Guild Wars 2

Maybe Anet could boost crafting slightly be decreasing the drop rate on armor and weapons, instead replacing it with approximate NPC coin value

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

It’s night in the Applied Development Lab, we got a wonderful sky full of stars…
… and an awful bright forecourt.

Just to visualize the problem.

I would love it if all of Tyria had a night sky like that.

erroch.8061:

I’ve also yet to get teabagged in wvw. This really happens commonly?

WvW is an extensive experiment on how simple “harmless” animations can be chained together into something vulgar, and there are many WvW players that are of the mindset to discover them.

Heck, you are lucky half the time if it’s not your own team that is degrading you for not being as uber-l33t as they are.

My setup is probably a good example of how not to do things.

WASD for movement (alternatively LMB+RMB in some situations)
1,2,3,4,5,6 for standard skills
alt 1, alt 2, alt 3, alt 4, alt 5 for heal and utilities (yes, alt 1 and 6 overlap)
On my razer Naga Hex I have elite skill bound to button 1.

I’m slowly adding more functionality to the hex buttons as I get used to them, however having 3 and 6 bound to volume up/down is a convenience thing.

Btw, I was serious. If someone could enlighten me as to the strategic advantage offered by muddy terrain on falling damage (for Rangers), I’d love to know, because other than the 50% less damage it seems pointless.

honeyjars.6590:

I just sat on the boxes to the left and waited for the first flag to respawn over and over again. If you get in the right spot they won’t catch you and you can just camp there the entire time.

Shh! Anet will change it on us!

I have always been against dueling, but having arenas like the one in BC, or opening the Queen’s Gauntlet for it would be perfect. Open world dueling gives way to much mobility. People who duel shouldn’t have kiting half way across Lion’s Arch as an option. It should be restricted to a reasonable area, and arenas are great for that.

Fall damage traits are great for several classes, especially in WvW, while others might as well not exist. The muddy terrain for rangers is pretty much useless since jumping down onto an enemy where the enemy has reason to run from a ranger is just not happening that often, not to mention that the rangers pet is usually busy trying to find a safe path down to the ranger, and is of no help. “Why yes! I’ll gladly give up a chunk of dps for the ability to slow down someone who isn’t going to run in the first place!”

Warrior falling damage is awesome for reasons listed above. Thief damage is useful in similar situations. Again, for PvDoor, a ranger jumping down to cause muddy terrain around a mob that isn’t moving in the first place makes it somewhat moot.

If there are situations where this trait for the ranger is a noticeable advantage, I’d love to hear about it. It’s always seemed somewhat pointless to me.

JBDanger.2603:

Okay, this threads at 4 pages now within an hour, the longer they let this thread go on with out an official response debunking this shows the true credibility of Anet.

Almost 5pm in Washington. They are packing up and heading home.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The only thing I haven’t seen implemented that he has found, is precursor crafting, which we know is coming.

Kitten, I hope they don’t try and make that part of the VIP package (just pay $xx.xx/month and you can craft precursors, etc.).

Curunen.8729:

Would prefer more diverse landscapes for wvw.

I’d like to see a WvW map based on Iron Marches. Really interesting terrain variations.

Vizier’s Tower would be a good location.

Nighttime does need to be darker, even if things have a “full moon” illumination. I don’t even notice day/night in this game.

Elric.6971:

Malediktus.9250:

Please bring this. Any prestige stuff is instant buy for me.

Please, tell me you are being sarcastic.

Sarcastic or not, there are thousands who have that attitude. Otherwise Anet would have changed things like RNG boxes (why would they keep them if they didn’t work?).

This latest info about a premium package is sickening, but not surprising that they’d consider or even push to implement it.

Remember, they’ve been talking about “big changes” for 2014.

Crafting in GW2 is quite easy. So much so that it seems a large majority use it for leveling.
There is no point in attaining any given level in crafting unless you want to make ascended gear. outside of that you are basically “special, just like everyone else”.

Vanguard had it right. Different leveling spheres, chance of rare, chance of failure, etc.

Another QoL: Fix ranger pet names so they are remembered when you pull out a pet.

Xenesis.6389:

Neural.1824:

Xenesis.6389:

Champ trains will no longer exist…

The rest of what you said sort of made sense, but this… this.. doesn’t make sense.

How exactly does creating an Open PvP server end champ trains?

You really think people will have the discipline to not gank each other while on those trains? the only ones that would survive are guild trains.

If you mean there wouldn’t be trains on an Open PvP server, I agree. I thought you meant that the trains on the PvE side would disappear.

Xenesis.6389:

Champ trains will no longer exist…

The rest of what you said sort of made sense, but this… this.. doesn’t make sense.

How exactly does creating an Open PvP server end champ trains?

semi-off topic: Has anyone mapped out the locations of the “do not touch” things? Are they just random, or do they form a pattern?

-Account bound dyes (yeah, it’s a stupid dream)
-Make the Veteran Largos Assassin relevant to open world PvE and make him worth actually fighting.
-Allow the info for the currently targeted object to be a movable UI piece.
-Perma-stow ranger pets
-Remove Diminishing Returns
-Filter trading post results by class
-Better loot tables for vets

I’m sure there’s more, but those were what came to mind currently.

Lord Kuru.3685:

We see this same thread over and over again. At this point, even if Anet is technically not “at fault” for the misunderstanding, from a customer service point of view, they should do something to make it more clear to players that you can only equip one of these at a time.

Ah, but you see, every time a player makes this mistake, they have to, potentially, play another 25 days.

skullmount.1758:

Neural.1824:

Arenanet has a penchant for re-skinning content. I would be surprised, pleasantly, if they created new models for this next update. That being said they likely won’t. The only ones that I can think of that fit what may or may not be key words, along with the object that was sent out, would be worms. Worms populate a lot of Tyria, but mostly in the caves. While they can poison, they shoot fire a lot. I’m really hoping it’s not worms, because that would make the Dune references just too much.

come on, that would really spice things up.

boooo! That was awful!

Arenanet has a penchant for re-skinning content. I would be surprised, pleasantly, if they created new models for this next update. That being said they likely won’t. The only ones that I can think of that fit what may or may not be key words, along with the object that was sent out, would be worms. Worms populate a lot of Tyria, but mostly in the caves. While they can poison, they shoot fire a lot. I’m really hoping it’s not worms, because that would make the Dune references just too much.

If Anet was going to dedicate resources to OP’s suggestion or Azure’s suggestion, I’d have to vote for the traits. Colors is purely cosmetic while traits can affect combat performance.

Yes, it would be great to have both, but much as I’d like to save my dye selections as well, the trait saving makes more sense.

I was thinking I’d seen quite a few more necros in Orr.

Strange that so many of them are bots though. I thought Diminishing Returns fixed botting. Makes you wonder if that is what DR was really about.

The changes are ok. I like the new location of General Discussion. The issue of the Suggestions forum is interesting though, because while Anet may have all the intention in the world of people posting suggestions in the sub-forums, they are going to need an army of moderators to move suggestions from GD to the proper forums. Otherwise GD is going to be the new suggestion forum (which it wasn’t far from already).

CoRtex.2157:

The real problem is that everything is PURE RNG. Exotics get dropped by random mobs instead of being dropped by a certain challange+RNG. This makes sure there’s no choice between getting the item or buying the item. Resulting in a demand only system. But not only that, you are playing a game we’re you cannot get the item by doing a certain challange… YOU CANT PLAY THE GAME WITH A CERTAIN GOAL, the only goal you can have, is earning gold. But everything gives you gold.. But the real sad thing is, the harder the content doesn’t mean you earn more gold. On top of that, the easyer & faster you can do something, the more gold you get. = GRIND. = NO FUN. That’s how bad it’s designed. Totally the opposite of GW1. So sad Throw a bunch of gold sinks on top of that all and you can guesse how kittened up the system is. Worste game design ever (economics wise).

Not sure about the “worst game design ever” part, but I agree with what you’ve said.

Everything is RNG, even the best rewards are purely RNG. Very little in this game can be achieved in a remotely realistic amount of time without buying items at the TP.
Is it possible to grind mats until you have enough charged lodestones to build Mjolnir? Sure, but most people would be fit to be institutionalized by the time they completed the grind.

Aside from the scarcity being way way over the top, it simply takes any enjoyment out of the game when it comes to setting goals. Because you can’t set goals that don’t hinge on the same base of making gold and buying stuff off the TP.

In the long run, the only goal in the game is to make gold. You pretty much can’t achieve anything else in the horizontal progression without it, and the people it hurts the most are the casual players who are lucky to see some of the rarer items grace their inventory at all. I’m not a casual player, and I’m one to grind a little if I’m bored, but even then, I’ve only seen 3 charged lodestones since I started in 2012.

Arenanet needs to stop trying to cater to everyone. You can’t cater to the horizontal progression of casuals and hardcores. Cater to the casuals, and the hardcores claim the game is to easy. Cater to the hardcores and the casuals claim the game is too hard.
Right now they are catering to both, and no-one is happy.

Final note, as I forgot to add: Much of the scarcity issue results in the problems I touched on early in the first post, because people are desperate to find ways to obtain items without paying real cash.

This also results in tension and misbheavior, due to a sort of cultivated attitude of greed. I think perhaps a lot of people are acting in ways that they would not normally act in a game, simply because they desire certain items so much, that the inability to obtain them in a reasonable amount of time causes them to operate more on emotion than patience.

…All in all, horizontal progression and vanity together create the atmosphere of need in GW2 (along with the initial goal of obtaining exotic gear, which is now surpassed by Ascended gear, but I’m not going to go into the vertical progression problems, even though it too is affected by scarcity.)

Once the atmosphere of need is created, everything else starts to churn. People want to grind gold or drops to obtain a certain look. Others want to gather material to craft the items they want. Popularity of certain attributes comes into play, and suddenly vials of blood are going for a higher rate on the trading post, and so on.

Then you introduce scarcity. Setting and adjusting drop rates. People begin to adjust their gaming habits to maximize efficiency.

When I started GW2, it was November of 2012. Back then I didn’t know about Diminishing Returns, nor was I high enough of a level to really see just how bad T6 drop rates were. Perhaps they were much better back then, I don’t know, but I eventually hit the zones where T6 mats started to drop. By that time I knew about Diminishing Returns. At the time my crafting was still in the T5 stages, so I spent time farming stuff here and there for T5 mats. In that time period I noticed what appeared to be changes in the drop rates of those materials.

All along, I was watching prices of things on the TP going up. I had dreamed of owning Celestial White for my main character, and when I first could afford it, it was a mere 6gold in value. I chose not to buy it because I didn’t want to spend every copper I had for one dye. Later on, not exactly swimming in gold, I finally purchased it for around 18gold. Like so many other things, scarcity had started to drive the prices up and up and up.

In fact, prices were climbing so high, that suddenly many of the things people desired, were out of their price range when placed along side their time dedication to the game. There have been claims made that GW2 is for casuals, yet for the truly casual player, much of the content is out of reach.

Except for one crucial factor that magically appears. GW2 is a virtual world. It has a virtual economy. Scarcity itself is virtual, but has the same psychological effects. Most people desire to have their character look great. They want certain skins, and many want certain stats. Yet through scarcity, a huge portion of the game is out of their reach….unless they grab their wallet.

Arenanet has, essentially, created a world with an incredible amount of scarcity, all with the intention of, in my own opinion, playing on the psychology of the player base in order to turn a profit.

Sadly, there are other ways to make money that don’t involve scarcity, but they aren’t quite as profitable in the short term.

It would be nice if Arenanet could break away from this scarcity principle, but it seems to be their business model, and I don’t think that is going to change, ever.

While balancing and bugs and other issues in GW2 are cause for many forum threads complaining, rightfully, to Arenanet about needing solutions, it is my personal opinion that one of the largest problems in GW2 is loot.

The loot, or lack of, in GW2 is directly responsible, in my opinion, for several other issues that people have complained about openly on the forums.

Champ trains, PUG kicking, TP prices, content being “to easy”, content being “to hard”, shady RNG, and the toxicity of the community, can, as I see it, all be traced back to the problem of loot.

After playing GW2 for over a year, it is clear that Arenanet operates their game on the principle of scarcity.

Wikipedia defines Scarcity as follows:
“Scarcity, in the area of social psychology, works much like scarcity in the area of economics. Simply put, humans place a higher value on an object that is scarce, and a lower value on those that are abundant.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_%28social_psychology%29

Another site, Investopedia, explains it from an economic standpoint, and even touches on the negative effects of the issue:
“An economic principle in which a limited supply of a good, coupled with a high demand for that good, results in a mismatch between the desired supply and demand equilibrium. In pricing theory, the scarcity principle suggests that the price for a scarce good should rise until an equilibrium is reached between supply and demand. However, this would result in the restricted exclusion of the good only to those who can afford it. If the scarce resource happens to be grain, for example, individuals will not be able to attain their basic needs.”
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity-principle.asp

This latter quote shows a key part of how Arenanet apears to have chosen to run their buisiness. “Individuals will not be able to attain their basic needs.”

It is true that in a game like GW2, you do not need a Legendary. It has been claimed in the past that you do not need armor at all, though I’ve yet to find proof on this one. You do not need ascended weapons, even if many of the threads on the forum appear to claim otherwise.

With a lot of focus on “horizontal progression”, wherein people put their effort and time into the game in order to achieve different skins, it brings to the front the issue of why many people play in the first place. Why do you need karma gear? Why do you need cultural armor? It’s not the stats, it’s the looks. Looks are a huge part of how horizontal progression works, and it’s a serious issue. Many people are upset by the appearance of the Ascended armor, because while it is best for stats, many people do not find it attractive.
…(continued)…

With zergs and champ farming it is a little easier, if not monotonous, to level an alt, along with crafting (though that is not for everyone). I have four level 80 characters, and two of them got a big boost from Queen’s Pavilion.
Part of the boredom of leveling alts is that if you spent your time getting World Completion on your first character, it doesn’t matter what race you choose, nothing is new anymore.

WvW offers everything I would want for PvP in GW2. sPvP is pointless, and I refuse to take part in something that so adversely affects the rest of the game because of “balancing”

My two favorites are Countess Anise, and Sieran.

Siera is fun loving, outgoing, and just happy.

Anise is mysterious, seductive, and dedicated, yet sweet.

chemiclord.3978:

Neural.1824:

If you’re going to move that much gold, both parties would probably benefit by contacting Anet customer service first.

Though I wouldn’t put it past Anet to just tell your friend “you’re quitting? Ok, we’ll take your gold”.

Oh, come on. Really? It’s one thing to be bitter about the direction they took, but to make the leap that they’d steal from their players? Grow up.

They wouldn’t be stealing. The ToS and all that pretty much outline everything as theirs, and it is not unheard of for a company to do such things.

edit: note that I intimated that they could do something like that. Not an outright accusation that they will. I just do not personally see it being beyond them.

I used a bear with LB/SB up through probably level 50 or so, until I started to understand a bit more about weapon/armor attributes, etc. The bear held aggro nicely so I could apply dps.

In the long run for both PvE and WvW I tend to run a LB/GS combo with birds (usually owl with eagle on backup)
P/P/CD with ranger runes.

I don’t know if it’s the best set up for how I play, but it lets me enjoy how I play. With Piercing traits it becomes a game to kite things in a manner that allows me to line them up if I’m against more than one target in PvE. Birds do good dps, but don’t last real long, so I have to manage them along with kiting.

Is it an optimal build? Very likely not, but I’m not out to solo champions or such, but I can move around in Orr without having to constantly skirt around stuff.

Maybe people are playing things wrong in the eyes of others, but looking back at my lower levels as a ranger, the bear is great if you aren’t into pet management and using the F keys. They are tough, and hold aggro decently. As such it’s likely the easy path for a lot of folks who just want to explore and have fun without having to obsess over their stats.

There have been a few things that made me laugh. Some big, some now. A smaller one that comes to mind was the first time I heard the Norn “confusion” commentary. “How many ales have I had?”

And while it is monotonously old now, thanks to the Jagged Horror, “No! I hand raised that minion!” was pretty kitten funny the first time around too.

Usually when jumping onto beams, the physical landing area is larger than what you can see visually. However, there is no consistency to which these platforms perform. Sometimes the landing area may be more to one side of the visible beam. If you are talking about the puzzle I think you are, I usually aim to land just short of the visible beam. As was mentioned above, a speed boost can help.
Also, it helps to zoom out a bit and then move your camera position to be as straight above your character as possible.

edit: and when you finally get that vista and your world completion does not trigger, don’t forget to go back to the Chantry of Secrets in Bloodtide Coast.

It’s really sad that Anet is so draconian in their methods that honest players actually fear being kind to others.

If you’re going to move that much gold, both parties would probably benefit by contacting Anet customer service first.

Though I wouldn’t put it past Anet to just tell your friend “you’re quitting? Ok, we’ll take your gold”.

While I differ in opinion about ascended gear than most others, I will agree that it is quite a grind. And the living story achievement-fests are often a grind as well. Queens Pavilion was the only one that didn’t feel grindy because the the high volume of action made it appear that drops were better. It actually felt like you were getting decent effort/reward ratio.

I just ignore things now. If I get an achievement, great, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about what is going on with Scarlet or whoever the latest mary sue nemesis is. It’s just too much grind and effort for rewards that aren’t attractive or of interest.

OP, I would pose a different analogy, though not everyone can relate to it.

It is much like when a person is 4 or 5 years of age, a mere child, and they are taken to Disneyland for the very first time (or an equivalent). It’s a fantasy world filled with endless fun and discovery. Around every corner is a new adventure, and every ride is a thrill.

Fast forward to adulthood. You wake up one day and realize it’s just a theme park. There are no new areas to discover, and the park is landlocked by other businesses, and, as such, will never create new corners to go around. The rides are all the same, but simply get a face lift now and then.

Note: this is choosing just one out of hundreds of reasons for both liking and hating this game.
Hate – Diminishing Returns
Like – Depositing collectables from anywhere

It’s a fantastic idea, but I seriously doubt Anet would even think twice about spending any time or money on promoting such a thing since it doesn’t have any easy money in it for them.

I think, personally, that one of the most broken things about this game is the extreme time difference between farming mats, and farming gold to buy mats. It is ridiculously easier to farm gold and just buy the materials, at which point why bother, just farm gold and buy your goal item outright. With the exception of Ascended gear, crafting is completely useless in this game beyond leveling a bit.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Leamas.5803:

That’s true to a point, but it’s gone so far that if you don’t farm you’re looking at years to complete some of these things. That’s a lot of dedication.
When I was playing in around November 2012, I figured that at the rate I was playing and getting drops, it would take me more than 3 years to get a legendary weapon, and things were A LOT cheaper then.

I don’t know about years, but I guess it does depend on your pace. I am a huge anti-farm player, because of the reason you already stated. I already work a job, and don’t want to labor in game. I have been playing since beta pretty regularly and it only took me until about march to have everything for my first legendary. That being said, legendaries are an aesthetic choice not meant for the casual, it is supposed to take a ridiculous amount of time and resources.

In standard PvE, you’re going to get around five T6 mats / hour. Maybe seven or eight if you run the champ train a little, but overall you are also fighting the stupidity of DR, which has never for a minute been about curtailing botting activity. Plus the materials you get are random and may include things you don’t need. For a legendary such as Bitfrost, farming the mats would literally take 3 years or so if you don’t make mystic clovers or such. Not because of a lack of time dedication, but because of Diminishing Returns crippling your ability to put more than 30minutes into a zone before you get punished for playing the way you want.

Yes, more tiers! I mean, it’s not like Arenanet hasn’t been getting a kittenstorm of hate from the player base already over ascended gear, let’s make it worse!

/sarc

Best way to farm T6 mats is to find the fastest way to make gold (other than gem purchasing) and then buy them off the Trading Post or make mystic clovers in the forge and hope you don’t get clovers or junk.

Drop rates for T6 mats are so low you’d think you’re after a precursor

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Time spent within GW2 isn’t rewarding, when considering the atrocious drop rates and the extreme grind.

This is the core problem with GW2 in general. The much hated champ trains are a symptom of this problem.

I set out from the start when Ascended weapons were released to get one of my crafting to 500 so I could just make the things. The drop rate on chests is about as slim as precursors, and then there’s the chance that you won’t even be able to use the weapon you get from it.

It really does seem like that Arenanet places it’s greed before anything else in the game, including the players.

Seera.5916:

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Neural.1824:

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just block them when they whisper something you do not like and move on and enjoy your life. That pretty much makes their unblocking and additional whispers useless.

I suppose you think that women are responsible for preventing kitten as well, and that the rapists should just be allowed to go their merry way to find another victim?

Your mindset is no different. You both have made it quite clear that you believe that the victim/target is fully responsible for anything that happens, and that the aggressor is somehow free of any responsibility.

No but if someone is annoying you in chat…. /block works wonders and works every time.

And honestly trying to equate kitten and some clown sending you annoying whispers is pretty poor taste.

This. Comparing someone rudely giving you their opinion, which is perfectly legal in most places, to something that is illegal is poor taste.

It’s you vs the bully. Bullies only bother people who they get a reaction from. Realize that their putting down of your game in the manner they did is a sign they know their game isn’t good. Report if it’s truly rule breaking and block them in return.