Guild Wars 2

The trait system is a good way to add an increase in power without relying on the level cap (never mind that it relies on it for unlocking initially). A rework would be really nice. What other games have handled level caps well? I can think of a few that had systems I enjoyed (TSW and GW1 come to mind). Are there any other games that you guys think did it better in terms of the leveling process and the cap across expansions?

Jaymee.1560:

My husband also think, as he too now plays GW 2, is that… this is good for me in many ways may of which I posted in my original comment, but he believes that it is keeping my mind active.

This wouldn’t be the first MMO that I have been dubbed – “The Crafting Queen” and GW 2 is no exception. He believes that, with the amount of crafting I do, from jewelry, to armor, to all out ascended material gathering, he thinks this helps keeps the mind functioning… instead of… sitting dormant, as it would if I were watching TV, so he says, and… now I actually wonder if there’s any truth to that?

That’s too sciency to not be true so I am going to believe it.

I really like this idea. It makes a bit more sense than the current distribution and I couldn’t see it taking much time or effort or coding (but I don’t do software so what do I know). +1 SAH!

I understand the desire for “vertical progression” in an mmo but I have always disagreed with the arbitrary use of a level cap to fulfill it. A gear grind isn’t much better but I can’t think of a better way to implement that style of progression (be it a level cap or gear grind). I have fallen in love with the idea of horizontal progression since GW2 came out. Apparently I am a girly man and I like to play dress up.
cough cough I mean manly man, who does manly dressup stuff.

I once met a lovely Gnome named Celinedion. But she was banned…..

Hamfast.8719:

Trixie.7614:

Hey, I’m second in command as well. Something is fishy here.

Nothing fishy about it. I’m also the Hero of Shaemoor, the Slayer of Issormir, a Charr Tribune, the reigning Snaff Savant, a Vigil Warmaster, an Order of Whispers Lightbringer, and a Magister of the Durmand Priory.

Maybe you’ve heard of me?

Don’t forget the slayer of Scarlet. You were definitely the only one who did that.

I am curious to know what my fellow forum goers think about the lack of level increase. I have never been a big fan of the conventional leveling system in MMOs but I feel like this may not be a popular opinion. I was a bit sad to find out that GW2 had a level cap of 80 when I got it but was relieved to find each level took about the same amount of time. So the big question is…

How do you feel about ANET not raising the level cap with the expansion?

Yes, you can save them. Just make sure to put them in a safe place so that you don’t delete them by accident

Edit: On a side note, the battle historian should be a permanent addition, so if you decide not to save them you will always have an oppurtunity to spend them.

Haha, nice post dude! I hope these feelings persist once you get some characters at max level

If games required that much time to level the player base would be much smaller. Something like that may have worked a decade ago but now it is too time intensive. Since big name MMOs have set the stage for Endgame as the start of meaningful gameplay, the longer it takes to get to max level the more players you will hemohrrage during the leveling process. Leveling has always been an arbitrary progression system for RPGs and I think it should get the boot (or take as little time as possible). But that’s just like, my opinion man.

I think that a lot of people don’t understand the kind of environment that is created when people do nothing but slam the game. Posts like this do a lot more for others than those that explain “why you hate the game”. I like to see positive feedback like this even though the game has major issues that some people believe should be addressed. Thanks for a nice post, I hope that issues you may have with the game are addressed positively and you can find more reasons to enter the game in the future

As a side note, I keep logging in because I enjoy being able to play for a short amount of time and still accomplish a portion of my goal. I tend to be very busy and I don’t always have a good amount of time to allot to gaming.

lol, I think it was worse in a few other games which had people camping high level nodes in several areas. Which made it a latency competition. Which was fun for no one.

Ooooo, nodes and kills being personal is a BIG one for me. I don’t like that form of open world PVE competition.

While I still think there is some work to be done balancing skills (does it ever stop?) I do agree with you Zoso. The flow of combat in more recent games has really detered me from making any sort of long term commitment to them.

What are some of the things that make it “better” for you Vayne?

I have to agree with you on that one and I will expand on my fourth listing. Traditional questing is very hard for me to get behind, especially with my experience in the current system. While I think that leveling systems are an archaic design choice for progression, I am glad they have taken the evolution they have; mob grinding —> quest farming —> Dynamic events/areas. Even single player console/pc rpgs that adhere to a questing mechanic are starting to bug me. FML

Seriously, that was the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. Thanks for putting forth the effort to make something like that, I had a blast watching!

Dynamic combat (the feel is different from other games)
Moving while casting spells (this is probably my number one, although certain channeled abilities still bug me)
Reliable travel that doesn’t involve some sort of Taxi (lol, wyverns pfffff)
Chained events that are tied with the state of the zone (zone story)
Lack of “falling behind” feeling (all grinding is optional)
Amount of variation in the beginning of the Personal Story (Lord Faren is love)
A story that moves forward at an acceptable pace (two weeks…ish)
Community that isn’t as Toxic as it seems (for the most part)
I can play however I want (within the rules set by the game)
Meaningful crafting

All of these systems have changed the way I play games considerably, and the inclusion of some has become a gamebreaker in certain cases (other MMOs). I think the game has a long way to go in terms of content wanted/needed by the community but as far as mmo’s are concerned I believe GW2 is a step in the right direction towards a system that caters to both sides of the playerbase (casual/hardcore). What do you guys think?

Edit: becsause what sides of the playerbase

Where you when GW1 die?
I was WoW
Ed ring, ‘GW1 ded’
‘No’

While I had some fun playing GW1, I really don’t think it was a good game. Meh, To each his/her own

I have to agree I like most of the changes from the last few patches. Each has been exciting to see and experience, and while it is pretty unpopular, I love the changes to the speed of leveling as well as the idea of introducing skills at the rate they do.

Kjeldoran.3849:

TheFamster.7806:

quote

1) blind for pve is… almost useless if you are in those situations:
- against bosses
- clearing trash (to fight against more than 5 mobs result in your blind to not hit everything due to aoe cap and to waste your “scholar rune”)
- fighting in danger situation (like aoe damage over time or like “old tom” fractal when there is nothing you can do to stop venom unless rapidly activate air and… well recover the most possible with regen… but i’ll talk about this later)

so basically the only place where blind is usefull is when clearing <5 mobs.

4)regen, prot or even vigor are MUCH BETTER than that stupid vulnerability! And yes, regeneration is usefull in some circumstances where you get costant damage where for example you “scholar rune” wouldn’t give you the 10% damage because of ambient damage… if you can’t find an example of this… do more dungeons/fractals.

That is almost 100% wrong.
1) Blind is amazing as a support ability, 5 out of 50 missing the next attack is still 5 mobs that won’t land their next hit. And as far as I know, blinding is still 10% as effective on a boss so it still serves some utility (albeit a very small amount). Yes, blind is useless during an activity which just hurts you for
4) That is not true at all. Those buffs are only good if you are taking consistent dmg (prot/regen), enduring dmg spikes (prot/regen), or have trouble moving around (vigor). Vulnerability is ALWAYS useful (although I must agree on the zerg comment) because people are always attacking. 1% more dmg means the boss goes down 1% faster, while those other buffs just ensure I can survive a longer fight.

To address your OP. The ability to provide support by the guardian class is still far and away the best out of the 8 classes. However, Guardian dps has been a bit slow for quite a while, and while you may have a vision of a guardian as a support class each individual class needs to perform at a certain level for any content played solo. On top of that, 5 man content is “balanced” around an average dps output from 5 players (in most cases). Buffs to our “selfish” abilities were necessary to assist with the average player maintaining a baseline dps during these situations. We have enough traits that can enhance a good "party support) role without forcing the class into that role. The new traits have enhanced options for solo and group play and have made taking a guardian that much more viable.

Congratulations Gaile! That sounds like a lot of her hard work paid off. I actually just moved within my own company and love hearing about the success of other people (whether it concerns lateral or horizontal movement). GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW ROLE!

Edit because spelling is hard

While I have not seen this topic before I have seen something similar firsthand. Things like this always make me ask questions like “Why should anyone feel nervous about this?” and “What have I done to alleviate these feelings in others?”. To a certain extent I believe it to be the abrasive internet culture that sets the standards for behavior in voip and that the issue is compounded by a persons relative introversion or extroversion. Regardless of how these doubts/fears are grown I hope that I and others can lessen some of anxiety felt with communication in this type of environment by staying positive and patient with people regardless of circumstance. Hopefully you encounter some like minded people and aren’t berated right out of the channel.

Persica.9728:

I’ve been an avid player since pre-launch and the last 3.5 to 4months there has been easily a 35-40% decline in players. Besides feature patch day which saw an influx of about 30% but then it dropped again about 24hrs later.

Gamers have 10sec attention spans. To leave their game with little to no new content besides a few festivals and whatnot most of us have left to new and better things.

All of this equals sad to see the game die when it could have been great

Made up metrics does not a strong argument make.

I agree that the secondary profession mechanic would just be too difficult to balance with the current system. And doesn’t the guardian have a few aspects of the Dervish already (elite skill forms)?

This is a very well though out idea. Kudos!

Kodan/Tengu. Not sure which race I like more.

PVP has a more streamlined horizontal progression. As usual there are men and women on both sides as to whether it was a good move (I tend to enjoy it, although I enjoyed the old system just as much). They have added a few new world boss fights that represent a higher difficulty than the usually world boss fare. Dungeons are I think the same or worse off with the stacking mechanics. The wardrobe system is awesome but some tuning might help reception (in regards to transmutation charge cost and the expense for alts to “have their own look”). The trait system has been refined and simplified. The traits now have to be unlocked through completion of certain map events (which I think has been met with mostly negative reception). The living story will bring more permanent additions to the game, and the option to see some of the past chapters (episodes, whatever) is coming with it. Fractals are….charming. As long as you set goals for yourself I believe you will have a positive experience. Since you already own it you might as well swing by and see the new stuff

I would say that 5g is an average. Maybe that applies to most players, maybe it doesn’t, but I can normally count on that average over the period of one week.

Haxwell.7398:

Only a small selection of legendaries, each requiring an obscene amount of time to make. Some weapon types don’t even have a legendary, no legendary armor and only a small stat increase. You do the math.

I did the math and it still says that that is an opinion. Would you rather they took less time? All weapon types do indeed have a legendary and the stats are equal with ascended to avoid any sort of extensive vertical progression.

Haxwell.7398:

An easy way to fix WvW, would be to only allow each warring faction to have a maximum of 33% of the population in a battleground. So example, hypothetically speaking if a maximum of 100 players could be fighting on a single battle ground (i’m only using this example because I suck at math) Then each faction fighting could only have a maximum of 33 players join the bg. That would make the fighting a lot more about quality over quantity.

Even with overflows this solution would punish larger servers. Even if we had equal populations in all servers, those with men and women who did not want to WvW would still gate entrance into the maps for those with large WvW populations. I think the solution is a bit more complex than imposing a limit like that or adding an outnumbered buff, but unfortunatly I am unable to see such a solution (also, this is a condi thread)

Haxwell.7398:

Sorry but they are. Simply stating facts.

That sounds more like opinion to me.

And there are a large amount of people who can count on and on about themelves and people they know who are getting precursors through exactly the ways you mentioned. What you are stating isn’t a hard truth, it is a passionate opinion (passion is good!). It is things like this that help move things forward but throughout your entire post I see nothing resembling a solution to the problem you ahve stated. Does the system need change? I believe it does, but you aren’t doing anyone any favors by stating your blunt criticism. The forums are a place for discussion, and you have effectively shut down discussion of the original post, with the original post. In the future, why don’t you post something constructive containing a solution to the proposed problem? ANET won’t be able to read every thread on every subject the community finds inadequate, but if there are enough of them and more than a few of them contain helpful and appropriate discussion don’t you think that the problem would get addressed sooner (not always the case). Just because it has been a long time does not mean they aren’t adressing it.

Because I believe that your post still does address an active issue, here is my solution to the precursor problem as dictated from a short forum post I wrote on risk vs reward:

One of the things that this game does well is time management. What I mean by that is that when I log in, whether it be for 30mins or 3 hours, I can apply that time towards any goal I have set for myself and make progress. The amount of progress might differ depending on a lot of factors: what I am doing, how long I can spend online, how life is going etc. This is due to a what I perceive as a nice balance of risk vs reward where I can still earn credit even during failure. But for all of avenues for improvement, there is very little risk involved. Regardless of the task you almost never walk away empty handed and will sometimes even get lucky and make out like a bandit! With that being said, there is an area where this is not true: Precursor acquisition. I know people who have been looking for months with nothing to show for it. Right now the system is based on RNG (like a fair portion of the game) but offers no way for players to combat the RNG mechanic. This has led to a lot of anger and wasted gold and hours farming the same content over and over again and playing with the Mystic Forge. For some people they can see their entire fortune washed away in an instant due to RNG, while others can “Get Lucky” and either strike it rich or acquire the item they have been searching for with little investment. This is the one area of the game where risk vs reward shows this much imbalance. In other games, items of epic or legendary quality tended to be found in one of two ways: drop of tokens/quest items or direct drops off of bosses. Both of these are also RNG based and I don’t believe this would solve the problem of precursors. Because the Legendary system revolves mostly around crafting I would propose a new system be put in place where we could use ascended crafting materials to create precursors. I believe the recipe should still be gated behind a small amount of time invested (ten laurels perhaps) and that the items should be account bound (keep the current precursors BoE and make the created token interchangeable with the precursor in the mystic forge recipe). The precursor market would stabilize and the option to create a legendary would be available to more people. The material cost for the precursor should remain steep, however, as the end result is still a legendary. In this way, no matter what you do (outside of dumping rares or exotics into the MF) you will be moving forward towards a legendary weapon if that is one of your goals. Risk vs Reward normalizes as you are able to choose which avenue you will attempt to acquire the precursor or precursor like item and no longer is chance the governing factor.

I hope you are able to make more constructive forum posts in the future, I am willing to bet that you have a quite a few amazing ideas.

Thanks for the Guide dude, awesome read

I probably should have seperated it into two posts, one with the intro to the discussion and then one with the example. Oh well live and learn

Ladies and Gentlemen,
One of the things I have noticed lately is the discussion on risk vs. reward in this game. There are opponents on both sides of the fence claiming that the game is either fine or, it needs serious work. I have put about 500 hours into the game and find myself leaning towards the “Fine” category but that doesn’t mean I exist without some complaints (I may or may not detail those in later posts). After thinking about it critically I decided that I would like to start a discussion with fellow forum goer’s about how they view risk vs. reward in this game and others (to include single player games and MMOs of all genre’s) to include questions like what seems unfair in this game, has another game done it better, and without directly copying the other game, how could GW2 change in the area you mentioned? Risk vs. Reward is the primary reason anyone does…well, anything. Will you switch to a new job, will you have kids, should you buy this house etc. Games are no different, and the proper application of the Risk/Reward theory is what gives a game longevity. I am not looking for page long rants on how ANET has failed us, or how they haven’t stayed true to their manifesto. I am looking for thoughtful answers from people who currently or recently played the game. I want to foster an amicable discussion that the Developers would be proud to read should they choose to or will engage those who find the topic in critical thinking. Please conform to forum rules when you respond, and please avoid one line snarky or “witty” responses. I am not just looking for praise for the game, but outright negativity gets us nowhere. We don’t need to know if you are planning on leaving the game due to a particular issue, it does not move the discussion forward. If this discussion goes well I will follow it up with further discussion on other areas of MMO games and how GW2 measures up in general.

I will start with my opinion on the state of Risk vs. Reward.

One of the things that this game does well is time management. What I mean by that is that when I log in, whether it be for 30mins or 3 hours, I can apply that time towards any goal I have set for myself and make progress. The amount of progress might differ depending on a lot of factors: what I am doing, how long I can spend online, how life is going etc. This is due to a what I perceive as a nice balance of risk vs reward where I can still earn credit even during failure. But for all of avenues for improvement, there is very little risk involved. Regardless of the task you almost never walk away empty handed and will sometimes even get lucky and make out like a bandit! With that being said, there is an area where this is not true: Precursor acquisition. I know people who have been looking for months with nothing to show for it. Right now the system is based on RNG (like a fair portion of the game) but offers no way for players to combat the RNG mechanic. This has led to a lot of anger and wasted gold and hours farming the same content over and over again and playing with the Mystic Forge. For some people they can see their entire fortune washed away in an instant due to RNG, while others can “Get Lucky” and either strike it rich or acquire the item they have been searching for with little investment. This is the one area of the game where risk vs reward shows this much imbalance. In other games, items of epic or legendary quality tended to be found in one of two ways: drop of tokens/quest items or direct drops off of bosses. Both of these are also RNG based and I don’t believe this would solve the problem of precursors. Because the Legendary system revolves mostly around crafting I would propose a new system be put in place where we could use ascended crafting materials to create precursors. I believe the recipe should still be gated behind a small amount of time invested (ten laurels perhaps) and that the items should be account bound (keep the current precursors BoE and make the created token interchangeable with the precursor in the mystic forge recipe). The precursor market would stabilize and the option to create a legendary would be available to more people. The material cost for the precursor should remain steep, however, as the end result is still a legendary. In this way, no matter what you do (outside of dumping rares or exotics into the MF) you will be moving forward towards a legendary weapon if that is one of your goals. Risk vs Reward normalizes as you are able to choose which avenue you will attempt to acquire the precursor or precursor like item while chance is no longer the governing factor.

That was an example of a response that might generate a discussion (although, that is my opinion on the matter of precursors).

Have a Kick kitten day and I hope to see you ingame!

1. Reaper
2. The Blazing Light
3. Yakslapper
4. The jumping titles from the super box (they are long…)
5. Wurms Bane

During a PvP match I ended up underwater fighting for a point. I am spec’d to allow meditations to heal me (monks healing I think) but when I popped my meditations I received no heal. I checked the tool tip underwater but it doesn’t say anything different (and still indicates a ~1900 heal). Is this working as intended?