Guild Wars 2

Saddly it’ll never happen (Oh how I hope I am proven wrong and am forced to eat these words).

Anet seems to think that more people = more epic = more fun = better content, or some ridiculous belief like that. They’ll never add Raids because they want as many people as possible to do these events, and since they want people to still have this idea that this is the Joe Everyman’s MMO, where you can hop in and do whatever you want, whenever you want, we’ll always be forced to have World Bosses where said Joe Everyman, in his terrible gear, traits, affixes, and sub level 80 will be able to join in, and run around adding gas to the toxin purifiers, throwing off the crucial timing needed to get the Wurm in a weakness phase along with everyone else.

The Wurm, I feel, is an amazingly well done fight. The mechanics are fun, the fight is difficult (if not way to kitten ed add heavy) but fair, and really, is about on par in terms of difficulty with what you would find in a Normal or Flex mode Raid in WoW. It requires coordination, but it’s totally doable with mistakes hither and thither.

The problem is, however, that the encounter is out in the open world, where anyone in the area can hop in and screw things up for others.

I really do want to see Raids in GW2 (Hell, call them Lairs or something like that if you don’t want to use the term Raid) where can have more fights like these, albeit it in more controlled circumstances (and hopefully with a more manageable player count), but it just isn’t going to happen with Anet’s current mindset of “People like the LS, ergo we’re doing everything right because our numbers say so!”

I’m sorry, but did I read the Anet dev’s post correct in that they intended to make it so that groups could help others out, but it didn’t make it into the release due to technical restraints?

So..the fight was designed with that in mind, but due to this ridiculous two week release schedule, the development team didn’t have time to fine tune the encounter and iron out the kinks to make sure this feature went live?

If this was intended to make us feel better, I would say it’s done the opposite. No we more or less know that content is rushed out, finished or not, to meet this ridiculous 2-week schedule.

Stop it. Just. Stop. It. If this is the result of the two week release cycle, it needs to end.

I’m sorry but I have to disagree.

I do not believe a fight where a single under geared group or player can fail the event for everyone as “Well designed and balanced”. This is especially true when four out of five platforms complete their Champion, only to have to sit and watch as the fifth fails without being able to do anything to help them.

This is not well designed, thought out, nor is it even remotely balanced. If the finished platforms were allowed to assist the others, I would be more inclined to agree, but as it stands, this is an absolutely huge over sight and it is ruining the experience for many, one needs to only look at the forums to see this.

…Is Vol really defending the god awful design decision of these events, and actually Arguing against people who are suggesting the events be made more accommodating for the players?

Well, whatever faith I had in these forums are now gone. There’s White Knighting, and then there’s this.

I also think it’s adorable, Vol, how you believe that if these were put into Raid Instances, they would still require 100 people. Each of these encounters are already designed in a way where a 25 man raid would fit them just fine.

I actually find it rather painful to think that you have so little faith in Anet, or so little understanding in how development of raid content works, that Anet wouldn’t think to make these encounters 25-mans instead of just putting them in an instance that requires 100 people.

Manuhell.2759:

It is not the “elite” players’ fault if there are events open to everyone that require previous knowledge of what is going to happen, certain degrees/types of equipment, high levels even if the map itself is a low-level one and that can be failed due to a small amount of inexperienced or not well prepared players.
Blame the design of the events – the issues are all there.

This.

The way this content was designed was with a particular play style and level of skill in mind, for both the Marionette and the Wurms. The reason peoplea re getting irritated and insulting players is because they’re getting fed up with loosing because of a few bad eggs who think it’s perfectly okay to come into content like this sub level 80, with no idea how to play their profession, with a mix match of affix gear and sub optimal quality (Blues and Greens), and jump right into the fights having no idea what’s going on, and likely ruining up what little coordination there is.

This content was not designed with casual players in mind, period. Both encounters require a good deal of coordination, skill, and gear to complete, and when you have people coming into this content with none of those traits, it does in fact ruin it for the others.

I’m sorry, but one persons personal enjoyment does not outweigh everyone elses. If you don’t know how the fights work, don’t jump into them blindly. Read up on the encounters, wait until you’re level 80 or have gear that’s appropriate for your Profession and Play Style, and make sure you know how to dodge.

One person can ruin an entire marionette run if they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s as simple as that.

True, but the depressing thing is that if this is how they’re going to handle all world boss releases in the future, than that’s an entire genre of updates that are going to be terrible.

Hopefully though the negative feedback from this update will stem them from adding more world bosses, and focus instead on dungeons or instanced content…which is ironic, considering I was saying the exact opposite last year (less bad dungeons, more world events and content).

Ever get this feeling that we’re going to be kitten ed if we do, kitten ed if we don’t when it comes to GW2 in 2014?

Random Over Flow #2452 finished it a few hours ago.

Didn’t even last a day before the over flows in FA all but disappeared. It’ll be dead as a doornail by this time next week on my server.

Seriously though, who didn’t see this coming. Now if this was in a dungeon, people would be using and abusing the LFG tool and spamming in LA all day for groups. But alas, we can’t be like those other MMOs, we have to be new and innovative, even if that innovation is terrible and ruining the game and upsetting the player base.

Ayrilana.1396:

Exquisitor.5076:

Evidence? Forums indicate lots of complaining…

Forums are far far far from the majority.

This is bunk, plain and simple, and your mind set seems to be the same one that Arena Net has.

Their argument of “Well we see a bunch of people doing the content so that means the forums are in the minority” means absolutely nothing. Do you know why people are doing this content? Because Anet is dangling a carrot on a stick in front of people who chase after it for those Achievement Points, which also dangle carrots in the forums of reward chests, and the meta rewards.

Take away the achievements, leave only the content in it’s place, and we’ll see how many people are still doing this content after the first day, when they’ve finished the storyline to it. You know what, I’ll just spoil the answer: It will be none. No one will be doing this content.

The forums are where Anet should be paying the most attention, as these things were designed with the idea of us having a back and forth with the developers to ensure the game became something we want to play.

Now mind you, I’m not talking about people who say “My class is borked, FIX IT!”, that information should be taken with a grain of salt. But when you have an entire forum that’s almost 90% complaints and dislike for this update, and about 10% of blind loving, there’s a problem. When this is a consistent issue, as it has been since Queen’s Jubiliee, arguably the last enjoyable LS update, there’s a major issue at hand.

But since you, and Anet themselves, have said that they believe the forums are in the minority, and that their numbers say people are doing this content (because again: The carrot on a stick), there’s essentially no back and forth with the developers. Compare discussions here to those on the Blizzard Forums, or hell, even the Turbine or Square Enix Forums, where the Developers take feed back, have exchanges with their forum goers, and better the game from it, and it’s no wonder people are getting fed up.

Arena Net does not listen to us. They hear only what they want to hear, and ignore what they need to hear, and GW2 is starting to pay for it. You can cry until your throat’s horse that the game is fine, the cotnent is amazing, and we’re all just whiners. But when January of 2015 rolls around, and this game is a ghost town because it’s obvious Anet would rather shove their own idea of content down our throat and continue to lock the fancy stuff behind the Gem Stores, you’ll only have yourself, and Anet, to blame.

munkiman.3068:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

munkiman.3068:

Since the culling patch, any problem with invisible enemies is usually a network issue on the players end, more so than a PC spec. I’ve yet to see an invisibility problem in the game anymore.

Could have fooled me. In fact it seems more is invisible than on launch on the same pc.

While i’ve seen a slower loading UI on occasion (mostly the TP taking a few seconds to load), I don’t have any issue with invisible enemies. You’re picture there screams to me of a network issue on your end or your ISPs, i’ve never seen that happen.

My game does it as well from time to time, usually when I first log in into Lions Arch, than multiple times there after. I have perfect latency in GW2, WoW, Lotro, and any other online game I play.

I suppose you’re going to say it’s a network issue on my end as well, even though Ping Test after Ping Test says it’s fine, or it’s my ISP?

Just because it doesn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it’s not an issue with a game, and not on our side.

windwarrior.2690:

I disagree about the NPC, I actually like it that we (the players) need to figure out what to do, thats just natural. Today we stuff games with tutorials and hints and whatnot so that all players immediatly get what to do, but sometimes trying and failing some times is just as much fun as being told what to do.

Your right, failing and learning a fight from your mistakes IS fun…when it doesn’t take 2 hours to try again.

I’ve said this yesterday, and I’ll say it again: I’m all for encounters that don’t spell out what you need to do (but are still obvious about it in other ways), and requires trial and error to complete.

I am not, however, for encounters that have a 2 hour wait time because I learned what to do, but 3/4 of the people are new, didn’t listen to instructions, and failed the event, ruining the experience for myself and everyone else.

What I don’t get is why you feel that Anet can’t just implement an instance system for these fights, instead of forcing players to abuse the Over Flow system to do it.

People would still get to go, Guilds would still take them, PuGs would still form, and guilds like TTS would still get people in there to get the achievement.

The only difference is now players have an option to weed out players that just want to be carried, which gasp is probably why so many people are opposed to a proper raid instance system. They’d much rather ride on the backs of other peoples enjoyment so they can “experience” the content.

Which they still would be able to do, with like minded individuals, and allow players that want to actually kill the boss instead of wasting all day trying to do it because of terrible random players in their groups, 2 hour locks outs, and over flow issues.

Stormy Dragon.9210:

Remember how the events in this game were gonna automatically scaled based on the players involved? Gotta love bait and switch.

Or how about when you failed a world boss, you’d have reprecussions on the world that would lead to more Dynamic Events, that when finished would give you another shot at the boss.

You know, that system that has all but been forgotten in favor of time gated crafting content, and now time gated World Bosses that simply respawn in two hours if you fail.

High Difficulty content is indeed good.

High Difficulty content that’s in the Open World, where you have to fadangle the Over Flow in order to cherry pick people that aren’t going to be terrible and screw the event up for everyone is not good.

These fights, as I have said all day, need to be in an instance, not in the world.

Chrispy.5641:

I liked the story instance, but the conversation between marjory and kasmeer came off as…I don’t know. I didn’t care for it very much.

The end result was cute, but the over dramatic acting of Kasmeer was WAY to over the top and ridiculous for the subject matter.

Yeah, even I have to agree that the fight it’s self is mechanically sound. It just belongs in a Raid Instance not in the Open World where everyone’s experience can be ruined by a handful of low levels in terrible gear.

Buffy.9246:

Lol dodging isent the problem. I go through the portal and get a 30 sec load screen. When it finally loads I’m already getting knocked around. So I said “kitten it” and don’t care to be stomped on.

Missed my joke, as lame as it was

I told you to dodge the loading screen attack, as in dodge role the loading screen all together.

But no, I do totally get what you’re saying, and it’s screwed up that it’s happening.

Okhu.7948:

“I have to sit around and wait for the event instead of wandering around the zone doing events to pass the time. Abloo bloo bloo.” No one is forcing you to stay in place.

If you want to stay on your server and not get slapped in an Over FLow, you do. And do you really expect people to be content with doing Dynamic Events in Lornar’s Pass for two hours? How is that any different than just sitting there and waiting?

chemiclord.3978:

“Content is too easy!!! It’s a zerg fest!!!”

“Content is too hard!!! Zones are becoming ghost towns!!!”

Official Forums: Always complaining.

For god’s sakes, no one but the really, REALLY casual people are complaining about the content being too hard. We’re complaining that it’s difficult content being slapped into the world with a 2-hour gate that we’re complaining about.

If these were Raid Instances, as they should have been, designed around 25-30 people, I would be the first to praise these as very enjoyable, difficult, and rewarding fights. But I’m not, because they’re in the world, locked behind 2-hour time gates, over flow servers, and people who have no buisness attempting this content, and it’s ruining the experience for me and many others.

And yes, I don’t give a kitten if you’re level 60 with Levelig Blues on and feel you’re entitled to see this content. If your presence in the content is having a negative affect on the others trying to attempt it ,you don’t belong there. Your personal enjoyment is not more important than the hundred other people there trying to make meaningful progress on these bosses.

Tequatl, Mari, and the Wurms are fine (Though I’ve heard the Wurms need some tuning adjusments) mechanically. What’s not fine is that they’re in the open world. They’re raid bosses, difficult, mechanically driven encounters. They belong in their own dungeons.

Lothirieth.3408:

I’m also enjoying the 10-20 second loading screen into the portals and when I finally do load, I load into a mass of red on the floor and promptly get smacked by the marionette.

So get better at dodging the loading screen attack, these achievements are designed to be hard, I mean that’s why they’re called achievements.

Seriously though, joking aside, I was wondering if the loading screens were going to cause issues for people trying to do these…saddly it seems they are.

displacedTitan.6897:

I remember when Teq was also impossible. People get on the forums after EVERY. SINGLE. PATCH. and claim its impossible. Seriously just wait a week until everyone learns the encounter.

The difference was Teq was a permanent addition. This is a two week addition. Players won’t have the opportunity to do this encounter after the first week, once people get their achievement and inevitably stop running it.

Elrey.5472:

Blade Syphon.4325:

The Champ affixes are based on the Chain Phase, not Lane.

The First Chain, Phase will always be the front immune champion, the second will always be the spinning Champion, and so on.

That makes sense, thanks for the tip. Any idea what the chain 3-4-5 champs are/do?

I haven’t had a chance to attempt Phase 3 onwards yet, as either Phase 2 is way to over tuned for what it is, or people are just that bad at kiting a slow moving mob into big glowing red circles.

I’m not kidding when I say that my platform is usually the first, and often times only, platform to complete the phase because I’m the one doing the kiting. And since there’s no way for me to help other players kite theirs, there’s not much I can do other than yell at them to stop being horrible at kiting.

The Champ affixes are based on the Chain Phase, not Lane.

The First Chain, Phase will always be the front immune champion, the second will always be the spinning Champion, and so on.

Agreed.

If Anet is going to insist on splitting groups up into five platforms, than we should be able to indirectly aid them in some way when our Champ is dead. Killing a generator adds an additional 30 seconds, or being able to move to another platform, anything is better than sitting here and relying wholly on a bunch of other players that may or may not be as geared or skilled as your group.

Facepunch.5710:

Blade Syphon.4325:

So..in order to get what should be simple achievements….

Why on earth are you starting with the assumption that achievements should be simple?

I’m happy to have something that’s more personally challenging than “Stand in a zerg while the event gets completed by those all around you then repeat 4 more times.”

Though I do agree with your later comments about getting it done yourself, but failing to get the achievement because other people don’t hold up their end.

Oh I don’t know, maybe because for a whopping 5 achievement points, and with a description that says “Avoid the twisted Marionette’s X attack”, one would assume it means to simply dodge the attack.

Perhaps if the achievement read “Avoid the Marionettes attacks and complete the event”, and award more than 5 or 10 points, you might have an argument. But for most people, when they read an achievement that, quite literally says to simply dodge an attack, for most people that means dodge out of the way of the attack.

And again, I have no problems with an achievement being kitten a personal skill level, or when I have the ability to help my fellow party members out. I do, however, take problem when an achievement requires me to dodge attacks, as well as wait for four other groups, of which I have no control over or have any ability to aid what so ever.

adamryason.9817:

Guild Wars 2 Patch release: Gives 2 bosses that are bugged and requires you to AFK hours in advance with nothing to do.

Other MMO Patch release: Gives new boss/raid/dungeon and additional content to complete in small groups.

I’m sorry but the fact that there are no small tasks that solo players can do without waiting + wasting time this patch is a disappointment. I tried to get guild and server pushes and its way too difficult to get full guilds into the right server/overflow. This shows that Arenanet learned little from Tequatl and how annoying organizing that was on the first few days. For other people who don’t want to waste 2+hours of legitimate sitting and doing nothing and prefer to just play new content that is for small groups…they can’t with this patch.

They could have made events occur in other zones or at least Lornar’s pass so that the people there or outside could play new content without sitting around.

IMO if you don’t have a lot of time or patience, I would wait a few days or until really late at night to look at the new patch content. Otherwise, you will be really disappointed with how little there is to do

The patch would be so much better if the events spawned every half hour, or even every hour. That means everyone has a chance to do content when ever they want.

It boggles my mind why Anet would think having these encounters on a 2-hour reset timer, especially a limited time only one, was a good idea.

Arkanaloth.3059:

I’m beginning to think the title of this content “Origins of Maddness” may apply more to the eventual state of the player base as opposed to the in-game content itself…. This is just… wow, I’m actually at a loss for words. O.o

Well they did say these final four LS updates would change Tyria forever. A mass exodus of players leaving because they’re finally fed up with Anet’s complete lack of understanding of what their player base wants would qualify for a world changing event.

The idea of a trial and error fight would be fine..if the boss fight wasn’t on a 2 hour respawn timer.

Another reason why content like this should be instanced. If you want to make hair ripping, finger nail biting, eye gougingly difficult content that requires lots of coordination, trial and error, and the like, do so in an instance where players can attempt it as many times as they’d like.

Putting it out in the world, where people can join at a whimsey without knowing what’ going on, in amazing blue and green gear, against a boss that is hard to kill, and when fails takes 2 hours to attempt again does not, will not, and shall not work. We said it before Tequatl, we said it during Tequatl, we said it AFTER Tequatl, and kitten ed if we didn’t say it before this event, and now during this event.

It.Does.Not.Work. Stop forcing your players to participate in raid content in an open world environment. We want hard, raid-esque content, we do. But we don’t want it in the open world where a few can ruin the experience for many, and the punishment for failure because of said few is to wait 2 hours to attempt it again.

PopeUrban.2578:

Good, this game hands out too many free achievements. We need more titles/achievements that require difficult feats, with reward points to match.

This is a well designed achievement. It encourages you to actually try to do well at the event, in stead of chasing some meta gizmo that can actively hurt it. (I’m looking at you tequatl chest/failure achievements)

Except this achievement has almost no bearing on your individual skill what so ever. If the other people on the platforms fail, you do not get credit for the achievement, even if your platform kicks butt, takes names, and you dodge everything ever.

If this was a personal thing of “You need to kill the champion and generator without taking damage on your platform to get credit”, I’d be inclined to agree with you.

Having to wait on four other groups that you can’t help or interact with to complete their platforms in order for you to get credit on yours is not an intelligent decision, at all, especially for content that’s temporary.

It’s basically forcing people to either have the luck of the saints in order to pull these off, or more accurately, give players a reason to come back every day to do a daily achievement for the LS to get credit for the meta, which in turn makes Anet look good in front of NCsoft and their investors, as they can turn around and say “look at how often people are logging into the game!”

Randulf.7614:

Blade Syphon.4325:

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

In order to complete these achievements you have to succeed the Warden event (the entire event up on the platforms) without being hit by the Marionette. If you are hit, you don’t get it. If you fail the event, you don’t get it. Stay sharp and break that chain and you’ll have it.

So..in order to get what should be simple achievements, we have to not only complete the event without taking any damage from the Marionette while also dealing with the Champion Boss on our platform, but also rely on the other four groups to not fail their events, otherwise we get no credit what so ever.

…Oh sweet mother of poorly thought out achievements. Welp, guess I’ll be doing the Daily for the LS each day in order to get enough to credit to finish the meta.

I read that as dodge + complete just the warden event, rather than just warden and Marionette event completion. Seems harsh if you do the work and the rest is out of your control otherwise

Yeah that’s what I was referring too. Essentially even if your platform manages to pull off a victory on the event, you still have to rely on four other parties you have no control over to complete their platforms as well in order to get the success of the achievement.

And since the Boss continues to attack while you wait on them, it means you have a chance to fail there as well while you wait for others to finish…That does not make for fun, or enjoyable, content in the slightest.

Erukk.1408:

Donari.5237:

(I intend to try out TESO and perhaps split my time with it, but fully expect GW2 to remain my prime game experience).

I did the same thing for WoW the last three months. I went back to do all their MoP content. I maxed out all the fraction reps, completed all the crafting, did all the raids, got most of the tier gear from Org. The only thing I stopped doing was the legendary questline for the cape, since there is no point in doing it that late in the game.

Needless to say, I ran out of things to do, and I got bored very quickly when the only thing left is lving alts. At least with GW2, you get new content to do every couple of weeks. It beats sitting there on your character and thinking, “What else is there to possible do?”. I do freely admit I get that same feeling sometimes on this game, but the LS helps curb that a bit. Not totally, but it helps a great deal.

Depending on reviews, and whether my friends are going to try it as well, I might do the same with TESO. It looks interesting enough to try, even though I’m not really a fan of The Elder Scrolls.

I don’t really understand how getting content that, if you don’t intend to grind achievements, takes less than 2-3 hours to complete curves long droughts of content, but hey, to each their own I suppose.

I personally would rather take a substantial update every 3-4 months like Blizzard does with WoW, that generally takes the majority of the time between updates (Expansion drought withstanding) to complete over hollow LS updates where the biggest “meat” of the content is grinding repetitive objectives to make your Achievement Point number go higher, but that’s just me.

Danikat.8537:

I don’t see the appeal of a feature-only update personally.

We already get bug fixes, balancing and new features added into the living story updates. To me this just means an update with nothing actually new to see.

That was because we were getting content updates WITH System/Feature updates in 2013. In 2014, that will no longer be the case. Anet seemed to think that the issue people had with the Living Story was that we didn’t like getting both in an update, so instead we’re going to get only content updates now with each LS, and only receive Feature Updates in Feature-specific patches.

We’ll still get bug fixes and what not as they’re needed, but class balances, new features, and the like will only be added during their specific updates once or twice a year, instead of being spread out over the entire year with the Living Story.

lordkrall.7241:

Lets not talk for everyone shall we?
I for one prefer the current way of releasing stuff, but I suppose that might have to do with the fact that I can play quite often and thus like to get new stuff more often than once a year.

You also have to keep in mind that an expansion would most likely deliver more or less exactly the same content as the living story, but as a package instead of smaller parts released over time. So the whole argument that it is “boring and predictable” is rather silly, since the expansion would be even more so, seeing as you wouldn’t have the suspense between releases.

What in god’s green earth are you talking about. Do you even understand what an Expansion is? Because I’m starting to think you don’t.

In the past year, we’ve recieved a LS update every two weeks, for a grand total of 21 updates. Of those updates, only a handful of the content that was added was permanent, and of that permanent content, the majority of it was system related.

Do you really believe than Expansion would deliver less content than a year of LS updates? Or that somehow the LS system is better? Ask anyone here on the forums, or in game, what they would rather have:

Another year of temporary content with a handful of permanent content thrown in, or a full fledged expansion filled with permanent content, and the answer is obvious.

The Living Story concept would be fine, if the content they added was permanent with each patch. But it’s not, and people are getting fed up with it. What Anet is doing now is no different than what Zynga did with Farmville. In order to make the game look good for NCsoft, they’re shoving terribly made content in our faces every two weeks to give their share holders the allusion that people are playing constantly, as if they miss out on playing for even one week, they miss out on content that will never be available again to them.

I’d be all for the Living Story system if, and only if, the content added with each update was permanent. And don’t give me that PR excuse of “Well this way the story is ever evolving” nonsense. When I beat a single player RPG, the game doesn’t implode on it’s self because the world has been saved, and it would make no sense for me to play it again. When I play any other MMO, I don’t have expansion content from previous expansions removed with the new one because “it doesn’t make sense for that content to still be in the game since the story has moved past it”.

Believe it or not, Players can suspend their disbelief for a story line when it comes to timelines, and especially when it comes to playing through an RPG from start to finish. Anet, however, doesn’t believe this, and would rather us keep dangling a carrot on the stick with temporary content to keep players coming back week after week.

Mark my words, and I really wish I was wrong about this, but 2014 is going to be no different than 2013 in terms of Anet developing content. They’ll keep putting out more and more terrible updates, refuse and flat out ignore player feed back, and when December of 2014 rolls around, we’ll get the same pat on the back PR garbage we got from them in a developer feed about how 2014 for GW2 was an amazing year, and its still the best game you can play for free any time.

Amok Threeohthree.8501:

Teq gets killed every day multiple times on multiple servers… Some like it some don’t…

So just because some players don’t like it there shouldn’t be any more bosses like Teq?

Get over yourself!!

I don’t like JPs, so should I go around in the forum going on about it? No I will continue to ignore them and let the people who like JPs enjoy them….

There is so much to do in this game why complain about stuff other players clearly enjoy?

Congrats, you’re part of the problem.

No, seriously, you are. Do you even grasp why people are irritated at the prospect of another World Boss being designed like Tequatl? I’ll give you a hint: The majority aren’t irritated at the fact that it’s difficult, they’re upset that it’s another world Boss with a high difficulty curve.

Almost everyone unanimously agreed when Tequatl was revamped that the fight it’s self was fine, it was the fact it was put in the world, instead of an instance, and forced people to circumvent the game’s own mechanics in order to make the boss fight an instance that was the problem.

And now Anet is doing it again. What does this tell us: Anet does not listen to forum feedback, or any player-feed back for that matter, period. There was zero reason for them to, once again, decide to make another World Boss on Tequatl’s level and shove it out in the open instead of making it a Raid Instance, as Tequatl should have been, with a daily lock out.

People shouldn’t have to force themselves into an empty over flow, than ferry people into the over flow in order to get a decent attempt at the boss without having to worry about griefers, AFKers, and the like. But alas, Anet thinks they know best, and if the Worm is the same difficulty as Tequatl, I can already outline how this is going to go:

Week 1: Everyone and their mother is trying to do the boss. Hardly anyone who isn’t ferried into a proper Over Flow server kills the boss. People that do get ferried kill the boss within a day or two, farm out the achievements, and get what pitiful loot the boss drops.

Week 2 Onwards: The boss is utterly abandoned, and everyone returns to Champion Trains and easy Explorable Dungeons.

The end result: more wasted development time on poorly planned and thought out permanent content.

All we are asking is for Anet to put these difficult bosses in Raid Dungeons instead of out in the world. But somehow that just does not get through to the development team, who seems to think that everything they do is perfect based on obviously misleading metrics.

If Anet keeps going down this lovely path of thinking they know best, and we’re just a vocal minority, GW2’s going to be dead in the water by the end of this year, because people are going to get fed up with being spoon fed terrible content by developer who can’t take, or refuse to listen to, criticism from the people who are playing their game.

Tom Gore.4035:

Blade Syphon.4325:

Because to be frank, I do not want to do this ridiculous ascended grind ever again. It’s not challenging, it’s not fun, and it sure as hell isn’t all that rewarding either for the time investment required, and the idea of having to do the exact same thing at a higher level (because we all know that’s what Anet would do) is a prospect that would likely make me, and many others, quit the game.

But let’s play a pretend game that they increased the level cap, but forget about ascended gear forever after that. Exotics would be the highest tier again and a full set would be acquirable in a week or two of intensive playing (or a month with a more relaxed pace).

Would you be opposed to that?

Obviously they’re never going to go back to the “peak power is fast and easy to get” system, because they don’t have anything else to fill the void left by the grind with.

No, because Anet obviously cannot be trusted to add compelling end-game when it comes to acquiring gear. The model GW2 had for gear at launched worked best, and most accurately hit the mark that Anet was going for:

End-Game gear in the form of Exotics that are easily acquirable, with an emphasis afterwords on skill for completing high-end content, which rewards cosmetic gear for participation.

However, that quickly went away when Anet realized they could make money with the Gemstore. Now we have Ascended Gear that takes hundreds of gold, and hours, to grind out to acquire, which of course can easily be circumvented by paying real money to buy some Gems to quickly convert into Gold.

Cosmetic Gear is becoming less and less acquirable in game, and instead pushed towards the Gemstore, as are the majority of the rewards we once got for completing LS events and what not. Hell, just today they announced a new Home Instance node that is yours for the low, low cost of 1000 gems, where as not even six months ago you could get upgrades for your Home Instance simply by playing the content.

The Anet that is developing GW2 is a far different beast than the ones that did GW1 when it comes to character progression, and it’s no small part thanks to the addition of the Gem Store. With that said, I would not, nor will I, trust them to add an expansion where gear progression and player progression is not locked behind a massive grind that can be easily bypassed simply by spending real money to convert Gems to Gold.

If they want to do an expansion, fine, but do it without a level cap increase, or an addition of a new tier of equipment.

Tom Gore.4035:

Level cap increase would be a nice slap in the face for all those who have grinded their eyeballs out for ascended gear.

Which is why it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

This.

If getting Ascended Gear was more about running Dungeons (that were actually dungeons, not “Run through as fast as you can and zerg the final boss” instances), I’d be all for a level cap increase and doing it all over again with brand new dungeons, world bosses, and the like.

But seeing as Anet’s idea of an end-game gear grind is to farm Champions all day in order to acquire the gold to be able to purchase the materials required to craft Ascended Gear, or grind for god knows how many more hours instead for the requisite thousands of various cloth and ore, I’d rather we not see a Level Cap increase ever, unless there’s a stipulation that those of us that have put in the time to craft Ascended Gear can have that gear level up with us.

Because to be frank, I do not want to do this ridiculous ascended grind ever again. It’s not challenging, it’s not fun, and it sure as hell isn’t all that rewarding either for the time investment required, and the idea of having to do the exact same thing at a higher level (because we all know that’s what Anet would do) is a prospect that would likely make me, and many others, quit the game.

The only thing I’m “excited” about in regards to GW2 in 2014 is that the Ascended grind is finally, FINALLY done, as is the horrific;y terrible Scarlet arc.

Beyond that, what’s there to be excited about? More buggy, rushed two-week content releases that are temporary? Oh boy, that’s so exciting to look forward to!

Maybe if Anet said they’re ditching the Living Story nonsense after the Scarlet garbage, and admit to saying it was a bad decision, I’d be excited. But after reading the transcript of their 2013 retrospective live stream, and seeing nothing but PR nonsense and them patting themselves on the back as though they did well and the community at large agrees with them, I have almost no hope, nor confidence, in Anet doing anything positive in 2014.

It’s going to be more of the same, and it’s going to be harder and harder for me to drag myself back to the game every two weeks to do whatever silly, 10 minute LS content before grinding out more repetitive Achievements.

It may sound cynical and negative, but it’s true. Look at 2013, out of the 20 Living Story releases we received, only a handful of them were actually memorable and enjoyable experiences. The majority of them were terrible, and if Anet thinks they did an amazing job with that, than 2014 is not looking bright what so ever.

I’m failing to see the issue here.

Right now it costs me roughly 2 and a half gold to buy the requisite silk I need in order to craft up one piece of Silk Weaving Thread. That means that, if I want to break even, I need to kill a whopping four world bosses in order to get enough Rare junk to sell back to the AH to make up the price difference (saying nothing about all the other stuff I’ll get inbetween).

That’s about 45 minutes of farming, and that’s if I decide to do a World Boss. I could also just turn around and do a quick farming run of Orichalcum and Ancient Wood and make up the price difference that way.

Or if I REALLY want to make the money back fast, I’ll go to Frostgorge, turn on Netflix, and farm Champs for an hour and than roll around in my recently acquired wealth.

So..Yeah. Not seeing the issue here what so ever. Now if it was costing me upwards of 5-6 gold for 100 bolts to make a single spool, I would see the complaints. But two gold is easily made up for in an hour’s worth of farming, less if you happen to prefer running dungeons.

PowerCat.5738:

If skipping mobs wasn’t intended, mobs would never lose aggro and follow you until they’re dead.

Arenanet has the capacity to change the behaviour of mob aggro, and they have done so.

Remember when stealth used to completely break all aggro? Now it doesn’t.

So skipping is intended, for skilled players.

Or it’s because Anet doesn’t want to deal with the mountain of backlash, whining, complaining, and god knows what ever else this community would throw at them if they removed all leashes from Mobs in the dungeons.

I’m pretty sure skipping mobs in the style that’s done in dungeons today was never intended. But it’s become so ingrained into people’s heads that they can’t actually remove it without an epic amount of backlash.

Why do you think the dungeons that have been added in Living Story events are done in a way that doesn’t allow you to skip trash? Anet knows that there’s no salvaging what’s happened to the dungeons in the game now, and are focusing their efforts instead on future dungeons, where skipping isn’t possible.

Of course, I still wouldn’t hold it past Anet to go back and remove the leashing from mobs in the dungeons at some point in 2014 if they ever get around to overhauling all the dungeons, but we’ll see.

Either way, Skipping as we do today was never intended by Anet, they just know that there’s no fixing the problem at this point in the game’s life, which really is a shame.

lordkrall.7241:

Verow.6904:

thats a shame is it really that hard to prepare 1 page with a little text and a few pictures on?

Just because all we see is a “little text and a few pictures” doesn’t mean that is all that is needed for a preview.

They need to make sure that everything is set in stone, and stuff that should be in is in and so on. The posting itself is most likely a rather minor part of the preview page.

So..explain to me than why Anet didn’t do what most companies would do, and complete the preview the week prior to Thanksgiving?

After all, if we’re to believe that this content is being worked on months in advance, they should have the material prepared, at the very least, within weeks of it’s release, right?

Or maybe, just maybe, this content really is being developed, and pushed out, within a month’s time frame, despite Anet saying otherwise, and they honestly don’t have any idea where they’re going with it.

After the abomination that was the Fractured release, and now this, more and more evidence is pushing towards the latter, and less of the former. Couple that with the fact that it took them until now to let people know the preview would be delayed instead of saying that it would be earlier, and it’s starting to, unfortunately, demonstrate that Arena Net is no longer the quality company it used to be.

These are mistakes that a rookie developing company should be making, not one that has nearly a decade of game development behind them.

Vick.6805:

In the meantime, if you go to the Releases page, on the right side there’s a serv-bot with a Santa hat in the ad for the Dec 10 patch. Click the image, and it brings up a preview video.

That’s been there since the release notes for Fractured last week, it’s nothing new.

Avster.1935:

Make your own party, bam! Problem solved! Genius right?

This.

I can advertise my group on LFG, and it fills within less than a minute. No fuss, no muss.

Getting people to play Guild Wars 2 through an ad campaign is fine and dandy, and even doing it in the way Rift does with it’s playful jabs at WoW is also acceptable.

Making a campaign that’s sole purpose is to slander other MMOs by having people make ridiculous youtube videos with the promise of “maybe” getting the game free is not.

This Migration Campaign leaves a terrible taste in my mouth, and if this is the direction Anet is taking, where they can’t make a good game on it’s own merits, but instead have to rely on slandering other MMOs and coaxing people to come play them, than it’s going to get to the point fairly soon where I won’t even play GW2 anymore out of protest.

The update it’s self is decent enough, but the rocky, bug-ridden release and more lore butchering just makes me shake my head, as it does for many others.

Most importantly, however, this update is showing players and (hopefully) Anet alike that not only is the two-week release schedule not working anymore, but should they actually go back to a more reasonable one-two month release schedule, we NEED a proper Public Test Server to break the crap out of the update so it can go life with as few hiccups as possible.

KorKor.9452:

Several threads about these things. Just write it off as another Scarlet alliance or just Scarlet in general and ignore it.

You know the writers failed when you can’t even be excited about the in-game previews of upcoming content, when you know it’s just going to be Scarlet related, and another annoying alliance.

That was actually the first thing out of my mouth in party chat when Scarlet popped up in the reactor when we got to Algalon – err I mean the Anomaly.

The worst part was there was a GM with us the entire time, and when we all started to express our disdain towards Scarlet appearing, he got rather uncomfortably quiet.

But yeah, I agree, I’m glad we got the Reactor, I would have weeped big puppy dog tears if they somehow managed to force in Scarlet into an Abbadon fractal, worst still if the Abbadon fractal turned out to be a remake of the final boss fight in Nightfall. THAT would have made me rage quit GW2 out of protest.

ThiBash.5634:

The developers stated that it wasn’t supposed to be a big reward/meta grind this time, but more of an ‘introduction to’ for the newer players.

A better way of introducing new players to the ascended mats would be to give them five of each, to give new players, as well as returning players, a good head start in making their first Ascended Weapon.

One of each…well it’s kind of a slap to the face, honestly.

My group got it, it bugged, we reset the Fractals and started fresh.

We got it again, and again it bugged. We quit.

At this rate, I’m starting to think it’s just not worth playing on launch day, or hell, launch week of a living story update. It’s obvious to pretty much everyone with this patch, first with the broken Story Mode dungeon and now this, that Anet’s bug testing is very, very poorly done, and horribly rushed.

This is likely no fault to them, but again, to the fault of the two-week release schedule. It has to stop. One update a month would be more than enough if it had proper testing and content to it. Right now the Fractals are essentially unplayable, since if you get Molten Facility, you’re not finishing your fractal set.

Yeah, there were no words. When I saw Scarlet, I couldn’t actually believe Anet shoved her into ANOTHER plot that had nothing to do with her. Oh wait, now it does…because the Inquest couldn’t be a stand alone villain all their own.

daemonlama.5413:

Valenthor.4052:

Anet, the only MMO developer that removes content from their game.

It is all perspective. Look at other mmo’s and how there is so much unused content. Everyone already been there and done that. Taking this tower for an example, they leave it in for 2-4 weeks. We spend those weeks playing the kitten out of it, then it goes away. That lends itself to give the LS a feeling of it being living. It was defeated, and now its it no longer exists.

It keeps things from getting boring and then ignored. Which we all know, happens with all content. They give it to us, take it away and give us something new, then some time down the road they give it back to us in an altered state to keep it fresh and interesting.

Or they could leave the content there permanent, scrap the entire notion that Living Story = Content must be removed, and give players more things to do than they can shake a stick at.

It’s actually painful at how fast people are to defend Anet’s idea that their Living Story concept of adding temporary content is somehow innovative and, even worst, a good, cool idea.

Yes, sometimes MMO Developers do remove content from the game when they feel it fits the storyline, but never to the extent that Anet does with each passing update. Think about it, if Anet actually left in the content (barring holidays, obviously) instead of constantly removing it, by now we would have had over a dozen new story missions, two full fledged new dungeons, a third mini-dungeon, an additional scalable dungeon with the Queen’s Jubilee, an entirely new meta-game they could have continued to add to with the Queen’s Gauntlet and Super Adventure Box, and an entirely new zone in the form of the Zepyhr Sanctum along with the Challenge Mission it came with. Not to mention the various new PvP modes/Activities they’ve added over the year as well that are no longer in the game.

Instead…we have Fractals of the Mist, WvW changes, a completely dead zone, a handful of rotating activities, and a revamped world boss no one does anymore.

Remind me again why the latter is better than the former?