Guild Wars 2

The community style play doesn’t hurt anything, IMO. Not competing for resource nodes, for loot (although I do wish better things dropped from dungeon bosses), or for mobs for quests is a nice difference. It’s more annoying when playing WoW (and FFXIV to an extent) when you’re not getting credit for kills because someone is tagging and one shotting everything in the area (in XIV they give you credit if you do damage to it, but won’t get drops, which is painful if you’re trying to farm a material from a non-quest mob, but a class with superior AoE slaughters them all first).

What I feel makes dungeoning and group content dull, right now, is that there’s very little focus on teamplay. Most dungeon bosses can be fought and killed in a corner, everyone wearing berserker stats (as in, being forcefully shoehorned to be DPS and not play a role you might like more, namely support, or utilizing conditions, or even focusing more on taking damage while providing AoE healing for the group to help keep people alive).

What makes the encounters dull is how simple they are when players want to cheese them. Some encounters are actually pretty fun when you’re not stacked in a corner auto attacking, which is partly why I wouldn’t mind Anet instituting shorter leashes on their bosses (can’t leave the boss room), or collision between the boss and between the players (only in dungeon instances), or something to at least make you have to fight the thing. Bosses with more complicated mechanics, faster abilities, who aren’t just HP sponges would also be a nice addition — make people need to use blast finishers, leap finishers, and combo fields for certain situations.

I didn’t really like Wildstar. It has a charming aesthetic and I like the general disposition of its characters and story, but the game itself felt… eh. I didn’t enjoy the quests too much, considering they were all extremely easy and weren’t varied as much as I’d been hoping (Basically kill stuff, kill all the stuff, and jump around here and there). The PvP felt kinda… messy? Like there wasn’t much for strategy going on, just two mini zergs of players bashing each other’s heads in with three million telegraph lines going off all the time. I find GW2’s a little easier to see what’s going on and with things like combo fields it adds a bit more strategy into the mix, well it can. Even in WvW, blob v blob, there’s more strategy in the form of calling out combo fields, blast finishers, maneuvers, etc… (Wildstar could probably get that, but it’s PvP feels more FFA than team oriented).

I don’t really care about Wildstar’s endgame since it’s endgame is likely going to be the same type of endgame I can get out of a more polished, streamlined MMO experience (like XIV, really). GW2 does lack in endgame things, besides Fractals, and I do wish it had some harder max-level things to do… as after 100% completion and getting a full set of armor, there isn’t too much to do in GW2 except farm things. (Admittedly, I’d love if there were hidden books throughout GW2 you could collect and store in some sort of menu, one you could access and read random backstories, or something, from).

If Wildstar was a buy to play MMO, or a free to play one, I’d say it’s pretty alright and would likely play it on and off. But for a subcription… eh, I’ll stick with GW2 and delve into FFXIV if I feel like paying a sub.

Vol.7601:

Myst.5783:

Seras.5702:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Taku.6352:

4.2k hours played since headstart, +1k gold down the forge, 0 precursor drops yet 4 legendaries and 1 precursor waiting to be crafted all thanks to the wonders of the TP.

If you want a legendary then just buy the kitten thing from the TP.

Nothing legendary about that.

Nothing Legendary about an RNG drop either. It’s either purchased or randomly rewarded for doing nothing special. We need a precursor challenge/hunt to justify the name “Legendary.”

You realize the “hunt” is just going to be more gathering mats, right?

I can’t see how they’d introduce anything truly challenging in this game for a precursor.

Imagine if they gated a precursor behind something as difficult as Liadri?

That would make so many people rage.

Well, Liadri wasn’t that difficult. But the 6 orb achievement was hard. I didn’t get it.

At least then it could be called a “Legendary.”

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Hey now you know how we feel when us who have been playing since head start didn’t get a single precursor drop and then they changed world boss chests to once per day to limit how fast precursors and exotics came into circulation.

Also a year and a half later, still no precursor drop.

I’m still pretty sad about that change, even though I gave up attempting that method after killing too many dragons and bosses to count and getting… I think the best was an exotic worth two gold or so.

It’s also why I feel like Legendaries and their components should be a little less luck based. (Though for most there’s places to go farm the stuff but… farming mats that drop less often than rares is… just… so… not… fun… in any capacity… I’d rather do something with friends that’s fun, engaging, entertaining and worth my time to get the items, at least then it’d feel like a fun journey and less of a “bash 1 constantly for hours upon hours” thing).

I only bought my precursor, but I still need to do the farming of… five other T6 materials, along with 100 Charged Lodestones.

Precursor-wise, it’d be kinda neat if there was a challenging, actually challenging and hard to defeat without actual teamwork, boss or encounter where it had a higher rate of dropping from. Or able to be bought with tokens gathered from doing the encounter a set number of times, or a train of such encounters that could be titled “Precursor to the Legend” or something like that, and all lead up to getting a particular precursor.

It’d make the item seem a bit more Legendary and a little less straight up boring grinding. (Only a little less, since you wouldn’t need to grind up gold for the precursor, but would need to grind up the other materials/gold for the other materials >.>)

Shriketalon.1937:

Kit.3986:

(Males don’t -need- more game heroes… there are countless, countless, countless of them)

I fundamentally disagree.

Everyone needs heroes, well written characters that exemplify virtuous traits. The vast majority of heroes in video games may be male, but how many of them are actually well written? The proper answer to a genre that is skewed in a certain direct is not an equally skewed backlash, it is ascension. It is rising above the current model and creating a greater work with well written characters from many archetypes to make the best story possible.

We need good female heroes. We need good male heroes. We need good heroes of various ages, ethnicities, vocations, and personality types. And we will never, ever reach a point when we do not need heroes.

Everyone does. So, less male ones (86% of the time are protagonists according to the study linked above), and more needed ones — you know, the groups of people who don’t have a lot of heroes representing them. The ones that are underneath that 86% take more priority from my perspective, as… well, males get this huge bucket full of chocolate raisins, whereas females get slightly more than a tenth of that. Other groups less.

My point is: There’s so many male leads, so many strong males, so many Mary Sue “Good at everything” males, that giving screentime to female characters, working and spending time on female characters, is more important because of how females lack those heroes to begin with. And it might shift the incredibly sexist attitudes that pervade the gaming community in general…. well, one can hope.

There are tons of other underrepresented groups in media as well, and they do, to me, take more precedence on the basis that they aren’t on equal footing with what’s already out there for the (yes) privileged group of people who have just about everything catered specifically to them.

Leshain.6720:

So even back in de’ good ol’ days it was sorta there, if anythin’ guild wars lore is not racist so that is good at least, Misandry seems to be a on going tradition though.

I don’t think you understand what misandry would actually entail, and it’s definitely not when men aren’t the main characters of a video game. But, if the video game industry was a bit more diverse with their gender distribution in the first place and gave female protagonists meaningful roles, character and design more often, then maybe there’d be some kind of point… but, even then, not so much since in that alter-reality there’d be prominent representation of all genders… and in an industry where men are on top over 90% of the time… it really isn’t “misandry” to give the spotlight to females in a franchise instead.

EDIT: I typed a thing, it broke the reply (no text showed up x.x) and I’m too tired to retype it, but… it was basically:

Legendaries were never impressive hallmarks for other players to be like “That person knows how to play” they were always farmed up items. Take a crapload of time, yes, but they’re basically just pretty skins.

Let people have their pretty skins whether or not you think they “deserve” them. Or, if that’s not a good thing (and raising he time to make one to 1k hours is dumb):

Only let them be available through these PvP tournaments. Since you need to know your class, have skill with your class, know how your class meshes and works with other classes, knowing various builds to know the enemy weaknesses and strategies, knowing the game mechanics, etc… which are all aspects of knowledge that make someone a better/good player… and so, their legendary would mean “I know my class well enough to beat down everyone else.”

When I heard dragoon, I immediately jumped to the dragon slayers in the FF universe (Kain <3). While I’d like more classes to play with and the like, I don’t think allowing players to join a different faction and splitting the playerbase would be for the best. Maybe letting players join other factions in the personal story, like Inquest, Nightmare, or something of that nature (Because being a dragon minion would probably be a dull time)… but for it to become a game mechanic, with players split up? Ehhhhh.

Lorelei.7809:

Or an Inquest Asura (which would have made more sense with acing all the Asuran Colleges)?

If a race change was to be had, this is the one that I’d have liked to see the most. There aren’t as many major asuran characters that permeate the story, less so of them Inquest, and the Inquest are actually a pretty interesting faction, I find. At least, it’d make the character more believable in terms of acing the colleges, since that’s basically a huge part of their lives and is something that an asura would actually study, train and work towards… and make it seem like an accomplishment, rather than a footnote.

I like sylvari, they’re my favorite race, but I’d rather see them in villainous roles that pertain more to them (as in, makes more sense for it to be sylvari — like a arc primarily featuring he Nightmare Court doing things on their own as an organization).

As side notes, I liked Sieran so much more than Forgal. Forgal was an uninspired carbon copy of “Gaming War Vet” that I’ve played enough games to experience and gotten my fill of. Sieran, on the other hand, was a fun, optimistic, cheerful, adventurous person who took on challenges… which isn’t as common, and makes her just a bit more fun to experience.

JGBarbarian.3579:

Kit.3986:

I just hope, for future male characters, we get interesting people. Traditionally “effeminate” sorts would be lovely to see, rocking flashy outfits and bringing a sense of uniqueness to the game (or more gay male characters, or bi ones, or something). I swear, though… if I see one more stubbled, middle-aged, gruff speaking warrior who wrestles bears with his hands and is a tactical genius… I’ll just eat a shirt or something.

What you find interesting I do not, the hero you want I do not. I want a warrior that wrestles bears with his hands, is a tactical genius, charismatic leader, emotionally strong (not daddy issues or anything lie that), mature, heterosexual, married, father of 7 kids (could be more), with huge arms, a huge beard with a mustache. Basically I want a mentor I can respect. You see, people is different and wants different things. Calling me misogynist, sexist, racist, communist, satan worshiper, heteromonster, beard supremacist, evil macho or any other card up your sleeve won’t change that fact You don’t like my style of hero and I don’t like yours, simple story.

Hi!

I get what you mean, but that character is:

A) Overused. It’s in like, every game in existence.

B) Silly. It’s a ridiculous character that’s only exists to pump testosterone into every situation and add nothing to the story at hand. It’s a very weak, overdone character that often lacks any meaningful depth, but gets adoration from fans because it’s the Mary Sue they all aspire to be.

C) I really don’t like the “Daddy” issues statement. It’s disrespectful, like really disrespectful, granted you’re kind of implying that effeminate males (I don’t like using “effeminate” like this, but it’s the only descriptor I can think of right now) have father issues, or gay males do etc… and… as someone who would identify with that type of character, I just dislike that irritating stereotype. Kinda sad you can’t respect people who differ from that depiction you have, though.

D) I didn’t call you any of those things, I expressed my desire for more characters -I- can identify with that aren’t silly caricatures, or disrespectful stereotypes since they don’t exist in the gaming world… really. Whereas, on the other hand, the Mary Sue you described is in pretty much every game ever designed.

At the end of the day, though, I’d rather see a female lead taking on the world, if only because female gamers need a larger list of heroes in our media, who aren’t just silly sex icons for the hormonal teen to stare at while she lounges in the background. (Males don’t -need- more game heroes… there are countless, countless, countless of them)

So?

Not everyone is lucky enough for that precursor drop to come for them, ever. Luck =/= skill for anything, farming money and materials isn’t even an exercise in skill, it’s an exercise in boredom if anything. Farming up the gold is just as skillful as farming up the drop.

Winning one in a PvP tournament where only the top players who participate will be involved makes more sense, since those players have to actually use skill to obtain the weapon in the first place, rather than mindlessly grinding content for months on end.

Prophet.6257:

I do hope for the sake of this game’s future though that Anet focuses on this game and making it appealing to the widest audience it can and not try to make it too much of a social justice push.

Balthazar forbid they lose their convictions in it but business is business.

“Social Justice Push” Always comes off to me as “I don’t like having diversity in my games.” I mean, how many thousands of white, middle aged, grizzled, straight male warriors does the world need? Really, it’s the dullest character type at this point (and I only bring it up as people openly advocated for it a few pages back).

If anything, having more diversity in the game does make the game appeal to the widest possible audience. It’s nice to see a game where some major relationships aren’t just ‘Grizzled war vet white dude gets with quiet, sidelined attractive girl" and instead have two, adorable sylvari expressing concern for their boyfriend, or having a relationship between two women that at least shows care, affection and love and hopefully isn’t written with the idea of fanservice in mind.

Either way, having a predominantly female cast for one LS (hopefully more) doesn’t bother me in the slightest, it’s actually really surprising (in a good way) and I do hope they keep up the trend of trying to represent more groups of people. At the same time, there’s always nips at how characters are written… though, honestly, I like Braham for multiple reasons. A huge one is that now a lot of male gamers can see where female gamers come from when they mention gender inequalities in the game, or lacking respectful representation… well, hopefully they could see that.

I just hope, for future male characters, we get interesting people. Traditionally “effeminate” sorts would be lovely to see, rocking flashy outfits and bringing a sense of uniqueness to the game (or more gay male characters, or bi ones, or something). I swear, though… if I see one more stubbled, middle-aged, gruff speaking warrior who wrestles bears with his hands and is a tactical genius… I’ll just eat a shirt or something.

Change of race doesn’t solve the character issues Scarlet had, like acing all of the asura colleges in record time… which, if anything, would be an asura thing to do. It’d only make people like her because players would attach sex appeal to her, which isn’t really needed with female characters and only serves to further undermine them and make them even more cliche. (For example of the latter of this statement, just read the second post)

Scarlet’s issues lie within her personality and road to getting to where she is, not because she’s a plant.

I’d just like to have dungeons feel like dungeons, and not stacking on every corner to afk auto attack everything dead. If there was a trinity system, maybe it’d be better, since as it stands PvE is basically “Wear zerker, stack and kill everything.” It gets really dull.

Oh, no I meant that one can’t factually state that Kasmeer, or Marjory, are poorly written characters and have that as a fact for an argument against having female characters. Since some posts seemed to be implying that.

I wasn’t referring to a bigger picture on that last statement, I agree with what those studies show and that was more or less what I was saying in my post (Female characters tend to be poorly represented in media, are often not particularly complex in the vast majority of things, whereas their male counterparts are treated a lot better on the basis that they’re male characters). Which is why I find it positive that GW2 seems to be going in a route where they, at least, seem to want to write stronger female characters.

Aedelric.1287:

dgenxp.8650:

hehe but as i said its a non issue for me but i also think it is a good thing due to the majority of games are male oriented this makes it stand out apparantly lol

Good content makes an MMO stand out from the crowd, not gender bias. If you imply that it was Arena Net’s intention to have a female heavy cast only to make itself different from the rest, then that was quite a failure. Neither does the story to the LS stand out from any other MMO as exceptional, the quality of the content itself has been fairly mediocre.

Many in this topic have said gender bias is fine if the story calls for it, but if they are not using story reasons for their decisions then that speaks volumes about the lack of quality to the writing.

So… having the characters be male would magically fix these other issues, that have no relation to character gender? Granted, so many games with all male, or male heavy (re: Almost any game ever made) casts have some really, really wretched and horribly executed and written stories (Anything in the FPS genre, for the most part)… so, gender of characters =/= good story or not.

And what reasons do they need? Women are being put into the story as characters, as people. Is there some magical reason why it must be female? Is male some sort of default for leads? Sure, there’s quite a few females in the LS cast… but, who cares? I see little to no merit in this complaint, considering how the opposite is true in almost anything, yet I highly doubt you’d voice complaint in those cases.

So, if you feel underrepresented, that the male characters are comical caricatures that paint men in a silly light… well, welcome to how women characters are treated in the vast majority of most other things.

tbh, one can’t really comment definitively and factually on the quality of a written character unless one’s an expert in that field, considering opinions of the average person would always differ and generally hold the same merit.

Yo, male characters aren’t needed in a focal position at all. Considering, about every other videogame features the grizzled, middle aged white dude as the main character in just about every other situation, with a large lack of female leads and characters supplementing the cast.

Over 45% of gamers are female, so it’s not really so shocking there’d -be- female leads, but aside from GW2, most games have male characters leading everything. It’s not even an issue in a genre dominated by male characters in the first place, anyway. (Seriously, do people take the overbearing amount of male leads to a pitiful amount of female leads seriously? Most of the time I just hear sexist jokes, some asinine dismissive statements followed up by a “it’s just the way it is stop crying about it”).

Men are very, very, very privileged in video games. And everything, really. Giving some acknowledgment to those underrepresented and who lack the privilege of having this representation is not some slight, if anything it’s a positive move because it’s making the video game world just that bit more inclusive, rather than an exclusive “boys” club as it tends to be.

Caramel Ham.4891:

Star Ace.5207:

Blix.8021:

Star Ace.5207:

Ergo, you don’t understand that 100% of players don’t play the game the way you do, which was the point of my comment.

If players are not objective-oriented then they shouldn’t join a dungeon with an explicit objective.

I don’t need to say anything more. :P Be aware that the world doesn’t revolve around yourself, though.

So now you are arguing that the point of entering a dungeon run is to not finish it?

mmm…yeah, good luck with that.

The point of even doing a dungeon, for me, is to have fun first and foremost. I don’t care about finishing it in five minutes, although the challenge can sometimes be fun (see how fast you can do it, beat old times, etc…). But if players go into dungeons and only want to be done with them, because they’re such a boring chore to them, then why even play this game? Why not do something that’s fun rather than suck it away from others? And why do something that’s not fun, for you, during your leisure time?

I’ll run whatever builds and stat combinations I want to run. I’m not playing to beat everything in five minutes, or stack in corners so I can just press “1” the entire fight and win. I want a fun challenge, I want to be moving around and doing things, I want to use my abilities and to use the abilities I like. If you can’t stand that type of player then, well, we won’t be grouping.

Additionally, I’m not playing for your enjoyment; I’m playing for mine. If you want your groups to have specific gear and specific makeups then either say so before you grab random people, or get like minded people to run things with you more often. Taking away things, from the game, just to make everyone the same is stomping on other player’s fun and is a rather selfish way to go about things when there are viable alternatives that don’t have a massive blanket effect.

Not everyone plays like you, with the same mindset, goals, intentions or reasons. To treat everyone like they must play like you is… well, why would they even continue to play if it wasn’t their play style? It’d hurt the game in the long run.

So… who cares… ?

Maybe the game does, maybe it doesn’t, have millions (or one million) players. But why should I care when there’s still loads of people in every zone I go to (lowbie zones, mid-level zones, high-level zones), groups are still easy to get, and the guild I’m with is active and experiencing a high in active players?

Why does it matter so much? If you’re having fun, play the game. If you’re not having fun and have real reasons and critiques, post them in detail so others know what you mean (and can discuss them). If you’re not having fun for personal reasons (art style taste, no real trinity) then there are plenty of other games out there.

EVE’s a successful title with less than one million players. In fact, I think WoW is the only game I’ve come across that can hold to “millions” of active players (Y’know, like those bots). But even they’ve been dropping players.

If you like WoW and big numbers, play that game, have fun, etc etc…

I actually enjoy this dungeon, I run it a lot for the tokens and because I genuinely have fun in there. Not-getting knocked down by the husks, without any stability/aegis, I just learned via dodging when they jump, staying back until they’re done jumping, then getting right back into it.

The dogs usually go down extremely fast in all 80 groups, and even relatively fast in a 55 group. I only had an issue with them knocking me down once, anyway, and that was because I was out of dodges.

Either way, I enjoy running this and if we have an awesome group, I’d be willing to skip mobs here and there. If we have a lower-than 80, or someone’s have some trouble, I prefer to kill the mobs as, in the long run, that will be faster than waiting on that one person to run all the way back, alone. (And likely get shafted by the knockdowns, blooms, etc…).

And this dungeon generally takes as long as all the other ones I do, and I like the challenging trash mobs (Knights, Wardens, Duelists, Sorcerers…). Keeps things interesting, IMO.

I also love sylvari, so I may be slightly biased.

It varies on how much time I have, sometimes I need to get off soonish ( 10 – 20 minutes) and skipping those mobs is how I can still finish the fractal with the group. (Such events would develop after the fact, I don’t go in knowing I have something to do in a bit). Or if the series is taking a long while to complete (long fractals, lots of deaths, etc…). Usually I’m totally down for killing them all though, I even got a neat exotic off one in there, ha.

If a player is super-awesome amazing, can do everything incredibly well, smoothly and reliable then… why is that player doing PuG’s all the time?

Either way, I don’t care how long a dungeon run takes me. If I say I’ll do it, I’ll see it to the end unless something does come up as, well, life is a tad more important to me. I’ve been in PuG groups where some people would mess up a lot, or even one person, or someone would go afk for some things (tending a child, for instance) and I never mind at all. I’m just there to have fun and I do have fun in dungeons (even ones that take a hellishly long time) if the people I’m with are lax, fun people to be around.

I usually only do runs with my guild anyway, but even then there are people who are new and want to learn so I don’t mind if they err or what have you. It’s a social aspect of the game I like, enjoy, for the social aspect. All the fun gets ripped away once you encounter these “elitists” who kick anyone they deem ill-fit, and throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their way.

If you want everything to go smoothly, well, without issue, then don’t PuG. Get a guild group together. With a PuG, you should be prepared to deal with players who don’t know the dungeon, who will make mistakes and so on. I guess that’s why I’m always, usually, pleasantly surprised with them when I have to get in one.

I guess I just don’t see how it’s selfish. To play a game, one shouldn’t be required to look up all the boss fights, all the encounters before hand… that just absolutely kills the game’s fun factor. For me to play with someone, they don’t need to be at a certain skill level, or what-have-you.

Agent Ihan and Trahearne.

The way Trahearne says “Claw” Island is so adorable.

Vasham.2408:

gold.3025:

Because it’s fun

This is an objectively false statement. Nothing is fun about standing still and autoattacking a stationary boss. Period.

If it was objectively false, then no one, absolutely no one, would find it fun. Fun is not a fact, it’s an opinion — different strokes for different folks, and all that.

Anyway, I have fun. Partly in killing the dragon, but mostly just chatting with the 50 or so other people who show up and taking part in costume brawls, and watching the Roleplayers turn it into something of a neat story. I find dragons fun because it’s not just “Auto-attack boss” but it’s also socializing with other people in the game, a lot of people, at once. And there aren’t many just out there bickering, like in LA or DR.

I’m still having fun, a lot of fun actually, which is more to say for any other MMO I’ve played in he past.

I didn’t like WoW that much. It felt too easy, to simple, to do everything and anything. Players were always less than helpful, trade chat was a mess of people trying to insult anyone who ever enters their midst, LFG dungeon groups were either silent or full of people who wanted everything done RIGHT NOW and booted people if they had to go AFK for more than a few seconds. Guild members wouldn’t help me do quests in low level zones, or really be around to hang out with… all too busy doing their dailies :/.

In Tera, the world felt dead to me — couldn’t interact with furniture, really swim, couldn’t climb down ladders, basically no buildings you could really enter, hardly anything to explore . Tera also felt incredibly repetitive, even though I loved the combat. And Aion (To a lesser extent, Tera) mostly relied too much on RNG, and had a thousand bots and gold sellers spamming chat which killed any of the fun. Rift felt drab, dull and the animations were drab and dull.

GW2 doesn’t have a trinity, so dungeons don’t take too long to get groups for. The auto-level down and level-appropriate drops gives a bit more incentive to help out in low level zones, even if some of it could be buffed up a little bit. The community is much nicer from past games, people are fun to chat with and hang out with, dungeon runs aren’t silent attempts to do everything ASAP all the time — sometimes, yeah, but most of the time no. The story is better than other MMO’s. WoW’s is… just so all over the place, Aion’s was kinda okay, but rather meh and underwhelming, Rift’s was standard dragonfare… GW2 has the standard dragonfare, but also has characters that feel more memorable and were more fun to deal with. Additionally, I love the sylvari.

There also isn’t a huge stat progression… or huge gate saying “You can’t do this, because you need weapons with higher stats.” Main thing like that are Fractals, but with that it’s grind the same thing for higher stats to grind the same thing. It doesn’t actually gate any other content.

Chest drops could be better… getting all blues after a dragon, or temple, is really quite disheartening. Some more incentive to just wander in lower level zones would be nice, and less RNG on precursors would also be nice (Although they say they’re fixing the last with a scavenger hunt, and that the Feb/March updates will help with the rest…). Guild Halls and housing would be nice, but not having them aren’t game breakers for me, personally.

Awh, I missed the purple shower of fun. :<

If you don’t like the non-trinity approach, why not play a game you prefer? It’s a little unfair, for a lot of players, to essentially be all “Guild Wars 2 needs the trinity” when it… doesn’t and would just keep all MMO’s basically the exact same game with different skins.

I like that I don’t need to wait hours for a tank, or for a healer.
I like that I don’t absolutely have to rely on one or the other to do a dungeon or event.
I like that if I end up in a random group with an extremely elitist person, we can kick him and grab a necromancer and do absolutely fine. (Whereas in a lot of other MMO’s, you’re SoL if it’s the tank and sometimes even the healer).
I like that one person doesn’t hold the entire fate of the group in his/her hands. kitten off healer? Probably a wipe. kitten off tank? Probably another wipe. kitten off DPS? Well, it’ll just take a little longer to down the boss).

And yeah, people can always say “Then run with your guildmates” but they aren’t always available when I am, or in the mood for doing dungeons when I am (in almost any MMO I’ve played). Simply, it makes dungeons more enjoyable and friendly.

I like this system as it is, and it’s nice to have at least one MMO that isn’t the same thing as almost every single other one out there, gameplay wise.

• Prince Charr Ming
• Charr Mander
• Charr Aznable
• Charr I. Zard
• Bush Inspector… something, was a while ago but made me laugh as he was hanging around the suspicious bushes, ha.

I’m not actually sure if we can check this in GW2, but I always found the achievement itself to be the actual achievement (versus the points it grants you). I mean, I have a little over 1000 achievement points from the game, though I really only consider my two jumping puzzle achievements (Vizier’s Tower and the Wintersday puzzle) to be the real achievements I have.

The Toypocalypse Cancelled is another I’d consider an achievement, versus just a ton of daily achievements. (And killing Nightmare Court, Risen, etc… to just be standard “You do a lot of murderizing of things.”).

That and the achievements that grant titles seem to be some of the harder ones to obtain, which is why I sort of figured achievement hunters would go for collecting titles. (In Aion, I know a lot of people would collect titles… mainly because some of the titles meant something).

But I might not truly get the other side of it. I view achievements as something to do alongside play the game and they aren’t my primary focus.

I do:

- Exploration (Slowed down a ton once I got to the Orr areas…)
- Dungeons (CoF, TA, and I want to get the mantle from Arah…)
- Wintersday Events (I -love- Toypoc, even if I’ve not got the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement)
- Crafting
- Gathering crap for a legendary, though I’m doing this slowly
- Trying to get into the RP scene a little

I feel like I have lots to do though, and when I don’t, I might just go roleplay some to pass time (or do other things).

If you feel burnt out though, I suggest stepping back and doing some other things. Read a book, write a story or poem or do what you like to enjoy that’s not GW2 for a bit. Then come back to it after a little bit.

On principle, I don’t go near any mob with the horned skull alone. Usually that alone is label enough for something like that, but if you’re having trouble why not get people together to go get the skill point? It doesn’t need to be nerfed, or re-labeled, really. If you can’t do it alone, get other people to lend a hand.

Mister Mustard.7203:

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

It feels like there are more mesmers in the game than any other class.

I’m guessing that is because 5,484 is a lot larger of a number than 1,886. Any time you see a mesmer, you usually see 4 of them.

It does surprise me to see that they aren’t that popular. Everybody wants a portal, but nobody is willing to make them themselves. :P

Mesmers are also admittedly not the most … intimidating? class. Lots of butterflies and whatnot. It may not sway everyone, but I imagine it’s stopped some.

Purple butterflies is why I went mesmer <3

Love my spell effects, now if only my clones could dance with me…

But in my experience, I see mainly:

- Thief
- Guardian
- Warrior
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Necromancer/Mesmer
- Engineer

Lots of groups I’ve been in lately have been primarily elementalists, though.

Zeldain.5710:

Alloy.2839:

Aside from being artistic, legendary items are status symbols. How much status would they confer have if anyone could buy one for 10g? They are cosmetic and provide no benefit as far as gameplay goes. Also, some players may be dedicated enough to obtain the materials from playing the game, not just buying them from the TP.

That’s missing the point – at least my point.

I’m not complaining about the time to acquire, or cost… but the lack of creativity in the quest to obtain them. It’s a grind, only a grind, and a grind of Asian proportions.

I wouldn’t think of it as a “grind of Asian proportions” as that grind, for an item like that, would be a lot worse. And probably have a very, very healthy dose of RNG stat bonuses (that contains numerous grinds in and of itself).

But it’s a grind, yeah. It’s not one you need to subject yourself to, though. If you want a Legendary, then you’ll have to work (grind) for it, and if you feel you can live without for a bit, then wait until you can normally acquire all the materials. (Or until you meet the nicest guild member you will ever, ever meet).

Some people find grinding fun. I mean, if I’m horrendously bored and am just chatting with guild friends, I can stomach killing the same thing for hours (while also playing my own music). Assuming I need to kill hours of time (Like being snowed in, for one thing). I did it in Aion and Tera, and it was pretty fun sometimes. Even more fun with a party and you’re all just goofing off as you kill things. ANet’s constantly advertised this as a “game for everyone” and people who like grinding fall into that “everyone” category.

It’s a long term goal intended for people who either really, really want it, or who enjoy the gamestyle it takes to get there. I probably won’t get legendaries for a very long while, and I’m okay with this (I’m working on getting exotics now), unless I get obscenely lucky.

Additionally, I’d find it a negative thing if these items were obtainable by anyone in a week or two. It’d kill the point behind them.

But hey, at least you can’t fail at crafting. (As in, your legendary you spent months grinding the mats for won’t go “poof” because RNG says so).

Oh man, weapon dyes would be so amazing. I have the tier 3 cultural greatsword on my mesmer and… if I could make that blade a translucent purple… and glow… <3

I’ve always enjoyed nature, I find it incredibly beautiful in the real world and especially in MMO’s. So, usually, I much prefer to play in places that are forested, with exotic plants and animals roaming about. But I made a sylvari and stuck with them because I love their designs, their faces, the colors, the glows, the hairstyles, and they fascinate me with how young they are compared to all the other races.

Plus, I love the starting zone and The Grove is so beautiful.

I’m also trying to branch a little into the RP spectrum, and going with a race that doesn’t necessarily have books upon books of culture or history and where the individuals can be still new to Tyria as young adults — not knowing every bit of lore out there — is actually a nice template for me. Plus their curiosity, and some of the lines they say (NPC’s) and some of the insults they receive make me giggle inside.

I’ve actually fought this guy and can’t say I’ve ever been one-hit KO’d by him, as a Mesmer. Then again, I stay the hell away from him because he’s just nasty up close (I’ll let my clones die in my place, thankyouverymuch).

But I have seen people die to him pretty quickly up close, though usually someone else will kite the mob away (ie: the whole living group moves off the corpses of players) and I’ll go in and revive them (or someone else will, though I get the pretty purple shield of deflecting problematic projectiles).

So basically, teamwork. If you can’t dodge the hit, then hope the people you’re playing with will try moving him and revive you. Just, nerfing champions doesn’t feel right to me, as they are pretty easy to destroy as it is :/

leprekan.7248:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Sargon.2608:

Well it is really simple, A-Net want us to use the cashshop. Why do yhou think it is so difficult to make any gold ?

Except it’s not. That’s the entire point of this thread.

Feel free to send me 3 Dusk’s then (1 for me and 1 for two others in guild stuck on getting the precursor part). Please do not insult yourself with the “you don’t have to get a legendary” line … nobody has to get anything in a video game.
.

Well, you don’t have to get legendaries. I mean, if you’re not even going to work for them. Those items were put into the game, from my understanding, as a long term goal to work towards and not a “Oh, I want this right now so I should get it right now and since I can’t get it right now this game is flawed in design.” I’m getting by absolutely fine in just cheap rares; if legendaries were -necessary- then I could see some merit to the complaint, but… they really aren’t, and again, are something to spend a lot of time working for (re: a -lot- of time).

Unless, of course, you want them so bad and can’t wait another day and buy gems to convert to gold to get it all ASAP. (Which, seems like a fair trade off to me — work for it in the game over the course of months, or just buy it all with real money that benefits the company).

IMO, the gold-making ability in game is fine. I’ve had plenty to get all the necessary items, and even quite a bit extra to just power through some crafting.

As long as male characters are included, I wouldn’t mind.

Plus, more freedom with character appearance is a positive in my head, anyways.

It doesn’t feel anymore forced than all the heterosexual relationships feel, to be honest. To play a game that doesn’t limit itself to heterosexual relationships purely, or have lesbian relationships there more as a fanservice than a story device, is a nice change of pace. Additionally, it’s also nice to see some m/m relationships that aren’t full of stereotypes.

To those who are all “but I don’t want to see something like this, stop forcing it on us” I challenge you to be a tad more empathetic to those who are subjugated to heterosexual relationships in nearly every other facet of life, where seeing any sort of same gender relationship is simply rare; if anyone ought to stop stuffing their preferred relationships down people’s throats, it’s all the heterosexual couples and imagery that’s found practically everywhere. (Not that I, personally, have anything against any relationship with two consensual persons… just making a point regarding some posts earlier on).

Plus, the sylvari were stated beforehand to be a pansexual species… which sorta fits the whole plant deal they have going on.