Guild Wars 2

Duke.4795:

Direct dmg (most notably warriors and mesmers) can do >5-6k dmg/sec with minimal effort

The failure in your argument is that you are talking about DPS as if all sources of damage were meant to have the same rate of damage per second. Just as a thief has higher burst damage than a guardian, which doesn’t mean the guardian can’t do more damage than the thief, just because condition damage doesn’t have higher DPS than using all 5 skills in a row doesn’t mean that condition damage isn’t a viable source of damage.

What needs to be balanced is how condition damage works as a source of sustained damage, when compared to the more burst-based direct damage. Trying to merely and simplistically increase the damage per second of condition damage is a bad idea.

Sinifair.1026:

This meant that there were many builds that worked for many different situations. I never found one to be particularly better than the other.

This is blatantly false. Often players found skill combinations that were simply better than everything else they could use; very often, we would see players using incredibly bad skill combinations, making bad players to be huge liabilities. It was such as an issue that, when we were given the ability of seeing the skill bar of other players, groups would often demand a player to use a specific skill bar to do a specific content, or refuse to accept players using a skill bar someone in the group didn’t agree with.

Sinifair.1026:

It was fun, because it meant that a strong build could be broken, if someone had a build to counter it. In PvP that meant that players really had to work together as a team, and the PvP was very good in GW, as to my experience.

What you describe was called “Build Wars”, and it was one of the aspects that ruined GW1’s PvP. A strong build that could be destroyed by a specific counter build often led to the following:

Team A has the strong build:

• Team B has the specific counter: they win effortlessly.

• Team B does not have the specific counter: they lose, no matter how well they play.

This was called “Build Wars” since what defined victory or loss was not the skill of those involved, rather if they had the specific counter or not. This was incredibly bad for GW1’s PvP, and all those familiar with the game knew about this issue.

In the end, having too many skills made it impossible for ArenaNet to keep Guild Wars 1 balanced, which killed the game.

The recent announcement about the future of Guild Wars 2 had a screenshot showing some of the currently idealized items we will be able to buy with the achievement tokens, as seen here. We have been told that we will get one token per daily, and ten tokens per monthly achievement (source). In the screenshot above, we see some items which purposes are not exactly obvious, such as the “Guardian Gear” box, the “Warrior Gear” box, and etc; they are currently somewhat cheap, only 5 tokens per box. In a recent interview with someone else from ArenaNet, it was mentioned how the rewards for map completition are somewhat random, and often cannot be used by the profession of the character doing the map completition; the ArenaNet developer mentioned how they thought that was an issue.

Now, we know little about this feature. Everything in that screenshot is subject to change, the amount of tokens earned is subject to change, and we have no idea what those “Profession” Gear boxes are.

I would like, then, to raise the idea that “Profession” Gear boxes are intended to work as a lottery: opening them would give a random item useful for a given profession (opening the Guardian Gear box could give someone a random rare scepter or a random exotic shield or a random blue sword, but it would never give a bow, for example).

If that’s the case: I would kindly ask ArenaNet to rework how those things work, considering how GW2 already has waaay too much “random number generators” as the game is. We don’t need some new kind of lottery.

(“Why are you asking ArenaNet to change a feature they have barely talked about, and that you really know next to nothing about?” Simple: because this is a kind of thing easier to change now than after it’s released. ArenaNet is less likely to remove a lottery after it has been implemented in the game and used by hundreds of players than before it were implemented in the first place.)

The ideas are good, but it’s the execution that remains to be seen. This has always been ArenaNet’s main issue.

I’m really curious to see how are they going to make people play in the open world. Unless the daily achievements are very specific (“Do X events in map Y” or “Do X events in region Z!”), players are just going to find the most effective place to do a given task, and flock there leaving the rest of the world empty. For example, if there’s an achievement for “Do x dynamic events!”, people will find the single map with the highest concentration of events and farm it once a day, instead of spreading through the entire world. This kind of thing would hardly benefit the game as a whole.

I’m also not exactly happy with the “Guardian Gear” and similar boxes. We don’t know what they are yet; I am strongly hoping, though, that they are not something we open to get random pieces of equipment useable for a given profession. The game already has waaaaay too much RNG as it is, for ArenaNet to introduce an achievement tokens lottery in the game.

This will be an interesting test for ArenaNet. We have some vocal players asking for more skills, with the argument that “more is always better!”.

Of course, that’s a very flawed argument, and Guild Wars 1 has proved how having too many skills is actually worse than having few skills.

The big question is: will ArenaNet chose the more inteligent and more restrained route this time, and avoid adding too many skills to GW2, or will they again try to pick the “OMG so cool!” path that ultimately led to the death of GW1?

Sinifair.1026:

If some of you guys ever tried WoW, you felt like you got stronger as you progressed.

There’s a very interesting article in GamaSutra, here, about how many players jump from MMO to MMO seeking a copy of their first online world. Those players often don’t realize it themselves, but they keep moving from MMO to MMO, asking for more and more features from their first online world. However, they are never satisfied, even when those features are implemented, due to how no other game will be a perfect copy of their original MMO.

This is a phenomen ArenaNet has to understand, so they realize that they will never please someone who doesn’t want to play GW2, rather wants to play some other MMO.

Fairymore.8609:

What exactly is complicated about putting in a feature that allows two players to fight against each other?

It’s not complicated.

It’s simply bad.

I hope ArenaNet never adds dueling. If they do, however, I definitely hope they never add open world dueling, that’s more a nuisance than anything else.

I agree with the idea. However, 120 tokens may actually too much for some lodestones. Glacial Lodestones, for example, cost 60 silver. You can make that running one path in AC, but HotW is more time consuming and less rewarding; if it required two paths in HotW to get what you can get doing one path of AC, people would still not run HotW and so this token exchange system would have been wasted. The same applies to Molten Lodestones, and Corrupted Lodestones are borderline, but considering how time consuming Arah is… Those lodestones shouldn’t cost 120 tokens, or no one would use tokens for them.

Shade.6081:

Right now I am stuck in my personal story and cannot advance. This is a MAJOR problem.

Nope, that’s great. In other MMOs, people can simply “outgrind” challenging content by acquiring more levels and better gear. With level scalling, it isn’t so easy – grinding is only taking people so far. Any challenging content cannot be simply outgrinded, it requires a minimum of skill. And that is exactly as it should be: skill > time spent.

The only issue is that level scaling is not strong enough. A level 80 character in exotics in a level 30 area should be downscalled to be like a level 30 character with level 30 green gear; the stat bonuses from traits should be negated, although the level 80 character would still have an advantage due to having the other effects of traits and access to more kinds of skills.

I don’t like Orr. The combination of very few enemy types (not only there are only Risen, more often than not it’s the same few types of Risen) with very high mob density and high respawn rates makes it annoying, IMO, not fun.

Meanwhile, we have seen some complaints here about how there are few things in the game that require coordination among a lot of players, or that help to build server identity.

Plus, we kind of defeat the source of all those zombies, but why are the zombies still there? Granted, it will take a while for all of them to die, but it would be nice if the lore in the world advanced, instead of remaining static.

In order to address all those issues, I would like to propose something:

Capturing all five temples in Orr at the same time triggers a mega event involving all 3 maps. The Priory would find a way to use the energy of the gods to push the Risen out of Orr for a time, but the ritual would have to be done at all temples at the same time. A hard group event would then begin at all five temples, at the same time, requiring players to defeat all kinds of Risen while the ritual is finished.

This would require coordination among a lot of players. It would be a nice feature for guilds seeking guild content, it would help build server identity as people would need to coordinate with each other so all five temples can withstand synched attacls, and it would have nice “rewards”:

Once the event is finished, a wave of magic runs through Orr and all Risen are destroyed. They will eventually come back (returing players to the Orr we all know and not love), but meanwhile the entire map is changed. The architecture and similar things would remain the same (no need to give more work to environmental artists), but all Risen would be replaced by other enemies: animals would move from the north, the Inquest would expand from their base, spirits and elementals would spread further from the temples, and so on; more importantly, ghosts from Orr, using the same skin as the Ascalonian ghosts but being more friendly in nature, would appear through the land and share stories from the old times, triggering events and giving players access to old lore. Characters who have finished the storyline would also see dialogue from NPCs about how that’s the way Orr will be in the future, once the undead influence has been completely removed from the region.

The other main difference would be dynamic events. All current events would be replaced by new ones, many being about the mostly friendly Orr ghosts, but also with events about all other kinds of beings that would populate those lands. Those events would have bigger rewards than usual, being a source of rare and in demand items such as ectoplasms and lodestones.

This way, everyone would have something to find in Orr:

• Those interested in lore would have access to all the stories about the old island of the gods.

• Those interested in exploration would have access to entire new dynamic events.

• Those interested in loot would have new, more reliable sources of always in demand crafting items.

• Those who actually want to play through high level open world content with a lot of other people would find themselves able to do so in Orr, as the reasons above would keep it filled with players while this state lasts.

ArenaNet could even go one step further and give a small, temporary bonus for the first world who manages to accomplish this. Over time, the Risen would return, and Orr would go back to the way it is, until the start of the mega-event happens again (requiring all temples to be captured).

There should not be “trash mobs” in the game. As the name implies, those enemies aren’t interesting or well developed; they are just trash.

I agree with the idea of having fewer, more interesting enemies. That’s what we have in Ascalon Catacombs most of the time, though. It’s definitely not what we have in HotW, in which there are relatively few enemies, true, but instead of being interesting they are just massive HP walls.

Ema.4953:

I have done a few dungeons (not many I admit) and to be frank, I don’t see a compelling reason to keep doing them.

Why do people play a game?

For every kind of game other than MMOs (and MMO-like single player games), the answer is “to have fun”. Now, MMOs catter to grinders, who are not interested in having fun, but rather on how rewarded they will be for playing the game. GW2 is trying to be different, though, so the answer here is the same as in any good game:

Why would someone play through a dungeon? Because it’s fun. And if it’s not fun, people should not play there, so ArenaNet would realize there is something wrong and rework it.

Guild Wars 1 was effectively killed by ArenaNet when they decided to add two new professions per chapter, plus 25 skills for each old profession.

The original GW had 6 professions, with more or less 75 skills each; that’s 450 skills.

Chapter 2 had 2 new professions with 75 skills each plus 25 new skills for each of the 6 old professions. The game now had 750 skills.

Chapter 3 had 2 new professions with 75 skills each plus 25 new skills for each of the old 8 professions. The game now had 1.050 skills, more than twice the original game.

Had ArenaNet released a chapter 4, it would have needed 2 new professions with 75 skills each plus 25 new skills for each of the old 10 professions. The game would have had 1.600 skills.

ArenaNet basically put themselves in a corner, given how they could never, ever, balance all those skills. This was 100% their fault – by chosing to add so many new skills and new professions per chapter, they showed a huge lack of long term planning; the fact they did so in order to make something “cool” in the short term (“more is always better, right?” – no) is no excuse. The result was having a lot of underpowered skills, which could then be ignored when balancing the game, as well as completely broken professions that had to be reworked in order to work.

They need, of course, to avoid this mistake in Guild Wars 2. They have to add few skills per expansion, and preferably add no new profession, or at most a single one, in order to avoid having more skills than they can balance. Considering how the currently available skills are not bug-fixed or balanced…

I would like to see if ArenaNet is now smart enough to not listen to the players screaming “We want more!” when they announce how many skills they will add per expansion. Players are not game designers, and there is a reason for that – most are pathologically unable to think on the long term and realize how something that they think is “cool” (such as “more and more skills, OMG!!!1111!!”) is actually detrimental to the game on the long term.

Shufflepants.9785:

I agree; make all mobs lvl 1, reduce all characters to lvl 1, and disable experience gains.

Sounds great to me.

pkbot.1345:

Because one of the BIGGEST reasons for playing an RPG is to progress to higher power levels consistently, and feel powerful.

Nope. That’s why grinders play most MMORPGs, but that has never been the focus of good RPGs.

Kraggy.4169:

LOL .. I find it hard to think of games like WOW, LOTRO, FFXI (to name 3 I’ve played for years and am still playing, along with Rift and now GW2) are ‘dying’

WoW has been rather obviously dying; it’s going to take a long while to die considering how big it is, but it is and has been hemorrhaging players. LotRO was never a big success in the first place, but the number of subscribers took a deep fall right before the change to a free to play model (source). FF XI has always been a niche game.

Age of Conan… LOL! Rift is so successful that its Christmas gift to its developers was a bunch of lay-offs in the middle of december. The Old Republic has been acknowledged by EA as a failure. The Secret World has changed business model and has forced Funcom to do a lot of lay-offs. Tera has just changed to free to play due to a lack of subscriptions.

Classic MMOs are dying.

Grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters are not enough to make a MMO successful.

Guild Wars 2 needs to be something different to survive, regardless of what the very vocal and very small minority that wants more of the same has to say about it.

Kain Nosgoth.4218:

But I cba to not get my Dusk for another 60 days (from a hard imposed time limit) when there are ppl that got it for nothing AND FAST (that’s the problem) from low lvl rare bugs and Karka event and burrowing gold from ppl after launch etc

The issue, IMO, is that ArenaNet doesn’t punish exploiters enough (see everyone who exploited to get gold for their precursors and has been left in the game) and they rely on RNG too much (see Karka chest).

Morrigan.2809:

If is also necessary for people who do like things to say so, otherwise you have a one -sided view and decisions get made about the game that could have been avoided if both sides where able to state their case with out harassment.

A great example of this is Ascended gear.

Before the November 15th update, we had two very vocal groups here:

• The vocal minority of grinders whining that they didn’t have anything to grind, that all MMOs are grind-based and that a real MMO has vertical progression.

• The vocal minority of haters claiming that everything in the game is rotten, and using the lack of vertical progression as an example of that.

People happy with the game were just playing the game instead of posting in the forum. However, ArenaNet then listened to the vocal minority, and rushed to rather poorly implement a new kind of vertical progression in the game, beginning the entire Ascended fiasco.

Tolmos, do you like the Ascended gear? Because that’s the kind of thing you get when the only thing running rampant in the community are whiners and haters. ArenaNet has proved again and again that they don’t understand the concept of “vocal minority” to be able to disregard the part of the community they should ignore, unless it’s made crystal clear to them.

Kain Nosgoth.4218:

but if no matter what I can and want to do I can’t get it faster than 45 days of farming events it’s still not good enough

Actually, I would love if whatever system is implemented has some kind of check to prevent grinders from having an advantage over everyone else. If it’s something like the DR system, which punishes grinders, farmers and addicts, while doing nothing against normal players, I would welcome it with open arms.

“We don’t want players to grind”, remember? Remember my signature, too? ArenaNet should not catter to the vocal minority of grinders while punishing everyone else.

Tolmos.8395:

Just as much that it is a reality that some people are so desperate for a pat on the back that they spend most of their day brown nosing a company that might even notice them

And yet there are far more haters than fanboys – it appears people are more willing to waste their lives with pointless and empty whining than with pointless and empty praise – as described in the OP here. If anything, fanboys are actually better than haters – while the former are based on positive feelings about the product they spend their time defending, haters waste their time with something they despise. That is something which requires a very large emptiness in someone’s life.

Tolmos.8395:

Morrigan.2809:

Constructive criticism is a good thing, it gives suggestions on how to improve things, throwing your toys out of the cot is not.

Unfortunately, most fanbois/fangirls are unable to tell the difference

And most haters pretend there is no difference. All MMOs have a large amount of people who spend more time hoping a game will fail and trying to use slander as much as possible, instead of actually providing constructive feedback. That’s of course not good for the game, nor is it meant to be good for a game. I only wonder how empty could a person’s life be to waste time with sych behavior, but it’s a reality and it’s a common reality here.

Horrible idea.

As some others have already stated, the OP thinks replayability comes from grind. Instead of asking for more content so people would have fun and thus want to play the game more, he’s asking for more grind so people would be willing to play content that is not fun more.

Hearts are probably the worst content in this game. They were designed as tutorials to force players to see dynamic events and understand how those are the core of the open world game. Rewarding people for repeating hearts over and over, considering how boring, easy and mindless they are, is rewarding the worst kind of player in the game for doing the worst kind of content in the game.

Keiran.1896:

WoW understands it and puts such tokens everywhere for mounts/minis. A way to keep busy those who don’t like repetitive dungeons. And it works.

WoW is dying. All WoW clones are dead or dying. The classic MMO model, focused on grinders and addicts, is not cutting it anymore.

Warruz.8096:

Here is the general thought to appease both crowds

You are not going to please both groups, considering how they have opposite views. ArenaNet should learn that they, too, won’t please both groups – if they try, the best they can do is build something that is “meh” to everyone and great to no one.

Thereon.3495:

Why is it assumed that leveling is grinding?

Because that’s the point of what MMO players call “leveling”.

In classic MMOs, leveling is just grinding levels – a way developers use to keep content gated and to slow down player progression to the end game, when the level grind ends and the gear grind begins. It’s not supposed to be fun (it’s basically a bunch of quest hubs with “kill 10 rats” quests) and it’s not supposed to have anything to do with the “end game” (since it’s more solo focused, and as such all professions have to do a bit of all roles).

In Guild Wars 2, this split doesn’t exist. There is no “leveling” and “end content” – the entire game is end content, as what you will be doing and how you will be playing when you reach the level cap is exactly the same thing you were doing when going from level 1 to the cap. In this, GW2 is more similar to a single player RPG (in which the goal is to have fun) as opposed to classic MMOs (in which the goal is to grind).

Thereon.3495:

Now ive enjoyed myself immensely but if I compare my time here to my time in past MMOs that ive played I was never without something to do. I never once reached a point where I could say ‘ive done all that I want to do’ due to the fact that most other MMOs have content that is designed to keep players playing for a sizable amount of time. BEFORE this content runs out, new content is added and this new content lasts a long time.

In other words, other MMOs treat their players as addicts, who are expected to do nothing but grind levels and then grind gear, only to see an expansion being released and then be expected to grind more levels and then grind more gear, while waiting for the next expansion.

That is bad game design. It’s very easy to understand why MMO companies chose to go with that specific design – it keeps grinders paying a monthly fee, grind is the easiest possible kind of content to design, and so on.

It’s still bad game design, and as seen recently, it simply doesn’t cut it. All games based on that model died or are dying. There isn’t an infinite amount of people willing to be dealt with as if they were addicts willing to accept any mediocre game, and so this classic model of MMOs has led to failure after failure.

GW2 is trying to follow a different model. As they have said on their Manifesto, GW2 has been made more for those who don’t like classic MMOs than for those who like them (which is basically a nice way of saying that GW2 has been made for players who want to have fun, not for grinders). As such, it’s not going to be an infinite and demeaning time sink as other MMOs are.

Wolrok.6143:

Gift of Mastery is perfect. To make this you need to complete world exploration (Gift of Exploration), play a bunch of WvW (500 Badges of Honor for Gift of Battle), do a ton of events for karma (250 obsidian shards for 2100 karma each), and collect a bunch of skill points (200 for a bloodstone shard). Everything here sounds good.

I agree.

Gift of Explorarion is great, a symbol of mastery over exploration.

Gift of Battle is great, too, a symbol of mastery over WvW. Those who enjoy WvW are going to get it simply by playing, no grind required, and the amount of badges required is very reasonable – a full set of invader armor requires almost 4 times as many badges.

The 250 Obsidian Shards are nice, a symbol of mastery over dynamic events. That much karma is easy to get just by playing the game, too, there is no need to grind for it.

The Bloodstone Shard is an interesting idea, representing mastery of playing a single character, but it kinda of becomes diluted since those many skill points are earned merely by earning the Gift of Exploration.

The Icy Runestones themselves don’t bother me. They would represent mastery over making money – if they were the only gold-based component, considering how 100 gold isn’t that much, it would be ok.

Having the need for two maxed crafting disciplines is nice, representing mastery over crafting. But IMO, it’s not enough. I think the Legendaries should require true mastery over crafting, by demanding people to have maxed all crafting disciplines.

Likewise, the dungeon-based gift isn’t hard to get, but I don’t think it’s enough. While it requires only a little repetition (it requires less than six paths), I would rather have a system that requires no repetition at all but favors true mastery of dungeons: IMO, a Legendary should require a player to have the Dungeon Master title.

The rest is very badly designed. The Gifts of Might and Magic are very bad – those are very unlikely to be achieved through normal play, they require either grind to be farmed or grind to buy those materials. The Globs of Ectoplasm are never going to be earned through normal play, without grind; and many of the other components not only require grind, but also A LOT of grind (hi Charged Lodestones!).

Meanwhile, the Legendary system doesn’t reward mastery over the storyline, neither does it have anything to do with PvP.

I would like to see Legendaries changed so they require:

• Mastery of exploration: the current Gift of Exploration.

• Mastery of WvW: the current Gift of Battles.

• Mastery of dynamic events: the 250 Obsidian Shards.

• Mastery of a single character: the current Bloodstone Shard.

• Mastery of making gold: the 100 Icy Lodestones.

• Mastery of crafting: requiring all crafting disciplines to be maxed in order to craft the Gifts.

• Mastery of dungeons: a gift earned when a player achieves the Dungeon Master title.

• Mastery of the storyline: when someone finishes the storyline, they would get a token that could be exchanged for any precursor. This way, even those who are not interested in Legendaries would get a nice reward for effectively reaching the end of the game (an exotic weapon), and precursors would not require RNG to be earned.

• And finally, a long side-story tailored for each individual Legendary, with fun and challenging missions explaining what the Legendary means and detailing how it’s created.

sPvP would have its own way to achieve the Legendary skins, considering how sPvP items are split from PvE and WvW items.

Gilosean.3805:

Being able to plan is a skill. Being successful in many aspects of the game takes skill. Engaging intelligently with the game economy takes skill. Being able to stick with something through repetition is a skill (or character trait that a person can develop).

You don’t need to plan to get a Legendary; playing a lot of time will give you the resources to get one regardless of planning. You don’t need to be successful in any aspect of the game to have a Legendary; farming over and over is not success. You don’t need to manipulate the TP to get a Legendary, although that helps.

Being able to stick with something through repetition… As you said yourself, that’s not a skill. Enduring well something unpleasant is a character trait, although being willing to do so in a game is somewhat nonsensical.

Ergo… You don’t need skill to get a Legendary. All you need is time, and being willing to play a game (you know, that thing that was meant to be fun) by enduring unpleasant grind.

This makes sense, in the context of classic MMOs. They have been built around the concept of monthly fees, so players are rewarded for playing as much as possible. Since the idea is that everyone should be rewarded merely by playing (and thus everyone would be willing to play, and so pay, more), the long term goals in classic MMOs don’t require skill – they have been made to catter to the lowest denominator. That’s, essentially, what Legendaries are – but given how Guild Wars 2 does not have a fee and, more importantly, has not been built around the concept of a monthly fee, the current Legendary system is just an anachronism.

Blazed.8346:

If Anet would ban anyone who exploit a glitch they would have a lot to do and lose players aswell.

They would lose exploiters, not players… And good riddance, I say. If ArenaNet were that afraid of losing exploiters, they wouldn’t have permanently banned the snowflake exploiters.

Kingfisher.7213:

To the right of the Seraph’s Landing waypoint, there is a small dock.

I noticed a bandit swim up from the nearby swamp to try to steal supplies from the dock.

I killed the bandit. However, less than 10 seconds later, a new one spawned and also ran to the dock to try to steal supplies.

I must have killed about 15 of these bandits, all reliably respawning within 10 seconds and running that straight line to the supplies.

I don’t remember them trying to attack me either. They were pretty focused in their attempt to grab those supplies.

That kind of enemy is linked to the Heart in an area. In your case, it’s linked to the “Protect Seraph’s Landing” heart. Since killing those enemies allows players to advance the heart, and they do not attack players, the respawn rate is exactly what it should be. The same thing happens in multiple other hearts.

That isn’t an issue. The fast respawn rates of a lot of Orr enemies, in other hand, is.

Pawstruck.9708:

What kind of “skill” do you want?

Already replied to in one of the many posts adressing you that you chose to ignore.

Pawstruck.9708:

Legendary weapons are something to work towards. You may be deceiving yourself into thinking “Pfft. If it doesn’t take skill, I won’t do it!” but what you’re really saying is “I don’t want to work for it.”

Nope. What I am saying is that what you describe as “work” doesn’t deserve any reward, much less a Legendary. Do you want to see a real life example? People who do mindless, simple jobs often work a lot of hours per day and yet get very low salaries – see Chinese factory workers. Meanwhile, skilled people get considerably higher salaries even when they work less than those Chinese factory workers – see Steve Jobs.

Grinding is just doing mindless things over and over, under the claim that this deserves a reward. Just as the Chinese factory workers are not going to get rich even when working 18 hours per day 7 days per week, grinders should not be rewarded. The skilled players, who actually know what they are doing, and avoid mindless repetition more suited to bots – those deserve a reward.

…Because way too many people are exploiting the stairs to have invulnerability when fighting the path 1 and 3 bosses. I have tried asking a group when joining if they will use the stairs exploit, but even in the groups who say “no” someone will run to the stairs and most of the group will follow.

This is extremely ironic considering all the topics we had after the snowflake bans, with a lot of whining about how people were afraid of being banned over anything. It appears that, in reality, players are not afraid of being banned even for using an exploit.

ArenaNet should ban the stair exploiters in order to finally make people understand their stance on exploits in GW2. I’ll wait until they do so to play in AC again, but at least I have a nice list of exploiter names to send ArenaNet when the banning begins.

Gilosean.3805:

All the whining about ‘only the best should have it’ – well, only the best do have it. It’s just not the best of the skillset the whiners want. It’s the most determined, most careful players who are willing to experience and succeed at all aspects of the game.

Nope.

Grinding is not a skill set. A bot can grind very well, in fact. When people say “the most determined”, “the most devoted” or anything like that, they are simply talking about time spent, not skill. Legendaries are, in fact, the greatest example of “time spent > skill” in GW2.

When Legendaires stop rewarding people who play ten hours a day for 4 months just facerolling over their keyboards as they kill the same easy enemies over and over… Then maybe someone could say they have anything to do with “success”. Until then…

Polarbear.7680:

I know I can buy the recepie for karma points, but my question was what to do if I want do discover it. Its says that I can discover it at crafting level 50, but the recepie requires an ingredient that I can’t use until level 75. I would say this is a bug.

Not a bug. Recipes that can be bought for karma cannot be discovered (or otherwise they would not be bought, as they would be a waste of karma).

Aoshi.4785:

The requirements as they are, steep as they may be, are attainable by most. A long grueling quest that involves some skill and would be, at the outset, daunting to this “casual” player base would keep many away

The current requirement doesn’t catter to “casual” players.

It catters to grinders and grinders only.

Classic MMOs are built on the foundation that they don’t need to be good games (as in, fun and challenging); they just need to create a feeling of addiction and keep people grinding for as long as possible (and thus paying a monthly fee as long as possible). The more people incentivized to grind the better (since it means more people paying those monthly fees), and so grinding has been made to catter to the lowest denominator – it’s something easy and mindless (a bot can do it), but the fact it takes a lot of time (even if all it requires is a lot of time) means it’s a nice investiment for the designers of classic MMOs…

…Or would be, if more people fell for that. But making a mediocre game (something that isn’t fun and challenging) is only going to deceive so many people; and the fact we have so many MMOs in the market right now, all following the same model, means the target audience of grinders is not really enough to make any new MMO a success.

ArenaNet got it right in their Manifesto. When they say, “We don’t want players to grind – no one enjoys that and no one finds it fun”, and “If you like MMOs, you will like MMOs – if you hate MMOs, you will REALLY want to check out GW2”, they are trying to make a MMO cattering to those who understand how the other options currently available are just time sinks disguised as (mediocre) games.

Thus, adding a system that rewards grind to a game like that, whose main target audience is not grinders, is not a good business move. What ArenaNet has to understand is that they were wrong in not marketing enough this game outside of the MMO niche, and that a vocal minority of grinders from other MMOs populating the official forum doesn’t mean they should change the game to turn GW2 into one more generic MMO made for grinders.

Guild Wars 1 was effectively killed by ArenaNet when they decided to add two new professions per chapter, plus 25 skills for each old profession.

The original GW had 6 professions, with more or less 75 skills each; that’s 450 skills.

Chapter 2 had 2 new professions with 75 skills each plus 25 new skills for each of the 6 old professions. The game now had 750 skills.

Chapter 3 had 2 new professions with 75 skills each plus 25 new skills for each of the old 8 professions. The game now had 1.050 skills, more than twice the original game.

Had ArenaNet released a chapter 4, it would have needed 2 new professions with 75 skills each plus 25 new skills for each of the old 10 professions. The game would have had 1.600 skills.

ArenaNet basically put themselves in a corner, given how they could never, ever, balance all those skills. This was 100% their fault – by chosing to add so many new skills and new professions per chapter, they showed a huge lack of long term planning; the fact they did so in order to make something “cool” in the short term (“more is always better, right?” – no) is no excuse. The result was having a lot of underpowered skills, which could then be ignored when balancing the game, as well as completely broken professions that had to be reworked in order to work.

They need, of course, to avoid this mistake in Guild Wars 2. They have to add few skills per expansion, and preferably add no new profession, or at most a single one, in order to avoid having more skills than they can balance. Considering how the currently available skills are not bug-fixed or balanced…

I would like to see if ArenaNet is now smart enough to not listen to the players screaming “We want more!” when they announce how many skills they will add per expansion. Players are not game designers, and there is a reason for that – most are pathologically unable to think on the long term and realize how something that they think is “cool” (such as “more and more skills, OMG!!!1111!!”) is actually detrimental to the game on the long term.

critickitten.1498:

Red Falcon.8257:

There is nothing in this game that kills you inevitably.

Except the Jade Maw, whose only attack will instantly down you if you’re not holding a crystal or are really good at dodging him. And if you get the bad luck of being targeted again while downed (saw it happen to a PUG-mate), you’re killed instantly with no opportunity to dodge.

Oh, and Agony, if you’re lacking in AR at Lvl 20 Fractals or so. At that point, Agony deals 25% per tick and there’s generally about 4 ticks of infliction….that’s a delayed down, not an instant one, but it’s just about inevitable shy of having a dodge at the exact right time.

And then there’s a great number of bosses in events and dungeons with attacks that are either OHKOs or at least very high hitting, and these attacks are also generally very difficult to dodge.

Saying “an attack will kill you inevitably unless you do something to avoid that attack” means said attack will not kill you inevitably. Ergo, there is nothing in this game that inevitably kills a character, and this by itself proves the OP wrong. Unless he can actually mention an example of situations when, in his own words, “player character gets damage that kill it and that can not be avoided.”

People assume the game has been balanced around dodge. Those players usually don’t understand the game as well as they think. Would you like an example? The fight against Alpha, in Crucible of Eternity path 2, has been mentioned a few times here as one of the most difficult boss fights in the game. A lot of people use dodge to stay alive there. However, when you understand how that fight works, there is no need to dodge at all. ArenaNet could add an environment effect that negates all endurance and a group of players who knew what they were doing would still be able to defeat that boss, without the need to death zerg or any other similar trick. However, ArenaNet doesn’t do that considering how many people don’t understand that dodge isn’t the mechanic GW2 has been balanced around.

To give one more example: In other topic, I saw someone using the Graveling Scavangers to demonstrated how “broken” the combat system is. The Scavangers have a charged attack in which, if they hit, they knock a character down and basically kill it while it’s on the ground. The poster was using them as a way to illustrate how combat is either DPS – and you kill them before they use this attack – or dodge – the only way to avoid this attack – or you die, no other option available.

That comment showed a profound lack of knowledge about the game.

Against the Graveling Scavangers, a character can:

• Interrupt the charging animation. Any kind of crowd control works for this.

• If the character cannot interrupt the attack, use some kind of defensive skill to prevent the attack from hitting. Aegis for Guardians, Mist Form for Elementalists, and so on.

• If the attack cannot be defended against, use some source of Stability to prevent the knock down and thus avoid the killing attacks.

• If the character cannot prevent the knock down and is actually thrown on the ground, use any kind of stun breaker to leave the knocked down state and just walk away from the killing attacks.

• If a character cannot do any of that… Just ask for help. Party members can do all of the above, plus interrupt the killing attacks themselves.

Dodge is not the only, nor the best, way to avoid taking damage. It’s likely the simplest, which has led some players to assume it’s the only one.

Pawstruck.9708:

I was trying to point out that the alternatives are worse, and so far nobody has even argued that point.

Before MMOs: “I am a gamer, and so I play games to have fun. If a game is not fun and does not offer a minimum of a challenge, it’s a bad game and I won’t play it”.

After MMOs: “I am a grinder, and so I will play any mediocre game as long as it gives me something to grind”.

This was bad enough – we keep getting waves of mediocre MMOs filled with basically huge grinds and nothing else (“kill 10 rats” quests? Really?). It appears we have now fallen another step, though:

Pawstruck.9708:

• A “massive” quest/storyline – This would either A) be so massive that it was ridiculous and un-fun, possibly taking up valuable Arenanet resources from developing/polishing the rest of the game, or be short and easy such that everybody could get it. Would you really like everybody to be running around with a Legendary?

So you expect a gaming designer company to be unable to make content that is fun and challenging?

Riiiiight.

MMORPGs won’t ever become good games until players actually demand them to be good games. It’s sad to see people now claiming that a game actually cannot be “good”, and asking others to accept mediocrity as the norm.

cesmode.4257:

Thinking of transferring to Isle of Janthir from a pretty well populated, decent wvw server.

Why?

I think part of the idea behind Legendaries is to reward people who enjoy all aspects of Guild Wars 2, including WvW. If you enjoy it, you will get 500 badges over time, without any need to grind (which is more than can be said for MANY other Legendary components). If you don’t enjoy WvW, well, IMO you don’t deserve a Legendary (just as someone who only enjoys WvW and doesn’t enjoy PvE doesn’t deserve one, IMO).

The storyline has a lot of issues – it feels like Trahearne was a plot device so ArenaNet could record all the lines our characters should say using a single voice actor, as opposed to using 10 different voice actors – but many of the critics here doesn’t really make sense.

Ashes.6418:

Then I played the story through, each mission back to back. I mentioned pacing, and this is why, playing the story like this became a chore.

You shot yourself in the foot by playing the story like that. Not only you removed any challenge from your personal story – if you read the Personal Storyline forum you will see some complaints about how it is too hard, but the scalling system doesn’t work well enough that a level 80 wouldn’t faceroll through most of the levels 1-60 story missions – but you also asked for repetition by playing all missions back to back, instead of playing through them as they were intended (every once in a while, as you do other things to level up in between).

Gehenna.3625:

turned off the sound for the horrid voice acting and skipped as much as I could

If you skipped the storyline, you don’t really have any grounds to complain about it.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

In GW1, your role grew as your character grew, less of the Mighty Hero and more of the dummy who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Far more engaging, continuous, and fun.

The great majority of the GW1 storyline, and especially the Prophecies storyline, is a big joke. It’s so bad that even Nightfall laughs at the Prophecies storyline. As bad as GW2 is, Prophecies was far worse (and Factions was worse, too).

Maveric.8369:

When I refer to “kill the player char”, I mean situations when player character gets damage that kill it and that can not be avoided.

This doesn’t exist.

I would like you to give a single example of a situation in which an enemy one-shots you and you cannot avoid it in any way.

I do hope the developers ban people who are using the stairs exploit in the AC bosses. Those bosses are actually fun to fight, and AC is a great dungeon, but using that exploit makes it incredibly cheap.

Pawstruck.9708:

The only thing left is a massive resource grind.

Pawstruck.9708:

Isn’t this a video game that we play for fun?

Those two quotes prove the OP wrong. The fact anything in the game is earned through a massive resource grind, instead of being earned through fun content, is a sign that there is something wrong.

“But how is ArenaNet going to make content than is fun and challenging?” Well, it’s a very sad sign for the gaming community that people question how is a game designer company going to make a good game.

All other MMOs catter to grinders. It’s no surprise that grinders are happy with the way Legendaries currently work – you don’t need skill or even to understand how combat in this game works, all you need is to play 10 hours per day and you will get your Legendary. People who only have time, and nothing else, are going to love this system. People who want to play a game in order to have fun, as opposed to work, are not going to like it so much.

Infernia.9847:

Sure people making a ton of profit off a recipe should ask themselves if it’s legit. On the other hand a company that lets a recipe slip through testing and is not completely obvious (like a 21 Karma cost for a T3 cultural weapon<—screams of exploit)should ban offenders but a permanent ban? I just don’t know.

Someone made a guide about using this exploit here, stating in bolded letters “This is a great way to get storage space, and gold!”. The fact it was so proftable to deserve its own guide already screams of exploit.

digiowl.9620:

In some insane way the players have to intuit that the controls are not there to put a mob out of the fight so you can focus on his buddies, but that they are there to counter mob actions.

That’s something extremely easy to figure out… If you realize GW2 is not a clone of classic MMOs, rather a new game on itself.

That’s the issue here. People who have played all MMOs in the world, so used to the fact that other MMOs are so similar to each other that they can be called clones, and assuming that GW2 is (or worse, should be) more of the same.

Whenever someone here begins a topic by saying, “I have played all MMOs released since EverQuest and so I’m a MMO expert”, credibility goes through the window as far as I’m concerned. There are already too many MMO clones out there. It’s about time someone made a game for people who want something different, and GW2 is that game.

Kanexus.2648:

Imagine being on an elevator with people…do u engage in conversation???? U might say hello and that’s it…now imagine being stuck on an elevator..u proly will engage in conversation then

If you only talk to people when you are forced, as opposed to when you have an opportunity to, I don’t think the issue is in the game…

Kiserai.3957:

Because the only difference, from a high-level perspective, is the profit margin.

Actually, the main difference, from any sane perspective, is that one allows you to make an almost infinite loop and the other doesn’t.

Dao Jones.6720:

No, guy, that does not follow at all. In my mind I assumed I was trading mithril/ori for Ecto, at a slightly more favorable rate than via the daggers.

A significantly more favourable rate than via the daggers, since not only you would get the same relative amount of mithril and orichalcum back, but you also kept the recipe’s activator, which is more often than not the most expensive part of the recipe. Which was an unique property of this specific recipe, and if you hadn’t realized it was something unique you wouldn’t have given it preference over daggers and other items.

In other words, you knew it was an exploit to make quick gold.

As someone else had said weeks ago…

Astraea.6075:

Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.

Genesis.5169:

The journey you talk of takes about 2weeks or hardcore play maybe a month of casual play 1-80+ full exotics isn’t hard

You are missing the point.

The “journey” he was talking about is playing to have fun. Playing to reach level 80 and get maxed gear is not playing to have fun; it’s grinding to the level cap and then grinding gear, which is how all other, donkey-based, MMOs work.

Power.2957:

PLEASE keep up the kittenery and see how many people end up buying your expansions.

Definitely a lot more than if they allowed cheaters and exploiters to run unpunished in the game.

Kiserai.3957:

He just finished telling you how he tried it, lost his money, and quit. How on earth do you go from that to assuming he knew this had a better profit margin and thus had malicious intent?

If he had not known this had a better profit margin than his usual approach, he would have kept his usual approach instead of making 50 jewels in order to get easy gold. The fact someone who understood the crafting system, and so knew exactly what he was doing, was so eager to change how he crafted items in order to quickly use a new recipe with higher returns than the old recipes in the game, by making a high quantity of those new items and salvaging them for ectos, is proof that he knew he was trying to “play smart”.

arjeidi.2690:

Not if you dodge forward, genius. Yes, dodging forward evades just as well as dodging back.

And moves you past the enemy, “genius”, so you waste time turning back. Not to mention how the time you spend dodging is time you could have spent attacking. And so on, and so on.

Dodging should be limited to when there isn’t any better option available. Considering how we can control which other skills we have available, dodge is a too to be used infrequently, which explains why we have limited endurance.

Dao Jones.6720:

Absolutely. When I was trying to gather ectos for my legendary, I would regularly buy the cheapest T6 mats (or guildies sent them to me) and make either rare level 80 daggers, or rare level 80 warhorns, which I could then grind and hope to get ectos from.

Which means you knew how the salvaging system works – how when salvaging those daggers and warhorns you would get mithril back and maybe an ecto, while when salvaging the snowflake jewels you actually got mithril, maybe an ecto, and also the snowflake jewel, which was enough for making a new piece of jewelry.

The fact it had such a higher return than the other recipes you admittedly knew about, and that it was different enough that you actually tried crafting a rare jewel instead of your usual options (daggers and warhorns) shows how you understood it was not the same thing. In other words, how it was something in a different order of magnitude from other recipes in the game, which you quickly tried to make a profit from, even if you failed.

In other words, how it was an exploit you tried to abuse.

arjeidi.2690:

Where did ANet say this was an exploit?

It was obviously an exploit. Saying it wasn’t obivious is the same as claiming that stealing isn’t a crime unless there’s a sign in each store saying so.

Golgathoth.3967:

Because it’s just about the only way to get anything.

Not really. It would be, if grinders had their way – then the only way to get anything would be by grinding (which, incidentally, is what the grinders want).

ArenaNet’s system is not perfect, but if you simply play the game and do whatever it is you want to do, you will get exotic armors and weapons, no grind required. Do you like to do WvW? You will get enough karma and badges for your equipment over time, without having to grind. Do you like to play in dungeons? After playing in some you will have enough tokens to buy your exotic equipment. Do you like dynamic events and exploration? Those will reward you with the exotic equipment you want as you play.

However… If there isn’t anything in the game you enjoy, then yes, you won’t be able to get anything without some kind of grind. Which is a big sign that GW2 is the wrong game for you.