Guild Wars 2

BobbyStein

UPDATE: We’re actively testing the fix. No ETA on when it will be deployed to the live server, other than “soonish.”

This is great news.

Did anything outside of GW2 update, such as your video drivers?

How dare ArenaNet, while making a game designed around bringing new ideas to the table, bring a new idea to the table. How dare they.

Nowadays, “casual” is used as a derogatory term in a frail attempt to insult people for having a life outside the game. So according to that definition, yes, I’m a casual.

But at any given time, it depends. Ever since GW2’s release, I’ve put a very unhealthy amount of time into it. But before that, I was pretty much entirely doing nothing but music. It’s a sort of ebb and flow; it really depends on what I feel like doing with my free time.

As for whether this game is for me, I think it’s not so much whether you’re “causal” or “hardcore” so much as whether you enjoy the game. It’s not like WoW, and people comparing it to that game might as well be comparing Battlefield 3 to Unreal Tournament. Some people are going to prefer skill-based combat instead of being a one-trick pony dependent entirely on gear. Some people are going to want their dungeons freakin’ hard. Some people prefer to explore and participate, and feel like they’re changing the world around them, instead of being told by some NPC with a questclamation mark above his head to go kill 10 Ogre Brutes and 15 Ogre Shamans who are just standing around in a nearby field doing nothing. Some people are going to find enjoyment in the gameplay itself and not in endless gear treadmills and a drilled-in, outdated sense of “endgame”. This game is for them. And then, some people will prefer the opposite. This game is not for them. None of that is dependent on how much time you put into it, so I think claiming that this game is for any group of players that falls under some commitment-based label is completely unsubstantiated.

Nicely done!

Eochaidh.4106:

DusK.3849:

How is tapping the dodge button right as you hit the ground “a lot of trouble”?

I mean a lot of trouble to implement. I’d rather see something significant instead.

You mean like a trait that reduces fall damage in addition to some other effect?

1 keeps AoE from being a ridiculously dominating force in WvW, so the 5-target limit should stay.

2. They can’t just increase map population counts without making the servers unstable. Server stability is really networking 101, so I dunno why anyone would ever suggest that. Outnumbered would be fine if each world was capped at participation to a third of what the map’s max pop is, i.e., if a map has a max player capacity of 600, then allow only 200 people from each server and no more so other people from outnumbered servers trying to join aren’t being met with a queue message.

3. This sounds more like a computer issue, as I’ve never had a problem with player character loading distance in WvW. Go into your graphics settings and boost both Environment and LOD to at least “High”. If you can’t do that, replace that toaster you’re playing on.

Can’t go wrong with world forums.

There are more medium headgear types than a mask. I keep a hood on my thief, for example.

How is tapping the dodge button right as you hit the ground “a lot of trouble”?

Illushia.3721

Katanas are absolute crap when used as one-handed sword.

You do realize that you’re arguing against what most consider to be the greatest Japanese swordsman that ever lived when you say this, right?

Kojiden.8405:

although I highly doubt anyone uses the fall damage abilities on a regular basis anyways…

I personally don’t see a use for them. They do seem like they could stand to be replaced by something much more useful.

But the idea of rolling at the right time to reduce fall damage is a pretty good one imo.

Campana.9216:

Being underlevelled is happening to a lot of people even though they are doing all the content the game throws at them, including crafting.

They’re not, though. Look at the OP’s post. He went to Queensdale, then Kessex, completely ignoring other regions in his level that are only a few portals away.

If you’re doing the content, all of it, contrary to what you said people are doing, and you’re breaking out the the whole “this is my race’s starting area, so this is where I should stay” mentality, you’ll find yourself a few levels above your personal story and future content very quickly.

A little insight into the dungeon design process was gleaned a bit when I was reading through the dev tracker. Specifically, it was regarding the explorable dungeon difficulty that everyone who came into GW2 thinking there would be some trinity system, and even a few who didn’t, found to be too difficult. Responding to this comment from another player:

What I would call ‘hard’ was trying to run Domain of Anguish and Mallyx with a balanced setup in the first weeks it was released. Many people called it impossible, but it was a heck lot of fun to do! Why? Because it offered veriety and fluid gameplay, quick and deadly like it should be. Not kiting a mob for 2 minutes and then walking into the next mob rinse and repeat.

Colin Johanson had this to say:

Colin Johanson

I’ll point out ironically, when we first turned on DoA back in Gw1 the posts you’re seeing in this forum from a few folks about difficulty were the exact same comments everyone had about DoA. It was “impossible, mobs were just tuned to do insane damage and have huge HP, there was no tactics to defeat DoA”, etc. I went back and read through the original DoA launch feedback and it was literally identical to the comments folks on the forums are leaving now.

We made the choice back then to stick with the difficulty, and give people time to learn how to play the dungeon better and overcome it. A few months later, people viewed it as the most fun thing in the game and totally reasonable without us changing anything.

We’ll be doing the same with the Gw2 explorable dungeons, our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics. By comparison, after having months to play the game and the time our alpha was complete, some of our better dungeon groups felt the explorable dungeons were too easy for launch, we decided not to make them any harder given the expected player skill on launch.

We’re actively monitoring every dungeon and working on balancing issues we encounter appropriately. We’ll be keeping an eye on bosses we think don’t have enough varied mechanics to warrant their large health pools and updating them over time to make them more varied/interesting fights. We’ll be monitoring, and continually tweaking/adding to dungeon rewards over time and of course balancing where we see the need. And of course, we’ll be looking at adding more dungeons as well!

All of that being said, the game is VERY new for most of our players, and I can absolutely promise with more knowledge of the game and advanced player skill, the explorable dungeons can all be overcome by being skilled groups. We’ve seen many groups do it just fine in our internal alpha test once they had time to learn how to play the game well. Just like Domain of Anguish in Gw1, it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.

If DoA was any indication, a couple months from now, many of you will likely be posting saying most of the dungeons are too easy and you need better challenges

So there you have it. If history holds true, a few months from now we’ll all be coming back here talking about how the dungeons are too easy and we want more of them, likely after the “whaaaa, I want the trinity back” baddies flooding the forum right now leave for their pandas and the rest of us get better at the game and learn the dungeons a bit better.

Dungeons are made to be difficult regardless of level. Colin Johanson made a post yesterday about how they’re basically around the level of difficulty of DoA. You’ll never be able to just breeze through that.

How are we measuring success? Concurrent users? Because if so, it’s already been more successful, as ANet has already revealed to have logged about 400k concurrent users; GW1 never got that high. Are we measuring in terms of sales? If so, I think the possibility of it being more successful is very likely; it got nearly a third of the sales in less than a month (2 million) of all three GW1 campaigns + EotN from 2005 to 2010 (6.5 million). That’s no small feat.

I think this game will stick around for a while. Most people didn’t walk into this game thinking it was gonna be WoW 2 or GW 1.5. Most people knew they were getting what ArenaNet have been saying for the past three years they’d give us. I don’t think those people are just going to drop off.

You purchase it in the gem store. It’s 800 gems; $10 if you buy those gems yourself, or roughly 2.5-3 gold right now if you don’t want to use real money.

Spitwyld.1963:

It is clear to me that GW2 is intended to be different, but I would like to hear from those who are still enjoying GW2 after reaching level 80. What maintains your interest, what motivates you to keep playing?

What, if anyone knows, is Anet’s intention with this game? Having a game free to play, in my opinion, really limits the developers’ ability to regularly produce new and exciting material so I wonder how far the game can really go.

For the first point: Gameplay itself motivates me. I inch closer to that 100% map completion while tagging along for dynamic events, running with guildies through dungeons, and playing the market in crafting. When a game’s fun, you don’t need motivators like progression gearing to keep you going; if that were the case, most games wouldn’t exist at all.

For the second point: ArenaNet, and I’m quoting their lead gameplay designer Colin Johanson here, want “to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.”

The reason they can do this is -and brace yourself, because this will be a shock- a sub fee is not necessary in the least to keep an MMO running and develop content for it. World of Warcraft, the MMO giant that pretty much MMO afterward tried to copy, cost $200 million to maintain from 2004 to 2008. This included server upkeep and maintenance, all payroll forall employees working on the game, all development costs for new content, basically everything that went into the game. Seems like a big price tag for Blizzard, until you consider that they made over $440 million from box sales alone during that same period. This means that the $15 a month went to literally nothing but a fat check for shareholders. It was millions in free revenue for Blizzard to add on to their existing 50+% profit from box sales.

So considering all that, it’s all a matter of holding ArenaNet to their word. And I think they’ll deliver; after all, they broke 2 million. They sold so many more units than they thought they would that they had to halt first-party sales – the very sales that are most profitable for them – just to keep the servers stable. So they have more than enough cash in the coffers now to give us lots of great stuff down the line. And considering the game itself launched with hundreds of hours of content, I think everyone with a life outside the game that doesn’t have some masochist desire for a gear treadmill is going to be set for a while.

As the title says, I think that while you guys get the anti-RMT measures you’re working on up and running, this would be a great way to ease all of the tedium of reporting the gold spammers in map chat. Basically, it would be an addition to the menus when you right-click a character name in chat called “Report RMT”. This would report a player for spamming and block them, all in two mouse clicks.

There are a lot of people that are just not reporting anymore simply because it involves right-clicking the name, clicking to drop down the menu, clicking “Spamming”, clicking to send the report, right-clicking the character name again, and clicking block. Give us a right-click menu option that does all of that automatically, and you’ll see a big boost in gold spammer reporting, you can get those accounts banned quicker, and our server communities end up happier.

TheSabi.2378

Well thats not what a “responsible MMO company” does. Then again a responisble MMO company would make sure this would be working before launch and have more communication…so…yeah..

So there’s not a single “responsible” MMO company in existence according to your description.

I can’t shake the feeling that the last fight with the big guy is bugged.

I don’t think you’ll be able to do dungeons with your USA buddies without transferring until they implement guesting, as you need to be in the same server before you enter the dungeon for it to work right.

Yeah, I noticed this too on the items I was crafting.

What other MMO’s have done non-trinity combat, Knight?

/me waits patiently for Knight to list a bunch of multiplayer RPG’s that aren’t MMO’s.

Also, Darkdawns, if I ever saw you doing that in my dungeon group, I’d kick you out for being dead weight after I let the mobs rock you for trying that crap. You don’t just walk into a dungeon doing minimal damage and complete forsake control and support. That just makes you little more than a spot that could be filled by a player that’s actually good.

Funny observation: You ask a forum if they enjoy the game, and you’ll get a ton of people with largely ignorant complaints. Ask in-game, you’ll watch the game get showered with praise.

How interesting.

Not sarcastic in the least.

Elthurien.8356:

I have no problem as a melee Thief in dungeons, PvE or WvW. I use my utilities
to blind, stun and daze to completely avoid damage, If I get aggro I take measures to lose aggro and continue to melee while controlling my incomming damage with smoke and avoidance. Melee is more challenging but it is far more enjoyable experience because of this.

Gentlemen, this is how you play a melee class. Take heed, especially if you’re playing thief. He knows what’s up.

Amen. They created a system that puts more emphasis on skill than gear, breaks monotonous 1-2-3-4-5 tank n’ spank gameplay, and exposes the baddies when they come here and complain about it being hard. It’s a multi-win!

Anonymous.6935:

Must be another one of those poor mistaken people who are muddling good games up with bad games (such as Guild Wars 2).

Hi, guy who thinks gear treadmills are fun. It’s nice that you’re eagerly awaiting your pandas so you can do more of the same while you trick yourself into believing that your $15 a month is something more than lining in a Blizzard exec’s pockets, but the number of people playing WoW right now are about a third as large as the people playing GW2, so they could really use to in there to boost that population, and we could really do without your completely ignorant “Wahhh, this game isn’t WoW 2” whining.

Stark, ANet always appreciates thanks. And glad to see that you, like a majority of people who bought the game, are enjoying it. I’ve been playing my 80 for the past week, and I can say, contrary to what… people… like Anonymous say, there’s plenty to do at 80. People like him are just mad that, unlike what they consider to be TEH BEST GAEM EVAR, that post-80 doesn’t involve running dungeons for gear solely so you can run some dungeons for gear, ad inifitum.

The reason WvW matches are so short right now is because ANet is trying to iron out the very thing you described; there are a lot of servers, and with three-server combat, it gets a little tricky to balance them and figure out which server groups will be even matches for each other.

Give it a little time. When you see WvW matches increasing in how many days they run, you know they’re getting closer, that you’re getting closer, to a fair match.

They are bad, but those options are even worse if you’re not reporting each and every bug you find so that they can eventually get fixed.

So you wanted a gear treadmill, even though ArenaNet said there wouldn’t be one in this game. So why did you buy this game?

OMG BF3 is the worst shooter ever. I bought it thinking it was going to be like Quake Live, because it’s a shooter, and it’s nothing like Quake Live!

Seriously, people. Get out of this “every MMO is the same game” mentality.

anonim.5932:

Don’t feed the trolls? If it’s honest: WoW-Fans go to WoW. You’d know that GW2 would be different for… 5 years?

I wish that latter part were true, but it’s like every single person complaining right now completely ignored the ANet blog, beta reviewers, the wiki, GW2 Guru, and the main website, and then bought the game because it’s an MMO and in their minds MMO = WoW clone.

daemonlama.5413:

This just makes me look forward to the 25th even more.

No kidding. All of this “Whaaaaa, it’s not WoW 2, I’m so disappointed” crap is pushing relevant threads down.

I’d say we should hijack this thread, turn it into a “Why Guild Wars 2 is a great game but baddies prefer WoW” thread, but ArenaNet wrote article after article on that subject over the years, and these WoWites missed all that stuff. XD

Let’s go through the thread counting all of the people who thought GW2 was going to be WoW 2 and didn’t read a single thing ANet posted about the game over the years, shall we?

Seriously, people. You knew what you were buying. If you didn’t, that’s not the game’s fault; it’s yours. Be an informed consumer.

notebene.3190:

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you farm a waypoint?

Hang out there waiting for an attack event. It’s pretty effective, but tediously boring, so I don’t do it.

Neppu Demion.7439:

At least a gear “treadmill” is something to work towards, a reward you have to work for. What is there here to satisfy at max level? I keep asking this and people keep saying there’s lots of things, but all I can tell from their posts is that the only thing to do at max level is farm karma.

I’m sure you’re getting answers like “Try to get dungeon armor/weapons”, “Get your 100% map completion”, “find the jumping puzzles”, etc etc, which are all relevant answers, but like a conspiracy theorist, you’ve arrived at your conclusion that “there’s nothing to do at 80” first, and thrown out anything that proves that conclusion wrong.

I like how anyone that proves that the complainers didn’t know what kind of game they were buying is suddenly a fanboy.

Ah, well, guilty as charged. Enjoy your pandas and gear treadmills. Us “fanboys” will be in GW2 having fun.

I’ve run a greatsword guardian through my trip to 80 and beyond. I’ve had no trouble playing melee in any gametype.

It’s a known bug. You’re supposed to get participation for supporting players doing damage, but it’s not working for some reason.

That… is a hard question. Wow. I never thought about this, mainly because there hasn’t been a zone I haven’t enjoyed.

…I’ll get back to you on that.

Alex.9432:

I play a healer in this game. Yup I do. I’m a guardian. When someone go to dying I am on them in a flash. I pop an aegis of one sort or another to protect us and bring em up. The healing over time/big heals as HP goes down is not the way the game uses healers. You just have to rethink how it works.

That’s called playing support, and I’d hope so, because a lot of people don’t seem to know when to do stuff like that.

Azzras.8041:

shingui.4197:

Why GW2 is not going to be the next WoW

Stopped reading here tbh, as this pretty much sums up everything wrong with this thread, as well as explaining most reasons you probably didn’t like the game.

If you play a game, that tries it’s damnedest not to be WoW, like WoW…you’re gonna have a bad time.

The problem is Anet has blatantly stated it’s going after WoW, therefor it is fair imo to compare the two games.

But has stated clearly that they’re not trying to be it.

Trust me, if you think WoW is teh best game EVAR, you’re probably going to hate this game.

dvx.4162:

• PvP balance is all over the place right now (although this will hopefully get fixed)

If you think there’s a balance issue with any profession, post about it in the sub-forum of the profession in question. Izzy checks them religiously to look for suggestions for PvP balancing.

dvx.4162:

• 15 dollars a month. Sorry ANet, but if you want to consistently dish out manageable updates, you need the income (and many, including myself, are more than willing to pay)

No, they don’t. WoW cost $200 million dollars to maintain, including server upkeep and development costs, between 2004 and 2008. They made over $440 million from box sales alone during that time. That $15 a month that you have given Blizzard over the years and will continue to give them is literally free money to them that does nothing but line the pockets of their executives and shareholders. None of that money is necessary to cover the cost of developing new content.

dvx.4162:

• Use the trinity – your system looks good on paper, but it’s a disaster in practice (anyone that’s done exploration mode dungeons can attest to this)

No it’s not. You’re just bad.

dvx.4162:

• Dying is not a game mechanic – dying should be a bad thing. You should not be allowed to come back to finish a boss fight after you died.

Dying is irrelevant, because if you’re not bad, it doesn’t happen.

dvx.4162:

• Underwater exploration is fun, but underwater combat is stupid (no, really, it is). Blizzard’s blunder with Vashj’ir should’ve taught you this.

Most players are having no trouble with underwater content. If you are, that’s your fault, not the game’s.

dvx.4162:

• You need end-game progression. You really do. However, I do realize that a lack of end-game is a consequence of not paying 15 dollars a month.

Not only is that last point completely false, but the first is something any informed consumer walked into the game with intent to avoid.

In short, you bought GW2 thinking it would be WoW, completely ignoring everything ANet said about the game for the past three years. Next time, be an informed consumer; just because you didn’t bother to do your homework doesn’t mean the game will fail. To the contrary, actually; GW2 has consistently had over three times as many players than WoW since launch.

GW2 will not fail just because it’s not WoW. Actually, the fact that it’s not WoW will ultimately be the reason it sees success, as it has already.

dvx.4162:

• Waypoints are often contested

There’s always a waypoint near there that can’t be contested, except in Orr, which is supposed to be an ebb and flow where the battlefront shifts.

dvx.4162:

• Few people in high-level zones compared to low-level zones

Not everyone plays as much as you do.

dvx.4162:

• Most events impossible to solo

Completely false. I’ve solo’d more DE’s than I could count. If you can’t solo anything that’s not labeled [Group Event], you’re bad, and you should stop blaming the game for that and get better instead.

dvx.4162:

And at 80, things just got worse when dealing with the end-game:

That was your first mistake, and a lot of people are making it: You bought the game for an endgame. You didn’t do any research on this game, and thought this was going to be another WoW clone where you race to max level before the game begins. There is no endgame, there is only a game.

dvx.4162:

• Dungeon grinds are inane

I’ll agree here.

dvx.4162:

• Exploration modes are frustrating, not challenging

Only to people that are bad at the game.

dvx.4162:

• Dying as an inherent game mechanic just doesn’t work, nor does it feel right

Also doesn’t happen much if you’re not bad.

dvx.4162:

• Revisiting old content is not end-game, the fact that your level scales down just adds insult to injury

Then why did you buy the game? We’ve known about level scaling for years. And yes, it does add content. Just because it’s not a gear treadmill doesn’t mean it’s somehow not part of the game.

dvx.4162:

• The ridiculous downing mechanic is just that: ridiculous

It works in practice. If you can’t finish a downed opponent, it’s because you didn’t deserve to.

dvx.4162:

• CC, in turn, is almost always used to prevent rezzing

It also has a limit. If people are CCing you before you can rez them, it might be time to turn your attention to a more pressing matter, such as the guy trying to kill you.

dvx.4162:

• There is no depth to the game when everyone uses their stuns or knock-backs only in one specific scenario

These people are better than you because they’re using their skills intelligently. That adds depth. It doesn’t somehow make the game worse just because you don’t know how to do it.l

dvx.4162:

• WvWvW is stupid for melee (you just get blown up), but sort of fun for ranged classes

I play a greatsword guardian in WvW and have turned the tide of many sieges by myself. Your argument is invalid.

Arcnite.8752:

The problem is that unlike the earlier levels there comes a point when you stop gaining stats, levels, better equipment, access to new areas, etc. The content isn’t any less fun, it’s the feeling of progression that gets lost. So, how do you bring that back?

By exploring the places you didn’t go to when leveling, playing the dungeons you didn’t play, and getting sweet stuff you didn’t have before, and then when ANet delivers new content, you play that.

They touched on a power plateau at max level around the time they had the ele reveal. Countless blogs and discussions in the years after that. You mean to tell me that somehow, when you “read everything on their site plus a couple reviews and beta videos”, you somehow missed all of that?

Here’s a link to a blog post by Colin touching on how a gear treadmill will not be in the game.

Colin Johanson

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Here’s Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum in a video a few weeks before release talking about endgame.

So basically, yes, ArenaNet has said gear progression past max level will not be in the game. So if you bought this game expecting a gear treadmill, you might as well go out and buy Battlefield 3 expecting it to be Quake-esque arena shooter since you insist on being an uninformed consumer.

I could see this being added to the gem store someday. I mean, it was in the cash shop of the first GW, so why not.

Echo.7634:

I think part of the issue is that people have been “sold” on the idea that the game starts at the level cap.

Its nice to see another game where the “endgame” starts at level 1.

When you look at GW2 as a whole there is an enormous amount of content. Its shame that people don’t see that.

I really gotta stop typing so much. You people keep nailing this on the head with like 10% of the text of my posts. XD