Guild Wars 2

No, preview is not the same. I want to be able to make changes, review them while playing and still have some time to remake things I am not happy with. I have a preview now as I got kits from achievements points, but that isn’t doing what I want.

The event is still being done regularly, but mainly by dedicated guilds who spend quite some time prior to each fight scouting out an overflow and then populating it with their own members. Which shows the main weakness of this fight within GW2’s system – it needs organization to have a reasonable chance at success, but you can’t organize randoms well enough, nor can you reliably bring your own guildies into just any non-overflow map.

Have the wrong people claim the turrets and you can say good-bye to your kill. All of this runs counter to what GW2 usually stands for – open content where everyone is welcome to join, all other world bosses are “the more the merrier”, just not this one. The more, yes, but not just anybody.

It needs changes, mainly to make it easier to organize, not really the encounter itself. It is not fun to wait around for a hour for Teq to spawn as otherwise you can’t get your people into the map. And it isn’t fun for randoms because they have almost no chance at all at a successful kill.

As it is it works rather badly as an open world boss.

Also impossible to test out a new hairstyle with armor you don’t own yet, or did I miss how to preview armor in a makeover kit?

I really miss the ability of switching both skill template and gear with one button…they have that in this other well known MMO you know, had it for years there…

That picture has been confirmed by anet to be a fake.

My feeling is that mini-games kinda get forced down your throat, wether you like them or not. I happen to generally not like them, because I did not pick GW2 as my MMO to play mini games. If I wanted mini games, I’d spend my time on facebook.

Being forced to play them with randoms doesn’t make the issue any better – they might be fun if you could pick who to play them with.

Quote: “LFG … no noob classes, and when I asked what noob classes were I got the response: Engineers, Rangers, Thieves.”

Had to grin about that one. Currently I mainly play engineer and warrior, and if there is a “noob” class it would be warrior – very easy and relaxing to play, whereas playing an engi decently takes a lot more effort. Similarly for ranger and thief – to play them well you need to put a bit more in.

Generally people with attitudes like that show their own utter lack of game knowledge and I am therefor happy they make it easy for me to avoid them.

Had 3 out of 3 Skyhammer like 2 days ago. Luckily I don’t dislike the map as immensely anymore as I did originally or I would have blown a fuse.

I got a mini Teq last night and even though I did not pay specific attention when opening chests I am fairly sure he came from one of the event boxes, not the main boss chest, as he ended up at the very bottom of my bags. I also got an aqua breather, that one came from the boss chest.

Invisty.6435:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

I’m sorry but that article is a load of tosh. GW2 is very far from being a pay2win game as claimed there.

Especially new group content usually requires some communication to be run successfully. A point were pugs notoriously suffer. Start talking and organizing, and your pug might actually turn out to be quite good. Not a guarantee, but a decent chance…

Zaxares.5419:

With only 10 dailies to complete the Meta, it should be fairly easy to complete over the course of the month too, even with Halloween taking up the last two weeks.

I had the meta completed last night after doing the dungeon for the first time ever. Didn’t pay any attention to achievements then as we were busy enough figuring out dungeon mechanics – still got 9/17 dungeon achievements completed on the way plus the daily for running it, voila, done.

I also understand the achievements included in the dungeon section to be permanent.

Sell me the option to have a skill template for my characters, and I might bite. This item just appears to be completely redundant. I have never in one year of playing this game felt the need to respec right now and on the spot.

While I was doing this dungeon for the first time last night (and enjoying it) I mentioned to my guild mates that I could hear the screams on the forum already “OMG this is way too hard!!!”. New content, no walkthroughs posted yet…kinda predictable.

The dungeon is fine, and once you figured out the puzzles not overly challenging. Glad to have some new content of this kind.

Granted, trying this in an unorganized group with no or little communication will make it frustrating. But that is up to the player to take care of…

I enjoyed playing this dungeon path for the first time and without knowing most of its mechanics last night. I did play on a full zerker warrior, and only swapped out some utilities to get more survivability on parts we still needed to figure out.

I can see the odd mechanic in it becoming bothersome if wanting to re-run it on a regular basis, but then again people tend to figure out very efficient ways for all sorts of things. For now I am looking forward to doing it again.

I got to guru regularly for their dev tracker, which is a lot more useful than the dev post forum here.

I really love the new fern hair style – only I have a super hard time to decide on colors, without being able to “test drive” the character in game

A testing zone would be fantastic, but I kinda think that would require more effort than re-using an existing mechanic (already used on golem banker e.g.).

I miss being able to test out a new look in-game when it is locked into the makeover and hairstyling kits. Creating a character with the preview is one thing, seeing it in the game environment another, which in the past has led me to re-make some of my characters.

Suggestion: When hitting the accept button on a kit, turn it soul bound and give it a decay timer of say one or two hours. That way a look can be tested in game, with various armors, lighting and movement, and adjustments are still possible.

Inherently fun – doing a new(ish) challenging dungeon with a nice group of players which clicks well together.

Overcoming a really challenging boss fight for the first time.

Solo roaming in WvW and actually killing someone (I’m no pvp player at heart). I solo roam a lot but usually I get killed – or I run away, which I have gotten a lot better at.

Fiddling with character customization, testing out armor and dye combinations, and finding a good look which I enjoy seeing for quite a while to come.

At head start I bought 3 more character slots to have room for all classes, and a little extra for another bank tab or two. Not spent anything since, not likely I am going to anytime soon. Generally I feel gem store items are overpriced going by real money conversion, and overall there are too many niggling issues with the game to make me happy enough to say “Here have some of my cash because I think you deserve it”. They are getting a ton of my time already as is.

After a few days of LFG in game, this is my experience:

1. Usually is very fast, at times groups fill up so quick I can’t even read their description before deciding if I want to join them. It being so fast is good and bad both – good because you normally don’t have to wait long. Bad, because getting people to fill your group that easily makes them appear as a disposable resource – you don’t like what you get, simply kick and search again.

To avoid kicks, the tool needs more options, like being able to have people either auto join or being allowed to accept / decline. Also an option to only look on same language servers, it is not fun getting into a team which you can’t communicate with.

2. The tool still has some bugs. Like, three guildies and me finished an instance where we had one random join via the tool. The random left after the instance, rest of us stayed teamed but went our merry ways. Then I left our team (I was the one to have opened the instance) and suddenly the others find themselves active in LFG again.

Overall I like the LFG tool, but some of its kinks need straightening out.

I never did a dodge jump before that master of baubles achievement either. Since I bound dodge to my 4th mouse button, I had to get the timing between left and right hand correct to make it work. Still can’t repeat it reliably, but took me maybe 10 minutes to finally get that bauble.

Dustfinger.9510:

As hydeaut said, the distance of grenades is the issue. Auto attack works by anticipating where the target is going to be at impact.

Certainly relevant for PvP, but very often not so for PvE. This kit really needs an option to do it either way.

Speaking as someone with a full-time job – I flinch at the thought of paying 10 bucks for a minor convenience item in a computer game. So I either use gold→ gems, or don’t buy.

If gems for cash were cheaper, I’d be a lot more inclined to actually buy anything. As it is – sorry, not going to happen.

After playing the personal story through on three characters, I just find him horribly boring. If I had a choice and could avoid him completely, I might not mind seeing him once, but more than once is just too much!

For a main character he lacks depth and emotion.

Rezzet.3614:

maily because grenades are AoE plusthey would be terrible if they had auto attack as they dont have the speed to keep up with targets grenades rely on player reflexes and predicability plus being manually aimed makes it easier to attack multiple targets easily

as you probably have seen other than pve grenades with auto attack would be near useless

This sounds the most likely so far, but only if you reduce your view to pvp. And it does not help with the carpal tunnel risk of using them for any length of time, especially in pve. On the other hand guardian scepter auto attack is about as slow or still slower, and does not need to be aimed either.

Would be nice to have an option to toggle auto attack on/off, to suit both worlds. And even nicer to have an official answer to this.

locoman.1974:

Well, if you play a heavy armor character, there are several armor sets that display a lot of fur, and at least one of the tiers of cultural armor for both light and medium at least are sleeveless

The thing is you have to go out of your way to even find such armor. Whereas sylvari have fantastic racial armor, the same is sadly not true for charr. They do look silly in the human armors stretched over their bodies.

Tachenon.5270:

Also, why the heck would you wear clothes if you have FUR? That’s built-in natural clothing!

This. They have beautiful fur patterns, then you are left with the choice of putting badly fitting / clipping armor over it. Gotta add that I am generally not keen on furry races, though I did play a charr up to the 30s. Just not for me in their current incarnation.

I have been wondering about this for a while now. The grenade kit comes with an auto cast under water, making it a joy to use there. But it lacks the same on land, making it very awkward to use, with a high risk of inducing carpal tunnel syndrome if playing with that kit for prolonged periods of time. I do know about the option to switch the ground targeting so you only have to click once per cast instead of twice, but that introduces new problems – like being unable to judge if something is in range or not for a cast. So why is having an auto cast under water ok for this kit, but on land it isn’t?

Any good explanation?

If you want to play 1v1, don’t join a map with a team on it. Or – I couldn’t care less if I run into someone complaining that I just helped my team to win. If they complain immaturely enough, they may get a report on top of it.

Well the current deserter buff has no effect whatsoever. Amazing how many people have “dcs” in spvp as opposed to about any other area of the game, isn’t it? My suggestion:

- If someone leaves before a game ends, they take the full hit to their rating upon loss, rest of the team keeps their old rating or gets a small loss at most. No gain upon win for the leaver.
- Leavers get a leaver count. And above a certain amount subsequently get teamed with other leavers against other leaver teams, regardless of rank.
- Leaver count only increases if leaving a game which your side is currently worse of point-wise. That should take care of about half of the real dcs already, as those tend to not depend on the points of your team (big surprise)
- Leaver count only diminishes if you stay until the end of a game you are losing

Finally, give people an indication that they have a leaver count going on. Maybe not the exact number, but make them aware of its existence and effects.

A lot of good points made by the OP. I would also love to have more build diversity on any given character, but the system being what it is doesn’t support that currently. Right now you are required to decide on what type of build you want and then go get the appropriate equipment for it, which is time consuming, the more so with ascended gear. A few people may have more than one set on them, but to do so needs much more support by game mechanics really, like spec templates and saving gear setups to equip on the fly (and hopefully not clutter up your bags).

Really hope we get to see some of that rather sooner than later in game.

BilboBaggins.5620:

My opinion is if it’s time-gated then the items we create should be trade-able, if the items are going to remain account bound then there should be no time-gate. As someone who can only play on the weekends (usually), time-gating means it will be years before I can outfit all of my characters. For a daily player, it will take two weeks per item.

All of the current “daily” systems heavily favour players who can log in every day. If they would allow to stack up those dailies to a max. of 7, people who can only do weekends would be on an even footing. High time in my eyes.

Not a good call to refine those L400 crafting mats already. You could have done that to partially level up to 500 instead.

ghettogenius.9174:

The argument that players with better gear are carrying those with lesser gear is highly debatable and probably best left for another thread. I am more interested in discussing an online tool for integrating with game data – namely gear.

It doesn’t make sense to start developing something where it is debatable if it is actually a real benefit to have.

ghettogenius.9174:

You also make another gross over-assertion in claiming that those with private profiles are hiding lower tier gear and stats. There is absolutely no evidence to support this claim. In fact, the default setting should probably be private. So those who never interact with the system can remain anonymous, and those who wish to take part can opt in.

Only up to a point. People can refuse to team with you unless you open your profile to them. In a game which wants to encourage player interaction instead of segregation that would not be a good tool to have.

Shiren.9532:

How of much of the content this year made you want to tell someone who didn’t play “hey look at this cool thing Guild Wars 2 just released, you should join me”.

This is a really good question. Friends who started the game together with me at headstart left after a while. Two of them popped back in shortly when the Lost Shores event happened, never to be seen again since. Since then nothing has been added which would make me go and tell them “Hey, have a look at GW2 again, they added this really cool content!”

Living Story has been mainly fluff, mini games and the few meatier bits (like F+F dungeon, gauntlet challenges) are temporary. Calling the huge farm zergs of this months content “players banding together” makes me question the developers insight into their own game. I actually mainly experienced people being too focused on tagging that champion over there to even go ress downed players. Quality content looks different to me, sorry.

Poxxia.1547:

SoloQ is imho just as bad … maybe even worse (at least, this is where I have seen some of the most rude people in my long gaming-experience).

This. I used to only play hotjoin, only recently got into SoloQ. Ever since I did that, I actually felt compelled to report people for abusive language, which hardly ever happened in hotjoin. Some really really sore losers out there :-(

Fully agree with the OP, the total lack of effect the deserter debuff is having on the solo queue is really making this game mode pointless. Of the last 10 games I played at least 6-7 did not end as 5v5, meaning an instant loss for whichever side was lacking players. What is the point of having leader boards coupled with that?

This has been discussed in other threads, with some good suggestions given there. Like, whoever leaves takes the full hit to their rating, with no hit given to those remaining even if they lose. And please introduce real consequences for those leaving, I fail to believe that people have such a high rate of sudden disconnects in pvp mode only.

I am actually a player not overly keen on pvp, and got lured into it in GW2 by dailies (yes you can laugh at me). I did start to enjoy it though, and would likely play it more often if the system wasn’t so messed up. Please fix it!

Did it on subject 7 on my engineer. Should still work just the same after the patch as before.

Dishonor doesn’t seem to do anything really – I lost 2 out of 3 matches today because people left either before it even started or early on. If this keeps up, I will develop a habit of disconnecting myself very soon…

None, I am not into furries.

I have experienced the ooze bug too – small oozes from previous fight stayed around for the next, making it kind of impossible to do. Saw that happen for someone else shortly after again.

About every single time lately when I am in wvw and get into a big battle, GW2 crashes to desktop. Seems related to how many characters are around, as I don’t get crashes anywhere else, not even in a Jormag fight with tons of people there. Sent various crash reports via the automated questionaire after the crash, to no avail. It does get tiring, as I am effectively unable to enjoy wvw currently.

This is the start of the crash log:

—> Crash <—
Assertion: Gadget at (-502, -29967, -109) has out of bounds health value (curr: 1376.000000, max: 992.000000)!
File: ..\..\..\Game\Gadget\Cli\GdCliGadget.cpp(501)
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 156
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 15342
When: 2012-08-29T08:52:07Z 2012-08-29T09:52:07+01:00
Uptime: 0 days 1:46:54
Flags: 0

Just managed to finally do T4 Gnash (did T4 Kiel before the patch….). We did it with ateam of three, 2 zerker warrios, 1 zerker thief. Following the solo-way, it helped to have one ranged pull (scorpion wire), ranged perma interrupt (pistol 4) and two people with ranged knockdown.

Even tho it feels great to have finally done this, what I find utterly dissapointing is that this rewards certain classes and specs so highly above others, and that after a lot of people got the achievement the easy way it was “fixed”, making it impossible for the majority to do anymore. If it wasn’t time limited content, fixing is all good and fine. In this special case it was very poorly thought out.

TL:DR – please more challenging content like this, but NOT time limited!!

Galen Grey.4709:

I am sure some are trying to get as much AP as possible as fast as possible but thats not really the point. The point is whether speed is really a factor? the AP rewards arent going anywhere, if this month I get 30 AP less then the theoretical maximum is that really a problem? No not at all.

This is your personal opinion. Mileage for other players may vary (by a lot). As in – you can not simply define it ok for everyone to take an arbitrary time to reach a certain goal just because it is ok for you.

Galen Grey.4709:

I am not sure how I feel about weeklies. I personally suspect it would make the situation as lot worst. For those who play every day its not a big deal either way. But for people who play just during weekends it will be a grinding nightmare that just cannot be avoided no matter how much you’d wish to avoid it.

First, it would give weekend-only players an option they currently don’t have – to get all laurels for a given week plus all APs. Second – yes I agree it could turn into a grinding nightmare, which only serves to show that these daily tasks are done in a rather thoughtless manner. They do not promote fun activities in many cases, killing X underwater creatures is a good example.

What I (and others) are arguing here is that the current system is less than optimal and has a lot of room for improvement. No more and no less.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I would rather game designers make the game they want to make first rather than focus on making it “enjoyable for as many as possible” first. I’ve enjoyed games which were made by the former much more often than ones made by the latter.

I am with you on that one and have left a game before where the designers tried to cater to the most common denominator. I’s sure you can guess which one I am referring to here. But being required to perform a menial task on a daily basis is probably not what draws you to GW2 in the first place, right? So why not make it more palatable by not having it as a daily?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I get where you’re coming from, but . . . just because a player can do something, or chooses a challenge, I don’t want to first lay responsibility on the designers. If someone wants to self-limit to a naked charr thief who never purchases skills or traits, I don’t expect the designers to have him/her/it in mind when they balance things, if you catch my drift. Similarly, if a player isn’t going to be happy without being #1 on a leaderboard, I’m not going to say that’s the designer’s fault.

I would not argue that the current game is generally encouraging people to pick naked charr thieves as their main character – you will always have special birds finding their niche in gameplay, but I am not concerned about those. I am concerned about reward systems in the game encouraging people to play in a way they actually do not enjoy. Leaving the player with the option to ignore the system (and lose out on rewards) or follow it. Resulting in a loss of gaming “happyness” either way. Thus the system is to blame, not the player.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Wasn’t “leaderboards” something that kept getting asked for for a long time by the players? I mean, if they asked for it and we got given it, isn’t it kind of our own fault the Leaderboards exist?

The people asking for it in the first place may not neccesarily be the same now looking at it and feeling urged on to earn more points.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m not sure it would help if “Daily” was changed to “Weekly”, because I’m almost certain we’d be visiting this conversation again anyway. Also, the menial tasks of mining, I think, you mean the Home Instance quartz node? Yeah, I don’t know if it’s stil llike this . . . but the Quartz is only good for one thing in the end: Celestial Gear, which I seem to recall nobody really liking so far as for statistics in the past.

I dare say moving dailies to weeklies would alleviate the problem for about 99% of the players – certainly you’ll end up with some arguing their holiday takes longer than 6 days, but as you say, at some point you have to accept you can’t get it all.

About the quartz and celestial, sure, right now not many people care too much. That will change if the same mechanic is used once ascended crafting arrives, which looks likely as of now. I personally would be really annoyed if I then have to mine a certain node, harvest a certain plant and fell a certain tree once per day every day for a month to craft one item. Instead of going on a gathering spree on a lazy sunday afternoon to get materials.

My point of view is always at first at the game design and what it – intentionally or not – encourages the players to do. The first responsibility (and interest) is of the game designers to make their game good and enjoyable. Don’t move that to the players because the designers have failed.

Galen Grey.4709:

Grileenor.1497:

I agree with the OP. The game does not need this stuff. Give us more freedom to choose the way we like to play the game without the need to grind stuff you need to do, if you want to get certain materials or something like that.

Honestly I think this is exactly what dailies are doing. You can get the daily done in so many ways that do have the freedom to choose the way you want to play.
….

I think people are missunderstanding what dailies really does to their freedom, it doesnt take it away, it creates it!

You are missing an important point there. With rewards being given for AP, people want to achieve the most AP possible. This is also reinforced by having AP leader boards, thus Anet is giving even more importance to this AP-hunt. Wether you personally buy into this specific game design is not deciding, a lot of people do and feel unhappy due to it.

What is being suggested here multiple times is to provide more freedom in getting those time-gated APs, by moving dailies to be weeklies. Also to get rid of menial tasks like mine a certain node once per day. The most annoying about it is not the mining, it is each day you have to suffer multiple slow loading screens to even get to that node in the first place, with nothing else to do in that area. Let me mine it once per week seven times at once, and I will feel a lot less annoyed about it.

In the end it is about a good gaming experience, and providing options to please various tastes / needs is always a Good Thing™.

Fully agree with the OP. If they’d move dailies to be weeklies instead that would be a big step forward. That way you could keep AP gain the same as now, with more freedom to each player to do tasks when they got the time / feel like doing them.

As it is now, you have certain dailies pop up only occasionally. Like, do a story dungeon. If you happen to want to do one on that very day, you get rewarded with an AP. Do it any other day of the week – out of luck. That is poor design.