Guild Wars 2

Yet you based the entire premise of your argument on the fact that I “play 40 hours a week”

/facepalm.

srsly, when did /age really have a valid bearing on any metrics?

Don’t worry, they’ll get to them. It took a few days for the character I reported to disappear, but it has. Best thing you can do is report the player to exploits@arena.net.

This unfortionately is not uncommon (I reported one last week – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEM8LpD8kL4).

Just submit your evidence to exploits@arena.net

Garenthal.1480:

I really wish the people who claim to be quitting or have quit already would leave the forums be. How hard is it to show some respect for those of us who enjoy the game and want to enjoy it and discuss it here without being labelled ‘fanboys’ on the official site of the game in question?

Do these people go to football matches and say they think football is stupid in front of a thousand or more fans?

Not to argue in either direction, but aren’t those football “un-fans(?)” just as much justified to do so if they pay the same price for their seats as the other guy?

Bastion.2457:

Jestunhi.7429:

Bastion.2457:

How does one quit that which has no fee?

The same way they quit anything… by no longer doing it.

It’s not complex.

But then if they come back, they unquit?

Quitting in MMo terms generally means unsubbing. Guild Wars isn’t really something you quit, you just take a break. Eventually you will see something you like and login again, but you don’t have to actually do anything to “quit”.

My point is that if you aren’t happy, wait for things to get patched or new content to be released.

In the words of a famous cowboy:

“I wish I could quit you”

Your semantics is troubling.

I “quit” playing <insert sub-based game here> by canceling my CC, so does that mean I can no longer play that game?

Let me give you a hint: I just recently re-visited my CoH account and wouldn’t ya know, the same characters that I had left SEVEN years ago are still there!

I never mentioned removing team play, so where in my suggestion did you see that? Perhaps you should read the entire post rather than just the first few lines and assume you know what I’m saying.

I did, however suggest a replacement to the current LFG tool that certainly doesn’t do it’s job. You can easily validate that it doesn’t work yourself by changing your status to “LFG” and wait and see if you actually do get a party invite.

Smackjack.5071:

Ever since 2 people asked for a screenshot with his /age the op has not been back.

I’m also level 80, 100% map complete and 1 profession at 400.

Furthering the topic on the LFG tool: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-the-LFG-system-should-be/first

To be honest, there shouldn’t even be a “looking for group” system, as it adds a very complex, very unpredictable step between the user and what they really want to do – play the game.

Besides, the whole premise behind “looking for a group” is broken anyway. I didn’t log into the game to look for a group of people, I came in to play the content. If anything there should be a “looking for something to do” system and just let the groups form naturally.

So what “could” the LFG system be that would really help connect players to what they want to do?

1. Let the players subscribe to notifications of server-wide PVE events. Let us know when the centaurs are acting up in Hirathi Highlands, or when the Splintered Coast is seeing increased activity and that Tequatl’s approach is imminent. Let us know if the Citadel of Flame is under Flame Legion control or that Zojja needs our help at the Crusible of Eternity.

2. Incentivise revisiting certain lowly populated maps. Perhaps in the “LFG” tool, we can show a priority call for action letting us know when the Durmand Priory’s forces are low (there are too few players on the map), or when (and where) the forces of Tyria are planning an attack on Zhaitan’s forces on Orr and need our help. Increase the magic item drop rate for these troubled zones.

3. Let the user queue up for dungeons that we want to queue up for. I have read that the development staff have no intentions on doing this, but I just cannot see how this would have any negative impact on the gameplay or the user experience.

My suggestions are real simple and are based on some very critical User Experience design concepts – to reduce the amount of resistance between your user and their goals.

Let me elaborate.

The goals in this case are the PVE content, and at 80 the only real rewarding ones are:
- DE’s that drop chests (only way you can get gear your level to drop)
- Dungeon runs

The resistance being:
- The cost to navigate the map looking for DE’s to participate in
- The process of finding a relatively capable PuG to complete explorable dungeons with

Ideally, the goal is to connect the user to what they want to do; so the fewer the steps or logical barriers involved in the process, the better.

So what am I arguing against?

1. The cost to navigate the map looking for stuff to do (I actually love repeating these epic battles – they still haven’t gotten old for me). The issue is that most of the good DE’s are on long spawn timers – to the point where people are actually composing their own tools to predict when these events will occur (ie http://gw2dragontimer.webs.com/).

2. The LFG tool just doesn’t cut it. It’s too broad a brush for people, there’s no refinement or focus within it. Even if people know where it is in the UI, it does a terrible job of connecting people to the game. I don’t want to “Look for a group”, I want to “Beat some epic bad guy’s face in”.

So what am I suggesting?

1. There needs to be a way to rally people across the entire map for particular DE’s; I see nothing that can argue against this regarding the user’s experience, only technical arguments over how this can be achieved. Again, sitting around waiting for that epic DE to begin isn’t feasible, and jumping from waypoint to waypoint looking for the next DE to participate in is far too costly.

2. The LFG system needs some major retooling. Ideally, there should never be a “Looking for Group” tool, as it’s not what users really want; rather work toward implementing a system that shows users what is going on across Tyria. Seriously people, invest a little thought into this and you could easily see how greatly this could improve the QoL for players at 80.

I really don’t know how else I can say that my personal issue not with the amount of content, rather how the games connects us to the content; I’ve said it a few times, yet people still respond with “how much end game content do you want out of a game just released”?

If you folks want to argue in favor of ANet, then argue with logical points, rather than with the scripted “go back to wow, elitist” comments. This is a discussion attempting to make GW2 a better game, so to blunt – stop being d-bags.

@nerva:

Yes, I can craft a legendary (not PVE)
Yes, I can WvW (not PVE)
Yes, I can sPvP (not PVE)
Yes, I can do achievements (eh, technically PVE, but w/out any “strategy”)

I’m sorry, where did any of those suggestions contribute to my original statement?

Nor have I mentioned WvW or sPvP, those are two separate topics. The goal here is “how can we keep people better engaged in PVE after level 80”. I still play WvW, I still play sPvP, and I am still enjoying leveling other characters.

For the record, here’s my /age (not that it matters). But I thoroughly enjoyed the content (and am still enjoying the content on my warrior); and apparently I enjoyed it well enough that I didn’t even notice 80 levels and a full map fly by.

Or they can reduce the cost of navigating the map looking for things to do? When did that become unreasonable? And since when did any of you become the authority in how to play this game?

We’re merely making suggestions that enhance gameplay at 80. Again (dusk), either add something constructive to say or go hate on someone else in another thread.

You really don’t digest information well, do you Dusk.

Re-read what I wrote, let me know exactly what statement eluded you to believing I was asking for more content.

Perhaps Dusk you should actually read what people write; you’re starting to sound exactly like the category of people you are explicitly attacking.

Stop trolling – positively contribute or GTFO.

you also don’t have to watch the full cutscene.

bottom right of the window a button will allow to cancel it. i believe hitting “esc” also works.

C’mon, keep it on topic. The “type” of player really is just a relative factor and has no bearing on any reasonable metrics. Nor is the argument over how “much” there is to do in the game, since I never even brought that up.

The original premise was in the flaws in CONNECTING players to the actual content – something that is not affected by either the type of player or the amount of content.

To be honest, my (or any other’s) type of play really has no relevance on the state of endgame PVE or this topic.

Keep in mind, this isn’t an attack on the game’s overall fun-factor, just PVE after 80; I am certainly well aware that there is still WvW, sPVP, jumping puzzles, crafting, new characters, etc, etc.

I really only made a few observations and offered some suggestions on how to accommodate endgame play.

I’m not arguing that these fixes need to be in yesterday; my expectations certainly aren’t what you may think they are.

I myself am a software developer, so I personally know the process involved in product development (ESPECIALLY when you actually care about the product).

Nor am I arguing in favor of repeating the same bad practices other games have implemented in a “kneejerk” reaction to keep people engaged.

Right now I’m leveling a warrior and am tinkering with a mesmer in sPvP, so I still have an overall engaged attitude in the game, but the issue is what do I do w/ my lvl 80? Every time I log in, it feels like all I’m doing is either waiting for fun or unsuccessfully looking for fun.

There are plenty of zones I’d like to frequent regularly if all that changed was either 1. I knew something was going on there (keep in mind that some of the epic DE’s are on 3 hour timers), or 2. The cost to travel there to find out wasn’t holistically overwhelming.

Personally, waypoint costs are the sole discouraging factor when trying to look for fun events to do.

Had it not been for waypoint costs, I’d certainly find myself frequenting key zones pretty regularly (Mount Maelstrom, Frostgorge Sound, Blazeridge Steppes, Sparkfly Fen come to mind)

I’m really sorry and not to call people out, but every post I read here that argued AGAINST the OP didn’t really have anything constructive to say.

There are honest players posting legitimate arguments about the state of content at level 80. And to be brutally honest, if you haven’t a character that’s at level 80, you probably should keep your comments to yourselves.

Yes, it’s 27 days into the game, but some of these arguments hold valid whether you hit level 80 the day after release or a few months after release. If anything, appreciate the fact that there are people out there, making reasonable suggestions on how to fix these problems so that other people don’t have to experience the same challenges.

@Faction, I think you’re still missing the point. It’s not an issue of the enjoyment in leveling; personally, I LOVED leveling through. It also wasn’t an issue with the amount of content at level 80 – there is plenty to do WHEN you know what’s going on and where. The argument still remains that there isn’t enough bringing players together when they hit level 80 – regardless if you hit 80 the day after release or a few months after release.

1. I have 130 hrs logged for my lvl 80, granted I spent a good while on the weekends playing through.

2. Yes, there’s action throughout the game, but it’s not the epic content you would expect to see in the endgame; I’m not going to go back to Jotun’s Vista to have some NPC tell me I need to help them repair a bridge.

3. You missed the point in that it’s too costly. I have gone to zones and spammed map chat for any events going on. In fact, I’ve even taken it steps further and would run throughout the map hoping for something to pop up, justifying all the running around by farming crafting materials (this is mostly how I was able to level my craft to 400). Often times, I’d find myself sitting by a DE spawn point hoping that something would happen. I’ve even offered to start a few DE’s myself (like the Cathedral of Zephyrs) and would spam map chat for other players without response. I can only assume they are in LA or at a dungeon waypoint doing the same thing – looking for something to do.

Preface: I’m a fairly casual player, and have already completed my story, leveled one craft to 400 and have gotten 100% map completion.

There are just not enough calls for action in the endgame.

When playing through, the next steps were logical, you progress from one heart or DE to the next until you’ve enjoyed that content (or outleveled it) and moved on. The whole while you actively kept an eye out for those “epic DEs” that meant something really cool and rewarding was about to happen.

However, once you hit 80, the gameplay experience drastically takes a turn for the worst.

First, there’s no next logical step to follow when attempting to find where the action’s at. What I would expect to be rewarding end game content would be any of the epic dynamic events on Orr (Cathedrals come to mind), any of the Dragon events (Jormag, The Shatterer, Tequatl) or any of the explorable dungeon runs.

Second, the cost to navigate the map is astronomical when the destination isn’t yet known. It’s easy to validate the cost of waypoints at 80 when the user knows where they are going, but when we’re not really sure what’s going on across the map, it’s easy to drop 10s and get nothing in return.

And then there’s the issue with LFG and dungeons. I’ve read a few topics on the subject (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Finder-Sorely-Needed/first#post203347 seems to be the most responded one by ANet), and all I can say is this: I am a User Experience developer and if there is one thing I’ve learned in my career it is that you simply cannot force a user to use a tool, regardless of how well thought out you think it is; simply put, it either works or it doesn’t. Right now, the LFG tool DOES NOT WORK for what the audience wants it to do. We want something that connects us to content. Edit: my opinions on LFG here (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-the-LFG-system-should-be/first)

1. Botting is relatively easy to spot by the human eye (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEM8LpD8kL4 – my most recent report to exploits@arena.net)
2. It’s fairly easy for a GM to ban a player
3. There’s an overwhelming amount of botters right now
4. ANet’s immediate response to the botting problem gives the appearance that they aren’t responding to the issue fast enough.

The only conclusion I can come up with from these factors is that they’re genuinely investigating a solution to implement an automated “banhammer of justice” that requires little GM involvement; the alternative is that they go down the path of manually investigating and banning the population of those who actually are botting, which can be a very resource (read: money) intensive solution.

I’d also like to assume that they’re taking this time to watch and effectively dissect these tools the botters are using.

So if we don’t see a swift and immediate reaction to our reports of botters, let’s just assume that ANet is devising a tremendously spectacular solution to reliably “ban the crap” out of anyone who so much as thinks about it.

We can sure as heck gripe about it next month if ppl are still botting, though.

@SirMoogie – I understand where you’re going w/ this. I just don’t see how it would de-emphasize community building across GW2. The game already has some decent structure surrounding some community building (the ability to join multiple guilds comes to mind), where it lacks in others (LFG system I feel is terrible right now).

I also genuinely don’t see how open world content exclusively promotes community building. You can probably prove that point yourself by asking anyone to provide any player’s name for any DE they’ve participated in. I’ll bet you’ll get very little response.

Now I’m not saying it’s not fun, I love participating in DE’s, I just don’t feel as if they’ve really brought people any closer together with the completion of the DE; people tend to scatter off and continue on w/ their own agenda (and this perfectly OK).

I’d really like to advocate for both DE’s and instanced challenges. I don’t see how participating in and instanced challenge is not a community effort.

The armor stats for the dungeon gear are the same as crafted sets.

I understand it’s optional, but why have it at all if a player needs to run roughly 10-15 times through it to obtain an armor set for cosmetic purposes? It’s existence promotes dungeon grinding.

If I run every explorable mode for every dungeon, how come the only reward I have is 90x tokens for each dungeon that only take up bank slots?

I thought we did away with grinding stuff to see a viable reward? How did it make it into dungeons?

I can easily promote a few solutions to that problem without jeopardizing the challenge.

1. Dungeon vendors only become available after a player has completed at least 2 explorable modes. At that point, those vendors accept karma (s*-can the dungeon tokens).

2. Make dungeon tokens universal across all the different dungeons, and set it so that when a player completes all of the explorable dungeons, they have been rewarded with enough “dungeon currency” to purchase a single armor set.

And let me also note, I’m not advocating giving certain professions aggro retaining abilities and certain other professions aggro reducing abilities, but to spread them across every profession’s weapon sets / utilities.

As a use case, I like to play staff ele (mostly for the range I get out of the abilities), but in a case where we’re combating mobs in a long corridor (where it’s incredibly difficult to see whom the mob is focused on due to partical effects and random environmental conditions), I’d like to be able reliably pull a mob’s attention, pop a slow or stun affect (for melee mobs) or my earth spell reflect (for caster mobs) and soak up damage. I can then pop a utility skill (thinking mist form) to effectively lose a mob’s attention and let him move off toward another player whom has a mitigating ability ready. This just “feels” more like team play and opens the doors for a different level of player coordination.

Right now it just feels the game’s UI and environment conflicts with our ability to react effectively.

Shaank.2065:

Lance Coolee.9480:

I love the concept of raiding, but TBH, I hated the fact that we were locked into a set number of players. 10, 15, 25, 40, it didn’t matter, but those round numbers always left some level of disappointment when trying to organize. Either people were left out or people were randomly included.

I would like to see instanced content that scaled in difficulty based on the number of players attending.

Yea a scaled event would be pretty sweet for large guild type PVE sessions.

I’d even say this concept could work with smaller sized guilds; the premise being more of a “fully inclusive” guild PVE scenario rather than a “compete for a raid slot” scenario, or even just having to fill certain raid slots with random PuGs just because you had to.

SirMoogie.9263:

Lance Coolee.9480:

I would like to see instanced content that scaled in difficulty based on the number of players attending.

I would not like to see instanced content, in any form, unless it has to do with personal story. The focus of MMOs should not be shuffling players off into their own small little worlds, only to creep out to gather in a town to show how pretty they’ve become by exploring their small little world. The focus should be on playing epic, challenging, and fun content together as a community.

I never recall mentioning anything in my suggestion about rewards, merely the experience. It’s nice that GW2 introduces so many new community-based events throughout the world, but I wouldn’t genuinely say that those experiences right now require much team play (with maybe the exception of a few events in Orr). I would like to be able to visit content exclusively with a group of people I’m comfortable attending with. It’s not elitist, but it gives us the opportunity to scale content to a level that general PuGs might not survive (without serious coordination).

And TBH, I like the look of my lvl 80 crafted exotic set, so I’d likely xmute anything I get out of a difficult setting onto that.

I love the concept of raiding, but TBH, I hated the fact that we were locked into a set number of players. 10, 15, 25, 40, it didn’t matter, but those round numbers always left some level of disappointment when trying to organize. Either people were left out or people were randomly included.

I would like to see instanced content that scaled in difficulty based on the number of players attending.

@Korrigan – the problem is that it’s still “farming”. There’s so much good content in the game that’s just not as rewarding as others

My opinions on karma: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Karma-vendors-at-80-are-just-not-worth-it/first#post106478

IMO, the reward should be that those spammers get insta-banned pending GM review.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Suggestion-on-combating-the-gold-spammers/first#post132580

Preface: this is not argument FOR revisiting the holy trinity.

I totally understand the move away from the holy trinity of MMO play (tank, healer, dps), and personally I think it’s a wonderful breath of fresh air; I just think that certain aspects of the old school trinity should still be maintained – especially in the case of dealing with mobs’ attention.

The real challenge is that in order for there to be no “trinity” of sorts, then every player in every group would have to effectively be able to hot-swap into any of those roles, and right now that just isn’t possible. There is no way currently that an elementalist would outlive a guardian when it comes to taking and mitigating damage.

I also recall reading on a few threads now that the name of the game isn’t to outheal incoming damage, rather to block / reflect the damage. Again, this is a philosophy I totally jive with, but it’s also dependent on the ability for a player to be able to deal with that damage reliably.

Right now we can’t even tell who has any given mob’s attention (which in every dungeon I’ve ran seems to change very often and very sudden), so even if every player had a reliable and relatively consistent way of managing damage, it doesn’t help if there isn’t enough reaction time.

So if we can’t predict where the damage will go, can’t control where the damage will go and can’t all mitigate damage equally well across any build a profession chooses, how can these PVE scenarios be anything but a chaotic dps race / graveyard zerg?

I strongly feel we need Targets’ Target UI elements and abilities that allow us to control aggro regardless of which trinity of gameplay is chosen – Tank, Healer, DPS or Control, Support, DPS.

TL;DR: Kiting is fun sometimes, but not when it becomes the entire premise for managing every mob in the game.

For reference, take a look at this thread and the breadth of valuable information in it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elemental-bugs-glitches-thread/first

morrolan.9608:

There seems to be plenty of analysis and possible solutions being posted in the thread. Good stuff actually.

I’m sorry, let me rephrase. The options provided hold no value to the devs. “slight buff”, “no buff” or “major buff” does not provide any substantial information to compose the right solution. Granted, there are some folks in this thread who are providing some decent information, but my original statement still holds – that the original premise for the thread doesn’t work.

I also would like to see the dyes be account-wide, if not at least the rare dyes.

@runeblade – obviously this solution doesn’t solve every use case, but I would like to say it’s a step in the right direction.

If we can restrict them from advertising publicly, we make gold purchasing less accessible to those whom would likely purchase it from the gold farmers, which would take a toll on the gold spammers pockets, which would make them less likely to hack GW accounts since they’re less profitable.

Will it solve the problem with accounts being hacked right now? No. But we’d hope that this would help out in the end game.

paultimate.8790:

Lance Coolee.9480:

TP is a browser, prolly why they don’t have the “Preview” option available on it.

Just alt-tab or get another monitor (gotta love dual monitors – I couldn’t live w/out em)

Just throw money at the problem or continue to be inconvenienced is not a solution. If anything Id use fullscreen window mode and set a browser window up set to always stay topmost.

That’s an unfair assessment of my suggestion. Either way, money will get “thrown at the problem” – whether it’s on ANet’s side or the client’s. The tone of my suggestion was more along the lines of “this is a problem that us consumers have the resources to solve on our own”, so why not let the devs at ANet work on solving the issues we can’t?

Certainly it would be nice to have an in-game browser, but if you’ve ever worked in a software development shop that takes their products seriously (even in agile dev shops), there is no such thing as a “simple solution”. If it was my vote, I’d say let the ANet focus on other critical problems right now.

No offense, but I kinda feel the premise to this thread isn’t really valid. It’s easy to say if something is broken and give our “opinions” on how much work is needed to fix the problem. But we’ll likely find that those opinions don’t lead to a real solution.

I’m a software engineer and I had a mentor of mine long ago used to say unless I come to him with a real analysis of the problem and a solution to how to fix it, all I was doing was complaining.

Complaining will get us nowhere. If anything, let’s take the time to build other characters and give genuine evidence of where the profession lacks, and what may be done to remedy the issue.

Just a suggestion – perhaps it may prove valuable in empowering the players when dealing with gold spammers.

The idea being if a player gets reported for spamming “X” number of times, that player is automatically kicked and their account is locked pending GM review (we could even consider a first strike warning). I’m fairly certain this would greatly deter the spammers from continuing to blast general chat. I also think the risk in this feature’s misuse isn’t great either; as any players who intends on abusing this feature will certainly have their accounts on record and can find themselves in their own ban.

Also, perhaps allow us the opportunity to buy unique items w/ karma.

- Unique, non-craftable sigils / runes
- Guild armor (instead of spending gold)
- Unique pets

kishter.9578:

i dont have enough tme to read everything but let me tell you something, if ele get buffed a little bit more than now, we gonna be Super Saiyan. i feel my ele whit the correct build very strong. im the last one to die in every dungeon and in WVW everyone fear me and my meteor shower

I lol’d. Yea umm… they’re not running AWAY from you’re meteor shower, they’re running OUT of you’re meteor shower – so they can nuke ur face down to a puddle of goop while u sit there channeling ur world-ending-uber-leet-skill.

Similar threads on attunement switching:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Elementalist-Swapping-into-Air-attunement-causes-character-to-auto-attack-nearest-mob/first#post97193

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Switching-attunements-should-not-auto-attack-the-closest-mob/first#post97286

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Passive-traits-that-disadvantage-you/first#post67651

Awesome post.

Similar threads on this topic:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Passive-traits-that-disadvantage-you/first#post67651

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Switching-attunements-should-not-auto-attack-the-closest-mob/first#post97286

Keran Lors.8560:

You should deactivate auto-targeting, it’ll solve all your problems. If you still want the mob you attack with 1 to become your target automatically, you can set the “promote target” thingy.

At least that did it for me, never suffered from anything like you describe.

This may be a workaround, but not a solution to the problem.

Another use case:

Last night, I was running a dungeon w/ a couple of guildies, and went forward to tag the mob to focus target (the mobs were around a bend, so I had to get relatively close for them to be visible). I switched to water attunement to drop an aoe slow on them and I started auto attacking.

Granted, I “could” just think and plan defensively so that I don’t switch attunements within range of a mob, but at that point I feel like I’m combatting the UI rather than the gameplay mechanics. Turning off auto-target may be something I very well do, but that’s still not the solution to the problem – switching attunements shouldn’t be an intent to engage combat; switching attunements while in combat should keep the player in combat.