Guild Wars 2

There are advantages and goals shown to you at level 80. You only receive ascended crafting materials at 80 and you receive higher level loot. The new TA path can only be done at 80, and you’re more efficient doing difficult lower level world bosses like Tequatl.

The ascended gear progression is open ended. Though you are forced to do specific content, you still have an option. When I worked toward my Ascended shield, I skipped dungeons entirely. I was burned out on them so I chose to do JPs instead. I was surprised at how many I haven’t done before. I didn’t farm for mats, I just did world events and farmed champs so I could buy them off the TP.

If you define Endgame as “Stuff you can ONLY do at level 80”, then Guild Wars 2 lacks that. Most of the content can be done at pre-level cap levels. One of my friends is new to Guild Wars 2. She’s only level 34 and we can fight the Marionette together. I think that’s extremely valuable.

I go into the zone when there’s 20 minutes left on the timer. When I get in, I spend those 20 minutes coordinating with people. I’m not really waiting around for that long.

I always felt like that solo arena could’ve been an avenue for people to earn Ascended gear. The way people could watch you and cheer you on was a nice touch as well, and kept in line with this idea of a social experience.

Easier to nerf 1 skill than to buff 100 other skills.

zachooz.2614:

But gems cost a lot and I’m poor lol

You can make more gold now that you’re 80.

I don’t like Scarlet but I like the Living Story.

Does that make me weird?

I enjoy the content updates, loved climbing up the nightmare tower with the zerg, I enjoyed the puzzles in the new story instance. I especially enjoy the new attention to non voiced dialogue, not to mention the fact that Kessex changed for good. With that said, I wish the updates lasted me more than a few days and that the story for each patch would have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

As ridiculous as the complaint may sound, a few MMOs like RIFT and WoW allow you to play the game only after downloading a few gigs of data. The rest of the data gets downloaded as you play, would be nice to see that feature here.

I never have to buy another salvage kit for the stacks of white items I get. Also, it talks when you use it. Totally worth it for me.

Fun content can only get you so far. After playing something fun once, twice, or even five times, people will move on. Devs want to give players a reason to repeat content, it gives them time to create new content.

Some people feel the need to have the best gear possible, it’s a psychological thing. It also makes content easier to run through, whether it be WvW, higher level fractals, or new dungeons. I had a (slightly) easier time playing Aetherblade Retreat with my ascended Guardian. If you’re asking what the point is in running all of this content that you’ve all ready run, that’s a separate issue.

Getting downlevelled. I love being able to hang out with anyone and not miss out on XP and loot.

MMO sites publish articles on GW2 almost every two weeks now because of the rapid updates.

They added a new tier of gear past exotics, so if you want to upgrade your gear at max level you can do that now.

The content rewards you with some skins, mostly just backpieces. Sadly you can get the coolest, most valuable skins like the jade and fused weapons, without actually having to participate in the living story content. So far you’ve only been able to get the best skins through RNG boxes, but with this current release, these boxes can now drop from anything in the world and are tradable.

I like the frequency of the updates because it doesn’t take long to go through the content. I realize the temporary nature upsets some people, but if you have a few hours a week to play you can see all it has to offer. You may not have time to get every skin and complete every achievement.

There is a reason that this content is temporary, it keeps people logging in every week to see what’s new. I don’t agree with it. I think they should focus on content that has replay value, rather than spending resources on something that’s just going to disappear. But despite that, there’s always something for me to look forward to week after week, and I don’t find myself itching for the older living story content (I’ve had enough of Molten, thanks.)

1 “Dungeons are boring” – I find some dungeons boring because the easiest way to run them is to stack in a corner and spam all of your abilities. I like the AC revamp, the bosses now have more engaging mechanics, but some of them can still be exploited this way. It is a shame that bosses don’t have loot tables, and most times looting a chest is underwhelming. I like earning tokens, but that sense of reward only happens AFTER the run. Boss pathing and AI needs to be improved, as such that they can’t just be LOSed into a corner and bursted down. Give them more cleave/AoE attacks. Force players to take advantage of space. You didn’t really mention why found them boring, OP, care to elaborate?

2 “Tiny Bosses” – Yes. I started this game with a charr, and tiny bosses are difficult to fight because you can’t see their animation, which leads to the next point.

3 “One shot attacks” – I think one shot attacks are fine, as long the attack is clearly telegraphed (kohler’s chain pull). The problem with this is that there are way too many flashy spell effects in the game, and often times I find it difficult to pay attention to enemy tells. I don’t know which attacks to dodge and which to take. There needs to be a slider for spell effects, and during one of Guru’s SOTG podcasts, an anet dev said that they were working on spell effect culling in PvP. This needs to be in PvE.

4 “Zero personal progression” – Agreed. Once I have ascended gear and the cosmetics I want, there’s nothing else to look forward to. Extending the progression path and making it more time consuming isn’t the solution. Maybe collecting armor and weapon sets can be another form of progression. With this they’ll need to add an equipment locker for PvE. Collecting sets could reward achievements and titles. There also needs to be more types of rewards to work toward. Titles, minis, and tonics are other forms of reward, but I don’t feel that that’s enough.

5 “Gear wall” – Gear wall ends at Ascended by the way. This ties in with the personal progression issue.

6. “Large scale organized PvE” – There are Guild Missions. I like Guild Rush and Puzzle. Some bounty targets have challenging mechanics that can’t be surpassed even when you throw more people at it (Looking at you 2MUlT), but having to look for them is just annoying. I don’t like game mechanics that have to rely on outside sources (dulfy guides). This is the same reason I’m not a fan of trek. Guild Challenges suffer from “just throw more people at it” syndrome. I hear that anet is working on their version of “raid” content, we’ll have to see.

7. “World bosses” – The dragon fights have mechanics in them that are wildly ignored, like when fighting Tequatl. This may be a scaling issue, since you can ignore 90% of the adds, the bone wall, and the megalazer fires on its own without help. Jormag’s mechanics are a bit more demanding, but people just stand in a safe spot and plug away with their ranged attacks. The fight itself is also way too repetitive. How many times do I have to walk these golems. The Karka Queen was an attempt at making world bosses more challenging, but I don’t know, I can’t articulate what’s wrong with it exactly but it feels tedious rather than challenging.

8. “Skins” – This ties into the personal progression point. Once you have the skins you want, then what? I have a dozen different looking backpieces spread across a few alts. But we shouldn’t have to reroll to take advantage of skins.

I still log in and play this game daily for long stretches of time, but I do find myself going AFK a lot. This game is perfect for people who don’t have much time to play due to the micro updates, low stat ceiling, and casual world boss encounters. People who have more time to dedicate to this game will run into the aforementioned issues. Addressing them will only increase the longevity of the game for people on both sides of the camp.

EDIT : “f k” without the space is filtered?

I think if they added underflow servers, people would find others most if not all the time.

I think the problem lies in the enemy encounters, not the skill system itself. The open world pve is supposed to be focused on easy encounters, but most of the dungeons, where difficult content is supposed to lie, don’t really encourage you to utilize all of your skills.

The revamped AC imo is full of great encounters. I play as a guardian and I find myself having to use knockbacks, protections, heals, condi removals, stability, retal, and blocks. Sure a majority of the fights can be DPSed down after a few minutes, but using a well timed block or interrupt can be the one thing preventing you from a wipe.

This is different from other MMOs where the combat is rotation based. You have to use your skills in a particular order to be efficient. I think ANet’s intention was to have a skill system that must be used to adapt to constantly changing situations. The boss is about to unleash a series of room wide AOEs? I can interrupt it, protect my allies from the damage, remove the condition the attack applies if they do take damage, or teleport to them if they go down so I can res them quickly. There are only a few encounters with this level of depth, forcing you to think quickly on your feet and to analyze what each ability will provide for you in the fight. And it really is a shame, but ANet needs to fix their dungeons and enemy encounters, not their skill system.

Easy mode raids are in the form of world events.
Normal mode raids are in the form of grenth/lyssa/balth.
Also..
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_mission

Here’s a few more awesomeness.

- Casting while moving.
- AoE and cone based heals.
- Collectibles tab
- Not having to do dungeons or high level world events in a specific order
- Content gating is dictated by guild progress, dungeons and dungeons and world events aren’t gated by gear.
- Non quest like tasks (vistas, pois, SPs)
- Jumping puzzles
- sPvP armor locker

I still play other MMOs from time to time, and while they aren’t better or worse than GW2, it’s difficult to adjust being away from this stuff.

Everyone and their mothers have their own interpretation of that video, but this quote (and the quote “we just don’t want players to grind in this game”) refers to combat grind. The idea that you’re just using ability rotations on monsters/enemies instead of engaging in interactive combat.

Spamming your autoattack against someone who knows the ins and outs of their class abilities won’t turn out well for you, pure damage doesn’t cut it when there are a variety of ways to interrupt and mitigate damage. That’s PvP, some people argue that you can spam your 1 in dungeons and get away with it, I personally can’t see myself spamming “1” while fighting something like Lupi.

Bought it for the coolness factor, the convenience is a nice bonus. I speculate that this will still be useful when an expansion comes out and higher tiers of ore are introduced. if not, oh well, my Ori will still explode into a firery ball of lava.

I’ve been playing the game daily since release, but I haven’t spent any real cash since I bought the game.

I earn gold for everything so I get a sense of progression with almost everything I do. Add that on to the daily/fractal/dungeon rewards. Once I buy the look/stats I want I end up saving everything for a while until I get bored and start working towards a different stat set/cosmetic set. I’m a sucker for gem store items so I always have something to spend my money on.

Isn’t this guild rush?

I can earn/buy my SAB items just fine, no RNG : D.

Another LFG whine post isn’t going to speed up the development time on it. They know it’s needed, we have an alternative while we wait.

Because the game doesn’t have a working lfg tool?

They’ll stop with this business model when you stop participating in such a way that makes it profitable. Vote with your money not your forum posts.

I put on some MF and did a few Orr events. Got a rare or two. Who do you believe? Me? The guy above me? Arenanet? Why would they lie to millions of people? So people buy gems to convert to gold to buy MF gear? Why would I spend real money for MF gear, is that even practical?

Point is, it’s RNG. You can’t trust anecdotal evidence.

maddoctor.2738:

Vasham.2408:

Arenanet controls all the information. They control what you perceive about the population. They admitted that server pops are based on accounts tied to server (no matter how much you deny it). They control the caps on the servers. Just because you drink the koolaid doesn’t mean the game is successful or, more accurately, not dyeing.

No they didn’t admit it. Just because you lack basic logic and reading comprehension doesn’t make what you say accurate, it’s the complete opposite. You have no proof of any of your claims, I already mentioned WHY you are false, I don’t need to repeat myself, go find some logic before posting again.

Stop feeding the troll.

Guild Missions.

I know you mentioned guild bounties but you left out 80% of the actual guild mission content. You also left out PvP and WvW. I think it’s unfair to judge a game’s potential when you leave out the aspects that you haven’t seen yet and that you don’t enjoy.

I liked the Flame and Frost instances. I don’t really care about the refugees, but then again I never cared about anyone being attacked by Risen/dragon minions. What I do care about are the characters. Seeing Rox get her new pet was a charming touch. I liked seeing the Flame Legion versions of Dredge and Dredge versions of Charr. It was content that was easy to jump into and enjoy for 15-30 min. I was expecting to be blown away, but ANet never promised that. They stated that the story would pick up during this update and it has. They stated that the story would evolve over time, and technically it has. I’m disappointed, but only because I was expecting something out of this world, but I’d be lying if I didn’t enjoy what was delivered.

Airok.4712:

Thank you NetherDiver and Waraxx, that was actually very helpful. I really appreciate you guys taking time to do that.

Of course. I briefly skimmed over this but if open world events are more of your cup of tea, the world bosses and meta events are well worth your time. A perfect example of this are the Orr events, the chest at the end of each event now rewards a guaranteed rare. Though these don’t directly lead you to getting Ascended gear, you can salvage/sell the rares for a decent amount of cash that you can use to craft/buy many of the unique looking exotics in the game. The dragon events award the same chest, as well as other specific meta events detailed in the wiki article I mentioned.

What this game lacks are challenging PvE encounters. Each class has many tools at its disposal: boons, condis, AoEs, interrupts, CC, abilities that push and pull, blocks, evasion. The problem isn’t the lack of the trinity, the problem is that you aren’t really encouraged to utilize all of your skill sets. It’s a blast to coordinate CC by getting a boss’ defiant stacks down and interrupting the boss right before he unleashes a devastating attack but very few bosses require this amount of teamwork.

A bad encounter is a bad encounter. Trinity or not. A bad encounter with a trinity just amounts to tanking and spanking. A bad encounter with GW2’s system amounts to DPSing/standing on terrain and AFKing.

In terms of Guild Missions, you’re speaking only about the first type. Guild Challenges are the thing to look forward to in terms of challenging PvE encounters that require a large group and coordination. I can’t tell you if that’s successful or not seeing as no one’s unlocked it yet. It’s unfair to judge Guild Missions on just one aspect alone.

Even so, some of the Bounty bosses have some interesting mechanics. One boss can only be damaged if you’re without a condition. I’m not sure these are supposed to have complex dungeon boss mechanics. Half of the challenge is actually just finding the boss.

First thing’s first, they added a new tier of gear. But it’s very important to know that none of the game’s content is gated by not having this gear. This will be a concern for WvW though as it will take a while to get fully ascended, so you may feel like you’re at a slight disadvantage during some fights.

Let’s start with fractals. This will be your fastest way to getting your ascended rings, and the only way to getting your ascended back piece. You’re free to jump into fractals as soon as, well as soon as you start the game really. Of course it’s recommended you go in there at lvl 80. Once you hit Fractal Scale 10 you will be hit by attacks that cause Agony and this damage is mitigated only by the Agony Resistance stat which can be obtained through Ascended item specific upgrades. The Fractal vendor can be found in the Fractal hub in LA.

Next, be sure to do your dailies. Each daily rewards you with a Laurel which can be used to purchase Ascended Rings, Accessories, and the only way to purchase Ascended Amulets. You need only do 5 of the 10 listed dailies to gain this reward. The Laurel Vendor can be found a little south of the Dungeon Vendors.

February added Guild Missions, which is another way to get Ascended Accessories. This stuff is for groups of more than 5 people and are separated into 5 different mission types. The barrier to entry to these atm isn’t due to gear, but Guild progress. Join a guild that has these unlocked, afaik the most progressed guild(s) have unlocked the 3rd mission type. Finishing a guild mission event will award you with 50s, 2 rares, and 2 Guild Commendations which are used to purchase Guild Mission specific rewards, such as the Ascended gear mentioned earlier. The guild comm vendor is south of the bank in LA.

It’s worth mentioning that the vendors I’ve mentioned offer cosmetic, vanity, and utility items as well.

Tomorrow’s patch will add a WvW specific progression and will upgrade the honor badge vendor with a wider selection of armor skins and stat combos.

I skipped over a few things, such as the updates to existing dungeons (AC just got a complete revamp), updates to dungeon rewards (not sure when you took your break but they updated the amount of tokens you receive), and updates to the Orr events. I didn’t want this to be too heavy with text, but this touches upon the many many things you can do post launch.

Oh, fight your dragons and search the wiki for “daily chests”.

EDIT: Search the wiki for “chest” and read the Daily Chests section.

Makes me want to log back in.

RPG’s will have gated content. Your post is pretty vague, so I assume that you want to jump in and do high level content but you can’t because you have to level. This game is for people who like casual progression (people who like RPG’s but don’t have the time to play the game 24/7).

Didn’t they fix this?

With my guild we do T3 Guild Bounties during the weekends and T1 during the week sometimes. We have Fractal Fridays. During a typical game play session it’s a mix between WvW, AC, and temple runs. Sometimes I sPvP. This has been my routine the past month.

The month before that I was mostly running dungeons (other than AC), temples, jump puzzles, and leveling alts.

Oh and somehow I end up magically finishing my daily.

No one has proof at this point.

But in terms of population metrics, I’d believe a company more than some stranger over the internet any day..

I agree, and the only thing missing in this game is more flavor text. The NPC’s do fill in the story and the lore for those who want it. It’s the equivalent of reading the quest text before hitting ACCEPT, only you’re not presented with the wall of text up front. Traditional quest systems mark points of interest on your map anyway,, so I don’t see the issue with showing you basic information on the map.

In general I agree that the Hearts in this game lack the storytelling quality of traditional quests. I’d argue that multi-staged events fill that in. The temple of Dwayna for example, provides a lot of insight into the Temple of Dwayna and Malchor, who the zone’s named after. However, I feel that these events are few and far between and if you stumble in to the middle an event, you miss out on the exposition and story.

My suggestion to flesh out this game’s open world story is to provide more flavor text other than “Oh no something is happening! You should help and this is how you can do that!”. I want to know more about how an NPC is feeling, rather than just explanations of who is attacking what. We need more personality dialogue trees. Events need to have more dialogue during the event to provide context. Again, the game provides these things to a certain extent, but this needs to be pushed.

I think the combat challenges will come in the Guild Challenges and Guild Bounties. Colin mentioned that some of the missions will be extremely hard. Revamping the combat system sounds like expansion stuff to me. Though in my opinion there’s plenty of depth there, the problem is that there’s very little reason to dig in to that depth in PvE. They just need to design better encounters that require more tactics and strategy, which sounds like we’ll be seeing a little of in the February patch.

Wait, WoW doesn’t have Guild Halls.

I agree with seeing Orr restored.

The current Arah story etc. should be revisited through The Mists, seeing as that place has access to the past/present/future and we have access to the Fractals. It shouldn’t be part of the Fractal Dungeon sets though.

Is this a satirical response to the “Post 80 is Boring” thread?

gw2lfg.com. Make friends or find a guild to run them, though. Chances are you might run into a bad PUG. Send me a whisper, I’d be more than happy to run you through AC

Wait, isn’t that why they aren’t adding any more new zones/dungeons and building upon the core game instead? What major bugs are you running in to? They fixed a decent amount of class bugs (for my guardian at least) within the last patch, as well as various event and story mission bugs. Not to mention getting rid of some dungeon exploits. I know nothing about class balance as I just play whatever is fun for me, so I can’t comment on that.

- Race change
- Costume slot. If i want to wear a chefs outfit to a dragon fight I should be able to kitten it!

Wasn’t hard. It was just frustrating to have to wade through mobs of risen, getting CCed back and fourth in the process, just to get to an event that awards 1s80c. I agree with having more challenging boss monsters to fight (if they reward us with something other than Porous Bones), but getting from point a to point b shouldn’t have to be a chore.

Tali. /15characters.

Danno.5269:

Pretty soon will be able to pick daily so i can suffer for a few more days. I just hate the daily aquatic slayer (don’t like underwater combat) and i really dislike gathering.

Underwater critters count. Also, go look for vegetable farms.