Guild Wars 2

This isn’t the PR answer, but the real answer is that there is no endgame.

GW2 allows you access to most things you’re able to do in a pretty short period of time (hours, really), so instead of having leveling and then a different style of play at endgame, it’s just… game.

I don’t blame people for going through it and getting bored. If you played any non-MMO for eight to twelve hours a day, you’d get pretty bored of that fast too. So GW2 might be an exception among MMOs, but it’s pretty much like any other game in that you play it while it’s fun, and shelve it for a while until you feel like playing it again.

I stopped playing Mario 3 at some point. It’s not a bad game (understatement of the century), but I played it to satisfaction. No dramatic phone call to Nintendo about how I’m quitting their game. I just shelved it, and over the years I’ve picked it up again a few times and continued to thoroughly enjoy myself. GW2 is a normal video game in that regard, and the playerbase will eventually come to understand that.

I think Anet is realizing that the MMORPG player that WoW has created doesn’t care about good game or level design. They don’t even care about fun, really.

They’ll do any old boring thing if it gets them a shiny at the end. Is it a bonus if it’s fun? Yeah, maybe a little. But they’re not willing to play something fun without that carrot there. On the other hand, they’re more than willing to play something that isn’t fun—or to an extent that it stops being fun—if there is a carrot.

It’s not their fault that this is the modern MMO player and has been for nearly a decade now, but maybe they should’ve seen it coming too.

This looks more like a poor choice of dyes than the armor not looking like the concept art.

The second time I double-tapped off a ledge trying to position the next jump in the halloween puzzle, that was when I turned double tap off. I use B to dodge on my gamepad.

Have we forgotten Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault so quickly?

There was a time when, with just those two games, NCsoft represented something like half of all dead major-release MMOs. It’s a very scary prospect indeed to invest time and effort into something that may be shut down like that, and NCsoft is as willing to do it as anybody, but I guess that’s the risk you take.

Don’t get me wrong I loathe the idea of NCsoft profiting off of me, but I’m willing to deal with their crappy practices if the product is good enough.

Blah blah blah returning player blah blah. Important bits:

80 Warrior (banners/warhorns)
Gate of Madness server, willing to transfer
US EST, evenings/late nights
PvE: okay
sPvP: a regular/static group would be fantastic
WvW: prefer lower population servers, small scale activity
VoIP: okay
Representation: not quite 100%

To go into more detail I’ve been playing MMOs for over ten years now, and am looking forward to settling into GW2 which seems to be less demanding of my time than these games traditionally have been. Most of my previous connections appear to have moved to other games so here I am, looking for a guild.

Let’s get PvE out of the way real quick. I don’t mind doing dungeons, and in fact I’d be willing to go out of my way to experience them and also pick up some of those shiny armor skins. Guild missions or events same thing, don’t mind participating in guild stuff every now and then, but PvE is not going to be my primary focus and I’m not very likely to attempt to optimize/change my build for a PvE role. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do my best, I’m just not a dps charts kind of guy.

I’m mostly a PvPer. Through PvP I’ve met some really awesome people over the years (both as allies and opponents), and I’ve personally felt that while PvE content can grow stale, PvP never can because your opponents are always trying something new. Because of that I am very highly respectful towards other PvPers and would expect a similar mindset in a guild.

I have a lot of large-scale faction PvP experience from playing Aion, which includes assisting in organizing groups/raids. Mostly getting them formed up and to a spot and ready. Experience leading such groups in action is limited, but I’m very familiar with sieging/capturing/defending objectives. So I have an idea of how WvW works though I haven’t really participated much in it in this game. That said I’d prefer to operate in a smaller guild group (say 5-10 people) taking secondary objectives or roaming.

sPvP, I’m not saying I’d like to go competitive or anything, but I’d like either a regular group of people to play with/against or to be part of a static team. For this I am willing to optimize my build to suit the team’s needs, but I am primarily a support/defense oriented player.

Goodness this ended up long. Uh, representation is the last thing I wanted to touch on. I expect to represent the guild almost all of the time. The only reason I can’t promise that I will always represent while online is because I have a group of friends I’m guilded with who play on rare occasion. As of this posting they haven’t been on in a few months but if they get back into it I will be playing with them during the day, and it will in no way affect any obligations I have to the guild, its events, or WvW.

Last thing worth mentioning, I am willing to transfer servers, but I would prefer not to transfer to the most populated servers such as Blackgate. I also may not be able to transfer right away as I’m slightly broke atm, hah.

Uh, that’s about it. Will be in touch if anyone’s interested.

-Corian

GW2 plays closer to some of your more traditional RPG experiences than that other game ever did.

If you’re jaded because of the forum, you have to keep in mind most people that come to post on the forum do so because they have a problem. They aren’t going to mention the good because they’re cool with the good. They’re gonna mention the part they have a problem with. That has nothing to do with roleplaying.

I don’t really get this thread.

While I get you feel that you were wronged, aren’t you blowing it out of proportion a bit by titling the thread “refresher course in player etiquette”?

We all need to stop and check ourselves because you got griefed once? That’s as disrespectful to all of us as that guild was to you.

I got done saying this in another thread but they aren’t designed to be difficult. It’s designed to give just the average player running around in his normal course of gameplay an epic boss fight to take part in.

Basically it’s there for atmosphere.

Purely speculation, but I’d say no.

I suspect they’re constantly lowering the threshold that makes servers report as “full” in order to distribute the population between them evenly. The worlds are very clearly capable of handling a higher capacity than we’re currently seeing, so hardware limitations or whatever isn’t the issue. This is just a deliberate attempt to force the populations to balance.

tarnin.1690:

You know, I don’t think its the ease of these games that are the problem, its the lax of complexity. I will bring up the ol DAoC here as they themselves likened it to that game. The levels of complexity it in were insane. You needed a special calculator just to make a suit of armor. Games today, this one included, is so uncomplex that it borders on toddler mode.

Complexity is good as long as it remains relevant to gameplay. I’m not sure that I’d call my avatar sitting idle while I play a calculator “compelling gameplay”. Same thing dps charts. Don’t wanna play DPS Chart. Wanna play game.

Keiran.1896:

Guys, YOU are the crybabies. Just let the developpers make what they want and stop wasting their time with useless threads.

There will always be people saying “Hey, it’s too easy” and others “Hey it’s too hard” and others “Hey, it’s perfect!”. Who should they believe?…..

We should have Goldilocks play three test builds to decide which one goes live.

Content should be accessible to everyone and relevant for as long as possible. That means player power levels (i.e. levels and gear) should stay the same, while the content becomes more skill-focused for difficulty, rather than simply having higher numbers (gear checks).

Ideally, a player has access to just about everything, but must take the time to increase his or her own skill at the game in order to progress, rather than simply putting on new pants to beat a different color dragon.

5 man content has always been to me the sweet spot in PvE. It lets the player be a part of the team, while still remaining accountable for his or her own role in the fight. I hope that’s how GW2 moves forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the epic giant boss fights with dozens of people, but that fight isn’t meant to be a showcase of game mechanics and player skill. That fight is immersive and atmospheric, and no one player is going to make the difference there, nor is any one player meant to.

GW2 has both in place and I hope they will stick to this moving forward. The epic fights at the end of zone events bringing dozens of people together, and the skill-intensive fights for highly-organized 5-man teams can both be there. Both are accessible to the vast majority of players.

I guess my point in all of this is, trying to instance larger-scale content doesn’t add to anything GW2 has to offer. It doesn’t add to the difficulty of the encounter to each individual player, and it begins to restrict which players get to experience the big epic fights. Instanced raiding is archaic and has no place in GW2, which brings to the table everything that instanced raiding has previously, without all the logistical and time-investment frustrations that come along with it. GW2 challenges the players that wish to be challenged, and provides the epic fights for the people who wish to experience those. That’s how it should be, and that would be my “don’t destroy our game”.

The misconception is that solo automatically means easy.

It doesn’t have to. I’d love to have solo dungeons in which my skills as a player are tested. The problem with that is, if they make it too hard and people aren’t good enough to do it, they complain endlessly (clock tower, which btw was AMAZING).

Every other type of game forces you to get good enough to complete their challenges or give up. I guess it’s just MMOs where it’s assumed everything has to be easy and “difficulty” is offset by adding more players to your party.

I suspect the number of players required for a server to list itself as “Full” is a much different number now than it was in the first few weeks.

First, it’s intentional for LA to be the main hub for the population.

Second you can see all kinds of evidence of unfinished things in the other cities. Home instances, probable minigames, the giant gaping hole in Divinity’s Reach…

These are all things that will eventually be added to, to give you reason to at least visit these areas from time to time.

LA will still be the hub, though.

Stop being afraid and do it. Eat the deaths if you need to.

Everyone’s okay with repeated dungeon deaths, or repeated jumping puzzle deaths, but dying even once in PvP is somehow magically worse than all of that?

Hop to it, man. Or grab all those friends you’re so loath to leave and knock the map stuff out together. You can fix this yourself, you’re just afraid to.

Darlantan.5638:

The problem is it has endgame whether they want to coin it or not. The game doesn’t have very many different things or paths to do. It’s basically level to 80, level the worthless crafting system to max, grind some dungeons perhaps and explore. All of which can be done relatively quickly. After that you’re stuck with two options WvW or work on a legendary.

But the problem is you cannot set your own adventure in this game the paths are literally chosen and once you hit 80 there really isn’t a drive to continue playing, especially if you’re not interesting in a legendary or WvW. GW2 is essentially a theme-park MMO which means it has end game because you’re limited to the things you can do upon turning 80.

You don’t want “endgame”, you want progression. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a perfectly valid thing to want, but even back to GW1 the game was never about increasing your power.

The focus has always been on the gameplay. Which is precisely why I want Arenanet to publicly dismiss the term “endgame”, so that people stop coming to this game expecting gear ladders to climb.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to pretend anyone with a business is going to say, “hey, your idea of turning a bunch of customers away is GREAT!”, but there has to be a way to get across to generic_subscription_MMO_addict_01 that this game is actually about the game, and not about making one’s numbers higher on a dps chart. There has to be a way to change their perception and their expectations, instead of the “we’re looking into that and we appreciate your feedback” spiel that’s going to happen forever if nothing does change.

You’ll take your apology back over the next month as the bots show up again, then reissue it after they get rid of them again.

That’s nothing against you, but this is a neverending process. So just be patient.

Honestly, I want the developers to straight-up throw the term “endgame” out on its butt.

Same way they did with the trinity. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have an endgame. And pretending it ever will just creates confusion as to what GW2 is.

Instead what it has is simply “game”. No end. You get to experience the full extent of the gameplay from the beginning (which they do say), and that’s the same game you play at the level cap as the developers continue to give you new things to experience (which I don’t think they do a good enough job of explaining).

The idea of changing playstyle once at the level cap (i.e. raiding) is a restrictive, elitist, absurd, and as a result of this game, obsolete, notion. And the crazy thing is, it’s not even fun. Who likes clearing trash mobs for two hours and then glass-chewing on a boss that ultimately has to be overpowered by a gear advantage rather than by player skill?

GW2 has both covered. It has the giant epic boss fights with the big numbers, and it also has the skill-intensive boss fights for parties. And these are both part of the game. Not endgame, just the game. So they need to take the term “endgame” and really just completely stomp it out.

It’s basically saying “don’t report people just because you don’t like them”, or “don’t make a false report about people”, or stuff like that. Reporting a gold seller via the mail interface is not only acceptable, but highly encouraged.

Not necessarily expansion content. I look at expansion content as entirely new “world” maps, for regions such as Elona and Cantha. The parts of Tyria that there are roads to but aren’t explorable yet may come as free updates.

That’s my hope, anyway.

I’ve always suspected that we’re going to see the remaining Orr areas as they are after the personal story. Won’t go into spoilers in case anyone hasn’t done it, but yeah. I think we see the story continue.

Build a giant Quaggan statue. Everyone will be happy.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

Sylvari Warrior, no speed boost.

Once I completed it that first time I was able to complete it again within an hour the next day, and after that I could complete it about one in every five attempts.

I don’t like this. It’s fine to have the occasional champion wandering around as a bit of a wildcard for the area, but it’d just get frustrating to deal with very fast if it was constant.

I hate the underwater enemies that seem to have a constant 75% chance to dodge you.

I have no idea if it’s something they do or if it’s related to the pathing/invuln thing but yeah.

I didn’t experience any griefing. In fact, every last charr and norn player was happy to remove their armor when we asked.

I think the instance size is a bit large (maybe reduce it to 5-8 people?) but I did like having people to compare progress with and like someone else said, that feeling when you realize you’re the last man standing heading to the top of the tower is just epic.

It drove me nuts and took me several hours, but I finished it and felt like king of the freakin’ world.

Love it.

minbariguy.7504:

Pfft. Says you. That’s your opinion, and while you’re certainly entitled to it, kindly refrain from stating it as though it is a fact.

Fair enough, but I’ll stand by what I said. It’s a safe assumption this discussion changes nothing about anything, including the opinions of everyone involved. Such is the nature of internet forums, and that is fact. The wonderful thing about my statement is that your disagreement would only serve to prove my point.

The other stuff you say, I’ll grant you it’s arrogant of me to pass a judgment on the discussion, but I’ll go on record as stating that it is no more arrogant than this discussion occuring to begin with, as if the product somehow has less value because it does not have artistic merit. Virtually none of the media we consume has any, because it’s hard to have artistic merit in a product that someone intends to make a profit on. Any kind of meaningful expression or statement is heavily compromised when there’s an intent to make money off of it.

You might say that’s the reality of the times we live in. I agree. Artistic merit is just not a consideration for commercially viable media. There is the rare exception, but GW2 isn’t one, imo.

Actually, I’m not. I’m sure if you spoke with a GW2 dev, they would tell you that GW2 means something more to them beyond its significance as a video game. Video games, in my opinion, have the possibility to be the ultimate art form: in it you have literature, you have art, you have music. To the devs, GW2 is probably not just a video game, it probably goes much deeper than that.

I’m all for video games as art. Unfortunately, AAA commercial releases are not the place to look for it, as discussed just above the quote. The devs are hyping their product. Their intent is to sell their product. They’re selling it to you, even if that means claiming that it’s something more than it is.

Don’t get me wrong, the visual design of GW2 is fantastic, and if you go back and play GW1, even in 2012, it’s still a very good looking game not on the technicals of the graphics, but the strength of the visual design. Jeremy Soule has also been one of my favorite VGM composers since I was enthralled by the Secret of Evermore soundtrack as a kid.

And even if the intent on the part of the devs is to create art (something I don’t doubt on an individual basis), the intent of their NCsoft overlords is to make a buck and nothing more. Like I just got done saying, this means any artistic merit is heavily compromised. Maybe by deadlines on storylines and writing. Maybe by budget cuts to voice recording. Maybe by the expectation that it is unimportant to the gameplay itself, and that the audience ultimately doesn’t care about the lore. But artistic merit is compromised to the point of insignificance, and this will not ever change.

Number one priority is accessible and sustainable gameplay, which means all manner of different things to kill. This is a gameplay decision, and not a lore one. The game telling you you’re a hero is not to strengthen the sense of immersion. It’s to make you, the player, feel good and powerful about playing the game and killing things, so that you continue to do so.

That’s the reason I’m dismissive towards this subject, because it’s irrelevant to the point of the game: to kill as many different things as you can find, for as long as you’re enjoying it. That said, and I believe it was brought up, if you look and talk to everyone, you will get a far better picture of the world than the typical player ever gets exposed to. Not just renown hearts. Talk to anyone with a name. Before you finish a heart. After. Before starting the action of a personal instance. During. After. Talk to the halloween scavenger hunt ghosts after you’ve gotten the book from them. You’d be amazed what you can find. That doesn’t make it art, but it may satisfy the OP’s need for context in the game world.

Tai Kratos.3247:

But again, you miss the point. While you may see games as just entertainment, I am one of those people who sees the potential in the video game medium for artistic merit.

Sir, I am the one that plays the a video game—designed to entertain—to be entertained. If anyone is missing the “point”, it’s you. You’re looking in the wrong place for culturally significant artistic expression, or whatever it is you’re looking for.

To that end, I will critique a video game as I would any other form of art, such as literature, art, or music. This isn’t about the entertainment value of the game – I find it very entertaining regardless of my issues with it – but if the story is weak and the lore is weak, I think it is due some criticism.

Fair, but let’s not pretend what you’re saying is any way meaningful or relevant. Your critique doesn’t make any kind of meaningful statement about the object of your criticism. It’s amusing to consider, in much the same way one might discuss the aerodynamic properties of an alarm clock, but ultimately pointless. The traits being discussed have nothing to do with the object they’re being applied to.

With that said, bring something worthwhile to the discussion, or take your “wit and wisdom” somewhere else.

As I just said a sentence ago, what’s being discussed (artistic merit) has nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 (an entertainment product). The discussion, then, is inherently worthless, thus anything I bring to it is at the least harmless to its value.

But by all means carry on.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Strike

As far as I can tell it’s precisely that skill. Dunno how or if it scales with power, if it can crit, or whatever, you can check that in your combat log or something.

Only MMO forums.

Can you imagine someone complaining to Nintendo about Mario games, because goombas aren’t openly hostile, yet you can still kill them? Did Mario REALLY save the mushroom kingdom if he ate all the good mushrooms and stomped on the bad ones?

Amazing, and goes a long way towards fixing the camera.

As can be seen by people’s screenshots in here, smaller characters are positioned too high on the screen. If the camera can be pointed in such a way to place the character closer to the bottom of the screen at high/max zoom on top of these FoV changes, it’ll be perfect.

I also see that someone had visual issues with reflections. I play with them off and have noticed no graphical side effects. Turning on reflections, it looks like they get skewed weirdly at the sides of the screen, but it isn’t very noticable at the center of the screen.

Barring perhaps the thief, I think all professions are capable of some kind of cool role for large-scale combat. (and even then, thief players would probably consider picking people off and living as epic).

So if that’s your concern, you don’t need to worry about it. You can pick whatever you think is cool and still be useful in a group if you build for it.

slybri.2946:

Since there’s no monthly subscription fee, I tend to compare GW2 with other $60 single player games.

Thank you. I keep trying to tell people that they’re playing this game with the wrong mindset. I dunno, I think they just want a new treadmill to run on, rather than an actual video game to play.

Btw, that’s what your motivation should be, OP. To play a video game and have fun doing it. If you are having fun, fantastic. Who cares if you level? Your level 80 buddy can come play with you. It’s more fun than Orr anyway. GW2’s designed in such a way that you never really need to pay attention to your level; if you play the game (I said it again!), the levels come to you.

(btw, those of you looking for the treadmill, I highly suggest Rift. It’s virtually the same as that other treadmill, but with better graphics and the best class customization I’ve ever seen.)

The safe assumption is no. Even if the game is streamed, the UI overhaul is probably not something they’re willing to spend time on.

Increasing the level cap creates a lot of obsolete zones that have virtually no population once people level past them.

Case in point: every level 30-75 zone currently in the game. You really think anyone’s coming back to Orr if the level cap is increased? Even now the bits that aren’t level 80 are empty.

That you want to return to Cantha someday is fine, but why didn’t you just say that instead of coming up with all this nonsense?

The game just launched. Why would they include Cantha with launch when they can get people to pay for it down the line?

Absolutely not an exploit. The point of the karma booster is to boost karma. They WANT you to buy them to use them like this. It’s the entire point of having the item on the gem store.

My suggestion to you is to join a guild that has a lot of people active, form a party with them, and do the other events with that group without relying on the zerg.

This is a problem Anet can really do nothing about. People are going to just look for the easiest or most mindless way to progress and sit on it. No amount of changing things on their part will ever change that about the zerg.

While I agree with you that many of the events need to be scaled down—many of the Orr events in particular are designed around a minimum level of player activity that just isn’t often met—it won’t change anything about the zerg looking for the easiest spot and sitting on it forever.

The only thing that might come close is to offer a large bonus to the first time per day that an event is completed by a character, but this is a fancy way of saying diminishing returns, which is a term I suspect Arenanet wants to avoid for a little while. :P

You might enjoy Rift.

Rift makes you select an archetype (warrior/rogue/cleric/mage), and then each one has a number of “souls” which each represent a complete class. Well, you choose three of those and get to split your talent points between them WoW-style.

I imagine this is the customization you want. Though GW2’s traits system allows you to build a single profession multiple ways, it doesn’t really change the theme of your character quite like Rift’s system does. And that seems more important to you than the actual differing playstyles, in which GW2 is actually comparable, but in less obvious a way.

I did learn that a lot of OTHER players buy into hype and don’t do the research. Which is ironic because they take their time investment seriously enough to post endless lengths of text about it on forums, but apparently… not serious enough to do the research and form their own opinions before forking over money?

What I learned about myself is that even though my primary motivation in MMOs is PvP, I do very much enjoy the cooperative gameworld. It passes the time and I’m no longer filled with a sense of loathing and paranoia every time I see another player, so that’s a plus.

Mammoth.1975:

And there it is. PvE skills split, now there’s no reason we can’t make the game easier.

That’s not it. PvE bosses scale far beyond the capability of any player to mitigate no matter how defensive they build. The reason why is that the skills are balanced towards fighting other players, and not fighting PvE bosses.

There’s nothing difficult about a warrior pulling out a rifle and kiting a champion/boss/whatever. However, a warrior with a mace and shield in hand standing toe-to-toe with an enemy and using his skills and dodges to survive can be difficult, if it weren’t currently impossible. Making self-heals stronger gives the skilled player a chance of being able to do that, instead of mindlessly kiting (which is easy either way).

If we’re being honest though I would rather boss/champion damage scaled down rather than skills being scaled up for PvE.

Now that we’re opening the floodgates, all skills that go in the healing slots need both effectiveness doubled and cooldowns halved in order to scale them properly with incoming damage in PvE.

Most, if not all, utility skills need cooldowns halved in PvE. Most, if not all, elites need their cooldowns reduced to one-fourth of their current values.

There’s no reason for these skills to be so restricted in PvE anymore if skill splits are happening, and boss damage scales far beyond the player’s capability to mitigate that damage no matter how much defense they pump. There’s a difference between not relying on a tank, and no one being capable of taking sustained damage in PvE, and now that there are skill splits there are no worries about PvP balance being broken.

[[ For the record, I think skill splits are bad and create a lot of confusion for the average player, but since we’ve apparently decided we’re doing it… ]]

It’s not only unclear what your problem with the system is, but also what you’d think would fix it. And your suggestions for changes are completely baffling. I don’t understand what they have to do with anything.

For me, I just want waypoints in capital cities to be free from anywhere in the world. Saves on load screens having to go from WvW to LA to whatever other city and then to the waypoint of your actual destination.

This is one of those weird areas for me, because it’s rather obvious that they’d forbid the use of a turbo-button kind of thing that just keeps your 1 key firing constantly.

However, there really is no reason in game NOT to spam your 1 key. With no resource management and no cooldown, you might as well just keep attacking in much the same way you would keep attacking in a shoot ‘em up game even when there’s nothing on screen to hit.

I would like access to the sound files so I can build custom soundtracks. Apparently the game already lets you do this, but I wanna add to the game music instead of replacing it.

Good read, thanks for putting it together.

My concern with this game moving forward is that many of the cosmetic pieces coming will be introduced as cash shop pieces. Either via gambling or direct purchase or as replacement for RNG such as the precursors, I suspect they’re going to be okay with making these things cash shop since they won’t have superior stats.

GW2 wouldn’t be pay to win in that case, but it would be (and already is to an extent) pay to customize, and I dunno how I feel about that.

I think it’d be okay if there was also a stream of in-game stuff to have too, just worried that too many things will be bought from the cash shop rather than earned through gameplay, I guess is how I’d summarize it.

GW2 doesn’t have endgame. It just has game. You don’t level one way and then play another way at the level cap. You just play it. People overthink this.