Guild Wars 2

I agree with tolunart that you seem unnecessarily vitriolic, Ronin. Whether you see it or not, other people see it. You may not care about what other people think, but there’s a difference between being staunchly independent and being just plain anti-social.

If your goal here is to persuade people to your view, being unpleasant in your posts will not help.

If your goal here is to vent or state your own opinion regardless of others, being unpleasant in your posts is unnecessary.

If your goal here is to create a negative vibe, being unpleasant in your posts is bang on.

It’s entirely your decision. Regardless of how we feel about you, being a jerk affects you more than it affects anyone else.

Yes, I agree.

Part of me thinks that the first game to come along offering truly challenging, thought-provoking, dynamic content in a polished way will do very well.

The other part looks at how many people enjoy farming, raiding and basically collecting imaginary currency and wonders. Maybe Blizzard have the majority of humanity pegged. Maybe what we really wanna do when you get right down to it is having someone feed us a small pat on the back “achievement” for completing a stupidly simple task over and over.

If you are right, Rev, that DR prevents end game being enjoyable to such an extent that players will leave in droves cos they can’t farm, then I would say it’s irrelevant to me personally. If farming is such an integral part of GW2 that without it the game is not playable, I will be leaving whatever they choose to do with DR. I ain’t coming online to do boring, repetitive tasks. That’s what housework is for.

So for me, the only good outcomes to all this is that either you are wrong and they can take the grind away before the player base evaporates OR that grinding only affects a few things in game and that there are enough other fun things to keep players like myself here.

Kedrith, you make an amusing point. I wholeheartedly agree with you that 2012 should be no time for half made MMOs, but looking around it does seem in fact to be the ONLY TYPE ever made these days.

When I ask myself why that might be, the following things occur:

1) Realities of business (i.e. pressure for return on investment) drive timing of release, NOT the completeness of the game. A game doesn’t need to be anywhere near complete to get huge sales.

2) Realities of software development. Look at beta test feedback and compare it to live feedback. It kinda makes me think there are some things you will just not know until the game goes live. You might as well release knowing you have a reasonable amount of re-work to do, as long as you are confident you can do it before players get peeved (this last bit seems to be where they all misjudge things)

3) When everyone else is releasing half made games, you don’t look so bad when you do it.

Soulwatcher.2604:

Cribbage.2056:

Soulwatcher.2604:

Cribbage.2056:

Soulwatcher.2604:

@Cribbage like it or not in this game you NEED people to play. Chasing players away from the game is going to make a sad Cribbage the day you log in and there is no one to play with!

I don’t really see how players logging on to grind helps me. It doesn’t give me anyone to team with in PvP and it doesn’t give allies to kill event bosses with.

Yes, I definitely DO need a decent level of population to play, but they need to be something other than grinding zombies to have a beneficial effect on my game.

Who do you think buys and sells materials? Who do you think trades gold for gems? Who do you think grinds honor badges for hours on end making PVP enjoyable? I could go on and on DR effects PVP and PVE.

I think you are kinda missing the point.

If grinding mats is a necessary part of the game economy, my preference is to change the economy so it is no longer necessary. Not to invite a load of farmers to play.

If grinding honour badges is the only way to get someone to PvP, then my preference is to make PvP be enough fun that people don’t NEED and artificial currency to motivate them.

In other words, make the game fun enough that people will actually want to play it for its own sake.

To this I say amen but truth behold the current system requires a massive grind. Have you ever leveled a craft to 400? The amount of mats you need is mind boggling. Want to travel to 10 zones @80? Get ready to bend over minimum your going to pay 2s30c if they way point is 10ft away and up to 5s if its far away.

Anet does a great job at keeping you broke, the game is very unrewarding. The only way to get ahead is to sit there and grind until your rear end is numb. DR took that away leaving anyone who didn’t get their gear before DR screwed. That’s why there is such a uproar on the forum.

Yes, see my reply to Rev, above. I have to say I essentially agree with your view of the problem, although I am not sure we agree on solution.

Revenant.2691:

Can we tone it down a little bit with the rhetoric? Crib’s every bit as entitled to his opinion as we are, so maybe it might be more constructive to explain our point of view on this better than to simply cop out and call people fanboys who want the game to die.

Crib, if you read the second half of my post a few minutes ago I think you’ll get a better idea of where we’re coming from. Most of us hate grinding and farming, but feel like the system makes us have to do that more to do the other stuff we like. People who like to craft and sell armor, for instance, or people who want to make money/get better gear for WvW. It’s not as if we’re all in here complaining that we’re not allowed to mindlessly kill the same mobs all day as an endgame.

Yes Rev (and all those who made similar points), I think what people are missing is that I do not think the grind should be necessary or even beneficial.

So at the moment we have a game where grinding is about the only way to achieve some of the valid in game goals (e.g. leveling crafting) but they have put in DR to stop grinding.

My prefernce if for DR to stay but the mats mechanics and numbers to be adjusted so that things can be achieved without needing to grind (e.g. you need 1 large bone for a recipe currently requiring 8, or they just massively increase drop numbers of fine mats).

This is in opposition to the opinion stated here by some others that they are happy with grinding remaining but they want DR to go.

Soulwatcher.2604:

Cribbage.2056:

Soulwatcher.2604:

@Cribbage like it or not in this game you NEED people to play. Chasing players away from the game is going to make a sad Cribbage the day you log in and there is no one to play with!

I don’t really see how players logging on to grind helps me. It doesn’t give me anyone to team with in PvP and it doesn’t give allies to kill event bosses with.

Yes, I definitely DO need a decent level of population to play, but they need to be something other than grinding zombies to have a beneficial effect on my game.

Who do you think buys and sells materials? Who do you think trades gold for gems? Who do you think grinds honor badges for hours on end making PVP enjoyable? I could go on and on DR effects PVP and PVE.

I think you are kinda missing the point.

If grinding mats is a necessary part of the game economy, my preference is to change the economy so it is no longer necessary. Not to invite a load of farmers to play.

If grinding honour badges is the only way to get someone to PvP, then my preference is to make PvP be enough fun that people don’t NEED and artificial currency to motivate them.

In other words, make the game fun enough that people will actually want to play it for its own sake.

Apos.5184:

So you want everyone to quit? Right?

If you enjoy playing a game on your own, why buy an MMO then?

You can do without farmers, ok, nice. What else do you want out of the way in order to please you?

It’s not me who seems to have trouble accepting people with different opinions actually…

So when I say “I can do without farmers” you read:

1) I want all players to quit

2) I want anyone who farms to “get out of my way”

3) I play MMOs even though I prefer not to ever see other people online

Lol, with reasoning like that, it kinda doesn’t matter what I say – you’ll just drama queen it into something else.

To clarify – when I say I can do without farmers, it means if some people quit GW2 who would otherwise be sat on one small area kill the same mobs repeatedly, I don’t expect I will notice their absence. I do however want the game to be full of active, fun players who are PvPing and participating in dynamic content.

Yeah, I know all I guess, cos I disagree with you. And that means I got a bad attitude or something, right?

I can do without farmers. Even if some of them occasionally stop for an event, it’s not enough to make me care about having them in the game. If we don’t have a high enough pop from people playing for the fun of PvP or events, I’ll be out of here.

Soulwatcher.2604:

@Cribbage like it or not in this game you NEED people to play. Chasing players away from the game is going to make a sad Cribbage the day you log in and there is no one to play with!

I don’t really see how players logging on to grind helps me. It doesn’t give me anyone to team with in PvP and it doesn’t give allies to kill event bosses with.

Yes, I definitely DO need a decent level of population to play, but they need to be something other than grinding zombies to have a beneficial effect on my game.

There is another angle to consider here. Yes, classes being easy to own with by an unskilled player are a massive problem, but I don’t see much of that in GW2.

I think the real problem is there are some classes that are easy to own with by a reasonably skilled player and some that are very, very hard to own with no matter how skilled the player.

An unskilled thief or mesmer will mostly get owned except by other unskilled players I suppose). That’s because there are a whole range of PvP mistakes that will get you killed and are not class specific. Mashing keys and charging every enemy you see being the top two on my list.

Dradiin.8935:

Cribbage.2056:

Continued patronage is profitable. Players buying gems are important to the free-to-play model. And players who do not buy gems are still important because low population games generally do not last long.

This of course is the obvious answer, but it has not come across as an obvious reality from Anet.

Countless threads are made (most of them deleted or locked) that talk about how certain aspects of recent updates have made them decide to leave the game. Instead of impressing upon how important it is for players to stay with the game, most of the please for a change back to before the updates go on ignored, deleted, or locked.

I am sure others will agree with me, Anet has not made a good case that they want us to continue to play, as i said before, they got our money from the box sale, why do they care if we stay ?

Er … you got quite a difficult to understand spin on this one mate. I mean … you seem to be saying that Anet not making the game enjoyable is because they don’t care if people stay or go.

They’ve just spend several years and a whole buttload of effort making a game they want us to play. You must be on another planet if you think for one moment they want anything other than a massive, happy player base.

Sure, the game is broken in many ways and it’s making it unfun for some of us, but that is definitely NOT through lack of effort on Anet’s part.

Newsin.1945:

What annoys me is when they say “there will be no grinding” and then put in a mechanic that requires it like crafting. really?

I agree with this. I hate grinding and think it is the laziest tactic for both developers and players. People who WANT to grind for long hours, honestly give me a small depression about the state of humanity.

I was quite taken aback when I did the math of trying to level crafting in my head and realised the only way to get enough fine materials was to grind, since I had out levelled the story and completed the zones where those items drop.

One in the minus column for Anet, to be sure. They should radically reduce the amount of fine mats needed for levelling crafts. It’s supposed to be a game, not a job!

DR gets a thumbs up from me. It stops people turning into grinding zombies and it stops the gold sellers. Two birds for the price of one. And yes, this is me telling you how you should play. When you make bad decisions in life, the people who put you straight are on your side, however much you might resent them.

All games have set play modes. There are no games where you can go in and say “I want to play outside the game mechanics.”

If you enjoy farming, you should play a game where it is more central to the over all game. That’s not me asking you to leave. That’s me saying, choose a game where you like the playstyle, don’t choose one you don’t like then tell them they are being dictatorial.

Continued patronage is profitable. Players buying gems are important to the free-to-play model. And players who do not buy gems are still important because low population games generally do not last long.

It seems like the OP is one of those people who think there should be a “reward” for doing an ingame activity. Now, I realise that puts him in with the vast majority of MMO players, but it is wrong in my book. Rat-and-pellet games are stringing you along. You pay them to entertain you, but instead they get you to sit back and switch your brain off while your gold/points/materials/insert imaginary currency here ticks upwards.

Really, if that’s all you want, I will write you an app where pressing the spacebar makes a counter go up by one. You can sit there all night seeing how high you can get it. Every 1000, I’ll make it play a jingle and say “congratulations, you’ve reached level x!”

Having said all that, his observations about PvP in this game were kinda spot on. sPvP is dull, because all the maps are the same and none of them have any real tactical depth. And WvW involves too much follow-the-zerg running around.

Make PvP more interesting before people lose interest would be my request.

Geemo.6018:

Anet is trying to force people to buy gems. I fully understand that. Hey Anet, how about you come with some good cash shop items (current cash shop items are beyond lame) that will make players want to purchase gems instead of lame tactics like DR?

It’s possible other people have made this observation. I don’t read the forums enough to know, but I do agree with it.

For example, I now have 150 Black Lion Chests which I can’t open. To open one of them is going to cost me a few Pounds? That’s mad. At first, keys seemed to be awarded for completion of zones and the daily, but that has not happened to me for a couple of weeks now and I suspect they stopped it in a deliberate attempt to force people to buy gems.

I’ve played other free-to-play games and I have a warning for Anet – make your money on value, not on coercion. I’ve spent plenty of money in other F2P games on items because they seemed desirable. Way more money than the average MMO monthly subscription. But that was because I felt it was my CHOICE to buy them and there was no pressure being applied from the vendor.

At the point I feel like Anet are trying to stiff me, I’m going elsewhere.

Sorry to sound rude, but I think the OP is lost somewhere in one of his own orifices. There is no need for a clever or elaborate explanation for the trends he is observing.

1) Some people leave after their free month is up. There is nothing strange here. They didn’t enjoy the game enough to begin with.

2) Some people stay a few months beyond the free month but complain a lot. That’s because they want to stay in the game, but they feel it isn’t fulfilling their needs. SWToR was a great example of this for me. The released a game with loads of flaws, worked hard to patch in fixes but ultimately, who wants to pay subs for 6 months while they try to bring the game up a decent level of enjoyability. I will add to this, that even without paying subs, who wants to log into a game where it isn’t meeting their needs? You can always come back in 6 months and see if it is fixed, as long as the populations have not tanked completely.

3) Some people stay and don’t complain. Maybe the flaws in the game don’t bother them. Maybe they are not the complaining type. All games are flawed, particularly newly released MMOs.

I’m not sure how I stand with GW2 at the moment. I definitely feel my interested has waned over the last couple of weeks and a lot of that has to do with constantly running into stalled events, but I’m not quite at the point of leaving, and if the event engine gets sorted within the next couple of weeks the rest of the game may well get my vote.

WoW is a reserve for me, I will admit it. It’s uninspired and a little immature, but it’s a game where you can both PvE and PvP in teams and don’t have to worry too much about running into bugs while you do it. I’m seriously hoping I don’t have to find out whether pandas are as irritating as I think they will be.

Eveything I have tried to do in the last week in GW2 has been affected by a bug.

Skill events stuck – one of these has been stuck for over a week now. I reported it and there has been a patch with the usual unhelpful “fixes numerous stuck events” but it DIDN’T fix it. The stuck skill event means the zone cannot be completed.

Bugged hearts – mobs missing, NPCs not interacting meaning the heart cannot be progressed.

Storyline fails – this is by WAY the most annoying. So I play a storyline segment for 30-45 mins and then it bugs (mob wave fails to spawn, or quest item disappears with no way of retrieval). My only recourse at that point is to exit the story instance and start from scratch. But that’s so depressing I am logging instead.

Every time I meet one of these bugs it makes me want to play less. Unfortunately they are so ubiquitous that I am getting to the point where I don’t want to play at all. Without them the game would be very enjoyable, but with them it’s getting completely unenjoyable.

Whoever designed or quality assured the code that supports the events system should be sacked. It is the buggiest thing in the game and isn’t showing ANY signs of getting better. Every patch, instead of “fixed the event system to stop events bugging” all we get is “fixed numerous bugged events.”

EDIT – I meant to point out that this problem is made worse by a lack of support from Anet. When I am in a bugged storyline segment and looking at having to ditch the last 30 mins play and start over, there are no channels through which I can get any help. That’s awful support.

Musty.3148:

Cribbage.2056:

3) Stop saying kitten every other sentence. In a few months when the cool kids have moved on to another fotm phrase, you’ll look back and feel stupid.

You realize that the forum filter switches any bad words to “kitten” right???

Maybe you can “look back and feel stupid”

lol nice one. No, I didn’t know that and yes I do feel stupid

In the circumstances I think my response has to be – kitten!

You said yourself that PW is not really an sPvP skill. There’s fewer people, smaller spaces and generally less chance of landing it.

If we agree that PW is not really used in sPvP, then where would be the harm in lowering its burst to balance it for WvW?

Personally, I think you could build a very powerful team around PW in sPvP/tournaments. Have a composition that includes a lot of roots and snares, and used 1 or 2 thieves to spearhead the kills. However, I don’t know whether that’s imbalanced. It remains to be seen really.

KaiserCX.7103:

Cribbage.2056:

Yes, I’ve used it and I found it to be an easy way to kill people. If you have used it and didn’t, I would imagine you need more practise.

Obviously “removing” the burst from PW would be too extreme a measure. Reducing it would be a more sensible approach, which should not need saying.

So now you question my skill without actually seeing me play, it isn’t my skill in question here, it’s the people that don’t bring condition removals or know how to avoid a skill that is so simple to avoid (yes I even avoid it)? I honestly don’t even use Sword/Pistol in a sPVP setting because a lot of people have learned how to avoid it now. I prefer it in WvW where it’s chaotic and people are less focused on a single target and it’ll hit multiple targets. Honestly I’ve gone into big clumps of enemies and sat there and fought them for 30 seconds before they even notice me (without the use of stealth and with my warrior friend with me). For sPVP I prefer Dagger/Pistol due to it being more versatile for my play style. Oh yeah I thought I was done here…..

a) I did not question your skill. I surmised that if you have trouble killing people with PW, you might need to practise with it more.

b) This discussion is about WvW. Or so I assumed from the fact that the original post was a complaint about PW in WvW.

c) When your in a WvW zerg with 20+ opponents on each side, it’s a little unreasonable to think every single person there should be able to keep track of every other. That’s kinda MY point. In such situations, a PW thief is going to have many opportunities to exploit the imbalanced burst damage.

KaiserCX.7103:

I didn’t realize ACTUALLY playing and seeing how people react is “theorycrafting”. If you’re nearly full initiative at the beginning of a fight and most of their stuff is on a cool down and they have no endurance then why shouldn’t they lose or at least have to try and retreat? Any class if they are built to do some damage will tear someone up if their opponent has little or no endurance and their skills are on cool-down. I fail to see how this is a thief related problem, you’re simply grasping. I’m done here, neither of us are going to change our opinions on this matter I’ll just agree to disagree.

That’s not what I said. It’s not helpful to a discussion for you to immediately leap to the most extreme example of every opinion.

In fact you could be more or less even on initiative and have a lot of your skills available, but if your purges are on CD, PW is gonna be a problem. Dodging will only help you for a very short time, particularly when the thief has infiltrator’s strike to use as a gap closer.

All the thief needs is one decent immob or cripple.

Yes, I’ve used it and I found it to be an easy way to kill people. If you have used it and didn’t, I would imagine you need more practise.

Obviously “removing” the burst from PW would be too extreme a measure. Reducing it would be a more sensible approach, which should not need saying.

KaiserCX.7103:

Cribbage.2056:

You are wrong.

Everyone here is agreed, including you it seems that the summary of PW’s issue is “if you let the thief get close, PW will almost certainly kill you.”

You say “well then don’t let him get close,” but you are wrong.

In a multi-participant game, the thief may well not be the focus of your attention. The first you know of his presence could well be when he PW’s you. That’s even more likely give the thief’s stealth options.

In addition, there are many forms of root, snare or stun than the thief or his team mates could apply to you and which you may not have the ability to avoid or clear. At that point there is no way of stopping the PW from landing.

It’s balance breaking to have an ability which is so lethal.

Like I said before, I am a thief and intend to stay as one. I’d rather play a balanced class, and all you easy-moders who wanna PW your way to the top are not helping us at all.

Uhhh… who said don’t let the thief get close? I said people need to learn how to avoid the skill (dodge out or even just run behind the thief while he does it if you’re out of endurance). If you’re immobilized and didn’t bring a condition/immobilize removal (your fault) then you’re going to die by many classes anyways. It’s not like Thief is the only class that can completely destroy your while you’re slowed or rooted. Lets face it, Pistol Whip is a high damage skill that is kind enough to tell you you should dodge out instead of being a fast spike damage.

You really need to stop theorycrafting in a bubble. Sure, if I was in a dual-type situation with a thief, where we are the only combatants, have full endurance and no skills on CD, you would be right.

In the ebb-and-flow of PvP where you spend a lot of your time fighting other people, with low end or skills on CD you are dead wrong. All the thief has to do is look for an immobilised, crippled or stunned target. Failing that, just sneaking up behind someone who is engaged on another target will often allow them to apply the PW.

Rika, the stun in PW is an irrelevance. PW has too high burst damage. Even if it had no stun component, that would be true. Even infiltrator’s strike is more relevant to this discussion than the half second stun.

People who keep bringing discussions of PW to the stun at best do not understand the complexities of multi-player PvP. At worst they are deliberately trying to distract from the real issue of the burst damage.

You are wrong.

Everyone here is agreed, including you it seems that the summary of PW’s issue is “if you let the thief get close, PW will almost certainly kill you.”

You say “well then don’t let him get close,” but you are wrong.

In a multi-participant game, the thief may well not be the focus of your attention. The first you know of his presence could well be when he PW’s you. That’s even more likely give the thief’s stealth options.

In addition, there are many forms of root, snare or stun than the thief or his team mates could apply to you and which you may not have the ability to avoid or clear. At that point there is no way of stopping the PW from landing.

It’s balance breaking to have an ability which is so lethal.

Like I said before, I am a thief and intend to stay as one. I’d rather play a balanced class, and all you easy-moders who wanna PW your way to the top are not helping us at all.

I’m a thief. Play it as my main at 80.

Pistol Whip is overpowered. Its damage is too high.

There is plenty of evidence for it, as you can see by playing it or watching videos. Also, circumstantially it is obvious from the number of people using it as a build – that’s almost always a sign of something being OP.

People need to wise up:

1) Don’t defend and OP skill, even if it belongs to your class. Imbalance ruins fun and eventually leads to game populations dwindling.
2) Don’t try to justify the validity of skills by retro-theorycrafting specific fights. Spreading out DOES NOT counter PW. It might limit it to mowing down just one person, if you’re lucky. If that’s your only defence, you’re pretty much admitting it is OP.
3) Stop saying kitten every other sentence. In a few months when the cool kids have moved on to another fotm phrase, you’ll look back and feel stupid.

It is in everyone’s interest to have a balanced game. Sure, your ganking and face-rolling will not be as common, but you’ll be surprised how much fun a truly challenging fight can be.