Guild Wars 2

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.

But back on topic: ideally I’d craft at least two full sets of Berserker gear for my warrior and mesmer. The mes is already halfway there with an ascended GS and sword, amulet and rings. But that dragonite, man. I don’t WvW, not into world bosses at all (less so since the update) and my RL schedule often causes me to miss out the temple zerg trains on the more active servers. I’ve easily got enough materials for another 5 weapons, save for dragonite ore. If this stuff stays account bound and locked behind zergs I’ll probably have to pass on crafting armor.

Draco.2806:

azorean.1850:

…this thread looks like someone complaining about wanting things handed to him…

I REALLY hate this attitude.

This sort of insidious sort of mindset that seeks to make life difficult for everyone just for the sake of wasting everyone’s time. Why would anyone actually think that?

It’s like something Satan himself would tell you when you’re crawling through the waist-deep snow towards an old can of beans: “What? Do you want life to just hand it over to you?”

Yes.

Yes I would like you to hand me a can of frozen beans, Satan.

LOL, this made my day. Someone give this man all the +’s

I’ve never had anything truly spectacular happen, but I’ve gotten some moderately good drops. The most valuable was Carcharias (the lamest precursor, no less) from the final chest in CoF.

I rolled alts mainly to farm dungeon tokens but even after the nerf its still fun to mix things up now and again. Also, each profession has a strength that makes it suited to particular content (e.g. Eles in AC, Rangers for most open-world content) .

Ctrl Alt Elite (Norn Guardian).

Stooperdale.3560:

You’re missing one aspect of cosmetics. Rarity makes them valuable. If everyone in Lion’s Arch was wearing one you probably wouldn’t want it. You would take it for granted and want something else that was still rare instead.

Tell that to the Sylvari rent-a-cops wearing my godkitten 120g+ T3 armour! But seriously, there’s so many ways of personalizing your look in this game if you’re the type to put effort into it, even with the easily accessible gear.

As is there are too many items that are so inaccessible you virtually never see them.

Illogical.6218:

Ooh boohoo, you lost your luxury position of easy leveling

FTFY.

Definitely in agreement with the OP’s bottom line here; there should be more interesting ways of progressing toward cosmetic goals. Not just grinding for gold or hoping to win big with the BLC lottery.

And as far as weapon skins go… it’s time to let some of ‘em flow freely out into the world. There’s been so many sets released, yet they’re all quite rare and often obscenely overpriced. I can’t recall ever seeing someone using a Sclerite weapon. Maybe let some of them just straight up drop from regular open-world mobs ever so often? Like we could have the Wintersday skins as rare drops during December, Zodiac at the start of the new year and so on. It would do little to decrease their prestige, and give the average player a better chance of having something nice for a change.

Yeah, this is my least favourite of all the recent changes (i.e. nerfs) that have been implemented. Craft levelling is still pretty viable, though in spite of it.

Breeze through levels 1-20 by exploring a few maps and doing the race specific personal storyline, then craft and dungeon-swap the rest.

Went through a buncha’ different looks, finally settled on this one.

MithranArkanere.8957:

But for normal creatures, and for veterans and elites within instances that appear in high numbers, it should be random. Something that doesn’t always happen. Defeat 20 monsters, only 2-3 get downed. Defeat a wave of enemies in an event, only a couple of them get downed, the rest go directly to defeated.

Ha! I like this, use RNG to do some good for a change.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Change it to only Champions and above you have to do it on, and I’ll probably be okay with them keeping it permanently.

Fixed it for ya’

I absolutely detest the ‘finish them!’ mechanic and animation, though. Takes too long, looks all dramatic and cheesy. I could get into it if it was a little more ‘Gangs of New York’ and less ‘West Side Story’, but ultimately I don’t see the need for another step between me and my loot.

And on the topic of immersion and making enemies feel more ‘realistic’, my money’s on a cure for the strain of rabies that afflicts most of the wildlife in Tyria. Also, maybe have some of the more lowly bad guys recognize my ‘leet gear and go ’Uh oh, look at that guy. I bet he could kick all our kitten. Hope he leaves when he’s done choppin’ that wood!’.

Of all the things wrong with this game, you’re sick of this? That truly surprises me, because often I don’t even realize when a group member switches until after the cutscene and I’m like ‘Wait, did we have a thief this whole time? Ohhh….’. Lol.

As others have said before, the time difference is usually negligible and most players only do it in the easier dungeon paths. Even when it does cause a substantial DPS loss I don’t mind terribly, its worth helping a fellow player out now and again.

1. More customization options. Cosmetic progression is a big deal for me in MMOs, and while this game does offer quite a few, I feel as though they could be improved on and tweaked a bit. Some new skins or armor sets would be great. Purchased armor skins should be also added to a locker (like the hellfire and celestial sort) giving us the ability to retrieve them more than once. Minor issue, but mini-pets could be a lot more user friendly. They really ought to have their own slot.

2. Gear and stat swapping. Would also be great to have at least one additional gear tab in order to swap stats for different types of content without using the bank. I’d also like to be able to save multiple skill and trait setups (like the masteries and rune page in LoL). Vi

3. New weapon options and unlockable skills. Rangers should be able to use rifles, for kitten sure. Also, I’d like some new elite and slot skills added. Completing a tough quest or event chain in order to find a grandmaster trainer who can then teach you new skills. That would be pretty cool.

4. Cantha/Elona. Doesn’t matter if it’s a permanent area or just LS content, but I think GW2 is really missing out on the human diversity that was added in previous expansions. The existing human areas are just so….generic and boring to me.

5. A Norn mini-game called ‘Asura Toss’. Like crab toss but…. with asura. Come on ANet, make it happen! Lol.

Ahlen.7591:

I think that people really blow out of proportion what an ascended item takes to make. A Greatsword for example will take 9 days, 1-2 hours a day to make. If the materials weren’t time gated, it would take even less.

Honestly? Before I made my first ascended item I too thought the materials were quite high, but after that I realized how little it actually takes to make one.

Yeah, I was guilty of this as well. It takes a lot of gold or effort to reach level 500, but when you get there it’s smooth sailing afterwards. The only real obstacle after that point is how quickly you can gather the account bound items. Actually, its pretty much just dragonite that’s a pain in the kitten, since it’s only attainable through large scale open world events (temples, WvW and world bosses) that either occur on a timer, or rarely have enough active players to complete. Everything else you can work on in your own time.

Its easy enough to buy the ascended inscription and materials. Last I checked the TP it works out to about 60-70g per weapon, which is a prohibitive but not entirely unreasonable cost.

For ascended armor, I’m mostly comfortable with the current setup – although I wouldn’t want to work as hard for a single piece of armor as I do on a weapon. Each piece should require no more than half of the items (especially dragonite!) needed for a single weapon, ideally…. about a third.

I would prefer if other options were available. It’d be great if you could purchase a set with fractal relics or dungeon tokens + gold. However, considering the series of hoops we have to jump through to get any ascended items apart from rings, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to be implemented.

I’d have to say no to this, because craft levelling. I think most players with 3+ characters would agree.

In the open world areas, there’s a few small areas with exceptionally good design. The underwater hylek tunnel in Kessex Hills is the only one that comes to mind right now, that was a real gem to discover.

Some of the fractals have an epic and immersive feel to them as well. The cliffside and snow fractals are my favourites (especially the ‘dark woods’ bit after the elemental fight), and I dig the otherworldly feel of solid ocean.

My vote for worst dungeon overall goes to CM. Dull environment with boring enemies, some of the fights in small rooms completely bork the camera. The bosses and mechanics are mostly unmemorable .

Even the rewards are pretty uninspiring. Bland looking armor and weapons with forgetable stats (I don’t think I’ve seen anyone running with golden weapons), no ‘native’ core or lodestone drops.

kRiza krimos.1637:

If tequatl would be giving 1 certain exotic each defeat, do you know how many exotics would flood market? One teq defeat and instant 100-200 exotics would be injected. And counting how many times teq gets killed daily, it would mean thousands exotics would be coming into market. They would be worth 50s in no time.

That’s fine, since exotic isn’t top tier any more and we need to salvage dozens of them for dark matter to use in ascended crafting.

As a side note it really ticks me off how much effort is put into managing the economy, often at the cost of keeping actual gameplay fun and rewarding.

Sometimes I actually use kitten as a swear word in-game. Kinda fun, really.

Saviourslave.6715:

So, as a community, what are your thoughts on how Anet could make rare gear and loot acquisition a fun, progressive, non-gambling yet intensely challenging and truly “Legendary” experience that won’t be immediately exploited and achieved by those with 100000000000 gold?

Share your thoughts please in a structured and constructive manner.

I think high level rewards (gear, weapons and skins) should be acquired primarily through the game content we actually enjoy – a mix of combat, exploration and puzzles. Having actual quests to do would help this, I’d be in favour of a reputation system for that. Let’s say……….. You’d have to complete a series of tasks for each race or faction that increase in challenge and scope as you level up. As your reputation increases you’re rewarded, or have access to vendors.

Of course, this would require a major overhaul in game design.

Loot should be scaled with the difficulty of whatever activity you’re doing. I’m also fine with it being a ‘once per day’ for the specific task. For example, you solo a champion and get a guaranteed exotic. Same for completion of the harder jumping puzzles. The problem with this though, is that it would disadvantage lesser skilled and casual players. RNG at least screws everyone over, and is equally hated by casuals and hardcores alike, lol. I suppose that makes it fair.

JBDanger.2603:

Also its a pain to alt + tab to a 3rd party timer website to find out when world bosses like tequatl are going to spawn. That should be given to us in game. If they want the living world to feel living, why not implement some plot that a character has given us a com link for when we are needed and when these events are within 5 minutes from spawning, give us a notice like they do with the scarlet invasions. This would kill two birds with one stone and make the world feel alive and ensure the players don’t have to rely on 3rd party sites to find out when the events are.

Or make a seperate chat channel called Rumor and have it say something like Rumor: There are disturbances in the water at sparkfly fen!

This is a great idea. Would be nice for temple events too.

No use? Man, I spent at least a million karma on T3 cultural weapon sets for my characters. Down to aquatics and everything. (I’m OCD about my gear).

Barely had enough left for a stack of obsidian shards to craft ascended with.

Sometimes it’s fun to run with lowbies and newbies. I find this to be especially the case in CM PUGs, I rarely find an experienced group doing that dungeon. The most fun I’ve had in this game in weeks was a CM p3 run with some green and blue geared <80s. Ele kept zerging into every encounter, we failed miserably at the skips, Guard was the first one down in every single fight…Lol.

But it was a blast. Took well over and hour but everyone had enough of a sense of humor that we really did enjoy it.

Problem is most PUGs with lowbies end up like this, they’re either new players who need to be taught or competent but not just contributing enough dps or support (experienced players usually won’t burden strangers with an under level character, because they’d not want to put up with that either) . Dungeon rewards are too important a source of income for many players to take the risk of spending extra time on a path.

Doon.2364:

It’s Arena’s fault. They made dungeons unfit for lowbies.

Yup. I think the base level requirement is misrepresented as well, explorable paths are really better suited to 80s anyway. Most of the gear you can buy with tokens is max-level.

Stooperdale.3560:

Fair is all relative. If a person runs the path twice why should get more benefit with two characters than one character? It’s ‘unfair’ to a person with one character if the person with two characters gets more, just as much as it is ‘unfair’ for the person with two to only get as much as the person with one character. The time spent in the dungeon is the same either way.

A person with alts ‘needs’ the extra tokens for gearing and so on, whereas someone with a single character does not.

I don’t think fairness is relevant here, its a question of what is practical vs. what isn’t.

Awe.1096:

This thread is full of people with the usual mindset of “I completed it, therefore it is easy”. Get of your high horses please and use common sense. I can complete some content and still say it was harder than it should be for what it is and where it is. The definitions of “easy” and “hard” are blurry but to judge them, you need to ask yourself a bit more questions than only a simple “Can I do it?”.

Yup! This really needed to be said.

PopeUrban.2578:

People leaving the game because of this path or things like the new Teq encounter should just go already. If you can’t fire a handful of naurons and actually figure out how to do something as simple as switch to cc skills for a room or kite a mob during a boss fight… I really don’t want a game designed around that level of intelligence.

I hope over time all content is brought to roughly this level. It feels challenging but fair, like the dungeons in EOTN.

Sweet kitteny kitten, No. just no.

As a moderate player I found the dungeon challenging, but beatable. The PUG I joined eventually figured everything out and we kept the mood jovial and lighthearted, but parts of it were pretty frustrating and not fun at all. Other people of course have not even been this lucky.

The game needs content for all skill levels. I don’t think most players want a game that pushes too much past their comfort zone. Hell, a basic skill rotation and some dodging is more than enough for me to feel like a kitten hero of Tyria, and I think a lot of players feel this way, lol. I don’t need to lead an angry horse to water and make him drink to feel like I’ve accomplished something. [/quote]

Lol, ‘Batman’.

doot dee doo

Its actually kind of funny that we’ve got an Anti-elitist defence force pleading their case for the good of the newbies, not realizing that most of the low level and inexperienced players going into dungeons are just little ‘elitists’ in training. Give ‘em a few weeks and if they can actually stick it out, you’ll see. Lol.

Seriously OP? Even if you’re a hoarder these couldn’t take up more than a bank slot or two. I’ve always been contented to use them while levelling alts.

It would be nice if they could be used to forge crystals though.

Ascended is fine, it’s the time-gating and account-binding that sucks.

Yeah this happens to me at every boss fight, and sometimes in dungeons as well. Even when I put a target on a mob for my party to attack, while focussing on it somehow I end up with a party member or some inanimate object selected.

I always melee damage him for a few secs then dodge out and range until he hits the rest of the party with it, hop back in and res any downed or just continue dpsing if they’ve survived. Rinse and repeat as necessary. GS mesmer ftw!

fellyn.5083:

What do you do in game that you don’t accidentally stumble upon any of the ingredients to make ascended stuff?

Dungeons, all day errday. Occasional exploring and personal story (I have 4 characters), events and living story stuff if I like the content. I don’t WvW, it never appealed to me and my aging mid-range gaming PC doesn’t handle zergs well.

fellyn.5083:

You get 30 dragonite from the temples in Orr. You get 15-25 for most of the world bosses outside of the ones in the 1-15 areas and then in wvw you get 5-10 for capturing castles and keeps.

I have never, ever been to Orr and seen a temple event going on. Ever. I don’t WvW, as it never appealed to me and my aging mid-range gaming PC doesn’t handle zergs well. I suppose I will have to start eventually though. As a dungeon and frostgorge farmer, I have no trouble with Empyreal or Bloodstone at all.

fellyn.5083:

Also self gathering materials I didn’t spend a single copper outside of the NPC materials to get my weapon smithing to 500. In fact I made 20g+ doing it. So I don’t see an issue there either.

How long did that take? It sounds very time-consuming.

Don’t interpret my post as a complaint, its just my opinion on the topic. I’ll get my Ascended eventually and apart from the Dragonite, have fun doing it. However, I even though I make time to play and have saved a decent amount of gold, it’s still a considerable grind. Players who don’t have this luxury would definitely have to go out of their way in order to craft Ascended, and not enjoy it.

Yeah, I’ve run with a lot of complete newbies just hopping in expecting fun times and loot, only to have their kitten handed to them a few times and then quit. If a significant portion of the experienced dungeon community has experiences like this on the LFG tool, I think they’ll avoid it and stick to gw2lfg.com for PUGs….or become a lot more stringent with gear and AP checks like in the old CoF P1 days.

The absolute worst I’ve encountered was a <400Ap, 5 signet warrior in AC P1 who kept barking instructions at the other newcomers as if he even knew what he was talking about, and ragequit when we failed to protect Hodgkins.

fellyn.5083:

False. You don’t need to go out of your way to get ascended anything. Just play the game and you’ll get it eventually.

The only problem with ascended is that people think they should be able to get it all in 1 day.

For the sake of argument let’s just overlook the massive quantities of materials you need just to level crafting to 500 and focus on the Ascended drops only.

Bloodstone dust is certainly all over the place. Lots of us are just tossing it out by now, but Empyreal shards and Dragonite ore on the other hand….You have to take part in specific types of content to get it.

Dragonite in particular is a pain, because it’s only available from bosses that spawn on a timer, and often in pitifully small amounts (I got 4 from Maw today). And of course keeping up with these events requires the use of 3rd party sites, as there’s no in-game notification.

I do agree we were a bit spoiled with Exotics though. The relative ease with which even casual players could get max level gear with good stats has really done a lot to alter our expectations.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Which is it, because I’ve read both claims on these forums. Are dungeons faceroll or are they difficult? If they’re faceroll, then it shouldn’t matter much what you get from LFG. If they’re challenging, then do you really want to draw random people you’ve never played with from LFG?

They’re challenging, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. That term is just more of the rubbish hyperbole of elitist gamers. Think about it, if dungeons were ‘faceroll’ there wouldn’t be any need for elitism, would there. It’d be one massive zerg from start to finish, like Scarlet’s invasions.

Some dungeons paths do become easy for experienced players with decent gear and builds, but often one bad pull or failed skip (here’s lookin’ at you, TA) can result in chaos, raging and hilarity.

PUGs work quite well as long as everyone at least has a grasp of dungeon basics, and communicates when needed.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

The LFG tool is for the rest of us, so we can avoid you people.

Why would anyone think the LFG tool is for casuals? Dungeons are the least casual friendly content I’ve encountered in the entire game. Incidentally, the unskilled and inexperienced players in question aren’t typically casuals to begin with. They’re just new. Some gain skills and stay patient and willing to teach, others are just glad that phase of dungeoneering is over and only want to group up with other experienced players. In my experience running with both types of groups helps players improve their knowledge and skills. We shouldn’t try to cut one or the other out of the equation.

And we need to stop with this polarized view of the community. The casual/hardcore split is much less prominent in-game. Most of us want the same things; to have fun and minimize hassles.

I do agree that a filter by achievement level would be too heavy handed. However I think grouping options similar to those on the website would be helpful to all players.

And here they are.

Extended Run – posts will last for 2 hours. Use for content that is harder to find a group.
Speed Run – get in, get out!
Experienced Only – No newbies. Experienced players only
Newbie – I am new to this event, please be nice!
Doing everything – Why skip content when it is there.
Language Preference – Please post your language preference in the comments.

Covers the basics adequately, without offending or alienating anyone.

Aris.7492:

I really don’t see why different kind of groups can’t use the LFG tool. Isn’t that elitism in itself? So people complain about “elitist” groups, but then they want those groups to not use the LFG tool?

Yeah, this.

I’m baffled by some of the views expressed here, considering that the request is a rational one. The LFG tool is for everyone, to find groups to do any sort of content that allows it.

It could be implemented something like this; You want to speedclear? Check that box and find groups running the dungeon that way. Don’t want to? Leave it blank and join regular parties. Everyone wins.

Of course, the dialogue on this forums is always so polarized (casuals vs hardcore), but I find a lot of the PUG dungeon community is somewhere in between. Most of us do want to get in and out as quickly as possible, but we won’t get our panties in a bunch if things go wrong (within reason of course). This seems to be reflected in the listings on gw2lfg as well, relatively few groups identify any sort of prerequisites for joining. There’s lots of opportunities for newbies to learn the ropes, as well as room for more experienced players to have fun, smooth and efficient runs.

Since it was ‘unlocked’ for me I’ve been running my PUGs through the in-game LFG. Ran at least two paths of TA, CoF, CoE, SE and AC.

Here’s a couple things I noticed.

- Not nearly as many listings as gw2lfg.com, as I imagine many people still don’t have it available or haven’t bothered to check.

- Joining a party is nice and streamlined, but some people post LFGs without adequate details, or don’t bother checking the details of the group they try to join or merge with. This resulted in a bit of “zomg, this is p2 you guys!!!” raging/quitting. It does seem that the tool would benefit from some basic features such as a distinction between story and explorable mode, speedclearing vs no-skip, and setting a level requirement, Hopefully the final version includes these.

- There’s quite a few more dungeon newbies, ranging from simply inexperienced to just plain bad. Been grouping with a few uncommunicative players who don’t ask for help, or even say they’re leaving when it becomes too much for them. They just straight up quit. Say what you want about PUGs, but most of the gw2lfg.com community had at least some basic standards for behaviour when dungeoneering.

I think this’ll improve eventually, but the website will probably still be the go-to for the more experienced crowd for some time to come.

Sauzo.6821:

If Anet wants people to do these big events, they need to add something unique to make people want to devote the time needed to do them. Something like each dragon has a chance for a unique skin, not some recycled skin with a new color but an actual new skin. I mean honestly, it really can’t take that long to think up something for each weapon type based on the dragon type. Like Teq weapons maybe drip black ooze and let off green fumes like poison, Jormag weapons can have snow/ice crystals falling off them, and shatterer weapons can be purple weapons with a translucent purple glow around them.

This is a pretty great idea, doesn’t even have to be limited to weapons. A cool back piece or some armour with the boss’ look integrated in its design would make for an awesome trophy.

Ideally it wouldn’t be another RNG mess though, instead have a small amount of items drop that can be used to craft or forge the skin/gear. I know I definitely prefer a little grinding with a a guaranteed reward over a ‘chance’ at good loot.

Well, that seems odd. Which dungeons does this happen in? What class are you playing? I join random groups for TA, CoE, CoF and SE via gw2lfg pretty much daily on my Ranger and no one complains.

I’ll admit to being more than a little apprehensive if I see more than one Necro/Ele in a group though. Those classes have the highest failure rate in PUGS, imho.

Well, this is a real downer. ANet Y U D O DIS???!!

Yaki.9563:

I’m sure there’s other crap too but circumventing time limitations by abusing alts leaves me with little sympathy.

I’m seeing responses like this to virtually every issue players raise on the forums. Do you guys genuinely not see the bigger picture, or are you ‘trolling’ by playing the grizzled old vet?

The game is getting older, and the devs are restricting players’ options and personal freedom. Options and freedoms that were around since launch. You’ve got to consider that these time limitations offer absolutely nothing to players. It doesn’t improve our game experience at all.

Its a real downer for some of us because we found a system, didn’t like some bits of it but we did our best to work within it. Now its changing to make a lot of the work we put in (specifically, alts) worth a lot less.

All the time-gating is really giving the game a sense of ‘oppressiveness’ that’s killing it for me.

Made three lvl 80 chars in the 4 odd months I’ve been playing. Started with a Sylvari ranger, then rolled Human mesmer and Norn warrior when I found out they’re the preferred class for dungeons. Craft levelled the alts to 80, and geared ‘em in full exotics. Don’t think I could have sloughed through hearts, map completion and events again in order to reach the level cap, lol.

I really don’t like this change at all, but I suppose it is fair for one explorer mode path per dungeon to give the ‘elite’ players a challenge. I’ve noticed this in all of the dungeons I’ve run so far (and I almost exclusively run PUGs); there’s always that one path nobody cares for.

As long as the two ‘moderate’ difficulty paths remain unchanged, explorable dungeons make up far too significant a portion of endgame PVE to be hard mode only.