Guild Wars 2

Khal Drogo.9631:

Same question can be applied to you. Unless you are Anet you have no idea.

100% right. You don’t know and I don’t know.

The difference here is I can happily admit I don’t know. Some people seem to think they have answers they can’t possibly have.

Now I didn’t come into a thread and say the population is shrinking and I didn’t come into a thread and claim there’s been a mass exodus.

That’s the difference. I’m replying to claims made by others. Threads that are at best guesswork, but stated as some kind of truth. I’m countering that because there’s no way anyone can know.

But I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t raise server caps because the population is shrinking. I haven’t seen mass layoffs as usually happens when that happens to companies. And I do see constant help wanted ads on the Anet website. I’ve seen the financial report from NcSoft and none of it suggests anything out of the ordinary.

When I make a post and claim the population is growing, feel free to reply and tell me I have no proof.

Darkobra.6439:

Nage.1520:

Darkobra.6439:

Arrion.2185:

Guessing none of you have heard about this mythical thing called real life, in which people lose their jobs, maybe internet, go on vacation and leave their games behind, or God forbid have a loss in the family, or tests, and exams to begin cramming for, as the school year draws more quickly to a close.

Happens every day of the year. Doesn’t explain a mass exodus.

Because there hasn’t been one. You have no evidence. WvW is busy pretty much all the time. The same exact thing happened during season one…and back then we didn’t have Edge of the Mists to play in either.

Of course there has been. Every single game has one. It’s not enough to kill off the game but there is a drastic population reduction. To say otherwise is blind faith or lack of experience of previous MMOs.

Also, WvW is busy all the time on… which servers again? There are a few servers that would tell you you’re wrong. The bandwagon jumping to the top three servers that everyone did is why there are such concentrated battles in WvW. You can’t use that to disprove anything.

No, there hasn’t been a “mass exodus”. That implies something abnormal. If you’re talking about normal traffic patterns, that’s not a mass exodus. People and and go all the time. People go and come back. This is normal.

Calling it a mass exodus, then, is at the very least extremely misleading. Do you have numbers of any kind to support this mass exodus? Do you know how many people are playing now as compared to six months ago?

Darkobra.6439:

Arrion.2185:

Guessing none of you have heard about this mythical thing called real life, in which people lose their jobs, maybe internet, go on vacation and leave their games behind, or God forbid have a loss in the family, or tests, and exams to begin cramming for, as the school year draws more quickly to a close.

Happens every day of the year. Doesn’t explain a mass exodus.

Because there hasn’t been one. You have no evidence. WvW is busy pretty much all the time. The same exact thing happened during season one…and back then we didn’t have Edge of the Mists to play in either.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Nage.1520:

Of course TESO has new zones. It’s a new game.

But the idea that the quests weren’t generic just because they were dark and voiced? Absolutely nothing in that game that made me feel like I was playing an elder scrolls game and you know…I’m not the only person who had this problem. A lot of Elder Scrolls fans are equally annoyed.

Err no, it has new zones added after one month of release – not just the zones that were in the release.

As if you weren’t swinging the sword over and over again and mashing the F button in GW2 quests.

I dont really want to discuss ESO on a GW2 forum – but its my honest opinion about that game. I dont know how many people can realistically play two MMOs simultaneously though.

So it had zones added that were programmed before release as part of the main game and didn’t make it into launch. If you think they’re going to keep doing that, not going to happen. You’ll see.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Nage.1520:

I love how people think something “light” is necessarily for younger people. There’s a whole lot of older people who don’t like dark as well. And those people have plenty of money to spend on gaming.

I’d personally prefer a darker storyline, but ESO was so generic, it wasn’t the darker storyline I was looking for.

How is ESO generic? There are so many quests, far more than GW2, involving multiple storylines that are beyond a children’s storybook and deal with mature content and have much more quality voice-acting – not to say GW2 voice acting is bad but its sparser.

As for the"older people with lots of money" to spend on gaming, imagine the cries of righteous indignation if SAB was to be put behind a paywall.

Hayashi.3416:

You must understand that to many new players we’re talking MMORPG vs MMORPG, and they don’t give a crap about GW/TES lore since they’re new to both. Or rather, even if you don’t agree, it doesn’t change their decision making at all.

In such an instance, the king is value-for-money, and because it’s that much more expensive, TESO can’t ever compare with GW2 for that. The people I know here are starting to join GW2, steadily… though my community in itself is slow to join MMORPGs.

Man I am really tired of logging in daily just to craft my mats for ascended daily, or killing Teq daily for months and not see a Sunless weapon, going to COF P1 for the ten thousandth time. Even guild missions become a drag.

Whereas in TESO, new zones and new dungeons are rolled out at the end of month for people who level cap very quickly. This is within the first month of launch. Whatever your criticism of Zenimax, they dont sit on their behind.

Of course TESO has new zones. It’s a new game.

But the idea that the quests weren’t generic just because they were dark and voiced? Absolutely nothing in that game that made me feel like I was playing an elder scrolls game and you know…I’m not the only person who had this problem. A lot of Elder Scrolls fans are equally annoyed.

Morrigan.2809:

Yargesh.4965:

People are very fixed on being part of a group. It does not matter that it is an artificial group of complete strangers, since you are one of them they are better than other artificially created groups. One of the more manipulated aspect of human nature.

Of course it is- this is an MMO, as such self appointed identities/ groups are even more important, because the whole idea is so bizarre.
Anyway our trolls have been disciplined ages ago why should I now have to deal with other people’s unwashed/ stranger trolls :P

Seriously though in GW2 we have a bit of a disconnection from our characters and the world as it is- our servers were really the only thing you could identify with.
Now that is gone
It just feels very alienating to me

I don’t think people on TC will see much of a difference. At least give it a chance before you decide that it’s not good.

bri.2359:

Nage.1520:

I’m telling you that I’m on TC and during the Marionette I couldn’t get on my home server for days on end and it made me feel like crap.

Well Vayne, I can tell ou will have TC all to your self because so many will leave the game after megaserver hits.

Feeling better now??

First, it entertains me no end that so many people think I’m Vayne.

And you know, the sky is always falling, but it hasn’t fallen yet and this update is certainly not going to be the thing to make it fall. You’ll see.

uknortherner.2670:

@Nage: Except, what we’re getting isn’t a global server. I can’t play alongside US players from an EU server. In GW1 I could switch between regions at will and this is not what’s being offered here.

That’s true and that would be an improvement, but according to what’s been said by the devs in the past, it’s not possible due to the server park architecture. However that still doesn’t mean this won’t be an improvement.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Hayashi.3416:

What Gumball said. It’s mathematically impossible for the population of all servers to drop, they only increase or transfer from one world to another. This isn’t a subscription MMORPG.

The population fraction can drop if the capacity is increased. The capacity must be increased because you don’t want a whole group of new players raging on the forums that they can’t join their friends for those worlds being full.

And if anything, people I know are JOINING the game in relatively high numbers, because of how the pricing for TESO turned out – the game they were waiting for at first. Let’s face it, even players who really, really like the TES franchise might feel the game is 3, maybe 5 times better than Guild Wars 2, but for it to be worth the purchase, relative to a 50% discounted GW2, it’d literally have to be 10+ times better than GW2.

That is pretty much impossible.

I played RuneScape for several years, so it’s possible. That said, that was because of the XP malus in F2P – within 14 months of creation a P2P account I simply 99-ed every skill (16 of them in one massive firework party at the end), level capped and quit.

GW2 I’ve level capped for some time, and continue to play.

You are comparing a PG quaggan friendly Living Story franchise to a darker M fantasy franchise filled to the brim with Elder Scrolls lore? Apples and oranges.

Of course, the target market of the former would find the sub fee too expensive. Personally I dont like the sub fee but I dont intend to play every 30 days.

I love how people think something “light” is necessarily for younger people. There’s a whole lot of older people who don’t like dark as well. And those people have plenty of money to spend on gaming.

I’d personally prefer a darker storyline, but ESO was so generic, it wasn’t the darker storyline I was looking for.

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

What you’re asking for OP, is not reasonable. The idea of a megaserver is to control the population. Giving a people a choice to not be a part of a solution to several problems in the game is not really an option.

Some changes are made for the good of the game whether individual players like those changes or not. Allowing them to opt out of something that’s good for the game isn’t really an option.

The amount of servers that Anet now spawns and maintains to maintain the entire population takes server processor power. The more servers, the more the whole system has to handle. By using something like the megaserver system, less servers over all will be spawned.

That means that the system will run more smoothly (in theory anyway).

But people who say they don’t like the new system have never tried the new system in the first place. My prediction is is that most people will adjust to it and enjoy it.

Bottom line is, it’s not reasonable for Anet to make changes to the game on this level and still maintain the old system, because it would defeat at least part of the purpose for the change.

And yet the system we have now has been put in place by them and sustained for almost 2 years.

Don’t tell me it is good for the game.

The mega server is not something I have ever seen people asking for.
Underflows yes (and like overflows you can still be in your map server)

It is not reasonable fostering server identities for 2 years and then taking that away for the sake of what?
Even the name megaserver makes me shudder.

I’m telling you it is good for the game. If it wasn’t good for the game Anet wouldnt’ be doing it.

You’ve tried it? You have evidence it’s not good for the game?

As for people not asking for it, well, a lot of people HAVE asked for this. There’ve been suggestions about this sort of thing for over a year now.

Sorry that you don’t personally like it, but that doesn’t mean that many or most people don’t.

you haven’t tried it either

people have been asking for a solution to empty maps ( i.e underflows)
they did not ask for their servers to be destroyed.

Are you going to pretend to me that come tomorrow it will not be meaningless that I rolled on GH in beta?

That I will not now be lumped together with whatever the mega server decides is good for me- without being able to choose myself?

That whatever criteria the server system uses would be like my own?

no?
thought not.

How is this good for the game exactly?

I tell you now- if it is half as bad as I suspect I cannot see myself playing much if at all, and I love this game make no mistake.
I will not sit by and watch my world being taken over by Wallmart, or whatever generic bulk is better philosophy spawned this idea.

I’m telling you that I’m on TC and during the Marionette I couldn’t get on my home server for days on end and it made me feel like crap. And you know, there may very well have been just as many TC guys in my overflow, but it had the word overflow on it and guess what. People complained. This is one of the complaints that this sort of change will fix.

I haven’t tried the new system (and if I had I couldn’t tell you…but I haven’t). But logically, from a programming point of view it has to be better for the servers. There’s no way I can think that it would be worse for the servers.

It MAY be bad for a small percentage of players that OMG love their server. However, I played Guild Wars 1 for a long long time and never had a server.

We built a global community instead.

That’s what should have been here from the beginning.

Morrigan.2809:

Nage.1520:

What you’re asking for OP, is not reasonable. The idea of a megaserver is to control the population. Giving a people a choice to not be a part of a solution to several problems in the game is not really an option.

Some changes are made for the good of the game whether individual players like those changes or not. Allowing them to opt out of something that’s good for the game isn’t really an option.

The amount of servers that Anet now spawns and maintains to maintain the entire population takes server processor power. The more servers, the more the whole system has to handle. By using something like the megaserver system, less servers over all will be spawned.

That means that the system will run more smoothly (in theory anyway).

But people who say they don’t like the new system have never tried the new system in the first place. My prediction is is that most people will adjust to it and enjoy it.

Bottom line is, it’s not reasonable for Anet to make changes to the game on this level and still maintain the old system, because it would defeat at least part of the purpose for the change.

And yet the system we have now has been put in place by them and sustained for almost 2 years.

Don’t tell me it is good for the game.

The mega server is not something I have ever seen people asking for.
Underflows yes (and like overflows you can still be in your map server)

It is not reasonable fostering server identities for 2 years and then taking that away for the sake of what?
Even the name megaserver makes me shudder.

I’m telling you it is good for the game. If it wasn’t good for the game Anet wouldnt’ be doing it.

You’ve tried it? You have evidence it’s not good for the game?

As for people not asking for it, well, a lot of people HAVE asked for this. There’ve been suggestions about this sort of thing for over a year now.

Sorry that you don’t personally like it, but that doesn’t mean that many or most people don’t.

Ever tried to farm for a Polar Bear mini in Guild wars 1?

I didn’t think so.

Every single time Anet runs a sale on Guild Wars, they raise the population cap. Every, time.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen this thread and it won’t be the last. Servers don’t spontaneously drop like that on all servers over night.

Anet raised the cap so new people could get into the servers they want.

What you’re asking for OP, is not reasonable. The idea of a megaserver is to control the population. Giving a people a choice to not be a part of a solution to several problems in the game is not really an option.

Some changes are made for the good of the game whether individual players like those changes or not. Allowing them to opt out of something that’s good for the game isn’t really an option.

The amount of servers that Anet now spawns and maintains to maintain the entire population takes server processor power. The more servers, the more the whole system has to handle. By using something like the megaserver system, less servers over all will be spawned.

That means that the system will run more smoothly (in theory anyway).

But people who say they don’t like the new system have never tried the new system in the first place. My prediction is is that most people will adjust to it and enjoy it.

Bottom line is, it’s not reasonable for Anet to make changes to the game on this level and still maintain the old system, because it would defeat at least part of the purpose for the change.

There was plenty of notice about glory and the glory vendors are still there at this second, so you could spend the stuff right now. What you can’t do right now is earn more glory. This includes the new glory vendor where the armor guys are.

Right now, those in SPvP weren’t able to get rewards that other formats of the game are getting. The rewards in SPvP will be better, not worse. Most PvPers I’ve talked to agree this update will be a boon to them.

And I’d wager we’d see a renewed interest in PvP due to the reward system being revamped with PvP people should also appreciate.

Likewise there will be a ton of skins you can get more easily without using the mystic forge from this point out, so it doesn’t matter if your RNG mystic forge mats are going to waste. Mine did too. What we have here is an improvement in the number of things you can unlock and use an PvP, quite easily I might add.

And because you get coin and levels from PvP you can advance your character now.

The only one of your complaints which I’d say has some merit is the trait point doodad, but to be honest, it’s something you got out of a black lion chest.

Which if you’re a PvPer was worthless to you anyway.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

How is it bad? The only “arguments” I’ve seen so far amount to

1. It might annoy me
2. Vague handwaving about how it might be “bad” for the game while conveniently ignoring the fact that every addition to the game might bring in some perceived negatives. Like supposed “elitists” with fractals, easier dungeon kicking and selling with LFG, and griefers/spies with WvW. Not a valid reason to not add something to the game.

If they implement it correctly, it won’t even affect you, but you have to be willing to use the tools they provide. Duelers usually congregate in a couple of areas, with few duels happening elsewhere in the open world. If it offends you so much, don’t go to that one area.

Dueling will scale up events, even though the people dueling don’t participate in the event. The game was NOT designed for it.

infantrydiv.1620:

Dueling anywhere in the game would be a great addition for the reasons listed by TamTiTam.

The only prerequisite needed would to have a ’Duel Requests On/Off" button, which was automatically set to off for brand new players.

Two people dueling near an event would scale up the event even if they weren’t participating. That means less people doing a harder event, because two people choose to dual there.

That’s not acceptable. The areas in which you duel should not have events for this reason.

chemiclord.3978:

DDCarvalho.2071:

I don’t know what are the developers reasons for not implement dueling, but there are probably some. Like:
- Ability for a third party to “tamper” with the duel by giving boons to one of the parties, or kiting a mob against the other party.
- They could avoid the 1st scenario by locking both characters from receiving boons that are not from “self”, but it can be complicated depending of how the game is coded.
- To avoid the 2nd scenario (mob kiting) they could make a “closed zone” that stops people or mobs that getting into the “duel arena”, but this “closed zone” could be used to tamper with events and making them much easier or impossible to complete.

One way to solve both problems is to include a little Duel arena in most maps so people can use it without tampering, but this option would create its own problems.
- Many people want to duel in Queensdale! So one duel arena is not enough. How many then?
-Where will we put the duel arena in map X? Where does it make sense, lore-wise?

So, with each problem, we get closer to the current solution, which is: small battles in PvP and large battles in Obsidian Sanctum.
- Hey, another idea! When people choose to duel, they are transported to a PvP mini-map instance for dueling that is quite like a Jubilee arena. Other people can right click the duelers and be transported as expectators.

I think that if people come up with a solution that solves arising problems in an elegant way, it makes it easier to the devs to implement it.

As I’ve said before, I would have no problem with specifically designed dueling arenas. I wouldn’t even have a problem with such arenas in the open world. I just really don’t like the idea of free-for-all open world dueling because I’ve seen the sort of behavior it causes, and they aren’t positive experiences. Considering the entire design point of GW2’s open world is supposed to be cooperation, open world dueling runs contrary to that.

I agree with this completely.

Algreg.3629:

Nage.1520:

Algreg.3629:

who are you to decide how the game is to be played? Do what you want, block people getting mad at you, let them do what they want.

Letting people do what they want does NOT include allowing them to verbally abuse people.

indeed, hence the report function that is usable by everyone…

The problem is that when you have to report someone for acting badly it can impact your enjoyment in the game.

It’s really nice that some people can just ignore what’s being said to them. Some people can’t…or can’t as easily. I’m happy to ignore anything anyone says to me, because I don’t give a kitten ..but I recognize there are people who do, who are affected by verbal abuse.

Reporting them after the fact doesn’t excuse them for doing it and doesn’t mean that game mechanics that encourage that behavior should remain in the game.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

chemiclord.3978:

Dusty Moon.4382:

You can setup your own PvP arena for Dueling – Invite the person, DONE.

People want open world dueling so that they can be irritants. They want to be able to harass others and flex their kittens. They want to roll flavor of the month dueling builds, play their scissors and specifically hunt down their paper to cut, then crow about how awesome they are.

Otherwise, they’d be fine with specific arenas where they could easily find other people like them. But that would mean they’d actually have to fight other people who are built for dueling… and well, they can’t have THAT.

That Goldshire example I mentioned earlier? There’s a reason that dueling crowd hangs out in a low-level zone, and it’s not because it’s easy to find others duelists. It’s so that they can harass “easy marks”, low level players who are either new to the game or new to a certain class and might not know everything about it.

Straight up untrue. Sorry you had a bad experience that one time.

People hang out there because it’s right outside a major city.

Anyway, I suggest you stop worrying about how other play and whether or not they choose to duel. It’s really none of your business.

It’s my business if it affects me, and it affected me. I don’t really care if I can block people in chat or not. It’s obnoxious to have some teenage cretin badmouthing me in local chat because I refuse to duel him. It’s not why I play games. And yes, I did block him, but I still find it obnoxious.

This is the kind of player that dueling invites to the community. It ruins the community not just for me, but for the dozens of others who feel like I do. This isn’t something we made up inconvenience people. We feel this way due to our experience with players like that. Same with open world PvP.

Sure, I can ignore them. But they don’t make the game more fun for me, and they DO affect some people a lot more than they affect me. I’d probably rather have the affected people to play with than the griefers.

So I say no to dueling.

Algreg.3629:

who are you to decide how the game is to be played? Do what you want, block people getting mad at you, let them do what they want.

Letting people do what they want does NOT include allowing them to verbally abuse people.

That would concern me too! LMAO!

I have over 700 I should be getting.

Go to the black lion weapon vendor. You can exchange your soul bound logging tools for account bound versions there for free.

Ignore them. If they get abusive, report those that are.

Most of the train is all right. It’s just a few bad apples. Don’t let the bad apples influence your judgement about everyone who runs in the train.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Nage.1520:

Dueling isn’t fun. Dueling is annoying. It’s particularly annoying in a game that was never meant to be balanced for 1v1. Guild Wars 2 was balanced around 5v5.

So dueling would just open up large numbers of people complaining about how unbalanced the game is.

We already know it’s unbalanced.

Don’t like dueling? Then don’t duel.

That’s exactly what I do. I don’t duel. And neither does anyone else.

However, attracting people who love dueling and stuff like open world PvP is precisely the sort of thing that makes the atmosphere so toxic on other games.

The features in this game in PvE were designed to be cooperative. That’s the design sensibility of the game. I’m pretty sure if this was some major priority we’d have seen it already.

Dueling isn’t fun. Dueling is annoying. It’s particularly annoying in a game that was never meant to be balanced for 1v1. Guild Wars 2 was balanced around 5v5.

So dueling would just open up large numbers of people complaining about how unbalanced the game is.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Evalia.7103:

First of all:
Try improving your character.
I’m so totally sure you aren’t using a potion of undead slaying, not to mention any food at all. Maybe even, your gear is lackluster, greens at level 60 when you are 75.
After that, Orr is going to become much more populated after April 15th(theoretically)…

I thought gear didn’t matter in this game?

No one said gear didn’t matter at all. Everyone has said gear has far less importance than it does in most MMOs. Guys first character, first time in Orr, on an ele, one of the hardest to play professions, sure gear is going to matter.

However, if he can’t beat it in exotic he won’t likely beat it in ascended either.

Town clothes and outfits are actually now equivalent, it’s just people don’t want them to be.

If you were Anet, would you really keep the old one AND introduce a new one? I’m not sure that makes sense. Think long term.

Two, three, four years from now,. what’s the real benefit to keeping the old system, when a new one is replacing it?

Don’t forget some of that stuff in your traits will be changing on the 15th!J Possibly runes and sigils too.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Nage.1520:

It’s a big world. If you’re new to the game, you’re probably in a starter area. If you had finished most of the content, is that where you see yourself hanging out?

This is a problem with most MMOs. You have to get to end game areas (or at least places were people congregate) to find most people. No MMO I’ve played has people in all zones.

That said, there are busier servers and less busy ones but after the 15th things should pick up. In the mean time, try guesting to Tarnished Coast if you’re on a US server, and you’ll probably find more people in the open world.

FFXIV actually figured a way to fix that problem.

In the current patch, you have to go from map to map doing random Fates(events) that pop up for the rare reward chance that it will drop an book specific to that map. The drop rate is that equal to trying to get the Jetpack from way back during the Molten Facility era of the game. You need to collect 12 of these books to get a powerful weapon. Its not the top tier either, but its required for going for the top tier stuff.

My brother has been farming non-stop for these books since the patch release, which I believe was either really late march or early april, not sure, but he currently has 10 of them, last night he got lucky and jumped from like 4 or 5 to 10.

Ascended crafting works similar in this sense, because they expected players to go back to lower level stuff to get the mats required for it. Instead people use the TP and just stick to the endgame. If they had something similar to this, IE going from event to event in a map to earn items required to craft top tier stuff, with a really rare drop rate, you would see more people going for it. That’s currently what’s happening in FFXIV after all.

Player’s don’t have a big enough incentive to all the lower level events(not just champion farming), and thus maps can and will look like this. The feature patch is an attempt to fix this by putting people in a map with more people, but those people could be champ farmers and thus the zergs would just get bigger but you would still probably not see as many people.

You can have everyone in the game in one map, but if there’s no incentive to do an event, people are going to ignore it.

There are 25 zones in this game. There are dungeons, WvW, fractals, and SPvP. There are meta events that draw people in crowds and at times living story.

No matter how much incentive you give, if you don’t focus the people, you still won’t have enough people in the open world to make it feel populated. It’s more than just a traffic control problem.

That’s what made the living story successful. People are herded together and they see other people.

Make the world rewarding all over and it wouldn’t solve this problem (unless the world were a lot smaller).

Invictus.1503:

The schedule makes me sad. I play every night for about 2-3 hours at the same time all the time. Right now I can face most of the world events, and if I don’t get a chance one night, I almost always the next. Multiple bosses running at the same time helps me choose where I want to go. With this system I will only ever see the same old boss events and will rarely get to see any other.

Population has never been an issue for me as I’m on TC and there are always people around. Granted this is not the case for everybody, but the way I see it, for servers like mine we are actually lowering the quality of life

Only if you take meta events into account and nothing else. There are plenty of times on TC I’m on low pop zones that don’t have meta events, because I play at weird hours.

Even on TC this will be a quality of life upgrade for me.

Paulytnz.7619:

Dusty Moon.4382:

A.Net can put money into Cinematics or game play. Look at SWTOR – that was all Cinematics not game play.

It is hard to have both when they are both drains on finances and resources.

Yet they managed to do it for GW 1, your post here is flawed I am sorry to say….

Actually you can’t really compare. In Guild Wars 1, everyone had the same story. So you had, say in Prophecies, 25 scenes, all up, and everyone saw the same scene.

What you have here at launch is 50 personal story quests PER PERSON, but not 50 personal story quests that are the same. There are literally hundreds of personal story quests.

So Prophecies usually had 2 cinematics for every mission or roughly all up 50 cinematics.

Guild Wars 2 would have required hundreds and hundreds of cinematics. Three for each race for the first 10 levels means 15 cinematics just till you get to level 10 (minimum I believe there are forks in the road even there), and then another 15 by the time you get to level 20.

It’s not cost effective to create that many cinematics. SWToR is by far the most expensive MMO ever made, and a lot of the money went to voice acting and cinematics.

I know lots of people like to say they did this in Guild Wars 1 so it should be possible here, but that’s simply not always the case. Aside from that, I’m pretty sure a lot of the stuff done during the Guild Wars 1 era was a lot cheaper as well. I’m pretty sure the price of voice acting in games has gone through the roof.

It’s a big world. If you’re new to the game, you’re probably in a starter area. If you had finished most of the content, is that where you see yourself hanging out?

This is a problem with most MMOs. You have to get to end game areas (or at least places were people congregate) to find most people. No MMO I’ve played has people in all zones.

That said, there are busier servers and less busy ones but after the 15th things should pick up. In the mean time, try guesting to Tarnished Coast if you’re on a US server, and you’ll probably find more people in the open world.

I’ve leveled every profession. If you’re dying in PvE, the problem isn’t the game’s. Maybe you don’t strafe enough, maybe you’re just standing there trying to tank shots, but there’s very little reason, most of the time, to die in open world PvE (unless you’re trying to solo champions).

Try moving around more to avoid being hit, and not biting off more than you can chew. Or try playing one of the easier professions.

Later cinematics, as in the ones from the living world content, don’t use the same type of cinematics that the personal story does. I can understand why Anet did this.

They make one set of cinematics for everyone in the Living World. There were far too many combinations of personal story for them to do this in time and in budget.

I seriously suspect the personal story is a done deal that isn’t going to change much, with the possibly exception of the storymode Arah dungeon.

Look up some of the newer cinematics on youtube and you’ll see Anet has already moved away from these.

Every time someone suggests dueling,. half the people in the thread say no, they don’t want it in game. The game was designed for PvE to be COOPERATIVE and PvP to be competitive.

Go kill all the people you want in WvW…go roam and kill everybody, but frankly dueling in PvE will only accentuate how the game was never supposed to be balanced for 1v1 fights in the first place.

Vash Past.4385:

I still don’t get why there isn’t a dedicated server for those that DO want PvP enabled in the world. No-one would have to go there if they didn’t want to? No, WvW doesn’t count, that’s just big bunches of players running into other big bunches and Doors. So many stupid doors and catapults and whatnot… no skill required there.

Because it would mean more work for the devs, who would then have to fix bugs on two different types of servers.

I guess it would be great if they could just flip a switch and make it so and that the PvP population would then never complain about anything and never request changes or fixes.

But having all the servers with the same rules means bug fixes are easier. Making something for a small percentage of the playerbase to use probably isn’t the best use of dev time.

Xiem.4719:

It’s not that great in PVE aswell. Before patch you needed 6 transmutation stones to change your outfit up to lvl 79, now you will need to use 18 [3:1 ratio, and i’m sure map completition will give you 1 charge, not 3]. Sorry, but this is just money grab, nothing more :/

Logically speaking, most people will only spend a tiny percentage as each character pre 80. Meaning that right now I have a bunch of level 80s and most of them have been level 80 a long longer than they were 1-79.

With the exception of RPers and really slow levelers, it takes about a month to level casually. So if you play the game for a year, you have 11 months of being level 80 and 1 month of being level 1-79.

I’ve seen complaints on these very forums about people who have a boatload of transmutation stones and nothing at all to do with them. I personally have over 300 transmutation stones, sitting there, doing nothing. That’ll give me 100 charges.

Where you see a cynical cash grab, I see free charges for my level 80s.

Somehow, Max, I don’t think you get the game. You see, many of us left games that lead you around by the nose and say today we do this raid. Now we do this raid. This new raid is coming out and this is what we do. If we want that kind of claptrap there are plenty of games we can go to.

If you mean there’s not enough content, well, there’s never enough content in any game. You run out of content no matter what game you play. Old content is old and no one wants to do it. New content is old in 3 months and no one wants to do it. That’s how most games are.

So you have to like the stuff that’s there….in Guild Wars 2’s case that would be dungeons, minigames, fractals, world bosses, temples, world complete, WvW and SPvP.

And the living story when that starts up again.

For a year and a half old game, there’s really quite a lot to do. If it’s not that you personally want to do, well, that tells us as much about your play style as it does about the game itself.

Am I for more content? Sure. But this game won’t have open PvP, and dueling is dueling. It’s not really more to do. You can always go duel in SPvP if you want, since people have set up dueling arenas there.

It’s one of those features that a handful of people use after it’s new and most people ignore afterwards.

Open world PvP…never going to happen in the game. There are plenty of games you can go to that offer it.

LostSQ.4967:

tolunart.2095:

There is absolutely no reason for customer support to lie to you about what happened. Assuming your account wasn’t hacked and the gold stolen by someone without your knowledge, you made a mistake and sent gold instead of silver. It happens, but at this point there’s nothing you can do about it.

I can agree with you that there is no reason for customer support to lie to me, but what they see on their side might not be accurate. To assume their system is perfect and can’t be flawed is a huge mistake.

Right now I fully understand that I won’t be getting any of my gold back whither I did or did not send the gold and I accept that.

The purpose of this thread is to try and convince their team and the community that a confirmation message for sending coin is necessary and when sending any mail there should be an outbox informing the user of who they sent their message to, and what items/coins were included.

I just don’t want to see any fellow players experience losing half of their gold and being told it was their fault without any prove on their side. I can only hope a dev sees this thread and decides to take action in favor of the players.

I’m not sure why you think your memory of something you may have done in error might be better than Anet’s record of what actually happened. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

If Anet said you sent gold, then it’s extremely like you sent gold.

It’s an annoying thing to have happen for sure. But I’m not sure a window saying yes I’m sure would stop most of that stuff from happening.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up. That is all. Hype is what ruins half of what this game does. Why would anyone set themselves up for that again?

Khal Drogo.9631:

Escadin.9482:

I don’t think many people really miss the grind. That’s like saying they miss going to the dentist :/

The reward system in GW2 is weird. You go from zero to exo within 5-7 days, but any step further requires weeks to months of grind, for a tiny portion of the reward you got before. Everyone is rubberbanded to the same level. While this is good for casual play, it leaves little room for challenges or personal improvement.
Furthermore there is a lack of horizontal progression, too. Once you’ve seen all dungeons and learned how to play your (unfortunatly) meta build there isn’t much left to aspire.

They could have tried to dedicate a part of their game to each part of their community. However, for fear of splitting them apart they went for a merge attempt that instead will make them lose all except the casuals part eventually.

Furthermore there is a lack of horizontal progression, too. I agree with this part the rest not so; you forgot learning how to play all 8 professions though. Anet took a positive step in that direction when they released new sigils and runes such as perplexity but not much since then. What meta builds are there except for DPS in PvE even with the upcoming crit damage nerf?

In relation to DPS and the need for ascended, I forgot to mention one important thing – doing enough DPS to world bosses / champs as to be able to collect their loot before other ascended warriors melts them

How would it take you 5-7 days to be geared in exotic without reaching lvl 400 in crafting is beyond me since it takes quite a lot of tokens for exo gear now that tokens are capped daily. Crafting to 400 is quite a grind as well because u need the mats or the G for mats esp now that lower tier mats increased in prices thanks to ascended.

I think a lot of people misuse the term casual a lot – some people think it includes people who puts in thousands of hours but isnt as skillful or inclined to solo Lupi. Whereas I would term casual players who spend not more than 10hr per week on the game who would be turned off by the grind, the obnoxious 1337ists who reside in the halls of CoE or the lack of new good content in general.

Nage.1520:

I’m not sure why you think you can’t DPS stack to get the kill. That makes no sense. Particularly because we were DPS stacking before ascended armor and weapons came out.

And in some pugs it still fails due to lack of DPS if they don’t play warrior/thief/ele.

And for a Mystic Forging long time, the LFG tool was not up because some people thought it would “destroy” the GW2 community. I think these guys never PUG at all which would explain why some would feel that the game is too easy / you dont need good gear etc etc.

I’d love to see a quote where you get the idea that anyone thought the LFG tool would destroy the Guild Wars 2 community. I certainly never saw Anet say that’s why it wasn’t up.

More to the point, in other games, where you were locked to a server, people complained about cross server LFG tools. In this game, where we had an extenal site that got people together anyway and it didn’t matter what server they were on…well…I don’t see how anyone could think an LFG tool would change much of anything.

See, you make an assumption and you present it as fact. I haven’t wiped on the spider queen in a very very long time, and that’s with people without ascended gear. Maybe some pugs don’t stack in the very corner and they allow her to use her AOE from a distance, and that’s why you’re getting wipes. It’s not because people don’t have ascended gear.

In any event, make another thread to debate this if you want because it’s pretty much off topic at this point.

Titan Cronus.9216:

Nage.1520:

Snip

The problem arose because of the ORIGINAL implementation of town clothes, which was an unnecessary layer of creation….a 4th class of clothing. Three armor types and town clothes was a forth. That wasn’t sustainable in any sense of the word.

Snip

Im just going to quote something I said in an earlier post on this thread to save me a little time by not writing it out again. : )

Titan Cronus.9216:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Clothing was meant to offer visual options that break the class roles, however we were never completely happy with the way it was isolated from the rest of the game and still felt largely the same.

But thats exactly what was perfect about it. Thats EXACTLY how it should be.

Look, if im a welder (which I am), I wear overalls and a mask to work. A fitness trainer might wear a tracksuit and trainers and a stock broker might wear a suit and tie.
But, when we all get home, we all wear the same casual clothes. Ok, I know thats not a perfect example because we all wear different casuals but you get my point, We all have work clothes specific to our profession (same as the armour class in game) but we all wear the same non-profession-specific clothes after work. You get what Im getting at.

The Town Clothes function was (or is as it stands at the moment) amazing. It does exactly what it says on the tin. A forth armour class that all characters can wear while not at work (in combat). The only problem is that there are not enough activities, games and events to do in them.

In contrast, I would make the oppersite argument that: the ORIGINAL implementation of town clothes was a completely necessary layer of creation….a 4th class of armour. Three combat armor types and town clothes, the forth. That was perfectly sustainable in every sense of the word.

We are a good example of complete oppersite opinions in this topic, Nage. ; )

I’m not talking about what you’re talking about. Think of it from a creation point of view.

The way that it was laid out, you couldn’t fight in town clothes. So what percentage of the playerbase would consider investing in it? I don’t have an answer, but I’ve seen quite a few threads complaining about town clothes on these forums saying people wouldn’t buy them because of the limited use they’d get out of them.

Now, Anet has to take an artist, and make those town clothes for five races. During that time, they’re making stuff only for the small percentage of people who might by it to stand around in DR or LA. That’s the real problem.

If they make a piece of armor, you can buy it AND I can buy it. If it’s a fourth type of armor, they lose sales and they won’t invest artist time in something that isn’t going to work out financially for them.

I mean, why did the discontinue all those town clothes permanently? Because people were buying them? I don’t think that’s the case.

The problem is that it’s not worth it for Anet to make that extra class and you’ll never get another piece of town clothes again?

Are you really of the opposite opinion? Do you really think that you’d be happy keeping your own townclothes the old way and never getting anything new for it?

Because I’m pretty sure that’s the choice.

Oh yeah, I just thought, if you belong to a guild that’s not on your server and want to WvW with them, that’s another reason…but not for PvE.

If you’re heavy into WvW and you’re not happy with the server you’re on, it’s possibly worth the transfer. If you’re mostly doing PvE and don’t care about WvW, I don’t believe it’s worth transferring.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Nage.1520:

I’ve beaten every single dungeon in this game without ascended gear. Every single path of every single dungeon. I’m not even 100% positive I had full exotics in most of them.

Arguing just to argue is pointless. You can do the dungeons just fine without ascended gear. If you don’t want to grind for it, take your time and get a piece at a time as you get stuff for it from playing. That’s what I’m doing.

In the mean time I’m STILL running dugneons.

Those who are leaving this game because there’s a “gear treadmill” don’t know what a gear treadmill is.

No one comes back to Rift after a year away and does the current content with the gear they have.

Sure u could do it in guild groups. Its a matter of how long and how many times before you can get through. In Pugs you need every bit of advantage you can get for the more difficult content such as higher level fractals (when they were new) – otherwise there would be no such thing as RQ which I experienced plenty mostly by teammates in the thousands of PuG runs I have been on.

The only possible reason why people dont need gear is by now everyone found out the most easy tactic which doesnt require DPS for 2 year old content.

Ashen.2907:

Nage.1520:

You can do the dungeons just fine without ascended gear.

Certainly a valid opinion.

Sure killing the spider in AC in rares will take a longer time and risk possible failure since you cant DPS stack to victory.

I’m not sure why you think you can’t DPS stack to get the kill. That makes no sense. Particularly because we were DPS stacking before ascended armor and weapons came out.

If you’re talking about heirlooms and found belongings, you can delete them.

Blade Shards, however, you should save. A merchant is on the way for those.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Nage.1520:

If you’re speed running you might make it in 8 minutes. Non-speed run groups in my guild make it in 12. That’s with people who don’t do dungeons hardly ever, mind you and aren’t geared in ascended gear.

The thing is, it’s meaningless.

I can run dungeons ten minutes faster.

In other games you can’t run dungeons and raids at all if you don’t gear for it. That’s why it’s a treadmill. You need the gear from the last raid to do the next raid. That’s what very definition of treadmill.

I have guys gone from this game for a year, come back and jump into dungeons with us.

The treadmill exists in the minds of those who haven’t yet realized they’re not playing one of the old style MMOs. It doesn’t exist in Guild Wars 2.

Dungeons such as COF P1 and SE P1. You don’t need tokens or G for legendaries or for buying skins off TP or for gems exchange – its up to the individual. But people do it anyway.

Well some guild challenges do require u to have DPS – sucks to be in a guild with 30 people all wearing rare gear who play 10 hrs per month in GW2 when the event scales up to 30 ppl.

I’ve beaten every single dungeon in this game without ascended gear. Every single path of every single dungeon. I’m not even 100% positive I had full exotics in most of them.

Arguing just to argue is pointless. You can do the dungeons just fine without ascended gear. If you don’t want to grind for it, take your time and get a piece at a time as you get stuff for it from playing. That’s what I’m doing.

In the mean time I’m STILL running dugneons.

Those who are leaving this game because there’s a “gear treadmill” don’t know what a gear treadmill is.

No one comes back to Rift after a year away and does the current content with the gear they have.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Nage.1520:

Khal Drogo.9631:

Nage.1520:

Call it everything you want. Ascended gear is not a gear treadmill. For one thing, in games with a gear treadmill, you have to have that gear to advance in the game. Anet made one piece of content of all the content that would in theory REQUIRE grind. That would be FoTM. They did this because early on people were leaving the game in droves, because they had nothing to work for. It’s the purpose of agony.

Aside from that, what dungeon can you do in ascended gear that I can’t do in rares?

At least 10 min faster in organized groups all decked out and better carrying ability in PUGs.

Better? How much better? Ten minutes faster? I’d say that’s completely wrong. I don’t think it’s ten minutes faster. Are you saying that we can run CoF in 12 minutes on a relatively casual pug and you can run it in 2 minutes?

I don’t think so. Maybe ten minutes faster for the longest dungeon in the game, assuming everyone has maxed out everything, no one makes any mistakes, and nothing unexpected happens.

But you know, since the dungeons haven’t been rebalanced for ascended gear, exotic uses do just fine.

Do you really think you run SE path 1 ten minutes faster than I do? lol

There are dungeons other than COF P1 and SE P1 which most avoid – why is that pray tell? If the rest of my pug was wearing rares, good luck DPSing down SE P1. A casual organized group with BiS can probably do it in 8 min a bad PUG with bad gear can probably take more than 18.

If you’re speed running you might make it in 8 minutes. Non-speed run groups in my guild make it in 12. That’s with people who don’t do dungeons hardly ever, mind you and aren’t geared in ascended gear.

The thing is, it’s meaningless.

I can run dungeons ten minutes faster.

In other games you can’t run dungeons and raids at all if you don’t gear for it. That’s why it’s a treadmill. You need the gear from the last raid to do the next raid. That’s what very definition of treadmill.

I have guys gone from this game for a year, come back and jump into dungeons with us.

The treadmill exists in the minds of those who haven’t yet realized they’re not playing one of the old style MMOs. It doesn’t exist in Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 1, as successful as it was, remained a niche game because it was too hard for a lot of people. They couldn’t figure it out. They couldn’t make a build to save their lives.

Anet intentionally changed that system so that people wouldn’t have bad builds. That was the point of linking skills to weapons.

If you make it hard enough for guys like me to enjoy, you’ll end up with less people playing, which isn’t the best business model to fund an ambitious project like Guild Wars 2.

I’d personally welcome more build diversity and a lot of other people would as well. And I think in time that will come.

But going the Guild Wars 1 route is probably a mistake.