Guild Wars 2

Agree with points Rynarx and others have made… But to even further their points, rewards are too uniform in terms of xp/karma/coin relative to the level of event. Defending the gates of Arah is a 14 minute timer quest that gives you the exact rewards as a 2 minute timer shelter defense; the real difference being generally shelter has more zerg mobs so more chances for drops. Similarly, why go kill backwards and do events when they give less xp/karma/coin (other than maybe nostalgia or for a chest which has a potential for a precusor drop)?

The other caveat is lack of consequence…. aside from a wp being contested and maybe NPCs aren’t in the area (because it’s enemy occupied), is there really consequences to doing/not doing stuff? Like what does Claw of Jormag not getting killed do for the rest of Forstgorge or even that all the snowy Norn areas? Not much. Even if you kill him, good job, see you in 3 hours…. huh?

Yes, the events are dynamic, but not really the point of them having real consequences on the world as much as providing minor annoyances/rewards within the map… and because of this in tandem with the other points mentioned (and possibly the wp costs), there’s not a lot of reason/purpose/incentive for folks to go around and do a variety of things.

I wouldn’t say it’s an excuse, most things are opinion-based unless it can be backed with factual evidence. It’s hard to argue against a bug because it can be visually witnessed. It’s not hard to argue against the nature of a mechanic, like + healing is too weak, because the view is ultimately subjective. The strength of the subjective argument comes from the strength and cogency of the argument as well as the number of folks who agree. While I think die hard fans will use the fallacy of lumping everyone who hasn’t stated their opinion on the matter as people against the argument, I think Anet does consider the legitimacy of the claim (granted, they’re not always transparent in what forum issues they’ve looked at and what their stance is) and seldom (if ever) play the “minority” excuse.

Minority only matters if something is put to a true democratic vote, it says nothing about the accuracy of their concerns/statements. A minority believed that the treatment of workers in the beginnings of the industrial revolution was inhumane while the majority either didn’t voice concern/care or thought it was fine… and I think most of us who have some knowledge of history (not necessarily US, but even in their respective countries) know how that shook out. I think even people that like the game can admit GW2 isn’t without some flaws and those that don’t really care so much to voice doesn’t necessarily mean they think the game is fine….

I think the game certainly has a lot of great potential, some which draws of GW and some from other MMOs. I think they still have somethings to do to really make this game stellar, but at least the framework is good.

Just because they’re NA servers doesn’t mean the server time is set primarily to the NA timezones. Yak’s Bend is actually set to AUS time (east coast of AUS I believe, not the west coast). Not sure if we have a “full status” or how active everyone is (I’m a yank, so I’m generally asleep when the aussies get on), but if you’re not happy with your server, you can give YB a whirl.

In their current state, probably neither…. they both offer differences in the game which have potential, but don’t necessarily deliver.

I might side more with the open world just because it has the best potential to make the world feel more alive and continually in a state of flux (a real horizontal progression that keeps players playing)… although this sort of happens already, it’s kind of at a bare-minimum as far as horizontal progression goes.

I think it partially has to do with how the classes are categorized…. Scholar, Soldier and Adventurer; the first two are fairly easily to build armors around that general category concept, not so much the Adventurer, especially since (from a fundamental level) rangers, thieves, and engineers hardly share commonality like the different casters (that cast different flavors of spells) or the guardian/warrior (that are frontline fighters and tough as nails even if they do have different styles). Not saying that justifies the end result, though it does sort of follow the thought process behind the “art direction” for medium armor.

I thought the point of the OP was asking and suggesting counters for stealth…. as far as I can tell there doesn’t seem to be one. Pretty much all skills have some kind of drawback and/or counter… not sure where that lies in stealth even if it is/was working correctly.

It may not be necessary (assuming you still get upscaled), but I think it’s certainly helpful. Gear aside, level 80 typically indicates you can bring the max potential of your profession into an encounter; which becomes greater in importance as you go higher in levels.

Agree with Snix

Gamers can indeed complain sometimes about the most minor and trivial things, but there are a lot of valid complaints and concerns relating to the current status of the game and the directions being taken. Some of it might be a little over the top with the doomsaying rhetoric, but behind the melodrama is a real concern that warrants some merit unless it can be proven completely false. Some people are fine adapting or like the game as-is…. and we certainly need those viewpoints as well so that they help temper the severity of measures taken (if any measures are in fact taken).

Frankly, I find your generalization of the community’s dissenters grossly obtuse. There are good critiques, there are those who dissent about the game but encourage new players to at least try GW2 and form there own opinions, and yes there are a lot of repeat threads…. because repetition usually means it’ll stick and I don’t know maybe get addressed (whether through a fix or response that’s a little more insightful than silence or “we’re working on it”).

Sorry there are those that have an issue with the game, that can’t just submit in abject surrender and be content…. but their viewpoints aren’t somehow invalid because the way they play is somehow incorrect and can’t “fall in line with the way the game is supposed to be play” (whatever that means).

Given what Anet has done in the past, and the groundwork they have now, I think they can raise the bar and make this game a lot better than it currently exists without really needing to add content… but I don’t think they’ll divine that path on their own.

Umm basically what I describe about stealth breaking is what happens in WoW and stealth still works just fine, because in that split second you go into stealth and it get’s broken, the enemy still drops target which in itself is pretty clutch.

Last words are typically some sort of profanity cursing a deity or making an appeal to some cosmic balance… Sorry if that’s too vague, but without getting the words turned into kitten or the mods deleting the post, you’ll have to figure it out based on the clues.

Yes I suppose hardware constraints can impact what kind of game you can sell (like obviously an MMO couldn’t work for a console with no ability to connect to the internet)… I’m not sure it’s a PC vs. Console argument but rather the game itself.

I think my “resentment” (I think that’s a little strong of word) is more in what they said vs. what was delivered. I can hardly be upset when a game is advertised and sold as A and ends up to be A; it’s another when you get sold A, but it’s really more like B and not even a good B. The world is hardly dynamic. WvW feels more cheese than tactical not to mention the entire map and all things in it are not relevant towards winning as indicated in vids when they were showing off the system prior to game release. Ultimately, my actions are without consequence in the world which makes my time played even prior to the 100 hour threshold feel irrelevant. In a lot of ways, that’s why I didn’t like Skyrim as well; decisions really had no significant consequences. I won’t get into shooters as I think that has a mentality more like playing a sport than participating in a journey/experience. The hardware is definitely available to make a really dynamic game, they just decided to invest more of the 25GB on graphics over real world dynamics….

Let’s face it, GW2 is to GW like BF3 is to BF2; a shiny game that pales in comparison to its predecessor.

Yeah this really only affects market prices of certain cores/lodestones and possibly globs of ecto (because with CoE, you can convert tokens into rare items that can be salvaged)… Doesn’t really impact the market of T5/T6 claws/scales/sacs/totems/etc. sure, some of these things can drop in bags or off certain mobs that maybe present in CoE, Arah, CoF, and HotW… but not with any reliable consistency.

Revan.3185:

Most whiners on the forums are the people who rushed to 80 and want more endgame so just remember to explore the world and enjoy your time. Being lvl 80 is not the main goal in this game but rather to see how many cool things you can find on the way.

I mean a gross oversimplification and generalization of the complaints… but the game is pretty solid between levels 1-80. There apparently seems to be some issues finding a NA server that isn’t full, so that might be your only real issue. I mean, you got a couple of weeks before you can’t get a refund, so might as well give the game a whirl, see what you think and either hold onto the game or get your money back.

The counterplay to stealth is to create more opportunities for players to break it. Stealth can’t be detected, yet a thief taking damage doesn’t break stealth (would actually give conditions a further benefit), a thief’s attack doesn’t necessarily break stealth; I get for some abilities that’s fine, but if they do an attack that would typically reveal them they remain in stealth if a player blocks or evades the attack.

I find a general problem with the way damage is calculated as well. Due to the way toughness, defense, and damage are calculated… The discrepency between damage to a warrior and a mesmer of similar stat combinations is hardly any different; yet the mesmer has a lot more ways to evade attacks than a warrior. It might take a few more hits on a warrior to kill him because they have a slightly larger health pool and generally have to get in close… but it doesn’t seem that 3k-4k more health is better than tons of evasion measures at range.

Increasing one’s gold income rate is all fine and well if you’re just using it for fixed game stuff like wp costs, repairs, respecs, etc…. but all this does is make T5/T6 mats, gems, and other stuff more expensive since all gold making will do (without any mat farmers) is inflate the prices. If everyone is farming TA, I suppose the price of onyx cores/lodestones would eventually go down which would make a lot of folks seeking Predator happy.

Oglaf.1074:

Just need to add more Lightning Elementals on other maps.

It’s not so much the quantity of them as it is the drop rate of shards, cores, lodestones… It’s an abysmal rate combined with an absurd quantity needed in order to create legendary items…. basically, the story of almost every item necessary to create a legendary.

Red Falcon.8257:

Yours, OP, is the typical review of a person who still didn’t get to master his character and team play.
I too believed that, just like most people, before getting deeper into the system.

GW2 indeed lacks challenging content and especially there are no team-required zones.
This is an issue, but has nothing to do with the combat system, it’s just a matter of lack of team-based endgame.
Fractals is the first implementation of such a zone, but it’s not enough.

Finally, I’m bluntly telling you that GW2 combat doesn’t have to adapt to every person that’s missing obsolete tank/healing system.
This combat is much deeper and more interesting, and the reason a lot of people play this game; Anet will never downgrade the greatest selling point of their game down to the level of other MMOs.

This… it’s not so much the combat as it is the encounter design. Fractals did a better job at least having people do different things at the same time, but not really synergize skills or do different things from a combat perspective. In some ways I think it’s hard for Anet to design certain fights to do unique combat things since that might require a mechanic that not every class can provide, yet the whole idea is that any group combination is viable.

Sitael.4680:

Skribulous.3521:

MF does not affect chests, but DR definitely does.

Pardon me, but what is the meaning of DR?

Diminishing Returns… it’s Anet’s draconian system to curb players from farming particular events/mob types/dungeon paths and artificially inflate the rate at which items can be obtained.

Oh… maybe that method only works on the faction gear then (vigil, priory, whispers)

Talyjta.9081:

I’m in the 4US group…

I wonder whether it may arise a balancing problem, but… ah well, it’s a good idea, like so many here. And i really fear it will “go the way of all good ideas around here”…

I mean no offense, but a balancing problem already exists doesn’t it simply by the nature of some elite skills vs. others? Almost all of the Mesmer’s elite skills are way better than any one engineer elite skill; not to say the engineer elite skills are all complete garbage, but by comparison they hardly hold a candle in terms of sheer effectiveness (unless they were on shorter cooldowns perhaps).

I don’t think you really need to… with xmute kits you simply need to create a lvl 1 toon, grab money from your bank, buy the armor, xmute the skin onto a white item, place item in bank, log onto the character you actually want the skin on, xmute the white item’s skin (which is the cultural skin) onto whatever gear you want.

Now I don’t think this works for say heavy plate on elementalist robes, but you can potentially get a racial armor skin onto a different race.

Ayrilana.1396:

There are other jumping puzzles throughout the game so why focus on this one? If you need the badges then you should realize that they are part of WvW which is pvp. If you don’t want to pvp in the puzzle then use the mystic fountains.

Because other jumping puzzles are do-able… for all the people saying it’s fine the way it is, I encourage you to do it then to shut all the complainers up. And no, a strategy involving running the JP at some absurd off-peak time is not a strategy; that’s merely finding a point where the flaws of the puzzle’s design are less apparent… It’s also not skill-based strategy as much as a luck-based one; which defeats the purpose of the JP and PvP.

I’d actually prefer my elite slot to be able to use any utility skill… cause frankly, some racial and profession elite skills are simply useless.

I mean I can understand a greater emphasis on dungeons and instanced stuff since bots can’t really do these… but by taking these measures, Anet is letting the bots destroy their game; the irony being the whole point of these measures is supposed to stop bots from ruining the game.

The gem of this game was supposed to come more from it’s dynamic open world. Lacking real consequences and the scale of rewards made some events more worthwhile than others…. now the lack of rewards is making the entire open world experience kinda meh.

It’s interesting to see the pros/cons of subscriptions vs. free-2-play (regardless of whether you have to buy the game first or not).

It’s particularly annoying when your party is made up from folks of different servers yet you all can’t join into an overflow or something to collectively unlock a gate…. Pretty sure any of the gate encounters can be 5 manned.

Conner.4702:

Actually this would just move the problem around. What actually needs to happen is to give people natural reasons to visit areas.

It’s funny cause I think WoW BC and D2 pulled these off. In D2, the “ideal” gear wasn’t all high level and most likely to drop in the highest act. That’s why you had all sorts of various hell/nightmare runs. WoW BC pulled it off by having crafting skills with the ability to make consumables (at least most crafting professions), which in turn required mats that were scattered all about the BC map. But these are vertical progression games.

The natural reason for a horizontal progression game is typically because not doing something can have a profound consequence… when you remove that consequence and heavily weight rewards in favor of higher content, you lessen a player’s motivation to go out of their way to do those events.

Seras.5702:

I’ve heard a lot of complaints that players don’t want to take a waypoint within the same map to get to a DE because the reward won’t even pay for the cost of the port. That’s sorta ridiculous imo.

Which part, the reward not paying for the travel cost or the players not taking the wp? Cause it often depends on the encounter (and whether or not it’s a quick multi-chain and/or has a chest at the end).

Krosslite.1950:

I see no need in mounts. I also see no need to change the cost in waypoints.

The main purpose is to force you to go through the map and at higher levels do DEs. To introduce mounts or lower WP fees will remove a main design point of the game

Um… doesn’t the act of unlocking the wps make you go through the map? So I have to go through the map again and again…. then why have the wp at all if I need to find it first and then be allowed to use it second (and thirdly pay for it)?

How does the current system encourage doing DEs? Wanna know why most folks stick to the upper half of Cursed Shore? Because the DE rotation in such a tight density is more worthwhile than cruising all over the map, even if you know what events are up; whether you’re running or paying money to wp around the map (assuming you can even do that). If anything, the current system doesn’t encourage either of these things you’ve mentioned.

Yeah forums aren’t a good measure of what the entire community thinks about the game. Personally, I do like the game conceptually and I think they pull off something well, but there are definitely areas in need of vast improvement.

Hickeroar.9734:

T3 is about the look, not the stats. You’re supposed to transmute that stuff.

This… why spend 120g on T3 cultural exotics when you can spend around 20g or less (depending on the market) on a full exotic armor set with the same stat combinations (if you were really dead set on those particular stats)?

Answer… it’s about the looks, not the stats

kaboo.5194:

Webba.3071:

Its a moot point – the game (zone size and density, travel mechanics, economy etc) was designed to not have mounts. Adding them in any form other than purely cosmetic would require either a massive amount of work or would break the game completely. Its not even a remote possibility.

could someone please explain how would constant ~50% move speed buff (out of combat only) break the whole game?

I don’t think it would, but my counter question is how would this mount help given how easy it is to get into combat? In higher level zones, esp. Orr, you basically can’t use the mount unless you can somehow dodge while on mount. But assuming you can dodge, can you use utility skills to boon yourself with vigor or block or something, or would the mount work like WoW’s mount where you just have speed and can’t do anything on it (other than dodge with standard endurance regen)?…

Really not seeing how the mount is more helpful over just fixing wps to be cheap and always accessible (except for maybe like 2-3, which are tied to whether or not a dungeon is sealed or open).

Love the satire… though games, especially when they exist in a state of evolving, are not somehow absolved from serious discussion just because they’re a form of entertainment; that assertion, frankly, seriously undervalues what entertainment means to a society or person. Providing no serious/real input or discussion does nothing to tell the industry what we enjoy in our entertainment and doesn’t progress the state of play. I’m not saying all discussion narratives are insightful or enlightening, but they’re also not trivial.

If you wanna get real nihilistic here, nothing should be taken seriously since the entire human, and even global, experience is nothing more than an insignificant blip on the cosmic scale. However, we deem things as important and the way a culture engages in play is very much an important aspect and worthy of discussion; whether it’s play in the general sense or something more specific like talking about a particular game.

Just like communion (for Christians)…

The grind is over, but the grind will never end.

Healing is lumped into the category of support more than being the end-all-be-all method of support. Support can also be through certain boons or conditions or utility skills. Some classes can provide the healing support better than others, but in general no one type of support is better than another… they all have pros and cons. I think +healing could be a better stat, but other than that healing as it stands in the grand scheme of support is fine.

Smoothy.1085:

Welcome to this wonderfull game i would like to advice you to evade the forums as much as possible as it could blind your own vision with all the hate thats posted there.

Yeah, better to experience the game first, form your own opinions and then see what folks are griping about…. Cause there are folks who do like the game and you just might be one of those persons.

Hawkmoon.5849:

You couldn’t pay an actor enough to act as stupid as Trahearne.

Except they kinda did…. Granted it was just his voice.

I think the Destiny’s Edge storyline makes for a better story than the main story (even if you decided to go with a series of pre-set choices)…. Even if you focus the story more around Logan being the protagonist, it’s a story of loss, betrayal, redemption, “sacrifice” kinda, all that good stuff. The problem with the main story is that you really don’t get a sense of how the world feel about your toon… Unlike the DE story which is pretty isolated, your toon interacts with all sorts of factions and cultures. Given the different mindsets and the time this is happening, how would Slyvari feel about engineers, Asura about warriors, anyone about necros? In order to make a movie on the main story, you really have to take a lot of liberties with the story that people may or may not like; whereas the DE story is pretty much written.

I guess to keep it short… and from a purely MMO standpoint (regardless of FPS, RPG or what have you), an MMO that I could easily play almost non-stop should have a good balance between various game aspects, especially between classes/opposing sides yet being distinct (no cheesing), challenging content (in FPS games more a change in maps and mode and again no cheesing), and a decent story to drive the content (depending on the genre).

While I see a lot of great potential in what Anet has, the direction they seem to be taking the game has only created a further lack of interest for me to play the game (though I still pop on from time to time).

The fractal leveling mechanic, even with the gw2lfg.com site, splits up the player base a ton with no real incentive to for players to go backwards (unless they’re in the 10s/20s trying to farm rings). I know Anet said they’re working on it (like every other problem), but that doesn’t really help the here and now. I honestly don’t understand how they thought this level mechanism was even a good one. Should’ve been like dungeons… the highest level available can “host” the fractal and everyone get a +1 to their progression upon completion. Given all the repeats of 10s and 20s, it would easy for lower level fractal players to catch up… though I’d suspect some elitism to happen in order to make sure only “true lvl X” players are participating and whatnot.

I don’t see how mounts (flying or land) fix any issues about moving throughout the world. If you take damage (falling or enemy) does your speed get reduced like if you were running? Do you get dismounted? How do mounts help with the wp costs or is this mount moving so quick that I can essentially get from A to B almost instantly? Putting in movement content doesn’t hide the fact that the current movement mechanics are flawed; this solution of mounts merely says let’s cover up the issue rather than address it, though mounts could be more useful in a WvW setting (though I honestly think that’s an issue with the way WvW objectives are setup more than things just being spaced out really far).

I mean say what you will about WoW, but flight paths…. while the travel time was abysmal, the paths went to a few locations, they were never contested, and they were actually really cheap. Even with the travel time, they were a convenient way of getting around a large world and didn’t hamstring players. Mounts were an option of spending large capital upfront for the ability to be able to freely and quickly move about the world.

I don’t think you need mounts in GW2, but you shouldn’t hamstring players with high travel costs…. It makes an assumption about how a player plays and almost imposes a certain way to play.

I’ve always been a player that is like “all things in due time”… but when the dev starts to alter rates around to encourage the use of the cash shop, this doesn’t make me happy. If I wish to spend money, then I do so by my own choice not because the game keeps giving me suggestive nudges.

No, but between it and the LS event (and all the issues associated with them ontop of the older issues still not addressed), Anet really didn’t do much to inspire confidence in the playerbase.

For a horizontal progression game (which is very much what a lot of the game is built around), it really does the bare minimum or nothing in terms of your failures/success having impact and in that way doesn’t give players the sense of achievement.

Events are kind of dynamic, but in the bare minimum sense. Other than a point becoming permanently contested (and the NPCs dead on the ground), there’s no real consequence of failing. Succeeding doesn’t do a whole lot either especially when the event starts again in 20 minutes. Completing dungeons of either mode have no real impact on the world either. The LS zone imo is a huge fail not due to the one-time event and DC/crashes, but because there’s no horizontal progression…. no events afterwards, no real story (told through a series of quests or even a karka-filled dungeon), no consequences on the world for succeeding or failing.

Combined with wp costs and uniform karma/xp/coin rewards for events of certain levels, there’s not a lot of incentive to move about at higher levels… in a lot of ways being 80 becomes more of a burden because the game imposes a certain expectation on you, the player, and your time spent in Tyria. Why defend the gates of arah for 14 minutes and get the same karma/xp/coin as doing one part of the Plinx run, or staying at the pent/shelter area doing one of those for a few minutes? Why travel over to Wayfarer Foothills to do events that are less rewarding and cost you time/coin to get over there?

WvW is kinda like whatever…. sure, there’s small global benefits for doing well, but there’s really no noticeable impact for winning/losing other than changing the rotation of servers you fight. I’ll leave sPvP alone since that’s basically it’s own thing.

I mean to give a short answer…. It doesn’t really work in this game because it’s heavily RNG/Farm-based to acquire rather than skill-based. It’s very much slapped in rather than really integrated into the system like other “successful vertical progression” games like D2 and WoW.

Yeah getting to 80 isn’t necessarily a grindy feeling, but some of the pursuits once you’re level 80 can feel grindy (notice I said some, not all).

Was it across all NA servers? I know Yak’s Bend had maintenance periods over two consecutive days… but while it was prime time in the Americas, it was more like 8-9 in the morning in AUS.