Guild Wars 2

Spoj The Second.7680:

Im not saying change it for this game. Im just commenting on how the difficulty of games in general has dropped considerably over the years and its considered the norm now. Games used to be about challenge. People didnt complain about games being too difficult back then as it was normal to force players to improve.

The challenge of old school was really just a means of adding replay value in spite of technological limitations. As the platforms improved, games became more complex and interesting rather than just difficult.

You also have to consider how the gamer demographic has changed as well. It’s not just for kids and ‘no-lifers’ any more. Most of us simply don’t have the time or inclination to play a game over and over until we get it right.

NinjaEd.3946:

To OP

“The game of balance, is like a sword fight. sword swooshing You must think first “HIY”, before you move".
“Settler’s style is immensely strong, and immune to nearly any build. When it’s properly used, it’s almost invincible”

“I have given it much thought. It seems disaster must come. At best, only postponed. sPvP, to survive, must now be taught to more young men. We must expand. Get more players, so that the meta will spread.”

I don’t think time invested is a good way to distinguish casual from hardcore gaming. The complexity and effort required are better criteria.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

For crying out loud.

When the game launched there were no achievement chests, no one complained.
Then they add chests and people complain it’s not good enough.

You people are never satisfied.

‘Less bad’ /= ‘good’.

I also thought that the AP reward chests would get progressively better, but it’s really just the milestones (every 5k points or so). No complaints here though, we are getting significantly better content and rewards now.

This game has always been developed to cater to casual players. This is necessary because it is driven by the cash shop and in-game economy, which work together in a very delicate balance that requires actual game rewards to be few and far-between. No one wants to play hardcore content for rubbish drops after all.

I believe Anet have been trying to get more of the player base (casuals included) interested in PvP, and have sweetened the pot with the reward tracks. I think this was done because they haven’t added anything with real replay value to PvE. This could explain why they have made ranked and unranked rewards equal, and added a simple death match mode. I predict there will be a lot more along teose lines in the future, and hopefully the structure will allow casual and hardcore players to stay clear out of each others’ way.

For what it’s worth, I’m a semi-casual recent convert to PvP. Came for the rewards but stayed for the fun.

This is the funniest thing I’ve read on the forums in a long time. I love how matter-of-factly he states the initial points. ‘Come on now, lads. Let’s not fight.’

However, you’ll find that most players who share your view of PvP aren’t there for the dailies, we’re farming reward tracks, and actually want to win. It’s very, very simple to complete the dailies while pursuing our true objective so there is no incentive to waffle around and not play the match properly.

As advised earlier, you can do as you like in practice mode. You can even match-hop until you find one that is to your liking.

Palador.2170:

Now, do I do SPvP? Yes, a little. There’s rewards I want, and this is the best way for me to get them. But I stay in practice, and I don’t talk to anyone. I don’t take it seriously, and I hate it when people do.

This is my experience as well. I started PvP solely for the rewards, and over time actually started to enjoy the gameplay, but I’m not competitive enough to take the game as seriously as hardcore players do. Many, I would argue, take the game too seriously and become toxic as a result. They’re frustrated with the way the game is progressing and can’t help but take it out on their own team. In-fighting loses just as many matches as weak skills, poor co-ordination or not understanding PvP mechanics.

And that’s why I avoid ranked. Unranked matches provide the same level of progress with about half the stress.

Conquest is also pretty boring to me. I prefer the fast paced action of team deathmatch in the Courtyard. A few more maps for this game mode would be perfect, imo.

wasted.6817:

I wonder why AN continues to make those fugly, yet well done, skins which barely anyone uses?

It’s mainly the method of acquisition and subsequent cost that restricts people from using the BLTC skins.

If you could get ’em more directly, and at a lower cost, lots of people would use even the ugliest skins.

Carapace and Luminescent armour goes with the Pact Fleet skins, imo.

I like this set. Ideal for a Sylvari Necro or Warrior. It’s too bad they don’t release many skins for underwater weapons though. The Mordrem theme would be well suited for that, and I prefer complete sets wherever possible.

AzureSky.3175:

If you wanna be the very best, maybe you should go and check out Pokémon.

/thread. I laughed at that way louder than I should have.

Far as I can tell the benchmarks for PvE skill are high level Fractals and soloing Arah. I’d be pretty impressed by someone who had the infused capacitor and a complete set of fractal weapons on their character (underwater included). I’ve seen a lot of shinies in this game, but neverthat.

I agree, there’s too much junk and too much busywork. Sometimes seems like they’re designing things to keep us busy so we don’t realise how empty some parts of the game are. I still have an issue with junk loot, endless clicking for essences of luck, piles and piles of Ascended materials with limited use, bags within bags within chests. After 3k hours in this game I’ve gotten used to rubbish drops, I just wish they’d streamline more of it. Give me copper and save me those trips to the merchant selling monster parts. That’s fine at lower levels but really ought to end when we start saving the god-kitten ed world. Have luck ‘deposited’ directly to my account after the salvage. There is absolutely no use for the physical essences, except to annoy me.

It’s a somewhat unpopular opinion, but when Ascended crafting was introduced I expected things to ‘scale up’ accordingly. I.e We’d get Ascended drops as often as Exotic prior to the patch, Exotics like rares and so on. Even if most were bound items like the fractal drops, it’d be times better than constant salvage fodder (Perhaps ANet’s offices run on energy produced by our mouse-clicks.)

Things are a lot better now, though. Ambrite weapons and the Carapace set are pretty accessible, and earned exclusively through gameplay. Hexed outfit was practically given away too. I think it would satisfy most of us if every large scale update featured quality skins for us to unlock in-game.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Theme. Elemetnalists, Rangers, and Thieves are all supposed to be mobile, hence the 25% movement speed signet. Necromancers are supposed to be extremely difficult to escape, hence the same thing.

Somehow given their other abilities, I would have expected Mesmer to be at least on par with the Thief’s mobility. Guardian is the ‘tank’ class, so it makes sense that they’re a bit slow.

Lack of a consistent, passive speed boost for these classes is a bit of a pain in PvE.

I deleted two fully geared level 80s, Warrior and Elementalist to make room for new characters. They were both about two weeks old (levelled with crafting and tomes) and had less than 15% of the world explored.

Mainly deleted them for cosmetic reasons, and am happy with the decision I made.

Getting gold to convert to gems in order buy cosmetics isn’t horribly grindy or time consuming, at least with the conversion rate during non-peak times.

There’s dungeons and farming, SP→ gold and regular crafting that add up to a decent sum.

Imo, the real sore spot in GW2’s ‘pay2skin’ system is the cost of transmutation. Store bought items should be unlimited usage, as with the Zenith and Celestial/Hellfire skins.

I definitely agree that combo fields should be explained. I’d been running dungeons for months before I understood how they worked. A basic introduction to combat mechanics would also be helpful (how reflects, boons and conditions, CC etc. work).

The NPE addresses most of the other things you mention, I believe.

Five? It was 7 levels last I checked.

Far as I know all disciplines give 7 levels from 1-400, while those with Ascended crafting give a further 3 levels from 400-500.

Morsus.5106:

I’m just going to quote my response to the last “Get rid of the zerkers” thread.

Let’s say there are some fields that kids like to play on, and Marty wants to play Soccer (football for those of you outside the US). The sign outside the fields says that you can play whatever you want, and so Marty goes over to the kids playing baseball and says that they should all play soccer. The kids tell him that they don’t want to play soccer, they want to play baseball. There are some kids a few fields over playing soccer, but instead of going and playing with them, or finding some other kids to play soccer with, he keeps arguing with the kids who want to play baseball. “The sign says I can play what I want, and I want to play soccer!” He tells the other children, and so the other children ignore him and go back to their game of baseball. Marty tries to play soccer on the same field as the children playing baseball and runs into another child. The children kick him off of the field they’re playing on, and go back to their game. Instead of going and playing soccer with the children who are still playing soccer, he goes to the parents, and tells them how the other children are bullying him and excluding him. The parents scold their children for excluding poor Marty. Marty still isn’t satisfied, and demands that the parents make their children play soccer with him. What do you think the parents are going to do?

This is gold! Lol.

Don’t be an Anti-Meta Marty, be a Zerker Zach!

Mireles Lore.5942:

Can someone define forced for me in this forums context…

Are people actually playing this game against their will?

Are people suffering the threat of violence for not completing their daily?

There’s an Evil Skritt that hops out of their closet, points at them and glares angrily every time they miss a daily.

Players: ‘Man, GW2 needs better rewards.’

ANet: Gives free login rewards

Players: Pout ‘I don’t want them for freeee, this is BS!’

Jesus H. Kitten. I just cannot with this post. I literally…cannot…even.

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

Before this crappy update came in, one could do the daily just by normally playing the game. Now it feels more like a chore and robotic.

Before this update dailies were also essentially pointless. Sure they were easy but we got next to nothing for completing them. I’m a bit surprised so many people are upset about something I thought most of us ignored or took for granted.

There’s content that is challenging for varying skill levels, with varying rewards. For the most part these have been stale and boring though, and players have been complaining about lacklustre loot and rewards for as long as I can remember. I think we deserve to get some some good stuff for it’s own sake.

Monthlies are being removed with the Dec 16 update. The current one will be the last, so if you haven’t finished it…. be sure to do so.

Seera.5916:

The doing of the dailies would also give additional experience. And a little bit each day would likely add up. Especially if they felt like playing the character for longer than it took to get the daily done.

Ah, I’ve never felt like dailies contributed much to my progress.

At this point a lot of the objections to the new system seem unreasonable and whiny, like a person who won a prize and is annoyed that they have to leave home to collect it.

Hard to tell if I’m White-Knighting or ANet really did good with this update. I’m a bit sorry that so many people are bummed about something I think is awesome.

Halthur.9654:

I guess you missed where I posted that I was doing the dailies for the exp on my alts, you know, not level 80 yet. Due to the NPE grind. And that I absolutely detest PvP. And prior to this fiasco, it didn’t matter what level you character was at, you could complete the PvE dailies.

Isn’t the exp gained from dailies more or less negligible? Login rewards give 10 free levels via Tomes of Knowledge on the 27th login. Not a bad trade-off, imo.

Halthur.9654:

Jahroots.6791:

I definitely agree that the choices feel restrictive, hopefully they tweak them a bit for future dailies. Overall I think players will be satisfied, as this change is exactly what a lot of us asked for.

I sure as kitten didn’t ask for this change. And I was too busy playing the game to lurk on the forums everyday to even see if they asked us. Because I would have been thoroughly against this change.

I think some of you are missing the forest for the trees, so to speak. At worst, if one absolutely does not want to complete the dailies, they’ll lose out on 10 AP. Not a big whoop either way.

On the other hand, we’re getting loads of amazing stuff just for showing up!

Seriously, you just log in and collect stuff. How are you guys not psyched about this?

I definitely agree that the choices feel restrictive, hopefully they tweak them a bit for future dailies. Overall I think players will be satisfied, as this change is exactly what a lot of us asked for.

Lothirieth.3408:

It’s not about the time.

It’s not about the rewards.

It’s about choice.

This is understandable, but we do have a choice between a number of activities that are inherently fun and/or rewarding. So far, the benefits of this change far outweigh the inconvenience caused.

Seriously, dailies are just as easy as before, and are substantially more rewarding. The only real change is that you do need to pay attention to them rather than have them ‘running in the background’. If they’d made them more complex and left the rewards as they were I could understand the outrage, but we’re being compensated for the additional effort.

Most players seem to have adjusted to this anyway. Everyone was calling out events in Queensdale, just like old times. Warmed me heart * sniffs *

Yeah, same here. Now that I play PvP and PvE almost equally, this change is amazing. I did like how effortless the previous dailies were, but the rewards were completely flat and uninteresting. The change does make you go out of your way a bit but the rewards are worth it. 10 AP for completing any three categories, and some nice little boosts in addition to the existing rewards (Mystic coins and Karma).

Bellizare.5816:

I may be missing something, but are a bunch of you saying that it should be a painful grind to create a new alt?

They are, as usual. Why, you ask? Because reasons.

Most of us feel the OP’s pain. Although, to be fair, as a frequent power leveller I find the gold and SP costs associated with the new Trait system to the be the least of my worries. The bulk of my spending is on gear and cosmetics.

Two Eles, just to play dress-up. Going to roll another Guard or Warrior eventually when I’ve saved enough gold and Tomes of Knowledge to take me straight to level 80.

cafard.8953:

The whole gear stat/rune/sigil system is in a bad need of a revamp imho. It is crippling experimentation in wvw/pve. I’d like to see a system where you can unlock sets of stats, runes and sigils for gear pieces, and then be allowed to swap them on demand, like the traits work now. For each armour piece, merging a rune will unlock it for that piece. Same for weapons and sigils. As for stats, an option to merge same slot armour/weapon/jewellry bits with different stats into a single item with swappable stats.

This actually sounds pretty neat, and is probably quite close to what we’d get if this were implemented.

I envisioned build saving as involving additional tabs or pages for gear. You’d still need to physically equip the weapons, armour and trinkets on each tab (presumably additional tabs would be bought with gems). For example page one could be a full berserker set, page two soldier and so on.

I think this could add some depth to the game, while tackling some of the current inconveniences.

(1) Each page would function independently, and the equipment on each would be transmuted separately, allowing us more options for cosmetics along with the stat changes. I can’t count the times I found a perfect look for a character, only to come across another one I wanted to try.

(2) It could make weapon swapping for the single-set classes a bit less cumbersome. For example, an Ele can equip scepter/dagger on page one and a staff on page two. Doesn’t fundamentally change game play because you’d still need to leave combat to swap.

My second Ele, Yemoja. Envisioned her as having an ‘Arabian Nights’ sort of theme. Haven’t quite pulled it off though.

Next step is to craft Ambrite weapons (scepter, dagger and staff)

Sober Oni.8290:

The concept of a meta isn’t exclusive to this game. Every MMO you can possibly think of has some form of meta, and that’s because a lot of people want to do things as efficiently as possible. This is pretty much impossible to avoid no matter how many nerfs ANet releases, and honestly going on a pointless nerfing rampage would harm the game far more than metas supposedly do.

People have a hard time ‘seeing the forest for the trees’ on this issue. Meta-gaming has been around since NES days. Remember Tetris? It’s always been infinitely more satisfying to clear four lines at once rather than bit-by-bit. Sometimes you wiped waiting for that one piece, but it was worth it when it worked.

I can see why people have an issue with the min-maxing ‘meta’ crowd. They’re generally unpleasant to run with. Thing is, no one has to play with them if they don’t want to. Outside of Arah and Fractals the more casual groups typically outnumber those with strict requirements.

But I suppose we will have to keep banging on and on about this until a dev comes in and settles the matter, so that whenever this topic comes up we can end it with a quote.

I thought it would bother me more, but I don’t mind waiting in HotM for my matches to start. Map chat is entertaining enough, and it makes us take PvP a bit more seriously, something you have to fully commit to.

Under the old system of 5 min+ queue times this would have been horrid, but even during off-peak hours I don’t have to wait very long.

Blackmoon.6837:

I firmly believe the crux of this issue comes from the rewards mentality, which is in part due to the lack of a unique game play environment. People are so focused on loot, that everything otherwise is either left behind or optimized & utilized to get to that reward in the quickest way possible.

If only Anet had game play that was more complex, meaningful and exciting. Then the reward aspect would be shifted to the combat itself; instead of trying to minimize combat time for shinies. >_>

I know this isn’t the greatest example (not even the same genre), but consider Call of Duty. People arn’t playin’ that for gold. They’re playing it because it’s fun shooting stuff. Apply that same concept to the combat of GW2 and people might not be so strict with meta builds, although you’d still have to consider expanding things via attributes and skills etc.

Fun and engaging combat is desperately needed.

MMOs have always been about character development first, combat second, imo. It’s why the game play is often rigid and unnatural. A large part of said character development requires loot – items for cosmetics, power and fun little diversions. The ‘rewards mentality’ isn’t a problem, it is a reasonable expectation in an RPG. It’s the lack of rewards that’s made the game what it is today.

Call of Duty isn’t an apt comparison at all.

wasted.6817:

There’s one problem for me with hearts and all the other stuff. It’s sure fun the first time around, but even on my second toon it already felt like a drag. I think for the major part, at least for me, the problems lies in “checklist” mentality such world exploration structure have. You go from place to place, in a way being stuck in that one map until you’re done with it.

Hearts and events in the open world are fine, they simply lack suitable rewards. Dry Top and The Silverwastes would be deserted if playing in those zones wasn’t properly incentivized.

I’d argue that we wouldn’t even need an expansion if the rest of the world had similar rewards.

Leo G.4501:

The game is too darn easy! And no, I don’t mean (just) the fights because some encounters still gave me trouble. I mean everything involving an encounter. The gear acquisition, survival mechanics, boons, conditions, damage, it’s all handed to you practically.

The game is ‘easy’ because we have had a long time to master the encounters, as well as videos and guides to teach us. Also this game was made easy because the rewards are crap. We’re meant to spend money to look pretty while bonking lesser beings on the head. Kind of like those rich guys who go on canned hunts for dangerous wildlife. GW2 simply doesn’t work when it’s too hard.

Windsagio.1340:

This is why people hate ‘zerk meta’ folks. You’re immediately in a place where someone not dying is an easy kick. It’s so focused on the theoretical meta that they’ll punish people for not failing.

Simiarly, heartless up there is using the term ‘bads’.

The essence of it comes down to that the thing that makes people mad isn’t the zerker meta itself, it’s that people that insist on the zerker meta are almost inevitably jerks.

Quite true. Meta build parties are almost always made up of whingers and control freaks, and I find they’re only marginally more efficient than groups with a more relaxed DPS spec.

On topic though, it seems like too many people ignore the bottom line of this suggestion. Namely, will it truly change the meta and add value to the game?

And of course it won’t. The only foreseeable results of a change are (a) content takes longer to complete and/or (b) there’s a new go-to stat combo and team comp. This isn’t a desirable outcome for the majority I’m sure. Especially since we’re still running the same stale, old- kitten dungeons for the same crap.

Besides, meta game has nothing to do with stats guys, it’s something that exists in all of us, the players.

Heh. Saw a ranger in PvP who’d named his pet wolf ‘Sheep’, that tickled me.

Behellagh.1468:

There isn’t anything micro about any MMO’s cash shop.

True, and I think there’s a problem with that. I’m sure lots of players (myself included) would love to drop some cash into the game, but don’t feel like most items are worth the cost.

Behellagh.1468:

The exchange wasn’t set up so most players can buy the majority of items they desired for free. Free doesn’t pay the bills. It was designed in a way, IMO, to ween players off of it while making the RMT side of the exchange increasingly attractive for those who don’t mind paying a bit to enjoy the game they’ve been playing for free, beyond the initial purchase price.

Even when the rate was lower I wouldn’t say that it allowed most players to buy the majority of items for free. I had friends and guildies who were around since launch but barely had two gold to rub together. There was still quite a lot of grinding and a fair bit of skill required to earn gold, whether through TP flipping or dungeon runs. Difference is there seemed to be more of a balance between benefits for ‘freeloading’ and cash-paying players. Right now the scales are weighted heavily in favour of cash spenders.

As intrusive as it is, the B2P/Cash Shop system worked a lot better last year. 5g→100 gems was reasonable, imo. Still required a bit of a grind, but it was attainable.

Since then we’ve seen massive inflation where almost everything costs more, but the typical amount of gold that can be earned through game play hasn’t increased to match rising prices.

Also, GW2 doesn’t really feature micro transactions. There’s nothing ‘micro’ about ten dollar+ purchases. The average weapon skin on the TP costs, if one were to buy gems and convert them to gold, approximately one quarter of the cost of the entire game.

Someone asked about this in map chat not long ago actually. Didn’t know the rewards are equal now. I’ve been guilty of playing ranked just for the hell of it (farming reward tracks, mostly), but if the same number of points are rewarded for unranked play I’ma head back there with the rest of the filthy casuals.

The new interface is going to have a lot of new and casual players hopping into ranked matches. I’d advise any of you super competitive types to mind your ‘tone’ and be as diplomatic as possible. Maybe try some humour. Barking orders or raging at your team mates isn’t going to motivate them at all, especially if they barely give a finch’s tit to begin with.

tofumon.5924:

Conaywea.5062:

lol this OP

All that you said was to reduce the gold inflation , less ways to obtain gold so is easier for most players to get cool stuff and the traits so people have more things to spend gold

Wait are you trying to say the new trait system is easier to acquire traits than the old trait system? Cause it is definitely NOT easier.

Also, nothing has reduced inflation at all. Aside from a few mats, everything else on the TP costs quite a bit more, and the consistent sources of in-game gold remain the same.

This is foremost among my overall gripes with this game: too many things are becoming harder or less convenient. Gold → gems is much less feasible, traits are a pain, craft-levelling took a massive nerf. They even took the god-kittened TP out of a few zones as well.

A few posters have offered explanations for these, but all things considered, it’s illogical for a game to become more tedious as it ages.

The new LS and its rewards sort of make up for this though. Sort of.

skullmount.1758:

Except for most players its the loot that makes its fun, or at least repeatable.

This. Whenever I see people write on the forums about playing ‘just for fun’ and talking about rewards being unnecessary, I am genuinely puzzled. Rewards are at least half the fun of any MMO.

Lol. Well, you must be fun at parties.

Bit of a stretch to link ‘social decay’ to someone who just wants to play a game and doesn’t care if he takes twenty minutes to finish a dungeon instead of fifteen.

Stooperdale.3560:

Just to play devil’s advocate, why should a person with alts be able to make more money repeating dungeons than someone with only one character? Alts are not there for farming. Players continually ask for more money from their alts because they want more money, simple. Alts are not an achievement that deserves a reward. Alts are fun. That’s all.

If you think that running a dungeon a second time in a day with an alt is fun then just do it. Enjoy it.

If you have more alts, you need more stuff. It is really quite simple. Every single account bound gate makes alts just a bit more of a burden than they need to be.

‘Fun’ in MMOs means getting stuff. You know it, I know it and ANet kitten sure knows it. You do something, and get an item when it’s done. This is the foundation upon which the entire genre is built.

Agreed. Time and place for everything, really. I remember there was one guy in particular in the dungeon forum who was very, very vocal on this issue. It generated a fairly lengthy discussion as I recall. What is important is that players understand the mechanics involved, rather than just following the meta blindly.

Mesmer’s GS attacks are quite possibly coolest looking and most fun in-game though.

The anti-GS Mesmer thing probably originated in the dungeon forum. And it is a poor weapon choice when damage really matters, but it’s perfectly fine for general PvE.

I don’t recall dungeons giving 26 silver only. Back in the CoF P1 farming days we still got approximately 1g at the end of each path, from various sources, subject to DR.

Hard to say whether things were better before, but I am definitely in favour of per character time-gating.