Guild Wars 2

Dogblaster.6713:

Why you think single player games have difficulties?

Final Fantasy 6 does not have a difficulty setting… Planescape: Torment doesn’t have one, either. GW1 does have a difficulty setting – there is Hard Mode. GW2, in other hand, doesn’t – the settings are just “less mindless and easy grind”, or “more mindless and easy grind”.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Erasculio.2914:

I don’t think anything more needs to be said about how grind is bad for the game. It’s sad that the influence of PtP MMOs has created this kind of mentality. All ArenaNet can do is prevent players from hurting themselves, which requires a drastic reduction of the importance of grind in the game.

Can’t really out-grind a player driven economy but ANet can lower the costs for controlled things like dungeon armor tokens, waypoint travel and the like. Here’s a good example:

Not Grind:
If you’ve run every single path of a dungeon once you should have enough to get the full armor and a weapon or two from its tokens. If you want every single weapon as well, ok maybe you have to do all the paths once again.

Grind:
You’ve run every single dungeon path already? That’s nice. Do it 30+ more times and maybe you can afford the full armor and a weapon or two.

I agree. Avoiding content repetition and favoring content completition would be better for the game and healthier for its players.

Do you people enjoy grinding or not?

If you do, why are you complaining? Grinding may give you rewards more slowly now, but if you are doing something you enjoy, does it really matter if it’s a bit faster or a bit slower?

And if you don’t like grind… Why are you asking ArenaNet to allow you to grind? You should ask them to reward you for whatever it is you enjoy doing.

Dogblaster.6713:

Erasculio.2914:

Dogblaster.6713:

So he wont just achieve legendary in 3 months, so he wont buy cultural armor tier 3 in a week, unless he plays like me, for 10+ hours a day.

ArenaNet mentioned recently how they have not had too many reports about people having health issues due to playing the game too much. Clearly, that’s because the game has been released only 4 months ago. If people think it’s not only healthy, but also a good thing, to play the game 10 hours a day each day… You know the game has some serious issues.

ArenaNet, please save people from themselves – reduce the amount of grind in the game.

Thats totally normal. Dont know whats wrong about it.

I don’t think anything more needs to be said about how grind is bad for the game. It’s sad that the influence of PtP MMOs has created this kind of mentality. All ArenaNet can do is prevent players from hurting themselves, which requires a drastic reduction of the importance of grind in the game.

Dogblaster.6713:

So he wont just achieve legendary in 3 months, so he wont buy cultural armor tier 3 in a week, unless he plays like me, for 10+ hours a day.

ArenaNet mentioned recently how they have not had too many reports about people having health issues due to playing the game too much. Clearly, that’s because the game has been released only 4 months ago. If people think it’s not only healthy, but also a good thing, to play the game 10 hours a day each day… You know the game has some serious issues.

ArenaNet, please save people from themselves – reduce the amount of grind in the game.

TWMagimay.9057:

You absolutely, completely missed every point I made

No, I understood your points. I simply believe they are wrong. For example:

TWMagimay.9057:

I have never seen anybody ask for gear score in game.

Because there is no gearscore in game. That doesn’t mean people are not being kicked from groups because of their gear, or that players aren’t asking for DPS meters and similar things with the goals of being able to grind faster, because they dont want to grind yet they are doing so, and thanks to that they are making the game worse for other players. That’s the kind of impact grind has on the game. And do you know why? Because, in your own words…

TWMagimay.9057:

You can grind your behind off and get it relatively fast.

And why is grind being rewarded more than everything else, so doing it is the faster way to achieve anything? Why is grind so superior to any other plasytyle, considering how negatively it impacts GW2?

Dogblaster.6713:

I have 1200 hours played and around 300+ euros spend on gems …

It would be a real shame if ArenaNet intentionally rewarded that kind of unhealthy behavior.

Dogblaster.6713:

Legendary weapons are the most exclusive weapons in the game. For those who spends more time in Guild Wars than in real life.

It would be a real shame if ArenaNet intentionally rewarded that kind of unhealthy behavior.

Gryph.8237:

Players control the economy and are screwing themselves.

That’s how it always is. The more control players have of the economy, the worse it is for everyone other than a small minority.

There’s a new interview about Guild Wars 2 with Colin Johanson. Some highlights are the promise of a lot of new content on January and February.

Serra.8069:

Well, I did enjoy the road to my legendary. I just played the game for the most part; I did it because I wanted to, not because I had nothing better to do. I’m not a high profile career type, I’m an artist and barely get by, but because I love what I do it makes it that much more worthwhile to me.

Exactly. I would expect GW2 to be something like that. I wished people would be more rewarded for doing whatever it is they truly enjoy doing than for grinding. And that’s because, while I believe a few players actually like to grind, we often see people complaining about how ArenaNet has nerfed farming spot X and thus those players would have to keep doing something they are not enjoying for longer. I would like ArenaNet’s reply to that kind of thing be “don’t worry, if you don’t enjoy that, you don’t need to do it any longer, go play whatever it is you enjoy and you will get what you want, too!”. Currently their reply has been closer to “sorry, you were farming too quickly, you will have to endure farming a bit slower to get what you want”.

TWMagimay.9057:

Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, some people enjoy “grinding”? Or that maybe, just maybe, anything you do in the game(except spvp) actually gets you to a legendary at some point?

See my comments above. I’m sure a few players like to grind, but if so many people enjoyed it, we would not get as many complaints when ArenaNet nerfs farming as we do.

Grind has a big negative impact in the game. When people say, “We want gearscore for dungeons!”, have you ever bothered to think why? It’s because they want to play with other players that give them the highest possible chance to succeed; and that is because they want to play through those dungeons as fast as possivle; and that is because they do not enjoy what they are doing, they just want to get it over with as quickly as possible. In other words, they are grinding, they don’t have fun grinding, and so they turn to what some people would call an elitist behavior in order to keep the grind as short as possible.

Why is grind rewarded so much, then? Why is grinding something so good that it is the most rewarded thing in the game? This is what should be changed. Grinding is not something good, for the players or for the game; it should not receive the highest rewards in the game, rather the lesser ones.

Serra.8069:

I find that a common excuse that people who want a legendary but don’t have one yet use, but yes, of course they do :P What’s wrong with long term goals?

And what is wrong with players wanting to be rewarded for being skilled or for having fun, instead of for being willing to “endure” playing the game?

It’s interesting that a common comment in this kind of topic (or a common “excuse”, if you want to call it like that) is “if you want it, work for it, just like you work in real life”. I wonder, do people who state those comments have a job in real life?

Doing mindless activities over and over again, like farming… That’s not a “real” job in real life. Sure, some people can’t find better things to do due to a lack of better opportunities… But those who actually make careers, who have big jobs? Doctors, laywers, engineers, teachers, and etc? They don’t “grind” real life, they do the work they want to do. They don’t “endure” their work, they have chosen their work based on what they like to do.

If grind is something people avoid even in real life, if the most successful people in the world are not “grinders”, if the biggest salaries usually go to those who enjoy their jobs… Why, exactly, do you want grind to be the thing with the highest reward in the game?

VBMeireles.4951:

Then the question is: what will happen to all of those so hard to get pieces of Ascended gear? I don’t suppose they will scale up to level 90 when the level cap raises?

The issue with playing through content you do not enjoy, doing things you don’t have fun doing, just to get a shiny reward in the end (in other words, the issue with grind) – is that one day you realize your reward is actually useless, and your effort has been in vain. One day ArenaNet will introduce more powerful items, and when you look back at all the time it took you to get your ascended backpiece, what will you think?

Serra.8069:

and those who think legendaries should only go to “skilled” players need to get off their high horse and remember what game they’re playing. Everyone deserves the chance to make a legendary

Do people with a life deserve to get a Legendary, too? :-P

There are multiple tiers of items in the game. The most commonly discussed are:

• Rare items: yellow names. They have almost maxed stats, but are considerably cheaper than the next tier. Some people buy those while trying to get the next tier, some ignore them since they’re not the best thing anyway.

• Exotic items: orange names. They usually have maxed stats. Dungeon rewards, for example, are exotic items. They are expensive, though, so not everyone has full exotics on their characters yet. Until very recently they were the highest tier, stats-wise, but ArenaNet has just introduced…

• Ascended items: pink names. Those have just been introduced in the game. They have the highest stats, but for now there are only ascended rings and backpieces, there is no ascended armor or weapons. Which means, right now, if you want to have a maxed stats sword, you would need an exotic sword. ArenaNet said they will introduce ascended weapons and armors in the future, though.

• Legendary weapons: purple names. Stats-wise, they have the same stats as exotics. The only difference is that they have unique skins and require a lot of time to get, due to those unique skins. ArenaNet has said that, when they introduce ascended weapons, the currently existing legendary weapons will be changed to have ascended stats, so they would always be maxed stats items.

“Mystic” items don’t really exist. “Mystic” is usually something linked to the Mystic Forge, in Lion’s Arch (see a description here). There is a weapon set that can only be obtained through the Mystic Forge called mystic weapons, which are just exotic weapons with a different skin.

Dogblaster.6713:

Nope .. this is mmorpg. Who dedicate more time will achieve better items .. Are you playing MMMORG for the first time?

Zzzzzz… MMORPGs are based on quest hubs, where are the quests in GW2? Oh right, GW2 is being different from other MMOs. MMORPGs are based on players having to spawn camp in order to kill some monsters, where are the spawn campers in GW2? Oh right, GW2 is being different from other MMOs. And so on.

Currently, one of the weaknesses of the MMO genre is how it rewards lack of skill. There are historical reasons for this kind of design – it made a lot of sense in the context of pay to play games trying to catter to as many players as possible – but it’s one of the things ArenaNet should change, just as they have changed many of the classic conventions of MMORPGs.

Saying “that’s how it is because that’s how it has always been” is a very weak way to disguise “that’s how it is and stop complaining because that’s how I want it to be”.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Agreed with this. They people who complain about legendaries going to people who don’t “deserve” them should just go out to real life rich people

And this is a perfect example of how the current system doesn’t work.

In real life, a Chinese factory worker has to work very long shifts each day. They work more hours than the CEO of big companies – yet, do they have a higher sallary than said CEOs? No, quite the opposite. Under the current legendary system, however, they would actually get a higher reward merely for working more time, regardless of how simple and mindless their work is.

The legendary system – grind, in fact – is significantly different than real life. In real life, skill and ability are more important than time spent.

Dogblaster.6713:

Only few players will have them and those players hould be dedicated hardcore players. Not complaining whiny kids .. Sorry, but thats how it is.

Ideally, it would be something given to the most skilled players. Not simply to the players who have the most free time and are willing to mindlessly farm like bots.

I have made a similar topic here.

The thing is: legendaries currently reward mostly time spent. They could be changed to reward luck (which IMO would be a very bad idea, as the precursors have shown us) or to reward skill, or to reward other things. However, the players who can only offer time spent and have no skill or anything else to offer are strongly against this – so they are going to tell you to just give up or work for it.

This topic has suprisingly little info, considering it’s title.

The scavenger hunt is being worked by Linsey Murdock. She became famous within the Guild Wars 1 community after being the main designer of the Miniature Black Moa scavenger hunt, which was quite popular at the time (and the first such thing to appear in GW1).

I thought they are going to implement a “tiers” system so people can play together between levels 1-5, 6-10, and so on. It would make grouping a bit easier, at least for now.

It doesn’t bother me in the least.

I hate that armor design. However, I see it as what it is – one option for people who want that kind of design. Armorsmiths don’t make any other “skimpy” armor, other than the barbaric and the gladiator ones. While I prefer the other armors, I understand the need to catter to people who simply have a different taste, too.

Daddicus.6128:

One still cannot solo champions, but they’re called “Group Events” for a reason.

I’m exploring the entirety of Malchor’s Leap. So far, only one thing has been giving me trouble (the Statue of Melandkittenll point; it’s underwater, near a lot of enemies, and the statue inflicts bleeding and cripple to anyone near it), everything else has been done without too many issues.

The zone is simply not fun, though. I have ignored all group events since there are not enough players in the zone to make a group; which means I have ignored huge parts of content in the area. It’s not fun to have to run from all champions, avoid areas with group events, and etc.

Blackhalo.1324:

So, my questions are thus: Has anyone lese had similar problems with Direct Song, not just for Guild Wars music, but for any of the music they’re supposed to provide?

Yes.

Never, ever, buy stuff from DirectSong. Ever.

The issues you had are not the exception; they are the rule. I strongly regret buying products (which now no longer work, for the records) from DirectSong, and I will never do so again.

binidj.5734:

The Straits and Malchor’s biggest problem is that people tend not to hang around there

Pretty much.

Orr would be a fun place to be at if there were a lot of players around. Most dynamic events require a party, which means those two zones really reward cooperation between players; the large number of enemies and the fast respawn rate means that a lot of people playing there will always have enemies to kill.

The issue is that both areas are nearly empty, now more than ever (thanks, Fractals!), so the content that was meant to be engaging with a lot of other players is just annoying when playing by yourself.

I understand the idea behind the zones. It’s a good thing to see areas in which player actions really change how the places play (different enemies and different environmental hazards and different events and even different waypoints if the Temples are contested or not), but it’s unfortunate that there are never enough players to actually have an effect in those maps.

(Although, the enemy necromancers with 1200 range really annoy me. It’s a pain to be fighting other enemies and suddenly begin being hit by enemies who aren’t even showing on my screen.)

It’s interesting to read his first review of the game, and later compare it with his next ones. It’s more or less the following:

1) “Guild Wars 2 is trying to do what the other MMOs do and fails at that, plus it does some other weird stuff”.

2) “Ok, Guild Wars 2 was not trying to do what the other MMOs were doing. Those other weird stuff are actually the core of the game, and they’re rather nice”.

3) “I’m sold, GW2 is better than Mists of Pandaria”.

Nice change in opinion, but I think it highlights how a big issue with GW2 are actually players of other MMOs who join the game looking for more of the same, instead of being open for something new.

Dogblaster.6713:

(Imagine Obsidian shards, they were obtained by karma only. Now they add them to Fractals so you can buy them with tokens there. Did they make it easyer? No. They just add another way, but its equal difficulty)

More difficult, actually (since doing Fractals is less mindless than farming). Which is exactly what I have been asking for. Thank you for proving my point

Dogblaster.6713:

I dont see why are you making post about it, because there wont be any change to this.

There will. We have already been told that precursors will be changed from the current grind to a scavenger hunt. And one of the reasons for the change was the feedback ArenaNet received from those asking them to change the way precursors are acquired. They have already taken one step in the right direction by requiring things such as the Gift of Exploration, another will be taken by changing how to get precursors… How long do you think it will take for them to change the rest?

I have the feeling you are asking people to not discuss this subject simply because you like things as they currently are and do not want to see any change. Change, however, is already coming.

Dogblaster.6713:

And I say once more, again MMORPGs are and always will be about gold, farming, material, gear. Not about SKILL (skill is pvp related), puzzles, …

You want skill based game ? Dota, FPS games, Starcraft 2, etc.
You want story driven games? Mass effect, etc ..

I remember when people said, “You want story driven games? Forget FPS, go play RPGs!”, and then Half Life proved them wrong, opening the door to Bioshock and many similar and extremely successful games.

Other MMORPGs are all about grind. This does not mean MMORPGs are about grind – rather, that all other MMORPGs are just copying each other (which happens to be true, in fact). It’s about time someone made a MMORPG that is trying to be fun, not a grind. And if all someone wants is a grind-based MMORPG… There are half a dozen other MMOs like that out there.

Shock The Monkey.8796:

So right now I’m 30/29/0/0/0

My build uses 30 Zeal, too. It may not be the best build in the world, but I enjoy playing it. The stats are:

Zeal 30

• Create a Symbol of Wrath when your health drops below 25%
• When an aegis you applied is removed, it burns nearby foes.
• Symbols apply vulnerability to foes.
• Greatsword damage is increased by 5%.
• Greatsword attacks heal you.

Radiance 15

• When activating Virtue of Justice, nearby foes are blinded.
• Applying blind also applies vulnerability.
• Virtue of Justice is renewed when you kill a foe.

Honor 20

• Gain 1 second of vigor when you critical hit.
• Symbols are larger.
• The end of your dodge roll heals nearby allies.
• All symbols heal allies.

Virtues 5

• Virtues now also apply the following boons: Justice → Might, Resolve → Regeneration, Courage → Protection

With a Greatsword and Scepter/Focus, plus Shelter for healing, Retreat! as an utility skill, and Renewed Focus as the elite (the other utility slots are variable, depending of what I’m doing). I use full Power (toughness and vitality) gear.

This build has:

Support

• All Virtues apply boons: Might, Protection, Regeneration.
• The Greatsword skill 1 applies Might.
• Retreat! offers Aegis and Swiftness.
• Shelter blocks attacks.
• Renewed Focus not only recharges the Virtues but also offers invulnerability.
• Symbol of Wrath, which is larger than usual, applies Retaliation and heals.
• Greatsword attacks heal; the healing is very small, but when using Whirling Wrath and similar skills the healing from multiple strikes adds up.

Control

• Justice applies Blind and Vulnerability, plus recharges whenever I kill an enemy.
• Leap of Faith applies Blind and Vulnerability.
• The scepter skill 3 applies Immobilize and Vulnerability.
• The focus skill 4 applies Blind and Vulnerability.
• Thanks to Zeal, all those conditions last longer than usual.

Damage

• This build has the biggest possible Power for a Guardian.
• Multiple sources of Burning and Vulnerability (both with boosted durations) help to do damage.
• Two sources of Might also increase damage.
• Symbol of Wrath is also bigger and does more damage than usual.
• Virtues and Retreat! are instantly cast, so using them doesn’t reduce DPS.

When fighting against a single, slow hitting oponent that does a lot of damage per strike:

• Attack 1 is blocked by the passive effect of Courage
• Attack 2 misses due to Blind inflicted by Leap of Faith
• Attack 3 is blocked by the Aegis given by Retreat!
• Attack 4 misses due to the Blind inflicted by Justice
• Attack 5 is blocked by Renewed Focus
• Attack 6 misses due to the Blind inflicted by Ray of Judgment
• Attack 7 is blocked by Shield of Wrath
• Attack 8 is blocked by Shelter
• If the enemy is still alive, repeat. No need to even dodge.

This build’s weaknesses are a huge number of oponents, since this kind of defense cannot overcome multiple attacks from outside melee range, and a single oponent with very fast attacks.

Dogblaster.6713:

The whole Guild Wars 2 content can be achieved easyly, its easy to complete story, do all dungeons, have 100% map

And it’s easy to farm. In fact, it’s so easy, and so mindless, that even the very simple bots that used to infestate GW2 could do it easily.

Is it easy to do the dungeons? Sure. But still, even if it only takes half of a player’s attention to play through a dungeon while he/she reads a book at the same time, that’s still more attention needed than that of bot managers, who don’t even have to pay attention to the game while bots farm. The storyline is easy, too, but farming manages to be even easier and significantly more mindless.

In the end, what does the current system reward? Time spent and grind. That is, simply, not enough. Legendaries should be rewards for skill, for doing challenging content, for playing everything the game has to offer. Farming is none of that – repeating the same activity over and over in the same little corner of the world is actually rather worthless.

The Gift of Exploration is a step in the right direction – it’s not a huge challenge, true, but it’s at least more challenging than farming (a bot couldn’t do it). Playing through WvW for Badges of Honor is better than farming, too – a bot also couldn’t do it successfully. It is odd, then, that despite having those interesting components, most of acquiring a Legendary is a matter of only time spent and grind. The game should reward better, more worthy, things than that.

Kacigarka.5176:

Legendary weapon is something that proves you play more than real life.

That’s kinda sad o.O

Anyway, the point above wasn’t that earning Legendaries isn’t fast enough. Rather, that the current way to acquire Legendaries is badly designed. It has many good elements (Gift of Exploration, Gift of Battles, and so on), but it relies too much on earning gold, effectively becoming a grind. Considering how ArenaNet has mentioned often how they would rather avoid grinds, it’s only logical that acquiring Legendaries should be challenging and time consuming, but not based on grind.

I agree with the main point in the OP – the price of the current Cultural Armors is fine, but they should be exotics. We are paying not for the stats, but for the skins – doesn’t make sense to have such valuable skins on subpar stats.

I also feel bad for the OP, as most people react to a topic title metioning cultural armors by automatically assuming it’s a complaint about those armors being too expensive, regardless of what the topic actually says.

Darx.9842:

If the price was lowered everyone would have it and it would completely lose it’s value and appeal.

The skin would continue to be as pretty as it is today, hence even if every single player were given a free copy of the armor, it would not lose anything significant. To assume there is any prestige in having that armor means you actually believe people are going to admire you for having a lot of gold to spend in a MMO… To which I reply, well, no.

nemo.1572:

Obsidian Armor in GW1 took much time to get and it had the same stats as every other max lvl armor.

And cultural armors have worse stats than every other max level armor. If Obsidian Armor had worse stats than 15K Droknars Armor, people would have complained, too.

Hobocop.1508:

Considering you can already effectively roflstomp Shadow Behemoth and Fire Elemental as a downscaled 80, I don’t see the need in eliminating the downscaling system. I’d say they need to make it more strict at lower levels instead, since it feels pretty good in the middle levels.

I agree, with a high level character in a level 40 area it feels like I’m roflstomping everything in my path. Stroking someone’s ego by telling them “oh, you are so powerful now!” is considerably worse, and loses its appeal significantly faster, than keeping the entire game challenging and thus viable for all characters all the time.

Ellisande.5218:

For the most part level 80 players more likely prefer killing low level mobs faster (in 1 hit) than they prefer having to fight mobs as if they were level 10 again.

Your premise is wrong.

Raehvyn.4530:

That armor seemed too fairy for races other than Sylvari for my personal tastes.

Try using it while hiding the shoulders (which is where the wings are). The armor suddenly becomes a lot less flamboyant.

I agree with ArenaNet’s comments on the latest AMA, and later Mike O’Brien’s comments, that items should not require grind in Guild Wars 2. Something can be difficult to get (as in, it’s challenging, not merely a mindless grind), time consuming, and etc, without being a grind. Grind, in this context, defined as repeating over and over a piece of content that is not fun.

Something that bothered me in Guild Wars 1 was how everything could be bought with gold. A bot manager, if possessed of a strong sense of humor, could dress its bots in the rarest armor in the game (Fissure of Woe armor, for those who played GW), since getting it was basically a matter of getting gold enough to buy materials. This trivialized a large amount of goals in the game into “getting as much gold as possible as fast as possible”.

With both the points above in mind, I would like to present my opinion on the current way to acquire Legendary items.

Gift of Battles: requires 500 Badges of Honor. I really like this one. As many Legendary components, it’s a symbol over mastery of one aspect of the game, in this case World versus World. The beauty here is that acquiring the badges is not a grind – anyone who likes WvW will acquire those badges simply by playing that game mode. Will it be instant? No, it’s going to take some time. But it doesn’t require mindless repetition of a given goal – it’s not a matter of killing NPC X on the sourther supply camp over and over, rather just a matter of playing WvW. The amount of required badges is great, too – considerably less than the extremely expensive full set of WvW armor, enough that someone can get this badge within a few months of casual play. I would be happier if the badges weren’t available from the jumping puzzles, since those are basically a way to skip everything I have said above, but oh well.

Gift of Exploration: requires world completition. This is a great one, too. It’s a symbol of exploration, as the name implies, and it’s almost the opposite of grind – it rewards going to different places and seeing different things. Anyone who enjoys exploring will eventually get this gift, even if only after months exploring small bits of the map week by week.

Bloodstone Shard: requires 200 skill points. This one is mostly a matter of mastering one character, since it basically rewards playing a long time with the same one. Even ignoring how this one is almost given freely when earning the Gift of Exploration, it’s a nice idea, too – everything rewards experience, and getting 200 points is not unreasonably much. Anyone who simply plays the game and do whatever he/she wants will reach this one within a few months.

Obsidian Shards: require 525.000 karma, and is a way to show mastery over dynamic events. When I first learned of this one, I thought it would be a massive grind – but in the end, it’s not. Playing the game normally for at most a couple hours per day was enough to get half of that without any need for repetition. The rest came from using the Jugs of Liquid Karma acquired by doing some daily achievements and two monthly achievements under karma buffs.

Dungeon Gifts: require 500 dungeon tokens from a single dungeon. They are easy to get, and with each path giving 69 tokens as they do today, someone can get those gifts by doing all paths once per day in less than 3 days. Ergo, it’s also not time consuming. However, despite how it’s something that can be acquired easily and quickly, I think it has been designed badly – it still requires repetition, and so still requires a grind. I think the gifts would work better, and be more interesting, if it required doing all paths in all dungeons once (same as the current Dungeon Master title). This would be harder and more time consuming than the current system, but I think it would be more fitting to ArenaNet’s philosophy in trying to avoid grind, and in rewarding players who see everything the game has to offer.

Everything else… Is bad. For everything else, the limiting factor is gold. If the current method to get a Legendary required only the Icy Runestones, which go for 100k, it would be ok – a lot of things reward gold, and having one part of the Legendary linked to gold earning would make sense. The issue is that more than half of the Legendary components are basically a matter of farming gold – from both crafting materials gifts to all the materials required to craft the weapon gifts and all the ectos required for the Gift of Fortune and the Mystic Clovers. And that’s ignoring the precursors, since they will eventually be changed anyway.

I believe the process of acquiring Legendaries would be better if it focused more on things like the Gift of Exploration and the Gift of Battle, and less on things like the grind required to get the Gift of Magic and the 250 Globs of Ectoplasm needed for the Gift of Fortune.

Azure Prower.8701:

Why would you ever make a legendary look like this?

Because looks are subjective. You may not like how the current Legendaries look, meanwhile others do. ArenaNet is never going to be able to make something that would please everyone. Even if there were 5 kinds of Legendary bows, I’m sure someone would complain that none of them look good.

Just kill the karka hatchling (these guys). They are fragile so even at level 72 you should be able to kill them, and they spawn in very high numbers, so it’s going to be easy to kill 100 of them. I accidentaly got the achievement when trying to go kill the Karka Champion.

Volomon.9147:

I’m just now realizing months after release there’s not really anything to do.

You should be playing to have fun, instead of playing in order to achieve random milestones. If you don’t enjoy any aspect of the game – if you don’t have fun in the personal storyline or doing events or doing dungeons or exploring or playing WvW or playing sPvP… Why are you playing the game in the first place?

plasmacutter.2709:

All these people with “small fortunes” earned them by farming before the DR was put into place.

You can see, then, how farming without DR in place has already hurt the game – if even when it lasted a few weeks it was enough to make such a gap betwen farmers and real players, imagine how big this gap would have been if DR had not been introduced to slow it down.

Snowy.9580:

Whose of us that play more and love to craft must have paid less or are maybe just 2nd class citizens/players.

As opposed to those who have less free time being 2nd class citizens?

In real life, time is not better than skill. A Chinese factory worker who works 20 hours per day does not get the same salary Bill Gates gets working less. Skill, talent, knowledge, ability – in real life, all those are more important than time spent. It’s only to be expected that the same would happen in game; in other words, that merely time spent (and time spent doing something so mindless as farming, that bots could do very well) would not be a recipe for success.

Take a look here.

For those saying, “LOL, not everyone who plays GW2 uses Xfire”, please read here.

I’m more interested in the curve seen in the graphic than in the absolute numbers themselves. We can clearly see that the game had been slowly losing players over time, with player spikes on weekends and during the two events.

Recently, though, the number of played hours suffered an abrupt fall. This is the first time GW2 falls bellow rank 5, too.

Why do you people think this has happened?

Here are some options, for the sake of the argument (but keep in mind this is not a poll):

1. Because of Ascended gear. ArenaNet has alienated its most loyal fanbase by adding a gear treadmill, and so a significant number of players is simply playing less.

2. Because Ascended gear is not enough. The MMO players who make the core of any MMO need strong vertical progression, and Ascended gear, limited to a few trinkets and barely more powerful than exotics, is not progression enough for them.

3. It doesn’t have anything to do with ascended gear, most people don’t care. The issue is that the game has too many unresolved bugs, such as all the dungeon bugs, all the trait bugs, and etc.

4. It doesn’t have anything to do with ascended gear, most people don’t care. The issue is that GW2 has too many base issues – ArenaNet was wrong in making the game so different from WoW. The game needs a more traditional combat system, the holy trinity, raids, mounts, duels and etc to keep real MMO players engaged.

5. It doesn’t have anything to do with ascended gear, most people don’t care. The issue is that GW2 has too many basic issues – ArenaNet was wrong in making the game so different from GW1. The game needs more skills, more flexibility in making a skill bar, heroes and henchmen, more instanced content, more content like the GW1 missions, and so on, to catter to GW1 players.

6. It’s mostly because PvP is a mess, and since endgame is PvP, people are leaving.

7. It’s mostly because balance is a mess. Too many underpowered professions/traits/skills with a few overpowered professions/traits/skills are making people leave the game.

8. Actually, there’s nothing wrong. This fall in the number of players is common in any game a few months after release. GW2 only fell to 6° place because Assassin’s Creed has just been released and took the 5° slot. There are still a lot of people in-game.

9. Other?

Discuss.

plasmacutter.2709:

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

This means the prices are skyrocketing

And guess why so many people can afford to buy such expensive ectos, while most players can’t?

Because sane people can’t go out and fetch them themselves

Irrelevant to my question. I did not ask why is there a demand for ectos, rather why only a minority can afford their current prices.

I will simply cease responding to you if you don’t want to actually tackle the issue here

…Which is people not being able to buy items from the TP due to those items being incredibly expensive, since a few grinders and TP manipulators have acquired small fortunes and thus have increased the price of items beyond what is within reach of the real players.

So there we see why farming is bad and thus needs to be limited by DR, plus why TP manipulation is bad and so should be limited in some way.

DR is great. It’s not enough, though.

plasmacutter.2709:

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

This means the prices are skyrocketing

And guess why so many people can afford to buy such expensive ectos, while most players can’t?

Because sane people can’t go out and fetch them themselves

Irrelevant to my question. I did not ask why is there a demand for ectos, rather why only a minority can afford their current prices.

plasmacutter.2709:

This means the prices are skyrocketing

And guess why so many people can afford to buy such expensive ectos, while most players can’t?

plasmacutter.2709:

Individual players, on the other hand, when faced with DR, are forced to either the TP or the cash shop (then the TP) because they’re denied the capacity of self-sufficiency.

Using your expression, real players are not hit with DR. Only farmers are. When farmers grind the game in order to get gold, they are basically supplying the game with a huge amount of gold, which means they can afford things the real players could not. This leads to more farming in order to deal with the increased prices, which in turn leads to more inflation, and so on.

ArenaNet limited the ability of farmers to exploit the game this way by using the DR system, which restricts the income of a farmer so it’s not THAT much more than the one of a real player. As a result, prices on the TP would not increase as much, and we would not divide the game between real players and grinders…

…But ArenaNet failed to account for TP manipulation. Since exploiting the TP has no limit, unlike farming, a lot of people just used the TP to make small fortunes easily, quickly and without the need of skill (much like farming). Hence inflation, high prices, and etc, etc.

The solution here is to cull TP manipulation and TP manipulators, not to remove DR.

Actually, the DR system is needed to stop farmers as much as it was needed to stop bots. Farmers add a huge amount of inflation to the game and thus increase the price of items for the real players (those playing the game to have fun, as opposed to those grinding the game to farm).

FadeXF.5460:

Telling me my opinion is invalid or less valuable is not asked, or necessary…

Of course it is. Tell me, why do you think ArenaNet asked you to give your feedback in the Discussion Forum instead of just sending it to them directly by e-mail? Has it not hit you that maybe they were seeking other people’s comments on your ideas?

So, as asked by ArenaNet (since otherwise they would not have told you to post your ideas where people discuss them), my discussion about your feedback is: it’s horrible, and ArenaNet should not listen to it.

If you would like to read about how vertical progression is bad for this game, come back after you have read all of this. I would also suggest trying to learn how the forum works before making new topics in the future. Although I wouldn’t be surprised that someone who expected vertical progression in GW2 just jumped in the forum without trying to learn about it…

Ath.2531:

Who are you to tell me whats repetitive or not?

They are the game designers, who tell you everything about the game. If they wanted to call green in their game “yellow”, they would be within their rights.

In this case, grinders farming over and over would be bad for the community as a whole, since it would add a lot of gold in the economy and thus increase prices for all the real players (the people who are more interested in having fun instead of grinding). The DR system and all the limits to farming are thus great, as they both punish grinders and help players.

FadeXF.5460:

You have nothing to keep me playing. No PVE progression. No PVE dungeon finder. No real gameplay. Your MMO is nothing like other MMOs… and right now: I’m sorry to be the party pooper buuuut…. that is a BAD thing guys.

Yeah, because as The Old Republic has shown us, being exactly like other MMOs is a recipe for success…

Someone described earlier how MMO hoppers jump from MMO to MMO, without even trying to learn what each game is about, in a futile search for something that is a copy of the first MMO they have ever played (read here). The OP here is a perfect example of that – a minimum of research about GW2 before buying the game would have make it clear that the goal of this game was not to be WoW clone number 214.

This is the kind of player that will leave Guild Wars 2, no matter what ArenaNet does. Ergo, it’s exactly the kind of player whose opinion is worth less than two cents.

Norida.8692:

Make precursors account bound, every single one, it was the best solution and it was something that should have been done from the start.

That would have been a very bad idea. Imagine that someone wants to make a Bifrost, but got an account-bound Dusk; what would be the advantage to that person? It would have been better to receive a common, non account bound exotic, since at least it would sell for more than vendor prices at the TP.

This entire thing wasn’t so bad. It could have been handled better, of course, but I think it was more good than bad for the game. The impact it had:

• “I worked so hard for my precursor and people got it easily”: I’m sorry, but that’s a very bad argument. Mostly for two reasons: one, that’s already how the system works, due to the RNG inherent to the Mystic Forge (the guy who did the event and got a precursor had as much “work” as the guy who got four rares as drops and got a precursor from the Mystic Forge in his first try). Two, the fact it’s so annoying and so RNG-based to get the precursors is exactly why ArenaNet should change how those items are acquired. People should not have to “suffer” to get them, so the reasoning of “I suffered a lot to get them, so everyone else has to suffer too!” is really bad.

• It made a bunch of people rich, true. But not rich enough to manipulate the market. The real issue of the precursor market was how the supply was so limited that a few TP players could monopolize the precursor market, by buying all the currently available precursors and selling them at higher prices. This allowed people to make a small fortune, unlimited by systems such as the DR, which prevents farmers from similarly making easy money. Those who became rich due finding one precursor did not get enough money to monopolize the precursor market; at most, they got enough money to buy a couple precursors, that’s it. Meanwhile, the TP players trying to monopolize the market (and basically exploit other players) got shafted, since they are not capable to buy all precursors anymore due to the increase in supply. This will be temporary*, but at least for now the price of the precursors has finally fallen a bit.

Those saying “OMG ArenaNet is so greedy!”: this wasn’t out of greed. Quite the opposite, ArenaNet is potentially losing money since the amount of gems needed to buy precursors has actually fallen.

No, this was a move to reduce the price of precursors and reduce a bit the way the really rich players can manipulate the market and thus exploit other players. Too bad it won’t last long.

*Unless ArenaNet does something about it. IMO, they should give a token to everyone who finishes the storyline, and allow people to freely exchange it for a single precursor of their choice, not account bound.

Yes, the goal of the game should be allowing the players to have fun, not grind.

Veldan.4637:

To me, farming requires a lot more skill than stuff like playing a dungeon.

A bot can farm.

That’s how much skill farming needs. If you simply stay there using your auto-attack, you will get gold.

Doesn’t really matter if you like to farm the Karka Champion, the fact remains that using farming to get gold is so mindless that you don’t even need a human being in order to do it.

Cod Eye.1632:

Actually its the DR driving prices up, supply and demand, the less supply the likely the price rises, so at the end of the day it effects everyone.

The goal of farming is mostly to make money. While it reduces the drops of rare crafting materials and etc, there are far more items in the game that are basically converted to gold (aka vendor trash) than items that are traded between players. The DR system may reduce a bit the supply of those latter items, but since it reduces more the supply of gold, it acts against inflation and thus helps everyone else in the game.

To make it short, no, farmers don’t help the game by adding rare items to the market. Their bigger impact is adding gold to the market and thus causing inflation. If anything, Mystic Forge gamblers help the game by adding more supply to the game at the expense of gold.

TheWarKeeper.5374:

what is DR?
5 char limit

The more you farm, the less drops you get. “Diminishing returns”.