Guild Wars 2

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Poisoned…… Bacon? Oh my. Blasphemy has been committed!

Yes who would do such a thing?; it’s an atrocity! Now the next question is, how poisoned is it, and can it still be eaten?

I’m just happy I finished Twilight before HoT dropped. I too think it’s time for me to ease back and try to farm the game a bit before investing any more new real world dollars.

Land of Cheese.2584:

Anet has always been about absurdly high numbers of mats being required for things. Look at the Mystic Forge, look at legendary weapons, look at any crafting for that matter. Since Guild Halls and Scribes are “guild level” activities, it’s only natural to expect that “haha let’s make the number stupid high” is going to get even dumber.

I’m my guild’s scribe. The mats requirements are so high we’ve been ignoring it. Just having a hall is enough of a grind already.

I’ve crafted 4 legendaries and they were stupid simple compared to this. The only hassle was when they got rid of skill points and you had to go farm and hope that spirit shards dropped in your bags. Otherwise, most mats were easily bought at a reasonable price or gathered simply by PLAYING (not farming) the game.

I’m usually not shy about plowing gems into gold and buying mats, especially to craft legendaries or ascended gear, but scribing has made even me stand back and take pause.

I’ve probably purchased well over 300g worth of soft and green logs alone to make paper for leveling and upgrades. I have no idea what I’ve spent total; I know the brown dyes weren’t cheap either, so I’m guessing 1000g or more at least.

I’m at lvl 125 right now waiting for our hall upgrade (decorations vendor) so I can progress. The posts above do not instill a lot of warm feelings however if I need to plow THOUSANDS more in gold to get to 400. I’m wondering how they expect any WvW focused guilds to do this for their upgrades?

Not sure this has anything to do with squads; we could not do our guild challenge this week either. (Skritt).

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Didn’t they turn the in game chest to an achievement style chest (above the mini map)? I didn’t do many missions before HoT so I don’t know if you got the chests before the expac

For missions and rushes, you always received a wiggly chest along with a chest to open at the end (a cute cheese shaped chest at the end of Proxemics lab, two chests in Langmar estate). All the chests at the end have been eliminated and you need to cross your fingers to get the wiggly chest.

Eliminating chests is a cash grab, there is no other way around it. They’ve created huge sinks for gold and mats and at the same time reduced rewards. What other reason is there for doing both of these at the same time?

Edit: and no, missions have not been fixed.

Throw this one on the stack; we could not get our guild challenge even started this week because it was bugged. So, the two things that my guild centered its schedule around and enjoyed the most as a group (WvW, missions) are both broken right now.

And they took away the chests at the end of the rush and puzzle? What is up with that? I see no reason to do this other than money grab.

Sicarius.4639:

I said it a while ago, November was not a good month for having unhappy (gaming) customers.

Huge titles out and it will get to the point where the complains stop and so do the logins…

Yes, two of our commanders have been heavy into Fallout for the past few weeks, and yesterday was the first day I didn’t bother completing my dailies in GW2 because I was also playing Fallout. The slow creep begins…

I have my fears that HoT is a short term money grab by Anet who has plans to taper off GW2 content in the near future. This whole setup of sinking thousands and thousands of gold into guild halls and other things just seems off.

- WvW is dying a quick death because of the guild hall requirements, the new map, nerfing of siege, auto upgrading, and tougher lords; it seems like Anet is TRYING to destroy WvW.

- HoT content (map for map) is only about 2 times bigger than Living Story 2 content, which we got for free. And only 3 of the 4 maps are “playable” and fun. Should’nt an expansion be almost as a large as the original map if we are paying the same price as the original game?

- I read that a group took 35 straight hours to finish the Raid; yeah that sounds like fun. Oh and you need multiple sets of equipment depending on the boss, so go out and craft those hugely expensive multiple sets of armor, runes, and sigils!

- Guild upgrades, scribing, WvW upgrades, precursor crafting, and general equipment creation are all HUGE gold sinks now; realistically the only way to get things done in this lifetime with all the reward nerfs is to convert gems to gold and buy materials. This points strongly to a money grab theory.

I know for a fact that this content has turned off guild members and smaller guilds (primarily havoc WvW guilds).

Anet should be concerned about losing players due to HoT, unless my original theory is correct and Anet does’nt really care about losing players after this one last money grab.

Firts guild catas destroyed, now this?

Apparently Anet won’t be happy until the BLs are completely empty, roamers and havoc groups are completely eradicated, and every single person is in a single EB zerg.

kuritsutian.2987:

So before HoT you had no guild hall and you were happy…… now you have a chance of having a guild hall, but can’t get it …. so having no guild hall now makes you unhappy?
why do you suddenly feel the need for a GH if you don’t like people… just find a cool area to meet and call it a hideout!

Well to be fair he did pay a large amount of money for HoT, and I can see how the guild hall is all but impossible to upgrade for all but the largest guilds.

I tried the raid for the 1st time last night. Yes the fights are fun and all, but I don’t have 2 hours to spare to kill 1 boss; I had to bow out after we had reached level 4 of the vale guardian. Also, people in my group were buying new gear for boon stripping; I have my legendaries and I want to use my legendaries. And no, I don’t want to overwrite my super expensive sigils with ones tailored for a particular boss.

So the long and short of it was: I spent 2 1/2 hours of time, overwrote 2 expensive sigils on my weapons that I will have to re-buy to play other content and I recieved zero loot. Not sure it’s worth my future efforts.

Since they nerfed spiders, did they at least fix the issue of people dc’ing at the end of the 2 hour DS event and not getting credit for it?

Iason Evan.3806:

To me, it’s a shame they decided to use guild halls as a way to pull materials out of the economy instead of making activities for the guild to do together to level up the guild.

Boom – we have a winner. HoT has been detrimental to guild activities with the changes and bugginess of guild missions along with the well documented WvW issues. And then you have the concern of some players doing all the heavy lifting on the guild upgrades, leading to hostility within the guild (my guild hasn’t seen this much but I can easily see it happening with the costs of these upgrades.) And that grind! Everybody is off gathering mats up, but we are all doing it separately. There is no togetherness in getting this grinding done.

Last night we finally did a PVP fundraiser together in a desperate bid to get Heavy Supply Bags. (Supply Bags that are going for 5 g on the TP that Anet wants players to happily hand over to their guild.)

Tiny Doom.4380:

The mere fact that this error passed all QA checks for the launch of HoT is emblematic of the level of attention to detail paid to WvW for the last three years and more. If anyone on the QA or design teams had WvW in the forefront of his or her mind the position of WvW dailies post-HoT would have been an obvious concern. I was thinking about what would have to change months ago.

The new BLs are beautiful but they are no substitute for the ones we had, by the way.

I love how Heavy Supply Bags skyrocketed in price because 175 of them are needed for guild halls and the most obvious way to get them (wvw centaurs) were eliminated in the new map.

Of course you can still grind them out at an extremely slow pace in pvp.

Learning the intricacies of WvW and mastering your class for it will definitely take up some of your time.

Also, finding a good guild will definitely expand your horizons.

They put all the cool cutscenes into the DS final event.

PopeUrban.2578:

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Also, doing a successful DS event does tie the story together a little better, wish I wouldnt have done story before it.

I kind of agree with this. It takes a little too much reading between the lines to understand that the DS event is was allown the PS mission to take place, and that the PS mission succeeding is what actually ends the DS event in a story sense.

I think perhaps if they go this route in the future of ‘strike team accomplishes an objective while main army keeps the mass battle on track’ they should maybe have the story step entrance open up as part of the zone meta.

Like, it would have all come together and mode more sense if you had to do the first half of DS to get to the last PS instance. Then you’d understand the PS instance is only part of the overall offensive, and entering the instance or sticking with the zone meta would feel more like a plot branch which you then experience from both viewpoints eventually.

That would have been really cool actually, I can envision the awesome cinematic and cutscenes associated with something like this, having the mouth of mordremoth stare you down as you enter the story instance. And this would have driven more people into DS to help complete the meta.

I can also hear the whining about having to push through a difficult meta to finish the story, though.

Considering how hard it is to organize the map and get to him, I don’t have a problem with the ending being a little more “guaranteed”. It would be nice to give people sitting on the rocks something to do while he attacks the one rock though. I had to jump rocks just to hit him once because I was afraid I wouldn’t get credit.

Also, doing a successful DS event does tie the story together a little better, wish I wouldnt have done story before it.

I would sure like to know if this is going to get fixed before sinking any more time or money into it. Right now 175 bags * 5g each = 875 g for one ingredient used for 3 upgrades!

WvW is dying, not just because of the new map but because small WvW guilds have lost all claiming and buff clout, and have to sink ENORMOUS resources into PVE just to get a few scraps of that clout back.

I don’t see how it is even possible for say a 20 person WvW guild to get their War Room upgrades accomplished within a reasonable time frame, and then add in the costs of the upgrades themselves? We are talking thousands and thousands in gold here.

I thought the story was fine until its very, very, abrupt end. I was looking for DE members and then next thing I know, Mordy’s “mind” was laying dead before me. I was pretty disappointed that I defeated Mordy without ever seeing him (no successful DS event for me at the time).

The only problem I have with this is that I was able to contribute to my guild by PLAYING the game. It didn’t matter what I did, whether it was PVE or WvW events, running dungeons or doing guild missions, influence grew from PLAYING the way we wanted to PLAY.

That is out now. Now you have to grind, grind, grind. Grind mats and gold for upgrades. Grind mats and gold for scribing. Grind, grind, grind for masteries. Grind grind grind the new zones hoping for a successful meta to get a pittance of new materials needed for hall upgrades. Grind for ley line tools, grind for kegs, grind for glass mugs, grind for sand, grind for flax.

And I am in an extremely large PVx guild, I can only imagine what it is like for a small WvW focused guild who just saw their net worth plummet and their operating costs skyrocket. These guilds typically don’t touch PVE areas, but now they have to grind grind grind them just to get some rudimentary WvW upgrades from their hall.

People were screaming for help at the Balthazaar hero point in AB last night; I wanted to help, but after searching 40 minutes for the entrance (and dying a couple times when I was looking at my map to try and figure something out.) I said to’heck with it. No WP to go back to, can’t look at my map, and no obvious entrance despite running and gliding around the area.

I will be unlocking this hero point in WvW, I don’t care how long it takes me; it was thoroughly unrewarding and frustrating to try and find my way in there so I am not going to do it.

Everything is exploding in cost right now with guild hall and gear sinks. I’ve probably spent 100g in green wood logs alone for scribing.

1. Do SW
2. Sell everything for gold
3. Buy crystals and sand

I figured they would do something to push people back into the car wreck that is Drytop, but I refuse.

If they would have made the meta events more SW-like and less “War and Peace”-like all of these zones would be rocking with happy people right now.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Let me introduce you to my friend you probably haven’t met yet… meet LFG… I think you two will become good friends!

Funny Story: I taxied into a DS map yesterday that then completely filled up and BOOM, the mushroom volunteer thing came up. People became confused and hit the button and cleared the map out.

Are they using the mushroom thingy to control map populations and prevent crashes?

WvW has been made much worse, especially for low population servers. I’m wondering what Anet had against roamers? Between the huge maps, the auto upgrading, the tougher lords, and nerfing guild catas, roaming has been totally destroyed. All of the BLs are completely empty now; alot of us took great pride and had lots of fun defending our home turf in small groups, but now the whole place seems to run itself without human intervention, and you can’t defend anything anyways since you can’t find an attacker to save your life, and cant get there in time if you could find them.

EB is still ok, but overall population is down because… grinding. Now let’s talk about WvW guild upgrade costs….

There is something wrong. I partied up with someone to guide them from VB to DS last night and every time we made it to a new map we were placed in separate instances, and I had to re-join him in the instance. And none of these maps were anything close to full.

You would think the priority for putting people on the same instance would be based on party?

After watching the Dragon’s Stand event (I haven’t played in a successful one yet) I would have to agree that Mordremoth is dead (or mostly dead at least); his physical “head” is the DS main boss, thus the statement about being distracted when the PC enters his mind in the story.

The story is obviously not over, however with the ley energy moving to Glint’s egg. Is it Mordy transferring himself? Or is it something new? Too many cliffhangers for this to be the end-end.

GROMIT.7829:

Wow that first image looks alot like “Pay to Win” to me…..

So, ban all elite classes and Rev from WvW too?

I keep wanting to buy a Macbook when I see mentor tags for some reason.

Zypher.7609:

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Huh, I thought it was double tap?

If you hold your jump key, at the top of the jump the glider will come out. It helped fixed the issue with people lagging and not being able to open the glider in time.

Good to know, thanks, no wonder I’ve been sucking so bad at getting to the tough spots.

Huh, I thought it was double tap?

Hurray! This will stir the pot a bit! Maybe I will see my Herald come to fruition in my lifetime now!

Thanks for listening Anet!

I thought Rev was pretty fun while leveling him up. Give the staff a try; the bowling ball skill is fun to watch.

I’d say it’s still too soon to give a rating since a lot of the content is still locked away for me!

Positives so far:
Revenant – , just got mine to 80 and can’t wait to see what he can do in PVE and WVW
Gliders – Very fun, can’t wait to master this
Storyline – Very compelling and gritty (from what I can play so far)
Maps – Generally well designed and beautiful

Negatives:
Elite grinding – Many thought these would be “optional” specs with a sensible requirement for unlocking it. Since it actually requires what amounts to map completion, I sadly will never be able to experience the elite spec on the vast majority of my toons

Mastery grinding – Probably the most tedious part of HoT due to the lack of exploration / solo content. I would love to accumulate levels doing story, but that is also sadly locked away in gates. Where are the hearts? Where are the small dynamic events? It seems to me like every event requires a huge zerg to complete, and some of them you can’t even participate if you don’t have the proper mastery! Talk about your catch-22s!

The death of roaming in WvW – Many of us found relaxation in protecting camps and doing upgrades. Roamers have been put out of work by automation and a huge map.

I agree, using tickets you’ve saved up from gameplay is not an exploit and does not need to be addressed.

I wonder if the exploit has to do with saving rank up chests and opening them on a different toon?

Samhayn.2385:

Here I’ll make it simply so of us want to experience the new content with our elite spec (as a necro who always meleed reaper is great) not just to get our elite spec.

Others have alts.

As for getting them in wvw. That again is a matter of wanting to do it with a spec not for a spec. I want to enjoy the ride and not feel like I’m driving to the starting line.

Yes I read the perfect analogy on another thread. Anet put the key inside the locked chest.

I think the general expectation was that we would be able to experience the new content on our elites, not have to finish all the new content to unlock them. What exactly are the elites specs for if we’ve already played all the new content without them?

There is also the problematic dichotomy of having classes that aren’t as popular sparking interest with the elite spec. What’s a person to do? For instance, I haven’t touched my thief in ages. Not a thief guy. Now I might be a Daredevil guy, but will never know because of the intolerable grind needed on thief to get there.

Now we know why Rytlock was gone for so long; he was grinding hero points in the Mist! LOL.

I think the main problems are:

1. The HoT hero points largely cannot be done solo unlike EVERY hero point in old Tyria. So not only do you have to explore and grind away to get to the hero point, you then have to wait or party up to get help. This can be a pain if you only have a few hours to jump on. (Nevermind that you have to have map completion to get HALF the hero points you need)

2. I have plenty of mastery points but no way to use them. Re-leveling my 80 in HoT areas only is an abysmal grind, especially considering the available events. At this point I will be completely done exploring all the zones long before I have a large portion of the masteries unlocked.

Wasn’t the point of HoT to be able to play with these new elites and masteries? What is the point of having them if you’ve had to rip through all the new content just to get them?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Has anybody gotten a mushroom bonus for moving from an upopulated map in HoT? This feature may be broken. I see tons of guildies’ dots in these zones but they are never in the same map.

I never had that popup in new maps.

Have people been trying to taxi to fill up a map, I wonder, like SW? I know there are some meta-events to plan around but they may take too long to coordinate compared to SW.

I’ve played two sections so far and the story is pretty amazing (a few stupid movement mechanic gimmicks aside).

I was really getting into the story but sadly could not continue because of a mastery point gate. Back to mindless grinding, I guess.

Equius.4356:

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

WvW gets hero points with ranking up. You get some “coins” that you turn in, which unlocks a random hero point location in HoT.

I got 39 of these during a decent zerg run in one night (although I had a birthday booster going.)

Edit: I have not tried EOTM yet, but you should rank up the same in EOTM I would think. Also apparently the coins are account bound, but they come in a chest that you can store and open on another toon apparently (havent tried this yet either).

So I have to grind for a long time just to access their most advertised feature of the expansion…?

That is correct. Anet said they didn’t raise the level cap, but they in essence did. And there are no cheats around it like tomes or crafting, but I expect there soon will be with the current uproar.

Has anybody gotten a mushroom bonus for moving from an upopulated map in HoT? This feature may be broken. I see tons of guildies’ dots in these zones but they are never in the same map.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

So am I seeing this right? In order to get your elite in a reasonable manner, you’ve got to do the pve portion of the expansion, including that ridiculous mastery grind to even get to some of the hero points?

There’s no WvW equivalent of the 400 hero points you gain from expansion pve?

You receive “Proof of heroics” in WVW that can be turned in for hero points. From my experience, WvW may be the fastest way to accumulate hero points.

I foresee the return of skill trainers and books. For lots and lots of gold and spirit shards of course

Ravion Hawk.4736:

It is only going to get worse as the “pack” moves on and leaves the stragglers behind.

There is ZERO incentive to come back and help others if you already have the HPs done.

Except that alot of us have 9-10+ toons and will need to repeat this on every one we want the elite spec on.

Ironicially, I will be fully unlocking an elite I won’t even be using first (DH) because that is my main.