Guild Wars 2

It’s all been said but yes, Anet is pretty actively interested in nerfing farming areas almost as soon as they are discovered. Which is very paradoxical because this game is probably the grindiest MMO I’ve ever played.

The only conclusion is: they want the game to remain ‘the casuals paradise’, catering to the vast majority of the playerbase that plays less than 8 hours a week and spends RL money on the cash shop to buy gems. (Which they can then exchange for gold at a ridiculous exchange rate)

Rather than making another whine post (I have made a few the last 24 hours) I’ll just stick to saying not much at all has changed. Most classes still excel in one aspect of the game and suck in others.

edit: in terms of dungeons going full dps berzerker is still the optimal choice.

It would be a step in the right direction. Inb4 elitist jerk.

Yes, having no idea whatsoever of how much you are contributing to the group is great. Leechers everywhere, rejoice!

Keep up the good work guys!

Well since we’ve already gone through most of the trite statements made by ‘the fans’, I’ll just say this:

GW2 is a casual MMO made by and for people that enjoy things at face value, and never go further than skin deep in anything, least of all critical analysis.

Anet’s been consistent enough with nerfing of efficient farming and other things that might get you ahead, yet seems to be completely uncaring when it comes to class balancing, interface improvements and other core aspects of their game.

My advice? Quit, because clearly, “you just don’t get this game.”

Heck no. Thieves only have 1 skill underwater and no elite skills.

Bumping this, am getting crazy lag since the patch.

Thief is in a bit of a rough patch (pun intended) right now. I wouldn’t recommend it for PvE unless you really enjoy the rogue archetype.

It’s the only way to enjoy the game for longer than a week imo. Play it very casually, because there’s not much more to be gained for playing more than 2 hours a day.

That’s quite the provocative title you have there.

Call me crazy, but I’ve not had a mob reset on me even once before the patch.

Trying too hard to find the silver lining here tbh. The patch was without a doubt a rather heavy handed solution to a non-existant problem.

As you were.

Or just knows how to play a character instead of crying continuously on the forums, maybe something crazy like that.

Acting like everything is fine and saying “L2P” is a good way to adress class balance issues. (<— sarcasm)

No one really cares if you could play a thief with one leg and no eyes and still kill one mob. Doesn’t prove the class isn’t underpowered for the majority of the people playing the game.

I see no harm in it.

As for the people saying it’s going to create elitism, I don’t see it as something you can control. Dungeons are (because of no trinity) largely a chaotic zerg anyway, so I really don’t think a little UI to inspect people’s gear is going to make a big difference over just looking at someone and seeing what build they are by the weapons they are using.

Hanna must be really pro or something..

On topic:

I’m finding myself asking the same question. Thieves? What are they good for? PvP? >.>

I’ll be anxiously awaiting a serious rework of the class for PvE, as I’m already too invested in my character to consider rerolling.

Thief definately needs alot of work for PvE. As they are right now it’s almost as if the class was designed solely for PvP. Stealth in PvE is now 100% useless, and that was about the only thing only a thief can do that someone else can’t do (better).

Mobs being basically immune to thieves is also very lame indeed.

Winfernal.9208:

The rewards are too good compared to the difficulity of the events. As i’ve said before, world-bosses are pinatas. There is no challenge. I think it’s safe to say that no-one ever wiped at an world-boss.

Some of the people on this forum would say that’s exactly what they want.

Maximum reward for minimal effort. Such is the way of the Casual Gamer.

1. Warrior

2. Engineer

3. PvE

4. 2/10

5. 5/10

6. Dungeons

7. 2/10

Point being blatant fanboyism isn’t constructive feedback either.

Vayne.8563:

In other games, where content is gated by gear, sure it makes a difference. But here it doesn’t.

I get that. But some people like to have actual net increase in their character’s effectiveness.

Should I just read all this and concede that Guild Wars is for people that just care about the way their character looks?

If it meant getting more quality content, more support (substantial content patches) and all the creature comforts that (should) come with a subscription (*cough*bank space*cough*).

Hell yes.

I’ll agree it’s nice to never fall behind, but if there are no goals left for you to achieve other than purely cosmetic stuff with the exact same stats, why go the extra mile?

I guess it comes down to what you think is the lesser of two evils. A gear grind, or lack of content.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

It is whatever you want to do. Unlike other MMOs, there is nothing pushing you to do stuff. You don’t have that feeling that you have to log in or else you will be behind everyone if you are not grinding and farming everything. With GW2, you get to do whatever you want to do without feeling left behind or like you have to play it.

Bolded is both good and bad. At level cap, mostly bad.

100% wooden plank.

I had written out a lenghty post rebutting this trollbait thread, but the forum mods apparently won’t tolerate any dissonnance.

Here’s the concise version that may or may not get deleted again:

GW2 is already a game for casuals, where you have no way to elevate yourself above the next guy in line. Saying that “hardcore people with no lives” are the industry’s worst enemy is downright asinine.

You’re not doing anyone any favours, including yourself, by not being critical and generally being content with less. That is what leads to shiny, high profile AAA titles that go about skin deep. So really, you have it all backwards.

Boredom has set in after 117 hours.

Despite my many, many grievances with the way the game works, I’d say it was worth the price by merit of it being a one-off fee.

Can always come back 6 months or a year from now and see if they’ve made any of the improvements they need to make to appeal to a larger audience than communist elitist hipsters/wow bashers.

I agree on two things:

1) 300 is a very entertaining film

2) Shields feel totally useless in this game

I feel, and I know I’m going to catch flak for this, that WoW had a lot of good ideas that work that Arenanet for some reason (pride perhaps) just felt too good to copy. A Revenge type of mechanic actually exists within the game, but on weird weapon sets like double mace. Being able to swap out weapon skills as well as utility skills (kind of like Diablo III’s skill system) would also be a nice addition.

As it stands there is no reason to prefer 1h+shield over the raw damage output of a greatsword or 2H-hammer. The best defense is a good offense was their motto I guess? Which is fine if you forget the fact that mobs in dungeons oneshot their target if you don’t kite it.

Edited for flawless grammar

I’m not here to plea for a nerf. I’m just very disillusioned with how the actual game mechanics work. It’s complete chaos.

Where is the “skill” here? Dodging? Running away? Not dps’ing until halfway into the fight?

I consider myself an above average gamer and I’m certainly not reluctant to learn, but let’s go over what I could’ve learned from this experience:

1) Don’t do too much damage or the mob will oneshot you

2) Always run away and do 0 dmg doing so if the mob targets you anyway

Anything else I’m missing here? I’d honestly like to know where the “skill” comes into play here.

I guess the game “isn’t for me”, which gets said alot around on these forums. Makes me wonder what the community will end up looking like if so many people are saying the same things I’ve said.

I just vented in another thread so I’ll keep this short & sweet.

I have tried very, very hard to like this game in spite of all the core aspects that are either really badly handled or simply just not there. No trinity seems like a nice idea on paper, but in reality: it really does do more bad than good. Less flexibility in terms of encounter design, less choice in character builds (because everyone is essentially a DPS with a gimmick heal & some gimmick utility) and the whole thing is just a zergfest.

Well I just did my first ever dungeon run; AC Story with a pug. And wow. I am still in shock at how horrible this experience was.

There was me (elementalist), a warrior, thief, ranger and a guardian being oneshotted about 5 times over on every pull; even after switching to staff just so I could cast geyser/healing rain etc.

The whole thing just made it painfully obvious that no trinity just doesn’t work! You try & pull even just one mob and the whole thing turns into a bursty zerg kittenfest, but hope you’re not doing the most damage, because the mob will turn all its attention to you and come over and one shot you!

Five minutes of complete fail later, gz, you killed one normal mob! Now onto the boss that spawns 15 more of these kittens for no loot worth mentioning!

TL;DR: Dungeons are a chaotic burst russian roulette mode, mob damage is mostly unavoidable due to them being near instant casts, and at the end of it all, all you got was an hour worth of sheer frustration and a nice big repair bill.

COFFIN. NAIL.

I’ll stick to just the playable races because there are too many unplayable to choose from and I haven’t met them all yet.

Favourite – Human

They’ve gone through a lot and are still standing, showing a remarkable resilience and will to survive.

Least favourite – Charr

Look cool, but are an imperialistic, industrial machine. Clearly as much of a blight on the face of Tyria as the undead ever were :p

Off the top of my head?

Do away with level scaling

Grouping should always be a choice, not an obligation.

The argument that it encourages grouping doesn’t carry much weight. It doesn’t ‘encourage’ grouping, it forces you to group simply to avoid the painful tedium of not being able to turn around without being faced with the same normal mobs you killed 20 seconds ago. That is not ‘skill’. That is not ‘fun’. It is a p.i.t.a and leaves you with a bunch of disgruntled people united in their misery and rage at an unnecessary game mechanic that could only be put there to compensate for a temporary excess in player presence.

Furthermore:

Invoker.5462:

I think its fine, i enjoy fighting an endless stream of bad guys, makes me feel that much more BA, and in cursed shore it encorages groups.

Strange; it makes me feel like an incompetent idiot that has absolutely zero effect on the world around me.

Having a single player experience within an MMO is a refreshing new element to a fairly stale genre of games, and certainly a step forward.

It could be of a higher quality in terms of presentation and narrative of course, but my fear is that Arenanet will simply not have the resources to fund this due to their subscription-free business model (which was also one of their main selling points).

Bumping for justice.

The respawn rate is in my top 3 biggest grievances with this game right now.

I’m not sure how valid my opinion is going be given that I’ve only reached level 32, but so far I’ve had no problems whatsoever.

I have played a greatsword warrior for a bit as well; and yes it’s generally easier to just cleave things, but elementalists simply have more skills to use due to having 4 attunements vs 2 weapon sets.

Assuming you actively switch attunements and use all your buffs, debuffs and set up your burst correctly I think elementalists would still come out on top for both single target & aoe. I’m running scepter/dagger by the way, I think staff is probably less bursty and more about sustained dps.

So no, I haven’t thought of elementalists as being underpowered (so far).

I reroll all the time because I am hopeless at decisionmaking :p

I tend to get a really cool idea for a character race/class combo, then think up this entire backstory to go with it, play it to level 10 and reroll because one tiny thing about that character is no longer perfect lol.

I’ll be surprised if I make it to 80 tbh; things do get repetitive after a while :p

Perhaps a bit of a tangent, but what is even the point in using a 1H+Shield in this game?

With the idea being there is no trinity, which sounds good on paper, in the actual game people are generally much better suited to dps than they are at tanking/healing.

I mean; it’s nice that you want to build your character towards more utility/survivability, but imo the game fails in accomodating people that want to do so.

Seems to me there is more benefit to doing more damage in less time than it is to “hurr durr shield stance” for 5 seconds and only succeed in postponing the inevitable.

I have already written out a list of things I like and don’t like about GW2, but here’s a few regarding innovation:

Personalized loot

Not an entirely original idea but I do believe this is the way forward for MMORPGs from here on in. There was nothing more annoying than going through a three hour raid just to see that Big Hammer of Ownage being passed on to someone else, leaving you with nothing for your time invested.

Combos

The ability to create new, more powerful effects by working together across classes is a very cool idea that I would like to see more of.

Skills change based on what weapon you have equipped

This adds another layer of depth and strategy to the game (particularly pvp). This ties in with weapon swapping meaning you cannot go “Oh he has a 2 hander, he’s mortal strike spec” since they can actively swap skills and you have to stay on the ball.

DISCLAIMER: Like the OP my only experience with MMOs has been WoW; thereby these three ideas are probably not entirely original but certainly a step up from what I have seen so far.