Guild Wars 2

I thought the goal of ArenaNet’s economic management was to keep the economy such that no one group of people had a much higher amount of gold than another. (i.e. avoiding a real-life economy where 10% of the people have 90% of the wealth)

But isn’t that just what FotM is going to do? I mean, people/groups that make it to higher fractals will get better drops (and thus be able to sell them on the TP for profit).

Rares/Exotics (and presumably Ascended) salvage into 1-3 ecto… Meaning you could earn up to 75s off of one rare (and that’s not even taking upgrade components into account). That’s vastly superior to Masterwork items that vendor for at most 2s.

For that matter, it seems like Magic Find does the same.

One thing about the wardrobe/transmutation thing:
Fine Transmutation Stones are required to transmute level 80 gear (which are really rare and generally a pay-for item). If we’ve already used this to transmute the look of gear to an exotic… What happens when Ascended armor comes out?

Also, I’d recommend asking about weapons:
Will there be any additional weapon types added? (Which would thus introduce new weapon skills.)

@PearlGore: I said the same thing. ANet deleted my post.

Merthax.5172:

Crater.1625:

People oppose the changes being made to Guild Wars 2 not because they are in love with Guild Wars 1 and want Guild Wars 2 to be the same as Guild Wars 1, but because the changes are bad changes, taken on their own merits.

Guild Wars 1 is only mentioned in cases where either A) People seem confused as to how an online RPG can be successful without parroting the features of EverQuest/World of Warcraft, and Guild Wars 1 serves as an example of how a game like that can be successful, or When people bring up previous statements made during Guild Wars 2’s marketing with the argument that “they didn’t specifically say this with this specific wording so I don’t know why you interpreted it to mean that”. The same philosophy was espoused during Guild Wars 1’s development, and they maintained that philosophy for close to eight years - it was not unreasonable for people to expect that ArenaNet would adhere to those principles.

People are also not dogmatically in favour of keeping the game exactly as Guild Wars 1 was. Guild Wars 1 did not have a functional Z-Axis, jumping, or dodging. Do you see Guild Wars 1 fans saying that those mechanics should be removed from Guild Wars 2? No? Then ask yourself, what does that tell you?

Thank you, I think this captures the thoughts of many of us. I bought GW2 because I wanted the next evolution in the Guild Wars franchise. I’m thrilled about jumping, dodging, the increased mobility, and the beautiful environments. Even the underwater combat is an exciting addition.

GW2 was specifically sold as a game without vertial gear progression and to be anti-grind. This is what many of us expected, this is what we bought.

Quoting because ArenaNet deleted my post.

ledzep.9504:

Also fractal of the mist drokittenttenload of rare ive seen someone make 30ecto in a single run.

Must be after level 10 or something…

And if this is common, I wonder why the cost of ecto hasn’t plummeted yet.

ledzep.9504:

Yep and theres no reason to get it unless you want to take less damage from agony in fractal of the mist. And you dont even need it there unless you just want it easy.

You mean you don’t want to make it to Fractal level 50?

mrstealth.6701:

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

The infused version also takes a Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence which takes 5 Vials of Condensed Mists Essence to make (in addition to other items), and a Gift of Ascension which costs 500 Fractal Relics. So you would need to get lucky with RNG five times to make a single piece, and do Fractals enough to get 500 tokens. According to wiki, that would take 12 runs at difficulty 10. So 10-12 hours for enough tokens to make a single piece.

And after all of this, you still need an infusion to put in the empty slot.

Globs also drop in higher-level difficulties, according to the Wiki… which is why I declined to mention it. I’ve no clue how drops are past level 7.

I’m sure all of the pro-Ascended people will agree. They just want a game that replicates another subscription-based title.

Sylosi.6503:

Mackdose.6504:

The manifesto hasn’t been violated by Anet, it’s been violated by a player-base that twisted it into whatever they thought it should have meant, rather than what it actually meant.

No twisting invloved, some of us simply followed the Q&A sessions, interviews, blogs, etc and therefore don’t come from a position of ignorance, so we see the manifesto in the context of what they repeated time and time again.

For instance in their blog their lead dev wrote this:

“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

With ascended gear they have broken that statement in two ways, firstly it is no longer optional if you want to be “just as powerful” and secondly it is no longer optional if you wish to do all the content as they have introduced a gating mechanism with “agony”, so bascially repeating the mistake other games made years ago and have since worked out is a dumb idea, ‘agony’ is just ‘radiance’ from LOTRO all over again.

Quoted for truth.

At least with “spectral agony” in Prophecies, it was simple enough to run to the seer and infuse your armor. It was even part of the story.

lunabaguna.8293:

Crater, that is fine, I am fine with people saying “I dont want x” I have a problem with people saying “I dont want x because it makes the game into y/because game z wasnt that way”

If you want to play Game Y, then why don’t you?

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

lunabaguna.8293:

Zoul there is a marked difference, Diablo 3 was a single player game that was a sequel to Diablo 1 and 2. GW2 is an MMO, it is not a sequel to GW1. GW1 is a sequel to GW1 because it is constantly being updated with new content.

Wrong on multiple levels. D3 is a cooperative game, much like GW1 was. You can form parties (albeit limited to 4 players, but any more and it’d clutter things) and go out into “instances.” Yeah, it’s missing lobbies (which has been a feature I’d heard many people saying they wished it had.)

GW1 isn’t really getting updated anymore. They’ll still have holidays, I suppose. And it’s just as much a “single-player” game as D3 is. You can form a party to go out to instances… Or you could just use heroes instead, seeing as you could often wind up doing better than grouping with a PUG.

GW2 is a complete departure from GW1. You don’t really even need parties except for dungeons. (does that make it “single-player”?) Bosses are “difficult” due to hitting insanely hard and having way too much HP. Not because they have an interesting skill set. Yeah, the fractal bosses improve upon this… but still.

And, really, the main “complaint” about GW2 with respect to GW1 is that there’s gear grind. Which is kind of silly, honestly, considering that many people like the whole “downscaling” mechanic and how it keeps old content semi-relevant.

The benefit to not having a gear grind means that any max-level content they create is instantly playable for EVERYONE, even if those people haven’t been grinding for the latest BiS gear.

Also, as others have mentioned, WvW is probably the main thing going to really be hampered by the Exotic/Ascended stuff. The current complaints about there being a distant separation between “good” and “bad” WvW servers are just going to grow. I mean, a server with people/guilds dedicated to WvW are just going to get the best possible gear… Setting that server even further ahead.

Bonus influence: Yes

Extra chest: No.

Your reward is having a team that’s used to working together. You’re likely completing dungeons faster than PUGs anyway.

Does this explain why the Jade Maw kills FPS?

Ivonbeton.6814:

EDIT : About the MF, seems like they are already moving to a system where MF is inherent to the item and higher rarity means higher MF. Which was what I wanted to suggest

Magic Find still takes the place of other stat benefits on the Ascended gear. You lose the biggest stat boost in place of MF.

I find it interesting that Linsey (and the GW2 team) chose a MF ring to put in the article…

As someone that can’t get a group for level 4… I’m glad it’s not account bound.

It’s near impossible for me to find a group for Fractals level 4.

I almost had a group… but then someone had to leave and the group disintegrated.

I’ve also happened into overflows just as a group filled up.

This is incredibly frustrating and ridiculous, as I expected it would be. I mean, there’s no dungeon finder… and hardly anyone wants to do a lower level.

Teulux.6732:

I suggest you find friends that don’t mind helping you and will accept you even if you go at your own pace.

Unless you have a hard time finding friends that is. Which might be why you are playing a MMO? Seems to be the trend but it’s not always true.

I play an MMO to escape real-life. Not have a second one. If that were true, I suppose I might frequent SecondLife.

I’m sorry to be so “rude” and blunt, but I don’t exactly play an MMO to find new friends. I have friends that I’ll hang out with and make time for in the real world. I don’t really have the time to maintain those same social obligations in a virtual one, especially when this game may be dead before too long. (with the way that ArenaNet has been driving it into the ground, and all)

I don’t have difficulty forming a party for a dungeon that I want to do, I even chat with my PuGs… But I’ll probably rarely see them again. Yeah, it’s sad when you think about it…

But I have graduate school and a job to worry about, in addition to a real-world social life. I play Guild Wars whenever I want to have an escape from all that… To have fun and do what I want to do.

If you do anything else, you’ll get left behind.

There’s already people above level 20 on FotM.

Before too long, no one will want to do anything below level 10.

Asagi.1405:

Ah yes, the Dredge Suit Boss.
I fought that boss already in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
“Revolutionary design” everybody!

He reminded me of the Foe Reaper 5000 boss from Warcraft’s Deadmines dungeon.

And the “hot foot” condition in the Grawl boss lair reminds me of something from a Warcraft boss fight as well…

This would work for difficulty up to 10… but for the Agony levels, how will the ensure that you have Ascended gear necessary to survive?

Naginto is talking about the difficulty level of the dungeon that you’ve achieved.

It is kind of annoying when you’re trying to put a group together for a specific difficulty level and someone’s a lower level.

The reason they’ve introduced gear-grind has nothing to do with the methodology of the original game not working.

People would still have participated in the Lost Shores if there wasn’t Ascended gear to get. Simply because it’s new content and something different.

People would have still done Fractals since they’re better designed than any other dungeon in the game… and later levels have better rewards.

The reason they introduce the new gear-grind has EVERYTHING to do with wanting to increase the “market appeal” of Guild Wars. I mean, if it works for Warcraft (and they’ve still got millions of players after all these years)… Then it should work for Guild Wars 2, right?

They’re trying to replicate Warcraft with a F2P mentality… But they’re going to fail. Because Blizzard has far more money than ArenaNet and far more experience at this type of gameplay.

They should have stuck with what they knew.

I feel the same…

There’s no real reason for me to go back to Guild Wars 1, in my opinion. I imagine they’ll gradually keep dropping support for GW1. And eventually cut the servers off completely (like City of Heroes/Villains)

The only thing that I’d go back to GW1 for at this point would be to get the extra titles for GW2…

Servers can’t even seem to handle WvW… The same issues happen there, where you can’t see enemy mobs until you’re dead in some cases.

Loading issues, and it’s server-side issues… Not issues with my graphics card or anything.

My FPS is fine, just that enemy models AREN’T THERE.

So, this Ascended gear isn’t supposed to create any feeling of grind…

And yet everyone’s already complaining about how someone else got better gear from a chest that took a 3 hour event to get.

If there was no grind, then you could certainly just go out and easily get an exotic or a precursor or an ascended ring, right?

I’d much rather do dailies than grind an uninteresting dungeon for hours and hours for “Exotic” gear that will be outdated in a few months.

This is very clearly going to become more and more prevalent later on.

It’s simple: ArenaNet can institute a gear-level requirement for difficulties.

That way if someone has full exotics, they can start at Fractal level 10.

Especially since they’re giving away precursors in the event chests…

Phase 1 was horribly bugged. Phase 3’s disconnect issue just shows flaws with ArenaNet’s server management.

Obviously, the benefit to giving precursors to trial accounts is to encourage them to buy and keep playing an obviously flawed game.

Except that the fractals will still become dull and boring after you do each of them 10×.

Yes, there’s a bunch of them and they’re selected at random, but there are obviously ones that are more tedious than others.

You’re at the mercy of a random number generator to get a decent set of three dungeons.

Also, the only point to doing the Warcraft dungeons, in my opinion, are Valor/Justice points (which replaced dungeon-specific tokens) to buy max-stat gear.

WoW has done gear grind for far longer than Guild Wars and has perfected it by now.

In addition, you’re assuming a continuous influx of new players. Which is most likely not going to happen, given ArenaNet’s current handling of the game.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

They only work on creature kills, chests however have a better table then normal kills. We wanted to avoid the game play of killing a boss and then having to equip your whole Magic Find set before opening the chest.

Also magic find is calculated from when the creature is killed so it’s also not viable to use your normal gear set kill a boss then switch to magic find.

Yes, but that just results in people keeping magic find equipped all the time… To their party’s disadvantage.

Magic Find sucks. It’s essentially required for “farming” in Diablo 3… And it’s pretty much required to farm in Guild Wars.

I haven’t really seen any exotic drops at all playing without Magic Find gear.

And then the levels above 10 will become an issue when people get ascended gear…

It’s just a dungeon connected with the horrible “gear grind” that ArenaNet has decided to implement.

I mean, as people get infusions to negate agony, 15 will become the new 10. And we’ll have the same issue all over again.

At least Warcraft deals with this by instating an “item level” requirement rather than a “you have to grind the dungeon” requirement.

There’s currently an issue where few people want to do the story mode.

This same issue is going to apply ten-fold to Fractal level divisions, in my opinion.

There’s already people in Lion’s Arch “LFG Fractal Level 10”

How long before it’s near impossible to find a party for levels below 10? Yeah, the infusion mechanic is probably going to keep people near level 10 until they start getting Ascended gear.

Oh, and I was prevented from chatting in Lion’s Arch after a few “GLFM” posts (about a minute apart each). This only further illustrates the necessity for a party finder. Even something like the simple one from GW1 would be a vast improvement.

Rejam.3946:

Sounds like you’ve spent a great deal of time making these updates.
Can’t wait to get in to my mf gear. My party will suffer for it but at least i will get nice loot.

This is exactly why Magic Find needs to be fixed. Because, honestly, who isn’t thinking “Oh, if I’m going to do the dungeons… I should get the best drops possible.”

Asagi.1405:

Who whole part has just missed out on the level 10 ascendant ring.
Do you even test your content before you release it?

Here’s some free advice, divert a couple of bucks from your ivory back scratcher budget and hire some content testers!

Or they could simply have a PTR and let players test it for them… It seems to work for WoW releases. That way they can still afford ivory back scratchers for everyone and have well-tested releases.

Parisalchuk.9230:

This is horrible then. Not only was I ‘gifted’ 2 bags of gold resulting in a lovely 3 silver total, now I wont get another chance at getting fractals until lvl 10 difficulty?

Its starting to sound more and more like Im never coming back to Fractals. Horrible rewards for semi-fun content.

If you expected decent rewards, then you must have missed Linsey Murdock’s blog post about needing “gear progression” to keep people playing the game.

Linsey Murdock also thinks that gear progression is going to draw people back to the game (or keep people from leaving).

It’s clear that ArenaNet has a problem in understanding what their problem is.

Edit: As far as your question… I got one in my second fractal from a random dredge. So I’m guessing you just have to be lucky. >.> Sorry I can’t be of more help.

Avan.1540:

Really? I usually get at least a couple a day on my main running nearly +100% MF (and I have a lot of Alts I also play).

This post exactly describes why ArenaNet should analyze Magic Find and rethink drop rates.

I’ve maybe seen an exotic or two… But I’m pretty sure they were from chests (which are unaffected by MF anyway).

The game shouldn’t encourage people to ignore stats and other beneficial rune mechanics in order to obtain the best loot.

Instead they give us a brand new zone where everything seems to use confusion and items are no better than any other zone. (I think that’s the main “difficulty” of the zone… Getting hit with confusion.)

I say increase the timer by a second or two…

It won’t take too much to make this fractal more bearable.

My group eventually made it, but it took a while.

Honestly, increasing the timer slightly shouldn’t be a HUGE deal. It’ll still require teamwork in grabbing each of the wisps.

And someone mentioned the dredge one… I think the main issue with that fractal that needs fixing is the lava pours. Slightly increasing the radius of the spill would make that boss battle drastically easier.

Fadh (the largos) still gets stuck in his patrol on Tarnished Coast… But his chest is giving the shell.

leman.7682:

Guys, you knew before you bought this game that you’d be required to upgrade your hardware and your Internet connection every month for a major game release.

I mean really, you knew that.

Stop complaining and play the game.

And get a new PC and new connection.

Or you could just spend the money that you’d use on a new PC and buy a whole bunch of gems.

You could then convert the gems to gold and buy pretty much whatever you want in GW2 and ignore the silly events that aren’t really all that interesting.

Weekly, I think I’ve read.

nelopp.6140:

But the problem is the rewards for the commendation are total rubbish and not worth the effort to exchange for.

Right, I didn’t say it was worth it. ArenaNet seems to have a bad grasp of giving “decent” rewards.

The only way it makes sense is if they’re trying to get rid of items, since like you said… It’s not really worth it. They’re probably hoping people are stupid.

Searingarrow.4637:

After the laggy auto-attack fest that started this event you get a letter in the mail telling you to visit 3 people in different zones and gather information from them on the karka. After you go and help each of these people with there little quests (taking roughly 45 minutes) you come back and give what you’ve gathered to Researcher Levi in Lion’s Arch.

She rewards you with 5 Captain’s Council Commendations. These commendations can be used to purchase things from a vendor where the lions statue used to be. What you can purchase from the vendor with these commendations is absolute trash and a complete rip off.

…

So basically I just wasted 45 minutes to get a fraction of the amount of tokens I need to buy vendor trash I could go and purchase from any vendor in the game for 32 copper – 4 silver depending on what I want. Oh and lets not forget the cool weapons they sell that you’ve always been able to get for a cheap amount of karma… Weapons that you never see anyone with because nobody wants them….

TL;DR – Phase one feels like a waste of time to me because the opening event was a generic event no different than any other dynamic event in the game and the rewards are a complete rip off…

I feel like the “donations” to fix Lion’s Arch are ArenaNet’s way of trying to remove a large amount of items from the game. Possibly at an attempt to regulate TP prices of goods. (Like how they’d done with that Mystic Chest thing that I missed out on)

Or transfer from Overflow to your server… Love that mail notification.

Searingarrow.4637:

Minos.5168:

Didn’t you hear? They’re trying to make GW2 the new WoW.

Grinding the a new set of dungeons every few months for the highest stat gear.

It certainly explains why the crafting professions are so similar to WoW, but you can’t really out-WoW WoW.

Sigh this crap again… They added a progression dungeon for people who want progression. Know how many other dungeons don’t require progression… Well lets see yeah I guess you only have EVERY OTHER DUNGEON….

Honestly it frustrates me how casual players get mad because they want to play a couple hours a week and be as good as people who play regularly. Lets face it. The game had no end game. You get whatever set of armor you liked the look of and then after that there is NO reason to run a dungeon more than once. Not a single freaking reason unless you really like that dungeon.

As someone that actually played WoW, I can say that you can play a few hours a week and be as good as someone that plays it regularly.

You’re limited in how many valor points you can get per day (which are redeemable for the latest gear).

Moreover, you’re limited to going through the Raid bosses once per week.

You couldn’t simply grind Deathwing until you got everything. You had to either be lucky on your rolls or come back each week.

And the Dragon Soul raid (like most of WoW’s dungeons) was at least fun. The fight mechanics aren’t too difficult to get used to.

The primary issue with dungeons in GW2 is that they WERE NOT FUN. The sole purpose to grind them was the gear. They weren’t very interesting… The battles were ridiculous and likewise uninteresting. “Oh, this guy has a billion hit points and one-hits everything. Yeah, that’s cool.”

I can at least say that repeatedly doing WoW’s dungeons for valor points never came across as extremely boring or extremely challenging. It was fun. If dungeons were too difficult, they’d eventually get changes so that everyone could do them. (After other people had farmed them for the gear and such.)

The Fractals is getting closer to this level of fun… But it’s still not there. Some of the mechanics need more tuning to be easier for everyone. I’m not saying the bosses should be easier… Just give an extra second or two before wisps reset in the swamp. Or increase the radius of the lava just slightly for the dredge boss.

It’s all about fine tuning to get everything just right. ArenaNet has not learned how to gain mass appeal, yet. GW2 dungeons are known for being grindy and not fun… So they added another dungeon to grind.

Yeah, Fractals shows that they’ve learned to make dungeons better… but there’s still room for improvement.

You would expect that for their “free trial weekend” that they’d have an event that was very well play-tested.