Guild Wars 2

Substance E.4852:

Land of Cheese.2584:

I’m curious to see where they go with it.

Other than Raids? Nowhere.

Correct. It’s worthless in EVERY other situation.

TexZero.7910:

The people complaining about navigating the maps confuse me. It’s almost like they put no time into learning it. It’s a straight forward map, there’s nothing complex about it. Each camp has a waypoint, Each lane has a Wallow to and from said camp. Simple.

The Meta itself however is plagued with a few issues, scaling, timing, and counter-intuitive combat being the 3 biggest issues.

The Nuhoch lane scaling is extremely poorly designed there’s no middle ground once you hit 9 people elites spawn which take far too long to take down with that number. However once you do get above 9 there’s not enough mushroom spores to stomp out, even including getting the refresh on killing the mushroom mobs that spawn.

Scar Lane is a prime example of counter intuitive combat. Your defense event would be acceptable if the stun did more than trigger Gerent to go into his next combat loop animation. Instead the group is punished, and breaking the bar doesn’t even get the exposed debuff to allow for more damage to be dealt.

If that wasn’t enough, the no CC strat excludes players from properly using their skills. Eliminating a vast number of viable combat options.

Not sure who designed this Meta, but those 3 issues desperately need to be looked at as they are the problem with the entire encounter.

The only issue with TD is that it can fail so easily, so quickly. They change that, people would be doing it all the time. But that would make it less, hmmmm, epic I guess.

But, if barely anyone is doing it….. shrug

Boysenberry.1869:

The solution is for Anet to up the rewards and modify the difficulty so that it is on par with the other 3 Meta events. It is silly that killing an Elder Dragon is extremely easy and yet killing some large Chak is very difficult. Maybe the Chak should strive for world domination. They are obviously the most powerful species in the world.

This is the thing that bugs me a bit too. Another example:

1. I kill Zhaitan & Mordremoth = get two greens and a blue. (ok, its not that bad, but still).

2. I kill raid bosses that ARE NOT as powerful or dangerous as Elder Dragons, they are not even Elder Dragons Champions = I get Legendary Armor (or stuff towards it at least).

Logically, killing an Elder Dragon should give the best loot in the game.

Aguri.2896:

Your complaining about complaining and I’m complaining about your complaining about the complaining on the forums.

Nobody complain about my complaining.

I want to make a complaint.

Something doesn’t seem right here.

I was looking at the wiki. So, you now need 3 patches per insignia = 9 bolts. Then six insignias….. so 54 bolts of damask?

I also looked at the old pre HoT versions of that page – the totals are still the same.

I’m confused.

sonicsix.5713:

I was able to complete all the new zones because I happened to be able to play during “the rush”. Now, the zones are dead. And by complete, I mean I got 100% map completion… no way have I done the achievements nor will I. Now I am left to grind experience to spend what mastery points I have. The ones I don’t have are behind content I do not enjoy participating in like fractals, dungeons, etc. So now I log in each day, farm my home instance, get my daily chest and log right back out.

Putting mastery points in fractals will not make me do fractals. I will simply quit playing.

Hmmm, I see tons of people in all the new maps, all the time.

Thaddeus.4891:

Kraggy.4169:

GW2’s origianl story had no artificial gates, only level, which you could get by questing without the need to ‘group up’ for endless meta events.

I think it not unreasonable I expected HOT to be an extension of GW2 not turn it into GW3, nothing in the pre-launch hype indicated a huge departure from the gameplay of GW2 which HOT is.

GW2 HoT story have no artificial gates, only mastery, which you can get by questing without the need to ‘group up’ for endless meta events.

Masteries are artificial gates.

Narrrz.7532:

-The new crafting system – Medium-large time investment, Largest monetary investment, medium-large RNG

Whatever category you’re looking to optimise, crafting is your worst option.

What’s the RNG involved in this method? You do the collections, craft the items, cry over all the gold you’ve lost = guaranteed outcome. Albeit expensive. Almost finished Jugg and FF and have encountered zero rng.

Palador.2170:

Palador.2170:

For now, I’ll rate it a 4/10.

I actually want to give it 2/10, but I’ve been a bit sick this weekend, and I worry that’s making me grumpier than I should be about this. So, being as positive as I can, I go up to 4/10, with the option to decide later that it wasn’t the sickness making me dislike it that much.

The two biggest problems for me are the Elite unlock costs, and the fact that guilds are now required to have guild halls for things they could do freely before the update, with no personal options (aka: Personal Housing using the same kind of system).

Now that I’ve had time to recover and give the expansion more of a test, I’m going to rate it 3/10.

8/10 for the elite specs and central Tyria masteries.

2/10 for the chagnes to guilds, guild halls, dungeons, fractals, and so on. While I do like guild halls as a concept, the damage to so many guilds and the insane costs to regain what was lost or place even basic decorations shows a painful disconnect between the developers and the game.

2/10 for the HoT zones, and the general feel of the new content (including story). Lots of great ideas, burdened with lots of horrible execution. The shift of the open world to something much less casual also earns it a huge downvote from me. I’d be tempted to rate this part higher if it was more optional/avoidable, but the conclusion of the story that carried us here is locked behind all of this. As it is, I’ve still not bothered to get to the end of the story here, and I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort to ever do so.

That’s the biggest disgrace of this expansion – the story. It’s thin and rushed.

It’s awful. And Guild Wars has always been about Lore and Story – now they’ve completely ruined that.

IndigoSundown.5419:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The issue with what you’re saying here is that it flies in the face of developer comments that were previously made. Yes, they stated that HoT would have “challenging content” and they specifically stated that it wasn’t the open world, and then they revealed raids and explicitly told us high level fractals and raids were the challenging content.

Specifically, in the reveal the statement was something like, “You’ll see challenging group content that is much harder than anything you’ve seen in GW2 before.” The comment about HoT not being the ’challenging content" referred to that statement. See below.

Additionally, Colin has previously made statements that while they (Anet) does not want “everyone to have everything” there were components of the game that they felt needed to be readily accessible to the entire player base (yes, even the most casual of casuals). It was explicitly stated that open world and story where those components; however, the way open world HoT is designed, it does not mesh these previous statements.

I think you’ll find that the persistent world stuff is accessible to everyone. Yes, HoT mobs are tougher, but remember that ANet design worships the herd. Quantity has a quality all its own. What may be true is that HoT persistent world rewards are not accessible if a given player want to avoid the madding crowds and particle pollution, but that’s for the most part true in vanilla as well.

Granted, statements have been made (unsurprisingly, by Colin) and then reneged on before, so it’s not surprising to see it happen again. However, they really need to say something when they are going to do a complete 180 on their stance so fewer people feel jilted? slighted? lied to? However you choose to put it.

See italics, above… plus

HoT mob difficulty was established in the reveal, in the betas, and explicitly in the first beta announcement.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-first-beta-weekend-event-begins-august-7/

“Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles? Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding? Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters? Warning—creatures will be more challenging than in the existing Guild Wars 2 world. (Note: This is not what we meant when we said “challenging group content” at the expansion’s announcement—we’ll announce the details of that in the future.)”

I’ll grant you that the greater challenge of Hot mobs is risky in terms of alienating some players. However, I believe there was adequate notification of the change.

Those ‘some players’ are 90% of the player base. They likely generate the bulk of the games income.

If they don’t like this change and leave, the game is stuffed. All the hard core people in the world won’t save it at that point.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

It’s possible they’re trying to pick up the massive Wildstar crowd with HoT, it’s a courageous strategy I hope it works out for them.

Why would we want to make GW2 into a game that failed horribly?

Personally, I’m dubious this move towards hard core raiding and the trappings of all other MMOs will work – and it will drive away the vast bulk of the population that played GW2 precisely because it wasn’t like those games.

The only reason they put raids in is because they’ve botched up the existing game so much. Clearly LS isn’t cutting it financially, and they’ve turned to old school ideas – raiding, etc.

I suspect this won’t work either. As we saw in Wildstar, and any other number of games, this type of content doesn’t make you money. Its a resource sink that returns little profit.

And it alienates the people that actually generate cash. When they leave…. Oh well.

GW used to be unique. Now it’s just like every other mmo.

Zanshin.5379:

Not only did they clear it first thanks to their weeks of testing and bragged about it on their website/twitter/reddit but they also took advantage of it by being able to sell the specific loot from the raid first, therefore setting their own price.

What a bunch of doochebags.

That’s actually a good point. They profited hugely due to their advantage.

ps. Nothing that is dropped in a raid, or can be purchased from raid vendors, should be sellable – it should all be account bound.

I’m still making axe heads and hafts -_-. Stupid Deldrimor Ingots! lol :-P

Metavox.1094:

Lenny.9301:

In January 2014, the Great Jungle Wurm wreaked havoc in Bloodtide Coast. This colossal Triple-Headed Wurm proved a formidable opponent to the masses of trophy hunters wanting it’s three heads on a mantle. For days they threw themselves at the monstrosity; countless brave souls sent to grisly and painful deaths. Some witnesses claim the monster was too challenging, or it’s foes not up to the task. Tyria weeped for Bloodtide Coast.

Survivors of the horror will tell you that the Wurm had unknown advantages; magical… insects of a sort… that regenerated the Wurm’s vitality instantaneously. No matter how many weapons were raised to send the beast back to the void, it would return at full strength. How was such a foe defeated, then?

After the initial slaughter, Tyria’s leaders arose and the horns of battle were sounded. Scribes and seers from across the land studied initial reports and surveyed the death-consumed battlefields for clues. An elusive and skilled clan of fighters were called upon to train Tyria’s yet unbloodied soldiers for the fight to come. The Wurm’s tenacity was defeated, it’s otherworldly magics discovered and repelled. Bloodtide Coast was freed from the Wurm’s harrowing, and an alliance was forged to protect Tyria from similar dangers — they called themselves Attuned.

Now they are being called upon to face an unknown force that threatens our world. Once more, they will sacrifice themselves for Tyria. However, they will need your help to succeed; for they face not a mere beast but enter into an uncharted realm where many heroes will perish.

May our fallen be remembered.

Absolutely classic.

A+

GragorR.9768:

I thought it was obvious that by accepting early access in order to help make the raids better, they were relinquishing any rights to claim world first? Did I miss something?

They did get world first. Probably not the one they wanted though.

Hmmm. I got a bunch of chests for southsun, and vb and dry top. Maybe you have missed one somewhere?

This is too funny.

Verdant Brink map chat is now the “Looking for Raid” channel -_-

Hilariously, this is still a good farm.

Yes, the mobs give less xp, BUT they respawn just as fast and are easier to kill – meaning you can do it with less.

It takes a bit longer, but that’s what youtube is for.

Ayrilana.1396:

MashMash.1645:

Ayrilana.1396:

I personally don’t see an issue with timers but that’s just me.

It’s lazy. Instead of coming up with actual mechanics, they just slap on a timer and call it ‘challenging’.

The problem is that if you remove timers, what’s to prevent pkayers just slapping on as much vitality and toughness as they can so they can whittle down a boss? How is that challenging? Timers encourage players to play efficiently.

And why is “efficiency” the most important thing?

You can add mechanics other than time pressure. Their are lots of other options.

Knighthonor.4061:

How would you rate the HoT Fun Factor?
10 being the most fun
and 0 being the least fun.

Fallout 4 out of 10.

Ayrilana.1396:

I personally don’t see an issue with timers but that’s just me.

It’s lazy. Instead of coming up with actual mechanics, they just slap on a timer and call it ‘challenging’.

Just go the the next farm shrug

Linken.6345:

And whats the reason you cant meet up in any of the racial citys or lions arch?

Because all the people pugging are going to VB. It’s ruining the maps.

Everyone hanging around in vb is ruining the maps and the meta’s.

Also, map chat is awash with raid lfg and people advertising for raid members. Please also add a “Looking for Raid” finder.

So, I had recently been watching Nemesis’s video’s (I found them via the Teapot youtube show / podcast with inks, boots and brazil) and found the whole issue over dps, the meta and elitism very interesting. I didn’t understand all of it (I’m terribad at maths) but it’s certainly made me interested in playing a Necro. I understood the basic idea of what he was saying, but both camps seem so diametrically opposed, and without access to detailed information (which the games rules make impossible??), it’s hard to reach some conclusions. Seems to be a lot of screaming back and forth.

What about the devs who work on Necro? I notice it was mentioned that they think Necro is fine apparently. Do they then essentially agree with him, if they do not change Necro to make it “better”? (However you want to define that I guess). Would be great to hear their thoughts on this – the mechanics of it I mean, not the arguing.

What does everyone else think?

Here’s the Teapot video from the other day, and the video’s about dps and meta.

TeaTime : DPS & The Meta – With Nemesis, Boots, Brazil and Inks!

Meta vid 1, Meta vid 2, Meta vid 3

(ps. Inks was hilarious lol)

Jasper Defthand.3018:

2 things I’m gonna touch on is the Nightmare Court, they seemed to, in there interviews with the story/lore people, push an agenda that they nightmare court was not mordrem and that there would be a defining presence of that or something in the expansion. There was only 1 instance in that this was brought up and that was the short part of the story with Faolin getting killed and they brought back as a vinetooth… thats it.

This was something that WP mentioned several weeks ago, and I also was interested to see how they handled it.

When I first got to that part with Faolain, I was so impressed how it started, where she said the Nightmare Court were not Mordrem and that serving Mordy would be no better than the Pale Tree. I thought, “Wow, they are actually doing this right!”

THEN THEY TOTALLY CHEESED IT OUT and made her a Mordrem. And the Nightmare Court was ignored and will probably never be mentioned again. Or her relationship with Caithe (who was barely there anyway herself).

And don’t even get me started on Malyck (Who? Yeah, exactly). Or the Soundless. Ugh.

TKIB.9061:

well, no reward for me, the map says 100%.
No reward on silverwaste, dry top and karka island either (completed months ago)
all character with 100% tyria…

Is everybody afected will be given gems or just some random lucky guys?

Glad the fix is coming too…

That’s not what this fix was for. As he noted, what you require, along with many of us, will be in an upcoming patch.

Don’t stress, you’ll still get more. I’ve had several drop now, for classes I’ll probably never play much.

The only thing I’m not sure is how it determines which collection it counts towards first. What gets priority.

Did y’all see this on reddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3s16bb/the_other_kind_of_map_completion_bug_prematurely/

He has sort of the opposite of our problem. He did the HoT maps first, and is doing old Tyria second – and now he’s getting multiple gifts before even completing it the maps. This makes me think something bad has gone wrong somewhere in the whole map completion thing. I’ve completed Verdant Brink, but am leaving a few easy vistas and poi undone in all the other maps till this is sorted.

Why do we have to kill the Amber, Crimson and Cobalt Wurms again, just to get these 3 mastery points, when our other achievements, under the Triple Trouble achievements section, clearly show we have killed these bosses already?

Should these not be just grandfathered in like other achievements? Or is this intended? It’s especially annoying as the regular raids of this boss are being done less because of HoT (understandably so).

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArenaColin
We are rolling out a beta version of a 64 bit client today if all goes well – please give this a shot if youre having crash issues and let us know if that does the trick!

As a non computer literate person, what does this mean to me?

Less crashing.

RyuDragnier.9476:

It’s not lost. Turns out they put it in another line. I’m not sure what determines which line they put it in, but they definitely put it in one. Forgot about my mastery points for a while, remembered about them, thinking they were lost. Turns out they threw the excess exp from my Pact Commander Mastery line down into the Fractal line.

I found this happens. My bar had maxed out one day and I hadn’t noticed because I was engrossed in the map meta. When I finally did spot it, I opened the mastery window and saw one of my other unlocked mastery tracks had been filling even though it wasn’t selected. You probably have to have it unlocked though.

I suspect he has been removed, as his prices are much better than the NPC’s currently in LA. They must want to flush more currency out of the game quicker.

evadrepus.1280:

People are upset because of the buildup. This item was featured in the Halloween posts, talked up big on Twitch, and other channels. They made a point of saying you could get it, although, in fairness, they did once say “be prepared to work for it.”

This isn’t working for it. Even if you had to harvest it all yourself, it’s still too much. Let’s take one item – need 6000 flax seeds. Let’s say you get 100 a day – that’s still 60 days. That’s not working hard, that’s a second job. If you don’t buy it, you have to have almost every tradeskill, most of them maxed or near maxed. That’s more time and money.

But they probably don’t intend people to make it day 1, or the first week. It’s a long term project. As for crafting, having everything maxed is not an issue for long term players.

Amineo.8951:

PopeUrban.2578:

It’s actually pretty great. Completely cosmetic items that are expensive to acquire are fine long term goals that doesn’t lock you out of content.

The only reason to be upset about it is if you only wanted it if it were cheap.

Like legendaries, if you want something bad enough, you’ll generally be prepared to pay the cost.

Yeah, but you need HoT for this…

I think you can buy everything on the tp though. And the gift is old school.

Or are the materials that drop in HoT blocked off from people who don’t have the xpac? If so, what happens if you mail it to someone without the xpac?

Firefly.8135:

From what I can tell, it seems to be an issue with the game leaking memory. When I launch the game, its using roughly about 1.4G of memory. It steadily grows over time and I start to notice things like frame rate hits and issues painting certain things like gliders and pets once it gets around 2.7G and when I crashed, it was just over 3G memory usage.

I thought that too, but I’ve had it crashing a fair bit even when it doens’t get to that 3GB issue.

I seem to get it alot when I’m holding down the right mouse key and panning the camera. It’s weird.

DaniTheHero.6318:

Such a stupid freaking system. in 30 days you’re going to see like 20 mentor tags in any map. There is no justfied reason to make this new free tag better than the original tag and so easy to get.

30 days? It takes 3 hours to get it. More like in a week.

I have a problem where when I go to pan the camera, or then suddenly it crashes. Quite a lot since the big update. I thought it was the memory issue (where it hits 3GB and crashes), but I’ve been monitoring and it’s crashing well before this.

It seems to be related to the camera somehow.

eh, now it’s just constantly crashing doing anything.

Same. It constantly crashes. Seems to be the memory leak issue again.

Also, I can get back onto the original character, but have to log onto another character first.

Yeah, I been getting a lot of crashes too.

Godmoney.2048:

I heard you wanted some gating so I gated your gate.

You forgot Yo Dawg.

-5 health points LOL

GRIND! Grind like you never have before my friend.

Then you can have fun. But until then grind.

zombyturtle.5980:

Can someone please explain to me why sooo many people have such a huge problem actually playing the content they paid for in order to progress their characters. I mean why even buy it if you are so against playing it. I just dont get it x.x

That’s just it though – they can’t just “play the content”. You hit a wall, and written on that wall is the words, “Go and grind 5million XP (basically to 80 again and then some) and then you can have fun.”

Good job Anet. /sarcasm

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Requires 40 new hero challenges to complete, several of which require masteries that require as much EXP to unlock as leveling to 80 several times over.

Yeah, that is grind.

Exactly.

Farzo.8410:

I hope ArenaNet are standing their ground. I have no clue what people are doing to not be able to unlock things, are they just staring at the screen? Not even touching the keyboard and grunt every now and then when a silver platter doesn’t appear before them?

I play sloppily slow. I’ve been farting about and just explored things, looking at things close and died so many time for trying certain things. Unlocking anything is not even a problem.

I just hope that I will be able to experience THIS, as it should be, before ArenaNet nerfs it, IF they nerf it.

Try and do the story. You hit a wall where you need to grind out 5million XP. Which is basically leveling to 80 all over again.

fireflyry.7023:

FinalPatriot.8034:

For a “casual” player with 5 alts (all level 80), these changes have all but killed the game for me. After 3 years, I think it’s time to find another MMO to play.

GW2 was always fun because I could jump on any of my characters and build/play them the way I wanted to play them. That’s no longer possible.

Don’t jump the gun.It’s release window sucker time.Basically peeps payed money to be beta testers.

Check in 2-3 months from now.All good.

I’m doing all my Halloween achievements in the meantime.

FinalPatriot.8034:

With how quickly this controversy is growing, why haven’t we received any “official” response from Anet?

You need 500 Mastery points to unlock a Dev response.

Go grind some more.

vipersfang.7452:

I preordered base game, I preordered HoT. Its the release day of HoT and I wanna quit the game and im probably not gonna pay again.The expansion grind hero point system killed it for me. i mean omg wtf…who designed this crap hero point system. I only have time to do wvw/pvp. Thats the only thing i enjoy about mmos. im not gonna be forced into spending extra time in crappy pve which i hate from the bottom of my heart

I can’t help but feel, they deliberately did this too slow us all up, to drag out content and progression and make the game last longer.

Of course, it’s just aggravated 90% of the player base and many will simply give up.