Guild Wars 2

People are starting to make it sound as if Gw2 is the only game in the universe to use RNG. Which MMO have you people played that doesnt make use of RNG exactly cause they all do!

Sure its not the most forgiving in terms of RNG, it does have some pretty low drop rates granted but its far far from the worst MMO out there. Every MMO has rare stuff that’s hard to get which you need to struggle to acquire. Believe it or not that’s actually important because without it content would have far smaller longevity.

Jemmi.6058:

Your analogy is great, but the point of the analogy is that the argument that the content is fun because you are doing something else is not a positive for the content.

You could just go outside and chat to people, or you could just watch the commercials on YouTube. Why do the task that isn’t very fun to do? Why even add it in the first place. This thread is a critique on the fact that the effigies are not fun. ArenaNet has shown that they are welcome to feedback and respond accordingly. I hope they look at this thread and come up with fun ways to have us go around and do these fun events while also doing fun content.

I agree with OP 100% on how illogical and not-fun the effigies are. This is the same for Moa racing and pinata’s. Dragonball was at least something that was actually a game and was kind of fun. Not my cup of tea per se, but it was a good addition.

Mind you I am not disagreeing. I said it before and I say it again the task itself isnt fun no doubt about that. That being said I do think they actually have value for the reason stated. Going back to the analogy, like you correctly said you dont need to have an errant to run at city hall to leave the house and do all the things mentioned in the analogy but that being said people often take the path of least resistance. IF they’re having fun watching tv they’ll have no motivation to go out and do all the other stuff. The errant is what tips the scales.

Going back to the land of tyria I think the idea behind the effigies is on those same lines. I am sure no game designer at Arenanet thought this would be an exciting activity that people will go crazy about. Personally I think this is just a different the holiday version of the new dailies.

Let me elaborate … One problem a lot of people complain is empty zones. We see a lot of such posts everywhere. The game is designed so that players can literally play anywhere and still progress but a large majority of players just play the most profitable content and nothing else. They got comfortable sitting home watching TV that they stopped going out and do all the other stuff. The effigies all over the place are an attempt to get people to spread out and seems to me its working. It certainly worked on me before the effigies I was mostly doing events and farming holograms in just a couple of zones. Now just this morning I have already visited 4 zones by this evening it will be twice if not more then thakittens

also the same purpose hearts have. Hearts arent really exciting content but they have a vital function. It takes people in the general area where dynamic events happens and more importantly then that it keeps them there hopefully long enough for dynamic events to start.

Bottom line I think sometimes you need to create gameplay mechanics who’s primary function isnt themselves but to facilitate other content. I bet this is one such case.

Jemmi.6058:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Stupid game using boring mechanics like hitting buttons on the keyboard. I will only consider it content if I have to hit buttons on something else!!!

Try this. Instead of just mindlessly zerging to every WP and then complaining about how fast and boring it is, run between them and do the events in the area. I did about 50 different events, many of which I had never seen before while running around and finding them. It broke it up, made it more exciting and was fun.

So your argument is that the new content is fun, not because the new content is fun, but because you are doing something else at the same time?

Allow me to make an analogy

Say I watch a new show and I say it is horrible, 0/10.

Then you come in and say, no that show was great, because while you were watching it you saw some really funny commercials, some for products you’ve never even heard of. You then recommend that people would enjoy the show more if they didn’t skip the commercials with their TiVo.

Does that make sense to you?

I dont think your analogy is correct. In you case the bulk of what you experiance is the show with the commercials being a small subset. A better analogy would be say I had to go to city hall to sign something but thats okey cause I had fun along the way chatting with people, stopping at a bar, shopping etc…. If it werent for having to sign that paper at city hall I would have stayed home watching Tv. Both are fun but thanks to the not so fun activity (going to city hall to sign the paper) I got to do something different that otherwise I wouldnt have done.

Also please keep in mind this effigy thing is just 1 activity in this new content.

Thing is you’re right.. there is nothing fun with pressing F on the effigy perse. But that doesnt mean you cannot have fun while doing it. its one of those cases where the fun is in the journey not in the destination luckly you only need to spend literally 1 second at the destination so thats not a problem. (okey 5 seconds if you watch the whole dance)

SlothBear.9846:

Early MMOs were criticized for having the same dull, boring, quests that usually started with some guy asking you to kill ten rats.

Every MMO that’s come out recently has promised it won’t make you do this, and then turns around and makes you do exactly that. This is simply GW2’s version of it. Prior to launch they had this whole “Manifesto” about how players wouldn’t have to suffer through the exact sort of content that they’re releasing on a monthly basis now.

I’d rather not see any monthly content if it’s all going to be stuff like this and see that dev time put into making stuff that’s actually fun or, god forbid, bug fixes.

Thing is fun is subjective. I assure you I found this update pretty fun.I enjoyed Dragon Ball and I love running around the world doing events, killing holograms and just enjoying the sights. Effigies with their simplicity kinda “forced me” to play in a larger area which is good.

as for the Manifesto it promised you, you can play the game the way you want. So tell me how exactly do effigies break that promise? is there anything negative you get if you just simply ignore them? remember for some and I am one such person they have a positive effect in different ways (play in multiple zone rather then farming the same zone + increase players in low to mid level zones)

Genophix.3098:

I’m not being funny but every MMO I’ve ever played is 90% filler, as in boring repetition that we are forced to do.

This is so the game lasts a lot longer and the developers make more money. Ofc my theory holds more water in the subs model of MMO but you take my point.

The real question is why do we play MMOs? Well it’s not for the amazing storylines or unique combat at every turn. ‘Hey I swung a sword, hey I swung it again..’ It’s ironic GW2 is just the same as every other MMO in this respect but at least the PR team achknowleged the insane amount of repetition in MMOs.

So I’m curious as to what your complaining about, so they made you burn 30 effigies did they, what about the 40,000 mobs you’ve killed in the exact same way over the last 9 months? That’s ok?

Thats unavoidable. It takes days if not weeks to create a single dynamic event. You need to think / write a story for it. Create models, rig them, create any animations, create particle effects, script them, create the dialog and translate it to multiple languages, set them all up, test them and publish them. Players on the other hand will take 5 minutes to complete it. Its impossible for any developer to keep up with the rate of player content consumption which means you need to do fillers for people who play a lot of hours per week. If it takes say a week to create 5 minutes of engaging content how is anyone supposed to keep up with a player who plays 30 hours per week?

The Ace.9105:

“You like pretty colours? Fireworks and Pinatas” YEEEEHHHHHH I LIKE COLORS. What???

“You like PvP? Dragon ball” no PvP player plays this.

(snip)

A lot of what you mention is just you projecting your personal opinion on everyone.
How can you say no PvP player plays this? an even so its pretty clear some people enjoy it else why are AFK players such a discussed issue in that mini game?

Again, maybe you dont care about achievements because in your case you dont enjoy a game play mechanic that doesnt give you tangible rewards but that doesnt mean there are not people striving to be best on their server.

As from your comments you seem to be a person who doesnt play parts of the game if they dont provide meaningful rewards (based primarily on your comment about achievements) I would imagine you most likely didnt visit the effigy in say the bottom right part of Gendarran fields 100s of times before now since there was nothing for you to be had… except for a jumping puzzle which again doesnt provide meaningful rewards anyway. So now I really doubt every player visited all the remote areas with effigies 100s of times.

Contradiction… so first you claim that the game is all about grinding because the chances for a ticket drop are so low so you have to kill a lot of mobs but then just the very next line you said “Should everything addition to the game be kill this and kill that?” worked in GW1.” How can you want to just kill stuff when you find that grinding and thus by definition not fun?

How are the effigies the only content we get? Did you client bug out and not provided you with effigy ceremony single player instance? or the dragon ball, or all the other activities I mentioned my post to Xavori 4 posts above this one?

Sorry I dont follow what you mean by “All new skins, super adventure box etc. are fan created.” can you rephrase it please?

Now this is interesting. So you call me blind because during Dragon bash I am doing the same stuff I was doing in Halloween or Wintersday… Fair enough there are certainly some similarities. Instead you suggest we could get: “new dungeon, new elder dragon, new dragon champion”… But using your same argument just like Dragon bash is just a different skin to halloween wouldnt fighting a new elder dragon be a new skin to fighting zaithan. Wouldnt fighting a new dragon champion be the same thing just with a new skin to fighting say the claw of jormag or the shatterer? I get it you prefer more epic style content, I wouldnt mind it in the least as well and do hope such content is coming just like you do but its not fair to shoot down these holiday events just cause they’re not epic enough for you is it?

Based on what do you state that holiday events are all we’re getting in the future? They did expand your type of content before at least twice.. when they introduce southsun cove and the fractal of the mists so why do you feel that will never happen again… which is funny considering there is a post on reddit a couple of dates ago suggests there might be something akin raiding in the work (from an ingame chat with a developer with screenshots included) as well as a post yesterday on this forum by colin johanson saying that future living story events will contain content that will integrated in fractals of the mists once the event concludes (so I assume more dungeons)

Seras.5702:

Generally, I agree. But with limited time events I think they need to be more accessible to casuals. And for the most part, they have been. I’m not trying to insinuate that achievements should be easy. But I think if we’re going to have snazzy event content then it needs to actually be snazzy. For the most part, this event is a lot of fun; I’ve been enjoying it a lot. But we only need so many “run here, hit F” tasks for achievements. We had that for pinatas, taffies, fireworks, and now effigies. I think they could have done something a little more imaginative than ask us to WP around and dance (?) in front of an effigy (or 50). I’m doing it cuz I want the achievement, not because hitting F 50 times is fun. At least with the holos I get to fight stuff. That’s fun.

I agree and the solution to that is two fold.
1. Make some achievements optional
2. Make more then a single way how to achieve them

and they did all of that really.

For example you can taffies by
1. Bashing Pinatas .. run press F
2. Killing mobs and opening coffers
3. Killing holograms
4. Doing whatever activity you like and using the money to buy the sweets directly from TP

Same with the fireworks
Walking to the firework launcher and pressing F was just one way how to do that.
1. You could also kill mobs and farm coffers
2. Buy the fireworks
3. Farm the holograms

Pinatas and Effigies where they only two achievements out of 14 where the only way to get them was run to spot X and press F. Its not really that bad is it?

That being said some requirements were in fact steep for casuals. If you can only play a few hours a week it will be very very difficult to get most of the rewards (tickets, wings, even the dragon helm might be tricky) so there is some room for improvement no doubt. Not sure whats the best way to address that though because if you reduce the effort required people will then be unhappy cause there is no enough stuff to do since they’ll be done in a couple of days instead of having stuff to do the whole month which is also bad.

Seras.5702:

Xavori.3768:

Are we droppin’ it like it was hot, only literally?

This made me lol.

I agree with your point too. Even before the effigies, half of the achievements were “run here, press F.” Which can be made fun but loses its fun when it’s overdone. After all the holo, pinata, fireworks, & taffy hunting seeking out one more thing was kinda lame. I think it should have been visit 1 effigy in each zone or visit 15 effigies total or something other than visit 20 more than the number that exist in the world.

Dont think it can be that simple. If all achievements were something you can do in 30 minutes (I am assuming 2 mins per teleport will be enough for the client to load the zone and walk the extra distance) Then the leaderboard for achievement would become a joke as everyone would have the maximum points and sit in the top spot. Achievements by their nature need to involve a little effort.

Xavori.3768:

Galen Grey.4709:

A lot of people will start to like the game the moment they stop threating it like a checklist imho.

Its true there is nothing exiting about walking up to an effigy and hit F but there is a journey to be had between effigies. As long as you dont teleport from one to the other and allow yourself to be distracted from an effigy to the next there is a lot of fun to be had and a good reason to enjoy multiple zones.

For me Effigies are kind like hearts just a marker to give you your exploration a general direction nothing else. Do that an Effigies become just a buff between adventures in different geo locations.

I’ve done those journeys over a hundred times at this point. How is doing it one..err two since we have to visit the same effigies twice…going to be any different?

But again, you’re not defending the new ‘content’. Because you can’t. Because it’s indefensible. It’s an utter waste of time for everyone involved, including the 5 minutes it took some dev to stick the effigies on the map and write up the script to update the character variable.

Because of a nifty thing called dynamic events. For the most part it will be the same sure but there will always be that one event you missed the other 100 times (and you didn’t travel the whole world a 100 times, the same few favorite zones sure but everywhere? I find it hard to believe. Case in point you said the same journey twice cause you have to visit the same effigy twice but thats only true if you do it mechanically traveling the same most efficient straight line. If you allow yourself to be distracted it will not be the same exact journey twice. You can have many unique journeys between any two effigies if you wish.

For starters the content update wasn’t just the effigies, there was a ton more. The decorations, the dragon ball mini game, the moa race, the pinatas, the weapon skins, the dragon helm, the wings, the pola doll, the at least 4 events with voice overs, the food with the new buffs, new minis, the Marriner’s Horn, Marjory’s Journal,the firework launchers as well as the effigies. All of this content needed to be designed, modeled, animated, scripted, voice acted (in some case) and tested. It was definitely not a 5 minute job, its actually an amazing amount of work to fit in 1 month.

As for the content itself its up to you how you consume it. Dont like the effigies? skip them what will you if you do ? 10% health buff is the only thing you’ll be missing out. This month update allows you to:

1. Play the dragon ball mini game which personally I find very fun
2. Try to acquire one of the nifty skins doing more or less whatever you enjoy. You can Do DE, Story line missions, Hunt holograms, just kill everything on your way to the effigies, join zergs, farm mobs whatever.
3. Try to get more achievement points to improve your standing on the leader boards
4. Engage in the storyline of the event in LA
5. collect all the new minis
6. Get the 2 wings
7. get the extra rewards (Marjory’s Journal and the Dragon helm)
8. Ignore any activity what so ever and enjoy the change in decoration while doing whatever you feel like doing

Are you really going to claim there is a lack of content?

Should everything addition to the game be kill this and kill that? Or should they just send over skins via mail each month and not bother releasing any content at all?

At the end of the day its impossible to release content which everyone enjoys. Some of us want hard challanging content but then you’ll get people unhappy that they’re not able to complete it (Ex. Clocktower) Some of us want Easy casual content but then some people are unhappy cause its not challenging (Ex. the Effigies) Some people want to grind mobs but other people hate grinding mobs, some people want to explore and see the world but some people feel they already did that a 100 times so whats the solution? Do a variety of content that all have their own rewards.

You like combat ? You have the skins you can get by farming coffers from any mob
You like exploring around ? just go around visit the effigies
You like PvP? Dragon ball
You like Achievement? Plenty of those
You like pretty colours? Fireworks and Pinatas

So really why do feel that effigies change things so drastically that the this whole months content need defending? For you effigies dont add anything… fair enough for me they just increased the scope of my coffers harvest, instead of just going around the same zone I am now doing the same but through multiple zones. I have a price to pay for that, I farm less but on the + side I will belt another achievement and get to see more of the world. To me that simple activity made a positive effect. To people who ignore it, it will make no difference so really once again where is the problem?

A lot of people will start to like the game the moment they stop threating it like a checklist imho.

Its true there is nothing exiting about walking up to an effigy and hit F but there is a journey to be had between effigies. As long as you dont teleport from one to the other and allow yourself to be distracted from an effigy to the next there is a lot of fun to be had and a good reason to enjoy multiple zones.

For me Effigies are kind like hearts just a marker to give you your exploration a general direction nothing else. Do that an Effigies become just a buff between adventures in different geo locations.

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

So, I farmed the coffers for like 5-6 hours and bought about 15 G worth of coffers (from TP), opened them all and… NOTHING! God, this is frustrating me! Why don’t they add them in the Style tab for like 800 gems? I will not buy more gems for this, less buying gems with cash for stupid RNG crap.

I played a game that was only RNG-based stuff and it was kitten ing me off. If GW2 keeps creating skins with RNG crap, I will simply stop caring about stupid skins. I didn’t get any Fractal weapon, wintersday, flame and frost and still no dragon bash skins. God, why can’t I just spend my gems for a 100% chance to get a skin? Is that too much to ask for?

Or why not put the skins in the Zaitify merchant for Jorbreakers (like the wings)? I still don’t understand…

RNG really suffers from negative perception. Its just a different way of implimenting a token system. It just giving a dynamic price to stuff. It can either come very cheap (you get it on the 10th coffer) or you get it a bit more expensive (you get it on the 1500 coffer) … assuming an average of 1000 coffers per ticket. But look at the wings you feel are better implemented. You need 100,000 Zaitthingies for that. assuming a very generous drop rate of 3 Zaitthingies per coffer you’d need to open about 33k coffers. Do you think you’ll get 0 tickets in 33k coffers? You’d need to be very very unlucky for that really. The wings are a lot harder to get then the skins yet you seem to be more happy with them?

Reivaxe.1358:

Galen Grey.4709:

People, lets put some perspective on things. We’re just on the 2nd day of the event here, yes some of us (me included) opened a ton of coffers and found nothing… YET… there is still what?, 28 days for the event to end? Plenty of chances to get a ticket!
.

You don’t seem to see where people are getting annoy …

1 day or 2 days or 20, RNG is RNG and you could very well NEVER get this skin. Skins MANY people are clearly willing to spend money on.

It’s not good practice for players, it feeds on gambling and luck/ rng that drives people to buying coffers. I have gotten 7 rich coffers and I learned my lesson … never paying a gem for anything that’s not guaranteed again.

As for the people who PREFER RNG because they don’t want others running around with their special snowflake skin by buying them directly from the gemstore then they should really step back and think … if what you want is to be a snowflake then the BEST answer is to have more options. Heck, that’s half the reason I want MUCH more culture armor for Sylvari, to me my Sylvari only looks right with culture themed armor … and there are only 4 leaf armors in the game. Instead of wanting RNG armor or armor to cost as high as T3 I would just prefer there be a rainbow of cool and appealing designs that people could pick from.

Its all about perspective in my opinion. Just for clarification, none of what I am saying applies to rich coffers… I dont like real money gambling, never took part and would be pretty unhappy if that was the only way to get skins. But as it turns out its not. And yes you’re right there is a chance some people might not get one but thats a double edged sword.

If everyone was guaranteed one you’d run the risk few would appreciate it because it would have less value. Look at the toy weapons that everyone got multiple skins of cause they were so easy to get. How many people do you see walking around with those skins? How many complaints do you read on all forums how all items are impossible to get unless you pay tons of money where as every update had stuff you could get easily. But no one seems to care about the easy to get stuff. Even here you said it yourself, you might NEVER get a skin in this event yet there is 3 helmet skins that are trivially easy to get all you need to do is stand in LA for 5 minutes literally but you yourself completely discounted those 3 skins in your statement. Why is that?

I think you got it wrong, its not that people want rng so they’re a special snowflake at all. Its more of they want to work for the items so that they have meaning. Now it doesnt have to be rng, it could be like SAB did it, collect tokens and then exchange. But tokens or RNG it has to be something that requires a bit of effort to get else it will fall off between the cracks and not be as desirable. Its unfortunately human nature.

gvaughn.4163:

I am definitely not a fan of how the festival rewards are being implemented. It makes an otherwise fun event into a bit of a let-down.

edit: There is little doubt in my mind that Arenanet could care less, so long as they are making $$$ off the gems. I expect more of the same in the future.

I think you need to increase your doubt by a bit then. Let me take you back to a time when the first such skins where introduced in the game. Remember the Great sword / chainsaw skin in halloween? or the Scythe staff skin? How could you get those skins? only one way, buying Keys for lock boxes. What about this time? You also get a chance from coffers that drop like all the time from anything you kill no less.

Would you say that this change was not in favor of the players and made them less $$$ in gems? So are you sure they dont care about the players at all? Cause I dont really see it myself.

Kelthos Doombringer.9032:

I pay Blizzard monthly to see all of their content, and they also provide their own store items that are completely optional, just like Arena.Net’s.
But the difference between WoW’s store and GW2’s store is that if we pay for something, more often than not we don’t receive the item that we are paying for.
Yeah, I get that you’ve so kindly stated that there is only a “Higher Chance” at obtaining the tickets, but it’s obvious that the people buying the Rich Coffers are wanting the ticket.
But this doesn’t even make sense! People want the skin, why the hell put it in a RNG chest?? Arena.Net, why are you not giving your customers the item they are paying for??

With all due respect you’re using a double standard here. WoW has plenty of desirable stuff hidden behind much MUCH worst RNG. To mention one such thing how about the mount Ashes of Al’ar? You can only try to get it once a week, it has a 1% chance to drop and if it drops you need to be the lucky person in a 25 man raid to get it. Even if you manage to solo it, odds are you’ll get it after 2 years. (100 runs divided by 52 weeks). In this case you can get one skin in approximately 1000 coffers. So if you opened 1200 coffers already you were unlucky sure, but you hit the average time you should have gotten it after 2 days not after 2 years. by the end of the month if you keep the same rate you’ll have acquired 18 skins if the RNG gods dont betray you. in case of that 1 mount in WoW you’d still be 1/24 of the way to so that you hit the odds were you will get it once.

I dont think you picked a good example. You’re obviously happy with the way WoW does things so seriously why is something thats in this case a full 432x better ( you can get 432 skins in the time it takes to get that 1 mount in WoW) making you unhappy? Dont get me wrong, I am not trying to antagonize you I would really like to understand why you’re fine with WoW but not in GW2 even though the same thing is in WoW and in most cases to a much bigger magnitude.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Yes… I said this a thousand other places… but i want to make sure I’m heard because… I’m not happy. For the first time I seriously found some skins that I would throw myself off a cliff to obtain, but after impaling myself on the sharp rocks and bleeding to death, I find nothing.

My guild mate opened 15 coffers and found a ticket… I spent almost the entire day fighting holos, bet on 30+ races, fought in 60-80 dragon ball matches, spent five gold buying 120 coffers… opened around a thousand coffers in total … no ticket.

That’s not fair.

I am not sure fair has got anything to do with it and certainly not this early. Every coffer is a lottery. From people’s experiences the odds seem to be 0.01% ergo the average people get a skin is when they open up 1000 coffers. if you opened a 1000 coffers and didn’t find one you’re being unlucky for now. if your guild mate opened 15 and found one s/he was very lucky till now. But its still to early to say! why? because there is still a lot to go till the end. If you open another 5000 coffers till the end of the event and find 8 tickets and your guild mate opens another 5000 coffers and finds 3 more tickets the tables will turn, you’d be the lucky one getting 1.6 tickets per 1000 coffers while your guild mate would now have acquired only 0.8 tickets per 1000 coffers.

Further more fair is subjective. Take SAB, you could farm it and buy the skins without any luck involved but does that make it fair? In some aspects yes, in others not so much. If Person A can play 5 times more then I can then they can earn 5 times more skins then I can, does that make it unfair? Yes and no…

Same thing here. If the odds people claim are correct it should take 1000 coffers to get a ticket, so lets assume 2 people open exactly 1000 coffers and they both get 1 ticket. Is it unfair if one of them is lucky enough to get it on the first coffer s/he opens while the other gets it when they open coffer number 1000? they’d both be sticking with the odds 100%

bubblyball.7591:

Shadowtech.5071:

That’s right its been 2 days and already rage no weapon skins, say whaaaaaaaaaaat? lol

And do you know why? Because being the 3rd day some ppl already got more than 1 tickets… thats why. And some ppl even got their dragon helmets and wings too while other are left with nothing. Thats what making ppl angry and sad and disappointed.

Sure and they were lucky but that doesnt mean only they get to enjoy the skins. I can tell you my experience in SAB, it will make a good comparison in a way. Day one to a couple of days before the end of the event I had not a single skin drop. then just a couple of days before the event ended I had not 1 but 2 drops in the same day. On the last day I bought another further 3 skins with the bubbles I collected. So essentially until the very end one could say this is hopeless I’ve been at it for days and didnt get anything for it. But that wasnt strictly true.

Now its true with SAB you had better control because of the tokens you could collect but for most people it still took days if not a whole week to get enough tokens to buy a skin. Here its a bit more chaotic but getting no skin in the first two days is not yet signs of gloom.

Personally so far I farmed somewhere between 300 – 400 coffers still no skin but thats okey, its only day 3. If I can get 3 – 5 skins by the end of the event I will be happy. So far that doesnt seem undoable.

People, lets put some perspective on things. We’re just on the 2nd day of the event here, yes some of us (me included) opened a ton of coffers and found nothing… YET… there is still what?, 28 days for the event to end? Plenty of chances to get a ticket!

Compared with the last event and the really really low drop rate of boxes in that one, this is a major improvement in my opinion. I am quite confident I will at least get one ticket by the end of the event, quite likely more.

But I honestly dont understand this mentality of we have to get them all. Its impossible to get everything in any MMO f2p or p2p! I played Eve online for like 6 years now if not 7 and you know how many ships I never got to own and never will because it would take years to train for them all? This is not about the business model, its about if stuff is too easy to get no one will care about it.

I have yet to see people talk about the free doll for example, why? when you’re handed things easily they just arent as valuable when it takes real effort to get them. Every single release gave out free easy to get stuff but you dont see anyone excited about getting them where as if you get a ticket for these skins.. that makes your day/week/month. Sometimes you win sometimes you loose, it has to be a balance. SAB was pretty easy to earn your skins in… Got 5 myself. The last event alas was very hard, Personally I didnt manage to get a single one. This one I think we will be something between the two and I believe thats a good thing.

Bottom line is we’re still on day 2 dont give up already. Its easy to farm chests, they drop not just from the hologram things but also from mobs. Just by doing nebo terrace defense this morning I got exactly 24 coffers in like 5 minutes. There is such a huge supply that they’re likely be quite cheap to buy as well soon. Personally I feel compared to last month Arenanet have made it much easier to get these exclusive skins, I personally think and obviously this is just my opinion, that all this negativity is going to be counter productive. I have no doubt they’re going to have less sales for the chests this month compared to last month cause its obviously a lot easier to get chests this time round for free. No company likes to loose money unless they get something in return. If this change to the difficulty level of getting a skin makes people happy it will be worth the loss in revenue, but if it still doesnt make people happy than what reason will they have next month to make it as easy as this month to get these exclusive skins? If people are going to be unhappy either way might as well make as much money as they can right?

Dont get me wrong not saying anyone should just fake happiness but seriously I dont see the situation to be bad at all this month. Personally I am quite happy. Sure it will be difficult if not impossible to get all the skins but I am sure most people will walk away with a couple even if they dont buy chests with real money.

Raine.1394:

One correction here. They didn’t add Fractals for the grinders, they added vertical progression for everyone. Just visit a laurel vender to see the path of the power curve, in the initial pieces, for everyone. It truly would be great if we were talking about cosmetic upgrades, I mean, that’s what GW is all about, right? I would agree with you at launch, but with the addition of VP we all will be chasing ever increasing stats. That’s what vertical progression is. Vertical: the power level of the game increases; Progression: it continually and continuously increases over time. Again, they didn’t add a grind for grinders in FotM; they added a grind for everyone everywhere with vertical progression.

What vertical progression? Did they announce a new tier that I am not aware off? Is there content you cannot tackle without ascended gear?

Sure ascended gear is better then exotic but
1. focusing on just the gear not the infusions its the only tier that we know off. One new tier doesnt make the game more of a vertical progression game then it was before it just makes for a higher ceiling. to have vertical progression you’d have to be unable to ever reach the ceiling or at least only reach it temporarily.
2. the vertical progression (agony resistance ergo the infusions themselves) only applies inside FotM so if you dont care about FotM there is no vertical progression for you at all.
3. its entirely optional. The only place where ascended gear might make a smidgen of difference is in WvW but then there are so many variables there that there is no point on dwelling on what essentially is the smallest variable. Everywhere else you can do just fine using the most basic tier armor, none of the content requires ascended armor to be tackled.
4. FotM is no longer the only way to acquire Ascended gear. You can now acquire it doing WvW if you want to gain all the advantage possible.
5. Again, its a grind if you just make yourself play it and nothing else. Do it in moderation. A few sessions a week, whats the hurry?

Beligerent.1324:

Also people going “living story” as the solution… Really? I finished everything for Southsun in like an hour for each update and as for it being “living story” that’s a bit laughable. I love GW2 but their living story for this last update was some weak sauce.

Their living story is easily finished, quite speedily too (and I’m not even trying to rush through it or anything).

I am not trying to criticize you, you’re free to play as you wise and the way you find fun. That being said Gw2 and by extension the living story isn’t something you finish. It is more something you experience.

Talking to NPCs and see their view point on the events as they transpire, Enjoying how the settlements changed and evolved, Experience the new events, The crab toss mini game, getting all the achievements. Sure you can just do the story and nothing else and you’d be done in a week, personally with the two updates in a month there was more then enough content to keep me busy.

Dont get me wrong, You’re right, doing just the story didnt take that long, just a couple of events and the shortest dungeon ever but that’s not all there was, right?

As for your original post and grinding, again it depends on how you approach the game. I think everyone will agree Gw2 is a game mainly designed for casuals even though it tries to cater a bit to the hardcore crowd as well. The irony in my personal view is people who find it grindy do so cause they want a casual game but instead of threating it as one which it is, they force themselves to play in a hardcore manner. Case in point Dungeon armor sets, why do you think they dont have better stats then the other super easy to acquire exotic sets ? In my opinion thats to leave you free to acquirement them at your own pace or not at all if you so choose to. The problem why you end up hating a dungeon by the time you finish getting your full dungeon set is because you do nothing else then grind the dungeon until you get your full set. Thing is you dont have to do that at all! play just once or a couple of times a week, use different paths etc… and you will not get burned out and feel like you’re grinding badly. Sure it will take you 3 months instead of a week or two but so what? you can still have the same stats or you can even not bother with an exotic set at all and still easily tackle any content in the game.

As for what else there is in the game to do except from acquiring dungeon sets? Plenty of stuff, Dynamic events… seeing them all is no easy feat and it will take a long long time to complete. Achievements, exploration… and I dont mean getting world completion but finding interesting things such as a quagen hidden away in a small air pocket in an underwater tunnel that will be surprised / angry at being found. Hidden dynamic events , ie completely unmarked in any way that never trigger unless you do some specific actions etc… , jumping puzzles, achievements, talking to npcs (many have interesting things to say, some even have hidden dynamic events that can only be triggered through conversations), finding / discovering new recipes, getting unique drops such as final rest for example, experiencing all the meta events, finding out the various stories of the different areas in a zone (something you do based on what npcs say, the dynamic events in the area and some observation).

In closing Gw2 is not a game that should be taken as objectives that need completing, its a world that is to be experienced. My play style might not work for you, not saying you’re playing wrong and should copy me. All I can tell you is I have over 750 hours of game time and still have a few zones (about 6) that I havent event played in yet, I had my first max level character by the 3rd week of release.

Anet didnt lie to anyone, they said it from day one, there is no end game, the whole game is the end game because there is nothing special you’re meant to do once you get to 80. You are meant to keep doing what you enjoy doing whatever that might be. Take things with moderation and dont try to rush and then you can enjoy the game no problem. Thats my view at least.

enos.1580:

Galen Grey.4709:

Its also important to note this story builds upon the Lost shores. Canach and Subdirector Noll were main characters in the Lost Shores. They already had a history and this kinda builds upon it.

Maybe you had a different experience than the majority, but 90% of the Lost Shores content was broken and uncompleted.

Like Niyo said above. You’re right Lost shores did have problems such as NPCs that were meant to become friendly when beaten actually getting killed and not re-spawning at all and thus halting progress. These however were all fixed before the end of the event and it was possible to experience all the story near the end.

I get that some people might have given up and never tried again thus never completed the story. But this is the internet, people who truly wanted to follow the story could search it up. There are detailed accounts of what happens in the Lost Shore online.

The story isn’t disjointed at all. It is just not presented in your face. The trick is to talk to the NPCs and I don’t mean the ones clearly marked but all the NPCs. A lot of them will tell you whats happening to them and in so doing they’re painting a bigger picture.

Its also important to note this story builds upon the Lost shores. Canach and Subdirector Noll were main characters in the Lost Shores. They already had a history and this kinda builds upon it.

This method of delivery is consistent across all of GW2 though. Story is something you have to get to by talking to the NPC involved. Its a realistic way of delivery in my opinion. Sure its harder then more traditional methods no doubt but the only difference is you’re not told who you have to speak to and at the end there isnt really a need for that because everyone generally has something to say on the subject at hand.

The price isnt high in my opinion but with alts its a bit of a problem too. 10 euros I paid happily. Infact I had gems to buy it but still forked the money just to promote future items like that. It did leave me a bit sad though cause I applied it to my main but am currently leveling alts so I will not get to use it much and thats a shame. Perhaps a good idea would be to have 2 versions 1 thats soul bound for 800 gems and one thats account bound for more. I would be willing to pay 1200 gems… even 1600 gems on a good month if it were account bound. Anyone else would go for something like that?

Celtic Lady.3729:

Hee Haw.7164:

There are a lot of posts here, so it may be hard to glean one main argument. But from what I can tell, it’s: “I don’t like being asked to do something outside of my normal gameplay preferences to obtain a daily reward.”

Although it doesn’t affect me personally, I can understand the disappointment of folks that don’t like crafting, have never done it, and have been happy playing the game without it now finding themselves in the position of taking up a craft if they want to complete each day’s daily. Crafting is often one of those things that you either love it or hate it, so this is an understandable situation regardless of one’s one opinion on crafting.

What I take issue with are the people that come into the thread and accuse everyone that is experiencing this disappointment as being stupid and lazy. Such a position is neither logical nor helpful.

Thats the point of dailies and monthlies though, to drive players to try new things. Keep in mind the effort being asked of players here its miniscule. Crafting 10 items involves very little effort. Even if you just started playing the game on that day you can get it done very easily. You just buy a pick / axe / sickle go harvest a few nodes and you can craft your 10 items starting from absolute scratch.

If one feel so strongly about not doing any crafting for some reason they can also skip the daily for that day, its not such a big deal. The game is very forgiving, there is nothing one might need to get that quickly that missing out a daily now and then will penalize at all.

Svenn.5209:

Knox.3748:

Limitations? U play one day, u get the reward. Cant careless if you play 3/6/9 or 12h. If you play 12 in 1 day on a week you cant get as much as one guyes who plays 2h everyday.

Again, what is good about this? I play 5 days for 10 hours each in a week, someone else plays 7 days for 2 hours a day each that week. The person with 2 hours a day is more rewarded than me? Why? It’s a stupid artificial time limitation. I shouldn’t have to go “Well, I played my 2 hours today, now I can’t progress on that anymore because the game simply won’t let me. Why? No real reason, I’m just not allowed to make progress more than once a day.” This is the same thing that facebook games do. It’s NOT good game design.

You’re seeing this in too absolute terms. Someone who plays 7 days for 2 hrs per day isnt more reward then you who plays 5 days for 10 hours each. You will get way more karma / gold or whatever you choose to do.

You need to keep in mind that Gw2 like any game has lots of different activities that all have their own specific rewards. I can argue that spending a month logging each day for 10 hrs playing WvW will have me less rewarded then someone who logs in one single day that month and plays for just 1 hr if that person plays just a single dungeon and if all i focus on in terms of rewards was dungeon tokens because his 1hr dungeon session gave him some my 300 hr WvW session didnt give me a single one. That is obviously wrong. In absolute terms I was definitely rewarded way way more then he was.

Dailies like the name itself implies are geared towards rewarding people for logging in and playing the game each and every day. So someone who logs in 7 days does in fact do more in terms of what dailies require than someone who logs in 5 days. The length of time you play is irrevant in this context.

ragb.4721:

Do I have to pray so that my teammates fall so that I have to revive 15 of them ?

Also do I have to take note of mobs that casts spells in order to get 15 dodge ?

Seriously this is the most non-casual friendly patch ever. If you wanted to make hardcore genre, fine. But at least leave some space for the casuals to enjoy getting some good gear.

I`m not a nerd and i`m not going to spend this irritating time trying to get these dailies. I wish I never purchased this game at all, pffffff…….

you have to revive allies not other players. Plenty of zones where npcs regularly kill friendly npcs, just go revive them. Ex. in Queensdale wolves and Centaurs kill villagers and seraph patrols all the time between Scaver Plateau and Claypool. Walking around the road will probably give you enough revives to finish that requirement if not just walk it back and you’re done for sure. I think thats plenty casual friendly. Its not just Queensdale either, many zones have areas where NPCs kill other friendly NPCs.

Dodging isnt just something you do against spells. Centaur archers are also very easy to dodge. Stay a bit back and dodge as soon as they shoot the arrow or if you’re close a bit after then raise their bow. just requires a little timing. Other easy things to dodge are worms throwing rocks, worms borrowing towards you, raptors stun shout thingy, dredge, grubs and charging centaurs.

There is a huge world with a variety of enemies. Dont feel tied down to a paritcular area you might have an eaiser time doing the dailies in different areas.

Honestly I am amazed at some of the comments here. Yes the new dailies take a bit more effort then the old dailies (5 – 10 mins more mind you not hours of effort) but then again they reward more and finally variety. I started to skip dailies because it was just becoming boring to repeat the same things over and over again. But thats not what amazes me most, what amazes me is comments such as these new dailies fail to encourage people to move to different zones and then soon after the same people complain about finding it hard to revive 10 allies. Plenty of zones where npc kill many other npc, visiting one such zone helps you finish that achievement in 1 or 2 minutes easy. They complain how hard/annoying underwater combat is, starter zone makes this a walk in the park.

Something people seem to miss in my opinion is dailies / monthly arent simple quests, they’re not simply meant to give you something to do, they’re meant to encourage you to do things you wouldnt normally do to help you experiance more then the game has to offer. You never did crafting, then a daily crafting is just perfect. crafting 10 things including refining any 10 materials is not going to bore you to death, it will take a minute or two at most to harvest 3 nodes and refine the stuff you get there from a starter zone. Who knows you might even end up liking it. Same with the combo killer, for a long time I have seen people complain there is no reason to group up, there is no content for guilds to do together, well here is a golden oportunitey. Team up with a guild mate and work together.

Seems to me like some people want the game to hold their hands a bit too much. No daily specifically forces you to visit Zone X but that doesnt mean you will not have a much eaiser time reviving Allies if you visit war torn zones like Gendarran Fields. There is no daily that says do X with a guild mate, but that doesnt mean teaming up with a guild mate will not make the combo killer much easier to accomplish.

Seriously people in my opinion you’ll enjoy the game a whole lot more if you stop waiting to find what you desire spelled out word for word in the content and instead start thinking about how you can achieve what the game wants you to achieve play the way you enjoy playing.

I just dont understand this, why do people need to be forced to play the way they like? is it that hard to choose to play the way you like yourself?

Yes most of Gw2 can be soloed no doubt but there are many advantages in playing it as a group as well. Its absolutely not true that you gain anything. Here is what advantages you gain if you do a guild party to tackle Dynamic Events:

- Events scales up thus it becomes more challanging (provided you dont go over the 10 person scale limit of most DE).
- you get more mobs due to the scale up which in turn means more loot hence higher rewards
- if you’re in a party with guild members you will earn more influence for your guild.
- In a party you can support each other, hence you can make the game more tactical.

You might not need a guild for WvW, but it surely makes the expeirance a lot more enjoyable having one. To be effective in WvW you need co-ordination. You need to split into teams and tackle different objectives. Disrubt supply, keep main army busy, attack wall / door, stop re-inforcements. Destory enemy Siege weapons etc… Its possible to do this with your whole server but a lost easier to co-ordinate with your guild.

The game doesnt force you to team up and thats a good thing, some people enjoy playing solo. But if you want to play with your guild the game doesnt stop you either, infact it rewards you for it.

So no disrespect but if your guild members decided to play solo rather then team up, its because they prefered to play that way and not because the game made them.

I do agree with your point that the game is a bit too easy though. It could certainly use some more hard content no doubt.

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

Galen Grey.4709:

post

Here’s the thing (imo): you’re correct that increased supply of ecto has an effect on the market. But I don’t see how the economy is damaged. If ecto price drops, exotics and rares drop too, hurting people who use those items to gain money (crafters included). These people may be hurt, and the hurt may be directly caused by the exploit, but I do not qualify this as a damaged economy. It’s just a changed economy, where said practices are less economically viable, and where in turn other practices become more economically viable. People getting pushed out of their comfort zone =/= objectively hurt.
If Anet increased the drop rate for ecto, the same thing would happen as with this exploit: more supply > chain reaction. It’s ludicrous to say that Anet increasing ecto drop rates would damage the economy, is it not?

I think it is. The exploit made it so that once you start the cycle a single ecto would cost about 3s to aquire. If the exploit had continued to run indefinitely it is safe to assume that people undercutting each other would have resulted in an ecto price somewhere in the range of 3s 1c to say 5s . That would have killed the market for rares in my opinion. If rare drops netted just 5s doing PvE wouldnt be viable anymore, people would gravitate towards dungeons and a whole market would die. Same goes for crafting, if margines are small the majority of players will stop selling wares again another market is death. Thats not to say the economy as a whole would collapse, it wouldnt no doubt but no one looks at the TP and says the economy is entirely healthy when looking at say masterworks which nearly all sell at a loss.

This is way bigger then going out of your comfort zone in my opinion, left unchecked it would certainly drive away people from certain playstyles because the economy for the products you aquire from those play style would be dead.

Yes if Anet increased the drop rate of things dramatically they can damage the economy no doubt about it. The economy depends on scarcity. If I want to craft something and I need 15 sharp claws I will consider outright buying them if I know I might need to spend an hour farming mobs to get those 15 sharp claws but If I knew killing 15 mobs would net me all the 15 claws I need I would just harvest them myself. That would result in sharp claws that are extremely cheap in order to entice people into buying them just to save a few minutes. It will also result in gear that uses sharp claws to also be extremely cheap because else people will just craft it themselves. Imagine if this would be true of everything include lodestones. Do you think anyone would bother with the TP? Not likely in my opinion.

A healthy economy requires a balance between supply and demand. A large supply can be disasterous. Even in the real world, while its a shame you can even find stories of farmers destroying their product just to ensure that an over abandant supply doesnt destory their market.

I dont agree with you Doc. An increased supply of Ectos affects the econonmy on many levels. For starters there is the direct effect we observed in just a couple of days. Price of Ectos dropped from 35s to 25s. If all you’re interested in is buying ectos this might seem a good thing but it isnt especially for people who dont exploit.

Think about it for a second if the price of ecto falls so will the price of Rare gear because well rare gear is mostly used to generate ectos. That means if you’re PvEing and you get a rare drop and try to sell it you will not find people willing to buy it off you for 20s – 25s when the price of ectos is 25s, why? because by buying the rare there is no guarantee they’re going to get the ecto and if they do they will be saving nearly nothing. on the other hand it makes sense to buy rares for 20s if the price of ectos is 35s because well you save some money.

It also effects crafting. If you’re a crafter and are trying to make a profit (no one does it for charity) a drop in prices isnt really in your best interest. If you’re crafting a weapon that needs say 50 ectos and ectos sell for 25s you have to do a markup over 12g 50s if Ectos cost 35s you have to markup something that costs 17g 50s to make. if you mark up by 10% with ectos at 25s you’ll be making 1g 15s profit while with ectos at 35% you’ll make 1g 75s profit.

And this is based on only a couple of days. If this was allowed to run prices would probably have continued to fall and fall making the situation worst and worst.

Thats the direct effect, there is also an indirect effect. The economy suffers when you have rich people that happen to be a bit greedy. So think about your example someone making 4000g. With that kind of money he can monopolize segments of the market. How about using those 4000g to buy say all abyss dyes from the market and reselling them at double the price?

This was not as benign as you think in my opinion

Ascended gear is still being rolled out. So far they implemented just rings and back items and those for now require FoTM run. They did say they will roll it out to aquirable by other means as well including playing WvW itself. That being said this is primarily a skill based game. Ascended armor will give you a small advantage but I personally dont feel its such a big deal missing out on that advantage. I only have a 33% exotic set and do quite well in WvW. I would estimate about 10:1 kill to death ratio.

I also ran a little experiment for fun, tried an hour of WvW wearing no armor at all. Did 7 kills, died 2 times.

I think in a game like Gw2, Rarity is actually essential. What gives value to items? like OP said mostly the value is derived from how hard the item is to aquire. Lets take halloween, the backitem you could get from the scavenger hunt was quite good and had a good cosmetic value too. You never get to hear people praising the developers for providing such a great item for free and pretty easy to get.

Now lets take the unending toymaster tonic or the unbreakable bell, how much people desire it and are angry at not being able to get one. If the endless tonic or the unbreakable bell were as easy to get as the back item do we really think people will be as happy of aquiring it as the few person who had it drop off a present were? Dont think so.

As for the length of time required to aquire things, thats a bit tricky. Sure you can use real money to cut down on the time required but you really dont have to because whatever you want to aquire isnt needed really. Now there are a few exception to this like the holiday mini pets. We dont know if they’ll be available next year so I can understand collectors might feel pressured into getting them now just in case. Over all though it doesnt matter if it takes me a couple of days or a couple of months to get a named exotic weapon I want. Nothing wrong with paying money and getting it quickly but I am not so sure it will be as satisfying as actually playing the game, enjoying the game and after 2 months of “work” I can finally aquire the weapon I wanted for so long.

On the other hand you dont want to have to wait forever either. Thats addressed by having stuff that requires a variable amount of time to get. Some named exotics can easily be aquired in a month or two. Others take 6 months+ legendary go into a year+ You can go for the goal you know you can enjoy pursuiting.

I kinda feel its quite a good balance as is.

@Dominae

You’re absoluitely right, it just I dont see why it has to be a problem? Why cant Players just choose to do what they like?

The reason I am against vertical progression is because I love exploration and story, I essentially want to be side tracked without feeling I am being penalized. Gw2 does just that. You dont need to have the best equipment to play the game. When I PvE I have a rare armor set gear entirely towards MF (MF for two reasons, 1 I feel already too powerful as is, I want challenge and havning MF instead of stats that complement my build gives me just that 2. I get a few better rewards) With such a set thats really easy to aquire I am free to play anything I wish. That me though who likes exploration and story telling. Some people like different things like progression. For them there are more demanding gear to aquire that can be upgraded just ever so slightly to give you the best stats possible. If I were into vertical progression I would be playing that content and trying to conquer all the difficulty levels of FoTM. Two oppossing play styles both possible in the same game.

Is my horizontal progression hindered in any way by the vertical progression? Nope
Is the vertical progression hindered in any way by the horizontal progression? Not hindered no, but you could argue its not that advantages after all you dont really need the gear but then again you shouldnt be doing this because you need the gear as such more like because thats what you like doing.

I think the main problem is people are expecting the game to tell them what to do. Legendaries are hard to get, they’re positioned as the ultimate goal but that doesnt mean the game wants you to just work towards them, they’re meant to be something for longer term players to achieve. If you dont like to work towards long term goals than thats not something you should be pursiuting in my opinion. This isnt a game that tells you what to do, this is a game that provides like you said a wide variety of things to do, something for nearly every play style and leaves it entirely up to you to decide what you want to pursuit.

Gw2 is just about choices, its up to the player to make those choices. Trouble is, seems to me some people are just unable to choose what they want over the best item. Thats where the problem lies imho.

Thing the problem here boils down to patience. Fiennes said it best, aquiring a legendary isnt a goal meant to be achieved in a month or two. Its a goal meant to be achieved in like a year’s time. The problem I see is people want to get it as fast as possible so they end up farming up 1 ingredient at a time. Thats whats feeling like a grind.

There is a reason why you essentially need everything to build a legendary and thats so you play everything. What do I mean? Variety! If you come to terms that this is a long term goal you can just throw farming out of the window, play what you enjoy playing and just keep the rewards that get towards your legendary. Today you feel like dungeons? cool we get some tokens we need. today you feel like DE? we definitely need karma, today you feel like exploring? well we need to discover the whole world for our legendary etc..? All you need to do is litterally play the game.

As for best in slot / Ascended gear I am with Groovy. Rares are enough to tackle any content. You certainly dont need Ascended armor unless you’re planning to dwell deep into FoTM.

My suggest is play what you enjoy and not to get the best reward. The game is perfeclty designed to allow just that.

I have to strongly disagree with the subscription idea though. I too consider myself in-between casual and hardcore. More then that I like to experiance different games. Always looking for new stories to enjoy. A subscription model makes that a nightmare to manage, its a lot easier with a buy to play model. Pay upfront a set amount and then pay for specfic stuff when you want to like costumes skins and such on your own terms. Thats a lot friendlier especially to non hardcore players.

The mistake OP is doing is s/he feels he need to get the same rewards in the same timeframe as hardcore players. Well that would by definition require a hardcore play style. Subscription or no subscription will not change that. In fact I think OP is wrong in thinking that Gw2 is purposely making the situation bad so people spend money, In fact I beleive Gw2 makes it a lot less of an issue simply by making any gear unneeded. Like Groovy said a Rare armor set is enough to play anything and it takes a day or two to craft / buy one!

I also miss the ability to preview any armor, would like to have it back, personally never really experianced any issues because of it.

I actually love the dolls, they provide a good challenge. Evil princesses managed to kill me twice though I killed lots of them. My approach is to AOE condition them (necro here.) If they start throwing confusions I stop attacking, wait for it to stack a bit. in 1-15 they generally stack 4 but in high level zones they can stack even 12, then transfer the confusion to them before pounding them some more.

Trick is dealing with the confusion, if you attack them with 12 stacks you die very VERY fast!

I actually love the dolls, they offer a little challenge. All you need to do really is be mindful of confusion. As long as you dont attack with 8 stacks of confusion on you, you’ll be fine.

@Unspecified

you dont get to do anything for X seconds because you’re not prepaired to deal with the situation. you got condition removal skills. You have healing Spring, Signet of Renewal and spirit of nature. The only poor on demand condition removal is signet of renewal which passively takes away a condition every 10 seconds. However you can still use that to move the conditions to your pet (poor pet). You could also use that in combination with protect me which will prevent the pet from attacking for a while getting no damage from confusion. Rangers have options as well.

The secret to dungeons is team work, pugs are a bit trickier in this regard cause since players dont know each other they are less inclined to take risks for you. When I run dungeons with my guild I very rarely die once. In pugs I would say I average 2 or 3 deaths in a run.

There is a lot of different reasons for this but primarily I think its because strangers are likely to focus on excelling, dealing as much damage as possible. If they see a weak link they dont focus in ensuring their survival like a group of friends would. But in any case if you’re really dieing so much I would take a moment and consider your own play style.

Are you going all out DPS? Are you charging in biting more then you can chew while your team might be more cautious leaving you to deal with the bulk of the enemy assault? Its important to keep yourself alive, that involves more then healing yourself an dodging. Depending on the situation you have to interrupt, blind, remove your own conditions but anyhow you played gw1 so I am sure you’re familiar with the concepts, dont make the mistake of thinking that combat in gw2 is any less complex then gw1, most of the concepts still apply.

Like others have said though dont feel you have to play any particular content. Dungeons might reward more but essentially dont really need the reward so its okey to play content you enjoy even if it might reward less. The game is fun if you play it for the fun. The game will get boring if you threat it like a job.

I too agree with others, they didnt lie the game is fun, there is a lot to do and most of it is done really really well. The attention to detail is unparallel in this game.

I honestly think people who feel gw2 combat is a lot more limiting then gw1 combat underestimate it gw2 combat a lot.

I played a necro in both and my gw2 necro with the one single build I have can replicate about 80% of my gw1 necro skills. Yes its like when I play gw2 I have around 120 gw1 skills on my action bar. Thats because gw1 skill were very specialized. Take death nova for example, you cast it on an ally, if that ally dies death nova does damage + inflicts bleeding to adjects foe. Thats all it does, there is no other way I can use it to make it do something else.

Now lets take GW2 mark of blood for example. This skill puts in an AOE mine, if an enemy steps in it explodes, foes in the area take damage and get bleeding, allies in the area get regen. So I can use this to replicate death nova, does same thing, but if I cast in on an allie who is engaging a foe that ally gets regen which essentially replicates a skill like blood bond. If I use it while I am engaged in combat I get regen essentially doing what blood renwal would do in Gw1. I could use it on my minions replicating skills in Gw1 designed to heal sevants like Blood of the master and verata’s Sacrifce. And this is just one skill used on its own.

Gw1 had a lot of options when you were setting up your build but while playing it you were extremely limited by the choices you made. Gw2 doesnt give you a lot of variety while building your build but gives you a lot more flexibility in how you play that build a lot more in my opinion.

I honestly dont want to judge people, I really hate doing it but I keep reading these kind of threads of how I loved Gw1 and Gw2 is nothing like it that puzzles me so much because I find them really very close to each other and then while reading on post I read a massive contradiction.

Op you said " I’ve logged thousands of hours over several years in Tyria, Cantha, and Elona." so far so good then critizised GW2 over taking too long to reach max level, specifically you said “It takes forever (especially if you’re a working adult with family). I can’t level a new character from 1 to max in a week or less like I could in Guild Wars.”

I cant help feeling you’re just trying hard to hate Gw2 here. playing 1000s of hours in Gw1 was okey but playing more then a week in Gw2 is not?

I am also curious what did you spend your time in Gw1 doing? just PvP? you never crafted any of the armor set available? cause if you did how was farming for those armor sets any different then farming for crafting in Gw2? You have exactly the same options open to you in both games. Either farm the materials directly or earn the money and buy the materials required.

Gear grind… sure its there if you want it, but you can just dress up in masterworks or lets say rare and still be able to tackle any content. You dont have to have the best gear unless you want to have the best gear. That include WvW. Honestly been succesfully running WvW without a full exotic set since day 1. And my kill to death ratio is like 10 kills to 1 death.

You have to farm 24/7 to get mediocure gear from TP? 1g and you can get a full rare set. Not sure if you consider it mediocure but A MF tuned Rare set enables me to play any PvE content without dieing. A correctly tuned Rare set (3 prieces are exotic) is what I use for Dungeons or WvW (not because the MF tuned rare set isnt good enough but because I just want to be efficient for team content as to not penalize my team) You can easily make 1g in 1 hour if you want no 24/7 required.

The Economy is entirely player driven. If something you want to buy costs way too much its not because Arenanet tempered with anything its because whoever decided to sell that item felt he deserved the amount of money asking for. If gold was more easy to aquire things would simply cost more. Let me illustrate, lets take corrupted lodestones. Average time to aquire a lodestone is probably somewhere in between 45 mins to 1hr 15 mins. An hour of farming you can get around 1g so how much do you put such a lodestone for sale? more then 1g or you’re wasting your time. Now lets consider if arenanet increased the gold aquiring rare and now it was possible to make 5g in 1hr. Does that mean now with 5 gold you can buy 5 lodestones? nope it means that someone who spend 1hr farming lodestones will sell lodestones at 5g+ Of course they could just increase the drop rate but if they do then no one will buy lodestones people will just farm them. Also if they increase the drop rate Crafting a Corrupted weapon would mean a couple of hours of work rather then a week long activity like it is now. Same thing happened in Gw1 anyway. If you wanted to craft Vabbi armor what would you do ? either try your luck with hidden chests which would take you more then 1hr per diamond / saphire or farm the 15 plat required per diamond which again took longer then 1hr per diamond / saphire. did gw1 cater for botters because of that?

I could go on but really many things you mention were exactly the same in Gw1 as they are in Gw2 why was their implementation in Gw1 okey but bad in Gw2?

ShaiHulud.7410:

Naqaj.6219:

Funny enough, once you ditch the usual MMO-mindset of MUST-AQUIRE-MORE-STUFF!! and just play for fun, non of these issues have any impact on your game.
I get enough gold for what I need just from playing the game, even have some spare to trade into gems. I have full exotic gear and am now replacing trinkets one by one too. Haven’t farmed a single minute, simply because this game doesn’t require you to.

Because you are the average-casual type of gamer. If you think like this that doesn’t mean we all need to think like this.

Probably you say: ’’It’s enough of what I have at the moment’’. Even though what you have is, for example, a sword that everyone else has, an armor that everyone else has etc.

But there are some players like me who want more out of their gaming experience. I want to strive, to compete, to come out in front. To have a 500 gold sword because I love it’s unique look and because I know that only 2 % of the population has it.

To have a cultural Tier 3 armor set because I know I am unique and not looking the same with 90 % of the server population.

And I wanna achieve this bymyself. By grinding. And when I say grinding I am expecting a reward also. And not being cut off from any means of acquiring gold except grabbing my wallet and buying their pathetic gems in order to conver them to gold.

How are you cut off from acquiring gold? you ’re not, not in the least, you can continue aquiring gold indefinitely. The game doesnt stop you in any way from doing that.

What you’re talking about is making the gold easier to aquire and that will not solve the problem either.

If gold was easier to aquire, everyone would have more gold but then the price of stuff will simply shoot up. If it takes me 1 hour to farm 1 lodestone for example, If farming regularly earns me say 5g per hour instead of 1g-2g per hour I am not going to sell that lodestone for less then 6g-8g or I will making a loss. That means that all you will end up with if you double the efficiency of making gold is your 500g sword will now cost somewhere in the range of 1000g

Besides the whole point of aquiring that sword that only 2% of the player base has is the effort it takes to aquire that sword and not the sword itself. If gold was made easier to aquire so that an average player made 5g an hour then any player playing for 100 hours can get that sword and then that sword will in a month be owned by everyone. The element that made it meaningful to you is gone.

In the end what makes any of these items unique is you need to be a dedicated player who puts in the effort to aquire the items required. People who pay for gems to get the gold are simply in a way cheating their way to the reward.

What Naqaj said basically. Its a bad idea to play a game specifically to earn rewards. Its better to just play the game for the fun and use the rewards you get while playing for fun to buy/get what you want.

If you want to sPvP you dont need any gear.

If you want to PvE, Rare gear is enough to easily play any content (with 1g you get a full set so 30 mins of play for OP)

If you want to WvW you also dont need the best gear to be effective imho. Rare or maybe exotic is all you really need and whats more important is you dont need it on day 1.

Simply play whatever you enjoy and once you earn enough buy the stuff you want. No need to change real money into gold, no need to farm if you dont want to.

Its really up to you, the game gives you total freedom including using your real life money to make things easier but it certainly doesnt make you do it.

Let me ask you something OP. if gold was made a lot easier to aquire like you’re suggesting. If you could make say 50g a day easily, you’d buy all the equipement you want in a week? lets exagerate and say you’d finish getting everything in a month, then what will you do?

Are all these concerns really justified though? I mean is it really a race? I only upgraded my chest and pants to Exotic and then in halloween I added the Boots (which have wrong stats) And I used that for WvW and dungeons exclusively. If I am PvEing I wear a rare set geared on MF and everything still feels really easy!

In WvW I have a rediculous kill to death ration something close to 10 kills for 1 death wearing only 33% exotics!

I even tried playing a little WvW wearing no armor and no acessories and still had a positive kill ratio. 7 kills to 2 deaths.

So yes quiting the game for 6 months, 1 year and coming back will have you subclassed as some people if not all will have ascended you will still be in exotic but will that really matter as much as we think it will matter? I am very skeptical! as I said no armor and I was still able to compete do we really think 1 tier is going to unbalance that much something thats designed from the ground up to be unbalanced anyway?

Exactly what Red Falcon said. If you simply play what you find fun you’ll level up in no time! This also apply to any other reward you can get in game!

You got two options take the path that gets you there quickest (this will feel like a grind)

or you can play what you enjoy and use that to get the reward you want.

You say you’re in no hurry and thats great, thats important. See what you enjoy be it Dynamic Events, Exploration, Story, WvW, Achievements, Crafting, Jumping Puzzles, whatever Play that and dont worry about leveling up its as simple as that!

Amadan.9451:

i think the problem with purchasable gold is: i have money to buy on tp whatever crafting mats (precursor, named etc. etc) i need for the new stat increasing shiny before non paying people would do with the normal grind wars2.

or i think this is the issue most people have in mind about gems/gold trading

i play since the 1st of october and as far as i checked (not to often i must say) i saw only the cost of 1 gem in gold increase and never the other way around… which means if we want to address an issue here: i’d rather not to spend my hard earned gold for let’s say a new bank slot even if i really need it, but i can always buy gems and become rich and also with a larger bank (note with a new contents come a lots of things that stacks just in the bank… even if there is a different way for the same kind of items to stack… ie. candy corn, shattering skulls, passiflora, karka shells etc, they are crafting mats, but if you want to keep it you have to use bank slots, which means if i want to keep it i have to buy bank slots or destroy/selling other items… there are a lot of dungeon currencies that cannot be walleted anywhere so you have to use bank slots… and each dungeon has its currencies… a lot of space used, then there is the pvp tickets, the badge of honor, the rare mats like lodestones and we could use some free space either, for cosmetics, boosts etc etc…. are we or are we not pushed in that direction someway? at least with bank which is the only problem i have until now?)

so as far as i am concerned i don’t care about gold, about grind, about farm, but sometimes it pops in my mind:

i don’t play gw1 since 2 years now… but i know if i want to play it, my gears are still max stats, and my characters are still competitive with players playing all the time (except they are good at play and i’m not anyway)… would this be happening in gw2?

if the answer is yes, i’ll take a deep breath, go on with my slow farmville gameplay (which i keep slow because i don’t want to reduce fun with a full time online farmer job), i’ll keep fighting jormag, run events, occasionally dungeons, wvwvw and maybe even a spvp (i already have one slot in that infamous bank for tickets i’ll never use) and no one will ask me to be fully ascended to play…
if the answer is no…. that keeps me far away from new content, or party play and there are only 3 solution to the problem:
1 i grind the fun out of the game
2 i buy gold from gems
3 i invoke the release of elder scroll on line hoping i won’t have the same problem (which is unlikely because no one seems to be able to think out of the grindbox)

Now this I totally agree with ! the storage problem is probably better addressed by buying a new character slot though. that gives you up to 100 new slots! should be plenty to store all that you mention!

but yes I agree with you! a lot of how good / bad this is will hinge on how effective not having the best gear will be down the line! kinda hard to tell right now!

Hawkmoon.5849:

Please tell me you’re joking, GregT. I left Rift by Trion for GW2, and I often wonder if I’ve made a good decision. The content releases here are largely untested, hence the massive amount of bugs and glitches we see regularly. This was nearly a non-issue for Rift, which used a Test Shard, and weeks of player feedback to weed out bugs and implement fixes that worked. This equals near bug-free content when everything goes live. This also gave players time to review upcoming changes and give feedback to the Devs.

The development team is on the forums daily, answering questions about mechanics, upcoming changes, and general fixes in the pipeline. There’s no “PR speak” like we get here; there’s just Devs being open about what’s up.

And how can you “ignore” Lost Shores when it’s a shining example of just how badly the ball has been dropped here?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not raging, I’m not leaving GW2, and I want this game to succeed… but the amount of errors we’re seeing from ANet since release is, in my opinion, staggering. I’m really hoping they can recover before the playerbase gives up on them.

I honestly dont think its a question of testing, I think its a question of load The problem with Lost shores, or specifically the one time events is they focus everyone on one physical server that creates massive loads that can in turn create issues that testing will not find but for them the issues would not replicate! let me expand on what I mean.

take the missing NPCs. These were designed to turn hostile, players attack them and when they get them near death they’d revert to friendly! Its quite possible that when a huge number of people attack them at the same time one of two things happens: in a single instant so much damage is dealth that more damage then the treshold is dealt and the NPC actually dies. Or its possible that because of the overwhelming amount of combat going on, the server slows down and the script monitoring damage aquired before turning friendly again gets delayed due to load just enough for the NPC to die before it kicks in! In testing due to smaller numbers that issue wouldnt occure! Of course this is not to say there is nothing to be done about it, the NPC if my theory is correct could have had a script that respawns him should that happen ! I am sure if this is the case it would be something they think of next time they design such an event, learning from experiance! etc…

Rift is an excellent game, one I liked playing as well ! but their world events where never as much popular as what you see in gw2, I started late and never got deep into end game so appologies if that something that would have eventually happen but I never been in combat with 100s of players at the same time, It was always less then 50! that makes a huge difference! beyond that rift is not action combat, thats something that I have no doubt causes a lot more load! Dont get me wrong, not trying to take away any of the credit rift deserves, its an awesome game with virtually no technical issues! Just saying Gw2 faces different challenges and a comparison with the two isnt necessarily fair!

My fear is there will be no realistic way how to address the load issue in these one time events which might force arenanet to simply abandon the idea due to that! I hope not cause I really love the idea behind them though

Enzomiles.6197:

Galen Grey.4709:

I disagree, I actually think its quite the opposite, they’re trying to make a game with something for everyone!

We actually agree, they are trying to make the game for everyone. Hospital food is also made for everyone and that stuff is delicious. You know what else everyone likes? Pandas!!! Who doesn’t like pandas. In the next update they should add pandas. They can call is Pandas in the Mist. Now that would get me playing again.

I honestly dont get why it is a problem to focus on the things you like and ignore the things you dislike in a game!

Every game does it to some degree! Having both PvP and PvE in a game is doing things for everyone for example! why is that ok and this isnt?

Having crafting and questing is doing multiple things that multiple people like, why is that okey and this isnt?

Seriously? do you think a game is subpar just cause it has PvP and PvE mixed together?

Snores.7806:

Hmmm, didn’t really start this thread as a robust discussion on P2W games. It was mainly based on what I believe to be the slippery slope that the company has started down. The observations of increased grind, vertical progression and what seems ro be an out of control economy. I was hoping to get peoples opinion on the direction the company has taken since release and wether we’ll see more of it in the future.
I will weigh in on the P2W argument though. I believe it depends entirely on your definition of ‘win’ in an MMO. What exactly do you consider to be ‘Win’ in GW2?
If you believe that having a fully geared 80 with all the best gear, bells and trimmings then yes, GW2 is definitely P2W. If you believe it tb be having a distinct advantage over a non paying customer then I’d have to say no, as any one has access to the ability to get similar geared.
What does wrry me though is that if the company continues along the path it has been travelling since release, they are going to make the cash shop more and more attractive for your avg player. Enticement can be a terribly powerful tool to manipulate the OCD types who make up the major population of most MMOs.

What slippery slop has the company started down? grind? is it really the game thats creating grind or player’s impatience? I mean having stuff thats hard to aquire is important for any MMO, last thing you want is people feeling they have aquired all they want to aquire in a week! But then how you aquire stuff makes all the difference. in most MMOs acquiring the best gear means raiding which in turns means running a dungeon repeatedly ! if thats something you enjoy then perfect no problem, if you dont then thats grind you cant avoid if you’re trying to aquire that gear. Gw2 tries to solve this problem by not tying gear aquistion to a specific activity you can just play anything you want that will in turn get you to the gear tier you desire! You like dynamic events? karma and gold will get you any gear tier (well they will once they finish introducing ascended gear everywhere) you like WvW you can use badges, you like crafting? check! The game gives the tools to the players so they can simply play what they enjoy to aquire what they want thus making sure no one feels like they’re grinding but player impactience created a situation in which fun comes secondary to reward so they focus on repeating the content that pays most thus creating grind themselves!

vertical progression, sure there is vertical progression in FoTM with infusions, completely true! you dont like vertical progression dont engage in it pretty simple! infusions will not make a difference in the open world or in WvW ! just eat the highest tier food it will give you x34 times the stats current infusions will give you!

how is the economy out of control? the economy is player driven, any chances are the result of players and it will stabilize in the long run! if players get greedy and overprice things buyers will simply stop to buy deciding getting materials themselves is a better option then stuff will start to drop!

A fully geared player with all the bells and whistles can only gain an advantage in WvW and thats just when it comes to killing other players which isnt really a win! an objective in WvW isnt kill count, its aquiring and holding Objectives! Further more you’re over estimating how important armor is! my set is only have 33% exotic and the rest all rare yet my kill to death ratio is really high! I definitely disagree that spending money to get the best gear makes the game definitely pay to win! For starters you can gear in the same stuff that person who bought his gear which means if you pay you dont really get an advantage per-se you just get there faster! And Gw2 is primarily a skill based game so having the best armor doesnt necessarily even give you a real advantage! I even had a positive kill to death ration when for science I tried to play a bit of WvW without any armor or accessories on! People overrate how much armor factors in this skill based combat imho!

If anything I wouldnt argue that having the best armor makes it pay to win, a better argument would be using gold to buy seige weapons might make the game more pay to win! in fact I would consider it so personally were it not for the game addressing that through the use of supply to ensure someone with money cant just endlessly spawn seige weapons!

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey…

If you don’t see any of the less positive changes since the beta weekends then as I wrote to Mirta earlier…. You don’t see them. That’s fine. I’m not going to argue for or against them with you. Any regular forum reader will be well acquainted with the discussions.

If you’re still experiencing (plan K) fun. All well and good. I’m happy for you. Many on the forums (myself included) appear to be experiencing (plan Z) a diminishing sense of fun!

Both experiences are entirely subjective. Both are equally valid.

I’m pleased that you understand the whole pattern thing and hence the reason for my initial questions to you. I prefer not to draw conclusions until I have sufficient information on which to base them. That’s why I ask questions.

@ Tobias Trueflight & Galen Grey…

Do you often find yourselves unconsciously dividing your responses to posts in such a seemingly coordinated manner?

Just kidding! Or am I? :-P

@ Gehenna…

Yep. Exactly what I thought and also part of what prompted my initial question to Galen Grey.

Ohh no dont get me wrong I see gear progression a bad just as much as the next guy! Like I told you I was one who expressed his disapproval of whole thing in the big thread thingy! But that being said as it is right now, the whole progression thing is still limited to that one dungeon! as it is right now You dont need the top tier to handle any content in the game! you dont even need the tier before that! As is right now all the negatives that make me strongly dislike vertical progression are simply not present in this game! In every MMO I played getting the absolute best gear involves repetition and in most cases grind.. I hate that I play games for fun so I never bother with the best gear! That has some implications biggest of which is its probably something that has really made me dislike PvP cause since I never bother with the best gear I have a track record of dieing a lot in PvP! not so in Gw2! Even in WvW even if I have sub standard gear (mostly Rare with a few Exotics) I am still very much competitive in WvW and there is 0 issue coming from gear in sPvP! In PvE not only I dont have to have anything better then Rare but I have even geared that with MF from top to bottom and am still able to play any content ! It even still feels too easy to be honest! What I am trying to say is yes I agree with you vertical progression is bad! yes I agree with you FoTM is all about vertical progression (well its fun too if taken in small doses but I wouldnt want to repeat the amounts required to get the gear) But what I disagree with you over that FoTM and the Ascended gear turned something that was lots of fun into something thats boring or any less fun! Even if you feel you have to have Ascended gear at all costs there is no really hurry to get it because it will make a very very small difference in WvW and nothing else anywhere! with that in mind they already said that like all other tiers it will be available through all the different content Gw2 has to offer so why not continue playing what you find fun and simple hoard whatever will ultimately get you that ascended set you want? be it karma, gold, crafting materials? If you love exploration, dynamic events, WvW, Crafting, Dungeons, whatever the lost shores update didnt remove any of it ! You and you alone decided to ignore all the aspects that are fun and concintrate on the one thing you dislike! that to me isnt exactly a good idea especially considering you can play just as happily with out !

as for me and Tobias Trueflight, rest easy, we dont know each other IRL or even on the forum, we’re just two posters who seem to think alike on this particular subject!

nic.5720:

@ Galen & Tobias.

With your evident love of plans perhaps you can tell me/us why, if plan K was fun… have ANet now dumped it for plan Z?

Plan Z being to suck the fun out of GW2 for many of it’s players one patch at a time.

So we continue to ask questions in the hope of answers. When we receive misleading responses, PR spin or silence, the overall pattern remains unresolved and we are left with more questions.

Which is why I personally have so many doubts about some of the posters on the forums who seem to have answers for everything!

I dont know what to tell you! honestly nothing change for me since bwes except there is more content for me to choose from which should technically be a good thing! I understand what you’re saying about patterns and thats what I see here as well! the pattern I am seeing is people unable to let go of things thats why there is this issue imho!

I know farming some events is a ton more profitable then exploring say Brisban Wildlands but I have more fun exploring so thats what I do! I know running FoTM brings a ton of money, but I dont like repeating content so I just do it a few times to get my monthly achievement and thats it! I know getting A full Exotic set armor will make me more powerful but crafting the crossing is something I give priority to! I know If i had to farm specifically for the ingrediants I need to craft the crossing I will get it quicker but there is no fun in it, playing what I enjoy still gets me what I need even though slower!

You just need to focus on the fun and ignore “the best!” thats the secret in my opinion! thats all there is to it! whatever was fun last month is still in game exactly as it was before today! your fun didnt change you are just having trouble letting go of profit/power in order to choose the content you found fun I am afraid!

Anet didnt dump plan K, they left Plan K exactly as it was and introduced Plan Z for people who like plan Z ! though Plan Z is designed so as to be entirley optional! and be optional I mean if you ignore ascended gear you can still play anything you desire effectively! some people who like plan K seem to feel obligated to play Plan Z!

The thing is arenanet are in a tricky sitation just like in police movies anything they say can and WILL be used against them! If they make a statement that statement will be twisted to mean what people want it to mean! such as when they said Ascended armor was intended to fill a gap between exotic and legendary! To me it was obvious they wanted to imply a time gap yet people called them liars and trying to manipulate them and what not because they said there was no gap before arenanet created it themselves (these people decided that gap meant a power gap not a time gap)! that puts a lot of pressure on people if an employee not authroized to speak did such a mistake (though not really a mistake) they could get fired over something like that! Essentially players are causing the silence by making it unsafe for anet employees to clarify things in my opinion! That being said I am not sure how you can say they’re being silent either ! I mean they organized an AMA on reddit on the subject and kept it going for 10 whole hours! thats quite communicative right?

As for posters who have an answer to everything, well cant speak for everyone! and I dont have an answer to everything for sure! But I am being honest and just simply explaining my views! thats never hard to do ! I arenanet did something I dont Like I’d simply say I dont like it ! (like I did when they first announced ascended armor after all!) but if I disagree with something all I have to do is explain why! thats never hard to do!

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

TWMagimay.9057:

Tolmos.8395:

Sure, you can grind until your eyes bleed, since every decent karma farming method keeps getting nerfed… not that you have to worry about that, since no one is farming karma in Orr anymore but instead standing in Lions Arch yelling “LFG LFG LFG”.

I can’t express how happy I am that I got my armor while Plinx was still at 100%.

Or -gasp- you can also not. Let’s see…full karma armour is like~250k. You can get 40 jugs in 1 month just from achievements. At almost 8k karma per jug, that’s 320k karma. Look, there’s your karma exotic set. Now, if in that one month you also bothered with random stuff like dungeons, WvWvW, resource gathering(where you are bound to run into a few events), you also made a decent amount of gold, got some mats and extra karma. Oh, almost forgot, if you leveled by doing maps and not with crafting or wvwvw and didn’t accidentally delete all your gold, you’d probably have 5-10g saved up to buy a piece or 4 from the TP with it. But, yeah, you can go grind till your eyes bleed out. After all, games are not about having fun, but about getting everything and getting it right kittening now.

I thought it was 4500 Karma per jug? Just a minor correction.

actually its both

its 4500 karma per jug like you say but if you activate guild karma boost + a karma booster you can boost it up to 7k + a bit more