Guild Wars 2

Kaiser.9873:

The mixing of pure PvE facets into WvW, and Anets desire to make WvW even more PvE-centric is disturbing to me. I don’t mind bloodlust, it’s good for havoc teams and solo roamers, but it seems that the new maps want to push WvW players into completing far too many PvE-type activities.

EotM could have been a pretty nice WvW map. That is a true WvW map, but something went horribly wrong. I really hope that the same thing that went wrong with EotM doesn’t infiltrate the new maps even more, and WvW as a whole even more, or else I, and many friends, will need to find a different game.

I play GW2 for dynamic fights against other players both large and smaller scale, not for completing tasks A,B and C prior to actually getting to fight other players.

The addition of PvE in WvW is not a bad thing. It helps to set a pace that would otherwise be completely player driven. The problem with completely player driven is that it relies on players and we have seen time and time again that players cannot be relied upon. What happens in WvW currently when the other team starts to win? The opposition stops showing up. With no PvE elements to slow the winners down and give the other sides a chance to get a foothold it will be pure domination. Pure domination hurts WvW population more than anything else period.

The original Alterac Valley in WoW was a great example of including PvE elements into PvP and it working. There was still tons of PvP, but the PvE set the pace and allowed for some real tactics. GW2 had a chance to include these elements with the centaur, quaagans, skritt, etc but utterly failed at giving them weight and tactical value.

People in this thread are missing the point entirely. This sort of damage should not be possible, PERIOD. It doesn’t matter if he had time to react or knew the attack was coming. This high damage is poison to PvP as it severely limits tactics, skill level, and simply isn’t fun for the majority. This goes for all the skills in the game that can hit/crit for a classes base health. No class should be critting for even a 1/4 of another classes base health. Fights should take 30s+, not 1-5s.

Now I know you’re thinking that the thief would be crippled if it couldn’t kill people quickly, that’s why it needs changed and rebalanced. Of course if all damage in the game is actually rebalanced it might not be that huge of an issue. I’ve played thief since beta, I’ve avoided the insta-gib builds like the plague as it only hurts the class when they inevitably get nerfed, but since ArenaNet has no clue how to balance the end up hurting everything else about the class.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Mad Queen: From what i’ve read you’re a PvE player. And you seem to think that the balance is broken because tanky builds cannot compete with zerker builds in PvE.

As it happens, this game is balanced around pvp, not pve. And if you take a look at pvp in this game and in other games, it’s clear that this is one of those with the msot balance throughout the classes.
As a matter of fact, it is so balanced you cannot kill 2 or more people of you’re skill level at the same time.

As for PvE. The lack of a consisten aggro system has made people go for effficiency rather than diversity. It’s not a balance problem. Rather than asking for nerfed zerk damage, you should ask that your tanky builds get something else to be able to compete.

Thirdly, the camera system. I didn’t find any specifics on what makes it so bad (maybe I just missed it) But I Think it’s just as good as any other mmo’s, it does what it’s supposed to do. It’s not somethign super special, but not bad.

Pets: Yes the AI system sucks. Mesmers are an exceptions, their pets and the play style around the clones are completely different compared to other classes.
The AI may be the same, but then again, you make them explode…

The pet part wasn’t aimed to you Mad queen

The game isn’t balanced in PvP either, I’m not sure where you got that impression and it’s pretty clear from that statement you don’t play PvP or WvW. PvP has long been considered unbalanced with certain classes/builds being far superior. Take a look at the rosters for classes/builds for the tournaments sometime and you’ll see that certain ones are must haves. You’re not going to find Trap thiefs and Vampire necros there, because those builds are absolute rubbish due to not being balanced in the slightest. Sure you can cherry pick the top 10% of builds and say they are somewhat balanced, but that ignores the heaps of horrible traits and skills.

Next you cannot continually keep buffing things up. Damage in this game is stupidly high right now because of that exact philosophy. Let’s buff mitigation and healing though because it’s much easier to buff 2 things and completely rebalance PvE instead of nerf 1. Look up what power creep is and you’ll understand why things need nerfed, while you’re at it send that link to ArenaNet.

Dinks.2478:

So can you guys disable grenadier and all the other broken traits on other classes too? Or do you just like making Guardians main line useless and don’t care about other classes?

I understand the reasoning behind disabling it, but with so many other obvious broken OP traits running around the fact that Guardian was specifically targeted and others are running free kind of kittenes me off.

We get no love on our elite specialization and we get no love on this.

ArenaNet doesn’t care if players are getting insta-killed by other players, they only care if players are insta-killing bosses. When grenade barrage starts trivializing Teq then you will see them do something. They’ve been doing this since launch, unbalanced skills in PvP? Leave it in for a year or more! An event or mob being farmed that they didn’t intend? Nerf it immediately! If you want the no OP skills nerfed you need to show how it’s causing things to be farmed quicker/easier than intended.

Genavelle.9516:

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

No, running it for hours is abusing an exploit for own purposes, in this case even if you “don’t care about ppt” that’s a lot of champ bags from the lords, that’s a lot of people’s time and money wasted in seconds from an exploit. WvW is not PvE.

Show how it was done once, don’t cap what you take the gate down to show, Send it to Anet, and you DO NOT use it again. Otherwise you really aren’t any better than those ‘hacking’ the client.

And to be honest, abusing an exploit in this manner can result in bans, and situations like this truly do warrant them.

To be fair, it’s not REALLY an “exploit”. I mean the skill is working as it is currently set up to work, and while I’m sure Anet intended for it to work differently, they overlooked something in it and now it’s working wrong. However, to call this an exploit would essentially mean that ANY PERSON playing a Guardian and using that skill right now is “abusing an exploit”. So please just calm down okay lol.

An exploit is using any mechanics in an unintended way. It’s quite obvious that this wasn’t intended as ArenaNet would have just taken out siege equipment since this makes them useless. Using that skill is not an exploit, purposefully getting a bunch of guardians together to use that skill to down gates is an exploit. To what extent ArenaNet can punish is up for debate but I’d say if you have 20 guardians all rolling around in WvW then they know exactly what they are doing is an exploit.

Murmaider.1805:

I’m so angry that all of my hard earned dollars are going into my monthly subscription for this game. Man, if only I could leave the game and come back whenever I want instead of complain on the boards all of the time, without a monthly subscription.

You’re totally right, it isn’t like people have paid for gems and ArenaNet has made millions…Oh wait they make about $18 million every quarter, the same as ~400k $15/m subs. If this game had a subscription it would have died by now because the post-launch development is just dreadful. You can leave and come back as many times as you want, but if the game is worse every time you come back then it’s kind of a moot point.

butch.8136:

WoW has PTR, balance is still kitten and bugged when they release the patches.
I’d rather get the changes immediately, I can handle the bugs for a few days/weeks.

Not sure what it’s been like since BC, but back then the PTC got things fixed. I remember a fairly big issue over a Warlock death coil change that ended up getting reverted because of PTC outcry.

A test server could potentially help GW2 immensely, but ArenaNet would actually have to utilize it properly and have a good dialogue with the players that are testing. Just getting the changes on paper for a lot of the stuff they implement would be enough to let them know it’s a horrible idea. I mean how many times have we got the week or so before patch preview and everyone is like “that’s a terrible idea”, but it’s too late to change it. The chances of ArenaNet listening and making timely changes though are astronomical though, so yeah we will never see a test server and if we did they would just give players the silent treatment like they currently do.

I’m sorry, but you don’t get time when things are this messed up. A few bugs? Sure, they happen and they will get fixed. Blatant balance issues in a balance patch though? Nope. This is why most MMO’s have test servers, so things like this don’t happen. This just shows how amateurish the ANet balance team is. The saddest thing is that they have been that way since launch. They’ve taken months to make the smallest balance changes and most of the time thos changes didn’t fix anything or even broke something that was just fine. Someone needs to step in and hire a new balance team because this is completely unacceptable.

My prediction? There will be a patch soon to address game breaking skills, but the majority of issues will remain untouched for 6+ months as HoT releases and they focus on that and new content.

ANet needs to get a public test server and a test forum where they actually have a discussion. Time and time again they release buggy content or even worse, horribly implemented mechanics. This patch just shows how clueless they are, how did half of this stuff make it passed initial discussion let alone get through QA? You can’t tell me the burning damage wasn’t noticed in testing. The only explanation is either greediness of the company not wanting to put in the money to release polished patches OR Incompetent managers that think this is balanced. I think it’s a little of both considering this whole new trait system reeks of band-aid design due to them bundling up all the traits they either didn’t know how or want to balance.

I will say that at least Anet is consistent with their level of work…

This is how ArenaNet operate. This is not the first time they have said one thing and done another. Ascended gear was another huge debacle. They sold the game prior to release as easy to obtain max stats and hard to obtain skins. 3 months after release they suddenly change their song and dance, they add ascended and say it was always meant to be in the game even though the entire endgame is balanced around exotics. Then there is the hotly debated No-grind philosophy from their manifesto, of course as the game goes on they add more and more grind. Want ascended armor? Grind to 500 crafting and events for material! Want ascended accessories? Grind dailies! Have alts or want a different spec? You better believe you’re going to be grinding!

I’m sure there are more instances of them saying one thing and then doing the exact opposite, but I don’t remember them off hand. All that matters is ArenaNet is not a company you should take at face value. Always take whatever they say with a grain of salt and in the end you’ll still be surprised at how monumentally they screw something up

maddoctor.2738:

FFXIV has 2 new primals, GW2 doesn’t have anything remotely close to it.

No idea what a primal is.

FFXIV is getting 8 new dungeons, GW2 cut it’s dungeon team so likely nothing.
FFXIV is getting a new Raid, GW2 might be getting a raid.

We still don’t know what “Challenging group content” is. Also, how many open world event chains is FF getting? How many open event bosses? How many zones with zone mechanics (day/night) cycle? We are also getting instanced adventures in HoT designed to test player skill and add competition in PVE. Any adventures in FF?

FFXIV is getting FC workshops, airships, and air ship missions; GW2 nothing similar.

Well we have guild missions, probably expanded/upgraded, not in the air though.

Primals are instanced 8 player group content that go from normal mode to extreme. Normal is pretty easy as long as you pay attention. Hard you’re having a tough time, but it’s not too bad. Extreme if you’re 1s late either you died or you wiped the raid, basically any mistake by anyone in the group is a potential wipe. If you like hard PVE then you’ll love these. These cover instanced adventures I think, but so do Guildleves(small instanced missions that are easy). Challenging PvE content is something that FFXIV does very very well and isn’t likely to be beaten by GW2 in the next century for a few reasons. First off we have the non-trinity system that means the number of mechanics available is already deminished since you don’t have tanks or dedicated healers. Class/stat balance- if they balance based on full dps builds that leaves any group with a support or tankier build screwed. Last the fact that ArenaNet has never been good at polish. Remember the marionette fight where one person would be put on a pad?

Each new zone in FFXIV has day/night and weather. They are even adding a UI so you can see what conditions in a zone are like. There was actually a video awhile back showcasing the new day/night cycle as the shadows change with the suns position. As far as zone bosses, won’t know until it releases. I can say there are zone bosses in certain zones already so it’s very likely the new zones will have them as well.

The point in all of this is that HoT, by what they have announced, is adding less for more money compared to FFXIV HW. Even if they are adding equal amounts of content GW2 HoT is still $10 more($20 really since FFXIV HW was on sale for $30 constantly). I’m not sure how you can really justify it. The subscription in FFXIV pays for far better patches and polish and the equivalent in GW2 is the cash shop. If ArenaNet isn’t making enough money to keep making patches then they need to re-evaluate their pricing structure. There are plenty of F2P games that keep putting out patches with only a cash shop so it is not a valid excuse of the clear quantity and quality disparity.

warbignime.4610:

You guys should compare WoW expansion reveal to HoT, or even ff14 heavensward. Most of MMORPG are vague about their expansion too, there are no weekly live stream about the content neither weekly detailed blog post. Just check wow MoP reveal page, all they did are listed features and a very short portion of the reveal video and that’s pretty much it. How much more do you guys want? Anet won’t tell you every detail neither but that’s the same with every game expansion ever. People are having ridiculous expectations and it bothers me.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn/71882448

Read that. FFXIV was not vague about anything. The games director Yoshida did a bunch of interviews, demos, and talked in-depth about things. If we are on the topic of information then you’ll know that FFXIV announced the expansion in October and then announced the release date in March. That’s 5 months. ArenaNet announced HoT in January and it’s now 6 months later with no release date announced.

Are you also trying to say Blizzard is vague about it’s expansions? They have No-NDA beta’s where players are free to talk about or even stream the game. I know for a fact that I was watching Warlords of Draenor being streamed when they only had 1-2 zones in the game so far and it was very unfinished. Blizzard is the last company you want to try comparing ArenaNet too. Blizzard lets everything in the open and takes the feedback to improve the game, ArenaNet is tightlipped about everything then doesn’t take feedback when the system they release is broken.

warbignime.4610:

IcarusMelody.5312:

OP you crazy. Anybody whose been following Heavensward knows SE has been sharing just about everything about the expansion that does not involve story spoilers.
They are adding
New race
3 New jobs
Flying mounts for aerial expansion area
plethora of new dungeons
New raids
A bulk of new story
level cap increase (new skills and traits for all classes)
New primal encounter
etc etc
And the price tag on Heavensward isnt even as high as HoT but players know what they’re getting and certainly not throwing a fit about the $40 price tag.

Folks havent seen much of HoT compared to HW. So its completely logical that everybody isnt just throwing their money at the screen.

And how much sub fee you spent on FF14? Also those doesn’t sound like more than hot at all.

The Sub fee gets you patches that GW2 players could only dream about. Not even an exaggeration, take a look at FFXIV major patches. I’d almost wager that they add more in a single major patch than GW2 does in a year. The level of polish is also something that ArenaNet could simply never achieve.

As for what HW is bringing…it’s far far far more than HoT. 1 class vs 3, easy win there. HoT is bringing 1 region that’s 3 maps? HW is expanding land mass by 150%, even if HoT has more zones do you really think they are adding 150% of current landmass? The sure bet is that they aren’t, so FFXIV wins again. Trait specializations vs 10 new levels, I’d call it a wash. Glding vs flying mounts? Again a wash. Guild Halls? FFXIV got those in a patch… New SPvP mode? FFXIV is redoing PVP. New WvW zone? Well you got FFXIV there! FFXIV is also getting 50 hours of main story content, GW2 at launch barely had that so I doubt their expansion does. FFXIV has 2 new primals, GW2 doesn’t have anything remotely close to it. FFXIV is getting 8 new dungeons, GW2 cut it’s dungeon team so likely nothing. FFXIV is getting a new Raid, GW2 might be getting a raid. FFXIV is getting FC workshops, airships, and air ship missions; GW2 nothing similar. Don’t take my word for it read the HW pre-liminary patch notes:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/e76258d6487ea30feb388f9ecc0a926fddc9eca8

If you haven’t played FFXIV at all, you cannot imagine the amount of content in that game. I’ve played MMO’s since EQ and Ultima, FFXIV hands down has the most end game content and variety. It also has the most personally challenging PvE. If you wanted to do all the dailies available alone you would spend probably 3-4 hours easy. Honestly, it makes the GW2 endgame look like a horrible work camp. The only major issues in FFXIV are PvP and class customization. The combat system is borderline, I can certainly see some preferring GW2’s better. I hate paying for subscription, but I can say that you get what you pay for and then some.

The true effects of ascended are not seen until you finish adding on all the attack modifiers. As the game has percent damage increases and decreases those 5% increases quickly cause major imbalance. Also if you add up the 5% damage stat increases, the 5% defense stat increase, and all other stat increases; you’re not 5% better than someone in exotic, you’re 5% better in each aspect which makes you >5% better.

Ascended itself is a symbol of how terrible at game design ArenaNet has become. It is counter-intuitive to how the entire game operates. Make alts and experience the different dynamic event chains! Try different builds to fit the content you are doing! Oh hey lets gate this new armor behind tons of grinding, crafting, and dailies! It’s pure and simple stupid design. The new 5% increase in ascended is absolutely unnecessary, there is literally no good reason to do it because as people have said you can already do everything with exotics. The only reason, which is a bad reason, is to force more people to grind for it as a way of artificially increasing “content”.

The price really isn’t fine at all. $50 for what is an anemic expansion? Take a quick gander at what FFXIV Heavensward is adding for $30 on sale, but $40 on the high side. HoT is an absolute joke in comparison and they want to charge $10-$20 more? Even comparing it to past expansions of WoW this thing looks weak. The land mass it’s adding isn’t that big. The features they are adding aren’t that game changing, some of which should have been fixed long ago for the base game. The last straw for me is the main game was $60 and had a lot more landmass, 8 classes instead of 1, dungeons, 3 wvw maps, and 80 levels. I just don’t see how anyone in their right mind can find this price acceptable.

Before someone mentions that FFXIV is subscription based, yes and they also provide far more content in patches than GW2 players could dream about, not to mention the quality of things are far above that of GW2. I was absolutely amazed at how tightly tuned the extremes and endgame raid were, I don’t think ArenaNet could ever even hope to achieve anything even close. ArenaNet simply doesn’t care about polish, they haven’t since the game launched. They are all about slapping on bandaids, throwing good after bad, and ignoring things.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Jon Peters (developer, in charge for balance i think?) said a few weeks ago during lifestream that “People that think thief is overpowered, do not play thief.”

Too be fair, that is the same guy that said necro reanimator was fine after people said the minion was useless and unable to land a single hit before death. He changed his tune when there was hard evidence that not only were those people right, the trait was bugged. Only took 2 years to get that trait changed. I also believe early on he said that people didn’t know how to play Necromancer as a justification of how underwhelming the class was at the time.

You can continue to put stock into what the devs say as being correct, but in reality they are clueless. This is the exact reason that instead of balancing traits to make them all equal they are taking the bad ones and lumping them in with better ones. Their balance patches are nothing short of glacially slow and fail to address most of the issues with PvP. I have more faith in comcast than I do the ArenaNet class balance devs, that’s saying something.

As for the thief class, I play thief and the amount of damage they can do combined with mobility/escape is excessive. Some other classes require a lot more skill and the end result is still less than an okay thief. Stealth is not something that is easily balanced and I can’t think of a single MMO that has done it successfully. Combined with the initiative system they setup a class that is nearly impossible to balance. It will always be either too overpowered or nerfed into the ground. I said this in beta and at launch and it has held true. SPvP was partially immune to it due to not being able to cap/hold while stealthed, new gamemodes will certainly change that though, so let the whining begin!

The condition changes stop short of actually fixing what’s wrong. They need to limit each class to 2 damaging conditions so we don’t have condition bombs that are the antithesis of what damage over time is all about. Make conditions last longer but lower the number of stacks that can be applied quickly. Condition removals need to be changed to remove a certain number of stacks, the number of stacks removed is increased by healing power. This way condition classes need to take time to build up their stacks while trying to survive and the stacks aren’t instantly removed from a single skill, the added benefit of healing power actually being more useful as well.

All this of course assumes that some of the DD builds are brought into line to tone down the fast TTK, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

BlackDevil.9268:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

I don’t even consider this a ‘full’ expansion.

Expansion to me is new class, another playable race, new skills for all classes, and another FULL continent to explore.

HoT is giving us what 35% of that. Three years later…

You mean aside from a new pvp gameplay mode, new WvW maps and a totally reworked trait system? All I see is lacking is the least important which is a new playable race.

Still doesn’t change that the expansion is anemic. Heck the trait re-work shouldn’t be included as part of the expansion since they screwed up the trait system. Let’s not forget that many portions of the game suffered for 3 years, getting relatively little, for the expansion to be…underwhelming.

Take a look at FFXIV Heavensward. I believe last I saw they are expanding the overall land mass by 150%. They are including flying, new fates including dynamic fates, 3 new classes, 8 new dungeons, 10 levels and skills to go with them, 50 hours of main storyline quests, 2 new primals, and a new raid. HoT looks like a pittance compared to it and FFXIV: ARR has only been out 2 years compared to GW2’s 3. You also can’t discount what gets brought through patches. I’d almost be willing to bet that each major FFXIV patch has brought more to the game than an entire year of GW2’s does.

Rin.1046:

Devata.6589:

“Very rarely do MMO companies give you free stuff” Except all F2P games that is.

This was more in referrence to post release content, but I should have been clearer on that. Most free to play games do not give free stuff in between expansions, they add it to the cash shop.

Devata.6589:

“people really don’t have any reason to complain about having no expansion for 3 years, and if they think they do then they need their heads examined.”

So if people prefer the content you see in expansions over the content released during the last 3 years / LS they are sick in the head?

I was not talking about preference, I was talking about people complaining there is no expansion, when there has clearly been stuff added for free instead. There is nothing wrong with prefering an expansion model, but complaining there has been nothing for 3 years is plain lunacy.

I understand that not everyone liked the model Anet used, even I disliked parts of it, but the fact is they did add stuff and for many that was enough to keep them busy and, more importantly, entertained.

Neither model is worse or better than the other, as it all depends on the actual content added and whether that content appeals to most players. Most expansions I have experienced in most MMO’s I have played have been completed within a couple of months. By pacing the episodes out, they have given players things to do throughout each year, rather than giving it to players to burst down in 2 months then having nothing new to do for 10.

The LS concept was not bad, in fact it was a very good concept. It’s just that the content they added was not enough for some, and that in their eyes means they had nothing. But that doesn’t change the fact we received it. It was Anet’s alternative content release model. Now they have realised that a lot of people preferred an expansion, and the LS content wasn’t received as well as they’d hoped. So now they are making an expansion. They are doing what a lot of these posters have wanted for a while, yet they feel the need complain that it wasn’t sooner? That to me just sounds like a childish tantrum.

What good does it do to complain now? They will not apologize for this, and I do not think they should either. They tried something different, and that is to be commended in my opinion, especially in a genre where very few companies stray from the tried and boring. I hope Anet continues to try new things and are not put off by the vocal few.

People are complaining because the excuse we got for 3 years is that we didn’t know what they were working on and that’s why we got very little. ArenaNet released content often, but it was very anemic and half of it temporary. People did tons of CDI’s only to have them be fruitless. The ones that did amount to things often missed the point like colored commander tags so commanders to cooperate being made into separate expensive purchases. WvW, SPvP, Dungeons, etc all wanted big changes/additions and might have gotten 1 minor change a year. The worst thing is that when changes would finally happen they were mostly one step forward and two steps back, ArenaNet is absolutely horrible at implementing ideas and often has to re-implement them again and sometimes again. Just look at the trait system…

HoT as an expansion isn’t worthy of the 3 years of neglect that non-ls players have been put through. FFXIV is releasing their expansion in a few weeks and they have more than GW2 does and it’s been just shy of 2 years since they re-released. 8 new zones, 8 new dungeons, new raid, 10 more levels with skills to go with it, 3 new classes, flying mounts, guild airships, and a bunch more. GW2 is doing what? 3 zones, no dungeons, no raid(maybe), 1 new spec per class, 1 new class, new wvw map, new SPvP mode, and gliding. Don’t even start looking at what FFXIV has brought in normal patches because you’ll understand why ArenaNet looks lazy. I don’t expect FFXIV level of patching but ArenaNet is below average in all AAA mmo’s that I have played and their expansion certainly matches that.

Vayne.8563:

The game has no expansions so far, but it’s still released content during the time between launch and the release of the first expansion and that content can’t be ignored.

Some people realize Anet hadn’t planned the expansion at launch and was trying something else that didn’t work out, so now they’re putting what they had been working on into an expansion.

I think that’s pretty clear. But I’d prefer if you avoid trying to imply that people who love the game are blind to it’s faults, because it’s not true.

Everything ArenaNet has added to the game post launch is kinda irrelevant really since most MMO’s release content patches, I’d actually argue that other MMO’s put more content into the game in a year of patches than ArenaNet has in 3. If we are using WoW from launch to first expansion it demolishes ArenaNet. If we use FFXIV from it’s 2nd launch until first expansion it absolutely destroys GW2. Just flat out compare expansions of WoW, GW2, and FFXIV, GW2 looks pretty bad.

We can certainly recognize that ArenaNet tried something and it didn’t work, but that’s putting it too lightly. Almost everything they’ve tried hasn’t worked out and the bulk of it could have been avoided if ArenaNet had talked to it’s playerbase. Having tons of temporary content was a no brainer that it would be a waste of time/money when the endgame was/is so tragically sparse. How many times has ArenaNet released something and the players have collectively looked at ArenaNet puzzled? Just look at the commander color change option, they bungled that one and it took a massive player outcry to get it changed. EotM was supposed to be for WvW players yet it’s used for karma farming and leveling. The new player experience, the new trait system, ascended gear, ruins of power, etc. It all adds up to 3 years of living story updates, 1/2 of which are gone for good, and very little support in any other part of the game.

This is just another case of ArenaNet being lazy. They created a system where there was huge potential for a variety of builds, however they lacked follow through to actually balance traits. There are traits that were absolutely useless or even negatively impacted the class. Even after months or even years of telling them they still didn’t get a clue. Two that I know off the top of my head are the thief stealth at 25% hp and the Necro minion when you kill something. The necro one was hilarious because no only did necros know it was useless, it was also broken. It took big threads in the necro forums to even get a dev response of “working as intended”, then more big threads showing that was indeed not the case. Eventually it was fixed but still useless. In beta you could select from all the traits in the line, which was awesome and allowed you to customize they way you wanted. Then they forced you into certain traits and that killed more build variety so they didn’t have to balance things.

So yes, this certainly kills diversity by further simplifying choices. They should have given more choices, that’s what this game needed. Don’t get me wrong, the trait system was terrible to start, but every change since beta has been in the wrong direction. This game needs depth, they are just making it shallower and shallower. It’s downright boring.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So if people think that dungeons are just too expensive to develop, that would imply this expansion should be very cheap since it doesn’t have them. I can’t imagine spending more than $20 for this expansion if there are no raids, no dungeons, no new race, and the zones are as small as they seem to be.

Everything about this expansion seems to be about saving money instead of building a better game. I’m afraid that the terrible failure of china’s launch has them scrambling for cash grabs instead of really building up the game.

I doubt what they are saying is “developing dungeons is too expensive.” Development is expensive, period. Time intensive as well. However, a company has to look at the cost of development vs the profit they gain from developing it. Therefore, they are going to be more likely to dump funding on ventures that provide the best return on their investment. If dungeons aren’t included in HoT, perhaps dungeons aren’t a lucrative return for them at this time.

It’s extremely sad that this very simple logic has to be explained.

This just highlights why ArenaNet has continued to fail at every turn. They think dungeons aren’t worth their time/money because people aren’t running their dungeons. They don’t question why people aren’t running the dungeons, they just look at metrics and see low numbers. If they had stopped and questioned why people weren’t running them, they might have seen that there is a ton of demand for good dungeons, but ArenaNet hasn’t provided a single good dungeon.

The dungeons are awful for a few reasons. The first and foremost being that the reward system is freaking awful. If I run a dungeon I want a chance at good loot, not tokens that I can use 5 runs from now for a single piece of gear. Then we have the fact that dungeon sets have specific stats, what dev thought that would be good? Maybe if all stats are created equal, but since the ArenaNet balance team is incompetent they aren’t. So there are dungeons where the eventual loot you get from grinding have stats that are worthless. The “different” paths in most dungeons aren’t really different paths, it’s the same basic path with a few changes. Take AC, you fight the same first 2 bosses in every path. You then fight lots of gravelings and finally take on a graveling end boss. Of course no one is going to do dungeons when they aren’t rewarding and a boring recycled grind. It’s like the dungeon devs paid no attention to anything that WoW did with dungeons and what made them popular.

So yes, now the development of dungeons isn’t going to be lucrative. ArenaNet insured that by putting out subpar dungeons and not fixing them. They drove off the dungeon running playerbase. They did the same thing with SPvP and WvW, it’s a very hard sell to get players back when you spend 2.5 years actively making them distrust you.

yanipheonu.5798:

$30 – 60. It’s a retail release guys. It’s not going lower than $25.

WoW’s latest expansion is $50 for context. I’d say HoT will be slightly lower. $40 – 45 is my personal guess, though 50 is not out of the question.

WoW also includes a ton of content and completely pushes the endgame forward. GW2 isn’t doing that. I haven’t seen anywhere near a similar level of content or game features that would put it on WoW tier pricing. They need to hit ~$30 for what they are putting out.

Personally speaking, I’d be tempted to buy at $20. I just haven’t seen anything that makes it worth dropping $40+. The last 2.5 years of development(or lack of) make me very leery of buying into anything ArenaNet has to say. So far it’s a class that is a rehash or other classes, some gimmicky PvE stuff, a bad implementation of GvG, and a WvW map that we have no idea if it will fix the WvW problems. Given their track record I think it’s going to be another in the long line of failures to address problems in the game as well as ruining other parts that were actually decent.

Healix.5819:

Jasher.6580:

Allow individual applications of conditions per player on mobs.

Have you ever seen an MMO support thousands of conditions on a single target?

A 25 stack of bleeds is 25 different debuffs compacted into a single indicator. This is why the stack count can change as all those short bleeds fall off. Other MMOs will do the same thing to simply make it easier to see, however, when it comes to actual debuffs that stack, they are actually merged into a single debuff with a stack count. With that system, single stacks can’t fall off and instead, a single new application will keep the entire stack refreshed.

ArenaNet has probably gone through various potential fixes, but supporting an unlimited amount of debuffs simply isn’t possible because it’s too intensive. Other potential fixes would basically require rebalancing every skill and/or changing how conditions work entirely. If they wanted to be simple however, they could just make conditions that fall off deal a percentage of their damage immediately, but that would make certain things, like a zerg + fire fields, very powerful.

Any change that makes conditions better in a zerg will likely make conditions worse on an individual level.

This isn’t everything. The condition system in GW2 is really badly designed. The conditions update per tick, meaning if you gain or lose condition damage during it the ticks will increase or lower. This means that calculations need to be done per tick, which is cpu intensive. That also has the effect of needing your client to talk to the server every tick, bandwidth intensive. It should have been a fire and forget system where the ticks are determined when it is applied and the only other time the server and client need to talk is if a condition removal is used. Then we have the whole stack of ticks going and it’s a huge problem for the servers and bandwidth. The entire system is poorly designed.

The only other MMO that I know of for a fact that had a debuff limit problem was WoW. They band-aided it within 6 months of launch and had it “fixed” within 2 years. Then they eventually made it unlimited debuffs. They recognized the problem, gave a quick fix, then made a better fix, and then finally fixed it for good. What has ArenaNet done in 2.5 years? Nothing. They do not get a pass at being utter failures to address that one of the two major damage types is absolutely useless in large scale PvE. They should be ashamed and embarrassed.

The entire condition system needs overhauled because it is horrible. Not every class should have all conditions, conditions should have equal damage potential, and no one should be able to hit a quarter of the condition cap let alone hit the condition cap solo. Condition cleanses shouldn’t be a a cure all, let them cure a number of stacks but not the full stack unless it’s a specific condition cure. Let Healing power increase the effectiveness of condition cleanse. Finally make the conditions fire and forget, no complicated calculations and bandwidth usage per tick.

Shiyo.3578:

Distaste.4801:

Shiyo.3578:

Bloodstealer.5978:

Sorry but I disagree with you.. the build diversity in GW2 is amongst the worst I have ever come across in an MMO in over 10+ yrs.

I’m not exactly sure what MMO’s you were playing because this isn’t the case at all, outside of PVE GW2 has more viable builds than any other MMO.

Sorry but 2 maybe 3 viable builds per class is nothing amazing. WoW had that a decade ago, since tons of games copied WoW, by extension, so do they. GW2 is not great in viable build variety and certainly doesn’t have the most viable builds. It has tons of sub-optimal builds though, that’s mostly due to incredibly poor balancing and bad game design. Although you could make a sub-optimal build in WoW vanilla as well by just slapping points into random trees so it’s really nothing to be proud of.

No, 2-3 viable builds per class in PVP is more than any MMO ever made.

Nope, Vanilla WoW had that. Frost mage, arcane mage, Fire mage and frost/fire combo. I know because I played all 4. Frost for CC/kiting the arcane was pom+toep+pyro, fire was fireballs and fire/fire allowed even more CC chains(was awesome for flag escort). Shamans had the healing spec, damage casting spec, and melee spec. Priests had holy, disc, or shadow. Warriors had prot and arms(which had 2 variants iirc). Warlocks had destruction or debuffs. Rogues had swords, daggers(backstab), or stun.

Any MMO with 3 trees has the exact same build variety that WoW did and GW2 does. GW2 is built in a way that things that could add to build diversity are either broken or underpowered. ArenaNet has refused in 2.5 years to fix them.

lordkrall.7241:

Usable != Most efficient.

I can almost guarantee you that every single build in the game can complete the vast majority of the content.

150 condition builds trying to kill tequatl :P

Shiyo.3578:

Bloodstealer.5978:

Sorry but I disagree with you.. the build diversity in GW2 is amongst the worst I have ever come across in an MMO in over 10+ yrs.

I’m not exactly sure what MMO’s you were playing because this isn’t the case at all, outside of PVE GW2 has more viable builds than any other MMO.

Sorry but 2 maybe 3 viable builds per class is nothing amazing. WoW had that a decade ago, since tons of games copied WoW, by extension, so do they. GW2 is not great in viable build variety and certainly doesn’t have the most viable builds. It has tons of sub-optimal builds though, that’s mostly due to incredibly poor balancing and bad game design. Although you could make a sub-optimal build in WoW vanilla as well by just slapping points into random trees so it’s really nothing to be proud of.

I highly doubt the 8 original classes will see major reworks. I mean you need to go by ArenaNet’s track record, 2.5 years and they can barely manage simple database value changes. Even the things they did rework they failed horribly at. Necro dhumfire? They failed at that multiple times even with players telling them how terrible their proposed fixes were before they went live. 2.5 years and we still have how many useless weapons and traits? Their record speaks for itself.

I’d wager that the Revenant will be OP at launch and remain that way for 1-2 years. First off it’s an incentive for people to buy the expansion. Second, ArenaNet has shown time and time again that their balance team plays favorites, obviously their new class will be their favorite. 3rd ArenaNet doesn’t want to do heavy lifting so you can bank on very little being done to help old classes.

The idea behind the revenant is just the culmination of homogenized gameplay that ArenaNet has been working towards. It is the direct result of ArenaNet’s balance team being unable to handle any sort of combat depth as well as their complete lack of creativity.

One of the main reasons it’s calculation heavy is because it has to calculate every single tick. If your condition damage changes then the ticks will do more or less damage. They need to be fire and forget where the damage per tick is calculated only 2 times: at application and/or at removal. If you max stacks then any new application either doesn’t apply until their is a slot. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what we have.

Another problem is that ArenaNet made it possible for a single person to max out stacks. How about we increase the damage and duration on a single stack of bleed instead of having every skill apply 2-3 stacks? Poison and burning also need to stack even if it reduces their damage/scaling. Obviously if we decrease the number of stacks people apply then removals will also need to be nerfed in order to keep PvP fair. I vote for removals only removing a certain number of stacks. If it’s a poison removal then let it remove a few stacks, if ti’s a general removal then maybe only 1.

One of the two major damage types should not be completely crippled in PvE. That’s just a sign of poor design and the fact that it’s been in game for 2+ years is unacceptable. It’s 2015 and there are games 10 years ago that have better dot/condition systems. If they could solve it a decade ago, what’s the issue?

Vayne.8563:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

This isn’t some big huge thing that huge numbers of people are complaining about. This is a pet peeve of a small percentage of the population who got riled up because Anet used the word grind and said the game wasn’t grindy. If that hadn’t happened, this thread wouldn’t even exist.

Yes, yes it would.

I have utter and complete faith it would still exist in some form. We might not be complaining about the same things as far as grind . . .

This thread is specifically about the no grind philosophy which was brought up at the launch. If the word grind hadn’t been mentioned in the launch people would be talking more about HoT and less about this.

Also there are a lot of things that people post in grind threads that aren’t about the grind itself.

Time gating is not grind, if anything it’s anti grind. It’s an alternate way to slow down progress. If something is time gated, you can’t grind it.

RNG – RNG is not grind. It’s a way of slowing down how fast you get something. You can grind the whole world over and over for a precursor, but what’s being complained about there is the random element…not grind.

Not getting good enough drops – This is not grind either, it’s people complaining they somehow have unlucky accounts and they don’t get the stuff other people do.

There are some grind complaints on these forums but they’re generally few and far between or have been for the last year or so anyway.

Time gating can certainly be a grind. Grinding is any repetitive task you need to do a lot of times to achieve some goal. Just because it is time gated does not mean you aren’t doing a repetitive task. The grind is spread out over a much longer period of time. Did I want to log in and do the daily? Heck no! But I needed that laurel and a lot more in order to get an ascended item. So every day I logged on to grind out the daily to get a single laurel towards my goal.

RNG is certainly a part of grinding. If it makes things harder to get that means doing the repetitive task more, thus more grinding. If an item has a 1/10 chance of dropping it’s not going to take nearly as much grinding as a 1/2500.

Poor drops- this is the same as RNG. If you get poor drops then you’re going to be grinding more in order to get whatever it is that you want. Not to mention that GW2’s reward system is terrible since most of the time you get trash loot. This helps reinforce the feeling of grinding since you never get a feeling of accomplishment. This is diablo 3 at release, at least Blizzard learned from their mistake.

In the last year or so the forums have slowed to a crawl as people have left or simply don’t care anymore since the devs ignore us. Grind has always been a big topic in GW2. Do you not remember the dungeon grind at launch that people complained about? Pentinent grind? The fractal skin grind? The ascended mats grind? The precursor grind? Champ grinding? The T6 grind? The Lodestone grind? Silk grinding? Ecto grinding? I mean there is very few aspects of GW2 that haven’t been associated with grinding and then complained about.

Morfedel.4165:

dekou.6012:

I don’t think this has anything to do with the expansion, as the issue affects the entire game. It’d have to be solved in a universal balance/engine update. They’ve been quiet about it, so it’s safe to say nothing is being done anytime soon.

Just because they aren’t revealing their inner dialogues doesn’t mean they aren’t discussing it. Don’t make assumptions.

Totally isn’t an assumption that nothing is being done. 2 years ago an ArenaNet poster posted that devs were aware of the issue and were kicking around ideas on how to deal with it. A few months ago Gaile posted that devs were aware of the issue and were kicking around ideas on how to deal with it. 2 years and they don’t even have an idea of how they want to fix it. Yeah, it’s safe to say that it’s not getting fixed anytime soon.

The infuriating thing is it isn’t even like this is a tiny issue, this is a glaringly bad design decision that should never have made it into the game period and after 2+ years nothing has been done. It not only makes conditions worthless is mass PvE, but makes a good deal of combo fields a detriment as well. Any other developer upon having 1 of their 2 major damage types broken in the game would have it fixed asap. It took Blizzard 2 years in WoW’s early days to expand the debuff limit to 40(they expanded to 16 a few months after launch) and 4 years before GW2 even launched they removed the limit completely. How does the technology and design somehow exist back then, but suddenly 6 years of huge tech upgrades and ArenaNet is stumped?

ZeftheWicked.3076:

If content oriented for new players is to look anything like NPE then i will start a kickstarter fundraising to buy a huge pirate ship, for the sole purpose of keelhauling any A-net employee that gets those bright ideas.

As for Angry Joe it’s good that he’s being reserved. If the expansion is half as good as i suspect he’ll be positively shocked and satisfied, though remember people – this is angry joe. For him the announcement was prolly something like this:

“Blah Blah, blah, yappidy…New pvp mode and new WvW map!!..blah, blappidy-blah, blah blah…”

There are a lot of people that feel exactly the same as he does. GW2 was sold with WvW and SPvP being a major features. ArenaNet though did not support them well with continued development, they focused instead on Living World. So of course they will see the announcement as being lackluster considering ArenaNet’s treatment of those communities in the last 2+ years. A new SPvP gamemode and WvW mechanic changes should have been in the game in year 1. A new borderland should have been in the game in year 2 at most. The question now is whether those features in the expansion are worth paying for or is it more of the same with similar lack of dev support post launch?

Vayne.8563:

Let’s also bear in mind that Anet actually brought up the manifesto, which I dissected line by line in so many posts I won’t repeat it here. But there’s no possible way to look at it, using the manifesto’s own words, to make anyone think that they mean any definition of grind but the standard one.

We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2 is a line in a paragraph about combat. Not a paragraph about gear or farming or gaining gold. Grind, as in killing stuff to gain levels. What it means to most old timers.

If you can find something in the manifesto which supports your definition, I’d love to hear it. Because in 3 years since it’s been out, no one has provided anything but that single out of context line, we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2. But everything around it defines it as something other than people are saying.

You can win any argument if you ignore the evidence.

Grind is and always has meant doing something repetitively to achieve some goal. It is synonymous with farming. It has never been directly tied to leveling only. You can certainly level grind, you can also farm experience. You can faction grind or you can farm faction. You can grind mobs for loot or you can farm mobs for loot. It’s all the same. As far back as SWG people were grinding for all sorts of things. Mission grinding for cash, experience grinding for leveling, experience grinding for jedi unlocks, merc/geonosian grinding for cubes/adhesive, or just faction grinding to swap sides or buy faction loot. So unless ArenaNet missed a decade of grind being used in a ton of different ways, your argument doesn’t hold water.

You also realize that when he says combat he is talking about anything that involves combat, which ranges from quests to farming mobs. It is exactly why they go on about what makes GW2 events different. That is why he says

“In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff”

The problem is that that is exactly what you do in GW2. Want the BIS gear? Grind. Want a certain WvW rank unlock? Grind. Achievement point unlocks? Grind. Awesome looking skins? Grind. BIS runes/sigils? Grind. Legendaries? Grind. Crafting? Grind. Even if by some stretch of the imagination we are talking purely combat, that’s a grind too! GW2 has an incredibly shallow grindy combat system, I was hoping they would go the TCOS route but they decided to stick with mediocrity. Honestly the “fun stuff” is incredibly few and far between, which is why the game is grindy. Instead of introducing fun content they slap in grind content. Any fun content they do add is usually temporary, which ultimately hurt the game.

I think a few of the things in HoT should have been added to the base game. The precursor hunt should be a base game change. The system they had was awful and helped break the economy, why would you not try to fix that asap? The new WvW map and mechanics changes, same thing. In 2+ years you gave WvW what amounts to nothing to fix the problems that were there on day 1, yet you’ll stick it in the expansion because otherwise WvW players wouldn’t buy it. The same goes for the SPvP gamemode, that should have been added to the base game. A new class and Sub-classes when the game has had glacially slow and clueless balance passes?

The bottom line for me is that the support for GW2 after launch was incredibly sub-par. So many portions of the game were in disrepair and left to rot, but suddenly there are fixes in a paid expansion. It looks like a cash grab pure and simple. If I buy this expansion are they going to go back to not supporting the game in order to work on another paid expansion? If they are going to treat the expansion like they did the base game then I don’t see a point in buying it. Day 1 we will find out all the horrible design decisions they made and they won’t be fixed for 2-3 years until the next expansion, which of course will cost you!

Can you really call what they do with class changes as “balancing”, because for the past 2 years they’ve failed incredibly hard at it. Do you really want them to start poking around in PvE? It will sound like a joke, but I’d wager their first change would be to somehow either buff direct damage or reduce condition damage. Their changes are that backwards that it’s baffling. Of course once there is player outrage it will take another 6 months for a balance patch to fix them, but only in a way that breaks something else.

Low damage is funner than high damage because it takes more skill and becomes more about tactics. HIgh damage is about who attacks first. This is evident in part by how badly SPvP has failed and how berserker centric PvE is. ArenaNet has also done a horrible job of balancing damage, mitigation, healing, conditions, and mobility, which makes people choose the most OP option. At they very least the might nerf is a teeny tiny step in the right direction. Being able to bunker up and have high damage isn’t something that should be possible because it kills the balance for berserkers. On the other hand a berserker shouldn’t be able to one shot any class regardless of how they are built. This game could safely halve the current damage and fights would be all the funner for it.

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Hopefully this is the last plant people story arc we’re getting, I doubt I’m the only one who’s rather tired of seeing sylvari in everything.

Is there anything about this game you do like?

Of course, sadly those parts of the game are heavily neglected – Fractals and WvW.
Since we know that dungeon developer team has been disbanded and knowing the poor (even worse than in PvE) WvW communication – I’m not hyped.
For all we know they might me working on a new WvW map, but with no one caring about feedback or listening, it might end up being another EOTM.

For me personally, new PPT system alone would be better than all the last 8 episodes of the living story.

These are the types of comments that burn me the most. EotM had an alpha server filled with WvW guild who all commented on it at the time. I was on that server and I read those forums.

Many of the comments made on those forums were incorporated into EotM.

The things that people complain about EotM today weren’t raised on those forums to my knowledge. EoTM didn’t become something great because Anet put in a test server or didn’t listen to people.

In fact, EoTM to me, illustrated just how hard Anet’s job really is. A whole lot of people and guilds, including mine, tested EoTM, and none of us saw what it would become.

That said, EotM is undoubtedly a popular part of the game anyway. A lot of people like it.

But a lot of the WvW’ers who tried it and liked it in alpha don’t like it now.

Listening to the fans and giving them early access did exactly what to help?

Much of the EotM feedback was not incorporated into EotM either. You don’t mention that. The two things I remember getting added on feedback are fences and destroyable bridges.

Not sure where you were, but the writing was on the wall for EotM even in testing. EVERYONE knew that EotM was going to be a zerg fest, this had spilled into the normal WvW forum and there were debates there about it. The concern was also raised about rewards for attacking and not defending. It’s absolute amateur hour level design to think that players will do something for no reward. Players always take the path of least resistance to rewards, thus since defending gives no rewards and attacking does, everyone just does round robin.

Don’t believe me? http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/editorials/hands-edge-mists

Did you read the bit about rewards near the end and it turning into a “grind train”, sounds like the karma train we have now right? I guess that guy is just a clairvoyant though, OR ArenaNet just ignored a lot of feedback on the overall design of the map/rewards and focused on little things that aren’t really game changers, which has been what they’ve done since the the game released. I mean seriously, if the press saw the issues then you can bet the forums saw the issues. I would absolutely love it if they released the archived EotM testing forums, then we could really see what ArenaNet listened to and what they didn’t.

EotM is popular because it’s easy farm. WvW players largely hate it. If you nerf the loot rewards in EotM the populations will drop dramatically overnight. This has been the case with almost everything in GW2, the popular things to do aren’t fun at all but give better loot. That is a sign of poor game design, you want things to be popular because they are fun. How much do you want to bet that you could slap a chance at awesome loot onto any event in the game and suddenly it will become popular, of course you need to abide by the effort/reward ratio.

Tharomir.6985:

This game desperately needs some actual new content besides this Living Story filler fluff.

I’m guessing it will add a raid, but if it uses current reward mechanics it will nosedive quickly like the 3 headed wurm. If they add a new tier of gear then there will be a lot of angry people that worked hard for ascended. If they increase level cap, same thing. If the raid rewards ascended then others will cry it’s a step towards raid or quit. ArenaNet are not that great with game systems/mechanics so I’m bracing myself for a train wreck.

Sirendor.1394:

It looks interesting, but somehow I can’t shove off the feeling that this will be another disappointment and hyping up people with awesome looking trailers and then when it hits, the actual content is not even worth the name “content”.

Most of the last living story episodes I just completed cause I wanted the armour skins, got through them in 1 hour tops and didn’t repeat. Wintersday was a total letdown, same old content again.

If they make this a paying expansion, I doubt I’d even buy it unless there’s new playable races/classes/PvP modes.. or anything of the kind.
If it’s a continuation of boring living story but behind a paywall… no thanks, cause it’s simply not worth it.
If it’s a hype up for living story that is still free, /care.

Pretty much my thoughts. Unless this expansion expands gameplay via new races, stats, weapons, skills, traitlines/trait system, SPvP maps/gamemodes, WvW maps/mechanics, etc; it isn’t going to be worth a purchase for me or anyone that I know. The LS is alright but it’s not worth buying an expansion. Even if it does include new gameplay there is a VERY high risk of the systems being flawed beyond comprehension or completely unbalanced, ArenaNet’s track record to date is extremely discouraging at a minimum. Why am I going to buy an expansion and hope they support the game properly when they didn’t do that for the original release?

It’s on my radar and I’ll check it out on the 24th, but I’m very far from hyped. I’d say it’s akin to a doctors appointment, you’ve got a bad feeling about it but at least you’ll get some answers.

There is no good argument against dueling, besides “I don’t like dueling so don’t add it”.

The harassment argument doesn’t have any merit for a few reasons. Dueling itself does not mean there will be a toxic environment, most games I’ve played dueling hasn’t been toxic at all. Even if it were to turn toxic we have ignore and report functions for a reason. Then we also have the fact that there have been many things in the game already that cause the exact toxic behavior that “duelers” are accused of. We’ve had the dungeon elitists, the fail the event to farm farmers, killed the champ out of order zone spam, and a whole host of other abusive people. That doesn’t mean you don’t add those events, mechanics, features, etc; it means there is a report/ignore function for a reason. Anonymous people are venomous regardless of what the specific thing they are doing.

Dueling spam is easily fixed via ignore dueling function. Using duels to buff up/exploit is fixed by not allowing duelers to damage mobs, mobs can damage them though, and all buffs are lost on duel end. There are no good reasons to not add dueling. Again, there are no good arguments for not adding it.

Serophous.9085:

Improvements:
Account Wallet
Magic find removed from gear and account bound now
AP rewards
Account bonuses
Wardrobe
WvW Ranks (and then account wide)
Improved WvW loot
Champs dropping bags
SPVP loot improved
Siege kicking off AFKers
Salvaging made easier….
Culling removed

I think that’s just the tip….

Account wallet- Fixed a problem ArenaNet introduced. Had they not added tons of currencies then it wouldn’t have been necessary.

Magic find removed- Removing choices from the game…yay?

AP rewards- Both good and bad. Good that it rewards achieving things within the game but bad because it’s introduced AP grinding as a major endgame activity.

Wardrobe- I’m sure there are some people with townclothes(iirc) that would like a word with you!

WvW Ranks- Did not improve WvW at all, if anything it hurt it

Improved WvW loot- I guess getting slightly more than nothing is an improvement if only slightly.

Champs dropping bags- The mere fact that you’re clinging to slightly better trash loot as a major game improvement should say something.

Siege kicking off AFKers- Bug fix?

Salvaging made easier- Wasn’t really needed and ultimately excerbated by them tossing too much trash loot at people instead of real rewards.

Culling removed- This is the only thing that I think really improved the game.

If that’s just the tip of “improvements”, lets list the negatives too so we can see if it’s an overall improvement or not!

Ascended tier
Laurels
Ascended armor/weapons through crafting only
Perplexity runes
WvW traps
WvW Runes of Power
EotM- Debateable
3 headed wurm- specifically reward/difficulty
A whole heap of class “balance” changes
SPvP paid tournaments
SPvP maps(skyhammer/unicorn)
Temporary content while endgame is lacking
NPE
New Trait system
WvW seasons- they destroy servers

those are literally the ones right off the top of my head, I’m sure there are tons more as ArenaNet always implements flawed systems that need fixed 2-3 times or they just ignore it and never mention it again.

Both games don’t live up to their potential in my opinion. Although I think FFXIV is doing a lot better than GW2. FXIV is very restrictive as far as classes go, sure you can be all classes but everyone playing the same class is exactly the same. The combat is clunky and boring, but the game has a ton of content and they continually keep adding to it. FXIV also has decently thought out mechanics and decent class balance. GW2 on the other hand has nonrestrictive classes but they are horribly balanced with tons of skills, weapons, traits being completely unviable. GW2 constantly suffers from poorly thought out mechanics and refusal to fix them. GW2 has a real lack of fun content, instead they’ve concentrated on grindy content. Gw2 combat is smooth but spammy and lacking real tactical thought.

GW2 at this point can be described in a single word, apathy. FFXIV on the other hand while not being the greatest in some departments at least seems interested in producing a fun game.

naiasonod.9265:

Immensus.9732:

not interested, story is not for MMOs, good gameplay and replayable content is, if we can get these fine

Story is not for MMOs? Dude, have you ever played an mmo?

Serious question time. You seem unaware of how major a factor story and lore are in… Well… About all of them.

Important to you? Clearly not.

I’ll risk speculating that it matters to most, and that that majority is a big one.

No, he is more or less correct. Replayability and Gameplay are far more important to a MMO than story ever has been. Heck MMO’s roots are all about creating a game that players play for a very long time in order to keep them paying a subscription. Why do you think MMO’s have drifted towards F2P? MMO’s have started focusing on stories instead of good gameplay and replayability, thus players don’t want to pay a monthly subscription for something they won’t be playing in a month. SWTOR is a prime example of story not sustaining a MMO. They focused so much on story and the rest of the game was generic, boring, and soulless. They had to scramble to flip that game to F2P because the loss of players was so bad. The best part of that was that I had called that they day they said they were focusing on the story pillar and doing full VO.

Story isn’t bad, it simply doesn’t sustain a MMO. Story is always finite and players will complete it way faster than devs can produce it. You need good gameplay and mechanics to sustain the game in order for the devs to produce more story/content. GW2 after 2 years is sorely lacking in good gameplay and most certainly in mechanics. If anything the continual dumbing down of things is making things worse than they were at launch. If ArenaNet continues to add LS3 without adding any depth to the game then it’s a sad end for GW2. We’ve already seen the effects focusing on LS has on the game and it’s not great; WvW is struggling to stay alive, SPvP is a joke, and dungeons are a ghost of opportunity lost. GW2’s remaining lifespan is basically until another AAA F2P/B2P MMO releases, I’m guessing EQNext.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve been over the quote “we don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” again and again. Taken out of context, it means what you think it means. Taken in context it doesn’t mean that at all.

It’s talking about grinding to level because that’s what grinding traditionally means. Looking up grinding in wikipedia it’s in the first sentences. Grinding to level is what they were talking about, because when they made that video many games didn’t have enough quests to really level you and you just had to go out and kill stuff to level.
That’s why they say, in the same paragraph, "we want to change the way people view “combat”. Not gear, not loot, combat.

Grind has come to mean other things, more so every year, but back then, more people thought it meant grinding to level. What you’re talking about is farming, not grinding to a lot of old timers. The word has changed.

Try reading the whole paragraph and tell me what in it makes you think he’s talking about anything but combat.

Anyway at the time, it was repeated several times at conventions, and Anet employees explained exactly what it meant.

It isn’t what you’re saying it meant.

I’ve played MMO’s since SWG pre-CU, grinding has always been doing a repetitive task many times, think about the term grinding it’s about slowly wearing away something. Farming is grinding for a certain item, material, or points and is basically a synonym. It is not and never has been specific to level grinding, that’s why people have to say level grinding, faction grinding, honor grinding, etc. However I guess my experience in 2003 with SWG faction grinding is wrong? Or in 2005 in WoW with reputation grinding is wrong then or the HIgh Warlord/Grand Marshal grind. So if grinding meant a lot of different things by 2010, how in the world do you know what ArenaNet meant in the manifesto.

Are you joking that most mmo’s didn’t have enough quests to level when the manifesto came out? You’re talking 6 years post WoW launch. There were tons of WoW clones in that time and almost all MMO’s had enough quests to level to max. Warhammer Online came out in 2008 and had more than enough quests to hit max level. If we were talking 2000-2006 your argument might hold water, but by 2010 most AAA western MMO’s had quest based leveling to max. In fact at that point the big thing was the voiced over quests, which both SWTOR and GW2 marketed on.

The combat statement is a separate topic in the manifesto. I thought that was pretty obvious. In fact after mentioning combat the quote is this

“It all gets back to our basic design philosophy. Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.”

“It all gets back to” means everything mentioned before this, not just combat.

“basic design philosophy” means that’s what the ENTIRE game is based on, not just combat.

“grinding for a future fun reward” could be anything from a new item, new skin, or new content.

I honestly don’t know how you can even remotely try to defend this. It’s pretty cut and dry. They didn’t want players grinding either for levels or rewards, yet now most of the game is based purely on grinding for rewards and the content is un-fun grind content. I guess at this point you’ll want to delve into the “Is it fun?” statements Colin made, because they certainly aren’t living up to those either.

Ayrilana.1396:

Yoroiookami.3485:

What can I say. I don’t believe you, when you say that you didn’t grind in the game. I consider grind as doing the same pieces of content over and over again in order to gain something.

Grinding:
- Doing the same dungeon over and over again for tokens
- Getting gold for ascended armour/getting materials for ascended armour/killing mobs for ascended armour and weapons.
- Getting x amount of geodes to craft Mawdrey and a bonus time-wall in case you actually want to craft everything yourself. (Getting punished for limiting grind)
- Queensdale, Orr, “Whatever” Train.
- Farming Black Lion Keys.
- …
Just off the top of my head.
Of course you can always pay for some of those with real life money, but otherwise you’re forced to grind, or find rich friends.
That’s grind for me. Plenty of content is locked behind it. It’s okay if you disagree.

As I had stated before, you don’t understand what they meant by no grind. I feel generous so I’ll link a few things to read/watch for you.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

You stated plenty of content is locked behind grind but you didn’t list a single example. Could you please provide me with one?

What do you mean we don’t know what they meant by “we don’t want players to grind in GW2”. It’s pretty cut and dry. They literally don’t want players doing the same things repeatedly. Of course basically anything they add anymore is exactly that, doing the same thing over and over again in order to get a reward.

As for your statement, where does this content lock suddenly come from? You’re the one tacking on words. However, let’s go with your idea for a second. If the ultimate goal of RPG’s is character progression then it can either be through stats or story. So we can now infer that there are 2 endgame goals in GW2, to do the story and to max out stats. There is, however, a 3rd endgame goal of getting skins that is gained from the social aspect that come from MMO’s.

Stats can then be further broken down into Achievement points, player stats, and ranking. The story you get free and can be unlocked quickly, so no grinding. Unless of course you didn’t have the game or didn’t login the 2weeks that story was up. At which point you need to buy that story and doing that through the game requires grinding. Maxing achievment points is certainly a grind since not only do most of the achievements require grinding, there are repeatable achievements that need to be grinded as well. WvW ranking is grinding. SPvP is no longer grinding since it’s elo based, but I don’t dabble in that to say definitively. Ascended gear is grinding as is getting a precursor and then getting a legendary. The best skins cost a ton of money, thus grinding, or are only rewarded through very low RNG, which causes grinding.

If you’re a player that logs in every new LS update, finishes the story, and does any new events in the zone 1-2 times without worrying about gear, AP, or skins; then sure there is no grind. However if you want the best gear, AP, or skins then welcome to GrindWars 2. When most of the endgame goals are behind grinds then I think I can say Yes content is locked behind grinding. There is a reason that the champion trains in PvE started and the EotM karma train is still running. There is relatively little driving content and tons of grinding content. Even the content that might be considered driving often times offers so little reward that it becomes grinding content.

samo.1054:

+1
Facts. I’ve been saying that “play how you want” died at the moment when the new Trait System was introduced. Worst call I have seen in MMORPGs in many years.

But what bothers me the most about all this, that there’s people there in Anet that keep making terrible calls for the game, that most people really dislike and even when the community makes a thread with 3400 replies and 160 000 views about how bad a certain change is, Anet refuses to do anything except adding more designs that ruin the game even further.

:S

It started earlier than that. The introduction of Ascended pushed people into doing fractals, which ArenaNet acknowledged was a bad idea to have only 1 avenue for players to obtain ascended. Of course they (didn’t) remedied that months later by adding more ascended that was gated behind dailies and guild missions that only larger guilds could complete. So we went from play any content you want and get exotics, to Fractals for rings, dailies and guild missions for amulets and rings, and now crafting for armor/weapons. The trait system just furthered the “push” towards playing how ArenaNet wants, there are also dozens of farming nerfs, content changes, and grindy content that help push players too.

Anyone remember when Karma was meant to be the play how you want currency? That’s the real litmus for the death of play how you want, when the currency that backed it is abandoned you know it’s dead.

It’s the typical ArenaNet approach to game design, one step forward and 2 steps back. I’m more impressed than anything that they manage to accomplish it patch after patch. This approach of course always divides the community since some like the one step forward and others hate the 2 steps back. In this case here some like that the new dailies are more rewarding and less time consuming for AP(1 step forward) and others hate that their is less variety, forces them to do things that are out of the way, and development time was wasted on a system that was fine before and the time before that(two steps back). I can’t think of a single change to the game that the vast majority of players were pleased with, I think that’s more telling of what ArenaNet has become than anything else.

nGumball.1283:

Imaginos.3756:

nGumball.1283:

Imaginos.3756:

Far fewer choices in pve for those who only do pve. This is an amazingly crappy change. I thought we were going to get more options not less. You already did Less and people HATED it. You can’t be that clueless Anet.

Add more options!

‘’You can’t be that clueless Anet’’

Do you really imagine the game to made based on your needs?
It should be the other way around. You play because you like it. You don’t play if you don’t like it. It is good to give feedback but it is annoying to see players insulting the company when they, themselves, have no idea what they want and they keep complaining, not realizing, that 2 months ago, there were complaints about the exact opposite of what they want now.

Sweet so I don’t play, I don’t spend money in their gem store, they don’t make any cash. Great!

I don’t know if you realize it but the world is not about you, you are just a small part of it and sometimes what you want is irrelevant. You may need to grow up a little bit before realizing that instead of threatining people with your money.

You’re correct and wrong at the same time. On a personal level what we want is irrelevant, however in this case the person is representative of a certain amount of players that play GW2. Since this person represents other people, depending on the number of people, what he wants can certainly be relevant to the overall games health. As for threatening people with money, you’re just wrong. Money is power, if enough people withhold their cash from a MMO company the MMO dies and the company collapses. As the saying goes, vote with your wallet.

BlueBoy.1236:

Astralporing.1957:

Obtena.7952:

… but that’s dependent on how the PLAYER decided to play. WvW is not all about 1 vs. 1 so if someone does get caught in a situation where they are at a disadvantage because of their gear, that’s their own fault.

Yes, precisely. If you are not running ascended, it’s your own fault – because you really, really should have been.
Notice, how the person decked in ascended will never get caught in a situation when being in weaker gear will give him disadvantage.

BlueBoy.1236:

lel, only bad players make that kind of excuses. Dodge, correct build and using the right skills at the right time are the things that matter in dueling.

Bullkitten. All that things the other player can do as well. And he also has better damage than you. Yes, the advantage the ascended gear grants may not matter much if you are a significantly better player, but what if you are of similar level of skill? Or are you implying, that you should never engage opponents if you don’t have crushing advantage?

yea a difference of 50 armors, 1%crit chance will definitely give me a “crushing” advantage.

50 more armor per blow adds up. You’re essentially saying that wearing a soldiers helm is worthless because it only gives 50 toughness. Also you don’t account for the multiplicative nature of DD stats. You see there are skills that increase damage by a percent, if your base damage is higher than that means you get even more damage from the small stat increase. So a 10K backstab can become a 12k backstab. So while the stat increase is only 5%, the overall damage increase is closer to 20%(iirc). That is very tangible and can make or break fights. In a class that bursts it’s targets, I’d say 20% is a crushing advantage.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Obtena.7952:

Wynne.3908:

It doesn’t matter to the average player WHY the things they want are so expensive. The point is the ‘good stuff’ in the game is FAR out of reach of the average player. Anything constructive to say to the OP at all? Are you concerned at the price of stuff?

The good stuff being what? Even the average player should have zero issue outfitting themselves in full exotic … is that not considered ‘good’ enough for you? Full exotic armor is 1-2% lower stats than Ascended. Are you seriously suggesting that if a player can’t get BiS gear, it’s not good? That sounds a little stupid if you ask me, considering all permanent content in this game was crushed in the gear you aren’t classifying as ‘good’.

Not sure where you are getting your numbers. A full ascended zerker gear player does 20% more damage than the exact same zerker gear player in all exotics. The math was extensively discussed when ascended was first released.

You do not NEED ascended gear to complete any of the content in the game, however the difference IS significant.

Those number were before the crit damage change iirc so it’s lower now, the point still stands though. Ascended offers a tangible advantage over exotic that well exceeds 1%-2% The armor from a full set is already 4%-5% higher without even including the other stats.

I don’t even know why people are arguing whether Ascended gear is necessary. Progression is a huge part of MMO’s, people play them to progress and for their social aspects. Any sort of stat increase is progression and therefore a major feature of the game. Telling someone they don’t need that stat upgrade is basically saying don’t play an MMO because that same argument can be used. Why did you buy the game? Why did you level? Why did you get exotics? The answer is always the same, because you wanted to. You don’t need ascended just like you don’t need to play the game. Since RPG’s started it’s always been known that players want BIS stuff, it’s a tangible number showing your progression. It’s utterly stupid to say that players shouldn’t go after that whether it’s needed or not.

On another topic, I personally have 8 level 80’s and only a ascended rings on 3-4 of them and 2 amulets. The reason being that I did not want to grind crafting. I got like one profession up to 450 and that just made me hate the game. I’m also certainly not going to farm champs, dumgeons, etc for the materials to do it because if I wanted that level of grind I’d play an Asian MMO. I’m almost 100% sure you can get a hasla weapon in archeage faster than an ascended weapon in GW2. Honestly, of the 8 classes I have I like playing 5 (Thief, Necro, Warrior, Mesmer, Guardian). Each class I play has 2-3 sets of gear per class, that’s 10-15 different sets. I’m not even going to do the math on the amount of time farming/materials it would take me to get them all geared in ascended even if I liked crafting. It’s absolutely stupid. I mean considering a part of the game is about swapping out builds to suit the different parts of the game, having the stats behind such a ridiculous grind is counter-productive, which sums up GW2’s development progress.

Everything about ascended shows ArenaNet’s incompetence. They originally released ascended and a lot of players hated the whole idea, but they ignored that and implemented it anyway. Of course they only introduce them to fractals and players were mad at being forced to do fractals to get them, ArenaNet recognized(posted in a reddit Q&A) that having only 1 way of obtaining ascended items was dumb and promised to add more ways. They add the laurel system with time gating that completely screws people that run alts. Then they add guild missions that completely screw small guilds, the designer of said system tells those small guild players to suck it up and just join a big guild. Later they add smaller guild missions that still don’t solve the problem. Finally they add ascended weapons/armor and it’s the punchline. The only way to get them is crafting which not only flys in the face of them saying a single way is bad but also screws people that run alts because now you need to farm for all the different professions. It’s simply laughable.