Guild Wars 2

Khai.6435:

None. Crafting and/or the gathering of materials for crafting is the most repetitive and boring type of play imaginable.

You don’t see Legolas stopping every 50 yards to cut down some ancient wood because he needs a stack of 500 for an epic bow; Rand Al Thor did not stop to mine once to forge an Angreal; and Arthur didn’t throw 1000 swords at a lake hoping some watery tart would give him Excalibur.

This.

Khai.6435:

And I love the playerbase that has bought into it; they’re defense… “Just buy the materials” so they want to replace one mindless activity with another..

“Just buy materials” is almost as bad as the above. The game is now so TP-centered that it becomes a job: you do some awful work (champ farming, for example) to earn gold so that you can buy what you really want — just like real life.. how bad is that?!

Elbegast.6970:

We need some UI customization.

I know that I haven’t killed Zhaitan. I will never kill Zhaitan. I don’t need a constant reminder of my failings, mocking me from the top-right corner of my screen.

• GW1 UI: you can customize practically every part of it.
• GW2 UI: you can customize practically none of it.

Why?

If a zone ever has zero population, the map resets — that might be what you’re seeing.

Mosharn.8357:

Heres what 2014 will bring

10 new skins from black lion tickets
More rng fun!
craftable precursors but the items you need for them are rng based! Yay!
ascended armor made from 2-3% to 6-8% effectiveness….sike this is gw2
preview of guild halls december 10, 2014
preview of new dragon story december 10, 2014…

Wow… this looks realistic… you must have inside info!

I’m beginning to believe that Anet will start an all new vertical grind through infusions: +5 infusion stats is the max right now, maybe +7 stats in a few months, then +9 stats a few months after that, etc.

So I’d like to change my answer of “at most 2 sets” to “I’ll slowly work on one set, but if this infusion grind comes to be, I’ll likely quit the game”

The Clague.4765:

Colly.4073:

Gw2 will be dead by the time devon gets back off his holiday, The state he has left WvW in he deserves be joning the dole queue.

I for one, and the large number of people I play with, love the format and will happily play it for a long time just as it is.

Solo / small group roaming = great fun
Taking towers / keeps = fun but can be too easy
Defending towers / keeps = fun but can be too hard
Zerg fights = great fun

If you don’t like any of those components then why are you playing it? I am pretty sure that when February comes that WvW will be just fine.

1. We’ve been playing the same maps and using the same skills for over a year now.
2. The Ascended grind is getting worse and worse — I personally think we’ll see infusion slots with higher and higher stats as the next phase of vertical grind.
3. Playing alts/new builds is highly discouraged because of the gear grind.
4. The only new stuff we have to look forward to are EoTM (which I personally see as another advertisement for the failed sPvP — the first being the ruins) and account bound WXP; both coming at some nebulous time in the future.
5. There has been no indication that Anet intends to put any more effort into improving WvW.
6. The fact that nothing big is in the works to counter the new MMO coming out in April indicates to me that Anet is pretty much giving up on WvW.

In short, WvW is getting stale and Anet doesn’t seem to care.

(Why we don’t already have one alternate BL and one alternate EB map over a year after launch, I have no idea.)

Zalman.8719:

From what I’ve seen this year, a def. no. Could say the same thing as others(classes broken and unbalanced, useless and poor decisions(yeah,ascended). I’ll wait for the end of the Scarlet arch and the feature update. If I find it poor, I leave. I’m not sure if I can trust their sense about epic, so I’m not expecting much from the the ending of this arch. I’m more curious about the feature update.

The Scarlet arc is slated to finish in early March. If they continue doing 2 week updates, then the first “Season 2” arc begins mid-March.

The first MMO competitor comes out in early April. So Anet will only have two Season 2 updates to dissuade people from trying out the competition. Seeing this drama play out is pretty exciting.

FootDive.3451:

The reason GW1 players are so iffy in regards to GW2 is because the game offered replayability that was VERY fun. Like mentioned by other people here earlier, the deck building system was amazing and allowed players to really explore the game mechanics and play whatever way that suited them; it basically allowed players to relate personally to the game itself because the game allowed them to define how they played their game. Simple things like trait redistribution and saved build specs were easy to use and not overcomplicated; why do I need to run to a trainer to respec? Why can’t I respec right here, right now? Why can’t I just switch to another build with a touch of a button?

This. What makes GW2 really incompatible with creating lots of builds is how heavily stats are tied to gear. You play power and want to try out a condition build? You gotta get a whole new set of gear first. And with Ascended that’s much worse.

Can you have facebook show a graph that shows likes over time? That might be interesting.

TheRainbowKnight.3651:

When I 3 man arah my favorite group is Warrior Mesmer Thief. Warr for offensive buffs, Mesmer for reflects (absolutely a must at alphard) and Thief for the trash runs (makes it a lot smoother).

I’m going to start three-manning Arah soon.. how much time does it take you?

titanlectro.5029:

Down-vote moderation can be trolled hard, so I hesitant to use that one.

What about a system like orrmaps.com where anyone can moderate — and the user has a preference of moderators:

for example, you go into the NSP-IoJ-CD thread and there’s a pulldown list of volunteer moderators — JaneDoe and JohnDoe, for example .. if you choose JaneDoe from the list, then you see only the posts that JaneDoe hasn’t ticked as “blocked.”

unknownchaos.1425:

Athena.4682:

Just a shoutout to my beloved XOXO friends in NSP.. the “heartseeker” thief you were referring to was my guildie and yes, RI. Just to let you know that he’s less than 1.5k achievement point, basically a newcomer to GUILDWARS. ^^

Cheers!
PS. I just heard it from someone in my guild that you guys love to make fun of people so I’m responding to let you know WHO you killed.

SALUTE

Its ok.. The big bad meanies of XOXO are all gone. The guild is disbanded , the players are scattered everywhere.. Most of the good players xfer off nsp. For more active PvP.

Thank you
Obs

Rip XOXO

Ironically, if NSP had tanked into Bronze league (every other server near the boundary of a league tanked) then we’d likely be seeing a revitalization of NSP’s WvW right now — that’s exactly what happened with HoD.

robertul.3679:

I, for one, enjoy contested dungeons. They really add up to the immersion.
It’s also highly realistic. Imagine having to go to the store. You can’t just teleport there, you have to fight through either traffic or the endless hoard of noobs. Every grocery run is an adventure, as is opening a dungeon.

You enjoy sitting in traffic when going to the grocery store?

Vayne.8563:

It’s not the short game that’s important, it’s the long game.

Not if GW2 doesn’t survive long enough to get into the long game, which — to me — is a real danger.

Dub.1273:

Yes, you need to take all burrows down within ~30 seconds. You don’t stand a slightest chance to kill gravelings as shown in Wethospu’s video.

In AC p3 where Tzark is channelling the ghostly essences: As an alternative to destroying the burrows, you can draw all the aggro and kite the gravelings until time is up.

Perhaps you can kite in ACp1 as well: Run in a big loop that takes you past each burrow… that’ll allow you to get a few hits off each round. In this case, maybe spectral wall and staff #3, #5 can help you keep some space when you need it.

I’m guessing it would take quite some time to destroy the burrows this way so maybe a condition build can kill off some of the gravelings as you kite.

It seems most gravelings have to stop to hit you so if you are always moving, it doesn’t matter how many are chasing you, you’ll rarely get hit (at least that’s my experience from ACp3).

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s the thing, right now we often don’t even know about stealth-deleted posts.

Doesn’t Anet realize that if we go to an outside forum, they will have no control over what’s said? All the talk that they wish suppressed (and they do a good job of that here) will flow freely.

There is however a major difference there.
When it is posted on these forums, it is ArenaNets responsibility, but when it is not, they don’t need to bother with it if it would break laws or whatever.

That’s irrelevant because it’s pretty clear liability has nothing to do with why they’re closing the forum.

Dondarrion.2748:

Looking forward to conclusion to Scarlet in next 4 LS updates; looking forward to new legendaries and precursor scavenger hunt, looking forward to next LS “series” and hopefully it brings a new ELDER DRAGON (you know, what this game is about, right?), new zones/playable races/professions.

Well, one can dream, and I hope it’s all inbound in 2014

Wildtrash, ESO won’t deliver (I will try the latter, but I don’t believe either will succeed, imho)
EQ:N/L caters to different crowd with its features (Next could be interesting though)…

Anyway – heavily invested in GW2 still – so c’mon Anet, dazzle me in 2014!

Reveal Scarlet as an elder dragon lieutenant and all will be forgiven

Just the existence of these new MMOs will likely hurt GW2. People will try them, and that puts them out of habit of logging into GW2. So even if the new MMOs are bad, a number of people won’t return to GW2.

GW2 really has to do something to stop people from even trying these new MMOs. But considering the first is coming in April, there’s not much time.

For those who want new skills/weapons — that works in the short term to keep the game fresh, but it’s not sustainable. If you keep adding skills, balance becomes a nightmare (Anet’s already having a terrible time of it right now).

How do you propose they Anet deals with this?

Stillerdakiller.4816:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Transitioning from PvE to WvW, ditch the berserker gear and slowly add it back as you get better at WvW.

What gear would you recommend I get?

What’s your profession? What gear are you using now? Do you intend to mostly run with zergs or roam in small groups/solo?

PVT gear is good starter armor for WvW.

Blade Syphon.4325:

The only thing I’m “excited” about in regards to GW2 in 2014 is that the Ascended grind is finally, FINALLY done, as is the horrific;y terrible Scarlet arc.

Don’t worry, next will be the infusion grind — you can pretty much be guaranteed Anet will slowly release higher and higher stat infusions. They may not make much difference right now, but these things add up.

It will probably be the “big reveal” to counter the other big MMO coming out later this year LOL.

I’m not too familiar with ACp1, but I think ACp3 would be doable .. and probably easy, after a bit of practice.

jojojoon.8607:

Lord Kuru.3685:

madchatter.7964:

The best way, honestly, would be to have two subforums – one modded, and one unmodded. Let each poster pick their flavor. (This has the bonus of providing a haven for all random threads, giving the mods less to deal with.) Voting on posts just devolves everything into a juvenile popularity contest.

But the suspicion is that Anet’s going to downsize the mod team and your solution doesn’t allow for that.

From what I heard (not naming the source), they’re anticipating that they will be losing a lot of wvw players in the next few months to a certain new game coming out. So, not only are they downsizing the wvw mod team, they are also downsizing the wvw dev team. That is why all wvw related content is getting pushed back a few months again.

You’d think that going the opposite direction of putting more effort and work into WvW would be the way to go. But considering this is Anet and how Anet feels about WvW, I believe it.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

I’ve had some of my posts in this very thread get deleted due to “clean-up” purposes. No rules broken, no spam, nothing. Just a post they didn’t agree with.

That’s the thing, right now we often don’t even know about stealth-deleted posts.

Doesn’t Anet realize that if we go to an outside forum, they will have no control over what’s said? All the talk that they wish suppressed (and they do a good job of that here) will flow freely.

Dempsey.8760:

Stars.2179:

With the promise of ascended gear to be final tier, ANET will simply increase gear “requirement” of ascended from 80 to 90.

Actually nothing was never promised to not come after ascended. If you re-watch the interviews Colin said the only legendary will ever remain BiS, and the he hopes ascended will be the final tier.

That’s genius! So we grind for infusions in between the times we grind for new tiers of gear.

I’m excited that there will be competition, which means Anet is more likely to get their act together.

That said. I do not look forward to an expansion right now: As the Living Story has shown, Anet is currently incapable of writing a good story. An expansion will almost certainly ruin the lore of whatever region it introduces.

TKiller.6829:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you guest on a server with the dungeon open, do you forfeit the influence for your guild on that run?

Actually a good question.

I’d guess no but does anyone know?

The guesting page on the wiki:

Guests retain guild bonuses from their home world and any influence earned will accrue to their home world’s guild.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

They made at least 10 big mistakes so far that rappelz also made.

I’d really be interested in seeing a comparison between other failed/failing MMOs and GW2. What do you think will be Anet’s next major misstep?

Straegen.2938:

Mass rez is a problem post fight as much as it is mid fight. Large groups cannot be brought down without a larger or substantially more skilled group.

If players had to port on dead, big zergs could be attacked by smaller groups and whittled down. As it is now, most small skill groups get overwhelmed by fire and the zerg continues on by rezzing their dead. If they couldn’t bring back their dead, a small skill group would have a very good shot of slowly wiping or critically wounding the zerg before going down.

Defensive would be MUCH more effective with this system.

This. With small groups being able to whittle down the size of zergs, there would actually be consequences when a zerg moves deep into enemy territory. Gameplay would be much more strategic and interesting. This is one small change that IMO can make a big difference in the game.

TPMN.1483:

Take a screen shot – send a support ticket in.
They will prob be forced to rename the guild I expect.

It’s what used to happen in GW1

I don’t believe you can rename a guild — the guild is instead destroyed.

Yargesh.4965:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

The amount of time you’d spend getting 5 Tickets is absurd. You’d get a lot more gold by just farming it for that amount of time (dungs, champs, world bosses)

At 20 mins per key, it’d take you on average about 17 hours to get one key. But remember that each key converts to a skin that sells for quite a lot (that’s the intention, at least) … so that your gold per hour would be comparable to other forms of farming.

It takes between 5 and 7 claim tickets to get a skin, each ticket takes 10 scraps, each key have a 1 in 5 or so chance of a scrap and tiny chance of a ticket.

As I understand it, during the current Living Story, skins for that Story sell for 1 Ticket. After that story is over, the price goes up to 5 Tickets.

With the matchup randomization algorithm changed to have less variance, we’re seeing servers staying the same color for many weeks at a time.

Why aren’t colors done like this:

Randomization algorithm creates matchups as usual. Then within each matchup, randomize the color of the three servers.

Stars.2179:

With the promise of ascended gear to be final tier, ANET will simply increase gear “requirement” of ascended from 80 to 90.

No. You’d have level 90 Ascended gear (still “Ascended tier” so Anet can’t be said to have lied), making your level 80 Ascended gear obsolete.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

The amount of time you’d spend getting 5 Tickets is absurd. You’d get a lot more gold by just farming it for that amount of time (dungs, champs, world bosses)

At 20 mins per key, it’d take you on average about 17 hours to get one key. But remember that each key converts to a skin that sells for quite a lot (that’s the intention, at least) … so that your gold per hour would be comparable to other forms of farming.

Peetee.9406:

You could go get a minimum wage job from McDonalds.

That would net you more gold per hour, probably be more entertaining too.

A minimum wage job at McDonalds would certainly net you more gold/hour: as of right now, 1 dollar gets you 4 gold.

Orpheal.8263:

Dalanor.5387:

Meglobob.8620:

Create a new character do personal story to level 10 get black lion key, can do this in under a hour.

Delete character rinse repeat…

Merry xmas.

With a staff ele it can be done in 25-30 minutes, just do personal story and nothing else until the lvl10 PS pops up. Complete it and enjoy your key.

its much faster if you do it with high level friends that rush you through everything by killing everythign for you in a matte of seconds.

Just invite like 2 friends with lvl 80 charas or guildies and let them farm with you the keys. That way you can farm much faster the keys, as like when you do it alone.

Say you had 1 friend with you. Instead of helping you, he could be starting his own character and getting his own key at the same time that you are. So you’d need to get keys at double the speed (if working together with a friend) to make it worth it.

But Yargesh.4965 above says that that’s not possible because most of the time is not in killing but rather in travel and cutscenes.

Behellagh.1468:

Even with your optimistic estimates it would take, subject to the RNG, 15-20 hours for a single skin. Personally I think it’ll be closer to twice that amount of time and boring as all heck.

I know there was a thread discussing how to farm for keys, as in which story was the easiest.

So that’s what ticket skins are going for? Haven’t bothered to check myself.

If you do this A LOT, then over time, the RNG would even itself out and you’d see my numbers

but yeah.. you’re right: this would get REALLY tedious once you’ve finished the interesting part of discovering the fastest way to the Level 10 story.

Just checked…. the Dreamthistle sword skin currently goes for about 100g sell and 92g buy and the pistol skin is at 195g sell and 125g buy. So we’re talking maybe 6-7 gold per hour at 20 mins per key.

Stars.2179:

Raising level is meaningless, people will just craft the last 10, 20 levels in a flash.

Raising the level cap, say from 80 to 90 would almost certainly come with gear cap increases from 80 to 90. Which would mean ALL your gear becomes obsolete.

Jski.6180:

If its any thing like Agony resistance your going to put soo much work into getting just +1 more of something on one infusion that it will not be worth it. As things stand the armor is not worth it for most ppl (other then the ppl who “need” to feel as if they have the best but that the way ppl are in real life too all about that ipad sd 999.1).

True. But as they add higher and higher tiers these stats will add up. You may not have to have the highest current tier, but you’ll still have to grind out some tiers to keep up. And that’s what I’m afraid of.

Another Black Lion Chest key thread got me thinking about making money by farming these keys. The key farming method is well-known (and apparently Anet has no objections):

• You create a new toon and rush through the Personal Story until you get a key at the Level 10 story. Apparently, this can be done anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes per key.

• As I understand it, you get 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket Scrap every 5 or so chests and you need 10 scraps to make 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket. So on average, it’d take you 50 runs to get 1 Ticket. This is subject to RNG, of course.

• 1 Ticket gives you one skin from the current Living Story. You buy the most popular skin and TP it for gold.

This way, if it took you 20 minutes per key, then in order to make 10 gold/hour (competitive with Dungeon running/Champ training), you’d need to sell your skin for 170g. (If it took 30 mins per key, then you’d have to sell for 250g.)

Anyone tried this?

I haven’t done any Personal Story quests in AGES … but could you cut the time it takes to get that key at level 10 by partnering with a level 80 friend (who would 1 shot everything and also give movement buffs)?

Note: You’d have to cut the time it takes in half for this to be an effective strategy.

Anet has promised that Ascended gear is the final tier of gear. However, I see a very easy way for them to keep their promise and yet keep the vertical grind that they so love:

Ascended gear has infusion slots. Currently, these slots allow for infusions that give small stat increases. But imagine if they introduce higher and higher stat infusions over time — of course with each tier requiring more and more grind.

Bonus for Anet: even players with Legendary gear will have to participate in this grind!

You can see this in action already with Agony resistance.

(Of course, Anet can introduce higher level caps, but that’s a horror that I don’t even wish to contemplate.)

shocking.3269:

If so, is it even possible to fully deck all your toons out with legendaries?

Every weapon has at least one legendary version — so it is possible for a toon to have every legendary that his/her profession allows.

Vol.7601:

3.) Legendaries are for cosmetics. You are better off making ascended if you just want BIS weapons.

Legendaries are better than Ascended in that you have out of combat stat change — which is REALLY good if you ever wish to play multiple builds: Imagine the horror of grinding out two sets of Ascended gear just to play two build; or the horror of having to grind out a new set of Ascended because your build is nerfed or obsoleted by new skills/traits.

Also, imagine if a new tier of gear were introduced or the level cap were raised. Legendaries are guaranteed to be Best in Slot gear (I doubt even Anet would go back on their word about this). So one enormous grind can save you from possibly multiple smaller grinds.

Disclaimer: I personally suspect Anet will introduce more grind (without resorting to level cap increase or new tier of gear) via infusion slots — by making available higher and higher stat infusions over time. That way they get to continue the vertical grind while technically keeping their promises. This means even if you get Legendary gear, you haven’t escaped the gear treadmill.

Making money via crafting doesn’t have any feeling of “crafting” (knowledge of materials, physical effort, technical skill in the field of that craft) — it’s basically playing the market and arbitrage. That’s one of the (many) reasons I dislike crafting.

The way the game is designed, the best way to play this game is to make gold and buy what you need off the TP. Just like real life — isn’t that fun?!

So find the gameplay that you can most stomach that makes the most gold/hour.

Cinch.5471:

While we’re on the subject of gear acquisition, I’d like to point out that I find the prospect of gaining my gear through the Trading Post to be a very… anti-climactic method.

The fact that you can buy practically everything through the TP causes people to play only the content that returns the most gold. The game becomes like real life, where you’re working an awful job (champ farming) to earn the money (gold) to buy what you want. This makes the game boring very quickly.

Of course no one is forced to play like this, but the fact is that a large proportion of the population does — because they can, I guess.

Unless something is done about this, no amount of horizontal progression will help the game — people will just go for the most efficient gold farm and all the hard work of creating content is wasted.

Anyone know whether you’re able to earn influence for your guild when you guest on another server? The wiki says:

Influence is accrued and spent separately by the guild members on each world. For example, a guild with players in Maguuma, Blacktide, and Riverside will have three different pools of Influence and three different build queues, one for each world.

But does this apply to guesting as well?

CryxTryx.9208:

Also notice that in the first screen shot the OP is displayed as a low level character, yet for the boss he has logged on his 80.

Considering you can solo this boss with a level 80, I’d say this doesn’t count as finishing with low levels. (Plus, there’s actually 2 level 80s there at the end — they’re the only survivors.)

If you guest on a server with the dungeon open, do you forfeit the influence for your guild on that run?