Guild Wars 2

captaincrunch.6731:

Some of you guys are far too defensive when it comes to criticism of this game. This is a big deal for completionists – and often renders map completion rewards useless because you are 10-20 levels higher than the gear you get by the time it’s finally fixed.

Sure, you can sell it, but why bother giving gear in lieu of gold in the first place if that’s how it’s gonna be?

Most of the people complaining unfortunately don’t come with actual arguments but just opinions that don’t hold much water to begin with. I don’t think the problem is criticism but the abhorrent lack of quality in the criticism.

My main is now completing areas at level 80. Some of them are starter areas. I still enjoy it and the rewards are fine. I don’t need the gear. It’s cheap on the TP at any level. And the rewards are more than gear. Except the capitals you do get a fair amount of silvers and materials aside from gear and things like transmutation stones as well.

A true completionist wants to say he’s done it. It’s not about the gear rewards. There are plenty of ways to get gear that are easy enough. I decided I didn’t want to craft. I sold all my mats that I gathered on the way to level 80 and made over 10g via the tp.

It’s not about defending the game but a lot of complaints are from people who just want to play one specific way and nothing else. Life doesn’t even work that way. Things change all the time and nothing is perfect. If you can’t handle that, well, I guess it will be a tough life altogether.

Let’s be honest. You talk about the rewards being a big deal for completionists. How do you know? Are you the representative of all completionists in this game or the world? Of course not. It’s just how you feel and maybe a couple of friends of yours. What I think bothers completionists more is when skill challenges are bugged. And these bugs need to be fixed. Is everything fixed at this moment? No. There is no argument that there are bugs and that it would be nice that all of them were fixed today. It’s just not a realistic expectation.

Ronin.8095:

Your inference that if we don’t like the DR we’re not intelligent is quite bizarre. It doesn’t even have anything to do with patience either. It’s just a really badly thought out idea. There’s no escaping that.

I said that it takes just a little intelligence to work around it. I am not saying that people are stupid, I am just saying that using intelligence just a little is enough. So my point is that we all can do this.

It’s more difficult to program that. It will not stop bots but any measure that makes it harder is fine by me. Admittedly other measures might’ve been prefered by myself but I do get the reasoning behind it.

Ronin.8095:

So because it’s a system I have to live with it do I? Ridiculous. I don’t and I won’t. I’ll try to get my money back if they won’t take it out.

Oh dear, a rebel without a cause…. There was a system already and you had to play by it before. It just changed. The whole frigging game is a system. You gonna sue them for that?

Ronin.8095:

The longer it stays in the more cancerous and damaging it’s going to become.

See, comments like this are ridiculous. Why? Because it’s an exaggeration. One big part of the GW2 marketing has always been that this game isn’t about grind. This is perfectly in line with that. Want another example? Dungeons give better token rewards but doesn’t reward doing the same dungeon 10 times a day.

If you were looking for a game that was about grinding yourself silly, I do wonder how you could’ve missed all those articles and reviews about GW2 for the past 2 years or so.

Soulwatcher.2604:

Forcing players to play the way you want them to play is a sure fire way to be on the outside looking in. Just ask SE how good FFXIV is doing and the same can be said about D3 and Star Wars. Why developers like to kill off their player base I will never know!

There is no such things as true freedom. Anything that is programmed means there are borders. They just changed them and they are easy to circumvent at that.

FF was just a dragon of a game from the start. D3 sold millions of copies just the same and all the hate doesn’t change that. My view on D3 is that it’s not the bugs but the content that failed the game. It’s just boring and SWTOR is a game I played from launch till last month. There were still bugs from the start after 8 months, their fixing rate is slower and the content was way too one sided. I was leaving as it was, even if GW2 hadn’t been there. I did all I wanted there. Characters are being deleted randomly, their TP doesn’t work after the last patch as we speak. That game has been out since December.

So no, I don’t think GW2 falls in that catergory.

And back about the why….The reason they do things like this is because the alternative is worse. That’s actually what you don’t get. Of course, with any decision, any change, you will lose some players because someone, somewhere will not be happy with it. Sometimes, sad as it may be, things need to change to improve the game, knowing that some people will leave because of it. Arenanet cannot win. That’s just a reality for anyone, not just for them.

DR would not be my weapon of choice here but if you can’t deal with a system that restricts rewards from grinding your kitten off, then this really isn’t the game for you. People like the OP are so well trained in endgame gear progression that they haven’t woken up and realised it’s not needed here. Exotic gear is easy enough to get and good enough to play any dungeon, event or what not. The rest is something that can take time, because even if you do think you need it, I really don’t see any argument that says you must be able to do it within two weeks grinding the same spot over and over again…no matter how much you like doing that.

Just look at all the complaints about botting and you will see that a lot of people are worried about that.

robot.9134:

You don’t need to be a tester or even a developer to be able to do product comparison.

But then again, you haven’t done more than throw around popular sayings and unsubstantiated claims yourself.

robot.9134:

Lets hypothetically say that ALL mmo fixes and maintenance are equal across all games. It shouldn’t be TOO far from the truth as most mmo’s should be somewhat similar depending on class balance and events etc. Compared to other mmo’s at release Anet is getting about a D+ to C-. in many peoples opinions.

They are not equal, it is far from the truth. Your hypothesis fails at the start. Compare it to other games like WoW, Aion, Rift, SWTOR and others. I played Aion and SWTOR of those. Guild Wars is much better.

robot.9134:

Anet knew they were making an MMO. Anet had GW1 already. Anet was also notoriously slow with releases for it and bad with communication. Why was little done to improve post release?

GW1 is classed with MMO’s but as it didn’t have a persistent world it isn’t really a MMO. This is the first MMO they are building and anyone with a bit of sense can know that a MMO is a very different type of game to build, with all the issues that come along with that.

robot.9134:

So don’t give me that vague answer “There is a lot of work behind the scenes” garbage. We already know that.

You haven’t given anything substantiated yourself. Just some opinions and vague references.

DR is a system. Understand the system and work with it or around it. People are just generally impatient and entitled these days.

I am not against having expectations but there is a little word called reasonable.

You don’t need to buy a sword for 150g and if you do feel you need it, you can work the system or take a little longer to get it. People don’t seem to get that you don’t need stuff like that to play this game. Sure, you may want it, but that’s not the same. And you don’t have to be able to get it within a week either.

The DR system was not the most elegant solution. I agree with that. But on the other hand, you can do a lot with rotating events to counter the effects of DR and I don’t think that Anet has to cater to people who spend 5 hours a day doing the same thing over and over again. Bots do that. You wanna be a bot, that’s your choice but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work around the system. It simply takes not being a bot.

A little intelligence and some patience can go a long way. Soon enough you’ll have your legendary sword…barey a month or two after release…then what?

Yeah they are clutching at straws to get our attention. I just report every single gold spammer for spamming.

It is sad that they are hacked accounts, but the sooner they are reported the better it is. I’ve had the experience of having my account hacked in GW1 and lost all my obsidian armour sets. It killed the game for me after years of play. Just couldn’t get back in and farm all that back together. No help from Anet by the way on retrieval so I hoped they learned from that and they can do more for us know. It really sucks as an experience.

So yeh, SWTOR was apparently airtight cause in 8 months I got 2 spam messages in total, but hopefully Anet can work it out their own way

The gold – gem ratio at this stage makes it unattractive to sell gold for gems.
We know that Anet has a hand in this ratio. So it is intentional.

The game is new. Gems are for extra’s and are Anet’s income aside from the box price. The simple conclusion is then that it’s in Anet’s best interest at this stage to make buying gems with gold unattractive and when people want to use gems for stuff in the gemstore, buying them with real cash is the better deal compared to the effort of getting all that gold together to buy the gems.

This makes perfect sense for me at this stage of the game. Later when people have had level 80s for a while and stockpile some gold, then it might become interesting to use it as a gold sink.

At the moment however the fluctuations allow for those interested to treat it as sort of a stock market, but little more.

Perhaps you want to avoid spending cash on gems and save gold instead but this would not be the best approach for the whole player base as many people do have the cash to spend on it.

Just face it, at this time it’s not being used as a mechanism against gold sellers…and why would they?
There’s an increasing amount of accounts being banned for gold selling / botting and the prices on the gold seller sites are going down. The laws of supply and demand tell us then that the demand is much smaller than the supply.

As someone mentioned, this is a new game and then there’s always a lot of spam. That’s not the moment to decide if there’s a lot of gold buying going on. Especially because people will start realising that getting exotic gear at level 80 isn’t that difficult and you don’t need legendary stuff to do dungeons. Once this sinks in, perhaps the need to buy gold will be even further reduced.

The gold prices I saw in my mailbox went from 4 Euro per gold to less than 1 Euro per gold in less than 2 weeks. That tells us people won’t spend 4 Euro per gold so they had to make it a lot cheaper in the hopes to appeal to their customers. It also means they need to dedicate more resources to make the same profit.

Someone said that to them it doesn’t matter but you need to have more copies of a game running around botting to collect gold in game to sell it at those prices. It means they need to hack a lot more accounts or buy game copies themselves to be able to manage that.

If Anet can stem the tide on account hacking and bans more accounts that have been abused it can hurt gold sellers if at the same time their prices go down so quickly.

The situation is far from perfect right now but I can imagine that if they made buying gold with gems very attractive right now, it might also make gold buying from other sources “feel” more legit. I suspect they don’t want to encourage that feeling and cut their own gem sales at the same time.

The game has no sub but they do want to make it attractive for as many players as possible to buy gems with real money I would think.

Interesting idea. To use it as a RPG, I would want to look at a few considerations.

First of all, the setting comes from a video game obviously. But this is what people have as a frame of reference. To make the game work, I would then adapt the game rules and basics to at least on a recognisable level to the pc game.

This would then entail seeing if you could build a system that fits both games or if you need to choose between GW1 and 2.
The reason I say this is that for me (as a long time table top player) a system actually is part of the atmosphere of a game.

I don’t like how, for example, Wizard’s anchored the D20 system and put every setting they sell in the same system. To me that just feels like D&D in the Star Wars universe for example.

So I would advocate a system that echoes the fast playstyle of GW on the PC. West End games did the original Star Wars rpg and this was a great adaptation in my view. The D20 system did no justice to it.

For D&D I prefer the older versions. 3.5 was pretty solid and 4 was utter crap. Hopefully the new one will be better, but that still doesn’t make it fit GW.

No, I’d opt for a new system that has fast combat, using a similar structure as either GW1 or 2. For GW2 you’d want a leveling system to level 80 for example and a similar approach to skill bars. Doesn’t have to be the same but something that would make you think it’s Guild Wars and not some or any other game.

Just my view on this

I think GW2 delivered in a lot of things and it certainly feels very different from traditional MMOs.

For me it hasn’t delivered on the next points:

Storyline. They really need better story writers. I agree with the OP’s points about story but I just wanted to add that the story itself is disappointing, especially the high level ones. Arah was the best example of how bad the end story is. No spoilers here from me so I’ll leave it at that.

Grind. I do not mind some grind so the promise that there would be no grind was suspect as it was and even though I don’t like too much grind, some grind is fine. However the way the dungeons are set up and their rewards (explorable, tokens) is way off. I want the TA armour and maybe Arah but they are tedious to do with pugs and have to wait on my friends to level. In any case I will not do the others because I do not want their rewards (different tokens for each dungeon). So when there are people LFP to do another dungeon I will not join them. The recent token increases help but it’s still a lot of work and I therefore do not wish to spend time in other dungeons. I think aside from the grind also makes it harder to find groups for the dungeons you need.

Reward system. When we level we can go to lower areas and be scaled down so we can still enjoy events and such at lower level. It’s a nice idea but travel costs are up because of my level but the rewards for those events are low. In general this discrepancy makes it less interesting to help guildies/friends with their events and quests when it takes you a few silver to travel there and not get an appropriate reward for your level, even though you are scaled down.

Having said that though, I do enjoy playing the game but mostly at lower levels. It isn’t till you get to around level 50 that some of these issues start to really show and I’d say until you get to 60-65 it’s alright. After that though it’s karma farming and dungeon running with the limitations there are on that. The travel costs to waypoint at higher levels really keep me from moving my character around much and the Orr region is not a great area to play in. Waypoints are often contested as it is and traveling by foot is dangerous, because they are tough to fight through and subject to overaggro, especially worsened by other players who run through the areas as they had enough of it and train mobs on you unintentionally mostly. But when you die because of it, you pay for it.

So all in all great game till level 60. After that not as much….it needs help. Still, none of the issues there are unfixable and as of yet don’t keep me from enjoying the game and its many facets.

Even though I am not part of that endgame crowd I do agree with the OP and his reasoning. I do believe there’s more to endgame than speed clearing but his points are valid beyond that.

I also find it funny that Anet want to make people do more different events but set the waypoint costs to a point that it discourages people from moving around. That is rather counterproductive in this whole matter.

Some people rush to level 80 in 3 days, have exotic gear within the first week and then figure out where to make money the quickest and easiest.
This became the CoF and Arah speed clearing (incidentally we had a CoF speed clears or runs in GW1 as well but that’s another story).
These people worked hard. No argument there, but because of this they also get a level of control over high end trading that is probably undesirable and cause massive inflation of the gold currency. This makes the game rather unfriendly towards more casual players on that level.

The difficulty lies herein: How to cater to hardcore and casual players in the same game?
All the hardcore guys want to do is what they have been doing. They rush through the dungeon of choice because it has the best reward/effort ratio, not because they necessarily enjoy the dungeon so much. That would only be a secondary benefit to the fast enrichment of those players in question.

Now they have to alternate between dungeons which slows them down because other dungeons give less reward or take longer. And this upsets them.

The issue here is that the people who are actually really interested in the cosmetic look you can get with the tokens are the people who lose out here unless they happen to be hardcore as well. And to be fair they mostly care about stats more than looks other than to show off.

My view is that Anet haven’t found the right balance here yet, but the game is young and they have improved a lot already.

I do understand the frustration of the hardcore players, but what they do hurts the economy in general and with that the community in general. The fact that that doesn’t bother most of them is fair enough but does require measures, though I find this particular measure as ugly as it was necessary.

Valkyrie.2678:

Gehenna.3625:

Valkyrie.2678:

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

So you say things should be nerfed because so-called majority is having problems with them. I say this is funny.

From the perspective of same logic, do you think battlefield 3 should come up with a system that automatically detects players who are not doing well in the game and aims targets for them?

I said impatient. Being good at something takes time.

Being good at something takes time, ability and interest.

If people lack any of those, they will quit and leave or at least avoid this specific activity. From a business point of view, it’s suicide to not cater to you biggest fanbase.

I don’t know of course if it is indeed the majority that has trouble with these dungeons but usually games are dumbed down or nerfed because it is a majority of players. So it is likely that here as well this will be a majority of players.

I was in TA last night (explorable) with a group of players and they quit cause halfway they had 30s of repairs and they didn’t enjoy it cause it was “too hard”. I only had about 9s in repairs so far and I could see their tactics fail over and over again. With better players it would’ve been a lot less painful.
The interesting thing there was also that they considered themselves decent players using TS etc.

The thing is though, that it is likely that groups like this are more representative of the average player than the full exotic level 80 speed clear teams. Again I do not know this but I feel that can safely state that it is more likely.

So, what’s game to do? Of course, you don’t want to chase out the hardcore players, but most of them leave after 3-6 months anyways cause there’s a big percentage amongst these players who just burn themselves out on any game because they rush through too fast. Just the way it is.

I think that things will become at least more balanced and perhaps a little easier but not in the first 3-6 months. And it generally is a logical conclusion when the core of hardcore players jump ship (as they always do in any game I’ve played), the casual player or the ones who put in lots of hours but aren’t hardcore as in dungeon running and gearing up asap, are the majority that is the main fanbase.

The point you are missing is that a game like WoW dumbed down because it made sense for their main fanbase and they were highly successful at it, in spite of everything. You simply can’t expect a company to hold on to something doggedly if they would lose too many players over it. Once the more casual players start hitting level 80 we’ll probably here more about this. Give it a month or two tops.

Mickey.4207:

Gehenna.3625:

There are bugs and this is part of a MMO release, but Anet are fixing them on a regular basis.

You’re not paying a sub either so honestly, there isn’t a serious complaint here.

Are you telling us that people are only allowed to complain if they are paying monthly sub? not that i am in favor of complaining.
You make it sound as if customers are of less importance to Anet because GW2 is B2P. I am sure Anet wants to keep players happy and want them to spend money on cash shop as well as buy future expansions.

So i am sure that Anet doesn’t think like you and value opinions of its customers.

And who is the special snow flake who keeps giving +1 to stupidity like this?

The stupidity is your interpretation. No, I am not saying anything of what you are saying here.

All I am saying is that I don’t take these types of complaints seriously because it is a MMO and certain things can be expected as it’s a massive thing to set up. Especially the idea of “paying for a beta” is ridiculous since it’s a common complaint in other MMOs with a sub.

Again, everything else is just your very liberal interpretation and certainly not what I was saying.

When you play a game like GW1 for many years and the devs start talking about GW2 because “they can’t do with this game what the community wants from it” and then they announce GW2, then it’s not strange that it sets the expectations a certain way.

It’s of course a different game but when you name something as number 2 then it says sequel and that there can be an expectation of recognition.

GW2 is a very different game from GW1. This is what people were told as well, but it was more different than people expected probably. It was for me.

I enjoy it for what it is but it is true that the skill bar in GW1 was more interesting. Partially because in GW2 you are confronted with fixed skill sets that belong to weapons. I like a mesmer with a staff, lucky for me it has a good skill set. I was told the sword/pistol combo is awesome but I won’t play it because I don’t like mesmers with guns. Just a personal preference.

The problem therefore is that skills are not just subject to fixed sets but also personal preferences on a visual level. What if I love mesmers, hate pistols but the pistol is the best weapon for a mesmer (just an example)? This means I would feel I have to use a pistol against my wish.
In GW1 skills were separate from weapons and the skill slots were entirely interchangeable and there were no sets of skills that you had to take together.

In GW2 I could think of making a clone build, but I am forced to have phantasm skills. Not a problem for me but I cannot take them out and replace them with more suitable skills. It seems to me that what people are upset about isn’t so much that a lot changed but more that we had certain freedoms of choice in our skill bar that are no longer there.

I can still enjoy GW2 for what it is, but I do agree that the skill bar in GW1 was much more flexible.

An interesting post and I agree with the general sense of it but not all of it.

The considerations yes, the solutions not so much.

It is true that people want the dungeon gear. In my view the mistake was made that tokens from each dungeon are different and you can only get each armour set with one type of tokens. Speed clears are not meant for obtaining the specific armour but for making money unless you want to say that everybody wants the same armour set.

Now here’s a couple of points to explain further:

1)Personally, for my mesmer, I prefer the Arah and TA sets. I haven’t even done Arah yet but those are the two I would like. Everybody will have their own preferences but I would think that the people who want all of them are a minority.

2) I need to run such a dungeon in explorable mode and over 40 times each I’ve been told to get the complete set.

3) Explorable modes are quite tough and need a good team to get them done in a reasonable time. They are not for pugs.

So what do these points have as a result? Well, the conclusion is that I do not have the time to run anything but those two dungeons and to run the dungeons I want I need to gear up first because they are tough and therefore I will expect to have full exotic gear before getting this gear set together. And this might bring me to the conclusion that it’s pointless.

If indeed Anet want to people to do explorable modes, I think that at this stage they won’t be able to convince the majority of their players for reasons similar to mine. I was in a pug yesterday which were 3 people of a guild, myself and another guy. The 3 from the same guild quit halfway because they weren’t having fun and it was just too much for them.

I am not talking about whether the game was too hard or the players too dumb, but it is probably too hard for a lot of players at this stage. I cannot look into the future but I already have guildies tell me they’re not even interested in the dungeons cause of these types of things.

Arah and CoF are being run mostly because apparently the level 80s found they were good for rewards and could be cleared quickly. This has nothing to do with the armours you can get there but the incoming cash flow from it. For the lesser gods, explorable mode is an endless frustration best avoided. I am not sure it’s the best approach for this.

I am male and play females only (1 human, 2 norn, 1 sylvari so far). From my point of view, I spend a lot of time playing games. I prefer looking at women

I don’t identify directly with my toons as avatars of myself or something. I see it more like Charlie’s Angels…I’m Charlie and they are my angels. Just an analogy hehe.

Elysian Rose.5283:

Aesalon.5402:

I guess you already have my (and most others’) money, so perhaps there’s no good reason for you to listen,

This man speaks the horrible truth.

No he doesn’t. As they have no subs and didn’t go pay2win, they need people to play the game and use the cash shop. They have every reason to want people to keep playing.

The problem discussed here must be the diminishing returns. A draconic measure, I agree, but there was a need to do something. That’s all there is to it really.

I just love how people refer to “the community” when they really mean just themselves. I didn’t like this measure even though it hasn’t affected me personally, but I do realise that for the economy’s sake something had to be done.

There are bugs and this is part of a MMO release, but Anet are fixing them on a regular basis.

You’re not paying a sub either so honestly, there isn’t a serious complaint here.

There’s two types of hate. The emotional kind and the simulated kind. The simulated kind is easy: trolls.

The emotional kind is when people feel disappointed or aren’t getting what they wanted or were hoping for. These are people who care about the game and want to like it but don’t for whatever reason or at least certain key aspects in their view.

It requires a consistent lack of patience and reasonability to maintain such hatred. It’s like logging in every day to check if they changed the game according to your wishes and of course they didn’t so you fuel the flame and go back to the forum to lash out some more….so much anger.

I don’t mind strong language and I don’t mind criticism. Criticism is good as it can improve this game. This seething hatred that you see, doesn’t help anybody, including the person him/herself.

It’s sad really but I saw it a lot in SWTOR, where people just came back day after day, just to spit their venom at the community. I agreed there was a lot wrong in that game but I liked it for what it was and am done with it now because they completely ruined their own game. Too bad, but such is life. No need to spew venom over it.

I find that GW2 has a lot of bugs but Anet are fixing them and it generally isn’t game breaking since there is generally something else you can do. I do have some criticism about waypoint costs, dungeon imbalance and a lot of broken events that do need to be addressed but nothing to hate the game over.

For all you haters out there of any game: it’s not worth it people. If you really don’t like it, move on. If you want to stay, then put up with it and use constructive criticism. Anything else is self-defeating.

Just my point of view.

Valkyrie.2678:

Problem is the community. They are selfish, impatient, they don’t tend to learn strategy, don’t want to follow a certain path because demanding for a nerf is easier.

But this community is the paying customer. Does it make sense to create a game with dungeons that are too tough for the majority of players?

Sure it may be that the players don’t want to learn those tactics, but in the end it still means they will not do these dungeons. Anet is planning to bring out more of them. This means they might bring out content updates that cater to a minority of players.

Hate the people all you want, but it’s not the wisest business strategy. Luckily there’s a lot to do and discover in this game, but what people call endgame may end up being interesting to only a limited amount of players.

ravinhood.3981:

Terok.7315:

More importantly, how do we 80’s make the money for all the gold sinks + armor? It’s been a week and I’m still trying to get full exotic armor, nevermind weapons and jewelry.

You aren’t INTENDED to get FULL Exotic or all sets of high end weapons in a WEEK….that’s why the prices are right for travel so you have to go off your farming beaten path and do something else to get money so you can afford other things.

Game is WAD hurray for Anet in their wisdom.

Although I would like to agree because I am patient enough to take time to get my gear together, in the end I must disagree with you.

The reason I disagree with you is this: If you are not intended to get full exotic gear within a week, why is it possible to do so? The fact is that there are already level 80s running around in full exotic gear. The hardcore players if you will and they are the ones who already figured out ways to make gold that most people don’t do or even know exist.

Because of this there is a rift between that group and the new level 80s that are considered undergeared because they need more time to get their gear together.

The waypoint costs hurt the casual player more than the hardcore player. That’s the problem, not the fact that there are many money sinks.

Everytime anyone says something isn’t intended, I just look at if it’s possible and legal within the game rules. If it is, then it is intended.

The argument that “this is not the game for you” can be true for some. In other cases the argument can be “improvement from criticism”.

The difficulty is figuring out if this game is really not for you or if the game with a few tweaks is the game for you. Few people like or hate absolutely everything in a game.

What is a bit annoying is this group of people that were 80 since the first week, all in exotic gear and me just turning 80 in level 75 yellows wondering if these people will even allow me in their groups cause I am “poorly geared”. The difference is just too big. I don’t mind taking time to get my gear together. But if there’s a core group of people who are fully equipped in exotic then it is annoying to take that patient stance because I am stuck in the middle between a small overgeared group and a big group of people who aren’t near 80 yet.

Pugging dungeons is atrocious because it takes 4 hours which I don’t usually have on weeknights and I am undergeared for the speed clear groups.

I don’t want to do most dungeons in explorable mode because the tokens are useless to me since I only like 2 of the armour sets (TA and Arah).

So I have to wait till more people are 80 but I figure that the problem started by allowing people to get Exotic gear too quickly and it will take about another month before the higher level population is more balanced.

So yeh for the answer is alts but at the moment it’s tough not being a hardcore and being level 80 at the same time.

Waypoint costs go up when you level up but you don’t get rewards on the level you need when helping people with lower level events, even though you effective level is adapted to those areas.

So you are discouraged from helping lower level people in lower level areas and encouraged to do the high level stuff. With the new diminishing returns you are also discouraged from repeating those.

You are also not encouraged to do multiple different dungeons because of not needing tokens for gear you don’t like.

It could be just my personal interpretation but somewhere in there, I get the feeling it doesn’t all add up as it should. If you give people lots of stuff to do and then discourage them to do most of it….doesn’t that seem odd?

This sort of thing happened in GW1 already. Lots of speed clears of various kinds.

The problem is a combination of things. People find the dungeon that nets the most and costs the least time. Minimum input, maximum output. No surprises there.

So then there is the gems. Why do I bring this up? Because you can trade gems for gold and vice versa and therefore the amount of gold needed to buy gems in game will go up.
Since we have a division between very rich hardcore players and a lot of players that have just enough or are constantly broke, this creates economy issues.

And then there’s the dungeon tokens. The idea to have different tokens for each dungeon is simply a bad idea. It divides people instead of bringing them together. Make tokens the same and limit token rewards to once a day per dungeon and a lot of issues are resolved there. Raise the token rewards and drop the silver/gold reward from explorable mode and I think that will help people to do more different dungeons and worry less about cash rewards.

This last patch was a draconic measure. There was a necessity, I get that, but the usually it’s not the what but the how that is the problem.

Think about this one Anet. It could be a long term issue.

Soothsayer.9476:

Gathslan.1870:

There is a point.

Having FUN.

mmo players have this attitude where apparently fun doesn’t matter, it’s all about turning a game in to a job and working on it day in day out until they have ticked everything off their things-to-do list.

Oh I don’t know. I think people have different ideas of what fun is. There is no single definition of fun that covers what everybody likes.

Some people like to do dungeons for challenge
Some people like to do dungeons because they like the group tactics element
Some people like to do dungeons because they will get nice rewards
Some people like to do dungeons because they just like group activities

These are a few possible reasons and more can apply.

The issue is that the end reward is for the level of the dungeon. So at level 50, doing AC gives you a level 30 gold item.

When you do explorable mode then you get tokens. The problem with the token system is that for my mesmer I decided I only like 2 of the armour sets. So I will possibly do TA and Arah. The rest I don’t care about. So when people are LFP to do TA or AC, I won’t do it.

The reason is simple. I need to do a lot of dungeons to get my exotic armour (The gold ones look the same for all). I don’t want to spend a few hours with a group hitting the same wall over and over and get a reward I won’t use.

So out of all possible, what is it, 7 or so dungeons, I will only do 2 of them and since you need to do them like 40 times to get a set together, maybe I will just do one.

I prefer a system where you can get the same tokens by doing different activities. The whole game is built around this karma thing that you can spend in various places on different items. But the variety is limited and generally reduced to green and blue items. To get yellow items it’s already a lot more limited what you can do with karma. I could get a staff for 65k karma but it’s got crappy stats and the cultural armour costs cash. No option to pay with karma there.

Same with dungeons. They should give the same tokens so you can choose where to spend them without limiting which dungeons you are willing to do. You’d just get more tokens for higher level dungeons and perhaps you can use a dungeon specific token that you receive on completion of a dungeon and only need 1 of those per armour piece.

It would encourage people to play more dungeons and not just select one or two which in my view would increase grouping chances for any dungeon.

Apparently level 80s are just doign CoF and Arah mostly cause of the rewards and they are the ones who do the speed clears that are now causing the gold limit to be put into place. A shame but necessary or you have 5% of players who own 90% of the gold in the player’s hands.

I played GW1 almost from the beginning and there were some patches that had a bigger impact and caused some people to leave.

The real reason it sort of died out, as already mentioned, is the fact that Anet focused on GW2 instead and didn’t bring out any major content updates anymore. They sold millions of copies there as well of the game, so I don’t think it was a flop at all.

The update refers to speed running dungeons. We had a lot of speed clearing being done in GW1 of UW and such.

It sounds to me that when you do a dungeon, you will get the normal results for rewards. If you speed clear it 4 times in one evening then you will suffer from the law of diminishing returns.

Life is grind. Repetition is part of our existence.

However, it’s not always experienced as bad or undesireable. Personally I think that people call something grind, not when it’s repetitious but because they don’t enjoy whatever it is that needs to be repeated.

So the real question is, what is it that people don’t enjoy and how come?

It does feel very grindy and the mobs seem a bit tougher in comparison. The fact that it is depressive makes sense though. I find that a good thing. It’s not a nice place, it doesn’t feel like a nice place.

However, the rewards for being there and doing stuff there could use a bit of tweaking. I don’t spend any more time there than I absolutely have to but it should be a dreary place because…well, it is a dreary place.

Two things:

1) They already warn you against abuse of the report function when you use it. So false reports can also lead to sanctions. This is already in place.

2) Secondly, a lot of those people just say they reported you for whatever. Doesn’t mean they actually did. The people who actually do it will change tactics and just report you for reporting you…even if you didn’t. Would you want a button then for reporting people who reported you for reporting them?

Pikafan.3792:

I watch players in melee die/down a lot more than players at range. Does show that ranged users have a huge advantage in harder fights.

Hint: Players using ranged weapons have the flexibility of running into melee to deal damage if they so wish. The same can’t really be said about players wielding melee weapons running into ranged.

On the other hand you have two weapon sets to swap between so you can choose melee and ranged on the same character, so you can swap from melee to ranged.

Also the melee dps is usually higher than the ranged dps as to make up for the time lost when dodging. Ranged is easier in that sense but not better.

The only thing that is lame is that one shot kills instagib that happens with some bosses. One mistake you’re dead is a bit rough, for the rest it’s all about choice and skill.

Soooo…I’ve played GW1 for over 6000 hours since 2004 and at first I didn’t like GW2 so much, during the beta that is. But they fixed a lot of things and enjoy it now.

I don’t have so much of a problem with DE’s. They can be repetitious (defend against even more centaurs) but I still enjoy them. My problem is that many of them are still bugged. They get stuck and block the cycles entirely because a caravan doesn’t take the final steps to completion or an enemy of a wave is stuck in a piece of terrain and is invulnerable thereby blocking the continuation etc.

Skills. Well I do agree that the first 5 being fixed is a bit of a shame because you tend to get stuck with at least one or two that aren’t that useful. Like having to have phantom skills while you focus on clones and such. Dual classing. No. Stop it. It created all kinds of problems in GW1 for balancing. I never liked that ranger were better at using necro skills and necro’s were better restoration healers than the ritualists themselves. Hunting elites, yeh that was kind of fun. But even then it doesn’t stop me from enjoying what is there.

The TP, well it seems that gold sellers is more the issue. The spamming mostly and that is a point. But it’s a new MMO with a gem system. And my view is that gold spammers only exist because there are customers for them. I just report them all and hope it helps stem the tide. Give Anet a bit of time to get some control there.

Kana.6793:

So that people will maybe stop and think instead of zerging. Once they do they they’ll find the dungeons suddenly get a whole lot easier.

If you believe that will happen I don’t think you have realistic expectations. You say “once they do this” and I tell you most of them won’t. People will quit and do something else before they will do what you want.

Kana.6793:

Also relieved to read that and I really hope Anet don’t cave in & start nerfing stuff later. If anything they should deactivate waypoints during combat to stop fully dead people from running back in.

Why… so people stop doing it altogether?

This, by you, is a good idea, is it?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want everything to be made easy but I do wonder why some dungeon bosses are bosses you can kill on auto-attack and others are tough as nails. They just need to balance the difficulty and also realise that the tougher the activity, the fewer people will do it. If you sell 2 million copies of a game, I suspect most of those are not hardcore players. Difficulty is good but you need to know where to stop as well.

Except what he says isn’t true. DoA was tough as nails and very few people got anywhere with it in the beginning, that part was true.

But what isn’t true is that DoA wasn’t made easier. It was. The area penalties were adjusted and things like cons and pve skills (Ursanway anyone?) did make DoA a lot easier to do.

So I disagree with him saying that DoA wasn’t made easier….it was made easier, just indirectly mostly. I see no difference in the end if you make the area easier or the players more powerful with supahskills and consumables…

Lots of opinions and very few facts. I suppose that the people who didn’t like it generally already play the game. That’s my gut feeling. If it brings in more sales then it will be successful. I get what they were trying to do and no I didn’t hate it, even though it wasn’t directed at me but I can see how it would work for a specific target audience. In any case….people are talking about it.

I dunno, if you get the reward from the quest, will it reset the quest if you didn’t leave the instance?

In any case, it’s not what’s intended, so yes, it could be seen as an exploit. Although I’d have to think hard about which quests rewards are so fantastic or do you get the full xp gain again as well?

Well, I don’t know how often this has happened to you but for me it’s only been a couple of times….so it hasn’t had a big impact on my leveling experience.

Complain all you will but the alternatives are worse.

I understand waypoints are more expensive over longer distances, but the cost also goes up when you are higher level. So for the same distance, a level 50 pays more than a level 20. This is specifically noticeable here. The OP is right in that sense because it will make you hesitate to help out friends or guildies.

I really think that going to another waypoint shouldn’t cost as much as it does. It discourages people from traveling around freely and this can be detrimental to scenarios like this.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Perhaps you’ve hit on a bigger problem. If the game has to reward players for minimal effort, just so they’ll participate, then either the events aren’t interesting enough, or they happen too frequently to be worth caring about.

I don’t really like being rewarded for something I didn’t do, however, if I knew that the event happening was a rare opportunity to participate, I would do everything I could to be a part of it.

It’s like when celebs visit malls, everyone flocks to the area to be a part of the event. It’s because it’s rare, and exciting. I’ve been saying this for weeks, but I think there is simply too much happening on the maps. Too much overlap, too many creatures, too frequent of repeats.

That is the problem with games in general though…or even life in general. It’s all repetition at some level.

What happens though is that at some point you happen to be in an area doing a task, looking for a point of interest or on your way to a personal quest. An event is nearby…do I join in or stick to my original plan?

I’ve stated since beta that events and taskes are repackaged quests. Sure there are definite differences as events are more dynamic in nature but you are still killing mobs, defending and/or escorting npc’s, picking up items and dealing with boss mechanics. Just like in quests.

How much variation is possible on that level? But the delivery is different and it is still worth helping out people with a level 10 event when you are level 70. And that’s where GW2 does something really good.

I am not saying that more variation is possible, but there is a lot to do and it is delivered differently. The fact that you can go to other races’ areas is a great thing.

But yes, when you want to level and are looking for events is usually when you have a hard time finding them and when you are not looking for them, they seem to be everywhere….that’s just life really

People are people and rewards work…to a point. But I think it’s ok to encourage the behaviour that you want people to portray. It’s all very J.F. Skinner, I know…but it’s how it works a lot of the time.

Battlewill.5614:

Again, Again & Again … people are just boring to hell …
Here’s a trick :

• Open you map
• Click WP needed
• Run around to kill 5 MOBS or so (you are 80, you can take them 5by5)

HOOOO GOD !! you are payed back …. Stop QQ now plz…

You’re Welcome =.=

Right,
I open the map
click on the waypoint I want to go to and lose 2-4 silver.
Kill 5 mobs and gain less than a silver….

Oh and level 80 isn’t where the problem starts and even a level 80 gets scaled down so attacking 5 mobs at one time is not the best advice.

How exactly am I paid back?

The events trigger when they trigger and when you are nearby you are invited to participate. Except if you get there at the very end, you will generally get some reward. This ensures that people are willing to jump in and participate.

This is part of the MMO experience, it’s a way to make sure people actually participate. I mean, how many people would join in if they weren’t sure if it would be worth it? Not that many I can promise you.

So what the OP is complaining about, maybe a valid concern for him/her but in the larger scale of things I wouldn’t want them to change it because it’s instrumental in getting people to participate.

Let’s be honest…we were told there were over 1500 events to start with. Well, after doing a fair amount of events I roughly see it comes down to: defend this npc, defend this location against x waves, escort an npc. I’ve killed my share of centaurs by now. Anyways 90% of the events are roughly the same type. Understandable but without a generous reward system, people just would start avoiding more and more events because “it’s not worth it”.

I never got to do AC yet as it was too bugged initially but I have done CM, TA and SE now. (level 68 currently)

CM was great I thought. The balance there was good and the instance didn’t take too long.

TA, well, I agree with the other poster that it’s a pain in the rear end…on various levels. There is a point where challenge becomes tedious. The last boss we couldn’t actually manage but it took hours to get there.

SE was ok, but rather long and it did bug the first time. The before-last boss was killed but the game didn’t realise it was dead so didn’t open the next gate. The second time it worked and the end boss was a pain but easier in the end.

What I am saying is that the difficulty within a single instance is most balanced in CM and not at all balanced in the other two I played. It does require tactics but the difference in difficulty between some bosses within the same instance is completely out there.

Ganadorf.3460:

Gehenna.3625:

Now, I never played WoW, but are you telling us that you got 50 character slots included in the price of the sub? That seems unlikely.

Lol? Have you ever played a game that wasn’t a pay to win Asian grinder…?

WoW has 50 character slots, 10 per server (11 per server in the next expansion). You can look this up, if you don’t believe me, but it’s pretty common knowledge. Most games have a solid amount of characters slots… Guild Wars is the odd man out here

Yes I have played many MMOs and most of them are not Asian grinders. I just haven’t played WoW, that’s all. This whole realm thing is new to me in that sense but I believe it. It just sounded like such a big number. I’ve never had 50 characters in any game for that matter.

I really am surprised at 50 character slots but then since you pay for the game, a sub and all expansions I suppose it’s the least they can do.

In SWTOR you got 8 character slots per server for example but since you can play both sides you would need 16 slots. They are offering f2p but you well get fewer character slots. So there’s another example.

You get 5 slots here as part of the game price. It’s still a good deal and has nothing to do with pay2win. In the end Anet do need to make money somehow and you get the possibility to earn it with in game gold as well. I don’t think the OP has a leg to stand on.

SiNoS.2147:

Gehenna.3625:

Turial.1293:

There are no tanks in guild wars 2, you need to learn to dodge, stay out of enemy fire, etc. the gameplay is far different than run in and do damage, you need to play it smart.

Although I agree with this in a general sense, there is the issue of melee vs ranged.

A lot of weapons and skills for a warrior I suppose are melee based and so far it seems that ranged classes or builds are best and melee is a bad idea in comparison.

The assumption is that GW2 only has damage dealer and support builds. We know there isn’t a real dedicated healer class but the guardian is definitely more tanky and can afford to spend more time in close range.

I haven’t played warrior so I can only guess here but I am having a hard time seeing the advantages of melee compared to ranged and I am not doing so well on finding them.

You forgot control on your assumption list.

Well there is CC as well of course. Thanks for adding that, but in any case there are ranged builds that can do that.

As a general rule I’d say that anything a melee build can do, a ranged can do as well. That seems fair but the difference is that ranged damage is easier and safer as a general rule. So what does melee get in return for having to get up close and take bigger hits…..heavy armour I guess, but as we can tell there is no tanking so that doesn’t go that far.

Dodging and kiting is definitely the way to do it, but you could wonder if it is desirable that all classes must play this way. It kinda goes against the diversity thing. What is the point of heavy armour anyways if you get one shotted anyway?

Turial.1293:

There are no tanks in guild wars 2, you need to learn to dodge, stay out of enemy fire, etc. the gameplay is far different than run in and do damage, you need to play it smart.

Although I agree with this in a general sense, there is the issue of melee vs ranged.

A lot of weapons and skills for a warrior I suppose are melee based and so far it seems that ranged classes or builds are best and melee is a bad idea in comparison.

The assumption is that GW2 only has damage dealer and support builds. We know there isn’t a real dedicated healer class but the guardian is definitely more tanky and can afford to spend more time in close range.

I haven’t played warrior so I can only guess here but I am having a hard time seeing the advantages of melee compared to ranged and I am not doing so well on finding them.

No sub doesn’t mean free. It’s like all those people who cry for free 2 play, not realising that a company still has to make money.

You can buy the character slots. The amount of character slots you have, has nothing to do with pay 2 win. That is an absurd conclusion on your side. You can do sPvP at level 80 from start. Don’t like it? Delete it and try again.

And as the others here pointed out you can actually get them with in game gold as well.

My advice: read up before you scream like a 5-year-old.

Now, I never played WoW, but are you telling us that you got 50 character slots included in the price of the sub? That seems unlikely.

I understand the repair costs involved but I don’t think it makes sense that you complete a task (you know the hearts on the map) and the gain of that is approximately the cost of 1 time traveling back to the capital.

The map is pretty big and it would make sense for people to not have to think about traveling to help guildies out and join ongoing events.

Also I’ve seen people dying during events when the group is all but wiped and not ress at a near waypoint to save a repair bill or being too lazy to walk back.

All I’m saying is that costs should make sense in comparison. If they need to create money sinks then a higher costs of travel based on level seems odd. Sure higher repair cost for higher level gear, I can see that. But higher travel costs because you are more experienced makes absolutely no sense, even in a fantasy setting.

As you level up the prices for teleporting to waypoints are excessive. I don’t see the logic of paying more for the same distance at higher level anyways. It’s a blatant money sink that I find unnecessary as it is.

Now your little trick here seems like a great way to avoid those costs, but I have one question for you in that respect. Is this a good trick or an exploit?

I hesitate to use this, because I don’t want to get banned for using an exploit if you will.

I went into the WvWvW zone yesterday and thought, let’s try this out. I went in for the first time. I walked to an area and got zerged by 20 enemies and it cost over a silver to repair.

My conclusion: forget it, I ain’t doing this again. I already think the prices for using waypoints are getting ridiculous. I travel for a very small distance and it costs close to a silver just for the nearest waypoint. I am not an avid crafter/seller. I play in a more casual way and I just 2.5 gold when I got to 60 …and had to buy a new skill book at 2 gold. So yeh I am not interested in a gameplay that allows zerging and costs you money. I don’t care what the rewards are. It clearly is a place where you have to go in with at least 10 people to stand a chance and certainly has nothing to do with the join in as you come along approach of the rest of the game.

Not for me, but there’s plenty more to do