Guild Wars 2

There’s no reason for you to be hit by a multi-strike attack if you have Aegis. You need to learn to dodge. You get one freebie with your Aegis on the first attack, then you need to avoid the rest.

You really think you should be able to just stand there and completely nullify a multi-strike attack?

Yea, I’m going to have to agree that loser isn’t the word to describe someone who has the wealth to drop $700 on an imaginary weapon. Winners in life is more accurate. Losers in the game because they didn’t “earn” it, but winners in life (life trumps vidja games always) because they worked in the real world to afford buying something that will literally save them hundreds of hours of mind-numbing “work” sitting in front of a computer screen.

So:

Hmm, I could sit at a computer every day for months grinding for gold to purchase something, OR, I could spend real money that I have plenty of and can afford to spend and not spend every day grinding for gold. Hmmmm, which of those options sounds like the “loser” option….

In the end, they have a legendary instantly and have tons of free time he gets to enjoy specifically not grinding. That’s winning in my book.

If you have two people then it’s pretty much whatever you want. I leveled up doing Guardian/Ele with my GF and that went well. Then Warrior/Ranger, that also went well. Then Ele/Ranger (she loves rangers), and that was probably most fun and also went well.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a combination of two classes that aren’t easy leveling. Solo is a different story, but having a second person there in general makes it easier (for rezzing on downed state especially).

I suggest play whatever classes you are drawn to.

I both agree and disagree with all of this. I don’t like grind and I feel 15,000 of something is a lot. But to be completely honest, I’ve spent maybe a total of 4 hours in the Labyrinthe over the past week and I have ~1200 candy corn. I was just leveling alts in there because lets face it that place is amazing for leveling alts. I have a feeling that as long as I hold onto all of this candy corn that by the time this event is over in a month I will have that 15,000.

IIRC, the other LS events that gave bags as rewards only gave one. Perhaps the 15,000 number is set so that you only get one bag if you play normally with the option for more if you choose to grind for it? 20-slot bags are pretty valuable, you know. If it was 2-3000 per bag then everyone and their alts would have them and completely destroy that market.

It won’t be gone in 2 weeks, closer to 4 weeks. Also, I’m not even really a fan of the whole door thing anyway, so personally I will be just fine with them being gone.

Yea, beyond simple, riiiiiiight. Maybe if you did it dozens of times last year and you remember some of the tricks.

But I can tell you that in the group of 5 that I was with, I was the only one who was able to finish it, let alone make it passed the halfway mark, and I really feel that is because I had done it last year.

OP is trying to flex his whatchamacallit.

Quick tip for JP: When you get to that first landing where you wait, start jumping to where the platform will be AS SOON AS you see the screen shake and wall break open. It may look like you will fall but you land on the little platform. This will give you the head start you need to make it through the entire puzzle without fear of the acid or whatever getting to you. Making all of the jumps is on you though.

They are mostly for skins. Some of us paid money for those skins! At least I did for Primeval. The others….eh…….

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Plus, killing a dragon wearing a top hat simply shows that you have class.

Don’t forget the monocle. Nothing says high society like a top hat and monocle.

juno.1840:

Draknar.5748:

Now you are no longer happy? What world do you live in? Entitlement much?

No need for that — sadly it detracts from the rest of your argument which was actually good.

Many people seem to have communication issues. Putting an insult in your response is like using white-out on everything else you had to say.

Fair. It just angers me so much. I actually had to tone down my response to the above. I will edit for maturity.

While I agree this initial Halloween release feels lazy in comparison to last year, it is important to note that last year the Halloween event was rolled out in, what, 4 releases? The Halloween update lasts until almost mid-November.

Let’s not jump the gun on calling it garbage just yet. I admit I was one of the first to claim it was terrible but then remembered it was released in stages so I would keep negative comments to yourself until it is over.

Everyone who purchased whatever version they purchased knew exactly what they were getting. You don’t get to dispute it after the fact if a new offer is available, that’s just stupid.

You paid X$ for Y, received your Y product and you were happy.

A year later Y is available for X$, but now comes with Z!

Now you are no longer happy?

EDIT: For maturity.

laokoko.7403:

That is like saying I spend 40 years working to buy a house. So the house is free.

Or closer to: Over the last 40 years, in my travels I have gathered all of the necessary materials that didn’t cost me anything out of pocket to build my own house, thus it was free.

Either way, it isn’t technically free. You acquired $XXX worth of materials over the course of X time. In this particular example you would need to consider the time it took to find the materials, transport the materials (and the gas/mileage to do so), store the materials (depreciating over time as they would lose value the longer they are stored), and the time it took to build the house.

I realize this isn’t apples to apples, but the idea is similar.

If they implemented race change then it should work like this:

Your Personal Story gets completely reset, any achievements tied to your previous race’s Personal Story are removed, and you lose the AP from it. The cultural gear you had accrued will no longer be equippable (that’s an obvious one) and since it is soulbound it cannot be used on any other character, so essentially you wasted your money.

This would get around all of the arguments for why you can’t race change.

I mean, if you can currently have your big burly dark-skinned Norn character have a sex change to a svelt, sexy light-skinned Norn woman who is 1.5ft shorter, then there’s really no argument about immersion breaking that can be made.

Now if those that want to be able to do a race change want to be able to continue to wear their cultural gear or transfer to another character or want to still keep credit for personal story then it really sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too.

Wow Septemptus really? What class are you?

Slot some condition removal and speed buff skills (or blinks/invis for mesmer), actively avoid monsters by moving near the edges, dodge roll, etc…..

I can’t believe you need help with this…

Yea this year’s Halloween content feels…..lazy. That’s the word. Lazy.

It’s honestly borderline insulting to those that completed it last year.

I’ll give them the story mode stuff, that’s different, but the meta is just lazy.

^^^^ yea, I played this for the first time today and figured it out after reading the instructions and then playing it for 5min. You should certainly have understood it by the end of your first game, if you did not then I don’t know what the heck you were doing.

Obsidian.1328:

That would be true if it didn’t affect my gameplay at all. Like getting screamed at in map chat for messing up Teq. Or having Twilight Assault take twice as long because someone wants some random achievement. Or draining supply camps/towers/keeps to build a hundred pointless rams. Or being bumped to overflow because they are zerging Scarlet’s minions. Or my personal favorite, watching server-mates suicide off a cliff for the daily rez, only to get happily ganked by a havoc squad.

It’s not so much that I don’t want them to have fun, I do. But if the game is devolving into a series of endless, arbitrary, and meaningless tasks that suck up the game-time of half the population, I’d like to know about it before hand. When did the game turn this direction anyway, Christmas time?

I’ve seen people yell at others in Teq, and I used to get bumped into Overflow for Scarlet back when it was still LS but haven’t since then, other than those two I can honestly say I’ve never seen any of the things you’ve mentioned. Like not even remotely. Guess its server specific?

Nick.6972:

Tip #1 – dont buy gems with real money.
I’m not farming anything but I can easily get over 50G / week.
Just spent 15G on a new hair style.

Tip #2 – if you can afford to buy gems because you work hard for your moneh, so haard for your moneh, then do it, who cares.

50g/week is not typical. Don’t even dream that you can make 50g/week by playing casually.

First time ever running, took right at 2hours to complete. Most of that time was spent on oozes and then Slick fight. Rest of the dungeon was pretty straight forward, and then another time sink on the final boss until we figured it out.

2 guards, 2 rangers, 1 ele — no zerker gear, only the ele had been there before us. It can be done.

Triton.2648:

It isn’t too hard, it’s just remarkably frustrating and buggy.

Half the time when you wipe you come back to an instant wipe ability, since it doesn’t reset properly.

It’s also needlessly annoying to get him to come down off his platform.

The only viable way to beat the encounter is to have a bunch of zerker melee’s beat his face, someone pull holo, and beat his face some more. Which is really boring.

As someone who completed this dungeon with 2 guardians, 2 rangers, and 1 ele I disagree with you. It really just took coordination, that’s it. We wiped a whole bunch, but we learned and then when we finally beat the boss we all looked at each other and were like “Oh, wow that wasn’t really that hard at all…” We made it a lot harder on ourselves by not working strategically. We didn’t even bother with luring the holos to him, when he was about to do his major strike we popped invuln skills and dodged. By the time he was ready to do it again our CDs were up and just avoided damage again. That’s really the secret. That and when you see him ready to do his cone, get out of the way, but that is GW2 boss fight 101. So many bosses do cone attacks, it should be common sense to avoid it by this point.

Don’t need a full team of melees, don’t need anyone in zerker gear (not one person in our group had zerker set). Just teamwork, that’s it.

skullmount.1758:

WTF? He bought/farmed 500ish keys (maybe less cause some were bound to drop another key)?

No no, back when Jade weapons were out, those Dragon Chests or whatever dropped like crazy, plus you could buy them relatively cheap on TP. I was actually saying that 500 was a low number to open to get 4 tickets versus the thousands I opened to get one.

First things I spent gems on were bag slots and bank slots. Those are pretty worthwhile investments.

Sirendor.1394:

It is actually. Most of the ascended pieces are given by logging in… it doesn’t provide a challenge, just a grind.

“Most of the ascended pieces are given by logging in…” Overstatement of the year right there. Someone likes to completely exaggerate things to try and make a point.

My girlfriend does that, too…..

fourpoundburrito.1698:

OC doesn’t refer to the value YOU put on the materials, it refers to the loss of potential gain via the market’s value of the materials. So no, you do not understand it just fine.

^^ correct use. As long as you hold onto the items and use them for what you wanted to use them for, then there is no opportunity cost anyway. If you want an Ascended weapon, you will either need to buy the mats or use the ones you have. Just because you used the ones you have doesn’t mean their value is lost opportunity cost, though.

Their value is now associated with that Ascended item. That item cost you Xg worth of whatever materials you put in. Just because you aren’t getting the mats via paying gold, but rather mats you had saved, doesn’t mean their equivalent value isn’t retained in their use.

fourpoundburrito.1698:

What does this post have to do with either the OP or either of the quoted posts? I play for fun and not to maximize profit yet I understand there is an opportunity cost every time I choose to hoard / craft something vs. selling it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

But there isn’t a cost when you hoard the items. Those items are still in your possession and they still have value. Those items are essentially in your “company’s” inventory. Whether you sell them right now or save them and sell them a year from now, or save them and actually use them for crafting makes no difference. They still retain their value.

I think the whole point of this post was to call out the people that are saying mats were free to them. Sure it didn’t directly cost them anything except time/salvage/mining equipment, but there is still technically cost.

Now, that’s still not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people who are saying that Ascended weapons only cost them 100g because they had the mats already. What they aren’t monetizing are those mats. They are completely negating the value of them. The correct thing to say would be 100g out of pocket and 200g worth of mats I already had. That would be the correct thing. Not 100g and the mats were free, which is what started this whole opportunity cost discussion, which is incorrectly being used here. You guys clearly understand the concept of it, but it doesn’t apply as the items they are saying are “free” are items that have value and were consumed, thus they need to be included in the cost.

So, no your Ascended weapon did not cost you only 100g. It cost you 100g + whatever the value of the mats you used that you saved up over the course of the year. OP is right, but opportunity cost it is not. Just sayin’.

Cactus.2710:

fourpoundburrito.1698:

I don’t understand all of the fuss in this thread. The OP is just pointing out the fact that there is an opportunity cost involved in crafting with mats you gathered yourself. So people who say stuff like “OMG it only cost me 20g to level weaponsmithing to 500 ’cause I had most of the mats in the bank already” are wrong. The correct statement is that it cost them 20g plus what they could have made selling all their mats instead of crafting with them.

^this^

It appears that a lot of people posting here don’t have a clue what “opportunity cost” means. Any money forgone by not selling the mats is money that could have been used for any other aspect of the game, and unless somebody ONLY played GW2 to make that one weapon that one time, the concept totally applies here. The money you didn’t get from the TP is just as real as the money you spent there.

It isn’t an opportunity cost so much as the value of mats you used, whether you gathered them specifically or collected them over the past year while salvaging things, i.e. this Ascended weapon only cost me 20g plus ~250g worth of mats that I had already collected. The mats have a value whether you use them for crafting or you sell them. You wouldn’t call it an opportunity cost as the value of the items are still in effect and you retain that value, in the form of a crafted item, so there was no lost opportunity. Whether you sell the items or use them for crafting, there is no opportunity cost if your end-goal remains the same (i.e. crafting an Ascended weapon).

I do agree that it would technically be incorrect to say that the mats are free (assuming you got them purely from salvage or gathering while playing the game casually) as salvage kits have a cost as does mining equipment. The time spent is negligible unless you are farming. Do you really want to quantify how much time it took to salvage/mine items over the course of a year and then somehow ascribe a value to that time? That would be nearly impossible.

AtoBoss.2906:

Hunting achieving points for an awful amount of hours is considered fun for you? If your goals in life come down to farming virtual points for literally nothing… I have nothing more to say. Clark Skinner’s post should be stickied lel, may save a life

You’d be surprised how fun it is for some people, especially if you have a touch of OCD. Your brain literally releases endorphines when you get an achievement. It actually gives them pleasure to achievement hunt. It’s no different than people who collect things in real life, like stamps, sports memorabilia, toys, video games, etc. Sure it is only virtual and doesn’t have monetary value, but the effect on the brain is the same.

Different strokes for different folks and all that jazz.

Haven’t played in a year, holy smokes, so you played like 1.5 months of the game before quitting and want to know what has changed?

I’m curious what was so terrible in those couple of months that made you quit in the first place. Most people hadn’t even hit 80 yet!

Knote.2904:

It’s like the part of the brain that holds the concept of “Opportunity Cost” is nothing but an empty vacuum of space, sucking in stray brain cells.

Opportunity costs? In a video game? This isn’t business— unless you literally spend every waking moment in GW2 farming for gold, in which case your opportunity costs comment would be somewhat applicable.

But for the majority of players who play casually with no rhyme or reason when it comes to making gold, there is absolutely no way to measure opportunity costs, because it is company/person specific based on their normal business/farming practices.

Only farmers (or businesses obviously) can talk about that kind of thing. And I mean farmer farmers, like they play the game solely to make money.

If you are that person then why the heck are you even playing this game?

Seras.5702:

I wasn’t pointing the “want free stuff” at anyone in particular. It’s just a general sentiment that I feel often comes from this topic. But being able to swap your amulet (and presumably all ascended gear eventually?) freely amongst your characters is, in essence, free stuff. It’s no different than getting a free amulet for your alt. It means you can earn gear for a character and then not have to work anymore for any other character.

Aside from armor types, you can certainly make that conclusion that getting an item on one character and then transferring it to another is “free” stuff for that alt, but if we are going to speak in terms of characters on an individual, then the main character is now minus an amulet, which is the opposite of “free” stuff.

Overall, though, wouldn’t the idea of being able to swap gear between characters be in line with the essence of GW2? If anything would be casual friendly, it would be being able to move my Exotic light armor from my Mesmer to my Elementalist and back. You would still need different sets if you ran different builds, or if let’s say the Light armor on my Mesmer doesn’t quite fit the character of my Elemenalist, then you wouldn’t swap them and would pursue multiple sets, but having the option to wouldn’t be a problem, in my opinion of course. Or, to be completely honest, if this was a feature, at first I would probably switch armor, but ultimately I would want to get a set for each character to avoid the inconvenience of going to a bank, dumping the armor in, swapping characters and re-equipping. Most players I know would still get sets for each character even if it was available to swap.

It would mostly be useful for newer, more casual players, and less useful for regular/hardcore ones.

I think we can all agree on that.

Problem with this is that if there is any kind of AP or item tied to it you will get completionist whiners cry about how hard it is and that it’s not fair to have content that is so difficult, completely ignoring the fact it is optional. If it gives AP, to them it is no longer optional content. It is “required”.

Easiest solution would be to simply not care about those QQers. I know I don’t. Hopefully Anet doesn’t either.

Shelledfade.6435:

No, Don’t make getting the skins as difficult as last year. Last year was a catastrophe that I hope to never repeat in this game again and the forums were in an outrage about it which is probably why EVERY CONTENT UPDATE after halloween was done differently. This halloween is no exception. WE’re gonna be able to CRAFT the skins this time and that’s how it should have been done last year.

Paying REAL money to GAMBLE on skins ??? No one wants that.

Well, that was my idea for a compromise with the ones clamoring for them to not become available. My preference is absolutely that you should be able to obtain them in a difficult, but achievable way. No RNG, just a difficult way to obtain. Like SAB trib mode skins. There was no RNG in any way. You finish the trib levels, you get what you need to make the weapon. It is still an exclusive weapon because not everyone had the patience to complete that content. Or the Liadri mini pet. It’s unique and isn’t RNG based, you had to complete above average hard content to get it.

IMO that is the proper way to do exclusive skins, not complete RNG from a $ based item. I already resolved after the Jade weapon fiasco that I would never spend another penny on RNG weapon skins. I got my staff, but I had to dish out some serious gold to get it, almost 100g, whereas, and this is absolutely NO joke, a guildie had gotten FOUR EFFING WEAPON TICKETS within 500 chests. I mean….WHAT. THE. PUCK. He would be on vent laughing about how he got yet another ticket, all the while I’m opening chest after chest after chest and nada.

Sour? Oh hell yea.

TooBz.3065:

I understand where you are going from, but I think that account wide time gating is alt-unfriendly.

This isn’t well thought out, so I apologize for rambling / lack of coherence. But I think anytime you have a reward that is for a character (e.g. soulbound gear) that is purchased using a currency that is time limited at an account level (e.g. laurels) it’s alt-unfriendly.

Honestly, I think the entire issue I have is tied to the fact that items can’t be shared across the account. If they could then there would be little difference between having 1 toon and having 7. Having extra gear would be a convenience item to save time swapping.

But currently if I want a berker sword for my warrior, guardian, mesmer, and thief then I need to get 4 beserker swords, no sharing.

I actually agree with this. I wish we could go back to the old school MMO days where you could move armor and weapons around whenever.

I don’t agree you should be able to put it on TP though, because you have to have some level of consumption in the market otherwise everything would be worthless.

I think all soulbound gear should be account bound. That would solve a lot of these issues.

Katostrophe.3274:

Ill be totally honest with you.

I cannot stand when someone joins and they aren’t a level 80. This game is designed to run dungeons purely at level 80, even the lower leveled dungeons. In the past i used to allow it but they are such a nuisance, and the dungeon almost always fails because of them.

I usually kick and block players who even attempt to stay in a party that are low leveled. Especially when they join quick runs/experienced runs. I hope I’ve blocked OP

Considering the fact that I completed every dungeon while on characters that were the recommended level, I must disagree that you almost always fail because of non-80s. That’s just bad playing. I and 4 of my guildies can grab level kitten, 65 whatever the recommended level is for that dungeon and clear it without issue. That I can assure you. It is certainly easier on an 80, but we’re talking about going from intended difficulty (like what they recommend) to ROFL easy on a geared 80. Again, this is assuming players are competent and geared with the best they can get for that level.

It sounds like you prefer easy content over slightly less easy content.

Dante.1508:

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

I think you are trying to say that the game is farm-unfriendly, not alt unfriendly.

You seem somewhat upset at the fact you can’t just switch between your 11 characters and farm the same content each time to get 11x the pay-out. That really has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. They are time-gating content. Karma is about as alt-friendly as it gets. If you want to farm karma, then probably not. Living Story alt-unfriendly? You share the achievements between characters lol, how is that unfriendly? Same with guild events. I’m sorry you can’t farm commendations 11x more than everyone else.

The game is alt friendly, it isn’t farm friendly. They want things to take time to complete, some players want to get them ASAP and are kitten they cannot. This is not an alt-friendliness issue, it’s a farming/time-gating one.

Junkpile.7439:

Sure it’s good idea spawn when map is full of roleplayers.

I couldn’t have said it better myself……………………………………..

…………………………………………………………..

Primernova.5791:

Are current gamers not interested in such fights?

I’m sure they would be, because honestly, I enjoy doing the GW2 dungeons and all, and I appreciate mechanics outside of just fighting (Aetherblade Retreat or Molten Facility dungeon for example— having to avoid lighting waves, jump things, etc. — I found this to be a great addition to dungeons that other games never really did), but most of the fights (trash clearing at least), just comes down to tank and spank.

I mean really, there’s no real rhyme or reason to it. We get to a room, pull 4-5 mobs, then its a free-for-all to kill them. You can target for organization, but that’s not really necessary most of the time. And that’s literally the only option. Target one mob, focus fire, move to next, or kill everything with AoE. There isn’t the added strategy of controlling one type of enemy (ranged or casters for example) versus another.

Most boss fights also boil down to tank and spank, but I will concede that there are boss fights that have a little bit more of a strategy to them (the new TA path is a good example). But trash clearing? That’s all mindless damage dumping on whatever is around you.

I know why they did it. They want all dungeons to be able to be completed by any make-up of groups. If you want all Mesmers, it should be doable, if you want all Thieves, it should be doable.

If they added CC to the dynamic then many dungeons would require a specific class, and they don’t want to get into that because a) that slows things down when you have a group but need one more specific class and have to wait and b) it limits who can join (“oh sorry buddy, we’re full on CCers”). The way it is now it really doesn’t matter unless you are an elitist and only focus on absolute fastest run times (which is well within your right to do, but come on we can all agree that all GW2 content is easy enough to beat with any combo of classes).

If that is true then it must be a bug. Have you tried just sitting where the drake spawns or something?

My 2cents: bring the skins back, keep them as difficult to get as they were last year.

I don’t see why that’s a problem. Obviously they were horrible RNG items, so what difference does it make if everyone has the same terrible RNG chance to get them this year as they did last year?

I’ve been here since Day 1, did all of the Halloween content, tried everything in my power to get The Crossing, but was not smiled upon by the RNG gods. So if those against having them come back are basically saying to me that I didn’t deserve it back then, even though I’m pretty sure I tried significantly harder to get it than some of the people who got lucky and got one, then you are all kittenholes. I should be allowed to beat the RNG pinata every year for a limited time to try and get those skins.

It’s a holiday event, not Living Story. The skins should be attempt-able every year on that Holiday. That would be the logical way to do it, not create completely new skins every year on that Holiday.

It’s all about how you advertise your group. There’s really no need for debate. If you want 80s only, state it. If you want speedrunners, state it. If you open it to any level, state it.

If you are an 80 elitist snob and post “LFM AC p1!!” and then kick someone out for not being 80, then you don’t understand the concept of efficiency and clearly are happy having people join, see they aren’t 80, vote to kick, possibly get a confused/angry whisper, possibly respond to said whisper about your unstated rule of 80s only, and then possibly have to do it even more when the next non-80 joins.

As an intelligent person you should want to minimize any unnecessary work like the above.

LF2M AC p2! Any level!
LF2M CoF p1!! Speedrun, ping gear on join!
LF1M CM p2!! 80s only!
LF3M FoTM! Experienced players AR 30+ ONLY!

You see how those postings would not cause any kind of confusion? People know what you want from the get-go.

And yes, there are groups that don’t require 80, almost every group I create I allow for at least one lowbie, because seriously, if I have 4 80s that know what they are doing, I could have a 35 in all white gear come along and not have it be a problem in any way shape or form, and people know that.

Players should be allowed to play with equally skilled players and to limit group members to that. Everyone can avoid ridiculous arguments by being clear when advertising. No one’s time is wasted then.

Tibago.8276:

Draknar.5748:

Tibago.8276:

To say “nothing bad will happen if you stop chasing achievement points” is like saying nothing bad will happen if you lose a football match.

Except people publicly see you lose a football match, whereas no one knows what your AP is and whether you have 1k, 5k, 10k, 15k, etc….

I mean seriously, it’s not like your AP is posted next to your name…

I have 9k AP at this point, and none of my characters wear the Radiant Armor I chose. So how will anyone ever know I have 9k AP!!!? They won’t. When I hit 10k, I’m not even going to wear the title, because WHO CARES….

… <— an extra ellipses

I would debate whether winning and losing merely concerns us when it is visible to others, after all I can get a kick out winning a game of solitaire. Who cares? Indeed. I perceive your comment to be a call for maturity about something that is, after all, trivial. Fair comment . . . for what it is worth, I am trying, but you know that stupid competitive spirit that dogs my footsteps does tend to get in the way

Trust me, I wouldn’t have 9k AP if I didn’t feel the competitive pressure, I can just never answer my own question as to why I feel that pressure, because no one besides the guildies I compete with know what my AP is (unless I wear the titles/armor— but I’ve never been the braggart type of guy).

That really has to be the only reason. If I wasn’t in a guild I bet I wouldn’t care in the slightest what my AP was.

But while I do feel the pressure and AP hunt, I don’t feel it is in any way a requirement in this game because of the reasons mentioned previously, and I certainly don’t think it has become the main focus of the game for me. Ever since they added the list that shows which achievements you are close to finishing I just check that every day and try to knock one out (when feasible), at the end of my playing session. I do the daily every day because they are easy and I finish them automatically while doing world exploration on my alts. PvP daily I just play in general and get the daily done quickly as well. That in addition to knocking out one of the almost finished achievements from that list keep me at a healthy AP pace without feeling like that’s all I’m doing.

If you are the type of person that absolutely must be the best, then that’s a personal character trait.

Primernova.5791:

Charm, sleep, mesmerize, root, transmogrify, polymorph, fear, mind control and sap are CCs. All are from 8 to 45 seconds long, some can be ranged casted and all have varied rules for breaking. Some even have benefits for the victim.

Won’t argue with you on lack of CC, but I will mention that Fear, Root, and Polymorph all exist in this game. Knockdown is a CC, think of it like a 3-5sec stun. I’ve been feared for at least 5secs before, same with polymorph, and I know I’ve been rooted for at least 10secs before. Mostly on account I didn’t attack my way out of the root.

But GW2 does not have any encounters that require CC. I don’t hate the fact CC isn’t necessary, but I do kinda miss it as a feature. You see a group of 5 mobs, you can CC two, fight 3. Just a fun dynamic in general.

Mesket.5728:

Draknar.5748:

Mesket.5728:

Draknar.5748:

Mesket.5728:

This game will simply lose players that are fond to role playing games simply because this game is not a role playing game. Nobody has a role in a group.

Clearly you don’t understand what role-playing games are. The role-playing is you as a human being playing the role of a fantasy adventurer. That is the minimum requirement, of which GW2 fulfills in its entirety.

I’ve had my share of board role playing games as a kid and later on MMOs since ’97. I kind of get what playing roles means.

I disagree, I don’t think GW2 covers the least expected from a role playing game. Not a computer based role playing game. If this was a book game, then we could all RP; but since the nature of computer games is quite different, roles has to be pushed through your role on a group. What is your role? what is your place? what do you do that the other do not? what do you lack of?

This game has the exactly same mechanic as if we were all playing Darksiders online and we all play the same character. The only difference is you cast it purple, I cast it red.

My role is a Sylvari guardian, born from the whatever tree, here to help stop the Risen/Zhaitan and/or any other threat to Tyria. That’s it. That’s all it needs to be.

What was my role in Aion? I’m a daeva like everyone else and I fight the badguys/opposite faction. What was my role in WoW? I’m an Undead priest, who needs to fight the bad guys/opposite faction like all of the other people and I go on quests to help random NPCs or do a dungeon instance that has very little back-story. At least GW2 tries to explain dungeons via Story Mode. Why was I running Shadowfang Keep again? To kill the nameless bad guy? What was my role in Asheron’s Call, or UO? I was a guy that wandered around killing monsters or other players and leveling up. That’s it.

GW2 is no different from any other MMORPG as far as RPing goes. You make it what you want like any other game.

We will never get an agreement here… you are talking about your role as in a board role playing game. I’m talking about your mechanic role in a party as a computer role playing game. You are trying to use the back story which is shallow and already written for you unlike really role playing games as an argument to justify that is fine if we have no mechanic roles in the party and we all play the same character. With that concept (and I agree here, this is kinda true) you can role play Mario Bross if you like but we all know that is not a role playing game (though you can turn it into one in your head). Computer role games relies on mechanic roles to support the character class and background as in the old school pioneers like Gauntlet (1985).

I really really really don’t think that’s what the “Role” in Role-playing game means. It refers to the player taking on the role of the character, not the player having a role on a team. If I’m wrong someone please tell me because I’ve been operating under this assumption for well over a decade now.

Tibago.8276:

To say “nothing bad will happen if you stop chasing achievement points” is like saying nothing bad will happen if you lose a football match.

Except people publicly see you lose a football match, whereas no one knows what your AP is and whether you have 1k, 5k, 10k, 15k, etc….

I mean seriously, it’s not like your AP is posted next to your name…

I have 9k AP at this point, and none of my characters wear the Radiant Armor I chose. So how will anyone ever know I have 9k AP!!!? They won’t. When I hit 10k, I’m not even going to wear the title, because WHO CARES….

… <— an extra ellipses

I think we can all agree on this. In all reality, no content should require anything above Rare gear. Exotic should give you an advantage, and Ascended should give you even more of an advantage, but Rare gear should be the default difficulty.

I think the problem with the Personal Story is that it is so fragmented. It’s not like you do it straight. You do a story line quest, then you go to a zone, level up, do different events, and then you come back and do another personal story line quest where you don’t even remember what happened in the last quest. Sometimes there are months between when I do a personal story and I’m really only doing it do get it done.

I have no investment in the characters or what is actually going on, it feels more like a chore because it isn’t fluid. It’s jerky. Oh man, this strong bad guy is summoning bad guys! Two weeks later when I get to the next one, oh man we are gathering some item that is needed to fight the bad guy! Two weeks later, we are talking about how to infiltrate some base or area to fight the bad guy! Two weeks later, we’re fighting the bad guy!

All the while in between all of this I’ve been killing Tequatl, other world bosses, have done multiple dungeons, PvP, etc. The personal story just feels so out of place because everything is moving around it but it stays completely static.

I don’t know what else to say about it, and I’m not quite sure how you’re going to fix it.

The main reason you lose people is because often you finish a PS quest, you’re maybe 3 levels away from the next one, you start playing to get to that level, then by that time you really stopped caring and end up leveling way past and then it just seems anachronistic to jump back to the level 15 zone and have some “epic” battle, when you’re having epic battles in level 60 zones already.

-1 for Weapons, -1 for Armor, basically for the same reasons others have disliked them. They don’t stand out anymore than Exotics. Especially the armor, the armor is so out there and frilly with that whole masquerade/spaniard theme, what’s their obsession with this style? I honestly think there are 10+ masks available in this game, like stupid masquerade masks. Did I miss a study where that was a cool design?

I didn’t play GW1, so maybe that look was huge in GW1, but uggggh its so bad. And for Ascended? I was so utterly disappointed.

The weapons I’ve seen just seem blah. I’ve seen FAR better Exotic weapons. FAR better.

TooBz.3065:

Draknar.5748:

TooBz.3065:

I disagree. If you read the posts most people have said that their are alt-friendly aspects and alt-unfriendly aspects. The only question is how much weight you give to the different things.

For example, as you say, gold / karma / laurels / dungeon tokens are shared for the account. So you can earn gold with one character and spend it with another. In contrast, laurels are limited per account and dungeon tokens have serious diminishing returns. What’s more important to you? If the later, then it’s alt-friendly, if the former, then it’s not.

I also think the game is much less alt-friendly than it use to be, and I think that factors into peoples perceptions.

I was directing my comments to the ones with sentiments such as “lol GW2 alt friendly? NOPE”

I don’t see how the daily laurels is alt unfriendly. Because you can’t complete daily quests on each character individually? That seems like standard issue. If you honestly have done the dailies/monthlies since they released them, then you’d be like me insofar as you have multiple characters with every kind of ascended laurel item you could need.

How is that unfriendly? Because it takes time to do it? At 80 the XP gain from dailies is lost anyway, so its even MORE alt friendly because you can hop on any alt character to do them, and thus level up even easier and gain that laurel. Heck you can character hop to complete the daily. I have a character logged out at a JP. I hop on that alt when it’s Puzzle Jumper daily, easy. My alts contribute to the same exact end-goal.

Laurels are currency like anything else and is shared. That makes it friendly. Time-gating something doesn’t make it alt-friendly or unfriendly. The fact that any character at any time can work toward that content makes it alt-friendly.

Diminishing returns on dungeon tokens? Huh? I need some explanation on that one as I’m not quite sure what you are referring to. You mean DR if you want to run the same dungeon path over and over? That’s a very different discussion and has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. I have 2500+ CoF tokens in my bank that any of my characters can access that would disagree that dungeon tokens aren’t alt-friendly. I can gear two alts that have never even set foot in CoF with those tokens, how is that unfriendly?

I haven’t been able to put my finger on why, and certainly not to the level of detail required to explain it to people looking to poke holes in my opinion, but when I see alts as a burden rather than an asset, then I start to think the game is not alt-friendly.

I’m not sure exactly when that happened, but sometime in the last six months.

Other people disagree, but that’s why it’s an opinion as opposed to a fact.

I suppose that’s a fair and honest response. They have never felt like a burden to me, but then again I’ve never been able to play more than 2 or 3 characters regularly anyway. I suppose if I was actively trying to juggle 3+ characters it would start to feel burdensome. But why do something if it feels like a burden.

TooBz.3065:

I disagree. If you read the posts most people have said that their are alt-friendly aspects and alt-unfriendly aspects. The only question is how much weight you give to the different things.

For example, as you say, gold / karma / laurels / dungeon tokens are shared for the account. So you can earn gold with one character and spend it with another. In contrast, laurels are limited per account and dungeon tokens have serious diminishing returns. What’s more important to you? If the later, then it’s alt-friendly, if the former, then it’s not.

I also think the game is much less alt-friendly than it use to be, and I think that factors into peoples perceptions.

I was directing my comments to the ones with sentiments such as “lol GW2 alt friendly? NOPE”

I don’t see how the daily laurels is alt unfriendly. Because you can’t complete daily quests on each character individually? That seems like standard issue. If you honestly have done the dailies/monthlies since they released them, then you’d be like me insofar as you have multiple characters with every kind of ascended laurel item you could need.

How is that unfriendly? Because it takes time to do it? At 80 the XP gain from dailies is lost anyway, so its even MORE alt friendly because you can hop on any alt character to do them, and thus level up even easier and gain that laurel. Heck you can character hop to complete the daily. I have a character logged out at a JP. I hop on that alt when it’s Puzzle Jumper daily, easy. My alts contribute to the same exact end-goal.

Laurels are currency like anything else and is shared. That makes it friendly. Time-gating something doesn’t make it alt-friendly or unfriendly. The fact that any character at any time can work toward that content makes it alt-friendly.

Diminishing returns on dungeon tokens? Huh? I need some explanation on that one as I’m not quite sure what you are referring to. You mean DR if you want to run the same dungeon path over and over? That’s a very different discussion and has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. I have 2500+ CoF tokens in my bank that any of my characters can access that would disagree that dungeon tokens aren’t alt-friendly. I can gear two alts that have never even set foot in CoF with those tokens, how is that unfriendly?

AtoBoss.2906:

3. Class imbalance. I main-ed an ele, and Anet has failed all of us elementalists. We’re broken in almost all aspects of the game, but Anet has continued to ignore. It’s either the devs are extremely ignorant, disregarding all ele forum posts or are extremely incompetent. Nerfing is not the solution anymore, improve other classes. Revert the ele back to its original state last year.

I can only assume you mean in PvP? In PvE Elemenatlist is effing awesome. It’s my new favorite class. In PvP Eles get owned.