Guild Wars 2

No…..why should I be against what someone names their character?
Really though, I find it cool to see how creative some people can be with their names, be it humorous, lore based or whatever. Some people have great imaginations

Lord Kuru.3685:

rjnemer.7816:

Fractals. So sick of only doing fotm 48. I cant wait till they remove the cap and they are revamped later this year!

Nope. You’ve been fooled by Anet. What you need is more AR. Anet could have just added infusion slots to Exotics for fractal players. Higher stats were never necessary for fractals. Fractals was just a flimsy excuse that Anet used to introduce higher stats Ascended gear.

This is partially right because they could still have introduced Ascended gear at the same stat level as Exotic – only with Infusion slots for AR instead of a sigil or with an option to infuse an AR stat directly on the weapon itself for Fractals.

Legendaries are future proof.
There is no guarantee there will not be more tiers in the future. If it happens, Legendary will get a boost to match, Ascended will get left behind.

Worth it? No, not IMO. It’s new BiS gear for the sake of BiS gear.
With no real guarantee of no new tiers in the coming years or even the next year to render it as non-BiS anymore(no, Colins vague “no more in the near future” is NOT a guarantee of any sort), its more worth it to grind Legendaries for the stat increase than Ascended as they will never be outdated and are stat variable. Future-proofing the time spent farming something is more worth it IMO.

Time is a much smaller factor to me than the method to obtain. Using your example of hours 100-250 would be fine if it was fun, engaging content. 100-250 hours gathering mats via repetitive farming to craft is not to me.

haviz.1340:

Maybe because the skin is kittening horrible?

Well, there’s this too lol
I’ve seen a few transmuted ones linked as well

Lambent.6375:

Not many, go to a champ farm and take a look. I’ve only seen a few people with one, and one person had just got lucky and got one from a chest in WvW.

I’m not one to go to a couple champ farms only on my server and draw conclusions on the entire population of gw2 like what seems to be the habit here on the forums.
I made no claims as to the percentage of people that have it already or that they were in a large abundance, only that they are out there already. I have seen people with them, people in guild getting them and people here on the forums reporting they made them already.
While they are not everywhere (yet) and no one can claim any percentage of the population, they are being made already was what I intended to say there. When it was supposed to be something that was intended to be a challenge or time-consuming task for people who wanted one.

Erasculio.2914:

I think it’s because they want Ascended gear to be time consuming to create, and they have envisioned it as a tool to keep the grinders around (as a goal to give them something to grind for). Since the grinders already have a lot of gold (they do keep grinding), they would be able to buy Ascended weapons the first day people made them and go back to asking ArenaNet “What’s next?”.

Remains to be seen what is ArenaNet going to do when the grinders have a full Ascended set (weapons, armor, accessories), turn and ask the developers, “What’s next?”.

It’s already failed as that. How many grinders or rich players have at least 1 Ascended weapon already? Wow, it kept them busy for a whole week. This is the problem with adding new tiers of gear.
Whats next? I’m sure no new gear this year as Colin said…but maybe some by the time the 2nd anniversary rolls around.

Tiger.7506:

For the people out there, it’s “play however you want”, not “get whatever you want.”
Gw2 is not L T W ( Log in TO win ).

I would disagree. Isn’t time-gated content and dailies for endgear exactly that? Login, craft your daily mats, do your daily AP’s, get endgear.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

4. Crafting category breakdown by tiers where each tier only lists relevant materials and recipes for that tier. I open my crafting panel noways and close it. it’s just one huge list all lumped together.

What are you looking for here? You can already do this. Click the down arrow by the search bar for a slew of options to filter the list – by gear grade, craft level, whether you have the mats, and so on. You can do this on your crafting window via hero panel or at crafting stations too.
Unless I’m reading what you want wrong and want something else.

Vayne.8563:

Their thought process, which I shared before it happened, was that people would go for the cosmetic only upgrades if the game was fun enough…except that some people care about efficiency over fun. Anet wasn’t prepared for that. Saying they should have been is your opinion.

This is also a way of saying they weren’t prepared to keep making the game fun. It isn’t entirely people caring about efficiency over fun. While that is true, the flip side is what if they released a decent free expansion every few months instead of 2 weeks, with new content that involved more than a zerg and AP grind and a deeper story actually having to do with the lore and actual fun content to partake in. Would people be fine with no new tiers of gear to grind? Guess we’ll never know. So instead, here’s new gear that serves no purpose.

People have run out of things to do after a year and needed more to do. Adding in a new gear tier just for the sake of something to do is a poor reason to do so.
And on top of that this is about as unfriendly to new players as it can possibly be. This may be cheap and nothing to people who have stock-piled the last year or at least the last few months……but telling new players crafting is the only way to get the best gear, and that they must grind it, that it is time-gated and that they must pay for or farm to level crafting to 500 is very unfriendly. Play as you want indeed.

Snowshadow.3105:

Is GW2 shifting its target group? from casual gamers to hardcore gamers?

Honestly, I have no idea what their intended target is.
I’m a casual player and these recent changes don’t appeal to me at all. There’s nothing casual about dangling a new time-gated, grindy carrot who’s only purpose is to be a carrot with nothing else to go with it. Once a day time-gating is alienating for this content. What if I can only play on weekends due to being away for work or whatever? There’s plenty of ‘weekend only’ players. 2 days a week we can refine this stuff? Casual implies that I can do this stuff on my own time as I can. The way it is now, I can’t.
But from a ‘hardcore’ standpoint, I couldn’t see how it could be appealing to them either, depending on your definition of hardcore. There’s certainly nothing ‘hard’ about it, its just incredibly tedious and requires no real thought. I would consider hardcore, those who want tough, challenging content that takes time to learn, strategize and conquer. I would not consider those with oodles of time on their hands to be called ‘hardcore’.
I have no idea who they are trying to appeal to at this point. Is there a category for “players who just want fluff”?

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

In 1v1s possibly, but if you’re in a 40 vs 40 zerg fight it won’t really make a difference if you have one or two pieces of 9% Ascended bonus missing.

Assuming everyone else is equally geared. If one zerg is 35 ppl in full ascended and the other only has 7 in full ascended, it’d probably be noticed.

LHound.8964:

To be fair, i believe that the higher tiered gear, should have an effort/reward associated to it. So to be handed as a reward (i.g.: Laurels) i don’t agree.

When i saw how these weapons immediately said : “Cool, some effort related reward, as it should be”. Don’t expect to receive everything for free!

To start that off with ‘To be fair’ wasn’t fair at all. Your reply was made to something the OP did not even say. Noone said anything about having it handed to them. He suggested an alternate method to crafting. The mats would still be required to be gathered in the same ways, the same amount of time taken (I assume), only replacing the Forge with actual crafting. Hell, even adding in an extra item needed for the Forge to make up for not having to do the tedious crafting or maybe different recipes altogether than crafting.
Thats a good idea and there should (and hopefully will be) alternate ways to make these beyond crafting and RNG.

Piecekeeper.4361:

ASCENDED WEAPONS (and equipment in general) ALONE DO NOT MAKE A GEAR TREADMILL!!!
Sorry for all caps, but I’ve had it with this gear treadmill talk BS.

Vayne.8563:

I wish you better luck with your thread on this than I had on mine. lol

I agree with you.

Its a playerbase divided. I don’t agree with either of you and don’t have the intention of changing your minds.
I do have the intention of posting my concerns and opinions here in the hopes some ANet employees would take it in as feedback. Its too late for Ascended, it isn’t too late for new tiers.
If we all bend over and accept it as you seem to be trying to convince people to do, they could very well add more and more tiers over time. If we state that this is where we want it to end and move onto cosmetic and more innovative ways to make an endgame, then maybe they will.
You may be tired of the ‘treadmill talk BS’, and on the other side maybe those of us on the other side of the argument are tired of reading threads that call our opinions BS.
I want more for GW2. I would like to see it stand above other MMO’s as a desirable place to be through innovation and things to draw new players into it.
Hiding behind the statement “we always intended it to be in game” is a loophole that can be applied to future tiers as well : “we always intended gradual increments in gear every year, sorry for the misunderstanding”.
Are you entitled to your opinions? Yes. Just as I am mine that this is the start of a treadmill.
I’m not trying to change your mind thakittens all going to be sunshine and rainbows. All of my posts are with the intention of feedback into Anet, not to convince you or anyone else what I believe.

I think the quotes now added to the OP pretty well speak for themselves as to why many of us had high hopes for this game breaking the mold of gear-driven endgame.
Theres many there clearly stating progression was purely cosmetic and not stat driven.
Regardless of the argument of however insignificant you believe this stat upgrade to be, which stands at 11% so far without the armor, its still a stat-driven upgrade.

Widowmaker Z.4802:

Having 80ish or so people and having them work together isn’t going to be easy.

LOL…..what? You imply there will need to be some kind of coordination or real gameplay involved. Given the path they’ve been on why would anyone expect this to be anything other than yet another full-on zerg?
For some reason this game seems to be in the mindset that harder simply means more HP, making the increased ‘challenge’ the task of finding enough people to zerg it in a decent amount of time.

Your idea of a stat cap is only half the sttory. Yes, people who have Legendaries need not worry. Their gear is always bumped up to match the current high stats of a new tier of gear.
This assumes that Legendary is the end goal for everyone, which it is not. Some of us find Legendaries ugly and not worth it. It was of no loss to not get them, however as they shared the same stats with exotic.
The gear treadmill excludes Legendaries. Anyone in full exotics is forced to upgrade with no in-game reason given to even do so, except to avoid being excluded from elitist groups that will develop and to avoid having a certain percentage disadvantage in PvP and WvW (regardless if its 5%, 11% or 20%, its still a disadvantage).
So what happens if they add a new tier beyond Ascended? Once again, Legendary owners are safe as they get bumped up. Anyone who doesn’t like Legendaries, however, are forced yet again to upgrade their once endgame set to a new level.
Not only would this be a gear treadmill, but its one that doesnt even affect everyone equally. If you want to keep up with Jones’, you have to either 1)get a Legendary that you don’t like or 2)suck it up and keep upgrading all your characters like every other treadmill MMO out there or 3)hope this game ends the treadmill with Ascended while keeping an eye out on new MMO’s that might actually break the tired mold of MMORPGS.
It doesn’t matter how gradual it is or that they’ve found a way to let some people bypass the treadmill with Legendary, its still a treadmill. As I’ve said before, I played 5 characters all pretty equally and got them all outfitted in full exotic and as much Ascended orns as I could and was free to do whatever I wanted as they were ready for it (even with multiple sets of gear for different needs in different dungeons and situations – yes to even run in elitist groups) Now the thought of all of them suddenly being in ‘transition’ gear and having to outfit them all in new gear (and even worse, behind time-gating) really kills my desire to play this game anymore, especially that I don’t trust that in a years time they won’t do this again.
Call it a treadmill, escalator, elevator, whatever you want…the end result is still a tired MMO ‘tradition’ that manages only to lump GW2 in with the majority of others.
In one way GW2 is worse than other MMO’s in this aspect. Other MMO’s hide their treadmills behind some new dungeon or area in an expansion. Lame as that content may or not be, its at least an attempt to sugar-coat it. ANET is adding nothing that even needs this (higher fractals is BS, since its not new content and they could make Ascended on par with exotic + infusion slot for that). Its a new tier that serves no purpose other than to fuel a treadmill.
A tired MMO gear-driven endgame with a new gradual-paced face that only affects people without Legendaries? Yes.
Innovative? No.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not grinding here. It’s just a mindset.

the gear here, even though it’s BIS…it just doesn’t make that much of a difference.

That’s why I can let it go. That doesn’t mean I’m thrilled about it.

My preference would be cosmetic only progression but I understand too many people can’t live with that…and that is a problem.

I always liked reading your posts…but this sounds like giving up and accepting it or settling for less. It is a mindset……that is being put in place for the sole purpose of making that mindset. If there’s no content that needs it, why add it? Its a carrot that’s not even disguised under any new content at all.
What’s being claimed as not much of a difference at all, is debatable. 11% is a difference nonetheless, and I would assume the stats of ascended armor is going to push the percentage difference from someone in exotic only more. And if they continue the trend and add some new transcended gear next year for another 11%, with nothing beyond temporary fluff content added in the meantime? At what point does it become a significant difference? When does it become a problem?

When people asked me why they should leave their current MMO for this one, I used to have reasons to tell them. This may not be game-breaking (yet), but its game altering enough that I can’t think of enough significant differences between this game and any other MMO to recommend someone leave one for this one. Its becoming mostly the same tired MMO clichés in a prettier “innovative” package.

JK Arrow.7102:

I’m not complaining about more ascended gear making content easier, although it will. I’m complaining about added vertical progression that we were led to believe wouldn’t be a part of this revolutionary ground breaking innovative MMO.

This is one of many of the problems. I, for one, wouldn’t have bought the game had I known a treadmill was in the works.
Yes, it is a grind treadmill. Just because some self-proclaimed MMO experts here that have played a few other MMO’s with a worse treadmill than here, doesn’t mean just because this one is less that it doesn’t exist. That argument is invalid. I’ve played a much worse gear treadmill myself, this one is less intense, but thats where its heading.
So what if they spread it over months between releases? It still invalidates all the gear you have worked on and customized for the last few months. Whatever the power hop is from exotic to ascended, regardless of percentage, it still invalidates your ‘best’ gear down to second rate. Call it ‘not that bad’ or ‘not making exotic irrelevant’ or whatever you want or regardless of how anyone wants to sugarcoat it, your exotic gear is now transitional gear.
Add on top of that the time gating of 2 weeks per piece (goodbye gearing alts), and the game becomes a job. You must login everyday to get mats/money and craft this new gear if you want to get it even remotely timely, especially if your character uses multiple weapon sets (and really, who doesnt?). Currently, the most timely fashion of getting money to buy these mats is via repetitive zerg champ farming, which by the definition of grind being a mindless task repeated over and over, is a grindfest.

So now you have a gearspiral guised under slow release rate, with the best option to farm for being a grinding zergfest and an obligatory reason to have to login everyday or fall behind, with the addition of no new content or reason for this gear other than be a gearspiral.
Sounds about as innovative as any other run-of-the-mill MMO that’s had a treadmill in the last 10 years.
While I’m sure some people will call me or anyone else against this as a crybaby, overreacting, or just whining……..call it what it is. Its expressing disappointment in seeing this MMO, that was touted as innovative and going to change the standards, take the tired path of just about every other MMO out there. We were ready for something new.

Ision.3207:

As a result, thousands of MMO fans were buzzing loudly about finally finding a full 100% horizontal-progression game for every mode of gameplay: PvE, WvW and PvP. And this was clearly understood as being a fact by the vast majority of people.

It’s a shame that the hunt/wait for an MMO that does this is back on.
Honestly, had I known that plateau was going to be thrown out in favor of new gear tiers, I probably would never have bought the game.

Raine.1394:

skill-based horizontal progression, is the alternative to vertical progression. Every game in or near the genre needs a mechanism for character progression. Vertical is an old idea with a lot of extra baggage. A lot of us understand issues like this in game design and we are ready for a new kind of MMO.

I agree completely. Its a tired old mechanic for MMO’s. Almost all of them end up the same with a vertical progession gear treadmill.
GW2 seems to be on the tired old path and conforming to standards every MMO before it has done safely. People seem to love the carrot, so why innovate when the tired and true work so blandfully well. I’m not one to hold the biblical ‘manifesto’ over their heads like some people do, because things change. But for a company that wanted to shake up the world of MMO’s with innovation and changes to the accepted low standards, they seem to be shaping more and more into ‘just another run of the mill MMO’
Its not limited to GW2, this mechanic is going to stagnate the entire genre more than it already has.

This was intentional and it was in some patch notes. I couldn’t tell you which patch it was, though it was fairly recent.

Reikou.7068:

What is there there to “deal with” regardin champ camping?

You should all whack the champ and the top 5 contributors would get rewarded. Want loot? Up your game. Simple as that.

Maybe not this extreme, but I’m starting to think something like this needs to be added, and not just to zergs.
Maybe you get less of a reward for your mob tagging that gets you a bronze in events. No chance of exotic or certain level stuff. Want the good stuff, earn a gold.
Still doesn’t fix the mindlessness of zergs, but would prevent leeching and going a_f_k (edit: seriously this kitten filter is a bit too sensitive)

Something similar should apply to world events, IMO. People who loiter in the swamp, won’t do pre-events (some of whom also complain in map chat how long the pre-events are taking other people to do), whack behemoth a couple times and get the same as those who ran to all 3 portal locations outside the swamp, for example. You do less, you should get less.

Professor Marvel.7584:

“I don’t like playing with a lot of people. It’s not fun when all my friends are on at the same time.”

“We should only limit guilds to 25 people max, that way when we do guild events the party is smaller and the gameplay is more rewarding/challenging.”

“There’s a bunch of people participating in something? I’m totally NOT going to be interested in what’s developing over there.”

…said nobody, ever.

I play this game to play with other people. The more people, the better. I don’t give a kitten about the loots and the golds.

Maybe making these things more challenging for large groups, or rather, scaling the difficulty appropriately, would be a better solution.

-PM

Its not the amount of people, or that people do it together. Noones advocating solo play or reduced player input.
Its that all these people have no need to interact, noone does anything significant, all you have to do is show up. You got it right at the end. They need to be made more challenging. Not just scaled upwards in difficulty, which ultimately means just more HP. Give all these people a reason to work together and to interact. Give them more to do than spam the 1 key and run to the next mob.

Superfast.5901:

Zergs are fun though how can you deny what GW2 gameplay is all about? Go play SWTOR or WoW if you want complicated mechanics with micro-management. This is a new era for MMOs, this is Gw2.

If this is a new era of MMO’s, the genre will go stagnant and die very quickly. A market flooded with games where all they need is bosses with massive amounts of HP that all players have to do is rush and press 1? Yeah, that’ll last a long time.
Who wants micro-management? Is there no middle ground between the overly complicated and zombie-like gameplay?
Noones asking for WoW mechanics. Noones asking for super complicated. I’d just like to have more to do with this new content.
I can go into an event with my all exotic/ascended Guardian and do zerg farming. Alternatively, I can also strip my elementalist naked to wearing no gear at all and do the same thing with little to no difference in the effect or reward of participating. This is a major flaw in gameplay design.

Superfast.5901:

GW2 is meant to be mindless fun, and it is FUN!

In all the times the ANet team has promoted this game, I don’t once ever recall them saying “Come join GW2, where mindless zerging is our goal and you don’t have to even think to play our game”.
I highly doubt the initial intention was to make a game that was mindless.

Genreninja.8516:

Your allusion escapes me…

I’m not saying GW2 is perfect. And I’m not saying the OP is wrong. I’m only saying the success of SAB doesn’t directly imply a failure of the rest of GW2. It simply doesn’t.

But alas, its not but an opinion I have about another posters opinion.

All I meant was, the analogy is flawed. McDonalds is pretty static and has been for years. Sure a few new menu items pop up and they have toys, but its pretty well the same experience going in now that it was 15 years ago. The same can’t be said for gw2.
It has changed alot and through all the updates to this one, a side-game is most looked forward to or most anticipated? That’s not good.
It doesnt directly imply the failure of gw2, no. But what should happen is this :

“Wow, look at the great new content in GW2, I can’t wait to get in there and partake. And oh look, they brought SAB back, that should be cool, I’ll have to check that out after I do some of this great new content”

as opposed to:

“SAB is back in GW2! Time to log in and play that wicked fun mini-game! Oh look, guess they changed some other content too. Might glance at that while I’m here. Maybe grind a few AP’s, but only after I play this wicked fun mini-game!”

Which version implies the game is going in a good direction?

It depends on your definition of ‘casuals’ which varies to large degree. My definition doesn’t match yours at all nor do I have the same assumptions you do about ‘casuals’.
Same goes for ‘hardcore’.
Its relative and I’m sure this topic will soon be a defining casuals topic

Genreninja.8516:

A good example: I never eat McDonalds, I’m not a fan of fast food in general. But when the Monopoly game is going, I pick up a soda, or some fries or whatever because me and my coworkers get excited about stupid competitions like that. We pool our pieces and try to win. But that doesn’t say “There is an obvious problem with McDonalds because the only reason I’ll eat there is when Monopoly is running.” Yes, it says I need extra motivation, I don’t care for the product but they occasionally offer something I want. but it doesn’t directly imply anything about the food itself. McDonalds is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut of success.

Lets make your example more in line with the game.

Lets say you love McDonalds. You eat there a few times a week and have many favorite things on the menu. Then over time, they start telling you they’re going to remove the different combo choices. Then they take away all cashiers except one and everyone ordering must gang up on that one cashier and shout their orders all at the same time and he will throw food out randomly and whatever you get is what you eat.
You try to do your own thing and go to the other counter to try to order. Noone can help you because everyone is rushing the one cashier. So you get smart and leave and go thru the drive thru. Yay, your order goes through. But whats this? The drive-thru attendant can only give you one fry per hour.
So…do you keep going back to McDonalds and loving it like you once did? Or do you just go at Monopoly time?

Sps.7862:

Leave it to you to take a fun side-game and somehow paint it as yet another problem of GW2.

You people need to stop looking for flaws. If you don’t enjoy the game, stop playing. Nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to log. If you ask me, GW2 is a fine fine game albeit with a number of flaws and shortcomings, but your attitude is the real problem when it comes to enjoying the whole experience.

I think you missed the point of this thread.

mrstealth.6701:

Colin Johanson

Looking Ahead: GW2 in 2013 blog post
New Crafting Material Rewards
We’ll also add a new set of account-bound crafting materials to the game. You’ll receive these materials as guaranteed rewards once per day per unique location for completing content within a category of gameplay in Guild Wars 2.
For example, capturing camps, towers, and keeps in WvW will earn you these crafting materials. In the Living World, you can earn them for killing giant world bosses, defeating dungeons, completing jumping puzzles, completing mini-dungeons, finishing some types of guild missions, capturing temples in Orr, and other activities.

Unless they’ve made some major changes in their plan, this is going to be completely account bound from crafting to finished product. They want getting ascended gear to take forever, so they aren’t going to let you buy it.

Ugh…..thanks for the quote. Well that really does suck.
I’ll just have to wait and see how game-breaking the new gear is, if at all. At this point, that’s all I’m hoping for.

TooBz.3065:

Having never experienced a real gear treadmill, I’m probably totally off base, but since ascended amulets came out (I ignored the rings because I dislike fractals) I have been constantly working toward getting gear for my characters. To me, I feel like I’m on a treadmill.

What difference does it make if a complete set of BiS gear comes out every three months or if a new BiS item comes out every three months? I’m still always chasing BiS gear with no end.

I’ve played a grear treadmill game. And it wears on you.

Imagine you get all your characters geared, then 4 months they release better gear…not cosmetic, but stats. And you start working for that gear. You finally get 1 character outfitted in it when another 5 months they release a set of gear even better than that. More and more of your characters fall behind as they continue to add more and you have to focus on one character to keep him currently geared.
Eventually, the game feels like a job. You can’t enjoy yourself because you have to farm or spend money to keep your characters geared. And you have to save for fear of the next update when the gear you just earned will become obsolete.
Yes, gear treadmills can be this bad. I’ve experienced it firsthand.

Without the treadmill, as Anet has said they wanted to avoid……you get your character in the new ascended and can work on alts or cosmetics and enjoy yourself because you’re not playing catch-up constantly or worried whatever gear you might have now is going to be obsolete in a few months. Without it…yes you might be chasing gear for a long time, but you know theres a visible and attainable end. IN a treadmill, the goals are ever-changing and pushed farther and farther away

Zepidel.5349:

You will obviously be crafting lvl 400 stuff to go from 400-425 if not 450. Common sense stuff.

And if that stuff is also gated? If you can only craft 5 lvl400 things a day, for example……then what was the point of hoarding as it will take you and every other person doing it the same amount of time? I didnt think this was out of the realm of reality, given the crafting gating now with home instance farming and combining those.
I don’t believe we know if this is the case or not, do we?

Genreninja.8516:

I think this is an inaccurate inquisitive leap. So SFB is the funnest event they’ve had so far? That doesn’t mean people would rather stop playing GW2 to go play SFB. I certainly wouldn’t leave GW2 to go play it if they detached it and sold it on Steam for $5. I might buy it, I might play it, but it certainly wouldn’t drive me away from playing GW2 on the regular.

You made a leap in what you assumed the OP meant. It doesnt mean I would stop playing Gw2 and play SAB exclusively if it were its own game…it does mean I have stopped playing GW2 regularly in favor of other games and am returning only for SAB.
Its not a good sign that some people are only returning temporarily to play in SAB than the actual GW2 game itself, is more of what was meant I believe.

The gear itself I could live with….if this is it and we’re not heading to a gear treadmill every few months. I don’t expect any builds to die because of it, presumably diff stat combos are available like current ascended.
The time-gated is what kills me. I don’t have a ‘main’. I have 5 characters levelled to 80 in full exotics that I played pretty well equally. Just depended on the mood I was in and what I wanted to do. So, I kept them all geared and equally ready to jump into whatever. It’s not OCD, as someone said, to want to keep them at the top of their game to be able to jump into whatever I want to do with them. Getting exotics was very alt-friendly. Time-gated crafting would suck for this. And depending on the stat upgrades, may not even bother with.
If we can outright buy the finished crafted product though and I can just pay to outfit my characters with this new gear……then thats different. Is this confirmed? Or is this stuff account/soul-bound on aquire? Or still an unknown?

Erasculio.2914:

I think SAB is one of the few kinds of content left in which the main goal is to have fun, not grind achievement points or exploit the game to become rich quickly.

The OP is right, it is bad sign of the state of things and the quote above is why. I know thats why I’m looking forward to it coming back.

I’ve bought nor farmed anything for it. I couldnt even count how many people have said they are hoarding this stuff so its not like there’s going to be any great shortage of it, especially with everyone time-gated making it.

I’m not completely sure. something like 10 to 15..its not a huge number.
Make sure to delete any system mail and just have a friend or guild mates send you empty mails to fill it up.

Hint completion is easy. Press the ? on your top menu bar. The hint list checks off the ones you have. Just look for the one missing a check.

The explorer ones, I would recommend going to the wiki and loading up map pages from those areas. The wiki lists each ‘zone’ within each map and whats in them for hearts, etc…
Look for zones listed without anything needed for map completion like pois/vistas/hearts in them. Those are the zones most commonly missed since theres nothing guiding the player to them. You can then compare the ‘empty zones’ off the wiki map picture and your own map to see if you have it unfogged.

Ravenmorghane.9287:

So really it boils down to one query from me:
If this game is really so bad then why are you people still playing ? It makes the forums less enjoyable for players like me who genuinely like the game.

I’m not. I’m logging in to do dailies for laurels in case I do play again one day and want those for something. But that’s about it.
I continue to post here because I hope for better things for it. IMO, it has a lot of potential that’s just going to waste. I’m hoping to see that potential fulfilled.

Drop the mindless overwhelming the mobs/players with numbers gameplay and add innovative experiences.

Peetee.9406:

MMOs morphed into a more casual style because of adults with busy lives and less time to play, not kids.

It’s being done wrong though.
How many adults have boring as hell jobs? Sitting at a computer mindlessly entering data? Or working in a factory on a production line? Or something equally tedious?
These people are supposed to be drawn to a game that encourages the exact same tediousness of repetitive user input in a game?
Games can be more than just a time killer. Especially in an MMO. It can be a mentally stimulating and social experience that alleviates some of the tediousness of real life.
By driving people to this super ‘casualness’ of not even having to think, it would drive these ‘casual’ adults away more as they would rather have something that’s more engaging.

OP says he bought an MMO. Says he can’t find people to do things with and there’s noone in the world. Yes, some people advised finding a like minded guild.
But, it also says a lot about the state of the game currently that a lot of people gave the advice of how the mobs he needs are “soloable”, thereby all but agreeing he bought a single player game.

Im Mudbone.1437:

I don’t care about the crap for drops, I enjoy the huge mobs of people and baddies to squish and the gold.

The intention may be there, but its not happening.
Cause again, I could go watch TV and take comfort in the fact millions of other people are watching the same show at the same time and as a group we are contributing to the shows further success and subsequent episodes. Otherwise, we do not interact, do not communicate, do have anything else to stimulate or further enhance the experience. I am having the same amount of interaction with those people as I am with those in a GW2 zerg.
MMO is a stretch of the terminology in a case like zergs. Its more like a single player game that just happens to have other people playing at the same time, but you have nothing to do with them and no interaction has any effect at all. All people have to do is show up and be present for the continuation, much like people just have to tune to the same channel. Whee.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

people that claim it’s “fun” are really just doing so from a standpoint of they like getting rng loot, much like pulling on a handle from a slot machine. It’s not particularly engaging but it can potentially be rewarding.

This is the other huge point I fail to understand about this zerging trend.
People go on incessantly about RNG. RNG cashshop. RNG chests. RNG drops.
Zerging is RNG put to the max, you’re getting RNG drops and chests/bags both from these champ zergs…..and this same population is feeding more and more into it.
We don’t want RNG, but we are going to farm it in the most mindless way possible and claim to love it like there’s no tomorrow?

The Living Story was also touted as a continuous, innovative way to keep the game fresh without waiting for it stagnate, then release an expansion.
While this was and could be a good idea, it has fallen into something like a poorly scripted syndicated fantasy TV show. You have your run-of-the-mill new bad guy every episode, the good guys destroy him/her and nice and timely in the 2 week span, rinse and repeat.
I had thought the Living Story was going to impact the world in some meaningful way and progress the real story. Instead we get faceless new badguys we know nothing about, don’t know their motives or history. Don’t even care because we know they’re going to be replaced with the new flavor of the update bad guy in 2 weeks.
This links back to what Vayne said about it not being immersive. I don’t care about these nothing badguys and even goodguy characters that are ‘famous’ for a week. There’s nothing to care about……they will be replaced with more paper thin characters in the next update.

I think it started out that way. I feel like they’re at a loss now.
I would argue the removal of the trinity as being “successful”. With no trinity or class specific roles, they just want to throw us into zergs. It doesnt matter what class you are, if you have skills, if you’re levelled or if you’re even wearing gear at all doing world events.
The main core of gameplay is coming down to how many people we can throw it at something at one time. With new MMO’s coming….its not a good mechanic to have at your core. I’ve been a fan of GW2 for a long while…..and I’m starting to look at whats coming up from other developers.

Calae.1738:

It keeps the casuals happy; which is what the target market for GW2 is. Spam 1 or 2 skills and be rewarded.

I’m a casual player…that doesnt play much anymore because this is what everyone is doing. Other places and instances are barren because people are doing this. The majority of my guild is doing this whenever I log on. If i wanted to be a zombie pressing the same button repeatedly with no effort or thought process, I’ll go lay on the couch and channel surf. I’ll probably get more mental stimulation from the commercials anyway.

And at this point I don’t know whats more mind-numbing……the zerging itself or the people who are whole heartedly endorsing this as an engaging gaming experience.

And I will return as well!
I havent enjoyed the last 2 updates much at all, nor this zergfest that is the current trend and as a result have barely played in 3 weeks or so. And some of the new update is…meh.
But, in all of that I am really looking forward to the return of the SAB! Can’t wait to get back in there! They will have me playing active again for as long as the SAB is up

Personally, I’d like to see an in-game scratchpad. Pop it up and make whatever notes you want on it – like achievements lists.