Guild Wars 2

Well, not exactly. They would hurt the devs who would have to spend time and money developing them, they would hurt players by providing them a way to be anti-social but still get loot, they would hurt the game overall by making it more confusing for new players and less appealing as a pure multi-player game.

You’re right that certain elements of the personal story are designed to be done solo, but actually every single step of your personal story can be done co-op. I’ve done virtually every mission on mine with at least one other person in my party, it’s way more fun that way.

Tellingly, the Personal Story is widely regarded as the weakest part of the game overall. Nobody really talks about how much fun they had wandering around Orr with Traherne, but everyone talks about a cool experience in a 5-man dungeon or in a big group in WvW.

I love your boats idea. Would not work in PvE but maybe a special PvP mode, pirates vs. navy or some such.

ARR!

When you first make one it’s unbound, so you can give them to any of your characters, mail them to someone else, or even stick them on the trade post (not seen any for sale yet, but it’s a matter of time).

They’re bind on equip.

So because you’re poor, they should provide you with an alternative way of buying an expensive item?

Wow.

If only life worked that way.

I really want this Ferrari, but I don’t have the money required. Would you take these 60 bags of corn as payment?

Heh.

wxyzabcd.2569:

anyone noticed that the fountain-admiring NPC “Linsay Morell” in lion’s arch is still admiring the non-existent fountain…?
perhaps they can change the dialog into something like ‘the fountain exploded’ or something?

Yeah, there’s a thread about it in the Halloween event sub forum, and a dev has responded, they’re aware.

Nope. Stand near dungeon, say “LFG” in map chat for maybe… 3 minutes? bam, you’re in a group.

Alternatively: Join a big guild and start getting friendly with people in the guild, you will easily be able to start a dungeon run whenever you like.

This is strictly a multi-player game, playing on your own should never really be an option.

If you’re looking at dungeons as a way to grind out money, some kind of job that you have to do over and over and other people are an annoyance that slow you down, then maybe you need to re-evaluate why you are playing this game.

This seems dumb. Start a new character if you want to change professions. It doesn’t really take long at all to go 1-80, and you get some epic lootz and cool content along the way.

Lutharr.1035:

Oh Im now stupid am I? Based on what then? The fact that I judge something by its merits or flaws and notkittendurp i must hate anything that WoW has cos I need to pretend to be one of the cool kids. What irritates me the most are people like you who dont have any spine yet will throw insults around on the net cos the person aint there infront of you. Bravo for proving what kind of person you are.

Point proven I feel.

Lutharr.1035:

As I mentioned in another thread, all you ever do is shoot down anything peopel suggest adding to the game. So you want the shipped box as is and no improvements. Yup I can see Anet doing loads of buisness with that mentallity. Thankfully the people running the game have more going on upstairs than some hater.

They have sold 2 million units and counting with no “Endgame” or Gear Grind to speak of. Yes, I do want the game “as is”. I really like the game as it is now, which is why I bought it, and why I’ve spent over 300 hours playing it.

Of course there is room for improvement, which is why I’m even in this forum in the first place, but the improvement certainly is not “add gear grind”.

Thankfully the people running the game have more sense than to churn out yet another Gear Grind MMO and have it fail.

If they changed it into one now, I think that would be a huge mistake.

Azaziel.3608:

And of course, something to brag, not very annoying like the commander icon but maybe a title

…

You do realise the commander icon is not a bragging icon? It’s meant to be used to direct people around in battle…

Scarce nature of money?

People are buying legendary precursors for upward of 300G, there’s certainly no shortage of money in the game.

Don’t mistake you being poor for everyone being poor.

You don’t need to spend real money on gems or spend hours grinding, just make a few good investments on the tradepost.

For example, the mad moon sheild was about 10 gold at the start of the Halloween event, now it’s about 25 gold.

If you had bought a coupel of those when they were cheap, you would have tonnes of gold now. Also, since they can’t be made any more, the prices are only likely to go up…

Just join a high pop server that sucks at WvW. The maps will almost always be empty so you will have no problem getting in

Yeah maybe. So, instead if the WvW armour vendor sold the backpack and a rune that gave the stats (as well as selling that horrible looking armour), it would be awesomes:

Superior Invader’s Rune
1/6 = 25% less damage from arrow carts.
2/6 = +50% speed when repairing walls / doors
3/6 = 25% less damage from catapults / balista
4/6 = +50% speed when building siege
5/6 = 25% less damage from cannons.
6/6 = 25% reduced cost when buying upgrades from quartermaster

Invader’s Backpack = +10 maximum supply carried. (Guild logo displayed)

Only problem is that with the rune, the armour would be called “Invader’s Helm of the Invader”. I do already have a Beserker’s Mithril Amulet of the Berserker though, so that’s not a game-breaker.

So, in fact, it’s not the name that bothers you but the graphic.

Remove the stars, make it sort of blue-purple, “problem” solved?

Suggestion stolen from TheDaiBish.9735 in another thread

BADGES! We don’t need no stinkin’ BADGES!

At the moment, I save up the 300 badges of honor or whatever for a piece of the Invader’s armour, and it gives me… nothing.

Nothing over and above any other exotic armour anyway. I’m not interested in a legendary, I think they look pretty ugly, so I might as well spend them on arrow carts. I find it kind of demoralising that killing 12-14 enemies in WvW is only worth the equivalent of 6 silver.

To make badges worthwhile, each peice of Invader’s armour should have a specific bonus that only works in WvW:

Invader’s Helm = 25% less damage from arrow carts.
Invader’s Backpack = +10 maximum supply carried.
Invader’s Pauldrons = 25% less damage from catapults / balista
Invader’s Gloves = +50% speed when building siege
Invader’s Chestplate = 25% less damage from cannons.
Invader’s Leggings = +50% speed when repairing walls / doors
Invader’s Boots = +15% movement speed when carrying supply.

Rune with All 6 armour pieces equipped:

normal stats, but 6th rune equipped gives: 25% reduction in cost of upgrades from quartermaster.

The armour and rune would need to be perma-soulbound of course, so only people who get the badges can use it.

This would make WvW far more rewarding and competitive I think. In order to get all that you’d need something like 3000 badges of honor, which is something like 9000 kills, since not every kill drops badges.

Very fair I think.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Make the gear only give advantages to that game mode (so no statted gear) and I wouldn’t have a problem with it:

In PvE, Dungeon Gear would reduce damage by x% / y% / z% in that dungeon depending on the number of pieces you’ve got equipped.

In WvW, Badge of Honour gear would:

• Increase damage done to structures by x% / y% / z% OR
• Reduce damage taken from Siege weapons by x% / y% / z% OR
• Increase the amount of supply you can carry by x / y / z OR
• Reduce the amount of supply your siege weapons require by x / y / z OR

based on the amount of pieces you have equipped.

There you go: gear progression that doesn’t gate content and isn’t required.

I love this suggestion so much I’m going to make it a thread of its own.

nachtnebel.9168:

Well, the AGG (law about equality) provided may force the employer to investigate, but they don’t force him to do anything (at least not in the OPs case). AGG protects you against discrimination but a bad joke about “caming nude” is not necessarily discriminatory, also, in the given case, it could be an insult but this would never lead to a sexual harassment lawsuit unless it happens all the time.
173 StGB would only apply if anything had happend between a grown up and an underage. And I don’t get why you brought up 183 StGB since there were no exhibitionistic actions in the OPs case.

Note to self: Don’t make any jokes in Germany.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Then why the PvP locker?

Actually, if people want to collect them, they should let them, and a PvE locker should also be added.

PvP locker is fine. If you want to collect armours, go do it there. PvE is not an armour collection simulator, never has been, never will be.

They should just get rid of gold altogether IMO, it’s a worthless currency.

Olba.5376:

But there is one thing you should never, ever do. And that is give the WvWvW players an actual unfair advantage in the form of access to better gear. Because not everyone does WvWvW.

Hmmm. disagree there bud.

It’s not an unfair advantage if everyone has access to it, but decides not to get it because they don’t like WvW.

I think anets policy of “exotic is exotic” is great though. Whatever they do they should NOT capitulate to the “give us gear grind” crowd..

QWACIT.9238:

I’m looking for answers from an objective person’s and not the GW fanboy’s. Thx for comment Bye.

See ya!

Enjoy Lineage 2 or some other bullkitten Gear Grind game.

Yeah… If I was the GM reviewing this report, I’d chuckle quietly to myself and delete it.

Grow up.

If this person receives a lot of reports they might slap them with a temp ban for offensive behvaiour, which is more than enough.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Yes, it does matter.
First, because they could one day use ‘class’ to refer to something else, and then it’ll be confusing.
And second, because GW2 is so different to other games that one must keep a different mindset around it. Using GW’s terms instead generic terms used by other games helps with that.

Nope.

If “one day” ever happens, you would be right. But right now, class = profession.

That crap about “mindset”? Yeah… nah. GW2 is different, but it’s not that different. A class is a class, end of story.

Please don’t add any new classes / professions. Game is fine just the way it is. We don’t need a third heavy.

No matter how well it’s thought out, adding a new class always unbalances an MMO. There are always far too many of the new class and it all goes wrong.

Trust me, if you think you want a new class, you don’t.

New RACES on the other hand. I’m all for that.

No, mounts would not be fun. They ruin the game.

Once you have mounts, everyone wants a mount. Worse still, if mounts give you some kind of stat advantage, everyone has to have a mount.

With mounts, the areas where a lot of players are standing around just looks cluttered and ridiculous.

It’s just a crap idea. You’ve got minipets and ranger pets if you want to collect animals.

Lutharr.1035:

Another issue with all this is the way armour is stored. If everything is cosmetic we sure as hell need larger bank slots to store all this stuff. Unless they want us to spend ages amassing it and then having to destroy to make room.

I don’t understand why some people take the view that because there is a lot of different types of armour in the game, that means that one of the objectives of the game is to collect all of the different types of armour.

It just isn’t. The devs don’t want you to spend ages amassing it. Get a set you like, hell, go crazy, get three, but then… STOP.

Seras.5702:

I feel like a game should be able to exist solely within itself without the need for googling things or reading the forums. Those should be bonuses, not required.

Totally disagree there. The game does not and should not exist in a vacuum.

You require an internet connection and a PC to play it, therefore you do have access to the wiki, forums and community sites. There are also other players in the game, and you can talk to them.

Most MMOs take the route of pretending those websites don’t exist, and stuff is explained in tedious NPC dialogue. I think it’s much better that the game does not spoon feed us everything. It means those community sites have to bring their ‘A’ game, and people have to interact with each other to ask stuff.

Having said that. I do think there should be a little more indication on-screen about what to do next. That personal story quest marker is all well and good, but lets have a special event quest marker, or some other markers that we can turn on and off, or appear when events start…

It won’t be every month. Halloween is a special event like Xmas in the US. I’d expect 3 or 4 events / updates like this per year

Nope, ended Nov 1st.

Nah, plenty of people managed to do it with player models blocking their view, just added to the difficulty.

It has a different icon.

Act 1 = Ok, but overall pretty boring. Farming the doors was fun.

Act 2 = Very good, loved the mad king’s realm!

Act 3 = Awesome new dungeon!

Act 4 = Um? You take the awesome new dungeon AWAY to celebrate halloween?

Seriously, Mad King Says? after all that amazing stuff on the buildup to Haloween, on the day itself we get that, and the best part of act 3 taken away?

I was looking around everywhere for the “Party”, there was none.

We should have had a “Finale Event” like we did with the Beta Weekends, the “party” could have been a massive map-wide event in LA or something…

Anyway, I enjoyed the days leading up to 31st immensely, 31st itself was meh.

FYI – Christmas takes place on December 25th.

Act 3 had a cool dungeon, Act 4 had… a crappy game of “Mad King Says” ??

None of the stuff from Act 1 or Act 2 was removed before the 31st, why remove the most fun halloween dungeon on the 31st, leaving all of the weaker content playable? Made no sense to me…

I’m a Norn. We get no love in jumping puzzles.

Tried it for about 3 hours, never made it above about 10 jumps or so. Gave up.

Actually sucks that they’re so afraid to make permanent changes to the world.

As beautiful as it was, if the LA statue comes back and everything goes back to exactly how it was, then the whole thing is for nothing, and may as well not have happened.

Come on guys, even Disney World changes the rides now and again… Give us some PERSISTENCE!

Spetrix.3859:

Thieves have shortbow #2 for 1200 range.

Guardians have scepter #2 for 1200 range.

I play both in WvW and i’d recommend carrying multiple weapon sets to handle different situations

You’ve clearly never played a Scepter Guardian if you think that the 2 skill is in any way a viable ranged attack.

There is an invincibility cheat, yes.

I’m pleased to see the devs acknowledge the problems we currently have with hacking and cheating in WvW (and probably PvP as well, I wouldn’t know, I only play WvW). Hacking orbs out of garrisons is only the very tip of the iceberg, cheaters are everywhere in this game.

However, we’re not seeing any progress being made toward a solution. Here is some information for the GW2 devs that I hope they will find useful in stopping cheats. Please discuss, agree, disagree, whatever.

Having most of the interaction client-side is a design choice I guess, and while it does offer a lot of performance benefits, it also allows for the sorts of hacks we have been seeing for the past few weeks. Personally, if I was developing an online game, I would have all player movements and interactions run through the server, which would automatically reject anything “illegal”. That said, the game is out now and massive changes like that are not really possible.

Clearly, the devs have “trusted” the player and client far, far too much. I can easily run the game in a VM and modify variables in memory on the fly to allow me to speedhack, teleport, go invisible and much, much more. I almost feel it’s insulting to real hackers calling it hacking, it’s so easy.

Tip 1: Get some security people in to show you how to encrypt your variables and randomise your memory locations, just for a start. Real hackers will get around these measures, sure, but lets not lay the whole game out totally un-encrypted in RAM on a plate for script kiddies to go and mess with.

Cheating is nothing new, it has been a problem in online games for over a decade and, in fact, the problem has been solved many, many times, even for client-side games like GW2.

Tip 2: Implement “Punkbuster”, or a variant thereof. The makers of Punkbuster, Evenbalance, are a company who specialise in defeating cheaters, they might be on an exclusive contract to EA at this point, I don’t know, but I’m sure they can at least offer consultancy & advice.

The basic premise is that on all of your servers, you have a punkbuster client connected at all times. This client monitors the movements and actions of players, and flags people for ban who it detects as cheating.

Even the most basic of this type of system would be able to detect some of the hacks we are currently seeing in WvW. As you developed it further and further, cheaters would eventually be severely restricted in what they can do.

Good luck in the battle against cheats!

I say people with crappy connections or lag issues deserve to be killed equally as much as someone who Alt-F4s when downed.

Basically, when you disconnect, character should persist in the world for 5-10 seconds to allow you to be killed / finished.

All in favour?

This is a terrible idea. It is complicated, pointless and only appeals to a small minority of players who obsessively collect everything. Please do not develop this.

If the ‘problem’ is that the game makes it very difficult, cumbersome and expensive to collect ALL of the armour skins, the ‘solution’ is not to redevelop significant parts of the game to make it easer. The far simpler solution is don’t try to collect all the armour skins. Nobody cares.

Very good and well thought-out scoring system. You have my +1

Agreed. The mob AI is severely lacking in general, and most events are entirely un-challenging with a group of 6+

The one exception that springs immediately to mind is the Temple of Eternal Radiance. Now here is a truly interesting and challenging event, one that I really enjoyed.

It has a good boss with an interesting mechanic (if you look at her in medusa mode you can’t attack, so you have to turn away – awesome).
It has 3 shield generators surrounding the boss and you can’t attack her if one is up, forcing the Zerg to split up.
It has NPC catapults which do big AOE damage a d knock back to players, and each catapult has a different type of enemy defending it.
The mobs that spawn there are pretty tricky to fight sometimes, like the veteran risen Mesmer.
There is a loot chest after killing the boss.
There is a karma vendor which can only be bought from while the boss is dead – an event that actually ‘changes the world’ in a way I give a kitten about!

If more events were actually tough like that one, the game would be a lot more challenging and rewarding.

How to fix WvW:

1: Fair scores, not based on being online when your enemy isn’t.
Score should be based on both number of points captured and number of enemies online. EG at the time the score ticks over, the amount of points is lowered if your team has significantly more players logged in than the enemy (on average for the duration of the score tick). The amount / scale of the lowering is up for debate. This prevents night capping from being such an effective way to gain points, but does not penalise anyone in any particular time zone.

2: Tiers / Ranks for winning. Right now there is zero incentive to win. You gain points, you gain XP, if you’re lucky you earn a little more gold than you spend in repair costs, and some Karma. There’s much easier ways to farm XP and Karma than WvW, so there’s little reason to play other than “for the fun of it”. This is fine for a while, but eventually even the thrills of WvW combat wear off and many of us are now looking for the Metagame. It doesn’t have to be a lot, or complicated, here is a suggestion:

Add an additional map to WvW, much bigger than EB and with much, much more difficult NPC defenders on each heavily fortified point. This would be the “Tier 2” map, and only WvW players who meet the Tier 2 criteria would be allowed to join it, say: Level 80, 1000 kills, 100 keep captures, or whatever. You could keep adding tiers forever really.

3: Rewards for winning. There should be a loot drop for placing first in WvW, automatically given at the end of the round to anyone who logged either X hours, X kills, X supply used etc. There should be awesome loot bags / badges for the people with most kills, most supply used etc. (MVPs) over the 2 weeks. The MVPs on the losing teams should also get slightly reduced awesome loot. Give us a pervious battle summary screen that shows who the MVPs were, who the best commanders were, etc. and a current battle summary that shows who is in the running this cycle.

I’ve ordered them 1 2 and 3 in order of importance. Changes 1 and 3 are simple and quick and will greatly improve WvW. Change 2 is huge but would make it AWESOME.

It’s utterly meaningless while free transfers are open anyway.

Big guilds are swapping Worlds based on the most recent ranking position, so whoever was at position 1 yesterday is irrelevant. This morning the Worlds all have totally different people on them, so the balance of power is changed and any automatic ranking system is completely broken.

Please close free server transfers, this is a farce.

Hiding the RNG makes it worse, not better.

WoW hides the RNG behind raid boss loot.

Easy way to solve this “problem”: Stop trying to get a Legendary.

If you forget about ever getting one, maybe one day you’ll be out in the world and randomly drop a precursor from a chest or whatever. THATS when you start trying to craft one.

Dear Guild Wars,

Currently, I can travel for free to any of the cities in Tyria.

I do this by pressing “B”, and pressing “go to the mists”.

The game then loads the mists instance, and I appear just in front of the portal to Lion’s arch.

I then walk forward for around 10 seconds, and the game loads all the player models and characters that are standing there looking for PvP matches etc. I then go through the portal to LA.

I then get a second loading screen, and appear in the south part of the LA map, near the WvW portals. Again, the game loads all of the characters standing around, and so on.

I then waypoint travel to the city portals in LA and after a third loading screen, I appear in front of the city portals. I can choose any I wish, and walk through. Again, the game loads all the other players nearby etc.

Finally, I walk through the portal of the city I want to go to and get my fourth loading screen. I then appear in my chosen city.

Time spent on load screens = approx 90 seconds (I have a fast SSD, I guess Hard Drive people will be much longer)

Actual time spent interacting with the game = approx 15 seconds to walk through 2 portals and use 1 free city waypoint.

Amount of data that is streamed to me via A-net’s servers in loading 4 maps worth of content, player models etc = probably quite a lot.

Amount of gold spent to do this: 0.

Now, if I take the route which is less taxing on the A-net servers, just clicking the waypoint in the city I want to go to on the map, I have to pay between 1 and 3 silver to get there. I know this is almost nothing, but when I can get there for actually nothing, I am prepared to sit through a few load screens, no big deal. I will always take the free route.

It seems that you would cut down on server resource substantially by making city travel free, and make it quicker and easier for players like me (who prefer to save as much money as possible) to get there. I can’t imagine I’m in the minority of players, since it’s quite hard to make money in this game, and very easy to spend it. I always see a lot of foot traffic to the city portals in LA.

If city Waypoints were free both inside and outside the city, it would be one Waypoint, one load screen, 0 time spent running through portals. Surely this is the preferred method of travelling to cities?

It would be good if the game told you more obviously where and how to activate them. I’m level 80 and have only activated a couple of combo fields ever, and never on purpose…

Jnaathra.6549:

Do take note that this post makes no mention about action against gold buyers. So the end result here is going to be the same as all other games. The bot population will go down, but no go away. They will ban bots and the ones still making money will steal or buy new accounts. As long as buyers are allowed to exist, there will always be sellers.

It’s a fair comment, and there have been attempts to ban buyers before in other games. The gold sellers simply get smart and randomly mail gold to lots of people in the game, as well as their customers.

If they ban everyone that has been sent gold by a gold farmer, then all the people they randomly sent gold to get banned as well, moral outrage and bad vibes / bad publicity ensure.

Not to mention you can buy gold via gems, so it’s a little hypocritical. Only buy gold from ME, not from THEM! Buyers could easily claim to have been tricked into visiting the gold seller site, thinking it was the gem store…

I read with interest the comments on the blog earlier this week about “hacked” accounts.

But, I really think it is not the widespread issue that you think it is.

GW2 has one of the better authentication systems I’ve seen in a game, requiring email confirmation for every new login attempt, I think that it is a strong, effective solution.
Sure, a certain number of users will have had both their email AND their GW2 account compromised, but this alone won’t explain the huge numbers of “Help, I was hacked!” support tickets I presume you’re getting from banned players.

I suspect that the majority of these players will have been banned for botting, then when you ban them, without fail they raise support tickets claiming to be hacked, and can provide all of the backup and proof that they are not a Chinese gold farmer that you need, because they aren’t…. They are the Chinese gold farmer’s CUSTOMERS.

The gold farmer does not need to do anything so difficult as hack people’s account details and email accounts to gain access to unlimited numbers of GW2 accounts, all they need to do is offer a POWER LEVELLING service.

This is where you, as a lazy player who does not want to level up to 80, pay the gold sellers to level you up to 80, normally gaining some money and items along the way. Crucially, this “service” requires you to hand over your account details to the farmer, and AUTHORISE THEM to connect to the game as you.

Once you give your details over to the farmer and authorise them, they happily run bots on your account all day long (often times only running the bot during your off-hours, for example allowing you to log in and play during the day, then running the bot overnight).

In addition to this, farmers often look for customers to “Rent” accounts from. If I were to buy a few bucks worth of gold, or I’ve just been successfully powerleveled to 80, the gold seller might approach me and say hey, if you let me use your account between 02:00 and 06:00 your time, I will pay you 2 Gold per day! Just make sure if your account ever gets banned, say you were hacked and know nothing about it!

Your GMs of course catch and ban the bots, as they are easy to detect, but almost immediately you get a complaint from the account owner, crying that he was “hacked”, and he wants his account back.

For every account like this that you restore, and little johnny gets his level 80 Mesmer back, at least half will have been used and abused for farming in this way.

So, what on earth can you do to both ban bots which ruin the economy and avoid clogging up your support queue with tickets from lying scumbags who claim to be hacked?

Well, I think the simple answer is NEVER re-instate an account that has been used for botting.

When someone is a confirmed botter, they are banned, then the real account owner goes on to appeal the ban and prove that he was the legit owner, all that should happen is that they are given a brand new, fresh account with no characters on it. You can reserve their old character names to the new account, and any gems they bought can be credited to it, but that’s it. Reset to zero.

Suddenly, getting Chinese gold farmers to level you, or letting them “borrow” your account is the least attractive option EVER. All it gets you is reset to zero.

It’s a little harsh on people that were genuinely hacked, but then you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs…