Guild Wars 2

It really depends on what you enjoy. GW2 is heavily focused on cosmetics, if you don’t like ‘dressing up’ and creating cool looking characters you probably won’t get much out of this game, as most activities are pretty simple and repetitive (not a bad thing though, imo). Apart from that, there’s the social side. Witty banter and trolling in map chat, doing guild stuff and so on. You only get as much as you put into this game. It’s not a passive form of entertainment after all.

Also, I disagree that PvP is lackluster. Despite it’s flaws it is currently the most challenging and fun aspect of the game, and the reward tracks give a very tangible sense of progression. If that doesn’t satisfy you, your expectations might be too high.

Lmao @ Inay’s comment on the Ceremonial outfit picture.

Another +1 from me on this. Whatever we can hide on regular armour, we ought to be able to toggle off for outfits as well.

Not a fan of playable Kodan, or any of the anthropomorphic races I’ve seen around Tyria. They’re all hideous, silly looking or lack distinguishing features.

I do think we could do with more interesting full-body cosmetic options for the current races though. Things like battle scars, tattoos and piercings for humans and norn, maybe thorns and creative bio-luminescent patterns for Sylvari.

I almost never play full meta for anything, as I’m mainly a soloQ kinda guy and need to be self sufficient. I typically follow about 50 – 75% of the recommended builds (I stick to the traits pretty closely, but use whatever runes, sigils and skills I feel like).

That was incredibly soothing to watch. Dude is like the Carl Jung of PvP, great video.

The tl;dr of it is basically:

- Maintain a positive mindset
- Have realistic expectations
- Treat failures as opportunities to learn

Oooh, I’ve got some.

Was pugging COE and at the golem boss someone remarks that our dps is weak. I mention that I’m full berserker except for runes. One of the warriors says that he’s wearing Giver’s. Giver’s. We all laugh, cause this has got to be a joke. He then informs us that he doesn’t like running with zerkers and straight up quits the party.

In another COE pug, we lost our 5th halfway through, so we post. A 1k AP Necro joins, so the leader whispers and asks if he knows the dungeon. No reply. We ask if he hasn’t gotten the whisper or doesn’t understand english in both party and then open chat, still nothing. We continue anyway and out of the blue dude is like ‘Jeez, do you have to be so kittening anal about it?’ /kick.

True stories. #puglife.

Meh, I have a pretty decent time in Unranked solo queues. The good games (those that are enjoyable regardless of the outcome) have always outnumbered the bad.

The poster who mentioned that you’re likely to run into reward track farmers and casual or semi-casual players this way is spot on, though. Anyone who wants to fly solo should adjust their expectations accordingly.

Thief and Mesmer.

Lots of bits and pieces went into the Thief’s look, modelled her after Dante from ‘Devil May Cry’.

Nothing special on the Mesmer, just Crystal Nomad outfit and Peacemaker weapons. Sort of a futuristic planeswalker type character.

‘When everybody has wings, nobody has wings.’

Thumbs down from me.

Every map has fans and haters. I’ve seen topics where people argue just as strongly against Forest, albeit for different reasons. In a perfect world we could queue up for specific maps but there simply aren’t enough PvPers for that to work.

Deathmatch is loads of fun when you get the hang of it. Targeting makes a world of difference here.

The greatest challenge in fighting most world bosses? Lag. Many of the noobs you see dying over and over again are quite likely chugging along with a 50% or higher decrease in frame rate, and are content just to get enough damage done to ensure some loot. Even on my slightly aged mid-range gaming PC there’s nothing ‘clearly telegraphed’ at this point, the experience is not enjoyable at all. Any new challenges ought to be instanced.

Low AP is a decent indicator of inexperience, but high AP isn’t always linked to skilled or knowledgeable play. It’s best that we’re able to check it though. If that were removed the number of ‘Ping Gear’ parties would probably increase significantly, much to everyone’s annoyance.

On this note, I’ve always been in favour of the ability to inspect other players’ gear.

Shiren.9532:

Is the dungeon difficult in this game really so great there needs to be a big distinction between rangers, necromancers, mesmers and the “preferred” professions? When I think of all the ways to improve my daily dungeon time, excluding entire professions which have viably fast DPS builds is not one of them.

I’m all for encouraging the designers to bring professions in line, but tbh I don’t think there is a huge difference between some of the meta professions and some of the non-meta profession. The biggest difference seems to be player attitude, not tangible differences in performance.

We’ve been over one year since the last dungeon update (I believe it was Fractured – so approaching 18 months now) and the word dungeon wasn’t once mentioned in relation to HoT nor was there a single dungeon in Living World season two (compared to Aetherblade Retreat, Molten Facility and Aether Path). Maybe it’s time the dungeon community stop looking at ways of excluding other players (“no rangers, no necros etc”) and instead tried to foster a more populous dungeon community, we all might see ArenaNet take more of an interest in dungeons.

If you remember back at launch, AC was considered hard (AC story was considered hard). Many of us have come a long way since then, but I suspect most did not. Stop creating artificial barriers to exclude players from dungeons you enjoy playing – it’s only going to hurt you in the long run if ArenaNet doesn’t see enough player interest and participation in dungeons and instead of putting a team on a new dungeon, they put that team on another open world zerg train because the dungeon players were too elite to welcome the ranger, necros or Knight’s wearers.

I believe players have to make an investment in getting better at dungeons (and that means not running soldiers ASAP) but if we want ArenaNet to make content for us, we need to make sure that “us” is as many people as it can be without compromising the dungeon experience.

Filtering the community isn’t going to do anything. Players already have tools to do that with lfg (“zerker only”, “no rangers”, “80s only”, “6k+ AP”). I’ve joined “full zerk, exp only, 6k AP” groups only to find someone who clearly had never done the path before. How would a self filtering system work any different? Most of the filters are stupid anyway.

You’re absolutely right.

Most of the dungeons are easy enough for any team comp, if each class is being played properly. Ranger and Necro are generally unwanted because experienced runners have noticed a trend where these professions are frequently chosen by unskilled players.

Unfortunately, ANet have already turned their back on the dungeon community and disbanded the team.

I don’t bother reporting anyone other than gold sellers. If anyone, regardless of skill level, is annoying the party during a dungeon run they get a nicely worded ‘please stop being a kitten.’ warning. They ignore it, or I don’t like their response? → Kick. I’m a very patient and reasonable fellow, so by the time I’m ready to give someone the boot at least one other party member supports my decision.

Skeletoncross.4532:

So I get to killing zitan and have to form a group if i wanted to play with others i would join a party also i don’t want to play with others and the no mercs thing is bs all the dungeons you run through everything no one kills enemies this game is horrible the view distance is bad too you can see 100 meters in front of you and thats it fix this stuff and i will play again I wanted play story by myself glad this game is dying

In before ‘can I have your stuff?’.

Seriously though. Send me your stuffs. I have 9 hungry alts to feed, with one more on the way when the expansion drops.

Caeledh.5437:

phys.7689:

at least try to come up with something fairly simple that will achieve the same effect.

I thought I did and posted it but it seems to have either gone unnoticed or been considered so dreadful as not bear commenting upon.

Make dungeons like the current dailies. Rather than each dungeon path being it’s own daily with it’s own reward, have the game randomly select a few dungeon paths each day and provide a bigger reward for properly completing those (eg. killing all mobs).

The reward / time for full completion could be perfectly equivalent to the current scheme.

If the game also disabled skipping cutscenes for the selected dailies that would fix the problem of newer players never being able to watch them (without aggravating the speedsters).

Everyone could still earn rewards at the same rate. Speed runs would still be possible but there’d be much, much less incentive to do them. You wouldn’t be (speed) running the same dungeons every day so it might feel less repetitive. Newer players should have an all round better experience.

This is a great idea, until HotW and Arah end up in the Daily pool.

For what it’s worth, I’ve found ‘toxicity’ (I’m beginning to hate these SJW-esque buzzwords) in both PvP and PvE. People actively trolled the Queensdale champ train when that was a thing. There was constant bickering between the loot farmers and people who wanted to complete Scarlet’s invasions ‘by the book’. Even in Kessex Hills there’s events that some people want to beat, and others just want to farm. Whenever your individual success (however you choose to define that) depends on the actions of others, there’s potential for hostility.

And that’s why PvP seems so much more hostile. Not just competitiveness, but because it takes a team effort.

I voted yes, but I’d actually prefer if they just gave us more stuff do to in the Mists instead. Crafting stations, Mystic forge, that sort of thing.

A couple 1v1 arenas like the upper level of Crown Pavilion would be neat too.

borrok.9267:

Tao.5096:

Rym.1469:

Troll dem, whispers of sarcasm and irony are your deadly weapons, mon! You’ll make them jump on their seats and call moms. And you’ll have some fun while waiting for queues to pop.

Impossible.
They block you before they will whisper you.
Tho they rage-ask you questions and even laugh that you do not respond to them because you’re scared-noob.

This is so accurate lmao

That whisper-block combo is the worst, lol. You don’t get the satisfaction of a snappy comeback, and spend the remainder of the match feeling like George in that one Seinfeld episode (‘The jerk store called, they’re running out of YOU!’).

IndigoSundown.5419:

Godmoney.2048:

Proof? How about that each Anet employ costs 20 grand a year just for health insurance. LOL teenagers are funny.

Unsupported and ludicrous statements do not constitute proof.

There was a very well-written and researched blog post by a member here that explained drop rates are poor to preserve the economy, and as we all know, the entire game is built around trading and cash shop purchases. His example is off-topic (and pretty funny), but the bottom line of the post isn’t far fetched at all.

That’s been my experience in ranked as well. There’s good and bad days. The good are great, most of the bad are terrible. I’ve got a 40-something % win rate that I’d like to improve, but it could be worse.

I don’t really sweat it though. Win or lose my reward track still fills up eventually.

Denzelrealm.3580:

Lets discus pvp reward system for a minute. Is it actually Balanced? I myself wanna go for a legendary which is basicly 99% grinding money. I also need 120 tomes of something to make 2 characters instant 80. So i thought why not pvp. But is the pvp reward system balanced? I feel when openings these chest that there is missing something. Kinda the feel of exicetement. Becease do they even drop stuff like exotics? At least when i open a champion bag and i get exotic i get that feel of aww yeah. I won’t use it but it is a free skin or some extra gold. Which i love. But how do you guys think of it? For me it really lacks that aw yeah feeling

It’s a hell of a lot better than everything else. By the time I’d reached rank 40 I got two ascended weapon chests, one armor chest and seven rings.

The individual reward tracks give a lot of goodies that you can get in PvE, but in a far less tedious way. They’re great for Tomes of Knowledge, Transmutation charges and Obsidian shards in particular.

Why did these get so insanely expensive though? They’re nice but not that nice. I remember when they dropped they were around the usual 60-70g each for quite a while.

Loki.8793:

I’ve seen a lot of people on the forums and on reddit complain how the PvP community in Gw2 is bad and toxic recently, and I’m completely baffled at this. People are saying how it’s as bad as the LoL community and made them quit the gamemode altogether. What? Are we playing different games?

I’ve been playing this game since launch, and while I dabble around in all of the game modes, I spend most of my time in PvP. And in my experience, the community there is just as good anywhere else in the game. Sometimes you see some ragers, like today when a thief was complaining in map chat how bad a thief I was and had to be carried by teammates. Though, back in reality, he just ran into 1v2s completely oblivious and got mad when I killed him every time. Yeah, it’s annoying, but that’s the nature of competitive games. People get serious and emotional.

But I’ve never seen another player verbally abuse another for playing bad. Sometimes I’ll see “Ranger, what are you doing?” followed by furious pinging on the mini map, but otherwise it’s fairly tame.

But here’s the thing. Even if it is the case that there are a lot of toxic people in PvP, so what? The good people greatly outnumber them. People in HotM are very quick to answer questions and help out noobies with builds/etc when they ask. A lot of people will ask if you want to join their guilds if you aren’t representing one too, anticipating that you are a new player.

And when you do come across the occasional “toxic” player, and he starts yelling at you, why would that matter? Why would that deter you from a game you enjoy playing? If a single insult was all it took to get you from playing a game, then why are you playing an MMO in the first place? Stop being so kitten emotionally fragile, go learn some social skills, and deal with it. There a plenty of people willing to help you out if you need it. To ignore that for a few angry people is idiotic.

People also need to get out of this “block-happy” mindset, where anyone who says something even remotely offensive to you is immediately blocked. Seriously, grow up. As I see it, there’s only 2 things you use your block list for:

• Gold sellers/spammers
• People who whisper you to insult you after a match has ended

If you’re blocking someone in the middle of a game because he’s yelling at you, deal with it. Chances are, he may have a reason for it. I’d much rather be yelled at and criticized for making a bad play than being reassured I’m fine and that I tried my best. And I’d much rather that because people learn through criticism.

Again, if you’re blocking people because you can’t deal with them saying something you don’t like, why are you even playing an MMO? How do you deal with normal socialization? You’re going to hear things you don’t like. If you can’t deal with that, then you have no reason playing a social game, and furthermore a team-oriented one.

Have you watched the PAX South expansion announcement? Did you see the people who make up the GW2 playerbase? We ain’t really on that tough guy kitten, man. Look at it this way: In the same way that aggressive players can’t keep their emotions in check and accept that it’s just a game, others can’t handle the negativity. It’s bad enough to be losing a match without someone having a go at you so they can vent their anger.

In an equivalent social context – board games, for example – people are much better behaved. So there’s that for starters. Tempers do flare up a lot in contact sports, but it’s usually expressed in a more appropriate way. You’ll never see a goalie in a football match yelling to the opposing team that their defenders are ‘garbage and should kill themselves’. Unlike actual sports, though, GW2 PvP is a very low-stakes activity. So why so serious?

Hostility and negative criticism won’t inspire most players to learn, it just makes people turn chat off so nobody kills their vibe. Best case scenario? They ignore it keep doing what they’re doing anyway. Worst case? They’ll go afk or feed the enemy.

I do agree with you that the toxicity isn’t terrible, especially compared to MOBAs, but I think it is healthier for players to maintain a positive atmosphere than accept toxicity as an inevitable consequence.

GoD Obelisk.3057:

I suppose that’s part of the problem, they know most of us who like to challenge ourselves in PvE through dungeons and such will still just buy the expansion so why bother. Welcome to corporate world, if it sells, it aint broken.

Also, I suspect they’ve realised most of the community does dungeons primarily as a farm rather than for the sake of it. They’ve been adding farmable content that doesn’t affect the economy too much, which probably seems like a win for everyone.

We definitely need more party-oriented PvE content though.

I don’t often have problems with zerker PUGs, although many of them are unskilled players with blindly copyied meta builds who’re so used to being carried they don’t realise that they’re bad.

I like to add a little flavour to my zerker postings like ‘Well-dressed’ or ‘Fashionable’, just to let people know I want to get things done properly and have fun too. That always attracts the best sort.

Espers.7346:

I cannot stress it enough, this post was not to enforce the trinity, but to allow others whom wish to play non zerker roles. the chance to enjoy content also. Not everyone should be forced to be pure damage builds in order to burn down mobs before they can kill you. Also not saying make it fast, but make healing builds matter and do enough healing to last a longer battle.

You can this right now!

Equip any stats you want, use the appropriate runes, traits and sigils and have a go at it! Take a friend let them play dedicated healer. Take two even!

What’s been stopping you all this time?

Old shot of my mesmer, last time the Zephyrites came around.

No one, apart from a handful of soapbox-toting forum warriors, gives two kittens about the manifesto. They promised stuff. We got some, didn’t get others and quite a lot is open to debate. It’s all behind us now.

Heart of Thorns, baby!

Any form of reputation system would have to involve positive reinforcement only. Could be something as simple as a nice little ‘+1 to whatever’ when you right click their name or character portrait.

Reputation points could then give access to appropriate rewards. It wouldn’t stop negative behaviour but it would probably encourage people to be a bit more community minded. One thing that unites GW2 players is our love of da shinies.

OP I know that feel. We need a couple more Death match maps, and the ability to queue for that mode exclusively. Courtyard is pretty sloppy, but when the teams are evenly matched it’s loads of fun.

Taking screenshots during the run suggests that you’re some kind of troublemaker and should probably know better, imho.

Vayne.8563:

But I have a guild full of people and what I don’t want to see is someone saying, looking for a group to do this dungeon and then hearing them say, sorry you can’t join us, you don’t have the pack.

It creates complications. It puts pressure on people who might not have the money to get it to keep up with everyone else…sort of like an expansion.

This is understandable. I’ve seen this happen first hand in DDO and LotRO where we could unlock content in bits and pieces. It sucks, but it’s life.

We’ve already established that ANet cannot give us any substantial content without revenue to fund it, and it’s unreasonable to limit options for those willing to pay so that we don’t upset those who can or will not.

uknortherner.2670:

JLHiggs.6258:

If you wouldn’t, you’re not pertinent to this discussion. Other people spending money would in no way obligate you to spend money.

This is a public forum, so you don’t get to decide who has input and who doesn’t. Dissenters have just as much right to make their feelings known as much as those who approved of this suggestion.

As has been pointed out, such a scheme would fracture the community and cause a clear divide between the haves and have-nots.

Just because you’re willing to throw money around doesn’t mean that everybody else should be required to in order to keep up.

I agree that all opinions on this topic are valid, but I do not see how this would cause a clear divide between the haves and have-nots. The gem store has done that from the game’s inception. The much celebrated Heart of Thorns expansion will also do the same. Not seeing the problem with paying for additional content.

And of course, yes I would support this. As long as the cost is reasonable and the dungeons are well made and have good replay value.

Nope. Do not want. That’s one of the worst aspects of the MOBA genre; early failures or mistakes are usually difficult to recover from. At least in GW2 even when you’re being outplayed in the start you can learn your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, discover their strategies and counter effectively.

At best, I could get behind this kind of buff for the disadvantaged team in a 4 v 5, but even then I’m sure there would be balance issues.

I’m not blaming the community, I’m a part of it too after all. That was simply a response disagreeing with the poster who said we should ‘deal with it’.

Sadly I have no suggestions. I don’t even care enough to take any action. I just get bummed about the un-fun players from time to time and felt like sharing my views.

inhearth.2038:

So just deal with it. If you don’t like to be competitive just go play Practice Games, and be sure to turn off your chat so you don’t participate in any discussion about the game where people will disagree with you and make you feel SAD.

I can’t really agree with this. I mean, if you guys are as serious about PvP as you say you are it would make more sense to ‘police’ yourselves a bit and keep the atmosphere positive. You’ll never be rid of casual players as long as PvP reward tracks > PvE content.

Besides, raging and verbal abuse pretty much guarantees a loss. Can’t cite the exact statistic but I do remember LoL featured a little tip on the loading screen stating that players who engage in this kind of behaviour lose x% more matches than those that don’t.

NeXeD.3042:

The community requires a healthy balance of care bears and toxicity for competetive balance. Just remember it’s a game on the interwebs and the big scawy kitty cartoon saying you are bad can’t hurt you lol

Apparently it does hurt, if the number of people staying out of the chat is any indication.

Even the ones that are quick to hurl insults are cowardly little kittens. Half of ’em whisper you trash talk and block your responses.

Definitely thieves in sPvP. A well-played thief is a major pain in the kitten. When I was still green I absolutely hated Mesmers, and would just leave the point if one showed up. Figured out how to counter them now, for the most part.

Those seemingly invincible Eles and Guards are a close second.

I like the PvP lobby, it’s usually just full of stoners and silliness. I can dig that.

The real rudeness takes place during or immediately after losing matches. A lot of the time team-mates are your worst enemy, because in their mind they’re the only Good Players™ and everyone else is a scrub. It starts with a barrage of swearing and insults, and sometimes a whisper if you don’t acknowledge it. I’m often confused about whether they can’t help but vent their frustration this way, or expect it will improve team performance.

I think a lot of people in solo queue keep their chat turned off just to avoid this kind of thing. Lots of matches the team doesn’t type or respond to map or team chats.

Are you playing immediately after the daily reset? Even so, I only find anything close this happening every couple of matches (I play unranked only). Usually it’s just one or two of the ‘Class-of-the-day’.

For dungeons I would recommend warrior. Decent dps and survivability, and exceedingly simple to play. Your main role is to stack might and whack things. Phalanx Strength warrior has a fair bit of vitality from traits, so you can go full Berserker on gear if you want.

Ranger offers the best ranged dps with the LB and 6 points spent in the Marksmanship trait line, but pet management in can be a hassle. However as Palador mentioned pets can be very useful. Greatsword or Sword and Axe/Warhorn are a good alternate weapon for the fights that PUG groups usually insist on stacking for.

Excellent idea, nicely presented as well.

I get the impression that the outfits were meant to address this need, but the lack of customization (beyond dyes) gives them a fairly limited appeal. Whenever a new one is released it seems like everyone’s wearing it, until the novelty dies down and they we go back to mix and match sets.

I’d take your idea a step further and suggest an extension of the equipment tab instead. This would allow for partial build saving (multiple sets of armor, trinkets and weapons with different stat combos on each tab, if desired) as well as the ability to transmute the gear on each page separately. Pretty solid opportunity for monetization, imo. Additional tabs could be unlocked via the gem store.

Here’s hoping we see some version of this feature released when we get the expansion.

I’m surprised to see one of these threads pop up so soon after the expansion announcement. Always thought these were a product of boredom, and there’s so much more interesting stuff to discuss.

I remember I was like the OP, hated Dry Top. Overall it’s a good map, but somewhat poorly scaled. Too many terrain abnormalities packed into such a small area I think. Makes them a bit more difficult to navigate and orient yourself to, but I think most players get the hang of it eventually.

I do hope the expansion’s maps aren’t all complex as well. Visually interesting for sure, but easy to get around.

/goes Apekitten.

Troll? that’s an unfair assumption. Some of us pick the less popular maps from time to time for variety, or if it’s what we feel like playing.

I’ll take anything over a third consecutive Battle of Kyhlo match (which has happened).

The real problem with the current system is not knowing which maps you’re queueing for in advance.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Berelious.3290:

I’m failing to see a problem here.

“I am too lazy to convert a specific reward to gold, so please take that reward away from everyone who actually needed it for a long time, and give me that gold.”

QFT.

Of all the surplus items in game, these are arguably the most useful. No problem here.

Kuldebar.1897:

Junk items are vendor trash and you can make some coin off them…not sure what there is to complain about.

Their vendor value is so low that they’re virtually worthless. Even a full stack of most types is worth very little in the grand scheme of things. Personally, I don’t like walking around with a bag full of garbage like a god kitten ed hobo. And quite literally, it’s all garbage – piles of mush and broken things. Kind of ruins the immersion for me as a veteran player. The heroes of Tyria call me Boss, and I’m chopping spider legs off to sell for pennies. Ridiculous.

I like to keep various salvage kits, consumables and my alternate weapon sets handy.

There’s always at least one stack of bloodstone dust, empyreal fragments and essences of 10 luck in my junk loot pack.