Guild Wars 2

Chessrook.8643:

So many MMOs out there… every one, in fact… when they release an expansion, it comes out six months, a year, maybe two down the line, with a load of content that gets finished in a week. At most, by the hardcore. And it’s supposed to be a lot of content too, meant to tide people over for ages.

GW2? The Living Story DOES give an expansion’s worth of content… over the period between when the game comes out, and that expansion would have released, doled out in bits over time. Sure parts of it disappear, like the storyline for F&F, but other parts stay… jumping puzzles, mini dungeons, and even Southsun, which got revamped just a few months after it was added, and this is to say nothing of balances or new mechanics. We ARE getting an expansion’s worth of content… just not all at once.

Asserting your favourite MMO is unique as a reason to argue it’s therefore superior, in the face of patently obvious flaws in that assertion .. I point you at Rift as only one of many which follows the same expac-followed-by-frequent-and-regular-updates that you’re saying only Anet provide .. simply shows you’re bereft of anything substantial to justify your assertion.

Viralseed.9362:

After several patches of waiting, this was to be the most promising balance update.

I am disappointed.

You’re disappointed about your class getting BUFFED? Your class is one of thew few not to suffer any nerf damage and you’re still complaining?

/shakeshead

kelman.9451:

Dog.1472:

I like most of the changes, but the one that shocks me is ranger. They utterly destroyed the class, which wasn’t great even before this epic nerf.

LOL they increased our bow damage and nerfed pets a tiny bit, sorry but I love the patch with my Ranger.

50% is TINY in your world?

/shakeshead

How many players were there for this? Estimate, was it a handful or the usual 20+?

cesmode.4257:

This is the absolute grindiest game on the market, which is hilarious when it set out not to be. Sure grind is optional. What else is there to do? See the pretty world? Most people can only do that for so long.

You haven’t played many MMOs, have you, because you can’t possibly say that otherwise.

Lokki.1092:

PvP is the focus of this game. Always has been.

Um, no, a game can’t be said to be PVP focused when PVP is tucked away in its own zones, out of the way.

At the absolute most you can argue PVP and PVE are equal, though you’d be hard to show that the majority of layers ever PVP.

Bright.9160:

I tend to avoid casuals and scrubs and not play with them.

This is a prime reason why the two ‘sides’ well never peacefully coexist.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Arena does not want to hurt the game in any way. People however…

The latest patch notes tell it differently.

thehipone.6812:

Kerin.9125:

Yet again, the PVE side of the game is considered collateral damage to keep the PVPers whining down.

The phrase “nerfed to the ground” is often over-used, but IMO it applies perfectly to what Anet just did to Rangers’ pets.

In Guild Wars Land it isn’t called nerfed to the ground, it’s called Smiter’s Booned

Ah, so THAT’s what ‘booning’ means.

I’ve seen that a couple of times (not in connection with today’s changes) and having only played GW1 for about 4 weeks some time after Nightfall was released I’m totally not up with that game’s memes.

I also note the GW1 Ranger was apparently subject to huge ‘boonings’ as well.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Nick.6972:

And what happens when you get bored of running the same build all the time?
You change your skills and try something now.
I want to play a new GS Guardian build in GW2, I can’t do that, Traits don’t change my skills.

Lol, people have a remarkable ability to NOT do this though. Just look at how many people are complaining because the build they have created is nerfed in a way. You might say they could simply change build? Surely they can’t run the same build the whole time? I think you’d find that actually, then can.

Since I’m one of those he’s referring to .. since we’ve exchanged views on the Ranger nerf in another thread .. I can, let me tell you why.

There are times when I do change playstyle, it’s call being an ‘altaholic’. I don’t like one style unchanging. However, I play this sort of game largely for the ‘adventuring’ if you want to call it that. For me, the best time in any game is the first time through it, exploring, seeing what’s to be seen.

So, I now have 4 × 90s and since I don’t PVP or do instances the only content left is open world events and the like. I use the Ranger, because I want to experience the content, the playstyle I use is irrelevant, whatever works best for me is what I use: and ‘best’ means ‘easiest’.

I have thus for a pet-using class .. in all MMOs they’re the easiest for obvious reasons usually .. and the Ranger is .. or I now should say WAS .. a very powerful pet-using class.
I don’t want to ‘change it up’, I was perfectly happy with it as it was, it did what I needed it to do.

I have never understood the continual demand from a section of the playerbase for change for changes sake, nor for the incessant call for ‘balance’ where there’s no meaningful competition for ‘balance’ to have any purpose.

So Nick, while YOU may get bored with playing a spec unchanging, please don’t try to say everyone else thinks like you and thus feels the need to endure change when they see no reason for it.

I don’t need to be ‘challenged’ all the time, at times I want it to be easy, especially when it’s time-limited content. If I want a ‘challenge’ there are many things I can do without having to sacrifice my ‘eZmode’ option; sadly that’s exactly what I’ve had to do to satisfy others’ calls for ‘challenge’ it seems.

Ameepa.6793:

Well, before Karka Queen there were people here in the forums asking for harder world bosses so that they would require large coordinated groups and more work to kill. Even without better rewards. They got one. Seems to be very popular.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

How very true .. it seems to me many of those calling for more ‘challenge’ have no desire for a moment for it to happen, they’re bluffing when they post such things in the expectation Anet won’t actually do it, they call for it to try to appear superior players .. cases like this show that given such content they run a mile in the opposite direction.

Nick.6972:

Bad players will always go on internet and search or the best viable cookie cutter build and copy paste it while good players will try innovating and creating new meta builds.

And the numbers of those ‘good’ players are in the low thousands, at most, and many are in the hardcore guilds that keep their builds a secret.

Fact is, in all MMOs, there’s a very small minority of players who do the theory-crafting, the majority of the rest are the sheep that follow blindly what these min/maxers dictate .. trying PUGging on a build you’re ‘innovating’ and see how long you’re in that group .. a few will play the game like they want to and thus deny themselves access to content controlled by the min/max worshipers.

MMO players are their own worst enemy, it’s the players mentality that kills off “innovation” and it’s their incessant demand for ‘efficiency’ that means the min/maxers decide how 95% of players play .. that is, if they want to do group content with others.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Kerin.9125:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Kerin.9125:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Sure, nerf the shortbow for the rangers. Now, it acts like a shortbow should relatively to the longbow. Before, it was just like a different longbow.

You conveniently seem to overlook the huge nerf to BMs here.

“conveniently”? Not really … see a couple of posts above mine (by ProtoGunner). A BM ranger perfectly ok with the patch.

He’s a PVPer, he was talking PVP, he makes my point for me .. PVEers are collateral damage to keep his kind happy.

OK, from a PvE perspective then.

Okay, thanks, now you’ve explained your perspective I can at least disagree with you honestly.

I don’t agree with you because I see no need for ‘balance’ in the PVE game, if a spec is ‘easy’ then why should it be nerfed to appease those who want everything to be a ‘challenge’, there are many other options for that.

Rangers (and Hunters and whatever other MMOs call them) are usually the most played class for one obvious reason: they’re EASY. People like playing them!

I do. I have 4 × 90s ATM, Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist and Ranger and Ranger is by far the most fun of them due to it being less stressful than the others: I resent and see no reason why the ‘fun’ factor has to be taken away from me, and those like me, simply to make one out of many specs ‘challenging’ for those who prefer that playstyle.

To re-state, I’m talking PVE here, GW2 is one of the least ‘competitive’ PVE games I play, there is no need for ‘balance’ in PVE; in PVP I entirely agree that ‘balance’ is vital, and I maintain this huge nerf is simply pandering to PVPer whining, I see no history of complaints about OP Rangers in PVE content.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Kerin.9125:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Sure, nerf the shortbow for the rangers. Now, it acts like a shortbow should relatively to the longbow. Before, it was just like a different longbow.

You conveniently seem to overlook the huge nerf to BMs here.

“conveniently”? Not really … see a couple of posts above mine (by ProtoGunner). A BM ranger perfectly ok with the patch.

He’s a PVPer, he was talking PVP, he makes my point for me .. PVEers are collateral damage to keep his kind happy.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Sure, nerf the shortbow for the rangers. Now, it acts like a shortbow should relatively to the longbow. Before, it was just like a different longbow.

You conveniently seem to overlook the huge nerf to BMs here.

darkace.8925:

PolarisNova.3867:

Aside from that, it makes me sad that the place is now pretty much abandoned. Re-introduce the 200% buff and people will soon return there in droves :-P

I’m sure some would return, but I don’t know if they would do so in droves. As long as the Living Story keeps introducing new content, new achievements, and new equipment – especially when they’re temporarily available – I don’t think Southsun’s will ever see the kind of traffic it did during the Canach’s chapter of the Living Story.

I think this is a good point, Living Story now seems to be creating FoTM content that will attract the hordes wherever it is staged leaving the reast of Tyria, if not deserted then severely depleted of players.

Gabe.3976:

I imagine this has got to be annoying for rangers. I mean, not for me—I run mostly longbow, not BM build, and I run birds because that’s what fits the character—but I’m pretty sure I was in the minority.

I run birds too, you missed the massive nerfs to them as well, my eagle is now likely retired.

Yet again, the PVE side of the game is considered collateral damage to keep the PVPers whining down.

The phrase “nerfed to the ground” is often over-used, but IMO it applies perfectly to what Anet just did to Rangers’ pets.

I run a Firefox plugin called RequestPolicy which blocks off-site references until I enable them.

Starting today it is seeing a large number of references to subdomains of cloudfront.net with garbage names, such as:

d1r2pgr9caw5gy.cloudfront.net

With these blocked the pages don’t render at all sensibly, so I have to enable them to use the site. Is this expected behaviour? I’ve seen no mention of web-site updates to forum-en.guildwards2.com and this has every appearance of a site hack.

I doubt it is but some ‘official’ comment on this would be helpful.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

This game’s combat system doesn’t have Tanks/Support/Healers/DPS/Tanks roles of any kind. By choosing a role, you are gimping yourself and your potentials of combat.

SO basically if I like playing healers in normal MMOs, GW2 isn’t for me?

Certainly seems that way if my experience doing the zone boss in Harathi HInterlands last night is anything to go by, my Elementalist running around in Water Attunement got kitten to bronze rewards because she spent her time healing/reviving/debuffing rather than selfishly pew-pewing and letting others die; for which she’s have gold gold without a doubt.