Guild Wars 2

I think Fort Aspenwood is now in Tier 1 for WvWvW

This one was hilarious.

Double tap your AOE to place it. That means if you’re a Necro and using your staff, to place the #1 ground field, hit #1 once and you get the big green AOE picture, hit it again when you have it where you want it and it will place it. The big green circle is impossible to miss, even in heavy combat. Train yourself not to left click to lay AOE’s.

The last step towards your ascension – crafting panel.

Your signature has a typo (missing R in towards). Also, it’s awesome.

It really does feel epic fighting your way through all those unwieldy randomly rearranging unnecessarily lengthy menus to end up with the top tier of gear in the game after grinding 50+ hours for the mats.

The people that are happy( 90%) are busy playing and not complaining on the forums

I take issue with the 90% figure, but other than that, what did you think the forums were for?

The designers are repeatedly taking players back into the open world with the living story.

No, they aren’t. That’s the problem. They take people, everyone, the entire server population and put them in a single zone. That’s not getting people into the open world. Not by a long shot.

Puandro.3245:

No because that would satisfy a niche portion of the population and they don’t run the game, casuals do. For example see SAB, that got nerfed less than a week after release.

Normal mode was nerfed because there is already a hard mode. Normal wasn’t supposed to be hard. Elitists still have their game mode.

Balkanwarrior.5132:

Permanent content

GW2

Pick 1

Unfortunately this seems to be where we are. It’s not where we should be though.

Sykper.6583:

The invasions are a small step towards helping out the old zones with activity, but I agree mostly.

The problem is that there still isn’t quite enough incentive to push some old zones save a few used routinely for champion event chains for daily chests and whatnot. The new ascended weapons require many different aspects of PvE from jumping puzzles to champion event chains to dungeons, but for the most part there is only so much one could do with the current system in place to achieve some sort of…population I suppose on any given map.

One idea I thought of just now, I believe I read it somewhere else, would be something akin to Cross-Zone events, where it starts off in a low-level zone, do a chain there, finish up with some sort of chest, and proceed to the next zone and toggle the next line.

Do that ALL the way up to the high-level zones for a climax of some story-related proportions, and some nice loot!

Cool, you just increased the activity across many low to medium zones. But systematically that might seem rather…hard. I believe A-Net has designed events not to overlap with other zones like that, so it would be something out of the box, thus take a GREAT degree to make.

For now, GW2 will have to suffer this similar problem many MMOs have…for now. Unless they do come up with something really cool, then I will be happy.

Invasions are just another gimmick ride in the rotating carnival that GW2 has become. Yet another attraction that draws the entire population to one single place all at the same time. Mindless zerg fests that mimic the champion farms in Orr and Frostgorge that are themselves simply mat farms.

Ascended mats dropping at various locations amounts to farming mats. It’s a boring grind and the only useful thing the game world currently provides. Not to mention the fact that the entire Ascended tier of gear further invalidates the world because it makes it even easier. For those that enjoy grinding/farming it will hold them till they get their weapons. For those that don’t, they’re already looking elsewhere or waiting till the next patch.

I do like your idea about cross zone event chains. In fact, the way Anet advertised (and still does) that’s what I thought “Living Story” was going to be. Sadly, that’s nowhere close to what it is.

I just finished map completion today. It was long, boring, tedious and I didn’t really want to do it, but I did anyway. Why do I feel that way about it? Because it doesn’t matter (unless you want a legendary). Every month some new ride comes out in this Theme Parkiest of MMO’s and the entire game population flocks to one zone and one zone only. Nothing happens out in the world….well nothing other than what I saw while doing world completion. Tyria could just as easily not be there. Take away the world and what do you lose? Nothing. Dungeons are instanced, the monthly stuff all takes place in one zone and sPvP and WvW are their own instances. Other than grind crafting mats……bleh, there is no use to the world. If it weren’t for the new champion boxes, it wouldn’t even be good for that.

For the sake of comparison, WoW, the most successful MMO in history started losing subs at the end of its WotLK expansion (third expansion in the game) when Blizzard made Azeroth irrelevant. All content became instanced, mobs became irrelevant due to gear scaling (sound familiar Ascended gear?) and you didn’t have to travel for any reason or leave a city except to ……. you guessed it, grind for crafting mats. It’s only taken Anet one year to get to the exact same point in GW2. The problem is, that’s the point WoW started its decline, not its rise. Where do you think the same strategy is taking this game?

After a whole month barely anyone was exploring Bazaar or farming in Pavillion

Which is my point. This temporary content is disposable and loses its attractiveness very quickly. There is nothing here to build a game on. It’s a side show. Log in, see what this week’s deal is, log out for the rest of the month. Anet is touting sales figures and loosely interpreted statistics to give the illusion that the game is growing and thriving. The sad reality is that yes, people buy it, yes they log in but then they promptly log off and don’t come back until the next patch because there is nothing of worth in the mean time. That’s not the game GW2 was supposed to be and I refuse to believe the people that poured their heart and soul into creating this game are satisfied with it.

Our Living World releases will expand on the promise of what it means to be a continually growing game. In the future, you’ll see a wider array of content and experiences in each release, with a greater focus on permanently expanding content. We’ll go into specifics on the variety of playable content you’ll be receiving as each update approaches, but some of our focuses will include improving our existing world bosses, continuing to update and refine our dungeons and fractals, creating world events with a larger and more permanent impact, and expanding the number of dynamic events across the world.

Taken from the “Looking Ahead” blog post about the second half of 2013.

July we had the Bazaar, August we had the Queens Jubilee, September we have SAB, October will be the Halloween event, Novermber ????, and December will be Christmas. 5/6 of those montly events are TEMPORARY CONTENT. We were promised more permanent content, more events, permanent impact. What happened?

I can’t speak for everyone, but to me when I say I want more permanent content I don’t mean Scarlet’s minions staying around to attack a zone randomly. I mean I want to go into the Northern Shiverpeaks, the Crystal Desert, Maguuma Wastes, Ring of Fire, see the rest of Orr. I want to open up the world, explore new zones and have something real and substantial to see and do.

I don’t want carnival events every month that get boring after the first couple days that draw the entire population of the game to one single map. I don’t want to spend all my time on a jumping puzzle air ship, in one part of Divinity’s Reach with everyone else in game or on a random map zerging event after event like a mindless zombie.

This game has turned into the worst kind of theme park MMO and it doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon. What’s going on Anet? What happened to the Manifesto and creating a Living World? These updates aren’t anything of the sort. This world isn’t even a poor copy of living. It’s a set of random or more often non-random timers that circulate the exact same thing over and over. Events were supposed to be the heart and soul of Guild Wars 2 and you’ve completely abandoned them in favor of the carnival rides. The absolute certainty about a living world is that it changes. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t change, the current carnival packs up and leaves to make room for the next carnival arriving. But at it’s core, the world stays exactly how it was before. Non living, static, boring.

I’m writing this not because I think the game is doomed, or even that I dislike it but because it’s not what I was told when I bought it. It’s not what I’ve continued to be told over the past year and it doesn’t appear to be changing into what it’s being sold as. Living Story is what you call your patch cycle. What story? How is a carnival rotation an approximation of a living world? The carnivals are fun, some more so than others, but they lose their luster quickly. I’d really like to have more substance, more world, more dynamic (actual dynamic, not rotating timers) content. I’d really like to have more of what I was told and continue to be told is in the game.

I want it to be purple at night.

How can it be a “unusual behavior” if they have animations and combat graphics? There’s a video of a mechano-squid thing shooting a pink lazer. Someone had to create that, spent work hours, got paid. That’s quite the chain of “unusual behaviors”.

Dog.1472:

Dog.1472:

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

Exactly what does protection, condition management and regen have to do with DPS? Absolutely nothing. If you want an optimizied DPS setup the one class that will never have a use is necromancer. There is not one thing they can do that another class won’t do better.

Sure, they can do cool things, but a necromancer will never have a place in an optimized party with the current state of the game.

You said that necro’s offer next to no support. Top AoE dps in the game, 3rd single target only damage in the game (that order goes Thief, Warrior, Necro). I’d say with their combined utility and pack leading damage, they’re better to have in the group than not.

Dog.1472:

The one class I would call useless is a necromancer. While it is capable of high damage, it offers next to no support aside from medicore vuln stacking at the cost of their own DPS, making it not worth it.

This is an ignorant statement made by someone that obviously doesn’t play or know anything about Necromancers. Necros bring the best group condition management in the game. They can provide sustained protection to the group, nearly if not fully 100% up time. They are probably the 3rd highest single target dps with dagger/power/zerk buids and easily the single highest DPS aoe build in the game with rampagers stats and contidion spreading. They provide regen to the group, large scale CC useful in many dungeon situations and can easily stack and maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability while keeping up might on themselves (at no dps loss like that guy would have you believe).

The only problems necros have in dungeon situations are with minions and multiple condition classes at once. You shouldn’t be stacking condi classes in groups anyway. Anet needs to fix pets for necros and rangers alike. Those problems aside, necros provide top rank dps and great group utility on par with any other class in the game when built and geared properly in a variety of viable builds.

The problem isn’t that you can be in 5 guilds, it’s that all 5 of those guilds see you regardless of which character you are on. It causes arguments, plain and simple. It either needs to be like GW1 where you can only join a single guild (not preferable) or character based so you join a guild on that single character alone (very preferable). If you want to put all your characters in a single guild, so be it. You shouldn’t be forced to.

Why are the tickets SOULBOUND. The progress in the gauntlet and the achievements are ACCOUNT BOUND, so why on earth would the tickets be soulbound???

They weren’t at first and Anet changed them to be. The excuse was because people were making new toons to get 5 free tickets in the mail. My response to that, SO WHAT???? It’s not like the tickets are rare or valuable. The content is difficult on its own and having extra tickets doesn’t change that. A better fix would to have been to simply STOP MAILING THEM.

But, then again, why is this content gated at all?

I agree, culling is bad in every way and adding it to spell effects just makes it worse. Anet is supposed to be removing culling from the game, not expanding it.

Cant see Circles!!!!!!!

Bugs.

Effect culling.

Shiren.9532:

At least necros have the option of running something else (plus minion death is expected). Ranger pet deaths are a considerable DPS loss and you have no other options.

Yes, necros can run something else. However they lose an entire trait line and 1/3 of their skills because minions are more useless than ranger pets. Necros have the fewest viable trait points and the fewest viable skills of any class in the game.

The point is, it’s not a necro vs ranger problem. It’s a pet problem and it needs to be fixed for everyone.

A two week patch cycle, like the one Anet is currently following, while ambitious is looking more and more like it’s detrimental to the game overall. Anet is known for their bugs. New and old, some in the game since release and completely ignored but every patch introduces new ones. This latest patch is no exception, with the patches to fix the patch still coming in.

Maybe it’s time for Anet to slow it down a bit and focus more on releasing QUALITY content instead of shoving it out the door every two weeks. Bug test your releases and for pete’s sake, PLAY YOUR CONTENT before release. Are aoe’s in encounters difficult to see? Fix that before release. Are there bugs that cause people to waste time, money or both? Fix that before release. Is this fun? Or is this a boring repetitive grind?

Right now I’ve been in the game about 6 weeks after an extended break because some of the bugs that I considered game breaking had been partially addressed. Partially, not fixed. However, this latest update has me frustrated near to the point of uninstall once again with sudden ports to Divinities Reach because I opened a chest or signing up for a gauntlet match only to have it not pop, put me in with two people and two bosses, or simply die from a myriad of bugs including having AoE effects culled because of the mob below. It’s not fun and buggy games make people leave.

Quality is vastly more important than quantity. Something to think about.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

If memory serves, you (Anet) specifically went out of your way not to reveal what was added or where it was. Do you seriously expect fanfare and interest without advertising? NC Soft has been guilty of exactly that in the past (Aion), but they and you (Anet) should have learned from that.

Those events, the ones I know were added at the time (of which I don’t know many because that was NEVER REVEALED) are good. The mini-dungeons are even better. The meat and potatoes of GW2 was supposed to be the dynamic event system, but what we actually have is a pre-recorded tape of events set on a loop. There’s nothing dynamic about it. Yes, it’s extremely difficult to design a system that is truly dynamic and changing, but additional content can go a long way towards creating that illusion.

Also, please don’t judge reaction to something when it wasn’t properly advertised or described. Telling us “We added 50 events around the world” isn’t enough. What events? Where? What stories are they trying to tell and why should we be interested? If you feel you didn’t receive the response you were looking for, it’s almost certainly because you didn’t give us the information we needed to provide you with that response.

I like GOBSTOPPERS. As in, “Those GOBSTOPPERS people keep getting in my GOBSTOPPERS way.”

lettucemode.3789:

Terror does extra damage per tick if there’s another condition on the target. However since Torment wasn’t added until recently, it seems like the code to check for extra damage wasn’t considering Torment. So if you had Torment and Fear on the same target, you wouldn’t get the extra Terror damage even though you should. The bolded part is saying that this has now been fixed and the bonus Terror damage will work with all conditions.

Ah, so it wasn’t giving the extra damage when only torment was on the target. Ok, thank you.

From the patch notes: Terror: Reduced the damage by 17%. Fixed a bug so this trait now checks for the torment condition as well.

What does the bolded part mean?

JonPeters.5630:

timidobserver.7925:

I have a couple of serious questions.
1. Did the person that came up with the math for this graduate from high school.
2. To prove it, please upload a copy of your high school diploma.

How about just a copy of their resume. I don’t see his high school experience on there. Hopefully the other stuff can count as relevant experience for your assessment.

http://www.glicko.net/cv.html

I’ll bet Glickman is still paying student loans. Too bad Good Will Hunting hadn’t been released yet, he could have just paid some late charges at the library.

So, um, can I has your things?

zolio.1236:

Error code 42.6.3.2158

Ya, mine changed to that too.

Login servers down or….?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have some clarifications for you guys. The intent of the training mission is to make it easier for your small or less active guild to access other guild missions (or acquire anything else you need influence for). It’s not meant to replace standard bounty hunts or augment influence gain for guilds that can already earn a ton of it. To that end:

• The commendations, rares, and silver are not awarded. That reward is specific to actual bounty missions.
• The training mission can be researched and activated as many times as you like. You can stockpile up to 10. Keep in mind that researching a training mission will tie up one of your research slots and that boosting that research with extra influence will ultimately cancel out a portion or all of your gains from the training mission.

I’m happy to answer further questions, but please remain civil in this thread. Thanks!

So, instead of simply making Guild Bounties accessible, you just added a time sink that has a penalty if you speed it up. Brilliant.

Habib Loew.6239:

WvW ranks & abilities are character based. The best way to think of this system is as alternative/extended character progression.

So the entire game, including guild membership, is account bound, but this new system requires us to repeat our work again and again for each alt. What are you people thinking?

Every patch, every single one launches with problems like this. It’s past time you started a Public Test Server to iron these issues out before they are put into the live client.

Coordinating schedules, getting people to show up ready, geared and excited is hard enough for a guild to accomplish. There shouldn’t also be a barrier to entry for guild content. This system heavily favors zerg style guilds, which aren’t what a guild should be about, and hurts smaller and even medium sized guilds. The costs are far too high and there shouldn’t be a cost anyway.

digiowl.9620:

DKNS.2135:

Where’s this qoute taken from ??

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

OP should edit his post to include this link. I’m not actually surprised to hear Colin say this after reading his response to other problems like why cameras are the way they are. The guy seems like he has no clue what he’s doing. The Jay Wilson of Arena Net.

No. I don’t think GW2 and Anet have the quality level required to get me to pay a sub. If they fixed a myriad of things with the game, ironed out all the bugs and stepped it up a notch I’d consider it.

I also have this. Noticed it after updating to the latest Nvidia drivers. First noticed it on the foundation under huts throughout the game, especially Norn areas and WvW. Later noticed it all over in various random things.

Some people in another thread have said setting the frame limiter to 30 fps or playing in windowed fullscreen may help until a fix is made.

Josh Foreman.8250:

One issue that a non-developer would not know is the difference between creating a single-player game and an MMO. So it’s easy to look at Uncharted’s camera or Skyrim’s camera and say “Why don’t they just do it that way?” In fact, a lot of us artists DO say that to the coders. And then we get taught a lesson in how incredibly more complex an MMO engine has to be. The sheer amount of dependencies on any one system is staggering, and there is hardly ever a time where a programmer slaps their forehead and says “Oh, I never THOUGHT about just doing like Skyrim!” There are always REASONS that our systems are the way they are. None of this is to say that all our systems are perfect and our team is perfect and nothing will improve. Of course we aren’t perfect, and we are just as frustrated by the limitations and quirks as you are.

I don’t compare GW2 to Skyrim. I compare you to WoW. WoW is not only an MMO, it’s the best selling MMO in history. One BIG reason is because Blizzard nails the controls. WoW is a more complicated game with many more systems than GW2, yet they manage to get their cameras spot on. Why can’t you?

An awful lot of the camera issues with jumping puzzles could be solved with two simple changes to the cameras. More zoom and 1st person view. Those two things would reduce headaches for nearly every odd angle and tight space in a JP. 1st person lets you look around without the camera pushing through your characters head and zoom allows you to pull back to see around corners and up steep grades. Why don’t you just do that?

Just wanted to chime in here and report that it isn’t isolated only to the 0 glow setting at creation. I recently used one of these kits on my female sylvari, but she was at 100% glow and no glow was displayed using the kit. I did report this at the time using the in game bug reporting feature.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whispers_Leggings_%28light%29

Heavy clipping issues, any hip mounted weapon.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

You may have kicked the instance owner, which would indeed close the instance and boot everyone out.
We are aware of a problem related to that though, and are working on solutions.

EDIT:
Whoever is the first person into the misty portal/dungeon is considered the owner of the instance, despite his placement in the party.

Why are dungeon groups designed this way with an “owner”? It seems like something that only causes problems.

Wow, gotta say all the “No” votes surprise me. Also that I agree. I miss the way GW1 was where level cap was low and the entire game was meant to be done at max level.

Answer, NO.

Sithaco.4673:

Oxe.6142:

Evindor.1780:

Also, it doesn’t work with your own fields. Which I believe is as intended.

Which if intended is awful design. I don’t want to have to find groups to try and get my daily done. The old way was was much better.

Well that is why you only have to do 5/6 of the achievements, if you wish not to do that one, by all means, no one is forcing you to.

I didn’t get any options. I logged in and it had what I needed to do picked for me. No way to change it, no options. Am I missing something?

Evindor.1780:

Also, it doesn’t work with your own fields. Which I believe is as intended.

Which if intended is awful design. I don’t want to have to find groups to try and get my daily done. The old way was much better.

LFk.1408:

Technically, any perceived violation of their TOS is cause for a license termination, what you agreed to (though obviously no one reads it, but that’s not excuse in a court of law). Assuming ANet can defend that the player’s “abuse” of the company’s error was indeed definable as abuse, then the termination is valid and not theft.

Something being in the TOS doesn’t make it right. You’re forced to agree to the TOS, regardless of what it says to play the game. It could say in there that you declare NCSoft as your sole heir and beneficiary upon your death, you’ld still have to agree to it. It’s not about technicalities or the TOS, it’s about right and wrong. Anet screwed up by making the bad recipe. It’s their job to fix it without making ill gotten profits by banning players. They screwed up, fix it, move on.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The respawn is pretty high in certain places, look at the Maze Skill Challenge in Cursed Shore for instance, the veteran and risen respawn within 30 seconds, which is literally barely enough time to kill both, then start the skill challenge fight and quite often the mobs respawn before you even kill the SP mob.

I was going to mention this exact place. I died many times on my necro in rare gear trying to get that skill point. I simply couldn’t do it solo. I might be able to now, in half exotics, but before I simply couldn’t because of respawns. That said, if I ever die in the world it’s 99.99% positive that it was because of a respawn, regardless where. Champions are easier to deal with most times than the respawn rate throughout the world.

ArenaNet perma banning anyone for an error in their programming is theft, plain and simple. Anet is stealing from the people that paid to play their game. Fix the bug, take away whatever resulted from the bug and call it done. Ending their license is theft.

Cbuzz.5083:

Q: Rotating or turning camera lowers FPS.
A: With Shadows & Reflections set to high/ultra there is currently some kind of programming software bug that causes your FPS to plummet. Lowering these should alleviate some of the FPS drops.

Confirmed this. Setting reflections to “All” causes the game to lag horribly in new areas, when logging in. Changing reflections to “Terrain & Sky” resolved it.

Ikzilion.6235:

I have problems with the fonts on the Black Lion Trading Company

It does that because you selected the small UI setting. If you select normal, that goes away. It’s a apparently some kind of bug that also needs to be fixed.

This new FoV looks nice, but causes a pretty significant performance hit. A similar effect can be achieved simply by increasing the amount you can zoom the camera back. While you’re at it, add first person view to the game.

The first two pictures are in Orr staring off into the distance from an outpost, original FoV and then new FoV. Notice the 7 FPS drop, 15%.

The second two pictures are in LA, again original followed by new with a 4 FPS drop, 16%.

This performance hit is on top of the performance lost after the Halloween update. No bueno.

NCSoft is notoriously bad at advertising. A lot of the failure of Aion was attributed to a lack of advertising. I remember reading an article once where they did a survey after a major patch in Aion that addressed a lot of the complaints that American players had with the game. The survey found that the overwhelming majority (I don’t remember figures or the link for the survey, but bear with me) of players that had played Aion and left or considered themselves likely to play Aion had no idea that the patch had taken place and didn’t take a second look at the game as a result. This lack of customer enthusiasm was attributed to a lack of advertising on the part of NCSoft. They will take their defeat silently. Bet on it.