Guild Wars 2

OP I still like the game. But you are spot on, they lost my trust to. I don’t know if they realize how off they’ve been with their words vs actions. I don’t even know if they care. I held them in the highest regards, it’s like a different company to me. From my heart, it hurts, and oddly enough I still like the game on several levels, so it’s not a total train wreck, but I am a bit puzzled inside.

So you’re telling me I have a chance.

Maleioch.1907:

After reaching level 40 I decided to do my first dungeon, AC. I joined a pug and did story mode. After completing that I wanted to try exp mode. I’ve been in 15 or so pugs today and if I’m lucky, they will not kick me because of my level. Of the 5 that kept me, none of us completed much of anything before everyone gave up and quit.

I have gone from being “excited” about this new phase in my GW2 game play to totally disappointed and discouraged.

I really doubt that all the posters in this thread that claim it’s easy or that they’ve run it 5 times today have done so with level 35 or level 40 or even all level 50 toons. And if you reply and say “its for level 80 characters” you are wrong. The dungeon entrance window says “level 35”. That should end the argument right there.

Honestly I haven’t seen a mmo until now that simply doesn’t care about this issue. They are just ok that people give up often. Name me another mmo that has a high point of entry for dungeons like GW2? GW1 was 5 times easier. Also any combo of class makeup should be able to complete dungeons, otherwise one should have just stayed with the trinity, since one way or another you are forcing classes and builds for success, what’s the difference?. Somebody wake up.

I hope Anet sent gw2lfg.com some nice swag at the very least.

Mindgame.7852:

I dont pretend to be very good at this game. I dont understand why a team of lvl 80 players with more than 1000+ hours of play and geared out in full exotics, with multiple exp in all the game dungeons would get bounced around like popcorn, knocked down and held down until defeat by ….adds? How is that FUN? I ask. It is more annoying than challenging. We did complete our post patch curious run, but honestly it wasnt very enjoyable. We kept wondering the whole time what this experience would be like for/with pugs. How is this a lvl 35? Who thinks that constantly being kicked around before you can even get back up is challenging? If the goal was to prevent AC farming…which btw… why would anyone care if exp players ran the dungeon in 10 minutes? Not everyone who plays this game has all day to run dungeons. 2.5 hours in a dungeon? Please shoot me! Seriously?

I am speechless that the entire brain-trust overlooking GW2 hasn’t addressed this.

How can difficulty/HP etc vary that much from open world to dungeon? Do they eat spinach in dungeons?

You cannot get anywhere near close to satisfying gamers with one difficulty level for instances. Some what GW2 dungeons harder, I would say though a lot more would like them tamed down quite a bit, we need choice please and like yesterday.

I don’t understand how a mob outside goes down in 5 shots but in a dungeon it’s 50. What is the lore behind this enhanced vitality? Drop the HP boost and just add more baddies instead.

No, they should just hire those that Hollywood types do when something gets out there they don’t want out there. Just get it all erased and be done with it.

It will be interesting to see what was learned when an expansion comes our way.

diabluz.2860:

ArenaNet needs to very quickly remedy the fact

If the demise is true, there is nothing for me to believe Anet is not going to do anything quickly. I think they’ve shown that.

Astralporing.1957:

Chuo.4238:

The only people that really know what the numbers are on any given day are ArenaNet, and they’re not going to tell. They don’t have to, and it would be bad for business. I’m not sure what the speculation here really achieves.

Intresingly enough, it’s only bad for business if the data is not very optimistic.

And that is if you are so insecure that a game has to be growing for one to put time into it and not judge the game on things that you may enjoy. What the heck is this, fashion gaming?

I Sir Horrorscope declare thee that I will only participate in said game if everyone is playing it first. That and only that will justify my precious time to share with those in GW’s 2.

What kind of phobia are we talking about here?

The game is not a ghost town, it’s also not a game you are tripping over everyone all the time. Population comes and goes and it’s actually pretty good how it does vary, a little change up isn’t bad. Sometimes a zerg, sometimes a little solo adventuring…

mjharrison.3209:

Ansultares.1567:

Heijincks.9267:

Anyway, increased hours played over the past two months isn’t especially noteworthy; by December, hours played as tracked by Xfire had dropped something like 90% from the release. I know fanboys curse Xfire, but its proven reliable across multiple MMOs I’ve played.

XFire shows it’s been pretty consistent over the past month.
http://www.xfire.com/games/gw2?

google trends also shows the same trend as xfire – a steady loss since release with a gentle plateau in the past month or 2. Certainly not an increase as they claim.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=gw2&date=10%2F2012%206m&cmpt=q

Yeah, if anyone is surprised the game isn’t as heavily played today as when it was released… umm… well you shouldn’t. When I see a post like this now, we are past the “new shiny phase” and into general game health from here on out. The game has been steady.

As a player at any point things could vary session to session, you just don’t have enough data to make heads or tails. “Guesting” can be playing a part in perception to. If many others are now questing to the most popular servers, the smaller one’s will now seem more barren than before, skewing thoughts.

I am also a believer in these analytics, Xfire/Google. Scientific pooling is pretty darn accurate, Nielsen does it with less, News Stations do it with less. Those that don’t seem to like them are people that don’t like what the stats are saying or feel left out because they don’t use the service. It’s just how stats work, nothing more, nothing less. The results are what they are. Good or bad and to me being steady in Feb, not bad. The game is on-sale now, so I see they would like to see a bump here.

The only in game person this should matter to is the person that is not having fun anymore because of less players around. If you are one of those, have you checked out other servers “guesting”, somewhere there has to be enough warm bodies around.

Ansultares.1567:

Heijincks.9267:

I don’t think it’s a matter of trusting Anet. It’s more of a matter of proving your case with statistics. Personal experience doesn’t count by the way as others have stated contradicting experiences.

There are no metrics backing up Anets claim, either. They say there are, there may very well be, but they’re certainly not making them public.

Anyway, increased hours played over the past two months isn’t especially noteworthy; by December, hours played as tracked by Xfire had dropped something like 90% from the release. I know fanboys curse Xfire, but its proven reliable across multiple MMOs I’ve played.

XFire shows it’s been pretty consistent over the past month.
http://www.xfire.com/games/gw2?

There are a few, to me a very minor issue.

I updated my systems Java on Sunday, for whatever reason when I started GW2, it immediately stated “Connection Error” and go no further, the fix was to uninstall Java. I’ll go back at sometime to see if I can get the two to work together.

DR or DRM no matter. Hurts the legit player.

Why no DR Icon to alert us legit players when we’ve farmed something too much, so we can go somewhere else to have fun? Everything vast and mysterious with too many mechanics. I feel I’ve done nothing wrong to deserve such things and perhaps I’m not being penalized, but I, I just don’t know, see Vast and Mysterious. This should not be my problem.

Right no button to pick it up, you just pick it up. I’ll take that or a unique “Loot Only” button. Because we all know when you are gathering loot and you have a NPC in the middle, the next thing you know, you are in a conversation with them. Either or for me.

Abyssisis.3971:

I’ll have hit dumbinishing returns and have to do something else till it resets…

We need an icon when it is in affect, only makes sense, no? It does feel like DRM… “only punishing legit customers”.

So far it seems it takes an unspecified amount of months to correct things such as this. One would think there would be some type of table one can edit like a DB, meaning a few minutes worth of work changing up drop chances etc, then testing. But it must be something more than that, all changes in GW2 seems like it must be a near herculean code effort to make.

The running joke in our guild is when we drop a champion “I got my chest”, it still funny no matter how many times we do it.

Just great… now chickens will get nerfed.

nerva.7940:

they still havent gives us a reason to go back to the old maps. when is that coming?

The adjustments were so minor, one could have not said anything and no one would have known the difference. They just have a hard time of just letting go and really allow loot for the players true level to drop. Just…. Can’t…. Let….. Go…..

If the down-scaling is proper, the true level loot should drop very regularly.

Other than the seasonal additions, so many parts of this game are being updated at a snails pace. So many things they say have been adjusted, you can’t even tell.

Eric Clapton can play a $999 guitar better than you can play a $1000 one. Skill>Miniscule Stat.

Karizee.8076:

All you have to do is change zones for about an hour if you hit DR.

NVM.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diminishing_returns

Daroon.1736:

I really don’t understand why they felt that introducing these chests was a good use of time and resources. Did I miss all the threads from players complaining that looting corpses was too difficult?

I don’t mind them. Making them drop on a Champion makes sense though.

Thanks.

Dodge Wars 2. I do it, but I must be able to do it a lot better, it sounds as that is the most important thing you can do in dungeons to stay alive. I won’t say that it makes total sense, but it’s more of “it is what it is”.

Vlawde.1895:

IMO things shouldn’t be scaled any more than they are now. The point of being a high level is to be more powerful. You go back to areas you got killed in when you were lower level, you SHOULD be able to kill the mobs easily, not struggle like you did when you were low level. Otherwise what’s the point of levels?

Levels, well you can’t get too far ahead of yourself. It was a key basis of the open world to go anywhere and expect level play, to help friends lower level than you, etc. Easy to see their reasoning, much better than the other mmo’s where there is zero fun to ever go back.

OP: They did tweak it the way you mention the last patch and I assume they will continue to monitor. How the game is designed, it has to scale “well enough” so going back and playing older content makes sense. To those against this idea, imo they don’t get the plan and it griefs even people you like and would want to play with, when you one shot what takes them 5, losing credit for kills etc.

^And then you are back to square one. So Yaki would you say the most important thing is to get dodge regenerating as fast as possible?

Edge.4180:

I think you’re ignoring the fact that daily tasks now require more “work” than they used to.

Ehh, some are actually considerably quicker, some about the same and perhaps some a little longer. In general I wouldn’t say more work at all.

Question:

Lets say my password is very simple like Home. That is one in 7.5 million combinations. That takes a very short time to break when you have free reign to attempt as many times as you like. However it is still 1 in 7.5 million.

So my question is this, how do outsiders get to bang that many attempts against something like GW’s before the game says “Ah no, we have locked your account, please contact us?”. I would think 10 chances every time you try before a successful should lock the person attempting out. Isn’t this a fair assumption that this would happen? So really the only way they can get in, is already knowing your password from using it somewhere else. Correct assumption?

So a unique password taking a trillion years to break, that is a crazy # of attempts and the server on the other end allowing someone to try so many fails and not raise a flag.

It seems simply having an uncommon unique password is really all that is needed. Length just past 4 even is 10’s of millions to 1.

Those guys have to be happy, universally no bad words their way, nothing but praise. It is a magnificent world and effort, the biggest stars of GW2.

lothefallen.7081:

The game is mostly done solo. The only grouping you’ll do is in dungeons

I think the right way to say it, is you can play the game solo in everything but dungeons. I play 95% of my time in a group.

Smelly Bookah.6957:

For example I was playing Guild Wars 1 for well over 4 years, I got 50/50 in HoM, GWAMM and yet I never really dropped anything valuable. I’ve only looted like 3 or 4 black dyes and 0 runes of superior vigor

No doubt it’s a company philosophy. Anet games are really not about lots of loot and lots of varied loot. I would call it stingy in some cases, but it is just the way they like their games. I would have loved to see a GW1 meets ARPG loot, as a variant.

Also, Friendly isn’t the right word imo, I haven’t had an unfriendly moment. It’s more of people keeping to themselves mostly.

The best news I can give you OP, is just play your character as a jack of all. Get your event, get your loot and continue on. There isn’t this big public outcry for anyone doing anything more and quite frankly for DE’s, 99% of them, nothing else is even needed anyway. So in your good will, it wasn’t even really needed. So just do your thing, send out a nice say after, revive a downed player… All good. That is what is expected.

Kirk Seeker.6497:

Noone tells thats GW2 is a bad or not. It’s superior, cool, awesome, still after you have done all tasks – its become borring. That’s the main speach. So it’s very good that new players come, but how for long?

I have yet to buy a game that I’ve played forever, any game, even a mmo, if it gives me a month worth of every day a few hours…. Satisfied, moneys worth. I can’t even imagine a game being developed that I think I could call home for years non-stop. Even my fav mmo, I play a couple/few months at a time, take a year off and repeat. This comes down to one’s brain, to be blunt. Some people have focus/addictive behaviors that allow them to attach to something for long periods. Some are always looking for the next new thing. The industry exists based on players not staying for loooong periods of time.

And they said Henchies in GW1 was the devil.

Perhaps an evolution (other mmo’s) to open World DE’s is auto-grouping as well, where those in your area bunch up on your screen as icons etc, limit say 8, system will determine who groups with who on the fly. Those already grouped will stay grouped and fill to 8. Perhaps a needed trinity brings more bonding to.

FWIW I believe I read the new expansion for Rift does something similar to my writings.

It seems GW2 should be sending some ideas out to other mmo developers and hopefully we’ll see this become more a base and working from there.

Then no one is happy. Or the group known as a little above average, they must be happy. Because average and below are not and well above average are not. DDO has six levels of difficulty, I guessed they learned something along the way, no?

Rika.7249:

The dungeons should stay the way they are.

There’s nothing to discuss. You’re bad and you should feel bad for suggesting that the game should be dumbed down to suit your lack of skill.

I will take that as sarcasm if you are serious or not.

Fay.2735:

Malvagite.3254:

Dungeons in guild wars 2 are no fun.

Horrible rewards except for token gear for the time spent.
Horrible fight mechanics, ie, being 1 shot, being beat down in 3 sec with 3k armor after your 2 dodges are gone.

Triple AAA mmorpg with combat and rewards worse than a free to play korean grinder.

If it werent for tokens, people wouldnt even step foot in these horrible dungeons.

Please don’t speak for ‘people’ as if everyone feels that way. There are a lot of people who love dungeons

They didn’t. I also agree with their observation. Management needs to review this aspect of the game.

Can someone direct me to a good post about the devs talking about how DR works? Also, wouldn’t it be helpful if you hit that point with an area, DR kicks in and an Icon on your screen appears, basically telling you “hey bud, go play somewhere else for a while?”. Right now it’s just playing mind games with me.

Saulius.8430:

hello. this is 2013. come back in decade or more, when computers and software has advanced a bit.

It’s the software they are using, others using it are having the same issues. I have noticed the change in PvE as well, a little worse.

wildcode.5403:

Geotherma.2395:

10g+ a day SOLEY off penitents when it pops. I use omnomberry bars and no mf gear.

This gets me angry. I am lucky to make 40s an hour with 122% MF from all the events in the area when they pop and this person is making more than double that just from 1 event …

What level are you?

Infernia.9847:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Colin, my warrior friend gets 3x more rares than I do. And I have some magic find and he doesnt. Also when I swapped from condition damage to raw damage I started getting more loot. There was also a time where we got 4 items as loot, and I got 2.

So Im pretty sure better loot is being given to whoever deals the most damage and this is incredibly frustating and agaisnt the philosophy of “play your way” of Guild Wars 2.

We would all appreciate if you could give us a brief explanation on how loot is handled. Thanks in advance

I am beginning to think DPS does factor into loot. I have 1 lvl80 char, a ranger, that is running beserker gear with pirate runes. I get very poor loot and it’s gotten worse in the past few months. (never had an exotic drop in PvE or WvW nor a lodestone +700hrs)
HOWEVER I found out that if I group up with others and stay near them in Orr I will get rares and greens. If we stick to the same mobs I get higher quantity and higher quality loot. It happens every single time.
Of course once DR kicks in I can’t shake it so I end up switching characters to a low level alt and finish dailies then log off. ( no changing maps, zones, characters, anything will shake DR once it hits)

I really think there is something to the speed at which you kill mobs having something to do with loot. If I go to low level maps and solo I have a much higher chance at getting greens than anywhere else unless grouped.

If you are fighting with a zerg, you need to be grouped or you will get greatly reduced drops. It’s based on the team damage (and tagging still) at that point…. Or at least I’ve been told and have seen.

Rabbi Rick – Or just download a random password generator and click generate. Done.

One thing I’ve noticed happening a lot more, is the dropping of a small brown wooden chest. I got one off a Vet just yesterday and nearly fainted, that is the first time I’ve seen a vet drop a chest like that and that is an 80 (Which is probably a 150 for how many times it has rolled over) a 60 and a 30. One chest from a vet.

Today, I’ve seen 3 more of these chests, I swear I haven’t seen them prior, if I did it was extremely rare. Is this the chest they were alluding to dropping on Vets/Champs?

Yeah here was the update:

Made the following changes to the Champion Risen Priest of Grenth boss:

Increased cooldown on Grenth’s Shadow Pull skill
Changed radius of spells
Modified attacks to do less damage
Modified attack area so as not to overlap on attacks
Modified Velocity of Teleport to allow player to not go into ceiling
Decreased the damage of Grenth’s Shadow Pull skill
Decreased the numbers of spells

I couldn’t be more for this. Difficulty as it stands today doesn’t sit well with me. There has to be a better way of entry for us. Yes difficulty levels makes the most sense to me, I don’t want to hurt those that like it as is. Every patch, I hope for an announcement to make dungeons approachable by all players, they look great from some of the movies I’ve watched.

Just throwing something out there…

Perhaps a scenario where a town can rise from where none exist today. It gets built with players gathering varying resources (a metric ton) as we gather and turn them in the city builds in front of us. When complete, a new working city with DE’s and all that then spawn from.

Might make a nice community activity.

Isaiah Cartwright:

“We had a few issues with this system that we made adjustments to. When high-level characters played in lower level zones, they were a bit too powerful, so the content was not as challenging as it could be. As a result of this, we also scaled down the rewards a bit too much.

As of the January 28 build, we made some changes to the dynamic scaling system to address these issues:

1.) We changed the formula for how attributes are calculated when the dynamic leveling adjustment system scales you down. This makes returning to lower level zones more fun and better balanced.
2.) We changed the formula for how rewards are calculated when scaled down to make it more rewarding for high-level players to visit lower level areas."

===

Bingo! I haven’t tested enough to say it’s perfect or not, but both of those are in the right direction. Thanks.

Aoshi.4785:

Did Grenth the other night and was expecting to get blown to bits from what everyone was chatting about on the boards here, but we didn’t wipe at all, and it was actually a lot more fun than before. I dig it

There was another small patch that addressed several parts of it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

That is correct yes, there is absolutely no account or character specific data used in loot rolls what so ever, can debunk that theory. The only thing you can do to alter a specific characters chances is magic find which is a stat visible on your character from gear/food, for loot drops specifically.

Isn’t there one other factor you missed here? If you have triggered Diminishing Returns by farming an area over and over that also is factored in to loot drops, no? That is by Account/Player over I think an unspecified amount of time before that returns to normal. Amiright?