Guild Wars 2

Vague Memory.2817:

A lot of those new hero points are hard gated behind some fairly high level masteries.

And those that aren’t are ridiculous for other reasons.

I walked to one (emphasis on walked) that spawned a champion dinosaur and required me to kill it in 5 minutes. That’s simply unacceptable (not to mention impossible to do by myself) for something I need to do to unlock content I paid for!

The full servers in WvW won’t reopen unless enough people transfer off the server. That’s the entire point of their being closed.

Spambot.3625:

its rather that casuals keep whining that they need to actually put effort into character progression. Map completion is not part of character progression, it offers next to nothing for your character other than open waypoints

Map completion gives you hero points, making it just as much a form of progression as the hero challenges in HoT.

Spambot.3625:

Ansau.7326:

This hero point system is just absurd.
First, each elite specialization needs too much points to be unlocked, really 60 to just unlock it and 400 to get everything?
Second, it’s not account bound… What the heck were you thinking?
Third, to get hero points you just need to grind, yes grind map completions, grind EOTM zerg…

I’ve calculated that to unlock an entire elite specialization per character requires about 100 WvW levels and 2000 badges.

For people who has alts it’s just a suicide mission.

Anet and devs, you really need to tone down A LOT the hero points required.

no its actually good, you shouldnt be able to progress your character instantly but rather have to put work into it

what gw2 was lacking was character progression, this is one step into forward by anet, loving it

1. People already put work into progressing their characters, it was called map completion and both anet and you white knights are keen to devalue it.

2. Masteries were supposed to be the progression, not elite specs.

I don’t understand why they’re ticket skins either, they’re not flashy enough to be worth tickets and they’d make much more sense as something you’d earn in-game in Verdant Brink…

I feel like the Spinal blades should be a glider as well

You know, a lot of people did “earn it” via map complation, but people don’t apparently take that into account because… reasons?

Also sucks if you’re trying to be a daredevil, since your actual mechanic is locked behind grandmaster traits.

Have faith, OP, Anet’s hellbent on turning this game into a WoW clone so I’m sure you’ll get your mount soon enough!

The one to Rule.2593:

I understand it, it’s just ridiculous that people thought that they were just gonna get their elite specs with no work.

Since when is map completion “no work”.

IndigoSundown.5419:

mtpelion.4562:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Odd, these very forums repeatedly claimed that the focus wasn’t on gameplay and development toward exciting story and mechanics because we didn’t have expansions (relying on the Gem Store, etc.) and now that we have expansion(s), it’s the same lament.

Again, what’s a Dev to do?

The people who said that before were incorrect. GW2 presented us with free content and free story updates at a frequent pace and only the people who wanted to pay paid. The people who complained about a lack of an expansion were in the wrong and unfortunately got their way so that now we do NOT get free content, we do NOT get free story updates, and now EVERYONE has to pay.

I have lots of negative opinions about the expansion people because they have ruined the only MMO I have ever enjoyed.

I’m sure that the near-constant demands for an expansion had a lot to do with the timing of Anet’s decision to create one. However, it may have been inevitable anyway. Ongoing gem revenue was still healthy, but was trending down from quarter to quarter. B2P games in general only offer new content with a price tag. I believe the combination of the 3 factors pushed the game towards needing a periodic buy-in.

Also worth noting is that the people who wanted an expansion were tired of tiny scraps of content from the living story and wanted something massive, more akin to Factions or Nightfall in scope and scale. Anet is either unwilling or unable to provide that level of content, so everyone loses.

I wish more warhorns had special sounds, currently only Howler, the Super Warhorn (and its green/yellow versions), and the Crimson Lion warhorn do (people said the Pact Fleet one does, but those people are liars).

The obvious answer would be to double or even triple the amount of tokens given per path.

But then they’d still be worth running, which is against Anet’s explicitly stated plan to strongarm people into doing the content Anet wants them to do (and boy does this show a lack of confidence in fractals and raids on their part!).

I’m hoping they toss Tribal/Apostle/Stalwart in HoT somewhere, to pad out the anemic number of actually new armor sets we’re getting.

I want those Apostle pants, god kitten it, I’ve got every piece of that set but that one (and every piece of Stalwart but the only good piece, the shoulders!)

Tman.6349:

Ikr. After all the “Dungeoneer are toxic, elitist kittens” threads over the past 3 years, I can just imagine the QQs about Raiding. Not to mention the new Legendaries REQUIRING playing PvP and WvW. Not to mention Legendary armor REQUIRING successful Raid completions.

If it weren’t screwing me over too, I’d be impressed at how the toxic raiding culture performed a coup d’etat on this game. They tricked the people who were unhappy with the dungeon meta into instituting a vastly more toxic meta in its place, and like all useful idiots they’ll be surprised when it’s their turn on the chopping block.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Anyway, the grudge is softened by the fact we soon get raids.

Yes, I agree, adding content explicitly not intended for most players to complete definitely makes up for gutting an accessible form of group content.

Wait, no it doesn’t.

Pandabro.8743:

Lord Kuru.3685:

So a big chunk of the endgame will be lost (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Anet will replace that dungeon content with new fractals and raids).

I cannot fathom that Anet would shift rewards to a new area and not have plans to add additional support to that area. It’s pretty clear they have some sort of plan to regularly add new fractals. We just don’t have any details on that aspect yet.

If Anet was adding new fractals, they’d have said so. They didn’t.

Better idea: don’t nerf rewards on old content to strongarm the playerbase into doing new content you already know (or at least suspect) they wouldn’t do otherwise.

They know their new content will be a flop, so they’re gutting existing content to make it look better by comparison.

phys.7689:

Its actually kinda funny.
They started off like
awesome new map rewards! more rewarding gameplay! faster materials gain!

then in the fine print
we will be reducing gold earning activities, and material earning activities.

Essentially the goal of the economy is that players never actually get ahead. Just keep you a hamster on the wheel.

unless you play the tp.

well, it works so wonderfully in the real world, after all.

#occupyblacklion

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

I don’t see it happening either. Druid is an elite spec with a primary focus on support and healing, and that’s what they’ve achieved. You have to remember that these aren’t going to be the ONLY elite specs, we’re bound to get more. The next elite spec MAY have an aspect with a damage focus, but I doubt they’ll recycle and elite spec like that. (or at least, I hope they wont!)

And if we were getting two elite specs with HoT, that would be a valid point. But “you don’t have to use druid, you can use a future elite spec that won’t be added for years (if ever, Anet sure does love abandoning their content these days)” isn’t a good argument.

Actually, having two elite specs available to begin with would probably have solved a lot of complaints about the existing batch, actually.

Bearhugger.4326:

As we get much better designed content that may actually take effort and has a place for all kinds of players

And what content is this? Because you’re sure as hell not talking about raids (which deliberately by design do not “have a place for all kinds of players”).

If you are talking about raids, see below

a lot of people salty about getting banned from daily arenas for trolling, it seems.

Orangensaft.7139:

and reduce rank points in those private arenas so rank farm gets turned down and players who do that have to farm 10x longer to get their 100% undeserved ranks

They already do that, you get significantly less rank points and there’s a hard cap on how much you can advance a reward track per day in custom arenas.

thewaterguy.4796:

At this point, I could care less about dungeons, it absolutely sucks that Arena-net have just abandoned them at this point, seems any promises they had of improving them or adding more of them in the future are now dead, but dungeons are dead and non-content at this point, so I can’t say I care too much, I’ll be glad to see all of the “elites” that run dungeons like a kittening slave camp where unless you are playing zerker meta you are instantly kicked whine and cry about how players can avoid them now

I hate to tell you this, but those mean old zerkers are just going to switch to whatever the raid meta is and set up camp there, and the raid meta will make the dungeon meta look downright welcoming by comparison.

SkiTz.4590:

No offense, but aquatic stuff is hilariously useless in this game

And no, I would prefer anet not waste time improving “under water”…. its just there for a bit of fun, but the real content is on land….

Ya it would be nice to see an underwater dragon fight like teq but underwater, but I rather not since that means developement for other projects have to be put on hold for something so irrevelent in the grand scheme of things….

Under water legendaries are useless…..whats the point? you wanna dive in and show off to a couple fishes? no is in the water to look at your new shiny besides NPCs……

I agree, underwater content is indeed irrelevant, it’s not like one of the Elder Dragons is living in the ocean or anything!

Dyvor Kurozu.4893:

At first I was I was really excited about seeing the first new legendaries, I still am excited about the axe and pistol to a certain extent. The staff, however, lost its points in my eyes when I found out it was something that had been datamined from the game years ago… I was expecting all of the legendaries to be brand new and made from scratch, not something that was made years ago and now decided to be slapped into the game together with the expansion with some minor tweaks to it or as it was.

Eh, I’m being a bit too nitpicky but the new legendaries were one of the reasons I’m getting HoT, so it struck to me as Anet taking the easy way out on one of the legendaries by using some old skin that was gathering dust godknowswhere.

Considering that we were supposed to be getting new legendaries in 2013, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was designed back then before they decided to lock said legendaries behind a paywall.

Lome.8239:

People don’t seem to understand that the only 2 ways the sword can be easier to learn are from changing the skills completely (no thanks) or changing the way leaps work across all aspects of the game.

Honestly if you just spend a few minutes practicing timing your movement and weapon swapping on a dodge roll dummy, it actually plays really well. I hope it stays as is, and I don’t mind the skill cap on it.

Warrior, guardian, revenant, thief, and mesmer swords all work perfectly fine without any gimmicky nonsense or jury-rigging that ranger sword requires, there’s no excuse for it being such a janky pile of kitten in comparison.

Especially when it’s the only one-handed melee weapon we have.

I love how people who desperately wanted to be accepted into meta groups ended up kicking off a chain of events that created a meta more hostile to them than the big bad zerkers they hated could have ever been.

I don’t like what the Druid is, and I like even less what its existence says about the direction Anet is taking this game.

He didn’t “save” rangers, he papered another class on top of them and called it a day. Druid doesn’t even interact with our class mechanic at all (even Tempest, the most hated of the elite specs, does that much)!

Better buy some gems to buy those bag slots! /Anet

Anet already has the ability to make pets immune to enemies’ attacks, because there are a lot of things they’re immune to right now (the Golem Mk II’s electric fields, the Vinewrath’s laser attack, at least some environmental effects). They just need to apply that to all big attacks.

Especially things like Liadri. I probably would have beaten her a lot quicker if my pet could have stayed alive for more than a few seconds in that fight.

They didn’t add a single main hand weapon, for some reason. All two-handers and offhands.

Sligh.2789:

roachsrealm.9284:

do dungeons, sell rares, buy the extra silk you don’t get from salvaging greens/blues and loot bags. if you do 9 fast dungeon paths (couple hours game time) you will always break even. squeeze in a teq for another gold or two, depending on drops, and hit silverwastes.

farming gold needed is always better than farming mats directly.

This is exactly the reason the prices are so high.
If players took the challenge to find, harvest and salvage for their own materials, and then bought a few to top them off, the demand would be low, and the prices would follow. I have all 3 weight sets and spent less than 20G to top off sometimes. I never farmed anything, and I do not do dungeons to farm gold. I play the content to have fun, and the materials are there. I do dungeons to have fun, and the materials are there.
Patience is a virtue. Just take your time and the armor will be there.

The price of silk is high because Anet arbitrarily made it take twice as much as the leather/wood/metal equivalents, and it’s required for all forms of ascended armor.

Leather drops from the same sources as cloth, at roughly the same rate, and yet is barely worth anything.

Guardian Of Tyria.6397:

If you want to look at insignias in the crafting of armor, then perhaps the insignias should be changed too. Have cloth insignias for light armor, leather insignias for medium, and metal for heavy.

The funny thing is they did this once, with the Gift of Blades recipe, and then never again.

I got all three keys from the personal story within about a day, the keys don’t count against each other.

Whether the Destiny’s Edge and Claw Island keys are also limited to one a week, I have no idea.

I feel like the Bristleback’s projectiles need to be more visible, it’s kind of hard to see them compared to a spider’s or devourer’s.

Also, the wyvern’s heads should be scaled down a bit so they don’t look so cartoony, they look really goofy with heads almost as big as the rest of their bodies.

Azumi.9572:

98% of the game is built for casuals like you. 2% is now being diverted for other players.

You still got the majority of the pie. Silverwaste grinding isn’t going anywhere. World Boss farming isn’t going anywhere. You still have your casual content to sleep through.

I mean, it’s not like there’s 6 new sets of armor skins (as many as the entire rest of the expansion, I might add!) representing an entire new tier of armor locked behind raiding or anything.

Ardid.7203:

Mob density was enormously reduced.

I too enjoy slogging my way through dozens of enemies to get anywhere. That’s why everyone loved pre-nerf Orr /sarcasm

Harper.4173:

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Also – you can’t make content both easy and hard – easy to get done but difficult to speed clear. Because if the content is easy enough to begin with simply doing those things faster will clear it faster.

The fact that more players will be sad is true – but it should motivate them to improve – since all games should have you constantly striving for something – and ideally through that strife and struggle should come self-improvement as a player.

For content to have a significant lifespan and staying power in an MMO you have to make it repeatable – and people won’t repeat content and raids for the sake of “prestige” – they will do it once and be content with being able to get a really fast run and then won’t care about it – 1,2,3,4 seconds do not matter that much to people.

What matters are practical rewards something you can get for yourself – so for that
reason these real, tangible rewards are the factor that will motivate people to do the content over and over and over again.

Ask yourself this – if the 1 – 3 gold reward at the end of each dungeon got removed – how many people would still run dungeons?
What if you also remove tokens and skins? How many people would still run dungeons?

It’s the practical rewards that keep people playing.

And here I thought you people wanted challenging content for its own sake!

Funny how that argument immediately went by the wayside once Anet started kowtowing to you.

They’ll abandon raids as soon as some shiny new thing catches their eye. Or as soon as the effort to make content most of the playerbase is excluded from exceeds the returns. Either or, really.

cafard.8953:

I don’t know, but the announced pets are in the pet selection UI since yesterday (greyed out, of course).

They also forgot code the tiger as amphibious, since it’s not in the underwater pet menu at all.

Bomber.3872:

Thanks, thats exactly what I thoguht remembering the hundrets of threads where actually only rng was called as an issue and lierally noone ever complained about the price itself.

You’re remembering wrong, there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of threads about precursors being too expensive.

hazenvirus.8154:

Did anyone really expect Anet to just hand out precursors with no cost attached except time played?

Even if they did hand them away demand would shift to the the other mats. The mats would boom to 1-2+ gold a piece and then you’d have your wish of incremental progress farming thousands of ridiculously expensive mats that would also impact other crafted items. But hey, at least it isn’t gold right?

You forgot that you can buy t6 mats with laurels, and that’s what people will do (either to use themselves, or to sell).

Eric.7813:

keep in mind, and i’m sure, Anet probably has a whole list of elite specs that they plan to release. every profession will probably get a damage focuses spec, a support focused, and what ever else people categorize. this time around, the ranger got a defensive build. reaper for an offensive build. It will all work out. until then, appreciate the druid! it is much needed for us.

I’ll keep that in mind for the next expansion when Anet adds another set of elite specs, a couple of years and another $50 from now.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

GW2 is not so dependent on raids as other games. I don’t see a problem to make them harder so normal pugs won’t be able to complete them.

They’re not dependent on raids yet, but a frightening number of people want them to be!

If they keep adding raids as often as they seem to want to, let alone as often as you think they will, that’s an awful lot of resources for something most people can’t do. Eventually they’ll end up developing them at the expense of other content (which will rightfully anger all those excluded players) or they’ll decide the return isn’t worth it and abandon raids just like they’ve abandoned so many other things.

They literally bolted a completely unrelated spec onto the ranger, as far as I can tell. They didn’t even bother modifying our profession mechanic in any way, and even the much-maligned Dragonhunter and Tempest got that much!

Hell, Druid would have been a better necromancer spec than a ranger one (it even has what is essentially a “life shroud”!)

PopeUrban.2578:

Their entire goal structure with raids is not just that they’re challenging, but that they remain so throughout the life of the game.

If raids are not accessible enough that normal people can do them, they’ll fail. Many, many MMOs have learned the hard way that hardcore raiders make up a tiny fraction of the population, and Anet appears to be dead-set on repeating that mistake.

Anet can’t afford to pour their finite resources into content most people can’t do, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Telebrion.3645:

Doam.8305:

What got me was when they stated enough gold and time at tier 3 to keep the value of the Pre’s on the TP.

Did they ever say that? They said they wanted the Precursors to keep value, and I expect that they’ll still cost several hundred gold to complete, because there needs to be a large investment so that they retain their… grandeur. But I don’t believe they said that they want the Precursors to keep the same value they currently have on the TP. I mean, Dusk and The Legend are triple the price of The Energizer. Do you really think they’d make those Precursors three times as expensive as the other collections, just because they’re more expensive on the TP?

Forget the Energizer, Dusk costs something like 15 times as much as Venom or Rage!

Honestly, playing Caithe is awful (despite her OP skills, she’s still a squishy dagger thief), I wish they’d at least have given her a shortbow to swap to or something.

also, that perma-retaliation golem (and it is permanent, I’ve stripped it and it just reapplies it) in Fallen Hopes is one of the nastiest enemies in the entirety of season 2.

Kite.2510:

NOTHING in this game should be designed for Zerker.
Players will always find a way to cheese some Zerkers in once they learn the in’s and outs of the content anyway, but at least that way other builds would be more viable.

Everything is viable right now, it’s just not optimal if what you care about is getting through something as fast as possible.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I don’t think zerker is going away for new content either. If it does, Sinister will replace it. Why? After the 1000th time you’ve done the first raid, do you really want it to take longer than it has to? No. That’s why those of us who’ve done thousands of fractals run zerker. We’ve learned the content. We know how to survive with the least amount of healing. Same thing will happen to raids. The only way for this to happen is for content to be constantly changing and significantly. We will, as a whole, take the least amount of defensive support needed to complete content. That’s why we even have a zerker meta in the first place.

get out of that mind set because the current content is easy to learn , easy to dodge, easy to use Damage metigation procs , protection blinds ect , the HoT content will bring mobs that ignore blinds , ignore direct damage, some will even ignore Condi damage or have mechanics that swap between the two , yes for some zerker is a decent stat set but it won’t be the End off all being the best in the content comming up , you can learn all the content you like but the fact is Unavoidable damage is comming no matter how much active defence you have there is a limit to how much you have which is why Support is being buffed , increased .

Dungeons were believed to be incredibly difficult at release, too.

If crafting the precursor costs as much as buying it, what’s the point? Most people wanted precursor crafting as an alternative to paying a ton of gold, not the same gold grind with a happy face on it. Did Anet ignore the hundreds of threads about precursor prices?