Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Anyway they didn’t change the game into a platformer. There’s no more platforming in HoT than there was in the original game.

Whole HoT is one big jumping platformer. On timer. There is nothing worse then platformers on timer.

Adventures are not even comparable to old Tyria JP. Only thing those JP gave was some AP and they were always there, always available and you could take your time while doing them. I did a lot of them using engi Jump Shot while following guide from web. I used mesmer portal on few timed JP. Took me pretty long time but I did them.

I will never even finish most HoT adventures. I don’t mean “earn gold” for actual MPs and finishing countless collections, but I mean just get to the finish. They are not available when I want to play them. They ALL have timers. Yeah, I got few gold from those stupid ones you walk in first time wihtout even knowing whats happening and get Gold chest.

I did most of them solo, 2 should be enough for everything. There are few fairly annoying achievements that are bugging lot of players so just look at LFG or place your own party in there. Not only are there usually other players trying to do it but sometimes even players join for sole reason to help you out.

Engineer is certainly capable class and can be fun but it takes more time to learn since most of their gameplay revolves around equipping several kits that replace weapon skills. I am also still angry that both of my favourite engi builds I used to level up have been nerfed so I am not even sure which build to recommend anymore.

I go around in HoT maps with my mesmer and look out the Snipers just so I can put Feedback on them and the laugh loudly when they kill themselves.

I had nothing better to do and I also find stats like these interesting.

Anyway, the chart shows kills per server, taken Friday evening, (from the wvwintel.com). I think it is probably best guess we currently have about populations of each server too. Obviously number of kill is affected by:

• killing server population
• killed server population
• how much one or both servers want to fight

If you don’t agree that it shows basically population, lets say its the amount of action going on in each matchup. Exact numbers are not so important (tho highest is ~40k and lowest is below 1k) but its more about to compare different tiers. For example tier 9 has only about half the kills of tier 8 and tier 6 about double of kills in tier 8.

Now if I only had the same data from last year, I could show how many people have stopped playing in WvW (a lot I think). But API did not provide such data back then.

Also not that it is only counting kills and not deaths or the ratio. Basically you can do similar chart with deaths too, but it ends up same when comparing amount of action between different tiers.

I don’t think GW2 has anything like “Star Glider” class.

For completely new player who just want to try GW2 out, I usually recommend either Guardian (because they very rarely die) or Ranger (having pet to aggro enemies while you shoot them from the back). They both fairly easy to play without more complicated systems some other classes require.

Game is grindy when you have to do stuff you do not want to do. It is highly subjective since people are different and like to do different stuff. Core GW2 has much more freedom, you can do something here or completely different things there and you still gain xp and materials and end up with similar stuff. HoT is different in that its all basically gated behind some very limited timeframes or maps or events or activities, and there is no other way, no other place, no other time to do those things. If you happen to like doing those things, its all fine, but if not, you are out of luck and it all becomes grind.

I play because of these days:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld-dWpWTWcY
Does not happen every day but when it happens its still so much fun.

I was planning to write lenghtier comment about WSR and specially NINE since we have been stuck in same tier for many months, but I can’t be bothered.

dlmoore.7293:

You make a fair point. However, I purchased HoT with the assumption that they would be equal to the base class. I wanted options, not things that are necessary to be relevant. They should provide a different style of play and not something that is strictly better.

I understand that but I doubt it can be actually done. There is basically only 2 measurements of “goodness” of each class/trait/build. How much damage it can do? How well it can survive? Everything will be instantly compared to some other build/class/weapon and even if there is slightest difference, one is marked as “better” and other “useless”.

Also I think HoT maps itself, enemies and events are designed for “better” builds.

Not going to happen. HoT is suppose to be total grind.

Anyway, for me, there is enough xp to max out all masteries, I am just missing all those MP from HoT maps. If SW and DT only give xp, it does not change anything.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I know people would really like to believe the game is dead or that the game isn’t dead, but there’s really no evidence for either theory. The only thing that matters is: are you having fun? If you’re not, then what difference could it possible make if there are 5 million people playing? If you are having fun, why would you care if there are “only” 100,000 playing?

Clearly you are not playing in WvW. It makes all the difference of having reasonably sized servers or completely empty matches. For many people WvW is only reason to play this game and nobody can deny there is A LOT less players now. For a game mode that requires massive amounts of players, that is very much a problem.

dlmoore.7293:

It feels to me that, to be as comparatively effective as everyone else, you are forced to use the elite specializations. It has been a while now and it seems like everybody is still using them in pvp and pve. They were hyped as a different way to play but they just feel outright better to me.

Yes. Its called Pay-To-Win. You can play GW2 for free but you will be weaker compared to other players who payed for the HoT.

Now suppose Anet nerfes the elites so they become somewhat similar or less useful then main professions. People who pay for HoT want something for their money. If they still end up using their non-elite specs, they have payed for nothing.

Squee.7829:

Proclaim frequently in map chat that you’re looking for a specific legendary. RNG magic will see it and spawn every legendary but the one you announced! It also helps to be as far from the respective base as possible.

Thats is true. Yesterday at least 3 different people were trying to find Leg at Yellow base and we got 3 Red Legs within 10 minutes.

Crinn.7864:

Of course the old players are quitting, they’ve been playing for what 3 years now? Chances are many where just looking for the slightest excuse to rage quit.

You are completely missing the point. HoT was released exactly because people had been playing for 3 years and were mostly done with the game. It was suppose to refresh the game, give people new things to do and keep them generally busy for next 3 years. Yet, it achieved completely opposite – a lot of people quit the game after HoT instead of returning to the game.

It was not that difficult for me to find all 4. But ofc I was actually farming shovels for guild hall so I was around the map a lot. Pick 1 fort you are missing Leg from, upgrade it, defend it. Keep an eye on the map chat – normally people will call out Legs there.

Also found it easier to just tag up yourself and start doing events. People will join and help you. Its easier and faster then waste time on that useless LFG.

MadRabbit.3179:

I am down to my last 9 for the Cyria points and my pool of options are not things I find to be fun or interactive like spoon collection and diving location discovery. It’s not choose the style of play I find the most fun anymore, but rather choose the least painful of a pool of kittenty options.

I am just missing 2 more Tyria points and both of these. We should gank on these achievements together. They are pretty horrible so I probably never finish them.

It gives nothing.

Same once you max up Tyria mastery (or HoT mastery), all extra xp you earn there is lost.

Honestly, whenever I want to check some skill, weapon or trait, and I do change everything around a lot, I just walk out to SW or WvW map and whack some enemies that stand just there. It does not provide me with exact number but it gives me general idea about how things may work out in real fight. Because there is quite a bit more then having BIG NUMBERS in the battle.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

And I think it’s pretty unfair to gate stuff behind jumping puzzles in a Fantasy CRPG. If this was a platform jumping game, I’d be off base, but it’s not – it’s a Fantasy CRPG.

It’s the reason I get so very annoyed by HoT adventures too. If I really like to play timed platform games, and I would be great at it and enjoy it every day, why would I even bother playing GW2?

If they were completely optional and just reward some silly chest with usual trash, I would not care, but they are not. There is bunch of mastery points tied to those, asking for Silver and Gold rewards. I will never get those points and will never finish the HoT masteries because I lack the MP. There are Weapon collections requiring certain rewards on adventures. I will never finish these collections. Yes, because I am so bad at timed platform games, I am denied the weapon in MMORPG. Even if its just the skin, its still completely stupid idea.

And they all exactly same too. If you are any good on one and like it, great, you will enjoy every single one. If you suck at one, they all completely broken for you.

I have to agree that items were probably not chosen randomly or picked to make upgrading GH/Scribing easier. There is logic behind using all these high value items, the logic is that upgrading GH is costly and requires a lot of money, time and effort.

Not that I like it. Just there isn’t much point for Anet to make upgrades use up all the trash items.

Yea, the achievements you already have finished will reward you with MP automatically. Also, you can check your achievements panel, it shows which MP you have gained and which ones are still available.

If you refer to this
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/essential-elements-of-the-new-borderlands/
consider a bit time it was posted. A year ago. 6 months before HoT was released. Chance that they will actually do what they said about “having plans” is very low now.

Even though this will initially replace the existing Borderlands, we have plans to bring back the classic alpine Borderlands. More information on that will come in the future.

The plans were clearly about rotating the old maps when HoT maps were released, and those plans have been scrapped long ago.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

The WvW maps are planned to be on a rotation. Eventually the old map will should back and you’ll be able to complete the JP. Hopefully.

No they are not. Some players wish they could be back but it is extremely unlikely.

I expect those achievements to be moved into historical section soon.

Nike.2631:

FogLeg.9354:

Not going to argue if they were too good or not but their usefulness compared to other classes is currently low.

You can say that, but it doesn’t make it true.

They went from bloody mandatory to yeah, that’s still amazing.

There are situations where I think pure Mesmer is better then Chrono and that means as elite specs it has failed.

((snort)) Your expectations are so skewed they’re not even wrong.

True or false. Right or wrong. There are no absolutes in this.

Depends what gamemode you play mostly. Depends who you play it with. For me Chrono is not very good, for you its most amazing. I understand that. Hope you will too.

It has not changed really. After HoT was released some classes have been nerfed by now (Revenant, Chrono) and some have been boosted (Thief, Warrior) but nothing major to help you through that story battle. I have done it with 5-6 different classes and I hate those traps too, still I usually manage to get through it without dying. I have also helped people with it when they asked in map chat.

I think there is setting in graphics option that makes those traps practically invisible for some players. Also, you may want to replace some traits/skills for that single fight because there is not healing.

Using gliding is no different then using Jump Shot. And I did most JP with my engineer just because of that.

Stop worrying so much about other players, you can still do everything the “hard” way and if others don’t enjoy platform games as much as you do, they can use shortcuts. Its about having options and allowing more players to enjoy the game.

Happens a lot in HoT maps, you kill one enemy, and while fighting next one blocking your path previous enemy is already spawning on you. Combine short respawn times with huge aggro range and its obvious why nobody likes those maps.

It is not common in main Tyria maps, I think there are only few spots where you have to be careful with mobs. Eventually you will learn safe spots and some areas that just need to be rushed through.

I consider guild hall upgrades extremely grindy. For WvW guild upgrades are not optional, they are REQUIRED to be able to fight in WvW. Yet, nothing can be achieved from playing WvW, thousands and thousands of gold and mats are required for each upgrade, many of these can be only found in one specific map.

So, again, I just want to play WvW but game forces me to spend countless hours in stupid PvE maps I dont care about. Forces me to gather mountains of materials only to be thrown away on guild upgrades. And that is for me the very esssence of HoT – you can not play the way you want to, where you want to, you have no more options.

Yeah, HoT is all about eternal grinding.

As about core game in Tyria, I dunno, there isn’t much need for those legendary items so its up to each player to spend months creating those or not. Getting the ascended stuff hasnt felt specially grindy to me so far, some I crafted, some I got as drops (already got full sets of heavy and light armor, working on medium).

I agree in that nerf hammer has hit Chrono hard. Not going to argue if they were too good or not but their usefulness compared to other classes is currently low. There are situations where I think pure Mesmer is better then Chrono and that means as elite specs it has failed.

No. Still waiting for them to fix the HoT content first. They are losing players because the HoT is bad and should not be rewarded for this with extra money.

2 major changes happened with HoT 6 months ago:

• Borderland maps were replaced with current version. New maps were largely disliked for being too big, too confusing and having too many oasises. A lot of WvW is now only happening in EB and BL maps are left empty.

• Objectives started to auto-upgrade over time. Before you had to pay gold and use supplies in the objective to upgrade, now it all just happened itself if you waited some time. This has been changed by now to system where number of dollies is required to upgrade.

WvW as gamemode is pointless without large number of players, so once people who disliked the changes stopped playing it, it created cascading effect of less and less players finding it interesting. No enemies = no fun. There are now bunch of servers with literally handful of players (still marked incorrectly as medium and not dead as they should be).

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

I still want to restate that I clearly stated, my opinion on WvW isn’t much to agree with but I KNOW FOR A FACT it is a zerg fest, you can’t even argue that. Also again people are forgetting this is coming from a vet player

Depends on your server. Depends on the time you play. Depends what you are trying to do in WvW. There are solo roamers. There are small groups.

Honestly, you are trying to argue about gamemode you have not even played.

hm, so if you happen to be in matchup where your opponent totally controls all maps, it means you get no real chance to even gather any valuable resources? Just another reason for everyone to transfer into top server.

Well, they normally sell gliders skins for gems (extra cash), so adding new skins that can be crafted, and also being cheap… Probably not going to happen.

I did all 3 specially a week before HoT was released.

Half the bloody Guild Missions are constantly bugged anyway.

It same in every HoT map. And even the daily world bosses and SW. These unfinished megaserver mechanics and broken LFG tools should of been fixed long ago, even before HoT was released.

No, you are not only player not being able to gather all mastery points. Just most people don’t bother with those adventures. Gaining every HoT mastery is about having higher number next to your name, so very few players care about it. Last level masteries itself are completely useless.

Sandpit.3467:

So the problem lies elsewhere then. The Guild upgrade system is bad.

Obviously.

This would be just one small step to help players upgrading the guild hall. You still need bucketload of other mats too so you won’t be magically finish guild hall with few extra shovels.

It’s not that simple. You can’t just say never should server 5 ranks above be matched with someone. These things work in tier 1 or 2 fine. They do not work in last tiers where populations have huge differences.

I doubt anyone in Anet matches up servers manually. I am fairly sure it is done by some code using random numbers, and when random numbers are involved, random stuff happens. If you remove randomness, people will complain they are tired of fighting exact same servers for months and months.

As I have not seen the code that picks servers each week, I can only assume how it works in general. Mu suggestion would be to include counters that consider number of players logged into wvw for each server and total number of hours all the players have spent in wvw for each server. And when these numbers are getting too wide, not to allow such matchups.

And btw, I am in FoW, currently 22nd in EU, have been through last tier myself, have fought constantly servers much bigger then us and have been desperate in matches where enemy holds 100% of every single map.

Otaur.9268:

How about allowing secondary weapons to be equipped, but only swappable Out Of Combat… This would make life so much better for Ele and Engineers alike.

But when you are out of combat, you can already equip another weapon. How would that change anything?

This so-much-garbage-stop-filling-my-bags-already-loot is extremely annoying. The game is not created to make designers life easier, it is created for players to have fun. And the amount of garbage drops is simply not fun. The game would become so much more enjoyable if all that rubbish would be turned into gold automatically and only drops you would get would be actually useful items.

Starlightmagus.8654:

But the “casual” content that has shipped with Heart of Thorns is…well, in my opinion, awful. I don’t know what ArenaNet was going for, but outside of the story content it is pretty much nothing but grind, grind, and more grind. Grinding by it’s nature is known as such because it’s not fun.

Agree. It’s so bad I actually can’t be bothered with it.

Sandpit.3467:

Why don’t you play other content instead, you are clearly spending way too much of your life grinding that one map.

Guild upgrade requires basically endless supply of those, and since they are account-bound and can not be found in any other map…

Hopefully not soon. They are still struggling to balance the elites and revenant from HoT, 6 months after they were released plus at least a year in development. Each new class means even more trouble.

I think some bots were abusing it.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

What can you possibly disagree with and share that is different from what I said? How else is the game falling?

You see, different people play the game for different reasons and like different parts of the game. I understand what YOU like and what YOU want, but its just YOU. Other people like other stuff and want other parts of the game changed in some other ways.

The runes are one of the gold sinks in the game. As long game keeps changing, builds update and different runes become fashionable, people will keep buying them, over and over and again and again. If you implement a system where runes are one time unlocks, they move into trash category. And honestly, game has already so much trash items.

Its the CoR-drama all over again. The revenants were complete mess as a class with 1 single super skill, and once it got fixed, they became useless. Berserkers are same, 1 stupidly strong skill and everything else is meh. Yes, Gunflame should be fixed, and yet, the whole berserker class needs rework.

I would play WvW but they ruined WvW. I would play open world PvE but I dislike HoT maps. So yea, I complain on the forum instead.

Once Anet manages to fix either of these game modes, I will leave the forum, stop moaning and play the game again.