Guild Wars 2

This would appear to be one of those concepts that is downright amazing in the concept room, but isn’t so great in practice.

Some artist is probably shedding bitter tears right now at the neglected detail of those shoulders, lost to the naked eye.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Why? Because people like to gamble. When you open a box, you even see a slot machine interface. For a game that’s rated teen it’s actually pretty reprehensible.

Ah, someone who feels the same way I do about it. Even there is technically no “real” monetary reward, you can pay real money to buy the keys. So it’s kind of a legal loophole and is most definitely gambling in the psychological sense. It’s rather sad to me that games can get away with this sort of thing, under the umbrella excuse “virtual” and “game.” It’s definitely ethically questionable when real money can be involved.

I imagine the only reason they don’t get slapped on the wrist for it is because it’s not possible for real money to exit the system – only to enter it – so the government couldn’t give two hoots about it.

Somehow the people who design these systems are ok with living with them. They probably sit there and reassure themselves that no one is actually wasting important money on key gambling, while some exec gets the brunt of the profit from it.

The dark side of game design… not fun to talk about or acknowledge, but it’s there.

For the same reason they play the slots or buy a lottery ticket. “This time I’ll get the big payout. Or maybe this time. Or maybe this time…”

An arm wouldn’t have bridged the physical gap. It was conveniently (or not so conveniently, depending on whether you care about Scruffy) large enough to fit Scruffy, but not small enough for much else.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Plot Twist…. you can’t get into any active maps because the expansion flopped.

Brink usually has a low-medium population most of the time.

Auric Basin has a decent population….. but I’ve never seen the meta event succeed there.

Imho the best map out of the entire “expansion” is Tangled Depths…. and I’ve pushed the map to the Gerent about thirty times now…. and I have still yet to see it succeed.
Even when all the preparations are complete, and everyone taxis people in…. One of the lanes always fails.

Bro, I know it’s a lame solution, but you gotta use LFG man.

I’ve been in three t4 Verdant Brink maps. I’ve yet to see it fail t4 when the map is working together on it and taxiing people in.

I’ve been in numerous Auric Basin successful runs, though it is a bit annoying find an organized map if you’re coming in late. Your best bet here is to sit through some of the pre’s and be part of the prep/taxiing process.

Haven’t tried to get into an org Tangled or Dragons yet, but I know people who have done them successfully a lot of times. Granted, with Tangled, the ones I know of are all people from a big guild that works on world events. I dunno how good your luck would be with casual LFG use on that one.

I had this happen the other day. The message went away after a bit, but it was kind of annoying and probably sent some confused players away…

I’m assuming this is one of those freak bugs.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Swift.1930:

And thus the burnout. We’re forced to level and go through entire trees of things we will never ever use just to unlock something minor.

Bingo. Not only is the training of the masteries completely divorced from their purpose (as you, myself and others have pointed out) but you also make the excellent point that we’re forced to go through things we don’t want to get to what we do.

Case in point: I’m on the last tier of the PACT Commander mastery, trying to get the ability to pick up loot automatically, a simple QOL feature that would affect only me and would reduce some of the administrative tedium in the game. Yet, this feature is the last tier and requires not only completion of all the previous tier which I’m not greatly interested in but it also requires an exhorbitant amount of xp. It’s not something worth working up to over months. It’s a useful feature that should be tier 1.

Instead, tier 1 is mentor, although it affects multiple people and is causing a lot of headaches because it’s so easy to get. This is a mastery that should be tier 5, and should take months of effort to acquire, to demonstrate that someone is worthy of being a mentor.

Imho these two masteries should have been reversed. But what do I know?

I agree that the order is wonky on a number of masteries. I’d love to know what their reasoning was. For instance, the idea that the “challenge the champion” masteries are all tier 5 instead of 6, or even 1 – why?

It’s like… now that you’re honored among the tribe, they will give you access to another mastery. They already helped you learn some other ones, but oops, they forgot one.

Maybe I’m expecting logic too much.

Devata.6589:

It’s a huge difference, it’s the difference between just wanting to brag (as you put it) or just having a founded opinion about what guilds are supposed to be.

It’s clear you’re not following what I’m saying.

It appears that what you are saying is “if someone doesn’t want smaller guilds to have as good a chance as larger ones, then they fit the example Labjax made about people who want to show off. If someone doesn’t want micro guilds to have a chance at all, then they cannot fit that example. They are just being reasonable.”

Is that about right?

If so, it’s a total distortion of what I meant. Not everyone who wants to keep GH mechanics as they are is the “brags and doesn’t put in effort anywhere near the level of self importance they have” type. People who do act like that usually do it with some consistency. They don’t suddenly lose interest in bragging and posturing because the topic shifts from (for example) smaller guilds to micro guilds, or vice-versa.

I was definitely not handing out cannon fodder to play the “subjective opinions are objective” game.

Devata.6589:

It then has nothing to do with those in big guilds thinking they were god’s gift. Suggesting that only makes you look a little silly imho.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Talking about size 15 or talking about size 2 doesn’t automatically change the attitude of the sort of people I was referring to. It makes no difference to them. They are interested in using the efforts of their team to lift themselves up and brag. That’s their shtick.

ZachAttack.3957:

Yes, a few threads of this are fine, but there is absolutely no need to spam threads with the same complaints. People are so pessimistic, it seems that no one notices what ANet has done right, and instead bash on what was not done right over and over again. It seems they can’t put one thing in the game without SOMEone complaining about SOMEthing. Human nature I suppose.

Oh dearie me.

Whenever I see posts like this^ or threads like this.. I can’t help but think “this person has never spent more than 5 minutes on an internet forum before, least of all a gaming forum.”

It’s not that it’s “human nature.” It’s that the forums are a funnel where all the hatred and dissatisfaction goes. It looks like more than it is because it’s all concentrated in one place.

That said, with a little experience on forums, you can discern when people are complaining because they can and when they are complaining because they are deeply dissatisfied with a particular feature and enjoy other features.

A LOT of the complaining I have seen about HoT since its release is, to my perception, the latter. People who like some features, dislike others, and take time out of their day to write passionate and detailed explanations as to why.

Since HoT’s release, droves of people have also come to the forums to play white-knight for the game. And by white-knight, I don’t mean, “Stating their opinion about a feature in a way that is positive, or making an argument for why a feature is good.” I mean this thread and every thread like it.

It’s insulting to the people who are putting in a lot of time on genuine, constructive feedback, to act as if everyone is just throwing a hissy fit. And it literally adds nothing to the forum, other than biting back and forth, and people like myself writing posts to explain how stupid it is.

To those who are tired of reading complaints on the forums, here’s a word of advice that might sound familiar. It’s like that lovely little trope “if you don’t like it, then don’t play the game,” and it goes like this “if you don’t like it, then don’t read the forums.” The sword swings both ways.

Again.

And again.

I just got played like a harp.

Albadaran.1283:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ANet has shown that If people get into fights about PvE content, they will nerf it. They have done this repeatedly. From reports on forum threads, maize balm farmers and non farmers were clashing repeatedly. People warned on these threads that if the two groups continued to clash, ANet would step in and nerf the farm.

And ANet did.

So wait, if we want something to be nerfed, we simply have to start an arguement and it will happen? Hmmm, in that case I may have some ideas (laughs evil).

Sort of. It needs to be a pitched battle between farmers and innocent bystanders that regularly hurts peoples widdle feelings. I don’t think they actually give two kittens about it, tbh, they’re just afraid of their flagship marketing tool “GW2 is cooperative” being marred.

I think it’s best to give up arguing the point. Anet has made it clear that they consider a tiny group to barely even count as a group, much less a guild. They want people to zerg together, I guess.

And it’s not worth the time and energy arguing with all the people who insist that it’s fine for inexplicable reasons, when many of those same people are probably yawning in a big guild, getting benefits from the work of tons of other people.

I remember in the raiding game I used to play, every so often, you’d see one of those people who played in a hardcore-ish guild and acted like they were god’s gift to creation, but if you got in a raid with them, their skill level was incredibly mediocre. I imagine it’s much the same thing here. Lot of people who think they’re amazing because their guild has good progress, when they’re mostly being carried.

I don’t know that fake is quite the right word for it, but spammy mechanics can definitely put you in a situation where the easiest strategy is to ignore the mechanic entirely and zerg the enemy.

If you put on a lot of pressure at once under average conditions, most people are going to go for the path of least resistance (that path either being to quit and do something else, or use the approach that makes it a piece of cake).

For instance, most world bosses are designed such that people can die 500 times in a fight and zerg the thing to death. In theory, they are difficult, but in practice, most of them are just a matter of slamming bodies into them repeatedly until they die. Thus very few people try to take on a world boss without a massive zerg.

HoT has some clever mechanics, many of which are challenging, but once again, zerging undermines most of them. Mainly because if it didn’t, then open world would be a hardcore raid all the time and none but a small percentage would stick around.

displacedTitan.6897:

Congrats on discovering that all video games are basically pointless time wastes of slowly making imaginary numbers larger. If this is actually news to you, maybe you need to graduate from the 5th grade first before coming back to the forums.

Honestly its becoming very clear that people complaining on the forums really want a single player game like Skyrim or Fallout and NOT an MMO. The essence of the MMO is grind and repetition, something many people enjoy. If you do not enjoy the repetition go play a different genre, also if you think GW2 is bad for grind PLEASE PLEASE do not go and ruin someone elses MMO like FF14 or WoW since you will discover they are in an entirely different league of true grind. FF14 in HW requires you to run the SAME dungeon ten times for about an hour each time (if skilled) to get a single level, of ten. Then you do the same thing over and over through a couple different dungeons until you hit max level at which point you graduate to grinding Raids or mini-Raids to get items so that you CAN DO IT AGAIN for the next content patch.

Nope. Try again.

Slomo.1029:

Offair.2563:

To screw wvwers over once again. Anyway the chests you get out the rank chests are acc bound, they dont stack but you can just put in bank and get the proofs on another toon you want.

Edit: horrible typo

There is an even better solution.
- You open the chests because they dont stack.
- You put the soulbound Proofs Of Heroics into your bank.
- Log in into a different character and go to the Hero Points merchant.
- Buy the hero points, it takes the Proofs directly from your bank, you dont have to have it in your inventory. Despite the soulbound nonsense it still works.

Good to know, thanks. +1

If you read the OP, instead of assuming, it’s kind of obvious that he’s talking primarily about the stressfulness of the new zones. The only real downtime is the forced downtime in-between metas, but even then, there are very few areas of the map that won’t get you killed by mobs for standing around.

If you find intensity relaxing, the HoT maps will be very relaxing for you. If you find intensity to be draining, then HoT are one big, ongoing stressfest.

There’s a reason I find myself going to DR or LA to bank stuff and empty bags, and it’s not just because of the lack of banks and TP in HoT zones.

The issue is that unlike some game mechanics, falling itself is not affected by lag. The physics for falling will trigger on your screen, regardless of whether you’re lagging. So you fall and by the time your client catches back up to the server and sends it the message to deploy your glider, you’ve already fallen way past where you wanted to be.

To fix this, they would almost need to make falling a thing that happens on the server end, instead of client end (if that’s even possible). It would be a bit weird, as you’d have moments where you could walk through the air like Wile E Coyote. The main trouble with this solution is that even if it is possible, you then end up opening to the door to exploitation (people finding ways to force lag to allow themselves to cross a large gap). People who are lagging would actually have something of an advantage now, since they stay level longer.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the reverse would possible (allowing gliding to deploy while lagging) since it requires both a keystroke and stamina information.

Once upon a time, I’m 99% sure that John Smith said there was no DR. Maybe that was only in regards to loot? But it would be nice to hear a refresher on whether there is or isn’t supposed to be DR and in what capacity.

As it seems numerous people are bringing it up in HoT with XP.

It would also be nice, if there is any DR, to hear the reasons for why.

Thanks.

I have mixed feelings about renown hearts. On the one hand, it can be annoying when their objectives pretty much require you to get lucky and have a dynamic event going on in the area for you to complete them in an efficient manner. It’s also annoying when the objectives are vague or difficult to accomplish while playing in the “normal” way.

I like the Beetletun city heart in Queensdale because once you get the gist of where stuff is, you don’t spend a lot of time looking around or waiting on respawn. You can get a rhythm going.

Conversely, I can’t stand the other Beetletun heart, where you’re either in the water trying to aggro invulnerable crabs or killing a limited number of mobs around the area.

The main thing I like about hearts is that they give maps a sense of groundedness. I’m all for interesting dynamic events, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to hang out in part of a zone without it changing on you within the hour. Sometimes I don’t want an intense map. I just want to chill and do things at my own pace.

I don’t know why there are displayed ranks in the first place, but I’ve just kinda gone along with it cause it seemed inconsequential.

I feel it would make more sense if maxing a mastery track gave you a track-based title that you could choose to display or not display. There could be titles for mastery rank as well (ex: a title for 150).

I dunno. I’m just saying, why make it into a level thing when mastery levels are meaningless to begin with. It’s a weird design choice to me.

morrolan.9608:

Be warned though the chests being account bound is apparently a bug. They may be changed to being soul bound. There has been a large player reaction against the possibility of this happening though so it may not.

>.<

azizul.8469:

because hero’s challenge completion is character bound….

Yeah, but you don’t get the things from doing hero challenges. You get them from WvW, which is generalized gameplay, so I don’t see how that reasoning applies at all.

Jski.6180:

Labjax.2465:

Sadu.9541:

Anyway there need to be losers in an economy to allow others to win.

Ahh, not really.

That’s more just American mentality about forward-movement.

Well its more on the lines that things are not one way or another just degrees of things. So its a over simplification of what going on there are “winner and loser” but its not a one or the other comply. English just not that good at saying such things with out a long complex statement (though i am not sure what language is good at saying such a thing simply).

Any way HoT was only unfair in the early days becuse the first to get items much like at the start of GW2. So if you where playing right when GW2 came out you got money a lot easier then say ppl who start now becuse 1g when GW2 first out was simply more valuable.

I’m pretty sure I understand what you’re getting at, but I still (mostly) disagree. Yes, there will always be something of an economic imbalance in terms of who gets what and who doesn’t, but it can be a lot more balanced than it is.

Part of the reason it gets so imbalanced in this game is because the main source of income is from trade, rather than from direct currency generation, meaning that working markets with as few people as possible, at the right time, is the most profitable means of wealth acquisition.

The result is that the barrier to profit is not large for a newer player (all you technically need is the know-how to work/find a niche market and you can profit) but it also means that “playing the game” (meaning: doing whatever you feel like) is one of the most poor ways to get gold for items that can only be obtained in that way.

You pretty much have to go out of your way and focus on gold acquisition itself to make meaningful progress. And even then, it’s not always clear to the average player what it would beneficial to go out of their way to do.

Most people end up relying on a market like SW, where the profit is decent despite it being swarmed. But those kind of markets are rare and tend to deteriorate over time, due to the glut of items.

Mind you, I’m not saying purer currency generation wouldn’t be imbalanced at all. It would have a different kind of imbalance to it and would need special stuff in place to keep it working well. I’m not sure what the answer is. I just know it’s not all “has to be this way.”

Thanks for the workaround. It’s better than nothing.

Sadu.9541:

Anyway there need to be losers in an economy to allow others to win.

Ahh, not really.

That’s more just American mentality about forward-movement.

Am I missing something?

doddbox.8153:

If they put a DPS meter in the game Nemesis would probably complain it didn’t work. Spreadsheet math isn’t an expectation it’s a target, there will always be limitations of player skill and instances where optimal rotations don’t pan out and that’s fine, just don’t take anything that Nemesis says as a consolidated fact because it really isn’t.

I’m sure you’ll eventually realise that Nemesis is just a controversy show-boat and ends up on the Teapot dudes discussions purely for click-bait and views.

Actually, the dude has stated openly that he plays up the drama to keep peoples’ attention because he knows they’ll get bored with pure numbers/analysis (which is largely true).

That doesn’t mean his analysis is disingenuous and made only for views. I’ve watched something like 4 videos with him in it and already, it’s clear to me that he either cares a lot about a truthful portrayal of GW2 builds or he is so good at conning people that I will gladly be conned by him because he deserves it.

Trouble with the way the economy works is that you can’t just give people detailed advice on what to gather or invest in because then it loses its value as hundreds of people swarm the same thing.

It’s one of the few distinctive parts of GW2 that is anti-cooperation. You’re actually better off being selfish, or keeping tips to a few close friends.

Latin just sounds cool for fantasy names. Doesn’t mean the writers are going to aim for total accuracy.

As is probably apparent from anyone who reads even one of my posts, I have some pretty strong opinions about this game and about game design in general.

I’ve said a lot about HoT since it came out and I wanted to compile some general points that explain why I would or wouldn’t recommend this game to friends.

Gliding Pros:

With Updraft use, Gliding is an absolute joy and with Lean techniques, it’s pretty easy to get around from Updraft to Updraft.

Gliding cons:

Pre-Updraft Gliding is very limited and it’s impossible to participate in a couple zone bosses without it (VB Patriarch and AB East Octo).

Without Lean techniques, it’s difficult to go from Updraft to Updraft, especially in VB. There’s virtually no room for error.

Any lag at all can muck up gliding royally.

The XP barrier of entry to gliding (not just the mastery, but getting to level 80) means that it’s not much of a selling point. "Come glide in this game… once you reach level cap AND get experience in a very particular set of zones, at which point you’ll only be able to use it in those particular zones).

End-game content pros:

There are numerous large scale events with distinct rewards for each and reason to keep at them for weeks or months to get all of the rewards.

There is always another skin to obtain, or another set of gear you could craft.

The types of end-game content are highly varied and can please a lot of different preferences (PvP, WvW, open world, dungeons, fractals, raids, etc.).

There is virtually no gear treadmill, so barrier to entry is low.

End-game content cons:

Most of the HoT metas are super long and can wipe out all of your progress if you DC / lose your place in a map instance.

End-game rewards have very little meaning beyond “cosmetic,” but often have time investment that is in line with games where rewards have a more concrete meaning (such as power).

The game has challenging content (especially with raids coming out) but does not endorse tools that make challenging content more manageable (ex: meters).

Summary:

The game a lot to do. So much to do, in fact, that if someone kept at everything, they could probably be playing the game forever. However, a lot of this “stuff to do” has poor motivation for doing it. For instance, you could spend a lot of time collecting all of the BL weapons in a single set. But this is just a mindless gold/ticket grind and the reward is 7 BL tickets. Which gives you a headstart on new BL weapons, but gives you nothing to show for the collection itself. What are you going to show off? What are you going to be proud of?

Another example: Legendary weapons are actually very showy, which is great! But then, due to the alt-endorsing nature of this game, and the variety of weapons any given class can use, you may not even use your legendary weapon half the time. So your lose your showiness once again.

The theme I see is that there is a lot to do and little reason to do it. Many of the rewards themselves are cool at first, but the shelf life of any given reward is not very good. If we think of gliding as a reward, for instance, its shelf life expires outside of HoT maps. The result is a game where even permanent items tend to feel consumable and it’s hard to feel like you’ve done anything lasting.

A different game, which shall remain nameless because my talking about it is not to advertise it, has a model that is both Free to Play and has an optional subscription. The subscription gives some monthly bonuses (things like GW2’s boosters), store discount… stuff like that.

Granted, the game I’m talking about went F2P long into being a sub game.

But the point is, it has been done.

That said, GW2 probably won’t do it because of the irrational stigma against anything sub-related.

They’ll probably add it to the store. U.U

Dagger.2035:

It is possible to capture a guild hall with two people and I think there are probably quite a few guilds out there who have captured a guild hall this way. Here’s the video from our guild hall capture. It isn’t pretty, but it worked.

https://youtu.be/T0TSUo1_vF8

I record it and I’m not a very experienced staff elementalist. I’m sure the players out there who solo/duo dungeons often would have an easy time claiming a guild hall.

Huh. Ok.

Mercurias.1826:

That’s incorrect, insulting, narcissistic, and stupid all in one post. Good job. I’m sure mommy and daddy are proud.

Not all people have to adjust their mentality to enjoy the game. Many of them simply don’t care about the rinky-dink bonuses that need reclaiming.

Your entire argument for Stockholme’s Sybdrome is so pants-on-head, malignantly kitten that I’m simultaneously angered and feel sorry for you at the same time. You see play time in a video game as being captured, and that probably means you need to liberate yourself by uninstalling, showering, and going outside.

Stockholme’s syndrome is when you have actually been captured or held hostage in the real world and develop sympathy for your captors. It’s as bad, and exactly as mature, as calling your mommy and daddy kittens for not letting you see Saw that one time.

I see you’re pretty angry. Now that you’ve got it out of your system, maybe reevaluate the act of posting disparaging nonsense without examining the context of what you’re replying to.

I’ve noticed throughout my life that when using analogies, people tend to either get it or they don’t. Some of them get that an analogy does not have to be exact to convey a similar kind of meaning. On the other hand, some of them take each and every analogy as a fully literal statement of fact that is supposed to be taken as precise in the same way that a scalpel is precise when performing surgery.

You’ll be a lot better off with those emotions if you start out by assuming that my analogies are not meant to be the latter. You also might be better off with some anger management classes and/or meditation. I’m one dude on an internet forum, you know. I’m not that important in your life and my words are not worth the anger.

The amount of projection in your post is staggering. You tell me to shower and go outside while simultaneously getting angry at an analogy on an internet forum. Just a word of advice: Don’t be hypocritical to my face unless you want to get called out on it. Sweep on your own porch and I will leave you be.

Have a nice day.

Sorry about some of the inaccuracies or straight up neglect in this guide. Glad it’s still helping people. I really do mean to update it, it’s just a lot of dull guide composition work and I haven’t gotten around to it.

Thanks for your continued interest and input.

Ranger : i giggled at the “if you don’t know this you’re probably a ranger” for LB #4.

Hehe. Was wondering if somebody would catch that. Being melee in pug zergs with rangers in them brought that comment out in me. :P

ToothyMcFang.2305:

This is nothing like Stockholme Syndrome. I am not a prisoner or hostage, and neither are you. I have the freedom to choose to do anything in the world. I enjoy playing games when I have spare time, so I could play any other game. I love this game, and I choose to play it.

I don’t waste time and energy on a nonexistent alternate reality where things are more convenient for me, hoping that Anet will make a patch just for me; I live in this current present, and I make the choice to live with and accept the current circumstances. If I thought that the Guild Hall costs were too difficult for me, then I wouldn’t bother with it.

I’m sharing my opinion, and sharing what helps me to enjoy the game more. I never said that all other opinions were wrong. I did indicate that certain other views wouldn’t enjoy this game or this experience. I offered suggestions on how some other people may enjoy the game more, specifically citing my own experiences as examples. “Individual experience may vary”, after all, so why not try to see the world from someone else’s perspective and learn from it? I am aware of the other viewpoints on the subject; I have seen them both in-game and on the forums. I decided to offer my viewpoint.

“The correct mentality is needed to enjoy the experience.”

“learn to be patient, and you will be much happier.”

I’m sorry, but regardless of what your intentions are, telling people what the correct mentality is and suggesting that they learn to be patient is patronizing.

“I live in this current present, and I make the choice to live with and accept the current circumstances.”

Are you really making the choice as much as you think you are though? You just said you love the game. You say you’re not a prisoner or hostage (and obviously you aren’t literally – refuting that point is strawman stuff) but it’s pretty weird the way you talk about learning how to enjoy it and then you say you love the game, too.

It sounds to me like what you’re saying is, you love the game enough that you’re willing to adjust your mentality to make yourself enjoy parts of it. Sounds like kind of an abusive relationship to me. I can’t get inside your head. I’m just saying that’s what it sounds like.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Labjax.2465:

How do you have a guild hall and do missions with 2 people.

I must have misunderstood something huge about the new mechanics.

You can do the basic Bounties for 300 favour each week in PvE… not really that tuff anymore but moving up to the next tier becomes a little more difficult unless you get outside help to push you along… the wvw ones I don’t think you can actually do with 2 as it requires 3 to claim a location if I remember the heads up on it before launch (not done a wvw one yet so might have to check on that though).
PvP – no idea never even looked at it tbh.

PvP I remember seeing that you need 3 for it. I guess I can see how you’d make some progress if one mission is possible. I’m assuming they asked for help for claiming their guild hall though. I’ve never heard of 2 people claiming one.

How do you have a guild hall and do missions with 2 people.

I must have misunderstood something huge about the new mechanics.

Aomine.5012:

Let’s face it, all their care about is keeping everything super expensive, so people would more likely waste real money in exchange for gold. They do not care anything else.
They’d do anything to keep precursor/legendary expensive as hell. That’s why we have this rip-off precursor crafting, that’s why they increase the material craft from 2 ->3 or 3-> 4 and never other way round. They only want to raise price of everything to make everyone suffer enough that they may consider using Real life money for gold.

Maybe it’s just because I’m tired, but part of me thinks you’re right. And I’m certain it’s not all black and white. Like not every designer is sitting there asking “how can I fleece players?” In fact, many of them are likely principled and dedicated to making a fun gaming experience. But when it comes time for executive decisions that affect the overarching direction of the game, it’s hard to deny the signs of garden variety greed.

This is not personal, mind you. I’m not calling out any one developer or Anet company leader. It’s just a general impression of the company’s direction with this game. I have seen games that try to fleece you and I’ve seen games that try to have integrity, and this game constantly gives me the sense of both. The presence of some integrity is really the only thing that keeps me here.

I hate being the guy that says they are money grubbing, but the passel of keys, none of which go in the wallet, mixed with the passel of different bag drops from a single zone, really sets off a BS alarm for me.

I thought the story was pretty good compared to what I saw in season 2. It really felt like they listened to the feedback from that season.

If I look at it in more of a vacuum, yes, a lot of it was deus ex machina hapdash plot line city. Like the stuff about Rata Novus, for example. Such a weird cutoff. “Turns out the dragon has a weakness.” What weakness? I don’t know, but we know he has one now. ??? How is that revelatory.

We’re going to split up for the second or third time. Why? Because some of us disagree on what to do next. But isn’t it dangerous in the jungle? Yeah, it is! But we really want to split up though… ok, fine, we’ll split up. Nothing bad happened while we were split up. I guess the jungle isn’t so bad.

Wait, why did we split up again? The designers wanted a way to lead the player through complex areas of the jungle. Ohhhh, ok, yeah, it all makes sense now. Wait, there’s a fourth wall?

Hey Rytlock, how about those powers of yours? Oh, like the fact that I can knock down vine walls in the same way that that big frog dude can? Yeah, again, the designers wanted a way to control player flow, so that they don’t move too quickly through the instance and get lost. Ah, right, that fourth wall again.

Hi, I’m Ruka, you can follow me if you want. I will help you escape the clutches of evil. Just come to where I move to. I’ll wait for you halfway across the map to get here. You figure out the steps, I’m not going to walk you through it, you welfare whiner.

Hi, I’m Tarir, we have the ability to sacrifice an exalted to save the city from Mordrem invasion over and over. But when it comes to Glint’s Egg, the only thing we really care about, the best we can muster is a single guy who will run ahead of you. Thanks egg-bearer, the force is strong in you, but you are not a Jedi yet.

Hey, Taimi here. You know I’m not just a weak kid right? I can do things for myself. Just because I’m a kid doesn’t mean I- HELP ME, PROTECT ME, AHHHHH. I’m really smart though. If we just transmute the halfrun matrices into the glonknogs, then it’ll do something cool! Could you go gather some grass for me, so we can get on with my brilliant experiments.

Drawing Guy.3701:

I had my hopes up with the Legendary Journey – I play all aspects of the game and enjoy a challenge, but doing the same thing over and over thousands of times is just tedious – not what I had hoped for when they said it won’t be easy. I also don’t want to take “then just don’t do it” as an answer. I want to try for change – to find an alternate method to a tedious grind. Those that like the grind can grind, sell their mats, and buy the precursor. And those that wanted the “Journey” could go on the journey that wouldn’t require that (or at least be far less of a grind).

Excuse my cynicism for a moment, but I think the ship has sailed when it comes to precursors. It took them, what, 3 years to come up with a new system for precursors that wasn’t 100% based on an infinitesimally small chance of looting one?

And then they come up with a half scavenger hunt (what people asked for) mixed in with RNG (what people hated), apparently.

Maybe in another 5 years they’ll implement a precursor system that isn’t so painful.

What’s funny is I did a search to check when they were first being complained about and found this thread, and a post by Lindsey Murdock (dunno if she’s even with the team anymore), saying:

We’ve seen players discussing the topic of crafting legendary precursor weapons and claiming that we’ve made changes to make this more difficult. We’d like to be clear that we did not make any across the board changes to reduce the drop rate, nor was it our intention to significantly increase the difficulty in acquiring these precursor weapons.

We did fix a few bugged recipes that were rewarding Legendary precursors more often than they should have been. These recipes were mostly using Rares in the level 70-75 range and mostly affected the precursors for the greatswords and the dagger. This has had some effect on the drop rate when using lower level rares to attempt to get a precursor but it was never intended for that to be the best way of acquiring these weapons. The recipes for throwing in level 80 exotics have not changed at all.

We have been watching the prices climbing on Legendary precursors and share your concerns about some of them becoming too expensive. We will continue to monitor the situation and will make any adjustments we feel are necessary.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/crafting/Official-Response-Drop-Rate-of-Legendary-Precursors/first#post378176

I guess somewhere along the line they stopped sharing concerns about precursors becoming too expensive. Or they have a very strange concept of what expensive is.

Behellagh.1468:

Because it gives the player a sense they are working toward their choice of precursor.

So here is a way to “earn” your precursor by playing the game, the whole game, “on an epic quest” and while on it, gather all the mats you need. For long running players they may already have a fair chunk of the mats needed. The devs were never looking at the “cost” of this method over the others, just the reliability of getting what you want.

Of course some players don’t really care about all that. They look at the price on the TP, and realize that if they sell off those materials they need to gather and/or craft along the way their precursor, they could simply buy the one they want now as the price has crashed. Of course some of that crash is recovering as more players realize that crafting a precursor isn’t going to be cheap and easy.

This is like the question about why some players craft their own gear rather than buy superior ones off the TP for less than the material costs (excluding ascended gear of course). Some players want to use what they make or find while others go to Evon-Mart.

Except that crafting gear yourself is almost always cheaper than buying direct off the TP.

Which, from what I understand, is not the case with all precursors.

The fairness depends on what angle you’re looking at it from. If you play one character, it’s a pretty reasonable price for such an upgrade. If you have upwards of 6 characters, all of which you play, it’s a pretty poor bang for your buck. If you have tons of characters, you’re probably much better off investing in bank slots or storage expanders.

I’m fairly sure that Nuhoch Stealth Detection has no effect on the HP Champ at Treacherous Path wp.

It’s possible he’s porting and so I’m missing his outline or something? I dunno, aside from its use on Treasure Mushrooms, NSD isn’t as helpful as I thought it would be. The fact that most of the mobs it is effective on do both a port and go stealth means you’re going to spend half your window to figure out where the hell they went anyway.

I think Nemesis makes great points. And the general message I take from all of it is:

1) Don’t take people at their word when they tell you they’re getting X DPS numbers just because they sound confident.

2) Learn your class, so that you can play it well in a variety of situations. I spent about an hour tonight putting together a jungle build on my Ele and testing it. I got way more comfortable with my class in one hour of my own testing and reading the abilities than I get from two hours of reading and copying a rotation/build that somebody else made (a build that is highly situational, if it’s good at all).

Lesson learned. Use the “experts” as a way to gather opinions and ideas, not as a creed to follow.

Ayrilana.1396:

Why do they need to be in line with other exotics?

They don’t need to, but it’s not exactly in support of moving away from total zerker meta to have the new stats be significantly more costly.

The question is, do they care about expanding the meta beyond zerker or are they just pandering to complaints that not enough viable stats exist?

Odyssey.6523:

You are already starting to see this. Flax started at 40s the day HoT came out. The next few days it lingered around 20s until the dev’s leaked the farm underneat Jaka Itzel wp and cued people to check their achievements for the 10 linseed oil reward. Since then players have been farming like crazy. Today I saw flax hit 4s which is an all time low from what I’ve noticed. Mean while many guilds are pressing through the Tavern and Workshop building upgrades which combined =20,000 flax or almost half of the total flax requirement for guild halls. Additionally, individual players are losing luster on Nightfury as a “give me now” item, while the persistence of others has led them to finish crafting it. Demand is reducing, supply is rapidly increasing. Flax will be down to 1s by the end of the year, I’m sure.

You’re probably right, though to play devil’s advocate: 1s per Flax still isn’t exactly cheap. As far as I can tell, all oiled crafting components require 5 vials of linseed oil and you need two components for each item you craft.

So that’s 100 Flax x 2, or 2 gold to make a set of components (not counting the insignia). If we compare that to other components, most of them don’t even run you 1 gold for a set of two. The highest I can think of is making two ori greatsword components, which will cost you around 60-70s if you pay full price on the TP.

That’s not even counting the milling stones, milling basin, and on oiled greatsword components, ori as well.

For the use of these components in making Auric weapons, it kinda make sense, the cost. For use in average exotic weapons with some fancy stats, it doesn’t make a lot imo.

What we’re looking at currently is a situation where the sell prices of Flax and Milling Stones have to plummet almost to the point of being valueless before the cost is in line with other crafted exotics. Which seems counter-intuitive, since they are all about taking steps to prevent mats from becoming valueless and they’ve added several new stats to the game in support of moving away from total zerker meta.

Gaile Gray.6029:

You may speculate, if you wish. However, the team that is requesting testers has carefully analyzed the sort of player they need, and they have made determinations based on those precise needs. This is obviously not an attempt to distance veteran players, but to get the best test input possible, and obviously a player’s perspectives change with veterancy.

For example, in other tests, they’ve sought someone with no familiarity with our game. Maybe that test involved looking at the user experience with the game interface, you know, such as seeing how easily someone discovers the dye system, or the wardrobe, or figures out how the inventory and storage systems work.

Maybe in the case of this test something is being changed. Your familiarity — as a widely experienced player — and your knowledge of the current interface and our development and patterns in general would obviously change the input that you gave. You know the interface, a small change might not cause you to stumble at all. But maybe that person with less experience would be completely flummoxed by the proposed alterations and not have the instincts of a veteran in finding things.

I truly don’t know what they’re testing. I am nearly certain it is not the interface, but I’m using that simply as an example. I make the post simply to point out that there are different types of tests, and different input requirements, including that of newbies, mid-level players, veteran players, and experts.

Thanks for understanding.

^Exactly.

See usability testing, for more information on this sort of thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

Think of it like a science experiment. It’s not a matter of censoring or ignoring opinions. It’s actually a matter of trying to do their best to get information that will help them with what their development goals are. When you’re doing a science experiment, you look for particular kinds of participants to isolate variables and ensure that you can draw accurate conclusions.

You are then able to apply that information in a broader context.

God, it never gets old does it. This telling other people how they’re supposed to play the game nonsense.

It’s one thing to offer a suggestion. It’s a whole other thing to pretend like subjective mindsets are objectively wrong.

As it is, the OP reads like Stockholm Syndrome grade stuff. “It’s not that bad once you just accept your fate and realize that you have no power in how this will work.” It’s a little scary tbh.