Guild Wars 2

Conski Deshan.2057:

5% is a very high amount of people for what is currently meant to be the games toughest solo challenge. The exploit is also doing significant damage to its perceived challenge.

I’d hope for below 1% figures for some harder challenge content (before anyone freaks bare in mind that if the game has 1 million players 1% is still 10000 people which is a significant amount.

Why would anyone design content specifically to exclude all but a vanishingly minuscule part of the playerbase?

Every time someone ask for female bodies and faces that aren’t scrawny babyteen sex dolls, or non-skimpy female armor, or armor for charr that actually fits nevermind looks good on them, or gear NOT designed exclusively with humans in mind but themed for sylvari, charr or norn, or better roleplay support, or player housing (the list probably could go on) … people will hasten to claim that nobody would play that or pick that, it’s a waste of resources, etc. etc.

Yet I’m pretty sure that all these wishes would be seconded by more than 1% of the playerbase. Many by more than 5%, probably.

So when people call for massively restricted content or skins, I get just a wee bit cynical of how actively excluding the majority, or pretty much everyone, or even “only” people who can’t play regularly or haven’t played without interruption from early access onwards, is a good idea and even a must … yet giving everyone more options and diversity or giving some much-needed love for a minority species is often dismissed as a waste.

FWIW, I beat Liadri today and it was a huge adrenaline rush that, yes, felt great partly because she’s so hard. Still, as with other fun aspects of a game, seeing more people do the same would never diminish my feelings in any way. I’ll cheer for anyone who beats her, or who beats another fight that was tough for them, because I know how good it feels to succeed at last.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Really? I mean I get not liking it… or getting it. But as a Charr main you’ve got to be happy that there was an armor designer who gave some kittens about Charr and gave their male outfit a totally unique feature.

As someone who plays female characters, not only do not have to be happy, I’m really ticked off because as with every other case of gendered armor, the female version is an inferior kick in the teeth compared to the male default. I play charr in no small part to get AWAY from gendered armor. Yes, male charr are the red-headed, left-handed stepchildren of this game in terms of gear, but female charr are below even that.

As someone who fiercely hates gendered armor, I want nothing more than the ability to wear all those flat-out better — in terms of design/theme, practicality and kickbuttitude (if that’s not a word, it needs to be one) — male armors. It’s beyond ridiculous when something that looks very well-themed and impressive on a guy turns into yet another inane hooker outfit on a woman.

To hell with this. I play char in no small part to get AWAY from the disgusting BS that is gendered armor and the difference in quality of male over female versions. Please keep that nonsense away from the species that already gets the short stick in terms of gear. Better yet, ditch it altogether and make outfits that look equally practical or equally skimpy on BOTH genders.

Defiant is BS, sorry. It is hugely frustrating to whittle away at a nonsensical, unexplained perma-buff by wasting CC abilities over and over until the game graciously permits them to work, just once — oh wait, the laugh’s still on you, because the enemy is not only Defiant, he’s totally immune to whatever you just tried to do. It shouldn’t require perfect group coordination to maybe, possibly, get a once-in-a-while shot at CCing an enemy.

It’s fine to have some enemies that can’t be CCed under any circumstances. The bigger and heavier they are the less sense it makes for a puny human with a toothpick to be able to knock them on their butt. (Then again, it also makes little sense for said puny human to be able to hurt them AT ALL, so eh.) But smaller, and especially humanoid enemies? Bring on the CC. Give me variety, don’t pretend this silly little asura-boss in front of me is somehow as unshakable and untouchable as a giant.

Speaking of variety, I am tired of the many-against-one obsession when it comes to bossfights. Again, if we’re talking something like a dragon, that’s fine — but it does not feel epic or awesome when 5+ of us, the supposed heroes, gang up on some other humanoid who is infinitely more powerful and tougher than any of us. Fights of group-against-group or group-against-boss-and-swarm would be more intense and give control specs a place to shine.

Other ways to improve the combat would include pure interrupts being separate from actual CC — shorter-CD skills that interrupt an active cast and longer-CD skills that stun, knockdown, knockback, polymorph, whatever. That way you can affect a boss without turning them into a football to be kicked around by the players. You can also have bosses buffing themselves with Stability before winding up their killer move or going on a whirling rampage, so that players need to time boon-removal with CC. And finally, the “stacking up” instead of “whittling down” is an option too. Let the boss be affected by X control skills before going into a frenzy or summoning adds or activating some nasty environmental effect. This shouldn’t be a guaranteed wipe or even necessarily permanent, but enough to dish out some serious pain, giving groups who judiciously save CC for when it really helps (interrupt the big nasty spell, get the boss off a downed group member) an advantage over those who just spam away.

Dalanor.5387:

Imagine zerg content where you can stunlock the enemy. That thing has a purpose.

This is not an argument against CC. It’s yet another argument for why “zerg” content is the most shallow BS imaginable and needs to stop.

Palador.2170:

Agreed on Pyroxis. Far too often I’ve died in that fight and never saw what got me.

I swear he either lags me worse than the others do, or the flame swathes have a wider AoE than their graphics indicate. More than once I have neatly sidestepped one and still gotten downed by it. It’s a complete pain and probably the reason why no one seems to want to do this boss in the maps I end up on (well, that and the zerg mentality).

Crunk n monkey.3749:

The two things I don’t like about Boom Boom Baines, the lack of time you have to dodge her grenades.

I noticed that, too. You either move the very moment they pop up, or you get an instant faceful of pain. That’s a bit too tight IMO.

I’ve seen zergs getting their tails handed to them in this fight by the Vet adds. They’re so focused on the obvious target, that they ignore the “lootless” extras. Kill the target, get the cookie. That’s all they focus on, even when it’s an obvious threat.

The joys of people rushing into an ongoing bossfight with an effing pain-train of veterans on their tails which they make no attempt to avoid or kill …

Despite all the negative criticism, this is one thing about the new Pavilion that I believe is definitely worse giving kudos for: the improved boss AoE indicators. They can still get a bit lost in particularly bad particle spam, but they are a lot more visible than the usual flimsy red circles. Can we please get this implemented in other parts of the game, too?

Yes, I enjoy it too. The whole zone remains my uncontested favourite of all the post-launch content, and the race just fits it well with the fun and whimsical feel of it.

Nocturnal.5023:

A souvenir or memento perhaps when you participate in an event.

Having some item available to everyone devalues the meaning behind the memento.

How? Nothing short of horrible illness or injury can take your enjoyment of a particular event, or the memories of it, away from you. Souvenirs, to me, exist as a reminder to myself, as a way to evoke those fond memories.

It’s like you can just use real money to purchase everything in the game, what’s left with the meaning of actually playing the game?

Doing what we enjoy because we enjoy it for itself, not because we think it entitles us to others’ envy or admiration or whatever.

Nocturnal.5023:

Just wondering, what if it’s a skin you like?

Doesn’t matter if it’s my favourite skin ever or the worst eyesore in the history of gaming. Let ’em have it for a pittance or for free for all I care, it will not change my own fondness or lack thereof of the item. Joy or fun or nostalgia is not like a cake, something that diminishes the more people we have to share it with.

Ryuujin.8236:

I personally don’t feel item prestige should be put before the happiness of the players. I was extremely sad when i missed the twisted watchwork shoulder because I was travelling across Europe that week, that skin looked amazing. […] I’ve barely seen anyone even USING the watchwork shoulder skin, so all those people who’s being smug in their “prestige” didn’t seem to care about the skin anyway,wh tais the point of “prestige” if it’s just languishing in your wardrobe, while the people who would actually use the skin, can’t obtain it, because real life clashed with an arbitrary in-game timer?

Very well said.

DancingMad.8504:

If you don’t want to bother yourself with loot and item progression, don’t bother, no one is gonna judge you.

Aside from all the people who sneer (or worse) at those who don’t have the shiniest shinies or complain when a MMO implements content that isn’t all about new shinies for the “hardcore” crowd. You get that a lot in this genre, sadly.

I don’t understand why i need to explain why item progression is one of the fundamental aspects of a MMORPG game.
This is, seriously, a fact.

Only if, again, you assume your conclusion: X is true because X is true.

I’m not saying that any given existing game isn’t fundamentally all about loot, or that no game ever should be all about loot. But it’s not some immutable law of nature for the whole genre. The fact that GW2 was loudly advertised as not having vertical progression was what attracted many players in the first place, and that is why there was a HUGE upset on these forums when ascended gear was announced.

Also, you either missed one point of my first post or I wasn’t clear enough: I actually agree with the people who are upset by constant “nerfing” of profitable activities (though I stand by my opinion that level 80 “trains” have no business in a starting zone). As someone who doesn’t care much for gear and positively hates grinding, I’d like to spend as little time as possible in the annoying process of “getting gear” so I can move on to the stuff that’s actually enjoyable for me. Thus, anything that makes getting money or fine materials even harder to come by is as much of a pain for me as it is for the people for whom “getting gear” is enjoyable in and of itself.

If Anet does not want us to grind/farm/whatever, then PROLONGING the time needed to get anything done is exactly the wrong way to go about it. Instead they should reduce the NEED to farm by increasing droprates and being less stingy with money rewards. Sure, some frustrated players with low impulse control will spend real money to get in-game gold. Maybe most of them will even do it the legitimate way, though given the goldseller plague I doubt that. But I think most ticked-off customers are not exactly going to pay for a game that annoys them … at least not for long, or without signs of improvement.

I just object to blanket statements that “we” (i.e. all MMO players) play primarily or exclusively for loot, or that loot must be “fundamental” for the genre.

You’re assuming your own conclusion, though. If intrinsic things are thought shallow and easy to get and external things like loot are harped to the high heavens and considered the one and only ultimate “goal”, then that’s how you design your game. But it does not HAVE to be that way. Loot does not HAVE to be the end-all, be-all of every game. And in the minds of at least some of us, it SHOULDN’T be.

Conski Deshan.2057:

For the people against any form of limited items/prestige items, what motivates you to play the game?

I play MMOs for the big persistent world, the setting and lore, the environments, the teamwork and friendly banter, the ability to customize characters and stick with a favored one for years, the enjoyment of how a particular class or role plays (sigh I miss tanking). Not a single shred of my enjoyment hinges on “status”-jockeying or excluding people (rude or abusive jerkwads aside).

If I enjoy something, why would I not want others to enjoy it too? If someone would really like to have a certain item, why should I stop them from getting it? Hell, I might help them if it isn’t too much of a pain for me.

And if another player wants “respect”, they get that by being friendly, helpful, fair and a good teamplayer, not by stroking their ego at me. The more obnoxiously someone demands attention — either verbally or by jumping around me like a flea on crack or by swinging their flashy weapon at me or by parking their bigarse mount on an important NPC — the faster they get blacklisted.

Draknar.5748:

TL:DR – They need viable options to generate income while playing SOLO PvE outside of buying gems from the gemstore to convert to gold, playing TP, or selling Ascended mats.

Seconded, strongly.

If people are not “meant” to farm, then goals like even a basic “I want to level a crafting skill in tandem with my character” need to require less grinding of both money and materials. As a new player, it was flat-out impossible to keep even a single item-producing crafting skill (armorsmithing) within ten levels of my character level because the droprates for cloth and fine material were so low.

Aidan Savage.2078:

The desire, and importance, to improve your character is not the same as loot being important.

Also agreed. Gear does not actually improve my character at all — take off the shinies and all that “progress” is gone. What I get excited about is intrinsic stats, abilities, and traits/talents. I was hoping GW2 would go down this road more than WoW and its clones do, but the skill system is quite unexciting, the backloaded traits are even moreso, and the introduction of ascended items made me worry about what other “vertical” elements they’ll introduce despite promising they won’t do that.

@Palador: very well said. I don’t understand this notion of “prestige” or “status” at all. Wear what you like, because you like it. The only time I notice someone is when they have a well-put-together outfit that shows the character’s theme and style and personality. Or, as you said, if their outfit looks particularly bad. :p And given how ostentatiously over the top “epic” (legendaries, tier sets in WoW, etc.) gear tends to look in MMOs, it falls into the second category much of the time.

It’s just pixels, not holy artifacts demanding worship.

I had the happy impression that this ability had been noticeably improved, since I’ve only had a few issues with it. While I died quite a few times tagging all those crystals, most deaths were not #3-related, and those that were had nothing to do with overshooting or falling short. It’s sad that other people are apparently not so lucky.

@FlamingFoxx: Those platforms down by the beach were a complete pain for me last time and took me about half a dozen attempts because the auto-pull was so unreliable then. Not a good introduction to the otherwise fun aspect system, that. This time around, I bounced to the crystal without a hitch. Though I still found myself holding my breath every time I had to make an auto-pull because of all the times it used to fail and get me killed. :p

This has been mentioned many times before, but it bears repeating, so I’ll toss my support and desire for a speed utility or trait in the ring, too.

Yes, I agree. Both the nets and the helpful quaggan who res you if you splat yourself at the bottom of the map (or at least some parts of it) are a very welcome addition.

Yes, it’s a shame they didn’t bring back the full array of Bazaar achievements like they did for the Gauntlet. The dive is still great, though. And I still break into sweat IRL jumping around the airship to get there.

Lankybrit.4598:

Just one point. The ‘Loot’ being talked about in this thread, is anything you get by playing that has been nerfed. This includes gear, mats, and gold.

Yeah, I know. Both my “I don’t care for gear” and my “so I too don’t like how an annoying grind is made worse” statements refer to all drops.

justkoh.4073:

Zerging was a unforeseen side-effect and IMO, A-net is correct to deal with it now.

Good riddance to people steamrolling starter zones and insulting newbies in the process. But if zerging was truly “unforeseen”, then Anet was willfully naive for ages. Did they never look at other MMOs and observe player behavior? Many people will usually take the easiest way to “profit”, no matter how boring or cheesy or exploitative it is. And if there is no good alternative, more enjoyable way to get gold or materials, then what are they supposed to do?

Putting a way to get loot people want/need into a game and then removing it because it’s “too profitable” just leaves a sour taste, and I say that as someone who pretty much never farms or joins “champ trains”, never did the Gauntlet bosses for money when they still gave money, etc.

Wonderly.1324:

It’s about the game having value. Items (especially cosmetic ones) have value intrinsically because of it’s scarcity.

Eh, I disagree. If I like something, I like it for itself. Doesn’t matter a whit whether every starting player gets it the instant they first log in or whether it’s rarer than a RL lottery win. Nothing another player can do could cheapen my enjoyment of it. And conversely, if I DON’T like something, I don’t give a dead rat’s last fart how much imaginary “status” is attached to it. If a guildmate gets a legendary I congratulate them because it matters to them, not because I see any value in the item itself.

I understand if people like having something to work for. I also understand that people can feel a bit bummed out if something that they got the hard way is suddenly made significantly easier to come by. What I don’t get is the insistence to lord it over others.

I do not play for loot in any game ever. Actually, I HATE loot. With a burning passion. This genre’s frothing obsession with loot/gear, be it gear-grinding or gear-gated content or “optimizing” gear, is easily one of my least favourite aspects and endlessly annoys me when I’m just trying to enjoy myself without the constant reminder that my character is actually little more than an ambulatory armor stand and weapon rack. The onlys thing I care for in terms of gear or other loot are 1) aesthetics, 2) fun “toys” and 3) crafting for the enjoyment of creating something.

That said, I too am not happy with the way they are reducing drops. Because I hate grinding for gear, anything that makes T6 even more of a pain to get is really frustrating. The economy is broken anyway. Trading house jockeys will still make oodles of gold off other people’s effort. And people who aren’t rich and don’t like grinding/farming but are pretty much required to do it anyway are not going to be happy if an annoying activity is made even more annoying. Unhappy players are less likely to put real money into a game than satisfied players. So I just cannot fathom who is supposed to benefit from these changes.

The difference between silver and gold is insignificant anyway, so I just see both events as a fun little diversion that I do if I feel like it.

This has long been requested, and I would very much like to see it implemented. If queuing as a group is thought to be too much of an advantage (as it is in every other aspect of the game anyway), then I’d love to see some way to set up minigame matches within the guild arena system.

Ash is fun. It also shows a glimpse of Rytlock’s sense of humor and willingness to follow someone else’s lead when he knows the other person is better suited to a particular task. I enjoy such moments from the early personal story chapters because they give the Destiny’s Edge members some much-needed character away from and outside the internal DE conflicts.

The sylvari are a bit too similar this time around, but still good, as are most of the charr faces (aside from the ridiculously wide-eyed housecat). However, it looks like the more “monstrous” female charr #3, which is great otherwise, lacks teeth — the slider doesn’t do anything.

The rest is, sadly, more of the same where female character are concerned: underaged, painted, “perfect”, essentially indistinguishable dolls. I swear you could remove three quarters of the female norn and human faces and hardly anyone would notice it because they don’t have any distinctive features. Could we please get some faces that actually look adult, nevermind give an adventurer vibe i.e. lines and scars instead of heavy duty makeup? Also, some faces that are not so lily-white would be really good. The sliders don’t do much if you’re trying for a Cantha or Elona look.

Charr and sylvari have some “cutesy” faces too, but with them it seems the designers are allowed and/or willing to be more creative and actually go for the “plant person” and “monstrous predator” theme of the species instead of making everything female a masturbation fantasy.

Sartharina.3542:

While the changes in this latest patch smooth over the most outrageous effect of the new trait system, it does nothing to address the underlying problems:

Very well said. One might say that low-level characters are boring and interchangable in most any MMO because the genre pretty much has a “you don’t matter if you’re not doing ‘endgame’” stance. But that is a sorry excuse for not making an effort to change a bad feature for the better and make one’s own game distinguish itself in a positive manner. For example, competing for resource nodes was the standard, GW2 changed that, and now I don’t want to imagine playing a MMO that has players fighting over each little tree, rock or plant.

This is one of the features I really like, actually. My enjoyment of something has nothing to do with exclusivity, because I like what I like for itself and not as some sort of imaginary status symbol. So I’m glad that people who missed one or more of the returning items (or accidentally destroyed them, like one of my guildies did with his gas mask) now have a shot at them again.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I’m just surprised that they all apparently accepted the role without question. I was expecting any of them to speak up, “Oh he’s not our leader, just a friend.”

Even that would be silly IMO. There’s absolutely no base for “friendship” with these characters because there has been way too little interaction with them. The living story is all about the NPCs talking and emo(t)ing at each other while occasionally barking orders like “FETCH! KILL! SEARCH!” at their mute attack drone i.e. the player. They don’t know anything about my character. They don’t care about my character. My character does not exist as a character in the living story, and she will never exist while all the story- and character-defining moments exclude her by default because they are voiced and she is not.

I usually care more about story and lore in games than about anything else, but the living story annoys me to no end and I’ve just stopped giving a toss about anything or anyone. It is just that badly written. If I wanted to watch a movie, I’d watch a movie. When playing a game, I want to be involved, not actively excluded.

Shiren.9532:

I share your stance though Traveller, I’d rather adventure with Destiny’s Edge or some of the heroes from the Personal Story (or shock! My guild and friends!) before I spend more time with those five again.

Me too. I still don’t understand why they brought these characters in and made them so super-important when we had prominent NPCs in need of more fleshing out already, in Destiny’s Edge and other parts of the personal story.

With Laranthir recognising it as a possible dragon, it would be painful as a commander in the Pact to see the story ignore the player character’s status as higher ranking members of Tyria’s greatest authority on fighting dragons and instead anchor us with the Biconics again.

Ugh, very good point. The Pact has totally fallen off the face of the planet in the LS, partly because of the nonsensical waffling about whether or not the LS takes place after Zhaitan or not — but to keep ignoring it now would be really bad and further feel like the personal story is actively being invalidated.

I agree that moving the first trait gain back to level 11 would be a huge positive change, because the new back-loaded model makes levelling less fun and versatile and gives people less time to experiment before hitting 80.

Still, I’m very glad for those new changes to the Adept unlocks. It’s a big improvement from the high(er) level zone completion nonsense.

I’m slightly of two minds about this, because it was fun to run into a big tough enemy so quickly on my first character (the Risen Monstrosity in Caledon Forest). Loot never mattered, it was about the experience of tackling something like that in a group with other excited newbies. So it’s a bit sad that will no longer be possible. Maybe these enemies could be upgraded to elites instead, as a compromise?

The people for whom it WAS all about getting loot as easily as possible by steamrolling starter zones and vomiting abuse at anyone “disrupting” their “train” or asking questions? Yeah, no sympathy there and good riddance. Making money IS a big pain in this game, but starter zones should not be the place for that either way, and there’s just no excuse for hideous behavior, especially towards newbies. (Bragging about griefing the “train” is cruddy too, IMO. Don’t do it. If someone in the “train” is an abusive pusbag, report, but don’t sink to their level.)

I’m a bit late to the party because all my characters predate the big patch, so I had not even known about the exact nature of the new unlock system until stumbling across it today while browsing the wiki. And honestly, I was just stunned. The fact that even a single person, nevermind the team as a whole or at least a majority, could have decided that high-level zone completion should be a requirement for an Adept trait really worries me, and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. As it is, the game has become a lot more unfriendly to new alts and especially to new players, and that is never a good idea. Honestly devs, please reconsider this system — for your sake and ours.

Trait gain should not be as back-loaded as it is now. If anything, it should be more front-loaded so that building up a new character becomes more fun because each level means more and the build one wants to play is not so far out of reach. Level 35 is way too late for a crucial aspect of character customization.

Also, while some traits can be build-defining, traits are passive and thus innately less “exciting” than active skills. That makes having to jump through hoops for each and every trait doubly annoying — I’d rather unlock (some) skills through (ideally class-specific) challenges and tasks, not traits.

At the very least, though, the unlock system NEEDS to be reworked so that each trait has a level-appropriate requirement. Adept traits should come from sub-40 zones and Master traits from sub-60s. WvW and dungeons should be off the list altogether IMO, given how hostile much of the community is towards non-“optimized” characters.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose the greatest advantage to a lack of trinity is agency.

Interesting, because it’s the other way round for me. With the trinity, I know I have a clear choice of how I want to play — and no matter which role I pick, I know that it will be needed and important. That feels good and reassuring. In this game all classes feel kind of the same on a fundamental level. Plus, thanks to the toxic community you get insults and hatespeech for exercising your “agency” to play in any way that does not march in perfect lockstep with what the leetpro dudes have decreed the One True Way (i.e. the “meta”). Yeah, every game has its share of terrible people, but in GW2 the meta-or-die mentality is far worse than anything I’ve ever seen in ToR or WoW.

DPS: You do damage but nothing else.
Tank: You don’t do damage. Enemies chase you around and try to kill you, but you take less damage.
Healer: You don’t do damage. You heal the guy who gets chased around, and the
errant DPS that gets hit sometimes. Everyone blames you for failure.

None of this sounds appealing to me. I like to actually, you know, do stuff in the game, and so do most people.

Eh, you make it sound as if stuff just happens automatically without player input. Also, beside making red or green numbers go up, any class role can also have both hard and soft CC, buffs and debuffs. Aggro control requires active attention from everyone. Healing isn’t my thing (I’m a tank at heart and healing goes against all my “instincts”), but I know that good healing involves quick decisions based on who’s at how much health now, who might take how much damage in the next moments, and how much mana one has left.

I always felt I was “doing” a lot more in a trinity game than in GW2, and I also found it a lot easier to tell whether or not I was doing well.

This is why DPS is several times more popular than the other two roles.

Actually (based on my experiences) DPS is more popular partly because it requires less in terms of “doing” than either tanking or healing — or more precisely, because going DPS carries less immediate responsibility and less obvious consequences. Plus, big damage numbers are better “bragging material” — people rarely thank tanks or healers (and many are in fact quick to blame these two for every problem), but “wow great DPS there dude” is a lot more common.

If the tank can’t juggle six enemies at a time while both friendly and hostile AoE is flying around and nasty spells need interrupting, brown stuff will hit the fan in short order. Same for the healer. A DPSer pulling low numbers will drag the fight out but not get anyone killed directly.

I prefer systems that are designed around giving players strengths, and not deficiencies. I want to be a class that does damage and also debuffs, or does damage and also heals, or does damage and is also really durable, or does damage and also has movement/control effects.

I agree. And a well-designed trinity game will let you do (most of) that, within reason of course. Trinity or no, there always need to be trade-offs. If a game has crappy balance, it has crappy balance whether or not it also has class roles.

This is agency. I get to play what I want, and group how I want, and am capable of engaging content in different ways as I see fit.

Funny, that is why I want and love class roles. :p

Granted, I’ve never played a no-trinity game other than GW2, and my problems with this game cannot all be blamed on the lack of class roles, but when I compare my feeling of “agency” and “doing” and having a real effect in this game with good-old-days-WoW … the disparity is just huge.

Agreed. This feature is long overdue, and I too have always been utterly baffled by it not being there from the word go, because it’s such a basic and logical thing.

To me, “casual” means playing a game primarily for fun, with a relatively low tolerance for non-fun BS. Just what is “fun” or “non-fun” varies depending on the player, of course, but common examples of the latter include heavy grinding, adhering to a strict schedule, or copying whatever the flavor of the month min-maxed “meta” is. It has nothing to do with skill, time investment, preferred game modes, whether or not one is a roleplayer, or whether or not one likes a challenge.

Basically, it means treating a game as a game, not a job or an ego-crutch or something that one mainly just suffers through in order to get to one tiny enjoyable bit. Some inconvenient or non-fun bits are to be expected and might be alleviated through other factors like good company, but all in all something that is not enjoyable in and of itself is not worth sticking with.

My personal flavor of “casual” includes a fierce hatred for gear-grinding, gear-gated content and other gear-obsessed idiocies that only exist to hide a game’s lack of enjoyable content and reduce my character from “hero” to “ambulatory armor stand and weapon rack”. Aside from outfitting a character in something that matches her “theme” and the mental image I have of her, I do not see gear as a reward or as a fun goal, but as a completely worthless PITA that I wish MMOs would move away from.

Gibson.4036:

What is GW2 missing?

A clear design vision.

Before launch, I think a lot of people got excited about this game because ArenaNet presented a passionate, bold vision for the game with clarity and energy. That’s why, four years later, people still bring up “the Manifesto” when talking about the game.

Sadly, that kind of solid direction has given way to vague statements and the sense that GW2 is lurching about between opposing design goals.

Even if they decided to go in a direction I oppose, I would welcome it if presented with the conviction and confidence that they presented the original vision for the game.

Fully quoted because this is short yet brilliantly to the point.

Purgatory.5296:

It’s missing the Trinity. I know I’ll get flamed for saying it.

Certainly not by me, because I fully agree. Though I too could live without the traditional trinity as long as the game offered some other form of role and playstyle variety.

We’re told by the Devs and loyal GW2 players that we shouldn’t have the Trinity unless you want to wait 30+ minutes in a dungeon queue because you can’t find a tank or a healer.

Instead we now have a system in which people are routinely insulted for even daring to ASK for help with builds that do not march in perfect lockstep with the current “meta”, and derided for doing anything but perfectly “optimized” speedruns with lots of cheese and skipping. It’s such a toxic atmosphere, and makes the profession forums worse than even WoW’s forums back when I played that. Why is it okay to say “tanking does not work and should not work”, or healing, or CC, or conditions, or ranged, yet melee direct damage is the one and only playstyle that must be “allowed” to remain “viable”? Yeah, I know, much of that is player attitudes and the devs cannot be blamed for those — but they can be blamed for making false claims and unbalanced content.

Snipped the rest, but I second pretty much every word of it, especially the feeling of missing that satisfaction of having a role, a purpose. I also miss the interplay between the roles. And I’m perpetually baffled and dismayed how, in a game with such a small “toolbox” of only 10 active skills at a time (5 of which come in a non-negotiable package), long cooldowns and short durations, many skills and traits don’t even work in many PvE situations. The fewer skills I can have, the more impact and every one of them should offer.

Playstyle variety. As someone who loves tanking, I was always worried and skeptical about the claims that the “trinity” is oh-so-bad and boring and restrictive so GW2 would do away with it and be better for it. What happened to that lofty claim? Please make “control” and “support” meaningful at long last, make defensive stats meaningful. Get rid of melee-zerker-stacking as the One True Way. Solve the condition stack limit problem and make conditions affect anything and everything. “Realism” is of no concern in MMO combat anyway. If ghosts and ambulatory rocks can bleed, so can doors and non-ambulatory rocks.

Depth. This is closely related to the above. Give us more options and ways to affect a fight. First and foremost, that means getting rid of Defiance, which was a terrible idea from the word go and single-handedly makes bossfights boring and “control” characters pointless. I’m not saying that a tiny silly mortal should necessarily be able to knock a giant or dragon on its butt (though see “MMO combat and realism” above), but against a humanoid or roughly humanoid-sized boss that should absolutely work.

PvE balance divorced from any and all PvP considerations.

Mounts or some other easily and equally available movement speed boost, be it karma-bought consumables or the addition of movement speed signets and traits to all classes that lack them. In fact, I’d like to see the traits and signets even if mounts were added, too.

Housing via an improved, customizable, interactive home instance. Mining a candy node once a day does not count as “interactive”, I am referring to books, furniture, etc.

Fun in-game collectibles. I know that, this being a free-to-play game, there must be incentives for players to spend real money to keep the game going and add to it. Paying for, say, character slots or makeover kits or name changes is perfectly fine and fair. Still, there’s a special satisfaction in being rewarded with a neat toy, mount or pet after a long questline, or as a side-effect of an otherwise annoying grind, or as a rare drop or encounter. Buying such things with real money would not give me any satisfaction at all, I want to find/earn them through actual play.

Permanent content. With the exception of the Bazaar of the Winds, the living story did not do anything for me, and even if I cared about its events and characters, the whole thing would still feel like a neverending rat race that, if you came in late or ever took a break, you’ll never really catch up with. Give us more content that anyone can enjoy in their own time and on their own schedule, please.

More instanced single-player, small group and medium group content. Dungeons. Bosses. Class- or culture-specific challenges. Guild stuff. I’d love to see something like Big T but in an instance intended for maybe 10-30 people.

Instanced guild missions, at least puzzles and challenges. Since the arrival of the megaserver, it seems you need to wait in line or try to luck onto a map where the mission is not currently active. That gets annoying (especially since getting guild members onto the same map still needs improving), and the same goes for having 50+ strangers from another guild stampede into an ongoing puzzle. Can it be fun for two smaller guilds to help each other with missions? Absolutely. But that is hardly the same.

Player presence in the living story. With the lack of player voiceacting, we essentially do not play any part in it because all the cutscenes and voiced conversations that move the story forward completely shut us out. If I wanted to watch a bunch of NPCs blab and emo(te) at each other, I’d watch a movie. Don’t make me the One And Only Chosen One Who Can Save The World (that boring trope has been beaten beyond death and even undeath), but let me be an actual character instead of a mute, invisible lackey.

More decent armor for female characters. In fact, gendered armor can die in a fire. Want to leer at panties and wardrobe malfunctions? Then make the same armor set nothing but a banana hammock on the boys. Want a stylish, impressive, full-cover armor with a unique design? Then give it to female characters, too.

More decent armor for charr. Tail-clipping and distorted textures can join gendered armor in the blazing pits of hell.

More performance optimization and better options for culling excess characters and especially particle effects. During big events and zergs in particular, the fireworks get old, cause lag and eyestrain, and routinely lead to deaths because people often can’t even see their enemy, nevermind see it winding up its killer skill.

I would very much like mounts, but only partly for themselves and primarily for the movement boost. This game does NOT have class parity when it comes to move speed, making getting from A to B significantly less of a hassle for some over others. It’s nonsensical that some people should have to pay a bunch of gold for Traveler runes when others can just flip a signet into a utility slot and be good to go — and it’s doubly nonsensical if the disparity in speed boosts is a result of PvP “balancing” affecting PvE.

sternenstaub.8763:

Still, most people are the so called “casual”, whatever that means.

Mostly it has come to mean “someone I hate cause they’re not like me”, a bit like “gay” or “any-word-for-female” except for the ongoing history of RL violence. As a playstyle descriptor, it’s basically useless these days.

These people have fun going around with theyr character and stomping stuff in PvE, while chatting/TS. These people enjoy the Zerg.

Eh. Most people would sneer at me for being extremely “casual”. Never gave a dead rat’s last fart about gear or titles or “meta”-whatever or other “status”-nonsense in a game, and never will. And I loathe “zerging”, just as I loathe anything brainless. I want to engage in content in my own time and my own way while feeling that my presence and contribution actually make a difference — not as an utterly superfluous tagalong in an (often abusive) amorphous blob. Not to mention the lag. And the annoying barrage of particle effects which means I can’t even see what I’m fighting.

What I want is more instanced content for solo players, small and medium groups, without stupid gimmicks but with support for more varied playstyles beside “LOL full zerk or die u casual noob”. Unfortunately, that’s a lot harder to create than zerg-fodder. And since so many players just exploit or skip or cheese their way through anything anyway, why bother? IMO both developers and players are to blame for the state of the game’s content.

Love the voice. It sounds exactly like I’d imagine a tough-as-nails giant from the frozen north, someone who lives for danger and challenge and the making of legends, to sound. Contrast that with the female charr, who is way off the mark for a huge creature of war with a tiger’s muzzle full of big razor teeth. As much as I love my three charr, I wince every time they speak, whereas my two norn sound dead-on.

Yes, I honestly would be surprised if the lack of even minimal care in armor design was not one direct cause of the fact that there are fewer charr characters, despite the fact that the character models themselves can be made to look fantastic with all the different fur and horn and face choices (as opposed to the array of indistinguishable painted babydoll clones that are human females, ugh).

You pick charr for your character’s species, get excited with all those options, look forward to getting some badarse armor to match your badarse character … and instead get something that looks like it was cobbled together by some disgruntled intern in the very last minute before the armor was due to be finished. Over and over. It remains a huge disappointment. I love the charr, but BLOODY HELL are they hard to find even half-decent armor for, and it only gets worse with every new set of armor that distorts textures, tail-clips, muzzle-clips …

Kick the “gendered armor” for humans/norn/sylvari BS out the door and instead invest in making a single version of each armor that looks good on both genders and all species, instead of something obviously designed for human males that turns into a T&A mockery on women and a distorted clipfest on charr.

IMO this is one of the more annoying examples of why balancing a game primarily or exclusively for PvP is such a pile of steaming BS. Why should any given class be “punished” in PvE, especially out of combat, just because it might “unbalance” some other game mode that any given player might not even engage in or give a toss about?

I really wish this game had mounts, at least.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

So my final statement on this topic is: My guides are for open world and casual PvE. If they are not for you, feel free to ignore them.

Thank you, have a nice day.

Delurking just to thank you. I swear, these forums are worse than even WoW’s ever were in terms of hostility from the “pro” players. Having a few differently-focused guides and voices like this around won’t bloody kill anyone.

The reasons I am considering to quit again are the same reasons I had for leaving the game about a month after launch: primarily the combat and the writing, added to some less severe but still galling issues like ascended gear and gendered armor

The combat is shallow, boring, and often hampered by the game itself because I can’t see a bloody thing among the particle spam. There are no quality-of-life features like target castbar or target-of-target indicator, or better visibility for enemy AoE indicators, and the combat log is entirely useless. We only have a tiny number of skills, most of which have painfully long cooldowns. Then there are the utterly uninspired traits — out of 70 trait points at max level, only at most 14 have any noticeable effect, and of these you only get to actively choose at most 7 … a pitiful ten percent. Other games are slowly waking up to the fact that +1% here and +2% there makes for a crappy and bland trait/talent system. I wish Anet would do the same.

Not to mention the horribly unbalanced stats and the completely blase attitude of the developers about this situation. Conditions and especially the defensive stats can’t hold a candle to glass cannon berserkers. (This is from a PvE perspective — I do not ever PvP, so I could not possibly care less about their “e-sport” fixation.) Defiance/Unshakable and the impossibility of active aggro control remove almost all tactical elements from boss and champion fights because you can’t control or influence them — and hell, wasn’t “control” supposed to be one of the playstyles in this game? In the light of all the noise made about the evils and limitations of the good old trinity, this uninspired, auto-attack-heavy mess of a combat system is doubly laughable.

And while the setting is quite good (I honestly love the charr and the sylvari in particular) and the premise of having to figure out how to defeat the almost godlike Elder Dragons was interesting enough for me and promised some good old-fashioned epic fantasy, the actual story writing is also disappointing because it as as shallow and boring and messy as the combat. The personal story is disjointed, offers not a single opportunity for actual roleplaying nor any meaningful choices — a sylvari going Vigil says and does the exact same things as a charr going Whispers, and is treated in exactly the same way too. My character is not a character with her own culture, history, personality, friends and foes, she’s a generic, vaguely hero-shaped blob saying generic, vaguely heroic things. I’m fine with Trahearne, hell I even like him to a degree. I’m not fine with not being allowed to be an actual character.

The living story is even more disappointing because neither my character nor the premise of the Elder Dragons even exist anymore. Instead it’s all about NPCs blabbing at each other, and an untouchable, godlike, shrieking teenage brat pulling all the strings everywhere. For all its problems, there were moments of the personal story that I enjoyed and felt engaged with, mainly in the early culture-based chapters (because they allow for some sense of identity that is so painfully missing later). The “living” story on the other hand does not even have the potential for that. One big reason for my quitting WoW was the fact that I was beyond sick and tired of a tiny handful of forgettable, overblown writer’s pet characters (Varian, Thrall, Garrosh and Malfurion) getting all the attention at the expense and to the utter detriment of everything and everyone else in the setting. GW2 is heading in the same direction, and that is a bloody shame.

Ascended gear ticks me off because it adds something that this game was marketed as not having: another layer of gear-grinding. So much for cosmetic horizontal progression only. I hate the obsession that so many MMOs have with gear. Let my character’s power be intrinsic instead of external. Being a glorified armor stand for the oh-so-k3wl “epix” is not heroic or exciting at all.

Since we’re on the subject of gear: the gendered armor ticks me off to a huge degree. So many sets that look badarse, dignified or just simply practical on a male character, so many distinct designs are ruined on a female character in favor of boobs, panty shots, heels, garters and lacy frills. Yeah, other games are much worse when it comes to objectifying, gendered armor, but “it could be worse” is not remotely an argument in actual favor of something.

Who says I want “abominations”? Not-human-cute does not equal Cthulhoid monstrosity, either physically or in terms of mentality and behavior.

Sylvari are not just colorful Arthurian but gender-egalitarian almost-humans. They are plants with a totally different biology from us mammalian animals, they don’t breed as we do but emerge fully mature from a singular source, and they have the Dream of Dreams, their empathic connection and Wyld Hunts — all things that are completely alien to humans.

It just looks like we approach the whole species from opposite directions. I see and love those alien aspects and wish they were more pronounced and emphasized, because if I wanted something human I’d play human. You see the more human influences and like those over the “alien” aspects?

Order of Whispers? Figures, that is the one I have NOT done with a sylvari. :p Thanks, something to keep in mind for possible future characters.

Thank you very much for your ongoing work AND willingness to communicate, despite all the criticism.

I think it’s kind of a missed opportunity that there is no storyline of sylvari trying to reach out to the centaur, or even a mention of regret that the culture that spawned the being who shaped the entire sylvari existence is so unlike him. There is no sylvari-centaur interaction at all that I remember, yet there must be some centaur somewhere that aren’t “evil”, or at least could be nudge towards a more peaceful existence, and given how idealistic many sylvari are, I could see at least some of them trying to do that no matter the danger.

If anything, I wish they looked — and were written as — MORE alien and inhuman, because making them human-cute severely diminishes their uniqueness and the simple fact that they are very much NOT human. That is why I use the branch-face for my guardian and the branch-“hair” for my elementalist, and clearly non-human coloration for both.

Fleaman.9864:

It’s kind of interesting to me that this has come up quite a few times. It hadn’t even occured to me before, but, yeah, really. I mean, I have a Charr character. He’s an Engineer called “Mister Chargue”, and he’s as big and as loud as possible, because I just sort of assumed that that’s what you make a Charr character for. I hadn’t even considered that female Charr served as a viable alternative if you did not want to be obnoxiously big and loud, but that would make sense.

Oh, I DO want “big and loud” all right. :p My charrior is max-bulk (but not max-size because of the literally nauseating camera issues in this game) and I just adore looking at her. I wish the female charr voice was deeper, snarlier. The thing is that while some of the female charr are a bit too “cute”, many of the males are just grotesquely deformed. When someone’s teeth are a tangled mess that by rights should mutilate half his own darn face even when only breathing, nevermind talking or eating, I don’t think “ooh, wicked!” — I point and laugh and shake my head. That is what I meant by “trying to hard to be mean and scary”, and why I like the female tiger-like and lioness-like faces best of all charr options for either gender. they’re plenty badarse/bestial while also being “realistic” in terms of not getting in the way of their own survival.

I have the same reaction to over-the-top “cool” armor and weapons as well as heavily sexualized characters and skimpy gear. The harder they try, the more attention they try to draw to it, the more it backfires.