Guild Wars 2

I sort of think you’re missing the point. They have their end game fixed up,. except for people who are insisting what end game is/should be. Plenty of people are playing a lot of content on 80th level characters.

People seem to be laboring under the assumptions that most people like dungeons and raids, but that’s not actually ever been proven.

Anet has been doing stuff in the open world. Some of that stuff stays, but most of that stuff goes.

For example, the new Tequatl and Wurm fights are giant open world event that require some organization. The new path of Twilight Arbor is one of the harder dungeon paths in the game, and better than most of the other dungeons from my perspective.

The new jumping puzzle in Gendarran is pretty hard too.

But the stuff that’s really been happening, for a lot of people, is the living story.

The game has become pretty achievement centric. If you like getting achievements, you’ll probably like it more than if you don’t.

There’s all sorts of ways to farm since you left. Champs now drop champ bags, dungeons give at least 1 g guaranteed (in explorable mode), there are five new Fractals, but somehow, on the living story update days, I end up in overflows for a week.

Someone is playing the game.

RoyalPredator.9163:

No it won’t break My bank, but it seems like a straight ripoff

A ripoff is when you buy something and don’t know what you’re getting. Make the decision to buy it, or don’t make the decision to buy it. I bought the halo, but not the horns. Halo looks fine on my character.

If you don’t like how it looks, don’t buy it. Simple enough. I don’t see this as a game changer.

Platforming.7102:

Lishtenbird.2814:

tl;dr: buff all players, nerf all monsters, make gemstore free!

Or, more accurately, “Lets suggest a few adjustments which have the potential to increase the amount of fun people have. That’s what games are for.”

tl;dr indeed.

A couple of years ago, I’d have agreed with this. Now, not so much.

The problem is, what’s fun for one group of players is horrible for another group of players. A percentage of players want things easier and find this game too hard. A percentage of players find this game too easy and want harder content.

Yes, games are here to have fun. If we all had the same idea of what was fun, designing games would be a whole lot easier.

Fenrir.3609:

So you are moaning about the fact that your wvw/pvp meta toon was less effective (but still able to do the content) than a niche zerk dungeon meta toon?

You are moaning about zerk builds and yet failing to take into account that fact you happened to use two completely different classes? Does your necro have a bear?

I also find it somewhat hard to believe that someone who solos dungeons using a zerk build, didn’t realise why the zerk build was the dungeon meta in the first place.

I think you probably misread the OP a bit.

The OP didn’t say that he was doing the dungeon, he said he was doing the event to open the dungeon. Nor did he say he didn’t understand the reason, in fact, he said clearly he did understand the reason why zerker is better. I think he was just shocked at how much better.

And I read this and didn’t see moaning at all.

Meh, I waited for a couple of hours, my queue never popped.

I’m the worst player in the world and I’m still not in. lol

Been queues for ages and no tournaments start. Anyone else? Server is Tarnished Coast.

Solution, find a good guild with players who play the way you do. Pugging is the lottery. You can’t expect to win.

Welcome to the game…there’s a lot of changes and new content, but not all of it is still here. The world is moving and if you leave the game for long, you’ll miss some of the content. But there’s still plenty to do.

I believe we’ll see new zones this year, but not an expansion.

OP, I’m not sure your’e following the development notes. We’ve just seen the end of season one of the Living Story. Anet announced months ago that feature releases weren’t going to be released at the same time to keep the message on focus. Otherwise the feature stuff distracted from the story. The story is now over.

The story will be delivered differently in the future, with shorter arcs and more story.

In the meantime, there is a big class/balance feature patch coming up shortly that has been waiting till the living story ends. Lots of bug fixes, changes to profession skills, traits, runes, and sigils, among other things.

We don’t know the extent of it yet, but we have seen the skill balance previews.

So when you say stop focusing on the living story, they already have, because the next big patch will be the balance patch (that’s not the small patch that’s coming Tuesday btw, but it won’t be far after it).

What gets me is this line of reasoning.

People are saying that they want an expansion because the living story is buggy and not presented well and it’s not deep content. I don’t necessarily agree with those statements (except the buggy part), but I wonder…

what makes those people who want an expansion believe that expansion content is necessarily going to be better?

It’s not like different people would be designing it.

If the content is buggy, the content is buggy because it’s complex and there’s never enough time. That happens with just about every major MMO. Stuff gets released and it’s buggy.

So the LS stuff gets released and it’s buggy and most of it is usually fixed pretty fast. The same stuff is going to happen with an expansion. Why in the world wouldn’kitten

As for deep content, I’m not sure that the content would be less or more deep than the Living story, but have no reason to assume it would necessarily be better.

The Living Story, content-wise, has improved dramatically. There are a bunch of people who don’t like it who keep talking it down, but if you actually look at the reaction of people story wise, you’ll see more and more people are liking it, not disliking it.

But there are a few stalwarts who didn’t like it, and continued not to like it, some of whom left the game because of it and can’t judge the new stuff, because they’re not playing the new stuff. They simply see the world Scarlet and make a judgement.

I mean the Marionette and the Escape from LA were good updates and most people liked them, in spite of the complaints. There were marionette appreciate threads.

This last episode was a bit of a backslide in popularity but I’ve still spoken to people who really like it and many people like the story part, even if they don’t like the battle to get there. And you can skip that battle if you like and just do the story part.

The living story is getting better. It has been since the Nightmare tower, back in December.

I’m not sure that an expansion would be better than the living story because the same people will be working on it.

TESO is okay. Unfortunately it’s okay for a pay to play game which is bad. I can’t comment on Wildstar I haven’t tried it. No non-MMO will compete with GW 2.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

You get what you pay for, so enjoy your “living story”.

You don’t always get what you pay for. I paid plenty for other games, and got next to nothing for it.

There are a lot of people these days slinging the word zerg around. If there are a lot of people doing something, to them it’s a zerg. They completely ignore any number of anti-zerg mechanics that have made it into PvE at the very least.

The Marionette has a zerg aspect, but because of the lanes and platforms, it mitigated the zerg and required skill and people to learn fights. The wurm needs not only people to divide into groups, but people to have strategy. There’s a condition team needed, a reflection team. This is not a zerg.

The LA fights aren’t zergs either, though some aspects are. Things are broken up in a number of ways. Even in the escape from LA patch, while you could zerg, if you wanted to rescue the max amount of citizens for the max reward, the only way to do it was to break up into small groups.

People ignore the challenges in the game and repeat the word zerg over and over. If you zerg a lot of this new content, you’ll fail it.

It’s obvious why people want expansions. I want an expansion. Having huge new zones to play around in and new professions and new races and new quests? What’s not to like?

The question is whether this sort of stuff can be delivered without an expansion. We did get Southsun Cove, which was a new zone…and it’s largely ignored by most of the player base. That doesn’t mean if they opened up the Crystal Desert that would be the case.

People go whether the easy profit is, so zones like Orr and Southsun Cove are largely deserted.

In an expansion the entire population moves to the new area….in most games. But this isn’t most games.

I think Anet would have to create a new zone and make the zone part of the living story for a period of time, then leave the zone there and make another new zone that’s also part of the living story.

But that’s not an expansion.

Do I want an expansion? I don’t know for sure. But I would like to see new zones, new professions and new races. New skills, and traits too.

If I can get that stuff without an expansion I’d be okay getting it piecemeal.

I’m on Tarnished Coast. If you’re a PvE’er there’s almost always people around at all hours of the day and night. I know this because I have an erratic work schedule and I play all hours of the day and night.

Dafomen.7892:

Tasty Pudding, I completely agree with you as I was thinking the same thing when they introduced these daylies.

Contrary to all those unimaginative nay sayers, I say there are many ways to get this to work taking non-80s into account and accessibility in general.

For example you could alternatively include some kind of “mini-daylies” into the personal story and when you hit a certain level, you get another one of those mails telling you that now you are ready for bigger tasks in the big world or something like that.

Or how about a subcategory of daylies with those specific tasks and some extra reward apart from say 2 instead of 1 AP.

Took me 10 seconds to come up with this and I am sure, if Anet wanted too, they could.

The benefit to revive those forgotten zones, dungeon paths, DEs and champs would be worth the effort.

It worked in GW1, why can’t it in GW2?

I like that I’m unimaginative because I don’t agree with you and the OP. It’s entirely possible, however, that there are reasons why people don’t agree.

The idea behind dailies, according to Anet, is to give people some extra help to catch up if they can’t play often. It’s not to inconvenience people.

More to the point, it’s to get people to log in every day. If they make them annoying enough, if they make them take a longer time, less people will log in to do them. This defeats the purpose of the daily.

In fact, the very reason the dailies exist would be threatened by making people jump through more hoops to do them.

There are other mechanisms that are used to get people to where Anet wants them, specifically the living story and various meta events.

It’s not a necessary change, and in my opinion, it’s not a good one.

Sort of what commanders were supposed to be…but I really think we need a guild alliance system, rather than just larger player groups. Given a choice of the two I’d much rather have the old guild alliance system back.

Ummm, since when is dailies end game?

Sirendor.1394:

Obviously people are giving up on this game. It needs an expansion badly.

Living story has the same “quality” of the free monthly patches we get in about every other game on the market, adding near nothing to the game itself and being filler content itself.

But contrary to GW2, those other games also bring expansions (either paid or free), with new features, not the same old, same old, over and over again, recycled so it looks ‘new’.

This game would actually be better without the living story: no crappy achievement grind, no money beating out of the gem store (look at Scarlet shoulders and gauntlets LOL).

What makes it obvious that “people” are giving up on the game?

Randall.7306:

nGumball.1283:

Just a notice, Anet announced before that they have been working since a while on projects with expansion-like content, they also stated that LS and An Expansion are two seperate projects, not connected to eachother. Which means that the statement saying that Anet can’t work on both is false. Not only that, it is literally so that Anet have been working on content for an expansion for a long time now.

On the other hand, Anet said clearly that the content may not be introduced as an expansion and that there are alot of options. Looking at the player-base however, they may as well release it as an expansion.

LS content and Expnasion content are seperate and Anet have been working on both with two different teams. It is already stated by Anet.

That’s weird, because they announced first that no expansions were made or even in the list of things to be made. Then they announced in offsite (eurogamer interview) that yes, of course, tons of new expansion-like materials were being made, and they just needed to find if give it for free or release an expansion or what.

So, one of the two announcements was a lie, but we don’t know yet which one. And they managed to put them in interviews so they can always declare “this was misinterpreted” as is not coming directly from their mouths/keyboards.

GW1 had awesome expansion with Factions. I was able to buy factions 2 years after release and play all the content. I can even play it now if I want.

If they release a LS-like expansion stuff that is only playable when they want.. well, it can be weird. They already have a method to release story-like content that can be playable at will (personal story) and that resolves around missions, story and doing stuff, not getting achievements and collect random junk limited materials only usable for two weeks, and bosses scaled to be done with 150 participants at maximum DPS.

Nah, that’s not a lie at all. That sort of thing is quite easy to understand.

If you ask one person if an expansion specifically is being made, and they haven’t actually made anything for an expansion, and didn’t plan one, he might say no. That doesn’t mean that stuff that could be released as part of an expansion wasn’t being worked on.

In other words, they’re working on bigger projects which at the time the first question was answered wouldn’t have been in an expansion. The fans heard that interview and starting chanting “expansion, expansion!”. So they hold some kind of meeting and say, maybe we will have an expansion.

Unless the two statements were released at the same time, it’s not only entirely possible, but also quite likely, that saying they weren’t working on an expansion caused enough negative response that they changed their mind.

I’m pretty sure when the first guy said it, an expansion wasn’t actually on their radar.

Another thing. A lot of people are focused on a few areas. There’s a looking for group tool now for dungeons and it fills fast, so you might not see much in it. There’s a bunch of people still trying to retake Lion’s Arch (and that ends in a week).

@Devata

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

You came into this conversation (and game) with a predetermined concept. Cash shops are bad, this always happens. As long as you start from that vantage, you will find problems with the cash shop.

I didn’t come in with that point of view and I don’t find many problems in the cash shop. There are a few. Over all, however, I think you’re judging the game too harshly.

There are plenty of things about this game that make me want to quit, but the cash shop isn’t even close to one of them.

People come to forums to complain. People come to forums far less often to say nice things. That’s the way of forums.

If you’re having a good time playing the game, why stop playing to post here? Unless you’re at work or something and can’t access the game, maybe.

But you know, if you’re not liking this game, this is a great place to vent.

So the forums will always be slanted toward the negative. And I’ve yet to see any MMORPG where this isn’t true.

Long before there were emotes, people RPed. I"m pretty sure emotes don’t equal RP. I’m an old school RPers who can’t RP because emotes are just silly.

No idea, but if you make friends with someone who has them in his/her home instance, you can mine them too.

Every time Anet says something and tells us, fans hang on their every word and if anything changes, Anet then is said to have lied. Iterative companies that change stuff up all the time can’t afford to tell people too early what they’re doing to do…because often they don’t know. They try stuff, and if it doesn’t work they scrap it. They said so. So why should they tell you what’s going on far in advance?

By the same token, Anet has often overhyped things in the past that weren’t as good as they implied they were going to be.

From these two statements, I can guess that Anet is probably better off not talking at all, never mind far in advance.

Adding to this, there’s some strategic retail strategy in not letting competitors know when an expansion is due until as late as possible.

Transparency only works if you’re sure about what you’re going to do. If you’re still discussing it, or not sure then transparency will start to look like lies.

Let’s pretend you plan to do something and it doesn’t work out…but you’ve already said you were going to do it. Now you’re a liar. Bad business if Anet did that.

They were transparent about the original dye system, which they changed completely. But they’d already said what it was, so people called them liars. This is in spite of the fact that the new dye system is far better for most players than the old one ever was.

Quick Mouse.7635:

The also still come out of black lion chests rofl…

Not according to the patch notes they don’t. That was fixed with the last patch.

Anything can be removed at any time in any game, period. It happens all the time. In Guild Wars 1 they removed entire PvP types.

Of course stuff like this can happen in real life too. You can buy a membership to a gym and the gym can go out of business. Try to get your money back.

90 plus percent of events in this game downscale. No one ever said every event in the game would be soloable.

In fact, in a FAQ on Guild Wars 2 before launch, the question was asked, is Guild Wars 2 soloable. The answer was that you could reach max level without ever joining a group, however, Anet believes that there are some challenges for which the community needs to come together.

At least this portion of their philosophy hasn’t changed since launch.

Malediktus.9250:

I do it because I have nothing else left to do in this game. PvE dailies take 1-2 hour a day, PvP dailies 2-6 hours a day (2 if 100% win rate, 6 if 1/3rd winrate, SoloQ is highly random).
But I am nearing a GW2 burnout so I preordered TESO to get rid of this.

I wish Anet would have sticked with the original 4 dailies everyone could complete in 20 minutes.

Why, if you already have nothing to do?

I play Guild Wars 2 for more than 3 hours every day. It’s not 3 hours all at once, but you can nickle and dime a lot of this stuff. Think of it this way. Most achievements take less than 20 minutes. If you spent an hour online before you go out and do stuff and an hour when you get home and then an hour later on on the evening…that’s three hours.

I used to work 12 hours every single day. Six days a week. So if I work 8 hours, it’s nothing for me to play for 4 hours…that’s the amount of time I used to work.

Zhaitan wasn’t meant to be a boss fight. It was meant to be a story. You start fighting Zhaitan at level 70 and systematically weaken him, until the asuran technology made specifically to be anti-dragon magic finishes him. It all works as a story.

But I hate most boss fights anyway. Matter of personal taste, obviously.

Sligh.2789:

Let us discuss 2 different players.

1. is a casual player who enjoys the lay of the digital landscape and the thrill of every encounter, playing a multitude of classes with many weapon sets to flesh out the many playstyles and tactics available by skill and weapon combinations. He is a consummate player that gets excited when an exotic weapon drops.
2. is a hard core gamer and has to have the best item skins and stats immediately. He labors repeating the same content over and over to get a digital item with no value, other than to his vanity.

Anet has decided to cater to both parties, but the hard core get the shaft, the casual gamer is in heaven. I love it that they complain instead of being able to look at it from player #1’s point of view. I think that is borne from how young gamers never immersed themselves in games as I did when I started pencil and paper gaming in the 70’s.

I played Pen and Paper games. Nothing to do with that.

The Holy Advenger.1758:

because fast = more time for more profit. Zerk it is. i have a group of friends i play with and we all bring w/e. or we make a good balanced group. CC/Condi/Tanks/Supports/ Dps. etc. We find it more challenging and overall fun to play. We have our speed clear groups to though in case we need to hurry up, knock out the dungeon tourney and continue with w/e we have going on. Just find u a group u can do these things with.

Zerk equals less profit. I’ll explain.

I play zerk, I make money faster. I get bored faster, I stop playing faster. If I don’t play, I make no money. I make more money playing a character I have fun playing, than a zerker I don’t want to play.

cobrahorse.4329:

So after reading this post I came across people responding in the matter that disturbed me a little bit.
You cannot say “you play for skins” “you play for this”
If this person’s goal is to farm allot of gold the game should be offering him a variable gaming experience.
A good game in my eyes is a game that attract many different kind of people and furfill all their needs, the explorers, the pvpers, the pvers, the gold farmers, the rp’s and so fourth

By percentage, far fewer play the auction house well than farm. If you make it so farming can make you big money, and the auction house can make you big money, you increase inflation and the price of everything goes up.

This ends up forcing people who want to neither farm nor to play the auction house to walk around as perpetual paupers. Guys like me would leave the game, because we’d not be able to afford anything.

Making it so everyone can have money makes money have less value.

medohgeuh.4650:

Please, the only reason anyone wants a mesmer is for a few utility skills. Outside of that, we’re just as unwanted as the rest of the classes.

It’s warriors who are unwanted in my book. I’ve probably had more wipes to bad warriors than bad rangers.

Purple Miku.7032:

zenleto.6179:

We don’t ALL want be bored kittenless!

If you’re bored on your warrior, perhaps it’s your own fault for not doing anything interesting?

http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3840557
Most people who play on warriors probably don’t melee this guy. Try it. It’s fun as hell, requires fast reflexes, and has high intensity especially with an inept guardian.

http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3840580
Most people who say things like “warriors are boring faceroll classes” or anything of the like are likely having in mind group dungeons. If this isn’t the case for you, then fair enough.Try soloing them. It’s a completely different experience and is much more than just autoattacking with axe mainhand.

@OP
I don’t hate other classes and I have no issue with rangers specifically other than the fact that the vast majority of the ones I’ve encountered were all morons. Realistically, it’s just the idea of people feeling the need to safely range everything from a distance that irritates me. A ranger with a bow is by no means no worse than a mesmer with a greatsword or a guardian using staff for PvE. Sorry you have miserable experiences with pugs but believe it or not so do I, and all I play on is my warrior.

The only class that truly is awful in PvE by comparison to any other class no matter what, is the necromancer. I feel bad for the people that main them… it’s not their fault that their class was designed poorly.

Nope it’s not my fault that I don’t play games strictly for combat. That’s why other people play games.

There are people who are very focused on mechanics and combat. There are people very focused on world exploration and crafting/gathering. They’re not necessarily the same people, and that’s the problem in a nutshell.

I could care less if I can melee a boss. Doing so wouldn’t make my like the game better and it wouldn’t make the profession more fun.

And it would still be harder to melee it on my mesmer.

I have everything I want (and then some) without having played the TP at all. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

Neural.1824:

Nage.1520:

Anyone who makes the game about loot is probably not going to have a good time. The shame is so many people think loot is the game.

The game is freaking horizontal progression. If you want something cosmetic, you have two choices. Pay real cash, or grind your brains out for.. you guessed it, loot to sell or somehow process into gold.

Gold is the end game in Guild Wars 2. The rest of the content you burn through so fast that it gets old extremely quick.

I bet a lot of people would disagree with this. The end game for me in any game is to have fun. That specifically means NOT farming. I’ll get what I get when I get it. I don’t have to have everything and I certainly don’t have to have everything now.

I’m quite content to have fun with the guild, do what I’m doing, and eventually have enough gold for something I need.

It’s a mentality that makes gold the end game of this game, for certain types of players. Not everyone feels this way.

Play what you like. Ignore the people who tell you otherwise. They didn’t pay for your game.

The fact is, most people who play warriors are bored anyway because everything becomes too easy, and then they expect more challenging content to be made just for them.

I usually tell them to try it on an ele. Then come back and tell me we need harder content. lol

Anyone who makes the game about loot is probably not going to have a good time. The shame is so many people think loot is the game.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Nage.1520:

And the cash shop barely influences my gameplay at all. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I spent money on that crap. The game is fine without it.

Look, if noone is willing to spend money on the cash shop, where do you think this game is going?

What is the most southern point of the universe again?

It’s not a question of willing or not willing. I’m not willing to buy a McDonald Hamburger, but enough people will. McDonalds isn’t likely to go out of business soon.

Anet sells a lot of stuff. Some of that stuff is cute. People buy the instruments. I don’t. People buy costumes…I have seen blue people walking around. But I don’t need costumes or instruments to play this game. I don’t even need transmutation stones.

I did buy a broom when I saw the charr animation on it, though. It’s not like I’ve never spent a dime. I’m just saying that if I hadn’t bought that broom, it wouldn’t negatively affect my game play.

The cash shop isn’t this horrible, insidious thing you need to spend money on to enjoy the game as some people seem to imply.

But….but….what about the true hero of the story.

We love you Evon!

Usagi.4835:

Is this guy a troll? People stay because they care and because they hope that it will change. I know this is a real stretch of a comparison but e.g. if someone you care about is messing their life up, do you give up on them and walk away?

People shouldn’t have to quit the game for there to be changes to the game that might benefit it in the long term. That’s just indicative of either the inability or unwillingness of the company and dev team to take into account player feedback and satisfaction. Or both.

I’m pretty sure there’s a difference between someone who is a compulsive gambler or alcoholic, which just about everyone agrees is really bad for you, and a reaction to bugs in a game.

For every person who suggests something that’s game breaking for them, the thing they’re suggesting is game breaking to someone else.

But regardless, people need to express what they feel. Sometimes I just wish they’d do it more civilly.

They should make a dueling server. The entire server can duel. But the catch is once you go to that server, you can never play on any other server. No transfers, no nothing.

Then we can finally keep the guys who don’t want to deal with this at all, away from people who insist on having it.

Because that’s the real problem with the MMO industry. Half the population wants X and half wants Y and they’re mutually exclusive.

TC is the server of choice for PvE and does pretty kitten ed good at WvW too. Best community in the game, as far as I’ve been able to tell.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Well, I cannot say if this game is losing too many players or too few.

The only thing I can say is, that in the last 1 1/2 years, this game has degenerated from the hope for the whole MMO genre to a generic asian grinder with a cash shop and crappy updates.

Do you blame the players for not logging in for this?

I completely disagree. This game hasn’t at all degenerated from the hope of the entire MMO genre. It was never going to be that in the first place, and anyone who thought it was was fooling themselves. Even if a company wanted to be the next big thing, the playerbase is too divided to allow it.

Nor has it become a generic asian grinder. And the cash shop barely influences my gameplay at all. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I spent money on that crap. The game is fine without it.