Guild Wars 2

personally i dislike that they went the way of “even more weapon swapping, more complexity, on top of already silly amount of complexity and Zero fixes to the lack of power gain by doing so”.
every other class perform far better at far less involvement, which i see as a major issue.
it just doesn’t feel very rewarding and the fact Aoe’s (especially staff here) are so ridiculessly easy to avoid and even when hit their damage is very low compared to Any other skill combo which takes a 3-6seconds to land the full damage on and multiple roots+the exspending of all cleanse before you can lay down the combo’s.

i had hoped for some much needed ranged love to the ele, to give it that “Mage” feel which it should have been as an “elementalist”…
so many melee focused classes why kitten the ele so much on this area :/

SirDrygan.1823:

How much are you willing to bet the Weaver will be nerf after the preview event.

And how long will it takes to get more nerfs after launch?

My bet is 10 hours after launch of PoF.

if we follow nerfs as they have come we will see slight nerf to melee focuse, huge nerfs to ranged focus, then buffs to melee focus.
and we are back with the melee, mid range ele as always
so tired of everything being so melee heavy, need serious gab creators and proper long lasting ranged CC’s.

SunTzu.4513:

Oh, thougth it was my cat wich chrashed my game. She was walking over my keyboard after a pvp match and i thougth she pressed some weired combinations of buttons on it.

better apologies to the cat then

Aeolus.3615:

NeXeD.3042:

agreed completely skill spam there is no difference between legendary players and bronzies…… =/

that is one of the initial objectives of the game, reduce the gap between a good players and bad ones.

then they failed extremely hard. with over 25 different buff/debuff icons to keep track of at a glimse. ton of instant use skills to lower your timeframe for descission. 36 different fields combo’s to track. and the complete removal of “class identification” and “class roles”.

i cannot think of an mmorpg that creates more of a overcomplexity and cluster kitten its mechanical setup.
in 5v5+ it becomes utterly impossible to follow what is going on, which builds are on the field, which targets are key to take down first, what buffs/debuffs everyone has that need to be reacted to in this specific moment, etc.

when Every class can do Everything and there is no real limitation or “class diversity” this is what you get.
its one of the many reasons i personally dislike a system where Every class is supposed to do Every role.

i just see it as unnessesary as class roles are generally pretty well rounded normally, and the character archtypes are what the Vast majority want to play (however a lot will simply deal with playing something they don’t like just because it is so vastly more powerfull than the archtype for that class type).

besides that it is also the feeling off impact just isnt there. removing the “numbers” it looks/feels like you are hitting people with a pillow no matter what you do.
there is no feeling of “weight” or “impact” on any skills, and to be fair the vast majority of skills is just “shrugged off” as again everyone can so easily counter everything (so meta build FTW).

the best we can hope is changes to animations so it has the look of impactfull

i am not on a mac. win10.
but after you did this update i have started to have wierd choke lag, like my PC can’t handle it in certain situations.
never had this before, didnt change anything on my system and i am running a Beast of a machine så nowhere near maxing out my cpu, ram or gpu (planty of hardware space, ssd).

not sure how your changes to make it compatible to mac should have any effect on win10 performances but this is my experience since the patch a couple of weeks ago. (didn’t write on the forum before now as i assumed it was on my system and was doing a ton of testing to figure out the issue, however i cannot replicated anything like it in any other game nor benchmark testing).

while i like the idea of distinctive role setups, especially for pvp, Anet have used a lot of resources trying to remove this aspect of the game, so it would go against their design philosophy.

besides that i feel like the complexity of combat in GW2 have already reached an absolute insane complexity where gaining all the needed knowledge in group combat is impossible.

did a little post on it here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/In-combat-Information/first#post6677996

besides that i would have loved if instead of going “every class should play every role” that they had limited the classes to at least an advanced trinity setup.
but as that is not going to happend in GW2, or at least they are going the opposited way currently, anything like this will either not happend or be nothing but a “title” which convey nothing and simply just add more clutter :/

General PvP feedback off in combat Information.

The thing we’ve noticed continually while playing pvp is that there is an insane clutter of information, roughly 10-30 icons stating buffs, debuffs, perma buffs, etc.
But important information as “what build type am I fighting” is not shown at all.

The amount of multiplying complexity with 14 different Debuff effects, 11 buffs, 36 different combo fields, and a near unlimited amount of build setups, makes it an absolute nightmare to try and convey any reasonable clear information at a fast glance.

I am wondering how the devs do not see this as an issue? In any competitive game the most important thing is that you will clearly know what is going on and it is your reactions to what you see which matters. However, with such an insane amount of clutter this will never be possible. What it ends up being is people simply learning standard rotations which they mindlessly use the optimal rotation of in the hope that the opponent is blinded by the information and doing the same.
Even if someone is saying they can keep track of 25-35 icons at a glance, 36 different combinations and reacted to both within 1,5 seconds, it will still become a major hurdle to introduce anyone newer to the game.

I really do believe the next move of Anet should be to limit the debuff, buff and combo fields to a reasonable amount where a fast glance will easily convey exactly what is going on. With that it would also be needed to add the ability to disable icons which have no important information for combat (such as xp of all sorts etc).
as well as finding a way to make a clear distinction between build setups so you at first glance can see what you are facing. Usually This is the reason you got classes and thereby class restrictions. But as Anet has thrown that to the winds, they will need to come up with another way to convey this information.

I hope there should be no doubt that you are solving an issue in a bad manner when you have ended up with 25 different buff/debuffs that All does different things (and adding more for every big iteration, which is a little frightening, meaning they do not understand the issue of complexity yet). It shows that there have been area’s where the devs felt there was an issue and instead of finding a good solution to solve it they continued to simply add more nitch abilities which eventually turned into a kitten.
If you cannot solve an issue with a simpler solution I would suggest that you are looking at it wrong and you should try to re-examine What it is that your “first solution” was supposed to solve or add in the first place and whether or not it can either be looked at from a different angle (bc I guarantee in the vast majority it can. 25 different skill buff/debuff effects is an insane amount for any game)

well its all cool, got both now anyway ^^ tyvm for your time all of you

a follow up question: how do you even get HOT on an account which doesn’t have it?.
it is not available for purchase on the shop side as POF is the only available choice

someone mentioned you could get both as a bundle.
how do you do this? ^^

Chris.3290:

No, I thought this might be happening too, but they are not going to do this.

Thank goodness because Daredevil/Deadeye would have broke SPvP

as if the new trait lines didnt already do that before now ;P

Wulf.5431:

Nyx.6532:

Wulf.5431:

Wooden Potatoes showed a decent amount for the ele, nothing too in depth but showed the mechanics of it at least. So the weaving of the skills applies to all weapons. If you have a staff and are in fire, then go water, your first 2 skills become water and the middle skill is a hybrid of the two. You don’t have to be sword at all if you don’t want. One thing he was talking about how insane it is is Fresh Air. It still works, and the cool thing is you can swap to air to change your first 2 skills, and then swap to air AGAIN to change your last two skills. And each time you swap to air you get the benefits of swapping to air. Soooo double fresh air.

this sounds wrong. this would essentially mean we have 8! attunements to keep track of and it would be insanely annoying trying to figure out if my next swap is now the first 2 or last 2 skills (heat of battle).
the elementalist is already viewed as being to complicated to speedily grasp, them adding this would multiply that issue.

therefore i don’t believe this is how it would work (simply seems to cluttered and confusing)

Could a CM, or equal, pls confirm how this functions?

Ooookay, but like I just watched the video… I’m sure it’ll be up for you to watch somehow

i watched it before i wrote here if we are talking the reveal of the exspansion. which is why i wrote because it wasn’t clear at all how this would actually function with different weapons. all we saw was the weapon which specificly needed the trait to use it and there was no mentioned of how it would actually function or if it could even function with other weapon types

any cm/gm or someone with the knowledge that can confirm how it actually will work?

Wulf.5431:

Wooden Potatoes showed a decent amount for the ele, nothing too in depth but showed the mechanics of it at least. So the weaving of the skills applies to all weapons. If you have a staff and are in fire, then go water, your first 2 skills become water and the middle skill is a hybrid of the two. You don’t have to be sword at all if you don’t want. One thing he was talking about how insane it is is Fresh Air. It still works, and the cool thing is you can swap to air to change your first 2 skills, and then swap to air AGAIN to change your last two skills. And each time you swap to air you get the benefits of swapping to air. Soooo double fresh air.

this sounds wrong. this would essentially mean we have 8! attunements to keep track of and it would be insanely annoying trying to figure out if my next swap is now the first 2 or last 2 skills (heat of battle).
the elementalist is already viewed as being to complicated to speedily grasp, them adding this would multiply that issue.

therefore i don’t believe this is how it would work (simply seems to cluttered and confusing)

Could a CM, or equal, pls confirm how this functions?

considering the very high gem price for 1 account wide inventory slot, i dont think that will be it ^^

so i am wondering a bit about the elite spec for the ele.
will it be like HoT where it can be used with every weapon type and it will change all skills for those weapons, or have the attunement stuff.
or will it just be adding a new weapon which once again is melee focused (seriously getting sad over all the buffs//focus to melee/mid range combat, which indirectly nerfs long range options).

was suppsed to be a question ^^

Maethor.2810:

Alin.2468:

Two years ago they made a promise: every new expansion would contain previous expansions for free. Now people have to buy them in bundle.

Two years ago they also made a second promise: with every expansion release, all non-upgraded accounts would get previous expansions for free. Now old accounts of core game will no longer get HoT.

Seriously ArenaNet?! You started breaking promises now?

They promised that for each new expansion, you could get the previous expansions for a single price point. They are remaining true to this in providing bundles.

I don’t recall them saying that you would get previous expansions for free anywhere. Care to link a source?

that would also be wierd. i can understand if when the third expansion comes out they then make hot free.

but making the last expansion free for each new one, instead of just cheap, would be wierd marketing and make people speculated in not getting the expansion bc, soon it is free.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Pifil.5193:

Zushada.6108:

A few of my friends have come over from another game recently and are playing on free accounts. They would like to purchase the HoT unlocks but have been holding off until the announcement of the PoF release date.

I just took a look at the bundle postings and they indicate that PoF and the core Central Tyria is included; however, there is not indication of whether the HoT content is as well.

Can you please confirm or deny that HoT is included in this price?

Thank you for clarifying!

HoT is not included in the price, however you can add HoT to your cart when buying PoF and receive a discount.

This is correct.

Buying the Bundle

The option to purchase the bundle of Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire will appear at the end of the purchase flow, when you are reviewing your order. Please note that if you already own HoT, the upgrade/bundle option will not appear. But if you do not own HoT and are looking to purchase Path of Fire and add Heart of Thorns at a reduced price, it should appear as I described above.

Please let me know if it does not appear for you, and thanks!

nice ty.

however with gliding, poisens, and other stuff which is an absolute MUST have from HoTs, people need to get that and grind that first for the masteries (mastery grind is not good imho, all it does is limit content untill you grinded for x hours.)

mounts are just another kind of mastery movement system mate.
it is not like “mounts” you know from other games ^^

i am ok with it when it is done like this. although i feel like cutting off areas untill you grinded the right mount might be going a bit far
and if they are only usable in these area’s it is a wasted as learning to fully utilize them is pointless after that one map.

Zietlogik.6208:

Flatley.1620:

I’ve recently got a necro to 78 by “living off the land” as it were. Tremendous fun and she’s well away from having where near max stats. Ergo, the game feels awesome all (well, most) of the time to me.

I think it is less about the actual stats, and more about unlocking traits and skills.

Back when you only have 1 trait line and 2 utility skills, it is just not anywhere near as enjoyable

for me it is that i dont feel like i “NEED” to do it.
whenever progression gives you something you “NEED” to maximize your efficiency/open area’s up, i cant really enjoy it because it feels like a job, something i just want to get over with so i can do that cool thing which is the reason i need to do this.

so for me removing that burden and just letting me enjoy all the story, the exploration, the gameplay, etc etc etc. is when i feel the game is truly fun and shines.
normally Grind is there bc there is not enough content to entertain you and the content is so similar that if you played it for that you would be bored after a month. but in gw2 there is SO much good content and so many things to do, there isnt really content which is designed for “Mindless grind” and therefore there is no need for that “Maximization grind mechanic” as it subtract enjoyment and only adds “time loss”.

So it is Far more enjoyable now that i am finally done with gearing

GW2 gameplay feels so awesome once you maxed stats.

so the enjoyment of gw2 is far higher once you maxed out your stats and i expect same for masteries.

the grind for stats is never really fun in any mmo, and gw2 does it really well compared to mmo’s in general. however i feel my enjoyment is FAR larger once i maxed out the “Stats” so i could just run around and do what i wanted instead of focusing on specific progression.

i think it is a little sad that Stats maxing is even a thing in GW2 now as the game Truly shines once you are just wondering around the maps doing the events because it is “FUN” not because you “NEED” to do it.
it is the difference of having to do something and wanting to do something.

just wanted to throw my feeling and thoughts on it out there as it seems devs in general think “long term goals” equal “endless gear grind”.
i do think gw2 devs got most of the idea with legendary gear, as the stats is the same amount so it is not a “NEED” feeling to get it ^^

really hope the devs keep going in the direction of “no more stats” but just better content. the later maps from season 3 are kitten awesome ^^
(the mastery grind is a bit annoying though, but again it is because its the “NEED” feeling)

PS: love how there is so many lvls in the maps, like the big under water area in tangled depths is pretty cool little find hehe.
little bit sad that each map has different “special ressources” needed for that map, it makes each resource limited in their worth. but havent looked at it enough to say

so just finished this map for the first time and just want to say "That was an Awesome experience!! Best map by far and i Hope we get more content like that "

thats all TY Anet

it seems really wierd that they believe this was a buff :/
as a long range ele player i find the continual nerfing of staff builds vs. current builds to be very saddening :/
there is simply too many gab closers and CC is way to easy to counter and last to short to be viable to keep people at a distance, which means go tanky or you will have problems with a staff (or hide behind/in a zerg all the time)..

hoped they would give range love with this next expansion but looks like its more melee power

edit: if you had the problem op described you simply didn’t know how to use it (and you couldn’t really hide anywhere in the old circle if you did it right, as well as op says, no one would ever stay in it as CC immunities are growing on the tree’s in gw2 and even if they noob up and get stunned without Any CC break rdy its only 2 sec which means very little

draxynnic.3719:

The leaks suggest sword, and some weird mechanic about having access to less attunements but being able to combine them in some fashion. Apart from that, we don’t really know.

more melee -_-
why is there no love for long range ele… sigh…

zinkz.7045:

I hate to bring facts and objectivity into your GW2 lovefest, but older games already had patchers like this, Rift for example.

from what i remember rifts simply let you start before all was loaded, but it forced logged you if updates was applied.

also it still doesn’t change the statements made in the op ^^

Now back to enjoying the new Story (really love how there is so much more voice acting and more personallity in the characters in season 3. very nice move, and diffinately happily spend gems).

edit: must say the “oath” in the new episode is a bit off, sounds like they are overacting on purpose ? :P
hehe, else its been good till now

GW2 got the Best patch updater in the world

lets just take a moment to appriciated the Awesome patcher that gw2 has.
not only can it run the game without the entire download.
it also let you keep playing while new patches are being applied.

since no newer mmo is doing this we can only assume that the architecture behind the client to allow this must be pretty kitten Hard to make (as this feature Creates a Lot of positive feelings everytime i see a patch pop rdy)

Extremely well done to the GW2 devs!!

Felipe.1807:

They were both bad decisions….in order to punish the 10%(maybe even less) of population that is abusing the system, you dont make changes that gonna ruin the experience for the 90%.
You might not be aware of it, but theres a bug with the outnumbered buff right now, some people wont get it, no matter how much they participate or for how long they play on the map…that means you dont get the extra pips, get damage on armor and still give war score to the enemy…
And why the outnumbered have to be changed anyway…if someone is farming this stuff its not like he is harming the other players…If someone is farming pips on a queued map i can see why people would bother(its not really a effective farm unless you are a high rank, but thats not point anyway…). But on a map that allmost nobody is playing….i dont see why people care.
People asked for change(me included) for the Outnumbered, but to be spread out between the other stuff, like Rank and World place…again Anet make changes that nobody asked for and punish their playerbase, but i guess after playing this game for 5 years i should be used to this unprofessional behavior from Anet.

if you are talking afk abuse stuff. it is really easy to punish, to do this you need to minimum use macro’s which is no matter how you look at it a thirdparty program.
just monitor who is doing this abuse and Ban+punish them.

problem of afk abuse solved, no need for wierd changes which solves nothing and creates a bunch of problems.

complexity scale is something the GW2 devs need to read up on. Every problem they try to solve by adding more complexity with more systems, or making existing systems more complex in their behavior.
whenever you add complexity to a system you need to Really Think heavily about if there isn’t Any other way to do it which either lower the current complexity of the systems or make it stay at the same complexity.
(i point you towards the torment, bleed, burn, poisen, confusion, etc etc. Dots, which are a perfect example of how to add Tons of complexity trying to fix issue’s which could be fixed without adding any, or adding little, extra complexity to the existing systems).
remember complexity often adds exponentially on a system.

it’s a mechanic to abuse your psychology and the science used behind is generally known as “sunk cost fallacy”. read up on it if you are interested.

it’s basically trying to screw your mental health so it can abuse the damage to make you feel like you Need to play more and Need to invest more, than you would if they hadn’t screwed your mental health.
sadly the damage is not only going to be attached to gw2, it will become an issue for anything else which, even by normal means, poke the fear and/or addiction center and will likely take years to undo if it can even be undone (if it has the wanted effect on you).
it’s a bad thing and it saddens me to see games pushing so hard in this direction..

ignoring all the science and psychology (since lets all go full trump).
it is a way to “reward” long time players by punishing newer or returning players with FAR less reward for the same action and same time and effort put into that action. so that people who’s been here for far longer can get yet another “bonus” compared to others.

and a simple suggestion to ease the issue(as pips are not going away):
remove the time limit for pips and let it reset when maxed out.

Stand The Wall.6987:

maybe you are in a bad time zone because I get plenty of fights when I play wvw.

i didn’t touch on the balance of Pips at all, but it is horrific.
the easier the fights are the more pips you will easy mode make. the harder the less you will make.
doing over 1mill damage in a big fight (found a good spot and did insane damage since i was ignored and they outnumbered us extremely heavily) i still got 2pips shortly after (think it was 3pips then 2 on the next one).

as balance of it goes, its as mentioned a way to punish the majority of the community to make it seems like you are rewarding the minority longest playing wvwvw players.
it doesn’t even seem like it reward them more than before, it simply just punishes everyone else.

Pets!
Love these little things, they are awesome! I hope the devs does more with them in the long run ^^
How I would love to have the pets help out in pve content, having their mini-versions of their normal attacks etc. and systems to let me feed them, play with them and pet them to make them happier. their own little place in your house, maybe let you breed them etc. XD
that would be SO super cool and cute

Wish it would happen :P

On another note: kitten season 3 storylines have some awesome dialog and personalities are much clearer than the story before. It’s very much worth the gems imho (if you haven’t gotten all the episodes yet).

lilypop.7819:

It’s a bad idea to change from the normal. This is one of the worst examples of bad game design in GW2.

Evidence being the number of people asking questions in this area on-line and the sheer WASTE-OF-CUSTOMERS-TIME caused.

The Quaggan is stationed in an area of dynamic events so you assume you have to trigger something to get him to talk. Not so, of course.

BTW: Wiki doesn’t help in this problem area as it doesn’t indicate where either.

this (although you could argue its to push you towards the RPG element, however that would need a lot more personality etc. to really function imo).
i am generally frustrated over how bad the ingame information is, mostly when talking about figuring out what you need to do to gain a specific goal.
almost for Everything i need to do to progress my character i have to go look stuff up on multiple sites as even the wiki is lacking basic information.

it is rarely a good idea in a game to “hide” informations from players as it is most often just frustrating and wasting time. imho.
the easier it is to understand what is available and how to use it the more fun you will have using it instead of feeling frustrated and mislead while having to go to thirdparties to find the information (which is what will Always happen, so its not like you are forcing people to think, simply annoying us by forcing us to constantly look stuff up in the “dictionary”.
like talking to a professor outside of your own expertise which insist on using constant profession-terms instead of wording it to none experts within the field. while impressive, it is extremely frustrating
)

edit: which is sad because it is generally really enjoyable to run around and do stuff, but every-time i have to pause the gameplay to go out and use 5-15min researching how to do or where to get basic stuff it is diminishing the entertainment and bringing some frustration.

really enjoy season 3 storyline, especially that they have gotten a much better hang of bander and generally conversations between the characters ^^
new maps are very cool as well, love the magic focus. bit few mobs (each quite a lot stronger. its pretty clear that bruiser builds is what they expect you to use, which is a bit annoying) ^^

30h, running with zerg, hitting majority of targets, full zerk, barely dying, gave me maybe 50-70ranks…
(i am under rank 100, just got back and must say all this pip and rank grinding just to get ascended gear etc. is getting on my nerves. doesn’t help missing diamond 40 tickets by less than half an hour because of reset system -_-
couldn’t get myself motivated to keep playing more right after this, even though i had an Awesome time which was properly my most enjoyable WvWvW experience in GW2, but because of this silly loss of 30h investment and the extreme unfairness of others easy mode gaining it i just can’t get myself to log back on)

it is truly like they want people who ain’t super happy with hardcore grind to just quit the game, which is so silly as that grind for max stats completely stops and the entire focus of the game switches after the 2-4 months of hardcore grind it takes to get full ascended gear the first time. which gives a completely misrepresentation of endgame.
either you will love the gearing system and hate the endgame, or hate the gearing process and love the endgame. so yer.. not optimal imho

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Most players play about 4 hrs a day (which is generous)

Definitely not “most”

From the data on gw2efficiency…
50% of players play less than 1 hour 14 minutes per day.
Only ~30% of players play more than 2 hours per day
Only ~10% of players play more than 4 hours per day

which isn’t really a wonder when the majority of people are being punished by the systems so that a small % can be rewarded exceedingly.
reminds me a lot about real life work. doubt more than 50% would spend more than 1h a day on that as well if it was a real choice :P

personally i don’t think people that simply played longer should be rewarded exceedingly more for the exact same action in the game only rewarded more because they simply played the game much longer (it is already an advantage that they have had longer time to accumulated wealth, giving them even more of a leg up seems like you are just trying to punish newer and returning players. it also have the negative effect off creating an even bigger power gab, the longer the games been out, between old and new players which is something you almost never want to do in a game)

edit: ofc i do understand that it is sweet that your % of magic find goes up the longer you play, that you feel investment progress and feel it gets “reasonably easy” to switch builds etc.
But you need to remember that unless you give something to the other side of the coin it will also add a negative feeling for those that are yet to reach that critical point where they stop caring about pushing to get something specific in the game and just gone over to play because its fun and enjoyable ^^

sad panda. just had it reset the timer at the Very last chest of diamond… yer i don’t feel angry, annoyed and “pointless * design” right now

it’s sad it’s made so dumb, why even have a time limit when the limit is Different for the players? some reach it after only 7h’s and others misses the last box after spending 30h. absolutely not a fair reward Vs. Effort and it makes me feel really kitten crappy about wasting the extra time trying to reach diamond. big “fu” to me imho :/

this need to be Fixed ASAP

maybe introduce the ability to skin animals for their leather hides.
as with all other gathering you can go to do this specifically, but i don’t believe leather gain have any specific way to farm it besides just “kill a lot of stuff and pray to the rng gods”.
so introduce skinning animals and skinning tools would be beneficial on this point ^^

also a specific suggestion forum would be nice (if there is one then i apologies, didnt see any on the overview of the forums).

Astralporing.1957:

ToraSempai.8946:

People are now mad because of the nerf at lake doric (for those who don’t know, trebuchets now shot even at the entrance gate) they’re saying they’re going to BFF now to continue AFK farm. It is comunity’s fault in first place that be got punished this way for abusing AGAIN in a farm Anet gave us the option to use.

No, it’s Anet’s fault that they designed the farm to be unappealing when done the “intended” way.

this but the reasoning is:
“burden of optimal play”.
in short if you “force” people to have to do tidious stuff to get the stuff they think is needed to enjoy things they actually want to do, then you will force them to find the fastest and least effort taking way to reach that goal.
the only option to minimize this is to insure that abuse is rewarded less than actively playing.
but in any system finding abusive ways to do it will always be a more efficient way.

so how to fix it? well Anet had an amazing idea when they made GW2 “we will eliminated the reason to do tidious task, everything mechanic important, such as stats/skillpoints/etc, will be easily gained. it will only take roughly 2 days of play to max out 1 build, after that each 5-10 hours to max out a new build”.
by doing this they eleminated the “Need” to farm by doing tidious task when it comes to the mechanical aspect and only cosmetics where now something you needed to farm which was fixed because of the Vast amount of outfits meaning you might not get that “perfect” look instantly. but there was planty of “cool/interesting” looks which could keep you satisfied untill you reached it and you would never feel disadvantages due to build/stats/gear/SP/etc. for more than max 1 day (which would be the absolute maximum time to farm everything for a full new setup).

since they changed it to be all about the “reward system” and put in some really heavy time taking grind, just to max out stats. the “burden of optimal play” is in full force, and it is actually worse than with other games as GW2 wasn’t made to be a “grindathron” and a lot of it’s original playerbase (and lots of mmo players) really loved that they had an mmorpg to enjoy that didn’t take a fulltime job investment just to get the mechanical side to the point we felt we could just “relax and enjoy the game content”.

but it is a hard choice as “what else do you do to make people keep playing for years”. to that my answer would be “make the gameplay Fun!”.
CS is a good example of how simple concepts that just does what it does extremely well, will keep people playing for literally over a decade and when they finally made a new version of it. it was simply a “upgraded” version of this exact concept

i personally think that focusing a Lot more on making the existing world feel a lot more alive (put in tons of new events, make it so it rotates the even much more, let the events have creator impact on the area they are in, let enemies build castle’s and defend them, monsters take over town and enslave npc’s etc. generally just polish the world and make it more alive) would be the right way to created more content for GW2.
adding more area’s now is kind of pointless the maps area is already so insanely big that there is absolutely no need for more “space”, there is a need for more reasons to actually be in the maps and do the events and feel like its not all a “repeat” again and again.

but that’s just my 2cents.
i am truly looking forward to an mmorpg that does horizontal progression as it’s main progression. meaning you never really get more “powerful” stats wise (kind of what they aimed for in the old days of gw2, just polished and better thought-out now that there have gone many years of development time into thinking it through).

Limodriver.4106:

according to reddits research:
How long does it take to get all 175 WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets (1450 pips) in one Week?

0 pips: infinite
1 pip : 1450 ticks, it takes 5d 0h 50m (120h 50m) or around 17h 15m per day
2 pips: 725 ticks, it takes 2d 12h 25m (60h 25m) or around 8h 40m per day
3 pips: 484 ticks, it takes 1d 16h 20m (40h 20m) or around 5h 45m per day
4 pips: 363 ticks, it takes 1d 6h 15m (30h 15m) or around 4h 20m per day
5 pips: 290 ticks, it takes 1d 0h 10m (24h 10m) or around 3h 30m per day
6 pips: 242 ticks, it takes 20h 10m or around 2h 55m per day
7 pips: 208 ticks, it takes 17h 20m or around 2h 30m per day
8 pips: 182 ticks, it takes 15h 10m or around 2h 10m per day
9 pips: 162 ticks, it takes 13h 30m or around 1h 55m per day
10 pips: 145 ticks, it takes 12h 5m or around 1h 45m per day
11 pips: 132 ticks, it takes 11h 0m or around 1h 35m per day
12 pips: 121 ticks, it takes 10h 5m or around 1h 25m per day
13 pips: 112 ticks, it takes 9h 20m or around 1h 20m per day
14 pips: 104 ticks, it takes 8h 40m or around 1h 15m per day
15 pips: 97 ticks, it takes 8h 5m or around 1h 10m per day
16 pips: 91 ticks, it takes 7h 35m or around 1h 5m per day
17 pips: 86 ticks, it takes 7h 10m or around 1h per day

this, anyone over the 4ish pips per tick should be silent imho and stop robbing their easy mode tick counter in everyones faces

it is a bit wierd to come back and see everything be about getting Stats and rewards now when before it was all about just enjoying the gameplay and maybe get some cosmetics.
times change

ps: its funny they add a bunch of extra grind saying it is to give the hardcore players something more to do, then give the players who playes the most the fastest ticks, removing that grind time and just punishing the lower ranked players by doing it :/

Natto.5819:

If you want end game skins, and the new WvW Legendary is something you want, it becomes a fulltime job. Not saying I’m forced to do it against my will. But Anet set the bar high, and the tickets needed take a long time to farm.

I’ve been sober for a couple of months now, so I have more control over my in-game impulses. I’m just greedy and want more for less effort to get the skin.

fair enough if it was ONLY for the skins, which could also be done by ranking which you need rank 1800+ to be able to get the new statsed gear as well.

but this will for the majority of hardcore pvpers not be for the skins, wvw skins imho are quite ugly so doubt many do it for skin, but for the Ascended stats, which makes a big difference.
some one gave me a number of a 4% difference, but just from looking at the stats increase we are talking a 5,021% increase in all stats which effectively becomes a 10.042% difference in damage taken/given. that’s equal to an extra Top Trait slot, which can be pretty big, so you will want this.

the extreme nerf to the skermish tickets seems overdone.
it is always giving an extreme advantage to the people who did it before the nerf.
from what i hear we now get 1/5 of the reward of before and from a quick calc, assuming your doing nothing but WvW for 5-10hours every day, you will need 2-4 weeks at minimum just to have the skermish tickets for 1 ascended piece.
on top of that you now also need the 500 in the craft and craft materials to do so. which means WvW ascended weap/armour is properly the worst way to get it.

considering that PvP is supposed to be as stats balanced as possible, having months of pvp grind to fully stats gear is too much imho. as this should by logic be the fastest way to get it as PvP’ers rarely like grinding for gear (which is why the majority of their time is going to pvp, not pve grinding).

that’s just my view of it ^^

people seem to misunderstand a handfull of points here so i will try to clarify

1. i do Not mind spending money. as said i make over 200€ for a day of work, that’s without overtime which i can easily take, so the amount is not the main thing and after seeing the actual € price of stories etc. it is not an issue for me at all (they are fairly cheaply priced, considered they don’t do P2P setups or many “forced payments”).

2. i lose the interest in playing when anything i can do in the game in a full day of boring grind (which is part of the course with mmorpg’s) i can do in under 10minutes of RL work. it means any ingame effort is a complete and utter wasted of time.

3. i feel like there is things in the game i “Need” to get, like maxed out stats. so i Need to figure out a good way to get there. but when the best way is without a doubt just RL € and getting the gear is always a lot of “mindless grind and boring hours” (no matter if you do pure pvp you need to do your Crafts to 500 now, boring mindless stuff), then it becomes a question of "what bores me more; 8-16 hours of work or 800-1600 hours of grind (lets say 3/4 of all game time is funtime, which is a little high in an mmorp, thats still 200-400 hours vs. 8-16hours boredom. meaning i feel like a complete idiot for spending any time at all trying to archieve Stats ingame.

4. “if you have the money, and you want to stats, why not just spend the 2 days at work?”.
because its a slippery slope, if i start spending several houndread of € just to get gear, it will constantly pressure me to just buy more and more, and when i’ve bought everything then what is the point of playing? i am just throwing money at the dev so they give me digital pixels instead of giving me a fun experience of which i was searching in the first place.

as a short summary of all this:
so “what do i want from it?” i want a gameplay experience where my RL work isn’t involved at all. i want a place where i can simply log in and feel that what i am doing in the gamespace actually matters for my character within the game-space while giving me positive and enjoyable experiences.
i want to disconnect from the real world and just enjoy cobling off for a few hours from all the stress, all the deadlines, all the real worlds maximizing of efficiency.
i simply want a space where i can relax and not have to think about how i should be doing Real work to allow for optimal enjoyment of my actions.
IRL this is the reality, you weigh work hours which created income with the time you have left to enjoy that income and try to find the best solution. having to do the same with a game seems very counter intuitive to what the game is supposed to do for us..

edit:
the entire discussion of the impact of RMT is something which should have it’s own thread (if needed to analyze etc. actually have several pages on that one if is, but think it will derail the discussion heavily if brought here).

it’s also worth noting that this the issues of rmt is mostly created because the game is no longer a horizontal progression system but now a vertical progression with continually increase of stats for a very long ingame play time (which creates the “burden of optimal play” issues, which in turn makes RMT a real strong issue, with horizontal progression RMT is far less impactful and therefore less of an issue)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Nyx.6532:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you are unwilling to pay cash or gold and you feel that it won’t be worth the cost then maybe you’d be happier watching the episodes on YouTube and skipping those maps.

you didn’t read my post at all. your answer is talking about something completely different than what i am saying.

in short: the problem is how depression it is that i know i need to use 800hours of ingame grinding to just make up for under 8hours of RL work.
there is absolutely no point in ever playing the game at that point, any logic dictates that if i want to use time in the game because i want something in it i should just take a few extra hour of overtime and buy whatever i wanted instead of using several houndread hours of grind time…
instead of pvp’ing i should just pay someone 3.000 gold and make them fight and win for me so i can get a nice trophy… etc.etc.etc. anything in the game is LEGALLY, which is the key word, Far easier obtained by me just going to RL work -_-

which is incredibly depressing and once i realized. it and did the calc i feel sad when i start the game…

I read it, and it reminded me of the quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

You’re making yourself unhappy because some amount of money will buy some amount of gold but this amount of gold is more than the gold you think that some item is worth.

I gather you can afford the cash value. If you want it, buy it. If you don’t think it’s worth it, don’t. Watch the YouTube instead. And quit making yourself unhappy because this amount of money get you some # of ingame tokens (gold).

lolz Awesome! job on the qoute hehe.

and yes i know i am, but i can’t stop it.. i think “hmm i really want to get fully geared someday, happy Stats isnt so importent from where i am to max gear so no pressure of getting it Right now”… then instantly the thought comes “but you should just do 3-4 days of work and you would be maxed out”.
which now results in me either getting sad about it because it is such an easy and optimal solution to do, or i do it and feel like the game is basicly over and i just wasted a Lot of money on nothing and then i hated the devs for feeling manipulated into losing the enjoyment and a lot of money..

so it is a no win situation, which is an issue i haven’t had often :/

Skittish.4539:

It should be noted that you cannot, in fact, “buy everything”. Sure, you can find some way to buy a perfect pvp team for pvp wins and you can buy raid carries and dungeon carries and fractal challenge mote carries. But then what are you gonna do while they finish that stuff for you? Literally sit in your chair, staring at the screen while watching someone else complete all the content for you? I guess if that’s your definition of entertainment, go for it.

true, but i think the problem here is “burden of optimal play”. i am a min/max optimum player by heart. if you give me a mechanic which makes me far more proficient in the game i almost garanteed have to use it, it is very annoying for me not to as i feel that others like me will use it and i will be far behind the optimal play.

so it basicly bumps me out and removes most of the fun of playing.

Linken.6345:

Nyx.6532:

Donari.5237:

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

how is
“you know this thing people do that f’d your enjoyment, effort put into the game and all the fun out of archieving stuff?”
“yer?.. yes, good.. we are going to do that ourself now, so forget about any kind of damage control or minimum amount of people doing it etc…”

while we are at it why not sell hacking and botting tools as well? i mean it is a huge issue in general in mmo’s and people will always use them, so why not just let Anet prvide them? they will even be better than ever as they will be part of the ingame UI’s…

seriously, how that is a logical “reasoning” is beyound my understanding :/ i just don’t get it and can’t get my head to accept it

---

yer it sadly didnt help. i just can’t get my mind of the “ow there goes 1 day of playing, you could have had an extra legendary piece there, boy you must be having fun for giving up 1 legendary piece just for that play session” … and no i was not having That! much fun, no one is :/

So after you worked over time and bought everything you want in the game whats the point of playing for you?

I play the game to do things i like doing and earn gold for the goals i set for myself.

So what if it takes 800 hours for me to get that legendary piece i had fun collecting the funds for it

Exactly, That is my point….
why would i even play now? why wasted my time with it when i know i could just buy everything and done with it.. then why even start in the first place… and grinding the hours it takes to earn it now seems idiotic to do compared to just doing a few extra work hours.
So its made it all pointless, which is why the game now feel depressing to open :/

mauried.5608:

Anet doesnt sell gold, they only sell gems.
The gem to gold exchange feature in the game and the exchange rate is set by the players and any gold you get from exchanging gems is coming from other players.

tomato, tômata.
result is exactly the same, there is absolutely no difference in its effect.

Donari.5237:

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

how is
“you know this thing people do that f’d your enjoyment, effort put into the game and all the fun out of archieving stuff?”
“yer?.. yes, good.. we are going to do that ourself now, so forget about any kind of damage control or minimum amount of people doing it etc…”

while we are at it why not sell hacking and botting tools as well? i mean it is a huge issue in general in mmo’s and people will always use them, so why not just let Anet prvide them? they will even be better than ever as they will be part of the ingame UI’s…

how that is a logical “reasoning” is beyound my understanding :/ i just don’t get it and can’t get my head to accept it
it’s sell lvls, sell all gear, next step is to sell prestige=pay us x amount and you get to be nr.1-2-3-4 pvp ranked best player in the world :/ i dont like all this pay instead of play thing, it makes me sad : . (
________
yer it sadly didnt help. i just can’t get my mind of the “ow there goes 1 day of playing, you could have had an extra legendary piece there, boy you must be having fun for giving up 1 legendary piece just for that play session” … and no i was not having That! much fun, no one is :/

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you are unwilling to pay cash or gold and you feel that it won’t be worth the cost then maybe you’d be happier watching the episodes on YouTube and skipping those maps.

you didn’t read my post at all. your answer is talking about something completely different than what i am saying.

in short: the problem is how depression it is that i know i need to use 800hours of ingame grinding to just make up for under 8hours of RL work.
there is absolutely no point in ever playing the game at that point, any logic dictates that if i want to use time in the game because i want something in it i should just take a few extra hour of overtime and buy whatever i wanted instead of using several houndread hours of grind time…
instead of pvp’ing i should just pay someone 3.000 gold and make them fight and win for me so i can get a nice trophy… etc.etc.etc. anything in the game is LEGALLY, which is the key word, Far easier obtained by me just going to RL work -_-

which is incredibly depressing and once i realized. it and did the calc i feel sad when i start the game…

Problem with Goldsellers.
question in bottom:

So here is a problem I actually haven’t experienced with goldsellers before (no matter if it is sold by the company or thirdparty. I see no difference on the two from a gameplay and enjoyment experience).

So I am sitting here thinking: “I would actually like to buy the living stories I don’t have and play them. I don’t mind paying the price it cost” (its 1280 for the season 2 and an extra 800 for the season 3 I can’t play, so 2080 gems which is roughly 25€).
Then I look at what that would get me in gold. Anet will sell me roughly 600gold for that price, that is actually far more than my char has on him and even at a 4g/h ratio (which from what I read is pretty high income grind) it is 150hours of grind.

There is No Way in hell the living stories will ever even come close to making or opening something worth 600g.
So if I was to give the extra money (and I Truly don’t mind that if it was, it’s 25€ which is very cheap for me) I should definitely get direct gold instead of stories as it gives me far more hours of “income”.
However I will NEVER buy gold, I don’t care if it is from some sweatshop thirdparty seller or from the company itself; it is cheating, it cheapens the effort of legit players and it decrease the enjoyment of everyone which plays on a fair playing field.

So since I would feel bad for buying something which has far less worth than simply buying gold, I have a hard time even wanting to buy anything….
So instead of me starting to use extra money on stories, later the cool tool animations (which they where just animations as I am using magic tools), perma bank stuff etc etc etc. I am constantly recalculating what that would be in pure gold and therefore coming to the conclusion that buying anything else is pointless and again I will Not buy ingame currency as it is cheating etc. as mentioned (and I could use 1 day at work and buy 3200g+ ingame (200€=16000gem= 100g per 500gem, so 3200g), making any time I use ingame on gaining anything an utter and complete wasted of time which will instantly turn me off from playing as any time spend I should just be paying my way out off…)

So yer, this is actually an issue I haven’t seen in other mmo’s I’ve invested time into…
Any cool idea’s of a different way of looking at it? which could change my mind and make me not feel so “depressed” over spending time actually playing the game to progress, instead of simply taking some overtime at work (and cutting months of grinding off for every day i just do RL work) ?

normally my argument is “it is against the eula etc. and hope the little piip piip gets perma banned when they do it” but here it is highly encuraged and the devs really want us to do it, making any kind of this argument nullified

edit: calc for gold price

Faaris.8013:

Nyx.6532:

yes i got HoT itself. i Finished all the season 3 story stuff.
do i need to pay season 3 episode 1 to get access to it then? still think it is quite iffy but better than what i thought was going on :P

…

i finished the season 3 story as well (don’t own any of it, but it lets you play them through).

I think it’s time for you to realize that you are confusing things, and stop blaming the developers for it. What I get from your posts (and that’s just trying to make sense out of them) is that you returned to GW2 after a break, and logged in recently, so the current Living World Season 3 Episode 5 is unlocked. The other episodes of season 3 are locked and cost 200 gems each to play.

You played through episode 5, and that’s it. That does not unlock the Ancient Magic Mastery track. As the wiki says, you need to enter Bloodstone Fen or Ember Bay, and to do that, you need to buy and play/start episode 1 or 2 of Living World Season 3.

I suggest you sell some materials or save gold and buy 200 gems with it. I think it costs about 58 gold. It’s about 2,60€, don’t know how much that is for you. In many cities in Europe, you don’t even get a regular sized coffee for 2,60€.

cool thanks for clarifying

and i should blame the devs, when stuff like this is so unclear that it is hard to even understand what i am on about when explaining it in details then there is definitely an ingame information issue which should be clarified.

when you have to search the web and ask on forums to figure out stuff that should be basic then the information part need some work ^^

*as example: go ingame and figure out how to craft ascended gear using nothing but ingame information, try to see how long it will take to just find the information ingame about what you need to do so. consider then that many of the mats are time gated by dailies so it is something where days of research will really hurt you, and that there is no way ingame to figure out the mat need before already acquiring all the recipies for the component (something which doesn’t seem easy to do) and to figure out where you get what recipies.
And do it ONLY using ingame information you get on your own. then come back and tell me it is a problem with Me not the lack of proper information ingame *

Faaris.8013:

Faaris.8013:

In many cities in Europe, you don’t even get a regular sized coffee for 2,60€.

That’s a lot for just coffee.

yer. for me it is more that it is a lot for such little amount of content(that i frankly don’t want as i just want to pvp, but seem to need it to gear for WvW in a reasonable timeframe).
however i don’t mind paying them extra since they do a decent job lowering the p2w crap (although it is depressing to see how much gold i get for 400gems vs. grind time, takes the lust to play right out of you).
i do dislike the “manipulation” tactics of how it is done however. dislike games trying to “lure” me into paying with unclear/hidden rl money gating.

just want a clear number from start of how much it will cost me to enjoy the product fully without all the hidden payment needed to optimize enjoyment.

Randulf.7614:

Just to clarify, since you have mixed reponses.

You have HoT and played enough to unlock the mastery system?

If you have finished all of s3, then you have access to the ancient magics line. Or do you mean, you finished the latest episode?

Yes you will need to pay for the first episode of S3 if you lack it and yes clarity and communication from Anet ( like most mmo companies i am rapidly seeing) needs improvement in areas like this.

i have hot yes and finished it.
i finished the season 3 story as well (don’t own any of it, but it lets you play them through).
both my ancient magic and the one right before it is still locked and can’t figure out how i would get to the blood fen area.
the only thing i can think of is that season 3 without buying it doesn’t let you enter that specific area (my season 3 finished at the lava dragon where you stop the god from stealing it’s power. and it says finished on it and if i want to replay that part).

so do i need to buy the part of season 3 p1 to get access to the masteries? ^^

Randulf.7614:

The wiki has the clearest info

Ancient Magics is unlocked after entering Bloodstone Fen during the story of Out of the Shadows, or after entering Ember Bay during the story of Rising Flames.

yer but as with too many things in GW2 that doesn’t really tell you what you need to know (i already ran through the season 3 story missions as it was available, so i assumed it didn’t say start at p1, then skipped to p5 ignoring the rest).

it is really getting tiresome that i am using a very large amount of time just doing Meta-gaming out game research to try and figure out basic ingame usage
think they should focus on doing a better job with ingame information and guidance ^^

Randulf.7614:

You dont need season 2 since that was before the masteries

You ideally need ep1 of season 3, altho i think i was told one of the other eps unlocks it too

Have you unlocked the mastery system from HoT itself?

yes i got HoT itself. i Finished all the season 3 story stuff.
do i need to pay season 3 episode 1 to get access to it then? still think it is quite iffy but better than what i thought was going on :P

btw that would be 2.rising flames? right?

PS: if anyone in contact with the dev team read this then please tell them the ingame info on all this stuff is just horrificly badly made. comming back to the game i think 25+% of all my game time is used on google for answers which should be ingame and not difficult to find out :/

is there no way to unlock these masteries without buying season 2 part 1-2??
i do have HoT but from what i can read to unlock the ancient magic masteries you need season 2 p1 or 2.

it seems very iffy if you need to buy 1 episode from season 2, to unlock masteries needed for HoT’s(or is it season 3? but that one i already finished).
price seems excessive for just opening the masteries which is needed (dislike that kind of thing quite a lot. hate manipulation and hidden RL cost).

so anyone knows of any way to unlock the masteries for Ancient magics which doesn’t envolve throwing money at the screen? (after already buying HoT ofc).

best regards and ty
me