Guild Wars 2

Yes, it is very useful. While I appreciate what gw2lfg.com did and all kudos to whoever made/ran that site, I no longer use it as the in-game tool serves all my needs and is very convenient.

What Zoltreez mentions has nothing to do with the LFG tool. Those same groups were found on gw2lfg.com. There is plenty of non-elitist groups posting on it too, besides you can also start your own with a non-elitist description.

Aerlen.5326:

THIS. This is why I don’t want to bother with WvW. If I wanted to worry about jerks out to gank me, I’d reinstall WoW and go on a PvP server. You have no idea how frustrating it is to finally get to a vista and boom, killed. Doesn’t matter if you are naked and unarmed.

And if you are JUST playing GW2 for WvW and never set foot in PvE… seriously? That really is like going to a movie just to watch the previews then leaving.

I don’t want to run dungeons for tokens. I don’t want to bother with it. Why am I being forced to do this for a skin I want? You have no idea how frustrating it is to get to a boss and have the party wipe when its almost dead. I should be able to enter the dungeon and get the tokens without mobs and bosses who are actively trying to stop me from reaching the end. If I wanted a mindless PvE grind, I’d install a Korean MMO.

Oh wait…….no, scratch that. I actually do realize there are other aspects to the game that aren’t tailored exactly to me and if they happen to be a requirement for something I want, I’ll do it.
Basically, this is a requirement for a Legendary. Suck it up and get over it. You know this going in. It is not a game flaw. Not a bug. Not a glitch. It is required. If you don’t want to venture in and are not willing to do what is needed for the item you want, then find another goal that better suits you.

More interesting is the bash of how people experience fun in the game. So because someone might spend all their time in WvW or PvP, they are playing the game wrong? Its a smaller percentage by map size yes, but in terms of how people have fun, that’s quite a judgement call on your part. I’m not even a WvW player, but I still find your extremely narrow view on it interesting.

Bismuth.3165:

It’d make sense if they cancelled ressing in wvw or spvp, but not in pve.

It does in different aspects of PvE. Look at how many people will just lay dead at Tequatl, Fire Elemental and so on. Bosses still with 75% HP and people lay dead expecting others to survive themselves and revive them. When all they’re doing is scaling the event up and having others do it for them. WP and run back.

This complaint again, seriously?
You have 4 maps with, let’s face it, not much on them to get. You don’t even have to engage in PvP if you go at the right times and watch what your servers doing. PvE and WvW are not seperate entities.
Besides look at it from the other way, WvW players who don’t like PvE have a hell of a lot more to do outside their realm of enjoyment than you do if they want one.

PvP is a non-factor as it is a seperate entity. Different stats, gear and everything. WvW and PvE share everything.

I’d probably keep it with the hope of being able to salvage it or something later. It’s not like these drop all over the place, so you won’t have a stockpile of them or anything.
Just throw it in the bank and wait for now, IMO.

kiwituatara.6053:

I dont see whats wrong with getting to 300% mf fast~ If he’s found a way to get to 300mf without losing much, why would he not do it?

There’s nothing wrong with doing it. Its to then come here and start asking whats next when I would bet the vast majority of the population isn’t even close to capping.
This is the portion of the MMO playerbase that gets time-gating, gear-treadmills and rushed content put into games because they rush through it as fast as humanly possible, brag about it, then start complaining they have nothing to do and want more.

Ethics.4519:

Are we talking about downed or dead?

In what I said, I was referring to actually dead. Downed players shouldn’t be penalized for trying to get back up, and they are far more easy for other players to get back up than dead ones.

Dee Jay.2460:

2. Laziness during Boss-encounters – While this has always been an issue, the recent Tequatl revamp highlighted this issue. Players have become so accustomed to constant and easy rezzes that they don’t bother to respawn in most encounters. This is problematic in Tequatl due to his strict DPS requirements.

I think this type of behavior does not need to be encouraged. It would also help make open-world bosses more imposing if there’s at least the chance you may have to waypoint.

In the case of open-world encounters, I would like to see a system put in place that if you lay dead for more than, say, 15 secs without any HP regen from someone rezzing you, then you lose credit for the encounter, get no reward and you are no longer a factor in the event (thus bosses not staying scaled up due to corpses who refuse to wp).
In most cases, in the time someone lays there dead for someone else to have an opportunity to try and revive them, they could have WP’d and ran back twice over.

This topic clearly shows whats wrong with the playerbase side of MMO problems. Rush, rush, rush, make bragging topic, then complain they have nothing else for you to do.

if you did it just for bragging rights or something to do, then congrats. But don’t come complaining that there’s nothing else to do with it afterwards when you obviously went out of your way to max MF as soon as possible, presumably by spending coin to do it in such a short timespan. Congrats on all your clicking.

-1 for weapons. They’re just bland IMO. Kind of remind me of prettied up Christmas skins. There’s many Exotic, Rare even Masterwork grade weapon skins that look far better and more impressive.

-1 for armor – going on more than just pics here. Have previewed them in game using the codes that were floating around here not long ago. They’re really ugly, IMO. I’m not even sure what kind of look was being attempted……but it sure isn’t something someone would go fight dragons wearing. Unless those dragons were at some kind of Halloween Spaniard ball and the way to defeat them was to win the most flamboyantly ugly costume contest.

Anyway…they’re not going to change the skins, so you can forget that. Especially when you have the option to change the look yourself.
I’ll be changing pretty well every Ascended I get with trans crystals to Exotic/Rare skins.

Did you check the Chantry of Secrets as mentioned above? It is its own map, with 1 poi.

Whether its needed or not is really irrelevant to the question in the title.
Its a slight increase in stats for BiS gear in the game, thus rendering Exotic as 2nd best (I am not saying obsolete or anything of the sort, only that its 2nd best now).
So…. A slight power-creep, yes.

Convince me to play the game like an elitist snob.

Zlociutki.9165:

Colin what about:

- “New Skill and Traits”
- “New fractals”
- “Ascended Armors”
- “New legendary weapons and backpack” – “On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013”

Are these things also moved to 2014?

Did I miss the last 3 months of 2013? Wow, time flies when you’re jumping to conclusions and getting worked up about stuff before it’s even happened.
Welcome to 2014!!

Devata.6589:

Yeah he did get your comment. However that has nothing to do about the discussion how generating income with micro transactions affects the game in another way that generating income with expansions does.

You want to have a discussion about how to call those models, fine by me but totally not the point in that discussion.

I don’t see what you’re arguing.
They are using the cashshop as a significant source of income. They are also claiming to be introducing as much new content as an expansion via Living Story (Anets claim, not mine). Thereby, by their claim, they are expanding the game and you are not paying for, while also getting people to sustain the game by introducing new luxury cashshop items with each instalment of the Living Story.
In theory, I could see how this model would be more sustainable than a one-time purchase expansion as they are getting this income on a more consistent basis.
A one-time expansion purchase is just that.
If the Living Story becomes more and more permanent content, so much the better as it would help future vanilla box sales. Buy the game at any time during its lifespan and you have access to everything they have released since without needing to buy any expansions. 3 years down the road that could be appealing to people – buy game ‘x’ + 3 expansions or buy game ‘y’ and get all added content included.
There are ways to improve upon this model, IMO, but it seems to be serving them quite well.

GW2 is B2P. You buy the box, you play it. That’s it. This is really inarguable as the cashshop microtransactions are not needed in any way, shape or form to play. Those are completely at the discretion of the player.
I would imagine he mentioned Pay-to-win, because many F2P games generally take this route as they have no box sales and no other source of income, thereby putting things in the cashshop that are needed for endgame to force people to use the chashshop, forcing cashshop income.
Thats the greatest difference between GW2’s B2P model and F2P (B2Win)….Anet has nothing, absolutely nothing, in the cashshop you need to buy to play. Many people, myself included, have not spend a dime in the last year and have actually played the game free since the box purchase.

By not having expansions thus far and providing a free Living Story (whether anyone agrees it is a good thing or not), they are also sticking to being B2P. You are not paying for any new content, its all free for everyone. You are not paying for endgame gear. You are not paying a monthly sub. You are not paying for anything game-altering from the cashshop. You dont not need to use the cashshop at all and can have gone the entire last year without even looking at it.
Just because they throw luxury items in the cashshop does change the fact this game is 100% free to play after the box purchase.

Xcom.1926:

MMOs should make you feel like you have to play them. Not randomly log on here and there. Which is exactly why GW2 has things like dailies and temp content. They want you to log on and have the urge to log on.

Xcom.1926:

But there should be compulsion. There should always be that urge. You should feel like you are missing out or wasting something if you don’t log in.

From the way it sounds you want it, they should just lace the game with nicotine.

I don’t know if you’re wording it wrong or if I’m reading it wrong. They should make the game appealing and fun to play, yes…….but not like a drug as you are making it sound. Its a very wrong turn a game has made if they have to force that addictive quality onto its players to force them to play rather than just having players logging on and enjoying themselves because the content is fun.
If I feel like I’m wasting something in a game because I’m doing something in the real world, then it might be time to reevaluate my life.

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Don’t expect this to be implemented though.

The amount of items in a single item stack is defined by a single byte, and thus is limited to a maximum of 255 (though the game limits stacks to 250, it is possible to alter chat links so it looks like a stack has 255). They’d have to change this to work with two bytes instead… and that’s probably too much work for Anet to handle.

This was an acceptable excuse back when it was Rupees in the original Zelda in 1986. Using this as an excuse now is…..inexcusable. Practically no other game out there is limited by this in any way – other than to fuel cashshop sales for expansions and extensions (which is fine with me and I would gladly pay a reasonable fee for higher capacity).

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Shouldn’t Legendaries inspire more respect in game rather than be called credit card owners?

Not really….
Honestly, I dont give a rats @$$ about how someone got their weapon or how much money they have or how much they love to grind.
All I care is that they know how to use it in the situations they need to, be it dungeons or whatever. If you want any kind of “respect” in a game environment, which is kinda of ridiculous to begin with, earn it by knowing how to play. Not by showing off the flashiness of your Ascended or Legendary.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

~20 Dungeon Paths worth of Empyreal Fragments, or the player is a JP Pro/WvW Pro.*

I parked 5 characters at the end of a JP. I log in once a day to them and loot the chest for an average 40ish Empyreals a day for 10secs total effort switching between them. Am I Pro yet?

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Whatever else you do outside of the game, be it winning the Lottery or becoming King of Burger Kings to pay for the Legendary does not concern GW2.

Isnt it time Arenanet changes that?

No.
This argument does not work. You don’t want to reward people with jobs and higher levels of disposable income…..and instead want to only reward people with alot of free time on their hands?

Neither proves a thing.

Say someone unemployed mooching off the system spends 12 hours a day grinds out an Ascended. Then someone working a real job for 12 hours a day decides to buy a Legendary by charging up his credit card, because he doesn’t have time to grind it.
The premise of this topic says the unemployed guy is better and puts in more effort. Yeah, he put more effort into a game. Guy 2 put more effort into real life and bought his luxury item.

Point is, you can’t judge anyone without knowing how or what they did.

Easiest answer : http://gw2crafts.net/huntsman_450.html

Use the navigation at the top for the profession you want. Site is live and always up to date on current costs of levelling.

I really like some of these ideas for achievements. I’d love to see them and titles for them, especially the Naked DungeonMaster lol

Achievement points have sadly become more or less a joke, with so many tied to zerg-content and fetch type living stories, but additions like these would be great fun.

Tibago.8276:

Its name implies that the number attached to this is the primary indicator of one’s progress and success as a gw2 player.
~snip~
In the meantime, I am trying to pretend that APs don’t exist, just so I don’t get the feeling I am wasting my time with my alts.

Its a matter of perspective. What its name implies and what it actually means are very different. As you say, the lust for AP’s drives people to the LS.
All the AP indicates is the players ability to zerg thru most LS content or how to press F to hunt items down during most Living Stories or can breeze through some of the easier ones to get. While some people attach some kind of player ability to the number, there’s also alot of players who attach zero meaning to it since it really indicates nothing.

And as for wasting time with alts because of lack of AP’s……..again thats a matter of perspective. Farming LS and grinding for AP’s is a waste to someone like me when fun could be had levelling new characters and exploring and making new friends.

Its all open to player perspective.
As for your scenario, what Celestial suggests is probably the best route to go if you want AP’s on alts.

Nope. I have spent $0.00 since the initial purchase.
I realize they use the cashshop as an income source and I also believe they do it alot better than most other MMO’s, offering only luxury and convenience items – so I don’t not use it out of some malice for the cashshop or anything.
There’s just been no reason for me to spend money. Anything I’ve wanted out of the cashshop I used gold-to-gems to buy.

You don’t have to spend globs on earrings. Obviously you are not in a guild that does missions. I have equipped several characters with earrings using only guild commendations. I would recommend that for the time-being. Find a guild that does missions.
I like your people skills as well. Generally not the way to ask for an answer from a company that isn’t entitled to tell you anything at all, if they don’t want to.

Vol.5241:

No.

I think the content provided between an expansion and living story can be equal

Expansion = content all at once
Living Story = gradual progession of content

In the end we get the same amount of content.

I would agree with this…….if the gradual content was of the same quality as expansion would bring. If LS was gradually opening up more maps, adding significant things to the game (like a real story and not this shallow crap they do now) and be more than an AP and backpiece farm, then yes the LS would be ideal. But it not bringing the same content.
LS has to potential to be….but currently feels to me like they’re wasting it on weak additions just for the sake of pushing something out every couple weeks.

My guild does it at least once a day after reset. I just go with them and get it done daily.

On top of that, our server has boss trains (as I’m sure most do) after reset, and usually the next boss for all to go to is linked. Fire Shaman often falls into the zerg train somewhere, usually when nothing else is going to pop for a little bit so theres time to do it without missing something else. This is guildless communication amongst strangers and it getting done. Its not hard to link and direct people to it during the boss train.
If you link it, they will come.

I would rather a big quality expansion. I stopped doing the living story a few updates ago and I’m much happier with the game now. Got tired of the shallow stories, paper-thin characters and silly AP grind. To the point where I was just tired of this game all together. Every 2 weeks is “here’s some AP’s, go farm them and get a backpiece!”.

Ever since I stopped, I made new characters and levelled them the old way, running around and doing events and running into people and talking and doing things with them. The game’s enjoyment has come back for me by ignoring the ridiculous format of the living story.

If it’s like Ascended weapons it will take time, yes. Effort, no. The tasks needed to get these mats take time to do, but require very little actual effort.
There is no big rush to get it because it serves no purpose, unless you are of the small percentage who run very high level fractals (and if they add infusion slots to it). As it stand right now, without infusion slots, the gear has no function and the time to grind out the mats or the money to level professions to 500 and/or buy mats is nowhere near worth the little boost to stats.

Fractals is a very loose excuse for another tier. Its about all you can tie the need for this too…but even then, they didn’t need another tier. An Ascended tier on par with Exotic, but with the additional Infusion slots is all that was needed if you want to argue fractals.

The point of Ascended armor is to prove that acquiring Exotic will still be more than viable after adding a new tier, since Ascended will desperately need to be transmuted with Exotic skins as soon as is possible.

I don’t understand. You can still do the newly added dailies even if you finished 5 previously, afaik. What exactly are you missing out on if that’s the case?
I mean the Aetherblade one obviously, since the WvW one can’t be done at all and has nothing to do with reset. Problems are problems, nothing can done about that one except hope WvW comes back up before reset.

Gibson.4036:

This is the problem with the cash shop, living story, no expansion model.

Perhaps, down the road when they’ve exhausted people willing to buy gems to get a lot of this stuff someone at ANet will look around at a year’s worth of assets no longer making any money and figure out how to bundle it into an xpac for a reasonable price. Then the rest of us can just plunk down a tidy sum to get access to the last year’s worth of goodies without having to participate in the nickle and diming.

This isn’t true. There are MMOs with cashshops that have expansions. This is strictly Anets decision, not of the cashshop model.
They could just as easily stop living story and give us a free expansion every six months with the cashshop income. You can’t claim the cashshop model is the reason why we don’t get expansions when its only because its anets choice to not.
They could also continue on their current model and still put up a pay expansion for yet more income.

If there is to be a cashshop, this is what it should be. Cosmetic luxuries. Skins, hairstyles, minis, and other in game luxuries like bank slots, inventory slots, additonal character slots…..thats what should be in there. Its absolutely nothing you need in any way to play the game. Noone can gain any advantage from cashshop use.
And there’s going to be a cashshop no matter what. Even if they did pay expansions, the cashshop will remain. Anyone who thinks they’d introduce expansion with a fee and drop the cashshop entirely is kidding themselves.
Its there to stay and a mainstay in a vast majority of MMO’s. What you would prefer in it? Being able to buy endgame gear? Lets just put Ascended and Legendaries directly in the cashshop. Fractal backpieces too.

Saying the cashshop stuff isn’t available in game isn’t true either. I have the new hairstyles free twice from free makeover kits. You can also farm and exchange in-game currency for gems.
Willing to farm exotics via whatever method or Ascended or Legendaries or Ap’s every couple weeks, but farming a few gold to buy this is too much?

People always say noone comes to the forums to praise the good stuff, only to complain about the bad. And on the whole people are right. I’ve been more than vocal about the bad changes they’ve made (bad, IMO at least). But I can also be vocal about good changes I see (again, good IMO).

Todays patch had a couple changes I am glad they made:

-Tequatl. People were complaining about this. Reward not worth the effort. There was 2 options here for Anet to take. The one they took, I am glad for. Rather than nerf it back down to the joke world boss it was before, they raised the rewards. Sunless weapons significantly increased (though we’ve yet to see how high). Better rewards from Tequatl himself. Better rewards from the turrets, and you get this chest every time you do, no matter how many a day. Very good, IMO. Also booted AFK people from turrets is very welcome…..and this kind of thing should be added more into events to prevent leeching.

-new TA path. This is mixed good and bad. This looks to be a permanent change to that TA path. On one side, its finally good to see that a Living Story dungeon is going to remain in the game. Content like this should be left behind as permanent additions.
The bad side is the loss of the path it overwrote. The new path should have been a path 4, or at the choice of paths, having the option to run the old one or the new Aetherblade one.

-increased TA rewards. Kind of goes with the above. For the duration of the LS, you get more Empyreal Fragments and dungeon tokens on a run. This is good IMO because you are still earning stuff for the game beyond the LS while doing the LS and not just farming yet another back skin or mini.

These ones stuck out to me the most. I’m sure there’ll be topics about the bad and complaining and I’m sure I’ll contribute to those as well. But some of these changes are ones I like to see.

This was on the forums weeks ago already. The fonts are wrong for one.
The first post was locked and said to be faked, I would expect this one to be as well.

No, guess the focus came about on the crazy amount of clogged slots.

The game will auto-sort these items according to rarity for you, if you want to go that route though. Fractal relics can traded for grade-specific loot bags. Your drops will be sorted into those automatically.
I am assuming we’re talking gear here, since collectibles can be deposited from anywhere and are auto-sorted in the bank.

I have 92 slots on my characters. They are never full. I do dungeons, then empty out. Do meta bosses, then empty out. Why are you hoarding so much stuff? Or rather what are you hoarding?

None were changed that I am aware of. They all seem to have the same duration between windows and the same window lengths they always did. I think its either your perception or your server just has them all spawning at the end of the window they always had, making it seem like it was changed (which would also be perception)

While you can delete this stuff as a viable option, why there isn’t a way to increase collectible storage is beyond me.
I would pay a realistic gem store fee even, to have my storage capacity increased PER SLOT. I don’t want more slots, I want to be able to store 500, 750, 1000 in one slot and would pay for it.

Blude.6812:

Kinda agree, I wish mags like PC gamer would re—review the game after it’s 1st year. I think that it wouldn’t be getting a repeat of the positive review that they 1st presented.

This goes beyond GW2.
I wish all reviews for MMO’s would be taken down and redone annually. They are very rarely the same game originally reviewed and is very misleading information on a game.
Some games you search for reviews on and they’re all 3 years old from back when (insert MMO here) was new. How accurate could that possibly be currently?
Strictly GW2 speaking, I would also like to see the same reviewers who did reviews within the first couple weeks of launch re-review it now a year later.

Skins all the way. Ascended weapons are ugly, IMO. I hold no hope of the armor being appealing. If I ever do get one, it will be transmuted immediatly.
Exotic is still endgame for many people. Some of us are unwilling or refusing to grind one Ascended weapon, let alone for alts or full armor (assuming it follows the same time-gated grind). Exotic is still end of line for me and others.
And also, Ascended changes nothing for gameplay. It was a carrot added for the sake of being a carrot. There’s no content that needs it.
So, IMO, dungeons will remain the same as they ever have and not much need for alot of concern.

I’d actually like to see a scaled dungeon. Or an alternate mode to story and explorable. A ‘light-explorable’ mode. Easier and do-able by 2 or 3 people. Ofc, scale the rewards down as penalty for it being easier.
I would love this as sometimes I’d like to be able to disappear into a run with just a couple really good friends.

No, I would not like to see a dedicated healer class. That being said, I would like to see more ways to support others without being dedicated to healing.

Joreel.9263:

Most are at work, school, or end game areas probably.

What’s an endgame area? Queensdale is a starter area and it has to be close to, if not the, highest populated area of the game.

September would probably see a drop off in a lot of MMO’s though as kids go back to school/college/university. Leaving some holes as people with jobs aren’t on during work hours.
The server I’m on seems to have alot of East Coast players as early morning EST through to early afternoon is far less busy than late afternoon and early evenings when people would be getting home.
In-game time has alot to do with it too. Closer to daily reset and the hours following see alot of people getting on to do dailies and the world boss train farm.

Glad to have inadvertently helped

Stark.1350:

While some people may feel it’s pointless to list things that are done very right in this game

It’s not pointless. The forums have lots of negative feedback, and I voice my complaints over the stuff I don’t like. But I also like some parts of this game and think they are done right. Its never pointless to have good beside the bad.

1 – No race specific classes (I detest this in other games)
2 – Music
3 – Ambient sounds – I’ve gotten a kick out of things NPC’s say in cities. Make the city seem more alive
4 – Dodging – I like being able to control when I evade attacks and not just a chance due to some stat.
5 – World completion – I like there’s rewards, a title and AP’s tied to this. Gets people out in the world.
6 – The wallet – I am amazed this isnt on everyones list by default. Every game needs to look at this wallet and implement the same thing. Incredibly convenient. Best addition they’ve made.
7 – shared farming nodes – again something I detested in other MMO’s where nodes were first-come first-serve.
8 – Everyone can revive – while I think there’s some flaws in the downed state and party dynamic when people die, I think the fact everyone can revive is a good one. Revive being class-dependent isn’t a good model IMO.

Vayne.8563:

People stop playing…how many people? I’m pretty sure Anet has numbers (in fact I know they have, I talked to a dev in game recently and unless he was lying, they have numbers).

Concurrency is up. More players are returning. Some people will leave, but name an MMO that never loses anyone.

Without knowing the numbers, we can’t know what kind of problem this really is.

You can’t question someone elses claim to playerbase going down because of lack of anyone outside the devs knowing and then claim fact that its going up and people are returning while lacking the same information.

MMO’s always have a turnaround rate of players. Neither of you know whether its up or down, or what the reasons for either case are, so neither can claim either case.