Guild Wars 2

That’s the real question that goes along with this thread title.

When does free server transfers end = paid server transfers start = server guesting starts.

Until then, tell your friends to try and schedule a transfer during the off-peak hours for your server and maybe they’ll get on.

Leiloni.7951:

Lord Jaguar.9504:

3. If there is nothing left in this game once you ding lvl 80 except to reroll your character or PvP, you are going to find a host of people extremely disappointed. And the canned fanboi response of “you never did your homework / Guild Wars 2 was advertised as having non-traditional endgame for months and months prior to release” does not fly. People like having things to do on their favorite characters. People like being able to raid, PvP, play interesting dungeons and engage in other entertainment.

I’m sorry but you are flat out wrong. This game has as much if not more to do at max than most other games.
-casual and organized sPvP battlegrounds
-ongoing open world keep warfare PvP via WvWvW
-crafting
-8 hardmode dungeons for the PvE crowd with various paths in each
-open world PvE content via Dynamic Events

You can grind away to your heart’s content earning gear via all of those methods if that’s what you prefer. Same as every other endgame MMO. What would you like to do that they don’t currently have?

I already stated WvW and sPvP are great alternatives, even in the initial launch state (a big plus for Anet).

From my experience and based on the opinions of people I have talked to, the ‘open world PvE content’ you mention in the form of DE’s is a joke. This is because they are a straw man feature after even the first instance of playing that DE. In my opinion the lack of depth and complexity available in these so called world boss fights, and the way they always devolve into a brainless zergfest, severely detracts from any value they will have under the evaluation of end-game content.

The 24 dungeon paths available at lvl 80 suffer from the same symptom. Though variety is provided, depth is not, and therefor the PvE is GOING to come off as a shallow grind past anything but the first run where you have the novel experience of seeing something new.

Crafting is not going to be a viable end game path for players to entertain themselves unless the economy drastically improves, and people can participate in a stable market where their skills and production ability actually matter. As it is now, the most interesting thing you can do at lvl 80 with crafting is grind the feth out of mats to try and create Legendaries.

Some people are playing the market now and turning a tidy profit, but why? Oh yeah, to buy mats for Legendaries.

Lets clarify your challenge that I’m flat out wrong.

Am I wrong that a game with little end game content will create disappointment? Doubtful.

So let’s just say for the record that not everyone is going to be happy with the end game content this game does currently have – and it could be made alot better. There is no need to enter into an argument about what people should have expected or what Anet should be permitted to get away with for the sake of being different or anti-WoW.

My position: it could be better, so why not make it better? Would you really complain if 8 or 10 or 25 man raiding content was added (that did NOT add a WoW-esque style of gear progression, but just fun challenging content)?

Would you really complain if the Dynamic Event bosses were refurbished so their abilities and mechanics were actually interesting and complex, forcing people to use their brains instead of just zerging the crap out of it?

1. You are not paying for an experience like Skyrim (not even close) or Dragon Age: Origins (not even close). Therefor the multiplayer provided by Anet is not “free”. . it’s the entire game, hence a persistent world MMO.

2. The lack of an end game is not mitigated by the ability to reroll your character and do the same crap all over. Although personal story quests are different for each class, they are neither comprehensive nor particularly worthy of praise as a standalone feature. To use your example, comparing the personal story quest to a game like Dragon Age I’d call the story quests in this game a C+.

(However, WvW and sPvP DO help mitigate it. I like these.)

3. If there is nothing left in this game once you ding lvl 80 except to reroll your character or PvP, you are going to find a host of people extremely disappointed. And the canned fanboi response of “you never did your homework / Guild Wars 2 was advertised as having non-traditional endgame for months and months prior to release” does not fly. People like having things to do on their favorite characters. People like being able to raid, PvP, play interesting dungeons and engage in other entertainment.

Failure to provide this will result in a large number of people quickly losing interest after lvl 80, and again, I will stress, NOT because they are all no-life losers who grinded to 80 too fast. Proof of this will come in time as more and more people ding 80, including casual, nonhardcore gamers who got there with perfectly measured patience and genuine attempts to enjoy the game. And they, too, might end up feeling let down.

Because players EXPECT and DESERVE end game content. That’s the standard set by the market, and GW2 has a terrible weakness here they are apparently trying to cover up with a marketing spin along the lines of; we meant it that way, the whole game is the end game.

Sure.

You take full falling damage on impact.

You die.

Oh, and in the same patch they added the feature where they kick you out of WvW when you die so GL HF don’t ragequit.

I’ll avoid making the same small minded comments as others have. “Raiding sucks” and “Guild Wars 2 isn’t that game” does not answer the profound issue, which I agree with you on – there is no depth to GW2’s PvE content. Whatsoever.

However. . that is not resolved by adding 500 crafting cap, and escalating the items into a gear progression that will take months to grind out and master. That’s not the point of this game. On that, your detractants are correct. Guild Wars 2 was built to be accessible. Part of that is keeping the Exotics in line with eachother so that after an initial hump of input, you are “Geared”, and then never have to worry about being left behind or so completely outclassed by another person’s gearscore. You might ENVY them because they look cool . . but they won’t be able to roflstomp you just because they have more stats.

What YOU are correct about that they cannot appear to see is that raiding was a great system. Gear progression sucked IMO – I spent months and months grinding and hunting for drops, and it was frustrating, and annoying, and nothing but a treadmill designed to suck up my time and subscription.

But the raid itself? The story, the complex boss mechanics, the multi-stage fights? Epic. Satisfying. Rewarding. I don’t care if they only give you lip gloss when you down Zhaitan in a 25 man raid. But I WANT that fight to be deep, challenging, and complex. That doesn’t mean hardcore. It means QUALITY. Hardcore is defined by people needing to commit tremendous amounts of time to even qualify with a gearscore to join a raid.

I firmly believe the majority of this playerbase is “hardcore” enough to have participated in any of those raids from that other game. . if only a 6+ month long gear progression didn’t stand in their way.

And maybe if they had, they would be singing a different tune. I don’t think they have any idea what they are missing, or how hollow the bosses really are in this game.

I’ll let my guild know about this one (RP guild). Unfortunately I’ll be at work until 10pm that night. =(

Think that converts to 3pm EDT. . frownie face x2! Not even close.

But oh well. Hey man look up Iron Order or send Kharn Deathscream a message ingame, always looking for Arr Pee.

Tradewind.6913:

I’m curious what the expectation is of players these days when stepping into a brand new MMO such as GW2. What their prior experience is with other new MMO’s and the learning curve and complexity of the boss encounters in those games were when they too were first released.

Lets assume you are assuming we are all talking about WoW (because I know that’s what your talking about).

Pay attention around 2:57 mark

This is the Baron Geddon fight. This is vanilla WoW.

There’s only one remotely tricky fight mechanic here. Someone is THE BOMB and if they are standing near people when the timer goes out, it blows them all up. Easy. But that is a fight mechanic you have to learn, control, and adapt to.

And it’s STILL better than what GW 2 has.
———

To recap my opinion:

1) Raids are not evil. People who think all raids are evil have a very narrow minded opinion and think that it belongs only to the top 1% of the most hardcore of gamers, and therefor has no place in a casual friendly game. You’re just wrong.

Raids are FUN. The only reason they were exclusive in the past? Gear progression. Now that gear progression doesn’t matter, why not include something proven to be FUN in Guild Wars 2?

2) Unfortunately, the PvE here certainly does not have that kind of depth, and perhaps more importantly, a huge percentage of the player base seems to hate even the idea of raiding based on past preconceptions carried over from other games.

I’m not an advocate for turning GW 2 into WoW 2. I’m an advocate trying to say that a progressive, smart game trying to break the mold is a good thing – but don’t knowingly leave behind strong feature concepts “just because” someone else used them before. Make them newer and better.

Real raiding without long term time commitments for gear progression? I’ll pay for that. Here’s hoping Anet does it with an expansion or content patch.

Not getting a reward sucks. Their anti-farmers code needs some work, granted.

But capping events with some arbitrary number that directly contradicts the concept of a persistent world MMO is not the answer. Sorry bub, think of a better solution.

Let me get this right.

You participated in an epic battle with a massive world boss that included fifty other players fighting to save Tyria, and it was all for not because you didn’t get a few pixels from a shiny, mysteriously appearing box?

You wanna anudda carrot, brah?

Although I like where your head’s at, you are right. This idea has several glaring practical problems, as has already been mentioned.

1) If the leading team is dominating so badly they won’t have trouble defending one more objective, especially when that is guarded by puzzles, traps, and neither of the two lesser teams are organized and cooperating. You make it sound like the other two servers will team up to take this Magic Button. . they won’t. They’ll zerg it and murder eachother on the way in, making it a joke for the top team to fend them off.

2) This ultimately does nothing to change the balance of the matchup, because the only thing that can achieve such balance is cooperation from the lesser teams to defeat the greater. It provides temporary relief of the symptoms, but the disease is still there. aka Cool but ultimately Ineffective.

3) PvP has to have a winner and a loser. It is not supposed to hold your hand. It is not supposed to make everyone equal, or cater to anyone. This is an important concept to get across because of the following: PvP = player created content. The dynamic environment of WvW is built on the framework of a few castles and towers Anet gave us. But the ebb and flow of battle, the organization of one server against the others, is all player driven.

You start notching that down by introducing arbitrary game mechanics to limit or redirect a player’s intentions and you go down a dark and dismal road where an already safey feeling game becomes totally oppressive.

Kal.2376:

Then it gives you a goal in the game. To look for that sweet piece of armor.

You can send a mail, or ask someone else with the same type or armor. Ask guildies, ask in general chat. There are many ways to find out what you need.

I do not like inspect because it reduces what a player is. A player stops being “Jasher the player”, but becomes “Jasher the undergeared dude” or “Jasher the ranger with +healing”, or “Jasher the vit stacker”.

I HATE when players are labeled like that. I prefer when a player is labeled as “Jasher the good player”, or “Jasher the friendly player”. The less we are turned into numbers, or stats, the better.

I don’t get posts like this.

You have a game where all players are created equal (no trinity).

You have a game where, after a certain minimal effort, all gear is created equal (lvl 80 exotics are even across the board, no 6 month gear progression).

Then you want the anonymity of players protected so I can’t look at that sweetkitten helmet and figure out it came from Caudecus’ Manor. What if I don’t give two siamese kittens what stats it has, and just want to know where it came from?

Yes, I could ask you, but I don’t care about you. I care about the helmet and want to know where it exists in the game. If I wanted to strike up a conversation with you about your fashion, I could do so, but not everyone is interested in doing that, and besides which, not everyone who is asked is interested in responding. TBH I’d rather people look up what gear I have on than constantly spam me asking about where I got my rad lewtz.

It’s like you people come from a different planet where pixellated avatar characters have constitutional rights to privacy that you don’t want invaded on the extremely slight chance that it might come off as vaguely related to some other game which was prejudicial towards people based on their socio-gearonomic class.

tl;dr

Be less cuddly, not every feature from other games is satanic and evil. You won the war, no gear progression. You won the war, no trinity. Don’t stomp on the refugees because they still want a couple of simple, USEFUL features that everyone would take part in just because you are afraid it will spawn neo-nazis in your game.

TBH I couldn’t agree with this post more, and am surprised that others haven’t already done so.

The raid encounter replacements AKA world boss fights are a joke. They might look pretty and be entertaining the very first time because of that fact, but all following instances of that encounter are boring as hell because there is nothing genuine behind the flashy bitz. No complex fight mechanics. No multi stage phases. No threat, no challenge, no thrill.

If that is the price Anet paid to vanquish the Holy Trinity. . . then I’d say get a refund.

Compatibility updates from the game

Driver updates from your GPU / Proc.

Or a magical leprechaun took a golden poo on your motherboard.

Either way? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

GrimShade.8091:

by the way do these +10 exp per kill work. I don’t think they are. I tried it out and was getting 18 exp per kill before I used these things and I also got 18 exp after I chowed down.

I noticed this too and stopped levelling Cooking.

I don’t know one way or the other, but I’m not about to waste time on a profession unless I can see / measure that benefit.

Insufficient. I demand an aesthetically pleasing gear reskin for my backpack / chest item that includes a fishing rod style pole which dangles a perfectly orange carrot with the quaintest of emerald stems 2.5-3 ft in front of my characters face and does not deviate more than 15 degrees from my direction of forward travel.
(Anything more or less would be too complicated or rail roading.)

Question:

How do I get the giant green question mark / giant red answer mark?

There are threads like this popping up on the Suggestions forum all the time. Search for any of them. One in particular got pretty popular and had a mod response along the lines of “We appreciate the suggestions and will certainly look into adding any features in the future that enough players might want.”

In short, I’m pretty sure this will be added in the future, hopefully in the first wave of updated items on the gem shop. I’d like to tweak my appearance too.

Rokien.6405:

Hello, Rokien here for the first time! I hope everyone had a good weekend! I had to work… so mine was meh~

I want to talk to you guys, what I like to call, “The Treadmill Effect”. A lot of games (western rpgs in general) have this effect. It’s where there is a disconnection between the player and the ground. The ground will move faster than the player, in perspective, it creates a sliding effect of sorts.
To me, it makes the game feel cheap, and it really bugs me(I quit games because of it). So, I was wondering if you guys mind it or not?

Tldealio:
Treadmill Effect: The lack of the relation between character and ground. Does it bother you?

It doesn’t bother me quite to that point, but I do notice it. Games that handle this well help create that sense of immersion / finished polish. Games that don’t come off a bit sloppy. And since it is a visual effect you see 100% of the time, it is noticeable at first (even if you get used to it and stop paying attention later on).

This game does. . okay. At least it doesn’t have your foot standing on a solid invisible surface over the side of a cliff.

C’mon fellas. If you like em, bump em. Others deserve to see!

I am patient. I understand what this game is trying to be. I even love what this game is trying to be. To respond to your post more directly, I would even argue that this game is quite bug free and functional. The only issues I have noticed since launch day were related to the TP being down (and, tbh, I didn’t really care). Everything else worked smooth as silk.

My problem, bro, is that I ache to see their PvE reach its true potential. What they have. . . it’s a good start, but will not hold through until they make it better.

my 2cents

Charr zombies would be pretty gnarly.

Hmm. . . how did these get here?

If a Charr and Asura . . .

http://imageshack.us/a/img809/3119/charrandasuramakefurbie.jpg

Are these guys related?

http://imageshack.us/a/img204/4333/notpandasdone.jpg

Psilocin.1435:

I don’t disagree with your post. What you describe here would be the perfect MMO. Unfortunatley, GW2 isn’t. Maybe they’ll be able to fix some of it, but right now, it’s basically standing still, moving out of the fire and auto-attacking the boss along with fifty other players. If they have to reduce the mechanical difficulity of boss encounters because you no longer have clear roles present in the game, then I personally believe it’s a shame, because doing Ulduar in WoW, was one of the best gaming experience I’ve ever had.

I agree.

I like playing a class that can be versatile. I appreciate the fact that my warrior can be as strong with a rifle as with a warhammer. However, versatility and options should not lead to a homogenized pot of poorly defined characters. That wasn’t the point. Something went horribly wrong.

Because of this, we have PvE content that lacks the same kind of depth that other games have already proven possible. Being different has come at a great cost – it’s worse. The challenge was to make a different game that’s better, not just a different game.

You are symptomatic. Indication: narrow minded rhetoric

Diagnosis: Fanboi

You think that this game,in trying to be different, should never take good ideas from other games.

When you deliberately ignore and exclude good concepts for no other reason than to be ‘different’, and then proceed to resolve any mention of this disparity by saying “go back home and play your silly raid game”, you are reducing the entire discussion to a take-my-ball home argument. In other words, stupefying the conversation.

Guild Wars 2 is great. I love it. I will continue to play it.

. . . and I will anxiously await the day they provide a feeling of depth, strategy and challenge to their PvE content.

Sin.8174:

Cromx.3941:

Well its not just the death of the holy trinity as many call it it, its the death of any sort of strategical depth. Its like football game with nothing but linebackers in every position. Or a basket ball game with no centers forwards or pointguards…just people running around with no special abilities or roles.

It absolutely makes grouping a lot more boring, as everyone more or less is a DPS class with no real significant abilities or roles besides this. I think GW 2 is an example of what not to do. Its an ok game but the lack of any real strengths or class strengths really shortens the lifespan of this game. If every class is the same ability wise I really lose interest in playing other classes.

Its sad the MMO genre has reached its absolute dumbest dumbed down state ever with GW 2.

Yeah totally strategic. I’ll stand here… let the mob beat on me. You, you, and you smack the crap out of them. You heal me. Maybe once in a while. Deeps, hit the buttonz!!!

After an hour of the same thing. Wewt. Fat lewtz.

Talk about ‘dumbed down’.

1. Except when DPS and Healers can both generate threat quicker than the tank, and an equilibrium has to be found in the group. And the tank has to control multiple mobs, and hope the DPS is focusing down the one he has generated the most threat with.

2. Except when mobs (not even bosses, mind you) have unique fight mechanics that force the group to be mobile, handle CC and threat dynamically and force you to adapt rather than just tank & spank.

3. Except when boss fights (dreaded raid encounters for you carebears) have multi-phase mechanics that force you to learn all of the above and then change gears and expects you to be smart enough to cope. Including, mind you, totally unique, custom-tailored and intensively scripted fights done special order for that particular encounter. In other words, a UNIQUE encounter.

“You are not prepared”

Vs.

Mobs that have some AoEs
Mobs that have some ranged attacks
Mobs that have a knockdown or a stun
Mobs that might spawn some pathetic adds

And… that’s it.World bosses have the same abilities, but they look cooler and have bigger HP bars. Otherwise, it’s no tank (lack of trinity), just spank. None of your abilities mean kitten other than throwing pretty lights at the target and watching the HP slowly tick down.

Repeat: your abilities, conditions, affects, stuns, controls, anything.. WORTHLESS in absolutely ALL of the so called boss encounters. They are invulnerable, immune, or otherwise not giving two kitties.

Have fun with your [ ] & spank.

That’s blank & spank, btw.

Cromx.3941:

Well its not just the death of the holy trinity as many call it it, its the death of any sort of strategical depth. Its like football game with nothing but linebackers in every position. Or a basket ball game with no centers forwards or pointguards…just people running around with no special abilities or roles.

It absolutely makes grouping a lot more boring, as everyone more or less is a DPS class with no real significant abilities or roles besides this. I think GW 2 is an example of what not to do. Its an ok game but the lack of any real strengths or class strengths really shortens the lifespan of this game. If every class is the same ability wise I really lose interest in playing other classes.

Its sad the MMO genre has reached its absolute dumbest dumbed down state ever with GW 2.

Though I don’t think GW 2 is the dumbest MMO out there by far, I totally agree with the rest of your post. The strategic thinking required in Dungeons, in open world boss encounters and in general gameplay is gone. What you have are dynamic zergfests and death-running dungeons.

There is a significant portion of this game’s userbase which misses IN DEPTH TACTICAL COMBAT that comes from having group roles, complex fight mechanics and challenging events that forced player organization.

My only hope is that Anet cares about these players enough to consider our opinions, because many of them have been rendered in constructive and useful ways. The game needs to recommit and make the PvE more interesting, or it is going to lose people who are unable to satisfy themselves on PvP alone.

kaboo.5194:

1. you dont have to grind to get to lvl 80.

Don’t kid yourself. The curtain here is cleverly designed, but with dynamic events repeating themselves 5 times while you are in the same zone and heart quests being a mish-mash of pick up X object, kill Y monster there’s quite a bit of grind here. They are better than most, but to say the game is grindless is pretty much just fanboi talk.

2. endgame – i still dont know what this word means. do you people expect to get to lvl 80 and then have what? 5000 dungeons so it doesnt get boring? 1000 lvl80 areas so you dont have to stay in one place? you say less is enough? i say less is too few because 200 areas youll finish in 2months and then cry for more endgame(that basically means that any amount of content is not enough in the big picture). i dont know why nobody can understand that if you dont want to play pvp then all mmos are the same as one single player campaign, just its multiplayer. the campaign ends once you get max lvl and explore everything, and thats game end. that means the game ends there and theres nothing more to do, except of you know, repeating stuff youve already completed, but thats something you dont like and call it grind. why do you even play mmo if all you want to achieve is to kill some lame AI and run around with your shiny sword? its good that mmos offer some pve content where you can learn the game and play through the story, but they are mainly about players competing with each other in either some arenas or in the open world sieges or so. and if you realy dont want to do pvp, then go and replay every single area in the game, im sure youll find there events you didnt find when you were there the last time. or start a new char and take a look at the main story from a different point of view, or go help other people. but i know i wont be doing any of this, because once i get to the end, pvp is the only way to go.

Endgame means having meaningful activities available that keep your attention for a long time after reaching the level cap. It doesn’t have to be interpreted as anything else. Continuing to roam the world and redo all of the same PvE content you did to get to lvl 80 is nice(ish), especially since the downlevel system lets you continue to enjoy a bit of a challenge and play with friends. HOWEVER, it does not replace long term content like raiding. What does are activites like sPvP, tournaments and WvW.

But what about people who don’t want to play PvP all the time? Go ahead and explain what their options really are. A couple dungeons in a game with no structured class roles that you get to grind for gear reskins. This sounds like a good start to me, but I don’t know if will hold water in the long term. Guess we’ll find out.

3. combat is different from any other game, so its more like you dont know how to play melee yet. and the same applies to dungeons, since combat is pretty new youre just not good enough.

You are making a very judgmental and childish assumption by saying he is just bad. Melee classes get hit harder – because most damage output from mobs and bosses occurs at close range, and it is much harder to dodge attacks when you are close in. Ranged classes have it easier. There is no two ways about this.

1. Everyone is more or less equally squishable
2. Melee spend alot more of their time in the squish zone vs. ranged classes
3. Melee get squished alot more
4. Melee have harder lives
Refute this with logic. I’ll be waiting.

4. crafting – i didnt have any issues so far, it seems pretty easy to learn and i realy dont see any way how anyone could be a better or worse crafter than someone else.

TBH I agree with you. I haven’t done alot of experimenting with the Mystic Forge yet but otherwise crafting is very straightforward. If the Discovery tab is too hard for you then something is wrong, I’d suggest calling 1-800-555-1234 for Better Parental Education.

All rebuttals in bold.

Ganadorf.3460:

What do you propose NCSoft/Anet does about it?

Uhhhhhhhhh

Ban the everliving bajesus out of them.

Again, and again, and again, and again. . . and again. . . and again. . .

High end exotic and legendary gear is going to be just as hard to collect in this game as it was in any other. Collecting enough dungeon tokens, gold or karma to get the most awesome sets is going to take TIME. Lots of it.

Only difference? Those items are for bragging rights and aesthetics now, and they won’t automatically make you into a facerolling godmachine that can 2-shot everyone else who actually has a life.

Great game.

Worried about end-game and continued viability.

We’ll see.

I support this. I posted a thread on another forum complaining about the lack of low level armor variety. I only get to play the game 2-3 hours a day and after rerolling my character a couple times to change my hairstyle and some other stuff, I spent quite alot of time at sub-30 levels. The armor down here is very boring and presents a drab scene for incoming players.

Now, I understand that aesthetic = progression (in this game more than any other), but still. I’m essentially forced to wait until lvl 35 when I can equip my Tier 1 cultural armor. And then only because I’m Norn, and happen to like mine (I think the Human / Sylvari T1s are lame).

The only reprieve is coming from Heart vendors, who provide one piece at a time, which are very quickly replaced. Copper and Iron armor sets look identical. Most drops at these levels look just like the starting set.

There’s no reason that 95% of the available armor between levels 1-35 all look the same. I understand they should be “low level” “a bit drab” “not as cool as the best gear”. But c’mon. Give us a LITTLE variety.

Marrond.1385:

Tavern in Pirate’s Bay (there’s none? introduce it! you might also use that torrent’s site allusions as well ) – a gambling heaven! Great moneysink and great fun. Also a lottery would be great so someone lucky can be actualy someone rich as well

Just Person.6731:

Great idea, but the easiest way to do this – build a casino in LA. Pirates will love it.

You sir are my personal hero today

Yes, yes, and yes.

1) Great fun for players and an excellent pass time in the game, would create a whole new social scene

2) Excellent moneysink. Casino takes a percentage off the top of every pot, and the economy is made that much more stable.

3) Bring in traditional and totally unique games. I want to see Texas Hold ‘Em, sure, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Asuran Polydiagonal Chess either.

4) Gives people an alternative to straight grinding or playing the TP to make money. Besides, the TP is just another form of gambling. . but you don’t get to play with cards.

Togashi Jack.9531:

While I as a player wouldn’t mind this, there are fees fora reason on these waypoints – they’re designed specifically to keep players from getting too rich too quickly. Its one of the many ways of taking money back out of the system to help prevent inflation. Nobody wants a useless currency – by taking money back out of the system they can help to prevent this from happening. As much as I personally might dislike having to pay, it is a good feature that works well.

I respect the intent of your point, countering inflation in the long run, but your lead-in is a bit off. Waypoints are a moneysink. They hurt everyone equally . . young players before they have alot of money and veteran lvl 80s because it costs more.

Reducing the cost of waypoints after 100% zone complete / 100% world complete will not make people get rich quicker. It will just reduce the overall sink in time, as more and more players get world completions. But come on. That is a major task, and will take hours upon hours of dedication to achieve. Though the current rewards are nice, there is nothing that could replace this suggested long-term benefit.

Besides, it falls very well in line with an explorer’s reward. You spend tons of time exploring 100% of our game? We will make it easier for you to get around because you are OBVIOUSLY a pro-cartographer.

Sethren.8472:

One of my biggest “likes” about GW2 is the absence of raids. The meta-events fulfill the “take down the big bad mojo” element of raiding without forcing someone to experience the “second job” element that often comes with raiding: “be here at X time, have X buffs, we’ll be in there from X to Y for Z amount of days this week, etc.” I love the fact that ANet did not include raids. That’ s just my opinion on the topic though.

Sorry, but it doesn’t. The large dynamic events I have seen so far, with immense bosses and epic fights – zergfests. GW 2 does not bring the elements of skill and strategy into these encounters, so beyond the smoke and mirrors of having a giant, cool looking boss, you get none of the same depth and satisfaction as more traditional raiding.

I think there is a large amount of ignorance, or even hatred, for the raid concept in general based on how other games have mishandled that style of content. I’m not advocating a 6+ month gear progression raid system. I hate that just as much as everyone else.

I’m advocating large PvE encounters (instanced, not instanced, IDGAF) where you need to use your HEAD in order to vanquish the big bad, not just zergit to winnit.

I could see this being a hilariously awesome tool in WvW.

However, I don’t think it really belongs anywhere else, unless we come up with a capital city like Lion’s Arch that has airdocks. Free roaming around the world would be difficult, and frankly, probably alot less enjoyable than you imagine (other than for bragging rights).

1) You’d still have to zone. Not like you can fly over the mountains.

2) There would be no way to balance any kind of combat interaction with the PvE, so there won’t be any.

BUT… it would still be cool to have a giant air limo and be able to drop a rope ladder to kittenes and have them party with you.

It’s called a 2-handed weapon.

Single.. two handed.. weapon.

Single.. two handed.. weapon.Profit.

You might be forced down a road, but you aren’t trapped. Keep in mind that you can switch professions at-will without losing skill in any of them. At some point we are going to see people with all professions maxed at 400.

Probably soon.

Hawken.7932:

Lorati.7361:

You can have raid-levels of coordination requirements in 5 man content. While I fear for the longevity of the PvE side of this game, I don’t think instanced large group content is the answer.

I don’t really fear for the longevity of the game, as long as they can add new 5-mans over time.

What I would really like to see are world bosses with more complex mechanics (at higher levels) which require traditional raid-type coordination for groups or guilds to tackle. By this I mean boss events with multiple stages, and mechanics which you can’t just “zerg” with a large group.

Maybe there are in fact these types at level cap, though I haven’t heard of them yet. It doesn’t matter to me that there are no instanced raids which require 20 people to complete, but it would be great to have content which was appropriate for big guild runs, etc. with appropriate loot or rewards (even just a big karma / money reward).

I’ll admit this is currently one of my biggest sticking points with the game. Some of my best experiences with the MMO genre come out of complex, challenging and FUN raid style encounters that push you and your group.

These bosses force people to learn unique, intimidating and interesting fight mechanics. They provide challenge that can’t be overcome simply by throwing more people at the problem – but has to be tackled with coordination, with game knowledge and skill. I enjoy WvW in this game not only because it’s massive player on player combat with capturable fortresses (awesome) but because the entire environment pushes people to cooperate, meet eachother and play “together”.

Perhaps most importantly, I don’t think these encounters have to go against the design strategy of GW 2. Having an open style, casual friendly game does not mean you have to obliterate some of the best concepts other games have used time and again. Raid encounters in other games were extremely exclusive not just because of the time it took to learn the fight or the skill you needed. That was a factor, but probably not even the biggest piece.

I spent years playing World of Warcraft, progressing with various guilds and characters. I never saw all of the content, because I wasn’t “hardcore” enough. But do you know what made me less hardcore than all of the other players who had seen it all? Gear.

Gear checks made it so that you had to spend months and months collecting enough stats on your character to even attempt certain encounters. My limitation wasn’t skill, or knowledge, or that I was too casual to be able to complete the event. It was that I hadn’t already spend 2+ years building my character to afford the privilege to try.

Guild Wars 2 has the opportunity to bring this amazing, engrossing and valuable content into their game without the gear checks. Make rewards for raiding things like titles, skill points, unique gear skins and other rewards – in line with the rest of the game’s philosophy. But bring us the content. Raid encounters have alot to offer every kind of gamer, and despite their reputation they are not inherently “exclusive” to a small subset of players. They were made that way because of other elements that existed in other, older games. This one has the opportunity to make it accessible to everyone.

What if Guild Wars was the first franchise to bring intense, challenging and complex raid encounters to the masses? Think about that. Then sign the thread.

I think this would be a highly anticipated feature. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I rerolled my “main” literally twelve times. Three or four of those times I’d gotten as far as my early 20s before rolling, and only once did I ever reroll for the sake of changing class.

All other examples were for changing my appearance, skin tone, tattoos, hair style, etc. I finally found a combination that I think looks good but would STILL enjoy the option to change my hair style and color down the road, at the very least. Skin tone, body type and face. . I could see that not being an option, or at least a different level of customization.

Maybe put in two different items?

1) Recustomize your characters tattoos, scars, hair and facial hair.

2) Recustomize your entire character! Want to be taller? No problem! New eyes? Got you covered.