Guild Wars 2

Really agree with the dungeons being over the top. I’m not opposed to difficulty, but when the boss has only 2 or 3 mechanics, and the real challenge is just staying alive while you whittle down the insanely large health pool, you’re going to either get boredom or frustration.

Which is exactly how I feel about most dungeon bosses. Either they’re boring, or stupidly frustrating (and by frustrating, I actually mean frustrating as opposed to challenging. Neither of which is “fun”.

I’m on board with the rest of the OP as well. Good post – very constructive.

Sad to say that most of my friends don’t play GW2 any more. It’s even more sad when you realize that we all met in Guild Wars, and played that for years.

Sorry, ArenaNet, you’ve tried to cater to too many different types of gamers here, and have largely alienated most types. This game isn’t for casuals, nor is it for hardcores. You’ve thrown out the best parts of Guild Wars, and replaced them with the most annoying parts of typical MMO’s.

When you try and please everyone, you’re actually going to please almost no-one.

Kumakichi.2583:

“the grind” is a matter of perspective but mmo’s tend to tap into the OCD of a lot of players. They dump rediculous hours into an mmo to get all the best gear and coolest stuff. Then they are so burned out from grinding they usually hate the game and quit playing. I’ve watched this happen to several friends. Some have quit playing mmo’s altogether.

Ever knew anyone who worked harder at an MMO than at their job? Or worse, lost their job because they prioritized an MMO over their job? I gotta wonder how that happens…but it does.

I’m not blaming MMO’s for this; they didn’t force anyone to do anything. It’s just something that makes me go “hmmmmmm…”

Cowrex.9564:

As much as I love the idea. It would be terrible since people will misunderstand it and cause a ruckus.

“Could you describe the ruckus?”

Sorry, couldn’t resist ;-)

Nuka Cola.8520:

Seriously? If i see this i will facepalm hard… you’ll be spending 100+ reall dollars for a pixelated sword? really sad…

People do. Which is why precursors are not account bound. ArenaNet wants your impatient money. Gold buying is legal if you do it from them.

I’m pretty sure that this is why they don’t care if they ever sell 6 million copies of GW2 like they did with GW1. They’ve probably made their money back in spades from people who bought gold, and may or may not even play the game any more.

Think about it. $40 for 4000 gems. That’s just about the price of one copy of GW2. So for every person that’s spent that $40, it’s almost as good as selling another copy.

There’s a dev post somewhere that says MF does NOT affect Mystic Forge drop rates.

Edit: here’s the reference -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Magic-Find-Chests/first#post598159

I sometimes wonder if the grind is the only thing keeping some people playing…

I realize that different people find different levels of grind acceptable. This is not what I am talking about though.

I’m curious how many just long in to do the daily laurel/fractal/dragon chest and then log off. I’m suspicious that this is why they put that stuff in there..to keep people playing just a little longer…

So many things more important to me than Player Housing. If they ever add it, it better be at the bottom of a long list of bug fixes, PvP improvements, quality content additions, and perhaps even an xpac. Certainly not before Guild Halls.

I’m really tired of meaningless content. This would be a huge turnoff if it happened anytime soon.

Please prioritize making a quality game over fluff.

Sorry this happened. It’s small comfort to know, probably, that you can give that ring to an alt.

Good luck getting your month’s worth of Laurels back, though. They don’t do refunds.

Guild Wars kept my attention from wandering to that “other” MMO for very long. It was far superior in itself. GW2 is superior as well, although I’m very disappointed in the moves that ArenaNet has made in the direction of the “other” MMO. But whatever. They know that.

I’d say they’re doing what they think they need to do to make money. They’re trying to maximize people’s playtime, and provide incentives for them to buy gems. Most of their tactics are rather Pavlovian. But none of this is new in the MMO industry.

Clearly there were some big screwups somewhere in the developmental process of GW2. It took years to release, was overhauled several times, and still isn’t really complete. My guess is that they started with a game that was in the spirit of GW, and were forced to make changes by NCSoft to maximise profits. I wouldn’t be surprised if NCSoft told them to release it ASAP, too, in complete contradiction of the “when it’s ready” policy that ArenaNet kept for all those years.

So the short answer is: I think they chose to, or were forced to, change the game they wanted to make in order to maximize profits. From an artistic perspective, it’s a blatant sell-out. From a business perspective, it kind of makes sense. I’m sure there are some very disappointed devs, but I seriously doubt we’re going to here from them on that. It would likely cost someone their job to speak out.

So all we can do is guess. We’ll never know for sure. I think I did a pretty good job of applying Occam’s Razor to the evidence, but I could be wrong.

Yea, thanks! More monthlies like March, and I might even get my alt geared up by the end of the year. You guys totally conquer gear treadmills and grind!

Too bad they overhauled this game a time or three before release. They tried to please the GW1 fans, tried to please the WoW hardcores, and failed at pleasing anyone. Somewhere in the middle, the Manifesto became rubbish.

Thanks to you artists at ArenaNet. kitten shame your management is what it is.

Well, this Living Story is certainly not causing anything close to a buzz of excitement on these forums…I’ve seen everything from vague curiosity to bored indifference. Something seems to be missing in the imagination and execution department here.

I gotta wonder if they are still writing whatever the next piece is going to be, and generally making it up as they go along…

I can’t imagine what people would post there. There’s nothing to discuss…

I agree. I’ve really got no clue what’s going on with it. I had to wiki up the achievements. I would have never found the events otherwise, or the lost objects.

It’s like they’re trying to do something along the lines of “War in Kryta”, but they released it before it was ready.

Of course, everything about this game has been released before it was ready, but that’s a whole different topic…

They do make the occasional comment, but usually it’s on the small, “nice” threads. When something causes a major issue (Guild Missions, Guesting, Culling, Ascended Gear, Grind, Communication) they tend to ignore the threads as long as possible until they find a reason to close them without any meaningful comment.

Correspondingly one of the issues commonly brought up here is a lack of communication. So you’re observations are certainly warranted.

Check that you are using the MF popup inventory, not your regular inventory to move the ring into the forge from. I made this mistake once.

It’s taken waaaaaay too long for them to address this. And they still haven’t. I suspect this game has just hemorrhaged a quite a few players – just like how it did in November. To some degree because they keep making stupid mistakes like this content, but more so because they don’t seem to really listen or care what people think.

No facts to back any of that up – it’s just an impression I’m getting from how short my friends list and guild roster have become in the past week – and my own attitude.

I’m finding the motivation to log on hard to come by this past week. Never even did dailies for 3 days straight.

Simplest answer – so they can sell you extra inventory and bank space via the gem store.

Nice of you guys to do this! I’ll come, too, just to meet some nice ppl

sacredninja.5236:

@Ardenwolfe.8590
They have announced this themselves on their Twitter Page.

That’s another area where ArenaNet are doing it wrong. Random posts on social networking sites that not everyone subscribes to, and not linking them on guildwars2.com. I’m starting to suspect that nobody there ever took a communication class at University…

Revolution.6301:

Gelltor.3015:

I don’t understand why people get so worked up about this,the lfg site is perfectly functional,so I don’t see why the devs should devote resources to making something that can already be gotten…..
And besides,if they do make one and it’s not as good as the lfg site,then it will actually hurt the dungeon finding as people will just be usin that one.

Its because its such as common feature in any mmo now-a-days. Idk why Anet would not include such as logical feature that would not be hard to implement. This just shows a lack of polish.

Another common (universal?) feature is a customizeable UI. They’re not going to do that, either. I’ve no idea why – I’d be embarrased if I’d released a UI like that…

Anyway, I honestly hope they don’t bother with a LFG tool. Some enterprising person gave us a good one with gw2lfg.com – they should work on polishing other areas of the game.

Well, from what I’ve seen, gw2lfg.com is far better than anything ANet would come up with. For one, it’s not buggy, and it doesn’t break 3 other things when you use it…

TheBlackLeech.9360:

In my honest opinion, Guild Wars 2 was an unfinished project when it was released.

It was lacking in so many areas.

Sure, some of these areas have been improved upon…. but the game itself still has a lot of flaws.

It is really upsetting that game companies can get away with releasing games as unfinished products…. but by the same token…. I’d rather be playing the game as it is now, unfinished, than still be waiting for it (and still playing gw1)

This game is amazing…. but I still shake my head in disbelief at how much better it should have been.

I share the same opinion. What astounds me even more though, is that its still not any closer to a finished state than at launch. The UI is still clunky and unintuitive, and it blows my mind that someone would think it’s ok to use such a UI in a game that was released in 2012. It’s more like the UI I’d expect in a game from 1996.

But anyway, I wanted to say to the OP that I love the title of this thread, because I’ve been told so often that I’m doing it wrong if I don’t play just how ArenaNet intended.

Looks to me that, months and months later, the community is still strongly divided over this.

I bet everyone would like new content to play, new events, new Living Story stuff, maybe new dungeons, and areas to explore. Everyone would enjoy seeing the world grow and change over time, and having new and fun things to do, as they choose and at their leisure.

I bet not everyone wants to grind gear.

Solution: keep putting lots of that love and creativity that ArenaNet became famous for into this game, and stop adding Ascended pieces. Keep what’s there – people worked for them. Add no more. Just work on making the game the amazing mmo it should have been…

Vorch.2985:

You can pay 40 dollars, buy crafting materials, and be level 80 from the start.

You can save 4-5g per crafting profession, start from nothing, and be level 80 in a few hours.

The same way people like to reference the ability to attain level 20 in GW1 in a day (Jalis Ironhammer Punch-out challenge), I can get to level 80 in GW2 in much less than half the time.

Yea…except Kilroy’s Punch-Out didn’t cost 40 bucks or a kittenload of gold…

Ethics.4519:

Yeah Anet, why didn’t you just mail us BiS gear with auto infinite XP on character creation?

Oh wait, maybe because MMORPGs are about leveling and character progression. Go to sPvP if you want everything handed to you.

Ah, but they don’t have to be, and some are not. Think outside the tier gear box…

Vol.5241:

Laxuar.3504:

Dear Anet Staff

I bought this game because you promise a lot of innovative and intresting things like:

• No Grinding: but now there are 60 hours to get 80, 20 hours for exotic gear, 30 runs in fractal for ascended rings. I don’t know what do you mean with grind but 120 hours to get a full equipped character for me is quite long.

So you want the best gear in the game with zero efforts? 0 hours played?

Just install, log on and BOOM, all your characters are lvl 80 and in full exotics with a legendary of your choice?

You miss the point, mate. Not every game needs to be about gear. GW1 wasn’t about gear. When you hit max level, you bought cheap gear from the vendor, and it had the same stats as every other set of gear. For me, it’s not that I “want gear with zero effort”. It’s that I simply don’t want gear at all. I want to play, not grind.

I want a game that’s about playing and having fun, not grinding out freaking gear.

It’s fun, it’s possible, and it’s been done. By ArenaNet even. No clue where they’re going with GW2, though. Aside from away from fun.

So….has anyone heard from ArenaNet on this? Perhaps they posted something on one of the random social networking sites that not everyone subscribes to? Or is this thread going the way of the November Mega-thread: ignored and brushed off?

Jski.6180:

Chuo.4238:

Jski.6180:

The thing is time tables are not a grind they are a counter to a grind. Now by doing it this way they are making it so ppl CANT grind content as well so if any thing they are removing grind this way. Now if you feel that you must log in every day then your putting the grind on your self but that is your chose and no one else.
The thing about time tables is they give order to your gameing life. Look at it like this if mobs or events where random then you will never know when to drop in for events and these major events need numbers to run so you would have complete chaos or have ppl camping things for hours on end. Time tables ARE GOOD please try not to fool your self on that not having them would make the game far worst it would make any game far worst because ALL mmorpgs have some type of time tables.

They just need to stop releasing tier gear. Then it wouldn’t be an issue either way.

Do you think they are going to stop putting out ascended level gear? They are going to pull out the full set saying bad things about it every time they put out a new bit not going to stop any thing or help any thing.

I don’t think they’re going to. They’re not very good at admitting mistakes. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they should, though, because, well, they should.

Ascended gear has resulted in a complete transformation of GW2 from the game that I was excited about, and bought, into this horrible grindfest. It’s what’s ruining the guild missions. It forced people into Fractals. It’s tied to dailies monthlies and timegating. It’s every reason why I loved GW and disliked other MMO’s. Except now we’re becoming just like other MMO’s.

Essentially, Ascended gear is preventing people from playing the way they want to play. Which isn’t fun.

Seriously. Don’t release any more Ascended gear. Keep the backs and accessories. Make ones with new stat combinations if you want. But no more. No weapons, no armor. No more.

Work on your brilliant ideas, and release them without ties to tier gear. Work on your Living Story. Improve PvP and WvW with new ideas. Come up with new festival events. Make some really freaking cool armor and weapon skins instead, and then sell me Fine Transmutation Stones. That is win-win, right there.

Be different, be special. Don’t be like all the others.

Jski.6180:

The thing is time tables are not a grind they are a counter to a grind. Now by doing it this way they are making it so ppl CANT grind content as well so if any thing they are removing grind this way. Now if you feel that you must log in every day then your putting the grind on your self but that is your chose and no one else.
The thing about time tables is they give order to your gameing life. Look at it like this if mobs or events where random then you will never know when to drop in for events and these major events need numbers to run so you would have complete chaos or have ppl camping things for hours on end. Time tables ARE GOOD please try not to fool your self on that not having them would make the game far worst it would make any game far worst because ALL mmorpgs have some type of time tables.

They just need to stop releasing tier gear. Then it wouldn’t be an issue either way.

I, too, am pretty tired of sitting in overflow on my own server because people from other servers aren’t content with events on their own.

I like Missy’s suggestion: make the spawn times the same on every server.

Azjenco.9425:

People in smaller guild really don’t need to worry.

When the LFG tool is implemented, I’m certain guild missions will be a part of it, and you’ll be able to get groups together in no time.

Also, I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. GW2 is growing more guild alliance friendly with each update.

Yea, I can go along with any guild that’s doing a mission. But if I’m not a member and repping, I’m not getting credit. So that doesn’t work. LFG is pointless in this case.

Dondarrion.2748:

I’m glad it’s B2P so people can come back later at any time of their choosing, but I fear GW2 will become a ghost town when the next big, anticipated MMOs hit the market if the game doesn’t get new, large content updates like zones, professions, races, skills, etc., then like Zeromius above says, people won’t keep playing, games need new content to retain that novelty effect.

I don’t think it’s the lack of expansions that are going to make this game a ghost town. Despite the B2P, you can’t leave and come back and still be relevant because they’ve time-gated the heck out of tier gear. If you’re not up to speed on dailies, monthlies, and guild missions, you’re behind. That’s not only going to drive some gamers off, it’s going to keep them from coming back.

I’m happy with this decision of theirs to work on the game and not to expand yet, but I still think they’re missing the point. It’s the tier-geared, grindy philosophy that’s going to kill them in the end. Yes, time gates will keep people playing…for a little while. And when they get tired of it, they’ll leave…and won’t see any reason to come back and be behind the power curve.

I’ve said it in other threads and I’ll say it here: no more Ascended gear attached to your game, guys. Keep what you have – people have worked for it – but don’t add any more. Take what little time you have left here to rework your philosophy. It’s not too late…yet.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Chuo.4238:

IndigoSundown.5419:

cesmode.4257:

Now we have:
-No grind. Not OK. There is a HUGE grind in the game for literally everything.

Since I don’t experience this, I’m curious. Legendary was always going to be a grind, let’s face it. Ascended was put in to “bridge the gap,” between dungeon sets and Legendary. “Literally everything” encompasses a lot. What else in GW2 is grind? I’m betting that a lot of the perceived grind devolves down to Ascended. I’m willing to be wrong, though.

It’s Ascended. I’d love this game if they stopped adding it. Legendaries don’t bother me because it’s just a skin.

Grinding for a skin I like is fun and rewarding (I have multiple obby sets in GW). Grinding for tier gear sucks. It’s a job, and I’ve already got one of those.

If they took BiS gear out of the equation, I think there’d be many more people happy with new content.

They’re not going to take away items people already played for. If you think the reaction to guild missions was heavy, the reaction to that would dwarf it. They might be able to get away with stopping at trinkets + back item. They’d be more likely to produce the full spectrum of Ascended, then not add more tiers. Then, if they do the discussed level increase, the existing tiers would have level x versions.

I didn’t say to remove it. I said stop adding it. Keep what’s there, but please no more…

IndigoSundown.5419:

cesmode.4257:

Now we have:
-No grind. Not OK. There is a HUGE grind in the game for literally everything.

Since I don’t experience this, I’m curious. Legendary was always going to be a grind, let’s face it. Ascended was put in to “bridge the gap,” between dungeon sets and Legendary. “Literally everything” encompasses a lot. What else in GW2 is grind? I’m betting that a lot of the perceived grind devolves down to Ascended. I’m willing to be wrong, though.

It’s Ascended. I’d love this game if they stopped adding it. Legendaries don’t bother me because it’s just a skin.

Grinding for a skin I like is fun and rewarding (I have multiple obby sets in GW). Grinding for tier gear sucks. It’s a job, and I’ve already got one of those.

If they took BiS gear out of the equation, I think there’d be many more people happy with new content.

I’m kind of surprised that this hasn’t come up yet.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/05/arenanet-not-planning-guild-wars-2-expansions-or-sequels/

Thoughts?

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Chuo.4238:

I don’t know why they open these. If you think they’re going to respond to a mere 38 page thread with only 1800-ish posts, may I refer you to a 222 page thread with over 11000 posts that they didn’t answer?

That thread did spawn a response by Chris Whiteside. Only, the response was not posted in the thread itself. However, the final post of the thread does link to the post by Chris Whiteside.

So this example illustrates my point rather than challenging it.

Yes, there was technically a response by Chris Whiteside. That said, was it really an answer to the concerns people raised in that thread? Now, almost 4 months later, would you say that they actually stuck by that? How relevant would you say that response is, today? What do you think? Did they give a good answer?

rootnode.9546:

If they didn’t expect it, why open a thread about our opinions and concerns? (Let alone the fact that they opened it 4 days before the patch went live, which is just kitten stupid)

I don’t know why they open these. If you think they’re going to respond to a mere 38 page thread with only 1800-ish posts, may I refer you to a 222 page thread with over 11000 posts that they didn’t answer?

Nice guy, but not hero material without the player. Yet somehow he’s the hero and not the player.

We have our backpacks, and a full suite of accessories, all of which require time gates, grinding, expensive MF recipes, and/or focussing on content that some may not like (fractals, guild missions).

Most of the heartache regarding these things would probably go away if the Ascended gear stopped right there. People would be happy to play the things they like without having to worry about BiS gear.

ANet, your content ideas are often brilliant, but attaching a BiS grind to them is upsetting folks who want to play how they want to play. It’s making the game into a job, and starting to become very annoying. I left games because they got like this. You’re about to become next. Why can’t you be the talented, wonderful studio who makes fun games?

Please, just don’t release any more Ascended gear beyond Backpieces and Accessories. They are ruining an otherwise good game. Make fun content instead. And cool skins. I’ll buy gems if I’m having fun.

An Asura named “Wee Bitty”

Oreoz.2573:

Because right now, we have what we have currently: A hodgepodge of rushed systems all aimed at getting you gear that really, we shouldn’t even know about yet BECAUSE it wasn’t ready.

Couldn’t agree more.

ArenaNet – we’ve got our backpacks and a full suite of accessories. Please stop with the Ascended gear. No more. Just make a fun game to play, and focus on that. When you start adding Tier gear to these gating systems you have, the game goes from fun to being a job.

I’m pretty sure that if you hadn’t attached BiS gear to Fractals, guild missions, dailies, and monthlies, you’d have a game that people enjoy, because they can play how they want to, and a much smaller crowd of upset folks.

Please wake up. Please don’t release any more Ascended gear. It’s destroying your game.

Brilliant idea. Especially stupid implementation. This is a recurring theme with GW 2.

The first thing I’d do is remove the ascended carrot from this debacle. Then I’d take a breath, sit down, and start reading player suggestions. All the way back to November…

Wayfinder.8452:

Pockets.3201:

Wait.

So you activated the bounty and some other guild wiped it out before you got there and you just…got no credit or anything else and lost the mission you had running?

If so that is a brilliant setup for the whole thing. I thought the days of camping NPC spawns was over…

We were looking for the 2nd target for a few minutes and another guild announced that they killed it. We got no credit, influence and time wasted. People were asking for help in map chat, we got none.

jazzllanna.1278:

So you lost your influence or you just have to wait for respawn?. And the guild that killed them got nothing.. they did it just to mess with you or did they have it started as well just you all are going after the same target? . sorry just really interested in what happened here and a bit confused.

I don’t really know how fast the NPC will respawn, but this is of no importance given that our time was wasted looking for it at that point. Further more the individual rewards (the ones you can use for earrings and other kitten) is give only to members who contribute to killing a target its not a guild bonus, so half the guild was kittened because we split up in squads.

About camping… I stayed on the map for a bit afterwards I was nervous and wanted to at least find the target again. 10 minutes later or so I found it, at mostly the same spot as the guild before, and guess what it was camped by another guild (only 1 member, but they were camping different spots just sitting there). I am sure spawn points are random, but what happened is just even more annoying.

Wow…just…what do you say to that? This is awful. Beyond that words fail me. I’m not sure how ANet could have screwed this up worse. What the heck were they thinking?

ArenaNet – you guys are the absolute masters at screwing up brilliant ideas…sigh…

I don’t think the story is all that bad. It could be better, yes (why the kitten is Trahearne the hero?), but I think it’s actually the terrible voice acting that makes it seem worse than it is…a lot of the actors seriously sound like they’re reading a script from an office cubicle, and have no idea what the context is…

The point is, people who are in small guilds are there because they prefer it to large ones. This is no more right or wrong than preferring yellow mustard to brown.

Nice!!

Excellent evidence that your customers will always find uses for your product that you didn’t think of ;-)

Cora.9745:

All larger guilds aren’t filled with child-eating ogres like most people seem to think.

Child eating ogres would be preferable……[/quote]

Lol second that. It’s not fear that keeps me from large guilds. It’s lack of desire to put up with several hundred people who can hide behind a computer monitor and act like complete (fill in the blank). Believe it or not, I like my friends more than I do these people.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Your all nutz.

Thay have revamed fixed and added so much stuff to this game its nuts and you all just like " its all fluff" or " its all about the gym store"

If you think about it, mate, they didn’t really “add” anything. This was all stuff that should have been in the game at launch, and is clearly not complete (and not very thoroughly tested). This game is still under development. They released it too early.

When they come up with a legitimate xpac, then I’ll say they’ve “added” something.

If course, it’ll probably include more tier gear and a rise in the level cap, so I’ll probably say a lot of other things, too (I’m getting good at incorporating “kitten” into my vocabulary). But that’s a whole different story…