Guild Wars 2

segman.3560:

Eurhetemec.9052:

zombyturtle.5980:

gricks.1897:

1. There a lot of “80’s zerker only!” in the LFG tool, and its incredibly obnoxious.

How on earth is this obnoxious

Because it’s so prevalent to the point of completely dominating LFG.

It’s only because casual “all welcome, no clue what to do” groups are filling so fast you don’t notice them. Or don’t want to notice them.

Yeah that’s definitely it.

GrandHaven.1052:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Because it’s so prevalent to the point of completely dominating LFG.

After almost 3 years of the same dungeons, do you blame them for wanting it to be as fast and efficient as possible?
They are doing it to farm.
Not for fun.
It stops being fun when you do it daily.

However you perceive it, try to look at it objectively.

You’re asking me to look at it subjectively, actually, but to look at it from your perspective. That’s fine, but don’t confuse “See it from my PoV” with “objective”. People are misusing that word to the point where it’s becoming the new “literally”.

No, I don’t blame them, either, where you getting that from? I just think they should have a separate LFG (I mean, I go in those groups sometimes, too).

zombyturtle.5980:

No one forces you to join those groups though, and its not like casual runs cant be advertised because of the zerker groups. At worst you have to scroll down a second or two to find a suitable group..Id hardly call that obnoxious.

You often have to look pretty hard.

I don’t think they should be banned or anything though lol – I just wish there was a flag or something, like a separate LFG for “GOGOGOGO ZERKER” stuff where everyone needs to know every precise skip (which can be fun if you do!), so when you’re doing alts with friends and stuff you don’t need to eliminate all that (and so you don’t get those guys in your “Relaxed dungeon” group or whatever).

zombyturtle.5980:

gricks.1897:

1. There a lot of “80’s zerker only!” in the LFG tool, and its incredibly obnoxious.

How on earth is this obnoxious

Because it’s so prevalent to the point of completely dominating LFG.

Neural.1824:

Hamfast.8719:

Hey, the answer is going on 6 months old. I am asking politely for an update. Maybe the answer will be “sorry – never coming back!” But I would still like to hear something.

I’d like to know the truth about what happened, and who was behind it. The whole thing stinks like a fish that’s been left in the sun for a few days.

Cue X-Files music…

Cyninja.2954:

Full set of exotic armor and first weapon set comes to about 70-80g without runes (and you can got with cheap runes first). At about 10-15g per hour farming Silverwastes or even doing other things you’ll have the gold in about 4-5 hours tops. Maybe 10 hours if you do other stuff like dungeons etc.

How is this not considered “easy to get”?

Because you need good gear and great game knowledge to farm remotely near that efficiently?

You can’t even reliably get into dungeons with exotic gear so…

none.9681:

~20G for near-best gear in PvE/WvW (except for high-level Fractals)
Free best ‘gear’ in PvP

So much grind!

20g how? Where I’m standing it looks like 7g per piece for Orange Zerk (ignoring jewellery), and that’s before runes. 6 armour slots + 2 weapons @7g is 56g.

56g is definitely a big grind to acquire unless you’re a pro.

cloudjsh.7814:

So I’ve had ~8 years of Tabletop RPG experience since my good ’ol days with AD&D back in the day.

I’m curious if there are any Tabletop RPG fans out there who would like to see a GW2 adaption.

And not a d20 clone either.

I’m thinking more of an original system that best captures the feel of GW2 yet transitions well to pen and paper. Note, I’m thinking along the lines of a tabletop storytelling, character-building, roleplaying game, not a stat-crunching, number-stacking, miniature wargame.

Any Tabletop fans out there that have been wishing to trek across Tyria with their buddies away from the computer screen?

I run a regular D&D game, and a couple of other RPGs from time to time (Dungeon World, Shadowrun 5E, etc.), and I would KILL for a good, non-d20, preferably not level-obsessed Guild Wars 2-based TT RPG.

I don’t think it should be a pure story-telling-type RPG. If you want that, you don’t need an official product. You can just use FATE Core or whatever engine you like best with GW2 lore and screenshots/concept-art to illustrate stuff.

But a well-designed official RPG which had a little bit of crunch, but wasn’t heavy, and which embodied the ideas of GW2 (that leveling isn’t a big deal, and gear progression isn’t a significant factor, but rather going places, doing things, and learning new skills is), then you’d potentially have an RPG that actually brought something kind of new to the TT market.

(Right now, virtually all TT RPGs fall into two categories – games where you create a fairly simply character and progress by leveling with some degree of gear grind/turnover, and gain in power in a very linear or even exponential way or games where you create a highly complex (or relatively complex) and complete character, and barely progress at all – neither fits well with GW1/2 – rather you’d want a game where reaching “max level” as in max HP, damage, etc. was easy/quick but where acquiring new skills/abilities as actually a big deal – I genuinely cannot think of a TT RPG which fits this model – and I’ve played dozens, and know of hundreds or thousands.)

We need more PvE options, but that’s really all we need, I’d say.

Other than that, it’s a good system. Just up us to say, 5-6 PvE options. I’d also suggest that requiring one to do 4 events in a place, whilst not unreasonable, is a bit impractical at times. Especially in lower-level zones. I ended up having to do 6 events one area because I just didn’t get credit for two, as mobs got vaporized instantly by max-level characters. So if it’s a lower-level area, maybe less events required?

Gaile Gray.6029:

CDI on this? I don’t know what Chris Whiteside’s schedule is for CDI’s, and I know his bandwidth is stretched thin. (He has a boatload of stuff on his plate, that for sure!) However, I’ll ping him about that and he can consider if it would fall into the CDI format, and if so, when.

Thanks for the suggestion.

You have CDIs on many far less important or “day to day” issues, issues which have far less impact on gameplay or perception of the game, so I think Chris may need to make time for this CDI.

I know people (including my wife) who no longer play GW2 because they feel so worthless in PVE because of it, and they not playing has knock-on effects making others play less too. Personally it means I feel like there’s a whole swathe of builds that I just can’t use for PVE, and every time I bump into it, I feel like GW2 is not a well-designed game.

It may be a hard issue, or one that takes a long time to fix, but it deserves a CDI, and it deserves discussion.

It’s been a while since I posted here, but the last time I bought gems with gold, it was 200 gems, and that was very recently.

To be clear to Gaile and the team, going from being able to spend precisely the right amount, to having only very large increments (twice the size of the cost of a story episode!), which don’t match up with a lot of costs, is just not okay. It’s not something that ever should have happened.

The only acceptable fix is to bring back the full option to buy the right amount – too many of us have odd amounts of gems left over for otherwise, and your prices are too varied.

KOPPER.1458:

I am wondering what server most of you are on. I come from a T1 NA highly populated server. Overflows are not new to me at all. World bosses being a giant ball of light are not new. A zerg of players decimating LS event and or normal events is not new.

I realize there are other concerns here, but for those concerns I am a little puzzled.

The difference is between “not new” and “all the time”, though, is it not? (lol trying to contract that to be more grammatically normal sets off the kitten system, really Anet, that is terrible and whoever maintains that system should be embarrassed).

I’m from TC. Sometimes, SOMETIMES, a boss would be giant ball of light (esp. the two non-Teq dragons). But not all the time. Not even 50% of the time. Probably not even 30% of the time.

Overflow are familiar, of course, but again, they weren’t constant after day 1, and they often featured a lot of people from TC, and I was always able to get my group into them. Plus, they only really happened for zones where a big event was going on – whereas now they effectively happen for all zones, all the time.

So we’ve gone from “occasional issue” to “the new normal”, and you seem to be suggesting there’s no real change?

Consigliere.4903:

Totally not worth it in my opinion. How much resource gathering would it take to recoup the amount spent?!
I dare say one would be better off using Orichalcum (Axe/Pick/Sickle) for everything for a number of years.

Basically you would, and that’s actually what I do, personally. You get 90% of the same convenience as using the perma-tools (i.e. never have to think about what pick you’re using), at a tiny fraction of the price. You do have to restock occasionally, so assuming you carry spares (I do), you’re also gaining three to six – with two spares of each in the latter case – (LOOK OUT THREE WHOA DUDES! ) inventory spots with the perma ones, and maybe saving yourself a few silver every day or three not porting to get more tools.

It’s just never going to be a good deal financially.

However, if you never ever want to think about getting tools again, and you have RL money to burn (as much as an AAA PC game lol!), it’s a “good deal”. Some people blow $300 a year or more on F2P games like this (well this B2P but anyway), and they’re the target of these. Not people who carefully consider converting 100g into 1000 gems or whatever.

timmyf.1490:

You must play during non-peak hours or on a low-pop server. Playing around 5-9pm server time (PST), events like Escape From Lion’s Arch would almost instantly create an overflow. Getting into main? Ha! Hilarious!

Nope. Never see main, I agree, but you’re just wrong otherwise. Play on TC, usually on early peak times.

timmyf.1490:

Okay, so you enter your overflow. Did all five members of your party make it into the same overflow? No, just three? Okay, the two people not with the three of us, join on us. Oh, the world is full? Okay, let’s join on the two of you. Oh, your world is full too?

One person enters overflow, invites others, we join, everyone in same overflow. I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS FAIL I don’t know how it could. I’ve never heard it complained about. Ever. I played a lot back in the Scarlet Invasion times so… You get someone in, join their group, go to the zone, everyone is there. You can’t group up AFTER you go in, or just randomly hope, un-grouped, to be in the same overflow, if that’s what you’re complaining about.

timmyf.1490:

That was how these events would go for us for WEEKS. Marionette was like this for over a week. Escape from LA was like this for a week or two. The events to retake LA seemed to be a bit better, but it was still hit or miss.

I find this very hard to believe. It never happened to me or anyone in my guild.

timmyf.1490:

Trying to get 10-15 guildmates into the same overflow? Forget about it. That is simply not happening.

I agree that 15 didn’t always happen. It doesn’t always happen NOW with the current system! So no gain there!

timmyf.1490:

This is frustrating to me because I’m happy with Megaserver, yet I accept that it also has issues that require fixing.

Earlier you said it was “fine”. That’s not “has issues”. It’s particularly not “all the issues of Overflow AND MORE”, which you are now admitting it has.

timmyf.1490:

I don’t seem to be getting the same courtesy back.

The courtesy where you said the patch was fine and the players were broken, that courtesy, you mean?

timmyf.1490:

Opponents of Megaserver don’t seem to recognize that it solves a huge problem that many of us had. (Or that it should solve the problem. It remains to be seen.) It’d be nice for you to at least acknowledge that the system serves as an improvement for many people who don’t want to go back to the old way.

Opponents of the Megaserver sounds like an awesome metal band or album name.

That said, I don’t “oppose Megaservers”. I say the implementation is so bad it’s seriously impacting my gameplay on my level 80 characters (it improved them for my lowbies, but trait changes also ruined their gameplay so overall loss there!).

So you can see why I wouldn’t say this patch was an improvement. Megaserver is purely worse for my 80s (with trait changes being basically zero sum – free respecs are great, but charging huge sums for the new traits is lame), and Megaserver (slightly better) + trait changes (much worse) is purely worse for my sub-80s.

I also never see RP any more, or my friends from TC. Which blows.

EDIT – The only positive thing I see is, hilariously, that I really often seem to see ArenaNet people (with the little red arena wall next to their name) in town. Which I hardly ever did before.

anzenketh.3759:

They are not trying to aim for a 100% full map. They are trying to aim for a comfortable level.

They are failing miserably, then!

They need to lower what they consider comfortable by 30-50%, I’d suggest.

timmyf.1490:

I love how everybody acts like the overflow system worked perfectly. Do you know how often I was able to play with my full guild for new Living World events on patch day?

Never.

How about my full party?

Occasionally.

How about just my girlfriend?

Usually, but not always.

Very often, by the time we all loaded into a map and tried to join on somebody else, that somebody else’s server would already be full. As would ours. Not soft-capped full. Hard-capped full. (We weren’t guesting.).

It worked perfectly for me, thanks. Play with my wife? 100% of the time. My party? 100% of the time (literally – I have no idea what stopped you here – can you explain?). Everyone from my guild who wanted to group? 100% of the time (maybe I got lucky there but…).

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Or.. you create enough MegaMerge instances to keep sort groups homogenous. which essentially puts them back to pre MegaMerge.

That’s a really wild and baseless assumption. There’s no good reason it should be true. Only if they tried to replicate the previous situation perfectly would it even potentially be true. Aiming for better homogeneity does not necessitate a pre-MegaMerge situation – but it does necessitate better sorting and not trying to have full maps 24/7.

There is literally no way out of this situation that doesn’t leave them giving up on 100% full maps, though – if they insist on sticking with that, they WILL lose players, and lots of them. Full-er than previously is fine, but on maps that were already often near-full? Ugh.

timmyf.1490:

I don’t see how an opinion is “unjustifiable.”

Any opinion which has no rational or reasonable basis is impossible to justify, and hence, unjustifiable. It doesn’t matter if it’s personal. Look up the definition of justify if you’re still having difficulty with the concept. I mean, I could have the opinion that everyone who plays Elementalist is seriously bad, and say “It’s just, like, my opinion, maaaaan”, but that doesn’t mean it’s a reasonable or justifiable opinion – obviously, it is not. It’s completely impossible to justify the stance that the patch is fine and the community is broken, and it’s particularly nasty to even voice that as a US player, because you’re essentially saying that all the EU players suffering because of the changes are “broken”, which is just the internet at it’s worst.

munkiman.3068:

Peoples choices are not predictable, not even in small percentages based on past behavior. Unless your plugged into the system and it can read in advance what your going to be doing, no algorithm is going to predict behavior or intent. You can’t merge people, but keep them sorted accordingly, dynamically, without literally making instances to suit each possible sorting method, which now we are back to the most reliable method of worlds being separate to begin with. Of course the more sorting methods you tack on, the more it reduces the likelihood you achieve the intended result. Even in left and right scenarios (or coin flips) your best chance at being right is 50% and that’s about as simply as you can get. Compound that to 100’s of flips and you can quickly see that it’s not going to work any better. I’d guess 30% of the time you’ll be playing with the people you intended on playing with and that would be in zones that are typically baron to begin with.

Look at it this way, how do you get better than the extremely high probability of being paired with your party/guild/server that the old system provided? Answer, you don’t.

Oh boy.

If you are right, our entire society cannot exist, and we are living a lie. Perhaps we’re in the Matrix? Agent Smith will be along to deal with us shortly.

Everything in our society is based entirely on the fact that people are extremely predictable. Food shipments, electricity generation (how much and at what times), what shops choose to stock, where hospitals are built, who we allow to be teachers, where cops patrol most, and so on.

Is it perfect? Obviously not.

Is it pretty good? Obviously yes.

You totally can predict people’s behaviour in a relatively controlled environment with obvious motivators and so on. We’re not talking mind-reading, as you seem to think, we’re talking very simple statistics. Coin flips are a totally clueless comparison, I’m afraid, and show you don’t know what you’re talking about. Humans aren’t coins. The more people involved, too, the lower the randomness (not the higher, directly contrary to your apparent assertion – lower).

Seriously, if you were even slightly right in your comparison, civilization would not be able to exist. You might want to think on that.

As for your facile answer at the end, sure, you don’t, but that isn’t coming back, so you can either go forwards to a better system, or mope and talk about the good old days.

TheGaryTh.1649:

Does LS not count as content? Sure it’s only temporary, however I found that the LS updates every 2 weeks seemed like more content overall, compared with any other mmos. Also what about Teqautl, Triple Wurm, EOTM, and pvp revamp? Pretty sure these are fairly large bits of content added, on top of LS.

It doesn’t really count, because if you miss it, it’s pretty much gone without a trace. Completely unlike other MMOs, where much of the older content will still be accessible AND worth doing!

As I missed maybe 70% of the LS, that had zero value to me. Teq and Wurm are only for the serious elite/hardcore (by Anet design!), EotM is irrelevant unless you WvW, PvP unless you PvP (and they REMOVED content rather than adding it!). All the awesome new weapon and armor art are strictly only for pay. So yeah that’s pretty close to zero, sadly.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The LS could leave permanent changes, improvements, and additions. So far it has only left permanent harm – i.e. destroying LA and leaving us with a less-functional version in Gendarran (with full functionality paywalled for important paying people, of course, which is pretty pathetic. You could argue that in some ways GW2 has LESS content now than it did a year ago!

Astralporing.1957:

I’m afraid that no amount of finetuning and prioritizing can help in the situation of sudden zone population shifts (world boss train, for example). When train arrives to a new zone, there is a limited number of instances available initially (often only one, in otherwise dead zones like Sparkfly). Because server cannot predict how many people will arrive, it will only create new instances after the already existing ones are filled. So, regardless of prioritizing, when a huge wave of players arrive, the server’s choice of where to put any single player is very limited (often, to only one option – the instance that was created last and was not filled yet).
When there’s no possibility of choice, prioritization simply cannot work.

But it absolutely could predict this. This is totally something smart programming and study of previous statistics could help with. The bosses are on fixed timers. They are predictable. Anet could start creating extra instances for zones a few minutes ahead of the boss train, with the numbers modelled based on the number of people at the previous world boss and so on (please don’t try to argue specific language – this is doable, that’s the point), and sort people appropriately as they arrive.

Problem solved, really.

EDIT – To be clear, this programming, Astral. It is design. They do not “have to” wait for the instances to fill to create new ones. Indeed they should not. They should be creating new ones predictively as others partially fill (or, as noted, even before they are needed). It’s not rocket surgery.

Lalangamena.3694:

stop farming the same place.

Yeah, thanks, I’m really feeling all that “freedom of choice” and “play how you want” now we’re forced not to repeat anything more than once a day (no matter how many characters we need to gear). Great stuff.

timmyf.1490:

The patch is fine. The community is not. Just my personal opinion.

I’m loving the patch so far.

Unjustifiable opinion, I’d suggest, as it requires ignoring the issues EU players are having entirely (easy from the US) and ignoring the issues the trait changes have caused for new players and characters.

Much of the patch is good. Some is dire. That is not the community’s fault, and it’s ridiculous and insulting to suggest that it is.

timmyf.1490:

I think there’s plenty of server pride and differentiation in NA. Sanctum of Rall, my server, was a pretty populated server in PvE. (Our WvW fell apart after practically every WvW guild transferred when we fell out of T1.) It was overall a very friendly place with decent quality chat.

Megaserver has definitely led to a decline in chat. There’s a lot more negativity and angry-snark (as opposed to funny-snark) going on.

I’ve just hoped that, over time, Megaserver improvements lead to me being placed with a higher percentage of the type of players I enjoy playing with, as Anet has said they intend to tweak the algorithms and add new factors in the future.

That’s my hope too, but I’d really like to hear what they’re planning, more specifically, fairly soon. TC was a nice server and there is a ton more nastiness now – and I notice I’m not even always getting in the same megaservers as my guildmates! I’d really like to see some kind of RPer flag and a STRONG preference for putting us with that (and maybe a strong preference for anyone who was previously warned/suspended for verbal abuse to be put elsewhere).

Onisuo.8607:

Does not affect me at all(maybe I should have mentioned that in my post) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method I’m sure some adjustments will be made. If not, somewhere down the line it will affect me because Anet will make less money. That’s not something I want to happen.

So, you think that someone who is willing to spend 25-30 minutes doing something incredibly boring and repetitive for a single Black Lion key (and zero other progression/rewards), something so astonishing boring and repetitive that neither you nor anyone you actually, really know, can stomach doing, would simply buy the key if Anet put a stop to this?

LOL.

Seriously. LOL.

So no. No they would not buy a key. They would simply not have a key. They are getting what, $1.50’s worth per 30 minutes or so (there are some who can do it faster, but not much), and the only thing they can do, is then use the key to open a chest and get likely next-to-nothing. They’re effectively working for $3/hr.

This is a non-issue – and indeed the people who do it likely keep the game going in other ways (and I know some of them do buy gems – they just don’t spend them on keys!).

Nage.1520:

I have a guild of a lot of people, on Tarnished Coast who all seem to like this upgrade. At least all I’ve talked to, and that’s quite a few. They like it because we’re a guild that likes open world stuff. Not just world bosses. Not just farming nodes. We like the open world.

The open world feels more alive…even on Tarnished Coast, which is one of the busiest servers.

As a fellow TC-er, I can see it both ways.

The thing is, for less-populated maps, it’s pretty good. It’s not perfect, because the amount of “talking smack” and GIFT-type behaviour is up approximately 1200% (probably an underestimate, if anything!), and I really think GIFT’d players should be tagged to hang out with equally GIFT’d ones, but that’s another thread…

For heavily-populated maps, it’s extremely trying, because the current algorithm for determining whether to spawn another server seems to really like to fill maps to absolute bursting point. I used to be able to do World Bosses and actually have, y’know, a framerate. Not a good framerate, but a framerate. I could also actually use skills and avoid attacks and stuff, rather than dying to something that hadn’t rendered or animated on my screen!

Post-megaserver? Hahaha. It’s like just after they buffed the rewards from the World Bosses. Framerates in the single digits, most dangerous things not rendering, and even if they did the massive lag (which this was supposed to prevent!) means there is nothing that can be done about it. They are still doable because spamming 1 usually works, but good god, it’s a pretty significant fun decrease.

So I think the problem was making everything into a megaserver instantly, rather than watching and waiting. It’s weird because they said they’d watch and wait – but they apparently didn’t, and we’re told they’re now on holiday! Ummm. Not the best planning, there, Anet. Perhaps wait until AFTER the holiday for the big release?

EDIT – Also if maps are currently trying to have, say, 200 players on them, where possible, they should probably lower that to like, 100 – and actually leave room for guilds and friends and so on to arrive, and for people to have framerates!

Minos.5168:

I think that this new stance of silence is from the backlash they’ve gotten from responding.

Used to they’d respond more often, and it’d just elicit more complaints.

That’d be pretty strange. As a company, you want complaints, well, you want people to say what they don’t like. You don’t have to agree with them or follow them, but you should be compiling them. If you get more complaints, as a result of communication, that’s information, and useful info. A lot of serious fans hate complaints because they make them feel bad, but that is fan-ish behaviour, not smart professional behaviour.

The only time you don’t want to communicate is prematurely – i.e. to say “Oh we won’t be changing X, it’s great that way!”, when it turns out that in a meeting eight hours later, they decide to change X. I imagine this is the main reason for the current lack of communication, but tempus fugit and all that.

timmyf.1490:

Headline: Angry Mob Demands Target of Protest “Be Reasonable and Come Join Us”

If you want more dev interaction on these forums, it’ll take months of you guys exercising self-control and not attacking them or their work.

These forums haven’t been respectful enough to earn further dev interaction. If I worked for ArenaNet, I’d NEVER come here.

And if you’re so entitled as to think they “owe” us that interaction, there’s not really anything I can say. You’re wrong. Your $60 bought you a game, not the ability to force people to listen to you yell about how much you hate them and the work they’ve done.

If you think this is about “hate”, you should leave the discussion, because you clearly are not reading what people are saying. It is about criticism and dissatisfaction, and many people here have spent far, far more than $60. Whether they are “owed” a response isn’t the question. The question is whether it is smart to stay silent. I figure the devs have a week, at the outside, before people get really frustrated, so they need to respond by then if they want to avoid hurting the game.

Also, a guild leader who can’t distinguish “hate” from criticism is a guildsplosion waiting to happen, so you might want to look into that.

TheDaiBish.9735:

If they did say ‘we are aware of the issues and are looking into it’, do you honestly believe that people would stop posting / whining about the same thing on a daily basis?

That was /thread right there, pretty much.

It’s been eight days. Not eight weeks.

Yes, a lot of stuff is clearly borked and ridiculous and so on (Trait unlocks particularly), but they’ve put up multiple giant feedback threads and are no doubt reading them, and trying to decide what they can do to fix this stuff, and what they can prioritize. They are also probably internally debating whether individual problems fall into:

A) “They’ll get used to it.”

or

B) “Yeah that does need changing.”

So it would be dumb for them to be saying too much. That said, I do hope we hear some preliminary stuff soon-ish, certainly by this time next week. I don’t expect fixes, but they could give us some feedback on our feedback!

Victory.2879:

‘why don’t you have xyz trait’ ‘I can’t complete the event’.

Yep, and they won’t even be being unreasonable. 3g and 20 skill points is a non-trivial investment for newer players and casual players, and many of the events simply aren’t reliably available.

It worked in GW1 because you could solo (or at worst duo) any skill-mob, and they were always up (basically), but when you need a small zerg at least… and the event has to be up… Sigh…

Taygus.4571:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Taygus.4571:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

play normally? Whats “normal”?
and how many hours is that?

you’re “week”, is different to my week.

Sorry for the typo. But yes, of course I made my thoughts about ‘normally’. There are people with less time who need – let’s say – more than a month. But then those people could complain that it takes ‘months to reach max level’ as well.

Again, you’re throwing timelines around without any hours.

How many hours does it take you, doing WHAT, in game to level from 1-80.

In fact, create a new character now and tell us all exactly how many hours it takes you. Then we can talk timelines.
_
The issue isnt leveling to 80, its that trait unlocks are boring/out of reach for the level they are meant to be accessible. Even if some people can level quicker than others, it doesnt change this fact.

Without boosters or level jumps it’s usually 45 min-1hr/level, this is pretty steady across all normal methods. Only serious AoE in big events is faster (got three levels in one Scarlet invasion once), but that’s only viable at higher levels (if at all, depending on class).

Anyway 60-80 hours to do 1-80. So yeah “A week” is nuts. That’s 8.5hrs/day. Unemployed/holiday, and not in education is the only way to get that.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Is that so? But still. You level to 80 within a week if you play normally. So what’s the problem if you have to wait a bit until you have fully developped? It shouldn’t be a problem to do without certain traits until 80.

There is no way that “normal” play is going to see a player hit level 80 within a week.

“Normal play” for an adult with a job and RL friends is an average of 1-2 hours a day or less (some days you might get 4, but some will be zero). GW2 tends to average about 45 minutes to 1hr/level (sometimes as higher as 2hrs, but that’s rare). The Queensdale champ train and zone completion both hang around the 45 minutes to 1hr/level rate.

At 45 minutes/level (which is very optimistic without boosters, skip to 20 and so on), it’s 60 hours to 80. Assuming 2hrs/day so 14 hrs/week (which is very generous for “normal” play for an employed adult), so it’s going to be more than a month for most people. Only unemployed people, people on holiday, and students skipping their studies are likely to have time for the 8.5hrs/day (average) you need to do it in a week.

The new trait system is extremely bad for new characters, and just not fun, which is a terrible idea in an F2P game, frankly. Specific issues include:

1) Most traits sub-80 traits cannot reasonably be unlocked at the time you acquire them by the associated tasks. This is just unacceptable design – not just “poor” design, but “Okay, I’m not sure I’m interested in this game any more”-type design. I’ve got two characters to level, who have to unlock their traits the hard way, and good god, it’s just ridiculous. If you have access to a trait at 35, you need to have that trait possible to unlock by a level 35 character, unassisted.

2) The prices, both in gold and skill points for force-unlocking traits are ridiculously high. 43g and 360 skill points is not okay. It’s probably ten times higher than it should be. I have no idea what the goal here was, unless it’s to encourage people to get on the Queensdale champ train and stay there.

3) PvE in GW2 is already pretty boring. The new trait unlock system should have made it more interesting by getting you to try stuff and go around the world, and letting you freely try out whatever builds you wanted. Instead it encourages you to unlock only the traits you absolutely must, and to maybe accidentally unlock the rest, because you simply won’t be able to unlock many of them at an appropriate level.

4) This is made even worse by delaying traits to 30 and slowing their acquisition massively. I don’t know who found traits “too complicated” (I’ve never met them, and I know some very very casual players), but it seems like Anet don’t understand their own game – many of their skills and setups are pretty weak or even useless without the associated traits, and the game is significantly more dull to play without them. Whilst new players won’t know this, it’s not going to give a good impression.

A good start to fixing all this would to be to change all the requirements to ensure none of them are higher level than the level when you get the traits. If that’s not done, I can’t see myself ever levelling another character, or buying another character slot and that’s not good for my long-term interest in GW2.

The Holy Trinity is called Holy because people are irrationally devoted to it and obsessed by it, not because it has any special value.

That is what the OP and a lot of other posters don’t seem to understand. It’s holy in the same way many things are – they are subject of unquestioning, unthinking faith and devotion. The term was always rather derogatory.

Just thought that that could do with clearing up. It was never called the “Holy Trinity” because it worked or was best or whatever, just because people were obsessed with it. It only worked because gamer designers designed the game so that it did, and initially it wasn’t even a trinity, but contained a fourth role too – that of CC. WoW removed that fourth role (semi-intentionally) which lead to the Holy Trinity as we know it.

It’s certainly not necessary for an interesting endgame. It’s only necessary if you want a very specific style of endgame, one that dozens of games on the market today (and in the near future) already provide. Furthermore, they will always be better at it, because they were designed with it in mind, and in some cases have been doing it for most of a decade (or more!). The OP is basically complaining that basketball isn’t American Football, and demanding that it be changed so that it is.

bri.2359:

OP, as member of a dedicated guild that has successfully done Teq 100’s of times and the new Wurm 26 times, I think your idea is terrible.

So basically you’re saying “As someone who directly benefits in both loot and personal prestige from the present situation, I do not feel it should change!”. Not exactly surprising or relevant, bro.

bri.2359:

I am with the Penguin on this one. All this would do is promote more pugs, leechers, and akf’ers to pile onto these events. This is the last thing any organised guild or server doing these events want to see and have to deal with.

You don’t seem to able to explain why PuGs are inherently bad, as they have to be for that to be a negative. Is it your view that being in a PuG is in some way sinful or evil? There is no way to explain why you think “PuG” is a negative term otherwise.

Equally, can you explain how this would bring “Leechers” and “AFKers”? It seems like this system would totally mess up leechers and AFKers.

Finally, you say “No organised server or guild would want to do deal with this”. Sure, but it would never apply to an organised server or guild, would it? If you think it would, you need to explain how. Presumably you kill Teq/Wurm very regularly, right? So regularly that this timer-based solution would never kick in for you (as we can say it would need at least a day or two of 0 kills to even start the counter). So that’s a completely irrelevant argument, and that you’re bringing it up is very strange indeed.

Vol.7601:

That’s a nice word but that’s not relevant here. Transparency in games is largely limited to certain topics – disclosing future releases not being one of them.

Why any player deserves or has the right to know about the content of future releases is beyond me.

Actually, disclosing elements of future releases is, and Anet know this and this is why they are quite transparent about upcoming mechanic changes, often trailing them months ahead.

Content is more complex, and not necessarily about transparency (though it factors in), but Anet’s failure to outline their plans (very different to say, Blizzard with WoW, or Trion with Rift, both of whom give broad content outlines many months ahead) is making people wary of investing further time and money into GW2, I would suggest.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

I’m pretty sure the event is not bugged (in terms of getting loot).

The same thing can happen in world boss events if you join very late; you can get gold for the event but not do enough damage to actually get loot. If you just auto attack (and sometimes it’s limited to that because of the condition reflection) you may not be doing enough damage to get credit for the kill. It’s happened to me a couple of times, but when I play more dangerously to get more damage done (or spend less time rezing people) I usually get loot.

My suggestions are to try a different weapon/utility skills that let you do more damage (and lets you use more attack skills). Others also say to also form a party, I’m not 100% sure of the mechanic, but I think as long as you do some damage, your damage is combined with your party for determining loot drops.

This is definitely wrong.

I get loot on worldbosses 100% of the time so long as I get 10-20 seconds of DPS (often less). I mean, no two ways about it. That’s how it is.

With the knights, same character, same build, same weapons, same methods, much longer up-time, I only ever get loot on the first one I fight. Even if I’m on the second/third for several minutes.

It’s been so reliable that I thought it might be a rule that you only get loot on the first one, but apparently not.

So that only leaves “bug” as an option.

RedSpectrum.1975:

No one likes underwater zones or levels, no one

Truth.

It’s sad how many games have had to bitterly learn this lesson. Underwater zones are for the lose.

Leteia.5267:

People complaining about having to many non-hetero relationships in a vast game market of only two or three companies representing diversity is like me complaining about the lack of air on earth.

I hope you people complain about the lack of diversity in other games too. Because this sounds way to hypocrite and selfish.

Indeed, and ironically, when there are more romantic hetero relationships between NPCs (i.e. not between the PC and an NPC), the same people who are demanding them now, will almost always find fault with them, because they’re too soppy or too much of a focus or they don’t like one of the people involved (usually the dude) or whatever.

I’m fascinated by the people suggesting “all the male NPCs in GW2 suck”. I’d love to hear about some male NPCs (not the PC) in games they thought didn’t suck.

TurtleDragon.3108:

Tl;dr: It’s not that berserker gear doesn’t work well in PUGS/non zerker groups, it’s YOU who doesn’t work well with glass cannon builds.

Except that obviously isn’t true and is basically just faux-elitist or confused-elitist backslapping/self-congratulation. Nikephoros’ argument doesn’t make sense on a very basic level. He’s a superb player and optimizer, but he basically lives in a fantasy world when it comes to player skill, as do a lot of posters, here, sadly. Claiming someone is “bad” because they prefer a non-full-zerker gearset in a messy PuG is completely unreasonable. It’s basically redefining “bad” as “not in the top 1% of players”. Which just shenanigans.

I mean, it’s true that the very best players, those few, really don’t benefit from non-zerker gear even in a messy PuG. They are extremely few in number, however.

Unfortunately there are a gigantic number of people who think they are in that 1% (just like with the wealth 1% IRL – 33% of Americans think they’re in it! Obviously only 1% are, and it’s not even all the same people!), but who would strongly benefit from, when coming to PuG, being in some more survivable gear.

Nikephoros’ “But you’ll get better if you get downed all the time!” argument obviously doesn’t hold a great deal of water. If you’re downed, you’re not really learning anything. Wearing full zerker will teach you that you need to be better, but it won’t necessarily let you learn how to get there.

This build might well benefit from Frost Spirit, I note, but there is some really faulty logic and unrealistic elitism going on here. You need to accept that most players will never, ever, be so good that they don’t benefit from non-zerker gear in a PuG. Even most full-zerker players who are in elite groups are definitely benefiting from Reflects, Aegis and so on, and are not good enough to pull it off without those.

Danikat.8537:

The official word is that the animation in this game is much better in GW1, which means cloaks have to be much better animated as well or it would look silly, but a piece of loose fabric hanging from the back of a moving person is a surprisingly hard thing to animate.

If you don’t believe me go find a piece of cloth (even a towel would do) drape it over yourself, or better yet someone else (with their consent obviously) and run around. Watch how it moves. Now imagine the number of different animations required to recreate that convincingly, the physics required to determine which animations to use when and the progressing power required to do this for all 150 people on a map.

If you think it would be easy I’m sure Anet would love to hear from you.

tl;dr It’s not worth the effort it would take to make them.

This is obviously not accurate. It may be the “official line” (I hope not), but is no less nonsensical for it.

The armour in GW2 is simply not that well animated. It’s reasonably well-animated, as armour goes, but with no insult to the developers, it is nothing shocking or stunning or “stand out”.

Your whole suggestion about how we “watch a cloak in real life” is particularly off-base and misleading, because by that logic, none of the armour animation in GW2 is remotely acceptable, because none of it moves like real fabric or metal (far too light and far too flexible respectively). Equally, your “For 150 people” line is completely illogical – it’s not hugely greater than that for armour, and the way they solve that for armour is to strictly limit how many people they do detailed physics on. Which is precisely the solution that could be used here. So we can dismiss both those arguments entirely.

It’s relatively easy to do cloaks that are fairly satisfying, as satisfying, say, as the current armour animations. Even GW1’s very simplistic cloaks are certainly “on-par” with the complexity of the armour animations.

EDIT – I daresay the fact that the armour was designed without cloaks in mind and a lot of armour doesn’t have a good “cloak attachment point” is a bigger deal.

Ariete.6509:

After all of this plus over a year of release, how much more time do you need to truly realize where the problem really lies.

It’s very obvious.

It still lies in the design of the skill.

Learning workarounds to that, that’s not “fixing the problem”, those are workarounds. Your argument is effective that if your computer crashes every time you press ctrl+p, just use the print button, don’t bother complaining, don’t expect it to be fixed, and so on. L2Print!

It’s a worthless argument, and the basic design here, which forces you to disengage autoattack in PvE (I can’t even think of another skill which does that) is bad. It’s not some sort of awesome design, and I’m sorry to tell you this, but learning workaround to it does not mean you are awesome, though I know a lot of people’s egos are kind of riding on that.

I don’t expect it to be “fixed” any time soon, but it would be very nice to hear from ArenaNet as to whether it’s fully intended design, or rather the unfortunate result of the way they built this skill, because it’s really not clear to me which it is.

Is it something you can handle? Sure, but it’s very tedious to keep working around it, and most of the workaround reduce your DPS, especially if you have any lag at all, meaning 1H sword DPS is lower than frequently claimed, in practice.

Verow.6904:

I think 2/3 important characters in this game’s world are Females, the game needs some strong scary kitten dudes because it doesnt feel epic anymore.

This pretty much shows how the problem isn’t with the game, here. At all. It’s similar to the attitude that female comedians can’t be funny, female musicians can’t rock, and so on that was really common up into the ’90s.

If you can’t find something “epic” without “scary dudes”, I think that’s society’s problem, not the game’s.

DarksunG.9537:

What you just said proved my point. Having two people that can essentially think the same, when one of them is faster, stronger, has more endurance & can detach themselves from emotion more easily: that one is more likely to win. saying that has nothing to do with social engineering, it’s the result of scientific observation. Again, look at top mens & womens strength & speed records. It’s not even close. Read about men’s emotional wiring as regards to violence & enduring warfare. It’s why a female serial murdered is harder to believe/accept than a male. it just don’t happen. Why is it biased/wrong to say something that is factually true, I don’t get it.

All this i’m saying isn’t about “I want all male characters durrr!” it’s about “the expectation of more male warriors is normal & justifiable”. That is the statement that you seem intent on saying is false.
Then que Anet’s questionable girl-one-ups-man dialog & stories & you get the whole story of why things stick out in this game. They can make what they want, but lets call a spade a spade. One or more of the writers clearly don’t think much of men.

Why do you think that applies to Charr, Norns, Asura, or Sylvari? Explanation in detail please. Sylvari aren’t even animals in the normal sense, let alone mammals, and you think this applies to them? Norns have drastically different physiology to humans. Charr too. Asura probably aren’t mammals. So claiming “scientific” is utterly wrong.

This is a FANTASY GAME. Not “Olympics Simulator 2013”. Even the humans, are they ACTUALLY humans? We don’t know. They’re taller and better looking than humans in our world tend to be.

How does magic factor into this? It could make physiological differences meaningless. Everyone in GW2 uses magic – including Warriors – this has been stated by the devs.

Science about Earth is IRRELEVANT. You’re also wrong – there have been a number of female serial killers in reality, including a couple of violent ones.

The whole “oh the writers hate men!” deal is really insulting to ArenaNet staff, disrespectful, and generally non-rational. By that logic, the writers of Supernatural, say, “hate men”. Yet obviously they do not.

Indeed, the whole demand for male characters seems to be completely irrational, and based on ridiculous perceptions that men are being “persecuted” (you cannot deny this – you specifically allege it with “don’t think much of men”). As a man, I don’t feel remotely oppressed or persecuted by ArenaNet. Not in the least. I’m very sad to see other men claiming that they do – because it is not true. The female characters in this game are flawed and frequently flakey, just like the men.

If anything, the game has too many flakey characters of both genders in it, and too few sensible people – Majory is hardly some shocking genius, but sticks out because she is sensible and rational, in a game where most characters aren’t (Trahearne, for all the hate, is also sensible and always rational, I note).

Lostwingman.5034:

Eurhetemec.9052:

deeply outraged

I can barely breath I’m laughing so hard.
The only people deeply outraged and guffawing are the ones that think that having a male MC that isn’t a doofus or part of the main story is sexist.

That word does not mean what you think it means. Using the phrase “gurlpower” or denigrating feminism is certainly very sexist, and you’ve done both. At length.

Aedelric.1287:

This is getting to be quite the hot topic, just shows their is genuinely an issue here.

I do have my hopes up that we will get a few good male heroes in the living story, perhaps after this Scarlet nonsense is over.

On the contrary, it shows people will complain about absolutely anything, and some people have no sense of irony, nor any ability to understand how others live.

I’m sure we will see more decent male heroes – Braham was fine with me, though, because I don’t hate young people, unlike some, apparently – but demanding them is utterly silly and shows a complete sense of entitlement of the worst kind, as well as a serious lack of patience.

Goose.5196:

All of the female leads seem to have the exact same personality. They are all flawless/heroic/sexually ambiguous. All of the male leads have stereotypical dumb male personalities. They are either dumb brutes who don’t think before they act (Rytlock) or they are whiny idiots (Logan, Braham, Faren, Trahearne).

You can’t whine about being sexist, whilst being a wild sexist, Goose, it’s just silly. The female characters in this games have plenty of flaws and problems and personality issues.

Is Zojja flawless? Are you kidding me? She’s ill-tempered and bit of a maniac. Is she sexually ambiguous? Nope.

What about Caithe? She takes things far too personally, is unnecessarily mysterious about stuff to everyone, and lies to her friends, you call that flawless? Is she “sexually ambiguous”? Nope, she is very clear about her love for Faolain (it’s amazingly sexist to suggest clear lesbians are “sexually ambiguous” – that’s a typical male fantasy).

What about Eir? Flawless. No, she’s kind of shortsighted, just like you say Rytlock is, but actually she does less smart stuff in the stories she appears in than Rytlock. She doesn’t seem to be a particularly great mother to Braham either. So that’s flawless to you? I don’t see anything sexually ambiguous about her.

What about Rox? She seems fairly competent, but not overly so. She is not sexually ambiguous that I am aware of.

Then there’s Braham, whose only sin is being young and having a fancy haircut, yet posters are claiming he “doesn’t look like a man” (I would love to see the pictures of the people claiming this!), and he’s not particularly silly or stupid, and is both brave and kind. Apparently that’s not okay, though.

What about Kasmeer and Majory? Majory certainly is competent and sexually ambiguous, but the only one who clearly is. Kasmeer just seems kind of dim – like Lord Faren as others have said – has good instincts, but not a great thinker. That’s not flawless on any level.

Is there really, honestly, anyone out there who did not see this coming?

As someone with a Warrior main, I’ve been saying to friends for weeks that it was utterly inevitable that PvP nerfs were incoming, and I just hoped they didn’t hit PvE too hard (luckily the builds for the two are pretty far separated, so should be okay).

I particularly love the guys suggesting that, if they’re going to nerf us, they should just delete us. I mean, come on, if you can’t take being nerfed when we’re fairly clearly OP, just don’t play PvP games.

Atlas.9704:

Next up I expect the Hylek and the Centaurs to make the Hoof Hop Alliance because…..reasons.

Surely the Destroyers and the Inquest – they’ve got about as much in common as the Nightmare Court and the Krait. At least the Hylek and Centaurs are both fairly normal living creatures with simple goals of conquest.

zeromius.1604:

I did want to point out that Trahearne could qualify as a Mary Sue and yet not once did anyone claim that he is a Mary Sue probably because he is male.

You are straight-up inarguably wrong and should admit that.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=trahearne+mary+sue

He has been called a Mary Sue countless times. Your ignorance here does you no favours. Marty Stu is an alternative term, and he was called that plenty too.

Further, you are not explaining “Villain Sue” here, merely proving you don’t understand it well enough to explain it. That’s unhelpful.

Scarlet, as of right now, is a perfect example of Villain Sue. You could not ask for a better one. She’s TEXTBOOK, right down to graduating from all the universities of the cleverest species on the planet (not just one of them like they do – she has to be better, more special, more unique), being very young (like all Sylvari), and being completely fearless and not reliant on anyone else for anything, as well as there being no clear explanation for why people do what she says beyond “I’m so awesome!”.

This could change in future. I hope that it does. As of right now, though, it is the case.

I like the idea of using downed in PvE but I think there are two caveats to doing so:

1) It shouldn’t be overused – it slows things down a fair bit without adding much challenge in most cases – so only for specific occasions.

2) We need some finishers that aren’t immersion-breaking and obviously PvP-oriented, and aren’t paid-only, if it’s going to be used more.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

If you’re running a pure axe build, try 30/25/0/10/5. However, do not use that dumb banner trait, use Empowered.

Isn’t losing Fast Hands a bit of an issue?