Guild Wars 2

Is it not 2 mastery points? 1 for silver and 1 for gold?

I S N ’ T I T is not a swear word.

Seriously.

reapex.8546:

Celtic Lady.3729:

reapex.8546:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Was helping a fellow guildie earlier today on Auric Basin map and I really feel sorry for people coming into the game at this stage. Not nearly enough people to bring the walls down so everything was gated. Not nearly enough to go for hero challenges, let alone the meta… What was a lot of fun the first few times through weeks ago but today was truly a horrible experience because of lack of players.

Use lfg.

We do this all the time.

It doesn’t always work out.

That’s understandable since lfg is largely player driven. It’s up to people to decide when they want to taxi or not taxi. Sometimes players are more willing to do it than other players. So there are maps that are filled with people but no one advertises, so other players stay on less populated maps until more load in.

True. And sometimes people try really hard to fill a map by advertising and taxiing and not enough people answer the ads and join up.

And sometimes people succeed in filling up a map but the map empties out again halfway through the events and meta. Thus more time is lost/spent filling it back up.

Point is, so much trouble filling maps and having to hop maps and watching maps go south leads to frustration and burnout. Especially this early on in new content.

Not everyone has time to spend or wants to spend their time waiting around filling up an empty map or hopping around enough to find a full one in order to get things done.

And there are already so many reports of thinly populated maps and failing events and metas that I think keeping this system going long term is probably going to be a real problem.

reapex.8546:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Was helping a fellow guildie earlier today on Auric Basin map and I really feel sorry for people coming into the game at this stage. Not nearly enough people to bring the walls down so everything was gated. Not nearly enough to go for hero challenges, let alone the meta… What was a lot of fun the first few times through weeks ago but today was truly a horrible experience because of lack of players.

Use lfg.

We do this all the time.

It doesn’t always work out.

Jana.6831:

we’ve got a new borderland though which is all buggy and a bit complicated so it might well be that there’s no dorito to follow.

There’s almost never a commander in any of the borderlands for me since HoT. Groups in EB seem much smaller than they were pre-HoT. I’ve had 0 queues anywhere since HoT.

I run around the borderlands getting map items and don’t even remotely worry about being steamrolled by a zerg because I haven’t seen a zerg there since HoT.

Ayrilana.1396:

Did you account for all the WvW ones that are now actually obtainable?

Why are they actually obtainable? Did they lower the numbers? If so, I missed this. Good news, of course. I just didn’t think it would happen.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I just want to do, for example, the outpost event chains from start to finish. Haven’t been able to do a single one yet.

I hear ya. It took me a really long time to finish the achievements for the 5 outpost event chains in VB due to:

Thinly populated/empty maps
Groups that started the chains and then fell apart and didn’t finish them
Getting into maps where the events I needed were already done
Getting into maps where it wasn’t day/night when I needed a specific one

I could go on, but you get the idea. You’ve had even worse luck than me, it seems, and I was having better luck with map events the last 2 weeks than I’ve had this week. For me, maps are filling up more slowly than before or more people are skipping the event chains leading to the metas more, etc.

And scheduling my RL around this game’s HoT maps and their events? Yeah, never going to happen. rofl

I doubt they’ll change anything, but it’s always a possibility. If they think the fight needs a rework, they’ll do it. They’ve reworked content before.

Not that a small tweak or a few more seconds or minutes on the timer would really break anything, anyway.

Aomine.5012:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Aomine.5012:

Frosty.5401:

The reason why they are expensive and time consuming is because they GUARANTEE you get a precursor. You pay extra (in both time and gold) for this guarantee in order to avoid having to get the precursor using ordinary methods (Mystic forge/drops).

Still don’t understand why people are complaining about precursor crafting, obviously it has to be challenging/expensive in order to maintain (or not affect at all) the prices of tp precursors.

You’re GARUNTEED to get Precursor from TP too if your price is right.
Stop bringing up RNG because when the RNG is shared across the whole economy of palyer-base, there’s no longer RNG involved in it.

And that “right price of TP” is currently way cheaper than most Precursor crafting cost atm.

There is RNG in precursor crafting and anyone with bad luck that doesn’t get the drop they need will, in fact, NOT be guaranteed a precursor. You’re only guaranteed a precursor through crafting IF you can get all the RNG drops, and not everyone is getting these by any means.

Read it carefully.

WHEN THE RNG FACTOR IS SHARED ACROSS THE WHOLE ECONOMY PLAYER-BASE (millions of people), the RNG factor becomes next to zero

Ofc there’d be people who dump in 5000g and no precursor. But also there’re people who got precursors in their 2nd try. When you average them out in big quantaty which is the TP itself, there’s no longer RNG in it, especially when the time factor is long (more than 3 years now)

This doesn’t mean anything to the player that can’t get their precursor via crafting due to RNG elements in the crafting and collection process. That was my point.

I wasn’t getting near enough XP from event chains alone, so I maxed an alt to 80 with Tomes and began 100% world completion with her.

Map completions are the only thing I’ve found, other than a straight farm, that gives a lot of XP for masteries.

If they made story mode for each dungeon soloable like Zhaitan and added tokens to the reward box at the end, people could use dungeons to work toward their goals.

Spiral Architect.6540:

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Open world content – easy to moderate difficulty
Open world events – scaling difficulty, with difficult side events, bonus events, etc.
Hero Points – selectable difficulty, with scaling loot (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare)
Instanced content (including raids and dungeons) – selectable difficulty (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare), with scaling loot.

Everybody wins.

This would work for me. Don’t really see a downside.

Crovax.7854:

Valky.2574:

PopeUrban.2578:

Oh no. Some people have a way of doing things and you don’t like it.

You don’t have to play with them.

Problem solved!

Umm you did hear leg armor is raid only right ? so yes we have to play with the idiots of gw2 that scream at kids like a bad kitten and force ppl to play THERE way with the skills they want

And here I thought legendary armor stats were those of ascended, making it completely optional.

It is optional, but since raiding is the only way to get it, people will have to raid to get it. And people will want it for its looks and stat swapping.

I look at them the way I do Black Lion Keys – I simply don’t expect them to ever drop.

And yeah, I just get Writs of Experience from dailies if I want them, which I don’t usually because the amount of XP they give is negligible.

There was never a question for me as to whether or not raid groups would eventually require full ascended.

It was only a matter of time.

An enormous amount of GW2’s content at launch was meant to be (and indeed was) enjoyed by solo players. When I see people saying that GW2 is an MMORPG, so the expectation of being able to solo anything, including sections of HoT, is completely unrealistic makes me wonder if they’ve ever even played an MMO.

And GW2 is not the only MMO on the market that has either specifically made or tweaked plenty of their content to be soloable. Why do they do this? Because there’s a market for it. There’s money in it.

You really don’t understand the modern MMO if you honestly believe that no parts of them are ever meant to be soloed.

Pimsley.3045:

Casual is a term to define the amount of time someone spends online. It has no meaning in regards to player skill. Casuals aren’t asking for a nerf. Bad players and those with entitlement issues are. Stop saying casuals are being left out. You can play ten hours a week and clear the content with some effort.

“Casual” means different things to different people just like “grind” does. For some, casual means not a lot of time to play. For others, casual means they prefer a more relaxed gaming style. For others, it’s a combination of these two. Still for others, it means something else.

TBH, I haven’t found a truly fast way to earn Maguuma Mastery XP.

It all feels slow to me.

Zypher.7609:

Celtic Lady.3729:

You might want to try not making false assumptions about people from your high horse.

My response was a mix between responding to you and the OP. Also when you say LFG does not usually work, I pointed out that it has always worked for me since release. I use it daily, for about 2 meta events each day. When a map is struggling I tag up and help out.

As for the OP, he/she should use the tools available to find full maps. Yes there are dead maps, but it makes no sense to stay on that map. Use LFG or start a map yourself and taxi people in.

The point is, I’ve attempted many times to fill a map and it just didn’t happen despite the attempts. Again, taxiing people into a map works sometimes to fill it, but sometimes it doesn’t work. If you’re saying you have a 100% success rate of fully filling every map you enter, that’s great. But that isn’t the experience of a lot of us.

And constant map hopping when you don’t have the time to tag up and run everyone through the whole show carries its own frustrations that are not easily solved by the pat answer of “just taxi people in.”

Shylock.4653:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Whether or not a precursor is cheaper to craft or buy depends on how much of the materials for them a person buys or actually farms.

Why?

If you farm many mats they have a worth. You can sell them in the TP or use them to craft a precursor. In both ways the amount of Gold you are investing is the same (minus TP fees).

If you farm mats with the intention of using them, you’re not selling them. I’m talking about how much of the gold a person has when they begin farming that they are either keeping or spending due to outright buying something like mithril ingots – buying the ingots instead of farming the mithril ore and crafting the ingots.

If I’m looking to make something specific, I can spend 5 gold in mithril ingots or I can farm the mithril ore, craft the ingots, and keep my gold.

Zypher.7609:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Unfortunately, I get into more maps that are sparsely populated than I do ones that are full or even mostly full.

Even using LFG doesn’t usually help me get a meta done sadly. It helps sometimes, if I hop enough maps, but it doesn’t work most of the time.

And this is happening less than a full month since launch. That downward slide happened very quickly.

Not really, I use LFG everyday for HoT meta maps. I find them easy when the zone is starting up. From there I just stick with the zone, and help people taxi in.

It is always interesting to read threads of how people expect everything to be handed to them without ever trying.

…

What are you on about?

I use my commander tag regularly in meta events. I taxi and attempt to taxi people into maps regularly. Having a commander tag and taxiing people into a map is not a magic bullet for anything.

Many times, people simply don’t join up or answer ads in LFG. Maps that fill up don’t often succeed in the metas regardless of those of us attempting organization and explaining to people what to do.

You might want to try not making false assumptions about people from your high horse.

People are concerned about HoT content because of things we’re experiencing already so soon after launch:

Brand-new maps that are empty or mostly empty.

Hero Challenges that require help and involve a lot of waiting around for said help to arrive, if it ever does.

Maps that are full but where meta events regularly fail despite being full.

People insulting and ordering people around in map chat to get out of the map or do the meta, and if they do the meta, they get yelled at and insulted in map chat for doing it wrong or failing it.

The long length of time often required to do a series of events and their associated metas.

The frustration of map hopping in order to find a “good” map – one that’s full of people that are also organized enough to complete the meta event and succeed.

And these are only a small handful of the concerns that come up on these forums multiple times every day.

Unfortunately, I get into more maps that are sparsely populated than I do ones that are full or even mostly full.

Even using LFG doesn’t usually help me get a meta done sadly. It helps sometimes, if I hop enough maps, but it doesn’t work most of the time.

And this is happening less than a full month since launch. That downward slide happened very quickly.

Thaddeus.4891:

Kraggy.4169:

GW2’s origianl story had no artificial gates, only level, which you could get by questing without the need to ‘group up’ for endless meta events.

I think it not unreasonable I expected HOT to be an extension of GW2 not turn it into GW3, nothing in the pre-launch hype indicated a huge departure from the gameplay of GW2 which HOT is.

GW2 HoT story have no artificial gates, only mastery, which you can get by questing without the need to ‘group up’ for endless meta events.

I have no idea where you get this. I would have no hope of leveling my masteries without doing the group events in the jungle maps. I need to do group events and metas, or I get almost no XP for masteries.

Whether or not a precursor is cheaper to craft or buy depends on how much of the materials for them a person buys or actually farms.

Buying a lot of the materials means the TP precursor price is usually much cheaper.

Farming all your mats will significantly lower the price and significantly increase the time it takes for you to actually get said precursor.

milo.7198:

I’m in a small family guild. We aren’t mad about not getting a hall. That’s no big deal. But all the amenities we worked so hard for, harder than a bigger guild, like banners and weaponsmith, have been taken away.

For us, its not that we don’t get a hall, its about all of our progress and work being erased..

I believe it’s very wrong

So do I. It’s hard enough for small guilds (and there’s nothing morally wrong with having a small guild) to climb the same ladders as very large guilds do without having progress already made being stripped from you arbitrarily.

Misguided.5139:

If you want crystals, do the events leading up to the meta.

And this is assuming, of course, that you can find a map that’s actually doing the events leading up to the meta in the first place. This is often far more easily said than done from my experience.

Optimal timing doesn’t always solve this problem, either. I play evenings and weekends USA and I still see more maps failing or thinly populated than I see ones that are full and the meta succeeds.

It’s also becoming more frequent for me to see plenty of people but no one is actually doing the events that lead up to the meta in the first place. It’s like players have given up on them succeeding, so they’re beginning to ignore them completely or they’re growing burned out and tired of doing them over and over. Not sure which it is. Possibly both.

But given what I’ve experienced THE FIRST 3 WEEKS of launch when everyone should be crazy excited and busy doing things in the new maps, this map event system will not be sustainable long term. Not even close.

Broom.2561:

BrotherBelial.3094:

RustyMech.9876:

Require T4 to open the raid, problem solved.

Best Idea I have ever seen on these forums.

Only if it’s reaching the night T4, otherwise people will just run as soon as night arrives, and you still have a mess.

Yeah, it would have to be T4 night or the raid is locked out just like Adventures.

I’m trying to figure out the logic of Spvp being the very best way to get dungeon tokens. Dungeon running should be the best way to get them, but it isn’t any more.

This seems very backwards to me.

New player: I need dungeon tokens. Anyone want to run a dungeon?
Everyone else: No, are you crazy? No one actually does dungeons for dungeon tokens! You’re supposed to PvP for them!

Right.

Aomine.5012:

Frosty.5401:

The reason why they are expensive and time consuming is because they GUARANTEE you get a precursor. You pay extra (in both time and gold) for this guarantee in order to avoid having to get the precursor using ordinary methods (Mystic forge/drops).

Still don’t understand why people are complaining about precursor crafting, obviously it has to be challenging/expensive in order to maintain (or not affect at all) the prices of tp precursors.

You’re GARUNTEED to get Precursor from TP too if your price is right.
Stop bringing up RNG because when the RNG is shared across the whole economy of palyer-base, there’s no longer RNG involved in it.

And that “right price of TP” is currently way cheaper than most Precursor crafting cost atm.

There is RNG in precursor crafting and anyone with bad luck that doesn’t get the drop they need will, in fact, NOT be guaranteed a precursor. You’re only guaranteed a precursor through crafting IF you can get all the RNG drops, and not everyone is getting these by any means.

Yeah, I wish they’d made Scribe in line with all the other crafting professions – something you can get and level solo but that specializes in making guild hall items.

I don’t see why that wouldn’t have worked.

I’m not sure why anyone would exclude thieves from the new raid. They have several terrific skills that are fabulous in the first boss fight.

So, you’re what? A Flame Legion Sympathizer?

On the off-chance you’re actually serious (I’ve seen stranger requests on this forum before that were), I just gotta say – it’ll never happen. smirk

Girl power.

I’ve always believed this game should have an in-game voice chat the way LOTRO does. It would make everything much more convenient and simpler since everyone uses different outside voice chat systems.

I’m tired of always having to download yet another system because the group I’m in doesn’t have any of the ones I’ve already got downloaded.

Should have been in the game at launch to facilitate all their big group events and metas.

Spvp reward tracks give way better and more frequently quality loot than drops and rank-up chests in WvW in my opinion.

WvW needs something like this for ranking. The variety of items is just not there for WvW rewards.

Swift.1930:

Celtic Lady.3729:

It would be interesting if someone tallied all the ratings and made a list of them from this thread. I’m curious what the average rating for HoT would be.

There was a tally just a little while ago:

Coyote.7031:

The average “fun”, with some posts omitted because I’m lazy, is 5.12008 with 251 entries. Unless people gave a very clear short answer, I skipped the post. I didn’t want to average out the multi-score posts unless they listed a clear answer. If it was just two numbers, I averaged it out. So don’t beat me if it’s off, I did it just for kicks.

:)

Cool. Thank you. So, the consensus so far is 5 basically. In the middle. Interesting.

It would be interesting if someone tallied all the ratings and made a list of them from this thread. I’m curious what the average rating for HoT would be.

I agree that the meta events in HoT seem very long compared to others in the game. I’d love it if these were shorter and quicker. Like Dry Top, you can repeat the events for local currency and buy things like recipes and minis and tonics, etc. So that’s one reason to repeat it, if you’re into that sort of thing. Also, you can buy items for collections like the Mistward Armor set.

The main reason for repeating the events, however, is getting Maguuma Mastery XP since you can’t work toward your Maguuma Masteries in Central Tyria. This is the major reason why I’ve spent as much time doing events there as I have. I’ve also been trying to get the heavy armor Bladed Chest from Verdant Brink, but I’m not having much luck there.

I also worked on the Verdant Brink achievements in the beginning because VB is my fave map and because the events seemed really organized there. I haven’t done as much repeating content or chasing achievements in the other 3 maps, though, since I’ve had bad luck getting much in the way of populated maps and I’ve enjoyed their event chains less.

Once I get the masteries I want and the ones I need to finish the story and the few recipes I want from the vendors, I expect the only reason I’ll go back is if I want to take my alts through for map completions. Right now, I’m not sure if I’ll do many alts there or not.

If the maps continue to fail their events often and become even less populated than they already are as time goes by, I probably won’t take alts there, which is too bad really. I did almost all my alts in Central Tyria to 100% and enjoyed it. I would love to do the same in HoT, but the way the maps and events are currently set up, I’m not hopeful.

This sounds like a colossal mess. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m getting close to it.

Not looking forward to this at all.

Yeah, there seems to be yet another round of these going on.

The yellow note at the bottom clearly states it’s not from ArenaNet, so that’s helpful, too.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Is this considered exploiting?

Absolutely not.

PopeUrban.2578:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Draknar.5748:

Palador.2170:

Raids are supposed to be beaten by only the best players.

Yes, you will need to be an above average player, that’s always how raids have been. But you rarely have to be the best player. You just need to be someone who is committed to learning the fights.

I think raids should be accessible to anyone willing to learn the fights, be coordinated, and is decently well geared. Raids can be a lot of fun and I agree that they should be challenging but also able to be enjoyed by more than a handful of “best” players.

If you have to be geared out in all ascended (or in the future, all legendary) and the mouse has to float in the air beneath your hand in order to make a useful contribution in a raid, then they’re not accessible enough.

But that’s my opinion.

Why would being in legendary be a requirement in the future? It’s statistically identical to ascended.

For the stat swap, though without runes/sigil swaps this would be limited but still utilized if they chose.

This would be due to map completion rewards, I’m guessing.

Khisanth.2948:

By playing since headstart and the fact that there isn’t really much worth spending on.

lol I have 5 million karma. I can’t even remember what it was like to actually farm it.

Of course, the farms have all changed since launch.

On the off-chance I run out, though, I’m glad to know that daily Teq gives so much.

DoctorDing.5890:

I don’t believe it was “well known” that the expansion was going to be harder than the core game.

The statements they did make ahead of time about the “challenging content” were extremely vague and not ideal for making buying decisions.

There were many things no one could have predicted that changed from the core game and “mobs will be more challenging” simply doesn’t cover all of it.

It wouldn’t bother me if they were. I’d have an easier time of it maxing out my alts’ inventory bags if they were.

Why didn’t they just make it turn-offable in the settings?

I never got the impression that Anet wanted to kill the zerker gear. They just wanted to make some other stat options viable, too, like condi. There will always be zerker gear.

It was fun and unique.

It’s too bad it’s gone.

Draknar.5748:

Palador.2170:

Raids are supposed to be beaten by only the best players.

Yes, you will need to be an above average player, that’s always how raids have been. But you rarely have to be the best player. You just need to be someone who is committed to learning the fights.

I think raids should be accessible to anyone willing to learn the fights, be coordinated, and is decently well geared. Raids can be a lot of fun and I agree that they should be challenging but also able to be enjoyed by more than a handful of “best” players.

If you have to be geared out in all ascended (or in the future, all legendary) and the mouse has to float in the air beneath your hand in order to make a useful contribution in a raid, then they’re not accessible enough.

But that’s my opinion.