Guild Wars 2

Darkfusion.1728:

Thank you very much! I appreciate the help. I was considering switching classes but did not know there would be that much of a difference in them like you suggest. If you dont mind me asking, would the ranged character that mainly uses a bow ( i think its the ranger?) be any easier to begin with? Or do you reccomend using a high damage absorbing tank class to start off with as a beginner? Thanks again for the help!

Ranger is an extremely easy profession for a beginner – your pet can ‘tank’ a lot of damage for you/ take a lot of aggro from you (same with necromancer minions, btw – plus Necros have a huge healthpool).
You may want to take into account that elitist players dislike to take rangers along on dungeon runs though (this is more of an endgame-issue).

Warriors are supposedly faceroll easy to play and very attractive in group-play. Personally, I don’t enjoy them at all (tried up to lvl 17, then deleted the character and made a 2nd necro).

It all comes down to playstyle preference, but anything besides an ele (and perhaps a thief) makes for an easier playing experience when just learing your way around the game.

…because there’s more to the game than Legendaries?

I agree that I find Fractals difficult, because I am not much of a dungeon player to start with, and when I do, well…the time commitment to do 3 1/2 Fractals in one go is quite huge for me, because afterwards, I won’t have any more time to do content I really enjoy.

But hey, I know other people enjoy them, so go for it! It’s not as if I didn’t have other content to play, and I know I’ll do some fractals now because I missed out on the Aetherblade dungeon and am interested in the story of the Thaumanova Reactor.

I really wouldn’t mind at all if they weren’t the most effective way to acquire ascended items…

Ah, I see the problem…you can’t even AoE them out of stealth easily with most professions when they use a shortbow due to the range, correct? It’d probably be possible on a necro, but otherwise, you mostly need to know where to aim.

(Well I know why I don’t PvP – I suck at it – but I can see how this would frustrate people who do)

Hyde.6248:

Well the strongest and most wanted classes are
warrior,guardian,mesmer,elementalist,ranger,thief,engi,necro
this is a greatest to least list for pve. It’s also a mix of what I’ve seen before so don’t rely on what I say:).

You’d see Thief as better for PvE than Necro? for a beginner? Seriously? Necros are a cakewalk in PvE and make tagging (and taking down) multiple enemies awfully easy. Have you even played one?
shakes head

You have 5 or 6 character slots to start with – just try out different professions and see what matches your playing style best. One example: Yes, Guardians and Warriors are among the most wanted professions in dungeons. I don’t enjoy playing either.

Yep, had that one too. Player who was close and rezzed me was pretty puzzled, too.

Hamfast.8719:

Halloween had far more change than any Festival we ever got in GW1. The biggest thing they ever did there was remove the gift-chasing Grenchies from LA, which had been my favorite activity for the previous 6 years. (Boooo!)

Change is GREAT. Removing beloved content is NOT. Expand, don’t remove.

I second that. Wholeheartedly.

I never encountered Zojja so far, but it definitely tracks your personal story and race – Scarlet commented on my first invention (infinity ball, still adore that storyline) in one instance.
Apart from that, I only got Tybalt as special boss ;_;

Malediktus.9250:

It seems to me that the pink key is the most rare one, which is silly considering you need an equal amount of them.

Funny, I had equal amounts of pink and green ones (actually, I first had mostly pink ones) and had to specifically look for blue ones.
And I only did lvl 3 when I absolutely had to.

RedCobra.7693:

there wont be another alliance,

molten alliance = red
aetherblades = blue
Toxic alliance = green

all amount to the tricolours, im guessing she used these factions as building blocks to build the ultimate machine, whatever that is i dont know, maybe some sort of doomsday device

Coupled with the keys, you…might actually have a point there oO Interesting idea.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

KOPPER.1458:

Queen jenna is also not sellable.

Queen Jenna is not supposed to be tradable.. Everyone gets one by being one year old in game.

Can we be able to do something with her? Or get a random mini for our 2nd birthday? Having several Jennas is kind of … pointless

I have only played 4 chambers so far, but maybe she could let something slip in those instances?

I can personally attest to the fact that hackers obtain email-lists from various game pages and try to scam you/hack you using this information.
I get tons of fake ArenaNet Emails on my old Mailaccount (the one which sponsored GW1 back in the day, and GW2 during beta, and was used for forum registrations etc.) – luckily, I now use a seperate account for GW2 and only GW2. Never received any scam-mails there. Never got suspended for anything.

It really helps to use a seperate email for important accounts, even if it is a pain in the * to keep track of all those passwords. (Will install password manager today ^^°)

Also: What exactly does the OP wish to compete in? The truely competitive content (sPvP) does not require any sort of financial investment at all…
WvW perhaps, but I hear you can have a lot of fun there without any ascended equipment, too. PvE? You can beat all content I can currently think of in greens, might just take you a little longer.
Being the prettiest? Well, we might have an issue here. But as ‘prettiest’ is still in the eye of the beholder (meaning the most expensive gear may not be what you consider the most pretty), it’s mostly a non-issue, too.

On a more serious note: Who really uses their boosters?
I still have lots of them clogging up my bank, and only ever use the crafting boosters (and that rarely) when leveling up, because crafting gives you bank access…

I wish we’d gotten that mad king chest recipee for the mystic forge back…I don’t know what to do with those XP-boosters.

Gumby.1708:

I think Arenanet is a rather small company, and i dont think they can afford all the kitten the playerbase is asking of them.

Also, no one keeps you from making an awesome video with vocals in your native language – it just won’t be eligible for the contest. Big deal.

I don’t really care about new professions (much) – but I really do want a scythe. A 600 range would be fitting, I think.
And yes, I wand it on my necromancer, even though I am well aware that we already get a scythe-animation for the staff – which messes with many staff’s designs, unfortunately…

An arcane warrior as a jack-of-all-trades? Seriously, who wants a jack-of-all-trades? If done well, it would make most other professions redundant…

No temporary cosmetics please, thank you very much.
If I purchase something (or have the opportunity to purchase something with real money), I’d like to be able to use it as long as I please.

I’d rather have a wardrobe in the gemstore where I can store all my cosmetic possessions…or an NPC who will register and then resell me my holiday-related cosmetics as often as I want for a few silver.

Dand.8231:

mercury ranique.2170:

No!
If you want to trade with people you cant trust you should use the TP. The TP is designed for secure and safe transactions. Transactions through email are only used amongst friends (based on mutual trust) or by scammers. The answer is to use the TP.

The answer is NOT the TP. The Black Lion Trade Post, while awesome for what it does, COMPLETELY LACKS the feature im asking for.

I’m asking for a secure way to trade directly with other players.

Explain to me why exactly you need to trade directly with other players you are not familiar enough to trust them not to cheat you?

psy.5437:

Anet have never done anything for Au / Oceania in terms of competitions or giveaways ever. The only time a single promotion ran in AU it required an immense amount of cajoling from one of the PC magazines here to get an exclusive minipet in GW1. Other than that…

One reason for that might be the very specific rules AU/Oceania has for contests – such as disallowing any sort of advertisement for (specific) contests which do not take place in AU/Oceania (that is, are not based there and do not execute the drawing of prices there).

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

[snip]

As Frotee accurately stated, we do have a couple people on the community team here at the ArenaNet studio who can speak German and French, respectively: Martin Kerstein, the Head of Global Community Team and Stephane Lo Presti, one of our our French Community Managers. However, again as Frotree commented: all members of the Community Team are tasked with other myriad responsibilities in addition to helping with this contest. We also do not have a Spanish-speaking community manager at the studio (don’t let my surname fool you. :-P).

[snip]

/fangirl mode on/
I was (positively) cited/named by a dev (Also, I totally forgot about Stephane. Shame on me.)
/fangirl mode off/

Also, I think giving away a GW2 guitar isn’t that weird – it is a rockmusik contest (with guitar-heavy music), and it’s not like we haven’t had other interesting GW giveaways/goodies in the past. Remember the toaster?

My asura necromancer. I have a lot of fun on my asura mesmer, too, but my necro is still my favourite child.

(Yes, I have alts from other races, too, but really, they don’t stand a chance.)

It certainly can’t be that difficult to implement a wardrobe – there already is one in PvP.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Ok, playing the numbers game.

If you devide the playerbase by casual and hardcore right in the middle, everyone below 800 (actually closer 770) achievment points is casual.
If you belong to the 50% of players that have more than 800 achievement points, you are a hardcore player.

But we can split that up, so it feels less artificial. The 50% of players below 800 AP are casuals, the 40% of players between 800 and 3500 AP are core players and the 10% of players above 3500 AP are the true hardcore players (including me).

Or you could split it up by time. Let’s say a casual player plays 5h a week and some time more in the honeymoon phase. So people that started at release and have less than 200 hours played are casuals. Players between 200 and 1000 hours are core players and everyone over 1000 hours (including me) is a hardcore player.

Check your achievement points and type /age for your playtime.

So here we go. The difference between a casual and a hardcore is, that they spend less time in game and therefore have less achievement points.

BUT, this tells you nothing about what kind of content they want. Casual does not mean, this player does not want challenging content. The players just do not want to spend hours and hours and hours to get to the challenging content. Or that this players want to grind hours and hours and hours to get BiS items.

If a player is casual or not will not tell you how skilled the player is. Otherwise, anyone who plays soccer 24/7 would be a Ronaldo at one point. They just do not want to play stuff that they find boring.

That is where the ANets marketing set in before release, and that is where the game has failed in the end. We get tons and tons of new content that is not challenging (The Zerg) and grindy (check the achievement of the LS), or totally out of place (Tequatl) instead of quality content that is challenging and entertaining.

People feel not entertained, people leave.

By that metric, I would be a real hardcore player. But I am neither particularly good at the game (I miss dodges a lot because my necro made me lazy. I’d never survive anything real squishy in full zerker gear.), nor do I spend ungodly hours playing it, nor am I running after every carrot the game has to offer. I don’t own a single legendary and only bought to pieces of Ascended gear because I didn’t know what else to do with my laurels (already have that infinite cat tonic).

Why are people constantly complaining about lack of challenging content when they always take the easiest way to complete content?
You don’t have to run with the zerg – there are plenty of champions around which are not constantly part of a champion train. Go solo them! Too easy? Solo them naked!
Ever soloed (or duo-ed) a dungeon? Done group-events on your own, or heavily drunk?

It’s really not as if there weren’t any challenges in the game – they are just not all handed to you on a silver platter.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Armor is terribly done in this game. I can’t even gear my female human in a set of pants that don’t have frills and garters or don’t look like harem pants.

At least females don’t look weird in a dress… Try outfitting a light armoured male… There are not a lot of pants around!

Believe me, that annoys quite a lot of females, too (I hate skirts, particularly short ones. There, I said it. Glad my main is an Asura…)

@ topic: With the exception of dungeon armor (and maybe some karma outfits you’d have to be a much higher level to reasonably acquire), you could technically outfit your character in pretty much any outfit from the get-go using Transmutation stones (which you get for free from map-completion), given sufficient funds.

On giving a very basic overview over what transpired in the Living World:

I absolutely loved the ‘overview’ over the backstory/primary conflict of Destiny’s Edge we are given in that lvl 30 story instance in Lion’s Arch by those NPC children.
Couldn’t we have something similar in our home instances for the Living story, with different groups of NPC (somehow related to or somehow recognizable as belonging to) the different LS chapters?
That way, we would both be able to hear about what happened ingame and had something interesting to see and hear in our home instances Also, it wouldn’t add to the noise already present in the major cities and would be easily reachable for every player.

Honestly? I can see why it might be a good addition to the gameplay, but currently? I can down those enemies much faster than I can finish them, which is annoying as hell. Downing enemies that take longer to take down would be ok, really, but like this, it just drags fights out…

Uhm…everything it did on release?
Sorry, I just don’t see your problem. I’ve always considered myself a casual player, and I have completed the personal story with no problems (did the later ‘chapters’ with a friend for fun, but I have also helped out total strangers with theirs), have managed to find, nice, sociable teams for dungeons (both story and explorable), have managed to gain all the equipment I wanted without too much hassle (or doing something I really hate) (but I don’t care about legendary), there are still tons of decent worldbosses around, the people I play with are nice and helpful, I have no problem achieving personal goals (like world completion – although the WvW part was kind of annoying)…
I just don’t see your problem. But then, I simply choose not to deal with content and players I dislike. The game is big enough for that, after all.

kitten you, GEMA! shakes fist (Germans will understand my issues)

TriggerSad.2597:

Kal Spiro.9745:

This game is in multiple languages, right? If it supports multiple languages already, why doesn’t this contest? They obviously have a translator somewhere, otherwise they couldn’t address disparate language support questions.

Their localization team may not be able to spend the time to review submissions.
Likewise, it could be that they outsourced that sort of thing, so they don’t actually have one at their disposal.

Anet actually does have staff on hand speaking more than English (even natively, gell Martin Kerstein?), but they have other responsibilities. The amount of responses such a contest can potentially generate is huge – it takes a long time just to view and catalogue (since these things are usually archived somehow) everything. If they also had to translate many of their entries, they would definitely need more people to do it ‘in time’, people who would either have to be hired specifically or who would then not have the time to work on other important game issues.
Remember that all LV content has to be translated by the localization team, too, so they are probably busy with content actually impacting your gameplay.

slurpey.6014:

Ema.4953:

Arena Net ALWAYS excludes the Southern Hemisphere. Every single contest, give away, exhibition or convention is completely ignored by this company. Case in point, the “world tour” they did a while back. It’s not a world tour when you only stick to the Northern Hemisphere!

I understand we’re a long way from America/Korea (Arena Net is a Korean owned company after all), but it would be nice, just once to have acknowledgement that we, not only play your game, but we buy your products. Instead, we sit and watch as pretty much every country in the Northern Hemisphere are acknowledged and considered important.

We’re like Skrit to Arena Net. We’re there, but more of an annoyance than anything to actually worry about.

Speaking from Australia – we allow contests, we have some pretty good ones. Just none from Areana Net. Ever.

It’s not just Anet. Most companies exclude Australians or Asians when it comes to specific contests due to laws from either our country or other countries, when it comes to the so called “paid” out rewards (irl). It has nothing to do with companies trying to exclude or punish specific countries/players from other countries. It also doesn’t matter if that game is a Korean owned company, since the server and the branch headquarter are in the US. Same counts for the servers and branch headquarters located in other countries.

Pretty much this. I had to research laws impeding international online marketing activities for a seminar a couple of years ago, and New Zealand and Australia were pretty strict on that front. (I’ll see if I can still find my notes on that.) So don’t blame Anet, blame your home countries’ laws.

Or how about we don’t change the existing maps, but open up a new part of Orr where we can see the results of the Cleansing? If you look at the map, you’ll notice that we haven’t seen all of Orr yet. Making the southern or central parts of Orr available as cleansed maps for Players who completed the personal story might be nice

ColinJohanson.2394:

So a fun question to ask to help direct the conversation a bit: What aspects of your favorite television shows would you think would be cool to see reflected in a game medium?

My favourite TV-series have one thing in common: Each season has both an overarching storyline AND a mini-story/quest/monster of the day for each episode, so that each episode has both its own arc of tension (closed in itself) and contributes to the overarching arc of tension. I’d wish for more of that in the living story updates (yes, I noticed, we’re getting there – but it could still get a little more pronounced).

Also, YES! for achievement-skins available forever over the achievement menu.

I must admit, that would be kinda cool. What with all the effort I put into cleansing the whole thing and defeating Zhaitan…

Maybe we could, at some point, get a prompt triggering upon entering the area that asks everyone who completed the personal story (with the entering character) which version they’d like to engage?

Noooooo! Must organize protest march to save the poor Quaggan…they are already an endangered species! I mean, just look at them!

Yup, this can potentially benefit Mesmers who don’t want to invest into the cleanse-specific traits…won’t do a thing for my necro though. Ah well

1. Living Story and Lore. While it has already been stated, I would like to support the idea of having a stronger connection between Living Story content and existing GW lore. You have built a vast world with a long and complex history and hundreds of good points. They deserve to be put into the spotlight for a while to be better fleshed out and to better introduce and connect your player base to your overall world lore.
Instead, we mostly have poorly connected living story updates which add temporary content without really building upon what’s already there – or what might be yet to come. I agree that Scarlet seems like a cardboard-cutout villain (although I do enjoy the jester type – but she feels just so mary-suyey…), and something that connects to the threats, alliances etc. we have in the personal story (and the overarching threat of not one but six elder dragons) might be much more appreciated.
As someone already mentioned on page 1, why not use the living story to prepare for more permanent updates and long-term world building?

2. Rewards. I don’t really need great rewards as long as the content is fun to play, but I do miss nice things that do not require a merciless grind or huge investments into the TP to get – like the Halloween weapon skins. The wintersday ones were really much better implemented, with a chance at goofy skins through normal play.

3. Time. I am a casual player and still usually able to complete the 2-week-meta achievements without too much effort (except for the new TA path thingy, because I just couldn’t make the time to spend 3! hours in one dungeon path, just because we all still had to learn the mechanics.). However, the pace does feel rushed. I noticed we are getting more overlapping events, and I appreciate that. I think that each living story update should be available (and completable for) for one month, possibly overlapping with new content after 2 or 3 weeks. Thereby, we would have new content every 2 or 3 weeks, satisfying those who have a lot of time on their hands, but allowing those with more rl responsibilities to complete the new content at a more leasurly pace.

timmyf.1490:

3) Nielsen sucks and consistently misrepresents viewership. It’s a joke that advertisers take it seriously.

Could you elaborate on this, maybe via PN? Interested Marketing major here
(I think it’s due to easily available and established market research sources, btw.)

@topic: It can easily be acknowledged that even the forums are not consistent on what ‘Design Integrity’ means. Also, only politely (or at least decently) voiced feedback really deserves to be taken into account, IMO.

1. Build diversity in PvE, i.e. making max direct damage (berserker gear) no longer the only optimal time/effort choice for most PvE content (particularly dungeons).
2. Similarly, Condition caps.
3. New Armor skins and skin wardrobe.

Hello there,

seeing as my small guild of friends has become increasingly inactive (and/or scattered around different guilds and servers), I am looking for a friendly new guild still actively playing the game. I have been casually playing since day one (ok, actually since beta) and am up to pretty much everything excluding sPvP (and maybe Fractals, except if my new guild had the patience of showing me the ropes).

I am perfectly willing and able to use teamspeak for coordinated gameplay like dungeons, but would rather not have it up and running all the time (when just traversing the open world). I’ll also guest if necessary, not sure whether I’d actually transfer servers.

Ah, and I’m 26 years old, btw. (just out of university and hunting for the elusive job that will pay enough and is willing to hire me). I’m usually playing afternoons and evenings (every other day) in GMT +2 (due to summer time).

Ah yes, the tried and true way of rushing people through content to make ingame currency…has been around since GW1. Personally, I wasn’t fond of it back then either, but I don’t actually care if it’s done.
As has been said before, blame the demand.

…because there might just be people (like me) who don’t enjoy the guardian gameplay as much as they enjoy other professions. Also, fun beats efficiency in a game.

BoogerSammich.7189:

ITT: players complaining about the fact that they don’t have an HOUR to spare to play the game and expecting some sort of compensation.

Oh believe me, I’m not complaining about an hour. I’m not even complaining about two hours. But we still weren’t finished after 3 hours yesterday (which is when I had to leave). I like to take things slow, I enjoy learning (dungeon) mechanics, and I don’t even mind wiping a couple of times on each boss. But I usually just don’t have 3-4 hours to spare on a single dungeon (path), where I can’t take a break (to make dinner, for example, or walk the dog) without inconveniencing my party.
And it’s not even about the compensation – I just enjoy playing the content, from time to time. So it really isn’t about how much gold we get for completing this path, but for how long it takes to complete it. Yes, it will probably get shorter with time – but we still have to invest the time to learn it first. And it’s still kitten long even if it takes 45 Minutes…(anyone remember what a blessing the Cantha story missions were, time wise, compared to the Prophecies ones?)

Yes please!

While I do find it rather frustrating at times, I don’t mind the challenge – but I had to leave right when we were figuring out the last boss because I didn’t anticipate I’d have to spend >3hours in the dungeon an have another appointment in a couple of minutes.
That’s just sad

You know what the really nice thing about GW2 is? No monthly fees. That way, if you get bored, or feel burned out?
You can just try out some other game or activity. Or have a P2P-MMO on the side, fulfilling all your gear-treadmill needs, for when you have rushed through all the current living story achievements and need a different carrot.

Seriously, I can’t think of a single MMO out there that has less gear-treadmill than GW2 (or GW1) – and there are actually people who enjoy GW2 (and only GW2/GW1) for exactly this reason. Please leave us our one MMORPG without excessive necessary gear-grind and just go play something different when you run out of carrots to chase in GW2.

I believe the majority of complaints don’t stem from ‘this is too hard for me, make it easier’, but from ’I’d like to succeed at this hard content, but my success depends on what 79 other random people are doing’.

I don’t want raids in GW2 (or at all, really), but I can see why people think this encounter should be raid content. The fight definitely requires coordination, and I just don’t see how you can realistically achieve that with 80 random people on an overflow server :/
Yes, I know he has been beaten by several servers. But if your server/overflow lacks competent commanders (or vocal people in the chat), you just don’t stand a chance – and that’s quite frustrating.

Still boycotting Ascended. Problem solved. Might become problematic when they add ascended armor with nice looks…

Have you been to the Order of Whispers HQ yet?
Also, they have added at least one new WP in Orr (and Southsun, I think) in the last couple of months– so depending on when you did those, you might want to recheck.

Necro’s are quite good at farming, btw – tagging stuff with a staff/scepter+dagger and wells combo coupled with deathshroud 4 is ridiculously easy

Group support is decent too, in my humble opinion, if you do it right.

ViciousVyne.2935:

During the personal story of the asura, you have the option of the infinity ball, a device that is as big as a mobile phone, but was still able to create an alternate version of tyria, in which you conquered it with steam creatures. And your alternate version wanted to conquer our tyria aswell. If that little thing was able to make such big changes, an entire reactor could do all sorts of things. I wouldn’t even be suprised if the asura impacted the fall of abaddon aswell, or the mursaat, or the dragons. Man, there are many options to where this might go.

The Bookahs got my vote
#TeamKiel

Still my favourite story step, hands down (‘and today, I defeated evil-me from an alternative future’).
Also, I’ve already defeated Abbadon (like, twice at least) – more Asura madness, please