Guild Wars 2

Agree with most of your posts, so far the biggest problem is that people can auto-join with no confirmation. Anet probably wants to reduce discriminatory grouping, but it is way too easy to have undesirables/griefers join. Especially when you consider that you are advertising more elite content like fractals 40+ and team arena, the group creator (another distinction Gw2 unfortunately fails to make) should be allowed some discretion.

Some other things:

Sometimes you simply want to advertise an event (say, in wvw or open world pve). Like “need more help at Balthazar”. Your primary intent is probably to advertise this to your entire server, rather than just to have 4 people join and remove the event advertisement from the LFG tool. But I think this would be solved by letting us accept/decline incoming party requests.

Also, reword the “Living World” section to sound more inclusive of general open world PvE, and not just Tequatl/other 2 week event farming.

But as others have said, the majority of people still do not know they have access to the tool.

(Updated OP to consolidate my thoughts)

Nice tool so far, but too bad most people don’t know they have access. It will get better when more are using it.

Things I would consider changing:

+ Allow us to accept/reject incoming members. Anet probably wants to reduce discriminatory grouping, but it is way too easy to have undesirables and griefers join. Especially when you consider that you are advertising more elite content like fractals 40+ and team arena, the group creator (another distinction Gw2 unfortunately fails to make) should be allowed some discretion.

+Sometimes you simply want to advertise an event (say, in wvw or open world pve). Like “need more help at Balthazar”. Your primary intent is probably to advertise this to your entire server, rather than just to have 4 people join and remove the event advertisement from the LFG tool. But I think this would be solved by letting us accept/decline incoming party requests.

+The tool should not prevent you from browsing other groups while advertising one of your own. Two groups could be advertising for something similar but not realize it due to this restriction. Or, I may begin by advertising for a certain activity, and then notice someone else is advertising for something that seems more fun…etc. Please remove this restriction if possible.

+Reword the “Living World” section to sound more inclusive of general open world PvE, and not just Tequatl/other 2 week event farming.

+Give the option to reveal all of the LFG listings, rather than clicking through each category over and over again.

+Upon mouseover, display the zones that the group members are in (might be more difficult).

+*Annoying*: Message suppression occurring after making several LFG posts/edits in a short time.
What are your thoughts so far?

I would pay for it, as would others. Therefore, it should be researched. (Yes I realize you can alternatively make a new character, “pay” for it to be 80, geared, etc. but it is not the same).

Hello sir, please tell how you are managing to allocate 40-60 trait points into water magic. You must truly be a master of hydromancy, and I would like to learn from you.

Since the patch, my down/death UI element (located on the mid-right portion of the screen) is not functioning as it used to. The only downs and deaths reported are those incurred against me, and by me. The problem is the same when spectating- I can see the downed states and deaths caused by or inflicted against the player I am watching, but no others. Prior to this patch, I remember seeing all of the downed states and deaths reported within the UI for all of the players within a given match.

I have posted this issue in the Game Bugs forum too (as per the stickie above), but it was not given any attention. Is anyone else experiencing the “bug” I have described?

Since patch, the UI element (on mid-right side of screen) that shows player down/deaths in sPvP is no longer working correctly for me. The only down/deaths that are displayed are, those inflicted by myself, and to myself. I am not seeing any ‘feed’ display of what other players are doing in the match.

Also tested in spectator mode and I was only able to see down/deaths inflicted by/to the person I was spectating.

Thank you for reading.

Gw2 is rocket science though.

Already thought purging flames and meditations were extremely effective, what a useless update preview (besides showing that telling us in advance that purging flames will be probably be overpowered). What about the underused abilities? Healing breeze, spirit weapons, signets…etc.

Adding power/stat creep because they dont know what else to do…it sucks.

If it gets gradually turned on for the rest of the players throughout the week, fine whatever. If this ‘beta’ lasts for months…kitten .

Dungeons are ok, the problem is the power creep on the loot in other areas of the game (obtained by spamming auto attack…), and the new ‘need’ for this loot created by the new gear grind.

Its a serious problem, apparent since a couple weeks after release. The upcoming LFG system will help a bit, at least more than anything else so far. Districts would help too, but it doesnt seem anet wants them.

Extremely lame to anyone who has been putting a legitimate effort into their rank. That Anet still hasn’t fixed the problem is just as disappointing, the damage has been done and continues to be. The ranks/titles were one of the things that kept people playing Gw1 pvp.

Should have revamped this system ages ago to only reward victories (solo/team q if you prefer) and then consider rewarding more for consecutive wins like gw1 so good (and ‘lucky’) players could rank up faster. I dont agree with gating certain skins behind ranks that most players will never achieve…but the titles and emotes should be intact as something to show for their efforts.

Many carrot chasers pictured.

Moa form + stun= hf trying to use stun break.

For subscription-based games, I understand (but hate) the time-gating philosophy. In Gw2 it doesn’t make sense and it goes against the strengths of the game.

Yes I’m with you on this. Anet keeps creating new skins (for $), yet the players are still unable to attain all of the skins that were released with the game.

(I believe this set is called ‘masquerade’ in pvp locker?)

I am pretty sure they have been using the same argument since release (or much earlier), that and ‘esports’. Really aggravating and especially disappointing to just about everyone who supported Gw1 pvp.

@Wolfheart, excellent that is great news thanks.

@Nuka, I know and I’ve seen many of your posts and often share your frustration, but this is one of the changes I won’t complain about (but yeah waiting a year is ridiculous and sucks vs. some of the other stuff they chose to prioritize).

Nice, been waiting all year for this specifically. My only concern is the reach of the LFG system. Is it zone-wide, server-wide, region-wide (NA/EU)? I would expect at least server-wide, but the example shown in the screenshot only lists Sparkfly events? And if it does not reach all of NA or EU, then Gw2LFG will still be relevant for finding dungeons (unfortunately…).

@Nuka Cola, I think there are people out there who are interested in playing parts of the game for more than just loot…you know, for “fun”. This will help them find like-minded players to do things that are harder to find people for.

I like warhorn, but it is less useful now with cleansing ire and warrior’s sprint.

Still waiting for healing breeze to be changed.

Reflection added without any other modifications seems OP to me (thief dagger storm doesn’t knock people all over the place). But, it did make me think that if the tornado destroyed all projectiles in its radius (like swirling winds), that might be an interesting and balanced change.

sPvP isn’t nearly balanced either, but WvW has to deal with food, consumable buffs, ascended gear, WXP rank buffs (not directly buffing PvP i guess), etc. So their vision for WvW is that it doesn’t need to be balanced, and that zerg vs zerg spamfest is perfectly acceptable gameplay?

If the stat boost from ascended is ‘so insignificant’, as some of you are downplaying it to be…then why have the extra tiers of gear in game at all? It is just a distraction for a certain type of player to spend a little bit more time grinding out their character (which imo will turn away more people than it will bring in).

And then what happens after the ‘meta-pve-superhero-grinder-person’ finally has their ascended gear? The same feeling of emptiness sets in and “Gw2 endgame sucks/doesn’t exist” is heard again. ArenaNet should focus on strengthening their core game, which, at release, was brilliant.

Crovax.7854:

Celtus.8456:

Argue all you want, warrior is the latest to join the passive/spam-to win professions. Can easily play warrior now without using anything except 1-5, F1 and dodge. (Yes you can still play your warrior without this style, and yes it may not translate to ‘top’ tier pvp winning, but the point remains).

The only thing passive is the heal. Maybe 4sec regen on movement impairs every
10secs but that’s it if i recall correctly. Besides, what are you doing against conditions
with only 1-5? Cleansing ire? Good luck landing a burst with every other profession
taking a dump of conditions on your head.

Regen, passive perma swiftness, cleansing ire condition clearing every 8-10 secs while doing massive spike damage from bursts (other professions usually need to stop/slow dpsing to clear conditions…), etc. Every update recently has been a power creep for warriors (and a couple other professions, while everyone else sinks).

With each abomination of a content release, I wonder WTF happened to guild wars lore? This game is becoming a Skinner box.

Mindlessly droning around spamming a couple abilities and loot button isn’t really what I consider the best use of Gw2’s potential.

Argue all you want, warrior is the latest to join the passive/spam-to win professions. Can easily play warrior now without using anything except 1-5, F1 and dodge. (Yes you can still play your warrior without this style, and yes it may not translate to ‘top’ tier pvp winning, but the point remains).

Some people farm skyhammer custom arena now just by aoeing each other and falling off the world, over and over again for maximum points…gg @ gw2/anet.

just a promotional item to get you to buy more, and an attempt to get you into the failed format that is WvW.

I appreciate the minimalist intent, but it is having too many problems. Way too many cases of player icons blobbing up/disappearing.

Well Trahearne is the most eligible bachelor in Tyria, after saving the world with his incomparable heroism.

D’Alessio Arena 2.0?

Was expecting much more. End of culling will be nice so that LA can finally become the community hub it was intended to be. Besides that, I only see the culling change in PvE benefiting zerg farm clusters (pretty close to exploiting, most of the time they are culled), and the dragon fights. Not nearly as big of a change as was the removal of culling in WvW, but at least LA will be a better city now.

As for the other changes…more joke ‘updates’ for WvW. These mastery updates are a complete joke, it seems they only intend to release 1 per month. Start working on actual WvW content (this was supposed to be the GW2 endgame for many people), and quit clowning around.

As for the story, we’ll see. If we really aren’t getting another zone soon (Crystal Desert, Ring of Fire, etc etc), I can’t see it getting much better. A big shocking plot twist would be nice, I just hope it isn’t continuing at the same storytelling rhythm as the previous updates.

Didn’t watch the full video, but I agree and this often frustrates me. There is definite inequality in the animation telegraph, readability, ability to react/counter, etc. of each profession.

In my mind, elementalist (but air scepter 1-3 is really lame spam), guardian and warrior are all pretty fair and easy to read and react to. Though there are some instant abilities for these, I think they are not significantly powerful. Generally all, or most, of the abilities for these profs are avoidable if played right.

Engineers are sometimes readable (it is nice that their kits change on their back), but they currently spam too many conditions that it becomes difficult to really have a fair and controlled situation against them.

Rangers I suppose have many readable abilities, but they are so passive and spam based currently that it doesn’t matter. Most people know when a ranger is shortbow spamming them forever, but there isn’t always something they can do about it.

Thieves have some good ability telegraphs, but it hardly matters because they are in stealth half the time, and when they appear their attacks can take most or all of your hp (especially if you dont have CC removal up).

Mesmers are a similar problem, their telegraphs are masked by stealth and illusions (I know, that is sort of the point). Mesmer Greatsword #1 really bothers me, as does scepter #1. I really would like to see all these ‘laserbeam/lightning chain (as in ele air scep)’ attacks removed/redesigned as they really just seem to be spam. As for mesmer scepter 1, the mesmer flailing its hands to produce damage on a target somewhere, with little warning to the target, is just annoying and lame.

Which brings me to the necro. The necro, from what I have noticed, has the most of these ‘hand flailing’ animations. The only noticeable cue on the target’s side is a green puff of smoke and maybe a skull. Couple this with the rest of the necro disaster in the game currently, and I find it extremely annoying to play with.

Call me biased, but I think it is much more fun to fight against professions with fair and readable animation telegraphs.

google.3709:

Tiger and bear are really bad compared to wolf…. they were rushed, shark finisher is awesome, might dare to say more impressive than the phoenix video thats up on the wiki.

Dragon ? i’ll be a few years before anyone get that far… doubt it has been made yet

Hard to take wolf finisher seriously, having heard of the ‘three wolf moon’ shirt. I think we’ll see dragon sooner than a few years. It may have taken years for anyone to reach max pvp ranks in Gw1, but you don’t actually need to win to rank here (consecutively winning was needed too in gw1 to really get any significant amount of points). As mentioned already in this thread…sleep trading, lol. All it takes is a long grind by a decent player. I’ll be surprised if there is no dragon rank person 1-2 years from now.

Also: before this devolves back into the rant about rank being a meaningless indicator of skill. Sure, rank indicates experience though, and let’s be honest, that is what most of ‘skill’ involves in these games. Very few players have a ‘god given talent’ to play video games (lol). Some have a better potential for these things than others, but really experience makes the biggest difference. They might not win the world championship, but it is difficult to get all the way to rank 80 and not be pretty good at the game.

I thought we were ignoring the dragons. Not much to worry about anyway since zhaitan dropped so easily…

Go ask the other spineless rerollers in the necro forum.

A couple people might have phoenix (rank 70) by now, but nobody has dragon. I’d be curious to see them as well. I did see a “video” of phoenix on youtube, but it just showed the animation on a blank screen (not real ingame footage). Seemed legit though.

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t understand this comment. Farmers here have no bearing on the events in this instance. If the farmers were not farming the champs it doesn’t mean they would be helping with the events. Just pretend the farmers are not there and boom personal problem solved. They are not effecting you unless you choose to let them effect you…I don’t like players farming, thus they effect me?

I tend to avoid them, I am not saying their presence traumatizes/directly effects me. But I do think Anet, in striving for ‘innovation’, should perhaps avoid having their game devolve to something which neglects the other 99+% of the game world they have worked hard to create.

Farmers take the fun out of Mmorpgs. Not sure what the solution here is, Anet must have seen this coming with the implementation of their huge champ loot. Maybr make it so that you can only get the special loot from each unique champ once a day? That might be too destructive, but I think Anet should aim for rewarding what resembles a ‘natural’ playstyle rather than allowing the ‘loot metagamers’ to chase around several easy champions in queensdale/other zone all day while ignoring the rest of the game.

*Or make champs very difficult so that they kill many players (lvl 80 too) and arent so farmable nonstop.

KingClash.3186:

Any class in the hands of a skilled player.

This, unless you want to mindlessy drone between ezmode flavor of the month builds/professions (which do inevitably shift). Not sure what the OP wants, but since they mention PvE, it sounds like a long term character? Just make what is the most appealing to you and stick with it. If you find a good match, you can make it work.

My only problem (and it is a big one) is that, every 2 weeks (each release) a large portion of the world population gets siphoned off into a tiny instance area, leaving the real ‘world’ of Gw2 feeling empty. Of course you can make the very good argument that the people wouldn’t be in the world to begin with if not for the continuous LS updates. Still, I wish more would be done to make the ‘world’ alive and busy, rather than just making a new spot everyone rushes to while 99% of the world becomes/continues to be rather empty.

p.s. some of the stories have been kind of lame too

Can we please have red outline on spectral wall already? It is really annoying…

At first I thought it was a good event, then I realized it’s just a farmfest crammed into a pie of recycled terrain and mobs, with people fighting in hanging pods. Other parts of the update seem great (like champion loot and dungeon changes), but this farmfest (encouraged by 150% mf buff) will probably steal the population from the open world, until the event ends or people get bored.

New ‘real’ zone soon please (not a partial zone like southsun). And release that LFG tool asap, it will do the most to make your game more like an MMO again…

Btw, fighting those legendaries in the pavillion, I did not notice ‘improved combat visibility’ at all.

Syncing, one of the most hated and abused parts of GW1 pvp, makes its triumphant return to Gw2!!! Well, that’s what us Gw1 players get for complaining about the lack of Gw1 features in Gw2.

Yes it is unfortunately about zerging (though an extremely coordinated large group spreading out can be more productive). I have noticed a number of factors that contribute to this…

-The 5 target aoe limit: There is power in zergs because it is often not possible to reliably deal damage to a large group as your Area damage is capped at 5 targets (many in the zerg may not even take damage).

-The commander tag: Players tend to flock to any commanders on the map, forming zergballs around them. This is thanks to the poor grouping tools available- cant group more than 5, bad LFG system, poor group management/coordination tools all lead to balling around commanders. And commander costs 100g…im not sure why this is justified beyond $$$ for Arenanet or ensuring that all commanders can farm gold.

-People in large groups tend to get more loot because there are more people/npcs being killed and objectives being completed.

-It takes multiple people to siege anything except a supply camp (ok very good/motivated players can run back and forth for supply and solo cap a tower).

-Lots of lame roaming ganker types to deal with if not following zerg. Thieves, for example, can sneak up on many players and kill them very quickly and easily (or run away and stealth indefinitely). It can become rather frustrating.

-They do not want to be alone vs. the zerg that will inevitably roll them over

Etc.

WvW still needs significant development attention (re-development in my opinion) as it has not really had any changes over the past year, besides a ‘fix’ (removal of player culling) and the somewhat boring self-progression of world xp.

My first MMORPG was Shadowbane, a free for all pvp game with a big focus on siege warfare (but those were player built cities that would often take hours to win a siege against-or to lose, unlike here where it happens in a matter of minutes, 24/7). I loved that and it remains my favorite game model (the graphics, lag, bugs were bad) but I rarely play WvW because I think it is really lackluster now.

(ps there is also no point in winning/losing a week of WvW, besides the new opponent matchup)

I will be very satisfied if Kiel turns out to be a real villain (orchestrating some of the evils we have dealt with recently), seems too good to be true though.

Worst: The voting itself. I don’t care enough to click ‘vote’ hundreds of times. Furthermore, people are probably voting for both candidates to complete all the achievements, making the ‘election’ even less accurate.