Guild Wars 2

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Kana.6793:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

As a GW1 veteran (some 17500+ hours) there are a number of features that are in GW1 that didnt make it to GW2. Many of these features were as a result of requests from fans, lessons learned from the game or just hugely increased the community aspect of the game.

Servers are needed for WvW.

Actually they’re not. Instead of servers allow the users to select a ‘team’ to WvW for. Keep the same restrictons on changing team as now for servers (limited size, cant change more too often, changing teams costs money etc).

As for server pride, team pride is just as stong. Try telling a soccer or baseball supporter otherwise.

De-coupling servers from WvW, gets you a whole load of benefits too.

O No need to worry about server mergers/population
O Guild influence can be game wide(currently guild members only get the benefits they have earned for the the guild on their server)
O Does away with the need for overflows
O No need for friends on a server to guest to
O The game automatically scales according to population

Sure I remember what GW1 looked like when it was first out, but why throw away much of that evolution and not learn some of the lessons already implemented into GW1

I think the overflows are an evolution of districts actually.

Instead of “where are you?” “AE1” “AE 1 is full” “ok lets go to AE4” we now just right click and pick “join in” (if we’re not automatically placed in the same zone already).

I don’t think guesting is any more onerous that hopping districts either.

Azzras.8041:

stayBlind.7849:

Try out the dungeons if you are looking for challenge.

If you are tired of zergs, roll on a less populated server.

Doesn’t it cost RL currency to ‘roll on’ a less populated server?

It’s temporarily free until populations stabilise. After that you’ll be able to guest on other servers and do anything there except WvW, or pay to transfer fully.

Sorry OP, can’t think of anything but Tengu! They’re just so awesome. Loved them in GW1 and if race changes and Tengu ever become available I’ll make my main a Tengu immediately.

Algreg.3629:

I do not think so, but rather dungeons were designed to make people intelligently avoid damage and use their characters´ abilities to their best – and it seems like a win to me.

Yeah this.

The dungeons aren’t chaos or graveyard zergs if you’re doing them properly. I did a guild run of AC explorable last night and we all came out of it having made money from the run. One guy commented that it was quicker and smoother than his pug of story mode earlier in the week.

Why? We were on TS co-ordinating, discussing tactics before pulls, supporting each other and swapping weapons and skills to deal with specific mobs.

There are tactics for things, the problem is pugging them.

I’ve seen the Grenth event in Orr fail numerous times because some people are doing it properly and the rest just keep trying to zerg it. The biggest failure comes in the phase with the shades. You need to stand in the purple pool on the floor to pick up a buff. Without this buff you do zero damage to the shades. A lot of people aren’t doing that, even with the others spamming in caps telling them they need to stand in the purple stuff. They just stand there bashing away merrily doing no damage at all while the rest of us get overrun with shades and the NPC we’re protecting dies.

If I took a guild group and we did this with no random people around the event experience would be completely different.

Also with the dungeons, there are tactics and ways to counter boss mechanics. If you’re graveyard zerging you’re doing it wrong.

I’m not sure what could be done about this. You could make things more unforgiving and just kill people who aren’t doing things right, but as it is there are loads of people around who are zerging again and again and then complaining that everything is too difficult.

I can think of one suggestion for dungeons at least, don’t let people run back in during a fight. Maybe they’ll learn to do something else if they have to call a wipe when people die. (Not saying remove downed, just stop you getting back in if you’re actually dead.)

That said, I’ve fixed the dungeon issue for myself already. I’m not doing any of them with a pug. The result being co-ordinated, smooth runs and a lot of fun with my guild.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

As a GW1 veteran (some 17500+ hours) there are a number of features that are in GW1 that didnt make it to GW2. Many of these features were as a result of requests from fans, lessons learned from the game or just hugely increased the community aspect of the game.

I suspect the answer to these is ’didn’t make it in time’ but theres a few in which i’m curious as to why they were’nt included as they were a staple component of GW1. Such as
1. Apperance changes
2. A robust alliance system
3. Dedicated language districts
4. More information in the guild panel (last login time etc)
5. Announcement of winning teams in PvP ‘so and so has won a battle in the hall of heroes..’
6. and finally ( and most important to me anyway) why they did away with an (invisible to the user) serverless system and replaced it with a more limiting server based one(I get the server pride thing, but there were other ways of doing the same thing)

Just kinda curious as to why these were omitted or chosen in the design.

Servers are needed for WvW.

Zeke Minus.5720:

It seems as if I’m the odd one out in this thread, but I love Orr.

I enjoy the aesthetic feel, and how it imbues the sense of corruption. Until I came to this thread, I had no idea that Orr was sunk and had been underwater for a time (though the coral everywhere made me think it had been, I had just never known).

I like how dangerous the area feels. I like how you can get killed inside of a base, making it feel as if nothing is truly a sanctuary. While I understand complaints that the enemy density can be bothersome, I would rather it be this way. Paired with the fact that the Orr areas will only see an increase in player activity, this makes sense. I would actually prefer if the “group” dynamic events were tougher.

It is a pain to travel through, but it’s also one of the most exciting zones.

No, you’re not the only one. I love Orr as well.

And I agree with the guy who said the art team did a fantastic job at executing what is supposed to look like a dead and previously submerged island. The atmosphere on Orr is great. I like the weird howling wind noise as well, if you go under water it just cuts out and you’re left with a creepy silence.

By the way Ganadorf, you say you liked the levelling until Orr, but wasn’t it you yesterday telling some guy asking for levelling advice that he should grind mobs to level since this is an “Asian grindfest”?

ColinJohanson.2394:

No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.

On top of a large amount of free bonus content, we will be expanding on offerings in the Black Lion Trading Company going forward, as well as be doing large-scale expansion content down the road.

We’ll cover a lot of the details on the kind of support and plans we have in place over the next month or so on the Gw2 blog and with our press partners.

We do appreciate that you’d like to buy lots of new content, but we’d prefer to give a lot of it to you for free, cause that’s what we think a responsible MMO company does!

Thanks for the response and I’d just like to say that the attitude you just described is why you guys are my favourite games company! <3

It’s also why I’ve bought bank space, dye packs and 2 character slots already, even though I normally spend nothing in cash shops & never buy dlc.

Basen.8506:

I’m not sure how much I like my server, since it does seem pretty empty, deserted even… It’s quite strange, in my city ( Black Citadel ) I have not encountered a single human, sylvari, asura or norn. Do they not have access or do they just decide not to come to that specific area?

They’re just not deciding to go there. If you’re not happy with your server I think transferring is still free at the moment, though I haven’t checked.

Updates go here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_status_updates

I want them to display under names. The final batch of HoM points give nothing but titles, it’s a bit disappointing that you can hardly even see them.

Oudo.5236:

Pretty sure ArenaNet said that they will have free content updates, as well as large expansions to the game

I hope it’s this.

OP, I mean this as a compliment, so I hope you take it the right way! Thank you for asking for advice rather than making one of those threads complaining that the game should be nerfed because it’s too difficult

I would maybe try a warrior using ranged weapons. They’re tough, do good damage and ranged is a lot easier than melee. You can also support by using your banners.

For levelling you could also try a ranger and use 2 bear pets, the bears are pretty tough.

Once you’ve picked a class take a look at the class forum for some tips. Guild Wars 2 Guru has a lot of information as well.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/27-vigil-academy-pve/

The Elementalist is a complicated and squishy class, so it’s really not a good one to start off with.

If you really like the game don’t be discouraged. The dodging and stuff is very different and it can take some time to get used to. Reading guides and maybe watching some videos on youtube helps a lot. For example this one shows you how to circle strafe to help you avoid the mobs while you kill them from range.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUKWeaXZeOY
Plus you’re only level 25 and if you read up on some tips and practice them it should help a lot. As with everything, practice makes perfect

I keep seeing people say that WoW players would have trouble with this game because of the gear system and the lack of a carrot on a stick, but my main motivation for raiding was always the boss kills. Same for my guild, we all valued first kills and clears far, far more than gear. So I don’t really understand any of these arguments about a lack of progression to due gear.

I love these dungeons since they are like little raids. The progression and reward is in clearing all of them, same as with WoW. Gear is a tool to enable you to enter a raid, it’s not the goal. Here it’s not a needed tool, so why would you care about it?

Um OP, maybe you should edit your post to remove the word AFK. People are taking it literally.

He means something to do when you don’t feel like doing hearts or events etc. The time you spend running in circles in Lion’s Arch or /dancing on some random rock.

He doesn’t mean something done automatically for him while he’s physically away from his keyboard.

Archangel.1604:

Kana.6793:

Archangel.1604:

Kana.6793:

Archangel.1604:

Just so people know, not everyone is playing at US prime time.

What time are you playing at then? I see no problems between 6pm-midnight.

5-11pm

JST

On a US server? That’s 1am US pacific time isn’t it? (Please correct me if I’m wrong there, I’m in Europe!) I think you definitely need to be on an unofficial Oceanic server if you aren’t already.

Yup, and I am…

Isle of Janthir

Hmm don’t know what else to suggest really, other than maybe starting a thread asking for an official Oceanic server to try to gather more people who will be out of bed during your play hours.

Archangel.1604:

Kana.6793:

Archangel.1604:

Just so people know, not everyone is playing at US prime time.

What time are you playing at then? I see no problems between 6pm-midnight.

5-11pm

JST

On a US server? That’s 1am US pacific time isn’t it? (Please correct me if I’m wrong there, I’m in Europe!) I think you definitely need to be on an unofficial Oceanic server if you aren’t already.

Archangel.1604:

Just so people know, not everyone is playing at US prime time.

What time are you playing at then? I see no problems between 6pm-midnight.

Rookieevo.1276:

I don’t see why they would stop you from giving your account to someone, selling maybe but not saying “I don’t like the game here are my login details”. Maybe because they figured there would be a lot of people like me AKA perfect customers who buy the game and then don’t use much bandwidth, so they don’t want me to give my copy away to someone who could also be a potential perfect customer.

All MMO’s take a tough stance against people who trade accounts. People need to be put off obtaining other peoples accounts otherwise it gets even more profitable for hackers to steal and sell accounts.

It’s not that bad really, I got somewhere between 200-300 karma for events in Plains of Ashford.

Gunnar’s Hold is still very busy. I was completing low level areas on my 80 last night and there were people everywhere.

You can also use it to buy salvage kits, which saves you some money.

I think some people are taking AFK too literally, he means (I think) while idling around but still at your keyboard. On WoW if you don’t feel like doing much it’s quite relaxing to just do some fishing. You have to press a button to cast the fishing line and then click when you see the bobber move. You get fish to use in your cooking recipes and sometimes a little box of junk.

It would be a nice addition IMO, especially with the gorgeous waterside locations in this game.

SiNoS.2147:

One thing i would add is make it like the HoM vender gear where once you unlock it there are unlimited copies of the appearance item you can claim.

That’s a good idea.

I’ll pass this on in guild chat later. We were just talking about Guild Halls last night ^^

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/18447-guild-info-discussion-thread/page__st__180#entry887047

Aaah Guild Halls too! Great! Hadn’t seen that. Thanks Jezath.

Personally I haven’t seen anyone discouraged in-game, only on the forums so far. On my server map chat in all the zones with a dungeon is absolutely full of people looking for groups for both story and explorable, even in Orr. There are one or two bosses / trash groups that could be tweaked a little though.

What sort of things would you like to see added to WvW?

You’re welcome

Oh about the racial housing, if I recall correctly the housing was going to be added to your home instance, so it should be correct for each race since it would be in your capital.

When you complete a zone you could get a little framed map of it to put on your wall. Also I’d like to display armour and weapons and something to show dungeon progression, like a souvenir from each dungeon cleared. Essentially some variation of a GW1 HoM, but with your GW2 stuff. Maybe a special antiques display for people who have a GW1 HoM as well.

Confirmation window – yes please!

That’s a nice idea! As you say, they’ve always been very creative with their mini-games. It would be good to more.

A gear locker would be pretty nice actually. Armour sets took up so much bank space in GW1 and a locker would help keep things tidy. That or an armour tab in the bank, like the one for minipets.

Being able to display them somewhere in your home instance would be great! Like displaying them in the GW1 HoM.

They aren’t elitist dungeons, people have been pugging them. You just need to find a decent group, make sure you have the right traits and abilities and work as a team. Preferably also join a guild since this makes it easier to find competent people and you have the advantage of vent or TS.

Thanks to the explorable paths there are over 30 dungeons, which is actually a pretty decent amount to launch with.

The biggest problem with the SWTOR raids were the horrendous bugs. We had hours of wiping and resetting due to them, such as the floor being completely missing at Soa and the pylon boss becoming unclickable.

No, no fee – it’s Guild Wars. As the poster above said, you can make a “donation” via the gem store. I know some people who have said they’re allowing themselves a gem store budget per month equal to what they would have spent on their WoW subscription. I normally never go near the cash shops but I’m buying some stuff because there’s no sub and I think the game is worth it.

I think they’ll probably expand the town clothes and maybe those vanity armour skins later on, GW1 has a lot of clothes in it’s store.

Also to the guy saying GW2 is pvp focused with “some” pve content – have you seen how big the world is? And the explorable paths mean there are actually over 30 dungeons.

Yeah FadeXF, you get some from any zone, I got about a bar of it from completing Hoelbrak.

As for the guy asking if I’m high, no I’m not. I’m on a busy server and there’s not much around that hasn’t been killed recently. If you want to grind and get 1500xp in a few seconds per mob that’s up to you. But you could also get an entire level in a few seconds by spamming cooking.

It’s also in my opinion a lot more interesting to partake in all the activities the game offers rather than grinding, but maybe that’s just me.

They had direct trade in GW1 and there was quite a lot of scamming around so that might have put them off the idea. COD mail would be nice though.

Ganadorf.3460:

I agree, this was poor design, but it’s still easy to counteract. First thing to do is to level in a second zone, for the same level range. Also make sure you gather every gathering node, as this gives good xp for no effort, and little time

This is an Asian grindfest though, so naturally, the fastest way to level once you’ve done the quests, is to grind mobs. Try to find mobs that are out of the way, and off the beaten path, as in Guild Wars 2, you get more bonus xp per mob, for the longer it’s spawn has gone untouched. For this reasonl you don’t want to stay in one place for too long, but move around the map grinding mobs around your level. Never go into a zone that downgrades your level, as this will gain you xp at a much slower rate

It’s not an Asian grindfest, it’s an American game with very little grinding. (Yes, NCsoft are Korean, but ArenaNet have a great deal of autonomy.)

Grinding mobs is a terrible way to level as they don’t give much xp.

1. Zone completion gives quite a bit, even city zones.

2. Move between areas, there are multiples for each level bracket.

3. Make sure you do events as well as hearts (always go for gold medals).

4. WvW gives a lot of xp.

5. Gather from every node you pass.

6. Crafting gives loads of xp, especially cooking since it’s easy to level.

You do have an advantage with your traits, skills and gear. And the entire point is that you have to be a bit careful everywhere – that’s what’s so brilliant about it. None of the content is wasted.

As for why did you level to 80, well:
1. Fun
2. Access to higher level areas
3. Access to higher level dungeons
4. The ability to wear level 80 exotics

It’s really easy by 1. crafting 2. following a zerg in WvW. I completed it without even really noticing I was doing it.

You want 100% map completion without completing the map? I don’t meant this rudely, but that’s ridiculous. A vista is a particularly beautiful view, you can’t say you’ve completely explored an area when you haven’t seen the most beautiful scenery in the area.

The vista’s aren’t hard and the map completion is fast and easy to do. If you think this is boring and time consuming you should give GW1 map scraping a try! You had to clear your way through the mobs of entire zones scraping around every corner of every rock, often gaining map completion in increments of less than 1%. Also the in-game progress bar just told you what percentage of that continent you were missing. It didn’t tell you which zones the undiscovered parts were in.

Leave the vistas as they are please!

It’s certainly possible to travel around solo, but it’s a bit faster & (in my opinion) more fun in a group.

Nothing wrong with the zones apart from some bugs.

As for contested points – do you have very few 80’s on your server, OP? On Gunnar’s Hold at least, Orr is very busy and the points don’t stay contested for long. Maybe you just need to give it a week for more people to get to Orr.

I love the game, but I didn’t like the trailer, sorry. I thought it was a bit odd. Also, the dragon spoiler was very annoying.

There’s a lot of explanation & dialogue around. I always know who I’m helping and why. On WoW I picked up and handed in quests as fast as possible without reading a word of quest description since it’s irrelevant and boring and slowed my levelling. The more natural, spontaneous style of GW2 “questing” draws me in a lot more and feels more like a world with people in danger who need my help.

Loving the immersion so far and I really don’t like this idea. It would spoil the “living” feeling of the zones.

Yeah, this would be nice.

I don’t like the bugs, but they’ll be fixed. I do like the danger though, it’s fitting for a high level zombie stronghold. Orr is meant for groups and it’s fun when played like that.

Thanks Anet! I love the game, the world is huge, detailed and I can easily spend hours just running around looking at awesome scenery. I don’t think I could ever go back to a normal questing system, this is so much better. Down-levelling is absolute genius. I love how you haven’t made everything boringly easy. I levelled to 80 without really noticing I was levelling most of the time. So far the dungeons are a lot of fun and feel like small raids, which is great. Oh and the jumping puzzles are great too.

In short – can’t wait for the first expansion

I also want to say thanks for the amount of updates and responses you guys give and for all the hard work bug fixing <3

crismuno.4210:

HoM was a step by step achievement that you could do while doing everything you want, and playing WoW, a farm based game to leech your montlhy fee, isn’t a point that justify the price " FIX " they did

You can do this step by step while doing what you want as well, you don’t have to spam dungeons non-stop until you have enough tokens.

You can say what you like about WoW, but I’ll be doing these dungeons in much the same way as I raided – scheduled guild runs several times a week with a lot of fun on TS as we do them. As an added bonus all the explorables are available and none of them obsolete, so we can choose between them for variety. Plus there are the different paths for each instance.

crismuno.4210:

Kana.6793:

It’s not too expensive at all. You don’t need to get the dungeon armour, it’s a prestige item to show you put the effort into getting it. If you want a prestige dungeon set you need to be prepared to do a lot of dungeons, that’s the entire point. Where is the prestige if they practically hand them out as soon as you get through the portal?

Farming and grindind a dungeon over and over and over and over again until puke isnt a way to gain prestige, is just a bad design choice to high even more the exotic armor price.
And again try to think about it for a second instead of just posting " OMG ANOTHER WHINING THREAD :B ".

The way the exotic was meant before was this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nobleman's_Helm – 25 token for the helm
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nobleman%27s_Pauldrons – 100 token pauldron
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nobleman%27s_Breastplate – 100 token breastplate
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nobleman%27s_Gauntlets – 100 token gauntlet
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nobleman%27s_Legguards – 100 token legguards
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nobleman%27s_Greaves – 100 token greaves

25 token per runs, it’s like 25 runs if everything goes in the right way to gain whole set, 1 run is like about 2 hours of gameplay for a total of 125 hours; now tell me that this aint a long-term achievement

multiply these number for 8 dungeons and it’s 1000 hours for all sets for all dungeons, and keep telling me that this isnt a long term-achievement

Now a single set is worth 300 tokens for a piece almost and the hours of farming-grinding tokens triplicated

It’s just insane

PS
Prestige is not a synonymous of frustrating, gaining an armor doing 25 runs in an hard dungeon with friends is a prestige itself, repeating it over and over again it’s not

I never said it isn’t a long term achievement, it is and that’s how it should be. And no, I don’t think that’s too many hours. I spent over 700 hours on GW1 farming for HoM points and I spent months raiding on WoW each tier for titles and special mounts.

I do the dungeons with friends and guild members only, with Skype or TS. They’re a lot of fun and I love the difficulty level. I’ve done enough WoW pugs to be of the opinion that you couldn’t pay me to pug GW2 dungeons. But that doesn’t mean I think the dungeons should be changed – if they do get nerfed they’ll just become boring.

In short, if you’re finding them difficult my advice would be to join a guild and check your build and the builds of those in your group to make sure they’re optimal for the task.