Guild Wars 2

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Mesmers can trait for speed. They can get a speed increase for how many clones you have.
Guardians have perma speed if you carry a staff and have a small boon duration increase.

This is true, but both examples require the player to actively maintain their speed boost. Mesmer clones typically only last for 10 – 15 seconds (rough estimate) and in the guardian’s case, you’ve got to sacrifice more useful skills for a temporary speed increase. This in no way puts these classes on equal footing with the others that have an always-on speed boost.

The economic ‘meta game’ is what really gets me down. That unholy trinity of the BLTC/DR/RNG where we pretty much have to buy everything, just sucks all of the fun out of the game.

There’s also waaay too much junk. I especially hate that they created an entire category of completely useless kittene items and even made a bag specifically for the crap to go to. Just give me the 16 godkitten ed copper and be done with it, I do not enjoy clicking for clicking’s sake.

Great points, Kanto.

Incidentally, I’ve always felt like a trinity dynamic would have worked quite well in GW2 because its relatively easy to create and level alts. I would wager that most of the dedicated dungeon community has at least 3 level 80 characters, fully geared.

Well, I’m bIack and I usually just make characters I think look cool. shrugs. In every RPG I’ll try to make a toon that looks like me if possible, but none of the faces and facial hair options in GW2 felt right. Incidentally, my first is a sylvari ranger that my mates swear looks just like me, if I were made of leaves. After I got a bit more familiar with the game I just started building my alts to have a particular look that I thought would go well with the best looking armour and weapon sets. Out of the six characters I’ve rolled half are female, only one’s dark skinned and uses the face with the most distinctly ‘African’ features. Kind of modelled her after Jinx from LoL, I think it worked out pretty well.

Then there’s the forum Quaggans who babble incoherently, but are just so darn cute.

Ren.5842:

I must say, while this is a good argument I disagree with it entirely. Levels are anything but pointless in this game – they serve whether people like it or not first and foremost as an indicator of progression. Not to mention the fact that the level number is a great barometer for where on this massive world map a player is meant to be.

That process is an important one – it’s the period of time where a player becomes accustomed to their character, its mechanics and skills etc. Whenever the conversation about buying a max level toon comes up the first argument out the gate is “but the player won’t know what they’re doing/won’t have learned the character”, same argument here, you need a learning curve, levels offer that.

People slam vertical progression, I think, because of all the examples of it done badly, here we have a system where it’s been implemented near perfectly.

Yep there’s a lot of good stuff at endgame, but there’s also a lot of good stuff on the way there too. One criticism I would make is that dungeons seem to be poorly implemented – check out FFXIV for an example of dungeons properly integrated into the levelling process. Other than that, it’s a fully fleshed out and realised game from levels 1-80. It also has multiple starting zones and more content than is needed to reach cap – so mix it up with your alts a little!

On the subject of alts, even mixing it up I admit it can become a little stale. The skill point suggestion, along with the option to sell tome of knowledge on the TP would go some way to alleviating that. But on levels themselves, I think they should stay where they belong – in game!

Good points here. On a fundamental level I think we’re actually on the same page. I don’t think that the levelling system should be removed, as many people do enjoy playing the old fashioned way and RPing and so on, but I think there should be an option to speed the process up after the first character. This option existed prior to the introduction of ascended crafting and was a gold sink with reasonable costs, but unfortunately the XP nerf and TP price increases have now made it impractical for the average player. As a side note, one of my biggest gripes is the way Anet drastically nerfs or changes aspects of the game after we’ve gotten used to them.

As for the learning curve and progression – Imo, it’s actually more enjoyable to explore the world on an 80 than a level appropriate character because you’ve got access to a full build, and decent looking gear. I’ve found that I only truly began to learn to play different professions after reaching max level. You do learn the absolute basics along the way but a full build and traits are essential for figuring each profession out, particularly your role in group content.

My latest project, human thief wearing:

Viper Medium Armor (head and chest)
Human T3 Medium (legs, glove and shoulder)
Honor of the Waves (boots)

Having a helluva time finding the right combination of dyes, though.

Rangersix.1754:

Leveling served its purpose the first time. The second, third and fourth time it’s just tedious waste of time that gates off content for no reason.

The solution is obvious, allow level 80 characters to invest their spare skillpoints into levels for alts. Just don’t do something stupid like requiring 50 skillpoints for one level.

People with level 80 characters should know well enough that you don’t learn to properly play a class until you’ve unlocked its full potential at maximum level anyway. This way you also still leave the option open to level the normal way, for those that like it.

This is a brilliant idea.

Levels truly are pointless in this game. While it is considerably easier to level than in many other MMOs, there’s still an overwhelming sense of tedium because everything you do between between levels 30 and 80 is time-gating filler.

Everything about GW2 just feels like it’s meant to be played at endgame, but somewhere along the line the devs decided to keep a more or less ‘traditional’ levelling structure without really adding anything meaningful for the players to do or attain at intervals between starting and max level (aside from T1 and T2 cultural gear). And of course, most of the player base tries to work around this by power levelling through dungeons and crafting – anything to avoid the wasteland of open world PvE events and exploration.

It would be great if the devs took a clear stance on this, and either made levelling alts easier after your first 80 or added some rewards to the open world maps to encourage players to go out and play in them to gain levels (I’d prefer the latter, to be honest).

^ Depends on what you like to do most.

I’d say go with a mesmer, its a versatile profession. Great in dungeons and PvP, pretty good in general PvE. Only real downside is the lack of a permanent run speed boost. Asuran T3 light armor is one of the best looking sets in-game too.

lordkrall.7241:

Didn’t we have more or less the exact same thread a few hours after Tequatl was updated as well?

Give it a few days and people will figure it out, just as with Tequatl.

Except tequatl still fails most of the time (average and low pop servers don’t even seriously attempt him), and everyone guests to the few ‘pro’ servers to do it, causing massive overflows.

Kinda bummed. I’m not a fan of world boss fights, my PC simply cannot handle zergs adequately. Also, I cannot stand wurms. Actually, I hate wurms. They’re right after quaggans in the list of things I dislike about GW2. It’s something inherent in their design – the evades, the knockdowns, their godawful-ugly- kitten dness.

The marionette is less of a disappointment, and between the two additions it actually seems do-able. Still gets a ‘D’ rating due to the ‘no-loot’ champs. Major thumbs down from this guy.

I’m still seeing that ‘finish them!’ crap. Get it out of my PvE, please.

And as an aside, the toxic offshoots are still cluttering some zones, making map charting on my low level alt a pain. And of course no one’s touching them now. Was really hoping not to have to see these guys after the tower got smashed.

Yeah, I’ve got about 120% base MF and I get quite a few more rares in dungeons.

Its too bad all of the weapon skins that have been added are RNG. Of course, they’re sellable on the TP but it’d be nice to see some of them as rare drops as well. There’s so many sets I never see players using because they are just too difficult to obtain. Might as well not be in the game at all.

Hmm. This could suck unless the end reward is quite generous. And even so, Anet’s messing with one of the cornerstones of RPGs. Kill something, loot its corpse. Over thirty years of beautiful tradition, from Gygax to Sakaguchi!

And for the record, GW2 players go loot-crazy because they’re starved for good drops. If we got good/pretty/useful things across a variety of content there would be no need for dedicated farming.

I like this sort of content in theory, but the massive lag and particle effect spam take away almost all of the enjoyment. It would be better as a raid-type instance, with 12-20 people max.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

pushes the game into rock-paper-scissors with situational builds.

ie: “I see a necro running my way, swap to anti-condition build”

Oh, interesting point. Would have to be PvE/WvW only then. I could live with that.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Nay to hot swapping traits/skills/equipment, even out of combat.

Er…why not? Please elaborate.

At the moment I’m a little frustrated as well, Ascended crafting is wearing me down (I’ve got about 2/3 of what I need for my first suit of armor for my main character) and still no proper options (i.e. a wardrobe) to try different gear and/or builds on my alts.

Overall though, its still a pretty good game to me. I still enjoy dungeon runs and the nightly temple zergs for dragonite, but I really hope the next update offers something to distract me from the Ascended grind. I’ve done (and still do) every bit of permanent content that appeals to me… now it’s time for something new.

Dr Ritter.1327:

theres a difference between grinding and playing. its not a long boring grind to get dungeon armor as it is ascended. your argument sounds like you want everything handed to you

Agreed, it takes an hour or two to do all paths of most dungeons to get 180+ tokens. That’ll give you enough for a full set of armour and weapons in 10-14 days. Perfectly reasonable.

I do agree that it would be nice to add some decent items to the chests’ loot tables though.

I’ve been holding out hope for something like this for a while. It needs to be comprehensive though; we should be able to swap everything – Gear (Armor, Weapons and Trinkets), Traits and Skills when we go out of combat easily like the Rune and Masteries pages in LoL.

This would add a lot to the game. A chance to test out PvE and PvP builds without manually re-traiting every time. I think a lot of players play all content with their most commonly used builds, because it’s just too inconvenient to make changes every time.

Allowing the gear swap allows for both cosmetic and stat changes, something I’m sure most of the community would appreciate. Everyone wins – ANet sells more transmutation stones and armor skins and those of us who dig cosmetic progression get to dress our toons up.

Rin’s top 3 sum up most of what I enjoy in MMOs. Could not have said it better at all. Game play, character customization and exploring make it all worthwhile.

I’ll add a fourth – Immersion. I don’t expect phenomenal story telling, but I enjoy games where the lore, setting, art style and overall game design help bring the world to life.

So much…….dragonite.

I kind of like the idea of open world PvP, but it wouldn’t fit in GW2 at all. For starters, there’s next to nothing going on in most maps.

I’m sure there’s quite a few people who’d form a guild for the sole purpose of ganking and griefing people in the champion trains though, lol.

The population is doing fine but it tends to be heavily concentrated in a few areas. you’re not going to find an active world outside of the farmable areas or where there’s some activity taking place (LS, World bosses etc). But there’s always some chit chat going on in the map channel in LA, the Queensdale champ farm is going strong, and I find dungeon groups relatively easily well after 2 am on weekdays.

Lol!

This is probably going to spiral far out of QoL territory and into another wishlist thread, so I’ma just throw this one out there: wardrobe!

We really, really need some approximation of the wardrobe feature other MMOs have.

I would love to see a new map, preferably one that differs completely from the existing areas. A proper desert, or maybe some place with entirely new species and different architecture would be awesome. They’d really need to add something special to make them worthwhile though, lest it be neglected like last year’s toys.

A new dungeon or world boss, a proper level 80 champ train and maybe even a couple nodes for ascended mats could do the trick.

Swagger.1459:

Jahroots.6791:

Swagger.1459:

- loot goes directly to bag so we can focus on combat better without having to worry about missing rewards.

I think the AoE auto-loot option solves this.

Mine would be:

-A sidebar notifier (right up there with the LS stuff) for world bosses and active temple events would be pretty useful.

-Leave CoE and CoF uncontested like regular dungeons.

aoe loot still requires pressing a button when you’re running around killing stuff. i say no to F to loot all together!

Lol! I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve become so used to spamming the F key that I just about entirely forgot it was still manual looting.

Swagger.1459:

- loot goes directly to bag so we can focus on combat better without having to worry about missing rewards.

I think the AoE auto-loot option solves this.

Mine would be:

-A sidebar notifier (right up there with the LS stuff) for world bosses and active temple events would be pretty useful.

-Leave CoE and CoF uncontested like regular dungeons.

Agreed, even on medium-high settings this game looks pretty amazing. The only downside, imo, is that most of Tyria is extremely vanilla. The landscape feels natural and areas ‘flow’ into one another but everything is just so…..ordinary. Its like playing in a god-kittened Bob Ross painting. Also, too many zones look exactly the same and there’s not a lot of variety to the wildlife and mobs.

Having recently tried Rift one thing that struck me right away was the art design. It just feels like a fantasy game. I ran around the starting area for a quite a while just to look at stuff. Was a far cry from the bandits who apparently get their outfits in the rubbish bin outside Queensdale’s thrift shops, and the centORCs (as I like to call them) that plague kryta.

This is a view I’ve seen a lot of on the forums here, and sadly not particularly well written and overly egoistic. However my question is – Are there many MMOs with significantly more challenging open world combat than GW2? What’s your frame of reference here? None that I have played seemed particularly challenging. There’s always been difficult areas, most of them instanced, but the general game play is typically quite ‘casual’.

Also, your last paragraph makes no sense to me. The very existence of these terms makes the game what it is? Or do you believe that the fact the players acknowledge them has somehow influenced the developers?

In no particular order.

- Combat wasn’t really enjoyable. The downed state just felt ‘wrong’. I’d defeat an enemy solo then someone else in the team would rush in and finish them off. Of course, most of the time I hopped into PvP matches I’d end up on a team getting its kitten beat so bad. Like, 100+ points down with not much of a chance at a comeback.

- I also hate the default PvP armour. I’ve spent hundreds of gold tweaking my character’s looks, and don’t care to spend more to make ’em bearable to look at in an alternate game mode.

- The rewards are only usable in PvP. Actually that’s probably the main reason I don’t bother with it.

Love: PvE Gameplay

Hate: Restrictions (Time-gating, binding etc.)

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No thank you. Limiting rewards helps to curb inflation. If you want to get more rewards, do different content.

(1) Inflation shouldn’t even have to factor into this topic, and it is one of the main problems with this game, imo. They took what should have been a simple tool to help players get stuff, created a large scale economy and then developed a lot of the game’s design around it. That, is the root of a lot of concerns players share on the forums.

Our rewards and virtual income are severely restricted to preserve the stability of something that we never really needed in the first place. We should be self sufficient, adventuring and exploring to get what we need, not grinding and scraping for coin to straight up buy everything. No one’s doing anything but the most profitable activities because there is very little that pays off in this game, and we need coin and mats for character progression – especially now that Ascended crafting has been introduced.

Of course we do need limits, but there also should be a sense of balance throughout the game. The rewards should scale up with the difficulty and scope of the content.

(2) Based on what the OP listed, he/she is doing a lot of varied content. The only rewarding activity missing from the post is TP trading, and I’d hardly consider that content.

I don’t think determining wants vs needs is appropriate for this discussion. As an activity gaming is explicitly a ‘want’ to begin with, it is a ‘luxury’ form of recreation anyway and no one can say for anyone else what is necessary for their enjoyment and satisfaction.

However, re: that section of this discussion I will throw this out there – have a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Approaching its peak are Esteem and Self actualization, i.e. a sense of achievement and respect, being the best you can be (for the sake of argument let’s consider those the real life equivalent of BiS gear). So I think we can all acknowledge that players do need Ascended gear if it is something that they value.

The prevalence of this attitude (speed and efficiency > everything else) says more about the game’s overall design and direction than the players. I suspect very few people do dungeons for their own sake, this activity just happens to be one of the few decent non-TP related sources of gold.

Leather armor is pretty affordable to craft due to the abnormally low price of Elonian leather on the TP (currently <1g, in comparison a Bolt of Damask is around 13g)

This game, like any other, is only as much fun as you’re willing to have. Open up to new things. If you like it you’ll be glad you tried, if you don’t….well, just don’t do it again.

Also PUGs aren’t nearly as kittenome people make them out to be. With the right attitude, even the worst players are a source of entertainment.

Most of the emptier zones shouldn’t exist in the first place. For example; Sparkfly Fen, Mount Maelstrom and Brisban Wildlands are all essentially the same zone with very slight variations. The same applies across Shiverpeaks and Ascalon as well. There should have been way more distinction between zones, as well as an incentives to visit them.

The easiest fix for deserted areas in my mind is having ascended mats drop from DE’s. Prevent farming by making the type and amount you get completely RNG, too.

Depends on your personal taste. Preview all the available armour and weapons on Dulfy and the wiki, get the codes for the ones you like and see how they’d look on your character. I like to go with a general theme when I decide on armour. My human male guard is Canthan (Dragon Jade weapons and a mix of Braham’s and Draconic armor) and I love it, it’s ‘distinctive’ but still class appropriate.

If I wanted to build a more traditional type guardian I’d go for a mix of the pauldrons you get in character creation, Durmand Priory gear and maybe throw some Phalanx/CoE pieces in as well. Either mystic weapons or Pact (for the skin).

The Primeval skin is also quite nice for full coverage, would go well with Godskull weapons. The shoulders, gloves and boots also work pretty well with Gladiator armour if you prefer a skimpy look.

You might want to have a look at this site as well.

http://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWarsDyeJob

Unless you’re a carefree, ‘play how I want’ kind of player I wouldn’t hold out hope for getting an ascended chest, chances are the stats will not match your build anyway. Using it as a skin is alright though, I guess.

Bagel.4598:

They have a good system here, but there are things they could be doing in game for the players for free that would encourage MORE people to buy gems.

Agreed. 800 gems per gear tab would be an excellent addition.

Qaelyn.7612:

Bagel.4598:

We do not need a 5% boost to stats, acquired through being rich or being dedicated to grind.

No, you don’t. So don’t make it, and do what you like instead.

The threads about ascended gear on this forum contain the most overwrought complaining-about-nothing that I’ve ever seen in nearly a decade of playing MMOs.

That’s a pretty big oversimplification. Think about it, MMO players like a sense of progression, whether vertical or horizontal….we need the proverbial ‘carrot-at-the-end-of-a-stick’. We make fun of that expression, but MMORPGs typically aren’t as inherently fun to play as say……FPS games. The reward is half the fun, and the devs know this and have got a white-knuckle grip on all the good stuff. Also, ascended gear is the only substantial addition to the game in months. No one wants to just spin their wheels and repeat content with no real purpose, especially when there IS one which just happens to be a pain in the kitten .

We’ll ignore ascended gear when we have something meaningful to sink our teeth into. That, or quit playing.

Yeah, the bottom line here is a need for multiple ways of obtaining ascended gear. As is, in addition to actual crafting, players need to do a little of everything to get what they need (dungeons and jumping puzzles for empyreal, zergs for dragonite). Ideally there would’ve been ONE ascended account bound material with multiple ways of getting it. This would achieve roughly the same end result; players returning to neglected areas of the game… but the upside being they only have to do what they enjoy. Unfortunately, ANet seem to have decided that the effort required to get this gear needs to be disproportionate to the stat increase (40 laurels for a trinket? gedaddahere!)

As for an endgame cosmetic grind, they’ve totally dropped the ball on this one. I don’t see how we don’t have multiple gear tabs yet. The town clothes tab should have been a separate page for armor, weapons and jewelry ages ago. Think of the skin and transmutation stone sales that could generate.

You’re not really breaking any new ground with this post, friend, but I feel you on this. Ascended gear is best suited to those sitting on piles of gold with nothing to do with it (except make more gold), and that doddering crowd of MMO elder statesmen who remember the good old days when everything took a long time and they kitten well liked it that way! Lol.

ANet did get one thing right with the LS; most gamers have about a two-week attention span. It can be rough to drum up the motivation to pursue any gaming goal that takes more than a week or two. I still maintain that dungeon gear hit that sweet spot for effort vs reward. Three paths daily for 180+ tokens, which could be traded for a full suit of armor and two or three weapons, in just about two weeks’ time. It just felt right. As is, a full suit of Ascended armor is going to require around 300g, with at very least a week’s worth of dragonite farming.

I think most players are going to craft at least one set of armour….eventually, but it would be so much more rewarding to be able to gear up multiple characters, and then move on to something else.

PeterThomas.7243:

Exotics still work just fine… >.>

Irrelevant. The last major additions to the game were ascended weapons and armour, doesn’t matter if you ‘need’ it or not, naturally most players will want to get a set or two.

The cost and effort required are really a bit much, imho.

Rarity doesn’t determine value. A hungry man would probably choose a full breakfast at IHOP over a Gordon Ramsay appetiser.

I know that feel though, OP, my ascended drop had Settler stats.

I’ve done up until about lvl 70 or so, haven’t felt like going back afterwards. The story’s bland, tedious and generally unrewarding. I do like the cultural part at the beginning though. It really ought to end there, everything after lvl 30 feels like filler.

Personal Stories don’t really have a place in an MMO, I find. It’d take far too much effort to make ‘em feel worthwhile. The god I was favoured by, my ’quest’, alignment and origin story…none of these things have any real impact on my open world experiences. It’d be nice if they did, but that sense of immersion based on each character’s place in the world largely depends on my interaction with other players anyway.

Everyone agrees with you and eagerly awaits the update that will rectify this.

And imo, there’s entirely too much bloodstone and far too little dragonite. Empyreal fragments are just right.

Kiayin.3427:

I used to have 7 cosmetic outfits on Lotro :-] [the max allowed for character]. . An outfit for Moria, one for Lothlorien, one for the tundra in Forochel…. Matching my mounts and all that. [http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5480/10959795936_2aec8c0f59_o.png] My kinship even had its own uniform! I ended up filling 300~ wardrobe/storage slots with gear lol. It surely kept me extremely busy. XD I really wish they revamped our cosmetic system.

Nice! Yeah, LotRo had an amazing cosmetic system. I remember grinding reputation points with the Lossoth in Forochel to buy that sweet fur-lined cloak. Good times, good times…

We’ve already got 3 tabs for gear, I’m also hoping GW2 gives us some more robust cosmetic options. I’d be happy if they even gave us one additional slot for combat gear. That’d keep me busy for a while.

I started to lose interest in playing right after ascended weapons were introduced. Even though I don’t care for the character, Scarlet’s Invasion was the last LS update I enjoyed.

Since then I’ve just been keeping myself busy with my neglected alts. Recently I’ve come to realise how much fun Ele is, and I absolutely hated that class at first. Farming a few dungeon paths now and again as well, and ever so often I wind up in a PUG with good folks and we have some laughs along the way. But I’m definitely in agreement with the OP, far too much junk

Unfortunately, I can’t do most of the things I’d like to. Storage issues make it impractical to have more than one set of gear per character, and that bums me out a little. I’d probably have three sets each per character to match whatever environment I’m in at the moment (yeah, I’m OCD like that…lol). And ascended crafting…..sigh.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Jahroots.6791:

Excursion.9752:

Nothing in this world worth getting is easily obtained.

Yes, but we’re talking about Tyria, kitten . The idea of ‘working’ (as opposed to playing) hard for hours just to get virtual items for a character in a fictional world is utterly ridiculous.

Funny you say that because if anyone ever made a MMO where you don’t have to work for anything and everything just gets given to you like in a one-player game, I can guarantee you it would sink faster than the Titanic.

The thing is, a lot of people don’t treat MMOs just as a game, it often ends up being more of a second life, where your character is another you in another world, and thus just like the real world, they set goals, achieve those goals and feel proud that they managed it.

Especially as technology advances and devs can make virtual worlds more and more believable and realistic, and immersion having become a massive thing in MMOs, they are having more and more of a second life aspect to them, and the mental boundaries between virtual and real are really now quite thin.

I agree with you completely. However, I make a clear distinction between ‘working’ and playing the game.

Exploring, fighting enemies, even a bit of gathering are these things I consider to be game play.

Managing an inventory of a dozen bits and pieces, time restrictions and in-game activities that often require the use of a 3rd party website on the other hand, that’s just a job.

Virtual world or not, I don’t think many people (apart from the BLC trading community, perhaps) want this game to mirror the drudgery of real life.