Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

My point there was more that they got that part completely wrong. What should be instanced is not. Every map is instance so no open world but there are no raid instances.

I don’t mind the maps being instanced. It doesn’t bother me, like I’m sure it does for typical MMO players who aren’t used to having such between zones. This is very typical GW, and for me not an issue. This is still an ‘open’ persistent world though, especially in comparison to GW1; however, this isn’t WoW, or Rift, or SWtoR and that’s fine. Different games do it different ways.

Just because they do it different, does not make it “wrong.” Do they have some issues with their choice at times? Yeah, but that’s bound to happen. They are just kinks in the road that need ironing out. Do they always get it right when they try to fix it necessarily? Hehe, no, but they at least try. No one gets it perfect the first time, or the second even.

Mathias.9657:

Tengu and when/if they are released to be playable ANet are not going to give us Cantha because 1) we want it and 2) Tengu already have a city they need to unlock the gates to, located in the already playable area’s of the game. Well whatever, Tengu are awesome…

Yeah but isn’t there a whole convo somewhere about the Tengu going home to Cantha? They could make that a whole quest chain to reclaim Cantha, including the battle Bubbles, et all. Lots of potential there, but we can only wait and see.

Daendur.2357:

The new profession will be OP.

chuckle and then they shall be nerfed into oblivion, and take the next 2 years to make semi-playable again….maybe (waves at one trick pony paragons)

Mathias.9657:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Still trying to determine how this is so much worse than Anet locking cross campaign looks behind the makeover kit in GW1. People were fine with that…. but suddenly a similar thing here isn’t? At least here, you can convert gold to gems and get it, in GW1 there is no such thing. It’s fork over $10 or gfy….

Yeah, I wonder why no one cared in GW1. I wonder.

Because it wasn’t a big deal. $10 wasn’t/isn’t an outlandish amount to spend, and people didn’t mind supporting the game, which was what the entire point of the store was.

It’s no different here, honestly. Heck, with the gold to gems conversion, you don’t have to spend a penny if you so choose, which makes it that much easier on some (that don’t have the disposable income).

Devata.6589:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Beldin.5498:

My theory now is also that we next get instanced raiding because so much people now asked for it because of Tequatl, even since before very much people were strictly against that. But now ANet could say : hey .. you asked for that.

Well, Mike Z, Colin, and Chris W have said that the GW2 raiding would not be like traditional raiding. So Tequatl may have been anet’s answer to the raid request (no on has said definitively), which, for people requesting raiding, should still be very doable for them. They just get a couple of people with commander tags, and squad up to take him on.

We may get instanced raiding, they may give in to it if people holler loudly, but I don’t think so at this point. Colin has stated that they don’t want to do a whole lot of instanced content, because of how it divides the player base. (Thus why we’ve been told no HM for dungeons) Honestly, I like the Tequatl changes (mind you, I still aint beat him). I’m looking forward to them making such changes to all of the world bosses. But as for not wanted to do instancing… could always change. Just give me my heroes back, and I’ll be perfectly fine with it.

If they don’t want instances they should not have made every map an instance and if they don’t want to divide the playerbase they should have work with fractions and put WvW in the open world as part of that and no fractions don’t divide the player-base. Two people fighting each other are playing together.

They seem to get the whole instance part completely wrong. What should not be instanced is instanced and what should be instanced is open. A raid in an instance does not divide up the playerbase more then overflows do but it get people to really play together work on tactics. Something that does work way less with a open world boss. Well open map boss I should say as GW2 as not something as an open world.

It was never said that they didn’t want any instancing. More along the lines of they don’t desire more of it necessarily. As I’ve said in other posts, it’s a balancing act, and not one that they have perfected yet.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Yeah, but, this is a game, lots of things are unrealistic. The proper way to use a handgun is with two hands. Try holding a gun in each hand and firing them in turn. For starters, you’ll have atrocious accuracy, and you possibly won’t even be able to fire them as fast a single handgun if you can’t manage the recoil.

True, but we don’t need quite that level of realism. You need movie-level of realism, to create immersiveness. Just the way duel wielding works at the moment, its not immersive… to me anyway. I’m sure for others, it doesn’t matter.

As far as P/P goes, I think the #2 pistol skill still needs something done with it. I understand that the purpose is to lob a nice chunk of vulnerability on the target for coordinated damage, but I never see it being used for that. In fact, I rarely see it used at all. I’ve used it sparingly… I’ll sometimes pop 2 on a guy that is at somewhat low health and then use unload, which is then doing an additional 20% damage on top of the 20% from executioner, but I generally don’t use it otherwise.

You could use it in a condi-specced build to improve your direct damage, but the time you spend applying that means less bleeds, torment, and poison, so it seems a bit counterproductive.

I think unload is fine for the most part as it can do decent damage and is nice for proccing on-crit effects or projectile finishers, but the kind of playstyle it demands will leave you vulnerable. I found p/p works best when you have allies backing you up and you can just wail on the enemies from range, although I’ve managed to do decently solo as well. P/p also starts to suck heavily against tanky retaliation builds, but I guess everything will need to have weaknesses.

I haven’t tried p/p with the ricochet trait yet, but I haven’t been motivated to alter the p/p build I use yet. Might try it just for testing though. I used to know a guy who used it with the assassin’s signet for constant healing, but I haven’t tried that out either.

I think the main thing that is perhaps keeping p/p away from the limelight is the inability to play jack-in-the-box like s/d or various perma-stealth builds can. You then may have to build your stats for more survivability, which subtracts from your overall damage, and there you go.

I’m so-so on pistol skill 2. I tend to run with my husband, who’s paired character is a guardian. I like to hit 2, as he jumps in on the foe, and then hit 3 to stack the damage with him. Works decently for us, but since I’m not traited and still learning (only a lvl 60), my damage and effectiveness is extremely sub par. (Actually popping into the thief forum was wholly intended to help me understand the various traits better)

Edit: Should prob mention that I’m basically just a pve player…which has an effect on how I view things…

I have just a general issue with how duel wielding works in GW2. While it is true that you are going to use your dominate hand/weapon to do more hits and your non-dominant to defend, you still alternate hits on occasion. To make duel wielding more immersive and realistic, I feel they need to take a look at some “real life fighting” (boxing, mixed martial arts, etc) and use it as a model. While it is not realistic to always do lead-offhand-dual (old assassin rotation), it’s equally not realistic to only use your main hand either, especially with guns. It just feels…unnatural.

That said, they don’t necessarily have to change anything about the skills themselves, just the animations. Many auto attack (1) skills are actually multiple skills, it would not be a bad thing to adjust the animations to make use of both hands, rather than just the main hand. For guns, no it’s not multiple skills, but they could just as easily reuse the animation from skill 3. but at a slower pace, to make skill 1 a little more realistic.

Ugh male armors always look so bulky.

I think the only war helm I liked in GW1 was the kurzick… of course… the female elite kurz pants were niiiiiice too.

Sans the helmet and the frippin shoulder, it’s really not so bad. Of course, the helms for lot of your other sets also suck imo, and I find it very interesting that you opted to model all of those sans the helms, but not the ascended.

If you’re never going to show it why model it? You won’ts see it anyway, therefore what it looks like is a moot point.

I did see that ad last night. I didn’t click it (rarely click ads, they is not safe!), but I saw it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Yes, most business decisions are about money

-snip-

There is some fracturing, but you can still find people to do stuff with. You’re not ‘always alone.’

My guess is they might buff DE rewards (though I doubt it). I don’t think they will ever make fighting open world mobs other than champions rewarding. I expect them to go right on with making the most rewarding content be either the champion zerg or the zerg of the update, but I guess we’ll see.

Yeah, all we can do is wait and see. For the most part I’m fine with current DE rewards, but in order for others to do them, yes they’ll have to make the rewards much better. Otherwise, you are very correct, it’s going to remain champ zerg and update zerg. Which while fun for a little while, gets boring quickly. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. All I can really do.

Anet told us way back in the day that WvW was not intended to be a ‘balanced’ type of battle. (Still hunting for this. I’ll find it eventually)

Considering there is no guaranteed number of players per world, nor is there any guaranteed player level (or skill), balance (even with up scaling) simple is not possible. Yes, they gave the outnumbered world a buff, but that does not by any means make it ‘balanced.’ WvW is intended to be large scale siege type warfare, which by its very nature is not a “balanced” thing.

CMstorm.8679:

wow i was nowhere even close fml hahaha. but whenever i’m in game, people would occasionally say kitten

lol i did this at home last night and my husband was just like ‘really?’ tells me ive been on here faaaaar too much

chuckle we didn’t have quite as much issue in GW1 when people actually had to be approved and accepted by the group leader. Sure, there were still trolls and skill issues, and still some randomness, but no where near as bad.

Can’t please everyone I guess….

Light, I’m so-so on. I’ll have to try it out on my individual chars and see how it is.

Medium, I like.

Heavy… maybe sans the shoulders, and depending on dye-ability.

I like some of them, not the staff particularly. Like the axe, and the daggers though. I find I like the remakes better than their original GW1 counter parts, but it’s all subjective. Some will like them, some won’t.

MikaHR.1978:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

MikaHR.1978:

So, it will be EXACTLY like it was with exotic-legendary except with 1 of most pointless tiers of gear in MMO ever.

You DO need THAT tier for fractals. duh

And by raising power cap you will eventually need it for other stuff.

Yes, it was a nod to those the hollered, and loudly, for more gear grind. For some it will be pointless, not for all. For some, it will be the stepping stone anet claims its supposed to be, to bridge the time gap between easily obtainable exotics, and longer term legendaries. It’s all perspective.

You need _some_of the tier for fractals. As people have already shown, you can do the higher fractals with exotic armor and weapons, with only ascended trinkets. Something they have been doing for months now. Adding in the weapon simply makes it easier because they can get more AR and some additional damage output. There will be those that desire the challenge of doing it without the upgraded weapon, just as there will be those that feel they can’t do it without. The exception here is Maw, where agony neither caps nor functions quite like other fractals. Outside this, it is simply perspective differences is all.

Yes, the higher stat cap potentially means we may need it later on. Down the road. In the future. At some expansion point. It does not mean we need it right now. Of course, anet could add harder content at a later time, that recommends ascended, and people still do it in exotic. It all depends on whether anet falls into the gear gating trap of other games. At this point, they haven’t, with the single solitary exception of fractals which appeals to a very specific subset of players.

You don’t have to be a kitten in your response. Can you not have a civil conversation with those you don’t agree with, or do you simply lack manners in general?

Except there already is a gear gated content.

Which I already addressed.

MikaHR.1978:

If GW2 launched with instanced raids and full gear treadmill they wouldnt talk 5 years of not having it.

Fact is that that it didnt AND game became fastest selling MMO of all times based on something they turned their backs on 2 months after launch, probably chasing extra profit. Not the first or last company that did that, but most of those who did it ended with short end of the stick.

We don’t have instanced raids now, nor from the sounds of the dev’s comments, will we. They’ve stated that they want to do ‘raid like’ content, but they’ve also stated that it would not the traditional style. Most likely, Tequatl is their raid like content. (I didn’t think so at first, but it sort of fits the bill) Which is fine. They’ve always said, from the beginning, that they wanted to do large scale content to bring the players together together. To be able to play with others, without necessarily having to party up. DE’s were the start of this, they’ve gradually started making strides in furthering that general idea, while still preserving some “small group” content that does require a party (like dungeons). Is it perfect? Oh hell no, but nothing is in the first few tries. They have a lot of work left to do.

Yes, GW2 was the fastest selling MMO. However, what good is the fastest seller if it does not retain its players? How many threads have there been since…hell, November, shouting for more content? More grind? More gear? More, more, more, more! About how the game is dying? A heck of a lot. People were calling for an expansion in January because they spent 8+ hours a day playing and couldn’t figure out how to entertain themselves anymore. Anet had to do something. Living Story, one of their original ideals (living world) wasn’t ready, wasn’t up to snuff. They were having loot issues, they had so much they needed to fix still, etc etc. Knee jerk reactions are not something new for Anet, we saw it all the time in GW1. They simply gave the players what they were hollering for. Not their best moment, but not their worst either.

MikaHR.1978:

So, it will be EXACTLY like it was with exotic-legendary except with 1 of most pointless tiers of gear in MMO ever.

You DO need THAT tier for fractals. duh

And by raising power cap you will eventually need it for other stuff.

Yes, it was a nod to those the hollered, and loudly, for more gear grind. For some it will be pointless, not for all. For some, it will be the stepping stone anet claims its supposed to be, to bridge the time gap between easily obtainable exotics, and longer term legendaries. It’s all perspective.

You need _some_of the tier for fractals. As people have already shown, you can do the higher fractals with exotic armor and weapons, with only ascended trinkets. Something they have been doing for months now. Adding in the weapon simply makes it easier because they can get more AR and some additional damage output. There will be those that desire the challenge of doing it without the upgraded weapon, just as there will be those that feel they can’t do it without. The exception here is Maw, where agony neither caps nor functions quite like other fractals. Outside this, it is simply perspective differences is all.

Yes, the higher stat cap potentially means we may need it later on. Down the road. In the future. At some expansion point. It does not mean we need it right now. Of course, anet could add harder content at a later time, that recommends ascended, and people still do it in exotic. It all depends on whether anet falls into the gear gating trap of other games. At this point, they haven’t, with the single solitary exception of fractals which appeals to a very specific subset of players.

You don’t have to be a kitten in your response. Can you not have a civil conversation with those you don’t agree with, or do you simply lack manners in general?

Apparently I missed the announcement that they were rdy to add the ascended armors (and I can’t log in to preview the codes…. kitten!)

LordByron.8369:

TP still gives 10 times more than any other reward.
And all players are paying for those few that likes this form of free pvp.

I have absolutely no luck with TP… I’ve tried, I’ve even looked up ‘how to’ guides and I still fail, epicly. I think I need to find someone to give me a crash course in it, and smack me when I’m being dumb.

(On the flip side, I’m a terrible sales person too. So maybe it’s just not in my nature)

champ.7021:

Now here is my question that i would like to pose to all those who enjoy ascended armor and for the kind kind anet devs.
what is the point of ascended armor?
now ascended weapons were created (based off of anet’s logic) to bridge the gap between exotics and legendary.
however, there was no gap between exotics and legendarys in terms of stats only in looks. Ascended weapons on the other hand have better stats but worse looks than both legendarys and exotics. It was really just a reason to put in weapons that took people longer to get so that those grinding hamsters would have something to do.

Now for ascended armor. There is no legendary to make the excuse of bridging the gap and the armor looks terrible anyways. This armor is almost a game breaker for me. I thought anet would have looked at all the complaints and the arguing about ascended weapons and realize people didnt want ascended armor…especially not so soon. This will of course not be taken out of the game once it is released so i plead anet and other players like me who dont want grind but want fun to try and change this direction they have taken.

They were referring to the time gap between how long it takes to get exotics and how long it (theoretically) takes to get a legendary.

You are correct that originally (as far as we knew) legendaries were limited to weapons (probably why they opted to roll out craftable ascended weapons first). Now though, they are talking ‘full’ legendary sets…. weapons, armor, trinkets. Which theoretically will take forever and a day to obtain for average players. (Not saying this is a bad thing, always good to have goals). Having the ascended tier between acts like a stepping stone of sorts, if you choose to build those legendary pieces. (And why wouldn’t you with free stat swapping?) Of course, if you opt to stop at ascended, you’re not really out anything either…

Edit: And additionally, there will be those that never opt to get Ascended either. For them, exotics are more than enough. There is nothing in the game that says we ‘must have’ that tier, except other players. Now, should they add elite content, this may change since having BiS would be advantageous at that point.

MikaHR.1978:

They have a gear treadmill, they may as well go whole way to actually be competitive with other titles.

Every game has a treadmill, per se. It depends on how it’s implemented, how steep, and what it affects that makes the difference. Even GW1 had it, it was small and shallow, extremely simple and top tier was (as so many other gamer’s put it) laughable easy to obtain, but that’s ok. It worked with how the game was designed, and many of us preferred it.

As I’ve been saying, had GW2 launched with Ascended, we wouldn’t have anywhere near the kittening we have now simply because people would have aimed for it at the get go, rather than getting fully geared in exotics as fast as they absolutely could and then shouted ‘gimme gimme gimme.’ Had we launched with it, time gating and all, people would have worked to get ascended (which would have taken longer) and the shouting gimme gimme gimme would have been waylaid some. Perhaps enough that LS could have gotten rolling before people got too bored. However, with people shouting ‘more grind’ ‘more gear’ ‘more content’ they had to do something. We are as much to blame as anet is.

Still, while I do not like the potential precedent that ascended sets, so long as they do not add any more tiers I can accept this one. At this point, this tier is unnecessary to obtain unless you absolutely ‘must have’ bis right this very minute. There is no content barred to me because I do not have it. Even high level fractals are doable in exotic gear, with exotic weapons, and only the AR from the trinkets (which you get just from doing the fractals anyway)….people have been doing it right up to this point.

Honestly though, I think they would have been better off to simply have added the infusion slots to existing exotics, and then made the infusions the hard things to obtain. Still, that is neither here nor there, as it is not the path they chose.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Business decisions are most often about money. The larger the business, the more true that is. ANet is not really a large business, but NCSoft probably qualifies in that regard. Despite my disappointment with the direction of the game, I also don’t think they’ve gone completely to the dark side. Also, a war on bots is a sound decision no matter their motive. A hit to ANet’s profits from gem sales are not the only downside to the existence of third party gold sellers.

Yes, most business decisions are about money; although they aren’t always just about money, but that’s sort of beside the point. We know that NCSoft has their fingers further into the GW2 pot, than they did the GW1, just due to the fact that they hired a monatizer to foist upon ANet.

Anet has had an ongoing war against bots, since shortly after launch. They hired people to form a team just for taking care of that, for building the systems to track and handle such things. (I vaguely recall a news post about it on the site) I don’t think they would simply ‘stop’ doing this stuff just because they took care of the initial instances of botting. That’s just foolish. Monitoring and combating ever smarter bot programs is an ongoing thing. Thus, I don’t think their ‘war’ ever really stopped, it’s not a ‘new’ thing. I don’t think this alone accounts for their wanting to get people together.

I don’t buy “not fracturing the player base” being done to give players the sense there are other players in the game. This only works on the players who are “one with the zerg.” Anyone who is not with the zerg is going to get the sense they’re playing alone precisely because so many players are being given incentives to play relatively little of the existing content.

The reasoning they gave was sound, I can’t argue with it. Whether you ‘buy it’ or not is completely up to you. Yes, with the loot changes (especially for champs) they did poorly in balancing out how people play. Right now it is a lot of ‘zerg this’ and ‘zerg that’ (and only these things) because people only want to play what is profitable. If they can continue to update how rewarding certain aspects of the game are, those zergs will dissipate, at least slightly. If running DE’s became as lucrative as champs, some of the champ farmers, would split off to DE hunt, because they would prefer that over the champ hamster wheel. As the dungeon paths get overhauled, and their rewards adjusted, more people may gravitate back to that, as they enjoy doing that over the other things. However, these small fractures aren’t devastating; it’s when you get 24 dungeons with normal and hard mode, 20+ game maps with normal and hard mode, etc that you start thinning out the playerbase to the point where you can’t find people to play with.

If you’re running around in Timberline Falls, the fact that the players who are doing Teq are in an open-world instance versus a raid instance makes zero difference. If 90% of the players in the open world are either in Queensdale, Frostgorge or the zone-of-the-update, all of the rest of the open world is in that sparsely populated state they say they want to avoid.

If your goal is to have players use more of the available play areas, you don’t create incentives that funnel them into only a few of them. Now, maybe they do want to spread players out, but they don’t want to spread rewards out. However, if it comes to a choice between intrinsic rewards and extrinsic ones, which will more players choose?

Right, I just don’t think they’ve gotten that far. If they make doing 15min worth of DE’s in Timberline as lucrative as winning Tequatl (which also takes 15 min) then some people will opt to simply continue in TF over going to do Tequatl, while others may opt to jump to Tequatl because he has something specific they want (like I want the kitten revolver). They simply have to balance it out, which gives people incentive to go play the parts of the world they like. There is some fracturing, but you can still find people to do stuff with. You’re not ‘always alone.’

I hope that makes sense, it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet. Lol.

RoRo.8270:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Still trying to determine how this is so much worse than Anet locking cross campaign looks behind the makeover kit in GW1. People were fine with that…. but suddenly a similar thing here isn’t? At least here, you can convert gold to gems and get it, in GW1 there is no such thing. It’s fork over $10 or gfy….

You do realize that the campaigns were themed based on various cultures?

Yes, I’m aware of that.

My point was that you could not create a new character, and from the creation screen select a tyrian hair style with a canthan face with an elonian skin color. You can do exactly this with the makeover kit, and only thru the makeover kit. It’s the same general premise.

insanemaniac.2456:

i still have my makeover kit from my 5k chest…

im disappointed that male and female sylvari share their new hairstyles, and that 1 of the charr hairstyles is shared. the rest are unique between male and female.

asura gets a princess leia style, human gets a geisha style (f) and an emokid style (m), norn gets a couple mohawks (m)… personally im not really interested in anything but the exclusive haircolors that were already there.

I may actually need to pull my hair style kit out of my bank to check these out (got a blc key from personal story, got the kit from the chest, go me!)

Ayrilana.1396:

nowitsawn.1276:

Except you forgot the part where you’re not buying AP, they come as a bonus on a purchase with badges. You still get the item you’re spending badges on as well, so what’s the big deal?

You’re seeing what you get when you cross a completionist with a hoarder.

Something veeeeery ugly…. and potentially scary.

Conncept.7638:

killcannon.2576:

It doesn’t matter how many people play an Engineer, or a Charr.

What matters is the fact that there are bugs and graphical glitches in game that have been reported and recognized for over a year.

Instead of fixing these known issues, known for over a year, they instead have manpower focused on new content.

The fact people are blindly defending these actions is ludicrous.

I’m glad there are more hairstyles. But it’s not going to sell games by word of mouth or increase player base loyalty.

What is the point of fixing the paint-job on a car that doesn’t run?

So it makes a nice lawn ornament?

Well…. if you recall, a lot of the people that asked for new armor did say they would be willing to buy it from the gemshop…

Oh and new path is not temporary. It is permanent.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Keep in mind any reviews will be of the game before ANet decided to pump out crap updates every 2 weeks to spur gem store purchases so will be unreliable.

There have been articles and reviews and interviews since then.

Just because you do not like the living story updates, does not mean that everyone is of the same opinion.

I do agree that some forewarning that path 1 was being replaced would have been nice. I’d never actually had a chance to do it. When I read the release info for the upcoming patch and it said ‘new path’ I did not interpret it as ‘replaces existing path.’

I’m not screaming about it, but I am a little bummed. Communication is key in all good relationships. Something as simple as “This new path will replace” blah blah on the release flier page would have been fine.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Dividing the player-base is not inherently a bad thing. Trying to keep all or most of the players together results in zergs endlessly repeating the same thing over and over and over (boring), issues with overflows, and complaints about every zone but the zone-of-the-update being empty.

However, ANet is not just avoiding instanced content to “avoid dividing the player-base.” The concept of endgame involves repetition by default, and repetition means motivation through extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards (the beleaguered “fun”) usually does not survive an nth repetition. ANet is packing players into small areas of the open world by choosing where to provide rewards.

However, is the stated reason the real reason? Is it really about not wanting to divide the player-base? They seemed to have no issue with players going everywhere at launch. They seem to have no issue putting desirable rewards in instanced dungeons — not only at launch, but since.

I think the current direction is more about the war on bots. Gold farmers impact ANet’s revenue. Anyone who purchases gold from a third party is not purchasing gems to exchange for gold. If you look closely at where rewards are clustered, you see that open world content (farmable by bots) provides little reward. Temple events, dungeons, meta bosses, and champions provide the rewards. How many of those are going to be farmable by bots?

Is this scenario really the reason? I doubt we’ll ever know. However, there is a plausible motive and the hypothesis fits the facts. I’m not sure the divided player-base does.

No, dividing the player base is not an inherently bad thing…depending on how much dividing you do. Colin pointed out that the issue with too much division means you can’t find anyone to play with, thus resulting in the eventual death of your game. Wooden Potatoes actually agrees with that assessment, and points out that we did see this issue in GW1 in his video posted on the 29th of Sept. Still, I say there is a very delicate balance to be had between open world and instancing content. We just haven’t found it yet.

Is this their only reason behind it? Is the war on bots the real reason? Is a combination of both of these and maybe other factors as well? Maybe, maybe not. Like you said we’re not likely to know for sure, ever.

I doubt it has solely to do with the war on bots. This paints anet to be nothing but a money grabber, which I don’t personally feel they are. Are they a business? Oh yeah. Are businesses in business to make money? Most definitely. However, they’ve not gone to the dark side in my opinion. There are no pay to win items in the gem store. There is no purchasable ‘premium’ membership which gives people access to content or items that others cannot get unless they pay. Everything the offer is essentially cosmetic, which is no different from the GW1 store. It just has a heck of a lot more options.

You touched on a lot of things which all contribute to the player base division – so many maps, increased dungeon rewards, etc. I don’t think their goal is to have everyone in the same place at the same time. Different people like doing different things, so they’re trying to offer a variety of play options, yet at the same time they don’t want to break us up ‘too much’ because then you can’t find people to do all those different things. We don’t have heroes or henchmen to offset this issue like we did in GW1. They have to find the balance between all the different styles so people can feel like the world is alive and thriving.

Still trying to determine how this is so much worse than Anet locking cross campaign looks behind the makeover kit in GW1. People were fine with that…. but suddenly a similar thing here isn’t? At least here, you can convert gold to gems and get it, in GW1 there is no such thing. It’s fork over $10 or gfy….

So only those on the other side of the fence have opinions that hold any weight?

The view on the forums is likely to be skewed towards a “no don’t bother” answer.

My advice to the OP would be to check out some reviews, go check some youtube videos, and take anything said on the forum with a large grain of salt. If you like what you’re reading in reviews and game articles, and like what you’re seeing on youtube (and even twitch, they have their own channel), then try catching a free trial and investing some time into the game that way. They are having like a week long free trial right now, which should net you quite a bit of game play, upon which you can base the final decision of whether it feels like the game is ‘right’ for you.

Lol wouldn’t be the first kink with patching. chuckle some things never change. Give them a little bit of time, they’ll fix it.

Hm, feels like someone took a lot of words right out of my mouth there.

/applauds

Welcome to the world Rith. =)

fellyn.5083:

So you never noticed how your charrs tail magically pokes through his armor?

You must not be an anime fan at all then, cause you see this all the time in anime. Tails and wings just poking through clothes, no obvious design feature to allow for the protusion. This issue also exists in other games…

Or that his hair disappears when he puts on a hat? Same with his horns?

GW1 had this issue too, was never fixed. It annoys me too that I can’t wear a hat (on any class/race) and have my hairstyle, but it’s not game breaking. Just means I suck it up and don’t wear a hat/helmet. (Female warrior with the big pigtails in GW1… just poof when putting on a helmet, so yeah I know what you mean)

Or that if you equip a 1 hand weapon it will magically shrink?

I actually kind of like some of this. We saw some scaling with weapons on Jora in GW1, so I assumed we’d see some of it here in GW2 eventually. Could it use some tweaking? Sure.

Or the many many stretching issues because pretty much all the armors in the game were made to fix human skeletons and not charr?

Weeeeell, you can only ask so much here. While I don’t disagree, nor will I argue, that Charr armor needs some love, it’s not like they did anything any other company hasn’t done. I think it would have gotten some more attention had the game not been pushed out early, but its a little late for that. Now, we can only hope they get to it in their backlog of to dos, and they might not. Its just how it works. Only so many hours in the day, and only so much affordable man power.

roachsrealm.9284:

I have a couple charr and an engineer (one character is both of these things) I haven’t noticed any glaring issues or bugs. In my opinion these issues with how low the number of players using them can be summed up honestly like so:

Charr don’t have cleavage.
Engineers take more effort / patience to play like other classes.

Same reason there aren’t as many Mesmers. It’s a complicated class that’s less rewarding up front.

chuckle Cleavage would explain why the majority of the player base play human and Norn. Although I’m sure armor selection plays a sizable role as well.

fellyn.5083:

How much time do they need? Most of the issues have been around since the betas. And then there are completely new ones in the last month or two like the charr main hand weapons shrinking magically.

So again, how much time do they require? They sure as hell can make things worse at the drop of the hat so how much time do we have to wait?

Hell, charr still leave footprints in snow that go in the opposite direction the character is facing. And that would be such an easy thing to fix. It would literally take them about 15 seconds to fix it. But no, we have to stare at that kitten for more than a year now.

And the end of the day it’s pure stubborn laziness on anets part and they should be embarrassed. If they wanted to they could probably fix all the problems revolving around charr and engineers inside of a week.

And we do know what the whole story is. They flat out said it’s not worth their time to fix. There is nothing to interpret or guess at.

How much time do they need? As long as it takes. Development isn’t done using a magic wand. Tracking an issue through potentially thousands of lines of code, is grueling work. (Makes my eyes cross at least)

They did not say it wasn’t worth their time. They said because so few people play it, it’s a lower priority. Again, something that happens in every development situation. They have to prioritize their work somehow, and cosmetic issues aren’t game breaking. kitten , GW1 is almost 9 years old and it has clipping issues that were never fixed, and will never be fixed.

Kitten happens, they have to draw the line somewhere. I’d dearly love to have some of you slammed into their dev’s shoes and try to do what they do. Let’s see you do better. No game is perfect, kitten, no software is perfect.

Mathias.9657:

And how long did you spend at a merchant selling trash in comparison to GW2?

Personally I have to make a trip to level my mercantile skill after every kitten event.

I salvage oodles of stuff, so I only stop to merch 2-3 time when clearing a map. I don’t spend more time merching in GW2 than I did in GW1 really. Salavaging is my go to method of clearing inventory, unless its non-salvagable junk, which I can sell at a merchant in a single click. shrug

Beldin.5498:

My theory now is also that we next get instanced raiding because so much people now asked for it because of Tequatl, even since before very much people were strictly against that. But now ANet could say : hey .. you asked for that.

Well, Mike Z, Colin, and Chris W have said that the GW2 raiding would not be like traditional raiding. So Tequatl may have been anet’s answer to the raid request (no on has said definitively), which, for people requesting raiding, should still be very doable for them. They just get a couple of people with commander tags, and squad up to take him on.

We may get instanced raiding, they may give in to it if people holler loudly, but I don’t think so at this point. Colin has stated that they don’t want to do a whole lot of instanced content, because of how it divides the player base. (Thus why we’ve been told no HM for dungeons) Honestly, I like the Tequatl changes (mind you, I still aint beat him). I’m looking forward to them making such changes to all of the world bosses. But as for not wanted to do instancing… could always change. Just give me my heroes back, and I’ll be perfectly fine with it.

While I am sorry there are no Charr updates or engineer updates, I can’t really hold it against them. Such things take time. We’re getting a large balance patch in a couple of weeks. Perhaps they will address some of the engineer cosmetic issues at that point. We don’t know.

Still, I would think that these types of changes would fall on different teams, and that cosmetic ‘fixes’ would be further down on the priority list. Not sure what I think about new hair-dos, although admitted I’m one of many that has been asking for a few more options for Sylvari and Asura since….well, beta. Such things might actually be easier than the fixes being requested, and they opted to simply get them done and thrown into the game while they continue on the others.

We really don’t know the whole story. We don’t work there.

TooBz.3065:

Hi Lanfear,

You can’t find all of the “no endgame” or “gear grind” threads. Even with the search function. They seem to disappear after a while. For example, we know the ascended gear feedback thread was deleted. I tried a while ago, and many of them (especially the ones from last October / November) are gone.

Anyone who asks for proof about some topic or another has to recognize that was remains in the forums is not always a true picture of what was posted in the forums.

Ugh frustrating

Beldin.5498:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

That said, has anet changed it course over the last year? Yeah probably. I’m sure everything they “intended” didn’t work out as planned. You know what they say about even the best laid plans. Why did they do it? Because of us, their player base. We hollered for more gear progression. We hollered that karma was useless. We hollered that dungeons weren’t hard enough. We hollered that world bosses were too easy. We hollered that we wanted raid like content. We hollered the we wanted more permanent impact from living story. We hollered that we wanted some updates to WvW. Guess what guys, you got it. They listened, they provided, and now you aren’t happy because it wasn’t exactly what you specifically wanted.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just some random fangurl. rolls eyes Carry on.

The question is, who is “we” ? I personally never cried for any of the things below, and maybe ANet shouldn’t listen to what maybe only is a very vocal minority at the forums, and do things like ingame surveys, like they did in Aion.

It was a general ‘we.’ A lot of people on these forums did cry for those things, though not necessarily you or me . I wish the stupid search function worked. There have been numerous threads about gear progression (“Gear grind or people leave” is one I commented on a long while back. There have been plenty more), about raiding (Was just one asking if Tequatl was anets answer to raid like content in the LS forums), etc. (Starting to think I’m on here too much… but darn it, work is boring when you’re waiting for code to compile!)

I don’t know how much was asked for in game. I mean I saw requests for some of it, which started some heated debates in LA, but it wasn’t as ‘loud’ as on here.

Yes, the forum is a vocal minority, but we don’t know where else they are taking feedback from. Only they have the actual numbers and metrics.

Mathias.9657:

Yeah, I played GW1 for 7 years bro and still do. At least you can salvage mods off of ‘grapes’ or rares, get a title for IDing, and even use the weapon regardless of your class.

Learn to play hard mode if your drops suck, never once had a bad loot experience in GW1. I always got something out of a mission with or without other players.

You can’t tell me you ever left DoA/FoW/UW/SE without something worth while. Yeah GW2 drops more loot, but that loot is pure garbage.

Even in pvp a few matches yielded you a zkey which you can try your luck on the zaishen chest or simply sell it for 5 plat. Tell me an equal easy way to obtain wealth in GW2 without having to grind events 24/7. GW1 was the least amount of grind for the best amount of wealth vs effort in any game I’ve ever played.

I don’t play GW1 much anymore, just hang out in JQ really.

Still, I did play HM. Completed all of my Vanquisher titles in fact. Did some of the HM farming once upon a time. Drops still sucked. Sure, Ii got more purples and golds than other people I played with, but I had no luck with stats. Yes, you get Source of Wisdom if you maxed your rare IDing (think I’m at Oracle, wasn’t going to bother buying rares just to finish it), and sure you could salvage mods. Although mods on grapes were rarely perfect, and selling most of them was a lesson in boredom. So, merch food, since I have/had no desire to loiter in Kamadan trying to sell mods.

I did specifiy ‘normal’ foes. DoA, UW, and FoW are elite areas, they are not ‘normal’ foes. Although I really had no luck for gems in DoA. Only ever got them from the section chests. Yes, anytime I did UW I walked away with at least one ecto, and 3-4 shards every FoW run, but these went towards like 6 different sets of FoW armor… I didn’t sell them to people.

I’ve used over 1000 Zkeys (what else was I going to use balth faction for? Amber and jade don’t sell that well, I had my armors, and those titles were done shrug). I got 1 Voltaic spear, q13, which I sold pretty quick – caster modded of course. Beyond that it was mainly tomes, sweets, etc. Most of which I used for my own purposes. Yes, I got a lot of weapons, but again mods aren’t a great market and without a low req or a great skin = merch food.

That said, I don’t have any more of an issue making gold in Gw2 than I did in Gw1, and I’m not a grinder nor am I any type of expert trader either. The only thing that I would say I got easily more of in GW1 was materials. My materials tab was always packed….cloth, leather, dust, planks. Even the stuff I needed to ‘trade up’ for: damask, ink, deld steel, etc. Never had any shortage of materials, which made it very simple to get all my elite armors.

Mathias.9657:

After killing trash for so long in this game and not getting anything out of it except useless blues and greens, it makes sense why we call it trash.

You wanna know why people never called trash in GW1 trash? Because… wait for it… wait for iiiiiiiiiit… THEY ACTUALLY DROPPED LOOT LOLOLOLO!

LMAO. No srsly, did you PLAY gw1? The drops from normal foes were terrible. Rarely did you get anything that was not merch food. Most chests dropped grapes until they tweaked them to drop more golds, and even then (prior to Nightfall and inscribe-ability) you were hard pressed to get anything with decent stat combos.

Personally, I get more drops in this game from my kills. It’s still all merch food, but it’s not any worse than its predecessor.

darkace.8925:

I honestly can’t imagine anyone would find charging Quartz Crystals at a rate of one per day fun. I honestly can’t imagine anyone found running around Lion’s Arch breaking dragon pinatas fun. The list goes on for quite some time, so I’ll spare us all and get right to the point: there are so many things being implemented via the Living Story that fly in direct contradiction to the spirit of what was said in that article.

I don’t bother with the quartz, I don’t need it for anything. I made a few obviously. There where in my inventory and I was at a skill point, so wasn’t a hassle. But I don’t make a list of “chores” to do unless I’m working towards a specific goal that requires those chores, at which point this game isn’t any different than GW1 or any other MMO.

I did enjoy hunting for the pinatas. I enjoyed the pumpkin carving too. It was a good chuckle for me. Some people do find that type of hide and seek fun/enjoyable. You may not, that’s fine. Different people like different things. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. It’s really that simple. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying you have to.

“But the achievement points!” Really? 5AP causes you that much stress? I would say you might need to reevaluate your priorities. If AP hunting is your priority, I would recommend buckling in for a long tedious ride because this isn’t any more or less tedious than title hunting in GW1.

So many people look at that article (and many others) and proclaim anet has lied to us and I shake my head. With the exception of Ascended (which is whole different can of worms), GW2’s play options are not that different than GW1. You want a title? You grind for it. You want a shiny? You grind for it. You want some elite thing-a-ma-bob? You grind for it. It was the same way in GW1… You want a title? You grind for it. You want elite armor? You either grand the materials, or you grind money to buy the materials. You want that special FoW skin? Plan on running it a few thousand times. You want that boss’ green? Grind the gold and hope someone is selling it in LA or Kamadan or farm the boss repeatedly until it drops. The only parts of either game that aren’t grind are the story progression, the leveling and from what they’ve said that’s all they really promised whether you ‘interpret’ what they said that way or not.

Remember, communication is not black and white. Everyone interprets the same thing different. Just because you interpreted what anet said to mean one thing, does not mean that’s actually how it was intended.

That said, has anet changed it course over the last year? Yeah probably. I’m sure everything they “intended” didn’t work out as planned. You know what they say about even the best laid plans. Why did they do it? Because of us, their player base. We hollered for more gear progression. We hollered that karma was useless. We hollered that dungeons weren’t hard enough. We hollered that world bosses were too easy. We hollered that we wanted raid like content. We hollered the we wanted more permanent impact from living story. We hollered that we wanted some updates to WvW. Guess what guys, you got it. They listened, they provided, and now you aren’t happy because it wasn’t exactly what you specifically wanted.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just some random fangurl. rolls eyes Carry on.

Devata.6589:

I also did hear the dev say that it was like Arah and I was really surprised about that. Like I said before, the problem with many dungeon in GW2 is that they are very long. Challenging is fine and if it takes long because they are challenging it’s also fine but if a dungeon is very long because it’s literally very longs thats not fun. There is a reason why Arah path 4 is the most hated dungeon path in this game, so when the dev said Arah I was really stunned. I will see how the path is when I have played it (not complaining yet) and some things are for sure a step forward, like special armor drops.. thats something that really missed in other dungeons, maybe a rare mini and special recipe would also be nice but the whole mini marked has sadly been destroyed in GW2 because of previous decisions made.

But if it really is a long dungeon like Arah you can already know people won’t like it and I really wonder why somebody in Anet would have come up with that.

A question.. The path thats go’s away F/U is that the path with all the spiders on the end?

Well, the dev did say that the path would reward more gold than the original Forward/Up path did (which was 1g) because it was longer and harder. He didn’t specify how much though. Maybe you’ll get between 2 and 3 for it.