Guild Wars 2

Goldberg.4831:

Cyninja.2954:

Goldberg.4831:

Chrono.6928:

warbignime.4610:

No, first dungeon is dtill rewarding as long as you trade your token and salvage. Second liquid gold hurt gold to gem rate way too much. Third dungeon reward you way too much liquid gold for the skill and effort involved which is nearly 0. Actually I think the current liquid gold is still too much.

Gem rate? No it didn’t. Not all dungeon paths are easy mode like cof 1,2, ac 1,3. There are still quite a few which people don’t even do for the most part except maybe once to get dungeonmaster. If anything they could not get rid of the gold reward but instead make the fights more challenging on the easier paths. Or smarter enemy AI to where people can’t just stack behind walls.

Please support what you say with facts and not useless opinions. Your argument is so bad and poorly worded I’m pretty sure you’re trolling.

He’s trolling or oblivious, I can’t tell. I can tell you most of his post are over exaggerating or just plain made up crap.

Was liquid gold hurting the economy? NO.

Was liquid gold hurting gem sales? NO.
Does Anet think it was, it definitely looks that way. IMO it is backfiring. I ran dungeons because I enjoyed the content, the gold was just a bonus.

Gem store purchases before HOT = ALOT

Gem store purchases after HOT = 0

Gem store purchases during the holidays = 0

Bring back dungeons.

Everything you said, is backed by absolutely no data.

Are you still running dungeons? If not, then gold was your motivation. Sorry to burst your bubble.

I’ll just leave this here: http://gw2dungeons.net/Records

Now notice that not all of these are still achieveable due to changes, but times close are definately possible with the powercreep that is the elite specialisations.

Only because YOU can’t do a path in under 5 minutes, doesn’t mean others can’t.

Ever heard of dimminishing returns. I dont know anyone running 20 dungeons a day just for gold. I sure there was, but not many. I ran dungeons yes for the gold, also for the collections. Now I’m forced to collect through pvp. liquid gold is a bs arguement. its all about gem sales. God forbid I am able to earn any skins or QOL improvements through playing the game the way I would like too.

Linking speed runs has nothing to do with liquid gold, those guys were doing it for bragging rights.

“Now Everything you said, is backed by absolutely no data.” show me how liquid gold was hurting your economy. isnt converting gems to gold, liquid gold.

How can people be this…

Did you even try to understand what I wrote?

No, converting gems to gold is NOT the same as getting direct gold rewards from dungeons. That gold you convert your gems into comes from a pool of gold. That pool has been filled by players BUYING GEMS with gold.

Same as the pool of gems increases when people buy gems with real life cash and use those to convert to gold.

Here read up: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Currency_exchange

The total amount of gold in the game economy DOES NOT CHANGE (except for the 15% tax both ways which actually reduces the total amount of gold in the game economy).

Linking speedruns was to show that what the poster futher up said is NOT bs. It is possible and I know enough people who without being super duper speedruners had low times on many dungeons.

There were no diminishing returns on people doing dungeon tours. Clearing 5-6 different dungeon paths per hour was not uncommon. There was a reason why the gold gain was considered only slightly behind SW for speedrunenrs. The difference being that this is gold directly injected into the game economy (the gold supply increases) where as going through the TP does not.

Please, for the love of god, at least try to read up on stuff. I’m not going to repeat this point for a 4th time. This is just silly.

Goldberg.4831:

Chrono.6928:

warbignime.4610:

No, first dungeon is dtill rewarding as long as you trade your token and salvage. Second liquid gold hurt gold to gem rate way too much. Third dungeon reward you way too much liquid gold for the skill and effort involved which is nearly 0. Actually I think the current liquid gold is still too much.

Gem rate? No it didn’t. Not all dungeon paths are easy mode like cof 1,2, ac 1,3. There are still quite a few which people don’t even do for the most part except maybe once to get dungeonmaster. If anything they could not get rid of the gold reward but instead make the fights more challenging on the easier paths. Or smarter enemy AI to where people can’t just stack behind walls.

Please support what you say with facts and not useless opinions. Your argument is so bad and poorly worded I’m pretty sure you’re trolling.

He’s trolling or oblivious, I can’t tell. I can tell you most of his post are over exaggerating or just plain made up crap.

Was liquid gold hurting the economy? NO.

Was liquid gold hurting gem sales? NO.
Does Anet think it was, it definitely looks that way. IMO it is backfiring. I ran dungeons because I enjoyed the content, the gold was just a bonus.

Gem store purchases before HOT = ALOT

Gem store purchases after HOT = 0

Gem store purchases during the holidays = 0

Bring back dungeons.

Everything you said, is backed by absolutely no data.

Are you still running dungeons? If not, then gold was your motivation. Sorry to burst your bubble.

I’ll just leave this here: http://gw2dungeons.net/Records

Now notice that not all of these are still achieveable due to changes, but times close are definately possible with the powercreep that is the elite specialisations.

Only because YOU can’t do a path in under 5 minutes, doesn’t mean others can’t.

Grogba.6204:

Why not cut the Gold reward entirely or leave it as it is and instead reward players with T5 and T6 fine/rare crafting materials? (explanation further down)

As I see it (and as was explained by Cyninja.2954 above) to much liquid gold entered the game. Just a little calculation already proves this:

//note: Gold reward may vary depending on the dungeon (Arah 4)

g = gold reward at the end of a dungeon
p = number of paths
t = number of players
x = amount of liquid gold generated

g * p * t = x

Lets just take CoF and we get:

1.2 * 3 * 5 = 18g

Thats 18g generated out of thin air for just one group of players. Assuming 100 groups had done this daily we already have

1800g per day or
12600g per week

for just ONE Dungeon! (People farmed CoE, TA, AC and CM, too)

---

It should be no surprise that liquid gold was unsustainable for the game’s economy. But A-Net could simulntaneously throw the dungeon community a bone without inflating the economy while helping all players in the long run by adding crafting materials as reward.

Why do players accumulate gold? So that they can buy the things they have no interest in farming or which are to hard to come by.
What happens to these things? They are consumed or transformed into more valuable items.

T5 and T6 fine materials (totems, blood, claws, fangs, etc.) and rare materials (cores and lodestones) are required in large quantities for a multitude of things (legendary weapons, rare skins, armor sets, etc.) meaning that demand > supply.

To counter the scarcity of said goods and give the playerbase reasons to play dungeons again I would change it like this:

Ascalonian Catacombs
- Increased dropchance for Pile of Vile/Putrid Essence
- Increased dropchance for Large/Vicious Claw

Caudecus Manor
- Increased dropchance for Charged Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Intricate/Elaborate Totem

Twilight Arbor
- Increased dropchance for Onyx Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Potent/Powerful Venom Sac

Sorrow’s Embrace
- Increased dropchance for Destroyer Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Large/Ancient Bone

Crucible of Eternity
- Increased dropchance for Crystal Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Large/Vicious Fang

Citadel of Flames
- Increased dropchance for Molten Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Large/Armored Scale

Honor of the Waves
- Increased dropchance for Glacial Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Pile of Incandescent/Crystalline Dust

The Ruined City of Arah
- Increased dropchance for Corrupted Core/Lodestone
- Increased dropchance for Vial of Potent/Powerful Blood

Final Rewards:
- Small amount of liquid Gold (Similar to current state)
- Dungeon tokens (Same or more as current state)
- 1-3 dungeon specific cores OR 1 dungeon specific Lodestone
- 4-6 T5 fine material OR 2-3 T6 fine material

Using the same calculation as before, just the final rewards would net us:

(group of five, three paths)
15 – 27 cores
15 lodestones (maybe to high)
60-90 T5 fine material
30-45 T6 fine material

//all of the changes/ideas I made are just this. If someone has an even better idea than me I would love to read it.

Opinions?

Would also work, though those amounts are way to high. Considering most dungeon paths can be completed in 3-10 minutes by speedrunners.

This would decrease the value of these items dramatically making dungeons again undesirable (though it would allow people to farm these more quickly). I still prefer a token alternative to allow people to better finish collections (which in turn also unlocks ascended trinkets) and allows for the rares+exotics to get forged (for old pres) or salvaged for t5-6 mats and ecto.

kim possible.9406:

sames goes for shards.. get a party of 2-5 ppl and do the first part of lvl52 (volcanic grawl farm) until they run and start over.. its faster if u and the others equip a RANGE weapon since you dont get hit by kd 24/7… i did that for about 1,5 hours and ended up with 11 shards and a crapton of t5/t6 totems, large skulls, few rares and crap drops..

you can split 1 shard into 3 globs and 1 glob
keep lfg up and running since most guys leave pretty quick.
all you need for this farm is 1 guy that can open the lvl 52 fractal, you dont need any AR since it doesnt apply on this part of the fractal

This does sound quite useful for new players interested in fractals. Going for shards is definately the fastest way to get all the needed materials.

I don’t actually think they changed any drop rates, but instead, since people now kill way less trash in fractals (running maw, molten boss and swamp has nearly no trash) the amount of materials gained is less over a given timeperiod.

Sometimes these kind of things go under for vets who have their 100+ shards. Good advice.

Still it might be worthwhile to do the 1-20 and 21-50 fractal achievements just for practice and the reward chests. Not sure how many vials, globs and shards would come around that way, but I’m sure it would be enough for 1-2 ring infusions.

Iozeph.5617:

See? There you are, being pedantic, making my points for me… again. Yes, perceived value, supply and demand – blah blah blah. The economy you mention, the market, all are completely within Anet’s power to manipulate without a bit of transparency- even the alleged reaction of the market you mention.

This has nothing to do with supply and demand, or perceived value or any type of manipulation. It’s plain to see if you know where to look. I’m not making any points for you, you just make no sense in this disscussion. Instead of giving proper counter arguments you go on wild blabing sprees which only demonstrate further that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Iozeph.5617:

Any deduction you’re making is faulty. Any reaction shown is faulty. There is no paper trail. There is no causality. Nothing other than Anet’s say-so.

We could just as easily deduce or infer that the reaction and the shift people are perceiving is Anet cooking the books.

I’m coming from a position of, "We have none of the facts, but what we are being fed.’ I want to know that I’m right or wrong -there’s no shame in either- but I want something more than, ‘Cause we say so.’ to proove it.

True, we could go down the road of “arenanet is evil and a mastermind behind everything”.

Or, we could use the knowledge we have of economics and human behavior and try to make sense of what is happening in the current markets (gem exchange and trading post).

For example, gems are at an all time low for gold buy. This can be attributed to one of the following:

A.) more people convert gems to gold -> thus depleting the gold exchange and increasing the gem exchange.

This is likely given the current monetary deflation.

B.) Less people buy gems with gold. This could be attributed to no interesting items on the gem exchange (unlikely with the amount of gem exchange exlusives and hardcore pushing of the gem store recently by arenanet). Or simply because people value their gold more and are less willing to spend as much on gems (which again would benefit the idea of deflation or slower inflation happening).

Finally we can speculate that if the gold from dungeons were insignificant, arenanet might not have bothered with it. Maybe they simply wanted to desincentivise dungeons, which would not explain the huge lack of ligquid gold which could have been added to different sources.

Iozeph.5617:

What we’re come back to with the inflation argument is which gold out of thin air is bad?

Does Anet want all gold out of thin air gone? Do they only want gold from thin air gone from dungeons? Is it gold from thin air from fractals? From raids?

They couldn’t possibly want the gold out of thin air that is actual moneys converted to gems – then converted to gold- gone, could they? But in the end it’s all gold created out of thin air. And in the end they’re being anything but forthcoming about it.

Strawman argument. Arenanet doesn’t care if you spend 100 gold on 100 gems or 10 gold. The conversion would adjust. No one is saying they want to remove all currency, simply the amount generated out of thin air.

Why gold out of thin air (aka as direct loot is bad) was explained further up. If you can’t, or don’t want to, understand the difference I can’t help you.

Iozeph.5617:

What are they transparent about? Well, if we’re talking about obvious things which drive the prices of commodities higher they’ve certainly done nothing to lower their take of gold from trading post exchanges. If you’re buying gems and converting to gold then that’s money right out of your pocket for absolutely nothing -cause reasons.

I’m begin to think you really don’t understand the difference between the trading post, liquid gold and the gem exchange. I’ll try to give an overview later. They can be as transperent as they want to. They openly stated that they wanted the gold reward from dungeons gone.

Iozeph.5617:

But back to, ‘out of thin air.’ It’s a bit insulting to players that the gold from dungeons – gold come from participating in the contents provided is dubbed, ‘gold out of thin air,’ no? Out of thin air, as though effort and time spent count for nothing. As though to imply that the reward for victory is somehow actually… charity?

If you kill a monster and loot copper, silver or gold, it’s as though that gold were magically created. Same goes for any liquid/direct gold reward. Thus it’s created “out of thin air”.

If you pay waypoint costs, trading post fees, gem exchange fees, buy stuff from npc merchants, etc. Your gold is GONE! Poof, instant destroyed.

If you buy/sell something on the trading post, gold between players changes hands (with a 15% fee). No gold is created. The gold earned merely changed its owner. Thus the gold was not created this instant, on the contrary, the fee actually removed gold from the game economy.

This has nothing to do with charity or looking down on player achievements. I never said so, you merely seem to not understand.

Iozeph.5617:

There’s nothing wrong with a healthy amount of greed to keep the wheels turning. There is overhead for server upkeep and bandwidth hosting packages. That’s what box/and later on gem sales were intended for.

This has to do with this topic how? Your greed in this example is missplaced, since if more liquid or direct gold enters the game, prices will adjust upwards. Thus you buy less for your gold.

Iozeph.5617:

The whales alone won’t keep this game running.

How poetic, but beside the point. You still haven’t given any argument as to why inflation would not occure or why it would be good. Instead you’ve been brambling on showing you have little understanding of what is talked about.

As I said, I’m not against increasing dungeon rewards in forms other than direct gold. If you still can’t understand why, then I;m sorry I can’t help you.

Iozeph.5617:

How? How is it inflation? Why? Just on the basis of Anet saying so?

The term “inflation” originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation,²⁹ and some economists still use the word in this way. However, most economists today use the term “inflation” to refer to a rise in the price level. An increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation, to distinguish it from rising prices, which may also for clarity be called “price inflation”.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

Increasing the gold gained via dungeons causes straight up monetary inflation. No need to be a rocket scientist to understand this.

Selling things on the tradin post or buying gems, causes no such inflation since the gold you gain has been generated by another player. On the contrary, the taxation here actually reduces the total amount of gold ingame.

Iozeph.5617:

Until we have player account names beside every entry for scrap of every commodity available for purchase on the BLTP, for every bit of in game gold being sold, and until every gold exchange is followed up by an in game mail receipt to the player -seeing as how actual moneys are enterring this economy from outside and making gems/gold from ‘thin air’-

Good news, for most of this I can tell you straigth off the bat that they ahve nothing to do with inflation. Unless arenanet put up ghost items, which is highly unlikely since they can just alter drop rates. But hey, maybe they do.

Second, you can be assured, arenanet has absolut 100% correct values on how much money enters the economy and via which source and how much exits via gold sinks. They have ALL the data and access to even more.

You could argue that the gold from dungeons would be insignificant compared to other gold generation, which no one could argue against except arenanet since all we can do is speculate. But going by the market reaction and the specific targeting of gold rewards, again we can deduce that dungeon gold was significant.

Which leads me back to my original point, increasing gold rewards would cause monetary inflation and very likely increase prices accross the board and no one would be better off.

CoraxRnR.5742:

I know that there is this option, the problem is that a Revenant standard model doesn’t exist. Thus Asura Revs in ranked are still displayed as Asura.

Ah, my bad then.

That is a very unfortunate bug then. Should hopefully get fixed soon.

CoraxRnR.5742:

It isn’t like that, quite obviously. I only brought it up to get some attention to this minor issue, I know that there are worse. Still, with the amount of Condirevs running postal it would be nice to get a human model. On the other hand I can still blame my 1v1 losses against them on the tiny model, eh?

Actually, you can’t.

There is an option for standard human models in all pvp game modes.

Maybe try that for a while, it also helps with telegraphs and animations of attacks.

Lanaeris.3845:

The casual label for this game is what gave me that fan girl crave when I started. Since Hot, it’s been nothing but disappointment (except for the artistic side of the game). I am mad that everyone suggests to ‘get better’ to have more fun. “look up the best dps builds” “watch youtube videos of good players” “Learn your traits and builds”. Frankly, that’s not how some of us have fun. Some of us find enjoyment in the little things, like a leaf that looks awesome in the corner or a waterfall waterslide iceskating thing. We call our friends over and enjoy our time together. This game is pushing people away from each other when it sends them to look up the best dps builds to keep up with everyone; people get competitive and elitist. I miss guild wars for what it was, I truly do. Every MMO goes this route eventually.

How so?

Why would you bother with stuff others are saying when/if you take enjoyment in other things?

What is so suprising about people wanting to improve their gameplay?

There are active and alive guild wars role playing communities you might want to look into.

The way I read your post is as follows:
“I don’t want to put any effort into improving my knowledge, skill, gameplay, etc. of my character (which is absolutely fine if you don’t care for this stuff), but I want other players with different mindsets/goals to take me along (this is not fine. You need to play with likeminded individuals or else confilcts or disagreements will come up).”

That, or you’ve been drinking the negative coolaid of the forums to much.

As is, it is absolutely possible to never group and play 95% of the game solo and have a blast.

Avipt.9632:

As the title says, i kinda like spvp and my win/loss ratio is about 50/50 i would say, im not worst but far from the best. And i wanted to try out this new league. I figured hey im not that bad so i give this a try. 10 matches and 10 losses later I gave up.

So what about PvE then? Well I just cant get good at Fractals and dungeons, so im not even gonna try Raids.
Ive never experienced a game where my casual gameplay have hurt my experience so much :P

So does my mediocrity ruin the game for me?

I should add that ive played this game in small periods since release :/

First hint:
- try to read up on your class
- make sure you understand all your traits and build proper trait+stat combos. even the strongest greatsword (power build) necromancer (insert class of choice) does no damage with condition gear

Second hint:
- try a different class. sometimes it clicks more with a different class

Third hint:
- spvp, pve and wvw all require different approaches and understanding. don’t expect just because you mastered one to excell at the other straight away, though class understanding will help
- fractals and pve content in general is mostly memorisation (probably 70% memory, 30% reflexes). You won’t be good at fractals unless you know them by heart. Then it’s all a matter of “doing the correct thing at the correct time”. wvw and spvp are a bit different in that respect

Final hint:
- especially spvp is in a state of big confusion at the moment
- there is a huge influx of f2p players with little experience
- vast unbalance due to elite specialisations
- bad luck with team comps and quite a few 5-mann groups signing up at the moment to breez through the ranks in pvp atm

Junkpile.7439:

Dire necromancer is good. Works well in PvE.

Unless you plan on tanking that raid/fractal, that toughness on Dire will screw you.

As is, you don’t want ANY toughness unless you are the tank (for raids/fractals).

TexZero.7910:

Cyninja.2954:

TexZero.7910:

Keep the current rewards as is.

Add in dungeon vanquishing, as a selectable route (alternative to explorable) that makes you clear all paths and mobs before being rewarded would give gold relative to the scale of the dungeon ex AC vanquish 1.5g with a full Arah being around 10g.

Which part of direct gold rewards causing inflation do people not understand?

Arenanet don’t want high amounts of gold to enter the game. Also all this would lead to, ocne again, is a small fraction of the playerbase speedclearing the dungeons while the rest are forced into long dungeon runs.

You keep using inflation for justification for having a product that has no real attraction value and you’ll notice that the only thing being deflated is the player base.

I still haven’t heard any counter argument to inflation.

If players get more gold across the board, inflation will make prices rise, and no one will be better off.

Are they disadvantaging dungeons? Sure, because they want to shift to fractals.

Have they increased fractal rewards even though they stated they would (direct gold and drops)? No. This has to be corrected.

If you want dungeons buffed, the most sensible way is to think of rewards that are NOT tied to liquid (direct) gold rewards and asking for those. Hence my suggestion to make them more appealing for the collection achievement while at the same time providing more materials for the TP (all via higher token rewards). The one thing most of us can expect, is arenanet not to give gold back to dungeons. The content is dead. If you think they’ll let people speedrun dungeons for gold rewards again, you are deluding yourself.

TexZero.7910:

Keep the current rewards as is.

Add in dungeon vanquishing, as a selectable route (alternative to explorable) that makes you clear all paths and mobs before being rewarded would give gold relative to the scale of the dungeon ex AC vanquish 1.5g with a full Arah being around 10g.

Which part of direct gold rewards causing inflation do people not understand?

Arenanet don’t want high amounts of gold to enter the game. Also all this would lead to, ocne again, is a small fraction of the playerbase speedclearing the dungeons while the rest are forced into long dungeon runs.

Tigaseye.2047:

No, Wanze, that is not the problem here and you know it.

You’re just feigning admiration for that post, because it happens to suit your cause to do so.

Obviously, if no one wants any of the rewards (or to accumulate gold) in a game, none of this matters; but the truth is that most people do want some, or all, of them.

Assuming that is, inevitably, going to be the case (and just as well, for Anet’s bank balance, that it is), the problem is that one, niche, way of playing the game is FAR better than others at achieving them.

The “choice” in a game should, pretty obviously, not be “Play the TP, be rich IRL, or become a Buddhist.”.

Much as I admire Buddhists…

I think you missed the point MadRabbit was making.

His point was:

- he plays the parts of GW2 he enjoys
- he doesn’t care about others getting shinies before him
- playing the content he enjoys provides him with enough gold to aquire the amount of ascended/legendarys to his liking

And that’s just the case. You could even only pvp all day, and eventually you’d get enough gold to deckout in ascendedIf you stoped worrying about how much others are making but instead focused on ejoying the game, you’d greatly improve your gaming experience in GW2.

This has nothing to do with “not wanting rewards”. It has to do with “you’ll get them eventually while having fun”. Maybe stop trying to race down everything but instead enjoy the game.

It would also free you of the envy against others who can spend more time, spend more money, are better organised, are better skilled, etc.

Oh and you’d have a lot more longterm goals and enjoyment too.

Ashen.2907:

Did HoT change the community or did it shine a spotlight on an unpleasant truth that, perhaps, it was never really any better than other MMO communities? Removing a mask isn’t changing anything, just showing tge true face.

If by “truth” you mean that people react differently after 3 years, well that’s a very long facade to keep up appearances.

Maybe the simpler solution might be in order:

Current events are more selfish and the timegates and limited access to rewards makes people less social. Doesn’t mean the community as such is worse, just that the event design leads to unpleasant behavior.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heroics_Notary

doable at any time of day.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Ironically the best and most skilled players in this game are broke and don´t have ascended armor because all they do is play pvp and WvW.

Interesting.

Now if you could point me to where you got this info from? Last I checked, most serious wvw players have been decked out in full ascended for 2 years now.

Pvp players have enough spare gold from not spending any and getting ascended chests out their %^&** thanks to pvp reward title tracks.

But yes, must be true if you say so.

Xehanort.7034:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Lytalm.5673:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Yes the cast time of Magic Storm was reduced to prevent unintended gameplay.

“Play how we want you to play” isn’kitten ?

Are you also gonna change Gorseval because you can kill him without taking an updraft?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3vajhn/gorseval_no_glider_challenge/

It doesn’t have anything to do with allowing you to play the way you want and so I’d like to share some insight into why we made the change.

We’re actually perfectly okay with players not interrupting a break bar. However what we’re not okay with is having all the deadly mechanics of the encounter removed during this period. Honestly that’s really just an oversight on my part in how I built the encounter. This was the most simple change we could make that was relatively low impact.

If you don’t want people to use his channel as free makeshift DPS phase, why not change it so he still does at LEAST the teleports during the channel, and keep the auto-break at or around 30 seconds? for a good dps phase during that, you have to kite the seekers away (cant use ANY hard CC, except for single target fear (necro DS/RS 3 and knockbacks ranger LB4. you also have to be mindful of mesmer TWs, as slow will do a good amount of damage to his bar), keep up the rotations from each segment of the arena all the while dodging/mitigating the AoE’s damage. Now, with all of that going on, you would also have to worry about teleports AND the potential of having vale in a bad section when he auto-breaks, causing a circle to spawn in a lit up segment of the arena.

Or perhaps give him a stacking buff that grants some form of stronger retal that lasts ONLY during the channel, so you can still get some fair amount of damage off, but you have to be really mindful of you and your teams health.

Or, you know, they could just deal with the unintended issue instead of makeing the FIRST boss of raids even harder and messier for newcommers.

Seriously, what’s the big deal. It was clear from the start that killing VG while he goes into chill spamm mode was going to get fixed.

Samnang.1879:

It’s worth it because the raid themselves are FUN.

If you’re raiding just to get the armour… you’re torturing yourself.

This.

Also no one can predict what collections 2 and 3 will be. If we are looking at weapon precursors, step 2 will be a heavy gold and material sink with timegates.

Since a full set of legendary armor is supposed to cost about the same as 1 weapon, we can estimate with 3-5k gold. No raid necessary for that step, but eahvy crafting.

Collection 3 might again be raids, who knows. My guess is, it’s not even fully desgined yet. Judging by backpack legendary from fractals and pvp, and the new weapon legendarys: yes, heavy timegating for legendary armor is very likely.

Solid Gold.9310:

Hawke.1094:

Solid Gold.9310:

Funny that because I’ve been running around on my toon for 2,300 hours, and I only have one (1) ascended weapon, no ascended armour, no ascended trinkets or anything else ascended.

That’s since the head start a couple of days before August 28, 2012

umm…okay? Is that something to be proud of?

Just because you’re not working for something doesn’t mean they’re hard to get. It just mean that you didn’t work for it.

Raids aren’t designed for people who’re satisfied with the normal standards. Raids are for those who want to face the challenges. And those are the people who actually work to improve themselves, and their gears.

“umm…okay? Is that something to be proud of? " Dunno, yes no, not particularly/maybe.

“Just because you’re not working for something doesn’t mean they’re hard to get. It just mean that you didn’t work for it. " Still trying to decode that one.

“Raids aren’t designed for people who’re satisfied with the normal standards” No I think we should all be able to experience raids whatever our abilities, as I have said before, there should be difficulty levels and we all paid full price for the game, we didn’t pay full price to be excluded from part of it.

“Raids are for those who want to face the challenges” I think we all like a challenge, isn’t that why we’re here.

I agree that we all payed the same price.

But honestly, how do you expect arenanet to develope challenging content for players who have not even tried to prepare for said content in 3 years?

What about the months of pre-HoT news and previews did not sufficiently prepare you to get ready, especially on a 3 year old account?

Ideally though, yes more events like the Queens gauntletwould be nice. Pure solo challenging content which was fun.

Molch.2078:

846 hours over 68 days. That’s 13 h/day, for over two months.

Your last two months were nothing but playing gw2 and sleeping, and now you can play ONE role of ONE class. Now your raid group says they already have 2 P’Warrs, thank you very much, do you know someone who can play condi?

How can you defend this?

True, except for:

- ascended being account boud. So technically he has ascended for 3 out of 9 classes now.
- full ascended armor is still not needed and the major ascended stats come from trinkets, which are EASILY gained over the course of 1 month with a fraction of the played time
- ascended armor and weapons can have their stats changed which significantly reduces cost of changing to a different set after collecting your first
- the cost for getting a crafting skill to 500 falls away once you have it on one character unless you are OCD about having crafting on every character

No one said it was for free. That’s what exotics are for. The point is, it’s doable and by far not as bad as people make it out to be if you actually work towards this goal.

Adjust.6903:

Easy to play classes that are meta tier: condi warr, power revenant.
Support classes that are meta tier: chrono, druid
Hard to play: tempest, condi engi.

FYi I’ve played condi warr and power rev, both are insanely strong but the simplicity gets boring so fast so I’ve rerolled to chronomancer for a dps/support style of play and it’s ALOT more enjoyable!

Also good summery.

Funny, after 3 years of mesmer, I did the exact opposite. I switched to revenant as main, mesmer and guardian as second. It’s nice to occasionally just not worry about stuff.

I have to say though, Mesmer has to be one of the best redesigns a class has gotten out of MMOs I’ve played (Daoc, WoW, ST:ToR, Warhammer Online). It’s super fun now, even deeper than before (and I always considered mesmer between medium and hard difficulty) and has near gamebraking group utility.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Cyninja.2954:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ascended recipes require laurels as do trinkets, materials are gated, the math doesn’t work.

Well no, not necessarily.

There are quite a few ascended recepies on the TP that do not require laurels.

Same goes for trinkets. Actually laurels here are the less desired method of aquisition (except for amulet).

Rings – better to get via pristine relics. 2 rings take 2-5 days now per ring
Accessoires – guild commendations all the way. 2 weeks per 1 item
Backpiece – can be crafted via the mf (with the current nerf to fractal relic rewards, this might be better than crafting the fractal backpiece)
Amulet – the only slot where laurels excel, but even here there are achievements that can cover you.

That’s not even getting into Living Story season 2, which provides a nearly full set of ascended sinister trinkets and a ascended armor piece of players choice while at the same time providing around 200 gold. If a person devotes time to completing the Bioluminescent collection. Easily doable in 1 month.

1 month of playtime total is what the OP claims. Even if LS S2 was bought I’m not buying the story.

You not believeing him has nothing to do with the fact that it’s possible.

It was never claimed this had to be done casually. We are talking MAX gear within 1 month, from scratch, on a f2p account. Payed accounts would have had an easier time thanks to laurel rewards.

reapex.8546:

Cyninja.2954:

reapex.8546:

kult.3465:

Cyninja.2954:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

? What a **** comment.

Maybe because Knights is absolutely not needed in HoT (go celestial on Ele), especially when the main limiting factor is damage.

You can run Knights on any content where you want to spend more time than necessary or you lack the player skill for useful gear. Timegated content is a different story. Learn to play or at least use something that resembles damage gear. As is, there is NO content in game that requires Knights (aside from some WvW bunker builds). Even raid tanks only take as mich toughness as absolutely necessary to hold agro (400-500 over 1,000 base usually for a total of about 1,500).

It’s not the players fault that arenanet balanced the events around everyone running maximum damage. I don’t even want to imagine an entire group running full knights on TD scar lane. Have fun never succeeding. Wearing knights on this map is effectively leeching off of other players contribution.

False, difficulty is a subjective matter. HoT is a difficult to me. It’s the people in paper towel gear that I rez all the time while I wear my Knights gear.

Agreed, I’ve been in several SUCCESSFUL TD where the majority people are using whatever they see fit.

And you wound know this how? By asking everyone nicely?

The popular opinion of TD being the hardest new meta map and current requirements for 100% success beg to differ.

And you would know the opposite, how?

?

What’s the primary topic of this thread you are posting in?

Want me to go through the last couple of days worth of forum posts dealing with TD meta?

On top of which I’ve already said what organised groups expect and ask for in teamspeak which clearly shows a bias towards high end scale damage needed to complete the event…

Are you even serious?

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ascended recipes require laurels as do trinkets, materials are gated, the math doesn’t work.

Well no, not necessarily.

There are quite a few ascended recepies on the TP that do not require laurels.

Same goes for trinkets. Actually laurels here are the less desired method of aquisition (except for amulet).

Rings – better to get via pristine relics. 2 rings take 2-5 days now per ring
Accessoires – guild commendations all the way. 2 weeks per 1 item
Backpiece – can be crafted via the mf (with the current nerf to fractal relic rewards, this might be better than crafting the fractal backpiece)
Amulet – the only slot where laurels excel, but even here there are achievements that can cover you.

That’s not even getting into Living Story season 2, which provides a nearly full set of ascended sinister trinkets and a ascended armor piece of players choice while at the same time providing around 200 gold. If a person devotes time to completing the Bioluminescent collection. Easily doable in 1 month.

Dahkeus.8243:

If people are trying to decide on what class to play for raids, I suggest thinking less about what is “most optimal” and more about what is more likely to be needed.

This.

To add to that though, due to the nature of MMOs, balance changes will happen and shifts in optimal group meta can and will occure. So giving up on something fun class wise “just to get in” will not keep you safe.

Your best bet remains to play with a group of friends, guildies or established raid group. If you have the skill and/or are demonstrating the desire to learn and improve, most people will be happy to group with you.

Dahkeus.8243:

My top recommendations for people looking to be accepted into groups would be:
1) Revenant (Have a Zerk DPS and maybe a tank set too)
2) Warrior (Zerk DPS and Viper dps set)
3) Condi Engi (Have a Viper dps set and maybe a Rabid tank set too)

If your budget is tight, Revenant is your best bet since building a viper condi set is really expensive and time consuming.

Good summery.

Also for alternate playstyles consider running as tank or healer. Both are positions that are desired for raids and fewer people have the gear for at the moment. If you are decent at that performing, you’ll not have to worry about getting replaced for another dps (unlike for example revenant, which there are quite a few of at the moment).

Just make sure you don’t fall in the trap of making clerics or nomads or other such damage useless gear. Read up on what the recommended gearset is for your healer/tank. Overtanking is a thing, and to much toughness (due to agreo mechanics) is a big “no no” as well.

Death Stroke.9875:

While needing ascendeds to be able to complete raids may not be true it is unfortunately becoming so for people that try to PUG to do it. For example earlier I was looking on LFG and saw a post saying “LF Engineer VG” since I have a condi engi (on which i have gotten VG to <5%) I join up and entered the instance then they asked me to link my gear (I have all but 3 pieces ascended Sinister/Rampager and 98% burn and bleed duration) so I do, and within 10 seconds I am kicked. Annoyed i look for the guy on LFG again and whisper him to ask why i was kicked. he claimed that whenever anyone is looking for an engineer for raids it is implied that they will only accept a fully ascended Viper engineer. First I point out that I already have 98% on the main 2 damaging conditions i apply and the duration caps at 100% so it would be stupid for me to get Viper then tell him that groups that want full ascended are supposed to put it in the LFG description, so of course he decides to insult my intelligence.
I realize that most people aren’t this horrendously rude and stupid but since raids came out I have noticed that they are growing in number

Look at it this way: judging by the competence of the groups selection abilities, you just got spared 2 hours of wiping to Vale Guardian.

You should thank who ever kicked you for sparing you such a noob pug.

reapex.8546:

kult.3465:

Cyninja.2954:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

? What a **** comment.

Maybe because Knights is absolutely not needed in HoT (go celestial on Ele), especially when the main limiting factor is damage.

You can run Knights on any content where you want to spend more time than necessary or you lack the player skill for useful gear. Timegated content is a different story. Learn to play or at least use something that resembles damage gear. As is, there is NO content in game that requires Knights (aside from some WvW bunker builds). Even raid tanks only take as mich toughness as absolutely necessary to hold agro (400-500 over 1,000 base usually for a total of about 1,500).

It’s not the players fault that arenanet balanced the events around everyone running maximum damage. I don’t even want to imagine an entire group running full knights on TD scar lane. Have fun never succeeding. Wearing knights on this map is effectively leeching off of other players contribution.

False, difficulty is a subjective matter. HoT is a difficult to me. It’s the people in paper towel gear that I rez all the time while I wear my Knights gear.

Agreed, I’ve been in several SUCCESSFUL TD where the majority people are using whatever they see fit.

And you wound know this how? By asking everyone nicely?

The popular opinion of TD being the hardest new meta map and current requirements for 100% success beg to differ.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Juclesia Elcritian.8410:

beefjus.9347:

At this rate, I’m probably gonna get my ascened weapons by xmas 2016.

By which time you’ll have to stat-swap it for something else. Enjoy the “no gear treadmill” or “no power creep”. Coz Viper’s is totally not much better than Sinister’s. And there’s totally not gonna be some better stat combination in the future to make your current one less useful.

Yeah, the funny thing is, ANet has a tiered gear treadmill now.

But instead of resetting the grind on an update and putting everyone on the same level, ANet just raises the gear score on their ascended items (like from sinister to viper) to hide the fact, that ascended items having different values.

So there is no new level and no new rarity but we clearly have a power creep going on.

Your entire point becomes quite pointless when viewed under the possility of being able to cheaply change the stats from one ascended stat combination to another doesn’t it though?

Here, read up: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment

Especially the part aboutchanging the attribute prefixes.

Also, as was mentioned, the main power creep comes from the vastly more powerful traitlones and elite specialisations and changes to boons.

Quickness alone being a boon now changes everything dramatically. But yeah, who cares about facts anyway.

Nothing of the old methods of aquisition got changed.

Old precursors still drop as loot, can be obtained via mystic forge gambling and be bought/sold on the TP.

Urkara.9035:

Hawke.1094:

• And the main point is: Most people ask for ascended isnt mainly because of the stats. Ascended gear is more like a status thing. Realistically speaking, a person in full ascended are more likely to know their kitten better than a person in full exotic. Just because a person says that they’re good with their rotation doesnt mean that they actually are. You can’t just believe in everything ppl say on the internet. Thus, asking for ascended is technically the safest bet.

So you’re saying working on Ascended Gear rather than playing game is making you a better player ? Yeah sure

No, it doesn’t make you a better player. it does make you a better prepared player though.

Thaddeus.4891:

Urkara.9035:

So you’re saying working on Ascended Gear rather than playing game is making you a better player ? Yeah sure

No he mean that usually good players tend to have good gear. Because good player know that game, play more often and want to get the best gear.

Going after ascended don’t make you a better players. But good players usually have ascended gear.

Can’t agree to this too. I do believe players who have full ascended might have spent more time on the game or valued different goals over someone who doesn’t have full ascended. I wouldn’t say they are better necessary.

I will add though, and I stated this pre HoT multiple times (go ahead, check my posting history), it’s human nature to try to maximize your chance of success. If asking for full ascended does this, then yes, people will ask for full ascended. Would I take someone I know to be a good player in an ascended/exotic mix over a random full ascended player? Sure.

But as long as I can’t judge a persons skill, I’ll try to maximise to the best stats I can. Which also counts for buff food. Expect raids to demand full buff food for every try until stuff is on farm.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

It is worse than that. The problem with knight gear is that it scales everything in the worst way possible. It goes off of toughness, which is the most inefficient defensive stat, and has power/precision as its secondary stats but the precision barely makes up for the loss of power being a primary stat. Overall it ends up as having the same offensive power as Soldiers, but a fraction of the effective HP, and no defense against condis. I maintain that Knight is one of the worst gearsets in the game. You’re almost always better off with anything else.

The implication here isn’t necessarily the gear set. It is the mindset that active defenses and counter-burst don’t exist. When I watch pugs play in this game, they violently wiggle in place while auto attacking, ultimately doing almost no damage while avoiding no damage. I always wonder what it is the randoms think when, while fighting an enemy for 10 seconds, they see someone else come along and slaughter an adjacent enemy in two attacks. But alas, these post NPE players are used to a game where you can walk around naked auto attacking things and win. HoT comes around, and suddenly everything is terrible. This frightened mindset is what prevents a lot of players from performing well: they’re spending their time so frightened of big, scary attacks from mordrem they don’t realize you can literally walk out of the way and take very little damage.

The Chak Gerent meta has two features about it: #1 is that it is a DPS race, and a relatively tight one at that. #2 is that many of the Gerents attacks hit so hard that it’ll plow right through 1k extra toughness anyway. The end result being you cut offensive power to invest in stats that see no returns in play. Because of this, you’ll almost always want to go high damage in the event.

If you want more durability, I’d first suggest changing traits and utilities around. Gear is expensive, but changing traits/utilities is free. But if that isn’t enough, I’d suggest Marauder gear. On low HP classes it gives 50% more durability but sacrifices only 8% power. Unlike knights gear, which sacrifices 31% power for 67% greater durability. If you can’t afford Marauder, then hybridized gear of GC with… well, anything but knight works pretty well, too. Or if you want to go the condi route, Trailblazer is surprisingly tanky for how much long-term damage it can do.

You speak as if everyone in Knight’s gear tries to facetank bosses and kitten. That’;s not the case. I’m actively avoiding attacks all the time. Knight’s gear gives me some leeway in case I kitten up, because let’s face it, people are going to mess up. I play zerk/assassin/sinister or rampager on all my other classes. But I’m uncomfortable as a zerker Ele, because it feels too fragile to me. So I picked up knight’s. Skill, not gear, is the deciding factor. Being dead severely lowers one’s DPS.

But kudos to you for making suggestions, politely, instead of throwing a temper tantrum fit for a queen.

If by tempertantrum you mean pointing out that full knights on every person would likely fail the event the way it’s designed at the moment, while at the same time not providing a major benefit due to toughness scaling, sure call me a tantrum queen.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Cyninja.2954:

snip

Translation: “You’re bad because you don’t play the same why I do!!11!1!!!” -foams at the mouth-

Just the kind of comment I was expecting. People like you are toxic to MMO gaming. You think anyone who doesn’t play like you is bad or leeching. It’s rather pathetic. It’s a good thing I don’t care about other people’s opinions. Don’t like the way I play? Tough kitten. I’m not changing for you, or anyone else. Get over it

What does telling you that you are on a path of no success have to do with telling you how to play the game?

That’s like complaining about someone telling you that if you never attack an enemy, they’ll never die, unless someone else kills them for you. Which essentiall is exactly what happens when you walk around in knights gear in timed events. Others have to make up for your lack of damage and the event scaling up.

Even if players die with full damage gear, if they imediately waypoint and walk back the scaling will take care of the rest. On top of which, knights does not provide the amount of defense to be worth it while also being a severe damage loss.

All the while you basically screw 20-25 other people out of a reward if the event fails.

Again, I could care less what you do while solo, but when you start wasting other peoples time or actively make stuff harder for fellow players, I’m not interested in excuses.

Thanathos.2063:

Let’s say they assumed we would only get 1 journal side per day (because they failed at calculations or whatever) since this is the only timegated thing I remember.
If they really said that it will be available when the first T3 backpacks are finished, the last plausible date for adding the other 2 gifts would be 19th January 2016.
If they calculated with an average of 2 sides per day, they need to finish it til 9th December…

I have to agree with this estimate.

Very likely arenanet did not expect people to cap fractal mastery by the evening of day 1. Who would have guessed players would mindlessly farm CoF1 for hours on end without loot rewards just to get ahead slightly faster?

With 1-2 weeks of only 1 page per day, people would still need a couple more days until they had reached the cap. If everything goes as planed, my guess is the backpiece will get added with the fractal patch.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Laraley.7695:

The problem I have is the fact that clearing the whole wing won’t get you your weekly cap. What then? Are we supposed to fail bosses on purpose just to reach the cap?

No, you’re supposed to be able to run the raids again for a reward while helping/joining people who didn’t get their kills that week. This is a good thing.

This.

I sorta of thought this was obvious from the way they designed the shard bonus in raids.

Also this:

PopeUrban.2578:

Shards are not dungeon tokens.

The intended method of raid rewards is boss RNG, not token purchases. The tokens are intended to be supplemental so that if you have horrible luck you can still get what you want, not the primary means of getting your drops as they are in dungeons.

Basically, you’re supposed to repeat the raid to get your desired item as a drop, not buy it with shards. The shards exist simply as a meansure to keep you from totally giving up hope if your luck is really bad.

Whether this is a better system or not is debatable, but they were pretty straightforward that this was the way they intended the system to work.

Not going to happen.

The games economy is currently rebalancing itsself from the massive amounts of goldloot from dungeons. No reason to bring back the liquid gold rewards.

Now if you were to ask for them to remove the daily token limit for example in an attempt to increase rewards, I’d completely agree.

What increased token rewards do:
- allow for a similar speed in completeing the collections in PvE vs spvp
- increase in materials (tokens turn to items, items turn to materials thanks to crafting) which in turn would mean more trade via the TP which again would work against high prices on certain materials (especially ectos)
- incentivise more dungeon running without increasing direct gold loot rewards

Food for thought:
The ingame economy is currently in slight deflation mode on everything except high demand items (mostly everything conected to precursors and ascended items). What happens to the value of items if you ramp up the inflation? Exactly. If you think prices for crafting materials are bad now, imagine what further inflation will do.

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

I log on around 8pm, open the daily chest and check the PvE dailies. Next I say hi to guildies and bank the daily item or buy T6 materials if it was Laurels. Then I farm my home instance and do three of the four PvE dailies. I chat to guildies some more.

Then I sit and think, “what should I do now? HoT? Forget it, that’s just an infuriating exercise in futility and my head hurts due to constantly banging it against the glass walls and ceiling. A dungeon run? Ha, I can no longer find enough guildies to form a party and pug groups can take a long time to fill up. Oh I know, Fractals! Oh erm, maybe not. Raids? Nope and best not to mention Raids in guild chat as that word is quickly becoming an Escalator, no need to start another argument. Anyway doing a Raid is no fun as its just ‘stand here now, stand there now, use this skill now, etc.’ No fun at all.”

Then I go and farm something.

Bored reading this? Try to imagine how I feel!

My point? ANet please please please save this game. I used to love this game, I like most of our guildies, I want to do stuff solo or with them again like we used to do before you destroyed the magic. I really don’t want to leave Tyria but I just can’t take this level of boredom for much longer. I’m holding on with the real hope you’ll produce something but I have no idea what that could be. Please just do something.

So maybe tell us what you were doing pre HoT besides running dungeons?

You basically dislike all of the current pve content (which this expansion was heavily focused on), do not spvp or wvw. No wonder you are bored.

What about longerterm goals? Working towards any legendary or specific look?

Fact of the matter is, if you dislike pve which consists of:

- fractals
- HoT maps
- vanilla Gw2 maps and farm
- twinks
- achievements
- longerterm goals like legendarys

and do not play the competative game modes (spvp and wvw),

then yes, the game might not be for you.

Again, the question begs to be asked, what did you do pre HoT besides run dungeons for gold daily?

BrotherBelial.3094:

Cyninja.2954:

Coldtart.4785:

kult.3465:

Absolutely.

You should earn your gear. Not have it handed to you on a silver platter.
You earn your levels and skills, gear is no different.

Especially when it comes to more exotic stat sets.

Farming is now ‘earning’ something, apparently…

Never mind that some sets cost several times more than others despite being statistically equivalent.

5 Minutes of running through Dry Top gathering Quartz and then going to your home instance and crafting a charged quartz 1nce per day is already farming.

I see. No wonder people are complaining about grinding in this game. That’s a very low bar.

It can be that quick or take a lot longer than 5 minutes. As the only rich node in the game can only be accessed during the sand storm. so yeah, it’s not inconvenient in the slightest…….

I never said it wasn’t inconvenient, I was simply wondering about what people consider farming. Even so, 4 hours of silverwastes gets you more than enough gold to buy all the quartz you need. That is per month. Or play any other content and use the gold gained to aquire the quartz.

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s not a matter of how long it takes (though 10-15 minutes per day, counting loading screens) for 30 days is still 7.5 hours of farming), but rather that it takes so much more farming than any standard set. And the new sets are even worse. It’s to the point where you might as well go straight for Ascended versions in some cases.

Again, 7 hours sounds like a lot, but that’s per month. Also see top, buy the quartz off the TP if you can’t be bothered to mine it yourself. Even at spike prices of currently 10s per Quartz, that’s not that much per day (2.5 gold).

Yes, high value sets are more expensive. That’s why they are high value. If other stat combinations were as sought after, prices would spike on different materials.

The fact remains, if you don’t need your set right this moment (and didn’t prepare before hand), but are fine with gathering it over a set period of time, the game is perfect. Neither the required gold, nor the required time per day is exorbitant and any game mode played will provide you with the funds to gain your set.

Coldtart.4785:

kult.3465:

Absolutely.

You should earn your gear. Not have it handed to you on a silver platter.
You earn your levels and skills, gear is no different.

Especially when it comes to more exotic stat sets.

Farming is now ‘earning’ something, apparently…

Never mind that some sets cost several times more than others despite being statistically equivalent.

5 Minutes of running through Dry Top gathering Quartz and then going to your home instance and crafting a charged quartz 1nce per day is already farming.

I see. No wonder people are complaining about grinding in this game. That’s a very low bar.

kult.3465:

Cyninja.2954:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

? What a **** comment.

Maybe because Knights is absolutely not needed in HoT (go celestial on Ele), especially when the main limiting factor is damage.

You can run Knights on any content where you want to spend more time than necessary or you lack the player skill for useful gear. Timegated content is a different story. Learn to play or at least use something that resembles damage gear. As is, there is NO content in game that requires Knights (aside from some WvW bunker builds). Even raid tanks only take as mich toughness as absolutely necessary to hold agro (400-500 over 1,000 base usually for a total of about 1,500).

It’s not the players fault that arenanet balanced the events around everyone running maximum damage. I don’t even want to imagine an entire group running full knights on TD scar lane. Have fun never succeeding. Wearing knights on this map is effectively leeching off of other players contribution.

False, difficulty is a subjective matter. HoT is a difficult to me. It’s the people in paper towel gear that I rez all the time while I wear my Knights gear.

It’s not false difficutly when an event is balanced around maximum damage. most organised TD maps specifically ask for not only food and utility consumables but also Ogre pet whistles (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ogre_Pet_Whistle) and Fire elemental powder (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Elemental_Powder) specifically because of the high damage cap. That alone should make you think.

Also don’t bring the old tried and true “I rez all them full zerker damage n00bs in my mighty knights gear” excuse. You should not be ressurecting in the first place during events unless someone is downed. That’s what waypoints and running is for and event scaling.

It’s simple, for timed events on at this level:

- full knights means you are useless from the start
- full damage gear means you might be useful, but could end up useless if you can’t find your basic dodge button

kult.3465:

Absolutely.

You should earn your gear. Not have it handed to you on a silver platter.
You earn your levels and skills, gear is no different.

Especially when it comes to more exotic stat sets.

This.

On top of that, the actual gold requirements are very easy to come by (even easier when stretched over a set period of time). This way casual players have just as good a way of obtaining the gear without having to grind heavily for gold.

As is, arenanet wants players to dabble in every game content. Guild commendations are no different.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

? What a **** comment.

Maybe because Knights is absolutely not needed in HoT (go celestial on Ele), especially when the main limiting factor is damage.

You can run Knights on any content where you want to spend more time than necessary or you lack the player skill for useful gear. Timegated content is a different story. Learn to play or at least use something that resembles damage gear. As is, there is NO content in game that requires Knights (aside from some WvW bunker builds). Even raid tanks only take as mich toughness as absolutely necessary to hold agro (400-500 over 1,000 base usually for a total of about 1,500).

It’s not the players fault that arenanet balanced the events around everyone running maximum damage. I don’t even want to imagine an entire group running full knights on TD scar lane. Have fun never succeeding. Wearing knights on this map is effectively leeching off of other players contribution.

DoctorDing.5890:

Cyninja.2954:

As is, standalone single player games are doing just fine. Look at Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc.

Yes, doing fine today but the days of big-budget standalone single player games are ending. The genre will become niche and I doubt Bethesda would even consider starting development of Fallout 4 in that form today. The gaming companies will follow the money and e-sports is one thread of that.

I can understand the general dislike of e-sports in GW but I don’t think it is necessarily accurate to say that it is stealing development time from the other aspects of the game. Most of the money and resources being invested in e-sports will be “new” money – an investment in an enterprise that they hope will give good returns in the future.

Off topic: I loved the gameplay of Fallout 3 but after a while that unrelentingly bleak landscape just got to me. I’ve made a firm resolution to not retire to a grim post-apocalyptic desert.

While I do agree that online and social gaming will take a bigger and bigger chunk of the market, the death of single player gaming has been forseen for ages now.

It’s quite simple really, there is a huge group of gamers of all ages (but let’s focus on 30+) that have a significant smaller timeframe or opportunity to game, least spend hours per day. For these gamers, casual friendly or well designed singleplayer games remain the main draw.

Also high quality, high budget single player games are still being developed and made, just mostly for consol (I guess due to pirating issues on pc) and I haven’t seen this trend decline. What has declined though is:

- throwing tons of money at great grafiks, craapy gameplay tripple A titles
- throwing tons of money trying to make the next WoW MMO. Even Blizzard caned their project titan
- a vast growth of indie games both multi- and singleplayer which focus on fun and unique gameplay

Interesting, though a big part of the negative reviews are from middle of the year.

Let’s think back to what was going on back then…

- GW2 f2p no reward fiasko
- HoT pricing

The mood was at an all-time low. The poor management complaint goes futherback though, while the overall mood middle of 2014 was brigther.

Let’s hope Wintersday and new year bring some more order to the chaos.

DoctorDing.5890:

E-sport is not my thing but I have no problem with ANet exploring that stuff. It broadens the appeal and makes more people aware of GW. Almost all gaming companies are experimenting with e-sports, trying to figure out what works and what does not. The real e-sport success will come with the next generation of games. Gaming companies that are not experimenting with it now will probably not be around in a few years.

Good point, but only true for e-sports games and probably a big chunk of multiplayer games.

As is, standalone single player games are doing just fine. Look at Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc.

Not every gaming company will try to enter the e-sports market. Those that do though, I agree with you. Not to mention, the current generation of teenagers and below growing up on smartphones and tablets.

fireflyry.7023:

Nah he’s right. In GW1 you got max level and gear in a week or two, then forgot about it and enjoyed the game for the next few years.

It ‘s probably a grind fest now though, but that’s 5 years after everyone bailed ship.

PS:Give me a yell if you’d like some help in GW1.Would love to dust my Sin and my Sabway off

Except for all the skills you had to farm over the next few hours/days and areas you had to access reach in order to do so.

Don’t get me wrong, the end gear grind certainly is longer in GW2, but people do tend to have very pink colored glasses as to the overall grind.

All the while cosmetic items in GW1 were a ton more expensive than in GW2. Not even going to get into pre Heroes GW1 (you know, the one everyone played before Nightfall and EotN came along?). Forced grouping for just about any content since henchman were trash.

Khristophoros.7194:

Cyninja.2954:

Khristophoros.7194:

Cyninja.2954:

ChrizZcE.5981:

LimitBreaker.4165:

Its good the way it is, it’s not even a “grind” I made my ascended set in like 1 month just playing normally and having fun.

I´m curious how you managed to do that?

Ascended set including leveling crafting is like 800- 900g now.

That means you would have to atleast make 30g every single day for an entire month. Getting 30g a day takes me roughly four to five hours of Silverwastes farming including doing the event to buy keys.

Here’s a hint, sell the stuff from your bank. If you are making less than 10g per hour with silverwastes, you aren’t selling stuff or are afk half the time.

But yes, 1 month for ascended if you want to craft ALL of it would be quite expensive at the moment. How lucky that there is ascended boxes in many different game modes and getting 1-2 drops per month is very doable.

The fact that you have to farm silverwastes instead of do what you want is the problem.

Oh, I never said you couldn’t do other things. Play any of the new maps, or play some of the old. Everything works.

My respons was simply to one of the considered “best farms currently” getting missrepresented to dramatize a point (the point being that players need to grind massively).

As is, if you don’t go on regular wild spending sprees, gold will accumulate and you’ll be able to afford ascended armor.

that being said, 80+% of the stat bonuses from ascended are not even from armor, but from trinkets and weapons. Both of which are a fraction of the cost of full ascended armor. Maybe start with that?

I have ascended trinkets for most things but to make a good condi build it requires hours spent doing the story which I don’t enjoy.

The sinister trinkets certainly do not take “hours” to complete. The achievements, with 1-2 exceptions are very simple and diversive. Only because YOU do not enjoy the content, does not mean it qualifies as grind.

If you are unhappy with the way certain stat combinations are obtained, pick an appropriate title and complaint. As is, the sinister trinkets are probably the easiest, most straight forward ascended trinkets to aquire.

If you are unhappy, go for 2nd or third best. Or complete one of the achievements, infuse the ring and buy a second similar ring. It should still be possible to wear 2 identical rings as long as one is infused and the other one isn’t.

Khristophoros.7194:

Cyninja.2954:

ChrizZcE.5981:

LimitBreaker.4165:

Its good the way it is, it’s not even a “grind” I made my ascended set in like 1 month just playing normally and having fun.

I´m curious how you managed to do that?

Ascended set including leveling crafting is like 800- 900g now.

That means you would have to atleast make 30g every single day for an entire month. Getting 30g a day takes me roughly four to five hours of Silverwastes farming including doing the event to buy keys.

Here’s a hint, sell the stuff from your bank. If you are making less than 10g per hour with silverwastes, you aren’t selling stuff or are afk half the time.

But yes, 1 month for ascended if you want to craft ALL of it would be quite expensive at the moment. How lucky that there is ascended boxes in many different game modes and getting 1-2 drops per month is very doable.

The fact that you have to farm silverwastes instead of do what you want is the problem.

Oh, I never said you couldn’t do other things. Play any of the new maps, or play some of the old. Everything works.

My respons was simply to one of the considered “best farms currently” getting missrepresented to dramatize a point (the point being that players need to grind massively).

As is, if you don’t go on regular wild spending sprees, gold will accumulate and you’ll be able to afford ascended armor.

that being said, 80+% of the stat bonuses from ascended are not even from armor, but from trinkets and weapons. Both of which are a fraction of the cost of full ascended armor. Maybe start with that?

ChrizZcE.5981:

LimitBreaker.4165:

Its good the way it is, it’s not even a “grind” I made my ascended set in like 1 month just playing normally and having fun.

I´m curious how you managed to do that?

Ascended set including leveling crafting is like 800- 900g now.

That means you would have to atleast make 30g every single day for an entire month. Getting 30g a day takes me roughly four to five hours of Silverwastes farming including doing the event to buy keys.

Here’s a hint, sell the stuff from your bank. If you are making less than 10g per hour with silverwastes, you aren’t selling stuff or are afk half the time.

But yes, 1 month for ascended if you want to craft ALL of it would be quite expensive at the moment. How lucky that there is ascended boxes in many different game modes and getting 1-2 drops per month is very doable.

For a game to be successful as an e-sport, many factors have to aligne favorably.

1.) First and foremost, I have to agree on what was said about “make a good competative game first, worry about e-sports second”. No matter how much I enjoy GW2, it’s not a good competative game. It’s not even half decent. Balance is somewhere between pve, spvp and wvw. Terrible for an e-sport game.

2.) Ease of view. As is, GW2 spvp makes absolutely no sense to someone who is not invested in spvp. Something GW1 was great at by the way with it’s game streaming and better gvg game mode.

If you want to attract a wide viewership the game needs to be easy to follow and semi interesting to watch. Animation times and a couple of second skills are hard to follow, not to mention the boons/conditions. Let’s compare to successful e-sport titles:

- LoL/Dota – probably leading e-sports titles currently on the market next to CS:GO and Starcraft. Both games have established metas where different players get different roles. It’s not quite as important to understand the skills that get used (even though the inetersting ones (elites/ultimates) are on long cooldowns) but the role a person plays. Even on the most basic level, you see a back and forth and see land gain or loss.

CS:GO (Halo, etc.) – very simple, it’s a shooter. You see, you shoot. Understanding the deeper tactics and positioning is not needed to follow the usually very short games.

GW1 – teams of usually 8 players with distinctive front-, middle- and backline depending on which step of the meta we are in over the last few years. Classes once again fullfill different roles, territorial gain is visible and an ultimate goal is in place (kill that lord). Plus you have a competition between guilds and players going on.

3.) Fun. I’m putting this as third, because competative e-sports games, if played profesionally, aren’t always fun. We are talking 10-14 hours of practice for pro gamers per day. It’s mechanics and muscle memory and enough depth to be able to improve far enough to distinguish ones self.

At the same time, the game needs to be fun enough for casual players to enjoy themselves so that a big enough player base developes. This is probably one of the hardest aspects to get right in an MMO. Most successful e-sports games are designed around the gameplay. Something that is severly limited in MMOs due to the nature of the game.

Even the most successful (known to me, I don’t follow MMO e-sports) MMOs to do e-sports World of Warcraft, is mediocre at best. And let’s be honest, a big part of the viewers is due it being Blizzard. There is a ton of better pvp MMOs out there which get a fraction of the attention this 10 year old giant gets (again, huge playerbase).

Some things I think could be improved upon in GW2:

- first and foremost map design and spvp game modes.
- ingame tournament streaming

The things I don’t think will be easy to fix:

- game mechanics. I don’t think the huge amount of short duration boons/conditions and hectic action paced combat make for easy to follow viewing. Remember, the aim is to make stuff understandable for viewers not familiar with the class/game
- the establishment of roles. HoT has been a slight step in this direction, but the open combat nature of GW2 is here at a disadvantage balance wise (at least with pve and wvw to balance around). This could be slightly balanced through intelligent map design, but never completely corrected.

Werdx.2059:

I had to log in just to put on place those “more gold than ever” people.

You can not earn more gold than before HoT,there is no possible way.You can earn less or maybe,but maybe same amount.Lots of materials dropped hard with prices,and you got only Pile of Silky Sand in HoT that is worth some gold.

Obviously,you do not have nothing else to say,and you are trying to to better than others with stupid sentences like i am getting more gold than ever.No you do not.

If someone tried every possible way of farming in game,over past 365 days,that’s me.After everything i did,i decide to stick with SW farm.In times pre HoT,i had 160 gold daily from SW.

Ectoplasm price dropped for couple silvers.You can notice change,after you sell 2000 ecto’s,not 5.

Price of every other material,you get from SW dropped couple silvers,some materials even 20-30 silver.

Bandit Bag,which you could buy with bandit crests,for 9 coper and 10 bandit crests each,got epic nerf.Before HoT,stack of those bags was 12 gold if you sell on TP,these days is 2-3 gold for stack.Why?Because they drop t6 materials,and materials got nerfed in price aswell.That there,is big big big ninja nerf,and you lost automatically 30 gold a day.

Yes, T6 prices tanked. Why would this be of consequence to your SW farm? Aren’t you opening your bandit chests on low level twinks for the lower tier crafting materials?

Shame, could be making so much more gold.

Congrats though, you know your stuff for SW farm, well most of it. 160 gold per day is of no value as infroamtion. If you gave us a timeframe maybe, but on it’s own this information has no value. Did you farm 3 hours for those 160 gold? Or 10 hours? I certainly could farm 160g in 10 hours post HoT if I wanted to. Wouldn’t be fun, but it;s doable.