Guild Wars 2

Hyper Cutter.9376:

It’s way less obnoxious than elite skills were in GW1, the traits all come from zones about the level each trait tier is unlocked, and a lot of the requirements are things you should be doing anyway (like map completion).

Actually it’s not. My main character has 100% map completion, has completed all dungeons in story mode, is level 27 in WvWvW, has been level capped for 5 months, and still has 19 traits that remain locked. In GW1 I had all elites unlocked within weeks of level capping. In GW1 I could spawn an instance at will and solo pretty much any boss I wanted to capture from. Heck, I didn’t even have to kill the boss; I just had to interrupt it mid-cast. In GW2, many of the bosses are preceded by group event chains that may or may not succeed. Even when they do succeed, there’s a chance they’ll still fail on that final boss. Plus, unlocking an elite in GW1 unlocked it for the entire account. In GW2 every trait unlock is per character. How is any of that “way less obnoxious?”

Worblehat.8697:

On the other hand, I’m probably an atypical newbie. I’m a completionist, so those full map completion traits are no hardship; the only issue is pushing me into a path of zones that I would not otherwise have chosen. It’s not at all clear to me why my asura is fighting centaurs, for example, aside from the gameplay reason “because that’s what the hearts ask for”. Completionism also means lots of skill points, and I’ve already unlocked every skill I can imagine using. Would be nice to get them all, but thanks to this thread and the wiki I now know that I need to save up for the traits that I won’t be able to get via gameplay (those WvW unlocks, at the very least). I’m actually more concerned by the gold cost than the skill point cost at this point. That possibly apocryphal “new player friend” mentioned a few pages ago claiming 10g at level 20 is nonsense; I have a bit over 3g at level 40.

Reading this post is like seeing myself five months ago. I felt the same way until I hit level 80 and got 100% map completion. I still have 19 traits (I finally counted them) that are locked. This is on my main character. Frankly, I can’t muster up the motivation to unlock traits on my alts. Sometimes I get them and sometimes I don’t.

Dyonisian.8610:

Did some research on MMOs, found this, saw great reviews, how its the MMO that breaks the norm of grinding, saw an awesome review by Angry Joe. In particular, he mentioned he couldn’t get into SWTOR despite the awesome concept because of the lack of interesting game play. He struck me as someone who was looking for an MMO experience that actually had a soul to it.

That review is a bit outdated. I suggest that you supplement it with this video that discusses the recent changes made to the game:

Why I Love the September Feature Pack

Ashen.2907:

Bernie.8674:

My intent was closer to this:

• Zerkers kill some bosses before their abilities can trigger
• Stackers nullify some bosses’ game mechanics

Part of the misunderstanding might be that your intent was, “some bosses’ game mechanics,” but you said, “all bosses.”

I said “all boss mechanics.” Diagram the sentence. Boss was a modifier in that sentence, not a noun. Glad I could clear that misunderstanding up for you.

Ashen.2907:

Bernie.8674:

keep in mind that this is not conjecture; it’s based on years of WoW experience and extensive use of the Recount DPS meter.

It is very much conjecture that an element in an old-school raiding game would work the same, or have the same impact, in a casual non-raiding game. Not saying that I disagree with you about the impact, just that it is still conjecture.

This wasn’t only the case in raiding. It was also the case in heroic dungeons, especially in the Cataclysm days. Heroic dungeons in WoW during that period were harder than fractals are now.

Lazuli.2098:

According to the mod’s remarks in this thread the reason we got this totally screwed up trait system at all was because Anet listened to the GW1 whiners who wanted to make GW2 more like GW1. The original GW2 trait system was fine the way it was. The addition of free retraits retraits from anywhere was the only thing needed to make it great.

They could have made it more like GW1 without making the mess we have now. Skills were easy to get in GW1. Only the elites needed to be captured. I don’t remember the skills in GW1 that required you to camp a zone for hours waiting on an event to spawn and to hope that you had enough help nearby to complete said event. Also GW1 had the equivalent of free retraits as well. Blaming this on the “GW1 whiners” is redirecting blame where it doesn’t belong.

Obtena.7952:

It’s pretty convenient to label yourself a ‘new player’ after seven months to make your point.

I’m new enough to not have been grandfathered into free traits and cheap crafting mats. Those of you who scoff at pricing because it’s not going to put a dent in your 500 gold stash and you have nothing else to spend it on anyway have no clue what it’s like for players who started after 4/14.

Obtena.7952:

GW2 manifesto still holds. I’ve never done anything in this game I didn’t find fun …

Some people enjoy farming. It used to be a choice or something you did at the very end of the game. In Guild Wars 1 farming was never required to get the best gear in the game. In Guild Wars 2 it is. I know I don’t need the best gear in the game to participate in end game activities, but I’ll still be holding my group back, and that irks me.

Obtena.7952:

AND be able to increase my wealth doing it, getting closer to a gear goal. If you don’t have the same experience, it’s because you choose to do ‘not fun’ things to achieve the same things you can do having fun. If you can’t find anything fun to do, that’s not the game, it’s you. There are many fun things people do all the time.

I have that experience until I hit level 80, at which point I’m a cripple in comparison to my peers. WoW gives the same initial experience at max level, but the difference is that you can catch up in a matter of weeks without crazy grinds (I can’t believe I’m saying that WoW is less grindy than this game). In GW2 you can get exotics pretty quickly, but the grind to ascended is insane for a game that was supposed to be grind-free.

Obtena.7952:

If anything, GW2 structure FREES you of the artificial structures other games have to get endgame gear and progress. In truth, it’s not the manifesto you have a problem with, it’s the fact that Anet isn’t telling you how to play. I can see where people that NEED to be lead around by the game design wouldn’t like GW2 and find blame in things that aren’t themselves.

This is coming out of left field. I don’t even know what you’re responding to or what your point is here. GW2 has the exact same structures as every other game out there: instanced content and farming. My point is that ArenaNet had specified that they weren’t going to subject us to that, but they have done so in spades.

laokoko.7403:

you just need to set your priorities straight. Do you “really” need all the traits, some of the traits you barely use.

This is straying off-topic, but I have no clue when I will or won’t need traits and/or skills. The other day I ran into serious issues during a dungeon run because I couldn’t find my stability signet and the rest of the group wanted to run past a group that was spamming knockdowns. You can argue that this is a player-made issue because ArenaNet never intended for groups to just run past mobs, but if this was the case they should have designed the room with a door that wouldn’t unlock until every mob was killed. As it is, the burden is now on the new player to figure it all out. There were no mobs in the game during my levelling experience that ever required me to use stability. This issue is compounded by the fact that I now have to spend money that I don’t have and can’t readily acquire on traits that I may or may not need. Since I can’t get refunds I end up wasting lots of money. On the other hand, when I try to be frugal I end up causing issues for my groups.

laokoko.7403:

I wasn’t even doing high level fractals until I played 1 year into the game. If you can’t do fractal 50, do 49. If not that 38. If not that lvl1.

From my understanding, fractals weren’t even in the game when it first started. Of course you weren’t doing them. You were running dungeons like everyone else, probably with your guild. I would run dungeons with my guild, except they’re all into fractals now. Actually, they’ve even gotten bored of that, and most of them have moved on to ArcheAge. I would PUG the dungeons, but 90% of those demand level 80 in full exotic zerker gear and experience. As I stated earlier, even when I get a group willing to forego those rules my inexperience causes problems for everyone else.

Since I can’t even do dungeon runs without running into problems at the moment, I think it’s safe to say that I probably won’t be doing fractals anytime soon.

laokoko.7403:

You really only need 40 AR to do 38. Which cost like 20 gold to get a +7 and +8 on your ring, and you dont’ even need an ascended back. And the only difference of 50 is a slightly better chance of ascended armor and weapon chest. (which quite honestly, even if you get it, it mostly be a stats you wont’ use)

Honestly I don’t want to do fractals that badly. My point was that ArenaNet’s supposed design manifesto claimed:

But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

And they have clearly failed to live up to that promise. The supposedly non-existent inflation is just one aspect of that.

Obtena.7952:

Bernie.8674:

laokoko.7403:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Astralporing.1957:

BlueBoy.1236:

Ascended and legendaries are luxury items.

BiS is not a luxury.

Please point to the content that you can’t complete in exotics… if there is some content that is physically impossible to complete in full exotic gear then ascended is no longer a luxury but is required. Otherwise it is a luxury item.

High level fractals?

get a +7 and +8 infusion on ring. That’s 20 gold. Get an fused backpiece 100 gold(mawdrey). Get one piece of armor. 70gold for zojja’s footwear.190 gold and you can do fractal 49.

It ain’t too bad. Fractal 49 isn’t much different compare to 50. That being said, having the ability to do 50 is easier to find a party.

That’s pretty funny, considering that I, as a new player, have 40 gold to my name, several traits to buy, and a ton of crafts remaining to max. The fact that these items you’re talking about are going for 190 gold indicate that they are, perhaps, not as much of a luxury as was suggested.

What’s funny here is that you as a new player think high level fractals are relevant to you.

What’s funny here is that even after playing several hours a night for seven months straight I’m still considered a new player in a game that was billed casual-friendly. If I had invested a comparable amount of time into a grindy game like WoW I would be ready to jump into Mythic raiding by now. Just sayin’…

Vikkela.7261:

http://www.gw2crafts.net/ this site will help you save both time and money when crafting.

Until you hit level 400. At that point they claim you’re done when you’ve only just begun.

DaveGan.8065:

Bernie.8674:

Funny how you accuse me of straw manning and then come up with this. You don’t stack on those fights, do you? Then why would my statement apply to those?

Sorry, but you’re not getting away from this that easily. Not when multiple others in this thread have taken your very point and ignorantly generalized zerker gear to all content in this game. Barring an admission that you’ve not read the thread up to now, or that you fail to understand the significance of context, I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume you held similar or identical ignorant views.

I wasn’t responding to the whole thread. I was agreeing with one guy, and this is what he said:

I would take slowing a group down by 5 minutes every single time if it meant that I spent that entire dungeon having fun. I could make the dungeon shorter, but then I’d be bored the entire time I was playing. In the end stupid reasoning is stupid. I don’t play games to prove that I’m better at spending more time in a game than others but instead want to have fun. Variety is the spice of life. Down with zerker. blah blah blah

The stacking statement that you keep fixating on was just a second example of a way to exploit game mechanics, and the reason I posted it was that I had recently been in a dungeon run that did exactly that. You’re the one that’s taking this out of context and generalizing it to zerker = stacker. My intent was closer to this:

• Zerkers kill some bosses before their abilities can trigger
• Stackers nullify some bosses’ game mechanics

But this argument is completely tangential to the discussion, which is about DPS meters.

DaveGan.8065:

On the topic of easy dungeons, the elite PvE runners in this game have most dungeons on such a robotic farm with near perfect rotations that they could probably write a bot to do things for them. It is these easy dungeons that DPS meters wouldn’t apply to for most of us.

Exactly. This is even more proof that DPS meters are unnecessary.

DaveGan.8065:

And please stop strawmanning DPS meters a position where they are solely used to filter people. It is these tougher fights where things become more unpredictable and rotations more mixed, where it can be beneficial to test different weapons, traits, and rotations.

I’m not strawmanning, and I never said that they’re solely used to filter people. I believe, as a result of spending five years in WoW (where DPS meters are prevalent), that they are frequently used for that purpose. However, the statement you quoted didn’t address that issue. I merely said that by the time you’ve gathered the gear and resistances required to even enter high level fractals you will already have determined your most effective builds and/or rotations. For that reason DPS meters should no longer be necessary.

DaveGan.8065:

We get that some people will try to misuse them, but last I checked ANet does not and should not create its content according to what trolls might do (check Copper/Gold/Silver bosses in the Silverwastes as a prime example).

I agree, but I also think that DPS meters will do more harm than good for this game.

DaveGan.8065:

And just like now, you can avoid all that filthy elitist toxicity by just creating your own group

Thank you for bringing my attention to Nike!‘s Youtube channel. I’ve subbed already, and I’ll definitely check out the rest of his “What to Do in Speed Runs” series when I have the time. At 1:50 of his warrior video, however, he gave the perfect example of why DPS meters are so dangerous:

Warrior is not in the top DPS profession and really is not even in the top half of the professions in terms of personal DPS. But when it comes to buffing everyone else’s offensive capabilities warriors are the best in the game. The standard meta team comp, one guardian, one thief, double ele, if you add a warrior as your fifth member of that party you increase the team’s overall DPS by 23%.

So in the wrong hands (I would contend in most hands), the DPS meter will indicate that warrior is under-powered. In reality, having the warrior adds another player’s worth of DPS and then some, according to this video. Before you accuse me of straw manning again, keep in mind that this is not conjecture; it’s based on years of WoW experience and extensive use of the Recount DPS meter.

laokoko.7403:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Astralporing.1957:

BlueBoy.1236:

Ascended and legendaries are luxury items.

BiS is not a luxury.

Please point to the content that you can’t complete in exotics… if there is some content that is physically impossible to complete in full exotic gear then ascended is no longer a luxury but is required. Otherwise it is a luxury item.

High level fractals?

get a +7 and +8 infusion on ring. That’s 20 gold. Get an fused backpiece 100 gold(mawdrey). Get one piece of armor. 70gold for zojja’s footwear.190 gold and you can do fractal 49.

It ain’t too bad. Fractal 49 isn’t much different compare to 50. That being said, having the ability to do 50 is easier to find a party.

That’s pretty funny, considering that I, as a new player, have 40 gold to my name, several traits to buy, and a ton of crafts remaining to max. The fact that these items you’re talking about are going for 190 gold indicate that they are, perhaps, not as much of a luxury as was suggested.

Thaddeus.4891:

Its not working, its a game. If you enjoy spending time on the game it doesn’t feel like work. If you can’t spent more than 10 hours a week in the game without feeling like its work, then just spend 10 hours. Nobody is forcing themselve into playing the game, this is just a stupid argument. Ppl spend the time they want to spend in any game. Some like to play more and other don’t.

I agree. I had a discussion about inflation with one of my guildies who interned at ANet over the summer, and she took the position that anyone could make lots of gold in this game — provided that they engaged in an extremely repetitive activity like farming dungeons or farming Silverwastes. That caveat is the problem. Doing the same thing over and over ad naseum doesn’t feel fun to me. At that point the game crosses the line into the realm of work. That’s what I have issues with. If you want to play the game for fun you’re effectively priced out of crafting. Without crafting you can’t complete your ascended gear set. Without that you’re prevented from running high level fractals. This is a departure from the casual feel of the original game. In Guild Wars 1 I had to solo grind for cores to buy those optional sun-glasses, but I never had to grind for non-cosmetic reasons. I was able to 2-man everything except for the deep and the underworld. On two hours a night of non-repetitive play I was able to get almost all the achievements. Eventually I was finally down to repetitive, grindy tasks along the lines of:

• Farm a bazillion faction by waiting for your henchmen to complete the same quest over and over again
• Maintain an in-game buzz for a billion hours
• Stand in the luck circles for hours on end during festival events
• Repeatedly run dungeons for chest farming purposes

At that point the game stopped being fun and felt like a job. That’s why I quit without even looking back. May of this year, one of my old guild mates told me that the guild was still active in this game and that it was on sale. I picked it up, but now it seems that my guild has moved on to Archage, so I honestly don’t know how much longer I’ll be here. I get the distinct feeling that I got completely screwed by not playing this game from the get-go.

Palador.2170:

Release 3: “And On, and On”
Trahearne’s speech somehow moves into a THIRD half as he reminds the Pact how important it is to not just stand around talking, but to act.

Release 7: “The Dragon Speaks”
Now possessed by the spirit of Trahearne, the Great Dragon begins the first part of his speech to the gathered forces and Branded around him.

These are my favorites — I can see why they would want to put breaks after these denouements.

Beldin.5498:

Since i played GW2 i have farmed maybe 20-25k gold in total, and i only have been
2 times in a dungeon.

How did you manage that? I farm Silverwastes about 15 hours a week and am still only sitting on 40 gold, half of which came from dungeon runs and/or guild missions. Granted, much of my acquired mats and gold goes into crafting and trait acquisition.

pdavis.8031:

Oh i totally agree. However this game offers nothing that an average player cannot obtain. Ive gotten a full set of ascended and a legendary and working on a second set. For someone who doesnt play as much as a hard core player, it takes longer and you have to play more intentionally. When doing mine, as i said earlier, i only play about 24 hours a week. But was still able to get it. And thats the problem, peopel dont want to have to work for it, and seem to think that such things are beyond them but dont want to work for it.

Think about what you’re saying. You play the equivalent of a solid part-time job every week (24 hours a week!) and you were “still” able to gear up. That’s hard-core play. You play so much that your perspective has been skewed to the point that you still view 24 hours a week as casual play. Also, of course people don’t want to work for their in-game equipment. This is a game! We want to play. As soon as it starts feeling like work then I’d rather be working. When I’m working I’m rewarded with thousands of dollars a month for my effort. I then spend that money to play a game. I’m not going to spend that money to do another job!

tofumon.5924:

Bernie.8674:

tofumon.5924:

Bernie.8674:

I started playing after this change took place so I never got to benefit from the original trait system. I posted details of my experiences early in the thread, but suffice it to say that I found the system to be extremely confusing and cumbersome. Now that I’m familiar with it, it’s not as confusing, but it’s still extremely cumbersome.

How many traits do you have unlocked now? Did you stop after you finished enough for what you had in mind, or did you want to unlock more so you could get traits to “experiment” with?

On my main character I’ve unlocked most traits simply because I got 100% map completion and am gradually making my way through all the dungeons.

Ah, gotcha. I started right before this trait update so I only have 1 character grandfathered in right now, and I’m considering making a new character but collecting traits sounds like a pain. Did you have to do a lot of waiting around for event chains to start, champions to spawn, etc.? I don’t actually mind doing map completion THAT much because at least there’s always the next heart/POI/vista/skill point on the map to go for, but waiting around for things to happen that might not happen is one thing I CANNOT tolerate.

On my main I ignorantly farmed champions in Cursed Shore because the web sites I looked into suggested that this was the fastest way to farm ancient bones and I was under the (false) impression that I needed them to craft a “necessary” item that now escapes me. For that reason I was able to get it on all the events there and unlock a bunch of traits. On my other characters I probably won’t bother. I’m getting one of each class to 80 just so I can get a feel for how they’re played, but I doubt I will trait up any of them unless one of them turns out to be really fun to play. The traits are unnecessary for most content anyway. I don’t know exactly how many traits my main character has unlocked at the moment. There are only one or two builds I ever use, so I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to get the other traits. If ArenaNet was hoping to encourage more experimentation, they’ve failed miserably. Guild Wars 1 was head-and-shoulders above Guild Wars 2 in this regard (and in most other regards as well, to be honest).

Verificus.4320:

The same can be said for wow. Go follow wow for a while but from the perspective of an ACTUAL competitive guild, rather than a bunch of kids who are severly depressed about both their outside life and their ingame raid progressiont that they take it out on the poor wow plebs.

You mean like this guy’s? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUer4XfLL8

Or maybe this guy’s:
https://www.facebook.com/Killarslol/posts/572309812789070

Why? How? Well this game isn’t to blame. In the last few years this game (despite many people quitting and guilds dying) isn’t to blame for vodka/Exodus’ demise it’s the raiding community. I don’t mean this is a pointing the finger sort of way, it’s an inevitable sort of flaw in the competition of the top end raiders. You see… we’ve basically been killing ourselves off slowly since day 1. In the last few years we’ve certainly picked up the pace, but the “hardcore raider” is a dying breed and it’s certainly becoming a more difficult breed to be a part of. What I mean by this is of course the time commitment and the level of shear dedication and determination it takes and costs to be at the very top. This isn’t to poke fun, but to just shed light of why many people, and subsequently, many guilds will fall. Raiding for many many hours on end is fun, CAN be exciting, and at the end of it all can really prove who really wants that world first/us first/realm first the most. Unfortunately we (hardcore raiders) pushed too hard. Tier after tier we just keep adding to the insanity in both farming preparations and actual progressing. It’s almost as if progression itself never really ends after a end tier boss dies. Combine this with Blizzard actually putting new content out faster, alts playing a big role, PTR/BETA, dailys, coins, BMAH, well… you just get lost in it all. Right now there are a few legit world first guilds left. The competition is slim because the competition is literally eating each other (well not that literally). Good luck to everyone left in the race for this expact, but I don’t know how much longer this sort of thing can last.

Verificus.4320:

People saying ‘its not a business its a game’.

Yeah well, that’s great for you and all but some of us see games as serious as any competitive athlete would see a sport.

This thread is about DPS meters and why they would be abused in PUGs.

Verificus.4320:

Or if you’re a wow raider. Imagine Method saying in an interview, yeah, next time guys, we’re all gonna bring holy pala DPS because it’s way for fun! Screw meta! I’m sure their sponsors would be totally okay about that.

When was the last time Method PUGged their way to a world first? You’re talking apples and oranges here.

Verificus.4320:

GW2 doesn’t have this level of competition.

Bingo.

Verificus.4320:

But I can bet you everyone who is doing the highest level of PvE in this game (or sPvP, which isn’t much the e-sport Anet wanted it to be, yet.. there is still hope) wish there was.

And I suspect that you would lose that bet. Guild Wars has always been aimed at the casual crowd and always will be. If you want to participate in e-sports, there are plenty of games out there to provide that.

Verificus.4320:

And if anet decides to introduce raids to this game, you can bet everyone will race for server 1st/region first/world first completion. And they will all be running meta.

ANet will never introduce raids, for the same reason they don’t add a DPS meter. This isn’t that kind of game.

Verificus.4320:

It’s fine that your prefer being casual, as do probably most GW2 players as it is mostly a casual-oriented game. But don’t come with stupid crap like ’it’s just a game’.

It’s not “stupid crap” that I came up with. It’s reality. The sooner you accept it the happier you’ll be.

Verificus.4320:

As for the comment about the WoW raiding guild demands list. It’s nothing more than a fair list. You want fast progression so obviously you’d only recruit people who can guarantee that.

I never said otherwise. There’s a reason I don’t play WoW anymore. The point of my comment was that the list (that someone else gave) is an excellent example of where DPS meters lead. If you want DPS and job-level guild applications, then by all means renew your WoW sub. But please quit trying to make our casual game into a clone of your raiding game.

misterman.1530:

Are we to seriously believe that the “economy” in this game is driven solely by supply-and-demand? I honestly believe that many, if not most, high end items are artificially inflated. For instance, why CAN’T I sell an item for less than some specific minimum price? In a truly market driven economy I should be able to sell a good at any price I see fit.

Question: has anyone tried to sell a legendary in the TP? What’s the minimum you can sell at?

For funsies, I put in a custom-price of 1g for The Bifrost. It allowed me to put it, will it allow someone to sell at that price?

The minimum is dependent on what the in-game vendors pay. The game protects new players from unscrupulous veterans, so it sets the minimum at the vendor prices + the %TP mark up so that players will always make as much from the TP as they would have from the vendor.

hybrid.5027:

Bernie.8674:

A price drop for a single item is not proof that inflation is non-existent.

A true statement, but you’re on the verge of asking him to prove a negative.

I wasn’t asking anyone to prove anything. I was responding to this:

If inflation were taking place on the level that people are claiming it to be. You would see the same increase of prices over all the items, and not just a select few. Elder wood logs also would have gone up considerably, but I think they actually dropped some.

DaveGan.8065:

Bernie.8674:

I view the game as a game, not as a business.

Please get off your strawman-powered moral high ground. Business can be fun for some. You’re entitled to say that our way kills your fun, but to say that it kills ours as well is simply reaching and egocentric. “Your fun is not my fun” goes both ways.

Way to take a statement out of context. When did I say anything about what you liked? I said that I agree with DaedalusDragon that

it’s more fun to spread out, cope with boss mechanics, and take down a boss as originally intended.

because I view this game as a game. I never said that my way was superior or that it was the only way to play. I was just trying to explain why he said that zerker style play isn’t fun.

DaveGan.8065:

By all means play with zerker gear and stack behind an obstacle so that you can nullify all boss mechanics.

Please show me how I can nullify the Archdiviner or Imbued Shaman in Fractal 37/38/49/50 by stacking on them with zerker gear. I would be happy to pass that information to my group the next time we do it, and we would all be eternally grateful.

Funny how you accuse me of straw manning and then come up with this. You don’t stack on those fights, do you? Then why would my statement apply to those? DPS meters probably wouldn’t even apply to high level fractals anyway, because the gear requirements and agony mechanics already serve that purpose. The fact remains that most players stack on most bosses in dungeons. As one of the proponents of DPS meters pointed out:

Verificus.4320:

We don’t stack to negate mechanics. We stack because there is a maximum range on boons, because when everyone is stacked it’s easier to res a downed player, because melee by design is better than range (more damage and thus preferred for speedclearers) and becuz certain CC mechanics effect you less when you stack in a corner. E.g. stuff that knocks you miles away only disables you when you are in a corner, thus you don’t get out of boon range etc. Also, AOE’ing trash is easier if they are all grouped together in a corner.

pdavis.8031:

If inflation were taking place on the level that people are claiming it to be. You would see the same increase of prices over all the items, and not just a select few. Elder wood logs also would have gone up considerably, but I think they actually dropped some.

Gem prices have steadily increased since I started playing. The cost of most mats keeps rising as well. The reason elder wood log prices are so low is the sheer number of foxfire clusters required to make the vine back piece. Since most of the saplings that the clusters come from also give elder wood, the market is now flooded. At that point it doesn’t matter whether or not players can afford to buy your logs; if there are more logs then there are buyers, the cost is going to go down. It’s simple supply and demand. A price drop for a single item is not proof that inflation is non-existent.

Mo Mo.1947:

My newbie friend had about 10 gold in their first couple weeks of playing just from going around doing random stuff they came across. And she was around level 20 at that point so she has plenty of time to accumulate more gold as she gets into the higher level areas and starts getting better drops and doing more profitable activities.

This lasts until you get your crafting skills into the 400s and realize that you have a choice between spending an hour to farm the mats to craft a single item or spending 2-3 gold to buy those same mats. At that point she can decide wether to blow all her gold on traits or crafting.

Guhracie.3419:

And then I think of how duplicitous it was to emphasize the quote below in the blog post about traits, rather than relaying that the tiers being unlocked for free is utterly meaningless, and there’s no way to dive in when you don’t have any traits.

Once you reach the appropriate level, we want you to be able to dive right into the system and start playing around with it, so you’ll unlock each tier for free!

The hilarious thing about this is that it really calls attention to how bad the system actually is. At level 30 I get this message telling me that Adept traits are unlocked and then I look at my trait interface only to discover that I have two traits unlocked, neither of which are in the lines that I’ve invested in. That message just pours salt in the wound.

Mo Mo.1947:

Well I have a friend playing GW2 who has never played a computer game before and she’s doing quite well. I thought I would have to hold her hand through the game but she keeps leveling up and making progress without me around.

That’s because they nerfed all the low level mobs so you no longer need traits. How many traits has she unlocked without you around?

tofumon.5924:

Bernie.8674:

I started playing after this change took place so I never got to benefit from the original trait system. I posted details of my experiences early in the thread, but suffice it to say that I found the system to be extremely confusing and cumbersome. Now that I’m familiar with it, it’s not as confusing, but it’s still extremely cumbersome.

How many traits do you have unlocked now? Did you stop after you finished enough for what you had in mind, or did you want to unlock more so you could get traits to “experiment” with?

On my main character I’ve unlocked most traits simply because I got 100% map completion and am gradually making my way through all the dungeons. There are still some traits that I haven’t unlocked ankitten ot likely to ever unlock (because I don’t PvP and my server tends to neglect the camps in WvW). If I am ever told that I absolutely need a certain trait (Frost Spirit, for instance) I might actively seek it, if it’s not too much trouble. Otherwise I just pony up the cash.

On my alts I simply don’t bother. Once I hit level 80 I often park them by node hubs like the cluster of trees in Malchor’s Leap. The cost of gathering all the traits that would be required to make them interesting in the end game is simply too daunting. Thankfully I still have a couple of classes to level. At the rate things are going I fully expect to have burned out on this game within the year. Jumping puzzles, dungeons, and zergs just aren’t my thing.

Verificus.4320:

We don’t stack to negate mechanics.

Except for when:

certain CC mechanics effect you less when you stack in a corner. E.g. stuff that knocks you miles away only disables you when you are in a corner, thus you don’t get out of boon range etc.

Mind you, I’m not opposed to this style of play, and I understand why most players prefer it, but be honest about it.

Tao.5096:

So, time to recruit.

• 10 000+ AP
• Meta Build Only
• Full Ascended Berserker Gear, Jewelry
• Full set of Superior Rune of Strength
• Legendary Weapon(Berserker stats)
• All Offensive slots filled with Power Infusions
• Dungeon Master title
• Hobby Dungeon Explorer Achievement Completed
• Don’t be a baddie
• I must know you
• Link screenshot to your minimal DPS (if value is too low, we’ll reject you, and call you bad noob)

If you meet above requirements please leave your CV and maybe we’ll take you with us for a test run.

This is pretty much how raiding guilds in WoW recruit.

Harlequin.8593:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Since when has fun = bad? Get this straight. You who want zerk do not have fun. You play so that you can eat the carrot at the end of the stick, but you aren’t having fun … Down with zerker. blah blah blah

I may be anti-DPS meter and anti-inspect but there’s nothing wrong with playing zerker, I mean I play in head-to-toe zerker gear and that’s my choice just as it’s everyone else choice to play the way they want to. Playing my way doesn’t make things any less fun simply because I choose to do it with a particular gear stat combo .. to each her / his own.

I don’t think that’s how he meant it. Certainly, you can have fun in zerker gear. The problem is that most players insisting on zerker gear do so because they just want to get their dungeon runs over with as quickly as possible so that they can cash their paychecks and move on to other in-game activities. That’s why he says they’re not having fun. By all means play with zerker gear and stack behind an obstacle so that you can nullify all boss mechanics. I agree with DaedalusDragon, however, that it’s more fun to spread out, cope with boss mechanics, and take down a boss as originally intended. I view the game as a game, not as a business.

Harper.4173:

It’s not about personality, teaching, playing how you want or anything else. It’s about getting the most bang for your buck and for that reason you’ll want :

If you were talking about running a business I would be inclined to agree with you. Since we’re talking about playing a social game online, I think that you and other players like you have lost perspective.

Thaddeus.4891:

Never had to do dungeon to craft my acended armor or weapons. It just take time because of time gated recipe.

How did you max your crafting then? I saw a screenshot from back in the day and saw that T6 materials were going for coppers. These days they go for tens of silvers. There’s no way to get all those mats without farming dungeons. I have 4 level 80 characters and the only crafts that I’ve been able to max are cooking and jewelcrafting. All my other crafts are all stalled somewhere in the mid 400s. Every once in a while I’m able to save up the 30 or so gold that it costs to push a craft into the range where I can start making elonian leather and the like. Even so, that starts giving improvements somewhere in the 470s, and then you’re back to saving money for T6 mats. 15 minutes of dungeoneering is a guaranteed gold plus whatever loot you pick up. That’s the quickest and surest way to level crafting.

Teon.5168:

And fwiw, I don’t play Eve anymore because I enjoy the more casual style mmoprgs, like GW2. I used to be much more hardcore when I first started mmorpgs well over a decade ago, but nowadays, I would much rather just enjoy a game, and not even come close to feeling like it can be a ‘job’ at times. I have real life for that.

It’s funny how much fun hardcore play is when your typical weekday consists of three hours of class, two hours of homework, seven hours of screwing around, and twelve hours of sleep, right? I was pretty hardcore back in my college days, too. Now that the typical day is ten hours of work, two hours of commute, three hours of family time, two hours of screwing around, and seven hours of sleep I can really appreciate a game that doesn’t require so much of a time investment.

Leo G.4501:

You know, the whole “This isn’t the game for you! Leave and play something else” mentality spread around these forums is rather disheartening. The funny thing is, likely most of the people complaining or making suggestions have left and are playing other games. But we did invest in the game and likely look forward to the game improving.

What’s disheartening is that 90% of the MMOs out there already do what these players are asking for: gear treadmills, mounts, unforgiving boss fights, and harsh death penalties. The rest of us have this one casual game. That’s why, insteading of ruining our one last refuge, you should find a game that is more suited to your style of play. Those of us enjoy Guild Wars like the idea of a game that doesn’t require the equivalent of a full-time job’s worth of playing just to keep our character current.

Leo G.4501:

Getting to the point though, I get that the OP’s choice of words might not have vibed with you (I can tell you, I hated FFXI because of how mind-numbingly hard it was to do even the simplest of tasks! It wasn’t the risks, deaths, inability to solo mobs without spending tons of gil, but a culmination of various things but the other mentioned points just rubbed salt in the hole) but don’t ignore what flaws GW2 has.

I am not ignoring its flaws. The game is not perfect by any means, but the issues that the OP brought up (ease of play) is a deliberate design feature that many of us Guild Wars players are perfectly happy with.

Leo G.4501:

It’s got issues. It has a great foundation but things could be a lot better but thinking about it, I can’t really see myself coming back full time unless I see some huge change to the game, like a new race or more skills or something.

What does that even have to do with the OP? I disagree that those are needed, but I am not going to argue as vehemently against those as I did against the OP. This is because, unlike the issues presented in the OP, I think that ArenaNet can add more races and/or skills without crapping all over the rest of the game.

Leo G.4501:

I take that back, I do get that feeling when I explore around at -5-8 levels compared to the area…or at least I did around the sub-30 levels. It’s pretty awesome sometimes. Caves look more scary and mysterious (even though I’ve seen them before) when you know anything in there could rip you apart if you aren’t careful. It makes the game feel bigger somehow.

That’s the new player feeling. Around level 10 you start recognizing your environment as having yet another iteration of cave #36 and building #21. You get that in all MMOs.

Verificus.4320:

2: Maybe, that is indeed a good example. WoW is still the MMO-King though and you’d be hard pressed to find a majority there that doesn’t follow Icy Veins, Elitist Jerks and Fatboss like it’s the holy grail.

Then go play WoW. ArenaNet was founded by former Blizzard developers who wanted to target a different niche of the market than WoW was about to. This game is not now and was never intended to be WoW.

Verificus.4320:

4: Still running them because they are my best source of income. I TP alot too but i’m not a power trader. I get most my gold from spamming dungeons. I need to do them to cover my expenses.

The disparity between dungeon rewards and rewards for everything else in this game is insane. I think that’s more of a problem than the meta. To be sure, this calls a lot more attention to the meta issue. When the most efficient way to farm is in groups that all run a certain set of gear and skills, the dungeon queues get polluted with farmers. One nice aspect of Guild Wars 1 was that soloing was the most efficient way to farm. Those of us who wanted to actually enjoy the game could do so without having to interact with farmers and their non-stop complaints about inefficient content runs.

Verificus.4320:

5: It means I want to get over with dungeons and fractals fast so I can get to doing the stuff I enjoy. Thus requiring zerker as it gets me there fastest.

That’s kind of sad. You don’t even enjoy dungeons, but you feel obligated to do them. This is what ArenaNet should fix.

Verificus.4320:

6: The ship has sailed on GW1. People need to learn to let go. Was it a better game? Possibly.. Who knows. Everyone’s looking at that through rose-tinted glasses. Had both games existed side-by-side today opinions might differ. Also, people like to remember things differently. GW1 had meta’s too and best builds.

The best builds weren’t public. I learned quickly when I won a PvP template contest on the IGN forums only to see my build nerfed the following week. The sheer quantity of synergies in that game guaranteed a wide variety of OP builds. They also varied from class to class. I’m not under any illusion that we can match that system because it was too hard to balance from the PvP perspective, but Guild Wars 2 has gone to the other extreme. The current meta is overly generic: zerker gear for every class, and one prescribed weapon/rune set.

Verificus.4320:

7: If that is the case then why are so many grinding crests, and geodes back in Dry Top.?

Because they are the only means of obtaining the skins exclusive to Dry Top and Silverwastes. If farming those zones is so lucrative then why aren’t you doing that instead of grinding dungeons? You don’t need to answer that because I already know that you can make 10 times more grinding dungeons than you could hope to make in those zones. The difference is that once you’ve obtained the skins from Dry Top and Silverwastes you will have no incentive to go back. On the other hand, the dungeon rewards are so ridiculously inflated that you continue to run them again and again despite your admission that you want to get them over with quickly so you can go back to doing the things you actually like.

lordhelmos.7623:

Inflation has caused all basic necessities for “Progression” to soar to levels way beyond the reach of anyone but a Black Lion tycoon.

The acquisition of any high end items is directly tied into crafting and the market, with minimal ways of obtaining them alternatively (considering the randomness of chests, and the even lower likelyhood of any reward being of a specific stat combination that is usable to you).

In my experience, a large portion of this issue is the tremendous disparity between dungeon rewards and everything else in the game. I chained four dungeons back to back for a guildie one night and came out with more gold from that evening than I had gained from farming champions in the Straits of Devestation and/or Drytop the entire month prior to that. I suddenly understood why T6 mats were going for half a gold or more. For a game that supposedly wasn’t about grinding dungeons, this gold gap is odd, to say the least.

Crovax.7854:

Dailies required actual work to be done. This doesn’t. Simple as that. Why reward this behaviour?

First, it’s not work, and it’s not healthy to think of it as such. It’s play, and it’s something you should only do in your spare time. As to why they reward it, I suspect that they believe (correctly or not) that if someone logs every day in they are more likely to get sucked into a group activity than if they did not log in for months. It’s an incentive to increase your odds of playing consistently.

Verificus.4320:

Then it’s their choice if they wanna abide the meta and join me and my friends’ runs. I don’t think less of them as a person if they don’t and are PHIW but I will think less of them as a player valuable or useful to the team. Luckily there are a myriad of other areas in the game where we can play together. It’s a matter of attitude. Wether it’s a game or not, a positive attitude IMO is to always seek to better and improve yourself.

Understood. I tried to explain why this is a selfish policy to adopt. I don’t care one way or another whether you choose to keep following it, but calling others call others selfish for not choosing to adhere to it is hypocritical.

Verificus.4320:

There are always people who view games more as a form of escapism and aren’t even slightly concerned with being optimal but I would argue those are few.

I suspect that you would lose this argument. Wildstar banked on your idea, and the results didn’t turn out as they had anticipated:

When Wildstar was launched, it was heavily toted as “hardcore” especially in the sense of raiding. It now appears Carbine is adjusting its view with both previous and this upcoming patch. I wanted to know whether this was a pivot away from hardcore or a resolve to “The Devs are listening.” The official word from Frost was “both”, after seeing the feedback and looking at gameplay analytics they found that there was a real need to focus on solo content. However, the solo quest content has been in the works for quite some time and was something intended for launch but wasn’t ready. It was something they decided to “beef” up and Frost confirmed that the solo storyline will continue in future content patches.

Verificus.4320:

No matter how ‘casual’ you are, everyone likes being the overpowered hero in any game. So most people gravitate towards meta becuz meta often best encompasses this feeling of overpoweredness.

The glass cannon style of play is only overpowered in terms of DPS. From others’ perspectives, the ability to shrug off boss mechanics is overpowered, even if killing a boss takes a little longer. Those who gravitate toward zerker gear just want to get the content over and done with so they can tick off the next box on their in-game to-do list that much sooner.

Verificus.4320:

I’m not saying in all cases but in most cases. The small group of people that whine and hate on the meta and rage here are people who are just upset their cleric mace/shield build isn’t one-shotting the bosses like all the zerkers are.

Players hating on the meta miss the GW1 days where figuring out a way to counter skills was more important than flat-out DPS.

Verificus.4320:

They try to desperately find a way to disprove all the math and calculations because they cannot deal with the fact that their already is a proven meta and that this meta is not how they envisioned it would be.

Who disputes math and calculations? GW1 was far more complex than straight up math and calculations. Figuring out the right combination of hexes, conditions, and interrupts for each boss made for more compelling game play than simply coming up with the combination of passive buffs and gear stats that gives the highest output.

Verificus.4320:

As for your last comment, do understand that this game is 2,5 years old and we have been playing the same dungeons and fractals over and over again and I’m pretty much done marveling, discovering and what not.

I found your problem right there. Why are you still running dungeons then?

Verificus.4320:

I play mostly for my guild, social aspect and the story.

What do zerker stats have to do with that?

Verificus.4320:

All the other stuff does feel like a job as I need gold to cover for my in game expenses and I need mats to craft the stuff I want.

And that’s the problem ArenaNet should be fixing. Guild Wars 1 was much better in this regard. They didn’t force you to repeatedly grind dungeons in groups in order to craft high end gear. We simply got the best gear in game near the end, and any further grind was purely for cosmetic purposes.

Verificus.4320:

So yes, I want to complete the incredibly boring and repetitive content we’ve had for, literally, years and go do something else like a new story episode or something else new or fun ASAP. I only want the rewards.

Playing the game is enough reward in and of itself. For many (most?) Guild Wars players, repetitive grinds aren’t rewarding. The concept of rewarding long grinds with better loot is more suited to WoW than this game. This is why caps were placed on Daily and Monthly APs and why it has been reworked yet again to be even less repetitive.

wwwes.1398:

Gaile, the difference is that I know how many episodes are in each season of Game of Thrones ahead of time and we don’t have months in between the episodes. As a fan of the show, what would your thoughts be if they decided to delay the finale a month so HBO could ruin a miniseries for a month. You can’t do anything about the latter, but can you at least answer the first question? I feel like asking this is reasonable and I’m getting really irritated that it is being treated otherwise.

Then consider the Song of Ice and Fire books on which the TV series is based instead. I’ve been reading them since 1996, and each novel has taken longer than the previous one to be released. As frustrating as this is, I also recognize that without George R.R. Martin’s attention to detail and perfectionistic tendencies there would probably never have been a TV series to begin with. I’m willling to wait as long as it takes to get the best result possible.

Verificus.4320:

1: You misunderstand my definiton of bad. With bad I mean anti-meta, inconsiderate of teamwork and the party. When I make groups I specifically state I want experienced people in zerker gear. People choose to ignore these wishes and join anyway. They are selfish, arrogant meta-haters that come in to try and prove a point and in the end we wipe or the dungeon takes twice as long as normal and then they rage at me and my party rather than admit their own shortcomings. That is a bad player IMO.

The key portion of this being “IMO.” I dispute your assertion that anti-meta is bad in Guild Wars 2. If we were talking WoW I would agree with you, but I have yet to encounter a boss in this game that provides a challenging DPS race. I contend that anti-meta is a just different playstyle, but let’s not even argue about it. We’ll consider a world where your claim is valid and the meta is the only “correct” way to play this game.

By “inconsiderate of teamwork,” you really mean, “not wanting to get through the content as quickly as possible in order to satisfy your team mate — specifically, me.” Your requirements are not sustainable. I saw how this played out in WoW’s Cataclysm expansion. No one can play forever. If everyone demanded only experienced players in their group then inexperienced players would be unable to ever gain experience. Eventually you’ll be unable to find a group to satisfy your criteria in LFG. Ironically, when that day comes you’ll likely come back to these forums to complain about how the good players have all left the game. Instead of realizing that this elitist policy of demanding all experienced players all the time effectively starved the game of up and coming competent players, you’ll claim that the lack of challenge drove off anyone who was “good.”

Back when I started playing video games we didn’t treat them like a job that had to be completed as quickly as possible so that we could move on with the rest of our evenings. They were journeys to be enjoyed. If we replayed them it was to marvel at the graphics and/or discover aspects of the environment that had gone unnoticed before. I would argue that the selfish players are the ones demanding that everyone else abandon everything that makes a video game truly enjoyable and rush through everything so that the pros can continue to treat this game like a job.

Malediktus.9250:

This new daily/monthly achievement system is another huge slap in the face for longtime veteran achievement hunters.
Now you only need to do 3 dailies per day for 10 AP, before the daily cap people like me often spent several hours (4-6h per day at peak when the 5 soloQ and 3 teamQ dailies existed) each and every day just to get all the dailies done every day. And now every casual who logs in for 10 minutes can easily max their AP without any kind of effort.
Stop catering to the ultra casuals all the time and think of the people who play GW2 for more than an hour or two per week!

I believe that they put the lifetime cap in place so people like you would no longer feel obligated to do that sort of thing in order to stay ahead of the curve. For that reason the achievement system should no longer even be relevant for players like you unless you want to earn a little extra cash by converting laurels into crafting mats.

You’re also overlooking the part about harder dailies granting better rewards now. Just because you had to labor under a broken system doesn’t mean that new players should have to suffer like you. I mean, back when I was in college, 52kpbs was the best you could hope for with regards to internet throughput. You don’t see me complaining that the crappiest internet access available these days offers at least 10 times that. Sit back and enjoy the benefits that this new system brings you. A game that requires 4-6 hours of play per day is simply not healthy. That’s 28-42 hours a week — as much as many full-time jobs!

ZudetGambeous.9573:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/season-2-returns-on-january-13/

It appears that Anet is taking another 6 week break from their small updates to focus on PvP.

I do not believe that Anet is putting out content at an appropriate pace for a AAA MMO and should push the release forward to coincide with the Wintersday patch since it contains no new content and is just a rehash of last year.

Have a heart. The holiday season is upon us, and many schools and corporations let up on the workload this time of the year to allow their students/employees to enjoy more time with their friends and/or families. I’m curious as to what you feel is an appropriate pace for new content in a free-to-play game.

Guild Wars content isn’t generated by robots. The people bringing us this stuff have lives of their own and should have the same opportunity to enjoy the holidays that we do.

Deamhan.9538:

Bernie.8674:

I have trouble understanding a design feature that is intended to make the player experience more unpleasant. Like you said, the player avoids it. As in, the player avoids logging on altogether and finds a game that doesn’t put them in a penalty box for five minutes because they happened to take a risk. The point of a game is to be an escape from reality with limited consequences. Being forced back to a waypoint is consequence enough. What exactly is forcing a tedious walk back to the corpse going to add to the experience?

The walk back in WoW was optional. You can run back to your corps and rez yourself where you died, or you can rez at the shrine and take the penalty. You can then run back to where you were to try again. Tell me? What’s the difference between running back and rez’ing there and rez’ing at the shrine then running back? Both have running back, except that it’s easier to run back as a ghost and you don’t take that penalty. What, you would rather rez on the shrine and run back alive to try again? Possibly having to fight your way back to where you died? LOL ok. You do that. Me? I’d rather run back as a ghost and run past the enemies without having to fight them, run down that river of lava without taking damage instead of jumping from platform to platform, etc.

I agree with you that GW2 has even harsher penalties than WoW. I’m not opposed to an aggro-free walk back to your corpse if you really want to pick up from where you left off. However, I wasn’t making comparisons with the WoW system; I was responding to this:

I miss oldschool mmorpg’s where there was a sense of awe, dread, danger and adventure. UO, EQ and FF11 for instance… You had to prepare and plan for your journey and failure actually had an impact; such as experience loss or losing valuable equipment. On top of which you’d have corpse runs or be sent back a fair distance.

Deamhan.9538:

Even in GW1, the penalty was greater than it is now. Rez sickness that weakened you. Die too many times and either you waited hours for the sickness to wear off or you had to reset the instance by returning to town.

You’re preaching to the choir here. In my opinion everything was better in GW1. Unfortunately it’s no fun to play it alone, so I’m in GW2 along with the rest of my guild now.

Deamhan.9538:

I suggest trying out EvE. People who play games like WoW and GW have no concept of risk vs reward and it shows in your post. Why punish someone for taking a risk? Because risk vs reward. Properly weigh the risk against the reward and act accordingly.

I suggest getting a job and managing a family. I am well aware of the concept of risk vs reward. I am also painfully aware of the true value of a virtual reward. I would much rather devote my time to improving my family’s financial situation than spending 6 hours a day chasing a virtual reward that is going to disappear into the ether when EvE finally shuts down their servers.

Deamhan.9538:

WoW, GW, and GW2. None have a punishment system like EvE. If all your gear had a % chance of being destroyed for good and what didn’t get destroyed was lootable, then you would have a punishment system on par with EvE.

And I would probably uninstall the game and never play it again the day that happened. It’s better for me not to start.

Deamhan.9538:

What’s the point? The meaning of the reward reflects that of the risk. If failing is inconsequential, then so is the reward when you succeed.

No, it doesn’t. In-game rewards have no meaning outside of the game. The actual reward is enjoying the time I spend in the game. Much of that enjoyment comes from the idea that my in-game character is going to grow more powerful and have a wider range of options over time. As soon as you start taking things from my character then the game ceases to be fun for me. I suspect that many older gamers who have been around a while feel the same way.

Deamhan.9538:

Morrowind wasn’t a MMO. I see this argument about how MMOs are being dumbed down all the time, but I have trouble taking it seriously. This video puts this notion into perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDP3T3j2vOc

Again EvE vs GW2. Both are MMOs this time. EvE has one of the steepest learning curves out there and the tutorial only covers the basics then plops you out like a naked baby in the woods.

Then go play EvE. Don’t try to make this game into something else that already exists. The EvE market is pretty much covered by EvE, and it apparently isn’t lucrative enough for ArenaNet to want to poach on it.

Zenith.6403:

Bernie.8674:

Being forced back to a waypoint is consequence enough. What exactly is forcing a tedious walk back to the corpse going to add to the experience?

- Important part of enjoying a game is the feeling of competence. You’re right that if the game constantly sends you the signal that you’re incompetent, then the player will quit playing the game. On the other side if everything you do is outside the realm of competence, then playing the game feels pointless. Good example of the latter is grinding: do this easy action thousand times and you’ll be rewarded. The reward is given for simply playing the game, not for learning new skills.

I’m not disputing that, but how does a tedious walk back to your corpse make you feel any more incompetent than having to teleport back to the nearest way point or wait for some stranger to come pick you back up?

As for grinding, every MMO has it. You think of it as a reward, but it’s not. It’s an incentive to keep playing. The rewarded entity in this case is ArenaNet.

Honestly, those players who think of in-game loot as a reward mechanism are in for disappointment. For me, playing the game is reward in and of itself. Defeating a difficult boss is all the “reward” I need. My gripe with this game is that all the challenging content is gated behind group play, and for me group play is just not all that rewarding. I miss the GW1 days when I could skill cap elites from bosses with my trusty group of henchmen. That was far more satisfying than following the zerg up to Balthazar’s Cathedral and dodging abominations for 5 minutes.

Soulmancer.4715:

The same reasons why games like Dark Souls are a hit. It encourages you to become better, to be more skilled at the game, play your character better and strengthen your character… It makes those feats actually matter in a game that has “some” level of punishment for death and failure alongside challenging content…

I haven’t played Dark Souls, but I know enough about it to point out that it’s a single player game. No one is every going to train a bunch of mobs into your fight and then stealth just for the lulz of watching you walk back to your corpse. Early MMOs enabled that sort of thing, but they learned their lessons.

Soulmancer.4715:

Accomplishing challenging circumstances is more rewarding then steam rolling through a streamlined theme park where failure has no penalty.

This is purely subjective. Many players just want to steam roll a streamlined theme park with no penalties at the end of the day when the rest of their day has been filled with substantial challenges where failure has dire real-world consequences. I suspect that most players want this, or MMOs wouldn’t uniformly be heading that direction. Wild Star ostensibly started out catering to players like you, but they were quickly disabused of the notion that their business model would prove profitable. They’ve now chosen to move in another direction.

Soulmancer.4715:

Most game’s now adays have difficulty settings or mods… but MMORPG’s you are locked into the developers vision… and it seems most mmorpg developers these days are way too eager to cater to the lowest skilled gamers.

That’s because MMOs are shared worlds. For that reason difficulty settings are restricted to instanced content. In GW2 the difficulty is in the fractals. In WoW you have Mythic raiding. A shared world locks everyone into the same vision. I would even argue that the vision is not the developer’s, but the marketer’s. Furthermore, I’m pretty confident that the marketer’s vision is based on player feedback and analytics. Game designers have always catered to the lowest skilled players. If you didn’t realize this when you were younger it’s because you weren’t as skilled back then.

Deamhan.9538:

Corps runs are not fun? They are tedious and boring? Of course they are. That’s the point. It’s a consequence for failing/dying. It’s meant to be unpleasant for the player so the player avoids it.

I have trouble understanding a design feature that is intended to make the player experience more unpleasant. Like you said, the player avoids it. As in, the player avoids logging on altogether and finds a game that doesn’t put them in a penalty box for five minutes because they happened to take a risk. The point of a game is to be an escape from reality with limited consequences. Being forced back to a waypoint is consequence enough. What exactly is forcing a tedious walk back to the corpse going to add to the experience?

Deamhan.9538:

MMOs haven’t change much? Um, yeah they change considerably. RPGs even more so.

Morrowind wasn’t a MMO. I see this argument about how MMOs are being dumbed down all the time, but I have trouble taking it seriously. This video puts this notion into perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDP3T3j2vOc

Dalanor.5387:

Facetank Tequatl.
Do it.

I’m pretty sure Teq can be tanked, even the CM bosses with warrior and probably with necro too.

You’re right. My server does an organized Teq run every night, and it goes best when the zerg can just facetank and focus on DPS. The limiting factor is whether or not the players on the turrets do a good job of keeping the poison clear, the zerg buffed, and Teq debuffed. Berserker gear isn’t good for Teq because he’s immune to crits, so you’re free to use soldier’s stats instead, increasing survivability that much more.

Jana.6831:

Bernie.8674:

You’re missing the point that this is a serious impediment to the new player experience. […]
The goal of the trait system was ostensibly to make the new player experience more engaging, and it has done the exact opposite.

The Trait changes have got nothing to do with the NPE – they were introduced in april, the NPE in september. Back in april no one ever spoke of making this game “easier” for new players. The official explanation was to make leveling between level 30 and 60? more exciting.

I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I consider those who are levelling from 30 to 60 to be new players. Maybe my perspective is skewed because everyone in my guild pretty much already had level 80 characters for most classes when this change was introduced. For what it’s worth, I started playing after this change took place so I never got to benefit from the original trait system. I posted details of my experiences early in the thread, but suffice it to say that I found the system to be extremely confusing and cumbersome. Now that I’m familiar with it, it’s not as confusing, but it’s still extremely cumbersome.

Soulmancer.4715:

I miss oldschool mmorpg’s where there was a sense of awe, dread, danger and adventure. UO, EQ and FF11 for instance… You had to prepare and plan for your journey and failure actually had an impact; such as experience loss or losing valuable equipment. On top of which you’d have corpse runs or be sent back a fair distance.

You miss the days when you found a challenge in an activity that was new to you. Now, after playing MMOs for 15 years you find them to be easy. Is this really a surprise to you? A game that’s going to challenge a 15-year MMO veteran is not going to appeal to the up and coming generation of players. I suggest you try Mythic raiding in WoW. That seems to be more like what you crave. Also, corpse runs are not fun. They’re tedious and boring. If you have so much time on your hands that you actually enjoy a leisurely stroll back to your corpse, then I suspect that you haven’t been using it wisely.

Soulmancer.4715:

I guess WoW has ruined this generation of mmorpg’s given it’s population numbers and that it caters primary to the ADHD era of gaming that caters to the hyper casual audience and hands you everything on a silver platter without consequence or effort.

MMOs haven’t changed that much; you have. I don’t know why you’re expecting for a video game to make you work for stuff instead of handing “you everything on a silver platter without consequence or effort.” It’s just a game. If you want to participate in a system that meaningfully rewards hard work then get a job and excel at that. Since you’re so quick to insult the newer gamers, let me add some perspective. As an older gamer, I see a generation of spoiled kids whose copious free time left them under the delusion that games give meaningful rewards for “hard work.”

Soulmancer.4715:

I guess there are no alternate servers or private servers that cater to a more hardcore audience? At least with non-mmorpg’s you can always find mods to boost immersion or challenge… with mmo’s your at the whim of the developers who seem to do everything possible to lure and keep the most casual or simple gamers playing.

That’s how the real world tends to work. Those who devote their time to activities that are productive in real-life tend to have more money to spend than those who invest all their time into a game. I’m surprised that you’re actually disparaging the casual player who is essentially funding your gaming habit.

WEXXES.2378:

Also, the added additions wouldn’t do anything for the problem either.

Is it true that Berserker or a combination of Berserker’s gear + Something makes for the fastest and best runs? Sure.

The biggest problem, again, is that they ARE viable. So if you want to hit hard, be squishy, and rely on minimal evades and not getting hit, there’s no reason for a group of 5 who can do that not finish much faster than any other build.

This is where the first Guild Wars was superior. In that game, killing mobs often required the ability to spike them down before they could regenerate. Maxing out straight-up damage was seldom the way to accomplish this. Rather, taking them down required a combination of hexes, conditions, and/or crowd control. This game lost that. The reason everyone calls for berserker stats is that mobs go down faster when everyone applies straight damage. There are few buffs, if any, to dispel. In fact, the defiance mechanic pretty much renders anyone attempting to run a non-DPS build useless. Guild Wars was head and shoulders above the other games of its time, but for whatever reason ArenaNet chose to abandon its strengths and imitate the inferior systems instead.

tolunart.2095:

LS 2 finale: “Ok, all the dragons are dead, you can go home now.”

Servers shut down a week later.

In other news, a hobbit riding on the back of a giant eagle caused a volcanic eruption that destroyed Mordor. From an interview with Gandalf the Gray, “clever little man, why didn’t I think of that?”

I saw that movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU