Guild Wars 2

/signed.

No means no. Not “later”.

There is absolutely zero way I am ever going to give any company my phone number. It’s funny how ANet basically tells us they don’t trust us to pick good passwords, but expect us to trust them to keep our phone numbers safe. Well… I don’t.

That and 2-factor authentication is bother overhyped and a complete PITA.

Gosh, I hope not. One thing I never understood was that raiding fans come the ONLY larger MMO not having raids and then complain about their absence when there are dozens of games out there providing what they are looking for. Personally I am super-happy NOT to have all this drama and elitism surrounding raids in this game.

I have the e-mail one set up. Which is why I really don’t want to be bugged with the 2-factor one. :S

They often make Fractal levels I don’t remotely have the daily objective. I just giggle and move on. Thankfully sitting out on a daily is not a biggie and I can still do WvW if I want it badly enough.

Be glad. I got pestered multiple times at login already, but ANet apparently confuses “No means no!” with “No means ‘later’”. I hope they will add a “NO and don’t ask me again, EVER!” button to the launcher one day. There is no way I will ever give them my phone number.

Agreed. The animations are beyond horrible. Which is quite frankly astonishing, given the immense attention to detail ANet put into things like critter death animations. But the female GS animations makes me…well, use another weapon. I just can’t bear looking at them. My norn ranger is swinging her GS like a baseball bat. Even neglecting the total ridiculousness that is swinging a GS one-handed, the animation doesn’t look fluid at all.
But like others said already – this has been pointed out time and again for an absolute eternity, but ANet doesn’t seem to care. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for seeing it improved.

I agree with everything the OP said. 100% It nicely summarizes everything that’s wrong with the current direction of GW2’s content design. I am stunned that despite the mostly disastrous feedback Tequatl got, they are designing more content in its spirit.

I just discovered this thread, please forgive me in case I am posting stuff that already has been suggested somewhere in the past 46 pages.

Guild Wars 2 desperately needs more activities to allow our characters horizontal advancement, for this is what the game is supposed to be all about, no? Currently, I have to admit that I experience times when there is simply nothing to work for me anymore, particularly when the current bit of Living Story is completed or I don’t consider it interesting (unfortunately that happens – and it’s not meant as criticism, just statement of a fact). So what the game could do with is some more long term projects we could work towards, other than the legendary weapons.

I guess what I would love most in terms of horizontal progression are

a) Player housing.

Player housing is awesome for horizontal progression because it’s a cosmetic thing that doesn’t make anyone more powerful, but can offer a lot of motivation. There could be all sorts of quests, both dynamic and static, that would reward little things here and little things there to improve your dwelling with. Furniture, murals, carpets etc.

b) Clothing

“But, but,” you might say, for it’s not that there is no clothing to collect in Guild Wars 2. And you would be right, of course. But for a game that’s a lot about collecting nice looking gear, there is a distinct lack of variety in Guild Wars 2. Let’s face it, the current idea of armour design in GW2 is quite uniform. Medium gear is trenchcoat. Light gear is robe. Heavy gear usually features some version of armoured puffy skirt. And so on. There is little motivation to get more than one set of gear in this game – the trenchcoat you like best, or the robe you like best. In real life we don’t wear the same style every day. One day we might wear a sweater with jeans, the next it’s a blouse with a skirt. What I mean is that an actual wardrobe of -different- looking gear would be awesome to collect. If some of which would actually drop in the game and not -only- the cash store, that is (and someone would finally replace that awful Transmutation stone system with something better!).

What I (personally) don’t want is more achievements of the “Kill 1000 goblins” kind. That’s boring and unimaginative. I don’t hunt that sort of achievement in any game. What I also don’t need is more temporary quests rewarding yet another backpack skin or yet another helmet. What would outright drive me from the game is locking more nice stuff inside more Tequatl-like raid content as some suggested. I left a number of MMO because raiding made me feel like a second class player for not wishing to do that sort of content and consequently not having access to any desirable rewards in these games. I don’t need another experience like that. I bought Guild Wars 2 to have a non-frustrating MMO experience that I can play MY way. As was promised.

If you forgive me the comparison to another game: One MMO to look at for horizontal progression ideas is Star Trek Online. That game really got horizontal progression at endgame level right. There is a metric ton of stuff to do, and all activities at endgame level reward the same tier of gear (just with different stat sets and looks). Reputation projects to work on, a queue full of interesting group instances to run, open world PvE battles etc. There is stuff for everyone and for any mood. That is sort of what I could see Guild Wars 2 moving towards: A number of progression projects to work on that reward cosmetic/vanity items and gear (or even stat gear, as long as there is no additional tier being intoduced – we want horizontal progression, after all!), and a dozen different activities to pick from to fuel these projects. So people can do what they feel like and yet still get the same nice stuff.

Zyphent.2967:

Kimyrielle.3826:

Town clothes are a complete failure as an idea. Why would I buy a set of clothing that cannot be worn in combat in a game where you are in combat 95% of the time? I would never spend single gem for them.

Actually I hope that the (apparent) slow sales of town clothes makes them reconsider the idea and just introduce costume slots one day that accept -any- type of clothing, like the ones Rift has.

Thing is, I don’t really want people running around in boxing gloves, baseball caps, and aviators while fighting a dragon with me.

Town Clothes would be good armor for Activities, as opposed to the current PvP armor setup, but thats only a marginal fix at best.

I would agree, but we got people running around in quaggan and charr backpacks already, anyway. They don’t seem to worry about immersion breaking silly stuff all that much…

Town clothes are a complete failure as an idea. Why would I buy a set of clothing that cannot be worn in combat in a game where you are in combat 95% of the time? I would never spend single gem for them.

Actually I hope that the (apparent) slow sales of town clothes makes them reconsider the idea and just introduce costume slots one day that accept -any- type of clothing, like the ones Rift has.

I have two characters having some ascended trinkets and my ranger has a legendary bow. I have no plans to get any Ascended weapons or armour. I generally don’t grind for gear unless I like how it looks, and let’s just say Ascended armour is really, really far away from being considered looking good by me.

Zero Day.2594:

Valanga.5942:

So, basically we have a thread full of people pointing out that the only strong point GW2 will have against the upcoming competition is the fact that you don’t play a subscription…

Lol, nice. Nailed it for some.

Well…that quote roughly translates to “There are some games coming out that might be decent but not (much) better than GW2, so why should I switch to a game having a sucky business model?”

Which…just makes sense, no?

I stopped reading about TESO when they said it was going to be a P2P (yes, in this time and age this -does- kill any interest I might have in a game). I stopped reading about Wildstar when I saw the first screenshot and their infantile cartoon graphics (I hate that art style with a passion).

So yes, as far as I am concerned, there will be no upcoming MMO anytime soon that could lure me away from GW2.

I -have- admit that while I really love this game, one thing that does bother my greatly is the amount of time they need for virtually everything here that’s not the Living Story. We got so many promises, from precursor crafting, guild and personal housing, new areas and so on. The only thing we got was the LFG tool, which released more than a year after the game’s launch and turned out to be completely underwhelming, to add insult to injury.

We get updates super frequently, but with every new feature, the team can’t seem to make their minds up how to get them into the game. I guess they try too hard to be new and original, when not in -every- case you need to be new and original. The industry solved LFG tools a long time ago, for example. Could have just copied what works in that case. GW1 already solved guild halls, and many games have solved personal housing. Just…take the ideas out there.

My wish for 2014 – get something done to bring the game forward and evolve it. The Living Story is more about going in circles than going forward.

@IceVyper – if the OP had simply asked for more gear variety, I’d be among the first to support that. But that’s not what they asked for. They asked for removal of a a piece of armour they disagreed with for personal reasons. I -completely- tolerate people who don’t want to wear skimpy armour, but these people need to develop some tolerance of their own instead of trying to force their personal views on everyone else by getting the developers to remove revealing armour from MMOs entirely.

Oh, and it’s a widespread misconception (particularly among male players) that -all- female players resent skimpy clothing. There are plenty who wear it, in game and in -gasp- real life! SOME female players who don’t like skimpy armour wrongly turn this into a debate about sexism when it’s actually a debate about prudery.

It’s really sad how in every single MMO having even one piece of revealing armour, some prudes immediately have to rise up and demand its removal, because in the eyes of those people, showing some skin apparently makes you look like you’d work the streets. It’s not enough for them that they obviously have the choice NOT to buy said armour if they don’t like it, but they can’t tolerate other people wearing it either.

I don’t like trenchcoats. I really don’t. Do I demand their complete removal from the game just because they violate my personal standards of beautiful armour design? Nope. It’s called tolerance.

Bifrost, Kudzu, Bolt.

Sunrise/Twilight is ok on a burly warrior, but I don’t like it on mesmers at all for its oversized blade (which I am generally not a fan of).

I am guildless and got one. giggles

While it’s indeed interesting to note that the cash stop has become the primary source for obtaining skins in a game that has been advertised as being all about collecting skins, that hardly makes it Pay to Win.
But yes, I am actually wondering what we’re still playing the actual game for, if everything desirable can be obtained in the cash shop and nowhere else. Except backpieces and helmets (which I am utterly not interested in, as none of my characters ever display helmets, shoulders, and backpacks), not many skins drop in the actual in-game content. At least both my main characters wear cash shop armour as this is the only gear in the game I find not to look horrible…

Yay, a new ranger trenchcoat!!! That’s awesome, for we barely had any trenchcoats for rangers in GW2 yet!!!!

Oh wait..

…scratch the ‘new’ part.

Sorry, my bad.

1. Beautiful art and music
2. Non-competitive open world (no loot-stealing, kill-stealing, material node stealing etc.)
3. Dynamic events instead of linear questing
4. B2P business model
5. Multiple paths lead to same reward instead of dumping everything decent into frustrating raid instances.

Part III

Temporary and gimmicky content instead of expanding the world
I like to think I have a sense of humour. I can giggle when watching a costume brawl. I find the Super Adventure Box funny as in idea. I can even tolerate selling riding gear in a game having no mounts with a smile on my lips. But if there are reasonable boundaries for how much gimmick content a fantasy game can take before turning into a parody of itself, the GW2 devs have broken through them like a raging battle tank many months ago. When seeing players running around in a warzone with plush Quaggan backpacks, or a norn with dragon wings growing from her shoulders, I can’t take this game for serious anymore. We got crab tossing, jumping puzzles, more jumping puzzles, “Run around as a spider” Guild Rushes, even more jumping puzzles, costume brawls etc. And I thought what I bought was a fantasy RPG! I guess I was wrong.

To add insult to injury, said gimmick content crept into the core game in a way that you can’t realistically avoid it. Like several vistas and skill challenges require completing a jumping puzzle. Two fractals involve serious platforming. The developers obviously didn’t care about people like me and the wild camera shaking caused by the poorly implemented platforming in this game making me nauseous in no time.

Last but not least the devs somehow are stuck with the idea that making insignificant changes to existing areas would be somehow better than expanding the world and adding new permanent areas for us to explore. As a result, we got one, as in ONE permanent area added in more than a year. To me, MMOs are a lot about exploring. But GW2 doesn’t have anything new to explore for me, and after completing the world with several characters, the existing world is getting stale and boring more than anything.

Thanks for reading, yes I know it was long.

Part II

Transmutation system
Character customization is a really big thing to me. I love collecting great looking gear and building a comprehensive wardrobe for my characters. I was thrilled that GW2 was basically marketed to me as the game that’s about collecting armour and weapon skins.
But then for some reason they included one of the most punishing wardrobe systems (if you even want to call it that) in any MMO. Not only does it cost six Fine Transmutation stones every time you want to change your looks, which is bad enough. But you can’t remove your skins from the gear without a serious gem store purchase either. So the only “viable” way to actually wear your skins is to buy/make/farm duplicate gear to put them on.
This completely annihilates any desire in me to actually collect skins, for the only economically sound approach to deal with this horrible system is to decide for just ONE look, put that on your gear and never change it again. I do understand the need to generate income to fund the game, but players should never EVER have to pay money to change their clothing. It defeats the basic “collect nice looking things” design approach of GW2 with a near total vengeance. Because – why would I be motivated to farm more nice looking stuff if the game discourages me from wearing it? By all means, make us pay for the clothing, but let us change whenever we want to and without destroying our gear in the process. Other games solved this problem a long time ago – with that thing called “appearance/costume/wardrobe” slots where you can put in any piece of gear that would then override the looks of whatever item you have equipped in your gear slot.

Uniform gear design
I used to play Guild Wars 1, which featured some of the most beautiful gear designs I have ever seen in a game. Particularly most Obsidian sets were gorgeous. I should add that collecting nice looking gear is probably my most favourite in-game activity in MMOs.
So that’s why I have to say I find gear design in GW2 to be more than a little underwhelming.
One of my two main characters is a ranger. I love that class. I really do. But what I don’t like at all is a ranger wearing trenchcoats. And guess what? Ranger armour is trenchcoats, trenchcoats, and more trenchcoats. I understand some people like trenchcoats, and there is nothing wrong with that, but what happened to this thing called choice? Except some of the gem store, cultural and order armour, there is one, ONE medium armour set in the game that’s not some variation of coat. The Duelist set, otherwise known as the ninja-catsuit. Conversely, light armour is always some sort of (more or less skimpy) top plus robe skirt combo. Why is that? Why can’t we have some sort of variety? Why can’t we have pants, shorts, skirts of various length, boots, heels, sneakers, dresses, robes, tank tops, shirts, blouses etc. to give our character that thing called a unique look? You know…like in other games.
In GW2 I feel hard pressed to give my characters a look that I really like. There is something I could nitpick about pretty much every design. The Phoenix light set has an awesome top, but like most GW2 sets, its leg piece suffers from a severe case of Puffy Syndrome. Why do most leg pieces in GW2 have to stand away two feet from their thighs again, resulting in their backside resembling a horse more than a human/norn etc.? Most gear designs suffer from trying too hard to look “epic” instead of keeping it simple and elegant like the Mesmer Obsidian armour in GW1.
Mix and matching could be the solution to get rid of that odd piece of one set and replace with another. But very often, it doesn’t work all that well, as many GW2 sets don’t seem to be designed with mix and matching in mind.

Wall of text coming up.

Part I

Broken combat system favouring melee combat
In theory, GW2’s combat system is fun. I belong to the group that agrees with ANet that eliminating dedicated “stare at other people’s healthbar” healers and “sit there like a duck and absorb hits” tanks was a good move. I also don’t mind action-oriented combat at all as long as it’s not too twitchy (I am a huge fan of TERA’s combat system).
But GW2’s combat system is clear evidence that good intentions don’t always equal good results.
To add some complexity to the role-less combat system, ANet introduced Boons that can interact with other player’s skills. But those boons have a comparatively short range, so what ANet effectively did was eliminating ranged combat from the high end game. Oh yes, I know that people still run bows on rangers and greatswords on mesmers. But sooner or later, someone will kick you from their dungeon group for doing that and call you a n00b. Because high end combat in GW2 is melee combat and it’s not because ranged weapons are bad per se, but because your character won’t be able to share boons with other players unless everyone is balled up tightly. It’s a serious, serious design flaw, turning a game that was advertised as “Play it the way you want” into a “Go melee or go home” game. Yes if you’re stubborn like me, you can still play your ranger as an actual archer, using a longbow (a ranger using a bow…shocking thought, I know!), but better be prepared to get ridiculed by the playerbase at large for it.
Another consequence of the demise of the holy trinity is that combat in GW2 feels chaotic and unorganized more often than not. Mobs will more or less randomly aggro players, who, due to the lack of tanking and healing skills, have only one viable way to counter the unwanted attention, and that’s running around like a headless chicken and wait for the mob to switch aggro to someone else. To add insult to injury, ANet’s idea of difficulty in GW2 relies on one thing a lot more than any other: Ridiculously overpowered one-shot skills. And to escape instant death, players run around like headless chicken even more, trying to dodge those red circles of insta-doom that GW2 keeps spamming around in much greater numbers than any other MMO I have ever seen. Combat in GW2 is basically run, run, dodge, dodge, run, dodge, dodge, get a hit on, dodge, dodge, dodge…ad nauseum. To escape that silliness, most players don’t even bother with any other approach to combat than boon-stacking and massive DPS output. Because the best way to make sure the randomly spammed insta-gib skills don’t wipe the group is to kill the mob fast and thus minimize the time bracket where they can spam said insta-gib skills at you. Which is -the- reason why nobody in their right mind would ever run any other gear than full Berzerkers in this game.
Is this great combat system design? Nope.

Gambling and RNG
Ok, random generated drops are a staple in MMOs. But boy, did GW2 overdo RNG. At least I have never seen any other MMO where the literal centre of the capital city was a slot machine, and the best weapon in the entire game can be only viably produced by playing a lottery in said slot machine. Yes, I am talking about the “dump metric tons of wealth into a slot machine and hope a precursor for a legendary weapon will drop for you” thing. I hate it. With passion.
You know, there is a fair method for assigning very valuable items to players that are too precious to hand out of any single activity: It’s called “Token currency”. Yes, the same system ANet implemented for the dungeon gear. And with good reason. Because it sucks having to kill some boss again, and again, and again and again and never getting that chest piece you’re after, because RNG always makes it drop the legs – and how often did we see stuff like that in MMOs? Tokens eliminate that issue by making the process to achieve a valuable item determinate instead of totally random and unpredictable.
At least nobody will ever be able to convince me that it’s fair randomly making one player filthy rich by dumping a precursor on them out of the blue. The way GW2 is assigning its most precious drops is akin to someone dropping a million dollars on a sidewalk for some random person to pick up. It’s a completely arbitrary and absolutely undeserved windfall gain. While the way it should be is equal work for equal reward.

Gaming communities are generally more toxic than your average social group. The amount of vulgar immature trash-talkers in any online game ranges from close to 100% in PvP heavy games like League of Legend to a still significant group in more casual MMO games (GW2 is actually one of the more mature gaming communities around, sad as is…). I have no idea why many people think being a complete moron is ok in games. It’s probably because gaming culture was originally founded by teenage boys who sometimes seem to think behavior like that is cool or so. At least that’s my personal explanation for that. Game devs never really cracked down on that sort of behaviour – probably because they are so many immature trash-talkers buying games that their revenue is considered needed by the devs. So all you can really do is making generous use of the /ignore function while keeping adding actually nice people to your friends list to play and chat with them.

maxinion.8396:

Kimyrielle.3826:

The blame needs to be put on ANet for designing such a horribly broken combat system that makes melee a vastly better choice than anything ranged in pretty much any imaginable situation.

That’s only really true in dungeons. Range has its place in open world and in WvW and in PvP. Only one of the ~4 types of content the game offers is really stacked against range— that’s not so bad.

I can’t comment on sPvP for I don’t play that content, but in the open world, melee combat is in theory just as superior to range as in dungeons, because the same combat mechanics apply. The only difference is that people are less concerned with maximizing damage output and minimizing the time spent playing the game there. Also, people don’t run this type of content in organized groups -that- often, so boon stacking has less of an impact there.
In WvW, there are -some- situations where range is useful, yes. Namely barraging enemy zergs in chokepoints and putting suppression fire on enemy battlements. If that’s enough to consider range on par with melee is in the eye of the beholder, particularly since boon stacking is a staple for any organized zerg vs. zerg combat, too.

Both sides are technically correct and neither is to blame.

You can’t blame rangers (many of whom rolled that class specifically to play a -ranged- class, mind you!) for not wanting to be shoehorned into an extremely unfun to use melee weapon (filing tax returns is a lot more fun than using Sword as a ranger, really).

You can’t blame the rest of the group for not wanting to have a character around who doesn’t maximize their damage potential.

The blame needs to be put on ANet for designing such a horribly broken combat system that makes melee a vastly better choice than anything ranged in pretty much any imaginable situation.

No aspect about Ascended gear has been alt-friendly so far. I wouldn’t keep my hopes up.

I totally agree. I am a tad tired of being regarded a noob player just because I prefer to play my ranger as an actual archer, using a longbow. Is it really such a shocking thought that I want to be a ranged class in a MMO, particularly when I roll a class that is traditionally played as a ranged class in pretty much every MMO in history? In GW2, people will laugh at you for doing it, at least. Because the current combat system is more than a little broken in making melee way, way superior in every regard to any ranged choice, for precisely the reasons you listed.

SHM.7628:

You’re right. In the end I think they’ll favor the players most likely to use the cash shop. Probably the hardcore.

Mind you that casual players outnumber hardcores by at least an order of magnitude, so guess where the money really is?

Myself, I am a casual attitude player playing a hardcore amount of time, and I don’t think ANet can complain about my cash shop revenue. shrug

What is true is that it’s a myth that a game can cater to both casual and hardcore players in the long run with any hope to satisfy both. It can’t. More likely it’s going to turn into an equal opportunity offender this way, satisfying neither group. Ascended gear is an example of that. Casual players mind it for being gear progression in the first place. Hardcore players mind it for it not being needed in any (challenging) content in the game.

In the end, GW2 needs to decide what it wants to be.

Rangers are popular among people who want to play an archer, because that’s their most traditional archetype (I am one of them too – if I had wanted to play a sword and board class, I’d have rolled a warrior and not a ranger, really!).
Problem only is that due to the badly designed Boon system and boons being so ridiculously short ranged, ranged combat in GW2 is kitten by design. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the elitists are then picking on anyone playing…well…ANY ranged class in this game. It’s not the ranger’s fault. The problem is the combat system favouring melee combat and players tightly balling up to the point of it being broken.

SHM.7628:

Kimyrielle.3826:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Whether it has an endgame or not, every game needs progressive difficulty with a purpose for it.

I stopped reading there, because I totally disagree with that. That’s YOUR opinion and not the law of nature you make it sound as.

I think you did yourself a disservice by not finishing his post right there. He was starting to make a a pretty valid point. The game progresses until about level 70, and then progression grinds to a halt.

I am by no means hardcore and finished the maps by the level 75 with green level 70’s gear. If I’m an average player then where does that leave everyone else?

I hit 80, bought my exotics, but I had no were new to go with them. What was the point? Perhaps if there were some level 80-85 maps? Or a purpose to play on with my geared 80? Not sure, but something was missing.

Look, some of the things you say make me wonder if your basic problem with this game is that you wrongly assume game design approaches from other games to make any sense in GW2 when they are not even meant to. Like…gear progression. Yes, you’re absolutely right, there is no content in the game you totally -need- Exotics for. Which you think is a problem, but in isn’t, for GW2 isn’t about gear progression and the devs repeatedly said so. Yes, there -is- gear progression in the game (we have got Ascended and Legendary tiers, after all), but it’s just…vanity. You get legendary weapons for no other purpose than having a legendary and it being pretty. In WoW, you needed whatever their equivalent for legendary weapons was to get certain content done, for WoW was designed around vertical gear progression, while GW2 is designed around vanity.

I realize that some people will find this less than satisfying. Me? I love it. Which is why there are games catering to both groups and GW2 seems to be catering more to me than you, perhaps. What I don’t get is that people continue to complain about GW2 not being what it’s not even meant to be. It’s like buying a BMW and then complaining about it not being a Mercedes.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Whether it has an endgame or not, every game needs progressive difficulty with a purpose for it.

I stopped reading there, because I totally disagree with that. That’s YOUR opinion and not the law of nature you make it sound as.

I don’t play games to be challenged and brag with my loot, but to get entertained. I don’t mind difficult content in the game for the people who want that (GW2 has that!), but I totally mind being offered ONLY difficult content from a certain point on and every worthwhile reward being offered ONLY there. Which most ‘endgames’ do, for most often there is nothing to do except raids, raids, raids. Which is why I end up quitting these games.

laharl.8435:

Run in starter areas and get newbs. They often need help learning the game and sometimes have no friends. Be their friend and show them the game and you’ll gain their loyalty.

But be honest with this approach, though. I am a guildless player and I get often approached by people who’d chat and play with me for a while. And guess what – most of them lose interest in me really fast as soon as they find out that I am not going to join their guild. I consider that dishonest, for they obviously were never interested in the friendship I have to offer but only in recruiting another body for their guild. It’s pretty selfish if done like that. By all means, go ahead and make friends. And if they end up joining your guild, great for you. But if you’re not prepared to make friends for no other purpose than making friends, better be straight about it from the get-go.

Devs: “We will make a game having no endgame. The entire game is the endgame.”
Players: “This game sucks, it has no endgame.”

I mean honestly…do players even read what they are buying these days?

Personally – I hate the traditional form of “endgame”. When a game I bought and enjoyed suddenly morphs into something completely different, usually something I don’t even want to do. Because “endgame” most often means a stupid and pointless gear treadmill. And don’t even get me started about the raiding content this gear usually drops in – these five hour long endeavours, four of which are usually being spent getting set up, waiting for people’s afk and bickering about who’s getting what loot or who caused the latest team wipe with a slight mistake are NOT my idea of fun.

Me? I usually quit a MMO when I max out my level on 2-3 characters. Because to me “endgame” really means just that: End of the game. I am glad that GW2 is not like that.

What they should do is be more consequential about their own design. At least for a game that’s all about collecting good looking armour and weapons GW2 has a remarkable lack of good looking armour and weapons to collect. They really need to add more (and more different) skins for us to hunt. My ranger really doesn’t need another trenchcoat…

I am not over 30 myself, but I can feel the pain of those who are. Leaderboards…honestly? Who except a bunch of braggers wanted to have that anyway?

As for the “But it’s going to be redesigned, so it has be be reset!” argument: Did people who completed their Dungeon Master title prior to AC changes and Aetherpath have it revoked? No? Why should it be different for Fractals then? Or will I lose my legendary when the new precursor system launches? I -really- hope not!

At NO point in a MMO people ever should lose their progress on anything except they used exploits to get there. Ever! Everything else is just a horrible decision. It makes one wonder if it’s actually worth working towards anything at all if there is always a lingering threat of it being taken away after the fact.

The amount of insta-gib skills in this game turning it into a huge “run around like headless chicken and dodge, dodge, dodge”-fest is actually one of my bigger gripes with GW2, but it’s so omnipresent that you really have to either swallow it or find another game.

Yargesh.4965:

VOLKON.1290:

Deadcell.9052:

Box sales are going to take a huge hit in the coming months and possibly well into the first half of next year due to the release of Ps4 and Xbox 1. So don’t expect anything more than what we are currently getting here with Gw2.

That’s unlikely. At this stage the majority of income is more likely from the cash shop than box sales, and of the box sales there’s still a significant percent of people that are PC -or- console as opposed to both. Impacts on box sales from those new mediums should be small.

Very small frankly.

Extremely small, as consoles and MMOs don’t compete against each other directly. No major MMO runs on a console. It’s a very indirect competition the sort of “Should I spent my $60 on a new PC game or a new console game”, but the MMO industry is otherwise fairly unaffected by anything happening in the console market.

And GW2 is doing pretty well, given the huge competition in the MMO market, which is probably the most intense ever.

These threads never go well, for there are two different definitions of “casual” and “hardcore”. One is based on time (“casual” denoting player that plays the game considerably less than a “hardcore” player), one is based on attitude (“hardcore” players play for the challenge and bragging rights, “casual” players play to be entertained).
As a consequence of the different definitions, people tend to get their wires crossed in threads like that. And the widespread mutual lack of respect for the other group’s playstyle doesn’t help either.

Personally – I am a casual attitude player with a hardcore amount of time. I don’t care for frustrating content at all (I am still without a Tequatl kill and I never set my foot into Aetherpath or Arah 4). I prefer entertaining to medium challenge levels, as I don’t play this game to prove myself against some digital challenge, but to have fun. However, since I -do- play the game a lot, I have decent gear and sort of know my class well enough not to be a total burden for a team. I guess challenge-wisely, my favourite content is about Fractals Level 5-15 hard. That’s pretty much right for me.
I want a legendary weapon, but I couldn’t care less if literally everybody else has got one too, as my casual attitude makes me totally immune against any desire to have anything ‘exclusive’.

So what does GW2 offer someone like me?

a) WvW.
Running with a zerg is fairly casual friendly. Since it’s PvP, it’s by nature competitive content, yes. But since I am a part of a larger army, I don’t have to be a 1 vs 1 goddess to have fun there.

b) Low level Fractals
Since this content scales, it’s very suitable for both casual and hardcore players. Only downside is that thinks to the poor group finding support of this game (yes, I consider the lack of an automated dungeon finder to be one of the bigger obstacles to get casual players into that sort of content), getting a group for the lower level ones can be a hassle.

c) Farming a legendary.
Since I am that casual with a lot of time at my hands, I can go for this with some sort of hope to get it done one day. Have to credit GW2 for giving people like me access to be most prestigious gear in the game, actually – most other MMOs would lock that sort of gear behind super-frustrating raids and thus way out of my reach.

The Living Story is another story, though. I think it’s an equal opportunity offender that really caters neither to hardcore nor to casual players. Hardcore players will find the content to be waaay too boring and non-competitive, casual players of the “doesn’t have much time” type won’t be able to complete the often grindy achievements before ANet takes the content out of the game again. I don’t know what the LS really wants to be. Myself – I can get the achievements done, for I have the time for it, and sometimes even do that, but I don’t really care for the rewards much and the content is usually not able to hold my attention for long.

A lot of interesting and entertaining explainations why there are more female characters in this game.

Almost sad that it’s not true at all.

http://guildwars2viz.com/

Seems roughly 2/3s of all characters are in fact male.

You realize that the more checks and manual interactions you put into the LFG tool, the more indistinguishable it will become from simple spamming map chat with LFG messages, yes?

Even in its current form I don’t understand anymore what the LFG tool actually wants to achieve…

slurpey.6014:

I wish Anet would focus more on the “hardcore” player than the “casual player”.

If they did that the game would die fairly fast. There are simply not enough of you guys around to keep the game funded.

I think Anet needs to make a decision. Do you want to attract the “hardcore” players or the “casual” players? Both doesn’t work as we have seen, and sadly that doesn’t increase the player base or satisfies anybody at least not in the long run.

I tend to agree with this. Right now the game seems to be an equal opportunity offender that satisfies neither casual nor hardcore players a lot, and it doesn’t seem to know what it really wants to be.

I am not sure what ANet based their metrics on, but I am fairly sure the -average- team doesn’t run CoF 1 in 10 mins. That being said, the dungeon rewards were always imbalanced, which is after all the reason why some paths are massively popular and others neigh on impossible to get a team for.

Yeah, given ANet’s tendency to kill off every halfway interesting character, I fear for Marjory and Kasmeer’s life, :p

I’d argue that all three greatswords are the same weapon, save for the colour and some of the particle effects. And despite my mesmer is using GS a lot more than staff, I am after Bifrost and not that over-sized anime greatsword that would look utterly silly on her.

So yes, we need more choice. A lot more choice. For legendary weapons and really all other types of gear.

I guess the word “exploit” got a new meaning for describing other people’s playstyle in a MMO. Can’t have people doing things differently than we would do them, after all.

She’s a politician. Since when do they keep promises? :p

I could be sarcastic and say that the sole reason why most of us are going to work five days a week is the salary, so it’s not that doing unfun stuff for a reward is all that outlandish a thought.

But to answer the OP’s question, yes I do that in GW2. Actually lots. I farm materials in Orr like a madwoman with multiple characters a day, which is as dull and boring as it gets, but also the only viable way to get a Bifrost for my mesmer – ANet neglected to include a viable -fun- way to get a legendary weapon, after all. This activity consumes the majority of my playtime these days…

The list goes on, though:

- For map completion I had to complete several jumping puzzles. And I really loathe jumping puzzles.
- Many of the LS achievements are partially fun, but become a tedious grind halfway though. I complete them anyway, because I hate leaving unfinished things behind.
- I stopped considering the daily/monthly quests interesting a while ago, but still do them anyway because I have multiple alts that still want their Ascended jewelry one day.
- I achieved map completion on several characters, and don’t really desire to do it another time, but I am having another character doing it at the moment, because I want to play the class and the sad truth is that there are not too many new things for me to try in the game, for ANet seems to prefer to make minor changes to the existing game instead of giving us new continents to explore.

My tolerance towards content I don’t want to do is not unlimited, though. I sometimes do things I wouldn’t otherwise do if not for the reward tied to them, but when I saw the workload required for the 2013 Halloween goodies, I laughed really hard and walked away.

SkyChef.5432:

Glad that Emanuel can help you because I just got acceptance to a new feature introduced by Anet for some special players. The way it works right now based from the 1st report, I would be in solitaire for a long time.

He took me for a ride already! I was an…eye-opening experience. I hope he didn’t have to bite into his keyboard too often because of me…

And I hope they will solve your chat issue soon!

Considering the wide-spread negligence of female heroes in video games, I say it’s a good move. Funny to see the reaction of some people as soon as not 99% of all video game characters are male…