Guild Wars 2

Now that I run over 125% magic find with food, gear and bonuses, I get LOTS more magic items. I mainly notice the increase in rares, since the other stuff is just vendor trash. I used to occasionally get a rare from event drops, and now it’s common to get at least 1, sometimes 2 rares from Shelter’s waypoint in Orr. I’ve gotten as many as 4, and its very rare I get none.

I realize it’s hard to really get an answer here because most of our info is anecdotal. And I sympathize with the person who says he dies faster and takes longer to kill things when he solos with this gear. My magic find gear exists for one reason: to AoE farm event waves. I run in, explode every one of my AOE spells on every incoming wave, and clean up with greens/yellows. I even trait specifically for my favorite 3 orr events. It allows me to make an easy 1g/hour just with casual farming (often more).

I’m currently building a 2nd gear set that’s in line with how much damage I want to do. And I’ll be changing my spec soon to fit my goals (WvW). But I’ll miss my farming gear and spec. They work famously for what i’ve designed them to do!

From what I’ve found, those kits only increase your chance of finding the “upgrade” component. Usually this means salvaging the sigil, rune, or ecto. You’re still going to get the plain old cloth or metal from it.

So you ask, what’s the use of a master’s salvage kit? Well, peeling the rune off of my lvl 75 rare staff, I used a master’s salvage kit. Getting an ecto? Same thing. For anything else (especially those scraps of metal and cloth garments), use a basic kit.

Tradewind, I think your question, best stated, is “Do you still feel you have the right to voice concerns on the forums?”. And if that’s your question, my answer is yes.

There’s a trend here. The trend is that GW2 has lots of stuff to do, and I’m feeling forced to hop around from thing 1 to thing 2 because I’m, for some reason, not allowed to hunker down and farm.

Farming/grinding is in MMO players’ blood. Even though games figure out creative ways to avoid it at times, the majority of MMORPG players understand that some thing just take time. So we learn to put the game on TV, grab some lunchable snacks, and mindlessly farm for an hour or two on our own version of “autopilot”. I think if there’s nothing wrong with doing an event once, there’s nothing wrong with doing it every single time it’s up.

And my biggest complaint remains: If i’m not doing anything WRONG here, at least give me the courtesy of a debuff. Right now, with no indication besides “man I don’t seem to be getting many greens or rares anymore”, I’m having to constantly ask myself “Am I farming too much? Am I getting penalized yet?”.

I resent the non-disclosure, and I resent being told exactly how I’m supposed to enjoy this game. I thought I got to log in and choose what I did for fun.

If you read the patch notes, there are plenty of things getting “nerfed” that sound like good old fashion grinding. Run a dungeon too much, and you get an invisible DR system (essentially, a punishment saying you farmed too fast). Like to do a few event back to back in Orr? Be careful, Arenanet cuts back your loot without even telling you.

I, for one, am displeased with the knee-jerk method in which they’re handling things in the game. If you dont like us getting lots of experience in a dungeon, just nerf the overall experience. Don’t make me feel like I’ve done something wrong because I’m farming it. At this point, I’m afraid to play the game because every way I think to make money or get fast XP runs the risk of Arenanet nerfing or calling me an exploiter.

So what is our end result? Well if you look today, the same botters are farming events for over a week with no ban, yet patches are rolling out that constantly keep me on the move. I do not want to be told to “stop enjoying dungeons, go do something else now”. I should be able to log in and do whatever I want for the same fun/reward regardless of how often I feel like doing it.

So yes, I’m starting to have some very well-founded concerns about the play experience. I’m getting put through the gold-sink ringer, barely keeping my head above water financially, while arenanet constantly patches invisible limiters on the success I can have.

At the very least, do me the courtesy of showing a debuff when I’ve capped out on experience or loot for an area. I should not have to guess when I’ve farmed an event “too much”. I resent that there even IS a “too much”, but demand to be treated with a little dignity. You got my $60. Please give me a lot of value and just a little respect.

Crits add excitement and chance to a game. There are “crits” in sports and many other competitive games, inasmuch as there are random events that sometimes tilt the favor one way or another. And that uncertainty is exciting to me.

I realize you got omgsomad because you missed a spell due to RNG or because someone landed a “lucky crit”, but you should be mature enough to take it on the chin and move on with your life.

I do understand your compulsive need to have everything do exact damage so you can never, ever feel like luck was against you. But even if you get your way, you will simply come to the forums and complain about class balance or comp imbalance or some other issue.

Games are meant to be fun. Sometimes a little luck is needed to pull off a great feat, like taking down two guys because of an excellent dragon’s tooth crit (just kidding eles dont win pvp fights).

Anyway QQ

So Arenanet, is there anything in place that could help us out? Right now the Dev tracker is mostly useless. I’ve almost never had the patience to sort through all the customer support stuff to find some usable info.

It’s a quality of life thing, I know, but I’m sure you have a separate forum team from dev team.

You mentioned most of your responses come from the forums, which represents less than 1% of the population, typically. And the forum people tend to be harsher by far. So I do think these results need to be taken with that grain of salt.

That having been said, I enjoyed the results and think they mean something, directionally. I certainly think the satisfaction ranking by class looks accurate. I also think the 1-10 players haven’t figured out why the game is great yet, and the 71-80 were mostly 80s who feel they don’t know what to do now that they’re at the “end”. A predictable phenomenon.

Anyway, thanks for the interpretation!

Just kidding. +1 for vendor

What is this topic about

Marz, if you read closely I already mentioned that staff is my preferred weapon for the big zerg fights. But a lot of my time is spent roaming around smaller points, getting in little 3v3 skirmishes. That’s where I think the scepter/dagger could do well. Controlling the fight and bursting at key moments.

Enoch, it sounds like you have some knowledge of the build, but you’ve yet to share any of it with me! What trees are you putting traits in, which traits are you taking, and are you going power/condition, or FULL condition?

My thinking is still that power is king (every spell benefits from it, pretty much), then cond damage INSTEAD of precision, then my third stat will be a mix of tough/vit so i can survive these skirmishes.

Most of these replies seem to be geared around the big 50vs50 keep zergs, but I already know to grab a staff and keep my distance in those.

I strongly dislike that you can be in multiple guilds for one reason: there’s no accountability right now for influence gain. If I send a player an invite to my guild, he can sit on that invite for a week and accept whenever he likes. He can also NEVER represent my guild, and I have no way of knowing if he’s gained any influence for us. Yet whenever he wants, he can toss the guild name back on his character and use our vault or enjoy our benefits.

When you manage a large guild, it’s important to make sure your people are active and helping. I don’t want to give everyone a minimum influence quota, but I’m certainly likely to donate ectos and rares to a guildie who gains influence for me than one who simply represents on occasion.

Multiple guilds is an.. interesting.. idea. But until they have a way for guild leaders to see what you’re really doing for the guild, I think it’s a mistake.

The only unfortunate thing about your advice is that it looks like you don’t play much scepter/dagger. Your staff advice is useful. During those epic 20 v 20 battles, staff is my weapon of choice. But I don’t like staff as much when running in between points and getting in those little 2v3 skirmishes. I like the scepter/dagger skills, so I’m just curious how people are speccing and gearing for effectiveness. power/precision seems to be common, but there are a decent amount of burns/bleeds for condition damage.

I heard one of the devs say they are working on buffing condition builds. I wondered, since EVERY skill with damage can utilize “power”, but only certain skills will use condition damage.

Orr seems very poorly-imagined. After playing 80 levels of this wonderful world, I was shocked to find that the most imaginative thing they could implement for my lvl 80 zone was “put a mob every 5 feet so its really hard to go anywhere”. A dev mentioned that this makes sense in the lore of things because they’re zombies so they just kind of stand around. That’s an adequate explanation, but doesn’t equate to fun. I had great dynamic events, beautiful landscapes, for 80 levels. Then I get to this dark area where it’s nothing but rocks and zombies.

It isn’t epic at all.

I’ll agree with another poster here, though. Frostgorge was great! I really wish there were an 80 zone attached to that continent. Frostgorge is dangerous, with great events, but it’s spaced out so you can still travel on the roads mostly. Orr, on the other hand, is claustrophobic. I’ve barely explored it because I know I can farm my 3 favorite events, 5 ori nodes, and never have to go anywhere else in this stupid grid-map of mobs.

Very disappointed so far. I would love a mix of dangerous and beautiful. Some of the zones in GW2 are truly breathtaking, but Orr is neither imaginative nor beautiful.

I do think party gives an advantage in looting. At Shelter’s waypoint in cursed shore, we tend to get many more lootable corpses in a party. As an aside, I also got many more rares when partying, but I’m inclined to think that could have just been natural variance/luck.

I think when you’re in a party, your groupmates’ damage counts as the “minimum damage” needed to loot a target. When waves of risen run at us, I was able to loot many more corpses when my groupmates did damage beside me.

I may be wrong, but so far the results look really promising.

First, let me thank you for spending time on the forums for a game you don’t even like. That’s very generous or stupid of you. Oh.

Second, the game is not WoW. I played WoW for about 6 years. I understand it may be difficult for you to leave an 8 year old game with tons of polish, for a brand new game. What I don’t understand is how you expect the exact same level of polish.

Furthermore, “when it’s done” has never been a good practice with MMOs. Putting out a “minimum viable state” mmo is common practice, and for good reason. This lets them gain ROI (return on investment) which funds further refinement of the game. Sorry, but the real world will only let a company borrow so much before seeing some return. Also, with the stiff exception of the trading post, this is the best “launch” i’ve ever seen on a game (and i’ve played countless MMOs). SWTOR was really good I just didn’t like the game that much. Rift was nice, but I didn’t have fun. This game was fun from the very start and there’s always something to do.

And WoW sucked for a long time. Rep grinding at level 60 was not fun; neither was 40-man raid wipes. Sure, we look back on it now that we’ve accomplished things and we can say “oh man that was so crazy and fun haha!”. But we both know it was horrible.

Please don’t compare brand new games to 8-yr old games with several expansions and a huge budget. We all know what you want, so go shell out $60 to run around as a Panda for 5 more levels. Godspeed.

This is the only MMO i’ve liked after playing 2 days. Also, the main games I played before this are WoW and LoL. This has better questing/pve than WoW (more to come with expansions) and all the fun of instant-queue LoL matches in sPVP.

So I’m not saying you’re wrong, but your opinion certainly isnt going to be common. I’ve laid out some options for you:

1. Play more than 2 days. If only to get your money’s worth.
2. Never play again. thanks for donating $60 to my future expansion.

Hello wonderful Arenanet people!

I think people go to the Dev Tracker for one thing: devs giving us info about the game (current or future). As such, is there a way for devs to flag which of their posts makes the dev tracker? When I look at it, it’s 80% support tickets and little “Thanks you guys are awesome!” posts. That’s all nice, but the Dev tracker should be a way to find information directly from a Dev’s mouth.

Would love to see this change so we can scan it for good info instead of random chatting about video cards and asking players to fill out support tickets.

I feel bad bumping. I don’t normally like to do that. But I could really use some help. And if this info is available somewhere, please feel free to point me to the right place!

Hi everyone!

I’m an 80 ele and I need some help building for WvW. I like the scepter/dagger weapon combo for skirmishes (running between points/camps), and I use a staff for the big keep defends (to support).

Some questions I have:

Is scepter/dagger effective in WvW skirmishes?
What stats should I go for? I really want to ditch precision in favor of condition damage. My thinking is that WvW has plenty of “runners” (fleeing enemies with low health), and I think having increased bleed damage can finish off many foes. My goal is to alternate power/condition/toughness and power/condition/vit gear so I’m more durable and still have some oomph.
How useful is healing? I have superior sigil of life on my staff because I spend most of my time in water attunement healing foes (most of my time = i go back to water every time the healing cooldowns are up)
TRAITS! I love the might-stacking in fire, but otherwise I do not know how to build. A few suggestions would be nice. How’s earth attunement if im already focused on condition damage? I love all the movement speed buffs in air, but that might be a “nice to have” instead of a “need to have”

These forums are funny. I expected to find tons of great build advice, but instead all I see are people talking about how bad we are in PvP. That’s a shame, but I still want to make the best of it and I think we can do well in WvW.

I really want to get several people’s opinions here. I’m used to MMOs where there was only one “right” build and the rest were just sub-optimal. GW2 seems like it has a little more room for multiple builds, but as a game ages people tend to min-max and settle on the ‘best’ build.

Thank you sincerely for any helpful comments!

owned.

This has happened twice, and I’m 100% confident the item wasnt just misplaced in my bag

Instance 1: I sold a rare longsword on the TP last night. The TP had a buyer for 24s. The transaction was made, the item disappeared from my inventory, and no gold was awarded to me via the TP. The transaction wasn’t even listed in my “items sold” history. This was about 5 minutes before a game crash on 9/21.

Instance 2: A few days ago, I purchased 20 omnomberries. The money left my account and I’m still waiting on the berries (not hopeful at this point).

Items absolutely do disappear from the trading post. Now I’m very leary of using it since so far I’m missing about 50 silver as a result of its glitchiness. This is not good.

As a sidenote, another rare longsword dropped (same one) and only got 20s for it this time

Oh sweet a random person with an idea about a video game feature. Never seen this before!

My issue is that there’s just way too much difference between getting an exotic and getting a legendary. What’s in between? The second I hit 80 I got 5 pieces of exotic gear. I’ll have the rest of myself in exotics within the week. Are you saying I have zero incentive to look for gear now unless I want to embark on this thousand-hour abomination of a legendary?

I find it very hard to believe 1) Arenanet wants me to farm and grind and save up this ludicrous amount of gold/karma/mats just so i can get a COSMETIC upgrade, and 2) There’s no interim gear between exotic and legendary.

This is a big problem I think. If I’m getting close to satisfying requirements for a great item or achievement, I’ll consider that motivation. But as of now, I have no near-future carrot to chase. The reward doesn’t even come CLOSE to justifying the cost. Granted, I understand people’s opinions will vary from mine, I feel like there should be a few steps in between these two things that help me get better gear that I feel is actually obtainable.

no one cares about some random idiot’s rating. Might as well tell me your top 10 fashion faux pas of 2012 while you’re at it, Kardashian.

Home World: Anvil Rock
Guild Name: <Fancy Hat Party>
Guild Website: None. No one in the guild wants to log out of the game to visit a site
In-Game Contact: Tinydancer (Bonus points if you randomly send me a lyric from the song)
Focus: End-game sPVP tournament groups and WvW warbands.
Quick Notes: Our own mumble voice-chat server, over 30k influence spent, guild vault/treasure trove, THOUSANDS of crafting mats shared, and every member who joins the guild gets a permanent 10% magic find buff (We buy it every 3 days and keep it running as a thank you to our awesome guildies)

Over 80 members at the time of this post and growing fast. Remember: a man is only as fancy as his hat!

Home World: Anvil Rock
Guild Name: <Fancy Hat Party>
Guild Website: None. No one in the guild wants to log out of the game to visit a site
In-Game Contact: Tinydancer (Bonus points if you randomly send me a lyric from the song)
Focus: End-game sPVP tournament groups and WvW warbands.
Quick Notes: Over 30k influence spent, guild vault/treasure trove, THOUSANDS of crafting mats shared, and every member who joins the guild gets a permanent 10% magic find buff (We buy it every 3 days and keep it running as a thank you to our awesome guildies)

Over 80 members at the time of this post and growing fast. Remember: a man is only as fancy as his hat!

Rookieevo.1276:

I am tired of the events to be honest and it kind of ruins the experience when you complete an event to then return 5 minutes later to see the same event being played out again. The other problem I have with events is that I play pretty late at night when there are hardly any people online so most of the events I see can’t be completed because they are impossible to do solo. I am level 36 or something and I tend to just run right through most events because I find them boring I only ever stop if I see something new like a boss attacking a small town, I find them interesting especially when I am trying to kill it by myself.

The only fun I’ve had really is leveling up my professions but even that is getting a bit boring now and I realized that something wasn’t right about the game when all I was doing was running around gathering stuff rather than doing events or the story quests.

The story quests were okay to begin with but now it seems to be sending me from one zone to another just to spend 10 minutes killing stuff to then be told to meet back up in a main city, I wouldn’t mind so much if I could move a bit faster but the charr if that is what it’s called seems to be in slow-motion. Speaking of the charr and the story mode that sound they make when they talk like teeth clashing together really gets under my skin it’s like I end up counting how many times I hear that sound rather than listening to what they say and now I have lost track of the story all I know is that I have to find gems or something and kill a dragon other than that I have no idea what is going on.

You could benefit from a long conversation regarding punctuation.

cool story bro

fifteen

PPson.7042:

You do get advantages for being higher lvl because gear doesn’t scale in proportion to lvl when down-scaling, as well as I HATE IT in other games when I go around 1 shotting everything in lowbie areas, I’m not an RPer by any means but it kills all immersion when you go in to an area and 3 hit a giant 3 headed dragon because you are a higher lvl than it.

This also creates the ability to lvl with lower lvl friends without having an insane experience hurt to them. Personally I don’t want to create new characters every time a friend starts playing. I like how the scaling works and don’t think they should change it at all.

I see exactly what you mean, because it kills MY immersion when a level 3 goat who got attacked from my attunement proc is capable of killing me while I run to the next zone as lvl 60.

Bottom line: You get more powerful as you level up. ArenaNet suspends reality to let us contribute to events and quests with our friends. But there’s an obnoxious downside in that this ARTIFICIAL downleveling results in our death when trying to explore or travel for fun.

I’m level 80, ergo I should not die to a level 5 wolf. Go on, make that sentence sound stupid. I dare you.

Cesar.9365:

I agree…its terrible to want to explore and take in some of the sights or swim around only to be killed by a pig or fish that is in reality 40 levels lower than you. Sometimes I just want to go for a swim without any fight and find it difficult in lower level areas because of the gigantic aggro range.

This is exactly my issue. Down-leveling is great for playing with friends, bit it’s just stupid and makes zero sense when you’re trying to AVOID confrontation. Make it so these mobs don’t aggro you. If you attack them, expect a decent fight on your hands. But a level 20 wolf killing me because I didn’t feel like fighting my way through a lowbie zone is really, really stupid.

+1. This is part of the reason Social Networking has taken off. Getting updates on people’s whereabouts and doings can be very fun and encouraging. I also would like to see when someone joins my guild (Announce it to everyone in guild chat). These little updates make the game feel more social. Sometimes I will pull up my friends list and say “Oh crap, i had no idea that many friends were online now!” because I get no indication of it.

I strongly believe the cash shop needs more useful items. I spent hundreds of dollars in League of Legends (I’m a perfect F2P customer!) because they had such interesting skins. I was prepared to spend $100 right away for GW2 gems, but unfortunately could not find much I wanted. I was hoping for more “unlocks” (things I buy once, and always have). Instead, most of what you can buy are little boosts that don’t seem to help much and only last an hour. Spending money for very short-term temporary items doesn’t appeal to me, since I hate having to figure out if my next hour will be worthy of the boost or not. I’d be much more likely to purchase boosts that last a weekend, or permanent unlocks like bank slots (thank you) and player housing.

TL:DR: I want to give you my money but couldn’t find anything worth buying. This is a good problem to solve!

There’s a recurring opinion here that complaining about de-leveling means I’m some elitest wimp who wants the game handed to me at lvl 80. That’s simply not the case. In fact, I love that I can contribute to events with my friends without killing everything in one hit. I simply don’t think it makes sense that my survivability is also reduced AND that mobs still aggro me. If I’m level 80 (a very powerful elementalist), it makes no sense that three level 15 mobs can swarm and kill me just because im running across a zone to meet a friend. Either make it so that my survivability stays beefed up, make it so mobs dont aggro me, or as I originally proposed, make it so that I’m simply the top level for that particular zone. At least then I have the decision to fight or run. As it stands, I’m forced to stop and fight every lvl 20 I see unless my escape abilities are up. It just seems silly.

daemonlama.5413:

Adjust, adapt or leave. This is a core element of the game. It will not change.

I owe you an apology. I must have given you the impression that I was looking for your advice. I’m here to raise a concern because I don’t like the way a game mechanic plays, not to ask some random dude what he thinks I should do in light of my unhappiness.

Thanks anyway, Dr. Phil.

I’ll just say it: Cut us a little slack on the down-leveling. I understand you want high level players to group with their lower level friends, and that you want us all to be able to enjoy content as it was designed, but there are a couple of reasons I really don’t like the way it’s currently set up.

1. If I’m level 50 and trying to do an event designed for level 32, give me SOME type of advantage because of my level. Right now, ArenaNet ratchets me down to where all fights are challenging no matter where I am. Sounds great on the face of it, but why did I level if you were just going to kitten me to the point that I’m just as powerful as the lowbie next to me? Again: i’m not looking for easymode, but hell at least let me downscale to lvl 35 or so. Give me SOMETHING for my extra work and levels.

2. Running through a low level zone is hell. This is my primary complaint. If I’m level 80 and I want to cruise through a lvl 30 zone to start exploring, I have to stop and kill monsters because they will actually kill me if I"m not careful. A level 80 has to be “careful” around lvl 30 mobs. The solution to this could be simple: if I’m far too high level for the zone, make it so mobs don’t aggro me. I should not have to die 3 times running through Kessex Hills at level 60 just so I can get to Gendarran Fields.

Lastly, I propose always down-leveling to the max level for a zone. That’s right, if I’m in Gendarran Fields, make me level 35. That way I can still participate in events, but I’m not always double checking my screen to figure out what level you kittened me at. if I’m in a 50-60 zone and I’m level 80, make me level 60 so I can feel I have SOME advantage. Otherwise what’s the point of being powerful if everything is just as difficult?

(This applies to personal story as well. Give me a few levels advantage if I put in the hard work)

The primary reason I think there’s no trade is because they can’t tax a trade. When you put something on the trading post, you pay a listing fee. ArenaNet seems VERY interested in keeping money out of the game (or at least keeping everyone from having “too much” money). Now, leave it up to you to decide if that’s money-grubbing behavior or simply good practice for maintaining a long-term economy, but trades mean bypassing the trading post.

I don’t like it though, because it eliminates the type of barter I enjoy, where you simply shout that you have something for sale and people can buy it.

I started a guild the first day of the prelaunch, and have since acquired over 30,000 influence with a little over 80 members. In plotting out our guild advancement, I have been disappointed in the lack of options for ways to spend my influence, and even more disappointed in the sloppy/missing categories. Here are some complaints that I’d love addressed.

1. You can’t buy a single thing with Research Guild Architecture 3. Instead, I paid 5000 influence for GA3 only so I could pay another 10,000 influence for GA4. Why is there a 3rd tier if ArenaNet doesn’t offer a single item in that tier? I’m essentially paying 20,000 influence for a guild treasure trove, even though you’d never guess it costs that much from the confusing guild screen.

2. 500 influence for 5% influence gain over 24 hours. At this rate your guild needs to make over 2000 influence a day just to break even. It’s a strange thing to add to such a low level economy tier. Any guild with enough people to benefit from it would also have a much higher economy tier.

3. Too many “consumables.” There are very few guild unlocks. Once you have a bank and emblem, everything else is simply a trash purchase. Temporary banners that grant XP and a little extra magic find are cute upgrades, but once your guild gets a few core upgrades, there’s almost nothing to look forward to.

4. Representing guilds isn’t fun. I saw a guy online who stopped representing our guild. Yet any time he wants, he can throw up our guild tag and take from the guild vault. That doesn’t seem right. I would like people to have to choose which guild to stick with (or at least let us guild leaders stipulate that our guilds cant be part-time)

5. Stop letting people from other servers join our guilds. We accidentally recruit in overflow and have guildies who can’t earn any influence for us. It’s just a sloppy implementation.