Guild Wars 2

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Galen Grey.4709:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Crap! Galen, they’re onto us. Quick, remember Plan B and hope they don’t sniff out the names this time!

Wait, wasnt Plan B to track every single user and use that memory eraser thingy Agent K gave us for this specific occation? what was it called? neuralearser something ? no wait that was Plan C right? or was it Plan K? man this is confusing!

No, Plan C was the Wintersday raffle they can’t win because it’s rigged, then we go laugh it off with thousands of Gold each.

And Plan K involved Skritt, a box of asuran failed experimental compound, and Havarti cheese.

Ohh yeah right now I remember, Plan K was fun!

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Crap! Galen, they’re onto us. Quick, remember Plan B and hope they don’t sniff out the names this time!

Wait, wasnt Plan B to track every single user and use that memory eraser thingy Agent K gave us for this specific occation? what was it called? neuralearser something ? no wait that was Plan C right? or was it Plan K? man this is confusing!

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

And this is exactly my point! people love to see consperacies everywhere! They love to think that everything Arenanet does is to somehow manipulate them! No I have absolutely 0 relationship beyond buying / playing their game with Arenanet! That I share the same surname with a certain member is pure coincidence And have been using this nick in gw1 since day 1 (my first gw1 character in fact) and chose it before I even knew said member existed so defintiely wasnt meant as a tribute / compliment

Also too bad the huge thread on ascended items got delete, would have loved to show you how I joined the chorus in my personal dislike of ascended Items and how I believed it would have been were they have the same stats as exotics, so no I dont appologize everything Arenanet do either! But this whole thing has long left the realm of constructive cristism and dwelled deep in the consperiacy realm now! Think about your own idea that I am some undercover employee for example, why do you think that? Every opinion I have ever expressed I backed it up with the specific reasons of why I believe as I believe! Dont think I ever tried to manipulate anything or anyone in the least! I just think since this ascended story startered people are just trying to find every single reason to lash out at Arenanet and if I believe the reason they state are incorrect or unfair I state my opinion on why I think its incorrect or unfair! thats all!

Do you really think that anyone who thinks arenanet are doing more right then wrong have to be under cover employees?

Narkosys.5173:

I dont know if your trolling or not but wow.

When you create something for everyone you please no one.

The reason no complained about the VP in the game before ascend gear was that it shipped with it and they accepted it as part of the game. FOTM is not the only VP in the game and that is only partly what people are upset about.

They are upset at that now because it wont stop ever that is the point of it. When you downlevel now you are OP. Now imagine adding 10% + more power and that content becomes useless and invalid and no point to ever go there. 99% of the game PVE a faceroll. You now have better stats in WvW and in a fair fight you will win every time.

The game is full of vertical progression. Please show me where they added horizontal level 80 content recently that would show me that they are going in that direction?

Do you not understand that it isnt about 1 dungeon?
I can see that this will be a waste of time oh well.

Funny because I am please and others are pleased! I am sorry but if you cant be happy having an entire game that provides exactly what you need and 1 thing that doesnt and you just want that one thing removed even though others love exactly that is a sign of egoism! If Ascended gear gated content or prevented in any way any player to play horizontally I would agree with you but it doesnt, not in the least! This has just turned into a religious crusade like thing sometimes to a level thats frankly rediculous! Look around and see posts like, I quit Gw2 over Ascended gear and go back to WoW ! I quit Gw2 and go back to gw1 over Ascended gear might make sense but back to WoW? how does that game have less gear progression then Gw2? it just doesnt!

Yes you’re right, I totally agree, because they joined vertical progression and horizontal progression together a side effect of that was that going back to lower level area makes you over powered! I do that all the time and confirm 100% there is this problem! further more if that wasnt enough for some reason we’re also downlevel to level of area + 1 it seems! anyhow ! solution is pretty easy! for when I PvE I have a Rare set completely geared towards MF. The lack of stats make the content a bit more challenging and the extra MF gives me a bit more reward for making the content a bit harder. Is that such a big deal?

I completely disagree with you over in a fair fight having ascended armor instead of exotic armor will result in a win! this game is not gear based its entirely skill based! how well you play your build determins who wins and not your gear. Thats just something that gives you an edge nothing more and a very small one at that! For starters you level gives you 50% of your stats! check it out, remove all armors and accessories and you’ll see ! Further more or attacks have a base damage! On top of that you have traits and you can consume food that will also increase those stats! Attacks also do a random amount damage ! even where stats are concerned their advantage is very limited! My main set isnt even fully exotic yet! got 3 exotic pieces and the rest including accessories are rares! and I Do quite well in WvW! if stats where so crutial shouldnt I be loosing most fights? I assure you I dont!

No offense and with all due respect but the problem you’re experiancing is you have the wrong impression of what horizontal content is! You just asked me “Please show me where they added horizontal level 80 content recently” Level is a vertical progression thing ! The whole point of horizontal progression is having the whole world to play in, levels are meaningless! And to answer your question specifically every single release they did they added new events, new jumping puzzles all around the world! They even added nice little things like the skritt bulgler that you can randomly come across anywhere which is nice! They added a new map (southern cove) ! any new content added is something new for people who play horizontally!

so please tell me what is horizontal content for you specifically I am curious!

Does everything has to be a consperacy theory ?

this is a natural progression of things IMHO, at the start people needed gold so they converted lots of gems keeping the price incredilby cheap! $10 worth of gems took something like 2 hours of game play to aquire when gems cost 25s per 100

Now people are doing a lot more gold! farming, selling precursors (those who got them in Karka event). Now that the bots are gone fine crafting material and rare crafting materials shot up in price making people even more money! This in turn generally made less people feel the need to buy gems to convert them to in game gold hence supply fell at the same time demand increased, black friday, the new make over things, prepairing for wintersday etc…

I dont believe its Anet tempering with the prices, It makes perfect sense, this just the natural evolution of supply vs demand! Current price isnt unreasonable either! 1.4g isnt that much for most players now a days!

Seraki.2753:

Its getting rather hard to solo. Its like the game is trying to push some of us out for not being part of some big organization. Whats odd is the more we complain about it the worse it seems to get. Its like the game is on steroids sometimes and I have to wonder if somebody is actually trying to push people out of the game. I went back to a newbie zone to get a SP that was camped a week ago by a champ, its still there. but not enough players are there to care to do anything about it.

I was in the pre order beta, it was not like this back then.

Well to be fair champions were never meant to be soloable, they’re group events and group events are intended to be tackled with a group! that being said I find it odd that a champion is guarding a skill point. Generally its just veterans that can definitely be soloed!

Anyhow specifically to your problem, try asking for help in map chat!

Xaaz.8472:

Mirta.5029:

8. Major source of I quit of about 5% of population. Remember that not all people are on the forums and for majority it did not change their gaming experience at all. Especially having in mind how much overreaction there is here. You can overreact when it goes everywhere (crafting, event drops, chest drops) and is as hard to craft as a legendary. Then you can overreact. Now that you don’t know how hard or easy it will be to get it, why to be overreacting over a few rings that some fractal runners have?

I love when people post this nonsense. Go back and tell that to Warhammer, AoC, SW:TOR just to name a few. In each and every account, you will find some fool saying the same nonsense. Everything is fine, it’s just the small forum population….yeah…

If you honestly think the forums aren’t a decent representation you are foolish. The forums are the people who care and take the time to post about it. The others just quietly walk away.

you know it works the opposite way as well! a quick look on the WoW official forum shows plenty of complains there too! infact right now this second the top post is my server is dead, I quit! on the first page there are posts insulting the developers, multiple posts angry at nerfs, someone complaining that the last expansion doesnt live up to the games vision. Someone complaining against dailies. someone claiming false advertisment because the advert said the last expansion was the best when he says it was in fact the worst. And someone who says he wants the spark back.

So does that mean that WoW is dieing because it has some complaints?

Not saying feed back by forum users should be ignored. obviously no feedback should ever be ignored But you shouldnt considered feedback on the forum as a universal view of players in the game. simply speaking its a biased sample! before this whole ascended gear story if you looked at the forum it was still full of complains about nothing to do at endgame instead of what it is now! You dont see those sample people praising the game now they got some content to play now do you ? why because like others pointed out in most cases people post to complain and nothing else! ergo its obvious you’ll always have more complaint than praises!

Horrorscope.7632:

Galen Grey.4709:

its not placebo at all, go check my youtube channel. In the first videos people were asking me if I was playing a powerpoint presentation! Besides I can even quantify it for you, before bwe2 I had a frame rate in the range of 15 – 18 fps now I have a frame rate between 28 – 35 fps

But anyhow, dont take my word for it, just open up your task manager and see if the client is taking up all your CPU cycles, it isnt!

The game has improved performance wise, but it is still heavily CPU bound and demanding for a mmo. The last part, you don’t seem to understand how cores/threads work and how they display in something like the performance tab in Task Manger or other monitor. The CPU’s are being 100% utilized. Do a search here, there are good lengthy explanations.

Ohh I understand just fine how they work, I’ve been working in the field since day one! I will double check this evening just to be sure but pretty sure I never saw any of my cores (including hyperthreading) utilized 100% ! if thats happening for you it could also be that gw2 is too heavy for your CPU. Its obviously impossible to remove offload everything off the CPU! AI, game engine and quite possibly physics (its possible to offload physics to GPU but thats dependand on whether GW2 actually does it an which standard they support if they do) ! in some cases even sound might be CPU bound in a way! (most onboard soundcards virtualize a lot of hardware) a high CPU usage doesnt necessarily mean a lot of the graphics engine is still running on the CPU, its definitely not the case since I can hear the GPU fan working pretty hard while playing GW2!

Enzomiles.6197:

So here is my theory about what Arenanet is doing. They built their game around focusing on the wants of a specific player base. Now that the game has gained steam they are now moving away from those niche gamers so they can focus on the larger mass market. Most people just don’t care about the changes and they are now making the game for these players. Here is an explanation of what I am trying to say…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/the-cycle-of-customers-who-care.html

Here is the money quote,

“Until soon, the product or service is used by people who don’t care so much about the original intent, they just want something easy and functional and available and cheap.”

I disagree, I actually think its quite the opposite, they’re trying to make a game with something for everyone! They made a vertical progression system but locked it up in a single dungeon! (really infusions which is the only vertical progression system in the game really does nothing for the open world, its only useful against agony which is ristricted in FoTM)! they made items (starting with Named Exotics going to ascended and finishing with legendaries) That require an increasing effort to aquire! These are meant for people who like to work for their rewards! For people who like true horizontal game play, who dont want to worry about gear, who just want to experiance story, exploration and whatever they made a game that even with masterworks armor which you can aquire in 30 mins – 1 hour of game play or maybe more realistically a rare set which you can easily get in a day you can just about play any content available in the game ! For people who dont care for PvE you can just jump straight into PvP ! If you like crafting you have a game in which crafting not only gets you all the equipement but is also a viable way how to level your character. Truely there is something for just about every game type!

The problem I am seeing right now is some people (not everyone) who wanted horizontal progression are just seeing that one dungeon FoTM where there is vertical progression and they decided just cause in that one place there is vertical progression then suddenly the whole game is about vertical progression when its absolutely not the case! The irony is if someone had to complain I honestly believe it should be people who go for vertical progression because predominantly the game is definitely horizontal! You could remove all armor and still tackle level 80 content! dont know any other game that allows that!

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

No not really. There are some champs that are stronger than others but Riot doesn’t balance champs based on their price, they balance champs based on the metagame.

So you could buy a brand new shiny amazing champ with real money, and get completely dominated by someone playing a release day champ they got for free. And as someone else said you can buy champs by using IP, which is a currency you get just from playing matches.

Just a clarification to start off, not saying lol is pay to win! far from it! I said if you had to compare gw2 to lol I would find Lol to be more pay to win but still not pay to win enough to consider it as really pay to win!

that being said I am sure you’ll agree that practice makes perfect! so having your favorite character unlocked all the time will allow you to specalize in it more then someone who has to learn a new character week after week. Its a small advantage no doubt but still an advantage!

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

ANSWER: what you are saying is true. however, how does it look like in practice? there are concerns from pvp players that this system is not allowing new players to play more competitively. the reason is that you loose more tickets by entering tournaments than you get them from playing them. and the difference is too big.

right now you can get tickets by only wining free tournament. this means beating 3 teams in a row. it is not that easy. then you can get them from glory boxes (RNG), and 1 from dailies. so realistically this leaves you with dailies and boxes. good luck with the RNG and there are only 7 days in the week. so by the Friday you have 5-10 (im being optimistic here) tickets which will get you 1 or 2 stomps in paid. are people gonna pay for more? i doubt it. problem created is new players just give up and there is less and less teams playing paids.

the way i see it is that scarcity tickets got, was internationally created to force people into buying for gems (ofcourse i can also spend my hard earned pve money to get stomped (1.2g!!!) but i wont for some reason). this is the unbalance i am talking about. can you imagine this in pve? i couldn’t imagine it in pvp but here it is.

for me it is a question of standing up against it when it is still small.

I understand what you’re saying and yes they are a choir to get no doubt ! but thats because you’re considering them to be the standard PvP content. You’re considering every match is subpar unless its a paid tournament . I think paid tournaments should be the exception not the rule, kinda like meta events in PvE! Generaqlly you’re not playing meta events, generally you’re playing Dynamic Events. The meta event is a “special” occation you get now and then!

The fact that its hard to maintain a constant paid tournament can actually turn out to be a good thing! It would be a problem if free tournaments are ignored in favor of paid ones! not everyone wants to go professional all the way! Casual players would like to partake and thats not considering not everyone will manage to get a permanent team setup which is a requirement for paid tournaments!

Ultimately it will be up to the players! The decision is up to them! It would be sad if free tournaments are “snobbed” out just cause paid tournaments are considered to be the norm, Free tournaments should be the norm and paid tournaments should be the cherry on the cake in my opinion!

Hellkaiser.6025:

Misconception 1:

“You don’t NEED the gear to play the game so it’s not an issue”

Response:
We don’t need to log on at all if we don’t want to it’s not mandatory, but it’s certainly part of the game and or progression, if you never feel like you’re going anywhere then what’s the point?

Misconception 2:

“Grind is an inevitable part of an RPG experience”

Response:
There’s no reason to make it the BE ALL and END ALL of your progression either. Easing the grind into a game, then hitting them with a huge increase in curve, only serves to highlight and exacerbate any form of serious grind centric content thereafter.

Misconception 3: ( and it’s a BIG one)
“They have no subscription, and don’t have to keep releasing new content”

Response:
Then why use that as a major selling point? why even open that can of worms? why place yourself in that obligation? in fact, when someone posted a thread stating they didn’t have to add new content outside of purchasable expansions, as long as they fix their broken bloody game. It was in fact met with staunch opposition and argument from players.

enough content to justify the 60 dollars? perhaps, but many wouldn’t have bought the game on that strength alone (and it’s not a strong one) and you lot know FULL WELL that they wouldn’t

Misconception 1:I have to play the game for the reward!

Response: Nope you should play the game for the fun not for the reward!

This is the whole crux of the matter! and this is why people say that ascended gear or whatever is optional! once you realise it is optional you can then realise it doesnt matter if it takes you 6 months to get it! once you realise that it doesnt matter how long it takes you to get then you can play the game anyway you want, the way you enjoy it and use the rewards aquired through that activity to get the gear you want essentially totally eliminating grind! (ascended is kinda a bad example right now because they have yet to introduce all aveneus on how to aquire it but they did confirm that like exotic they plan to make it aquirable though every activity save for spvp just like exotics!) So lets take exotics as an example for now! the fastest fastest way to get exotics is to grind events such as say the claw of jormag, if you farm that event you could easily make 3 – 6g an hour which will net you 2 – 3 exotic pieces! But if you dont enjoy that sort of thing it will feel like a grind! thats playing for the reward! But if I am person who likes say Dynamic events I could just play dynamic events and then use the karma and gold to aquire exotic gear! it will take me an average of 2 – 3 days per piece most likely but I would have been having fun all the time and had to do 0 grind!

Thats what things being optional really means! play the game you like and see how that fits in getting the reward you like!

Fuz.5621:

Galen Grey.4709:

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

Nope, you get 10 free characters every week and you can unlock characters with the points earned in game. Unlocking one, even the most expensive one, is a matter of a few games. It’s a very quick process, I don’t play it a lot or regularly and I’ve already bought way more characters than I could (and want to) use. And used real money only for skins. And I didn’t need the skins, I just wanted to support the developers, since the game is free.

In Gw2 you get free cash shop items with some daily achievement, monthly achievement (not 100% sure but I think also with zone completition). And in 1 day or 2 days of game play you earn enough gold to buy almost anything (1 single item though of course) off the shop as well.

Same thing with me, the only gems I bought with money was to buy the halloween costume, I didnt buy it cause I needed it but because I wanted to support the developers!

I am sorry but I dont see how the cash shop you mention is any different from this cash shop! both are optional and both give you access to free samples and both can be bought without paying any money!

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

Are you sure? unless things changed since last I played league you had to unlock your favorite hereos which you could do by spending money or playing the game! how is that really any different ? both cash shops are optional ! bought give you a way to aquire what you want even if you’re not willing to spend money!

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

it is the thing of balance between grinding and paying… do you think things are balanced? pls enlighten me since im not into paid, does each member of team have to pay 5 tickets or 5 tickets for the whole team? is it balanced?

and saying that this game has better game shop than others is ridiculous since this game is buy to play, and game shop is for “cosmetics only”. so you can not compare it to free to play games that make money in game shop only. now how exactly is paying to play tournament cosmetic? i am talking about principle. this is pvp part of the game, basically paying to even play. again i understand that i can also grind my way into paid tournaments, but what do you thin anets real reason behind this system is? dividing pro from casual or money? i mean really… there are much better ways of dividing those two groups, and since their paid system did exactly the opposite, anet is gonna put ranking now as it should have from start… but does that mean paid tournaments are going out? it remains to be seen.

at leas when they put ranking system, pro are gonna grind tickets in free tournaments but with paid environment, which means there are gonna be even less good teams out there that can get their hands on tickets. are they gonna buy them in game shop? yeah, right. so there we go with the “lets make money by selling tickets so people can play the game they already bought as buy to play” disguised in “we want to separate pro players from the casual players” idea.

an this is only pvp which is more vulnerable since less people play it. and if you go to pve part of the forum, there is a lot going on there also on this pay to win or whatnot subject…

but yeah, maybe im just paranoid since our pay to win is much better than some other games have it:P

Didnt take part in them, not a PvP player myself but I beleive everyone taking part will require 5 tickets to participate!

But keep in mind buying the tickets its not the only way you can get them and thats what keeps it balanced. If you’re a person who has money but not time you can put in some money and buy the tickets. If you have time but not money you can complete PVP daily achievemtns and get free tickets, you can play regular PvP matchs and get free tickets as you level up in PvP rank or you can participate in Free tournaments and get rewarded with free tickets! Even if you do no PvP whatsoever playing anything in the game allows you to buy your 5 tickets right now for 1g 250s more or less! (buying gems with in game money)

further more participating in paid tournaments reward you with gems as well if you do well! coming first twice will get you enough gems to buy 30 tickets

I am sorry but you’re the one who decided the cash shop is just cosmetic no one said that cash shop will be exclusively cosmetic! there are no required Items and you can purchase anything from it without even using money but cosmetic? its definitely not the case plenty of examples that arent cosmetic such as boosters, bankers, inventory expansion etc…

Anyhow its really not an issue! its not hard to earn 1.2g can be done in a day easily!
and if you like PvP then why would it be a big deal taking part in PvP that will get you free tickets + you finish daily pvp achievements and monthly pvp achievements that get you even more tickets!

Its not a pay to win, its a pay to save time! which is how it should be! Paid touraments are meant to be hardcore tournament with greater rewards! but no reason why you cant have great pvp doing the free tournaments ! I dont see why hardcore PvPers will want to do paid tournaments and nothing else! is there a good reason why paid tournaments shouldnt be that special occation you engage in after earning a good number of tickets?

Asglarek.8976:

Galen Grey.4709:

And this is exactly why developers dont talk about every single step they make! Players just make it impossible!

So one time during the beta they share some technical details with the players, specifically saying the game was still CPU bound and they still had to work on that.

Naturally some players decided to take it as a permanent state of affars that never got fixed!

I bet that the game stopped being CPU bound by beta 2 when some graphical glitches started appearing such as textures disappearing and personally my frame rate doubled since that beta!

You’re confusing a flaw in the game engine with purposeful nerfs and admitted mistakes.

Bugs are one thing they are like the little dutch boy and the leaking pike, plug one hole and it opens 2 more so I can understand that but to purposely nudge or herd players to play a certain way to me is not understandable nor acceptable.

Sorry I cant understand what you’re trying to say. Can you rephrase it a bit please?

Vakirauta.6397:

Galen Grey.4709:

And this is exactly why developers dont talk about every single step they make! Players just make it impossible!

So one time during the beta they share some technical details with the players, specifically saying the game was still CPU bound and they still had to work on that.

Naturally some players decided to take it as a permanent state of affars that never got fixed!

I bet that the game stopped being CPU bound by beta 2 when some graphical glitches started appearing such as textures disappearing and personally my frame rate doubled since that beta!

Placebo

its not placebo at all, go check my youtube channel. In the first videos people were asking me if I was playing a powerpoint presentation! Besides I can even quantify it for you, before bwe2 I had a frame rate in the range of 15 – 18 fps now I have a frame rate between 28 – 35 fps

But anyhow, dont take my word for it, just open up your task manager and see if the client is taking up all your CPU cycles, it isnt!

Veldan.4637:

Galen Grey.4709:

Cant comment on sPvP not much of a PvP player myself but I feel some of the stuff you mention are issues with the players rather then with the game!

Nice post, yes there is truth in what you said. Player mentality does indeed decide how WvW and endgame are handled. But does this mean Arenanet didn’t do anything wrong? Do you suggest that Arenanet had no way of knowing that the average player goes for the easiest reward, or that with the current WvW mechanics zergs are a lot more likely to roam around than to sit in a castle? If they put any thought into this, they simply must have known. And they can’t change player mentality, but they can change game mechanics. That’s why I think that in the end, it’s still a game issue, even though you were not wrong.

Its a tricky proposition. As for Arenanet anticipating this… I honestly don’t know! I was genuinely surprised by the reaction to Ascended armor as well as how people just refused to leave Orr just cause it was more profitable!

Turns out there are two kinds of Horizontal progression players and before Gw2 I could have swore there was just one! I though everyone who loved Horizontal game play loved it because of the freedom it offered, because they didnt want to care about having the best gear, they cared about the wide variety of content they had to play and the many different ways you could go about that! So I cant really blame if arenanet though the same thing can I ?

And I dont know, I am not convinced that what you describe is truely horizontal game play! I mean at level 80 you have the whole world to play in! Any zone I go in I can have fun doing the DE, get rewarded for it and still risk getting killed. Yet just cause it rewards more these players stay in this one zone doing this one dyanmic event chain! thats the opposite of Horizontal ! I mean even WoW can probably be considered a lot more horizontal then that! Seems like this more like a hybrid, players who have vertical progression mentality but want the easy way of aquiring the best gear that horizontal progression generally offers and yes I think Arenanet might have missed that category of players ! I completely did! didnt realise until Gw2

as for WvW yes why would sitting in a castle guarding be such a bad thing! in EvE online that was taken to far greater lengths! for Aliances that controlled 0.0 it was normal to have patrols and even groups guarding gates hours at a time! And in Eve most of the time nothing happened, in Gw2 its almost guaranteed especially if we’re talking about castles / keeps on border of 2 or 3 servers they’ll be constantly under attack! And its great fun too! I was involved in long defence twice! once it lasted 4 hours and the other time 2 hours. in Both cases we were a small force, the bulk of our forces were taking other smaller objectives while we held back a force many times our numbers for that long! its pretty satisfying not just cause you succesfully defended and got rewarded everying 8 minutes but also because you know you bought the time that allowed your zerg to capture more objectives while your enemies wasted so much time after the carrot

Its a lot more fun in my opinion than taking over an objective and then thats it, untouchable for 24 hrs! This is way more organic! I am not a fan where the game has essentially got to enforce things for you! as a horizontal progression player I just want the choice to play as I want ! enforced gates such as a 24 hour timer Is not something I like! Honestly I think this design is better!

Cant comment on sPvP not much of a PvP player myself but I feel some of the stuff you mention are issues with the players rather then with the game!

Example: "5 minutes later your zerg will be gone and an enemy zerg will arrive and take it back. " How is that an issue with the game? Its players who decide to to move enmass from objective to objective! its even bad strategy! leaving a small defence force is enough to defend a keep, the game even rewards you for defending, in the case of the castle, it rewards you massively! what more can it do? Lock the castle once you take it so as to ensure everyone will definitely ignore it because its safe now no matter what? that would be going the opposite direction you’re asking for imho!
Worst yet taken objective isnt really meaningful in WvW, holding them is! The game really did everything right to prevent what you’re saying but alas some players dont understand what WvW is about and just are looking for the action or something!

The PvE issues you mention are also coming from players themselves! something that really puzzles me is the appearantly large number of players that claim to love horizontal progression but turns out they all flock to vertical progression the moment it was made available! Horizontal progression isnt about power, its about having tons of content to play! Gw2 certainly has that but like you yourself said some people will never stray from content that rewards the most! thats vertical progression mentality I need to get more reward to get better and better! Gw2 implement both game play styles and to do that made sure all content is doable no matter what armor tier you have! Wearing rare armor you can get in a day allows you to play all of gw2 content but I guess some people just cant live without having the best possible armor and the best rewards! that means they will always flock to one place until that is nerfed cause no matter what anyone does there will always be that one place with the best rewards! always!

Disagree with the classes comments as well. Classes are truely diverse, not just in terms of skill but also in the way you have to play them!

And this is exactly why developers dont talk about every single step they make! Players just make it impossible!

So one time during the beta they share some technical details with the players, specifically saying the game was still CPU bound and they still had to work on that.

Naturally some players decided to take it as a permanent state of affars that never got fixed!

I bet that the game stopped being CPU bound by beta 2 when some graphical glitches started appearing such as textures disappearing and personally my frame rate doubled since that beta!

Volomon.9147:

alcopaul.2156:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, I mean . . . if NCsoft decided to shut down ArenaNet, do you think GuildWars 2 would actually continue? Talk about “pay2win” and other things, but . . .

This idea doesn’t help any of us GuildWars 2 players fans or not.

No. Because GW2 is owned by NCSoft. But if NCSoft sells GW2 to other publishers, then it will continue.

“©2010–2012 ArenaNet, Inc. and NC Interactive, Inc. All rights reserved. Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet, NCSOFT, the Interlocking NC Logo, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCSOFT Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.”

Public companies are owned by there share holders, the people working there are elected by a board of trustees. Anyone with a majority share has the most votes, in a company. Effectively if someone can garner enough votes they can do literally anything. Your votes are per stock. As nexxon holds the majority share they have the most weight is where there talking about. Often those with the largest shares hold a seat. That means if Nexxon and a few other major share holders wanted to put a guy that works for Nexxon in NCsofts mists they could.

This is what they mean by Nexxon “owns” NCsoft, technically they don’t they just can push some weight around. It’s exaggerated for sure but you know what they mean. You know they can kind of yank the chain.

hmmm not really the most control a shareholder has is by getting to vote who will be serving on the board. 14% of the shares gives you 14% of the votes so it isnt even enough to put your own man in unless you can convince a lot of others to back you up! Even then decisions need to be taken by the board as a whole so installing 1 or 2 people even if at all posiable is not enough to dictate company policy! And even then the Sarbanes-Oxley act makes a lot of legal requirements that are intentionally designed at fighting the manipulation you’re suggeting such as the majority of directors have to be intedependant not associated with the business itself as well as the directors themselves are personally responsible for such manipulation.

So no I think its very unlikely that a 14% gives total control of ncsoft to nexon!

keep in mind that it is easy to miss events since you never know when and where they start! you need to look them up a bit, talk to npcs to try to get an idea of what might happen where!

All I can tell you is I didnt do any crafting but by playing just in Queensdale, doing events without repeating any except one or two perhaps and the daily achievement and gathering stuff I come across when I was done exploring I was level 18 nearly level 19

The content is there it might be a bit hard to do it all though unless you look for it!

JaironKalach.4938:

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is you insist on a vertical playstyle you want to play horizontally!

A horizontal game isnt about having the best gear! aquiring the best gear is a vertical thing! A horizontal game is about playing any content in the game and you dont need the best gear for that in GW2!

This may sound cheesy but its part of the clever designed Arenanet employed to make a game thats both horizontal and vertical! Having masterworks / Rare gear is enough to play any content what so ever in GW2! That allows you to get everything else at your own pace without gating you out from anything!
snip

Switching sides for a second… While its true that Anet has not put in gear-based gating, it is not true that the community is not enforcing such gating. The second piece that will make “horizontal but not vertical” progression work is an LFG system that allows players to find other like-minded players. My dearest hope is that the do so, but until they do, the social pressure is as good as an actual gating mechanism.

I am certainly not against LFG, dont know why it wasnt there from the begining really!

Yes community gating is a problem that is outside of the developers control! now its true that the way FoTM is designed it makes the matter worst and by a lot! Luckly they’re somewhat addressing that by expanding levels into teirs makeing it easier to find a group! that is definitely part of the problem!

The worst part though in my opinion is player’s greed! not willing to run in a level 2 group even if one is available now but instead waiting to form a level 8 group because it just pays a bit more! Same thing excisted before FoTM even to a lesser extent you did see groups refusing to take in people in their party for AC if they were not level 80 for example! Its not really needed, a level 35 can do it just as much as a level 80 can but still people are people and even though the game makes an effort to be inclusive people throw all that away in the name of efficiency!

Thats an unfortuntate social problem! not sure there is much that can really be done about it!

sonicsix.5713:

I just got an email today… offering me free play time to come back to WoW. It’s patching right now. I was so excited about GW2, but the latest updates ruined it for me.

which part exactly? the inclusion of a completely optional new gear tier you can ignore and just still play all of the game?

And you’re going back to WoW because it doesnt have that?

I am confused!

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

Snores.7806:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

Theres not a F2P game on the market that demands I pay extra before I can play it. But then I havn’t played everything.

What happens if you’d like more Bank space? Or you have 5 toons and would like to roll another ? Or maybe you’d like a semi-decent armor skin and didn’t want to grind 40 dungeons to get it ?

There are! quite a few f2p games sell quest packs, access to dungeons or zones ! but not all of them

Its up to you! you can either pay real money and buy gems or pay in game money and buy gems! not many f2P games give you that flexibility! in case of the dungeon skin you have no option but to play the dungeon, you cant buy that with gold so you cant convert real money to gems in order to sell it and buy the skin with that money I am afraid!

but anyhow even if you could all of that is entirely optional! why is it wrong! Gw1 sold bank space as well, sold costumes as well do you feel its not buy to play either?

Worst yet even some Pay to play games sell stuff to players! WoW and The secret world being some good example! they’re free to play now as well just because they sell stuff to players?

Snores.7806:

Galen Grey.4709:

Snores.7806:

I’m am worried about the direction of GW2.

Over the 3 months since release I have seen a steady stream of patches and updates that do little to nothing for the long term development of the game and it’s community. This has me worried that what we’re seeing is a “Churn and Burn” policy from our game developers.
The constant content push, month after month, for new content instead of a focus on game stability and playability. The steady nerfs to the economy, drop rates and general wealth generation. The lack of genuine communication and any real QA from the development team.
All these issues are leading me to believe the the games designers are pushing for higher profits rather then the vibrant, progressive community all the current customers were hoping for when they purchased the game.

But these are just my observations. As erroneous as they may seem, I’m happy to discuss so…

Fire away

I disagree for starters such a practice wouldnt work in a buy to play business model! the cash shop sales is a fraction of the box sales so the primary business motivator is customer retintion and making customers happy in order to convince them to buy the expansion when it comes out primarily.

That being said you’re also contradicting yourself. nerfing isnt done for some sadisitic purpose, its done to ensure the health of the economy in the long run! Lost shores was also geared at the long term improvement of the game! the new southern cove is a canvas where more events can be added and more so in the fractal of the mists!

Not sure where you got the idea of lack of communication! they’re actually quite communicative in my opinion not that common that developers get this involved with the community in my experiance!

What makes you think you’re still playing in a B2P game? Because you bought the box set?
I bought the box set too and judging by the game developments over the last 3 months I’m believing I’ve opted into some strange F2P model where they charge you an entry fee

and the fact their will be paid expansions and the fact everything in the cash shop is 100% optional and the fact that even if you want stuff off the cash shop you can also do it using in game currency

but more then that the fact that in the quaterly financial review NCsoft reported 2m box sales and $14m I believe in cash shop review!
even if we consider everyone bought the basic version and paid in dollars thats
close to $120m from box sales compared to $14m in cash shop

doubt they will be willing to sacrifice the big income over the smaller income!

what makes you think this is no longer a b2p game?

stof.9341:

The +3 runes in GW1 were of 2 kind :
- ultra cheap because they had no use for this class ( +3 runes also carry a HEAVY HP loss penalty)
- expensive because the caster class could really make use of it despite the penalty, or even WITH the help of the penalty for low HP builds

More often than not, the +1 runes were used. Very few builds required using two +3 runes, more like one +3 and one or two +1. Or no +3 at all.

+1 runes were more common in the world so cheaper to get even if a lot more popular.

Sure why not! but the same has to apply to Gw2 as well! you dont even need exotic gear to be effective and you dont need the runes either to be effective!

Chriswck.6490:

Galen Grey.4709:

fair enough but then if you need all options available to you to consider a build complete, comparing like with like wouldnt that mean you have to have all skills unlocked in gw1 ? what about runes that provide additional attribute points, getting all the +3 runes to all the possible different primary and secondary attributes would take A LOT more then getting to level 20!

If you factor those two aspects of Gw1 it will take a lot longer then reaching level 80 in Gw2 I have a feeling before you have all the options open to you!

In my opinion a build is just a setup designed to work in synergy to get the best possible outcome!

At level 10 in gw1 you’re still missing a ton of stuff, skills, attributes, equipement etc.. yet you still had to form builds right?

Good question, but GW2 will still take more time! >< If we also take into account of having complete equipment like what you just did by bringing runes into the equation, isn’t it even harder in GW2? Full exotics, with full set of superior runes, as well as the sigils…

“In my opinion a build is just a setup designed to work in synergy to get the best possible outcome! " – I’ll try to keep that in mind next time I start leveling to 80. It’s a nice way to look at it.

Dont know to be honest! it changes depends how you aquire them! and if you include skills in the equation then gw1 would take far longer without a doubt! anyway its just an academic question at the end of the day the important thing is their both great games with their own strenghts and weaknesses!

Chriswck.6490:

Galen Grey.4709:

Gw1 allowed you to create any build you wanted to play but then restricted you to the very strict boundaries of that build!

Gw2 on the other hand gives everyone a very generic build that do pretty much everything! only choose towards what role its primarily targeted on the upside then it allows you to play anyway you want cause unlike gw1 gw2 builds are very flexible and allow for pretty much any play style except for a few exceptions!

You raise a valid point here. And I concur that the variety GW1 had in the form of a high number of skill choices manifests itself in the variety that skills can be used in GW2.

I have to admit, however, that the variety and versatility of GW2 skills (along with trait point distribution) that contribute to enjoyment does not match up for the sheer variety of skills in GW1 that contribute to the enjoyment in forming builds.

Remember the days when enemies were much more varied, and encounters were much more interesting? Each time we head into a new zone/mission, we have to think about the enemies that we will face, and bring the right skills and create corresponding builds to complete the challenges?
Contrarily, it is seldom required to change builds, nor adjust our usage/playstyle of our skills in GW2 much, when we enter different areas/dungeons.
Actually, that is probably more of a problem of homogenous enemies, rather than that of skills/build variety/versatility.

I have to agree with you here though dont think its just variety per se thats the problem, I just think the game over all is too easy! I can understand why this was necessary to integrate both horizontal and vertical progression that coupled with having to so much flexibility in how to play the game! its a bit of a double edge sword! in Gw1 if you were speced for DPS and you mishandled aggro you would die no way out most of the time! that meant when deciding on your build you would have to factor that in if you were going to play an area where it would be easy to aggro multiple mobs.

In Gw2 as long as you know what you’re doing mishandling aggro just means changing your playstyle to be a bit more on the defensive side ! Because of this It might end up trivializing enemy skill. Its easy to miss the fact enemies can dodge attacks you make, or wait until you used your interrupt before using a crucial skill or even using the right conditions against the right allies (crippling allies that are still at a distance rather then engaged in melee with them) when you still walk all over them as if it were nothing!

On the other side they cant just make the game harder because you have players who just treat the combat system casually like a bunch of skills that are to be spammed and players (myself included) who might not go for the best armor in the game!

Chriswck.6490:

Galen Grey.4709:

stayBlind.7849:

Chriswck.6490:

Ditton.3149:

Dead.7385:

GW1 was boring. Hit 20, finish story mode and nothing really to do.

You could play the mini game “Build Wars CCG” err I mean acquire and cap skills ;-)

Yeah, that and building and discovering new builds was plenty of fun. I think the cap at 20 was an amazing decision with GW1’s system. Even though I was completing the same content on my alts, it stayed fun because there was just a lot of builds to experiment with. That distinct differences in enemy compositions mandated a change in build and thinking was a major enjoyment contributor.

Rather, in GW2, I have to get to level 80 before I can experiment with various builds. And thusly, the process of getting there just became a chore instead.

One million times this.

Why play the game when you can not have fun playing the game until you play enough to play the game?

how is that true when you unlock all skill slots at level 35?

Thats not to mention that the main skills you’ll be using are the weapon skills which you can fully unlock all of them at level 2 or 3!

that together allows you to test out tons of different playstyles which you can call builds if you want! Gw2 is differnt to Gw1 in that your playstyle / build is determined more by how you use your skills then what skills you choose!

Traits, my friend. And the full 70 trait points!

I see your point. But I feel that since those builds are incomplete, they do not constitute being proper builds. If those sub-trait builds were in any point in time proper builds, then I would put in less than all 70 points to play that build. But the thing is, I wouldn’t!

Nevertheless, it’s good to know that the process of getting to 80 with regard to constructing builds is still enjoyable for you. Perhaps I got too accustomed to having all attribute points freely adjustable early, and had that expectation brought over to GW2.

fair enough but then if you need all options available to you to consider a build complete, comparing like with like wouldnt that mean you have to have all skills unlocked in gw1 ? what about runes that provide additional attribute points, getting all the +3 runes to all the possible different primary and secondary attributes would take A LOT more then getting to level 20!

If you factor those two aspects of Gw1 it will take a lot longer then reaching level 80 in Gw2 I have a feeling before you have all the options open to you!

In my opinion a build is just a setup designed to work in synergy to get the best possible outcome!

At level 10 in gw1 you’re still missing a ton of stuff, skills, attributes, equipement etc.. yet you still had to form builds right?

Snores.7806:

I’m am worried about the direction of GW2.

Over the 3 months since release I have seen a steady stream of patches and updates that do little to nothing for the long term development of the game and it’s community. This has me worried that what we’re seeing is a “Churn and Burn” policy from our game developers.
The constant content push, month after month, for new content instead of a focus on game stability and playability. The steady nerfs to the economy, drop rates and general wealth generation. The lack of genuine communication and any real QA from the development team.
All these issues are leading me to believe the the games designers are pushing for higher profits rather then the vibrant, progressive community all the current customers were hoping for when they purchased the game.

But these are just my observations. As erroneous as they may seem, I’m happy to discuss so…

Fire away

I disagree for starters such a practice wouldnt work in a buy to play business model! the cash shop sales is a fraction of the box sales so the primary business motivator is customer retintion and making customers happy in order to convince them to buy the expansion when it comes out primarily.

That being said you’re also contradicting yourself. nerfing isnt done for some sadisitic purpose, its done to ensure the health of the economy in the long run! Lost shores was also geared at the long term improvement of the game! the new southern cove is a canvas where more events can be added and more so in the fractal of the mists!

Not sure where you got the idea of lack of communication! they’re actually quite communicative in my opinion not that common that developers get this involved with the community in my experiance!

stof.9341:

You find it funny I’m complaining of only doing FotM and dismiss the rest of the content as suboptimal? Well, why wouldn’t I? The rest of the content IS suboptimal and not that much fun to begin with. Whereas FotM is the only source of the best rings in the game, drops relics that can be used to buy the best back piece in the game whereas MFing the same would cost 70g. And second, you actually get OK money and drops in it which is enough by itself to get the rest of the best items. T6 fine mats? They drop there too. Lodestones and Cores? They drop there too whereas in open world you need to farm very specific mob types to get them.

Actually no where will ever drop anything useful for your character! You’ll aquire things useful for your character long before you even get to the area that drops stuff useful for you! Thats the trade off you make with a horizontal progressive game! Drops are just a source of currency and materials nothing else!

But anyhow dont you see that FoTM was actually designed specifically with people such as you in mind? you choose reward over fun had there not be any FoTM introduced you’d have farmed Orr for ever experiancing no Variation, FoTM offers you that variation which will also increase as more fractals get added to it!

stof.9341:

Farming in low level maps? One T1 blood costs 25c. T6 blood costs 25s. By the time I’d get 100 T1 bloods I’d have hit the DR so much I’d have 10000 dry bones to sell. Might as well do it on level 77+ mobs and drop one blood in one hour or less or a dozen extra T5 (1.5s piece) for extras. Result : I got a lot more money for far less effort. Risk vs no reward currently?

Thats the difference between us, you make the game fit the reward, I make the reward fit the game! I dont want to play the most optimal content to get me to the reward I wish as quickly as possible! I want to play what I find fun and then use that to get what I want to aquire! in your example I wouldnt farm Either! I would explore do Dynamic events and then when I get enough money but the 100 fine crafting materials I want!

stof.9341:

GW1 managed it, I was playing all over the world doing every single map and they’d drop me level capped items and crafting mats and money worthy of a level 20 player.

How so ? If I needed say granite slabs I could farm say Sardelac Sanitarium solo in hardmode and gain maybe 30 – 50 slabs per 30 mins

Or I could say play Auspicious beginnings which will net me 3 platinum at least per 5 minutes which I can convert to a guaranteed 70 – 80 slaps!

Farming Sardelac Sanitarium will get me maybe 100 slabs per hour
Farming Auspicious beginnings will net me at least 840 slabs per hour

what happened now to sub optimal content does it somehow apply to gw2 but not gw1?

Loswaith.3829:

Dead.7385:

Loswaith.3829:

The bigest joke in GW2 is the “play your own way”

….
….

I want an instant kill button. I mean it said I could play your own way! Where is my instant kill button!

Ohh I also want a button to summon 100 gold! It said I could “Play your own way”, so that obviously means I don’t have to worry about in game gold at all!

Also where are my guns! I want guns and 360lolz no scopes, cause “Play your own way” said so.

GW1 did fairly much let you “Play your own way”, you had a good choice of skills and options to create a build that worked for you (within the confines of a game), you could happily even swap weapons even as an elementalist. So to expect some precedence of Guild Wars 2 to do the same isnt that far a strech given it’s a sequal game.

Aside from the instant kills bit all the other things you mentioned are there, you can summon 100 gold at the push of a button (or rather a few buttons) by buying gems, there are guns btw.

Though feel free to troll more.

Gw1 allowed you to create any build you wanted to play but then restricted you to the very strict boundaries of that build!

Gw2 on the other hand gives everyone a very generic build that do pretty much everything! only choose towards what role its primarily targeted on the upside then it allows you to play anyway you want cause unlike gw1 gw2 builds are very flexible and allow for pretty much any play style except for a few exceptions!

Loswaith.3829:

The bigest joke in GW2 is the “play your own way”

Play a conditions based warrior with axes/greatsword – unlikely
Play a single element elementalist – if you want to be rubish
Use mostly heal skills – nope
Not use elite skills – you waste a slot
Want to be non-condition thief – tough luck
Ranger without pets – wasting the class skill
Play a warrior and use the off hand weapon’s boost – nope
Play a real support character/healer or tank – nope, we removed the trinity
Have a choice of which slots to put weapon skills – fat chance.
Want to run more than 3 utility skills – nope
Want to run without a heal skill – sorry
Want to solo – sure but you will need to avoid half the game
and 100s of other things you cant play because of the inherant limitations.
Sure the skill system of GW1 would have been tough to keep balanced but it was well worth the effort.

I’m guessing people dont want GW2 for the most part to be the same as GW1 (we do want something new), however the playing of GW2 is more like Warhammer online or Rifts (both taking a hand from WoW) than GW1. Sure you get a little more choice than other mmos but coming from the predecessor game (GW1) you have very little choice in comparison.
The cop out that GW1 wasnt an MMO is a joke because that what it is generally classified as since its release (because you could have 100s of characters in the one place at the same time, not just looking at some UI). Thats kinda like saying Half-life wasn’t an FPS because it had a cohesive story.

You do realise you just proved how actually gw2 is indeed play the way you like! Read your own list again dont you think it sounds funny? why would you want to limit yourself to things like:
Use mostly heal skills
or
Not use elite skills
or
Play a single element elementalist

Thats what other games force you to do!
if I am in engaged in combat and I end up biting more then I can chew I want to escape, that means interrupt, fear, cripple etc… in short Crowd Control!

If I am engaged in a fight that I am about to win but need to buy myself some more time or else I will die before I finish then I want to heal, regen, increase my survivability ! That means supporting myself, pets, minions or allies!

If I am in a fight that posses no danger to me I just want to get this done as quickly as possible, that means use might, set vulnerabiltiy on my enemies, spread conditions around! etc..

I could write a ton more of these suffice to say this is actually the strenght of GW2, this is the real play the way you want and this is actually one thing thats a massive improvement over Gw1 in Gw1 I had a huge skill pool that allowed me to build my character any way I wanted but alas all skills were so specialized I just had to commit to a build and while playing a zone I had no way of respecing meaning if I am geared towards damage and end up biting more then I could chew I might have the perfect build in mind how to deal with that situation but there is nothing I could do about it if thats not the build I took!

I love gw1, I love the skills system! but while you had a ton of options when creating the build you were completly boxed in once you got in the action with the choices you made! Gw2 on the other hand doesnt provide you with as much choices when creating the build but while in the action it leaves you free to change your playstyle and still be effective!

stayBlind.7849:

Chriswck.6490:

Ditton.3149:

Dead.7385:

GW1 was boring. Hit 20, finish story mode and nothing really to do.

You could play the mini game “Build Wars CCG” err I mean acquire and cap skills ;-)

Yeah, that and building and discovering new builds was plenty of fun. I think the cap at 20 was an amazing decision with GW1’s system. Even though I was completing the same content on my alts, it stayed fun because there was just a lot of builds to experiment with. That distinct differences in enemy compositions mandated a change in build and thinking was a major enjoyment contributor.

Rather, in GW2, I have to get to level 80 before I can experiment with various builds. And thusly, the process of getting there just became a chore instead.

One million times this.

Why play the game when you can not have fun playing the game until you play enough to play the game?

how is that true when you unlock all skill slots at level 35?

Thats not to mention that the main skills you’ll be using are the weapon skills which you can fully unlock all of them at level 2 or 3!

that together allows you to test out tons of different playstyles which you can call builds if you want! Gw2 is differnt to Gw1 in that your playstyle / build is determined more by how you use your skills then what skills you choose!

mavet.3047:

JaironKalach It’s all crap dude. If I want to play a grind, I’ll play a Korean or Asian MMO (I’ve played a crap ton of those and actually waiting for their new one to come out) – they’re FAMOUS for that ROFLMMFAO!! Rift with it’s new xpac is borderline grind city and is REALLY getting on my nerves with that crap. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many great games out today on the market. This one has potential if the devs would leave it alone and fix their debacles with the drop rates. I find it odd that a team needs to “investigate” issues we have in game that takes weeks and weeks on end but yet when there’s the potential for an exploit, you’ll see that kitten patched within 24-72 hours. Funny how that is – no?

Thing is you insist on a vertical playstyle you want to play horizontally!

A horizontal game isnt about having the best gear! aquiring the best gear is a vertical thing! A horizontal game is about playing any content in the game and you dont need the best gear for that in GW2!

This may sound cheesy but its part of the clever designed Arenanet employed to make a game thats both horizontal and vertical! Having masterworks / Rare gear is enough to play any content what so ever in GW2! That allows you to get everything else at your own pace without gating you out from anything!

with that in mind, you grind only if you yourself want to grind! I am serious, everything you need to get any kind of gear you can do playing multiple different types of content! You dont have to repeat the same content over and over again unless you want to! of course we get back to the previously mentioned problem though! you have to be willing to play suboptimal content and you have to be willing to take longer in order to aquire whatever gear you want! but there is no doubt you can play this game with nearly 0 grind if you really want to !

mavet.3047:

Gee, I’m sorry. I and all the rest of the crap tons of posts on these forums and other gaming forums, yes, gw2 players play other games and have posted the kind of crap the devs pulled here over there, must all be wrong and hallucinating. The zone drops are exactly the same without any changes – correct?? I must be mistaken as well when the very best next tier of armour and weaps, which NCSoft/ANet LIED TO ALL OF US and said this WOULD NEVER HAPPEN, can ONLY BE FOUND in the new dungeon – right?? Or am I, and with the majority of ppl complaining about this, just wrong?? If so, please tell me and everyone else what we are missing. Thanks in advance

P.S. DR must be our imagination as well when using the mystic forge and in other areas of the game – correct??

actually yes. with all due respect you are wrong! What do you mean by the zones are the same without any changes? new events have been added to older maps
source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/october-2012-release-highlights

“The world continues to evolve with new events, jumping puzzles, bosses, mini-dungeons, and achievements appearing across a variety of maps.”

And we also got a brand new map in november!

You thought Ascended gear would never happen, Arenanet never told anyone anything about gear tiers! if I am mistaken and you have a source to the contrary please feel free to share but them not living up to your expectations isnt lieing!

Nope Ascended Gear isnt found only in FoTM You can craft some of it outside of FoTM in the mystical forge and only 1 ingredient can only be aquired to FoTM of which you just need 1 – 5

the rest you can get all over the place! and thats only a temporary thing! they already said the plan was all along to make Ascended aquirable just like any other tier through any activity save for sPvP!
source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

As well as the AmA

stof.9341:

Except in WvW

Well WoW doesnt even have an equivalent so it cant be closer to it! but yeah you’re right WvW doesnt put everyone on the same playing field, the huge amount of players, NPC allies, Siege weapons as well as if you have a castle wall protecting you obviously create a huge bias

It’s easy in WoW too

Dont know how it is now cause I only played it at release but back then in the 2 weeks it took me to get to max level in Gw2 I would level up only 1 or 2 levels (near the end)! Gw2 was actually the only game in which I felt I was leveling too fast! hit level 80 while still doing level 60 content!

stof.9341:

What? NPCs that give a hand in story quests is hardly new….

Hmm it is new to me cause apart from gw1 or gw2 my experience with NPCs is they just ask you to go fight a war for them while they wait for you to return and I played a LOT of MMOs! Its not so much for the help! the game is easy as it is you dont really need the help, its more for realism! And in Gw2 its not just in the main story its everywhere! If an NPC needs something vital delivered, he doesnt simply entrust it to a total stranger, payment on delivery! you’re just a hired escort which makes a lot more sense!

*Gear gates no content
Except the new weapon skins that drop in high level fractals I guess.

hmm which new weapon skins drop just from high level fractals?

stof.9341:

Every single NPC is important …
Let’s not go that far XD …

hmm so merchants arent important? Even the ones that just stand there that just say one thing or another provide story and lore! take a simple one like two asura talking where one asura tells the other they’re going to build an unstoppable golem and the other asks what if it goes wrong. ohh it will have a switch in the back he’s told. It tells a lot about the asura in my opinion… how they are ambitious, how they claim stuff is a lot more than it really is, their ego, the way they. if you just hear such a statement without seeing who is saying it you’d immediately know its something an asura would say because it all adds to the identity of the race! it has value!

stof.9341:

Crafting thats actually meaningful
A lot of MMOs have meaningful crafts too… In GW2, currently with the material prices, crafting is becoming less and less relevant. With the new BiS rings, jewelry crafting already lost 1/3 of it’s uses. The back pieces are 100% non crafting too.

Well dont know if this has changed in WoW but at launch Crafting was really pointless! spend a lot of time leveling it up to craft stuff I could use and within 5 mins each time, without missing out a single time I would get a better drop! every single time! Not so in Gw2, if you’re a crafter you can get all the stuff you could ever need through crafting! But yes not exclusive to Gw2, never said it was!
Actually back pieces are craftable too now through mystical forge.

stof.9341:

Heck, I’m 400 in crafts and I bought my sets from the trading post because I’d get more money selling the mats and buying the already crafted items instead!

And thats the beauty of it, flexibility to get the stuff the way you want ! thats the freedom I spoke about! as someone who likes crafting I dont care that I could get whatever for cheaper, I care that I am using a set that I crafted myself!

stof.9341:

My objective is the get multiple of the best stat sets in the game. Currently I am very much forced into a specific content

Its just a temporary because Arenanet jumped the gun and introduced Ascended Armor in one avenue. Eventually that will change! That being said what you said isnt entirely true! if you craft ascended items including infusions you need materials not found in FoTM as well!

stof.9341:

It’s not viable. Any place that doesn’t include mostly level 77+ monsters is really suboptimal …

It also happens to be easier but people seem to forget this thing called risk vs reward. Its funny though how on one hand you complain that as you say you’re forced to FoTM, one type of content but are quick to ignore all other content because its suboptimal! I hope you dont expect a game to have equal rewards everywhere because that’s essentially impossible! if Gw2 issued rewards based on your level alone guess what would happen? everyone farming the starter areas! why? because the events there are a lot quicker and a lot easier then say Orr. You cannot have it both ways I am afraid! if you cant enjoy playing anything thats suboptimal no matter what arenanet or any other game company will do you will always funnel yourself in playing the same content because thats the nature of the beast there will always be an optimal content to play and everything else will always be suboptimal!

I honestly don’t understand this I really see Gw1 in Gw2 much more then I see WoW much much More !

Let me run a list and you decide which of these applies more to gw1 then it does to MMORPG like WoW:

-PvP where everyone is on the same playing field

-Easy to get to Max LeveL

-A combat/skill system that allows you to play your character the way you want

-NPCs that actually join in their story rather then send you to do their dirty work while they just chilax

-Gear gates no content (sure gw2 might be different here in which its not as easy as gw1 to get max level gear but you can essentially play the whole game using common gear, ALL of it from start to finish! thats more close to gw1 then it is to wow imho)

- Every single NPC is important and has story / lore to contribute

- World that actually changes while you’re playing it (in gw1 this was accomplished through instancing, while you stayed in that instance the world kept the state you gave it, in gw2 through dynamic events and yeah WoW has a littl bit of this too through phasing but other MMOs generally dont have any of it)

- Crafting thats actually meaningful

- Get to your objective playing any content rather then specific content

- having the whole game world thats vaiable to play in

I have a feeling that for most people Gw1 was simply about having the best gear rather then what it was to me which was all about the freedom it offered me to play how I want and get an immersive experiance! Cause honestly thats the only way I can explain how people are saying Gw2 abandond Gw1 concepts and went all WoW in its design! It hasnt not in the least! Gw2 has all that made Gw1 great though it does it all in different way! Thats all!

I dont think forum users are a good sample personally! the majority of players are casual they play the game for fun and dont interract witht he community on forums. Its a sample alright but its a low quality sample. When sampling for research one of the important things to do is to ensure you sample enough diverse people to eliminate bias forum users are really bad for that!

Its like trying to determine the quality of your product by seeing what people calling support think! 99.9% of those people will call because they have an issue. If you ask them they’re going to tell you that your product has issues and if you just look at them you’re going to get the impression nearly everyone using your product has issues! but when looking at the bigger picture it might turn out people calling in are just 1% of your users base which in turn means it almost certainly isnt nearlly everyone who has issues! the real number lies somewhere between 1% – 99% and most closer to 1% then 99% at that!

That being said forums are a bit more diverse then call centers, people do post to praise the game but that number is still an unknown and I do believe it is biased towards negativity! If you’re somewhat neurtal play the game and find issues its likely if it bothers you enough that you’re going to join the forum and talk about it! if you’re happy with the game you’ll likely keep playing and thats it!

In my opinion forums are a great way to see what issues people who are having issues and are unhappy face but not such a good source to see how the majoirty of the players feel!

Yoss Elendil.5862:

taomang.2183:

All the questions have been answered in the Reddit AMA. You made this post for nothing. The direction of the game is clearly stated on Reddit AMA.

Sry but it is not! Also @ Galen Grey when I say they don’t know what to do it was in reference to the recent changes. When you read the AMA I found not the statements they made but the reaction to some of the comments really interesting. Also the questions they do not answer. There is no clear direction. All they are saying is some of the consequences where not intendet, sry we will change this somehow in near future. How? When? Is it really possible to limit gear treadmill to FOTM? Are they willing to do that? Can’t find any answers to that in the AMA.

@Archmortal /sign 100%
I guess the question is if there can be something like a limited gear progression not effecting the rest of the game. So far ANet failed if that still is there intention. My personal view is it’s like saying only a little bit pregnant. How can this be? Well the belly is on a shallow growing rate!

Unless I missed something all the we didnt intend to do that was directed at the level of grind because of the high material costs. Thats not an exact science. I mean you’re trying to create an item set that takes a lot of effort to aquire / craft. I bet they had the opposite experiance with exotics. I bet they thought people would take longer so they over compensated. Thing is you’re trying to strike a balance between effort and time. The biggest effort required the more time you buy before you have to come up with something new people have to get! We saw quite well how that can be extremely problematic with this update so better err on the side of caution. Of course you dont want to alienate players either so hence the we didnt intended to be like that! They intent was to provide something that takes a long time to aquire but they didnt intent to make it frustrating at the same time. They just didnt hit the desired sweet spot in my opinion and not exactly a case of lack of direction. Thats my personal opinion of course, you might also be right!

I think they absolutely managed to create a limited gear progression that doesnt effect the rest of the game! All the impact people are talking about is all percieved none of it real ! I mean nothing in the game changed from before the update and we didnt even have any ascended gear though suddenly people are acting as you cant PvE without ascended gear? or people think you cannot be competitive in WvW without Ascended gear! Players, my self included have been playing WvW without an exotic set without any problems ! I even have a ridicolous kill to death ration that if gear was so much a factor I definitely shouldnt have ! I get it that people feel they have to have the set! but I am completely disagree it is required by anything in the game except FoTM post level 10 !

In Esscence FoTM was an elegant solution to the problem of how do we give progression players content to do ! The only price horizontal players have to pay for that if they don’t wish to partake in it, is a miniscule … VERY miniscule disadvantage in WvW especially after Ascended gear is made craftable or acquired with other means! The only difference then will be the high level infusions that are to be had in FoTM.. I think its quite brilliant design really ! They provide, progression that is required to get to harder levels without actually gating everything! How would this work in other MMOs? You’d have a dungeon that rewards a new gear tier which will then enable you to do the next dungeon that has the next gear tier! What are the problems there? Without getting the nth gear tier you cannot do the n+1 dungeon essentially gating you from that content! Gear tier n will make content that’s below level n irrelevant ! If you don’t have Gear tier N fighting a player that has it puts you at a sevre disadvantage! None of that is true in Gw2 That’s why I don’t agree calling it sloppy, its actually very well thought out imho!

I think they found a good balance and its win win for all in all honesty!

Archmortal.1027:

(cut for length)

I undrestand what you’re seeing completely and you are correct that FoTM is meant to be an endless grind, thats why it has no level cap but I disagree that its bad design, I personally think its actually brilliant design and I will explain why. Probably running in the length issue

So Gw2 is a game designed to meet the needs to different play styles. It was already appearant at release but now they came out and said it straight. Gw2 is definitely not a horizontal progression, its not a vertical progression game either, its both !

To merge horizontal and vertical progression in a single game is not easy! both horizontal gameplay and vertical gameplay have concepts that are opposite to each other and havent seen it with my own eyes I wouldnt have believed both play styles could co-exist in the both games! Let me go through these before finally explaining how FoTM ties in all of this.

with Vertical progression you get power creep. Old content becomes absolute leaving you only a small amount of content to play at any one time! You mentioned WoW so lets go with that. If you’re level say 45 how much content do you have to play? 2 to 3 hrs worth of? anything else is either too hard or too easy not to mention non-rewarding. Gw2 fixed that by using level scaling. At max level the whole game world is open for you to play in none of it is made irrelevant!

Vertical progression is all about power. Now Gw2 did solve this issue but not perfectly in my view. Cause the way they did it is you can still get better gear there are tiers unlike Gw1 but it is designed so that even using a common set you can play really any content ! In fact If I had to guess I would say that the game is balanced around masterworks … having better gear makes the game really easy. Having worst gear makes it slighty more challenging. Thus unfortunately made the whole game feel easy imho but people who are for vertical progression had some progression to go through. People who are into horizontal can safely ignore gear

PVP .. A horizontal progression player is very likely to have sub par armor compared to a vertical progression armor for a long while. That’s because vertical progression players focus on getting the best gear while horizontal players tend to be well distracted by things. GW2 solves that issue by having everyone on equal footing for sPvP. In Case of WvW there is this is issue a little bit but because this is a skill based game first and foremost and because there are so many variables upsetting the balance much more then any gear advantage could ever give you its not that important!

Vertical progression is generally all about the combat! I mean if you’re entire game objective is to get the best gear its likely you just like to use that gear as much as possible. Horizontal progression is generally more about exploration, lore, story,doing a diverse number of tasks etc.. GW2 solves this problem by allowing you get all gear in any activity you like

So in summary things are setup in such a way that playing one way or another works! But it comes at a cost! Resources are always finite and horizontal gameplay is very demanding on that! Arenanet done an amazing job in that department, the horizontal width of the game is huge! 5 starter areas, multiple zones of the same level, 15 different ractial storylines a main storyline that branches multiple times etc… The price for that was that Gw2 doesn’t have that much vertical progress to do though! 2 weeks people were easy able to get to max level and have a full exotic set! 3 months in and I haven’t even fully explored ½ the world yet! There is quite a big chasm there! That’s where FoTM comes in ! Nearly endless vertical progress replayablity!

How does GW2 make FoTM work with the Horizontal play style? They used The Infusion/agony mechanic to drive progression but didn’t even make it kick in until level 10 of the dungeon. Thus not only enabling horizontal players to experience all it has to offer but also have some level of difficutly to play with if they don’t want to go into the whole progression aspect of it ! They designed the dungeon to be expandable thus enabiling them to keep the infusion / agony progression tied to the dungeon and still provide future content to the whole progression playbase while having 0 effect on horizontal game play ! While not in yet The gear itself will also be obtainable using any activity in the game!
(to be continued)

beren.6048:

Aerwyna.2541:

Oh well if its just to be able to do Fractals, then it wont matter if you dont care to see that correct? And if you do, you will spend the time doing what is needed.

Guess so It must be said that I seen the stats and they are a lot better. The problem starts if they start demanding ascend gear when you go AC or other dungeons. Or if other future content requires infusion. Also, maybe you want to do fractals but you go slow or you are new. Already it will be hard to find a level 2 group.

I wouldnt worry. Rare → Exotic is a bigger jump then Exotic → Ascended Yet with a Rare gear set you have no trouble playing any content including WvW! I have no doubt some people will ask for Ascended because they’re all about 100% efficiency just like sometimes you come across groups that want level 80s for AC and what not. Just wait for the next group thats all there is to it !

As for finding group levels for FoTM thats more of an issue then the other dungeons true. This will be somewhat addressed by Arenanet’s intention to split levels into tier. So everyone can do level 1-5 and then those that get to 5 can do 5-10 etc… But I am sure there will always will be casual players as well as new players who will not mind running previous levels!

OnlyFate.8549:

Galen Grey.4709:

question unless you’re gunning for a legendary on each of your alts, why do you feel you need to finish each and every map on every character ?

Based on the design of the game, this is the fastest way to gain XP for leveling up a character (Unless you are in a very active WvW server). If not, it takes even longer to level up a character. Also, they actually encourage players to complete maps for more some gem store items such as Black Lion salvage kit, chest keys, etc. There is no reason for no completing a map when leveling a character. However, no matter how “fun” exploration can provide, after a few times for completing the same map, things get bored and there is no other ways to level up an alt.

Fair enough, you do have 5 maps to start with though so you can get a little variation and multiple maps to choose from going up from them as well. Will not solve the problem 100% of course, you’ll still eventually have to repeat maps but its a lot better to repeat the same map after say 100 hours of game play then right after each other!

also I like to caution people about being too efficient! If you really enjoy exploration, there is a lot more exploration to be done in a zone then the POIs and Vistas marked on the map! There are unmarked areas you can discover that reward you XP, hidden jumping puzzles as well as hidden events (events that dont trigger unless you talk to an unmarked NPC or Interact with an Object or even perform an action hinted by something you interact with). Well probably you already know this but just in case nothing wasted re-itterating it

OnlyFate.8549:

@Mirta
I won’t say this happens to everyone. However, if you finished a map for first character, finish the map again for second alt, third alt, and forth alt. The exploration eventually become bored for fifth alt or more. In my opinion, after the first character finished a map, its no longer called exploration for other characters because that will be simply running for unlocking PoI and vistas just for the map completion. Due to this bad design, I have finished Queensdale more than eight times since BWE1. I don’t think its fun to keep doing the same “exploration” for every character. Actually I really want to know what is the purpose for forcing players to do things again and again.

question unless you’re gunning for a legendary on each of your alts, why do you feel you need to finish each and every map on every character ?

I think most of the problem experiance by players including the grind issue comes from what focus said players give to the game!

Ask yourself why are you playing the game? from a lot of discussion I see going around seems for most players the answer to that question is get Object X. That focus in turn leads to situations such as grind. Goals are important and you need to have goals of course but my suggestion is dont make the game about reaching a goal rather funnel the activity you like doing into that goal. In most cases GW2 allows you to do just that with a few exceptions!

Let me expand on this. Lets say you’re trying to get an Exotic weapon. Now you have a choice. Is the exotic weapon your reward for playing the game or are you playing the game to get the exotic weapon? This might seem the same thing but in truth there is a major difference.

If you’re playing the game to get the exotic weapon you’re going to see whats the quest less effort path to get there. This will in turn be buying it off TP which means you’ll need to get 2g – 3g which in turn finding that goal asap will in turn generally involve grinding out some event with a zerg. The game now seems a grind!

But what happens if we try to get the exotic weapon and as a reward for playing the game? then you have to decide what you enjoy doing the most. Say play Dynamic Events to enjoy the story. You keep doing dynamic events, earn karma/gold doing them once you have enough of either one you buy the exotic weapon. Zero grind involved. you enjoyed the game from start to finish! Same applies to any activity in the game. If you enjoy WvW you can get an exotic weapon playing that, same story with dungeons and crafting.

This also applies to legendaries ! legendaries require you to play a lot of everything thats both a blessing and a curse. The curse being you might not like dungeons but to get a legendary you need to do it. Its also a bless because you dont have to lock yourself in repetition, play what you feel like doing! evening playing in a level 30 zone doing events and gathering along the way will get you closer to your legendary !

Now before I named a few exception and what I meant by that is specific skins! while you can get an exotic weapon / armor doing anything you desire specific skins are tied to specific activites! so If you want a ghastly skin and you dont like dungeons well you can avoid that sense of grinding as you repeat an activity you dont like. That being said because Gw2 doesnt put a lot of emphases on gear there is really no need to keep repeating the same dungeon over and over until you get the tokens you need. Just spread it out over time doing a run now and again. That can help bring the feeling of grind down a lot!

Simply speaking weather this game turns out to be a massive grind or no grind at all depends on you and how you approach a task! If you’re not impacient you can enjoy the game get whatever you desire without having to grind at all!

Archmortal.1027:

Galen Grey.4709:

Why is one okay but not the other?

Because as-is, the Fractals dungeon and the necessity of Ascended items to continue deeper into it is one of the purest most unashamed examples of a functioning Gear Treadmill I have ever seen in a game. It is literally “grind more gear to do more levels.” Hopefully they’re planning on fixing this, but currently that is how it is. A simple difficulty option with no strings attached is nothing like this.

And this brings us back to “ANET lied to/mislead us.” They said they were entirely against the mere idea of a gear treadmill, and now they have given us such a treadmill in raw form. Get more gear to do more levels.

Like every other part of Gw2 its designed to work as open ended as possible to provide something for everyone !
If you dont want a treadmill then you can ignore the treadmill, play up to level 10, enjoy level 10 as long as you want! you’ll still get ascended gear as well but even then there is no need to go deeper if you dont want to !

People who want the treadmill can engage in the treadmill, they can try to get better gear + infusions to see how far in they can get!

if you dont like dungeon, you can ignore the whole thing… you dont even have to give up on ascended gear as they already said like exotics they’ll make it available every where short of sPvP ! so if you’re a crafter you can craft it, if you’re WvW person you can get it with badges etc..

If you’re a person who likes the content but doesnt want difficulty you can have that too, simply replay the fractals on level 1 as many times as you want! You can still experiance it all and not bother with higher difficulties

In your case where you want a hard mode but not a treadmill simply work your way to level 10 and keep playing level 10 why does that have to be problem? I dont get it why does the game itself have to force mechanics on players? I would have though people would be more happy being really given the option to play as they want but it seems its really the opposite that is true! the more this ascended story keeps going forward the more I see people who want to be forced on the path they want, they seem to be unable to choose it for themselves. Why, I honestly dont get it?