Guild Wars 2

DevonCarver.5370:

We will be adding more liquid WXP that will be purchasable, likely with badges and some other currency, soon. As in, less than a month. I’ve made it a personal goal to improve the experience for playing alts in WvW. And to cut it off now, we are not making WvW rank account bound.

I’m fine with you not making WXP account bound, assuming there’s a good reason for it. So let’s hear it. Right now, all we have is the apex of parenting: “because I said so!”

I’m fairly certain they were changed to be more readable for the color blind. I could be mistaken though. Just give it more than one whole day, you’ll adjust and read the colors at a glance again in no time.

Meglobob.8620:

kokiman.2364:

Meglobob.8620:

It is really, really bad that you reach a point in the game and you are ‘stuck’, ie…no more progression other than dress up…

Apparently, the vast majority of GW2 players want it this way, frozen forever, so don’t expect any character progression soon…

Looks like I am “stuck” since I reached level 20 in GW1

I feels sorry for people like you who can only find a real enjoyment out of watching numbers grow.

I feel sorry for people who are happy to plod on week after week, never trying anything new…

What a sad miserable existence…

Don’t mistake extending the gear treadmill as trying something new. Grinding AI bots is still grinding AI bots. Like mama used to say, only stupid people are bored, because they’re too dumb to amuse themselves (no offense) Why don’t you try something new? PvP and WvW are new every time you step into them. Better yourself, instead of your characters’ numbers. If you reeeeeeeeeally need gear/stat/level progression that badly, you can play basically every other MMO ever made.

Chiolas.1326:

The days when we couldn’t kick an offline member from the party

Oh wait…

I Just found out you can kick people in dungeons. When did that happen? Why did that happen to just PvE?

Astralporing.1957:

Everything you have stated there is just your belief – even the “logic would dictate” part. It’s exactly as (un)supported as every other claim you attack on basis of no evidence. Please, use the same measure for your own posts as you use for the posts of other people.

It’s well documented that in business, when a customer receives, in their opinion, bad service, they will tell an average of 8-10 people. When a customer receives, in their opinion, great service, they tell an average of 2-3 people. Extrapolate that out, how you want, but the way I read it is people just expect “good service” and go out of their way to make sure everyone knows they received “bad service”.

How does this apply? Well, it’s not much of a leap to assume that the game’s own forum makes an excellent place to vent people’s perceived bad service, and thus the forums would skew toward the negative. Read any restaurant or hotel’s comment box, or online profile. The ratio of bad comments to good comments nearly always average out to 3 to 1, given a large enough sample size. It’s just life. Most folks don’t give much positive feedback beyond continuing to use the service.

And before you ask, I have a degree in business management. I’m not just making this kitten up.

Virindiira.1025:

WvWvW is NOT about maxing out your char in wvwrank. It is about have !!FUN!!

There will be never a account wide wvwrank. just accept it like 99% of the gw2 player do it. Just play wvwvw and have fun and you will see ranks will come.

On one hand, I sympathize with this view. I like playing games just because they’re fun, and wish people would do so more frequently. But on the other hand, part of why I play GW2 as opposed to so many other MMO’s is because it was developed under the idea that PvP would be a level playing field. They got that part right in sPvP, but every time more “progression” gets added to WvW, and every new bit of gear with higher stats that is introduced makes this less true.

At launch, every level 80 character with a set of the reasonably acquired exotic gear was on more or less equal footing in WvW. Yes, I know not every class is always 100% balanced, but that’s life. No game is perfectly balanced, and balance is an ongoing process. Now we have power creep in the form of WXP powers. While I don’t think most folks would like it removed outright (I wouldn’t mind), plenty of folks would like their WvW progression to be reflected on themselves personally, as it is with ranks in sPvP.

And besides, that’s why the forums are here, so the devs can get feedback. Far too many people get a little too Very Serious on here, but really, communicating your opinions to the devs is part of healthy engagement to the game. That’s a huge part of why game companies have forums in the first place, instead of just letting 3rd parties do all the heavy lifting. So am I going to continue having fun with all the other WvWers out there? Absolutely not. Does that mean we should just keep our opinions to ourselves? Absolutely not.

Of course if you’re trolling, I missed it. Regardless, that’s my 2 cents.

zeromius.1604:

Karizee.8076:

Was chatting with a dev ingame this evening, he was saying tomorrow we would see epic battles and that was just the beginning.

I’m very excited!

The Battle for Divinity’s Reach? It would be pretty cool. Now I’m just concerned about players that are starting new human characters and how they would be affected.

Hopefully, it’ll be something like, “This kitten is bananas!”

I’m basically on-board for everything you said. If only ANet would avoid new gear tiers, this would be the MMO that’s come closest to perfection in my mind.

Yeah, it feels like about a week shy of year, to me.

Wait… you can kick people in PvE?! What the hell, ANet?

Would it really be much of a spoiler to acknowledge that (spoilers!) at the end of the story, the big bad is defeated? I mean the PS is a pretty stock fantasy story about a hero who rises from nothing to challenge the greatest threat the world’s ever seen. Did anyone doubt for a second of the past 5 years that the game’s main story would end with the defeating of the main antagonist? I know it’s iffy as whether or not he actually died, but that’s another matter.

DevonCarver.5370:

Precursors do drop from the chests, but very rarely. I’d love to say you should be able to get everything ever from just playing WvW, but not only is that not going to happen, it’s not good for the game as a whole. We will continue to do what we can to improve the rewards available from WvW and there are some developments specifically relating to skill points that are coming soon to the game as a whole, but honestly if you want to get all the things in the game, you have to play all the game. Branch out, I suspect you’ll enjoy it. And WvW will still be there when you want to play it.

Here the thing, I DID enjoy it. I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite, too. In both cases, I beat on AI till I got my fill, then I moved on. WvW is about going up against living, thinking humans, where things are different every time, and the meta is always evolving. While I admit, I’ll hop over and look at the new PvE stuff every other week, it’s more out of curiosity than excitement.

So don’t act like the problem is that we’ve never given PvE a try. Guild Wars 2 made some giant leaps in MMO PvE content, but at the end of the day there are still lots of folks who aren’t here to beat on bots.

@Urak Then I apologize for being a pessimistic kitten. Don’t lose that optimism.

@Contiguous Yeah, well. Maybe we shouldn’t be the kittens who crush dreams.

Melanion.4892:

Snip

Oh god! I forgot about the forthcoming new tier of gear! (Yes, I know it’s technically an expansion of the current highest tier, but it’s still a whole new round of power creep.)

Yeah, if they’re not attainable in WvW in a reasonably similar time frame to what they are in PvE, I’m going to quit. This isn’t a tantrum, this isn’t an empty threat. I actually stopped playing for ~5 months after the first round of ascended gear showed up. I’ll keep an eye on the game, again, of course. I loves me some ANet, but I do not support pandering to the WoW crowd. I hate to throw the manifesto around, but lack of gear grind is what brought me here.

aspirine.6852:

Tell me Devon, why is this a good idea to make it not account bound? What is Anet’s vision about this, and why are they so against it?

Yeah!

Gehenna.3625:

I think it’s a great idea, especially about the traits. What I do wonder is if Anet will be able to make such a big overhaul, because it could take quite a bit of doing. They’ve kinda put themselves in a corner with this as it is, since all content is designed around how the combat system works now.

On the other hand if they took the invulnerability out of the dodge and got rid of insta kill shots from bosses and allow more dodging at the same time, it could already solve a lot of issues that might occur in redesigning the combat system. Dodge would just be a way to get out of aoe quicker but without giving any additional protection if you will. That will keep dodge as a useful element but makes it less powerful and less needed as a crucial survival skill. That could open the way for additional changes as the OP proposes.

This is what I don’t get. Why change fundamental game mechanics that work fine elsewhere, when the problem is dungeons? GW2 is fundamentally 3 different games rolled into one. When you go changing core mechanics, you don’t just change how dungeon bosses work, you change how PvP and WvW work too. While I don’t want to disregard the hardcore PvE crowd, this game was made by ARENANet, not DungeonNet. GW1 was marketed, not as a Massivley Multiplayer Online RPG, but as a Competitive Online RPG. The fact that the game’s mechanics seem to largely be built around competitive balancing shouldn’t surprise anyone.

But I digress. The game’s core, fundamental mechanics are what they are, and for better or worse, they’re not going to change. The problem that is solvable, is the problem of dungeon mechanics. This can be done without fundamentally altering the game, and supposedly is already underway.

TL;DR It would probably be much more constrictive to suggest changes that actually could happen (ie dungeon tweaks) than changes to the core of the game itself.

Just because they’re hiring doesn’t mean they’re short staffed. Every business has some degree of turnover, and having an “always-hiring” policy is one tool to keep your staff motivated.

Not trying to be a kitten, but anyone who could do that job probably either already has it, at ANet or elsewhere, or is trying to break into the industry already. It’s just not terribly likely there’s a programmer sitting at home reading the forums who will see your post and say, “Woah… I really COULD go work at ArenaNet.”

You do realize that NCSoft and by extension ANet, already employ roughly the number of people they’d like to? If the WvW team is short staffed, it’s by choice, not because ANet just can’t find talented people.

Konrad Curze.5130:

snip

I didn’t defend the current state of the dungeon meta. It’s what keeps me out of dungeons. I know current implementation is inherently unfun. What I am advocating however is that ANet retune their dungeons (which they have already claim to have begun doing) with their original design principles in mind. I think they can work with their current system and still defeat the “MOAR DPS” mentality. Case in point, in WvW and PvP, you actually DO want support and control in addition to your dps. I believe it’s a good system, with poor dungeons. I believe this came about because ANet wanted too much for any comp to be able to complete dungeons. They mixed all the colors together and got brown, so to speak.

What I don’t get (and I know you didn’t advocate this) is people who think GW2 should “go back to” The Trinity. The game was built from the ground up not to have it. Even if ANet for some reason redesigned all of their classes so The Trinity is “back”, they’d still have to retune all the dungeons, because they’d all still be optimized for MOAR DPS.

Konrad Curze.5130:

AntiGw.9367:

Tiger.7958:

This also hindering variety in boss fights. As of now the way I’ve seen boss fights go are thus: DPS boss, DPS thing healing boss or protecting boss/Adds, DPS boss, dodge big attack, stay alive, DPS boss. Rinse and repeat. This is not only repetitive but can be very boring after many fights.

As opposed to “tank, tank, tank and tank some more” while the other guy is like “heal, heal oh and more heal”? How is trinity adding more variety pray tell?

Your idea will result in certain classes being de facto tanks or healers. There will be no variety, you’ll always be expected to do that one thing. Bad idea.

8/19/2013

the day when everybody doing dps was considered more varied than a mix of tank, heal and dps

a day to remember, folks!

Here’s the thing though, does having a choice of 3 different mindless play styles really make any one person’s play more varied?

In WoW et al you get three choices of monotonous gameplay. You can spam your taunts, stand there and be healed. You can spam your damage rotation, stand there, and hope not to need healed. You can Play whack-a-mole with your team mates’ health bars.

Granted, GW2’s PvE could use some tuning (which is why I mostly fight people instead of bots), but even needing to dodge once in a while makes spamming your rotations a bit more interesting.

It all comes down to 2 things. 1) GW2’s dungeons could be made more interesting by many means other than putting The Trinity in, and 2) if you reeeeeeeeeally need the trinity that bad, you can play basically any other MMO on the market. Or, go for DCUO, where there are actually 4 roles!

Pre-launch, ANet was all about the “new” trinity of damage, support, and control. If they came out with more content that encouraged use of support and control, I think they’d be on to something. But bringing back The Trinity? I think most folks came to GW2 to avoid the things like that.

Of course, if you want support and control to matter, you could always join those of us fighting other humans. All three roles are quite useful in WvW and PvP.

1) D/P, SB
2) 10/0/0/30/30
3) WvW (Mostly group)

I’m not sure if they come right out and say multiverse in GW2, but in 1, I’m fairly certain it was explicitly stated that the Hall of Heroes was where heroes from across a multitude of realities (or something similar) joined to do battle. In other words, the Korean servers were in-lore alternate universes from the the NA servers and so on.

Yeah, The Mists are kind of the catch all. The Mists are the stuff of the world, and The Mists is the place where great heroes go when they die, and The Mists are also the means to get to the places where lesser beings go when they die. So, The Mists is a term that can be used a lot of ways.

If there are any references to the HoH in GW2, I’m not aware of them.

WvW is a form of PvP, no one cares about character progression!

PvP is about skill progression, about the players’ progression. When you do WvW or s/tPvP, the progression is YOU playing the game and getting better. It’s about YOU learning your class, others’ classes, what tactics work and don’t work, and the overall meta of the game. GW2 was always supposed to be about skill over time played. If you want a progression system for WvW, fine. But make it MY progression, not my characters’. It’s all done so well in sPvP, why can’t ANet apply the same philosophies to WvW?

CHARACTER progression is a PvE thing, and is part of what makes this game an RPG.
PLAYER progression is what PvP in this game was founded on. WvW is still considered a form of PvP with PvE elements, and not the other way around, right?

Short answer: The Mists.

The Mists are the raw stuff the universe is made of, and it’s also the stuff that connects the multiverse. As above, the fact there is a multiverse is established in GW lore. You can hear a couple NPC’s chattering about “The Mist War” in at least LA and DR.

It kind of bums me out the angle that they play though. The NPC’s seem genuinely terrified by whatever they’re fighting “in there”, and talk like it’s a fight for survival. I wish it was more of a Valhalla type thing in-character. Like it’s where great warriors go to “unwind” and just war for the sake of it. Which… is pretty much what I do. After helping cabbage-face become the new Eternal Hero of Tyria, my dude just retired to the mists to fight his days away.

Cheap Logitech garbage keyboard.
Cheap Logitech garbage mouse.

No negative side effects.

Ruby Highfarm.6073:

Being a thief i tend to use my movement skill right at the edge of a cliff.
In the queens gauntlet i often spam my dagger/dagger 3 skill and right as i win i get ported outside and then jump off and into my death… (Have done this around 3 times now)
Also after a switch of color in WvW i went up to the keep i thought was my own trying to enter the gate, but then it did not let me in. I just thought i had DC’ed, so i went downstairs to check my router… When i came back i was dead.. Yeah, not so smart.

Yeah, reset night kitten s always kill me… sometimes quite literally.

Ynot.8397:

snip

Thanks for the tip! Kids, grab your karma jugs. We’re making a road trip!

Ynot.8397:

Well stop being a pure wvw for the half hour it takes to run down to orr. Spend that karma on a bunch of orion jewelry boxes and make 60 gold on drops.

You can do that? Holy crap, I knew PvE was where the money was, but kitten . Last time I was in Orr was… probably September.

Yeah, players have the class icon next to their faces, minions, pets, rock dogs, etc. do not. When things get real hectic and my mouse hand is busy maneuvering (I unbound my rotation keys) and I need to sort out the minion master from the minions, I generally tab till I see a skull.

You could also use the “Target Closest” function. I have that bound to C. I use that mostly when I’m just looking for the auto attack to do something productive between cluster bombs during large scale fights. If you’re constantly targeting closest and hitting 1 between aoe’s, more often than not you’ll be hitting someone. Bonus points if your 1 skill bounces or pierces.

If the fight is small enough scale where both sides aren’t just mindlessly flinging dps at each other, then yeah, old fashioned targeting is the best way to go.

Just another YES.

WvW, like sPvP, is about YOUR accomplishments. PvE is about YOUR CHARACTERS’ accomplishments.

Using Withdraw at all in the control room of Skyhammer. That never goes well.

On one hand, I’d love to see fist/claw weapons (especially for thieves, but I suppose we could share). On the other, that might go against the general philosophy of easily identified opponents. For good or bad, much of this game has been built around easy to identify classes and weapons, and I’m betting much of that is for the benefit of potential spectators should PvP ever really take off in ESL. Fist weapons would either have to be big enough as to be ridiculous, or risk being confused with sheathed daggers or some thing. Just some food for thought.

On an unrelated note, I really dig the idea of whips.

Even if it were prudent to do something like restrict access to names because of similarity to minions, where do you draw the line? How similar is too similar?

My mesmer’s name is Nothingmancer. Should that be banned because it’s evocative of necro’s more so than mesmers?

Also, tip for you, OP. In PvP, actual players have their class icon next to the portrait.

Korgov.7645:

If anything I would have the power stacks taking effect only while you wield a weapon with the sigil on.

I like that idea.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be against removing sigils, foods and oils from WvW altogether though, either. It’s just one more thing to juggle for a fairly small return. Just my 2 cents.

I just leave Combat Healer up all the time. I’m hoping it says, “Thief who plays well with others”

Chickenshoes.6250:

I would be instantly disgusted with the game and quit. Literally uninstall.

MMO fight mechanics and imbalances really don’t make for good gameplay. If I wanted to just WvW all day for no rewards at all, I’d be playing a game that does it much much better like Planetside 2.

If I wanted to fight with these RPG-like mechanics I’d play an RPG.

If I wanted to play cooperatively with a handful of friends, there are many cooperative games designed completely around that one aspect of the experience.

If I wanted to play a fun game I’d probably be playing a shooter.

The largest point to an MMO is to better your character in comparison to other players through acquisition.

tl;dr I play Guild Wars 2 because it gives me stuff! Who wants to play a game that doesn’t give you stuff? Stuff!

JustTrogdor.7892:

Something isn’t right here if you take a glance at the OPs post history.

Is this ChaCha’s account?

I think the WvW rankings already read like a population chart. Things may have changed up a little since that added the random variable, but I’m pretty sure the top servers have the highest wvw populations, and they file pretty neatly on down from there.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Sorry, but regardless of whether you play mmorpg or any other video game, there is always a goal to reach … or there is no fun or sense of accomplishment. My hubby loves his xbox. He plays all the games he likes to unlock ACHIEVEMENTS. You might play a game for a few hours without some type of reward, but i dont’t think you would play for 500 hours. I love GW2, but part of what i like is having the chance for loot and achievements.

This wasn’t always the case. Remember FPS’s before they added XP? GoldenEye, Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, or even the first Halo? None of those matches mattered in the least, except in the context of that match. Winning a game of UT didn’t mean anything past that round’s stat screen (unless your victory dance went on for a while). You won, you lost, you played another game, usually you had fun.

I don’t wanna sound a like a haggard old gamer, but remember when used to play videogames because they were fun?

Instead of spending all my playtime in pvp and wvw, I’d probably just spend all my playtime in pvp and wvw. Maybe I’d have more alts tho…

I’m not reading this entire bible sized thread to find out, but has anyone considered that by fun rewards, he meant the reward of fun? As in you grind until you get your reward, fun being what you get. Cause that’s what WoW always felt like it was keeping from me, was the fun.

ducks and covers

That sounds just as bad as dropping a merchant on the WvW portal just before reset.

Man, on JQ the day after the sky pirate dungeon went live, LA was full of LFGs with “please be experienced” or some variant. Again, no big. I’m quite happy with the WvW community.

kokiman.2364:

Reihert.1509:

@Klawlyt So you agree that there is a whole, huge part of the game, where zerk is the only way.

The game is pretty easy. There are 1-2 Dungeons that may be difficult but none of them require you to have a specific gear-setup.

I didn’t say dungeons aren’t easy. Finding a group who will take a dude who admits to not knowing the dungeon and runs “sub-optimal” gear is the hard part. At least on JQ. It’s no big though, my interest in dungeons isn’t very great anyway. It would be nice to get the top of my screen to stop with the Victory or Death! thing though.

There could be a Junior Chang out there.

I just want to hear the dude’s fix.

Btw, I can cure cancer. Just don’t ask me how.

Elbegast.6970:

Whilst you ladies and gentlefolk argue the nature of the contrivance of the context of colloquy and converse in courteous accord, I, whilst adversely voiced, do ledger a wager in favor of the liberal levying of flavor.

slow clap