Guild Wars 2

Steel Thunder.2586:

Charr and norn refugees crawl from the wreckage of their homes in the Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau, struggling to find shelter in the south.

GrandmaFunk, while I would still like a confirmation as to any changes that might potentially permanently change, displace current events, I thank you for redrawing my eyes to the above quoted line. For some reason, I read “struggling to find shelter in the south” thinking that other zones north of Wayfarer and Diessa would also be affected.

And that’s a bad thing how? In my opinion what could happen is that there would eventually be two new elder dragons coming out to fight us, but before that a lot of zones will get messed up by them. If anything I can’t wait to see the change.

Malediktus.9250:

I never heared of this. If people advertise the slot costs 15g and people refuse to pay, they can either go leave and make their own group or should expect to get kicked. Pretty funny if people feel entitled to a free ride at endboss.

Imo its griefing if you join a group knowing you agreed to pay 15g then refuse to pay and not the other way.

I don’t think that they advertise though. It would be okay if they said it, but I think that they don’t say it until you enter the run and even if they said it it smells of scam.

Kandrick.8054:

Mirta.5029:

swiftpaw.6397:

Mirta.5029:

Gab Superstar.4059:

“Take a screenie and report”…

I don’t even know what to say…

/doublefacepalm

they are scamming, report function has “take a screenshot” function. I don’t see anything to facepalm about. Even better, once out of the dungeon you can also yell their account and character names on the map chat to warn others.

I just spat out my orange juice haha.

well even if you give them the money what’s there to stop them from kicking you and asking a different player again? Easiest way of course is to screenshot, say no, get kicked and report, because kicking for anything else than trolling and ruining the run is not exactly legal and has gotten people bans before.

Not sure where you got this from ? Kicking is not a bannable offence and you need provide no reason to kick someone. It’s totally up to the players whom they wish to run with.
The only exception to this (theoretically) is if you kick someone say at the final boss which could be construed as griefing. I say theoretically as to my knowledge nobody has ever been banned for it.

So, no. this has not gotten people bans before and the bit about kicking for anything other than … is bad information.

actually people did get banned for selling dungeon runs and kicking people that refuse to pay. They are griefing. You can get a ban for up to a month for activity like that. If someone gets kicked from a dungeon because they refuse to pay a certain sum, an admin can look back at the chat logs and who issued the kick and give them a warning. If they continue doing that often they do get banned.

Gab Superstar.4059:

“Take a screenie and report”…

I don’t even know what to say…

/doublefacepalm

they are scamming, report function has “take a screenshot” function. I don’t see anything to facepalm about. Even better, once out of the dungeon you can also yell their account and character names on the map chat to warn others.

critickitten.1498:

Er, what are you talking about? You don’t remember your history very well.

Ultima Online was released in 1997, was passed by the release of Everquest in 1999, and then passed again by Dark Age of Camelot in 2001. It was not a major competitor by 2005, as several other titles had already passed it by. That’s why Ultima Online 2 was supposed to come out and help replace it (but due to the critical failure of Ultima IX, that didn’t happen).

And of the three remaining titles on your list, only one is actually an MMO (Everquest 2), who was intended as a direct competitor to WoW, but its numbers were rather quickly surpassed by Blizzard’s own title. While it’s still running today (as is GW1), it never achieved a similar level of growth.

WoW was in the perfect place at the perfect time. Competition in 2005 was indeed present but it was not nearly at the magnitude of today, where there is literally a new MMO every few weeks (F2P or otherwise). GW2 is releasing in an age where the subscription model isn’t quite dead but it’s getting awfully close, and where micro-transaction-based F2P titles are starting to gobble up a lot more market share than they used to, simply because of how many there are. It’s not even remotely the same playing field that it was in 2005.

GW2 doesn’t have the “perfect storm” that WoW had, nor does it have the steady growth of WoW, either. WoW became a juggernaut quickly. After about a year and a half of sales, it had roughly 6 million active subscribers. Assuming GW2 is at exactly 3 million as of now, they would need to sell over 57k units per week to hit the 6 million mark in roughly that same span of time (they currently are selling less than half that many), and that wouldn’t necessarily mean that they had 6 million active players, either.

GW2 isn’t WoW, and it’s never going to be as big as WoW. And frankly I’m perfectly okay with that. I don’t understand why people obsess with seeing their favorite MMO beat out WoW, it’s not like they have to surpass WoW to make a statement in the market. Look at TESO. Elements of its combat and the entire PvP structure is ripped wholesale from this game….the fact that upcoming competitors are ripping off GW2 is already cause for celebration.

They’re selling 25K units without counting digital. Digital is estimated to make up 70% of all sales. They probably do have enough growth to reach WoW’s milestones.

critickitten.1498:

Mirta.5029:

WoW reached their 4 million mark 2 years after release. Give GW2 time, especially having in mind that GW2 growth stabilized at 30 000 hard copies a week, making it stable, fast and good growth for an MMO.

WoW also released in 2005, when there were fewer competitors and a LOT fewer buyers.

I’d love to see your evidence that GW2 is still selling 30k copies per week right now. Because my guess is that you’re misquoting this data from VGChartz, without realizing that the sales data there is only for the first ten weeks (running from August to early November). Ergo, GW2 dropped to around 25k physical sales per week within about 7 weeks of the game’s release, and there is no hard data whatsoever to support the notion that it’s still growing at that rate now.

The Pandaria expansion, which is widely considered a failure, sold 2.7 million copies within a week of release. The previous expansion, by comparison, sold 3.3 million units in 24 hours, which is why MoP is considered a “failure”. However, given that GW2 has only just recently passed 3 million copies after nearly five months of sales, they’re in absolutely no position to balk at those kinds of numbers.

Furthermore, WoW’s subscriber count following the release of Pandaria shot up to over 10 million players again, a climb of over 1 million from its previous low following the release of Cataclysm. GW2 refuses to release data about how many active players it has so it’s pure speculation how many there are, but suffice it to say that it’s probably not 10 million. It’s probably not 3 million, either, as many of the “locusts” that tend to try a game and then leave after a few months have already moved on, and they also lost an unknown number of people to the patch in November as well.

What baffles me more, however, is that I’m actually having to argue with someone over whether or not WoW is more popular. There is no question whatsoever, the facts are right there. As of right now, it’s not even competing with WoW, it’s fighting with TERA and SWTOR and Rift instead. Might that change in the long term? Maybe, but I’m not anticipating it. Not unless WoW just keels over and dies, and Blizzard’s “Titan” project is cancelled.

Actually it was released during the golden age of MMOs. Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars 1, Neverwinter Nights, Ultima Online… 2005 had lots of good MMOs either starting up or up and running and there were plenty of players for all of them!

I’m not arguing that GW2 is more popular than WoW, I’m arguing that give it 8 years and it might just be.

critickitten.1498:

Karizee.8076:

Keiran.1896:

Karizee.8076:

GW2 is more popular that WoW (in the West, they haven’t launched in China yet)

World of Warcraft: around 10M monthly subscribers.
Guild Wars 2: 3M box sold.
See what you compare…

And no, WoW’s population is not 70% from China. :P

Sure it is, that’s why they only sold 2.7mil copies of the Panda pac.

Erm, no….

They sold 2.7 million copies of the “Panda pac” in the first week of the expansion’s release. They’ve long since passed that figure.

GW2 on the other hand only JUST passed 3 million, a full four (almost five) months after release.

WoW is far, far more popular and I can’t even believe anyone would try to argue otherwise.

WoW reached their 4 million mark 2 years after release. Give GW2 time, especially having in mind that GW2 growth stabilized at 30 000 hard copies a week, making it stable, fast and good growth for an MMO.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Mirta.5029:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

you want a developer to re-put spawn points every day? Yeah, make your own game and you do that. Remember not to bug it out either.

With a system already in place, it’s as easy as moving a few things in an editor. I’ve been designing games for a while. It’s really not bad at all with all mechanics and world spaces already created.

you would still be paying someone money to mix up the spawn placement every single day. It would also confuse the players “Why are mobs here 5 levels higher than yesterday? There was inquest in this base yesterday, why is it Sylvari now? That doesn’t go with the lore!”. When it comes to events if it was random whether small mobs or a few champions spawned the same event could be really unfair on day 1 and 5 and be completable on day 3 and 4, preventing it from becoming a game with a steady difficulty setting, so no, mixing spawn points is a bad idea.

Here’s an idea: Don’t suck at placing the mobs. All of what you said are just bad ways to do it.

then you’re going to be replacing regular mobs that fit in with the story with regular mobs that fit in with the story? Instead of krait make crabs spawn one day? That seems absolutely pointless. It would add nothing to the game, but you would have to pay someone to re-program the game daily (keeping in mind that games with new engines (like GW2) tend not to have developer kits).

The Gates Assassin.9827:

you want a developer to re-put spawn points every day? Yeah, make your own game and you do that. Remember not to bug it out either.

With a system already in place, it’s as easy as moving a few things in an editor. I’ve been designing games for a while. It’s really not bad at all with all mechanics and world spaces already created.

you would still be paying someone money to mix up the spawn placement every single day. It would also confuse the players “Why are mobs here 5 levels higher than yesterday? There was inquest in this base yesterday, why is it Sylvari now? That doesn’t go with the lore!”. When it comes to events if it was random whether small mobs or a few champions spawned the same event could be really unfair on day 1 and 5 and be completable on day 3 and 4, preventing it from becoming a game with a steady difficulty setting, so no, mixing spawn points is a bad idea.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Evalia.7103:

^ hell of a task given amount of servers!
But I have to agree with you, the more interval between mobs conquering and players taking back, mobs should do something meanwhile(build some defences, increase their population, get a boss for themselves). To encourage players destroying their forces and not just abandoning, reward would scale with difficulty just as well.
As of now it doesn’t make sense that a group of centaurs/undeads(though who knows in second case?! they are undead.) just stands there doing nothing after they’ve captured a camp/whatever.

Give one person an entire server. Every day, they come in and change where the mobs will attack from during an event and maybe even create giant patrols that are trying to take over certain cities. You could even design it so that they slowly build up an army so that players have a chance to prepare themselves for battle. There doesn’t need to be voice acting or anything. Just control where the mobs are to keep things fresh.

You’re talking about every single event only repeating once and changing everything around it. Let’s say there’s 10 events in a zone daily. How much programing do you think they would have to put in to change the world in every zone 10 times daily? I don’t think that that’s even possible to implement in an MMO.

10 times per day would be impossible. Once per day isn’t really that bad. Hell, you can have it be the same for every server to save time. Just have it ready for server reset time. All you need to do is put objects that are already in the game and work in new places and in new arrangements. Assuming they didn’t code this game like an idiot, it really shouldn’t be hard to place mobs/spawn points in a new location.

you want a developer to re-put spawn points every day? Yeah, make your own game and you do that. Remember not to bug it out either.

I have a far simpler explanation:
If an activity is fun to a person, a person will feel joy repeating it on their free time. That’s why some people watch TV, read books or play games. In order for you to have a hobby it was to be addicting (fun) for you in some way. The addiction for video game is not the same as the addiction for marijuana. It’s the same as an addiction for anything else that’s really fun for you. No theories are needed here. I know people that love knitting and can knit for 6 hours a day. However their thing is not called an addiction, but gaming is?

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Honestly, I thought this game was going to be different in PvE than it turned out. I expected our actions to actually matter. When we defeat the Shatterer, it would actually matter. If we let the Centaurs take camps, it would affect things all over the world.

That kind of gameplay would keep PvE fresh eternally, but instead it’s just events that are “Keeping you pressing the lever”. It should be like WvW, but in PvE.

Unfortunately, they didn’t do that. If they did, they wouldn’t need all this addictive bullkitten in there. Instead, you have events that are exactly the same coming up at set intervals which only change how things are in THAT worldspace, rather than the entire world. If they just had someone monitor what was going on in PvE and moved mobs based on what players were doing (A director of sorts), then they could really make PvE awesome.

They didn’t.

You’re talking about every single event only repeating once and changing everything around it. Let’s say there’s 10 events in a zone daily. How much programing do you think they would have to put in to change the world in every zone 10 times daily? I don’t think that that’s even possible to implement in an MMO.

marnick.4305:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

I think the OP means differences other than the obvious. I remember when you would enter a town in LoZooT (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for those who don’t know), it would have shops closed at night and much less NPCs.

I did notice a change in the background music when it goes from night to day in GW2; or maybe its just me lol.

Imho the day-night cycle should be on a 24 hour cycle like in WoW. Night time is barely noticeable and really doesn’t add much to the game in GW2. In WoW, night time was really when the game became fun.

Anyhow, Ocarina of Time is still the best game of all time, and the day-night cycle in the Fields and villages were very important.

If you set it for 24 hours (real-time), it means that some gamers will never see day and others will never see night. I actually prefer shorter day and night rotations.

Vorch.2985:

Dungeons, fractals, achievements, WvW, legendaries, and exploration.

If you find those lacking, come back at the end of January, February, and March.

I still find stuff to keep mykittentps://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/I-m-level-80-now-what/1253157/quoteelf busy, though. People were this way about GW1 when it came out as well. if you want to see what individuals were saying about GW1 back in 2005, check my sig…

Read through it and found “So, you’ve played the game for a while, had eough of it, only thing left to do is bash the game on forums..” which just reminds me of what people are doing right now.

Rukia.4802:

Halanna.3927:

Anet does get their playerbase. If you are so enamored with another MMO, why don’t you go play that? It has all the things you are complaining about. But don’t try and ruin GW2 to make it into a clone of another game that has already been done and played to death. GW2 won’t survive copying ‘that’ game. People are tired of ‘that’ game, tired of the mechanics, the game play, all of it. Players want something different. GW2 delivers something different for those players looking for a long term, fresh new game.

I AM playing that other MMO

Stay there then? Is it some kind of full-time hobby of yours to complain about and insult something you don’t even play? You’re here complaining about this game seemingly 24-7, I’m surprised you find the time to raid in that other MMO.

The point is, this game is not like other MMOs and to 90%+ of its playerbase, that seems to be a good thing because if you didn’t notice, that’s how it was marketed. Heck, some people even play more than one MMO because they’re different.

If GW2 were more like WoW for example, I’d be disappointed because I came to GW2 for something a little more original. Every game for years as been essentially a copy paste of that formula and when something new comes along, the whiners that were begging for originality are saying that they want the clones back.

Seriously Rukia, I hope somebody pays you well to act like a disgruntled gamer because I don’t see how this game not having what you like affects you at all.

Love the charr. It’s my second most favorite race after Asura. They have an awesome personality, ash and iron legion also provides a nice storyline. I am able to create some cute cats for playing too
The most disliked race – Sylvari (despite having a level 80 sylvari alt most used for dungeons and fractals). They act so stupid.

Zeldain.5710:

SneakyErvin.3056:

Horrorscope.7632:

SneakyErvin.3056:

Player since head start. Playing as much as I can each day, 8h+ like most people I know.

I hope you are well and independently wealthy. I on the other hand know not one person who plays anywhere near close to 8 hours a day. Just balancing it out.

Nope, I get by thats it, money is of no importance to me aslong as I have enough to not go hungry or without internet/PC. Currently unemployed, but even if I would work, 8h of play wouldnt be an issue.

8h = Work
2h = Eating, Keeping clean, stuff around the apartment, getting home from work.
8-10h = Gaming
4-6h = Sleeping

It all fits within a 24h timeframe.

Where’s the social time? Where’s the family time?

I’m gonna help you out right now: there is no stage in your life where gaming 8-10 hours every day is ok.

actually if your other half is really enthusiastic about gaming, you can have family communication time WHILE gaming. I wouldn’t leave myself only 4-6 hours of sleep though. That kind of sleep deprivation would probably lead to illness later.

Our oldest and our youngest characters. Currently also working on creating two identical mesmers with unnoticeable name difference to troll people in Spvp chuckle.

Edit: pictures of our new identical mesmers bellow

okay, I have a question. They promised to release a PvP update before the fractals update, still at January. Are we actually going to see it?

They need more people than a dungeon does. Having in mind how many split paths there is in every single dungeon and how hard it is to get a group sometimes, it would be even harder for a raid (LF12M raid dungeon X path Y).
Dungeons in the game right now are mostly about skill. Increase the number of players entering at the same time and the how much skill does every single individual has to have?

Keiran.1896:

Active players, less than WoW I’d like to say, even if I prefer GW2.

How do I know? A few days ago I checked both WoW and GW2 pages on Facebook…

Last publication by World of Warcraft was 2 hours ago when I went there ; just over 8000 likes.
In that time, GW2 poorly manages to get 200-500 likes. When I came from WoW page, they were adding pictures to the fanart album posted over 1 month ago!! ; only 6000 likes.

So, several possibilities:
- Active players on WoW have 50 times more Facebook accounts than active players on GW2.
- GW2 posts crap so nobody likes it.
- GW2 is so awesome that players are stuck in the game and never go on facebook.
- GW2 has definitly less active players.

well WoW has 16 million people that pay the subscription, Guild Wars 2 has 3 million sold copies. Of course it would be more populated lol. though something IS up with WoW population, because now almost all zones are cross 8-10 servers to make them more full.

As to the OP – active player here, play at least 6 hours a day. Out of my close circle of friends – my boyfriend plays about as much as I do, his mother and my friend are both casual players logging in every 2 days or so.

Mindx.9610:

Im mainly talking about pvp cuz general mob ai is rediculously easy to escape. Your numbers are wrong for each of those abilitys they are much stronger than you think. My lich crits for 3.6k – 4kconstantly. Dark Path is your death shroud ability that lets you teleport to a target

TO target, not AWAY from one. I mostly run dungeons and fractals. Swamp fractal – teleports, invisibilities come in handy, as a necro you pretty much have to make sure that nothing hits you while running, because you CAN’T teleport or go invisible. Teleports and invisibility comes in handy in Orr when you don’t want to fight everything that you see (was going there as an ele-mesmer group yesterday and well, mesmer was really useful in helping me complete the zone fast), CoE you can avoid plantforming trough lazers if you have an escape ability. To make my necro usable I had to get her re-traited and re-geared for condi damage. I don’t feel useless, but having no such abilities that other classes have is a bummer.

Mindx.9610:

Mirta.5029:

Mindx.9610:

“Necros cant burst” Not True
“Necros have no escape options” – Not true
“Death Shroud is a bad mechanic” – Not True
“People dont understand Necromancer” – Very True
“People dont know how to choose stats wisely and thus certain classes feel gimped” Very True

Tell me of one ability that necros have that can do burst damage and not steady damage
Does a necro have a single teleport, burst of speed ability? No. hey have a signet for 25% increased speed and a condition removal that the can use once. Unfortunately when you’re stunned or crippled, remove the condition, but are still close to the enemies that did it they do it again, so no, necros don’t have an escape ability.

Fears, Dark Path, Spectral Walk, My meta must be way ahead of anything your doing because i can escape pretty much anything with just these 3 options and i dont even use staff. 3 forms of chill staff DS and focus. I run around with foot in the grave so i have no problem with stuns or knock backs for the most part. Necros burst isnt in the form of just 1 ability, ghastly claws, life siphon and life transfer used together is tons of damage, maybe not comparable to true burst classes but the damage is there….add in bone minions and its some serious damage. Lich form can do crazy burst as well. Did i mention dark path?

now when you’re talking about burst damage you’re fairly wrong there. Life transfer – 2000 damage, life siphon – 1000 odd damage, Lich Form 2000 damage a shot, a shot takes what? 2-3 seconds to do? That’s not burst damage. That’s pretty much steady damage. Now warriors are able to burst with abilities doing 10 000 – 12 000 damage in a short period of time. That’s burst damage. I’m not saying that necros are bad at steady damage though, it’s just that their most powerful abilities can’t even compare to some other classes.

Spectral walk seems like a temporary state like death shroud. It does not grant you invisibility like mesmer’s abilities do, therefore enemies can still be aggroing you an it does not teleport you away, so in order for you to be faster than them I suppose you have to use the 25% speed signet with it? That’s two utility slots taken for something a bit like an escape. Did not find an ability named “Dark path”. Are you sure that it’s not your racial ability? What race are you playing your necro as? What weapons are you using? Did you mean “Dark Pact”? Immobilize ONE enemy?

Mindx.9610:

“Necros cant burst” Not True
“Necros have no escape options” – Not true
“Death Shroud is a bad mechanic” – Not True
“People dont understand Necromancer” – Very True
“People dont know how to choose stats wisely and thus certain classes feel gimped” Very True

Tell me of one ability that necros have that can do burst damage and not steady damage
Does a necro have a single teleport, burst of speed ability? No. hey have a signet for 25% increased speed and a condition removal that the can use once. Unfortunately when you’re stunned or crippled, remove the condition, but are still close to the enemies that did it they do it again, so no, necros don’t have an escape ability.

Are you playing a thief? You’re not limited to bleeds. As far as I remember most condition types can stack different conditions at the same time
Take ele for example – swap to fire, stack fire, swap to earth, stack a lot of bleeds, stack vulnerability, swap to water, put the freeze thing
Necro – there’s a sigil to do insta different condition damage, you can stack bleeds and poison, there’s a sigil to direct enemies conditions back at them when offensive, take conditions off your allies on you when passive. In a dungeon run if a boss does AoE, jump into a circle, use the sigil. Run into a group of enemies in WvW, have conditions stacked, choose a victim, direct it there, they die, you run away while in death shroud.
Guardians – you can have an enemy on permanent fire most of the time (nerfed in Spvp though). Once fire duration is about to run out, use another ability with fire on it, while still doing normal damage.

Dante.1508:

Mirta.5029:

actually AoE nerf affects condition build a lot, because guess what Necro, Ele and some of the Engi AoE’s are good at? Conditions!
I have ele, necro and guardian all condition based mostly. My warrior is once again going to be condition and I can easily claim that condition is not broken at all.

Well unless they revamp conditions a lot it still only stacks to 25 so in a group event its pretty pointless, and can characters heals (most are poor as) even survive a bigger stack of conditions..they’d need to fix a lot..

if the conditions would stack even higher it would be OP. Conditions are a bloody good support weapon and really useful in most dungeons, deadly against thieves in WvW (and anyone else that forget to wipe them once feeling shocked).

actually AoE nerf affects condition build a lot, because guess what Necro, Ele and some of the Engi AoE’s are good at? Conditions!
I have ele, necro and guardian all condition based mostly. My warrior is once again going to be condition and I can easily claim that condition is not broken at all.

nerva.7940:

Marvingy.6327:

Could you please state the preliminary findings?
Which AoE’s are pinging your radar?

well necros
d/d eles
mind wrack

in that order. id be surprised if findings are different.

Necro staff build is useless. All abilities are slow and don’t do a lot of damage. If going for circles and condition build that uses AoE your primary attack gets reduced to about 200 damage a hit, one hit a second. Essentially you’re pretty underpowered as a necro. You do have survivability though.

SneakyLemon.8461:

AoE type builds generally take less skill to play, I think this change will help PvP immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things not to change.

Adapt me an engineer build that uses no AoE, but survives. 90% of engineer skills available are solely AoE. Engineers can’t put out strong dps, but do conditions well and are able to do tank builds. AoE is what puts conditions though.
Also if to nerf AoE, then why not to take it out all together? That way weapons such as staff would still have a use for elementalist, necromancer and mesmer. Now it’s pretty weak and with an extra nerf 4/5 skills would be unusable, meaning that those classes could use 1 weapon less.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to let you guys know that we’re reading this thread.

Your logic, reasons, anecdotes and ideas are being listened to. Also keep in mind, that as I said yesterday, a skill can be a balance problem in one area of the game, but underpowered in another. That’s the nature of using one set of #‘s to balance across all areas of the game. So we’re keeping that in mind as we look at this. We may need to do different tweaks in different areas of the game.

We’re also not going to make a knee jerk reaction to this. We’re still gathering data, watching player trends, and having meetings on all possible ramifications from possible changes.

thank you for the answer, it calmed me down. If you think there’s a problem with AoE in WvW, nerf it in WvW, but not PVE, because nerfing AoE in PVE when some classes already have problems would effectively kill off engineers and staff builds of mesmer, elementalist and necromancer.

Katai.6240:

Downvote. Fractal dungeons are more about mechanics than stats/gear. I doubt having level 80 exotics really mean much when you’re a dolphin. The only thing it really slows down is the damage on boss fights (and even then, those have heavy mechanics over straight damage). It’s not like you’ll survive Jade Maw’s Care Bear Stare by being higher leveled.

If a level 1 character wants to do a low level fractal with his friends, I don’t see why we should stop him.

because he doesn’t even have skills unlocked for it? I agree with the idea that a level 30 requirement would be good. After all it’s what AC requires.

DiogoSilva.7089:

How is spamming AoE in events slower than killing mobs one-by-one? There’s no incentive to kill them one-by-one. The looting doesn’t helps, neither, because spamming AoE gives you twice or more the loot too. If you focus on killing a single enemy, all other players will kill all the remaining foes, and you’ll only get loot from a single guy at a given time.

Spvp is not “almost free of AoE”. Several complains come from pvp itself: especially point capping and coordenated party rezzing. And I’m talking about tpvp, because for hot-join pvp, aoe on zergs is an excellent way to farm glory too, and it renders almost all burst builds (with the exception of mesmer’s and thief’s) useless.

It’s true that backstab thieves are unfun, but that’s a completely unrelated balance issue. Regardless of how strong or not backstab thieves are, that has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or not AoE is for several areas of the game.

As long as the AoE changes are carefully done, aoe-driven classes should not suffer from this agaisnt single-target opponents (ex. s/d or d/d eles).

you do about 1/25th of all the enemies health if you do an AoE. Spam AoE’s and if enemies won’t move (which they will) it will take you close to a minute to kill them. You get a hit on all of them, but it won’t help with killing them. Go talk with Engies in levels 50 to 60. I had an engineer ask is it normal to take 10 minutes to kill a regular mob. Zerging is zerging. It is not bad because of AoE, but because it’s zerging. Take 5 thieves and force them to backstab a team. Bam, everyone dead. Because it’s a zerg. You know what counters thieves? AoE. Because it’s the only way to actually attack them…

DiogoSilva.7089:

How many of you poor, saint souls have never, ever abused AoE to do dynamic events? Are you going to all tell me “oh, this idea never once crossed my mind”? No. We all abuse AoE for events. There’s no other optimal way to play them, because AoE is crazy strong. One of the ambitions behind this game is that you should play the build you want; but at the moment, for events, you either go AoE, or are at disadvantage.

How many of you have seen mobs dodging your AoEs? Probably not many, neither, especially with some good control skills. Sure, it is the fault of the enemy’s AI too, but if all enemies in pve could and would dodge, it would create the opposite effect: be extremely annoying for aoe players.

How many of you haven’t abused AoEs to clean entire capture points in pvp (and farm glory in the process)? Remember, at the smaller points, dodging and evading aoe damage is not an easy option, because it gives away the control of the point, and this might decide the outcome of the entire match. Or how many times haven’t you just spammed aoe on downed allies and anyone trying to rez them, because it’s simply easier and more effective than using the more risky finish mechanic itself? That’s cheap.

And WvW? WvW zergs are an AoE spamfest. This is a fact. None of you can argue against that. The format itself motivates that.

Matter of fact is, AoE is almost always better than single-target damage in this game. When you fight two mobs, are you going to quickly burst one so you can have some room to breath while fighting the remaining one? No, you’re going to AoE spam them, because it’s easier. Maybe if both options were equally viable strategically, but they are not.

It’s true that the devs must be very careful with how they nerf AoE, and IMO, they should find unique mechanisms that trigger at specific situations, and not simply make a straight damage nerf all across the board.

However, if any of you want “statistical proof”, just enter WvW and walk and pick a few flowers, just enter spvp and check what is happening around the points, just go take a walk in normal pve and check what is happening in dynamic events.

No one is whining? How many people have complained that some portions of GW2 are zergfests spamming aoes to each other? How many rangers, necromancers and the like have complained that aoe compeltely destroys their minions? How many melee players have complained that it’s almost impossible to melee in a slightly crowded zone because they would be AoE’d to death?

Don’t know what game you’re playing
1. Nobody complained about player done AoE, rather complained about the AoE bosses do in dungeons
2. Never used AoE for 2 mobs, because it would take me 30 seconds to kill them
3. Never spammed AoE in events because that would be uselessly slow
4. Spvp is almost AoE free
Now a question for you – how many thieves did you see running around invisible doing backstab for 14K damage? How many warriors do you see single target massacring in WvW and sPvP. Plenty of people have complained about various things in WvW, AoE was never a complaint here on the forums. So the “how many people have complained about AoE” question’s answer is pretty much zero.
Now ever heard that Engineers are “Op”? Neither do I. Do you know what they use? AoE.

1. No

2. Yes (they’re too weak)

3. No

4. No. WoW killed Druids and made it easy for Paladins. I’m afraid that all of these nerfs are just to make Warriors and Thieves even more OP.

5. Half of my posts were marked for infraction and deleted, because I felt really upset about the nerfs. Deleting posts won’t solve the problem. Please, actually go here and look forum users in the eyes. Don’t do something to illogical and silly.

Mitch.4781:

I will never ever buy gems simply becuase of these underhanded tactics. When the game first came out I bought $50 worth and was eager to spend them…but now I see Anet forcing us to go down this route simply because earning any kind of gold is so incredibly time consuming…They should be very very wary. Once a player leaves a game..it takes an enormous amount of persuasion so ever bring them back and the fact is there are lots of chocies out there with even more due on the horizon. I relaise they have to make money, but it should not be done in such an underhanded way.

I see no changes made to the game that could force anyone to buy gems. I don’t see any reason why buying gems would solve ANY problem you could possibly face in the game. In fact it’s for this very reason that I am doubtful that you ever bought gems in the first place.

Learn to sell valuables, gather, craft and sell for profit before you complain that making money is impossible. When you actually learn how to play, then you can criticize the mechanics of the game, before that day however – you should stop with the conspiracy theories.

THM.2036:

-1

They aren’t nerfing it because people are using it too much. They are nerfing it because there is an imbalance in terms of damage compared to single target attacks.

Did you read the blog and transcripts?

Really? Thief backstab for 14K damage?

+1 to this, my good sir

DiogoSilva.7089:

The only reason why (HB) Warrior is so strong, is because of the AI. Hundred Blades and other oftheir burst skills was meant to be easily dodged/ blocked, something that pve enemies can’t do. A Warrior is not even a top tier profession in pvp.

And yes, AoE is a problem. For events, AoE builds are much better at farming than other builds, regardless of the players’ skill level, which is unfair. For pvp, AoE spamming is very stronger against a coordinated team trying to rez their ally and against players defending points, weakening both strategies and making the format slightly more 2-dimensional. In WvW, there’s nothing to say: it’s an AoE fest by nature.

Maybe some of you never thought of this before, while you have been abusing AoE in this game, but just because you got used to it, does not means it was meant this way. That being said, I hope they nerf AoE VERY carefully. I want them to nerf AoE, but noone surely wants them to nerf entire builds, weapon sets or even entire professions because of that.

ever thought on having a guardian put down a healing ring? Ever asked a necro to do that? That’s an AoE. And that’s also the only skill that I was able to contribute to the team in dungeon runs. AoE is not OP. If you really think so start an Ele, Necro or a mesmer and try using the staff. Then switch to something else, like scepter and dagger that mostly targets single enemies. Compare the damage. They’re esentially killing some classes even. Tried playing an Engineer? Find a viable build that wouldn’t use AoE but would be able to kill mobs at PvE level 50…

Nerfing AoE is dirrectly killing Engineers, Guardians and is making the staff build unusable with Necros, Eles and Mesmers. Do you know why there’s so little staff users in the game? AoE’s on those do close to NO damage. Now essentially what you’re doing is saying “Play Warrior. They’re OP. We let them stay there” effectively making your game very poorly balanced. I strongly suggest rethinking what you’re doing, taking a staff and seeing what actual damage it puts out.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I’m sure they’ll carefully balance the aoe in this game. They have to consider the professions that are mostly stuck to AoE, like the elementalist. Maybe a good solution is to give them more single-target attacks? Or maybe AoE will scale down in damage when it hits more than one foe, but keep its full damage if it only hits a single foe?

Also, they’ve said they’re also buffing weaker skills/ traits, and no, buffing only without nerfing anything is not a good thing: it leads to a situation called Power Creep, where every character becomes broken. You must have a healthy balance between buffs and nerfs.

But AoE’s are worthless right now! Try a staff on a necro or an ele. 4/5 abilities are AoE’s and they do close to no damage. Knowing that they’re nerfing a broken mechanic is upsetting. May I ask what will they buff? Warriors? Thieves in full beserker gear doing backstab while invisible for 14K damage?!

AoE is UNDERPOWERED. Do they even play the game? It feels like WoW with Druids all over again. Well people if you were playing anything but warrior or a glass cannon damager throw your character away. Necros are already only mediocre. You’re essentially making staff build useless right there. Engineers and Guardians depend on AoE’s (bombs, healing circles).

No All of my necro staff build is AoE. It doesn’t do a lot of damage. Actually it does ridiculously little damage. AoE’s need buffing, not nerfing. Way to ruin the game Anet. It’s going to be warrior galore soon

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Mirta.5029:

SneakyErvin.3056:

@Mirta.5029: To answer your question. It’s a selfish stat.

I’ve read through most of your posts in this thread and it doesnt matter what you say, in the end MF gimps you. It doesnt matter if you can survive without the survival stats, you still gimp your character, there is always another stat you can get instead of MF to boost your group.

If you dont need survival stats to survive you pick up more dps stats, not MF stats. Since MF doesnt benefit the group the slightest bit. Also if you are good at surviving without the survival stats and chose not to take them anyways over MF gear you are gimping your group, since if you were to wield the survival set, you would have a higher chance of holding aggro, thus helping your groups with your “immortal” bun. Or is it just that you survive better with a MF set because you never get aggro, because your toughness stats are too low and your damage is weak?

And regarding the Mastercraft vs MF users in a group. The MC user would bring more to the table than the MF user. Their stats would be lower than a Exo geared player, but not to the extent of a MF set. All the MC stats would be worth something, but the MF stat just rips valuble stat points from the gear.

Nope, an MF user, like I said, was TANKING the boss, meaning – holding aggro. This game is more about skill than anything. A skilled MF player brings a lot to the table, so why the hate when you wouldn’t notice the difference?
MC stats are worth something, but it’s 3 stats in low quantities, versus a stat that doesn’t help the team, but 2 stats that are high. A MC user would output less damage, not more.

Because they’d be worth MORE to the group with Berserker’s, but instead chose to make everyone do more work so they alone MIGHT get more money.

MF is the second highest damager after Berserker. Meaning that to a group with berserker’s gear (if you don’t die) you should be worth more than a person with tank gear, because if they output less damage doesn’t that mean that they do LESS work?

SneakyErvin.3056:

@Mirta.5029: To answer your question. It’s a selfish stat.

I’ve read through most of your posts in this thread and it doesnt matter what you say, in the end MF gimps you. It doesnt matter if you can survive without the survival stats, you still gimp your character, there is always another stat you can get instead of MF to boost your group.

If you dont need survival stats to survive you pick up more dps stats, not MF stats. Since MF doesnt benefit the group the slightest bit. Also if you are good at surviving without the survival stats and chose not to take them anyways over MF gear you are gimping your group, since if you were to wield the survival set, you would have a higher chance of holding aggro, thus helping your groups with your “immortal” bun. Or is it just that you survive better with a MF set because you never get aggro, because your toughness stats are too low and your damage is weak?

And regarding the Mastercraft vs MF users in a group. The MC user would bring more to the table than the MF user. Their stats would be lower than a Exo geared player, but not to the extent of a MF set. All the MC stats would be worth something, but the MF stat just rips valuble stat points from the gear.

Nope, an MF user, like I said, was TANKING the boss, meaning – holding aggro. This game is more about skill than anything. A skilled MF player brings a lot to the table, so why the hate when you wouldn’t notice the difference?
MC stats are worth something, but it’s 3 stats in low quantities, versus a stat that doesn’t help the team, but 2 stats that are high. A MC user would output less damage, not more.

Katai.6240:

My only argument for MF gear is that it is flippin impossible to get a Vial of Cendensed Mist Essense, so every bit really helps.

Other than that, how often are you killing mobs in dungeons? In most explorer instances I’ve been in, I’ve killed maybe a dozen or two after running past everything else? MF works so much better in the open world, and almost not at all in a dungeon.

well it depends on a run type. I always search for a “normal” run even stating that. Speedrunning feels wrong to me in a way that there’s always going to be a teammate that dies and has to try multiple times, so I prefer going on a patient trip of killing things

ColinJohanson.2394:

Just to clarify, you’ll no longer be able to use waypoints when a party member is in combat inside a dungeon. This is prevent people from using waypoints to rush and kill bosses or clear areas, which is not intended game play.

All other forms of res remain unchanged.

this will prevent people from completing the dungeons entirely. Sometimes the only way to beat bosses was to make sure that at least one party member is alive in there and rush back from a waypoint far away hoping to reach the boss before the party member dies and the boss resets. Some of these kind of runs take 2-3 hours. Some bosses can be really tough. Glad that I got my dungeon gear already. Won’t be setting my foot in one again.

Kicking for no reason makes you an kitten really. If you’ll get reported enough times you will get banned. If you have someone in a party that much CLEARLY state that such players are unwelcome while searching for people or leave the group yourself.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

You’re choosing to contribute less to your group to increase your own drops. Plain and simple. It’s disrespectful to everyone involved. And no matter what you do with MF, you could do more with something else. When you use MF in a dungeon or fractal you are saying “I am more important than the rest of you.”

How is forcing yourself to perform better and survive without the survivability stats is saying “I’m more important than you” especially when you don’t get that much more than normal people? You’re taking out a survival stat and if you can survive without it and still output the same damage as everyone else then what’s the difference?

Mirta no matter how you put it you still sacrifice a stat for the Magic Find, and in conclusion worse than the rest of your party. That your party can carry you is no excuse. If you are really that much better than your party wearing your Magic Find – Well congratulations, you are a good player. But you can be better. It is okay for you to wear Magic Find if things are smooth, but if everyone is dying and you are on your Magic Find, I don’t care that you are the only one who’s not dead. The others are. And that one stat you sacrificed could have made the difference. Magic Find needs to go because some people always wear it, and we don’t really want to check all people. We would like to assume that people are playing to their fullest, and not trying to leech on their party by wearing MF (Even if you turn out to be doing better – You are still worse statwise which means you can do even better!)

Your arguments that vitality/toughness can be sacrificed for Magic Find if you can stay alive is invalid as well. If you can stay up with no vitality/toughness, then GZ! Your build is utterly useless, and you should have went for offensive stats instead. Having defensive gear is useless if you don’t need defense. Taking Magic Find over more damage is no excuse.

What if you out-damage your party? What if you get everyone up and play as a team player? How is your party carrying you exactly? The argument that you can do EVEN better even though you’re already doing the best the party could hope for is a bit selfish isn’t it? You clear a dungeon in 15 minutes, everything went completely smooth, people saved each other and the best player confesses to MF gear. Hell breaks lose. And why? Did it really affect the party that much? The only person that got affected by it is the person wearing it. Yes, they could do everything faster in Berserker gear, however if the player outperforms an average player by a lot and performs well in dungeon runs does it matter that they could perform just slightly better?

thats Fine for solo play but not in a group

Why? If you’re doing well with teamwork and out-doing an average player why is gear in a group a problem?

I see people are still using the argument that they have enough skill to outperform “optimally geared” players while wearing MF gear due to their skill. I also see people arguing that taking survivability gear is on the same level as taking MF gear. Suppose I agree (which I don’t, but that’s not the point) then the problem remains.

Even if you are elite, don’t need any defensive stats to survive because of your skill, you still underperform if you use MF gear. Simple replace exotic explorers with exotic berserkers, and your damage output increases still, while survivability remains the same. The same goes for replacing MF jewellery, runes, etc.

So yes, even in that case, you sacrifice your own, and thus your groups performance to a stat that only rewards you. That remains a fact, regardless of how skilled you are.

Berserker won’t work if you’re using condition damage as your main stat (there are still gear sets with cond damage, power and mf) and to be honest if you’re not performing worse than a player with vitality, power and condition damage why does it matter? How are you leaching exactly if all you sacrifice is survivability?

Dante.1508:

with 140% magic find i see zero difference in drop rates, drop types and special loots compared to 0% magic find (i actually see better drops with 0%)

Well I disagree on that. People did research and it does work. Just not that fast. On average a person with MF gear will gather more loot in a week than a person without it. However it does not mean that in a single dungeon run they’ll get more loot than a person without.

Yes it does. As said ANY other stat will help the group.

Lets say you forego vitality as you think that affects nobody else other than yourself. Aggro is calculated on a combination of your stats, you gimped yourself and so get less aggro than someone that hasn’t, they are taking your aggro, you gimped them. Just as one example.

Every single stat aids the group with the exception of MF.

Zogyark.4597:

I can’t believe people still defend this selfish MF stat.

Thereon.3495:

I hate magic find like many of you because its a selfish stat

I’ve seen guardians with toughness almost never taking aggro, I’ve seen people with vitality going down. If you put out enough damage the boss will aggro you and good players can survive with MF gear if their utilities are done right. It’s a lot about skill really. I did do a deal with my friends that wear MF and never go down in dungeons – at the end of the dungeon they’ll have to say that they have been wearing MF. If a person is useful in MF and do better than the group or about the same as the group saying that they’re being selfish is well… Selfish.

And, that’s fine in a single player game. The problem with MF only occurs in group activity. Then, if you are running MF, you’ve gimped not just yourself, but your entire group. No theoretical difference in skill, or traits, or builds, or armor class can make up for the fact that you’ve gimped yourself and now your group in the hope of getting higher rewards. And that is where most of the uproar comes from. You are essentially being rewarded more for contributing less to a group activity.

Usually, the threads revolve around player skill compensating for the stats. The problem is we know nothing of the player skill, it’s hypothetical, we do know about the gimping, it’s built into the very reason MF exists.

There’s really no answer to the problem other than removing it from gear.

How much you contribute though is based on how much skill you have. The same way that people can have good gear, bad stats and skills and perform far worse. You don’t tell a player that he is gimping the team because he is using the wrong stat combination or the wrong skill combination, do you? For some reason it’s always the gear, even though the gear contributes the least.

Everyone has the right to be greedy in a game but at the expence of others isnt right.
I dont think anyone takes well carrying someone he doesnt know through a dungeon.
Wanna run mf?sure do it with your buddies or find an mf group.
Just dont expect the rest of the community to accept you in theyr party with something that doesnt work.

And how would you know that the person is wearing MF if he can out-damage you and never go down unless he tells you? Would you care if that person had vitality instead but performed in the exact same way? What’ the difference?

its takes away from the group power

It doesn’t take away more than vitality and toughness does.

the user has more chance to fall on his kitty than if he were wearing ‘proper’ armour.

Well it’s a glass cannon armor. The player has the same chance to fall than any other glass armor wearer. However you can compensate with a non glass cannon build and survive fine.

But what about if MF was tweaked so that the entire party would feel its affects? It would certainly become more useful to the group. Providing you were able to see that the user was using MF then you would have a choice as a group whether or not the extra MF would matter. For instance in the Dredge fractal id jump at the chance to gain someone elses MF (although would never use myself).

this would actually work, but why would other players have the chance to get the same without sacrificing some vitality and toughness themselves? Wouldn’t it feel unfair to the MF wearer? Why not to share other stats that help players as well?

Kandrick.8054:

You are stacking a stat that adds absolutely nothing to the group mechanic. ANY other stat would add to the group, be it the overall health pool, damage, mitigation, whatever.

People can add what they want, it is their game to play how they wish. Doesn’t change the fact it is a selfish way to play though.

What you are looking for is justification of your playstyle. I don’t think you will find it.

You’re being selfish by thinking that other people are selfish. Does the health pool matter if the person doesn’t go down due to their utility skills? MF users do nothing to hurt other people.
I play a condition, vitality type of a necro. This does not even affect me. But I know MF users. They’re pretty good and keep the team alive.

Budg.3064:

With dungeons relying on teamwork for success (sometimes), Magic Find is the only stat that is completely selfish and doesn’t help the team in any way.

but it doesn’t gimp the team in any way either.