Guild Wars 2

I think all DEs need to be pointed on my map, when I enter the area.

Seems like we need an “evil” storyline.

Yea, it’s pretty annoying. There should be an option to prevent you from taking feasts.

Hah, this talk about abominations.

I love the one that happens when you’re trying to retake pertinent. If someone fails and just leaves the event there, it kills all the npcs and builds up frenzy to the point to instagib anyone silly enough to try to do the event.

And of course, how’s the Warmaster Chan event that isn’t labeled a group event going.?

As someone who never runs dungeons, I must say that was badly thought out.

Not for long

I’ll give an example from Starcraft: Brood War.

It became very popular for the Protoss at high levels of play to expand early against a Zerg player. If you aren’t familiar with Starcraft, the Zerg are able to field a large amount of weak but effective units known as zerglings that could overwhelm a poorly defended opponent. The Protoss player could field defense and their own units, but since their stuff is more expensive, it would be best to hold the Zerg at bay with as little defense as possible in order to gain an economic advantage.

Most high level maps allowed a player to place a new base close to your original base so that you could effectively defend both entrances by using buildings and photon cannons to block off any manner of enemy access. Now what separates a noob from a good player is that a noob would build 10 cannons and waste money regardless of situation where a better player would scout and build as many as cannons as necessary. 9 times out of 10 the better player would come out ahead, but once in a while they can fall prey to a sneak attack, in which the noobish player wouldn’t.

Now, the difference between a better player and a pro player is that a pro can get away with building no defense and come up with it, timed perfectly to come in just as the enemy comes in. That usually works for most standard games, but there’s been quite a few places where a surprise attack or sometimes just even bad luck cause a very humiliating loss in public.

As another interesting note, there’s quite a few decent but not great players that usually win if they are more defensive and often fail miserably when they try to emulate what the pros do.

Eventually, people aware of the metagame would defy it, and pull off oddball strategies that defied this, and essentially did things that would be bad strategies in most instances but succeeded due to the other side’s inability to react. The reaction to picking a playstyle that wasn’t right? Rage and tears, and even long post on message boards suggested that such gameplay styles be removed from the game. In this case, I find this to be quite universal in like every multiplayer game. People just love to ban people from playing in a way they don’t like because they are so obsessed with what’s “right” and “wrong”

Of course, this is due to the nature of other players being unpredictable. Against predictable situations, the risk of not going defense drops heavily given enough experience. Zerker is the best against enemies that let you hit them.

So what’s the point of this? My points:
- Safer options are not necessarily objectively inferior. They are when the benefits do not outweigh the cost, and that still depends on goal.
- It can be better when facing new or unpredictable scenarios.
-Some choices are terrible because they make unnecessary sacrifices.
- Just because the best players do something, does not mean everyone can perform optimally given their own skill level. If a bad player can only survive using pvt, then it’s the only manner in which they can meaningfully contribute anything.
- My point here is about the “edge”. Ultimately, certain things in a game give you an advantage, but that itself doesn’t mean that much unless one is able to take advantage of it. Gearing isn’t as dramatic in gw2 as in other games. Honestly, a 10-20% edge is just not the difference between night and day people are imagining. So indeed full soldiers is probably mediocre at best. But what about everything in between? I can see why it’s silly to sacrifice 40% damage for minimal survival gains, but what about when the gap is closer? like 10-15%?

- A lot of people are worse than they think they are.
- Stop forcing people to play a certain way. Instead, it’s better to think about the best way to get the most out of them. Unless you like having no friends. Even if they could legitimately improve, you just have to realize the incentive of improving in a non-competitive environment such as PVE in this game isn’t particularly high or even meaningful to a lot of people.

Vayne.8563:

Okay, let me try to explain this from a different point of view.

If your goal is to finish as dungeon and quickly and as easily as possible…then you’re quite correct. But not everyone has that same goal. For some people the goal is to have fun. Not fun by being quick and efficient, but to have fun by playing a character they enjoy. Now if one person in your party cares about how fast the dungeon will be run, you’d be right. But in my guild, where no one cares how fast the dungeon goes because we’re having fun, and we like each other so we WANT each other to have fun, playing a profession we don’t like to make it faster would be more selfish. It would put pressure on people who want to play to have fun to finish faster. Our goal is different.

One day, in the grawl fractal, one of the guys got a fire bubble and started playing tag with it. Chasing around other people who were trying to avoid him. Suddenly, we’re playing tag in the middle of the grawl fractal. Not very efficient, I’ll admit, but funny as hell. We finished the fractal.

Let’s pretend we wipe because someone is goofing off. So we wipe. It’s a couple of silver. No one cares. As long as we’re having fun.

We have one guy who loves to heal and support. We know it’s not most effective, but we don’t care. Because he likes doing it, so we appreciate his help when he provides it. Sure the dungeon takes longer. Why is that a problem?

I’ve been on fast runs of dungeons where no one speaks and I find them boring as hell. Run, run run. Let’s get it done. Let’s get the reward.

Remember, though some people are farming dungeons, many are trying to experience the dungeon more or less as their own character.

It is fair enough, though I doubt anyone is complaining about people’s own private groups. People do have different goals, but when you’re playing with strangers, you’re going to have to compromise or it will be impossible to get along. If one is not willing to do that, then they really need to make friends I guess.

Personally, aside from MF gear I don’t care enough what people wear and in reality I’ve never booted anyone for wearing the “wrong gear”. But I know to not throw rocks from a glass house. My guardian uses knight’s armor (what a noob! But my trinkets are zerker!), but I do zerk on my necro (omg nub playing necro in pve). In any case, I actually do not care enough about improving on dungeon running; if I did want to train on something it would be wvw or pvp. But I admit my skill isn’t that high. If someone wants to boot me because of that, then such is life.

Still even in the context of a game as entertainment, there is still some discussion for some degree of objectivity in how the game works. 1. f3 is Chess is most likely a bad move, regardless of what anyone else says, and thus analysis of gameplay should revolve around these assumptions. This doesn’t mean you should be arrested or banned for doing that, of course. I just think that when people are criticized and go “It’s just your opinion! It just works for you!” aren’t making much of a point besides that they have none.

However, my joke earlier in the thread making fun of people that feel that they can dodge mostly everything is that they suffer from some degree of tunnel vision. That is, yes, the best players in the world can run zerker anywhere and survive. (I’ve seen a video of someone doing it in wvw soloing, ffs), however I think that people often overestimate their own skill; in some cases they are just as bad as the people they bash.

That of course, still doesn’t change matters. But it does require some perspective.

tl;dr Some players just aren’t good enough to use zerker. They’re not terrible and selfish people. They’re just not good enough to use it.

A quick analogy of the situation

A: You suck!
B: You suck! Who’s winning?
A: You really suck! You’re only winning because you’re like, a meanie that takes the thing so seriously.
B: Oh yea, I’m gonna come get you. Where do you live?
/travels to the same city and punches the first baby they see.

B: I showed you! Look who’s boss!
A: ?
C: Time to take advantage of their stupidity and win this.

In both cases, A and B are most likely terrible people, however the fight is more of a urinating into the wind and judging by the splash that was made.

It’s a typical trap for this class to spec only for support, and then proceed to complain that you can’t do anything else.

One needs to realize that you can only pick so many traits and utility skills so analyzing all these skills in a vacuum with other classes is highly inaccurate.

True, but it’s hard to take pve snobs seriously.

There’s not much to get.

When you do the same thing over and over again, and said something isn’t that hard after the first few tries, then you can focus on doing it faster.

Although to be honest, it’s probably better that way. Forcing people to equip defensive stats would give a gear check kind of feeling. This way, skill still makes the difference. (ie a bad zerker player is useless, but a great zerker player can do a lot more)

AtlasUnbound.1082:

ArchonWing.9480:

AtlasUnbound.1082:

ArchonWing.9480:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Guardians are bad and need buffs and by the Six Anet pls make us heal for more and do more damage. And more mobility and CC too please, like cripples. Thx.

Guardians are terrible. It takes 5 people to remove me from a circle. It should take 50. I hope all the scrubs get this message and will abandon this class asap and stop making us look bad.

;)

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Guardians, but I am finding out that Warriors can do all the same things, just better. As far as all of my play has gone anyway. Maybe its just me? Maybe the Warrior and I just sync better.

P.S. GREAT Quote BTW.

The nature of the class system means that you cannot just take parallel builds and compare it like that. That wouldn’t be very exciting anyways.

So you claim your friend can support better than a guardian? Well, he might be able to get bigger numbers but pray tell, can he remove every condition from his nearby allies with one skill? Or spam removal and turn them into boons. Or create 2 barriers that prevent enemies from coming in? Or bounce projectiles back to the enemy? Or provide protection with every 3rd attack? Group stability?

I don’t play warriors, but I’m just curious.

My build is mostly offense, but I can still provide most of these.

I’m not saying Guards are the best in the game, but I think people aren’t fully aware that they can do a lot more then some would imagine.

And yes, thanks.

First of all, you can compare like that. They should essentially be equal in the build or simply have some trade offs. Here you did list some of these trades so lets go over it. You did make some perfectly valid points. Thank you for that.

My point is that trying to play one class like another is inevitably going to result in discrepancies.

“Can he remove every condition from his nearby allies with one skill?”

The answer is a no, not with 1 skill.
However he can get Shouts to remove conditions with Runes of the Soldier, which also buff his allies, and can heal as well should he choose. The heal of EACH SHOUT is higher than the use of the GUARDIAN virtue use effect. Meaning that he can double or triple it if he carries with just “For Great Justice” that has only a 25 second CD! This also give 3 stacks of might that last….. wait for it… that’s right, 25 seconds.

This is not a valid comparison because Runes of the Soldier are not specific to warriors. Guardians can remove even more conditions with it, and also you really can’t compare virtues that are basically handed to you for every fight compared to a utility slot.

Protection every 3rd attack, no. However it stops 33% of damage dealt. You can also get the same effect from spamming healing effects.
Now say he forgoes the healing shouts in favor of banners granting healing. This becomes a constant Buff that also heals constantly (for more than the guardian passive effect)
That persist until they time out even after downed or death.

That’s a bit of an apples vs oranges things. Depending on who you are buffing, -33% Protection to the less tanky is most likely more valuable. Not gonna say who’s better.

However, you should realize that the hammer protection requires no investment to be effective besides the hammer itself. You can offer it regardless of gear or traits and still work very well. Healing, at least healing that matters, isn’t necessarily the same thing.

Group Stability, yes, from the Battle Standard or Warbanner.
The stability effect is on a 15 second CD and can be used by anyone, not just the warrior. (again, the banner also heals allies if traited)

That… actually sounds pretty good.

Now keep in mind, unlike the symbols these banners are mobile, and their effects are over a larger area.
Each one (except the Battle Standard) adds 170 of one stat.
170 Toughness and Vitality is an example of one of these.

Most of these effects are still achievable on an offensive build for the WARRIOR with just 1 defensive trait line.

Well, nobody will doubt that warriors have superior mobility to guardians. This is where they have the edge for sure.

You’re not necessarily wrong. I just think you’re most likely underestimating the value of certain things.

bhagwad.4281:

When I asked them, they said “Just dodge”. So here’s why you should use Wall of Reflection in that situation.

Lol, it’s that zerker “I must dodge everything like Neo” mentality that has infected the community. The main thing was what did he run in favor of it? (Most likely a signet >.>)

I guess a lot of people aren’t willing to change skills on the fly and old habits die hard. It’s not something that can easily be remedied, though a few wipes may help. Not good for you though.

Personally? I might just have forgotten. Depending on the tone of the reminder, I guess things could vary.

colesy.8490:

ArchonWing.9480:

“Anything that you do that doesn’t benefit me is selfish”
Playing the “wrong” class is probably selfish too.

I’m sorry guys. I’m just not is l33t as you guys that can dodge all damage. I guess having defensive skills on my bar that give protection is also an abomination since I shouldn’t need to reduce your damage, as you won’t take any anyways.

Of course, mf was removed because the current implementation was horrible. Though they could be chided to fix it, I guess it’s easier to take the easier way out.

Practically every class can be strong in dungeons besides necros (utility-wise, dps is fine) and apparently engineers. Someone posted some pretty big damage numbers recently though, so I dunno, probably warrants testing like Brazil did with his ranger.

And stop overreacting, you don’t have to be l33t to watch for a clearly choreographed attack and then dodge, if you fail to dodge you’re either lazy, bad or in the case of most zerkers you screwed up your timing. And defensive skills are fine as long as they’re appropriate to the situation, for example hold the line on guardian is always solid, and “defensive” skills like feedback and wall of reflection are great too.

My point is that more stuff works then whatever the fotm is, though it’s so easy to simplify it to berserker > all for every single class and build that exists.

The other thing is that “you’re not supposed to get hit” is also a oversimplification in a vacuum. If that were true, all defensive skills would be pointless. There should be no reason to mitigate your “perfect” ally because -33% of 0 is no reduction. So the only justification for defense utility would be things like stability. Shall we just run all dps skills too?

I also bring this up due to latency, as with any game that has to require online play that occasionally things will not always be perfect. Even if your connection is in good condition, there’s no guarantee it’ll be true on the other end. Yes, it’s not really the game to require that kind of split second reaction, but I never see it being brought up.

And this leads to a number of slippery slopes, such as then shouldn’t people be using only damage food too?

No, the real problem is that running MF gear or something like cleric’s or soldiers is bad because the benefits do not outweigh the cost. You are gimping your contribution to the party by sacrificing damage for dubious value. In the case of MF, you sacrifice it for 0 value to leech off your team, so it’s obviously the worst, since people are doing it deliberately instead of being misled through good intentions. All forms of support, utility, and holding down enemies so they don’t attack your party members have little or nothing to do with stacking more toughness or vitality. Considering you brought up guardians quite a bit, then it should be noted that they can do all that wearing berserker gear or no gear at all.

In any case, the MF gear can be construed as selfish— everything else, well is debatable even if behind flismy reasoning.

“Anything that you do that doesn’t benefit me is selfish”
Playing the “wrong” class is probably selfish too.

I’m sorry guys. I’m just not is l33t as you guys that can dodge all damage. I guess having defensive skills on my bar that give protection is also an abomination since I shouldn’t need to reduce your damage, as you won’t take any anyways.

Of course, mf was removed because the current implementation was horrible. Though they could be chided to fix it, I guess it’s easier to take the easier way out.

Because there’s no food that reduces direct damage by 40%?

AtlasUnbound.1082:

ArchonWing.9480:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Guardians are bad and need buffs and by the Six Anet pls make us heal for more and do more damage. And more mobility and CC too please, like cripples. Thx.

Guardians are terrible. It takes 5 people to remove me from a circle. It should take 50. I hope all the scrubs get this message and will abandon this class asap and stop making us look bad.

;)

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Guardians, but I am finding out that Warriors can do all the same things, just better. As far as all of my play has gone anyway. Maybe its just me? Maybe the Warrior and I just sync better.

P.S. GREAT Quote BTW.

The nature of the class system means that you cannot just take parallel builds and compare it like that. That wouldn’t be very exciting anyways.

So you claim your friend can support better than a guardian? Well, he might be able to get bigger numbers but pray tell, can he remove every condition from his nearby allies with one skill? Or spam removal and turn them into boons. Or create 2 barriers that prevent enemies from coming in? Or bounce projectiles back to the enemy? Or provide protection with every 3rd attack? Group stability?

I don’t play warriors, but I’m just curious.

My build is mostly offense, but I can still provide most of these.

I’m not saying Guards are the best in the game, but I think people aren’t fully aware that they can do a lot more then some would imagine.

And yes, thanks.

Good, now it’s all in one place.

You are a prophet, OP.

Nope. Except this one:

7. Tries to “punish 1-6” but in reality are seeking free kills.

I like to casually stroll around, doing gathering tasks. Then I pretend to not see them. At this point, they’re coming in and I’m fighting back pitifully with my staff or scepter, usually missing most of those shots. At this point, as they are so excited over getting another easy gank, I press `32111111551111cf and send them on their backs so they can enjoy a nice night view. Of course, they usually never appreciate this and send their buddies after me. And I’m still the bad, of course.

darkace.8925:

CptAurellian.9537:

Well, if you don’t want to differentiate, then definitely zerker. PVT is useless in open world and deserves a kick in dungeons/fractals.

Great attitude! But you can do better. How about adding…
– If you’re not wearing full ascended (where possible) you’re wasting my time.
– If you’re playing using a very specific build and using a certain weapon you’re wasting my time.
– If you’re not playing one of three particular professions you’re wasting my time.
– If you’re wanting to watch the cut scenes you’re wasting my time.

So now you deserve to be kicked from a dungeon/fractal if you’re not a great sword-wielding Warrior, Guardian, or Mesmer in full Berserker’s exotic gear with ascended trinkets and a cookiecuttter build who is willing to skip all cut scenes.

Great attitude, indeed.

Of course! In fact, it’s just warriors and (only one) mesmer; Guardians are not master class.

Back on topic, you won’t go wrong with zerker in PvE in most content. Later you can just get enough to have both.

Staff is just a weapon I swap in, out of— mostly for empower, so I don’t care about cooldowns mostly. So yes, I will detonate the thing as needed.

Knights set is fine, but I’d recommend something tankier strictly for wvw, say soldiers or clerics. If you want to use a melee weapon, I’d strongly recommend at least soldiers.

That’s what I do, but you can convert it to 0/30/0/30/10 or 0/30/10/30/0
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfUAQNAreRlUgiCnFyKEf4Eh1jBCQ%2FVVIeYPwI87IA-jQyAYLBRyCERAkKAk9KiGbltIas6FMlLRUt3ADA-e

In large fights, especially considering the lag factor, I would mainly switch to a staff to spam empower and just land ranged damage on the other side while offering your shouts and other buffs. This is a very simple way of snagging bags but if you want something more upfront and personal, you can stick with what you currently have: EM+AH is really good with staff skills like empower.

You may also consider picking up a hammer. Hammer is the greatest survival weapon we have. This is because every 3rd strike generates protection around you. With crit hits and AH and Empowering Might, you’re looking at high protection uptime and constant AH healing. It also does alright damage, and also offers far more crowd control than a GS can, especially with the ability to trap enemies (skill 5) and line immobilized (skill 3)

I don’t run Altruistic Healing myself because I find it boring, but when I did, it was incredibly solid with holding positions.

Silv.9207:

A guardian can try to increase the survavibility of the group, no more. In wvsw a guardian is a excellent supporter, but a bad DPS.
That’s because of the useless ranged weapons we have. Staff can hit multiple targets but it’s damage is very low. Scepter is… the worst pvp ranged weapon ever, expecially in wvsw, where the enemy can move freely in a very large space and evade easly all your attacks.

lol, no. It’s obvious you’ve never done 30 radiance before.

It’s true that you should not engage in 1v1 fights with staff and you have better weapons than scepter for 1v1; however ever since scepter 1 was speed boosted, it’s a pretty strong weapon. In fact, your reasoning is completely backwards. In WvW, there are many targets to hit, meaning that even if it is trivial to dodge scepter/staff hits, you will hit something.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Guardians are bad and need buffs and by the Six Anet pls make us heal for more and do more damage. And more mobility and CC too please, like cripples. Thx.

Guardians are terrible. It takes 5 people to remove me from a circle. It should take 50. I hope all the scrubs get this message and will abandon this class asap and stop making us look bad.

;)

Have you considered 6x soldier runes? Decent survival, and you’re running a shout build, meaning that you’ll clear out a lot of conditions, which are extremely common in wvw.

Anyhow, OP it’d be nice if you told us what role you want to play (zerg support, small group, etc) so we can give you something more specific.

I usually do GS/Scepter and Shield but swap the gs with staff in large fights. Usually I prefer small groups, but zerging is nice too. I’ve been trying hammer instead of gs as well.

Usually I do this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAreRlUgiCnFyKEf4Eh1jBCQ/VVIeYPwI87IA-jQyAYLBRyCERAkKAk9KiGbltIas6FMlLRUt3ADA-e

It’s really good at taking people down in tower fights or times where you can just shoot from behind a zerg. =p

Certainly, the last 10 pts in zeal can be put into valor or virtues or something; that. That depends on how much survival I feel I need. Also, the trinkets can be ignored, they’re berserker from pve since I only have so many laurels and don’t do fractals so backpiece is junk too— I actually don’t remember if it was soldiers or cavaliers or something. :p

The combat system is fine even if it is simplistic, because from my point of view it can really for whatever reason show the difference between a skilled player and a not so skilled player. Sure, you can just say “You just need to know when to dodge” but in practice, plenty of people fail more than they’d like to admit. People can have widely varying results even with equivalent builds and gear. And of course the huge group of terrible Guardians that claim it’s impossible to survive without Altruistic Healing proves that skill is definitely capable of making quite the difference.

What does need to happen is have more options though, as having weapons with all preset skills of which 1111112 usually beats them all is not desirable. It’s also a bit slow paced, which I think it could go faster.

The final issue is of course, the game’s obsession with spike damage of which the dodge determines mitigation. I don’t know what to do with that.

Well, a lot of people complain what you do in this game doesn’t matter, say you vanquish a dungeon of evil demons and 2 days later they’re all back in there and it breaks the immersion.

Though of course the interesting ones can be preserved for challenging gameplay though in fractals somewhere possibly.

Congrats A-net. This was very well done.

If it were some other greedy gaming company (Don’t need to name them, you all know) they would just feast off the player misery and force them to buy more slots.

But no,. Despite the fact that Gw2 has a subpar interface, they decided that the player’s needs and sanity were more important.

As for me, I never hoarded stuff and have only 2 tabs, but this is quite the nice boon anyways.

Erasculio.2914:

It’s funny, considering how some people mention they get Legendaries less because they like the skins and more because they see it as a sign of status. In this topic, it doesn’t appear people give much prestige to those who own Legendary weapons… I wonder if said owners will accept that (and so that they effectively wasted their time, if their goal was sorely status), or if they will enter denial mode.

You will see this a lot, and it is those people that have the biggest chance of driving this game into the ground. There’s people who want to boost their ego, which isn’t a bad thing, but the problem is when the purpose is to show that they are superior to others. The drama over the achievement leaderboards is proof of this.

Pretty much everything destructive (asking for more nerfs, asking for more pointless grind, asking for more pointess vertical progression, asking to take away other people’s things) is all rooted in people’s desires to either satiate or protect their own egos by drawing prestige for themselves and putting down others. And they want a way to make themselves as special to make it really blatant. A lot of people will exclaim they can’t do something, so nobody can do it, or that everyone should do whatever tiny bit of the game they are in. And this is why MMOs are often filled with crap, thanks to them.

Not referring to all legendary owners, of course- just those who excessively clamor over status and there are non-legendary owners with the exact same attitude who want the status symbol for some reason (which are worse, since their whines are now extended to that too) Some people really just wanted the skin of course

Vayne.8563:

ArchonWing.9480:

Ah, so all that cool stuff referred to the personal story.

That’s great. Where is this awesome personal story? I saw a pile of trash that was passing itself off as one in game, but I doubt anyone with any appreciation of art or gameplay would consider that more than 25% complete. I thought that was just Trahearne’s story?

This has nothing to do with whether you like or don’t like the personal story. That’s another issue entirely. People are saying the manifesto lied when it said certain things and to avoid misunderstanding at that time, Anet clarified it. Whether you like what they did or not is fine. I don’t care. What I do care about it people deliberately misinterpreting something to prove some sort of non-existent point.

You didn’t like the personal story. Okay. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a personal story. And some people did like it.

My own experience is that personal stories were uneven. An no, I didn’t have the problems with Trahearne that most people did.

Oh, but it does matter.

In practice, story or not, much of what was stated in the Manifesto did not materialize in the game in an adequate shape or form.

Point is, they expressed certain ideas that appealed to some people because they were good gameplay concepts. Now you can argue the developers never intended this for the main game itself, but that just doesn’t reflect on it very well, I’d say. I’d rather not believe that they confined these ideas to the PS, because if they did, well that’s really kitten disappointing.

Honestly, this is just a bad way to defend the game by shifting the argument over there especially with such spotty evidence. Regardless of what Anet “lied” or whatever is actually not too relevant to me. It’s better to talk about how those useful concepts can be applied to the game itself in its current context. Because a lot of those concepts went against what people consider shallow and repetitive gameplay, and we wouldn’t want that in here, would be?

It’s entirely possible to be frozen and then set on fire. It would definitely not be a good feeling.

Well, they could increase the value of the monthly— this dilutes the value of individual dailies and make it so that missing one doesn’t mean that much. Say 20 laurels, but then the monthly would have to be harder (but it could be like harder achievements but require less volume), and I guess people would complain about that. =p

Or scrap that and go for Annual/Seasonal Achievements?

— The clunky interface, particularly the trading post
— The over-zealousness of nerfing things without giving time for the metagame to establish if something is right or not. This leads to a situation where the crybabies are constantly catered to, and that’s no way to create an interesting game.
— “Personal Story” though I use that term lightly.

Endgame is the complete freedom of your characters to participate in any content, and any new content at your own will, and the ability to perform with close to peak efficiency with some effort, without worrying about being placed at a severe disadvantage simply because you did not have time to grind whatever new content is around. It also includes the ability to be flexible, the ability to approach the same content with different approaches, which includes rolling new characters as well.

In other words, it is the point where you are not gated in any way.

The main caveat is that there must be some effort put in to it. Players without sufficient skill and will are not entitled to it. On the other hand, the game should also respect the player, and not arbitrarily change the gameplay or suddenly adding massive new grinds for a new tier. That would just be pulling the rug from underneath them and is not a legitimate means of improving gameplay. In other words, an established player now should be able to log off now, play the game in 3 years, and still be viable in all content, and at the very least be able to catch up to a respectable level within a reasonable amount of time.

There are legitimate reasons to nerf things. When something is horrifically out of whack with the rest of the game, then it trivializes content elsewhere, and suddenly the whole metagame revolves around those small areas of the game; also the economy gets flooded and everything has no value especially when things can be generated out of thin air. However, someone would argue it happened regardless.

Indeed, when people ask whether something is viable or not; they care not if it’s a good build in various aspects of the game, but rather a build that will let them earn quick cash and every other build/class is just “objectively” inferior and nub bait.

However, it seems that the main reason is to protect the economy and thus the gem store at the expense of the players. By limiting the gold accessible to a player, it may encourage them to buy it. That’s why I found the d3 comparison kinda sad, because that was a game that completely destroyed its gameplay integrity for the sake of their own cash shop. I once remarked in d3 that one was not a hero, but a sweatshop laborer.

Fortunately, Gw2 doesn’t have the mandatory steep vertical progression that gates content, so it is somewhat saved from such a fate. However, one does have to be wary when protecting the economy is worth worsening the gameplay experience itself.

In the end, the excessive reliance of RNG has made quite a few players unhappy. The RNG IS working as intended, and well, it’s not pretty.

Thus, I’ll give you what I feel the formula is for a terrible game, and hope Gw2 never becomes like this:

Constant Vertical Progression + Excessive RNG Elements+ Grind Requirements + Poor Risk/Reward Ratio + constant nerfing of new player created builds = shallow game play that minimizes the relevance of skill and focused around the best way to cut corners in the easiest and fastest area of the game with a focus on cash shop goods and ultimately = content gating = terrible gameplay. Gw2 is missing one of these, thankfully for now…

Johje Holan.4607:

Is that why SBI is taking all of Ebay’s stuff in Eternal and not attacking BP at all? Because BP puts up a good asset defense? Pretty lame way to play.

As an SBI’er, I feel you’re giving us too much credit. That implies we have a plan. The Eternal BG zerg of ours is like a dog chasing cars. Even if it caught one, it wouldn’t know what to do with it.

In all seriousness, welcome back, EB and BP.

Some people call their servers home, and some don’t care about wvw rank. If you’re going to abandon the smallest servers, then people will just move to big servers, and then the process of bigger servers getting all the transfers continues. We don’t need more stacking.

If anything the servers need more spread out population. Transfers to low ranked/low pop servers need to be heavily discounted.

Unless of course, you enjoy skill lag.

In any case, there are people playing on those servers— I think they should be the ones to decide?

Of course the trailer would be better, now that conceptions have become reality. Last year on release, you had to carry your materials out of your friggin bank to craft. Things have changed greatly.

This is a tough one.

The rewards scale to level, but in most ordinary gameplay, it’s very hard to keep up with this, and you will most likely come when you are overleveled and don’t need their crap. The other problem is buffing rewards now is not fair to people that already finished it, unless we give back rewards or allow people to replay it. (poor souls)

Thus, I recommend increasing the achievement point rewards for the story, possibly.

Surbrus.6942:

ArchonWing.9480:

Fact is, it is just being balanced with the rewards from elsewhere.

The problem isn’t with gold find. The problem is with the entire game itself. The thing that needs to be fixed is that enemies everywhere in the game needs to drop more gold. 20% of trash is still trash and thus the entire loot system needs a revamp.

If this is all I had read of your posts, I could have sworn that you are simply in agreement with everything I’m saying. As it is once the patch hits, the cost does not justify the purchase of this item, because the only real reason for it (boss gold drop) is being removed. Trash does not give nearly enough of a benefit to make up for it.

Care to elaborate on why exactly you disagree?.. it almost seems like a simple misunderstanding or something.

Alright, as I promised, I’ll elaborate on what I said earlier.

First off, in the worst case scenario that they are not creative and decide to give the whole thing an axe, then they should really reimburse everyone. But it’s not just time for that yet.

Reimbursing you all would only be a temporary solution. It doesn’t address why we all bought an MF/GF infusion in the first place. It doesn’t address why gf is not usable in the majority of the game. As long as the game’s drop system works the way it does, it doesn’t matter if it’s 100% mf/gf or 1000% gf. It just makes it less crappy.

Furthermore, there is a reason to keep gold find over magic find, and to keep it viable. Unlike MF, nobody sane would accuse you of sacrificing stats to be a leech. Thus it’s just a straight bonus that affects anyone who has the laurels. Thus, gold find isn’t the problem. More gold needs to drop from more places.

When I said it was being balanced, I believe you people threw up in your mouths a bit. This was intentional, because this concept of balanced is awful. Balance, being, everything is equally as awful. A balanced loot in reality means that challenging content gives more rewards, and less challenging content still gets rewarded without being trivialized (a waste of time). Currently, the situation is not this. Currently, one could really argue that by NOT farming dungeon gold, that there is a tremendous opportunity cost just to try other content. Meanwhile, Areananet does not want you to stick to the same few areas, and thus “grind”.

Sadly, what they fail to realize is the reason people moved to these places in the first place. I’d imagine a few genuinely enjoy the content but I don’t think it’s unfair for me to say that others feel almost forced to. Yes, one can say it’s not mandatory to mass gold or whatever, but it doesn’t change the fact that the loot and the risk vs reward aspect is horrifically broken. You can spent 10 minutes fighting a champion or a blue item. Why waste that kind of time? Thus, there are very logical reasons to do players to do what they do. Thus, their ideals conflicted with the game they actually put out.

There needs to be more sources of gold. Spread it out so we can go around doing a variety of content. Gold find could affect dynamic event too (that in itself needs to be buffed). Raise the coin rewards for the tougher dungeons and fractals. By a lot. Veterans need to drop more. And they need to be tougher. Obviously if one coin drops every 10 minutes, it’s not going to work. This also doesn’t flood the economy, because well… people would find ways to inject gold at the fastest rate regardless.

I’d also like to clarify my use of the word “exploiting”. Unlike a lot of the carebears, I differentiate between cheating and exploiting. Cheating is finding a way to violate the rules of the game. Exploiting is simply taking advantage of a game mechanic that was most likely poorly designed. Yes, I understand people use the later to ridiculous hyperbole (exploiting dodging, or anything I don’t like. ) but in both cases they are things that interrupt and break gameplay. The difference?

Cheating is the responsibility of the cheating player. They chose to break the rules and thus must be dealt with accordingly.

Exploits are the responsibility of the game designer. You cannot blame the players for your own oversights and bad design that allow certain areas of the game to be taken advantage of (say, that Lyssa thing). I don’t blame the players one bit, but I do blame the design that allowed it to happen. I would say here, they are guilty of this a lot into pushing responsibility onto players.

Simply put it’s their responsibility to balance the loot in a way that doesn’t cause this problem. A lot of people will say people will find the most efficient way to do something anyways, but that’s merely an excuse.

tl;dr Try to make it useful everywhere, to promote engaging and challenging content so that gold find may be a meaningful item for the sake of proper gameplay balance so that certain content does not overshadow the rest.

Surbrus.6942:

ArchonWing.9480:

Fact is, it is just being balanced with the rewards from elsewhere.

The problem isn’t with gold find. The problem is with the entire game itself. The thing that needs to be fixed is that enemies everywhere in the game needs to drop more gold. 20% of trash is still trash and thus the entire loot system needs a revamp.

If this is all I had read of your posts, I could have sworn that you are simply in agreement with everything I’m saying. As it is once the patch hits, the cost does not justify the purchase of this item, because the only real reason for it (boss gold drop) is being removed. Trash does not give nearly enough of a benefit to make up for it.

Care to elaborate on why exactly you disagree?.. it almost seems like a simple misunderstanding or something.

Hah, allow me to clarify myself as I admit to using incendiary words sometimes I will reply in depth later, but I will leave you with this point to think about: if Arenanet gets a clue, you may regret getting rid of it for a refund.

Yea, I’m hopeful. Sue me. :p

Surbrus.6942:

TheDaiBish.9735:

As for Ascended, as long as that’s the last tier, it’s more of a step, since a treadmill is continuous until you get off.

Ascended is a massive treadmill. Most people will never be able gear up your alts to max gear, especially if you have multiple builds you wish to play.

Ascended gear was only put in to appease these players who cannot fathom a video game without a useless gear treadmill. There are plenty of games that mask little content behind massive grinds and gear treadmills, those people should just go play those games.

This is actually a concern that A-net refuses to address, or even pretend exists. It seems like their ideas of progression are always balanced around an account with one character.

Guess which type of player that ends up hurting more?

Ah, so all that cool stuff referred to the personal story.

That’s great. Where is this awesome personal story? I saw a pile of trash that was passing itself off as one in game, but I doubt anyone with any appreciation of art or gameplay would consider that more than 25% complete. I thought that was just Trahearne’s story?

Man, this kind of mentality is so results oriented. To me at least, it makes me feel people are gonna ask “Why dine at that expensive restaurant… you are going to go to the bathroom anyways?”

In other words, I feel it’s the type of person that would go out to eat and consider the endgame in the bathroom while ignoring everything in between. Though some are actually too lazy to actually eat too.

I’m glad the Gw2 endgame is NOT the continuous trip to the bathroom. The actual experience though could use some fixing.

Nay to the account bound idea. Chances are I will end up buying it with in game gold, for whatever absurd amount it takes at that point.

I have no intention of subjecting myself to the RNG luck fest.

Surbrus.6942:

ArchonWing.9480:

And after the patch, it will still function as advertised.

Sure the words used to describe its use have not changed, but suddenly the effectiveness of the Infusion is going to reduced by what?… 90% or more? Sounds like the reasoning used by a slimy lawyer. Just remember that this costing Laurels, means that it was a long grind and represents a lot of the player’s time, effort and in game wealth. I don’t think most people who actually use the item will appreciate having the wool pulled over their eyes and have their item’s effectiveness kitten so much.

This item is no longer worth almost a month’s work.

You just admitted said infusion is in your mind, worthless, outside of taking advantage of certain peculiarities in the game.

Fact is, it is just being balanced with the rewards from elsewhere.

The problem isn’t with gold find. The problem is with the entire game itself. The thing that needs to be fixed is that enemies everywhere in the game needs to drop more gold. 20% of trash is still trash and thus the entire loot system needs a revamp.

In any case, it’s not like I haven’t spent 50 laurels and whatever it takes to build an extra exotic mf gear set. It’ll all be gone soon, so forgive me if I don’t seem to show any sympathy.

Surbrus.6942:

ArchonWing.9480:

Nope. It was never meant to be used to exploit a dungeon in that manner, unlike magic find which is being removed completely from gear.

It isn’t an exploit, it functioned exactly as advertised. Now however the main reason for using the Gilded Infusion is being removed. You’re statement referencing “exploits” sounds more like sour grapes than anything.

And after the patch, it will still function as advertised.

No refund is needed.

Nope. It was never meant to be used to only exploit a dungeon in that manner, unlike magic find which is being removed completely from gear. It’s not even that bad in open world, of course it won’t make you absurd amounts of gold anymore— which is the point. Besides, are people gonna replace the infusion with karma? lol

The solution is to increase the gold drop and rate from enemies outside of dungeons which is why this problem started in the first place.

stale.9785:

The OP is a troll, crusading all the non-warrior forums, moaning about how OP everything that isn’t a warrior is. His rants have included; Lemongrass, bear pets, the new nerfed pet leash range, melee rangers, ele’s in any form at all, condition mitigation, and warriors don’t do enough damage.

Essentially, if he’s posted it, there’s no real reason to acknowledge it. In his little trolly mind, he just scored a hit against the Guardian class.

Ah, lemongrass. The life of the ones that aren’t so good at this game is an unfortunate one, I guess. There’s something wrong with everyone else, except oneself.

The gearing and stuff needs to be put closer together. In fact I’m not even sure why you even need NPCs to begin with.

The other thing is that the rank and stat stuff seems lackluster. There’s no real detail.