Guild Wars 2

kaltastic.3146:

I’ve played plenty of other games where I dreaded having to log on and run daily quests every day. After a months of the same exact quests over and over I could describe the most efficient path to take to get done the quickest, how many mobs will be killed, how many casts it will take and precisely how many more times I had to repeat it before I could say “Thank God. I am never doing that again, screw my alts”.

I’ve had the exact same experience. I’ll tell you my favorite part of dailies in GW2 – not having to talk to someone to get the quest. Often the daily will reset in the middle of my evening play session, and I won’t even notice until I complete one part. I’ve even got most of my monthly done already without even trying. Last month’s with the 500 salvages seemed a bit over the top, this month’s is cake in comparison.

clay.7849:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Essence Snow.3194:

I undercut mainly b/c I dislike the tp. I will continue to do anything and everything I can to hinder those using it solely to gain wealth.

If you’re serious, the best way you can hinder the market is to vendor everything. By selling items too cheaply on the market, you’re providing a savvy trader an opportunity to buy up your cheap item and flip it for more money.

Haha, exactly. I can’t say how many times I have made a profit off of someone trying to undercut the market by too much!

Actually, if you really want to be sure you aren’t helping out those evil capitalists, you shouldn’t buy anything from the TP either. You could be buying it from someone who will (gasp) make a profit.

Essence Snow.3194:

I undercut mainly b/c I dislike the tp. I will continue to do anything and everything I can to hinder those using it solely to gain wealth.

If you’re serious, the best way you can hinder the market is to vendor everything. By selling items too cheaply on the market, you’re providing a savvy trader an opportunity to buy up your cheap item and flip it for more money.

CassieGold.7460:

Fact: Profit opportunities exist within every crafting discipline.
Fact: Not every recipe is profitable
Fact: If you source your materials by buying at lowest seller’s price instead of working with buy orders, you are making your margins slimmer.

Suggestion: If you want to make money as a chef, I suggest taking a gander at the Unidentified Dye recipes that will allow you to source many of your ingredients via karma.

This is good advice… although you MUST know what the ingredients are worth. I was looking at the unidentified gray dye recipe back when the price of it was irrationally high, and then I priced out coriander, and it turned out to be more profitable to just sell the coriander.

The profitable recipes settle out to be close to the cost of their components pretty quickly, so you have to keep an eye on the market and know what people are looking for. I craft to get my 10 levels between 70 and 80 and to be able to make my own level 80 exotics. It might be more efficient to just sell all my crafting materials and buy them with the gold I make, but I get a certain amount of satisfaction out of making it myself.

Cooking was the only crafting I did for fun. I had a blast clearing out my discovery pane with my chef and she ended up with 97% map completion in the process. I’m fairly sure I have every discoverable recipe currently in the game discovered. I think I’m missing some karma bought recipes though. Cooking gave me a reason to go to different zones in search of ingredients, and to hit up the heart vendors for recipes and ingredients. I liked puzzling out the recipes too, although towards the end I cheated a little because I didn’t have enough of the right kinds of snowflakes for the ice cream recipes and I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money guessing.

Grafskopa.9140:

I miss the combo attacks. Sad it was taken away just because people had trouble with it.

I like the dailies too, but just a small correction here – the combos were removed because there was a bug, not because it was hard. I’m not sure exactly what the bug was, but it seemed like you only got credit for the combo if you comboed on the killing hit.

I suspect if they can get the bug sorted out, it combos will come back to the dailies.

Three Pounds.2359:

• Karma Spender: Also useful for casuals or people that have alts that may still depend on green items and/or not have reached lvl80 yet. And 750 is really fair given how plentiful Karma is.

I actually finished this one by accident by buying two recipes while I was getting my tailor up to 400. It’s super easy to do.

I also liked seeing the jumping puzzle completion in the list. I know some folks hate them, but it might get others to check them out that might not have.

Overall, I really appreciate how the changes in this patch (even the unpopular ones) were designed to encourage folks to spread out and try a variety of things.

The easiest way to figure it out is to do two different gear builds in GW2 BuildCraft It’s not perfect, but it does account for a lot of things when calculating effective power and health.

I did a quick comparison of Berserker’s exotic trinkets with rubies to Ascended Berserker’s and Berserker’s/Valkyrie with basic offensive power infusions and got 1674.76 effective power versus 1796.58, and I know could make a bigger gap if I put more thought into it.

In my opinion though, a skillful player that understands their class will always knock the snot out of a less skillful player with one tier higher gear. There may be a significant difference between exotic and ascended when you crunch the numbers, but it is difficult to calculate how much effective power or armor that knowing how to play your build adds.

Geotherma.2395:

I wanted a legendary just to see it on my character, now that I CAN see it on my character for FREE, I have no need for one

But what about the achievement?

Before the patch I didn’t go looking for skins until I had my final gear for a build, but now that it’s easy to see what an item looks like, I’m willing to pay more for something that has a nice skin and the stats I want. I’m still too cheap (er thrifty) to shell out the gold for Deathwish when I like the pact staff almost as much.

Which is better? To have a group of folks run out of goals to work toward and stop playing until the next patch or have a group of folks feel overwhelmed because there are more goals to achieve than they can complete before the next patch?

I never did get around to getting commendations from Lionguard Lys, and yet I still had fun and I can still do all the things I want to do. I didn’t raid in WoW and somehow managed to enjoy the game. I feel confident that I can completely ignore guild merits and still have fun playing.

Games should not be designed so that typical players can complete every thing in the game before the next content update. There are folks out there that have way more time and energy to devote to GW2 and I don’t begrudge them having something to work towards just because it’s impossible for me to match their effort. When you have limited time to play, you have to focus on shorter term goals.

I don’t know if you followed Diablo 3 at all, but I knew it was going to be a disaster when the devs started boasting about how impossible inferno difficulty was going to be. Shortly afterward, there was a group of players that had beat inferno hanging around saying “yeah, right. Now what?” and another larger group still struggling to get past the first part saying “How is this fun?”. It’s better to have lots of things to work toward, even if everyone can’t achieve all of them.

The skin is the same as the karma only staff Modniir Quarterstaff. It seems pretty rare, there’s no listing history at all, but it seems like a fairly typical Carrion exotic staff which goes for around 3G. I don’t know that the skin makes it much more valuable because it is available from a karma vendor.

There are some popular builds that are pretty fool proof, but I’ve found that there are certain weapons that I just like better than others because of the skills that come along with them. A rifle warrior is built and plays very differently from a hammer/shield warrior, even though it’s the same class.

You can unlock all of the weapon skills for a profession before you leave the starting area by buying one of each type you can use from the weapon vendor (sword icon on your map). I tend to pick the weapon I have the most fun with, and build around that.

There is a viable build for every weapon for each profession. It may not be the uberest dungeon speed running/PvP pwnage build in the world, but you won’t really struggle with any of the PVE content if you put some thought into it.

As a duo that is experienced with other MMOs, I think you’ll find GW2 pretty easy on the surface. It’s digging into the details that keep it interesting after you’ve explored the world for a bit. Don’t get too caught up in knowing exactly what you want to do until you’re level 80.

Masterwork gear is very inexpensive and is good enough for most content, you can completely respec your traits for a few silver, and you can earn enough skill points to get every single utility skill and have points left over (My main has 150 unspent skill points – you continue to get skill points after you hit 80). It’s much more forgiving than the other MMOs we’ve played – you don’t have to level an alt to try something different.

rozbeaux.8269:

Hey there folks. So the wife and I are going to get into the game together and she’s pretty much sure she’ll be playing a Warrior. (snip)

Anyone have any suggestions on that front? I’m pretty good at micro-managing and making quick decisions in combat, so I was thinking possibly a Necromancer, Elementalist, or Engineer? Anyone have any experience with such duos and whether or not they seemed to synergize well?

The last question involves potential specs for the wife and myself. Guild Wars 2 appears to have a lot of angles you can pursue for each class, anyone have any suggestions for the specs that would work best for the Warrior/?? combination?

My husband and I play together (and have in many different MMOs). One thing I love about GW2 – we don’t have to keep our “duo” characters together. We have yet to find any pair that didn’t work out for PVE. It’s best if we can complete a map that neither character has done anything in yet, so we both need to complete the hearts, but even that isn’t a really big deal. With the level scaling and the dynamic events, we’ve been able to run characters together and have both make some amount of progress regardless of what each character has completed, what level they are, or what class they are. The only issue is if you bring your higher levels into the 1-15 lands, you really have to hold back so you don’t one-shot everything.

There is a lot of flexibility in the way you can build a character, and every class is capable of doing DPS (ranged or melee), being tough, and supporting their allies. I would recommend you play a few levels of different classes before committing entirely to anything (spec or profession). It’s not hard at all to level in GW2, and you can always go into the heart of the mists (the PvP lobby) and try out all the skills at level 80. I’ve found that a lot of the complaining on the forums about this class or that class being useless stems mostly from not understanding the class. Some things about certain classes need fixing, but I have seen every single class in this game built/played impressively. Some builds aren’t really viable without some fixes (spirit ranger) but skill points are plentiful, and respecs are cheap, so just experiment and figure out what fits your play style.

I would check out the sticky at the top of this forum. My “things I wish I knew when I started” list includes don’t start crafting at low levels. You will not need to craft anything for yourself at low levels, and you can get 10 character levels by raising your crafting to max level. Now that I know, I save those levels until I’m in my 70s.

One thing that helped me with the daily dodger – dodge toward the mob. My habit was to always dodge away, so most of the time I wouldn’t evade the hit, I would just be out of range and it would miss. If you dodge toward the mob, you don’t have to go looking for particular mobs, you can just get it done in the course of your normal playing.

X The Manimal.5293:

I especially dislike when people sell something for only 5 copper more than it’s worth to a vendor. Thus making it pointless to post your item for its REAL value. People still dont know that the game “taxes” your return.

If there are thousands available at 5c over vendor, the item isn’t worth anything to players. In fact it’s so worthless that they’re willing to pay a few coppers just to get it out of their bag. I really don’t think that many people are completely ignorant of the tax on the TP, the tax just isn’t high enough to make it worth the time to hang on to crap so they can vendor it to make an extra 10c.

Time is money. Penny wise, pound foolish. et cetera et cetera.

If you type “unguent” in the inventory search box, nothing shows up? I’ve found the search feature to be very effective.

I think a small change to the UI can change a little of this behavior. I don’t play the market, so when I’m selling or buying, I’m looking at getting a fair value for something I have or want, so my motivations are a bit different from the traders, but I do sell a lot of stuff.

When I’m buying, I can see more than top of book, but when I’m selling it’s kind of a hassle to see more depth. When I’m selling something of significant value, I will take the time to go look at how many of that item are available at different price points, and what the spread is, but I’m not going to go through that hassle for something that’s not worth a lot to begin with (or is worth a bit more, but doesn’t have a lot of demand).

I think if I could see the top 5 price levels on the sell screen, I might price my stuff over the minimum sell order on more things. 10 levels would be better. That being said, I don’t see much difference in the sale time of things priced at the current minimum sell order and things priced at 1c under. If I’m going to undercut, I undercut by a lot, or fill a buy order and get it sold right away.

I think a lot of folks still haven’t wrapped their brains around how many participants the market in GW2 has… undercutting by 1c might be a useful tactic in a single server auction house, but it’s pointless in the TP unless you’re selling something that no-one wants (of course it’s likely to be priced at 1c over vendor anyhow so you can’t undercut).

On the other hand, complaining about people undercutting you by 1c is just as pointless. We don’t have the tools to do any high speed trading on the TP and leverage small shifts due to volatility (at least not legitimately). If your item doesn’t sell faster than people can undercut you, you picked the wrong price point. Of course I’m willing to wait a day or two before I give up on a listing. I understand that if you’re trying to make money on the market that might not be feasible.

Wesley Of Florin.2150:

Doesn’t make sense to me. Do people really go so far off the beaten path, and stay there, that they can’t find a merchant to offload their goods?

It makes no sense to me that folks would inconvenience themselves for a few coppers. The events in Orr spawn fast and furious sometimes and take you all over the map. You can’t way point to a merchant, because most of the waypoints near the action are contested. Often the merchants have been killed by risen, and catching back up to the event zerg can be a hassle because of the mob density.

A 30 – 40 minute run can reliably generate a little more than a gold without trying too hard (I know lots of folks can do better than that). Do the math. If you’re going to go 5 minutes out of your way to find a merchant then catch back up with the group, how much money do you have to save over selling it on the TP?

If ANet put in a button that I could press to list at minimum sell order every item in my bags (excluding my invisible bag) that was priced within 50c of vendor price, I would wear it out.

BioFringe.7945:

While I agree that there should be a fallback in place for such things…doesn’t it only cost 1s to start a guild?

Exactly the reason why you should just go start your own guild instead of trying to take someone else’s guild away from them. In my opinion, the money isn’t the issue – it takes a lot of effort to form a new guild from scratch. If enough folks don’t like the leader of your current guild, they can get together and form their own guild. Of course someone will have to step up and take responsibility for leading it.

The simplest solution is for the folks that are unhappy with the current direction to form their own guild. In GW2 you don’t even have to leave your current guild if you want to pop in from time to time to see if things are getting better.

Jayne.9251:

Any way to get another hotbar so we can stack items bought from NPCs out in Tyria?

I would be happy with one dedicated slot similar to the slot for the healing skills or elite skills that allowed us to choose any of the consumables in our inventory. I would fully expect it to work like the skills and not allow us to swap during combat. Even if it had no hotkey and I had to click a button, I’d still want it.

Solandri.9640:

Yes fixing up the class would make encounters easier. But only if you insist on using the best gear.

If you feel a “fixed” ranger is too easy, all you have to do is drop down to rare or even masterwork weapons and armor to make it challenging again. That way both you and the people who think the ranger needs to be fixed can be happy. In its current state, only you can be happy. And asking Anet not to implement fixes others want just so you don’t have to create your own challenges is selfish.

Demanding that all professions be normalized so that none of them require much skill to play seems kind of selfish from where I’m standing. Lots of people want lots of things changed, but that doesn’t mean it will make the game better.

You know that group event where the branded champion is raising an army of twelve other branded? My ranger soloed that without dying when the only exotics she had were some level 78 weapons. Most of her armor was masterwork, and her jewelry was 20 levels or so old. It was a long fight because you couldn’t attack the champion until his army was dead, and they kept respawning while the champ was walking through an area infested with branded. I couldn’t have done that on a guardian or warrior even in the best gear. Maybe someone else who’s better at those classes could, but that champ hit hard and the only way I could see to beat him was to not get hit.

I don’t see what about Rangers that needs fixing. They require a little more involvement, but if you’re willing to do it, they can accomplish things in PVE that other classes can’t. They are a really good class to solo (Lone Ranger, ha!) and they don’t need the uberest gear. I do perfectly fine in dungeons. I can contribute in WvW. Every profession has it’s own strengths and weaknesses. Just because one profession does something better than another doesn’t mean something needs fixing.

What’s wrong with having some classes that are easier to play than others? It is traditional for the warrior to be the “beginner” class in MMOs. They’re tough, they focus on DPS, and their class mechanic tends not to be very complicated. It’s not a bad thing for different professions to have different play styles – I never did get the zen of the Mesmer, but my husband’s Mesmer is awesome. Folks on the forums complain about all of the professions, but I have seen each of them built and played well enough that I’m convinced most of the complaints are based on folks not really understanding the profession.

Solandri.9640:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Ranger is my main – don’t listen to the haters, they can be fun.

Ranger is my main too, and it’s a lot of fun. But when I alt to my warrior or guardian, it’s like flipping a switch which puts the game in easy mode. Encounters where I’d have to dodge, strafe, pet swap, and use all my skill as both a ranger and a player to defeat, my warrior can just stand there and bash everything to death with just a few skill button presses.

Since I play for fun not for loot, I prefer the ranger. But the haters are right that Anet needs to fix up the class.

But see, I like being more active, so “fixing” it for other folks would break it for me. I have an alt for when I don’t want to work too hard.

Berkut.2837:

@OP: Believe me when I say that there are people who are willing to go through a dungeon for the sake of seeing the story of it (I am one of them). It might take a while, but I can assure you that they are out there.

I like slowing down and following the story also… The best way to find folks that have similar goals is to suck it up and build the group yourself. Decide on a dungeon you want to try, read up on it a little bit so you know what to expect, make sure you set aside enough time, and be clear about what kind of run you’re doing when you advertise for more members.

Who knows? You might find some folks you’ll add to your friends list.

solado.8206:

Ahh, I see – well if Warriors are indeed auto-attackers then it’s totally not my play style. Think I will venture into ranger class

Ranger is my main – don’t listen to the haters, they can be fun. One tip though… don’t ignore your pet and expect it to just work. The pet is your class mechanic. Put it on passive and tell it what to do instead of just letting it run after whatever you target (or whatever decides to target you). Use the pet skills to complement your build, and swap between pets just like you would weapons. Also, telling a pet to come back to you is a good way to pull stuff into your traps.

solado.8206:

I have a warrior around level 12 which I started yesterday, I love the questing system and exploration which is fantastic. Problem is I seem to find I die alot or take tons of damage from enemies equal to my level (and in some cases even lower). I read other threads about “Constantly moving”, I grasp the idea of evading (rolling) out of special attacks but standard melee seems to cause alot of damage.

At level 12 it’s not your gear. You should be constantly moving even as a melee class. And you should understand and take advantage of your “downed” skills. One thing that’s hard to get used to if you’ve played other MMOs is that moving doesn’t interrupt many of your skills, and using a skill usually doesn’t root you in place. You don’t have to dodge all the time – stepping behind a mob will cause them to miss you, and you can step out of the way of projectiles. It takes a little experience though to be able to recognize when the attacks are coming, but I think if you start just by constantly moving you’ll do better.

solado.8206:

Next question is relating to skills. I have taken part in a few world quests which are great. Problem is I feel like I am very underwhelmed with my skill set. As a warrior using a 2 handed weapon all I seem to do on a boss mob is:
Auto attack (button 1)
then press special attack (Button 2)
No use for 3,4,5 because they are either engage, get away or situational.
The 6,7 buttons I have are just for utility. Ones a heal and the other is a shout I keep buffed on myself.

Most of the skills are situational, and again it will take a little experience to get the flow of the class you’re playing. It gets more interesting as you add trait points, but if all of your skills are always on cool down, you’re not being as effective as you can be. It takes a lot of practice to know out of all of the skills on your current weapon (and your swap) and of your utility skills when is the right time to use them. Also keep in mind that a warrior has lots of Combo finishers. You want to be aware of what the folks around you are doing, and hang on to your whirl or leap finisher for when it’s most useful.

There’s a lot more to the combat than what you see on your hotbar – but the only way to really “get it” is to play. You can go to the “Heart of the Mists” which is the PvP lobby essentially and try out any skill or weapon. Your character automatically gets set to 80 and you can change their build into whatever you’d like to try.

solado.8206:

Final question is end game content, I think I already know I will probably be going on a mass exploration to unlock all the map, quests and hidden locations. But other than that is it all PVP and WvW?

That’s a whole lot of content if you do it completely. You’ll probably also want to do some dungeons to earn tokens, and you might want to go do some dynamic events to earn karma.

Iruwen.3164:

Too bad you cannot convert the basic ones in the mystic forge, they’re pretty much useless.

I didn’t find the basic ones completely useless (I really hate that one medium armor coat that looks like your mom sewed it out of an old quilt), but I did get many more than I needed. I like the idea of being able to upgrade them in the forge.

Arsenal.2601:

“Ruined” is a bit strong for me, but I certainly acknowledge GW2 as being (in my mind) the leader in the genre.

I’m currently playing through Rift to see what the Storm Legion expansion has to offer. Even in a game as exceptionally well made as Rift, full of dynamic events and innovative approaches to grouping (such as instant adventures, invasions and rifts) I find myself wishing it elements of GW2. The game does much to hide the static nature of its combat, but it is static nevertheless.

I enjoyed Rift for about a month. Then I got frustrated trying to get credit for closing Rifts. The high level folks would shut the rifts down in the low level lands to recharge, and all the low levels just wasted time and got zero reward. It also mattered who you were in a party with, although a whole party of low levels couldn’t compete with one high level coming through and closing the rift. I really love the way GW2 handles participation in events, and I really like the level scaling, so that at 80 I can do whatever content I feel like it without completely screwing things up for lower level folks.

I also found the dailies in Rift tedious. For some reason, I don’t feel the same pressure to do dailies that I felt in Rift (or SWTOR for that matter), and I’m not sure why. Maybe because there is only one daily quest in GW2, and I don’t have to wander around chatting up various NPCs to get it. I really like that I know immediately that the daily has reset if I’m logged in.

The easiest way to get them is map completion – go finish one of the main cities and you’ll get three normal ones. If you want fine transmutation stones, those are harder to come by… There’s a chance they can be a reward for map completion, but I’m at 92% completion and had to buy mine from the gem store.

If we use the textile (quote the title and add the link with a colon), will the filters skip the link text?

I don’t have a link that got censored handy to try it with.

Katsumoto.9452:

I have no idea why, but I just love these little guys. All the ooo noises and Shashoo’s insanely high pitched voice.

I do too! If I had a lick of musical ability I would write an “I am Quaggan!” song like L70ETC did for the Murlocs. “hooOOOooo … I am Quaggan!”

Once you’ve decided on a class, how do you go about choosing weapons, skills and traits?

A while back I posted an explanation of how I arrived at my Ranger build. I looked it over the other day when I was checking out my forum profile, and even though I’ve changed some things up since then, I still used the same thought process when I started trying to figure out how I wanted to build my Necromancer.

I’m not a build master, but I like coming up with my own builds rather than following someone else’s guide, and I’m interested in how other folks do it. Here’s my process for a general PVE build… what’s yours?

When I’m doing a build, I think about three questions:

1. How am I going to survive?
2. How am I going to do damage?
3. How will I help my allies?

Survival
There are three aspects to survivability – avoiding damage (evasion and control), mitigating damage (debuffing enemies’ damage, speed, or chance to hit, interrupts, buffing yourself, having a large life pool, breaking controlling effects), and repairing damage (healing and condition removal).

Damage
Damage boils down to burst damage (criticals, heavy damage/long recharge, short term damage buffs) or sustained damage (high power, damage over time, longer term/easily renewed damage buffs).

Team friendly
This is basically a catch-all for anything that helps your allies other than you keeping yourself alive and dealing damage.

I look over the class, and decide on a theme for each of the three areas. So for my Ranger, it was evasion, sustained damage by conditions, and team help with combo fields. Then I look through the skills, paying attention to (in order of priority) anything that has a primary or secondary effect that increases my evasion/endurance, is compatible with sustained damage by conditions, and is a combo field.

Then I do another pass and fill in gaps, for example, adding conditional removal and a stun breaker. Looking over the trait lines, I choose the one that goes with my main themes, for example, Wilderness Survival for my Ranger because of the endurance regeneration, condition damage, et. al. Then I look at the other lines to see which ones add the most to my chosen skills, for example, Skirmishing on my Ranger because I picked a lot of traps and being able to ground target them is useful. Once I figure out my trait lines, I look at what I’ll need to smooth over with gear, for example, I might not have put any points into a trait line with vitality, so at least some of my gear will need vitality on it.

Ursan.7846:

M Ham.7509:

In your explanation someone buying Gems and converting them into gold has the potential to increase inflation. The “Precursor” for players adding more gold to the system via Gem purchases is the price of items in the TP.

It would be interesting to to see how much gold is added to the system vs. how much gold is converted to Gems.

Cost-Push Inflation… are Legendaries our Oil Crisis?

M.

You are right, and that is exactly why their Gems/Gold ratio is based on supply/demand. If more people convert Gold into Gems, the exchange rate (gold -> gems) increases.

Seeing as gold -> gem prices have been climbing steadily since launch, I’m pretty confident in saying more gold has been destroyed creating gems than other way around.

Disclaimer – I don’t believe that there is anything inflationary going on, these are just questions to firm up my understanding.

So, the easiest way for ANet to combat inflation is to keep adding desirable items to the gem store, correct? It seems like this is also a good way for them to generate revenue because some folks will convert gold to gems and some folks will just buy gems to get the new items. Doesn’t the gem-gold conversion track the introduction of new items fairly closely?

And I thought the oil crisis (at least in the US) was primarily caused by government interference with the prices to keep them artificially low. I don’t see legendaries as an essential item – I can do everything in the game without having a legendary. I actually can’t think of anything on the TP that I need and can’t afford. There of lots of things I’d like that I can’t afford, but they’re sort of the difference between buying a reliable used car versus a Silver Shadow… they’ll both get me to work, it’s just a matter of style.

Winfernal.9208:

Unspecified.9142:

I know I’ll probably never change your mind but the point I’m trying to get at (and the OP seems to be as well) is that the problem isn’t with the game. The problem is with you and your preoccupation with collecting pixels and skipping as much of the game as you can in your pursuit of pixels. If that’s all games are to you then that’s fine. There are games for you, go play one.

If you ever decide you want to play a game for the sake of playing a game and, you know, have fun doing it I’m sure GW2 will still be here waiting for you to come have fun.

I agree. They once made maintream games without achievements, prestige, unlocks and ranks.

How could we even play games back then? What was the point?!

This modern “musthaverewards”-mentality towards gaming is just toxic to the community and developers.

I came across an interesting study on overjustification recently. It may be that by adding a lot of “expected rewards” to games has actually caused folks to enjoy them less. The change in the games might have caused the change in the attitude, and not the other way around.

I don’t think there’s much a single game can do about it though. Some of the folks playing MMOs have already had their “intrinsic motivation” lessened, so I think that any MMO will have a pretty short shelf-life for them. I think that’s part of the reason a lot of MMOs can’t command a monthly subscription anymore – any company with less resources than Blizzard can’t add rewards fast enough to keep people paying. Even Blizzard has seen its subscriber base dip.

I think that the folks that are complaining about the end game are technically correct when they say that there is no reason for them to play after hitting 80 and getting all their exotics. There’s no reason for me to discover every single recipe in the game on my chef, but I did it anyhow and had fun doing it. There’s no reason for one of my guild mates to try to level a pacifist character to 80 without killing anything, but I’m sure they’ll have fun at least giving it a go.

If you can’t make up your own reason to play once you’ve finished the goals that have been set, you should move on to another game that will engage you. There’s nothing wrong with switching games and there’s nothing wrong with a game just because you’ve done everything it has to offer that you wanted to do.

Antipode.2518:

I’m surprised people still boast about questing in GW2. It seems like a clear case of the emperor’s new clothes.

I recently tried to pick up GW2 again and got instantly bored of collecting apples, trapping fish, and killings spiders. Removing a quest giver doesn’t suddenly make boring quests more interesting.

Well you don’t have to do them at all though. They are 100% optional. You can easily get to level 80 without doing a single heart.

If you want the map completion, hearts are still much less annoying than your typical WoW style quest because you don’t have to go talk to someone to get the quest, or to get your reward for finishing it. You can complete all of them multiple ways, so you don’t have to scour the land for elusive single hooved Zevras. And almost every heart has a dynamic event that will complete the heart if you participate in it.

Ugh, I remember the amount of drudgery involved in trying to get my quests in WoW done with the least amount of walking while still balancing out which ones needed to be completed before they got too stale and didn’t give any XP. Even with the quest helper add-on it was really really tedious.

It’s so much easier to just wander around an area in GW2 and make progress no matter what I’m doing. Yeah sometimes I have to back track to a heart I didn’t quite complete, but it’s right there on the map as an empty heart. Usually with a way point close by. And it doesn’t matter what level I am when I finally get around to completing it.

gwawer.9805:

TSW is a great game, and currently the only other online game that I play other than Guild wars two. Honestly I’m getting sick of the whole medieval fantasy setting, and the atmosphere in TSW is very refreshing well-crafted.

The fantasy settings are wearing a bit thin for me also, but much like Warhammer, I found the swords and sorcery of Guild Wars different enough to be interesting. (I really wish Warhammer’s setting had been done as 40K though)

gwawer.9805:

The TSW developers are very close knit with the community and reveal a lot of details about upcoming changes and what not, unlike the developers in Guild wars two for some reason have to keep quiet and some seem paranoid about releasing details and getting punished by their boss for doing so.

TSW is really great and the community is great. Just look at the general forums for TSW and you can feel the love many players have for the game. I think there are many more mature players in that game versus in Guild wars two, where many kids just jumped on the bandwagon because they like jumping on the bandwagon of some popular game. TSW is more like a cult classic with very dedicated fans who are very attached to the game.

I think that these things are true for many niche games. The way you describe TSW reminds me of City of Heroes, which I played off and on for many years. Having a smaller more focused player base makes a lot of things possible that aren’t feasible for a game that sold millions of copies in a few months.

I do think that ANet has a passion for their game in the same way that the TSW folks do (and the Paragon folks did), but if you look around the forums, you’ll see it’s not their bosses that are punishing them for talking to us, it’s the folks on the forums. With a community this large, if any Dev says anything that isn’t a simple statement of fact, they more often than not get their post ripped apart and the ensuing kitten storm is ten times worse than if they had just kept silent.

You can’t be a close knit community of millions. I do think though that ANet’s communication has been pretty good. If you look at the news archive on the main site, there are plenty of articles on upcoming changes and talk about their vision for the game. I know lots of folks probably see it differently, but having been on the other side of the retail software fence, I appreciate the amount of work that those articles represent and I understand why it’s a bad idea to talk too freely about changes that aren’t really close to being completed and verified as working.

MaRko.3165:

I installed TSW after I started getting bored here. A bit darker visually and story wise. There actually IS a story, everything seems to ‘mesh’ much more completely. I have not made it out of the ‘start area’ quite yet, still trying to milk my $$ worth out of GW2.

I bought TSW when it first came out, and I really like a lot of things about it – the setting, the “investigation” missions that involve going outside the game to get information, the classless system, et. al. The problem I had with it was that the combat was boring and clunky, and there was just way too much of it. I couldn’t do the parts of the game that I was interested in, without trudging through stuff I hated.

GW2 lets me do what I’m in the mood to do and there’s at least some reward for doing it, whether it’s exploring, crafting, gathering, WvW, running dungeons, or just cutting a swath through the risen to see if I can beat some heavy moldy bags out of them. And if I get bored of the jungle, I can head over the the Shiverpeaks for a change of scenery, and still get rewards commensurate with my level.

I have to agree with the original sentiment – I own copies of a lot of MMOs that have gone free to play, and honestly can’t work up the motivation to log into them knowing that I’ll have to deal with things like folks stealing my quest mobs or my harvesting nodes, wading through auction houses trying to figure out which of these randomly generated weapons is the closest to what I need for my build at the best price, having to return to quest givers to get my reward, and so many other seemingly small things that add up to one big reason to stick with GW.

In some ways it’s a shame, because each MMO I’ve rejected had a few things about it that were interesting – they just fall down so hard in other areas that the one or two cool things couldn’t keep me playing, and certainly couldn’t keep me paying.

I still identify them. The ones that are worth more than a silver I sell, the others I toss in the forge. I have gotten lucky and found two black dyes. I haven’t been keeping track, but I’m fairly sure the 20G I made off of them and the dyes I actually ended up using on my character offset the loss of not selling them unidentified. Besides the fun of opening them up and getting something cool is worth something to me.

I’m at the point where the gap between what I can currently afford and the next step up is so great that I just have given up trying to earn it and I just gamble and hope to hit the jackpot. I don’t salvage my rares for ectos any more – I match them up and toss them in the forge. The prices for precursors are so high, my goal is to save enough cash to post on on the TP if I ever catch Zommoros on a good day. There’s no way I could earn enough money to buy one outright and still have fun playing.

I’m probably in the minority though, because someone has to have the cash to buy the things that are expensive or they wouldn’t be so expensive.

Sovta.4719:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Don’t you think that the players that are there to leech off of other folks are going to put on the gear that gets them the most acceptance into a group?

Don’t you think we won’t find out in dungeon?

That’s my point exactly. You can’t tell before you get into the dungeon, but you’re excluding folks that could very well be an asset by just looking at gear. You can’t tell if the gear that you see them wearing when you inspect them will actually be the gear they wear in the dungeon. By relying on gear, you’re limiting yourself to a pool of folks that probably has a higher percentage of people that intend to make the team carry them.

It would be better to be able to see badges of some sort for accomplishing different dungeon related things. Gear is the worst way possible to judge the effectiveness of a particular player in GW2. Yeah fractals are special because of the agony mechanic, but it still comes down to guessing when you’re putting together a PUG, and of all the clues you have, gear is the worst indicator of performance.

I’ve better luck judging player effectiveness for PUGs by looking at the names they chose for their character. I also put a check in the capable column if a player starts asking other folks what they’re bringing to the table build-wise so they can adjust their build to fill in the gaps.

Sovta.4719:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Complaining that you will be kicked by parties is honestly entitlement. You are demanding that parties take you because you perceive yourself to be just as strong/capable as people who have natural advantages over you due to their gear.

Finally someone who can think.
It’s not fair to inspect your gear, but it’s fair to make other 4 guys carry you.

The underlying problem with this argument is the assumption that somehow exotic gear or a particular set of gear can overcome poorly built or played characters in GW2. Don’t you think that the players that are there to leech off of other folks are going to put on the gear that gets them the most acceptance into a group?

There is no way to tell before you actually play with someone whether or not they can carry their weight, and gear inspections are just a way to exclude people without giving them a chance to explain why they don’t need the gear you think they do. If you’re looking for someone experienced with a particular dungeon path, you should be able to tell by talking with them if they know what it necessary to get it done quickly. You should also be able to tell in the first couple of fights whether someone is dead weight, and replace them before you waste too much time.

If someone asks me to link my gear without being concerned about my build, I just drop team and find another. Regardless of what people think, unless you’re running a straight cookie cutter build and gear template, there’s no way to tell from solely from your gear whether or not you’ll be successful on a team. And pushing people into cookie cutter builds stifles more creative builds that might be more efficient than the one that everyone has decided is the Best.

I get that people don’t want to take the time to build a team – they just want to run the dungeon fast and not have to babysit anyone. The answer to that problem is not gear inspections, it’s some sort of measurement of their experience with the dungeon in question.

I like the mango pies better than the life steal on critical food – I find the regeneration helpful in getting yourself out of the downed state, and I rarely say no to extra vitality. The recipe is mostly karma bought ingredients, which I find pretty cost effective:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/3152

I am fortunate that I have not been compromised, but I did want to let y’all know that support is being extra careful with email address changes now. My non-public email address has recently started receiving spam that includes virus attachments, so I am changing it all the places I use it, including GW2. I was a little frustrated with all the hoops I had to jump through to make that happen until I read this thread. The game serial number alone was not enough proof.

My sympathy to the folks that had their accounts compromised…

In the spirit of the original post, and with no comment on other folks’ opinions which they are entitled to, I have to agree that the additions to the game haven’t affected how I play yet.

My husband and I played the entire weekend completely ignoring the Lost Shore Event. We play to de-stress, not to feel pressured into doing particular things at particular times. We still had fun.

I am a bit concerned about the tiering of the fractal dungeons because it’s possible that finding a group to do the lower tiers might be difficult by the time I get around to wanting to do them. I am in a gigantic guild though, so I’m not going to worry about it until it happens.

I am in some respects casual about my games, but I do have hundreds of hours played, I enjoy WvW with a coordinated team, and I do take playing well seriously. I just don’t care about having the best gear. I want to have gear good enough to be competent at the content I want to do. Nothing has changed for me so far.

Also, don’t ignore the fact that harvesting gives XP, and many of the non-hostile creatures (that con yellow) give significant bonus XP because they haven’t been killed in a while. Food is really cheap on the trading post – keep a food buff on for the 10% bonus to XP. Potions/sharpening stones/crystals/oils stack with food, so I always keep both buffs up when I’m leveling.

GW2 was the first game where I out-leveled my husband (it’s usually me trying to catch up with him), because I stopped for every harvesting node and did some crafting. I wasn’t even doing it all that seriously, I’d just use up whatever I’d found and it was a significant chunk of XP at the lower levels.

I had something similar happen to me over the weekend. I was out getting my daily done and had an item in an invisible bag. I right clicked on it to sell it and the TP screen was blank. I thought maybe invisible bags now prevent items from showing up as saleable on the TP, so I moved it out of my invisible bag and switched tabs in the TP interface, but it still didn’t show up. I closed the TP interface entirely and reopened it and the item was available to sell.

I would recommend going and getting the report yourself. It’s much clearer when you see the figures in context.

From the NCSoft 3rd quarter report, GW2 sales excluding royalties was 45,841 KRW in MN, or 27% of all their game sales. If “MN” means million, that’s about $42 million in US dollars. Without knowing what NCSoft’s cut of the retail sales price, or how much of that is cash shop sales, it’s difficult to convert that into an accurate number of sales. That figure probably also excludes the pre-purchase sales that happened in the 2nd quarter.

Regardless, from reading the quarterly report, GW2 looks pretty successful so far with ArenaNet’s YoY sales up 2258%.

Levetty.1279:

Rangers are horrible for dungeons, no damage, no support and the pets can’t avoid AoE so die easily.

Bad rangers are horrible for dungeons. I don’t understand why so many folks completely ignore their class mechanic and then moan about how it doesn’t work well. Actually, any player that doesn’t have a decent understanding of their profession makes dungeon runs more difficult than they need to be, regardless of what that profession is.

My pets don’t aggro anything I don’t intend for them to, I can use them to pull single mobs if the rest of the team cooperates, and I slot search and rescue to help keep downed team mates from getting killed. My pets make it through most fights – it’s rare that I don’t have at least one available. They have useful effects like immobilization and vulnerability, and provide a meat shield to step behind to avoid certain attacks, even if they don’t contribute much damage.

I can lay down four types of combo fields (fire, water, poison, and ice), I can support my team members with regeneration and condition removal, I’ve got decent control abilities, and my damage is solid. Yes I focus on condition damage, but if I see that we’ve got two warriors on the team, I swap out my extra bleeds for a different type. I must be doing something right, because most boss fights end up with the boss stuck on me.

I get why some folks want certain professions when putting together a pug. Some professions are easier to play than others, so there is less chance that you’ll get stuck with someone who makes the run harder because they don’t understand what they should and should not be doing. I get around that by only doing dungeons with guild mates. Most of us can complete dungeons with just four people, so it doesn’t matter if one person is still getting the hang of dungeon runs. I find the runs more fun with a mix of professions.

It’s a very minor thing, but it would be nice if the Q icon were changed once the original poster marked the question as answered so I can skip over those threads. I don’t have an opinion on how it should change other that it be visually distinct from an unanswered question.

I usually see that when I’m testing a link from my post preview and I forgot the http prefix. For example, (url)somesite(/url) instead of (url)http://somesite (/url).

I mangled the syntax a bit so the url tags wouldn’t be parsed.