Guild Wars 2

Not everyone can use TS for a variety of reasons, including myself, but the main problem with Raids from what I have seen so far is they are just a series of gimmicks and DPS checks (like timers and little green circles). Learn the timings and the patterns (not everyone can learn this, but if people don’t let them in, then they’ll never learn, vicious circle) and they become easier.

Jumping through hoops like a trained dog isn’t my idea of fun- but then I like fighting mainly against other humans as my gaming fun so i guess Raids aren’t really designed for me.

They do need difficulty levels so groups can learn the gimmicks whilst getting through the Raid rather than brick wall it and have people quit from lack of time or a loss of interest.

Keep them the way they are. Just remove the mastery points from them and add the mastery points to some other open world content instead of gated behind this garbage.

Anyone seen coglin posting recently? Did he fall off his nag? I’m missing his defending everything.

I’ve worked out what the major overhaul is…‘adventures’ are coming to wvw!

Yes, you will be forced to complete an adventure before being able to exit the entrance to wvw. All your skills will be removed, and you will now have to complete timed adventures before getting your masteries back, which will be unlocked by such simple tasks as capping SM 10000 times (counter reset to zero).

PVE events will trigger on the new replacement map for EB every 5 minutes, which will be twice as big and full of height changes for no other reason than they can put them in- oh and ledges and bridges everywhere to promote the use of fearbots.

If I had 100 people vs 100 people in the main keep on those BL maps, split into several objectives that have to all be held at the same time, with the current design for the keep, it would make for an awesome fight- tactics, splits, big battles (just fix the long run back for defeated players).

As it is, 5 people against one random doesn’t make for much in the way of fun.

No! They somehow spotted that mace rev makes for some pretty sweet damage (and condi too). It’s very fun to play- revs can throw condis out like confetti and it gets hard to cleanse very fast if you’re facing a lot of condi players.

I don’t think you can count raids as general content when they are restricted to a tiny percentage of the population…

I don’t see how anyone can compare guild Halls between the two either. H0T guild hall needs a massive amount of mats and basically huge numbers of members to advance to even basic functions which are then gated behind scribe (who might leave the guild, tough luck!). Guild Wars halls was very easy to upgrade and once it was done, it was done. they also served a very useful function for GVG, whereas H0T hall has some squalid round piece of ground that they laughing describe as a place to have fights on.

I’m pretty sure if they were designing Guild Wars now it would be much more attractive as well as bigger.

But bear one thing in mind- Guild Wars was much more a pvp game than GW2 is or will ever be.

Dondagora.9645:

So… I see the main complaint is customization. Any problem with, let’s say, splitting the stats amongst 14~16 platforms which should allow you an equivalent level of customization, along with having no restriction on rune sets [including allowing more than one rune set to be used, AKA mixing and matching] and so forth?

Really, customization is no real problem, as I’ve addressed this: we can give an == level of customization with the exception of choosing statistically inferior gear [meaning having less stats than other gear].

The second argued point is liking to make one’s own gear in the end game, and also that this change might waste all the gold spent thus far. My thoughts are:

• Simple difference in opinion on making one’s own stuff. I prefer a level of ease to join WvW and creating as easily a build which suites the needs of my preferred playstyle and changing it as wanted, which currently it is not. The loss of personal-ness in terms of gear will be lost, yes, but in turn allow for the personal-ness and uniqueness not be in the gear but the build itself.

• I truly don’t like this idea that you can grind, farm, or buy your way into better stats. Even if some people have wasted gold on their gear, I feel the sacrifice would be fine given the pay-off of a potentially more plentiful WvW population and gameplay. This is, of course, a con of the idea, but one amongst many pros. But, then again, do you play WvW for the gear, or do you play it for the fun? If not the latter, what’s the point? If you’re willing to sacrifice the latter for the former, well… that speaks for itself. If you have a reason beyond the former, then please state so.

I would like to ask people to read various comments before posting. Not all, of course, but some which might relate to your thoughts on the matter.

People are like a broken record without ever addressing ideas which address their concerns with this idea. Please be productive rather than repetitive. I am open to criticism, but only so long as it is constructive and a fully formed thought.

FACT: They will not bring in a system that is more complicated and more programming than the one they have for their ‘e-sport’. They aren’t going to spend the money on it.

So the only possible change is from having build diversity to being shovelled in to the spvp system with it’s many faults and restrictions.

You seem to think changing to standard pvp gear will increase the population, there is zero evidence to support that whereas comments here indicate current wvw players would leave, resulting in a net drop in numbers.

No thanks. Clear enough?

No thanks. I’d hate to have to try and balance my build around some clunky system when the current one works just fine- and food and stuff needs to stay too.

There’s a reason people don’t like the spvp type set up and that’s the lack of build diversity it imposes on you.

Anet wouldn’t spend money designing a whole new system for wvw, so the ‘best’ you would get is the spvp system shoved on us, which would drive more people away. i doubt many spvp players would move the other way and start playing wvw, they would find it too slow and less rewarding than spvp.

That’s not confirmation. That’s a dev from some other part of the game repeating the ‘wvw is getting better’ mantra without knowing the first thing about wvw. He’s only been there a few months, obviously hasn’t learned never to promise things they aren’t going to deliver, or answer any questions relating to wvw.

When they announce beta testing of new features and maps and restricting various test servers to small groups, roamers and a blob map or two, and how they are going to deal with empty servers as well as full ones, points system, mismatches, and the numerous other issues affecting the game mode then I’ll believe that Anet are actually working on making it ‘better’.

Swift.1930:

Another thing to hope for in the WvW revamp that’s supposed to be coming up soon. A really big map with lots of camps/outposts that is not designed for long (if any) siege. Persistent PvP. Maybe on a swamp map. Hey, sounds a lot like Hossin for Planetside 2… awesome!

Nice dream. Considering there hasn’t been a wvw dev for over six months and the ‘new’ BL map just got shoved at us (a spare LS3/sequel to Dry Top map converted for wvw), we’re not going to get anything any time ‘soon’.

As for roaming, you can go ‘roaming’ in any BL map anytime of the day- just don’t expect to find any enemies to fight with.

Swift.1930:

Ayrilana.1396:

Swift.1930:

Ayrilana.1396:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

No, silver.

Nobody is making you do adventures, man. There are plenty of sources for XP and you don’t need to finish any specialization collections. IDK what to tell you.

Yet if you want to finish your mastires, you do have to play them. you see you need to get gold on them to unlock the points that are locked behind them.

I don’t know what to tell you, other than maybe read the OP and have all the facts.

You don’t need to get gold on any adventures to max all of your masteries.

(Until they add more masteries to use up the spare points, that is.)

But hopefully they also add more sources on that day.

They added two more masteries for raids and more than two mastery points.

But as per my reply to your reply, did that force people to get gold on mini-games? Not yet, phew! =P

So as long as they keep adding mastery points whenever they add masteries, we should be able to avoid the mini-games most of the time.

You currently need 13 silver mini ‘games’ to fill out the mastery lines.

Ones in Raids don’t count, as they apply to maybe 2% of the population, and most will never see them, so we are still at 13 silver required just to complete the current H0T mastery lines.

It’s got to the stage where I don’t enter H0T maps as I don’t want to waste any Exp gain when I run out of points, and can’t face doing the gated, then timed, ‘adventures’. It’s a complete turn off for me- I play games to have fun and relax after a hard day’s work, not be pushed into timed gated things I loathe.

They nerfed the badge drop rate so badly, it’s now become like much else in H0T, and you need to grind it out to get anywhere.

Compare 1-2 badges and a terrible chest with the 20+ chests you can open at the end of AB meta event in a few minutes (and without having done the meta yourself) or the huge piles of loot you can get opening chests in SW, and it’s no wonder players don’t choose to stick around in wvw when there are better things to do with their time.

Q the usual ‘we don’t play for the rewards’ etc. True, some don’t. But the rewards are now SO bad compared to a spam 1 meta event in H0T that we are only left with die hards and some empty maps.

Hopefully they will address this faster than the AP rewards in wvw- as that took 3 years. And are still very high in some categories.

Many people like housing in games too, or pretty toons, or many other aspects of fluff that add nothing to the game play…..I’ll agree with NonToxic on this one, just because something is up or down voted doesn’t change the nature of the argument. It’s very easy to rig up or down voting over a period of time.

Harper.4173:

Swift.1930:

Harper.4173:

Obtena.7952:

Maybe you don’t want a sub par FPS experience in an MMO but it’s not about what you want. I’ve never played an MMO that was about ‘what I want’. Anet wanted a collection of activities for unlock; if the requirement for those activities were based on ‘what everyone wants’, there would be no collection that would fulfill it.

But you can build something based on what the majority of your player demographic wants.
Why would you assume your player base that’s currently playing an MMO with MMO mechanics would want to stop playing that and enjoy your sub-par FPS or Race simulator experience?
Why not make the adventures use the mechanics that are linked to the game type your players are actually playing?

Also, curiously (although I was not on the forums), I’d say that Guild Wars 1 devs seemed to know where the game was going and what its players wanted. I don’t recall any kind of update that added completely unrelated or unwanted gameplay to core areas (unless I’ve forgotten about it). Perhaps that was partially a mood thing, though, because GW1 also had a stronger sense of atmosphere.

I completely agree on both fronts. GW1 never tried to tack on so many things, nor did it try to be something it was not.
Some whacky things existed but they were few and far between and usually associated with festive moments and limited time events.
Also – GW1 had a much stronger sense of atmosphere – a thing that GW2 I feel is strongly missing.

Make it easy for people.

There was Guild Wars, the game. Great game, good pvp (when it was mainstream title), lots of things to do, could swap builds easily, share templates, form teams and being in a guild meant something.

Then they released GW2, which is about as similar to Guild Wars as it is to SM8. Actually, now I think on it, GW2 has a lot more in common with SM8 than Guild Wars.

These mini games are like something some devs did in their spare time then decided to tack on to the maps as they needed more gates for mastery points as they couldn’t work on any more within the 4 maps.

Guild Wars also had many collection events (like one on now) which are fun and rewarding as well as a good number of festivals (themed to the game) with lots of fun quests to do.

I just don’t feel connected with GW2.

The one to Rule.2593:

Swagger.1459:

The one to Rule.2593:

Swagger.1459:

The one to Rule.2593:

No, Legendary gives no added bonuses over ascended, if you don’t want to work for legendary then you are not any worse off than before. No support.

Legendary “stuff” does provide versatility so that is a boon to the gear rank. Your level of support for this doesn’t matter, something will change over time once the devs gather enough feedback and statistics. I guarantee they are questioning their current design choices as we type, so it will only be a matter of time. Also, a dev could swoop in here and tell me I’m wrong, but that will be temporary “heel digging” and won’t last long.

Edit- Games can offer challenging content, and none of what I said takes that away. You people also have to understand that casuals are the backbone to any video game so content designed to being tightly exclusive, along with a lack of options and qol features like I mentioned, are areas where developers always end up shooting themselves in the foot.

There is no added gear rank just because you can swap stats, it’s still not practical because you’ll still need to swap runes, Which if running strength runes like many do, is not going to be an option. No ones going to pay 100g every time they need to change out their runes. And quit honestly, i’ve only ever been in maybe 2 situations where i’ve needed to swap stats to anything from zerker. The issues with not being able to get it are simply learn to play issues.

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with exclusive content. Look at runescape, they have a variety of certain drops only dropped by certain high level boss monsters that are pretty difficult for anyone not in top end gear. Yet, no one there complains because they understand it’s something to strive for and that not everyone will have them.

If you can’t keep up with the endgame content then don’t do it until you can. Casuals are the backbone sure, but that doesn’t mean 100% of content needs to be tuned to them, at some point you need to think about the veterans and what they want.
Legendaries are simply skins with very limited added utility the stats are exactly the same as ascended and casuals can easily get ascended. If you don’t have ascended then There’s no way you’ll be going for legendary either regardless.

Of course legendaries are practicle… Runes are minor in comparison to the entire gear and food package. Soon enough we will be able to swap out runes and sigils, and we will eventually get ascended and legend dart runes and sigils as well.

The game is pusing toward roles for endgame content, you’ll make more than two builds eventually and legendary gear will be a blessing if you have it.

I’m glad that works for runescape, but it will need to be adjusted here.

What I want are options for all players, nothing of what I said takes that away…

I have weapons, never switched the stats once and I can’t even think of a situation where I would ever need to either. You are basing your statement off assumptions about being able to rune swap, and actually rune swapping is far more important because it costs far more, a set of exotic full zero armor is cheaper than a set of strength runes. You obviously don’t need to replace ascended/legendary armor if you want new runes, you just need to replace the runes.

Not once has anet confirmed rune swapping is going to be a thing.

Really? You’e never swapped the stats on your weapon, changed out an entire set of armor, etc?

I’m guessing you never play wvw then. And you might want to check the cost of a full set of ascended armor- it’s way more now than a set of strength runes (not that people use those in wvw anyway).

There are other parts of the game that don’t just use zerk faceplant.

Setz.9675:

Using WoW as a means to measure raids in gw2, absolutely atrocious.
If you think the timer is there to make it hard you are sorely mistaken. But considering you blame the timer for the difficulty and not the actual mechanics shows that you have zero relevance to any claims raid related.

But do allow me to explain:
1: during phase 2-3 the tank needs to possition the boss in the correct platform so green circles spawn correctly for green circle group to maintain dmg on the boss. Need to get out blue AoE, need to time CC phase, green circle spawn and AoE platform despawn and position boss accordingly.
2: green circle group needs to work around blue field to avoid teleportation (in green circle), need to slow/knockback red orbs to avoid getting killed, need to maintain awareness of green circle spawns, need to maintain decent damage on the boss.
3: Healer needs awareness where players need healing, most likely is part of green circle group.
4: melee dps got it easy.

You saying that the timer is too short and the mechanics are easy is because your group doesn’t perform well.

1 and 2 sound awfully gimmicky to me- but then all they can do is throw in lots of gimmicks and one shot mechanics to counter the lack of a proper trinity, and then add timers to make it ‘hard’.

Most of the ‘difficulty’ so far seems to be learning which gimmick goes where and when, and then making sure you pass the DPS check.

My theory about the new BL map being a cast off from an abandoned LS3 next to Dry Top where gliding and mushrooms would ahve come in is looking a lot more likely now. Insert shiny keeps, make them bigger to fit in the map and hey presto, new BL map. Does it work for wvw players? Who cares?

[–]DevonCarver 118 points 3 hours ago
I haven’t been working on WvW since March of this year.

Well, no great surprise there then.

Coming to the gem store soon, 30 slot bags 1000 gems, followed by 40 slot bags 2000 gems and a special price of only 2500 gems for 50 slots!

Draknar.5748:

Punter.7648:

How does ArenaNet make money from this esport thing?

I doubt they are making money. Usually the prize money comes from sponsors. You get enough sponsors on board for X dollar amount and you make that the prize pool. Any item prizes like graphics cards, peripherals, software, etc. are all donated from sponsors as well.

With the size of GW2 Esports scene, my guess is if they aren’t sponsored at all (I honestly haven’t looked to see if they are), that the money put up as prize money comes from their marketing budget. $200,000 is pretty easy to come by if they cut some web ads on certain sites for a few months. That or NCSoft HQ is putting in the money from their marketing budget.

I know the company I work for isn’t nearly as big as NCSoft and we have a $1.25mil marketing budget. So I can only assume NCSoft has a much bigger one and $200,000 of it for a tournament to try and legitimize GW2 as an eSport is a worthwhile investment.

Spending $200k on pulling a maximum of 9,000 viewers (I’d like to see the whole set of numbers on that, like viewing minutes per, uniques, etc ) means $22 spent per viewer – which is a terrible use of marketing spend. Adding it to the UI and STILL only getting 9000 views tells you how bad a fail it is in terms of numbers- that’s less than 1% of say 1m active players bothered to look at something that is a part of a game they actually play!

My bug bear isn’t really the forced advert on the loading screen, nor the UI permanent ad, it’s the fact they spent 200k on the failed ‘e-sport’s rather than on something useful like a few extra devs on wvw.

Maybe they should cancel the next ‘season’ and spend the money on fixing wvw instead.

The difference between Guild Wars and GW2 is that watching matches and GVGs in Guild Wars was fun, and you could learn a lot about builds, tactics, splits, etc. In GW2 it’s just a mess of particle effects, you have to turn off the breathless screaming commentary, and no matter how much you watch you won’t know anything about builds being used or tactics – and much of it boils down to camping a point and moving to engage 2v1.

Raziel.4216:

We have a 20 mastery point surplus (or more?), you don’t need gold on any adventure to max your masteries, heck you barely need silver in some.
Doesn’t meet the criteria to be “forced” upon you.

Someone worked out if you can’t get gold in any, you need 13 silver to complete masteries.

That might not seem liked ‘forced’ to you, but 13 of those piles of gouda (remember, a lot are gated behind meta completion events) certainly seems like ‘forcing’ to me.

If there were other ways of getting the mastery points (hey, how about ‘fill in the exp bar, get the mastery?) then it wouldn’t be forced. As it stands, there is no other option, hence they are forced.

‘Barely’ silver is still silver, and for many that’s too much. Huge timed JP is one of them, and after struggling for over an hour to finally just scrape bronze I realised that I’m never getting silver on that one. It’s not a ‘mastery’ test, it’s a ping/reaction/graphics card test involving hand/eye co ordination. When I was 20 my reactions and hand/eye co ordination were literally second to none. I didn’t like platform games then. I’m considerably older now and like them even less, and they just remind me of what i have lost over the years.

Melanion.4892:

I know for a fact that Anet is working on some things to address wvw, but for some reason they’re not talking about them even if they’re changes we’ve been asking for. Terrible PR decision if you ask me.

Can you prove that fact, ie are you one of the actual devs actually working on it, or is this more along the line of ‘I was in the pub the other day, and overheard someone say something about them working on some stuff for wvw’.

Or are you directly connected with Anet or someone who works there and is working on wvw?

Otherwise, we’ll believe it (if we’re still around) when we see it. Too many past promises of future improvements under the bridge (CDI’s, LOL!) to think any more optimistically than that.

VladR.9827:

they wont, they’ve got pvp league now with 200k in rewards ;d – wvw? pff obsolete

They were going to pay a team of devs to work on wvw, but then someone suggested they should spend the money on their ‘e-sport’…

Draknar.5748:

Anet, do not listen to these people. I enjoy Jumping Puzzles and want more of them!

If after 30+ years of video games evolution, most with basic jumping mechanics, people still can’t figure out platforming, then they need to call it a day on video gaming. This is basic stuff, people. Since Donkey Kong, as OP said. There’s no excuse for being bad at platforming, outside of a physical ailment.

Sure puzzles I could see not being mandatory, but you people complain if you have to do basic jumping. The kind of jumping a 10yr old would be able to do, simply because you don’t want to…

See there’s the problem. I stopped liking Jumping games at around 8 years old. Hence why I don’t play SM8. Gating mastery behind metas was bad enough, but having a double gate of meta AND gimmick JP mechanics that have timers that have nothing to do with the rest of game isn’t my kind of enjoyment.

But we are forced to do this garbage (you might like it and call them fun, if so, other games are for you- and how many times have you done them since you got gold? Oh yeah, it’s gated so you can’t half the time..) in order to get mastery points to complete the mastery lines.

They can add as many as they like- in fact, they should all be grouped together and they can release a separate game containing them all and sell it to those who like them. Just stop gating stuff that the rest of us need behind them.

I noticed I have to now go and do a few more story modes in dungeons to unlock a mastery point – is it a bad time to be trying to do dungeons then since the nerf?

Now, as a mainly wvw player, how exactly do I go about getting a legendary armor set? Oh yeah, play as we tell you…

I’d post here but there is enough sarcasm in the threads above.

Suffice to say I’m not a fan. Judging by the numbers (lack thereof) I see on them others feel the same.

The worst thing is switching from pve into wvw, getting into some fights and just then realising that you should have been spamming the pick up key again as you lie on the floor defeated and seeing those loot bags and a chest sitting back along the route.

It was supposed to work in wvw, but then they decided to remove it. Why? The one place where it actually makes sense to have it, and it doesn’t.

Fix it, Anet. Soon. Please don’t make us wait another 3 years before someone rushes past and throws a bone at wvw.

My theory is that the map is a leftover from when they designed SW/Dry Top and was recycled into use as a wvw map. They originally were going to have gliding but then decided it would be too much effort

Cons: massive amount of time gating, meta event gating, JP gating, timer gating, and putting mastery points behind one or more of them so half the time you can’t even activate the content you want to try, but instead are forced to endure something else.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

ChrizZcE.5981:

I love jumping puzzles.

Having to clear that last jump gets my blood pumping more than any boss fight.

I agree they are fun!
I would like it if they added more Jumping Puzzles to get to epic boss fights and during boss fights platforming is necessary to kill boss. Makes it more challenging.

Maybe this isn’t the game for you. Try Super Marios 8, that has all the jumping and platforms you seem to crave.

The bigger problem comes when the person you chose to boost to 500 scribe decides to ‘take a break’ from GW2…

Update: got very lucky and found a full map last night, and managed not to d/c, and RL let me stay on until the meta completed. Managed to get the map completed apart from one HP, so used points from wvw to get that triggered for map completion.

Now I have ‘adventures’ to endure if I ever want to complete the masteries…

Catalin.5341:

Don’t know if this is the case on all servers, but on SFR we have commanders that refuse or are too lazy to learn the map so they tag up as usual cause people follow them, but they are just leading people into dead-ends and always take the super way around things to get to an objective. Then people start complaining how this map is so bad when they don’t even know it.

To get a feel of what I explained above, imagine the alpine borderlands and in order to get from hills to cragtop you would go through the garrison water-gate then up to sunnyhill, reach north camp and the go south to cragtop. That’s how people get to Palace when they start from Rampart Hilarious!!!

Having a pvp map that contains dead ends and bad pathing isn’t great for promoting what people enjoy, and that’s pvp. People don’t want to spend ages having to navigate and getting out a compass in order to rejoin the fights- if they wanted that, then ESO battlefields would have been hugely more popular than they were- the number one complaint there being it took way too long to rejoin the fight.

People tag up as no one else is doing it and they are trying to get some action going, then they get 2-3 others to join them and go around pvd’ing as there is no one around and no enemies to fight outside of prime time. Then they get bored and move to EB to see if anyone is there, then they log off.

That’s why the BL’s are so Deserted, it’s nothing to do with comms who don’t know the way around the mini maze that is the BL. I’ve yet to see anyone complain if a comm goes the wrong way and end up at a dead end- usually it’s about the best laugh we have as the chances of finding enemies to fight outside prime time is low to non-existent unless the enemy map blob is map jumping then it’s our 5 against 30-40.

Warcry.1596:

30 minutes after every Odd hour server time (5:30, 7:30, 9:30, etc) the map resets, go then and look for a map that is finding people. I have NEVER not found a map and complete it often 2 times per day. Just keep looking in the LFG and you’ll find it

If you complete it two times a day, you’re spending at least 5 hours ingame every day. That’s not your average person with a RL job, who might typically be able to log in a few times a week from 8.30 to 10pm. So weekdays basically they can’t do the map at all. They might get enough time to try one event on the weekend, only to see it fail after 2.5 hrs of effort. And that’s after using lfg and ferrying and taxis and all the other work arounds players have been forced to come up with to try and populate a map enough to have a chance at succeeding.

The whole two hour long meta event is a big block to people who can’t commit to 2-3 hours in one stretch and THEN spend even longer madly scrambling around the map before it closes trying to unlock POI’s and Vistas that you don’t even have time to check on how to get there.

Having the map locked behind the meta event is terrible design and just cheeses people off.

Rasimir.6239:

Laurelinde.4395:

I hadn’t realised I needed to gold a lot of them for max mastery.

You don’t as long as you get all of the non-adventure mastery points. There are 129 mastery points in HoT (excluding the 4 from raids), and you need 112 for max mastery (again excluding raids, with raids it’s currently 114 of 133).

There are 15 adventures (5 per zone), which each give 2 mastery points, one each for silver and gold participation. If you have all non-adventure, non-raid mastery points this means 13 silver adventures or a corresponding mix of silver and gold.

So basically you’re forced into getting silver on timed, gated content that half the time you can’t access because of some unrelated meta event completion.

There is no option, if you want to complete your H0T mastery lines, you have to go play SM8, whether you like platform games or not, and whether or not your reactions, spacial awareness and ping can cope (or not).

Ping becomes an issue here USA players may notice they get a much better ping then EU based players, this means they find it easier to do this sort of action/reaction platforming.

Tough luck if you thought you didn’t buy Super Marios 8, apparently Anet share devs with it now which is why there are now so many platforms in GW2.

Sooner or later I’ll force myself to try another one – the couple of hours I spent trying Sanctum Scramble to finally scrape bronze convinced me these types of timed co ordination tests aren’t for me.

I don’t enjoy platform games, and haven’t since I was around 8 years old. Stop forcing this crap on us Anet, it has nothing to do with my character or the rest of the game. Anyone that enjoys them should drop GW2 and go play SM8.

I never have enough laurels. But then I couldn’t stand old fractals (as well as time issues in order to complete runs- never a good thing to have to log off after the 3rd bit, etc).

I’m mainly wvw, so used laurels for not only rings and accessories and trinkets but also for wvw infusions at 5 a pop- which is where they really start to add up. Also many sets of ascended on my various mains as well as ascended weapons.

Ascended stat change isn’t practical unless you are using very cheap runes- and wasn’t even possible until recently anyway.

Always been in favour of rings etc being tradeable- otherwise it’s just another time gate.

It’s not a drought. It’s just a restriction and a time gate.

Outside of prime time you will struggle to find players in any maps except EB. During prime time some guilds might be around in BL, but whether they will welcome your presence is another matter entirely as these tend to be closed raids.

Earlier tonight SFR had outmanned buff in EB and no one in the other maps either, so it all depends on what time you usually play.

The new BL feels like a rejected third map after Dry Top where they were going to decide to have gliding and mushrooms but then decided not to use the map and revamped it for use as the new wvw map but without the gliding. The keeps certainly feel like gliding was a part of the design with all the very high ramparts etc .

Well, another weekend has gone by and still no closer to seeing a DS map succeed, so still unable to get that map finished.

After much reading of guides and with a lot of help, managed to get TD 100%- thanks all who were on the map and running around to all the various HP’s! Was tedious, lots of waiting around or running back and looking up even how to find POI’s, vistas, etc. Luckily I had a good long spell at it during primetime.

Three down, one to go…

Not managed to see a DS map meta event even running yet, so most of the map is locked/gated behind the meta event.

Why it’s locked behind a two hour meta that is very prone to fail is anyone’s guess- but then TD looks like some Super Marios fanboy map so i guess we shouldn’t be so surprised.

Spending hour upon hour (when I can log in- chances of being there for a whole 2 hour meta and then being able to spend time exploring after that, all in one session= zero, I have a rl) trying to even access an open world map is bad design.

Way too many ‘mastery’ points gated behind these mini games- I’ve managed exactly one silver, having tried several and wasting a lot of time on the JP timed one.

No chance of ever getting gold on any of them, so can’t complete H0T masteries.

What’s also annoying is having their activation locked behind meta or some other event completion – so you finally work out how to reach it, just to find you wasted all that time as it’s locked behind something else.

/quote:You can start playing your elite spec from the first trait point you put into it- you don’t need to fully unlock everything

If that is the best defence you can come up with, then we don’t need to say any more.

Anyone who changes to their elite spec with just the first trait opened is playing a kitten character, basically asking others to let them leech.

It’s a big time gated/meta gated grindfest. Add in content that is locked behind reliance on being online and lucky enough to get in to a meta that actually succeeds so you can explore that map and it’s frustrating as well. And to top it off, completion of the new maps is mandatory if you ever want to craft your precursor for the gifts.

Having less than 5% on a toon is easy- just play wvw.

saturn.4810:

Alex Eternity.8195:

i have to say, i am quite shocked bc of the prices right now. guess i got my reality check, when i was pondering the use of coni warriors – and i researched what was needed to lets say get an ascended viper set. NOW i dont see the lack of condi dps in raids as a coincidence! This will cost you around 1500g for the armor set alone…i just cant…

seems like i will stay zerker, i am glad i dont play condi classes which now are effed bc viper is a straight up better condi stat than anything before and i guess its kind of a gear treadmill. not gear itself but the new prefixes which get more and more stats and are nondebational just better.

While im at it, i find it disturbingly annoying that the new stats are gated behind more and more grind and mats than ealier versions. why cant it be like in the old days, where we buy the recipes at the vendor and be done with it. but now getting a optimal viper/sinister set? farm season 2 living story achievments for 2 weeks to get the trinkets, throw 2000g at the tp, farm meta event maps for the exotic AND asc insignia/insrcription for another 2 weeks. gone are the days where i could try out new builds on a fly with only mats and gold needed…

/rant

Don’t forget that you can reforge ascended equipment.

Yep, which costs and also wipes your runes, which quickly becomes both expensive and annoying.

Brocktanor.1794:

I think all you guys are having problems because you guys are not in WvW guilds or that your guilds are not making the right decisions. I’m on Ring of fire ( silver/bronze). Our guild has spent all his time since hot launch on borderlands. The first week, we didn’t have fights every time we did a raid, that’s true. However since the last two weeks we’ve had tons of fights every day at any hour.

If you manage to build up a little group you can cap towers easily and could even cap keeps. And the fact that you are capping stuff will draw attention from the enemy and they will come on the borders. Of course if people don’t do the effort to cap because it’s gona take 5 minutes to take down the wall or a door of course the border will stay empty…

I can understand that people that are not in a big pvx guild or in a wvw guild have a hard time building up such groups but if you realy want to have fun on the borderlands join a wvw guild.

The ones that need to be blamed for the bad situation on certain servers/matchups are mainly the guilds that are all the time on EB, not A-net! If the guilds are on EB nothing will happen on the borders, EB will be full of blobs and there will be a queue. Pugs will get frustrated on empty borders and quit WvW.

To resume;
If guilds get on borders, they will attract more and more people on borders. Guilds will have high quality fights on border. More pugs will go on EB and have fun over there in mind-less zergs. Roaming on EB and borders will have more sense..

What I’ve said just above is what’s happening on RoF. It’s really a win-win situation for everyone and everyone is having a blast over here!

Tried that several times. No one came. They didn’t care to leave the only map with people on it to fight, to come and pvd behind us.

Joined wvw guilds ages ago, they all died or are now down to 3-4 semi active and 150 that never log in.

I find fighting against guilds that many of them are just as ‘mindless’ as the pugs you denigrate, or in some cases worse.

EB is the only place that has real fights of people vs people. BL are empty and it’s pvd and never see an enemy. I’d much rather be fighting our 15 against your 30+ on a map I can get back to the fight on than pvd against some auto upgraded t3 emptiness.

I wonder how many other people on RoF can come and back up your statements, including other servers (not your guildies).

I’m lucky, I have another comp on my desk, so I just start the NPC off on their ramble and read the news/weather/sport/post here on the other. Then check back to move the story on to next wall of NPC verbiage.

It’s the only way to do it, otherwise you’re stuck staring at the screen whilst they mumble about something.

flog.3485:

Hmm lets try a lore-based argument.
OP, I personally don’t think it would make any sense to make map exploration as easy as tyria simply because it feels meaningless (and where there is meaning, thre is no enjoyment) to see a character progree into an unknown map in such an easy way. Core tyria allowed that. Why? Because core tyria population lived in these regions for more than 250 years
As a side note I would also add that I heard there was some problems with map completion (if it has not been solved in the last patch, tell me please), so no need to rush and no neeed to be impatient
I actually like the fact that you won’t be able to just spend two hours in the map and say “ok i have finished this map, let’s get to the others”. The important fact to also consider is that these maps are story-driven and not putting an emphasis on that in an expansion which consists of only 4 giant maps so far is really not fun.
When I see these maps I feel like exploring them with my alts, which is not the case when I consider the tyria maps which feel boring to complete once I have already done it with one character (of course I am not incriminating the quality design of GW maps in general)

Ah, so it’s LORE that is stopping people form completing maps. That’s Ok then. As long as it’s Lore that prevents getting pieces to craft a precursor, map completion, lack of players in the maps…what an awful argument.

When I see these maps I feel like logging out. I have no drive to put myself through the same drivel for a second time on any alts, ever.

That’s if I ever get lucky enough to be on when the meta completes on the right map and I can figure out how to reach where I need to get to and other players are there to help rather than jumping ship to the next loot bag meta.

I’ll let you know if I ever get done with TD- Auric Basin I got finished by converting wvw points into HP points and got lucky enough to unlock the last one I needed that was gated behind a meta and either ley line gliding or some other gimmick. Sadly in TD I still need some HP’s , POI’s, Vistas etc which are blocked off by meta.

Vayne.8563:

Notsoperky.2348:

It’s rapidly becoming impossible to ‘do what you want, when you want’ and this game now feels more ‘log in after checking event timer, get lucky with lfg into good map, get lucky completing long boring meta event and maybe you have a chance at people sticking around to complete HP’s , POI’s, etc before map shuts again’.

Add that to the fact that my brain hurts as soon as I step foot in TD and map completion has gone from being fun to being next to impossible and/or tedious.

Anyone who says’ look for an event, etc’ bear in mind a lot of people can only log on for an hour or two a couple times a week, they aren’t wedded to the game.

What you said here is true. A lot of people can only log in for an hour or two every couple of weeks. But no game company can make games aimed at those people. It’s not a reasonable expectation.

Try re reading what I said. An hour or two . A couple of times a week. That’s pretty much most games target audience. Add in a couple more times a week and that’s your average game player.

Sadly, with less and less people in the maps, if you missed the rush and can’t play 24/7 you are going to struggle to get to half of DS map at all, and forget about completing most of the HP’s unless you like wasting at least 30 minutes + finding a group or spamming a deserted map’s map chat after you have finally followed some convuluted route to reach it.

It’s rapidly becoming impossible to ‘do what you want, when you want’ and this game now feels more ‘log in after checking event timer, get lucky with lfg into good map, get lucky completing long boring meta event and maybe you have a chance at people sticking around to complete HP’s , POI’s, etc before map shuts again’.

Add that to the fact that my brain hurts as soon as I step foot in TD and map completion has gone from being fun to being next to impossible and/or tedious.

Anyone who says’ look for an event, etc’ bear in mind a lot of people can only log on for an hour or two a couple times a week, they aren’t wedded to the game.

So, trying to complete the hellish maps TD and DS. Every time I log in, WP’s in DS are contested.

TD is a ghost town. Not to mention trying to work out where to go just gives me a headache and I go do something enjoyable or just log out the game.

Don’t say ‘find a DS event, etc’ I tried, nothing at the time of day (it’s 1.45pm on a Saturday afternoon, no lfg taxi, next timer 1.46hours away).

TD is like a bad maze, coupled with the chances of finding other people to help on champ HPs is about as likely as Xmas being tomorrow- eventually it will be true, but not any time soon.

GW2 have invented a new game called ‘general waiting 2’ where you have to log in and spend your relaxing leisure time spamming lfg, or looking for some other people that might finally come along and complete the HP you want in a few minutes after hunting for hours.

It’s not fun.