Guild Wars 2

Think.8042:

Please immediately fix the announcement text to say that you can get materials for 2 out of 5 pets only. Otherwise, everybody who made the first two pets and finds out the third one is much more awesome will jump your throat.

Civilized people flip tables.

Isn’t that enough?

Kitten sucks. Can’t wait to never look back at it.

Change the achievements so I can finish them and never come back to this POS.

OmniPotentes.4817:

That’s pretty lame. I spent 1 hour playing. Both my progression bars are still at 0 despite winning almost every match.

This.

Zaith.9132:

Thanks for the personal jab and cruel sarcasm, Ansultares.1567.

I only asked a question. You seem to take this too personally.

Zaith.9132:

Sorry for the confusion, I just get depressed when I visit the forums now.

“get out if you can’t do it”

Were you the guy who doesn’t use the mouse at all? I may enjoy trying to drive using just my knees, but I don’t recommend it if you’re trying to get to a destination on time.

Reihert.1509:

Zeldain.5710:

Fox.3469:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

wintermute.4096:

The thing is, it is not super hard by any stretch of the imagination. It is mildly difficult at best.

Personally, I loved the clocktower, but apparently, anet has given in to all the whining and made it so easy everyone will finish it now sooner or later.

So… you’re wanting people to fail? How else is someone supposed to interpret that?

So you want noone to fail? even not the guys that give up after 2 tries? or how am i supposed to interpret that?

Yes some people will fail this and yet if everyone made it this wouldn’t even be an achievement. Plz think before you speak, if you want everyone to do everything you’ll take all the challenge away, and challenge is what makes a game fun. You may as well just watch a movie if there’s no challenge…

Why don’t you accept that not every single aspect in a game needs to be completed for it to be fun? If you keep doing something that frustrates you over and over, that’s your problem, not the problem of the game.

You’re basicly saying the same as, dungeons are to hard because you died in them…

GW2 has stuff for everyone, do the stuff that is ment for your playstyle and don’t complain about content that isn’t, cause you know what, you’re not the only person in the world.

This attitude won’t stand. And it certainly won’t retain players. ArenaNet is dutifully aware of this (they see it in their metrics.)

Overcoming challenge is one thing – overcoming bad design in whats should be the most casual of casual content (Holidays) and yes – EVERYONE should be able to do it regardless of their gaming dexterity.

This is NOT a platforming game, people didn’t buy it for one and this kind of thing has to go. Immediately.

I’ll pray for your soul teenager.

Sounds like a angry casual/weekend warrior, not a teenager.

Zeldain.5710:

Then where IS the content for the rest of players?

Bell Choir? Make Snowmen? Isn’t it a little early yet to QQ?

I had to rebind my keys in order to do Bell Choir. I actually ended up liking that one, though my first impression was that it is awful. The snowball arena, on the other hand, I can live without.

CrusaderRabbit.7460:

Maybe a gauntlet style jump puzzle.

You could handle that any better than timed jump puzzles, Munson?

RE: thread title – apparently so.

Teabaker.9524:

Warrior should just be the class with self-stability. Warriors atm just get stunned, focused and nuked down without any way to react

You could slot for stability, but then the buff just gets removed because the class is weak to buff removal as per some nonsense statement.

But don’t worry, all those underwater weapons are now slightly more useful.

Incurafy.6329:

The increase of Fleet Shadow from 33% to 50% is quite an interesting choice though, it’s like they’re trying to say “Yeah Thieves can get away easily in Stealth, that’s the point! In fact, you don’t like it? Good, we’ll make them even better at it!”

And that’s when I quit a game.

/facepalm

sablephoenix.1593:

I also love how ArenaNet makes content that’s not all-inclusive in a frigging holiday event.

OMG I hate the bell choir too. How did you know?

Shadow Dragon.9874:

Rather random it seems :/ Opened 10, got 10 sweaters.

That’s not random at all.

I could see this being difficult if your PC/laptop sucks.

Blaeys.3102:

Its really the only logical thing for ArenaNet to do. There are servers that need more people right now – for both WvW and PVE.

Keeping fewer servers full is more important than trying to salvage lower pop servers.

Of course, that statement sounds somewhat ridiculous given that so many servers read full, but I hope we all know that to be misleading.

What we really need is an undertow mechanic to complement the overflow mechanic; undertow would consolidate players from multiple servers into a single zone.

beren.6048:

LOCO.1785:

Ansultares.1567:

And once again, I’m left wondering why include the stat upgrades at all.

That’s the million dollar question, which we’ll never get a real answer to.

We all have a good idea why of course, it just doesn’t make sense, not to me anyway.

Else the WvW people will not do the dungeon at all and they will get bored faster.

Of course we don’t want them in WvW, because that’s boring and broken, and if the WvW guild I was a part of is any example, the vast majority of WvW/PvP focused players have already left the game.

Oobob.6754:

how does creating a tier of armor that uses tons of t6 mats bridge a gap to legendaries, which require a ton of t6 mats? it only delays the legendary as they both rely on the exact same items to create.

And then there’s this totally valid point which I quote here.

LOCO.1785:

If they wanted to truly bridge the gap, why give ascended gear higher stats and require such a slog of a grind just for one single piece mind you?

I figure they set the initial requirements extremely high so that players didn’t acquire them in the first hours after FotM was released.

But, at the same time, I’ve seen no indication that they’ll reduce the cost in the future, other than empty statements that they will (they can say whatever they kitten well please, but it’s meaningless if they don’t act on those statements).

Increasing the precursor drop rate was the first instance I know of that they could have indicated that moving forward they’ll be reducing requirements outside of a timetable that includes the release of an expansion; it’s near useless to reduce the requirements only once newer, shinier pieces are available.

Instead of actually increasing the precursor drop rate, we’ve now experienced a two-fold stimulus program, temporarily “flooding” the market with precursors. It still doesn’t address the underlying issue of low precursor drop rates, and precursor prices will continue to rise again, until the next round of “stimulus.” They’re as bad as the US federal government in that regard.

I had been thinking about upgrading to digital edition at some point; does the upgrade include the wizard’ kitten or is that only for people getting the free digital deluxe upgrade via purchasing a copy of the game?

EDIT: Really amused that we have to refer to it as a Wizard Hat, instead of in the possessive, because the forum censor filters it to Wizard’ kitten.

Twitchz.6407:

I thought this was discussed before? Is Ascended gear not to bridge the gap between the exotic and the upcoming legendary armors?

If Ascended gear had offered no more stats than exotic gear, except to include Agony resist, then legendary armor could still have been BiS while offering the only stat-superior gear to exotics.

Again, literally no reason to include increased stats on Ascended gear, except to institute the gear treadmill.

Meanwhile, until Ascended gear was released, legendary weapons didn’t (and still don’t currently) offer superior stats to exotic gear; legendary weapons (and by extension, armor) were nothing more than super-unique skins.

If anything, this says to me that legendary armor won’t look all that legendary; it wouldn’t need stat padding if its looks alone were enough to make it desirable. This is similar to how I feel about Ascended gear in general; the gear treadmill is a silent admission that WvW/PvP will not be the ongoing focus of the game.

Twitchz.6407:

But Fractrals aren’t horizontal progression, they require you to have finished the previous tier before moving on to the next. As I understand it you are then required to get agony items for resistance so you can go further.

They’re horizontal to the rest of the game, as is agony so long as the mechanic is contained purely within FotM.

It’s like a mini-game, but someone slapped on gear superior to previous endgame gear, for no other reason than that they could.

Twitchz.6407:

How is this any different to simply getting better gear and fighting harder monsters?
If this is what you meant i completely agree with you, i don’t understand why they did it either.

Getting higher stat gear to fight “harder” monsters is not necessarily interesting progression.

In fact, you see complaints all the time in this MMO and others that ever increasing monster hitpools and boss attacks approaching one-shot status are unattractive.

But that’s all the stats are good for; increasing hit pools, and making attacks stronger. The only real progression there is paperdoll progression.

Unless the developer is also introducing interesting mechanics, then the fights grow stale because you’ve done them all before no matter how far up the VP you get.

Fractals themselves provide an interesting study in this; the gear offers stat increases, but the only one offering any material difference is agony resist. Beyond that, monsters’ healthpools and damage scale with each fractal level. Without the stat upgrade, you and everyone else might be 1-3 fractal levels lower than you currently are (more if you refuse to run fractals without the associated stat increase on gear).

Meanwhile, if you’ve run at least through fractal 10, you’ll notice that with each tier of fractals, certain mechanics become active/enhanced. Ultimately, that progression is far more interesting than pursuing the stat upgrades.

And once again, I’m left wondering why include the stat upgrades at all.

Twitchz.6407:

I think you have to face facts here, GW2 already has vertical progression, it had it when you created a character and logged in.

The vertical progression was predicated on a great deal of horizontal progression, ie content. It was also definitely bounded by a level cap.

The new stuff they’re releasing is much shorter on horizontal progression, and much heavier on the vertical progression, VP which we can assume to be unrestricted by any sort of level cap given how it was introduced in the first place (by exceeding the level cap, and in fact dragging legendaries up along with it).

Given that developers, like all people, will only work as hard as they need to or feel they need to, the new content is very disheartening in that we’ll see more sizeable content expansions supplanted by smaller content underpinning yet more stat growth.

Southsun Cove is a great example; it’s pathetic in terms of a stand alone zone. It exists solely for a now completed event. You can complain about lower level zones being devoid of other players, but this place is devoid of just about anything. I expect more content like this, and players will accept it because there’s a tiny little stat increase associated with it.

And that’s the most insidious side of VP; it lowers the bar for what is considered acceptable HP. While VP may be a method for attracting players to particular content, overall the larger factor involved is the quality of the content itself, and that’s a matter of HP.

I don’t know how to qualify my attendance.

3m attended before quitting that lagfest/ 30m attended during the last event running (server reset about halfway through the event)

No loot, obviously.

Have received my bag (2x junk exotics, 2x rares).

Incidentally, a guildy attended 5x and also got the bag in the mail (before I did, no less).

The whole thing stinks, and all I really want is a better drop rate on pre-cursors (and not these periodic stimulus programs that don’t address the underlying issue).

But I guess thanks for my free 20slot and free accessory.

Mechanix.5719:

then it sounds like a good time to level some crafting

^^

I’d be more enthused about anti-botting measures if loot rewards weren’t purposely so draconian.

Twitchz.6407:

Is it a grind if you enjoy doing it though? If fractals were an awesome experience and players loved doing them would people still be so against the items you received for doing them?

I said it above; FotM is horizontal progression. The ascended gear tacked onto it is vertical progression. The response I’ve seen regarding FotM alone is generally positive, outside of the issue with disconnects.

Twitchz.6407:

What I’m trying to say is its not what you get for doing them that matters, it should be the choice of what you do and if you enjoy doing it.

How about we flip it and ask, why did they feel a need to give FotM higher tier loot?

What about exotics was insufficient to carry FotM? I have yet to see any sort of explanation as to why exotics were insufficient. I’d really love to read one, but I don’t think it exists.

Aly Cat.9415:

The article is about members hopping guilds.

The article is silly; bad guilds exist in every game. If anything, guild hopping allows for players to more readily find the guild that suits them best. At worst, it’s no more an indictment of this game than any other MMO out there, in that bad guilds are bad guilds are bad guilds….

In essence, a good guild maintains membership regardless of how easy it is to join/leave guilds. Ironically, its no more easy to join/leave here, so I really have to wonder just what someone is smoking when they claim that guild hopping is an issue.

lothefallen.7081:

arcaneclarity.5283:

Dungeon Finder is never a solution to create a social game. If you want a social game, get rid of the instances altogether. Instances do nothing but isolate people from the game world.

I think this hits a big nail on the head. While the guild issue is a secondary problem to the way the classes are set up. Builds, specs, roles, inter-class reliance is all really homogenized. Mix that with the fact that everyone runs basically the same thing due to lack of skill…it’s a very anti-social system.

Nonsense; the truth is, social in MMO was related to downtime. Starting with WoW’s push to minimize downtime, you’ve seen less and less socialization in MMOs as subsequent developers copied the WoW model (as best they could interpret it).

Builds, instancing, etc.; it’s all meaningless. The most socialization I’ve experienced in GW2, or any recent MMO I’ve played, has been associated with downtime (excepting socialization via voice chat software).

Sorrow’s Embrace path 1 was a great spot to socialize for a few minutes while waiting for the patrols to pass. Now, it’s content I don’t even bother entering without some sort of heavily premade group, ie people I’m on voice chat with, ie no new people, and the content doesn’t even support the same level of socialization because there’s no longer the same downtime.

WoW focused on eliminating personal downtime. I feel that too many developers misinterpreted this to mean any downtime. Even Blizzard made that mistake in Burning Crusade, when they started streamlining dungeons, removing extra trash, extra packs, extra patrols, etc. Half the nuance or more of clearing a dungeon was, for me, in getting to a given boss, but all that has largely been removed from modern MMOs.

Without rambling further, I guess I should just conclude by saying that socialization isn’t a function of the holy trinity or class builds or instancing or dungeon finder. It’s most directly a function of the content. If the content allows for constant action, then there’s no time to socialize.

Twitchz.6407:

What exactly is horizontal progression? I dont understand this concept, how can a game move forward into new challanges by sidestepping?

What is it you want Anet to add in terms of content? Is it things like the Southsun Cove? The place no one goes because there is nothing to do there that you cant do anywhere else?

Is this what people are really after?

I would imagine HP is expanding the game through content which isn’t already present. FotM is actually a potential HP, but they saddled it with VP as well. That new Rohan expansion I hear about for LotRO would be HP via the new mounted combat (IDK if they have VP there). As I understand it, EVE Online is releasing some sort of groundbased FPS combat which will coordinate in some way with its space combat.

Southsun Cove is not HP or VP. It’s just a lonely and terrible island that was spewed out in order to house the Karka event. I’m somewhat surprised that it’s even still around, but apparently they plan on fleshing it out.

Rukia.4802:

While I don’t disagree, I always laugh when people say that others are quitting the game in masses.

I’d say 90%+ of my guild has stopped playing; that’s at least several hundred players, if not more (it’s a very large guild). Some of them probably did break off to other guilds, but most simply left the game.

I don’t know how people, having witnessed contraction in other games and seeing it right in front of their face here, can plug their ears and scream “lalala only the devs know.”

Unless they’re just trolling.

Jetser.2486:

Couldn’t even join the event due to servers stressed out

Meanwhile, people getting 4-5 chances at precursors.

Quality design here

Don’t worry; they’ll get more chances at precursors, you just need to start buying gems to sell for gold.

ASB.4295:

Personally, I will not play the game again until I can be absolutely sure that the BiS gear will not be devalued by a new tier(or infusion tier upgrade mechanic) and is attainable with minimal effort, which I am defining as how long it took to get a full exotic set after you have already one maxed out character to farm with.

This current tier of ascended gear will be rolled out over the next months, and once finished it will be followed up by an expansion which increases the level cap and starts the whole treadmill over.

They would have done better to have reworked WvW to be a more engaging long-term venue; to me, the fact that they pushed VP is an admission that culling is a permanent feature, and that they’re looking to move away from PvP-focused endgame as a result.

I guess it suits some people, but one look at my guild’s vent channels tells the whole story; both WoW and PS2 channels/sub-channels have more activity, and discussion in the GW2 channel as often as not focuses on alternative games (alternative to all three games I mentioned).

I think anyone interested in VP already bailed; I know a few diehards remaining who refuse to play WoW and didn’t like PS2, but given another month or two and I’m sure they’ll start bailing as well.

Will you be informing us when the script has finished, and we can begin putting in claims for being screwed by both the event and the script?

RE: Dungeon Finder

I actually like that players were forced to innovate a better solution than anything I’ve seen developers design so far. Now, developers just need to integrate gw2lfg.com into the game.

Boomstin.3460:

Someone explain to me why did they planned a beatiful dynamic world and then introduced a dungeon that requires spamming Lfg in a single city hub leaving the open world empty?

That’s a mystery to me. I would have liked to have seen the game leveless, with all the content being equally viable at endgame. Any game which looks to employ dynamic event style content should consider it, and when they’re using it on such a large scale they should strongly consider it.

WAR had a similar problem, with plenty of great public quests (GW2’s dynamic events), but because they were only relevant on-level most went totally unused, with a handful underused and some rare ones frequently used. Similar to GW2, group oriented public quests were almost never completed, especially the semi-raid or raid public quests (something we’re seeing with the Orr temples).

Slightly off topic, one of the most attractive things about WoW in the early years was the constant rollout of new servers. While not as relevant here because of the way the game is structured, it certainly extended the lifespan of mid-level content (low and high level content tend to have the highest concentration of players in any game).

I don’t bother PUGing this or path 2 anymore. Shame because they were both formerly enjoyable paths.

Qelris.6901:

Unlike left and right arm seals, mobs do not heal the final seal.

Does he heal it then? Because for my group it was healing.

Wethospu.6437:

Iehova.9518:

You are defending an unnecessary change to an already annoying boss.

Yep, I know I’m probably in minority. But I will run this path now and see if that changes my opinion.

You’ve been talking about it without actually having run the path?

It’s annoying; it was a long, slow, boring fight before; now it’s a long, slow, and frustrating fight to PUG.

It might be fun for a well coordinated group, but aren’t all those guys off running fractals?

HawkMeister.4758:

Guardian

Ring of Warding: This skill will no longer affect non-attackable NPCs.

Heh!
No more NPC Trainer pile in LA.

Nice.

No more de-bugging some bugged NPCs, either.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

blud.8174:

SadiStick.6598:

Funny, you couldn’t be bothered to fix the teleporting grawl bug though huh?

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

SadiStick.6598:

Funny, you couldn’t be bothered to fix the teleporting grawl bug though huh?

Would you please describe the issue to me so I can make sure our QA knows about it?

Are… Are you serious?

Are you seriously saying that the QA team doesn’t know about a bug that has been reported MULTIPLE times and is common knowledge?

If so, i think you need a new QA Team, one that actually does their job.

Are you guys 12 years old or were you just not raised to treat others with respect? You both definitely could have phrased that better. Understand that the people doing these jobs are human beings just like yourself and that in a real workplace environment solving problems isn’t as simple as receiving it on your desk and churning out a solution 2 minutes later.

They’re reacting to an obviously misordered priorities. Fixing that was more important than fixing the dredge backdoor.

The issue with the shaman has been present since fractals released; dredge backdoor only became common knowledge recently.

Apparently they spent 2m on one bug fix; they picked the wrong bug to fix. Hence the outrage.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

to update:
Our QA dept was aware of this problem, and had a bug on it. We were just unable to fix it in time for the patch.

That’s cool; you’ll be rolling out a hotfix for colossus fractal any time now, so you can just slip that in there, right?

Fubumaki.5489:

Some bugs were fixed, some bugs were Fixed!

And some Fixes were bugged!

Surbrus.6942:

ankittenhral

How is “and (a) mithral” worthy of being censored?

I’ll believe it when I see it; I’ve been playing MMOs for too long to put any faith in the words of a developer.

What I saw was that their unprompted reaction was to implement a major grind; that says more than any amount of apologizing or self-realization does.

It’s always worked that way as far as I know.

In your first example, the trait cleared the burn; in your second, the trait cleared the cripple. Assuming you’re talking about Charge, I’m sure if you checked the tooltip for the resulting swiftness buff from the second example, you’d see that its duration is the sum of the baseline swiftness buff plus the trait-specific swiftness buff.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Nor did FotM or Ascended do anything for my guild. My take on why they just stopped playing and have not returned? PvP. Their take was that neither Wv3 nor S/ /t Pvp had sufficient depth by comparison to both GW1 and other PvP games.

I’m in a fairly massive guild; we were losing players at an alarming rate even before Ascended gear was released. Activity has dropped off 90% since mid-September. Since Ascended gear hasn’t seemed to spark any increase in activity at all, and no further dropoff can be attributed to it, I can only assume that most players left for the reasons you describe above. Namely, that WvW has several substantial issues.

I’m inclined to believe that the push for vertical progression is A.net’s response to determining that culling (and other issues) cannot or will not be fixed any time soon.

SleepingSloth.8340:

ankittenep enjoying the game

A.net’s gotta have the harshest censor I’ve ever seen.

Servanin.5021:

Guild wars didn’t have threat values like traditional MMOs either, but it still had tanks and healers. Its the same deal here; You may not have a taunt, or a 500% threat modifier on your attacks, but you can still force enemies to attack you if you do it properly.

This man has it correct. Chances are your meager DPS isn’t as impressive as you think it is if you’re not the one holding agro.

Karizee.8076:

My experience is the same as yours – everyone in game loving it, then a vocal minority bashing on the forums.

My experience in game, on guild voice chat, and on the forums all seem to suggest fairly similar trends.

While forums are by far the most vocal about their displeasure, player loss has been evident for weeks in-game across several servers I’ve played on, and voice chat has provided a clear tracking of the same (as I’m sure “last date played” would in guild UI if they implemented it).

The new gear, to me, screams desperation on A.net’s part, and I strongly believe it will drive more players away than it attracts.

Just added that to the tooltip? I remember it being there the whole time since I first rolled my warrior at release.

It may not have worked properly until recently, but it has always been an intended feature.

Soldier is a good generic choice. So are divinity runes (which apparently exploded in price).

Personally, I’d go with something support oriented, probably focusing on +boon duration and +might duration. Someone else already noted that you’re at +30% boon duration with full Tactics tree (shouts heal), so add on another +15% and up to an additional +40% further just to might and you’re looking at +85% might duration; with reduced shout cooldowns, “For Great Justice!” will have less than half the cooldown of the might stacks’ duration. That’ll make for some awesome might stacking on your group, especially when combined with Battle Standard.

At that point, you could even trait for Momentous Greatsword, combine it with a Sigil of Strength (assuming they stack), and push 25 stacks of might personally, allowing you to contribute meaningful DPS on top of it (the high uptime on fury should cover any lack of precision from gear).

I was thinking recently of running this build, but my only spare set of exotics has full divinity, and it’s really not worth trashing those runes.

The bulk of those changes were to add combo finishers to harpoon gun (ranged water weapon).

There are only two relevant WvW changes; +10% base damage to Dual Shot (longbow 1 ability), and the addition of a finisher to Brutal Shot (rifle 4 ability).

There are three more entries in there which cover minor fixes; tooltip improvement to Bull’s Charge, and two icon fixes.

I’d hardly call this a list of buffs; more like a list of non-nerfs.

oflow.2157:

you’re all overlooking the fact that a warrior has better regen thru signets

The one signet that provides regen? The same one which doesn’t even provide as much healing per second overall as our other heals?

I use it, but not because it’s vastly superior; it’s just easier than spamming a heal ability every time its off cooldown.

Tachenon.5270:

I suspect, however, that it was meant to fail, and therefore was a brilliant success.

Any ideas why?

I don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I’m at a loss as to why they’d intentionally tank.

Namu.5712:

The half that didn’t just happen to be very vocal about it. Anet didn’t base this change on forum posting I garantee you that.

No, but I’m sure their main focus was determining why players were leaving, so of course they perceived an overestimated demand for vertical progression.

haviz.1340:

Columba.9730:

through forced pve gear grinds….lol.

Yes, through forced pve gear grinds. They wanted raids, more character progression and everything else that comes with vertical progression.

Some people wanted that.

Many people did not want that at all.

Lopez.7369:

kKagari.6804:

This game is a failure, of course the events are

That’s completely over-the-top. This game is great. The one-time event just had too many issues to ignore.

No it’s not.

One word: culling.

Bobbi.6801:

Ayoe.2136:

Oreos.2814:

This is so boring I actually played SWTOR for an hour and had more fun. Got more loot too.

The event is a big disapointment, yet its way way better then the SWTOR..That game is faliure in any possible way.

Yes. Yes it is. But you can’t possibly mean that it’s actually worse than this event.

I’ve been thinking longingly of my poor Sith Juggernaut and the TT-15A Powertech boots I never found for him.