it. Right now there feels like a major disconnect in game for time vs reward.

• Roleless combat. I know most won’t agree with this it seems, but the lack of any purpose to your class extends beyond just traits and weapon skills. It extends to the core combat system of the game itself. Basically, the game relies far too heavily on flat damage, to the point where any other build is ineffective minus specialty situations.

• Wardrobe system. The Transmutation stone system is a complete nightmare wrought with bugs and loopholes. It should of been a tab labeled “Wardrobe” on the character pane from the beginning.

• Living Story. Ugh. At least now we know that waiting a few extra weeks for a real content update is important.

EDIT: Sorry that’s six. Oh well.

slamb.4781:

So i was thinking would people still Zerg / Karma train if there where no / less rewards?

The thought is that an objective be worth X amount of WXP and Karma and the more people in the Area of the event such as taking a Camp and or tower receive a portion of the WXP / Karma. So the more people in the Zerg the less WXP and Karma an individual player would receive.

for example,

If a camp is worth 1000 WXP and 4 players take it they receive 250 WXP each
and if 20 players take the same camp they each only receive 50 WXP each

this could also roll over on to loot as well such as less players that kill a Lord better chance for higher tier loot.

If they take away rewards for capping things, they better make loot bags drop a green+ item every time. Right now, taking keeps/towers is the only thing propping up WvW in the sense that I would be broke if we didn’t get those rewards.

It would just force me to PvE to have money, which I wouldn’t do, I’d rather just leave the game.

Ulari.9547:

STRanger.5120:

Ulari.9547:

It is not a balance issue.
There is no balance reason for condition damage to go down in a group while direct damage does not.

If two players can each do 1,000 DPS … there is no balance reason why one player gets to do only 10% of his damage when attacking a mob that 10 other people are attacking and the other player still does full damage in the same situation. That is just dumb. But that is what the condition cap does.

Ulari

Balance issue:

Berzerker = high dmg, but fragile character
Rabid/Dire/Carrion = high cond. dmg, but much survivable than zerker.

Here you go

I won’t argue weather condition damage is better than direct damage…
I will argue that having a the condition stack limit on the target is stupid.

Five condition characters should do 5x the damage of one condition character.
Just like five berserkers do 5x the damage of one berserker.

If a condition damage character is ‘better’ than a direct damage character… of course it should be balanced. But making every condition build worthless in world events and ‘bad’ when grouped with other condition builds is not the way to balance it. And Anet knows this… they have acknowledged in these forums that the condition cap is an issue. My frustration (and others) is that it has been more than a year since this issue was acknowledged and there has been no fix, no planned fix, no discussion of what the fix would be…

And it is important to fix this.
Having condition damage inferior to direct damage in group settings (in an MMO) hurts build diversity and hurts the game.

Ulari

Good post, especially that last part.

Aeros.2046:

No, this match up is boring. The only reason its remotely even is the PvDoor fest that resets everything. Dragonbrands NA spends all day getting used as a doormat by Ebay and Borlis, losing all their stuff, while Dragonbrands Oceanic karma trains in the wee hours of the morning.

Since Ebay and Borlis have about the same NA presence, neither server can match the 600 PPT DB pulls in the early hours. In essence, this match is boiling down to how long Borlis and Ehmry stay a sleep, and how fast Borlis and Ehmry can PvDoor dragonbrand when they wake up.

Its boring.

/shrug. I’m having fun. We need to recruit NA time slot, you guys need to recruit SEA time slot is what it boils down too.

I have still been getting plenty of good fights this week either way.

DrDivine.5378:

I always found this strange, as we used to play the first one, then played WoW for a long time, and a lot of my friends were looking for a new MMO to play that didn’t have a subscription fee.

I showed them Guild Wars 2 as it’s got mostly what they were looking for. More action based combat, good artwork, crafting, more focus on team work, etc. Unfortunately, for some reason this game never clicks with anyone. It has all these innovative mmo mechanics, yet they would rather play a standard WoW clone with less content.

I’m not asking to change someone’s mind as I know everyone has different taste, but what do you think it is that keeps people from getting into Guild Wars 2 like that?

Really, it boils down to time vs reward. GW2 has hundreds of great ideas, but it’s obscured by the fact that you have to grind hundreds of hours for the rewards, and at the end of the grind it leaves you feeling worse off than when you started, mostly because you worked hundreds of hours for a bow that shoots unicorns, but doesn’t make your character better in any way from before.

At least, that’s what all my friends told me. I had 4 RL friends that had bought the game with me, and I’m the only one that still plays. 2 went back to WoW. 1 plays Rift.

I think Anet just needs to work on their delivery of carrots on sticks, for instance, Ascended armor/weapons only being assuredly obtainable from crafting. That is dumb. Not a single one of the 5 of us bothers with crafting in MMO’s. It’s boring.

To counter that point, when other games (WoW, Rift, etc) release a new dungeon or new content, there is a purpose to doing it. You are guaranteed to get something out of it. If Anet can give their updates meaning and purpose, I feel like it would bring back some of the mass exodus.

Another reason I feel like it fails to draw in any of my RL friends, is because classes have no role or point beyond what flavor you like. But that is an issue I don’t see being resolved as easily as making the game more rewarding to play.

Whenever my friend asked me how to spec his traits for tanking, and I told him there was no reason to for PvE, he quit 2 days later. I honestly don’t know what they expected by only having DPS be a viable option in game. None of them wanted to play a system dumbed down for the masses, they wanted their choices to have meaning.

Yorgie B.5618:

Khunvyel.3972:

8.) Our character progression becomes more and more solo and ego-focused, or rather “solo in a big blob of people.” You continue to remove the incentive to play together. The two worst things you’ve done was adding more and more parts for the daily quest to complete which are giving out achievement points. You would be surprised how many people are chasing those points like mad and most of them are better off done alone. The other thing is, you are continuing to alienate bonded players by forcing activities into a non-groupable pvp set.

Please cap the achievement points obtainable for the daily reward chest to 5. The other way would be to remove achievement points from dailies to and monthlies altogether and do that retroactively as well. Completing a daily is not worth mentioning to be an “achievement” at all.

Allow players to group and join an activity as a group. Think of the community based tournaments that would be held. Quarterly Kegbrawl championships are just one of many possibilities. If you even add personal or time-specific leaderboards into those activities, a lot of people would play that more often.

I disagree with this proposal. Achievement points are tied to rewards and already require a significant amount of time to reach each tier. If you limit the number of achievements a player can receive you are hurting the players that are working hard daily to reach those rewards and adding another ridiculous time gate. I completely disagree with trying to force people to play together by enacting a block which doesn’t promote the “play the way you want” mantra. If I want to finish 10 daily achievements or more, every single day then I should be able to.

I don’t think the point was that you can’t do all the daily steps so much as something as trivial and meaninglessly easy as dailies shouldn’t of had an achievement point reward to begin with.

At least that’s what I gleaned from it.

Sorry, I know I’m late, I meant to post my Horizontal Progression ideas last night but I got wrapped up in leveling my Necro. I think a lot of good came out of the Vertical Progression side of the convo, and now I’ll move on:

Ideas for Horizontal Progression:

Skin availability and obtainability

• All skins should eventually be able to be found in the game world without a real money purchase. Of course, you want exclusive armors and items on the TP, but keep in mind after 6 months or so and the “newness” of these armors wear off, it might behoove you guys to throw your players a bone and make a way for them to be obtained in game.

• Skins aren’t the only form of horizontal progression. A good example is the new healing skills. New skills should be added to the game constantly.

• Make the progression feel rewarding. Right now, the horizontal progression side of the game is near non-existent. No new thrilling armor sets (style wise, and imo) have been released in a long, long time. There is nothing really to work on, horizontal wise, besides a legendary, which a lot of people aren’t going to do, I.E. me. I just don’t care about legendaries and I don’t really like any of the models. Basically, give us more than just legendaries to work on for horizontal progression.

• Skills skills skills. Give us a way to unlock new skills and new skill combos. Don’t break the game, but make it interesting and worthwhile to get, not because you have to, but because you want to

• Currency Squish – This idea I’ve been letting spin it’s tires in my head for quite a while now. I feel like all of the dungeon currencies need to be squished to a single universal currency, used to purchase all of the horizontal progression skins in the game. Make multiple ways beyond dungeons to obtain this currency (WvW, JP, DE trains, etc.) Then, you are able to choose which direction you want your horizontal progression to go. No forcing people to do dungeons they don’t want to do. I have been done with dungeons in MMO’s for years. I’m a WvW player and open world PvE player, forcing me to do dungeons when I don’t want to is why WoW has lost 5 million subs in 1.5 years. I haven’t ironed out all the details yet.

tl;dr There are too many currencies in game. Make a universal horizontal progression/skin currency used to purchase all skins in game.

I’m sure I’ll have more to add later, but I’m thinking pretty heavily on currency squish atm for ease of horizontal progression, because right now it feels far too painful to even deal with.

As someone who played through some of Season 1, there were no winners, everyone lost as soon as the season was over and they opened their 7 week grind chest with 2 greens in it.

No one is a winner.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

What all this comes down to is Entitlement. Certain players feel entitled to the best stuff as soon as possible. So when there’s gated end game content, and the player really wants it right away, they’ll call it a “grind”.

Guild Wars 2, to this day, still holds true to their Manifesto. Anet didn’t make a grindy game, but that doesn’t mean they left out the grind completely. You can play this game any way you want, and still have access to the same content, same story. The grind is there if you choose.

One huge mistake these complainers are making is that they feel they can’t live without Ascended gear. In their minds, they’ve convinced themselves that in order to be good at this game, you have to have the best gear. This is completely untrue. You can have max weapons, armor, and all trinkets and accessories, and still lose to another player clad in all Rare level gear. Skill will always hold more weight than gear.

Please note the following: BiS gear should be a goal, not a requirement. If you feel it’s a requirement, then that means you’ve forced the grind upon yourself.

Another entitlement post. This is new and original. At least come up with a new horse if you are going to bash other’s opinions.

Entitlement has nothing to do with abysmal drop rates to the point where playing is pointless a lot of the time.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

I’ve pretty much summed up my thoughts on this. You have a good list there. Just keep in mind there are a lot of people out there who don’t like crafting, and the talks should be productive.

Thanks again for all the time you are taking to communicate with us Chris.

I don’t feel like many things should be added until we can work out what direction the game is headed. It’s such an amalgam of hypocritical design decisions, adding a bunch of new stuff without fixing the old would just exacerbate the situation IMO. But…if we are talking in hypotheticals, (no particular order of importance)

1. New armor and weapon skins
2. Return of the trinity so class choice actually means something in game
3. Wardrobe feature, remove Tstones
4. New and exciting world events/DE’s/Hearts etc. And new WvW maps (especially WvW maps)
5. Dual Spec (Or even 3 or 4 saved trait sheets)

Palador.2170:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

As for crafting your first set of ascended gear we want this to take a bit of time before you get to our horizontal progression systems.

Stop.

Right there. See that?

That’s making people gear up before they get to the fun stuff. That’s exactly what that is.

Throw that out, it’s terrible. Rethink.

Yes. That’s the whole problem. This is supposed to be a game where max tier gear (ascended) is easily obtainable as soon as you hit 80.

Forcing people into month and year long time sinks just to get their armor is the worst thing you can do imo

And this is from someone who enjoys vertical progression more than most. If it’s too much of a grind for a Vertical Progression centered player, that tells you already that you way overshot your mark.

VOLKON.1290:

VOLKON.1290:

Could always bring back the Eidolon in some fashion…

Let me embellish now that the grey matter has digested this a bit.

Every thirty hours, on all servers simultaneously (to prevent hopping) and in overflows a Meta event chain kicks off somewhere, possibly even in a new, small zone that is relatively dead otherwise. The chain takes your through a few events and, at the culmination, there before you stands… er… floats the Eidolon. In a battle of Tequatlesque fashion, the server comes together to take down the beastie. You loot from it (if you win) an “Eye of the Eidolon”, which you can use to turn in for a piece of ascended gear of the stats of your liking.

I chose thirty hours because that will rotate through the timezones for the server and not leave people out due to work or region, but that can be modified of course, say fifty-four hours for example if it seems too frequent.

Meta event, mega-beast, coordinated server efforts, alternative means to get a piece o’ gear.

That’s a cool idea Volk, hope they carry this one to the table with them.

Phy.2913:

Ulari.9547:

And if it is a technical issue… Blizzard, with their glacial development pace, was able to solve the issue in their ancient WoW engine back in 2008.

Sad!

Ulari <— disappointed

It took them 4 years to do it.

While true, that doesn’t mean it has to take 4 years for every other game too

But…but…It’s so funny when they kill themselves trying to hurt my tanky guardian.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Overall I feel like time gating is important for an MMO because it’s important to close the gap between the causal and hardcore group so you can make sure your future rewards and content are useful for a wider variety of players. …

I support the reasons behind gating and I even support specific examples within the game. Unfortunately, I think the way it was implemented for ascended gear has hurt rather than helped the game. In particular, the time gating makes the game less fun to play.

Missing from the cons listed by Izzy above:

• Gear-related time gates are inherently tedious.

Missing from the cons as time gates are applied in GW2:

• All crafting-related time gates force players to logon specific characters and perform specific tasks.

I support the daily time gating of rewards from content. Those who play more and have more alts can therefore obtain more ascended rings and/or dragonite ore than others, but they can’t gain it so rapidly that more casual players fall too far behind.

• Bonus rewards are account-bound. -> Reduces pressure on players to attend every event and reduces likelihood of overflows.
• World event rewards are character-bound. -> Gives a minor advantage to altaholics.
• Pristine fractal relics and ascended drops are account-bound.

In contrast, I don’t support the gating for ascended armor and weapons:

• There’s only one guaranteed way to obtain these, forcing everyone to level up crafting. Previously, those who hated crafting could avoid it completely.
• It discourages build experimentation/swapping/diversity.
• Small mistakes are expensive and horribly frustrating.
• There are multiple gates: laurel costs for recipes, karma costs for materials & recipes, level multiple disciplines to 500, gather multiple types of materials, and the refining itself.
• The specific gates force people to play certain types of content: karma can be obtained from any part of the game, but there are very few sources of dragonite.
• Dark Matter has only once source and it’s horribly random — there’s absolutely no way to predict how much gold one needs to invest per item.
• Celestial recipes no longer drop, putting people at the mercy of speculators. Bad enough that this affects people who didn’t think ahead during the Zephrite visits, but anyone who has started the game since had no opportunity to learn these recipes.

Well said, that was kind of my point, forcing the acquisition of Ascended gear through crafting leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I’m not a crafter, nor do I want to be forced to craft to have ascended gear.

It’s a good idea. The spear has always been one of my favorite medieval weapons. I feel like restricting it to underwater usage is sad. I see my spear what, maybe 2 times a week if that?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Very cool, just want to add Chris, as a WvW player, I don’t really craft, and I think most of that would be a recurring theme. I have no numbers to enforce that, but I believe WvW players as a whole would be better with Ascended drops rather than just the mats dropping.

Even if the mats drop in WvW at an accelerated rate, most hardcore WvW players aren’t going to want to be forced into crafting, at least from my experience.

Every player is different, but keep in mind not everyone wants to collect crafting materials.

If you wanted to avoid a “bad RNG” situation, make an ascended armor/weapon guaranteed every 25 WvW ranks or something.

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

Set the lockout timer to an hour, and have the reward some zone specific crafting item upto 1 T6 or more of a lesser tier. I just want a reliable way to farm T6 mats that doesn’t involve ridiculous drop rates.

Dont think “farming” is the idea here. Its getting people out and about and being rewarded for it, playing in whatever zone they want. Not another “find the most efficient route and drive it into the ground” as with queensdale champ train.

The fact that the hearts are locked for a month after doing them prevents farming and exploiting. This won’t please the farmers that like to find the quickest route between two points.

It doesn’t matter what the intent is or how long of a lockout timer there is, people will find the most efficient way to farm it, or ignore it completely if it isn’t worth the time. Farming and grinding are the same thing, and for me, hearts are a grind.

There is no efficient method for T6 blood, there’s only grind, you grind mobs or money.

I wouldn’t say everyone. Theres enough people running dungeons, fractals, running around Orr, or participating in Winters day or an LS event to denote that farming the most efficient path is not the only thing people do in the game.

Running COE is not very efficient, but I do it because its fun, as Im sure many others do.
Doing the jumping puzzle in wintersday isnt efficient and won’t net you anything really, but people do it because its fun.

Would you rather everyone in the game sit in Queensdale or FSG and run the champ train because its the most efficient means of karma? If this is the case, then delete everything else from the game, and just have these two methods of acquiring anything.

If you want people to go somewhere else, then make it worth the effort. A one month lockout would make it worthless for 29 days out of the month, which doesn’t improve anything. I don’t run champ trains because they’re boring, but farming mobs is just as boring and far less rewarding. I need T6 mats, but getting them on my own is the most tedious grind this game has.

You are assuming that we will only have one map to do this.

All zones would be open to this. Once you are locked out of one zone from completing all the hearts, you move onto another one.

Exactly. Even as a dedicated player playing over 4 hours a day, it’s going to take you most of the month to clear all the hearts again. For me playing 1-2 hours a day on average, I might get half of them done, but I would log in thinking “Cool, I have 10 different zones to do stuff in.” Rather than log in and think “Do I wanna do a champ train or work on the daily? Ahhh forget it, not worth it anyway, I’m not guaranteed a reward for hours of effort.”

TheDaiBish.9735:

If there wasn’t the whole legal issue of ownership and making money out of it, I’d have said make a competition out of redesigning them.

That would be cool. One of the coolest things about EQ these days(Yea I know, it’s 15 years old and I still play it, oh well) is the “Hero’s Forge” which allows the community to make item / weapon models and then they choose the best ones to be available through purchase in the in game store.

I really love the way EQ handled the F2P transition and the cosmetic only store, some lessons could be learned even from an old fogey like EQ.

Personally, I think most of even the low level armors look better than these sets. But, this is why we have transmutation stones I suppose.

killcannon.2576:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

killcannon.2576:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

killcannon.2576:

remove half of them. especially ones near events/champs

I reject your idea wholeheartedly. None of you HAVE to USE the waypoints. If you don’t want to, then don’t.

The open world is way too big. You know how many world bosses would get done if there were no WPs? None. I’m not wasting an hour running from one side of the Tyria to the other just to do an event. Ever. It would be over before I got anywhere anyway. Oh, or maybe I could just make 30 characters, one for each huge map, and park it there. That sounds like fun…. NOT.

That’s nice. Long live the zerg trains , eh? lol

Has nothing to do with zerg trains. I have only so much time to play in a day, and harvest mats and and kills stuff and do dungeons and play wvw and do world bosses AND champs… I don’t want to spend my hour running from here to there, thank you. I’m not 19, I don’t play for 12 hours a day. With waypoints I can get to where I want to play for the time I have to play. Simple as that.

Oh…one of the “I got a life” elites. Don’t have the time to invest in an MMO? I don’t care. The lowest common denominator of gaming.

Give it to me now, cause I “got a life”.

I’m hooked, how is having a life and still wanting to spend your time in game doing something fun a bad thing?

/popcorn

Pawstruck.9708:

Maybe folks could fill me in on what TERA does wrong, because I haven’t made it past level 10 yet…

The PvP is horribly unbalanced (like, way worse than GW2 unbalanced)
Crafting is horrendous and you have a chance of failure and destroying an upgrade level if an upgrade fails.
Open world content is near non existent past the standard kill 10 x,y, and z mobs.
The economy is in the pits because of loopholes and gold farmers.
The game has a race of children in scantily clad clothes, which is just wrong to me.

The combat and graphics are top notch and that’s about it for pros. The dungeons are a lot more fun in TERA though imo. Otherwise GW2 is gonna be better in every other category.

Servanin.5021:

- World bosses are immune to conditions
- Destructible objects are immune to bleeds
- Bleeds, poison and burn only count from the most recent(Or highest damage?) applicant

So during the early days of GW2, I could have passed this off as an oversight or bug, but a year later its still the same way so its evidently intentional. Why?

I think they are scared to touch conditions until they gather more data. Right now condi builds are near useless in most PvE situations, and way too good in WvW situations.

They need to overhaul the entire condition system, but I wouldn’t expect it any time soon.

I really like this idea and I hope we get something like this implemented. I would actually finish up my hearts I have never done probably as well.

Essence Snow.3194:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Essence Snow.3194:

I hope ya’ll realize that most every pro and reason you just listed gets negated by allowing players to bypass time gates via gold.

This is why we really count crafting gating as a soft gate it is not meant to be a hard gate, but we have a lot of other time gates in the game daily, gathering, guild mission cool down, fractal daily timers ect. I know most of the concern about gating is directed at the crafting gate but I’m more trying to give insight to why we use time gates at all.

That still does not explain why ya’ll allow gold (the hardcore and tp players) to bypass the time gates that hold the rest/majority of the population back. It only serves to further the gap between them, which is in direct contradiction to what they are supposed to do in the 1st place.

So my questions are:

1) How do you define a soft cap?
2) Why was craft ascended designated as a soft cap vs a hard cap?
3) Why was gold allowed to bypass the “soft cap”?

To be honest, I think it has to do with gem sales and gem to gold conversion. It gives players a way to bypass the time gate, but only if they are willing to spend some cheddar. It’s smart from a business standpoint, but it really shafts the majority of players in game.

Viking Jorun.5413:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

I love that down state exists, it adds more elements of play. It brings in more strategy. I’ve often used downed teammates as bait so I can kill the person who downed them. Or I will use a downed enemy to bait his friend into trying to res him, then I beat up the guy ressing and I now have 2 kills!

The only real issue I have with down state is that it’s too easy to rally. In PvE I understand kill 1 mob, rally, ok. But in WvW you should have to meet some more criteria before you are allowed to rally off a certain target. I think either multiple targets should have to die to rally you. Or that you need to reach a higher damage threshold than just “tagging” someone. Possibly a combination of both.

As a WvW and sPvP player, I like that downed-state exists. I feel that the game meta would be so burst focused without it that it would be incredibly boring.

This. The downed state replaces the need for a dedicated healer class, and makes organized team play VERY rewarding, and also allows for organized teams to punish rezzing. It’s an active decision you have to make, and I can’t fathom why these threads still pop up every week. It’s part of the game and is actually one of the KEY things that makes PvP fun to spectate.

Watching someone you just slammed into the ground get back up in 5 seconds is SO rewarding and entertaining, do go on.

milo.6942:

Ath.2531:

I’m still waiting for the “expansion’s worth of content” that was supposed to come sometime this year.

it came and was promptly removed every 2 weeks

He said expansion’s worth of content, not a bug fix sized patch with mini games.

Want to chime in with this small thought:

Time gates have no place whatsoever in a supposedly casual and player friendly / grind free game.

Time gates are a grind that drives people away from games. I can’t think of a single person that has said “Oh I’m so glad I have to wait 17 more days to get this item even though I have the mats right in front of me.”

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

I was reading that thread as well, I’m glad that idea got transplanted over to this thread. This would help immensely with mat farming concerns and the new tier of ascended armors. I’m in full support of repeatable hearts as long as the reward is worth the time invested (I.E. 1 T6 mat and 1 RNG based mat sounds good)

GW2 has a great combat system. The only better one I can think of action wise is TERA. But TERA wasn’t a very good game beyond how fluid and responsive the combat was.

It’s fine. Just ignore the pinging. No one should be concerned what others are wearing in this game, there is nothing gear wise that is thrillingly powerful or required, sans AR for Fractals.

Basically: Gear score died for a reason.

CMstorm.8679:

. It’s only a grind if Anet makes it a grind

Agreed!

TheDaiBish.9735:

Aeonblade.8709:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like this is completely the wrong direction. All the stats should be unlockable via something in the game mode you play in, not forcing you to do supposedly optional stuff like crafting.

I’m glad you like the idea, but what you said would actually turn me AWAY from that kind of system.

So you would prefer different accomplishments to unlock each combination within each play style? How far would you take that? Just WvW vs PvE? Then you still have the problem of WvW roamers vs WvW zergers vs WvW defenders. In PvE there’s a whole myriad of play styles: dungeon runners, harvester/crafters, farmers, fractal runners, explorers, role-players, achievement hunters, living story focused players, etc, and they will all inevitably complain if they’re forced outside their usual play area. If you try giving all play styles a way to unlock everything by only doing one thing, you’ll end up giving them nothing but a grind.

I feel like the larger grind would be giving people stuff to do that they hate doing. For instance, I’d rather get 10,000 WvW kills for an achievement than have to kill1,000 PvE mobs. I feel like the 1000 PvE mobs is the bigger grind for me.

What about activities that require dedication from a particular game mode?

For example:

• For crafting, alter crafting so Ascended can be made at 450. At 475, Infusions, Runes / Sigils can be added to a piece of gear. At 500, Inscriptions / Insignia’s can be added.
• For WvW, allow players to unlock something on their piece of armour every X ranks. For example, after rank 50: every 5 ranks an Infusion, every 10 ranks a Rune / Sigil, every 25 ranks a stat combination, with one of each unlockable as soon as you hit 50.
• For Fractal runners (who have reached Level 10) and dungeon runners (who have unlocked Dungeon Master), they have to find the hidden bosses in a set of Fractals / along each path, with one in each Fractal / path. Each boss gives an item. 3 of these items can be used to unlock a stat combination, with dungeon tokens / Fractal Relics unlocking Runes / Sigils and Infusions.
• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

Now that, is an idea I can get behind. +1

Rouven.7409:

Well look at that, my comic of the day is somewhat related to this topic.
http://www.darklegacycomics.com/420.html
Disclaimer – mature language is used (one word).

Haha, classic.

Hax.8701:

Wow it’s Tuesday and only 2 pages so far. Shame on you all.

Yea it’s pretty quiet. Think this is what happens when all 3 servers have different prime times lol.

Azure Prower.8701:

Yes? No? Why? Why not?

I’d rather they did to bring back immersion to the world. Instead of looking at load screens as abrupt transitions.

No, if there are no mounts in game the waypoint system is the only thing propping up travel that doesn’t waste my time.

Zeldain.5710:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

I have a PC and it does far more then Steam can ever hope to do so your argument is falling on deaf ears. Steam OS offers nothing that I would be interested in, absolutely nothing at all. I have no use for a light weight OS, I want an OS that can do something else besides play games. Dedicated gaming machines are actually a thing of the past.
Now people want something that can do more, something that can be a whole entertainment center. Steam is a leap backwards.

But I don’t want or need it to do other things – I have a Mac for that.

If it can a) turn on and b) play games, that’s al I need in my high power desktop console.

Your gaming experience would be better AND cheaper with SteamOS on your hardware instead of Windows – period.

I feel bad because this really doesn’t have much to do with GW2 other than hoping Anet ports to Steam, but it’s a good discussion.

Steam has terrible support and terrible optimization on their Steam gaming platform. It’s so bogged down with garbage, I don’t understand why anyone would subject their PC to those products.

Thinking the OS is going to be somehow better just blows my mind. It’s like assuming the next president is going to be better just because it’s the next president. There is nothing to base what the OS will be capable of beyond what the company says and you can’t trust a word that comes out of their mouths in my experience with them.