Guild Wars 2

Edge.4180:

Horrorscope.7632:

Pennry.9215:

First, yes 0 guests and Overflows can still happen, but if guest beat natives to that zone, it will fill faster. So guesting can, and sometimes does, make things much worse.

The servers themselves need to be looked at. Sure, we could make the events happen more often, but even the 30 min ones are getting Overflowed now. Personally, I think I’m done with bothering. There’s enough elsewhere that offers better total rewards.

Not to you but just in general because I’ve read this enough already. This whole thing of visitors and natives, it’s ugly. These are Anets servers and you are bringing bigotry into the situation that isn’t needed. Mentioning the issue of over-populated zergs is fair so they can look at it, but then making a dividing line between players isn’t cool.

You’re kidding, right? The only “ugliness” is what you yourself may be bringing into it with that kind of thinking. This isn’t bigotry. There’s guests and then their are server residents, or natives, or whatever you want to call them.

Nope, I’m being honest. People are telling others… “Go back to your server, stay off mine.”. No player owns the servers, it’s a choice like any choice in life, we all just need to deal with it. That is how I read “Go back…”, sorry.

Anet has given us the option to move as we like within their parameters. Anyone on any server has the same right to be there as the next.

What other mmo’s do is irrelevant, this is the parameters we have in GW2. Several other recent mmo’s are going with mega-servers, meaning one server with instance overflows. That way there is no “This is my server”, I would have preferred GW2 just do that, but I think WvWvW is the reason why we have different servers to fight for, which from reading that hasn’t seemed to be a huge hit. GW1 worked of the mega-server ideal.

MrInfinit.1864:

It’s reported and assumed that guests are creating the lag, I still don’t buy it.

I’ll tell ya’s what is creating the lag, that is simple. GW2 has high demands on your system, it always has. If you aren’t running a top end processor and people are maxing a zone and in the same place, you are going to lag. You would have lag’d day one through today if those things happen. I have 2 solid systems and 2 below par. The bottom one’s are barely fine with general every day play, but you put 30+ people on the screen it gets painful. GW2 has been getting by without a lot of griping recently because in most places people were spread out (game is dying type spread) or in an instance. Go back to release when it was all zerg, what were you performance experiences with mid to low end hardware?

Pennry.9215:

First, yes 0 guests and Overflows can still happen, but if guest beat natives to that zone, it will fill faster. So guesting can, and sometimes does, make things much worse.

The servers themselves need to be looked at. Sure, we could make the events happen more often, but even the 30 min ones are getting Overflowed now. Personally, I think I’m done with bothering. There’s enough elsewhere that offers better total rewards.

Not to you but just in general because I’ve read this enough already. This whole thing of visitors and natives, it’s ugly. These are Anets servers and you are bringing bigotry into the situation that isn’t needed. Mentioning the issue of over-populated zergs is fair so they can look at it, but then making a dividing line between players isn’t cool.

I do agree about getting over it for the time being at the least and as you say the loot too me doesn’t seem all that better any way. There are plenty of places to get rare’s and better in a somewhat timely fashion.

Your loot future:

For every 5 minutes played and at least on kill you get a: Low quality Chest (Avg Blues, but a very small chance at something big, always a chance at something big, multiple pieces per opening).

Every 15 minutes of play with at least 3 kills you will get a medium quality chest. (You get the picture. Little better loot all around.)

Every 1 hour and at least 12 kills you get a high quality chest.

ALL LOOT is level appropriate to your character. No if ands or buts.

The kills are so you can’t just AFK and receive loot.

The equalized chests are so that all in game content gives out the same loot, so people aren’t pulled to do the same things at the same time. Play as you like™.

So there, how do you like your MMO future? Since we are all horn-dogs for the best loot/min and just can’t resist, this is what you get. A ticket, a chest… We deserve this really.

Will.9785:

Notice the dev never actually said that it wasn’t coming any time soon like the title of the article claims. “We’ll look into it” and “no timetable” just means they aren’t ready to talk about it yet. They definitely have people working on it. Last I heard they split the team in half and are hiring for the expansion. I would not be surprised if the end of year rumors were accurate.

Then it falls back to trust. My company does the same kitten and then they wonder why we don’t fully trust them either. They don’t get it, right over their head. “No Comment” is a safer answer. If there is a team working on it and they want to share, “We are working on one, but there is no timetable”. But how you allude it’s about playing with words… which then transfers over to trust.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

This isn’t actual news, it is something we have mentioned multiple times before. As the original interview says, and I quote:
“Expansions are definitely something that we’ll potentially look at in the future,” he explained. “We don’t have a timetable on it. We’re open to it, but I think our major focus as a studio is making the living world concept as strong as possibly can for the players that we’ve got.”

No one said we will never do an expansion, all Colin says (again) is that we are currently focusing on Living Story and other ongoing to the live game.

Then one would have to file away as, if there is an expansion and if they aren’t working on it already… It’s a long ways off.

Blude.6812:

Don’t want loot changed from the way it is, thank-you.
Just kick guests automactically when space is required for players want to be on their home server.

Only Anet knows if guesting is the problem. They haven’t stated details, have they? I hedge that guesting isn’t the biggest issue, because many if not most have been reporting overflows.

We’ll getting myself up to speed. There will be a fix coming in time and to me the loot/min’s won’t be happy with it. Obviously they didn’t want their games zones to be camped by timers, which is now happening. Perhaps they knew about this all along and putting everyone in a dungeon masked other issues.

I guess the game isn’t dying after all, huh?

RoyHarmon.5398:

The difference is that if you’re in overflow, you don’t know the timer for the event and are “forced” to play as though you’re not just farming that event. End result: You can’t just get a relatively huge reward for 5 minutes of well-timed participation.

Thank you, that does explain it and why I didn’t see a problem. Semi-exploitive stuff, goes back to a segment of players were loot/min is critical, just critical to their gaming fun. I know my timers, I sit down perhaps one time in the evening, all reset for me, things happen when they happen.

Got it, I just hope I’m stupid and those that make this a big deal but the same efforts into real life, because they should be very successful.

^Tosha. I’m not on the biggest servers and we now have overflow as well. I am assuming until directed better that the issue is also players that are coming out of Fractals and Dungeons and some maybe even coming back to the game all because the loot drops in the open world are now better. Which that in itself can create overflows. Guesting can also exacerbate (I love when I can fit that word in a convo) that as well, but I’m thinking on my server that isn’t the case.

To educate myself. What is the big deal/difference if you do it in your home server or in overflow? Leaving out the obvious, you didn’t do it on your home server, but what else is different? For all the complaining there must be something more. So far I haven’t noticed no real difference playing in either. I get proper credit, same loot etc.

This may not all have to do with guesting either. I’m on a server that isn’t one that is well known here where people flock to and we now have overflows on standard zones. What looks to have happened, is we are now seeing how many people were pent up in fractals for several months because of better loot there, now they see better loot in the open world and the turtle boys are now back outside again, so those players are now in zones vs fractal instances. Boom overflow.

There is no doubt a large base of players will go where the best loot can be had with minimal time. The next Anet trick is to figure out how to balance the perception that loot/time is equal in all phases of the game. Then at that time you can see what content people like vs another. Every mmo struggles with this, even 5+ years in.

Hmmm I thought they stated there already was a team working on it, like they have teams for several things going on. Who knows.

no message………….

They started a thread over at mmorpg, sharing GW2 screenshots. I pasted up several, I also use Sweet FX. Check’m out, add you own.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5596585/thread/378546#5596585

Once again art team, stand up and take a bow! Well deserved.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Horrorscope.7632:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Now, before you start asking why there’s so many Jugs, remember there was once a time when there were ample complaints about the cost of the Temple Exotic gear which cost . . . 42,000 Karma a piece. The response to that was to make Jugs of Liquid Karma drop from the Daily (giving 4500 Karma each) meaning you could gear up Exotic armor in roughly eight to ten days.

I get your point, but your math is off. I assume gear up means all gear.

You can’t buy Exotic trinkets/weapons with Karma so really? It’s just armor I am referring to. So I wasn’t 100% clear, my apologies.

That to, but doing math 42000 per piece 4500 for jug that is 8-10 for one piece. Then you ‘x’ that by number of pieces, no? Why I caught it I was thinking, wow really that is all I was doing for full exotic armor was 8-10 days? Seemed like a lot more. You need around 250K’s worth of Karma. No big.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Horrorscope.7632:

I agree with that. The part missing is the rationale that assumes Dungeons aren’t PvE. They are, Dungeons is PvE to. So why is the “E” different in Dungeons?

Ah gotcha. Sorry bout that. There are numerical differences in play for the creatures you fight in dungeons, and we build them differently. The “army” of a dungeon (things you fight) are given different skills than what you encounter in the open world. It is numerically different, and mechanically different than our open world.

The thing is there is nothing in the open world to prepare you for the differences. But oh well, I’m just sitting here awaiting for when you offer scaling difficulty or the like for dungeons. I only say what I do because we do struggle mightily with it and just don’t get where you are coming from with them. It’s just so different from what other games have done. I don’t agree, but then I don’t always get my way.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We do have a PvP, PvE split. That’s normal and something GW players are familiar with. What I was trying to say was that we can’t have a PvP split, a PvE split, and a Dungeon split. That’s just way too much, especially if we start having to do it for other class stuff. It makes balancing much more difficult and time consuming.

I agree with that. The part missing is the rationale that assumes Dungeons aren’t PvE. They are, Dungeons is PvE to. So why is the “E” different in Dungeons?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Just because dungeons are harder for you, and you don’t like it, doesn’t mean you speak for everyone.

Since I cannot know where every sits on that as you say. I then use my considerable dime a dozen game knowledge over decades of game play. The point of entry for standard GW2 dungeons is by far and I mean not even close the highest I’ve seen.

Your first game which was all dungeons was 1/3 the difficulty for entry point, if not less. So I rationalize that way, compare it to everything I’ve played, you sir like very long drawn out fights, buffed mobs, build dungeons where it’s ok to die as long as you can grind through it one way or another. Most people prefer clean runs, so there is some pride on the other end along with loot.

That said, I surrender there are people that can run these well, it’s just not average folk, otherwise every other game is really low balling difficulty. Games on the opposite end are Dragon’s Nest or C9, that is when easy becomes stupid easy.

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Thanks for the response, and I entirely agree. Open world is great for a Ranger, which is why I was so surprised that I was lacking in dungeons as badly

To me you can say that about every class. The mobs are what is different, not the classes.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope.

You did that with mobs, mobs in the open world are a lot wimpier than mobs in dungeons. Why the double standard? Why do they change?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Now, before you start asking why there’s so many Jugs, remember there was once a time when there were ample complaints about the cost of the Temple Exotic gear which cost . . . 42,000 Karma a piece. The response to that was to make Jugs of Liquid Karma drop from the Daily (giving 4500 Karma each) meaning you could gear up Exotic armor in roughly eight to ten days.

I get your point, but your math is off. I assume gear up means all gear.

I agree Karma makes sense. But all these games and currencies they have people getting way more then ever planned so quickly. The flip side is for happy go luck players it gets confusing what all this stuff means and don’t have the time to bother. Between those two evils I would go with easy, because those with a lot of the current currency, will get a lot of the new currency some way and you want an inviting game to everyone.

In the real world pretty much money buys everything or converts. I say for a game then “so be it”.

Avatar.1923:

i want challenging content that will evntually lead me into pvp.

i want a light stat gear grind for my pve fix.

i dont care about the “fashion” stuff and the farming.

basically, im almost ok with gw2

There are plenty playing PvP right from the start, where they would say struggle with the hardest PvE content, if you dropped them in to it. GW1 and GW2 are again different here. GW1 you could and many did just go straight to PvP. But at first anyway PvE was sold as leading you to PvP. To me that isn’t the case in GW2.

RakaNishoo.6071:

I don’t read every post in the forums and especially not in stupid threads that demand stupid things

The world bosses were already bad. The drop “fix” was final nail to the coffin. It is most ridiculous idea ever. My feedback here is not only targeted at loot but at the entire events. And entire idea of rewards.

What should be rewarded in the game? Now grinding and farming is rewarded. I expected ANet to go into direction of rewarding for completing challenges. I guess that’s not what is going to happen.

I’m not against rewards for world bosses BUT ONLY AFTER the bosses are redesigned so they are scaling to maximum number of players, culling issues and lag is fixed, and boss encounters are difficult.

It is now proven, the mob of players will only go to where the best loot lies. Every time they adjust loot, the mob goes to the best reward for time invested. This is part of end game as well. Min/Max’ing loot and time, pretty much the mob of players from all mmo’s follow this.

World Bosses while not completely ignored prior to the loot change, they also weren’t something the mob would go out of their way for and some actually stayed away because it wasn’t worth it. So making them a point for people come together is good. Now waiting for lag and culling to be fixed, well who knows when that may ever be fixed? I haven’t had the lag issues yet from this, but I also haven’t had to guest over to another server. Your PC’s specs will determine lag most of the time. Culling doesn’t really hamper getting the job done in PvE, just not aesthetically appeasing.

I am for the change they did, it was dumb the big world bosses weren’t worth the effort.

I wanted to say I don’t really agree with the OP. I think the open world is where the game should mainly be played at and the loot in the open world should be as good as anywhere else. There are plenty of bosses all over the place to find less common one’s if someone hates the crowds. There are also other servers to guest on.

The issue is the best loot wasn’t in the open world, so too many flocked to those alternatives. The pattern we see is wherever the best loot is, that is where the people in numbers are going. That seems indisputable.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

A couple of weeks ago I could do the daily in about 15 minutes. Today it took about 45 minutes.

45 mins is nothing, 15 mins is embarrassingly short.

That said, in general I doubt you really did them in 15 mins, not long ago 5 events were on every daily, that takes more than 15 mins on average, let alone the other things that still needed accomplished.

Vayne.8563:

It’s not perfect, but there are plenty of level 80s running around that enjoy the game.

That is true, what I’m trying to convey is many that do become disgruntled are well into the game, which going back to the OP and them seeing negativity vs their sole 25. It’s not that those complaining never had fun, far from that, but to some fun dies out with repetition and that is what a lot of it is now. I run around with my 80 often. My actual disgruntles are few, I’m still here, so I can’t ask for much more. I have my areas I focus my feedback on…

The overall game is fun, however you only have a level 25, I can assure you almost everyone that is claiming issues with the game today is way beyond that point and loved GW2 to pieces when their first was only 25 levels young.

The more you are balanced between real life and game the more you will enjoy GW2, it is an inviting game. The more you live in game, in time the game will frustrate you, but to me pretty much any game will do that. Some want to believe heaven can exist in a game, that when they find that perfect one, they can make their new reality in game permanently. Many people seem to have crazy and I mean crazy hours into GW 2, if one is handicapped or out of work no matter, crazy hours I tell you!

I hope several things in GW2 become standards in new mmo’s being developed, they made good strides in some areas that will be hard to go back to the old way.

Sovta.4719:

Horrorscope.7632:

Sovta.4719:

But lets face it, Blizzard has best programmers and game designers just like Bioware in terms of single player RPG.

/Sarcasm

Please be /Sarcasm.

No, it’s sad but true. Just see storytelling and choices in Star Wars: Kotor or Dragon Age and here. And let’s be clear, i’m not saying WoW is better then GW2, just that Blizzard has best people, that’s why EVERY other MMO sooner or later starts to copy them (just like GW2 started, good idea, bad realisation)

Story telling is one part of a RPG and will agree Bioware does that the best. But I still like Bethesda RPG’s a lot lot more than Bioware one’s.

Blizzard is living on it’s past, almost all their top people that made the company brand and they are living off their brand are gone, hah the founders of Anet are ex-Blizzard. But today there is nothing at all to make me believe they have the best programmers. They are the Coke of gaming, that’s all anymore.

Sovta.4719:

But lets face it, Blizzard has best programmers and game designers just like Bioware in terms of single player RPG.

/Sarcasm

Please be /Sarcasm.

An easier mode also gets more into the dungeons and as we learn them perhaps we might try it on hard some day.

OR what every other mmo has done with instances. DDO is built on that idea alone. Que AT&T commercial “It’s not complicated….”. Kids even get it.

bluewanders.5297:

Horrorscope.7632:

Donari.5237:

So the players have to contribute. The best way I’ve found is RP.

I agree with part one. Why not world gathering? Have NPC’s collect stuff that we all contribute to and as we do, it builds new things into the world. These would be pre-built in Anets world but invisible to us until we contribute enough. Think of different types of things, some helpful for daily venturing, others like landmarks, statues, etc. Throw a little sand box in there.

The “real” endgame in an MMO has always been player created content of whatever sort… the social aspects and community culture of the game. It doesn’t matter how many dungeons or raids or whatever a company pumps out… players will consume it… and longevity comes from the tools the company gives the players to interact with each other, rather than the newest npc to slay. Barring any tools at all.. there’s plenty of opportunity for players to create their own stories it sure is nice to have it be a collaboration with the devs though.

I won’t argue with that, but the places I frequent, it seems there are a lot of vocal players that don’t consider your definition as really part of their end game dreams. I would say the consensus is we don’t really now what end game should be as a whole. So that is why I don’t consider, endless grind, repeating raids, revolving PvP as end game, if it were truly that, then there wouldn’t be non-stop talk in the mmo world of end game fails. We would have been satisfied. That is why some push sand box, meaning ever evolving worlds.

End game so far to me has always been, done that enough… Next!

Kiraki.9761:

I have leveled a small army of characters, I have been through the map, I have completed these areas several times over, I do not want to go back to these areas, again and again. The events give less karma and money than higher level areas and the drops from mobs are terrible, so all I am doing is wasting my time.

snip…
So in my opinion it is a terrible tactic
snip…

And I cannot argue for your personal situation. I would have to lay out “greater good”, “the sum is greater than each individual”. Part of my reply does point to “We had it easy” so it’s harder to take on something not as easy as the new normal. For example if it were reversed, at first we had to go to each map each day and do something for our daily, then that was changed to we needed 50 kills and 25 gathers and that is it. People wouldn’t be put off as much because we went from harder to easier. We’ve been spoiled I reckon, I am ok with the change because I don’t perceive it as unreasonable and again see some logic in it.

Terrible Tactic? That seems a little strong. They need to get us around the map, this is a step, perhaps not the best one, I’ll just call it a start.

Donari.5237:

So the players have to contribute. The best way I’ve found is RP.

I agree with part one. Why not world gathering? Have NPC’s collect stuff that we all contribute to and as we do, it builds new things into the world. These would be pre-built in Anets world but invisible to us until we contribute enough. Think of different types of things, some helpful for daily venturing, others like landmarks, statues, etc. Throw a little sand box in there.

Atrophied.8725:

Horrorscope.7632:

Can any group made up of any combination of classes beat dungeons reasonably? Or does it have to be properly planned? From what I saw in many cases it was planned and it was also planned around an exploit with food, that wasn’t ever meant to happen that way.

Any combination of classes beating dungeons: Yes, as long as the players know what they’re doing.

I’ve done the new AC with multiple different group compositions. Yes, I tailored my utilities/equipment to run a more supportive ele build as needed, or DPS if mass cleanses weren’t needed, or tanking if there wasn’t a good tank for P2. It’s all about learning your class and the dungeon.

Go PUG UW/FoW/DoA/Urgoz/The Deep in GW1 and see how far you get. Explorables are the high-end areas of GW2 and should be treated as such. Don’t make them face-roll easy, make them challenging.

I’m with you in general, at then end the only thing I would differ is that instances have to have difficulty choices. They all have them, but here. To me that is what is needed. I also want harder choices for those that want even more a challenge. The thing is I could be a little better than average, but I’m guilded with Average to Below Average players (called family and close friends) and it doesn’t feel right, the night/day difference between outside the dungeon and inside one.

GW1 was all instances, think if GW1’s instances were as hard as GW2’s lowest level dungeon. Oh vey, game would have flopped! They knew where the sweet spot was for general players and then added a higher difficulty level and had some higher end instances.

drwookie.6391:

Reading some of the stuff that Colin and other developers mention regarding ascended gear and the “reward system” in this game…it seriously makes me wonder if they even speak to Mike O’Brien, the President….the dude who had that big manifesto before the game was made. Is there ANY communication? Is he locked in a dungeon never to be heard from again?

Or, as someone else pointed out, was the manifesto just PR bullkitten?

I wonder the same myself. If the game was the success they wanted or greater, my guess is the team has full reign to do what they want to do, there are Ferrari’s that need to be driven! (Or are one of those F2P owners/investors really flexing?)

As for the manifesto. If there was ever to be a GW3, I would suggest not attempting a Manifesto as the game promotion, the old saying “Fool me…”.

Nhalx.9735:

Horrorscope.7632:

Nhalx.9735:

Probably, since black isn’t a official colour and goes with everything it’s probably something people enjoy, but a black quaggan wouln’t look as good i think, vibrant colours work well with them.

Who is thee authority on official colors? In my westernized world, it is Crayola and they have black listed as one. My words go beyond Quaggan backpacks and into generalizations.

Any official physics book will cover me up, also it’s not a Hue colour.

That it’s listed as a colour is a different thing, whatever you want to think about it is up to you.

I can go even deeper into the subject like the fact it absorbs all the light but then i’d be going to far offtopic.

Ok, I will surrender at your physics level knowledge. I think for more us simpletons we do list Black as a color, it’s also a color choice in the subject GW2. If you don’t agree with that, then we will not be able to agree on this one. To me Black is a color in GW2. And I do list white and black as colors in my world, right or wrong.

Victory.2879:

Hmm…these seem to be getting worse…

Maguuma jungle veterans: no idea where to find any. Wonder around map for 5 minutes doing nothing but looking – then see people hanging around a spot. Not something I consider ‘fun’ or a useful use of my time.

Dungeon completion: nope, not going to happen.

Gain a level: could probably do that one by playing for an hour, without having to go way out of my way to achieve it.

Krytan missions: another run around the map or hope someone in a map calls out an event and you get to it before it finishes and you get the reward.

Daily kills: easy

Crafter: yep

gather: yep

Kill 5 bessies in WVW: possible, if you can reach any of them before someone else does or the enemies that know this is now a daily and kill anyone not in a zerg. Otherwise, more running around to little effect as unless it spawns at a camp that is unguarded and you can manage to kill one.

I’ve lost the will to log in to GW2. Every time I do I’m reminded that they are still to fix the many things wrong with the professions and skills, karma is a waste of space and they keep inventing more ‘currencies’ and ‘items’ that are not tradeable in an effort to keep the ‘active’ player numbers up.

I get your point, we’ve been spoiled/weakened from past Daily experiences.

For example:

Magumma Vets – Even if you don’t know… people will learn where though and that is good. Gets us around the map some, learning some. If it were like this day one, I feel you would have been ok with it. But since we had it easier… I get it. But I think we maybe better off this way, sense of adventure stuff.

Dungeon Completion- LOL, I agree. I wanted to remind Dev’s a lot of us are not happy with this content. Thanks for allowing me to share that one more time!

Gain a Level – Ok, no big.

Krytan Mission – Again it gets you out and around the map some more. See first reply.

Daily Kills – This is one of the stupid simple one’s. We’ve been babied.

Crafter – As you say, same.

Gatherer – As you say, same.

Kill 5 Beasts in WvW – Again they just want us to get out and use the world a bit more. Now taking PvE’ers to a PvP area, is always questionable though. But at least we have it as an option and not a requirement. So I’m good.

The one’s you found easy were the old one’s and they were easier. You didn’t have to go anywhere special, they just happened most of the time by just doing your thing. My guess is they are trying to get us moving around different parts of the map more. I applaud that, not saying this is thee best way. But it’s a start, I get the logic.

If the chests actually gave a really strong chance at something good, I’d care a lot more on how few I’ve got, around a half doz. And however well they sell at the store, it would be substantially higher I’m sure. Now for me to buy a key with USD, it would have to be some pretty epic loot. Sword of a Infinite Truths +1 or something like that.

Nhalx.9735:

Probably, since black isn’t a official colour and goes with everything it’s probably something people enjoy, but a black quaggan wouln’t look as good i think, vibrant colours work well with them.

Who is thee authority on official colors? In my westernized world, it is Crayola and they have black listed as one. My words go beyond Quaggan backpacks and into generalizations.

Villious.8530:

You don’t buy gems, but an awful lot of people do. I have one friend that has spent over $3000 in the gem store. I’m not going to say how much I’ve spent, buts lets just say I’ve spent well over the yearly subscription business model. I was in Best Buy the other day, and one guy had $300 worth of gem cards he was buying. He wouldn’t tell me how much he’s spent in the past on them. That’s 3 people I know. How many of the thousands upon thousands of players buy gems? I’m sure they make an awful lot more by the gem store than if they had a subscription.

I just want to say thanks to everyone that does that as you are subsidizing my game play. Even though I feel totally square with GW2 since I paid full retail for the game. But in totally F2P games… thanks again! (I put in around $20 on those, inv, trade, auction house features)

Kismet.1487:

So what caused the bulk of my team members to stop playing? Frankly, lack of something to do. They played so much because the game is so fun, they got burned out. At lev 80, they have very little to do other then grind Dungeons, Fractals, WvW/pvp grind, that will sustain them only so long.

Then what I hoped would revitalize the the game with members; guild achievements. Yeah brilliant idea to rouse members back to game! Uh what, what the.. look at those requirements! WHOA! We can’t do anything together right now? Can’t believe it! I’m still stunned. A door of opportunity was open, poor gate choices killed it.

To your two points. The first being being level 80 and little to do, you mentioned quite a bit and that is pretty much all that any other game offers. There are ends, some stop after they start repeating content, some grind forever because in the least case scenario the gold # goes up forever. So people left when they hit their enough button, seems healthy to me. When I do and I will, I look back at the times I had, A. was the game worth the $60? B. How does this compare to other like games? In general for me GW2 will score high enough.

Now your second point Guild content. I agree it’s a brilliant idea to think about, you can dream up of a lot of additional content and things to do if it’s done on a Guild level. Now in your case the point of entry is too high, I am not disagreeing, but to me you can make more epic Guild content that is different from the rest if you did require a fairly large guild. I’m still in thought about the possibilities in general, I am in a micro-guild, so currently I am out of the reindeer games. But I now think about what new content could be made for Guilds only and it’s a pretty vast realm. Intrigued, maybe even to the point of selling myself to Anheuser Bush, if you get the reference.

Brainwashing works. Ask most boys what their favorite color is and it’s blue! A girl the same question and it’s pink! I wonder why?

Now if they thought about it more deeply and accurately, I think there are two answers that would average higher than blue or pink. They would be either:

1. I don’t have a favorite color, I don’t need to play favorites with colors, they are just colors.

2. Or Black. When I look at what color people gravitate more to unconsciously vs brainwashing… I see they tend to prefer Black. What’s worth more in the Trading Post? Blue, Pink or Black?

So why in the question of Fav color, is black omitted? I played that game with my son not so long ago, he answered blue, I told him he was wrong, he looked at me “How can you say that I’m wrong on such a thing?”. I then pointed to all the things around him, much more black and very little blue. Then I asked him why does one need a favorite color? He then went into deep thought…

But Blue and Pink from the crib baby!!! System rules.

^I still think that is where the answers lie with instances in all games. You have infinite levels, with a better chance at better loot the higher up you go. You make the dungeon approachable for all to start and to reach top levels, you have pro teams. All based off some math calcs. Simple. Elegant. Everyone gets to play the content at their ability.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One thing we see frequently with at-level people going into dungeons, is that while their character is the right level, their gear is often 10+ levels behind them.

Why is the gameplay so drastically different from right outside the dungeon to inside the dungeon? What is going on that makes mobs so much tougher? What you say I won’t argue with but why are people mopping the floor outside the dungeon at level, with lower level gear then find the roles completely reversed entering a dungeon? I would also say then raising your gear up 10 levels to at level, doesn’t change much at all. Something that took 150 hits to kill in dungeon, now only takes 145? Where outside the dungeon a kill went from 7 hits to 5 with at level gear.

Am I that far off? 150 vs 5? How many hits at-level does it take to kill a single mob inside a dungeon vs outside? It has to be around a 25 times different. Why? To me that is the whole question about dungeons, why does that world live in an entire different mechanic? Just seems like a totally left-field design choice. I get scaling with more players, that would mean around 25 hits to kill a trash mob, for further difficulty you add more mobs. But hyper-bumping HP, ehh.

Can any group made up of any combination of classes beat dungeons reasonably? Or does it have to be properly planned? From what I saw in many cases it was planned and it was also planned around an exploit with food, that wasn’t ever meant to happen that way.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Will we ever release a video of our internal testing process? Highly doubtful. Just as I doubt we will ever post the builds, classes, and gear our testers test with.

May I ask why not? Remember, it’s just a game.

kKagari.6804:

Robert they should make you lead designer.

/Sarcasm?

bigtime.7410:

Needs to be widened. How boring would it be if everyone had everything, everyone was the same?

It wide from people with a few gold to people with 1000’s. It needs to be wider than that?

We can’t say for certain yet. But once March is out in the wild we can then say to ourselves, “With what they did with Jan, Feb & March, would I spend $60 for it?” (assumed price of an expansion) My gut is saying not even close. I expect things like new zones, classes, story quests and skills in an expansion, for the most part we are getting enhancements, tweaks and fixes to things already in place. Guild Events being an exception.

I’m not upset as I didn’t pay $60 or anything for Jan/Feb/March, this falls back in line with the other complaint of trust. As a person noted, I’m ok with constant improvement, it does seem a bit slow to me, but worst case is I put the game down for a while and comeback. My fav mmo of all time I do that and prefer that anyway, not healthy living too much in a game.

It’s the biggest no-brainer in the mmo biz right now.

Shadow Order.7258:

This is the dumbest kitten ever. I can’t join MY server during large events because greedy little scabs are gaming your system for rares.

I get the complaint but jeeze, really… scabs?