Guild Wars 2

The sequel that wasn’t a sequel.

The OP is right. This game is perfect if you’re 15.

That’s how I read his post…

I would completely rework the reward system:

1) More dailies that people can choose from. Meaning a daily for each playing style and you can pick a maximum of x daily quests each day.

2) Throw out monthly achievements and bring in weekly achievements instead.

3) Dungeon tokens can be exchanged for a single currency. The lower level the dungeon the more tokens it takes to exchange (to laurels for example).

4) Reward all activities. The laurel system can be used for this in general. Also people who level or do DE’s should get rewards that can be used to buy laurels.

5) Add better looking gear that can be collected.

6) Add full set of ascended gear.

7) Add more and better rewards for Karma.

8) Throw out DR and MF. People should be rewarded for playing the game not for using gimmicks and then being punished for it. So take the cause out with the punishment. MF will be a higher percentage that applies to all equally.

9) Down leveling should be stricter so higher levels are more on equal footing with low levels. As a reward better drops/rewards when playing low level areas.

10) Downgrade the rewards for FotM. People should be rewarded no matter where they are and not driven like cattle into one place with a big carrot. The carrot should be everywhere.

There is so much more that this game needs and I decided that reworking the combat system would be too much to describe here, but I would fix the reward system first though. Less emphasis on TP and Gems and more focus on better and nice in game rewards and a better reward system as such.

Szitler.4802:

im not getting into the wow vs GW debate, but 10 million people dont play WoW at the same time…

So you are getting into it.

Listen, I don’t play WoW but apparently their subs rose over 10 million gain after the last expansion. So at the same time or not, they are paying customers.

GW2 has servers that are all heavy or full but a lot of servers are dying at the same time. That’s just bs’ing players.

Nobody knows how much of the population has left. I am sure that of the 3 million copies of this game sold a big chunk has left. Especially since most of those sales were made in the first month. It happens to all MMOs.

I never liked WoW but it’s the biggest MMO out there still. I gotta give em that. So I don’t see how you feel you need to defend such a pointless remark that GW2 is dominating or something. It just isn’t. It has done well for itself and time will tell if they can keep more players than lose but it ain’t near WoW proportions.

Szitler.4802:

It just dominates on all scales of MMORPG’s at the moment… who needs this thing called WoW?

Apparently more than 10 million people.

Like or dislike GW2, but it certainly isn’t dominating anything.

Leveling is an extremly poor experience in GW2 in my view.

At level 30 you’ve unlocked all the slots and then you just get more trait points. Skill points you also get after level 80 so you don’t need 50 of them. The trait system is too poor to be really excited about I feel, so also that could’ve been cut down to smaller amounts. Really for what they prepared for leveling progress, level 30 would’ve been sufficient, maybe level 40 for a few trait points if needed but that’s it.

It’s true though that on higher level gear gets more stats and more stat lines. So not just higher bonuses but more bonuses. That’s something they should’ve left for gear tiers and endgame armour and not for leveling. I guess they just didn’t know what else to do or something.

But to me the leveling experience just got really boring after level 30. It felt to me that my character was at max level, except that it wasn’t.

Depends on your definition of dead.

It’s pretty clear that there’s been a lot of movement due to low server populations on various servers.
The truth is though, we don’t know how many exactly. People who say that most servers are doing well are just making assumptions…just like people who would say most are not doing well. We just don’t know.

Also, GW2 doesn’t have a sub. So you can’t make calculations based on that. As indicated the servers being heavy or full don’t mean actual player activity by itself.

We can say that there are a number of servers that are doing poor as far as population is concerned. The guild I was in before I quit, I still have contact with and they just moved last week because their server was pretty low on population.

Anet needs income. That makes the game successful from their financial point of view. But part of that success is there being people online to play with. Not having a sub though only means it’s easier to pull people in, but it’s also easier to leave after. The game still has to be good enough for you to keep playing.

I hope the OP had a chance to move server as today is the last day of free transfers if I believe correctly.

Is the game dead on some or more servers? I think so. Is the game dead as a whole? Obviously not, but the problem probably lies in the PvE area.

There are a number of dead servers by now but the busier ones tend to revolve more around FotM and WvW. Perhaps they should’ve never made such a big persistent world, if they were going to corral everyone into a few instances anyways.

I would suspect there are still quite a few players, what I don’t know if there are more new players come than players leaving. For me, a game dying means that you lose more players than you gain consistently. How would anyone here truly know if that was or wasn’t the case?

I remember seeing a video pre-launch where someone from Anet was talking about how lots of things they developed were thrown out and that they sort of tested and retested and redesigned things etc. Already then I got this feeling that in their enthusiasm to bring it down to the core, that things would be too basic and too simplistic. My view is that that feeling was right.

What Juzztn describes is sort of what I was hoping for as well.

tic.7425:

Gehenna.3625:

tic.7425:

You want raids? No problem. Why cant the rewards be guild titles, armor skins, weapon skins, PvE guild perks (to do your next “tier”), i don’t know, but can we please stop with the epic lootz, at least in one decent MMO?

The loot subject is not the same as loot. GW2 already has the epic loot called ascended and there is nothing set in stone that there won’t be any gear progression. Also because more levels will be added later on.

So raids or not, the loot issue you fear is already there.

As Maddoctor already said, I believe Anet already realized their “mistake”, and with it coming to WvW shortly, I’m hoping theres limits to what we see in the future.

Anet have realised their mistake in that, but that doesn’t mean they have a good solution for it. Will they let people wear Ascended gear at lower level? I dunno. What will happen when you go to PvE? Will you have to (un)equip every time you move from one to the other? Will there be WvW only gear like sPvP? Maybe you know, I haven’t seen the details yet.

But gear progression is here, perhaps a bit slower but it’s here. I’m just saying it’s odd to fear the coming of something that is already here. I am sure the next thing will be tiered infusions, for example.

Time will tell but Anet have made a number of bad decisions, that are odd at best. Perhaps they will do better now, perhaps…

Waraxx.4286:

Gehenna.3625:

There simply are a lot of people who take pride in collecting top gear together. Anet basically gave them a carrot that costs a ridiculous amount…to keep them busy.

If you collected football cards and you got 99 of 100. How much is it worth to you to complete the set? Are you going to be happy with 99 or would you like to have all 100 to be able to say you have the whole set? Even if the last one costs a ridiculous amount?

It’s all about human nature and how people work. Not everybody is the same, but the fact that you don’t get it, basically means you are different and have a hard time understanding others are different. Or in other words: Just cause you don’t see the point, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There just is no point for you. And you are not the template for mankind.

….if I may be so blunt…

i am in fact aware of this and that’s why i included specific terms like “you” and “me”. i never said in my post that everyone was considering the stats useless and that no one should ever get them. i was merely saying that if you don’t want it you should not get it.

and if you are a collector or a “i want everything in max stat” type of person and you are prepared to do anything that is needed to get it. then obviously you think the extra 5 stat is worth it, thus you should get it and work for it.

Apologies, I see I misread your post.

I do wonder what things will look like when full sets of ascended gear will be available and how much statistical difference there will be then. Especially since chances are that stronger infusions will come as well.

tic.7425:

You want raids? No problem. Why cant the rewards be guild titles, armor skins, weapon skins, PvE guild perks (to do your next “tier”), i don’t know, but can we please stop with the epic lootz, at least in one decent MMO?

The loot subject is not the same as loot. GW2 already has the epic loot called ascended and there is nothing set in stone that there won’t be any gear progression. Also because more levels will be added later on.

So raids or not, the loot issue you fear is already there.

Tekno.3027:

Only one explanation.

He wins. I totally believe this one.

Guild missions sounds like an interesting concept, but I wonder if they really will work. If it does work I think it could do a lot of good to the game, but I wonder if it will simply because it sounds like another type of zerging. I don’t think they will give players bigger party sizes. I think it will be like the commander thingy rather than an actually party set up for 10+ people.

Waraxx.4286:

Nuka Cola.8520:

that’s what i’ve been saying… its laughable and at first they even charged you 50 skill points. Whoever made them as useless should rethink the whole thing or make these infusions cost 5g and under.

why bother with getting the 5 extra stat if you don’t think it’s worth it? your logic is just counter logical . that’s the point of this system. you get it if you want to. if you don’t think it’s worth the time then don’t do it .easy as that. it’s not like you won’t be able to play some of the content just because you dont have 5 stat points ( or 10 if you add them together).

if you think it’s worth the stat. then do it. otherwise, why bother? i haven’t bothered. because 5 or 10 stat points for me makes basically 0 difference.

There simply are a lot of people who take pride in collecting top gear together. Anet basically gave them a carrot that costs a ridiculous amount…to keep them busy.

If you collected football cards and you got 99 of 100. How much is it worth to you to complete the set? Are you going to be happy with 99 or would you like to have all 100 to be able to say you have the whole set? Even if the last one costs a ridiculous amount?

It’s all about human nature and how people work. Not everybody is the same, but the fact that you don’t get it, basically means you are different and have a hard time understanding others are different. Or in other words: Just cause you don’t see the point, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There just is no point for you. And you are not the template for mankind.

….if I may be so blunt…

The thing is, GW2 is not required to have raid style content and is also not required to have the role trinity.

However, when you take such basic element out of an MMO, you do need to replace it with something else that people enjoy over a longer period of time and gives them a sense of achievement. For all their plans, this is the part where GW2 has not delivered.

The problem is always that new content makes old content obsolete, simply by being there actually. It’s new, people wanna try it out and people are generally enticed to go there. FotM is a prime example. Ascended items, chance on precursor drops and good gold rewards and everybody goes there. It’s funneling and it makes the existing content completely secondary. It also means leveling is less fun because there are few people to be found there and a lot of DE’s cannot be completed because you are too few.

So where does that leave this “endgame feeling” you are supposed to have from the start? For me the basic flaw is in the reward system. As someone already correctly pointed out. No reward = no participation. People go where the are rewarded mostly. The laurel system seems a step forward in that.

Raiding by itself is not content gating. GW1 had raiding content like UW, DOA and Urgoz for example and it required more skill of the players but it didn’t require better gear because there was no such thing. Everybody had easy access to max stats. Just to prove that raiding doesn’t automatically mean content gating.

The game does lack content that allows more tactical/coordination style play. What does this game offer for people who like that? Nothing really. WvW is mostly zerg. Admittedly there are tactics and coordination involved but on such a different scale that it’s not comparable and you can’t do more than general tactics with a hungry zerg. Dungeons are not interesting enough and the lack of roles do not allow for more. It’s a choice Anet made and the reality is probably simply that if you like more in depth tactics and coordination, GW2 is really not the game to play.

This is why I don’t see raid style content as a viable option for GW2.

I think groups bigger than 5 in GW2 simply won’t work because of how the game is built.

GW2 seems to work for soloing, small groups or zergfests.

Even GW1 has raid style content needing 8-12 players. But in GW2 we see that the combat system, the lack of roles (like it or not) and the lack of mechanics in instances make larger groups than 5 not viable in my view.

Let’s say they added dungeons for groups of 10. Look at what dungeons are like now and what more would it offer than larger boss areas with lots of red circles and kiting around? The thing is, without roles and more distinct mechanics, why would you need 10 people? I think there is a clear reason that 5 is the group size, because more doesn’t really work or add anything. Everybody plays roughly the same role (DPS/support) and has to dodge circles and run around using mostly auto attack. Some bosses take a bit more than that but in general boss fights are not complicated and it doesn’t matter who joins really as far as roles are concerned.

In fact in GW2 we see that classes are not shunned because of roles but about who does the most DPS basically. Warrior or Necro? Necro will work but warrior has more DPS. End of story.

So all in all for larger groups than 5, there is only zerg. DE’s and dragons are basically large group content and WvW. And we know that that’s usually zergfest. Now, that isn’t necessarily bad for everyone. WvW is considered very enjoyable by many, so why not. But it does seem that GW2 stifled its own success by not offering enough options to different player groups.

In another game that I do play, there are 8 and 16 man raids. In a group of 8 you would normally have 2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 ranged dps and 2 melee dps. These are 4 distinct roles that each have their specific tasks.

Now I understand Anet wanted to get away from the roles and just let anyone do anything but the drawback is that raiding is basically not viable in such a system. It may not be a drawback for everyone but for those who like to be in guilds and do group activities that require a bit more than select target and go smash, GW2 simply is not the right game.

I do think though that in return for raid content and a more active gear progression, there is not enough that came in return for that.

So all in all, I think GW2 is not set up for raid content. If they do add content in the future for larger groups, I think they will have to do some really different things to make it interesting to do.

If I remember right, the nightmare armour comes from the Twilight Arbor dungeon. You get tokens for completing it in Hard Mode that you can collect to buy that armour from the vendor in Lion’s Arch. I would suggest looking up the dungeons in the wiki for GW2 or something. A little reading can go a long way.

This thread should probable be in the players helping players forum anyways.

Good luck in any case.

GW2 has been a completely different design and it’s sometimes hard to see why things are so different from GW1.

What GW1 offered worked well for me. As the world was instanced outside towns, there was no boss camping, griefing and such. These were significant advantages at the time. For endgame there were raids, but they were perhaps organised differently, especially compared to WoW. In GW1 they were 8-12 people in size. Areas like UW and Urgoz basically. These were already smaller numbers than raiding in other games.

GW2 doesn’t have raids really. The maximum group size is 5 for dungeons but there is an underlying reason why bigger groups would not make sense. The reason is the lack of trinity and the lack of mechanics in GW2 encounters which is also part of the design. Why do I say that? Because when you have bigger groups, GW2 can only offer zerg content per design. Dragon fights and DE’s are what this game can offer.

If you were to stick 8-12 people in a dungeon in GW2 then it will just be a mob rush. There are no tasks to hand out because there are no roles or mechanics in place. Just think of doing TA for example and how many red circles there are on the floor and sticking 12 people in there. It just wouldn’t work.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that GW2 should have raiding, but as with other things, there isn’t enough to replace it. The vertical progression with gear is extremely shallow and therefore unrewarding. I suppose FotM is sort of a Tetris for MMOs where you just look to see how many levels you can complete and as far as horizontal progression, something that GW did a lot for, GW2 simply doesn’t deliver. Aside from the lack of cool skins, the acquisition of them is generally not well thought trough.

All games have their flaws but I do feel that GW2 doesn’t reward the player correctly. The top gear is just a couple of trinkets (ascended) and exotic grade gear and even legendaries are freely available….on the GTN.

Exotic gear should’ve been exclusive to dungeon and karma rewards and very rare drops that are bound or account bound. Craftable gear is too easy to make apparently cause there’s plenty of it on the GTN. At least there used to be when I last played.

This all takes the excitement out of collecting stuff. Whether it’s for skins or stats. It’s just not exciting to me.

I think that the problem with treadmills starts when you need to gear up too quickly as compared to the time it might take an average player to get it. This can be controlled in different ways.

People demanded for gear with better stats, simply because they finished the game and were bored inside a month’s play and there really wasn’t anything else to do. Exotic gear was too easy to get, making rare gear basically pointless and there were no cool skins to collect or other ways to really expand your characters.

The replay value of the leveling zones is low for various reasons and after level 30-40 your character doesn’t really progress anymore aside from a higher level number. There are no new skills, gear types etc to unlock and there are too many zones to level through with pretty much the same activities. In essence, the idea of endgame being the whole world was an interesting idea but it didn’t work out that way.

At the moment ascended gear isn’t much of an advantage because it’s just a couple of trinkets and that means the vertical progression fails at this moment and the horizontal progression leaves much to be desired.

To each their own of course but aside from FotM and WvW, there is a huge PvE world and it doesn’t seem like it needed to be that big if people aren’t using it much. Perhaps more high level dungeons and WvW features would’ve worked much better and a level cap of 50 with a lot fewer leveling zones to start with. But GW2 in the way it’s made, really just doesn’t have what it takes to feature more tactical group content for more than 5 players. It’s either a small group or zergfest. It’s a design, you decide if it was a good design or not. For me it didn’t work, but I am just one person.

The idea is that they assume that because you can go to areas of other races that you will. The problem with is that I found that it lessens the replay value.

I made a human mesmer first and I like snow. So I leveled my human no problem using the human and norn areas.

But then I made a norn and since I already played through those areas with my human it got boring more quickly.

This was the first MMO where I didn’t like crafting so I didn’t do that and WvW I didn’t do till later.

In essence you are forced to use more aspects of the game whether you like it or not. Just being in an area gaining xp from farming mobs is discouraged. Too bad really cause you could ensure more people in the open areas, which apparently is an issue now on many servers.

Sounds dodgy. I wouldn’t use that link.

If I have to believe the forums, people aren’t farming in Orr anymore, so this is a bit of a surprise.

But let’s be honest, with the introduction of FotM, farming is done there and no longer in leveling zones, except for some materials I guess.

The world has too many zones as it is, making the leveling feel longer and because areas are completed to quickly by themselves, you don’t spend enough time in each zone.

The truth is that you do get level 80 loot when downleveled but the events give less karma and gold than the level 80 ones. So there is a difference. So I guess people still farm some karma but with the daily/monthly you get a lot of karma anyways.

I can’t speak of the current situation as I stopped playing but you will know better whether people spend most of their time on FotM now and not so much in zones or other dungeons.

So, you think it’s ok to make money with someone else’s products?

If you can buy it, it’s not legendary in my book. Knowing myself that I did a lot of effort, doesn’t meet the description of legendary. That’s about bragging rights. Like it or not, that’s what it’s about. But if you can buy it, then you take the bragging element away since most people will just think you bought it, cause it’s possible.

There should be gear that you can show off that are only linked to in game achievements. Items that simply cannot be bought but require effort in game to show you actually did it. That’s the sort of bragging rights I am talking about.

Sleel.8365:

Yes, but your post was about people putting theirs up for sale and people buying them. Takes a lot of work either way.

Except if you buy gems and trade them to gold to buy the legendary. The ratio between hours spent in game to get a legendary or hours spent making the real life money to buy gems doesn’t compare at all.

So, there will be people running around showing off their legendaries that put in the work and then those who simply bought them via real cash.

I can imagine that people who worked for it in game might feel a bit cheated. All in all the karma system should provide unique rewards that are only attainable via karma. That side of the game is not used nearly enough. A missed opportunity.

There is a big difference between moral and morale.

In any case, bugs are normal in MMOs. It depends a bit what is bugged. If skills don’t do what they’re supposed to or an instance doesn’t work that you need to complete a story, those are major bugs that need fixing. But bugs are part of MMOs.

I do not care for the story lines, the voice acting is horrible. The world is beautifully crafted but fails to make a connection for me. The skill bar and trait system are not very good and the game doesn’t really have a lot of cool skins for gear. The reward system is all over the place.

I no longer play but still hope that Anet will be able to turn things around. Time will tell.

I think that for whatever reason the design team for gear has failed tremendously. It’s like the original crew has left and some new guys came in that had to start all over.

Armour looks crappy for most of it and these legendaries aren’t much better. It’s like they stuck em in at the last moment, just to have some in the game. This game lack cool skins like crazy and where in GW1 I had 3-5 elite armour sets per character, I could barely find one I liked. The legendaries I never needed to get cause I don’t really like any of them. Not one.

The fact that the GS have effects and others don’t is just strange. I really makes me wonder if they are finished products or rushed products.

The underlying problem is that GW2 doesn’t reward effort.

You can buy your way through anything and someone who plays the TP for profit wins. The person who plays all content gets shafted. There is nothing legendary about it.

Someone said they don’t want to craft. But the point of achievement is that you have to do something for it to get it. That’s what the OP is on about. If you don’t want to craft, that’s fine. But it also means you don’t get the legendary.

It’s like wanting a diploma from school. So, you could complain that you don’t like to study or follow classes but you won’t get the diploma without it. GW2 is the fake university where you can buy your diploma. It does the trick in a sense, but you don’t really get a sense of achievement from it.

GW2 lacks real achievement and rewards for it. Anything that you can buy aswell invalidates the effort others might’ve put in.

The argument that you shouldn’t compare yourself to others is denying human nature. We always compare ourselves and we want to be able to show something to let people know we did what it took. Why else have medals at the Olympics for example.

Now if someone has a legendary, people will say, oh he probably bought it with cash. Instead of saying, wow, this guy managed to get a legendary together. That’s the effect legendary items should have in my view.

Ruprect.7260:

Lucky.4263:

idea: get rid of the dodge and downstate mechanic replace them with “real” healers and "real " tanks… after that u can do whatever the hell u want with the dungeons.. IMO there is no real tactics to any of these boss fights or dungeons, its dodge dodge doge rez rez rez roll yur face across your KB blow all CD rinse and repeat… just MO tho.

NO, that just makes it like every other MMO then. I got this game becasue it did not require the trinity. So sick of that mechanic.

They added a new tier…just like other MMOs
They are taking ress at waypoint during combat out….just like other MMOs
Tank builds do exist, healer builds in lesser forms.

Really as things progress this game will be more and more like other MMOs.

The lack of trinity exists only because people aren’t completely allowed to (mostly because tank builds can’t really control threat). That’s a thin line.

Ashanor.5319:

Last thing we need is to start filling this game with level restrictions, especially not 80. Maybe 30 would be alright.

Oh you mean like all the other dungeons in this game?

There are some activities like world completion and doing all jumping puzzles but these things will be done at some point.
Then there’s dungeons, but nowadays that means mostly FotM.
And WvW is pretty popular.

Dunno what people would do beyond that. For me it wasn’t enough so I quit playing and hope things will get better. Maybe someone who is still playing can give more options.

I wonder about TA.

Yeh you know, the spores. I think people will wipe a lot more dealing with thrash mobs and spores.

And the the boss with the wurms and the 2 million red circles…and spores.

In fact, think of any boss that has an insta-kill effect.

I do believe they are making the normal dungeons a lot harder and pug-unfriendly to say the least.

One could wonder if that will have a positive effect on the game….or not.

Mobs in GW2 are more hp heavy than in GW1. This means it takes longer to kill individual mobs. This gets annoying, so people will tend to want to get the whole group and aoe the crap out of them.

If people use aoe all the time even when not needed, it is a sign also of how uninteresting the skill set is. Nerfing aoe is one way of dealing it. Another is making other skills more useful…..but oh noes PvP will be affected.

PvP balance is a big problem for PvE.

Ouroboros.5076:

Such a blatant lack of understanding of this game’s mechanics does not give much credibility to this thread.

Don’t use words like blatant, if you then don’t actually give any reason why. That means you are building on assumptions

Ouroboros.5076:

It’s even more sad coming from a GW1 player where each class used to use maximum 20 skills in Vanilla, where attributes had no influence at all on the gameplay, and where you could not swap skills on the fly. On a single Fractal run I may use up to 30 different skills with my Mesmer, depending on the ennemies, my group needs, and the situation.

This shows a lack of understanding of GW1 mechanics. The attributes powered different skill lines and definitely had an effect on the game. Your reference to Vanilla is pointless. People have played MMOs before. You can’t start at zero anymore nowadays. Games need to deliver more at start.

A single fractal run means hours going through levels of the same dungeon. That is not a reasonable comparison. The fact that you could not swap skills on the fly meant you had to do the entire area or dungeon with that same skill set. That takes some planning and consideration and team builds also mattered. Again, you show little understanding of GW1 mechanics. Also in GW1 you could change your attributes and skill sets in a matter of seconds in towns….for free. Compare that to switching traits, because attributes in GW1 took the place of traits and in GW1 you could swap much more easily, making it more dynamic on that level.

Ouroboros.5076:

This game’s mechanics are much, much deeper than GW1, so complex in fact that it’s hard to really understand them all.

They are not deeper. That’s a statement and you give no evidence to support it. The reason it’s hard to understand the GW2 combat system is not complexity but lack of transparency and skills not working as they should.

The big issue with the combat system is that the skill bar in GW2 is less flexible. You are forced to take an elite and a heal skill. You are limited by weapon choice and usually get skills you don’t want or need from them. CD’s are much higher than in GW1 and this is the price you pay for being able to swap skills between combat. I find it funny that you say you use up to 30 skills, but the truth is that you barely have 30 skills and I am pretty sure this only applies on higher level fractals. Also fractals is a minute part of the whole game. And in the remaining 99% of the game (assuming that you really need to swap skills so much, cause I wouldn’t know) you don’t need to swap skills and it doesn’t really matter what your trait choices are. The idea that in fractals you may have to and that it’s then the only place in the game where it really matters is sad really.

Depth comes not just from layers but also from meaning. If taking 5 points out of a trait line and putting them somewhere else without really creating much of a difference, it means it lacks meaning. If you don’t notice the changes and can do most content with auto attack and dodge, ress and a heal skill and that that goes for all classes in the game, I consider that a lack of depth in the combat system and that’s how I experienced GW2. They balanced everything so much that the differences are also too small to notice. And still some people complain about certain classes being OP but it’s mostly about stuns, stealth and such. So the game has similar complaints but lacks meaning in its combat system.

That is my view. Is it worse than the horrid story lines and the superficial feel of the world? Dunno. Is it worse than the endgame grind? Dunno either, but it certainly is a big issue and one of the main reasons I’ve stopped playing, hoping that one day Anet will improve things. Time will tell.

Rukia.4802:

I agree, got my last legendary in WoW in 1/10th of the time, and it had a epic story the whole way too. I think they really missed the point on legendaries and assume they are simply meant to be one huge boring grind.

The problem is so much RNG, and ANets obsession with the mystic toilet.

Mystic toilet….that’s just totally hilarious. You made my day with that one

I think that should be perfectly acceptable.

As a player you shouldn’t be punished for Anet’s mistake. I say that because I think the whole MF mechanic should’ve never been put in and the lack of inspect options means that people can willfully make your life more difficult and even increase your repair costs while they run away with the big loot.

What would be cool is if they could devise an April Fool’s joke that looks like a joke but actually isn’t.

Or you could ask yourself the question why people expect the worst? From experience?

Also consider why they release information like this. Without giving clear details I mean. Perhaps they want to see people’s reactions and see what players might not like or do like.

The OP just gave his reaction. Anet will then see what they do with these reactions.

It is clear though that the economy of GW2 does revolve at least in part around RNG. It means that there are drops but because they are not always useable people’s behaviours change accordingly.

If you got a weapon that was a level 80 exotic of your choice. You don’t need to craft, grind or buy one. If it’s rng you still get loot, but most people will need alternatives.

I don’t particularly care for the GW2 approach on this because of other elements like the crafting system and FotM being the only place to grind etc.

Still, it does have an effect on the economy.

Keiran.1896:

That’s weird cuz in WoW it was expensive to switch server.

And then GW2 came and made instant unlimited free tranfers… My point is, it proves that it cost them nothing to do this and it’s a shame to make us pay for it.

That’s just bad reasoning.

It doesn’t prove at all that it cost them nothing to do this. The guesting feature wasn’t working and they didn’t want to charge people for their failure to deliver it. That doesn’t mean it was free of cost to them. It just means it made business sense not to charge customers for something when it’s not fair to do so.

critickitten.1498:

Tolmos.8395:

critickitten.1498:

Lambent.6375:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Fellblade.jpg (the hulking 1 hand version)

This one is already in the game. Only available to GW1 players with 23 Hall of Monuments reward points.

And is also 2H.

Because it’s a greatsword, not a 1H sword. GW1 didn’t distinguish between sword types, so they were all 1H. Even when it looked positively ridiculous to wield with 1 hand.

And it’s rather unlikely they’ll take an HoM-exclusive skin and put it into the game as a skin that anyone can get, anyways.

GW2 has 1H swords that are ridiculously large, to the point that sheathing the sword makes the tip of the sword disappear underground.

GW1 did have 2H weapons, just not swords. I feel GW2 is too much GS. At least half the classes can wield em and it’s a bit ridiculous.

Back on topic:

I am not saying that GW2 needs to do the same things as GW1 but it needs to achieve the same feeling and depth that GW1 has in the combat system, traits and skill bar. Creating a build in GW2 was fun and required some thought. Changing one or two skills made a huge difference. Here it hardly is noticeable for most purposes.

The second part I miss in GW2 is the general atmosphere. GW1 felt like your home when logged in and I still feel that pull to log in and just be there. GW2 has better artwork as such but doesn’t have that same atmosphere that pulls you in. The storylines and voice acting certainly don’t help.

What I find funny is that Anet said that they couldn’t continue with expansions in GW1 because the world was getting too big and people too spread out. So in GW2 they limited the continents but they made Tyria so big that the world really is too big from the start. Solution: stick everyone in FotM. No, that doesn’t work for me.

Astralporing.1957:

Just wait till they increase level cap by another 20 levels. Should be 2 expansions from now.

They might extend the trait lines with that as well, so I doubt they will just add more points and leave the trait lines the same.

The other problem with going from 70 to 90 in the current set up is that it makes diversity less between builds. You won’t have to make choices.

Right now the problem is that you do have to make choices but the choices hardly matter for most content.

So my solution is not to increase the amount of trait points but to make the trait lines more meaningful than they are now. I think that’s also the reason why some people want more trait points because the current trait lines aren’t…well, let’s say they aren’t exciting.

I also enjoyed it a lot…the first month. I hope you like it better.

Alastar.2863:

People complain about the ascended weapons being a “gear treadmill” in the future, but I hear that they are going to make ascended items easier to obtain in the future (not sure what they will do) so I would hope that what they plan on doing is making the ascended items just as easy to acquire as exotics (maybe SLIGHTLY more difficult.)

Another thing, why not make more powerful weapons as the game grows and gets expansions and such? If you have the SAME STATS and level and gear after, say 2 or 3 expansions then things can get old, there would be no reason to do anything if you have the maximum stats you want and the cap never increases.

Wait, first you say just pretend it was always in the game taking away the element of gear progression from that point of view and then you advocate a gear treadmill in the second part of you message….

Sense, you make none.

I deplore Anet’s choice to bring in endgame gear progression but it is here to stay.

The problem then remains of how it is implemented and this is the real issue if you accept it’s here to stay. It was poorly implemented and I don’t know what they will do next when the rest of ascended gear will come out.

Other games simply do gear progression better. No game is completely unique, so ok, they decided to go this way but the poor implementation doesn’t help the situation.

Wow, you actually liked the story? That was one of my biggest disappointments in this game.

It is all over the place as well and half the time I didn’t even know what the story was about anymore (turned off the sound for the horrid voice acting and skipped as much as I could). I really didn’t think it was very engaging or original and it most certainly wasn’t “my story”.

After my second level 80 I couldn’t bear to level any toons anymore. Just too boring. Not just the story but that was a big part of that.

It is about how you play the game but Anet know that too. When you like to complete maps then there’s your focus. Sadly killing mobs by itself is pointless (poor loot and very little xp). Why that is sad is because for a good amount of people it means that they are not rewarded or there isn’t much incentive to do more than what you do OP.

The world is beautifully crafted as such but I think the mistake they made is that they made too many zones and too many levels. A level cap of 50 and more to do per zone (therefore needing fewer zones), would keep you in a specific zone longer.

So for me, the zones just became about completion and once I did that and all the jump puzzles I didn’t really wanna go through there again with alts. It kinda killed the replay value. And I think this adds to a grindy feel to the world while leveling.

I agree with the other person that the real grind is at level 80 but if grind is linked to repetitiveness I think that’s the feeling I got when leveling and seeing how many zones there still were to go. I was level 80 before I got to Orr anyways, so Orr was just about getting that horrible storyline over with and skipping as much as possible. Completing those zones were a challenge but never would want to go there again.

But if you want a legendary (which will have better stats, not just looks) and the ascended gear with better stats, you will have to grind quite a bit.

You have to decide for yourself what you mean with serious PvE. As you level up after the 30s levels become basically meaningless. You just get a skill point extra and your trait point and that’s it.

You will unlock more dungeons. Generally it’s level 80s that do all dungeons because even scaled down they are more powerful and the often prefer higher level players. Still, most people seem to grind FotM from what I hear (I no longer play) more than anything. And that’s really all there is for PvE.

The high level zones for leveling in Orr for example are generally seen as horrendous. You’ll have to decide what you think of the story line but for me it got worse and worse as the story continued. Opinion but not an uncommon one.

From a PvE point of view I don’t think this game offers enough of the right things. I liked doing the jumping puzzles, but never again. The zones get boring because it’s just completing hearts…more of the same. I personally think there are actually too many levels and too many zones because there is not much character progression anymore after level 30-something.

It’s true that PvE is the biggest chunk of content but after x amount of events killing centaurs and thieves, it also gets repetitive. If the level cap was 50 and there were more dungeons, it could’ve been much more interesting already.

Of course the dungeons are rather simplistic. You don’t have much in the sense of tactics going on there. Most bosses are just hp monsters with one shot kills abilities that you need to dodge. Most of the PvE experience seems to be kiting and dodging anyways.

Respawn rates are bad especially in the Orr zones, but even sooner there are places where mobs respawn too quickly. The best one yet were some grawl that respawned BEFORE I killed them. That was even better. But I suppose that’s minor stuff.

But yeh, it depends on what your definition is of serious PvE content. GW2 has a lot of content but personally I can’t take it very seriously. To each their own.

I played GW1 to death but I quit GW2.

I don’t think it’s because I played GW1 that I don’t like GW2 though. What you do see is that people who played GW1 and don’t like GW2 can make clear comparisons to things they liked in GW1 that are missing.

I also have to laugh at people who don’t get that people can be disappointed. What the devs said, for example, is that they took “all the things you love about GW1”. They didn’t. Simple fact. But this is also personal.
It’s particularly funny to me, because the devs did imply that GW2 was really a furthering of GW1 instead of a completely different game that barely resembles it at all, keeping just some names and history. See that was just their marketing strategy.

Also keep in my that when they say something, they tend to embellish. What does it mean when you talk about massive dragon events? A lot of people here commented there is no tactics because everybody is just running around doing their individual things without communication and the fight it itself is very simple and rewards are appropriately crap. Some will say Anet lied, others will feel it fits the bill.

I was initially disappointed how different the game was from GW1. I knew it would be different, I did read the articles, but I didn’t see it would be THAT different.

So once I got over that the question was this: If I disconnect GW1 from GW2 in my mind is GW2 still a fun game for me? The answer was no. Not because it isn’t like GW1 but because FOR ME it fails to deliver on the long term. I find the replay value of the leveling zones extremely low. I find the functional differences between classes non existent. Bear with me….I am an altoholic and after leveling two characters to 80 I just couldn’t get myself to level another one. Too uninteresting. Which brings me to the story line.

Watch the manifesto and see what they say about the epic story, you know, my story. Sorry, it’s not epic and after Mr. T. comes in the story it most certainly isn’t my story for sure.

The video said: no grind. we don’t make grind games they said. Come again? FotM is grind station number 1. Like it or not, the way FotM is build is a genius platform for grind.

All in all, we have no stats. But there are a number of people who quit because it’s nothing like GW1. There are people who quite because they got bored with the game as such for different reasons. This happens to any game really.

The reason I refer to GW1 a lot is because as part of the issue I don’t understand how they had some great things in GW1 that they didn’t keep for GW2. The previous game does certain things better and it was their own product. How they got to throw those out and put inferior elements in GW2 by comparison is what does baffle me.

I think it relates back to the element of progression.

The OP just wants something to show for his time played in some way other than levels. This is reinforced by the fact that after about level 30 or whenever you get your elite slot, there isn’t really any character progression by leveling. Just adding levels and skill points. That’s it.

So at that point you start looking for other things to progress with like crafting. But if the returns in loot are so poor, then there’s not much you can do. Playing the market is not for most players. In fact if everybody did it, it wouldn’t work anymore.

So I understand the idea that you want to play for a few hours and got more out of it than some generic definition of fun and a higher level. You don’t get new skills etc on higher levels so it means very little. Fun is all good and well but you can’t do similar things constantly and just do it for fun. It all gets repetitious. Thats why people look for progression in various ways. There just isn’t enough of that in GW2.

GummiBear.2756:

so apparently people complain about there being too much grind as well as there being too little grind… color me confused…

It’s about when and where.

For endgame there is grind and it’s all to be done in FotM.

But while leveling or just out in any of the zones, there is no grind because of low xp and DR. So just going around the zones killing stuff and enjoying the scenery a bit is discouraged. And why?

It’s like you can do what you want but we only reward you if you do what we want you to do. That’s the difference to me. If the guy wants to just go around killing stuff, clearing a zone or something, why should he not get decent xp and loot? Why can you only get this when you do the hearts?

The grind doesn’t start till you’re level 80 and you kinda want a legendary weapon and feel you need ascended gear before the next gear update comes.

HiddenNick.7206:

Rhysati.4932:

Besides that obvious example, we could look at something like the Paladin or Druid from WoW, hybrids that are capable of filling all roles.

But you HAVE TO choose one of those roles!

For example you choose to be a tank (like Paladin with Protection) and you use healers equipment then you will suck hard with tanking.

In gw2 it’s combined effort that counts. So if you tank a bit and heal a bit then your doing a lot.

PS. I’m not saying that holy trinity is completely broken! I’m just saying that Gw2 system isn’t as bad as some of you say it is.

I made a big post to reply to you and then the forum decided to go nuts again so I am not doing it again.

So just a short reply here. Not all game require what you say. Someone already mentioned EQ I think.

But on the subject of choosing a role. Yes you have to make a choice and that’s the point. Making a choice that has consequences makes the choice matter. It means something. GW2 is too flexible in roles because there aren’t really any. Add to that the lack of depth and flexibility in the skill and trait system and then there’s nothing left that keeps my interest here.

It obviously is enough for you but this is this the most boring set of character classes I’ve ever had to play with. It all looks great for sure, but functionally it’s all too generic. It just gives too much flexibility in the role department and too little in the class depth.