Guild Wars 2

There are two whole continents that were in GW1 that we still don’t have, and aren’t even visible on the map anymore.

The huge zergs that go wander a map and mass slaughter NPCs and world bosses…
- Really have no point.

Some people do them for fun, and that is fine.

Many others get lured in thinking they need to ‘grind this content for the raid’… and then wonder where the raid is…

“Endgame” is a non-concept in GW2.

Either you can find something about the world, story, PvP, dungeons, fractals, roleplay, etc that you enjoy… or its not the MMO for you.

If you’re running some content and starting to wonder why… Starting to wonder what all of this ‘getting ready and gearing up’ is fore…
- you’ve locked onto something you think is endgame, and you better get out of it before it drains your fun out of the game.

vectorfox.6894:

Basically … ranger … be a … power ranger.

Does this mean my ranger has to wear a pink visor helmet and do line-dance combat animations with my team-mates and pre-load every emote and shout with ‘mighty’?

At least you gear will be good for something. In other MMOs they raise the level cap and all new more powerful gear drops from common trash mobs hanging out by the starting portal… Making everything you had before nothing more than vendor trash – because you can’t even salvage it for mats.

Expansions have a way of resetting a lot of things. But at least everyone’s current gear will still be useful. Maybe not in the same way as before, but there will be effective builds to be had without having to start everything over.

Unless you go for the new class. :P

Elegie.3620:

In any case, why not give it a try? Nothing beats first-hand experience! I’d just advise you to try it in a friendly group, as “experienced dungeoneers” may not be forgiving of such experiments (lots of people take the game way too seriously, to the point of insulting people not “playing” meta – whatever game mode).

Regards.

Mace/Shield is what I ran for about 2/3rd of the time I was active after launch. Switching from Hammer to Mace/Shield when I started my Guardian – so that I wouldn’t be looking at the same weapon and so similar of animations on two characters.

On both I tried greatsword and hated the playstyle – not its impact, but its animations and just the audio/visual feel of it felt really alienating to me. Both characters tossed their greatswords before they’d made it past level 5 or 6 or so…

So I’m perfectly willing to be “off” from the meta, and willing to get tossed from a group that insists…

But I do want to know exactly how far off I am. And I think I could live with axe/shield or sword/shield if they were superior enough over Mace/Shield (as in, more than a 15% buff to DPS).

I did try */shield on guardian back around launch, but it had too much ‘magical flashy stuff’ going on, so my guardian went Hammer.

Thank you for the citation, and no I was not kidding.

That build is so distracting, I can’t even see the link to it anywhere in here. :P

Yep, I’ve google everything I can come up with and cannot find whatever build the OP is talking about. I’ve even tried searching Xtinct’s post history…

What is the ‘roll call’ or this build and where?

I should have more clearly clarified. I said I enjoyed Dungeons. What I failed to say was they I don’t really enjoy PvP. I never have in any game: MMO or otherwise.

I did notice in some threads that it is considered a good choice in PvP, for the interrupt abilities. But that’s not my focus.

I’m specifically interested in how much worse mace/shield is in PvE / Dungeons than assorted other choices. If anyone has numbers that would be especially desired.

So I read that in the current game Mace/Shield is “not the meta”, not the good choice.

I really like the feel, combos, and animations of mace shield, and I really enjoy dungeons. Plus, I’m pretty keen on my shield skin which has my guild crest on it…

So the question is… just how much worse is this choice from other choices?

Anyone / anywhere I get exact numbers?

Is this one of those case were people are being picky over something as small as 1-5% DPS, or are we talking something like losing 40% and the choice is just flat out disastrous… or…?

What about other 1-hander + shield options? Axe or Sword?
- is my “problem” going to be that I like the shield, like the mace, like either, or like both?

NoTrigger.8396:

i got my dungeon master title 3 weeks after my first char hit 80 and the only experience i had was leveling from 1-40, because i crafted the other 40 levels.
how can gw2 dungeons be hard?
in wildstar we wiped to a single dungeon boss for hours, HOURS.

first of all we dont cheese through dungeons and secondly without berserker gear the dungeons are even easier because there is more room for error.

for HoT instanced content, i want content that utterly destroys me for weeks and months, just like in wildstar. i want to do pulls for weeks on a single boss to figure out the fight and get a perfect execution done.

Oh man I remember that about Wildstar. I also remember those in my guild that cheered when we wiped so much.

A lot of us felt that sort of feeling of “FINALLY… An MMO says it will be tough, and is.”

Yeah I also hope the expac to GW2 can do that… I may even wait to get it, see what all of you people say first… after running it for a little bit…

cletiscake.9173:

design encounters with more order to them.* The developers need to allow other builds to emerge.

Anet really needs to communicate to us how they want us to play the game. They need to talk about it openly. IF they truly don’t intend for us to stack in corners, they need to describe to us how we are supposed to cope without a Trinity. And if they want to lessen reliance on DPS, how will they go about doing that?

They did communicate it, a lot, pre-launch. Watch some of the hype videos from before launch.

ArenaNet lost its mojo after that. I think they were unprepared for the players they got. They were expecting people to play like they did during the first few years of Guild Wars 1. They were not prepared for the changes a decade of other MMOs brought into the player-meme.

When they zerker thing popped up, they seemed to flounder with no answer for it. It was NOT what they designed around, and it never occured to them, I suspect, in testing, to try and ‘kitten ’ the content… They seem to have tested to make sure all the mechanics worked, and tested to see that if players coordinated well, and ran as a varied team switching up tactics in play, the thing would work.

But they failed to test for ‘cheats’ or ways to ‘break’ the content.

Post launch, at least up until I left… the dungeons seemed to be getting sloppier as they rapidly shot off a number of different styles to see if they could find a quick fix for a fatal flaw in the original concept… And it showed. Thinks like the dungeon on Southshore that had such a weird way to be done looked like obvious ‘testing while live’ attempts to find a way to fix something they were unprepared for…

Its not the developers that need to allow other builds to emerge though – its the players.

But the devs, do apparently still need to fix the ability of their content to be ‘kitten through / run around’.

cletiscake.9173:

I see a lot of people here saying that the only way to kill the Zerker Meta is to make dungeon content harder (less stacking in corners, and less DPS stats), forcing people to run builds with more survive-ability instead of full Zerker. This isn’t the solution. Have you ever tried going into a dungeon with “tankier gear” instead of Zerkers?

I used to run tanky builds all the time. I’ve been away from GW2 for 2 years. I’ve been testing the waters of it the last few days.

The more things change the more they stay the same I guess.

I’ve been running tanky builds again. No problems.

Nobody actually seems to notice. All I notice is that mobs seem to like attacking me over the others a little more, and I’m fine with that.

One way to really kill the stacking meme: making living objects solid.
- No ability to stand in the same spot as another creature.
YES this will drive up lag, but if you do it right, not by that much.

GW1 had this, but only for enemies. I suggest adding it for both sides.

There is already some kind of invisible box around all characters, used for determining if you can fit through a door or jumping in caves and such. Just make it so no other character can pass through that box.

(optionally limit this to dungeons / fractals or jumping puzzles will get ‘griefed’, or… add an ability to push someone – and then jumping puzzles will get griefed in another way… so maybe some limits would be needed)

cletiscake.9173:

a) You have limited amounts of dodges and blocks which means you will take more hits over a longer fight. Because Mobs hit so hard, it’s more efficient to run Zerker and kill everything quickly before you run out of ways to avoid damage.

Technically this is true. In play, I actually don’t have this problem. When I am not staked somewhere, I find other solutions. Including running a thought out build and thinking about the order I use my buttons in rather than just spamming my keybinds.

In practice, I find that I can always find some solution. My reactions might not always be fast enough to get to it… because I can always see that it is or was there (sometimes I notice it too late).

The other thing is… I find this a LOT more fun.

Sure, I am not as efficient.

BUT THIS IS A GAME, NOT MY TAX RETURN. I DON’T CARE ABOUT EFFICIENT, I CARE ABOUT FUN.

Ask yourself this: WHY are you grinding to get 3.26 gold per hour (or whatever)?
- what is it you hope to achieve with that gold?

Buy a new look for your armor, or get a legendary right? Or something like that.

Ok, why? And once you answer that, why again?

At the end of the day, when you finally run out of questions to ask why over… the last question should be ’WTF am I doing here?" and the answer should be “having fun.”

Now just see how many steps between the first question and the last can you skip…

Me? I go all the way to beginning… my playstyle better be fun, or I got other things to do.

So I like tanky builds, I’m going to play them.

If you don’t like tanky builds, fine. Play what you like.

Frankly so far nobody’s noticed I was not ‘doing it right’ and I’ve been using that new fangled-LFG tool the whole time I’ve been back.

And what else is nice about this is… I don’t care if they run zerker, as long as they don’t bug me about running tanky. It actually meshes together well enough anyway.

cletiscake.9173:

b) Not stacking in corners is simply not feasible. Because there is no reliable aggro mechanic, and no reliable way to “tank” damage (due to limited blocks and dodges), fighting mobs becomes a chaotic mess.

This is actually not true.

Things get more complex, but that is NOT the same as not feasible. Back before I took off, my guild ran things without ever using zerker / corner stack runs. We all came from other MMOs – and we frankly didn’t even know you could pull off this stacking stuff…
- and I’ve had the ‘Dungeon Master’ title for over 2 years now… (or however long its been since the Karka Island part of Living Story – that’s about when I got it). Which is to say, I got it running the dungeons they way they were intended to be run, and without any of the gimmicks. All but one of them (I forget which), which I PUGed and ended up in a group of 4 zerkers and myself. But that was just the first time I went to it. I led guildies through it later.

We used a lot of team tactics, careful pulls, mobility, calling targets, coordinated buffs, and other tricks. And we also learned how to do this without much communication – as we often brought 1-2 PUG people along.

A condition dealer should be as dangerous to face as a toon that is focused on power and precision.
- Both paths should be equally viable.

I think recent changes have helped to move the dial more towards condition. I’m not yet convinced it has moved too far. But if it does – for a short while that might be a good thing as a way to convince people to experiment.

Even as of two nights ago, I had a guildie claiming ‘condition damage is useless in GW2’ – so if the dial has shifted to favor condition, not everyone has gotten the memo yet.

He was on an engineer too, as was I at the time, and I just sat there gaping while looking over my action bar at a virtual army of potential conditions… On any day where the daily is ‘apply 3274 conditions’, my engineer hits it on her first PvE pull of the day…

So if I’m dealing with a fellow engineer who thinks using conditions is useless – perception might still be out of whack with reality.

In every other discussion on this kind of topic, I’m usually arguing for Condition builds and being called a troll, noob, or worse for thinking conditions can hurt even fleas…

I certainly hope you folks are on to something and conditions are more potent now. I found them potent before but it took me highly specialized builds to do it.

Posted up my balanced PvE / Dungeon / WvW (NOT bunker) build to my blog last night:

http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/elementalist-build-building-a-better-gandalf/

“My iconic role model here is Gandalf, standing on the bridge declaring “You shall not pass!” You’re not the heavy damage hitter, but you can tank something to a degree, and you bring your own brand of amazing to the situation.

That means bringing an overall package, that can hold aggro in a dungeon, and switch between support, control, and DPS as needed in mid fight."

My blogs gets a little political, but what I have there is mostly a combination of a build and a guide for that build, topped off with some general theory on my playstyle.

My thief build and guide:
http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/thief-build-the-bandito-bruiser/
- A non-stealth ‘shoot them in the eyes and stab them in the guts’ bandito / bruiser build for the thief.

In most dungeon runs, its usually the zerkers who I see faceplanted and calling everyone ELSE out in chat as bad… Repeatedly… pull after pull…

The dodge everything and use zerker gear either only works for a very small set of players, or only in a very small set of content – or both.

For everyone and everywhere else:
http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/guild-wars-2-mythbusting-if-damage-is-all-that-counts-why-are-you-getting-one-shot/

None of those skins are appealing to me personally but I am still glad to see this. Tying the rewards of new skins to doing a variety of content rather than ‘standing AFK next to dragon timer spot’ is only going to help the game.

In time I’d like to see some new skins with less Disco in them. :p
- Something nor so flashy, just normal gear of different fashions (read: no buttflap) than we have now.

But this is a great addition nonetheless.

The only solution to this would be to make what you get in the chest NOT random, but based on total participation starting with the first pre-event:

1. There and participated for 100% of ALL events: exotic
2. There and participated for 95%+ of All events: rare
3. There and participated for 60%+ of All events: masterwork
4. There and participated for all of final event: blue
5. There and participated for only last 50% of final event: white.

- That would change the dynamic a LOT.

While brutal in requiring a lot of involvement, this would also allow for a guaranteed exotic for the really dedicated.

Xehanort.4589:

I know i didn’t tell them i would leave after i get my daily, but reporting me just because i don’t have enough time to complete all the 3 fractals is a bit eccessive.

They told me i’m an idiot, why i ask myself, i’m just playing as i want and at the moment i was just completing dailies and the daily does not force me to complete all 3 fractals.

You were being selfish and rude to the others, getting your gain at their expense.

I don’t think what you did is considered an offense under the ToS, but I would have reported you as well just in the hope that it was.

Devils.3679:

just because you think someone is being rude doesn’t mean that person behind the keyboard is trying to insult you.

The ONLY reason I will kick is rudeness.

Hmmm… well, and being offline / afk – but I don’t count that as a kick as they’ve left and its just cleaning things out.

haviz.1340:

Yasi.9065:

And yes, it works It just doesnt work very well with pvt geared players in a group or with certain mobs that imo dont work properly.

I run with full zerker group and I tested anchoring. During the run, mossman preferred one of the warrior, ettin another one and archdiviner preffered thief. With standard anchor build 0/0/30/30/10 you won’t do enough damage to draw aggro. Not to mention that mobs have different priorities and assuming that just high toughness values would be enough to lean it in favour of anchor is at least naive thinking.

That’s a tank / bunker build. You want to instead get a tanky build:
http://kichwas.wordpress.com/build-theory-how-to-be-tanky-but-not-a-tank-in-guild-wars-2/

- which comes down to a combination of various elements.

Being ‘closest’ or ‘first’ or ‘top DPS’ is unreliable and others can pull off of you just as easily if you went ‘bunker’. The key is doing many different things at the same time.

Also note that too much vitality can impair your ability to generate threat… Knights is better than Soldiers if you want to be tanky – but then takes other active play skills to survive condition damage. This is why guardians have it easy making tanky builds: low health and high armor – two items on the list built in for them. Though if they then go bunker, they lose that “advantage.”

It appears the combination of ‘it’ and ‘it’ is on the banned word list in some situations.

‘it is’ gets turned to a feline reference when combined:

its
it’s

is thakittens usually
is that it’s usually
is that it is usually

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/its.html
- Is this just a case of enforcing proper grammar?

Since the one without an apostrophe is actually the possessive one, and ‘it is’ is the one with the apostrophe.

Reaper.1695:

What has this game come to?

Stay out of the dungeons farmers like, and you won’t face attitudes like this.

That’s basically CoF p1 and 2. Some paths of CoE, Arah path 3, and higher levels of Fractals.

Most of the rest of the game is just fine.

What I notice when I end up in a farmer dungeon, is that it is usually the people who are faceplanted that complain the most about everyone ELSE…

(Had to do them all to get Dungeon Master. That done, I can now avoid those people.)

PS: Why is the conjugation of ‘it’ and ‘is’ a banned word?

tolunart.2095:

The problem isn’t the game, it’s the players.

Yep.

Wrote about it on my first blog:
http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/guild-wars-2-a-rare-intrinsic-reward-based-mmo-or-why-loot-is-so-low/

The game was marketed as an intrinsic reward based game. Too many ON THE FORUMS are stuck in an extrinsic reward model – they were never the intended audience for this MMO though. No matter how hard ArenaNet tries to change the game to please them, the company does not understand their playstyle at a fundamental level and will never meet that bar.

But its attempts will annoy the people they actually made the game for: us intrinsic-reward model types.

Now I’m going to wait for somebody to post up something in reply to me that is an extrinsic reward that they claim is intrinsic, or an intrinsic reward they claim is extrinsic… because invariably people respond to these terms with no clue at all what they mean… :p

Yes buffed bows. 15% damage boost – anyone who was not fool enough to sit there and spam autoattack now does a LOT more damage. The range change is a buff IMO – get closer in to the action where you can be of more use in positioning and where Spotter can be within range of your teammates so they get its bonus as well.

The class got a HUGE laundry lists of buffs… but the Hunters got nerfed, so they whine… While the rest of enjoy our now more potent rangers.

as you can see from posts above me, the farmers have left Orr.

This makes it a much more pleasant place to be in and do events around than it used to be. The people who are still in Orr are people who enjoy the content there. Enough to get events going, and even some major group zerg moments – but not crowds, and not the rude attitudes you will find at dragon timers and CoF.

ORR IS NOW MY FAVORITE AREA OF THE GAME TO PLAY IN.
- The community there has improved greatly with the removal of the farmers.

(Sadly farmers still permeate Arah Explorable, so that is an unpleasant experience.)

Sorean.5379:

Yes,a lot of them actually.
Elementalist: Arcane Blast – Free blast finisher
Mesmer: Blink and Feedback

- I’ve never had Blink on my bar except to try it out, do use Feedback often, but not all that often. Only in dungeon runs where there is a ranged enemy I suspect my group mates are too soft to withstand. And I stopped using that Elementalist one in the level 40s range, give or take.

Entries marked with (.) below are almost all the time. I keep them unless I must put in something else.

Mesmer: Mirror Images, Decoy (.)
Warrior: Shake it Off, For Great Justice (.)
Thief: Signet of Agility, Assassin’s Signet (.)
Guardian: Retreat, Save Yourselves, Hold the Line (.)
Ranger: Signet of Renewal, Sharpening Stone (.)
Elementalist: Signet of Fire, Signet of Water (or Cleansing Fire), Signet of Air (.)
Engineer: Elixir B, Elixir C, Toolkit (.)
Necromancer: Signet of the Locust (.)
- My necromancer is only level 42, so I have yet to lock onto a build-theory for her.

SandruDaniel.4386:

I will start with a quote from the new achievement stuff explained: " Every point that you’ve earned while adventuring across Tyria will count towards exciting rewards"
So Anet said there will be tiers. But how can every point count if there will be achievement tiers?

/facepalm…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_literacy

ESKan.6782:

The consensus on the Elementalist forums is that Arenanet deliberately wants them to be outclassed by everything.

The consensus on the insert name of ANY class here forums is that Arenanet deliberately wants them to be outclassed by everything.

• Warrior: OMG Arenanet hates us, we can’t PvP.
• Guardian: OMG Arenanet hates us, scepter is too slow.
• Ranger: OMG Arenanet hates us, they buffed our bows and gave us 150 bonus precision for self and the whole group that brings us and now I iz confuzeled.
• Thief: OMG Arenanet hates us, we can’t perma-stealth if we attack.
• Engineer: OMG Arenanet hates us, we can’t… um… (what? They can do everything).
• Elementalist: OMG Arenanet hates us, we can’t weapon swap in combat.
• Necromancer: OMG Arenanet hates us, we can’t sustain in PvP.
• Mesmer: OMG Arenanet hates us, we can’t use torment at will and shatter takes a millisecond longer now.

Syktek.7912:

For the real reason: Game is being sold to a wide audience and some countries have their own rating systems. Have to keep some aspects to a minimum in order to get past those rating systems.

Australia is known to ban games for some of the dumbest things, for example. (PROTECT THE CHIIIILDDDREEEENNN!!!!!!)

We (USA) ban for sexualization / nudity, they ban for violence.

Frankly I think they’re the smarter ones on that call. There’s nothing ‘adult’ or dangerous / repugnant about a human body. But violence is hard to ever justify.

Though as neither promotes the real thing:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
(debunks the myth that any media leads to violence)
– there’s no need to ban either. But if you must pick one, better to ban violent imagery than lack of covering.

The problem is that the people who do this cause the dungeon’s triggers to fail to load. Those are the tirggers that tell the server ‘there are players here, load the content in from the database’.
- That is a severe exploit.

Compare this to skipping mobs by skirting around them – that’s just clever play of what is there.
Running past till mobs drop aggro – again quick play to use the system.
Stacking to control mobs position – classic MMO method of handling aggro.

But this… this is breaking the designed content. Forcing it to fail to trigger. They then walk through an empty dungeon on a casual stroll to the end, and collect the end reward after using another glitch to do things to the final boss.

- The only proper response to that is a ban AND a patch…

The trick that is done in CoF path 2 is a pure hack exploit. It should be bannable. We just need to start reporting people who we see using it.

This is not a speed run, or a specialized build. It is a pure exploit designed to ‘break’ almost all the dungeon’s spawn triggers so that they can walk to the end and collect their badges without even fighting the final boss.

Those people need to be banned…

The majority of ranger DPS is in the conditions applied from their weapons. Has this “test” factored that damage in?

I just see screenshots of the numbers that pop up, which are based on direct damage only. Is the added condition damage shown anywhere, including how well it scales when using the other weapon options?

That guy up there is just a random risen wizard. I’ve always assumed he was one of Khilbron’s lackeys. Either a local wizard who work with him, or an apprentice, or just some fool opportunist who noticed the guy’s house was empty and broke in minutes before the place sank.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Kichwas.7152:

- If it lands in fractals that will be a boon to some and a condition to endure for others.

Maybe I’ll try to think of some sort of solution and add it to the suggestion forum.

I can think of one but its addition would be kind of a rude shock to the way the game works right now and probably very divisive:

Made the dungeon tokens from all dungeons identical… and have the dungeon token vendors sell their gear to anyone with both enough ‘generic dungeon tokens’ and perhaps the achievement for that dungeon.

Benefit: any dungeon is good to run to get tokens.

Problem: only the easiest dungeon out of every single option gets run by anyone save for the very few people like myself that enjoy intrinsic ‘run it just for the play of it’ over extrinsic ‘run it for the reward’.

- This problem already partly exists, in that other than people who want tokens from a specific dungeon, most dungeon runners live their entire GW2 lives standing outside of CoF path 1 waiting for someone else to do the event 5 feet down the hill so they can enter the place…
(ok, so I’ve 3-personed that event on a level 69 toon WAY TOO MANY TIMES while watching a crowd of 20+ people standing around by the dungeon door complaining that it was contested and not doing JACK but for being too close to me so that the event scaled up on the 3 of us doing it…).

- So, another mixed bag idea…

Well to be fair, the Charr were trying to push back an invasion by bug-eyed aliens from the Planet Earth.

They failed, and now they’ve had to make an alliance with the aliens from outer space to smack a few dragons around.

As for the Orrians, shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler to note that in the new novel it is mentioned that the Orrian sailing fleet was the most powerful among the bug-eyed space alien nations at the time of Orr’s sinking. Orr invented what was, before the time of that novel, the most advanced sailing navigational instruments.

We can be almost certain that many of its sailors and traders were abroad at the time of the events.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Kichwas.7152:

fractal – they’re random. This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

You can select your first fractal in a very roundabout way

I think you meant it would be bad for keeping “unpopular” dungeons dead (dredge fractal, oh how I loathe you), so I’ll go under the assumption you meant that (and you can correct me if I’m wrong).

I intended it exactly as I wrote it:

This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

Unpopular varies in reason. Some dungeons enjoyed by a number of people are unpopular because they don’t incentivize the ‘gold farmers / bots’. Like CM explorable.

- So as a random fractal people who want to find it have a chance at it.

Good in keeping such an unpopular place still “in the rotation” and thus alive.

The counter view is that some places are unpopular because many do not like the game mechanic to it. Arah explorable – getting past Lupicus. If you know him he’s so easy you might wonder why I list this, but as I’m currently working my way through Arah paths right now I’ve found a LOT of people cannot handle this boss’ mechanic and groups often shatter here, or end up reforming looking for a replacement.

So it can ‘bad’ if you end up in an a fractal that is unpopular because huge numbers of players cannot get past it. Swamp Fractal for example, or Dredge Fractal. I’ve seen many fractal runners when new to Fractals give up returning to them due to those two. My own guild was surrendering due to Dredge Fractal during a 3 month period I was away from the game. My first run of it was brutal with about 1 or 2 hours spent on the final boss alone… let alone the other parts. As a former WoW GM of a raiding guild – who used to never watch the videos (heh), I noticed things they didn’t and flipped the dial on that one… (Dredge fractal is both easy and fast once you figure out where to put your tanky teammates on the first and final pulls – wrong place, horrid run, right place, super fast).

The risk of fractals… being random you have less control over what you get – and if you get the one you can’t stand, that’s very bad. But if you get the one you love despite everyone else not liking it, you stay quiet and have fun at the expense of your teammates time… :p

I foresee Aetherblade being like that. Quite a few people hate the place as “impossible and too gimmicky”. Others have figured out the way it works, and either find it “an engaging challenge” or, as I’ve seen stated one “so easy its not worth my time being bored that much.”
- If it lands in fractals that will be a boon to some and a condition to endure for others.

Hell Avenger.7021:

You guys really want to develop it like a TV show? Take some inspiration from Game of the Throne, not freaking CSI Miami, where every episodes are barely connected.

BUT, But, but…

Mah sunglasses!!!

Can’t be epic without the shades.

Now I know why this was one of the first gemstore items.

mrstealth.6701:

darkace.8925:

rhodoc.2381:

So how they gonna make money without doing classical buy2play expansions?

rng boxes.

Who in their right mind would buy those dragon coffers from the gemstore when you can easily get hundreds of the droppable version for free? Unless the chance to get a ticket from them is 50% (or at least 30%), they simply are not worth bothering with. And if items are made exclusive to gemstore boxes, the player backlash is brutal…and rightfully so.

Yes well…

Somebody done been doing it, or we wouldn’t keep getting the things thrown out there.

But this is also why a lot of gemstore items come as temporary items. That drives up the ‘must buy now’ mindset. For all the people who, for example, complained about the mining pick as pricey and soulbound… I see someone using one every few days – and if in busy areas, multiple times a day on different people.

- ‘limited time sales’ for stuff works.

Nobody has to buy cosmetics. Sure. I’m fine with that. I -do- buy some cosmetics.

But we just want something more substantial ALSO.

I’m fine funding the game with the gemstore… but I’m not fine with that being a reason to NOT give us the missing 2/3rds of the game world… and I’m NOT fine with choppy inconsistent temp story content with its plot told in out-of-game interviews being used as the means to drive me to get that gemstore content.

If we’re going to have a living world, make it a living world, not a selling story.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Other points will just be a back and forth that aren’t very relevant to the main topic so I’ll just say that there are positives and negatives to having both the dungeon and a fractal, and in my opinion adding it to strictly fractals would be better (though if they added armor sets to be bought with tokens keeping them strictly as dungeons would be best).

Mostly I agree except that you cannot select which fractal you will run – they’re random. This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

Wolfheart.1938:

ozma.3498:

PolarisNova.3867:

aspirine.6852:

No expansion will make it a dead game within half a year or less. No amount of living story can give you the effect what a new expansion does.

Can I have your crystal ball please?

Why, because as far as I can tell, instead of getting content all in one big blob (expansion), it’s evolving and coming to us in stages. Is that so difficult to envision? o.o

Well, I think the issue is that the content on offer isn’t actually comparable to what you’d get in a true MMORPG expansion. Even if you took 2 years worth of the kind of content we’ve been getting and offered it all at once, it still wouldn’t be on the same level as a WoW expansion.

For example, in WoW’s latest expansion you got:
- 16 new raid bosses at launch, with 3 difficulty levels.
- 9 new 5-man dungeons with 3 difficulty levels.
- 7 new scenarios (like a normal mode dungeon, but for 1-3 people).
- About 1400 new quests in an entirely new continent.
- About 900 new achievements.
- 2 new PvP maps, 1 new arena map.
- The usual mass of armor skins, weapon skins, mounts etc.
- Pet battle system.
- A new class.
- A new playable race.
- Increased level cap.

Then you have the content patches throughout the expansion’s life cycle on top of that.

As much as I’m impressed (and surprised) by the frequency of updates in GW2, to say it’s the equivalent of an expansion being spread out over time is just plain inaccurate.

Unrelated question.
What did Blizzard release during the 6 months you were charged a subscription fee before releasing the expansion that you had to pay for? Also 2 pvp maps and 1 arena sure looks impressive :p

Most of the time I’d agree with you, and you can even find posts where I trot out how much money I paid for the Dragon Soul raid and how little I got…

But this time I’m going to side with the person you quoted… because of a key caveat he made:

“Even if you took 2 years worth of the kind of content we’ve been getting and offered it all at once, it still wouldn’t be on the same level as a WoW expansion.”

And I’m reading more into that “on the same level” than he might have intended.

Lets look at what LS has given us so far, and multiply it out.

6 months, in which we got:

2 multi-boss dungeons, both temporary…
1 scenario like dungeon (Canach + Canach explorable, not even as much in there as a single WoW scenario, so I am actually being generous to GW2 here).
Roughly 5 ‘hit ’F’ to win quests: signposts, fire dances, etc.
About 50 achievements (rounding here).
About 10-20 temporary events (almost all of them in Southsun.)
About 10 mini-pets
About 2 to 5 weapon skins (because of RNG, your odds of getting more than 2 are super slim. Many never even got 1).
About 5 back armor skins.
3 armor skins
2 new armor stat setups (Settler and one before it I think)
0 new classes
0 new races
1 zone
2 Jumping puzzles (Southsun and now the Aetherblade one).

- Multiply that by 4, and it is still less than a WoW expansion in terms of ‘VARIETY’ and depth.

It is a lot of stuff… but we’d still only have 4 zones and 8 dungeons. But because those dungeons are temporary and last for about 1 month, we really have 1/3rd of a dungeon.

Plus this all comes in as disjointed separate stories, often told on blogs, websites, and video interviews rather than in game. So the gameplay often involves a ‘fix X signs’ and then ‘kill the boss that was behind it all’ – with no link saying how we got from ‘oh, this sign fell down’ to ‘this guy destroying the world must be stopped’. We might not even know who the guy is, how we found him, or even what he was doing…
- Unless we were one of the folks who watched some interview on twitch.tv…

So another thing we’re missing that an Expansion gives: a Plot.
We have a story, but it has no plot.

darkace.8925:

Another thing about zones being added one at a time is they’re going to be jammed full of people, and all the other zones are going to be abandoned by all but the tumbleweeds. Too many people isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but…well, imagine trying to enjoy a scenic hike with your friends and while a marathon is being run on your hiking path. But that’s a personal hangup that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Like going to some national parks on a holiday. Your nature trail is so crowded you could tie a rope link between everyone from the parking lot to that ‘special scenic spot’ that has a few hundred folks standing around it taking pictures and trying to keep each other out of respective snapshots…
- Making you feel like you might as well have gone on vacation to the local mall.

Faerun.3091:

Let’s face it, with everything said, people want to play WoW(or any other MMO that hey liked) in new skin. People don’t want new experience because they are condition by their first MMO they loved.

The last thing I want is WoW, but I will use a WoW analogy when it fits.

Imagine if WoW had launched without Kalimdor or any of the Eastern Kingdoms north of Ironforge.

That is where we are in GW2 right now: Missinf 2/3rds of the core landmass…

That much land, added in tiny gated pieces… how can you avoid it being linear single plotlines. How can it be an open vibrant world like the small portion we have already.

Putting them in as small gated pieces will actually make them feel like Expansions: Like throw away single plot pieces, such as Outlands or Northrend: go there for the event while its on, then ghost town it. Southsun Cove anyone?
- That is not the way to handle 2/3rds of the core landmass…

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Kichwas.7152:

Azure Prower.8701:

I find it amusing people think Thieves are the worst open world PVE class.

Forum readers base opinions on forums they have read – rather than play. This is also why the ranger comes in so low on opinions…

Having leveled a ranger, thief, warrior, mesmer, and guardian to 80 I can definitely agree that the ranger brings less to the table than these other 4 classes.

Oh we’re counting 80s now?

Elementalist, Mesmer, Ranger, Guardian, Warrior, and Thief here. Engineer is close, Necromancer is just past halfway.

I come to the opposite conclusion.

But that’s fine – what I see a LOT of is people who say the class is weak, and then concede to not playing it, or not playing it for months, or show their playstyle flaws in their posts, such as the ones who admit they don’t know how to control their pet, or that it dies a lot from rushing in.

The folks who’s pets die a lot – that shows me the problem with ranger is a skill gap in the players who play it. Often their posts even show that they are not playing ranger, but Hunter. And if you try to play a hunter in this game, of course you will get subpar results…

All of this is already funded by our gem store purchases.

But more power to you if it brings gamer media attention to ArenaNet’s focus being on RNG boxes rather than armor skins and other items players keep asking for.

They hear us, as the new skins from Aetherblade show. But they need to hear it louder.

darkace.8925:

For GW vets, imagine if Cantha or Elona was only explorable a section at a time with two weeks between new sections being added. I don’t know that that’s how new regions/zones are going to be added in GW2, but it’s certainly a realistic possibility. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume it is. In that context, would you rather new regions/zones be opened all at once in an expansion or one section at a time through Living Story updates?

This is my whole problem with this anti-expansion bias horse they’ve been riding of late.

The only way to put the missing 2/3rds of the core game back in, would be in tiny gated pieces with choppy events and too tight of a story – as in each zone just having one over-arching story and event, and then a bunch of empty land…

It won’t be a living world… it will be a living plotline.

Ok, that -IS- how GW1 was… but it will be in stark contrast to how the the tiny 1/3rd of GW2 that we have so far is, and will make the game feel very strange out there in the rest of the land… like you’re being led on a leash, rather than a ‘explore and enjoy it and go off the beaten path’ manner.

As long as whatever is opened, clearly shows the thing will be opened, and that it won’t be constrained and linear with only one thing to do, but that we will return to these places as vibrant places as alive as any of the current zones.

Im Mudbone.1437:

As the topic title implies.
I play as a Ranger in every game that offers this class and is the only character I play because of dexterity issues, but, almost every time I turn around this class is continually hit with the nerf bat.

This is the the issue right there.

The ranger in GW2 is NOT the Hunter in WoW.

It is not a slow play in the back class. Even for a toon that is “physically” in the back.

It is a super-fast reaction constantly on your toes changing up weapons, pets, position, utilities and skills class.

This is a James Brown class: hardest working class in the MMO, fall down in a seizure at the end. Papa needs a brand new bag, or papa’s ain’t getting much done.

Some think that’s thief, but thief might as well be AFK compared to how a well played ranger needs to be done.

For the ‘Hefner’ sit in your robe and grin while the win drapes itself on you class… you probably want something else. I’m going to guess a dual pistol elixir engineer – because that’s how mine plays out. But I’m not sure.

Its perfectly fair to expect a class that can be played by people with physical impairments. But don’t assume it is the pet class just because it is the pet class in another MMO.

If you have mobility impairment issues, consider engineer because they really can stand in one spot and fire away and still do pretty well. That play style is not found on ranger class with much success.

Wait, I thought this class was so broken it wasn’t even allowed to enter dungeons?

:p

Let alone steamroll them…

Azure Prower.8701:

I find it amusing people think Thieves are the worst open world PVE class.

Forum readers base opinions on forums they have read – rather than play. This is also why the ranger comes in so low on opinions…

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Kichwas.7152:

This, if it turns into the way things shall be, will mean an endless series of hastily cobbled together, poorly plotted, un-QA’d, marginal quality updates with a lot of shinies to get through quickly, but little larger substance.

We’ll never see the remaining 2/3rds of the core game: Elona and Cantha – as those are too big to plop into a bi-weekly update.

insert buzzer sound here Wrong!

They could easily have 1 team (or more) set aside to work on a ‘larger’ content piece to be released down the road, while other teams work on the smaller arc stories. Development involves a lot of planning, including future planning. for things just like this. Its not ‘develop, push. develop, push’ That doesn’t work, and if that was how they actually did it, the content we got be a heck of a lot more buggy than it is.

Agile development -> many small, collaborative teams working as cohesive whole.

Look at the messy and small scale nature of what we have gotten and it is exactly how it’s been working. develop → push → develop → push → etc…

Fit me an entire continent with as many zones as the FULL current game has, into this plan…

That’s just Elona. Now do it again for Cantha.

And that is just to get us back to the size of the core GW1 world…

- Can you really imagine putting those in, one zone at a time? Or even half a zone like Southsun…?

That’d be an even worse mess.

Either you leave large empty gaps and come back to them, or it suffers from ‘empires of the small’ – each zone being abnormally small and unusually focused on just one event theme, with odd gates to keep people from walking just outside the village gates…