Guild Wars 2

For soloing, it might not be the highest DPS, but I doubt anything is faster than a pistol/pistol thief. Dagger is of course higher damage, but unload will instantly kill most enemies from range. I play random builds to 80 in the downtime. A sword/torch guardian is also fast, which gains a high crit chance early on and capable of blinking to and quickly killing enemies. However, those were both single targets and in most cases, I usually end up pulling 5-10 at a time, where a staff elementalist is going to win.

Eponet.4829:

And Verdant Brink Night fails whenever you don’t bring a small army of people to it, because the map never reaches the same numbers as the other HOT maps.

The metas truly only need around 20 people to complete or 3 per boss, but that also means you can’t faceroll it, which is why people do the whole LFG zerg. To make VB easy, encourage everyone to turn on their mentor tag, then cover each camp with 1 person, telling them to leave 1 enemy remaining during the camp defenses, which should allow them to easily solo the camps. Have someone call out 3 and 1 minute before the camp defenses start, as people should be doing the champs/escorts in between. For the bosses, simply spread out between them, using the mentor tags to estimate where others are.

Every map likely has enough people to legitimately complete T4, especially if people didn’t taxi.

Gator.5729:

The main issue is that new and returning players are jumping right into the HoT maps without being truly familiar with their characters and in some cases not being geared correctly.

Not being geared is likely a common problem. Unlike other MMOs, there’s no quests here to provide you with a proper set. For those playing the game like any other MMO and simply following the story, you’re going to be equipped in 80 rare equipment with no runes/sigils, no earrings and low level rings. It’s straight to HoT after, which would be balanced for full exotics. If you’re good enough however, it doesn’t matter what you have, as it can be done naked.

Gator.5729:

Core Tyria difficulty is a joke.

What people forget is that the core game wasn’t balanced for what you are now. Drop your 3rd trait line and limit yourself to rare equipment with no backpack and only minor runes/sigils at most and of course no consumables. That’s what Cursed Shore was originally balanced for. Play a zerker d/d elementalist for optimal effect. If you want to simulate the early crowd, further limit yourself to a mix of level 60-78 fine/masterworks with no accessories. It’s still not hard of course, but you’re going to be losing decent chunks of your health and not be able to 1 shot your enemies, making it far more challenging than what other MMOs offer in terms of open world solo content.

Djinn.9245:

Why is it that Anet doesn’t seem to care about this? Why didn’t they predict this and build some kind of notification so that new players know why the map is empty and how to find maps that have other people?

Of course ArenaNet cares. Earnings are down 25% compared to the year prior to HoT’s announcement. They simply don’t have the resources to waste and even if they did, it’s far too late to matter. They’re better off forgetting HoT and focusing on the next expansion, as that’ll actually sell the game.

Empty maps are partially a player created problem due to the use of LFG. Every map would be at least half full if people didn’t do it. Megaservers are the other problem, since they should simply fill maps rather than prioritizing friends/guilds/worlds. To complete HoT’s metas however, you truly only need around 20 people, which is around 20-25% of the map, but that also means you can’t play casually, hence the LFG zerg.

ArenaNet’s likely not going to bother wasting resources on a minor annoyance. It’s too bad they don’t support addons. They could officially allow people to use the trading post’s internal API for example.

If this were to be implemented, it’d likely work by allowing you to mark items as junk. A simple client side list of item IDs would be trivial to implement.

It’s possibly based on loot credit, meaning only the first 50 or so people to tag him will get it, and you probably have to stay within loot range.

Vayne.8563:

I can’t help but think that casual is code for I can’t accomplish something.

Close enough. In general it’s simply code for bad player. Some use it to simply refer to time played, but someone only playing a few hours a week isn’t generally going to be very good.

maddoctor.2738:

They didn’t nerf the difficulty of Heart of Thorns mobs at any point in time. They nerfed how the meta events work, making them require no participation before the final events started. The actual difficulty of the encounters is the same as at release.

As a sample, the damage of snipers was cut in half during beta. After launch, bladedancers had their fan shot capped to a single hit and the damage of their stun combo reduced, both of which were previously instant kills. Some encounters were also toned down by changing what spawned.

maddoctor.2738:

Veteran Smokescales aren’t “regular trash mobs”, regular Smokescales die in two hits by a proper glass build (one if you are a Thief). Shadowleapers in maybe 3 hits. Those mobs are built to die quickly but deal lots of damage if you let them, but you shouldn’t let them if have a properly built character.

Sounds like you avoid veterans. You don’t actually think they’re for groups do you? Regardless, enemies don’t always come in singles, and packs are something you should be commonly dealing with. You may encounter a group of 5 enemies with 2 veteran shadowleapers for example as an extreme case at an event. I doubt the average player could even handle pulling more than one of the more deadly enemies, or even a single veteran, though you are forced to during the story, but can cheat.

The only point however was that enemies are capable of easily killing you, and although they have low health, so does the trash in Dark Souls. You said the key point was failing to avoid the attacks, but the same goes for Dark Souls. Personally, I find Dark Souls easier, but that’s not really a fair comparison because it’s 100% solo content whereas here I’m also soloing what you’d probably consider to be group content.

maddoctor.2738:

And then we got Core Tyria where you can kill any mob in full glass gear without ever using dodge or any skill, only auto attacks.

Sounds like how I play Dark Souls. I also played W3 on hard using only steps and the basic attack. Most skill based action games are like that, because it’s all about positioning and avoidance. Keep in mind that the core game wasn’t balanced for maxed out characters. Even Cursed Shore is intended for fresh 80s in rares.

If you meant that you can casually AFK enemies, obviously that’s an extreme exaggeration, as that’s only considering weak enemies 1 on 1. If that’s the case, what did you expect? A small group of nobles are going to kill you with their marks if you stand there. Although not a part of the original core, a simple reef drake is going to kill you with its puddle of death in melee range. They’re always fun to watch vs zergs.

Are you trying to install, Gw2Setup.exe? Rename it to Gw2.exe and place it where you want to install it, then run it. There’s a bug where Gw2Setup.exe will show the login instead of the installer, which doesn’t actually work.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Why is Spatial Serge not supposed to be reflectable?

Reflect is for projectiles. Spatial Surge is a beam.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

I’ve had a gyro explode while the cleric is leaping in and it doesn’t do damage or knock him away.

Lag? As an elementalist, I’ve been able to interrupt it with gust, static field and unstable ground during their leap animation.

maddoctor.2738:

There is regular trash in GW2 that can kill you within 1-3 seconds?

Haven’t you tried playing the game at the normal difficulty, as in one of the glass builds with only 11k health? You should know that many of the enemies since HoT are capable of doing so if you fail to avoid certain attacks, such as veteran smokescales (assault), shadowleapers (leap shot) or desolators (leap spam). Even simpler enemies, such as mordrem drakes, can crit for upwards of 10k with their basic attacks, though trivial to avoid, which can create humorous moments at the flax farm.

Personally, I’m always on the lookout for a game like Dark Souls, but with the content updates of an MMO. GW2 is the closest I’ve seen, as everyone else balances solo content for the casual majority. Beta was of course better and the speed of season 1 was the only release cycle to legitimately keep me active. ArenaNet even has the same group concept as Dark Souls, where it’s intended to be done solo, but bads can group up and think it’s normal. So, if you happen to know of any, I’d like to know.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

That’s not what actually happened, they just forgot to buff the health of the Silverwastes bosses (or deliberately didn’t) after the specialization patch like they did with all the regular world bosses.

As a zerker staff elementalist with the same build and gear, I can kill them in under half the time compared to soloing them back at release. Considering all the nerfs since then, frost bow for example, core elementalists probably dealt higher damage back then. They may have simply changed the scaling however, where instead of the usual 3+, they’re now 1+.

They also added the NPCs to help with the collections after the initial wave, though that may have been due to the need of a tutorial, showing you to dodge into the trees for example. That also made it much easier to solo.

maddoctor.2738:

And then you read comments about GW2 being the “dark souls of mmorpgs” and realize that something is wrong with the community of this game.

Compared to other MMOs, GW2 is the Dark Souls of MMOs when comparing the difficulty of solo content when actually played solo. In what other MMO can regular trash enemies, intended for solo play, easily kill you within 1-3 seconds, assuming similar builds and levels? Sure, you can simply bring more people to play the game on easy mode, but that’s really no different from the vertical progression of other MMOs.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Mesmers greatsword ranged attack is no longer reflectable.

It could never be reflected. If you were able to, it was a bug. Their basic attack is Spatial Surge with added confusion.

Personally, I find their invulnerability the most annoying, which is there to prevent you from killing them instantly after killing their clone.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

So unless you have a block or dodge up there is no way to viably avoid a confusion or their autotarget AOE they do every other attack.

New to Lake Doric, Mesmers use a multiplied version of Mind Stab, except theirs does very little damage to account for the multiplication.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Knights AOE hits multiple times, which means it works against all one time mitigation abilities.

Simply step through them or move out of the AoE. As shown by the orange marked area, that attack actually shoots out in multiple directions. If you’re standing in between two parts, you’re going to get hit twice.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

And don’t forget their leap in attack that is non uninterruptible.

You can interrupt a cleric’s leap if you expect it. But yes, they’re the most annoying.

If you can keep them from getting within range to attack, they won’t actually do anything. They initiate with a leap to melee range, then block.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

The elemental has a knockback that is used often with a large AOE, and their fireball does a sizable amount damage (possibly the highest damage attack of all the White Mantle mobs) and applies burning.

Elementalist only do their AoE knockback in melee range, which has a slow cast time. Their fireball should be changed to the actual elementalist’s fireball, which would make them a joke since it’s slow and not homing.

The necromancers actually deal the most damage, especially when their bouncing axe hits you multiple times.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Every other class has long drawn out fights.

Zerk it.

AliamRationem.5172:

As far as I can tell, the bosses already scale to the number of players.

Scaling wasn’t designed to keep up the challenge. The more you bring, the less each individual needs to contribute and that’s not even considering the fact that group buffs can easily double your damage, making it way off. Scaling needs to be adjusted so that either small groups have it just as easy, or zergs have it just as hard, which would likely always fail.

AliamRationem.5172:

Are you suggesting that we completely rework these events to require less coordination? Or what?

The majority would certainly like it if it was a guaranteed win, just look at how populated easy bosses are, but as I said, the real problem is the joke that is megaservers. VB specifically is actually very easy, they all are, as it’s entirely a population problem. For VB, everyone simply needs to tag up, use that information to cover everything and knowing how to easily defend a camp can guarantee they never fall. Improvements to the UI would also be a lot of help, showing exactly when stuff will happen for example, instead of requiring outside timers, as most aren’t going to go outside the game.

The problem with commonly failing is that people stop trying, resulting in a dying population. Failing really shouldn’t be an option, and instead, it should simply take longer to complete. As is, you’re being punished twice, by wasting hours of your time and giving you nothing.

The problem with zerg metas is just that, they’re balanced for active maps. To prevent the population problem, it would be much easier if these types of events were split from the map and were something more like activities. That would allow them to be balanced for smaller/exact numbers, automate distribution/teams and they could potentially occur whenever.

As for what’s realistically going to happen however, HoT will likely be nerfed and the next expansion will simply avoid zerg content, just how season 3 is back to being balanced for 3+. Silverwastes was also nerfed when the population died down, reducing boss health by roughly 50%.

Swagger.1459:

not gold to gems exchange…

That would be the cash shop, which is currently mostly hidden, as it’s viewed by accessing the cart on buy.guildwars2.com. They can’t differentiate between real and traded gems.

When firing, the projectile is shot towards where your cursor was originally located on the screen when you initiated the shot and moving the character will adjust it. If you aim to the left, fire, then correct your shot for example, it’ll shoot to the left. If you aim to the left, fire and strafe to the right however, it’ll hit the target. If you’re saying it’s shooting all over without any movement, like a shotgun, you’ve found a bug.

The nearby enemies shouldn’t be a problem if the camp is secured. This adventure used to be locked until it was. You may have to kill an enemy now, but at least it’s open a majority of the day.

Asura? Lower to the ground means you fire from a lower position which has a higher chance of obstructions.

Remove “Tracked” from the Vinewrath in the Silverwastes, or at least cut the duration in half or base it on the number of participants.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Have been saying things along this line since the new player experience was put into the game and literally made the core game a joke.

It was already a joke. The core game was blanket nerfed in the original beta, basically halving everything. Enemy damage was originally a lot like HoT, even a little higher in some cases with dodge or die special attacks.

Most players simply do not want a challenge and attempting to force change will only come at a great loss, as they’ll simply go somewhere else. Look at any other MMO and solo content is usually a joke. ArenaNet has always been for the gamers however, rather than the majority. If they have no plans to continue supporting that audience, they really should revert the core game, simply to not mislead people early on.

If you’re running GeForce Experience and have sharing/shadowplay/overlays enabled, it can greatly increase your load times.

Besides disk speed, your CPU and network speed will also affect your load time. If you have high packet loss, loading can even enter an infinite loop. Run the game with -maploadinfo for loading info (Gw2.exe -maploadinfo).

This generally only affects older installs, but you can try deleting %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat, which is your hardware-related settings.

Axiom.9742:

We just moved a guild from Tarnished Coast over to Borlis Pass and had Ping issues immediately (coincidence?), raising from an average of 30, up to 200 and 2000+ after the move.

Your path to the servers wouldn’t have changed. There has been bad servers (/ip) before however, causing lag in specific instances. Was this in WvW? For PvE, you can simply guest to Tarnished Coast and it should be as if you never moved.

Axiom.9742:

FWIW, Just noticed Trace Route for all map IP’s I’ve been on tonight are going from here in the US to EU servers at Telia in Frankfurt Germany, before coming back to Ncsoft’s datacenter in Texas…

You should notice a ~200ms jump when going overseas. If you’re relying on IP geolocation, it’s not perfect. GW2’s EU servers for example will say they’re in the US.

zealex.9410:

hot going free to play will not fix a thing it will be the oposite tbh they will end up losing money if they do that.

Making it F2P wouldn’t fix the actual problem, but it would fix the population by flooding the maps with new players. It would cost them of course, because a portion of the free players would quit for the same old reasons. Earnings are down 25% compared to the year prior to HoT’s announcement. The problem with the lack of vertical progression and an increasing difficulty is that the higher that wall goes, the more they’re going to lose.

Like how other MMOs handle old group content, I’d expect to see HoT blanket nerfed with the next expansion, which would give the casual players their turn to faceroll through it. ArenaNet obviously doesn’t have the resources however, so doing that would mean delaying something else. Considering ArenaNet’s history however, I doubt they’ll do anything, as they’ve always been for the gamers, not the majority.

AliamRationem.5172:

Try using LFG ahead of the meta. It’s rare that these events fail these days when players are actively organizing a map to complete them.

Failure is the reason it turned out this way. You don’t need a full map, not even half of one, but most people simply can’t handle the difficulty. The higher the chances of it failing, the less people will bother showing up. To counter this, people started using LFG to make a full map, which greatly reduces the difficulty simply due to numbers. As people taxi out of the other maps however, it causes them to die out, which is why there’s a bunch of empty maps and a single full one. The real problem here is that megaservers don’t fill up a map, but instead open a new one once a map is half filled.

From the perspective of the average player, the game is going to appear dead because they’re simply going to login and play, not LFG. These metas would have been far better off as activities, where you simply queued in and were automatically placed in teams.

I wouldn’t count on anything changing. ArenaNet simply doesn’t have the resources. They had to pull the expansion team the first time they updated HoT. Megaservers have been broken since forever, which is the real problem, but they’ve also admitted that part of the problem is intentional, with maps having reserved priorities and thus half filled. The most I see them doing is simply making HoT F2P, then they can just avoid it.

maddoctor.2738:

Is this a joke?

The funny thing about GW2 is how many people don’t realize that the content is actually balanced for solo play and group events are balanced for 3-5.

The leecher should spin roughly every minute, shooting projectile AoEs all over. At this time, Aurene should move into position as 2 white circles appear. Standing in the circle isn’t enough, as you also need to additionally attack the boss to unlock the counter skill.

If you weren’t seeing any of that, it was bugged, but it’s not bugged for everyone as I just played through it.

If you choose the Priory, you get to keep the useless stone, have an increased chance of turning into an anomaly when entering a rift and your anomaly model turns red, possibly referencing Primordius.

If you choose the Consortium, a new useless krait oil will be offered, the prices will be discounted and your anomaly model turns blue, possibly referencing Jormag.

Try running the game with (443 or 80):

Gw2.exe -clientport 443

This may help against throttling, but for a complete test however, you’ll need a VPN.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

But, I’m not sure I fulfilled all the requirements, whatever they may be.

I heard a while back it was changed from “don’t get hit” to “don’t stop gliding” during the phase, as people landing on the branch wouldn’t get it.

If you’re going to try, I’d suggest doing it solo (maybe others could disqualify you) and to glide as early and for as long as possible without disabling the glider. The dodging part is easy, as all you need to do is hover over an updraft and press “about face” to stay on top of it. The constant flipping will cause the rocks to be thrown away from you.

Vayne.8563:

Imagine how hard it would be to get someone to start the game three, four expansions down the road, if the buy in price is 300.

But it is like that, they’re just not telling people up front. New players still need to buy each individual season. Since HoT isn’t actually required, their 1 box model could simply include the latest expansion and the core game, moving HoT to the gem store and further increasing the hidden cost. On their current track, it’ll eventually become very expensive to buy the full package, far more than selling every expansion separately because the gem store has fixed prices.

Aerlen.5326:

No one likes story gated behind brick wall difficulty and I don’t recall signing up for “Dark Souls”.

Fun fact, in the original beta, right out of the gate at level 2, enemies would kill you just as fast as the enemies in HoT. For example, a Moa would down you within the channel of their peck, or an ettin would simply smash you.

ArenaNet has always been for the gamers, unlike other MMOs which are balanced for the majority, aka the casuals. GW2 is essentially the Dark Souls of MMOs. GW1 was also very difficult if you simply jumped in. Obviously this is bad for business, as the higher they make that wall, the more players they’re going to lose, but do they care? Maybe they’ll blanket nerf old content with the next expansion, but even Orr is too challenging for some.

At this point, I’d recommend waiting. Season 3 is nearly over, which will likely end with a reveal for the next expansion. If their plans haven’t changed, the next expansion will include HoT, or they might simply make it free for everyone.

If you’d rather buy HoT now, yes, you’re going to have to buy a copy for each account. They’ve had 50% sales the week before releasing episodes 1, 3 and 4. Episodes are every 2 months, the next one being in April. It can also always be found on sale at DLGamer.us, which is currently 25% off.

Amaimon.7823:

- It’s going to be revealer that Kasmeer just had a cold and that’s why she hasn’t appeared yet.

Remember that time she said her appearance was an illusion, she got pricked by one of the toxic thorns and developed the ability to tell when people are lying? Probably a toxic hybrid.

Nothing is hard to level, though some are trivial compared to others. A berserker pistol/pistol thief can be very casual to play, as you can simply spam unload to kill enemies nearly instantly from range.

Permanent stealth, as in the ability to toggle it on forever, does not exist. Stealth lasts for a few seconds, but can be extended in duration through the combination of abilities, which could potentially last as long as you wanted.

ArenaNet seems to have a problem with how they handle account upgrades. When they held the first beta for HoT, participants were upgraded to the heroic edition.

They could be prepping the next expansion, or it could simply be a bug where the serials for free accounts overflowed, causing affected system to interpret them as regular accounts. Is the TP open? Can HoT maps be accessed?

If HoT does become F2P however, they could easily sell the extras like the revenant separately on the gem store.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Citation (link) needed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5w2mb2/psa_creating_a_free_to_play_account_right_now/

If it’s only with the story instances, try running the game with (80 or 443):

Gw2.exe -clientport 80

Disconnecting in the story has always been a problem, which seems to be caused by a certain packet being blocked. Since the patch however, servers have been crashing (rarely), which disconnects you to character select. There is/was also a network issue affecting routes through western US and EU always has problems somewhere, but in those cases, you’ll lag or disconnect anywhere.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Thus, I too, believe there was a cap for some time before that. Though, as proposed above, it may not have been since launch, as I stated, but put in shortly thereafter when those high APs acquired by cheesing their totals by salvaging were removed and a cap added to Agent of Entropy. (Which was around March of 2013, so about 6 months in.)

The daily limit was announced on March 28, 2014 and went live with the April Feature Pack on April 15, 2014. Entropy was March 26, 2013 to be exact.

The cap is in place so they don’t have to continuously add to the rewards. If they were going to remove the cap, you can bet dailies would only give 1 point.

If they wanted to be fair however, they would increase the cap and have all of the historical achievements count towards it.

Slowpokeking.8720:

The bugs are REALLY annoying and it’s too long.

The length is pretty average, taking roughly 15 minutes from start to finish, assuming you know what you’re doing. There is however no breaks once you begin the bosses. They should simply remove the reset on death so you can whittle it down like everything else and maybe add an interact to your allies after their fights, so you can choose when you want to move on.

Arden.7480:

LS3 lasts longer than LS2, but I don’t think so it will last 4-5 months more if we wanna see the expansion in this year. So on April the last episode and then the break from updates or just Current Events or something, but 6th episode? I don’t think so.

Seasons were originally meant to play out over a year. At 2 month intervals and with 3 teams working on it, 6 would likely be the absolute max. Assuming they don’t abandon it, season 4 needs to be ready to go within 3 months of launch. Considering they wanted to cut the downtime, the time between the last episode and the next expansion will likely only by 3-6 months. If it’s only 3, I’d expect to only see 5 episodes, allowing for season 4 to be ready to go.

Considering season 3 isn’t selling the game, it really doesn’t matter what they do. If they’re planning to launch this year, they’d likely be better off ending it at episode 5 and simply announcing the expansion, considering HoT improved sales and kept them stable up to launch.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Should everything be catered aroudn casual gameplay? (A question i’d answer with a hearty no.)

Most MMOs do tend to balance their solo content for the most casual of players, as it ensures everyone can do it. It’s why it’s so rare to see challenging solo content.

In general, a casual player is simply a bad player. Randomly dodges, or not at all. Stands still or barely moves. Doesn’t pay attention and takes several seconds to move out of AoEs. Uses abilities on cooldown or just randomly. See the average zerg for example.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

No, that’s not why it happened. And no, if it was an easy fix, they would have already done it, just to stop us from griping about it.

It would be an easy fix, but the point of locking it is to incentivize raiding. It’s really not a major issue anyways, since most people are simply going to unlock what’s required and move on.

They’ll likely fix it next expansion. Masteries for specific content should have been separated, requiring you to play that content, since they’re not needed anywhere else. The current mastery implementation should simply be scrapped however. It wasn’t a smart idea to force content and allow players to get into situations where they can screw themselves, turning it into a huge grind and possibly unrecoverable (solo).

I play random throwaway characters in the downtime with a focus on a random build, one of which was a dual pistol thief. Spamming unload as a zerker is a very trivial way to play through HoT, one of the easiest I’ve done. The rapid spam will also full heal you when using the passive signet heal.

For the gliding phase specifically, you can either cheat by taking the updraft up to the branch and simply sitting on it, or learning how to dodge projectiles. Projectiles are thrown at your estimated location, so all you have to do is move in one direction, then go in the other when the rock is thrown. Simply glide forward a step, then flip and repeat.

AliamRationem.5172:

Yeah, but that’s like telling a mountain climber who lives at sea level to just tie one arm behind his back. People who like HoT want content like HoT, not to be told to handicap themselves so that they can enjoy playing GW2.

The problem is that GW2 doesn’t punish you like other games would. Normally, you would be forced forwards as experience from lower level content would be greatly diminished. When you actually level through the core game at the intended level and equipped in what it was originally balanced for (fine and masterwork gear), it can be a much different experience. HoT is simply a wakeup call, because suddenly the game is balanced for maxed out 80s instead of levelers.

Playing in +3 level areas isn’t even challenging, it’s normal, especially compared to how it was at launch.

Mabuse.2879:

I am very glad that is it more challenging, because levelling through Central Tyria was trivially easy and got quite dull. I even resorted to doing it in white gear so that I could learn to play my professions better without killing things so fast.

Difference in level is a difficulty modifier. Your target should always be a minimum of 1 level above you, 3 if you actually want to play on normal mode. If you’d prefer hard mode or are simply playing a joke like a necromancer, go up to 10, especially from 1-20 to counteract the nerfs. Gear? Simply equip what’s provided to you, which will likely result in wearing pieces 10-40 levels below. Leveling through core can be far more challenging than HoT if you want it to be.

LFG for certain activities could certainly be made a lot easier. The problem is, a lot of people would like to do it, but LFG for less common activities is simply a waste of time. LFG in general is a waste of time, which is why queuing is far more popular. Using the idea of queuing, it would be much easier if you could simply select an activity, an achievement for example, and choose to LFG or LFM. It’d essentially be a LFG listing, but automatically added when you were online and removed when you weren’t. Those selecting LFM would act as the leaders and shown who was queued, or be periodically notified as more people did so.

Exerosis.8640:

Then I get into this secret room as daredevil and just die instantly…

Do you not have counter magic? It’s basically required.

Melee? Don’t stand too close, as his melee attacks are like an AoE, just big enough to cover his model. When counter magic pops up, use it. The boss will teleport to you and begin to attack, so simply dodge through him.

Ranged? Stay in melee range, as he seems to favor attacking ranged targets with his deadly projectile, which explodes, so don’t stand near the NPCs.

Watch the walls. When they begin to stop spinning, the adds will spawn. The boss won’t actually attack when shielded, so you can simply wait for the adds first, then break his shield. Right at the start for example, take his shield down to ~25%, then wait a few seconds for the first adds to spawn.

Pull them from range, expect their charge and dodge through them. Since it’s a frontal, forward moving attack, you don’t want to stay in front them. As a thief, you could also spam spear 5 to try to randomly evade it. I remember back when they did roughly 5x the damage they do now, instantly killing you if charged.

Kumouta.4985:

This system should really be changed..

It already has. Their “includes all prior expansions” part of their 1 box model was already dropped when they made the core game F2P. The core idea remained, in that you only need to buy a single box to get started.

I highly doubt they’ll repeat HoT by simply including it. They likely won’t just make it F2P either, as there’s really no benefit to them in doing so. With season 3 locking maps behind both the gem store and the expansion, it was likely a experiment to see how the population fared. Obviously the more gates, the less people. By bundling however, they could potentially triple the lifespan of the content, by including HoT with the 2nd expansion, then making it F2P with the 3rd. The only problem is selling it.

Personally, I’d expect a hybrid. F2P failed to sell the game, but it repopulated it, which is the most important thing in an MMO. The maps and masteries should become F2P, while the elite specs and story should be shifted to the gem store and packaged like season 2.

Aeolus.3615:

They said the same about capes 4 years ago, since there was to much clipping or colision detec required they were scrapped :P

ArenaNet’s problem is that they try too hard, or at least commonly uses complex cases as the excuse. In the case of capes, that would be capes with physics. Flat capes with minimal animation wouldn’t be a problem and would certainly clip less than backpacks, but what you’d end up with is basically the Grasping Dead armor set (female), but continued upwards.

ArenaNet could introduce mounts in a very cheap way, by not having actual mounts, but by basically using tonics. You are the mount.

Crinn.7864:

How do you have unique forum posters data?!

Unique by display name to be specific. I started mirroring the forums back when ArenaNet announced they were going to delete some of the sections. With this data, I can tell you for example that there were 164 posts in this thread by 52 accounts, 1 post was deleted and the most posts were by Vayne with 25.

Another user also posts forum statistics once in a while, which you can see here.

Run the game using:

Gw2.exe -clientport 80

or

Gw2.exe -clientport 443

Astralporing.1957:

4. To reiterate, HoT won’t be included in f2p with the next expac release. That was just a misunderstanding of the policy mentioned in point 2 that somehow got treated as fact by some.

Probably because the original plan was to bundle it, but that caused complaints, then the free client was announced shortly after. There’s really no reason to even include HoT, since it’s not actually required.

Considering the free client failed to sell the game and that season 3 was given away to anyone, it seems unlikely that they’d make it f2p. The only reason to do so would be to repopulate the older content, which is more of a problem for HoT since it was designed for highly active maps. If they do simply make it f2p however, that would mean you could potentially play a few years behind to get everything for free, though that was the original plan of the living world.