Guild Wars 2

Shayne Hawke.9160:

CSE looks like they’ve built a lot of hype around the development of a popular game’s successor that hasn’t even been released yet.

Do you see the parallels yet?

The hype is mostly due to the transparency in the development process. They aren’t being super secretive, they keep the donators/customers in the loop, and they aren’t wavering on the ideas that it will be a niche game for PvPers and everything else is secondary. ArenaNet on the other hand is super secretive, they don’t keep players in the loop or even the same continent, and they consistently waver on ideals for the game. I mean we went from “max stats are easy to obtain” to ascended grind. “We don’t make grindy games!” yet they keep implementing grindy content. Even with the new daily system, the old system they wanted players to have freedom to play how they want, now it’s we want players to do things they don’t do that often. ArenaNet also works at an incredibly slow pace compared to the rest of the AAA market. FFXIV already leaves GW2 in the dust content wise and have an expansion coming out in the spring that has new classes/jobs(whatever they are called).

lordkrall.7241:

rapthorne.7345:

I’m more concerned as to the reason for the log in incentives, is activity dwindling that much?

Do you really think that people that doesn’t play actively will suddenly start logging in because they get a small reward (that they won’t really have any use for because they are not playing in the first place) is added?

The better question is do you believe it was implemented for anything but inflating login numbers? I mean up to this point it’s been ArenaNets main objective to give players as little good loot as possible. From nerfing farms to just plain awful boss loot they haven’t exactly been tossing it around. Then suddenly a new system of daily logins that promises good loot as long as you continue to login? It’s fishy. The system isn’t for those who flat out quit. It is for those who are on the cusp. Those that went from logging on 5 times a week and are down to 1-2. ArenaNet is banking that if they login for a reward that some will continue to play, of those that do continue to play a few will spend money on gems. It’s all about increasing the odds that they make money through statistics. It’s this line of thinking and developing on metrics that ruins games. Instead of making the game fun to play they use cheap tricks to get numbers where the number crunchers want them.

This to me just solidifies that management in ArenaNet is what’s driving the game into the ground. The daily system was absolutely fine, it certainly didn’t need a revamp when compared to other systems in the game or lack of endgame content. That begs the question of how this got implemented? Once again ArenaNet managers look at metrics and see that daily logins are down, they don’t care why they are down or how to actually fix that problem. Nope! Instead they implement a daily login reward as a bandaid fix to get logins back up. It just makes them seem desperate that this is what they have to resort to in order to get people to login. This is pretty sleazy and the worst part of it is a lot of players won’t even realize it because they can’t see past the free loot. A really sad demise for the once heralded ArenaNet, using sleazy tricks to get players to login instead of making a fun game that players want to login to.

Simonoly.4352:

Rym.1469:

I imagine Anet don’t want it to reach a point where a Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer uses Endure Pain/Distortion/Shelter/Elixir S, Gear Shield at say 1/3 health and, whilst in stance/distortion/heal/shrink, block, is healed to full health by local water field blasts and other AoE heals. It would be an enormous buff to Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer sustain. Not sure if it’s the sort of thing Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer needs in sPvP.

Oh, wait…

None of those things constitute the same mechanic as an additional pool of health.

Yes, they really do. Endure pain has far better scaling than DS. Endure pain on a DD burst could absorb 10k+ damage. If the necro is fully specced into DS then he will get 78% of his life in life force, at 20k hp that’s 15.6k. If the necro is in DS for 5s he loses 10% lf naturally, leaving ~14k actual damage absorbtion. So already endure pain is near what DS is capable of and that’s just regular endure pain vs fully traited DS. if we start looking at multiple enemy situations then we would see that endure pain scales just fine, yet DS doesn’t scale at all. Endure pain is also ready to go where the necro needs to build the LF in order to use DS. So in a 1v1 DS is good, but passed that other skills that actually scale are flat out better. Why do you think necros get focused in team fights? A bit of extra health doesn’t stop focus fire, invuls/evades do though and mobility certainly helps.

Then outside of endure pain warriors get more endurance regen, more vigor, mobility, evades, stuns, blocks, a relfect, and flat out more armor. Are you really trying to tell me that having 14k more hp makes up for all of the above and it’s still reasonable that the necro can’t be healed in it? Warriors aren’t even the top tier of bunker either. Necros defense is DS spectral armor, and I guess plague form, that’s really it. The siphons/regens they have are near usless as one is so paltry and the other doesn’t work in DS, which is where a necro will be when they actually need heals. Finally let’s not forget to mention what an utter mess the necro weapons are. Sure other classes have a few bad weapons but for necro the choices are horrible for building a coehesive build. There is ultimately always a weapon skill on your bar that doesn’t really fit the build and is near useless.

They need to allow healing while in DS. Necros supposedly give up mobility for sustain, yet they have no real sustain. The Siphon traits are all pretty horrible and even if you take all of them and the heal to make the healing decent, it doesn’t outweigh what you give up to get it. Give Necros the sustain they were meant to have, nerf some of the damage on the extreme parts of the class to compensate. The necro in general needs a major overhaul though, the weapon sets are absolute trash and have no real cohesion, a lot of traits suffer from the same lack of focus. Most of the necro gameplay is trying to get into DS because the weapon skills are so bad and so much is tied to DS in traits. This is exactly why there are only 2 builds for the the Necro, everything outside those builds is lackluster, underpowered, or useless. At least giving necros some sustain would allow for another viable build.

Teon.5168:

No matter what anet does, short of getting rid of disablers, it will be complained about. At least this is a step in the right direction, and it was done in a fairly short amount of time.

And hey, as an added bonus……Anet is actually paying some attention to WvW!

People will still complain because disablers were a terrible idea implemented as a bandaid to a problem instead of actually fixing it. Is it really okay to praise ArenaNet when they were the ones that implemented disablers in the first place? Even on paper they were a bad idea, there were threads stating such, but they implemented it anyway. Turns out that the players were right…again. I honestly can’t give kudos when they are basically cleaning up a mess they made.

yanniell.1236:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

LetoII.3782:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Feeling stale?
Want a different type of game play where there aren’t huge zergs on all sides?

Go visit a t7 or t8 server. Let’s see how you do there.

T1 also has empty space.

but in addition there is active battlefields

We’re not just talking empty space here.

Strategy and tactics are very different between t1 zerg fests and (near) barren t8s.

From a former lower ranked server player, u have no ideia what u’re talking about. What I noticed when I just transfered from BP was that the roamers were actually slighter better in T4+, while the commanders and big group tactics were really, really better in T1, probably because they get a lot more practice here.

As someone who transferred from BG to IoJ to play with a friend, I found that lower tiered roamers were actually worse. In T1 I would actually think twice about attacking someone, in T3-4 I just run in and only worry about it if the enemies start to triple my numbers. I think the biggest difference is the builds in T1 are based around either running away from zergs/fights or stealth annoyance, so most fights end with someone running away or pure frustration. Now this was back at the end of Season 1 LS when I transfered, so maybe T3-4 skill levels have increased since then. I haven’t played WvW for awhile though, it’s just too boring and stagnant.

Beldin.5498:

Distaste.4801:

ArenaNet needs to come up with a way to add progressive goals to the game that aren’t farming or achievement points. MMO’s are all about progression and GW2 has always lacked it. The easy cop-out is a new tier of gear, but ArenaNet has already used that card. Clearly raids will be the next attempt, but very quickly they will find that if the rewards aren’t good enough it’s more wasted development time.

As soon as GW2 gets another “progressive” game i’m out here. Some years ago i left
RIFT and bought a lifetime subscription for Champions Online just to make clear
that i bever again wanted to play a progressive raid-grinder.

@Topic
Communication can still be misleading and people then pack their torches and pitchforks.

For example if we look at SOE, somewhere last year it sounded like we would get
at least the open Beta of Landmark in the first half of 2014, and maybe EQNext
then in 2015.

Now 2014 is nearly at its end and there still is no open beta, and so i see EQNext
even more far away.

Now i ANet would have said something like that about an X-Pack i’m pretty sure
that would be the next endless “precurser hunt” theme here.

I’m totally with you on the raid grind, but considering they are hiring a raid designer that’s the likely path. They will then have to have fitting loot for the raid or it will seldom be done. Just look at 3 headed worm, it’s not rewarding so there are like 2 guilds that do it. The class balance issues that will arise from it as well will create a lot of outrage as well, because of course in 2 whole years they are STILL just talking about possible condition solutions. Let’s not forget that having no raids was a selling point of GW2 and people like yourself will stop playing. Raids are not a good idea in GW2, I don’t think the devs(managers mostly?) have any forethought and are simply grasping at other MMO’s major draw and hoping it works in GW2. Had they learned anything from the decade of WoW clones, they would have realized that just copying a mechanic doesn’t mean success.

What I was trying to say is they need some form of meaningful advancement for people to pursue. Think like the alternate advancement in EQ2. There needs to be a reason to do things in GW2. Since everything is so segregated there is very little to drive players and keep them entertained. For instance WoW had raiding and PvP as driving forces. People raided to get gear to do more raids, some raided to get gear to PvP, others PvPed to get gear to raid. I am not saying we need a gear treadmill, ascended was already stupid. We just need something that lets us play the game yet gives players a sense of progression. ArenaNet needs to find a solution that fits GW2, unfortunately their track record points to never successfully happening. They run in fear of making big changes and when they do they are poorly designed.

There will need to be some massive balancing for ctf imo. Classes with high mobility and either tankiness or damage will be the preferred classes. Since there are very minimal defensive options like healing or a guard mechanic, that means offense will be the key factor. Any class that can assualt faster will obviously give your team more chances at killing the enemy flag carrier since they can close the distance quicker. Not to mention that should your enemies recap the flag being able to get the flag again quickly buys your team the chance to recap your flag. I just see this devolving into mostly thieves, warriors, and elementalists.

CTF would be a whole lot more interesting than the current gamemode, but they better be ready to actually support it. No more of this 6 month paltry balance patch stuff.

Vayne.8563:

People complained the content wasn’t repeatable. Could you imagine how it would be for people if everything was left in. The battle for Lion’s Arch, escape from Lion’s Arch the Nightmare Tower, the Marionette, the Scarlet Invasions…no one would know what was going on. Those sort of set pieces were possible because you could put them in and remove them…and it worked. Now it’s what people asked for. Repeatable content.

Which brings us to the new zones, which accompany the story and like Orr they’re locked in time.

You can’t really have it both ways. Anet listened to their fan base. I’d have preferred it the old way too.

So you’d prefer the game remain in perpetual stagnation once a season is over and after 2 years we have very little permanent content? The entire reason we are where we are is because ArenaNet foolishly thought developing mostly temp content out of the gate was a good idea. The game did not have a solid endgame at launch and due to all the temp content and LS it still doesn’t. You’re correct that the season 1 content couldn’t be left in, but that’s because it was developed as temporary content. It wasn’t developed with replayability or permanence in mind. The season 2 stuff has permanence in mind but fails at replayability. Besides story, or achievements there really isn’t much reason to do the content, thus once you’ve played through it once most people are done.

ArenaNet needs to come up with a way to add progressive goals to the game that aren’t farming or achievement points. MMO’s are all about progression and GW2 has always lacked it. The easy cop-out is a new tier of gear, but ArenaNet has already used that card. Clearly raids will be the next attempt, but very quickly they will find that if the rewards aren’t good enough it’s more wasted development time.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Sakri.7234:

Crysto.7089:

Didn’t anet claim at one point that they were going to rework all the dungeons ala AC?

Yes.

And then something happened. And we got the Living World.

It was determined that dungeons weren’t cost effective and the dungeon team was disbanded. At least that’s what some short sighted manger determined. What that manager didn’t see is that dungeons were implemented incorrectly from the start, that’s why they failed off the bat and continue to fail. First they weren’t rewarding, in other MMO’s you have a chance at awesome loot every dungeon run, not in GW2. You need to do a bunch of runs to get a single item from tokens and everything looted is vendor trash. Then we have the path system, while there are some unique paths, most are the same rehashed stuff with slightly different bosses. It makes the path system redundant and incredibly boring. Finally we have the difficulty curve. The difficulty from open world PvE to dungeons is vast. Suddenly mobs hit like trucks and you’re trying to spot animations through the spell effects, lest you die. Fractals were done better as far as difficulty curve goes. A large factor in difficulty though is class balance, which to this very day remains extremely poor.

Dungeons can be a major draw in GW2 but ArenaNets (mis)management can’t see passed metrics. I’m sure the same is now true for SPvP and WvW. They catered to LS for so long that SPvP/WvW populations dropped so management sees that a large portion of the current playerbase plays LS so they focus even more on LS. They don’t see the throngs of people that aren’t playing as the other portions of the game aren’t supported because they don’t have metrics. I get why they do it, but taking a small risk could result in a huge reward should they actually develop things outside LS. I think the players are out there waiting, the major problem is ArenaNet’s design team. They seemingly can’t implement a solid game system even on paper. Patch after patch we get systems with giant flaws that are easily pointed out by players before we even get to touch it. Any major overhaul of WvW, SPvP, dungeons, etc would ultimately have a very high chance of failure due to poor design decisions. Since we usually aren’t allowed to see the stuff until ~2-3 weeks ahead of time, we can’t fix it before they’ve wasted a ton of time on it and once again management would refuse to sink more time into it to actually fix it. Just look at the NPE trait system, terrible design and it’s still not fixed.

Doing it by time will always leave people angry.

The off hours players want their effort to count the same as primetime otherwise it’s unfair. However considering that it is much harder to gain points during primetime, during any fairly even match, the fact that off hours determines who wins is already unfair. Of course the off hours players don’t care that it’s already unfair, they just don’t want it to be unfair to them.

When it’s harder to gain points, points should be worth more. When it’s easier to gain points the points should be worth less. That’s the only fair way, but people will still complain. It would affect everyone equally, but since it would affect everyone those now posting fewer points during their play session will complain. ArenaNet just needs to man up and make the change.

P.S. It was incredibly stupid of ArenaNet to not have at least 1 server for other major timezones even if it was hosted in the US.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

FIrst, living story is a small part of the game and it adds no depth to the gameplay of GW2. It certainly adds to story and lore, but those are finite things. People who don’t care about the story get bored and leave, people that care about the story get bored and take a break. SWTOR had the same exact problem, they focused on story and the rest of the game was a bland soulless shallow mess. So yes you guys keep adding to living story, however other portions of the game like WvW, Dungeons, SPvP, and game mechanics suffer. As for the feature patches they are largely QoL things that ultimately don’t add any depth to the game to keep people interested. The new player changes certainly don’t keep veterans playing, especially since the trait portion was a huge failure, see the trait thread. While QoL is important, it does not reinvigorate stagnant gameplay.

Secondly, no it doesn’t show commitment to adding new stuff. It shows commitment to adding new Living story and fluff. ArenaNet has shown time and time again that they aren’t willing to make major changes to the game. The players have garnered through CDI threads that large changes simply aren’t up for discussion, they have to be small and therefor inconsequential. Take the ranger cdi thread where everyone agreed that pets were the big problem and were basically shutdown from suggesting an overhaul. The only thing that came from WvW cdis is the colored commander tags that at best are a 2 week change and it took 1 year to get them and of course they were still implemented wrong until everyone complained. The condition system has needed overhauls since launch, but the devs are still discussing possible solutions 2+ years after the fact.

Thirdly, this isn’t most peoples first MMO. We know what to expect from a developer and ArenaNet simply isn’t delivering. They haven’t been since day 1. While other MMO’s might patch more infrequently they get more content, better mechanics, and faster balance. Look at FFXIV, since they’ve released in August 2013 they’ve decimated GW2 for content. Oh and they have an expansion coming out in the spring. I remember in vanilla wow getting 2 class overhauls every 3 months, where GW2 makes a handful of value changes for each class in 6 months. It’s not even say the game is balanced so that’s why we get such slow balance changes, most people would agree that a large portion of weapons, abilities, and traits are underpowered or downright useless.

The TLDR is simple. The game has stagnated long ago and ArenaNet doesn’t make changes that impact that at all. We get story patches and fluff, if you don’t like story patches and fluff then you’re SOL.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

About how to fix population imbalance.
1,2k replies in the topic.
This within 1 month since the topic was created..

How clear of a sign do you need?

That wasn’t even the first topic on it. You see back when the game released it was quickly realized that having EU/SEA/etc populations is what won games. I believe it was the Titan alliance on HoD. Threads started popping up like crazy about “night capping” and population imbalance. ArenaNets response was to just shrug at players. There were long discussions over possible solutions like changing scoring, variable points based on population, etc. This was well before the community was toxic and the players had lost faith in ArenaNet.

ArenaNet has zero excuses for why this isn’t fixed. They had 2+ years and have done nothing. If you think for a second that now the populations are down they will do something you’re wrong. Unless its something dead simple like the commander color changes, it simply won’t be done. Even the simple changes will take 1+ year(s) that other MMO’s could do in a week.

ArenaNet and Khong Zong can toss all the money they want at trying to make GW2 an esport through holding tournaments, but it still won’t happen. The game simply does not have the mechanics or balance of a good esport. It isn’t fun to watch, it’s only slightly more fun to play than watch, and has already lost traction after 2 years of failing at being an esport. Until ArenaNet dedicates the time and resources to making big changes to the game, it will continue to flounder. Making the game fun and competitive comes first and Esports comes second, ArenaNet obviously did not understand that since they pushed the whole Esports since launch.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Have you guys genuinely never seen something come out of a CDI? Have you truly never seen changes that were outlined, discussed, and honed in the forge of the CDI system?

In WvW? Yes. The only thing that I’ve seen kind of come from a WvW CDI was the new commander tags, but lets set that straight. ArenaNet even FAILED at that, your original implementation was a blatant cash grab because it would keep people either farming gold or buying gems for gold. It wasn’t until there was massive outcry from all portions of the playerbase that suddenly things could be changed. The question then becomes did the devs actually read and understand the reasoning behind the different colored tags or see that it was an easy change and that money could be made off it. Clearly since their implementation was actually counter-productive to what CDI posts were trying to accomplish it points to them not knowing the reasoning behind it. Next lets talk about timelines. It took 1 year to get colored commander tags. We are talking about a literally 5 minutes of an artists time, or anyone that knows how to use photoshop or paint, and maybe an hour or 2 of a programmers time. Another week or two for testing just to be sure it’s working. We saw how quickly things got changed once there was a huge negative press storm brewing, it took 1 year to get that poor implementation and in about a week to get it changed. What does that say to you? To me it says that WvW was not a major concern and they gave the WvW some scraps that devs could bang out in between major LS projects.

So yes, the WvW CDI’s have been absolutely useless to date. They have produced nothing meaningful and until we see some results it’s going to be bitterness, resentment, anger, and downright skepticism. I would LOVE to be proven wrong and have ArenaNet release a patch that revitalizes WvW, however given the 2 year track record we will get something inconsequential and another meaningless season tournament that will destroy a few more server communities. The major concerns will remain untouched, pristine in launch packaging.

coglin.1867:

You do not know what your talking about. PvP is support with balance changes, promotions, regular tournaments. WvW tournaments and long open discussion CDI’s on WvW changes to come. All kinds of things added to PvE.

I know exactly what I’m talking about. The balance changes are terrible and almost everyone knows it. The 6 months+ that it takes them to do a balance patch makes them look like a joke. ArenaNet might sink money into tournaments, but not into actually developing SPvP into a fun/competitive part of the game, that’s why it failed and continues to fail . New maps, new game modes, monthly balance patches would be supported, currently that is not the case.The WvW tournaments aren’t development. CDI’s that never produce anything are also not development. It took them a year to get different colored commander tags into the game and they even got that wrong until huge outcry made them fix it. A 1 day project took them 1 year(iirc), that’s called undersupported. All the things added to PvE? Living story sure, but can you honestly say in 2 years since launch that Dungeons have been supported well? I mean they dissolved the dungeon team, if that doesn’t get the point a crossed then nothing will.

coglin.1867:

As I see it, dishonest posters who state their opinions as if it was fact and claim to speak for others then themselves, are what male the community toxic.

So you’re trying to excuse the devs ignoring the community? This says a lot about you, you’re also the one being dishonest by trying to infer things that simply aren’t true.

coglin.1867:

Sure, new players are entitled to share their unhappy opinions with new players. They problem is, most of those posters are dishonest to an extent, presume to suggest they speak for the community, and illogically chose to grind for items they do not need or require, then disingenuously claim they were forced to grind for it.

You keep saying these posters are dishonest, what I think you mean is their opinion is different from yours. You also seem to want to make it look like they think they speak for all players, which is again wrong. Again we are playing a MMORPG where progression is, well, the game. Saying that it’s illogical for someone to aim for the best items in the game, need or not, is like saying it’s illogical for people to want anything besides the absolute bare minimum to survive. As much as you seem to loath the dishonesty in posts, yours is absolutely chocked full of it.

coglin.1867:

Now your just being untruthful. This is clearly and obviously still a main aspect of the game.

No, it well and truly isn’t. Ascended gear is locked behind a crafting grind, time gating, or extremely small chance of RNG. Then of course we have the alt character or different spec problem. How many characters do you use? How many specs? Now get ascended for all of them and you’re looking at years. I use thief, necro, gaurdian, warrior, and mesmer . 2 Specs per character and you’re looking at 2 YEARS to gear them out in ascended trinkets/amulet. Even 1 character and 1 spec at 2.5 months is not something I would consider “easy to obtain”.

coglin.1867:

Clearly you are the one who " know nothing of the history here". They always intended for ascended to be in the game.

I do not contest that ArenaNet said ascended was intended for the game after they implemented it and had a huge negative outcry, they also said max stats would be easy to obtain and they don’t make grindy games. ArenaNet’s word is worthless. Lets look at it another way.; which is more likely the entire endgame being balanced around exotics and fitting the manifesto and ArenaNet panicking due to population decline so they try to slap verticle progression into the game then lying about it always being intended to save face even though it’s contrary to everything they ever said. OR that they actually always intended ascended gear that goes completely against the manifesto and didn’t fit the endgame at all and wasn’t anywhere near finished even though it’s just stats and a different color name.

coglin.1867:

They force you to get these items? I don’t think so. I have made 6 sets of ascended gear by simply showing up to the crafting station with the items I collect from my regular WvW play. I sold what I didn’t need to buy what I didn’t have, for each set, and never did any grinding in the least.

More stats mean an advantage in WvW, so yes you’re pushed into them if you care about WvW at all. Also you shoiuld NEVER use that argument in a MMORPG, progression is the name of the game and getting the next skill, stat point, or gear upgrade is what the game is about. You might as well say “do they force you to play the game” because it’s equally as ignorant. You must play a whole lot though, because I have 8 level 80’s have done TONS of WvW, champ farming, events, and world bosses and still don’t even have 1 set. I’m glad you enjoy crafting though, I hate being forced to craft. But hey! ArenaNet said there would be multiple ways to get Ascended gear in the future….back when ascended was first put in. See what I’m saying about things ArenaNet says?

coglin.1867:

Why? to see the same 30 people making the same complaints on different threads? Part of the problem here is that you disingenuously suggest you represent the entire community, when it is clear you do not have any actually knowledge of what the majority wants. They have stated the percentage of accounts created that have logged into the forums, and I am certain you do not even know what that number is.

I never suggest I speak for the entire playerbase. I merely state that those negative players have a valid reason for complaining. There is a long history here and many many more than 30 people have voiced their opinions that ArenaNet/gw2 isn’t/wasn’t heading in a good direction. I’m sure there are tons more playing than talk on the forums, I’m also sure there are lots more who quit and aren’t talking on the forums too. So if we really want to talk about unvoiced positivity or negativity then you cannot forget those who quit. I’d bet there are more who quit for negative reasons than there people still playing with positive opinions, but that’s only my opinion.

Direwolf.8796:

I appreciate the value of constructive feedback but the online GW2 community just seems so ungrateful and unappreciative Just think of the negative image you are portraying for new/potential players. I think more people should know how great this game really is.

If I was Anet and I read all the crap people complain about I would find it a little disheartening. So I’m posting for the first and only time to say the following:

Anet, I love this game and I think you guys have done a fantastic job. Thank you for all your hard work! Dont forget there are people that really appreciate this game and work thats gone in to it.

New & Potential players, come and give this game a shot and decide for yourself if you like it Don’t get caught up in the negativity of some people . The complainers are the loudest voices but there is a great community in this game if you give it a try.

-happy GW2 player

You clearly know nothing of the history here. The players have every right to be ungrateful. ArenaNet has gone back on their own design manifesto and philosophies that they sold the game on. Easy to obtain endgame stats and hard to obtain skins was tossed out the window when ascended was shoehorned in. Don’t get me started on the “we don’t make grindy games” and yet they continually implement things that are pure grind. Then they go and nerf drop rates or farming methods making the grind that much worse. Seriously find any of the threads talking about ArenaNet vs their manifesto. Then of course we have gamemodes that are all but unsupported. WvW, SPvP, and Dungeons are horrible undersupported. When big patch day finally comes and all they see is new player changes that arguably make the game worse, they aren’t going to be appreciative because they simply aren’t. Don’t forget we had around a year of nearly no communication from ArenaNet causing the community to get all the more toxic.

While these things might scare off new players, they need to know this information too. The base game is good(was great at launch but has decreased with each patch) but the Support from ArenaNet is absolutely abysmal. Now of course we have ArenaNet communicating again, but only time will tell if it’s more lip service or not.

GW2 is not an esport and most likely never will be. The PvP simply isn’t tactical enough, balance isn’t anywhere near good enough, and the game mode is boring. In order to head towards esport they would need massive overhauls that, frankly, ArenaNet has shown it isn’t skilled enough to do. They can’t even handle a balance patch let alone completely redoing combat, traits, stats, and game modes.

Azure.8670:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I talked to a couple of the devs just now, and they told me this is a subject they’re still reviewing and considering how best to address. It’s part of a larger discussion, as you can imagine, and changes would necessarily involve a few elements, not just condition caps alone.

While there aren’t details on changes or a timeframe in which they would be done, you can be sure that this is being reviewed by the devs and considered as part of the big picture and potential adjustments in the future.

This one, single post has restored my faith in ANET. This is all I have asked for. A clear response. Thank you so so so so so so much

How so? Sure the communication is good, but this has been a major issue since day 1 and we are at 2+ years now with no fix. I can’t even understand how the system made it into the game because it’s just bad, ArenaNet managed to bungle something that no MMO in the past 5+ years have had issues with that I know of. WoW solved it’s debuff issue within a year of release, learn from the past. I honestly don’t understand how a game where they wanted tons of people to do content together didn’t take into account condition caps. Burning and poison are just horrible since adding to duration is useless when it’s applied so often, that also makes using poison/fire combo fields for conditions useless. That’s pure bad design there. The fact that it only takes 2 condition builds to cap out other conditions makes me wonder if they thought about it all, because it doesn’t take much math to know that if there are 2 major damage methods that you’re going to have more than 2 condition builds at large events.

They’ve said the EXACT same thing before. Read this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Comfirmed-Nothing-being-done-re-conditions/first

If you’re going to reuse the same excuse from a year ago you need to at least include new information. Otherwise it looks like you’re just placating the community, they often don’t like that. Also, show some results. ArenaNet looks absolutely incompetent that after 1 year they couldn’t even decide on a decision and instead just leave their community to suffer while they continue to fumble at every turn.

PPK won’t solve the issues at all, but will certainly make WvW a less friendly place. All bravado aside, equally matched most servers are probably fairly close in kill counts. However, when there is a more dominate server they will get more kills consistently due to larger zergs, more gank squads, etc. This only gives the higher populated dominate server a bigger lead. So once again the coverage issue isn’t solved at all, it’s made worse. We need a scoring system that solves the coverage/population imbalances. Then of course we will have the roamers, uplevels, and casuals getting harassed in chat for giving the other servers kills.

wasted.6817:

xDudisx.5914:

Long fights with combo field, finishers, group support and class sinergy are much for fun than watch enemys that drop in less than 10s to a thief or shatter mesmer.

Imo, it’s more like opposite. Long fights = stale match. It just drags on and on, no big plays, no big moves, nothing changes. Plus it’s in general more primitive and easier to execute tactic, to bunker up here and there and get your long, stale fights, doesn’t require that much coordination as (i.e.) mesmer and thief do.

Long fights require more skilled play for longer periods of time, you have to constantly be making good decisions for the duration or you’re going to lose. It also gives a lot of time for counterplay, a concept that GW2 has forgotten. That makes fights fun for a lot of people. I think we can both agree that SPvP is by no means a success, the question is why? I think it’s purely because the style of combat is simply not appealing. Unless you bunker up, run cheese, or are super skilled, you die in seconds; it isn’t fun. While I will say it does take certain skills to play GW2 at high level, it’s definitely heavily based on fast reaction time. The problem is that fast reaction based combat cuts out a big portion of players and makes seeing “the big moves” very hard.

grifflyman.8102:

I can’t speak for everyone but the developer that I played with was for kind, and actually asked for player feedback. Several times during the week we would have at least 10 people from the server discussing ideas and possible solutions.

Anet is trying, they are listening. Now we need to wait and see if they are willing to fix things.

The major problem is budget and management. Putting aside the fact that most things in this game are poorly designed/implemented, the entire direction of the game has been wrong as well. That points to poor management and those managers are going to look at numbers and metrics instead of trusting devs who’ve talked to players. The WvW community can talk to the devs until they are blue in the face, but at the end of the day the devs won’t get the resources to do anything with it. Since the game was steered into temporary content and Living world for so long, that’s the main playerbase. If Anet suddenly shifts gears towards WvW, which has seen big population decreases, they risk alienating their main playerbase. Unless management somehow changes and the budget gets bigger, nothing game changing will be done. It is too big of a risk to bet that making big WvW changes will bring players back. The only real hope is an expansion, but again…management.

Tspatula.9086:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Atherakhia.4086:

It sure would be nice to get some interaction and commentary from a dev.

You mean like these recent threads?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4437596
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/4472575
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Siege-Troll-Discussion/4422954

Vague, open-ended, fantasy threads. There is no indication that any of them will lead to anything in the near (6 months) term. There has been no indication that anything will be done in WvW in the near term.

It’s more of the same attempt to appease the serious outrage in the forums and in game by creating these threads to give the false sense that actual changes are going to be made. As sooo many people have pointed out, we had a CDI session over a year ago and got NOTHING. I guess the newer players are going to buy it…

You have to give credit where credit is due, we did get something out of those CDI’s. We got the different colored commander icrons! Sure they originally had them implemented as separate purchases and jacked up the price on them thus defeating the entire purpose of implementing them and making everyone question if the devs actually read the CDI for the reasoning behind them or just saw add more colors. The devs certainly listened when forums went wild though and they fixed it. So yeah 1 year to get a 5 minute photoshop job that was ultimately implemented wrong, but we did get something!

lordkrall.7241:

See? This is a great example as to why they don’t tell us anything until it is more or less ready.

As for the near future comment, that might very well be past already. Near future is not more than a few months after all.

And we HAVE seen new names that very well might be new PvP-maps/modes in the dat-file quite recently, so I would think they are coming quite soonish.

No, this is a case of them putting out a tidbit of information and not following up on it. Communication needs to be regular, it does not have to be daily but certainly not once a year. You cannot fault the community when you say something is in the works and 10 months down the line they want to know whats going on with it.

MailMail.6534:

We’re currently in the most balanced state of the game we’ve ever see.

Every class has at least two unique and highly effective builds for all types of spvp. idk what there is to complain about.

WvW is a different story, and PvE is all dps all around.

You think that because “every” class has 1-2 builds for SPvP that it’s the most balanced it’s ever been? Sorry, but that’s just wrong, every class had a similar number of builds at launch. The fact that the number of builds hasn’t increased is only a testament to the incompetence of the class balance team. In fact I would argue that due to how poorly the class balance team changes things that the gap between viable builds and trash builds is now greater than it has ever been, meaning balance is worse. The only real “success” that the class balance team has had is bringing the warrior up from last picked, but then we’d have to mention how long it’s taken for them to nerf them down to a reasonable level from the overbuff.

Honestly, this is one of the worst balanced MMO’s that I’ve played. The number of skills, traits, and weapons that simply aren’t used or even viable is just incredibly sad. The 2-3 man class balance team needs a lot more manpower and shouldn’t be relying on SPvP teams to balance the game for them. It certainly shouldn’t take 6+ months for a class balance patch where most of the items are database value changes.

I’d just like to express concern that guild halls could potentially be a less than efficient use of development time. If they are implemented with limited use then they won’t be used much outside of the first week. If they have tons of functionality then the time spent on it could have been used to flesh out other areas of the game that a larger portion of the population would/could use. My last concern would be making sure that ALL guild sizes are included. I am part of a small guild and do not want to be forced to join a big guild. Guild missions was a major mess up with excluding, and still does, small guilds.

Tsnami Serene.8905:

misterman.1530:

server st anne.8750:

Oooookay, its easy to see the usual B.S. people post to explain why they lose. It can’t be theirs of course. I do know that playing smart will beat mindless. I read some guy insist that a 5 man sieged equiped keep can’t be held against 70 zerg. Maybe, maybe not. I can testify that one of my guildies in YB held off a 30+ zerg w/ 6 golems BY HERSELF. Yepper, she had an AC and a treb. They died. (you wanna say I lie? I will give your name to her. She will chew you a new one) YB wins cause we play smart. We learn and teach what we learn to the rest of our server. I will not say a high pop isn’t an advantage. Even then you can make them bleed. and get bags at your feet while using a siege engine. In other words guys learn to use the weapons you have and NEVER give up anything without a fight! Good Luck on your season.

Play smart. Lol. You outnumber the other two servers you are playing against probably 2 to 1. You seem to have zergs on 24/7. Fortunately, NSPers have, you know, lives and we have to take a break sometime. It’s tough to defend anything when two different YB zergs are just roaming around melting anything in their paths. Trust me, we’ve tried.

Congratulations to YB for being a big fish in a small pond. You win because you outnumber us. In open world, evenly matched, we seem to consistently wipe the floor with you. So…skill…not so much. Numbers. Just numbers.

And please, send her my way. You lie. No way she fought off a 30 man zerg by herself. They would just need to split into two, drop some catas, and the walls come down.

Hey, one time at band camp, I fought off a 100 man zerg with nothing but a regular AC and some gum. It’s true, I swear.

I didn’t say by myself I had one person come to my aide. No regular siege either they were superiors It’s not my fault the zerg was mindless and kept on the same door the whole entire time and got destroyed by the sup. treb and ac. That is why I called them mindless.

So what you’re saying is it was a fluke and by no means should represent what any 1 player can do on any given night? That pretty much makes a point moot. If 1 person can’t reliably and regularly take on 30 people the population problem still exists. Anyone that’s in T2 or below also need to recognize that there is a HUGE chasm of dedication, population, and honestly skill between T1 and them. I moved from kitten T4 and it’s like night and day.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

ipan.4356:

They could tell us whether or not they’re working on an expansion.

No they can’t. It’s their policy not to divulge any information of what they’re doing with the game (anything upcoming, changes to Halloween/Christmas, etc.), and this ‘policy’ which, if you look around for a general concensus, is in a lot of people’s eyes, the very source of all the toxicity.

It’s not the source of all the toxicity, but it certainly helps strengthen it. Class balance, or lack of it, is a huge part of it. 6 months for a class balance patch is simply unacceptable. Another major issue is ArenaNet’s apparent lack of logic when implementing things or, again, class balance. I mean there is a reason that ArenaNet is now known to have a “1 step forward 2 steps back” approach to changes and new features. Then we have another biggy, ArenaNet doesn’t seem to listen. How long were the threads when ascended was getting put in? Yet nothing came of it. How long is the trait thread about reverting the trait system changes? Nothing! There is a 90% chance that no matter what the players say, unanimous or not, about something new or a change, ArenaNet will still implement it.

Knowing what’s in development isn’t really going to change those things. ArenaNet could tell us what it is they are working on like “New WvW maps”, but we won’t know the details. Given the “1 step forward and 2 steps back” design approach the details will be what’s important. Say you need to kill the 3 headed wurm and get a certain soulbound rare drop to actually gain access to the new maps. New maps are good! Locking it behind high end PvE and RNG, BAD. When players finally learn the details they will make a fuss and ArenaNet will shrug it off since they want more people to do 3 headed wurm. So when it finally gets implemented and only 5% of the population actually use it, they then justify not doing anymore WvW maps because no one uses them. It seems a bit outlandish, but the scary part is that I think it’s something that ArenaNet would actually do.

Vayne.8563:

Paul.4081:

Vayne.8563:

Paul.4081:

Paradox.1380:

Paul.4081:

Well, sites usually post numbers when they’re good. Not saying that necessarily makes GW2’s bad but I keep an eye on the Xfire numbers from time to time and they have dropped by a lot as with posters on GW2 Guru. They blame circular threads (?).

One of the main reasons (I personally believe) why people stop posting on Guru is because that forum is even MORE toxic than this one and they don’t have the same level of moderation as here.

I don’t know anything about Xfire so I can’t comment on that. But also, most games like THIS do not post their numbers ever, and when they do mention it they almost always put it in ballpark generic figures.

Xfire’s numbers have dropped from tens of thousands to 400, unless the Xfire community are special snowflakes….

And (personal opinion) about guru, you can have a discussion over there without a mod deeming your post locky McDeletable!

I’ve rambled here and I’ve rambled there, I’ve only ever felt punished for it here.

Guild Wars 2 is the #11 game on Xfire. Go to games and search on Guild Wars 2. It says Guild Wars 2 is ranked 11 in the Xfire rank box.

That means on Xfire, Guild Wars 2 is the second most popular MMO. Only WoW is more popular.

Now Xfire, Raptr and Overwolf all seem to be saying much the same thing.

No. 11, they have reached the summit :S

I’m sure Anet is quite happy that the only MMO more popular or played on Crossfire than Guild Wars 2 is WoW. I’d be happy.

Considering many of the other MMOs that aren’t there are newer and some have been popular in the past, I’d say that it’s not a bad summit to have reached.

Even books that are on the NY Times bestseller list that were number four or five don’t stay there for two years usually.

The state of the MMO genre is just ruin, okay that might be embellishing a bit. At the very least the MMO landscape is just sad. You have the reigning giant slowly dieing. All “new” titles are basically rehashing that dying giant with some new paint and shiny baubles, they also want to charge a monthly fee. People buy the new game, realize it’s the same old crap and don’t want to pay $15 a month for it. If a MMO company is going to do a themepark game they simply can’t have a subscription on it anymore. Both ESO and wildstar will learn this lesson quickly as I am sure they are scrambling to go F2P.

The position of GW2 on lists says more about their monetization than anything else. The cash shop isn’t invasive like most F2P games so people don’t feel forced into buying stuff from it thus it doesn’t ruin the experience. I really hope that other game studios see this and realize they don’t need to lock everything behind nickle and dime cash shop sales.

Then of course you have alternatives. What other newer F2P games are really out there? Archeage is poised to do really well if their cash shop isn’t invasive and gameplay off-putting, I haven’t played it to know. SWTOR has definitely seen a popularity increase. That’s about it really.

It’s no wonder why GW2 is ranked where it is, however it also shows how GW2 was mismanaged. In the current MMO landscape they could have taken the ball and ran with it. They had no major competitors and plenty of time, they could have built on this game and made it very hard to compete with. Instead they just sat there dribbling it waiting for some new MMO to take it from them. I can honestly say the only thing that ArenaNet has done really well at is monetization, everything else like class balance, endgame, PvP, WvW, Dungeons, etc is all par or sub-par.

While I know there are definitely counters to the current power rangers, it doesn’t address the core issue that this game has and how bad the balance team is. Absolutely every skill in this game should be balanced around it not being dodged/reflected/evaded/blocked etc. If you’re balancing skill damage around those things then the sky is the limit for damage and combat becomes a game of who runs out of them first. That creates combat that has basically no strategy or tactics, aka shallow. Then you have the issues of when you don’t see the animation or have a dodge/block/etc up and someone gets insta-gibbed. It’s not fun in the least to be killed instantly from nowhere. GW2 has struggled with this problem from day 1(beta actually) and the devs still do not seem to get it. The balance in the game is just all over the map with zero consistency, it’s a game of extremes and that doesn’t make for fun combat or diverse builds.

Behellagh.1468:

chemie banger.9624:

Releasing it to a select few is not the public.

It is if they then turn around and post it.

Not if between getting the information and posting that information their friends get it and friends of those friends get it, etc, etc. Then there are alpha testers that never publicly release the information but can still use it and give it to friends. All we know for sure is that the information was definitely used prior to the patch. I’m not going to do the supersleuthing the find out when the information was made “public” vs when things were getting bought up, but I’d wager there was purchasing being done pre-public information. Even if your still think people aren’t using this knowledge to their advantage, remember that the first legendary was made by an alpha tester abusing the knowledge gained from testing.

First off, ArenaNet is absolutely abysmal at releasing information for pretty much everything. I shouldn’t need to go to different 3rd party sites or channels to get this information and more often than not I see it there first and no mention on the gw2 forums. Whoever is in charge of their PR stuff does not understand that having information from a central channel is important. The central channel here being the official GW2 website and forums, it is not twitter, reddit, dulfy, twitch, or whatever other website. RELEASE THE INFORMATION ON GUILDWARS2.com. Even if these 3rd party websites don’t leak the information to friends, they still limit the number of players that gain the information in a timely manner. For things that will drastically alter the market, the information should be delivered by ArenaNet and no one else. It should be on the front page and have a post on the forums. Send out an email.

Second, the market manipulation due to insider information should be met with a BAN, not a slap on the wrist due to lost profit. If their system is done even halfway decent they should be able to tell who bought up lots of the impacted items well before the patch and ban them. Sure there might be some speculation on some items, but when thousands are bought up it’s not just speculation. I remember back when precursors were being made easily and all they did was ask people to delete them. ArenaNet needs to put some manpower into setting a precedent by not allowing people to continually exploit either by insider information or actual in game exploits. They should have also done something about the market manipulation a long time ago, the market has been controlled by the wealthy for a long long time and it creates a bad environment for new players and even casual players. They either need to drastically increase drops, make certain things account bound, or punish manipulators. Personally I favor crashing the market with increasing drops and making certain things soulbound, I don’t see legit buying/selling as something that needs punished but I certainly recognize that a single player shouldn’t be able to control the entire market for a single item.

Finally, this is just a plain old bad implementation. The achievements should have been implemented in a way that it promotes the player actually achieving them instead of buying them. It’s the same old ArenaNet implementation though, they add something that is good(new achievements) while also doing something(s) bad(destroying the market/achievement is bought).

Fuzzion.2504:

We had this same thread when ESO was released.

Now. For NA, i see no change in T1. I am unsure about other servers but the game is far from dead for me.

T1 has had massive drops. T1 used to be queues on all maps for the duration of NA primetime, now you might find that on reset night and past that you can even find yourself outnumbered. Keep in mind that people have been merging into T1 now for over a year. There are other servers where you might literally be the only person on the map. You’re looking at 3 servers and saying it’s fine when there are 24 NA servers and each tier down is exponentially worse. The population will spike for the next tournament no doubt, but as soon as it’s clear who will win or rather who can’t win, interest will quickly die off. Sure some people come back every now and again, that is the advantage of B2P, but ultimately the WvW population has been decreasing.

ESO was never going to kill GW2. It is subscription based and has some giant RvR flaws as well. What is killing GW2 is stagnation and that’s not exclusive to WvW. It is by no means a quick and sudden death, but each patch slays what little hope remains in some WvW players and they stop logging in. Perhaps ArenaNet will release a patch or even patches that revitalize WvW before another AAA B2P or even F2P comes along and hastens GW2’s demise. I am very doubtful that will happen though, they develop too slow and just aren’t in-touch.

Going to point out that the game lacks sandboxy elements because the “best mmo engine”, as you put it, cannot handle it. The same engine that apparently can’t handle a better condition system. The game engine in GW2 is optimized for smaller maps and lower numbers of people(maps cap at ~150 iirc) and this is in order to keep memory usage lower(less stuff to load in) as well as CPU/Server usage lower. WvW is really where the engine shows it’s flaws as far as handling data and tons of effects/textures/players. The game engine runs well for what it is, but there are certainly better engines out there for other aspects. Now they could continue to develop the engine, but that would cost a lot of time and money. A lot of stuff in the game would get broken and need redone.

For the majority of players GW2 will live until another AAA F2P/B2P mmo comes out to steal them away. If I was pushed for what that game would be, I’d say EQNext. Maybe Blizzards “titan” project but that project was restarted/possibly canceled so who knows when it will come out or if it’s even an MMO anymore. The Division is a less likely candidate since it’s a shooter and Ubisoft will somehow screw up monetizing it, but it is another big one that I see people looking forward to.

Until then other games that release will just continue to chip away at GW2 as people get bored.

The short answer is because the skill sets are very different. SPvP is about capping and holding points and roaming is about killing. While killing is a part of SPvP it doesn’t necessarily win games.

The question becomes who are more skilled and it simply cannot be answered. You’ll see roamers come into SPvP and fail just as often as you’ll see a SPvP player come into WvW and complain that a zerg rolled them or that perma stealth thief and PU mesmer are such cheap specs. The skills acquired are simply different. Where SPvP learns to rotate points the Roamers learn to avoid zergs. WvW has more skill variance and stat imbalance to give a well geared roamer the edge, but it has a lot less fair fights(roamers often fight 1v2+). SPvP has the potential for facing more higher skilled people more often though. A lot of this comes down to builds. The better Roaming builds aren’t great for capping/decapping, likewise a lot of SPvP builds are horrible for roaming. If you’re going to talk team fights then of course GvG comes into it, I’d love to see a good SPvP team vs a good GvG team, I’d wager the GvG team would win purely because their specs are based solely on team fights where, again, the SPvP are more capping oriented with team fights in mind.

kodesh.2851:

Wait, this was an ironic thread, right? If you want more sustain, spec for it.

Doesn’t work that way. The traits that necro has for sustain are just awful. Using the siphon traits you might siphon 40 health on a regular hit and 80 on a crit. Simply put, they are HORRIBLE traits, which is why their “revamp” was laughable. You need to devote so many points to get them and make them slightly less horrible, all to negate maybe a single 1k hit in a fight. Let’s also mention that they don’t heal while in DS, hooray!

Almost any trait necro has for sustain simply aren’t balanced up to par. They cost so much and provide so little. Necros are all or nothing currently. You either burst/condition a foe down or you die. I would LOVE to do a vampire build, but it simply isn’t viable, too little healing and it not healing in DS is just a deal breaker. Allow heals in DS and maybe we can start using it, but until then it’s a wasted traitline.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Power necro has a TON of life force generation. In fact it bars on absurd. Necros sustain has always been the life force generation. Condition necros can get LF generation but it bars 2 issues:
1: they have to trait for it making them weaker (see point 2)
2: Condition necro doesn’t benefit from LF as much as power necro does.

It isn’t that necros don’t have a lot of LF generation abilties its just some of them stink ( mostly condition necro, lets face it what condition necro staff autos unless they are desperate for LF)

Even the life force generation of a power build isn’t enough sustain to make up for the lack of defense and mobility of the class. If asked whether I would give up deathshroud/life force for the sustainability of say the guardian or ele, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Deathshroud is just a bad mechanic the way it currently is. It is the end all be all of the necro class, it holds way too much power over the class. This might be fine if all other classes were bound to similar restrictions, but they aren’t. Ultimately this takes away from the class because it forces people into DS. I’d love nothing more than to make a Power vampire necro build that doesn’t involve me popping into DS to actually do damage yet my heals don’t heal me.

Lord Kuru.3685:

1. It’ll kill communities, which will drive away all the people who are still around only because of “server pride.” IMO that’s actually a lot of people — particularly those in the lower tiers. (See how lack of server pride has left EoTM as a complete failure).
2. At best, all it’ll do is slow down the inevitable demise of WvW. Total and complete lack of support for WvW is the true problem.

1. Communities are already being killed. Look at Maguma or the other servers that were destroyed. I agree that communities are important, but that shouldn’t be what stops ANet from making big changes to try and save WvW. They need to make big changes like merging everyone together, however they need to provide a new way for people to represent their communities.

2. I fully agree. One of those reasons for lack of support/development though is communities iirc(it was said in one of the ignored CDI threads). It will take BIG changes to revive WvW, but I don’t think it is impossible. At the current rate though, you are correct it will surely die.

Serious question, will you be discussing the big issues with the WvW tournament like servers already tanking to get better matchups? Or server stacking? Coverage/bad scoring system? These tournaments are absolutely meaningless without addressing these issues. Perhaps you’ll discuss the damage these tournaments ultimately do to the community? I can’t adequately put into words how much I wish you guys would address some of the elephant sized issues before pushing another tournament, that goes for SPvP too.

Immensus.9732:

To all players: don`t be greedy. The content you are getting every 6 months is equal to a full expansion in other MMOs. New areas? EOTM, Southsun Cove, Dry Top (and 2 pvp maps) . New features? Wardrobe, Traits, New armors/weapons. New content? this is kinda lacking but still, 1 new dungeon, dungeons paths, fractals, SAB. AND ABOVE ALL, Story wise: we are getting roughly 1-2 hours of story play every 2 weeks, lets do the math, on average we get 1.5 hours SO… 1.5H every 2 weeks on a 6(?) month Season = 18 Hours of story, that is equal to a 60$ worth new Single player RPG story amount, the only difference is that you getting it for free, and you getting it 2-3 times per year. Thats a lot of effort, i my self can be disappointed sometimes with some features that we havent got yet that i think are essential if you want to make your MMO competitive, like Housing, Dueling, more legendaries etc. but we got to think that the Devs are people too and there have limitations on how much they can produce. The only thing that they should probably do from their perspective is become more open to the players and start talking about things on development more often and with honesty.

Have you played any MMO that’s had an expansion? What we get in 6 months is nowhere close to an expansion. Let’s just look at WoW since that’s pretty much the defacto standard. In the first two years of WoW they added 5 dungeons, 5 raids, 3 battlegrounds, Honor system, 2 zone revamps, 10 world bosses, revamped all of the classes, and not to mention probably a hundred other things that aren’t bulletpointed in my mind. I don’t think GW2 is even close to comparing with that in terms of permanent content. Even including all the temp content it’s not quite there either. But hey, you wanted to talk expansions!

Burning crusade added 11 new zones including an entire continent, raised level cap, 15 dungeons, heroic mode, 6 raids, 2 world bosses, 1 battleground, revamped honor system, 2 races, tons of new skills, new talents, New profession, new stat, Flight/Flying mounts, Arenas, new creatures, and let’s not forget probably a couple hundred quests.

Now lets compare! In 2 Years, not 6 months,
GW2 has added 2 zones – Not even close

GW2 stayed level 80 – Doesn’t even compete

GW2 added fractals, a dungeon, and paths- Yeah vs 15 dungeons? BC wins

GW2 added Eotm and 5 PvP maps. Gw2 wins in quantity but considering 4 of the 5 are the same game mode I’d say BC wins in quality. 1 Map was even removed because it was so bad and another map is just as hated along with EotM being a big flop.

GW2 added no new races- BC wins

GW2 class changes- This one is laughable! BC wins

GW2 profession updates- again not even close- BC wins

GW2 added LS events- I guess the comparison here is quests and BC wins that without a fight. Even if you want to argue Marionette, Scarlet fight, etc, there are still 6 raids that GW2 can’t answer for and single raid can cover those events and more.

In 2 years GW2 hasn’t even put in the amount of content that WoW had in 1 expansion and you’re trying to tell me that every 6 months GW2 puts out an expansions worth of content? Sorry, you’re just plain old wrong. ArenaNet for whatever reason is extremely slow at developing content and even slower at balancing classes. 6 months for a balancing patch is 2x slower than what I’d consider a slow mmo class balancing cycle. Look at commander tags, it took over a year for those and I could do that in MS Paint in 15 minutes, 2 minutes if I used photoshop. Arguably the UI for the new tags would take maybe an hour if you knew the system, there is zero reason that it took a year.

Vayne.8563:

Temporary content is still content. In most MMOs, a dungeon or raid only lasts until the new ones come out. The world and the dungeons become ghost towns. Temporary content just took it away before that happened.

If the content was bad, why do you want it back? Maybe some of it was good.

It’s like saying I didn’t see a broadway show because it’s no longer there.

Temporary content is not content, it is temporary content. I guess I’ll go play SAB or Mad Kings Lair…OH WAIT I can’t because it’s not there, if it was content I could play it. A broadway show is entertainment and cannot last forever due to budgets and other issues. Content in games though are things to do and temporary content are things to do that last a short period of time. Unlike your broadway show, once things are created in a game they are always there and require no extra money to continue to be in game.

You mention new raids and dungeons, but have you played other MMO’s before? In most MMO’s when new dungeons/raids are released they become a rung in a ladder that you need to climb to get to the next raid/dungeon. Even in vanilla WoW when Naxx was released people were still doing the dungeons that were in at release. If we are going to use ghost towns as the reason for temporary content then we need to apply it to tons of things in game. Any WvW map with outnumbered? GONE. Any zones that are ghost towns? GONE! Dynamic event’s that don’t get done? Gone! What’s our threshold for “ghosttown” here? Because set it low enough of the overall popular and we have Dungeons? Gone! Fractals? Gone! SPvP? Gone! Sounds like a nice plan that will keep the game healthy!

Seasonal stuff is fine but when 3/4 of your developed content is temporary the game ends up with very little to do. GW2 wasn’t in a great state content wise when it launched and the temporary content has not helped that at all. There is still very little to do once reaching 80 and that’s the problem. This feature patch so far has added nothing that will add depth to the content we already have.

penelopehannibal.8947:

I don’t mean to sound rude or anything, but I think that if you have a complaint about a player’s behaviour, it should have been done privately by submitting a ticket to support – whether they are a dev or not.

Also, to the guy posting a pic: submitting a picture is uncool – again whether it’s a dev or not.

I’m sorry, but just submitting a ticket is a bad idea. This isn’t another player, it is an ArenaNet employee. If he just submits a ticket it can be swept under the rug. ArenaNet will be biased in their own favor, thus they cannot be in charge of the situation. Players on the other hand won’t be that biased as evidenced in this thread. Abuse of power is a very serious thing and something that customers need to be aware of. This is not the first time an ArenaNet employee has abused power either, which makes it all the more important that this is in the public eye. Apparently the last two incidents didn’t change company policy enough. The last two(that I know of) being the WvW gvg hate incident and the escape from LA incident.

Personally I think the dev was in the wrong if this is true. If he wanted a certain shot he could recreate it on the dev only server or he could include all of those participating.

Vayne.8563:

@Saylu.8271

You still don’t get it. There is no such thing as a WoW clone really, because nothing in WoW was original to WoW. And it keeps going.

You are so very very wrong. WoW did take a bunch of ideas from other MMO’s, off the top of my head they got instances from Asheron’s call, quests from Anarchy Online, battlegrounds from DAoC, and a whole lot from everquest. However WoW created a package, a standard of features that MMO’s would continue to copy and will continue to copy. If I’m not mistaken WoW was the first MMO to use story driven quests as their driving leveling force. They also took the focus from group experience to solo experience. EQ2 actually flopped out of the gate because of 2 things 1. it was very group oriented and 2. It was actually really computer intensive. WoW also streamlined things, not going to go into specifics but ask anyone that played pre-WoW things were more complicated.

So when you see a MMO that uses solo story driven quests for leveling, instanced raids/dungeons/PvP, and is pretty streamlined; that’s a WoW clone. There is a bit more to it than that, but that’s the core of it. Now certainly games can build off that and have, that doesn’t change that the core of their game is based on WoW, or more specifically trying to cater to the market WoW created. They problem that arises thouigh is that people are now looking for more. If they wanted to play something like WoW they can play WoW. That’s why the MMO market has stagnated so much in the last decade. That and in an attempt to streamline their games the MMO devs have dumbed the games down, if anything as the MMO market became more popular they should have gotten more complicated as they built off things. GW2 suffers from this, they tried to simplified everything and as a result have a relatively shallow game.

The addition of torment to multiple classes is one of the reasons conditions became a big thing along with perplexity runes and dhumfire. Suddenly classes had access to lots of damaging conditions creating condition bursts. This change just adds more condition application to a class that had plenty already.

I honestly can’t figure out why they did this. In SPvP it really won’t help because mesmers don’t have the survivability outside stealth to compete while capping/decapping. In WvW PU condi mesmers were already powerful enough and a pain to kill. In PvE….well conditions suck in PvE until Anet gets off their butts and revamps the entire system.

This is just a plain old stupid change.

Sampo.9678:

Isn’kitten bit to soon for this thread?
We still get 2 weeks full of announcements…

This was the SPvP/WvW week and both got the equivalent of a card saying $10 has been donated in your name to Save the Asuran foundation. None of the core issues in either gamemode were address, it was more bandaids and glitter. We can pretty much tell from the class changes that there are no major combat revamps. With tournaments coming up of course they wouldn’t want to do that even if it would make the game better.

The next week is about old and new player experience. Not really PvP oriented. I’m guessing maybe low levels being upscaled more, veteran rewards, general QoL changes, maybe even a trait re-revamp that doesn’t screw new players/characters.

The week after is about some new looting system and trading. Again not PvP oriented.

I’m not sure what happened at ArenaNet to cause such a poor post-release development. I’m not sure if they just have a small team and are strained just doing LS, if constant employee turnover keeps causing setbacks, poor management, or maybe all of the above. What I can say is that it’s definitely the worst development I’ve seen on a AAA game that’s doing relatively well. WoW in that similar time frame added 4 battlegrounds, arenas, did revamps of all classes, added new abilities for classes, and that was just their PvP. Arenanet on the other hand in 2 years has done very little with BOTH SPvP and WvW. I honestly wish they would take the SPvP tournament prize money and just hire some more devs to actually improve the game.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

lilz shorty.1879:

Why must we elongate everything in gw2. If the balances previews for the classes are up and youve made short clips, why not show them in bigger groups instead of just showing 2. Also ToG ends in October? So we are going to have a ToL2 Repeat yet again? Why must these tournies take so long.

Allow me to clarify. The video for the last two professions is not done. Unless you want to watch Karl in front of a plain green screen, there’s no way we can show it tomorrow. These videos each take ~3 hours to film and another 8+ hours to edit. On some weeks, the video wasn’t even exported until the same morning we showed it on the stream.

We opted to do two at a time so as not to overload both you and Karl in the preview. If you look back to when we did previews live, one of those episodes was almost 2 hours long, and by the end they were trying to speed through in order to keep it from going longer. Both you and we didn’t think it was fair to the people who play those professions that were rushed through, nor was it fair to have to sit through two hours of a stream to see your profession’s changes. We feel that this format provided a better means of communicating these changes. We can now devote the appropriate amount of time to each profession and showcase the changes without having to wait for Karl to change builds and move between locations on the map.

You could just give a write up of the changes, you have to do it anyway for patch notes and honestly a lot of the changes do not warrant a video. I’d also like to mention that the class balance changes impact ALL of GW2 and not just SPvP. People in PvE and WvW want to hear about the changes too without sitting through a livestream about SPvP or go to a third party website for a synopsis. Post the class changes in the profession forums, then do your skill bar videos explaining the changes as you see fit. I don’t really get how you thought it was unfair to have players watch for 2 hours for their changes and yet having them wait 8 weeks is any better, especially given the ToG predicament.

Nate.8934:

is it just me or are defenders basically complaining “it makes it too easy to attack us” while attackers are complaining “it’s too easy to defend against us”

Personally if it draws out the engagement time for each fight, I see that as a plus. I don’t find it fun to roll over 2 defenders with a 30-man zerg or being rolled over by a 30-man zerg as one defender out of 2-3. It’s a lot more fun when a roughly equal zergs clash.

It’s not going to draw out the engagement time and that’s really the problem. A keep with a few defense tossing disablers, especially stealth disablers, is going to be a big enough deterrent if there is any sort of opposing force on that the attackers go somewhere easier. The end result is going to be a lot more trebbing.

Likewise on defense with lesser numbers if the enemy disables your siege, you’re just going to leave the keep. Even if both sides disable each other defenses the attackers can’t really bring the door down and hold off the defense unless they have a much bigger force. Ultimately this brings back to number > Skill, which is exactly the opposite of what WvW players want. The disablers are just too much power for a single person to have, especially at such a cheap cost.

Are they seriously going to tout this as a feature? This is 2014 and better combat logs were done over a decade ago. If this game allowed addons we could have a better combat log inside a week. Instead it’s taken them 2 years to do this. It’s a welcome change, but we shouldn’t be patting them on the back for something that should have been done on day 1. They certainly shouldn’t be getting away with hyping this as a major feature.