Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Right by not playing for a couple of days, you miss two laurels. But in those two days other players that had time could be ahead dozens of laurels. Being only two laurels behind isn’t worse than the alternative, is it?

THAT IS NOT THE ALTERNATIVE, VAYNE.

Read the OP for god’s sake!

The ALTERNATIVE being proposed is CATCH UP.

EDIT – You are both using a Strawman, i.e. not responding to the OP’s argument and using another one entirely, and a False Dichotomy, in that you are presenting two things as if they are the only options when they are not. It’s almost impressively bad arguing.

Not much to say but “Yep”. I mean, that’s all spot-on. I remember before I was casual – back in WoW – I had no idea why people couldn’t always do all their dailies.

Now I actually have to use most of my time constructively, well, suddenly it becomes very clear.

And yes the solution you propose is absolutely perfect.

Vayne.8563:

Otherwise some people would have thousands of laurels by now, and casuals would have far less.

Nope, Vayne, read his post, don’t give a generic response. What he’s suggesting is much friendlier to casuals than the current system.

Right now hardcores have up to 358 Laurels. Casuals are unlikely to have more then a few dozen. This is only going to get WORSE, not better.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Eurhetemec.9052:

The solution – the holy grail, even – is to get them invested.

This is why housing is on the way. Casual players love housing, and it keeps people invested – they think about their little house, and they want to come see it again.

Not all casual players love housing, tyvm. Enough with the generalizations please.

This is like saying [all] hardcore players want the rainbow shooting legendary bow.

I’m quite impressed with your ability to take the suggestion that you like housing so personally, Lanfear. What next, I suggest you like the colour blue and you challenge me to a duel?

Obviously I mean most, not all – there is no all about anything in games, is there?

Enough casual players like housing that it is a good way to get them to stick around – it is especially good to get them to keep coming back to the game. I can’t think of anything quite as broadly liked.

They will need to do a bit better than generic solo instances, though, I suspect – perhaps shared towns more akin to DAoC’s housing zones (but more urban and with massively better visual design).

Wolfheart.1938:

Rewards are time-gated, content is not. Sorry (not) for those that wish to repeat the same thing over and over every day just for the rewards.

It’s fine to time-gate stuff if you let people catch up – i.e. miss a bunch of dailies, do them later – but by not doing that, then it’s effectively insisting that you log in every day or lose out, which is pretty poor as a game experience.

Harper.4173:

Sadly I hate this too – i feel i have to log on every day just to keep up.
I can’t just power-through in the weekend to catch up on stuff i didn’t do over the week. It’s becoming frustrating and repetitive. Getting tired of all this nonsense.

I agree completely. Please let us catch up on the bloody dailies on the weekend! I want to play GW2 when I want to play GW2, not to feel like I have to “do my chores”.

champ.7021:

I remember how freaking nervous i was when i went around that northern part of elona with all the toxic sands and what not. That place was dark and the mobs there were actual mobs where if you aggroed them you wouldnt just have an easy time face rolling through them. After a while i got used to it but the first time i went through it, it was frighful something i havent experienced much in gw2.

Were you ever in Orr before you had decent gear, and after it got buffed? I was, and that was pretty exciting, in a similar way (unlike Karka place which is just dull and frustrating/tiring – I mean, it’s hard work, but it’s not atmospheric or cool).

TooBz.3065:

The problem with the unvested masses is that they are fickle and will leave for the next MMO when it comes out.

The solution – the holy grail, even – is to get them invested.

This is why housing is on the way. Casual players love housing, and it keeps people invested – they think about their little house, and they want to come see it again.

Vayne.8563:

Anet obviously felt that they were going to lose a lot more than just a big percentage of players if they didn’t make a change…or they wouldn’t have made it.

Nope – that’s far too simplistic a claim.

They could be doing it for that reason OR they could be testing the waters to see if this was a bad or good thing OR they could simply be making an outright error (like with Blizzard and very late Classic WoW or with the early Honor system in WoW – which was an error that went on for about two years!).

colesy.8490:

Well zerkers have a higher chance of running a proper build and understanding their class than random bads in cleric do.

Also, we don’t always have people on our friend list to play with.

Why not, Colesy? Get more friends. Try harder. Stop trying to get the LFG tool to act as a crutch. If you were really as elite as you say, I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t have enough friends to run stuff most of the time.

Sure zerkers have a better chance, but it’s only a chance, and all it does increase a PROBLEM already present in GW2 – that the only good way to gear for PvE is zerker – it takes that from being a problem the playerbase discusses, to being a problem the GAME endorses. That’s a serious step. The devs probably want to spend resources to address the zerker problem, not to make it worse!

Shotgun Sonata.5017:

I’m not making progress in GW2. I’m watching filler episodes.

So Arena Net, fellow players, am I alone in these concerns? Does anyone else wish the bar could occasionally be moved up once in a while? Will there be new, harder dungeons? Or is it time for me to move on?

I think anyone who plays an MMO solidly for a few months or more, and who plays well, and frequently (not even constantly), will reach this point.

Is it time to move on? If you feel the need for progression, well, yes. That’s not a criticism, but until/unless an expansion comes out, the only thing you can do is wait for more content – which will not necessarily fit your fairly specific needs.

I’ve reached this point in many MMOs myself – so I take a break – usually from MMOs entirely. Then I come back once a bunch more content has been released, or after an expansion. Only DAoC managed to keep me going continuously, and that’s because it’s endgame was largely lateral power-gain (with some soft vertical) through PvP, and because you could always do stuff better, or with less people or whatever, in PvE. No modern MMO is set up that way so…

EDIT – One problem people don’t seem aware of is that, right now, only a tiny percentage of players go into the dungeons.

So adding more perma-dungeons, for this tiny percent, doesn’t seem like the best plan.

LFG is an attempt to address this. We shall see if it does. If so – expect more perma-dungeons.

Vayne.8563:

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot. Your legitimate grievance is that the game has changed direction. But saying many people…how many becomes a very important question.

Actually, that’s a logic-fail Vayne. Just because a group is a minority, doesn’t mean that his point is moot. As you say, “how many becomes a very important question”. That is true even with a minority.

I mean, if changes kitten off 1% of the players, please 15%, and leave the rest unaffected, that’s obviously fine. However, if they kitten off 15%, please 20%, and leave the rest unaffected, then you are looking at losing quite a lot of people – sure you have better retention on 20%, but is retaining them enough to make up for the losses?

Obviously it’s all theoretical without numbers, but minorities DO matter – if you keep kitten ing off 5% “minorities” off the playerbase, pretty soon you have a tiny playerbase. You need new blood or returners. Is anyone back for newTeq? I dunno. Everyone I knew who came back, came back because of previous events or SAB (even if they actually didn’t enjoy World 2), stayed because GW2 is fun.

All that said, I doubt Teq has caused many people to leave – however if he is still like that in a month, or if we see more content like that, I do think we will begin to see people either:

A) Leaving.

Or

B) Disliking the game enough that they are “primed” to leave the moment something new comes along (I mean people who aren’t the type to just join every new MMO – nothing you can do about those guys and they’re probably playing FFXIV right now!).

Odokuro.5049:

Maybe turn your lighting down in your options then every zone would be dark, hehe…

Haha :p

But what people really want is the contrast – a light in the darkness, you know? It’s visually cool and exciting, but rarely seen in MMOs – GW2 has more light vs dark than say WoW, but less than older MMOs.

Aurust.8961:

I have what I call a dungeon roster….. players that I ran with in PUGS etc that know their class and are in full zerker… I add them to friends and nickname them COE ( Name)… whenever i want a dungeon run I jut go down the list and ask them all….

That’s what I did in every other game I played, including WoW, as late as Cataclysm, for any serious content, or if I really need to be done in 20 minutes instead of 30.

These people demanding gear-checks built into the machinery of the game are, as I said, ironically being very lazy. They keep demanding people “get good” (which seems to mean “wear full zerker”, not actually “get good”, otherwise gear checks wouldn’t help), and do hard work to learn to play and so on, but they don’t want to expend the absolutely minimal effort of asking people on their friends list – even though it’s the only REAL way to get people who are good, not just “technically wearing the right gear”.

I’d love to see more genuinely dark places, but if that is going in, they need to also implement a “light” or lantern that isn’t the torch – even Dark Souls has this.

Konrad.9587:

On the other hand, people quit doing dungeons because majority of PUG runs are not optimal at best, and plain terrible at worst. In such cases the content is wasted because of inability to filter like-minded players from the masses.

Finding a dedicated and professional dungeon guild isn’t an answer because of varied schedules, different time zones, language barriers, et cetera. And although I belong to a one, I’ve never seen a MMO with smaller amount of professional PvE guilds.

I don’t buy it, Konrad. I certainly agree PUG runs tend not to be “optimal”, but that’s a ridiculous standard. “Optimal” is for friends and guildies.

Also you are proving my point; you say “I’ve never seen a MMO with a smaller amount of professional PvE guilds.”. Think about that.

Professional PvE guilds are not using tools to pick their member for dungeons. They are not playing with PUGs. They are playing with each other (ahem!). So the problem is NOT the tool. Professional PvErs want a gear ladder. That’s why they aren’t here. So you’re confusing two different things here.

TooBz.3065:

Two points, first, no check box or gear selection option on a LFG tool is going to weed out that kind of “bad.” Second, I think those expectations are best kept to speed runs with people you know.

It works the same way with WvW. If I’m with my guild, we all know what to do and can wipe a normal zerg twice our size. If I’m running with a random zerg, my expectations are lowered.

Yep. If that’s the standard people want, no tool in the world will even help with that apart from the dreaded FRIENDS LIST, which this game already has.

colesy.8490:

And yet most PUGs can’t dodge even if their life depended on it. There is a skill element to the game, people just prefer to shut off their brains, and then when they wipe have no idea why they did and refuse to use any good builds because “well it’s just cookie-cutter, I’m going to be hipster with my terribad condi build”.

Colesy, you’re proving my point – gear and builds are what the problem is here.

I don’t agree re: “most PUGs” not being able to dodge – most of them can. The problems stem from either:

A) They’re learning content that is new to them.

or

B) They have poor gear (like, green or blue, not necessarily bad choices – can be that too of course) and thus the fights take longer and eventually they screw up.

Most Zerker speedrun-type players I’ve come across are fairly mediocre players in terms of dodging and so on – this is super-obvious when you play with them in PvP and they fail ultra-hard. But they checkbox their way to specific gear and spec, and press the right buttons, and because the group comp is very specific, everything dies so far that their skill isn’t an issue.

Further, GW2 is terrible at explaining why people wipe, so unless you tell them, no-one will ever learn. Don’t want to teach? Then you have to only play with people you know. No different in GW2 to anything MMO.

Harper.4173:

When faced with an elitist exclusion a player can go one of two ways :

1)Cry and leave.
2)Improve himself and become part of the community that’s being “elite”.

Do we really need people in category 1? If you’re going to play the game at the same skill ( experience/ competence) level you were playing when you first started – why are you even here?

Yes we do need those people – they are are majority of the playerbase, and the majority of the gem-buyers! That is a ridiculous position to hold, Harper.

Also, nice attempt to exclude the middle – obviously most players are better than they were – yet nowhere near your standard or you wouldn’t even be complaining.

Finally, if you’ve experienced games where elitism became a big thing, you know perfectly well that 2) is false, because instead of that happening, the elite crew just raise the bar and exclude just as many people as ever. I know, I’ve been one of them. This is especially true in games where elitism is more spec/gear based than skill – and GW2 is one of those.

As for elitism being at the bottom of the list – no, it isn’t – it’s one of the main reasons that very few players do dungeons – which means the game is failing to get people into some content that is meant to be showcasing it. That that content is being wasted because people are afraid of exclusion.

You are only justifying that fear.

Harper.4173:

Maybe it’ll make for smoother runs and provide incentive for players to get better.

How would it possibly do that if you separate the best players off from everyone else? Without the good players to teach the rest, things will not change, don’t be silly.

Harper.4173:

Here’s the deal – you’re right – elite players know other elite playes – but I’m not here to sync schedules.

The tool should provide the option for me to create a group based on certain criteria- those who can qualify get in and we start a smooth and well organized run.

My schedule is erratic. I’m not here to start organizing things. I want to get in – get the stuff done as fast as possible with as little effort as possible and get out.

There’s no reason that the tool should do that. The devs aren’t here to cater to your erratic schedule ahead of making the tool work for the majority of their playerbase. If you want to get in and get things done, you should do it the way you always have been.

You simply cannot go on about the value of hard work and then refuse to do what is actual pretty minimal organising. Set up a website for elites looking for elites if you care that much! Or wait for someone else to do it. But don’t demand the devs make a tool exclusionary to support what is probably 1-5% of their playerbase (some of whom CROW about never having bought gems!).

Harper.4173:

As far as being a burden for the devs – check again.
I’m playing THEIR game, I’ve bought it – I’ve spent a lot of cash on gems – I’m not being a burden – I’m giving them money and time despite their best efforts to kick me off.

It’s not likely you spend more money than casual players, though – in fact every other cash-shop MMO (f2p or b2p) that isn’t a Korean grinder suggests casual players and mid-casuals are the key spenders. I’m sure that’s especially true here, where gold can, eventually, buy anything in the cash shop.

colesy.8490:

I’m sick of people making excuses for bads, get good or get out.

This is really an incredibly silly attitude for GW2. If you like elitism, there are dozens of games which support it extremely strong.

GW2 never has, and is never likely to.

You are like an olympic-level marathon runner going to the London Marathon and screaming that every runner except the elite needs “get good or get off the road!”. No, they don’t. That’s not how it works.

It’s not like what you’re asking for requires skill, either – it requires gear and specific builds, not skill. So let’s drop the attitude and stop pretending skill is the issue, not gearing.

Schwarzkristall.3984:

“lf 3 berserker warriors and 1 Mesmer COE all path”

Then a Hunter, conditonmancer, another guard (and tank of course -.-) join. And of course nobody leaves if I ask … lol…this is rediculous. Are you using the tool?
The last one who joins is a zerker Warri
If I could choose who wants to join my group, that would not happen. So The Zerker Warri and me are suffering from the tardness and impoliteness of the others.
So why is it my fault that you bother me?

We even can´t kick them, two kick replies are not enough

So did tell them what the problem was and ask them to leave? You didn’t actually say, and I’m guessing you did not because you used an excuse: “of course nobody leaves if I ask”. But did you ask?

If not, then you need to stop weeping about it.

If you did, tell us what they said.

I am using the tool, but I haven’t had any problems like you’ve described. Everyone I’ve asked to leave has left. I’m guessing you said nothing and then just dropped group. Or did some passive-aggressive complaining then dropped group.

SpeedFiend.4521:

You guys asking for a HP nerf know that he’s been killed with 5 minutes to spare on the clock, right?

How many times, and by who?

If we’re talking some kind of “Perfect Scenario”, where you had a zone full of perfectly-geared people, perfectly coordinated, and absolutely the max number of people possible, and you still only had 5 minutes on the clock, then uh, that doesn’t speak well of the design.

What I’ve seen is perfect coordination, perfect turret defense, megalaser firing on full, stackers being buffed and cleansed, and Teq only getting to 50% before time runs out, simply because the DPS wasn’t there (whether it was too few players or they weren’t geared enough is impossible to say – because we have literally no way to determine either!).

This should be an encounter where organisation and skill counts, not a DPS check, which is what it actually is right now.

5 minutes more on the clock or making the first 25% easier to get off would make most of the difference, I suspect.

Also there has to be a way to prevent incompetents and AFKers from getting the turrets – until there is, this is a pretty shoddy encounter.

Wanze.8410:

I need like 5 hours to make 50 gold on the TP and thats a casual estimate for me.
I need 2 months to get 80 laurels.

How much gold do you need to have to have the buying power to make 50 gold in 5 hours on the TP, though, Wanze? I’m guessing it’s in the hundreds, if not thousands, otherwise a lot more people would be doing it. All the information I can find on making that kind of money relies on you already have multiple hundreds of gold at the least.

So part of the difficulty is getting up to that sort of range where you can even start making that kind of money.

Unless you are doing Fractals, Ascended gear is only slightly better than non-Ascended Exotic (for now, may change later), thus it may make sense to blow Laurels to get cash, because that cash can help you to get into a place where you can make MORE cash, and eventually, perhaps, be like you in terms of being able to make 10g/hour from the TP.

That said it looks like T6 mat bags have a significantly better average return than dyes, if you’re turning Laurels into gold.

Schwarzkristall.3984:

Sometimes there are groups which post, that they are new to this and looking for someone who likes to explain. Sometimes I like to join those groups but mostly I like to speedclear with a full zerker group. I want to have the possibility to CHOOSE! Of course everyone can play this game and his char as he wants BUT I don´t want to suffer from those in MY Team cause this ppl don´t fit in our group teamwork! Full zerker group works mostly, full condition group sucks always. I want to choose.

Then set up a game with the details saying that this is a full zerk speedclear, and ask people to leave if they aren’t up for that. What is too difficult about that for you? If you can’t work up the courage to ask someone to leave, you can hardly complain about this. Sure, you may not be able to kick everyone, but you can ask them to leave.

Or you could just drag them through and take 20 minutes instead of 15 – but surely better that than wasting 5 minutes trying to get the perfect person?

My experience from other games suggests that people generally do what they’re asked to do – so just with-hold any kicks for people who won’t.

Harper.4173:

I put in effort and time – and I improved my game – by myself – not by being a burden to others.

Sure, but you can’t expect the in-game tool to automagically select the people you want, especially as there is no way to tell from someone’s gear, achievements, build, or anything else, that they are competent (well, short of a handful of specific achievements that even great players may have).

As you say yourself, the game does not force people to improve – so you get terrible players with 6k achievements, full zerker, etc. etc.

Actually there is ONE thing which requires good play – deep Fractals – you’re not going to get to Fractal level 50 or whatever without learning to play – but I’m guessing you want super-elite players to speedrun relatively easy content, not to do hard stuff.

I mean, what’s funny here is, we have people like you whinging about ultra-elite and awesome you are (which I’m sure is true), and how much “hard work” you have put in and how people shouldn’t shy away from this “hard work”, yet you are asking for a tool to do your work for you.

Which is pretty ironic.

Surely the tool should be aimed at the sort of casual player who isn’t competent or connected enough to form l337 speedrun groups, no?

I mean, I’ve played at an extremely elite level in a lot of games – DAoC and WoW particularly, whereas I was at the cutting edge PvP-wise and PvE-wise at various times (respectively). I’m a bit older and saner now, so I’m not into that, but if there is one thing I know, it’s that truly elite players know other elite players, and can form groups relatively easily. They don’t need a tool to do it for them. You only need a tool when you are casual or getting started.

So let’s be real – the tool does not need to support exclusion. The only thing I could see being reasonable would be, for Fractals only, a minimum Fractal Level option.

If you just want to speedrun COF for gold and exclude baddies, well, you shouldn’t need a special tool for that. Just do the work and stop being a burden on the devs, as you might say!

mercury ranique.2170:

I mean by this that the making of errors is rewarded and therefore encouraged if items are replaced. If items are not replaced, people will more likely learn from the experience and pay more attention in the future.

I also mean that the reason they don’t do it is that they don’t have the proper tools. a bankslot upgrade can’t be removed from an account. To do so Arenanet must have a programmer write a tool for that. Then a Q&A specialist must run tests. After that the support people needs to get training in this. In the end , Arenanet is investing money they could have invested in other things.

I have been a member of city council in my home town, and was specialised in city council budgets. We challenged each others often when someone wanted something for the town, to explain what other things the town shouldn’t do to fund that.

So if you think arenanet should have this tool? what do you think that arenanet shouldn’t be doing to fund the development. Would you say that skipping the living story content in the month October would be a good thing?? So no new content October at all??

You started off so well, then lapsed into a truly ridiculous argument, Mercury. ArenaNet are a company with hundreds of employees and dozens of developers. The people developing internal tools are not the same people developing content. I’m very surprised that you think they are. Having worked at companies a little like ArenaNet, I can tell you that they are not.

The issue here is priorities, not money. A company like ArenaNet is not like a council. The internal tool developers will be working on something – the question is do they work on this tool or another one.

Further, there will be someone who can remove bank slots from an account. A tool will merely be there to make it so that some lowly CSR can do it, rather than second-line support or a developer.

So we would not be talking about “skipping living world content”. That’s just wrong. We would be talking about skipping some other internal tool which we would never hear about.

As for “Oh well people will learn!”, sure, some people will, but they will also lose respect for the company involved, because the vast majority of companies will fix this sort of thing. This is a market with considerable competition, and the perception of poor customer service, especially with things that cost RL money, is a serious issue.

I understand Gaile’s explanation, and that makes rather more sense, but I have to say, I think that if ArenaNet wants long-term customer retention, they need to be careful in how much they say “no”.

Hawkian.6580:

Empyreal Fragments, Dragonite Ore and Bloodstone Dust can’t; the time-gated Ascended materials you just mentioned can also be bought with earned gold rather than converting gems. Generally speaking for all the hemming and hawwing about the evil moneygrubbers driving every decision behind this game’s additions, Ascended gear in general is not very friendly to the “pay2win”-inclined among us.

Yeah – GW2 has 99 problems but being “pay2win” very certainly ain’t one.

Knote.2904:

colesy.8490:

Non-zerker/assassin stat combinations are for WvW/PvP.

Because of failed content design.

Why would any dev design that to be the case lmao.

They wouldn’t, but some people don’t care about design, and just want to sneer at anyone who doesn’t check the right boxes – in this case being full zerker/assassin for PvE content.

TexRob.5183:

This is not an issue. If they shorten it, it further trivializes content. The whole concept of getting out of combat is easy mode. If mobs are still aggro on you, you’re going to be in combat, guess what, monsters don’t like you.

Go play Everquest for some perspective.

You don’t seem to have read this thread at all.

No-one is complaining about the length that you are in combat.

People are complaining about in-combat becoming bugged, and lasting longer than the devs intend it to. Which hilariously, was something people used to complain about in EQ plenty. EQ’s design was also absolutely appalling, and every game since has moved further and further from it (even DAoC, which was barely two years later had gone from sitting for 30 mins+ to regen to sitting for 3 mins or less – WoW took it down to 30 seconds). So you won’t gain “perspective” from that, just an idea of how incredibly bad and time-unfriendly EQ’s design was (I say this as someone who played EQ a fair bit back in the day).

Craywulf.5793:

Time-gated is not the problem…anyone who feels “forced” is letting their emotions cloud their rationality. They make things time-gated to motivate and guilt you into buying gems. It’s up to you to have some self-discipline with your wallet and time.

I just want to point out that this is complete and utter nonsense, because NONE of the time-gated stuff (Laurels, particularly) can be obtained by “buying gems”. I wish people would stop claiming stuff is to make you “buy gems” when “buying gems” will not help with these issues at all.

gaspara.4079:

Dulfy isn’t needed, but people who play to chase the carrot do and always will take the path of least resistance. Thats the reason these forums are filled with complaints every time a farm spot is nerfed, or content is made harder without increased rewards, or a moneymaking export is closed. People chasing the carrot don’t see the journey (which is what rpgs even mmos used to be about) on the other side of their blinders, all they see is that carrot dangling inches in front of their eyes and they just keep running until they can catch it (which they never will).

I don’t mean to be contrary Gaspara, but I think Dulfy IS needed right now, and I feel like I made some seriously bad choices because I didn’t start reading her until recently.

The problem is that ArenaNet are great at making their events sound cool and interesting and lore-appropriate, and terrible, absolutely terrible about making it clear what it’s important for you to do, what failing to do will cause you to miss out on permanently, and in some cases they completely fail to explain how you should even get started on stuff.

Cases in point:

1) the Queen’s Jubilee event – I had absolutely no idea how to get started, following in-game information. I spent literally an entire evening of gaming trying to figure it out. I saw some cool stuff and so on, on the way, but until I was directed to Dulfy (or another guide, I forget which), I couldn’t work it out. I’m not stupid or bad at following instructions, so… Wasted an evening because ArenaNet didn’t bother to give us good directions/explanations – I wasn’t the only one confused, either.

2) Gift of Crystal – I had no idea that thing was even in the game! Let alone something I should be hurrying to get! The sad thing is I played a bit whilst you still could, went to that isle, did some of the stuff, wasn’t excited by it, and so left, not realizing I was losing out until I saw it on Dulfy long AFTER it was closed (I was going back through to see what I’d missed out on).

If ArenaNet were better at signposting some of this stuff, I don’t think Dulfy would be needed, but… right now they’re using her as a crutch – making it so players who do want to know what to do have to go there. Because the time limited content is often, y’know, really limited, this is quite an issue.

Swoo.5079:

Does anyone doubt that the large majority of the MMORPG players only do raids because of the loot?

And even then most don’t care until they have stuff like LFR and still many don’t care?

If a designer has to load a certain piece of content with rewards to attract players, maybe, just maybe, that content sucks.

True that. I think you need to provide rewards which are at least even with other activities, though, or people will avoid your activity. Once that is in place (and actually was a stated goal for GW2 at one point), though, then you’ll see both what’s easy, and what’s fun rising to the top in popularity. Champ farming isn’t huge fun, but it is easy, and it’s kind of chatty – y’know, social, like in an MMO of old!

Because it’s easy pretty much everyone is nice to each other instead of nasty, too.

What they need are, really, I think, long-kitten -but-easy raid-like open-world (but perhaps within structures) events with a dozen or more cool, different bosses who SEEM dangerous but aren’t REALLY very dangerous, and which reboot at set, known, repeatable times every day (maybe rebooting faster in peak time). I think that way you’d get everyone together, have a good time, have some sense of danger/threat (like, have encounters where you can wipe, but it requires actually messing up a bit, not horrible DPS check walls and the like).

Temples are a bit like that but they’re thinking too small. Like DAoC PvE raids, a bit more is what I’m suggesting.

EDIT – Reason I use DAoC PvE raids as an example is that they were:

A) Extremely popular.

B) Quite similar in how they worked to World Boss events (in a sense).

C) Didn’t have to throw out tons of loot – most people would be going home empty-handed in terms of “new stuff”, and those who got stuff were getting mostly cosmetic upgrades or utility items. Everyone would tend to get a decent amount of cash and sell items, which would translate to blues/greens in GW2 terms.

Swoo.5079:

It is true that it is possible to acquire more ectos, coin and tier6 materials today, so crafting the armor is easier, but the question remains why this change was given so little attention by Arenanet communication, leaving the player base free to all kind of speculations.

It is easier, but we’re still looking at @4.5g per piece for armour, and a player is unlikely to arrive at 80 with more than 8-10g if new. For people who don’t play for multiple hours per day (i.e. more than two) acquiring cash is also quite challenging, and anything much more than 1g a day is unlikely (even that may be high), unless they sell absolutely everything they find (which may be an advisable course, but one the game tries to direct you away from, I feel).

I suspect the goal here is to force people into dungeons, because it seems like that is by far the most expeditious route to Exotic armour now, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened at the same time as the LFG system, which should make that MUCH easier for casual players to get into.

That said, if I wanted to run dungeons for loot, I sure as hell would not be playing GW2.

Ichishi.9613:

i love how everyone, including anet, assumes that magic find is ridiculously awesome and worth investing into and that everyone is so eager to increase it.

I did tequatl 2 times got 2 rares.
And since I get 600 karma for daily I don’t even bother doing them anymore.
Just sitting with gold and gems, spending my time chatting with guildies.

What’s weird is, unless MF got changed after the last ArenaNet discussion of it, it doesn’t apply to:

1) Chests – including world event boss chests.

2) Bonus floaty chests – including the one from each world event.

So MF is actually only even helping us with the giant piles of loot we get from stuff like Scarlet. Apparently 42% (for example) isn’t helping very much, because it’s still blue/green central for me!

TexRob.5183:

People are saying you can’t get to it from contacts, but at the entrance of a dungeon. I don’t follow. Does something pop up when you go to enter the dungeon? If so, haven’t seen it yet.

Even people who don’t have access to it generally seem to be able to get it to come up by going near the entrance of a dungeon.

I have the LFG all the time since last night and am in no way special, so it may be random.

mtpelion.4562:

Since they aren’t doing either, it suggests that they don’t know what they are doing.

Or that they want a middle-ground between action-game and RPG. Like, y’know, Action RPGs. By your logic, if we extend it, actual skill shouldn’t matter at all in the “ideal” RPG, only the gear that you are wearing.

Which is somewhat hilarious, because the idea that RPGs are solely “about gear” is basically revisionist nonsense. Perhaps by “RPG” you mean “WoW-clone”? I’ve been playing RPGs off and on the computer since the eighties, mate, and I can tell you that them being “about gear” is a very recent development, and a kind of kitten one.

Even in games back in the 1980s, like 1987’s superb Dungeon Master, there was active dodging in real time (moving your group out of the way of a fireball, for example).

So yeah, no that’s not how it works.

Evans.6347:

Unlike you, I have actually played Farmville so I call BS on your little statement.

Of course, housing would be a good way to implement some Farmville-like grinding and cash shop stuff, though, would it not? (apparently the contraction of “would it not” is unacceptable – man ArenaNet you need to get some people to look at your swear-checker… even your own employees are getting mad with it, as we see on the Sylvari forum amongst others).

/trollface

More seriously, I don’t think they will do that, and I’m glad to hear that housing is something that they are actively working on. I’ve always enjoyed MMOs which let me have a home much more than those which don’t. I get that it’s meaningless for a lot of people, and some devs don’t remotely get why anyone would ever want it (WoW’s devs, for example), and maybe it’s even silly, but I just feel a lot happier in an MMO where I have some sort of “home”. The home instance isn’t really that, yet because it’s so generic and un-home-y.

haviz.1340:

Both power and condition damage scale linearly. Critical damage and damage modifiers are what makes the difference.

Yep, this bears repeating, because it is the actual issue, not that “power is too good!” as people say.

Power is increased in effectiveness by Precision and Critical Damage particularly, and it isn’t mitigated by anything but enemy Toughness, which seems to increase linearly even though power is effectively no longer linear because of the multiplicative effects described.

Condition Damage is not only destroyed by the extremely low caps on number of conditions on a mob (I think they really need to look HARD at that, especially for world bosses – for normal mobs and veterans, sure, 25 is fine – but for others? Not really), but by the fact that the only potential multiplicative effect – Condition Duration is also getting screwed by the cap and/or by the fact the monster may actually die before the extra duration has meaning.

I wouldn’t use that word, “tweener”, god, that’s awful, but I know what you mean. I suspect that if my computer was good enough, I’d be one of the “L2DODGE!”-types myself, because when I’m solo/duo and 60FPS rock-solid, I do beautiful dodges, solo champs and so on, but when you get 20+ people around, even with my settings down, suddenly I’m at 20-40 FPS, and when it’s 50+, I’m at 10-20 FPS, and suddenly dodging is really hard and my computer isn’t even displaying all the effects and I am not as good as I might be.

I don’t actually think NewTeq is too bad, but I do think making him so reliant on the turrets being manned properly when we have absolutely no control over how they are manned and by who is not, well, ideal design. Last time I did him we had three turrets clearly behaving properly, knowing the strat, and so on, but the other three were drunkenly shooting stuff off in every direction, and thus we got plenty of bonewalls and failed hard. You can politely ask people to do the right thing, but if they don’t care to, there’s no way to kick them off or set up your own turret instead…

mercury ranique.2170:

I understand your concerns, but I do hope that Arenanet also take in mind the customers who don’t make mistakes.

Can you explain what you mean by that? As a customer who hasn’t made a mistake, but is an imperfect human being, and may make one one day, I would prefer that ArenaNet were lenient, rather than harsh, when it came to this sort of thing. I don’t see any way in which it harms me for them to be so, because the amounts of money involved are small.

I agree that it shouldn’t be a regular thing, but if they never help people who have made this kind of error, it certainly makes one wary of buying stuff with gems at all.

gaspara.4079:

I may have played 1300 ours but I still have never had more than 100g at a time because I don;t rush things, spend gold to have fun and don’t do something just because it offers the highest gold per minute in the game. And you know what, I have greatly enjoyed well over 1000 of those minutes.

I believe you, but that’s the issue – if you play a lot, you CAN play for fun, you don’t HAVE to rush things, you CAN spend gold for fun (I mean, I’ve never broken 40g, and I spend it for fun, but then I’m stuffed if I need it!), but if you can’t play a lot, then well, the demands on your time are fairly extreme, I feel.

I think the biggest buzzkills for me are:

1) No ability to catch up or get “missing stuff” whatsoever. Absolutely none. Zero. Worse than almost any game I’ve ever played in that regard. You missed out? You are SooL. This is really bad when you miss stuff like the Gift of Crystal.

2) Too hard to get gold in a limited time-frame without Champ-farming or other mindless grinds. I feel like there should be some way for time-limited people to get gold in a fun way that doesn’t work well for people who can play all day.

Vol.5241:

I agree, a catch-up mechanism would be great. All the dailies you missed would be banked so that you could get them eventually. That way, time-gating still serves its purpose but also gives those who missed them an opportunity to catch up.

I very much so try to understand other people’s POV (I love to play devil’s advocate and try as much as possible not to be biased). That being said, I think those who don’t have plenty of time need to readjust their expectations in that their inability to consume content that other people who have time is not a fault of Anet

But this could all be solved if Anet could allow us to ‘bank’ unfinished dailies.

I long ago adjusted my expectations, and learned that if I want to play GW2, my favourite MMO (for many reasons NOT related to the questionable reward mechanics), I have to play to ArenaNet’s schedule, which means less fun than otherwise. The trouble is, rather than getting better, these issues seem to be getting worse. That’s really concerning. The Karma nerf, for example – makes sense for people who log on every day – they could have had up to 3.2m Karma from the Jugs, but for people like me? It’s pretty horrible. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have done it, but it really negatively impacts my fun, and my ability to “keep up” or “catch up” (because Karma armour was effectively cheap and solid, not awesome – none of the best Affixes/Suffixes, but solid). Ascended Weapons and Armour will make it worse, and if I stop playing for a bit I will get even further behind on Laurels…

It’s not even making ArenaNet money! That’s what’s really silly! I can’t “pay to catch up” or anything – my game is just getting less fun and more “DO THIS OR NO COOKIES!”. Depressing. Which is sad because so much of the game is awesome.

Re: inexplicable deaths – yeah you learn eventually IF it happens consistently – the trouble is many of these deaths are inconsistent and impossible to fully explain.

Recent patches improved my framerate (despite the removal of the culling in PvE, bizarrely), but there is still a lot of stuff just not showing up.

gaspara.4079:

I have over 1300+ hours logged and if I wasn’t enjoying something I stopped doing it and did something else.

Here is where you totally lost the argument, Gaspara.

You do not understand what it is like for normal players. You have played an average of 3.5 hours a day, assuming the game has been out for a year (so give or take a little).

That’s nuts. Assuming some days you didn’t play, that you probably took the odd week or two off, you probably play more like 4-5 hours/day on weekdays, and more on weekends.

Obviously you can say “Well just take it easy maaaaaaaaaaaaan!”, because your idea of “taking it easy” is playing the game more in a day than some people get to in most of a week. Yes, I agree, if you average 3.5 hours/day or more (which is realistically more hours/day, because no-one plays every single day), then you don’t need to worry about much, because it will come eventually.

If you are more normal, however, and play 1-3 hours day, and probably average something like 0.5-1.5 hours day over the last year, then no, you CANNOT take it easy and expect stuff to come – it will never come – you need to target what you do, set goals, and play to ArenaNet’s schedule.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure how this is different.

Because they hyped the hell out of it, Vayne, and instead of apologising and saying “Actually no lfg for almost everyone…”, they put in a little note about it being only given to some people, which many people missed, and it’s so few people most people don’t even know anyone who has it.

They should NOT have hyped it – yet they were hyping it right up to the day it “went live”.

I’m sure it’ll be in eventually but some communication on this would be relaly good.

Vol.5241:

If you give me an example, I’ll point out what exactly is killing you near instantly.

Wow, you have completely missed the point.

Unless, Vol, you are going to come to my house and sit next to me and shout “OMG RUN INVISIBLE DEATH FIELD!” when I need to run, because the game as decided not to render the Death Field, or the exploding kitten, or whatever, you being able to do that is sadly useless to me.

It is also useless to all the other people who do not have Vol in their living room!

You agree that that stuff doesn’t appear in the combat log. Do you agree that that’s crap design? I think it’s REALLY crap design. To be fair some of this stuff isn’t one-shots, it’s just stuff that kills you when you’re on 60% health from stuff you DID see coming and that IS in the combat log (not all of it is avoidable given the limits of dodge-rolls – i.e. running out of juice), and makes you die for no visible reason. It’s quite disheartening.

EDIT – Also, re: achievements, they really are 99% “Just logging in”. Not skill or dedication or clever stuff like most Achievements in other computer games (even WoW achievements are more oriented towards ACHIEVING things, not mindlessly DOING things) – I can tell because I have twice as many as my wife – and yet she has done more and harder content than me, she just has played about half as much.

Vol.5241:

It’s the player’s fault for having the expectation that it’s work or a chore. There is a reason why they increased the # of daily activities from 5 to whatever if it now (12?). It’s so that just by playing the game, you don’t realize that it’s a grind. If there is anything that Anet can do, they can lower the # of achievements done for laurels from 5 to 3 or maybe even to 1. But I bet you people would still complain.

Uh, no it’s the designer’s fault for making it feel like a chore, not a game, though I agree that the increased number made it a LOT less bad. The designer’s job is to make the game fun, though.

As for “people would still complain” – well yes, because Time Gating makes you log in EVERY DAY, which only a small minority of players have lives that let them (you are one of them).

What they need is a catch-up mechanism – so you can do dailies you missed – it wouldn’t even need to be 100% – if even every third day or something was possible to “catch up”, that’d be a way more friendly design.

You also say “Just playing the game completes them” – yes, it does, WHEN YOU CAN PLAY A LOT! If I have a rare weekend day where I can play for six hours, I will usually complete the Daily just by playing the game. However, on a weekday, where I can play for 1-3 hours if I can play at all? If I want the daily done, I need to make time for it – either to do it first like a chore, or to wait until I have thirty minutes left to play and see what else I need to do from it (which isn’t always practical).

I don’t mean to be rude, but I think you play so much that you have very little idea what the experience is like for people who don’t have that sort of time.

Vol.5241:

Whether it’s an insta kill or a condition on you, there are ways of handling it. One type of damage is preventable. One is countered by using a skill. I think the insta death mechanic is good enough to teach players how to prioritize rather than smash skills.

Insta-kill mechanics teach nothing unless you know what caused the insta-kill AND how to avoid it in future.

With various World Bosses, I have had my character just randomly drop dead from 100% with no visible debuffs, nothing on the floor, no mobs attacking me, no SFX – or SFX only visible multiple seconds later and I’m not sure if they’re related or not. Similarly I’ve had effects which dropped me from full to dead in a few seconds with no debuffs, sometimes not even any damage numbers.

That’s not always the way – there’s some highly fatal stuff that is very avoidable – that’s fine. The problem is with stuff which isn’t possible to see, and it doesn’t matter WHY you can’t see it, because dead is dead.

Further, what is definitely an actual undeniable problem is a LOT of this stuff is NOT in the combat log at all. Like, you go straight from alive to Downed, but nothing in the combat log shows what happened! That bad, that’s just bad.

For the record, my computer is fairly old (way above the min specs, but I have to keep settings low to get okay performance), and I’m sure that factors in, but I think the “dead in 5-10 seconds if you don’t cure condition” would be a wildly superior mechanic in most fights, because it could actually be reacted to and seen, whereas this stuff is all unseen (or only seen after death) – which is the problem. I’ve kind of been developing a “sixth sense” for effects that probably are there even though they’re not shown, and that’s kind of kittenty.

It’s nothing new, but the new harder bosses are making it more of an issue.

Zeldain.5710:

xephire.8324:

Dude i don’t care about tequatl being hard i want greater rewards…..GREAT LOOT NOT greens and blues.I want tequatl to drop me a legendary that way ill be happy

The reason they can’t do that is because of the way loot works in GW2. Everyone can’t be eligible for loot… which they currently are.

They need a way to make world event bosses like this “taggable” so that only the organizing group qualifies for super rare/elite rewards, and the rest of the contributors still get access to the same loot they do now.

They need to not do that.

That would be the drama-bomb from hell. Servers would explode. It would be amazing.

Danikat.8537:

It’s mainly a feature of the armor rather than the dye, but it’s more noticeable with some dyes. The same colour will look different when applied to different materials – metal dyes a different way to fabric for example.

In most cases you won’t notice because most armor pieces use just one or two materials, and if they are different then they can be dyed separately and often end up as different colours so it doesn’t show. But on some armor sets it does stand out.

For example the female norn T2 medium armor has a section of cloth on the back which can be dyed along with the rest of the armor but which is always slightly brownish – the dye just tints it rather than changing the colour.

It seems to be more noticable with the brightly coloured dyes, although it will also depend on your graphics and monitor settings.

The armour does matter, but no, it’s not mainly the armour, because it is a small number of dyes which do it, and all the ones I’ve found which do it have plant or tree names (yet not all which have those names do it).

Everyone has Deep Maple, and you can see it does something completely different to other dyes on armour. Most Vibrant colours will just cover all the armour and react strongly to tone changes – dark bits will be dark/deep versions of the colour, light bits will be very energetic and bright versions of the colour. Deep Maple and Sour Apple and so on are different – with Deep Maple, dark bits are clearly red-brown, and lighter bits, and some bits non-Vibrant dyes won’t even touch are coloured a clear green, T1/2 Sylvari show this very clearly – if you have them, try one of those dyes and have a look at the results, I think you will be surprised.

Pandeh.5248:

It’s a long term mechanic… It’s not meant to be maxed in 2 weeks. It’s meant to be a steady slow rise over maybe a full year for casual players. I don’t see myself ever bothering maxing it either. Currently at 55% and I have not bought any blue/greens.

It’s fine as it is. Karma nerf is justified, it was too much karma gained from dailies compared to playing the game. Although 600 karma feels very low. 1.5k I would been happy with.

The thing is, those Luck essences are almost meaningless, as you’re proving with your 55% figure. Do you know what Luck a player would have if they did EVERY SINGLE Daily and Monthly for an entire year, and didn’t get Luck elsewhere? 59%. Barely more than you.

Two ENTIRE years? 77%

Three ENTIRE years? 87%. I really think someone doing every daily for three years (or even one) should be rewarded a fair bit more than that.

Yet in what, barely two weeks, you’ve made about a year’s worth of Luck!

I don’t play a lot, but even I’m at 42%. It’s really just an insulting amount of Luck that they’re giving you from the Dailies.

I can see nerfing the 4500/6750 pot a bit, but for this? Not very cool. I do agree that 1500 Karma would probably be okay, though I’d like to see the Luck reward go up a bit too.