Guild Wars 2

I hate to break it to you, but all signs point towards the gem store. It just seems like that is the direction things are going in this game.

Rangers are fine, just have to know to bring some reflects with you and use terrain more to close distance on them. Reflect those arrows and you will have one or 2 less rangers on you.

That being said, if you’re an alt-aholic, then be prepared for some low level goofiness and the still broken trait system.

Ulalume.9584:

Orpheal.8263:

As if finding out how to dodge would have been before the NPC so freaking hard.
As if finding out how to manage your own inventory would be so freaking hard, especially how you sell something, wow, must have been really rocket science before the NPE oO
Panic Attacks from being in the downed state, rofl.
As if it would be so freaking hard to learn how this mechanic works just by doing AND READING, what the skills do, instead of wildly smashing just the buttons like crazy in hope that they miraculously make you stand up again out of a sudden…

Seriously ..any person which had real troubles of learning this game before of the NPE should rather go play games like Tetris or so, because thats the the same niveau how this game felt being dumbed down to in many cases after the release.

This! So much this!

I am not sure why the intent is to dumb this game down to a level where my cat could play it. What’s with game companies these days trying to attract non-gamers. As if these people would stick around. All it accomplishes is that dedicated gamers leave and go elsewhere. After two years of playing my entire friends list is greyed out because none of them plays anymore. I log in once a month to patch the game. Good job, NPE!

Many of those new casual players are also more likely to buy gems out of convenience and habits they formed from other casual games.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this today and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t actually hate the NPE over all. Its fairly useful for some and although it slows down some of my play and doesn’t let me challenge myself by playing story steps while under powered for them, and although it feels like all the 1-15 zones are like playing MMO-lite, i don’t HATE it. I can even live with the whole playing blocks of a story every ten levels even though it makes some leveling between those points feel a little aimless. These are all things that can be easily overcome and after time, even a little enjoyable if you come at it the right way.

There were even some things in the NPE that I was on the fence about, but have come around to appreciating, like the changes to the TP, and I’m a fan of many of the skill updates/balances.

Sadly, all of that is absolutely meaningless in the face of the Trait problem. See, you can’t make a delicious cake and then slather it with a heaping pile of Vegemite and expect people to want to eat the cake, yet that’s exactly what you’ve done Anet. The trait system as is stands now is so utterly broken that it makes everything you were attempting to do with the NPE completely pointless. It undermines the leveling experience, the new player experience and the ability to keep players engaged.

Older players want to have nothing to do with making alts and new players will soon find that making additional characters will be both boring and poverty inducing. In essence, you’ve taken a crucial aspect of the character growth process and made it unworkable for new players. Making little tweaks here and there is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.

Jerus.4350:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

I still hold that all scoring needs to be tied to concrete actions in WvW and not something that is time based. Taking and holding objectives and definitive kills via spike along with yak/supply denial and defense need to be the way to go with scoring.

A basketball or baseball or football game isn’t won by trying to hold onto the ball for the longest amount of time without doing anything. You have to actually get to some kind of goal to get points. Simply earning points by holding or ninja-ing an objective right before a timed tick is just a broken concept.

I get what you’re saying, but I can’t help but point out that time of possession and clock management are absolutely crucial elements of basketball and football. Baseball not so much because that’s a game ended by events not a time (9 innings vs 60 minutes)

I do like the strategy of capping things “for the tick” where you cap it with 4 mins or less on the timer to prevent the possibility of it reflipping befrore the tick. THough overall I’m not a huge fan of PPT however there does need to be a reason to want to hold onto things, without that there’d be no motivation to defending your area, you’d be better off ktraining it through somewhere else, then jumping back to recap and get your points.

The motivation is that protecting your upgraded keep from a prolonged attack is worth more points than protecting or taking a paper keep. My idea puts greater point worth on upgraded structures that are harder to take/“easier” to defend. It might even slow down dome scoring early on in a match up as servers try to figure out the best ways to shore up their defenses before going on offensive attacks.

So, i know the Anet stance on not talking of things before they are set to go, but a few of the last trait changes happened without so much as a peep about them on this thread. So i put this out there now: Anet, are there any trait changes you have lined up for one of the next 2 update cycles or not? A yes or no answer would suffice at this point. I’ll pester you more for details closer to an actual update.

Ironically, when traited and kitted out just right, a warrior is a great group healer/supporter.

I still hold that all scoring needs to be tied to concrete actions in WvW and not something that is time based. Taking and holding objectives and definitive kills via spike along with yak/supply denial and defense need to be the way to go with scoring.

A basketball or baseball or football game isn’t won by trying to hold onto the ball for the longest amount of time without doing anything. You have to actually get to some kind of goal to get points. Simply earning points by holding or ninja-ing an objective right before a timed tick is just a broken concept.

runeblade.7514:

RyuDragnier.9476:

runeblade.7514:

I can understand the distaste over it because this is not designed for power levelers. However, if it was played like how they game intended it to be, it be fun.

Not on your 3rd+ character. It’s nothing but an annoyance at that point, compared to the previous system where everything was handed to you from the getgo, and they just threw you out in the world and said “do whatever you want”.

If you don’t want to find all those traits, you can always buy them from profession trainers.

I tested the new trait system after it was launched. i got a new guardian to level 80. I got a chunk of traits from exploration and found i needed to buy some more just to make her viable in any level 80 content. I basically blew through all of her skill points she had left at that point along with a bunch of SP scrolls and most of my gold and I still don’t have all the traits i wanted her to have for the builds I envisioned for her.

Also, while i’m thinking on it:

Other point generating actions (albeit SMALL point gains, like 2-10 points at most)
Yakslapping – 5pts
Wall Siege clearing (cannons, Oil, etc) – 2pts
Player SPIKING (not killing, but having to actually spike them) – 5pts

It will both encourage actual spiking in the middle of combat if you want the points, help give starting players and roamers something to do that can contribute to scores while also encourage others to help defend and move yaks along, and also allows smaller groups to contribute to overall score when attacking objectives.

To add to my point above: Remove NPCs that can contest camps as well. They are unnecessary and go counter to the defend a camp kind of thing I’m suggesting above.

PPT based on a timed ticked is frankly broken. That is the biggest issue here. If you have coverage, you can exploit the PPT and build point leads while other servers sleep. it completely invalidates all of the work and effort and GOLD spent to get structures upgraded if 5 people can PvD and paper everything when no one can defend it.

Actions need point values assigned to them. Actually capturing and defending objectives need point values assigned to them and the longer it takes to take or defend the objective should increase the points given. This way, if its a long hard battle fought and the attackers get the objective, then they should be awarded more points then if it was 5 dudes with a golem steamrolling a keep. same is true for defending. If its a long battle and defenders win, they should earn more points for the defense of the objective.

This will encourage both fighting and defending with a real reward for the effort put it. It also makes upgrading things more worthwhile for ALL players since upgraded keeps and towers and camps should mean something.

can we also agree that the ruins have…well, ruined things? Seriously, they don’t add much to the game play and in fact punish smaller pop servers.

Outmanned: Any group that successfully attacks an objective or defends one with this buff should be getting a small bonus to their server’s score as well.

I used to love doing this.

Yeah, at this point I am probably going to be focusing on my 80s and maybe bringing my test necro out to farm some stuff to try to ear some gold and mats for what she has used up. There is just no joy in playing a toon made after April. Sadly that means once I’m bored playing with those level 80s I may find myself walking from the game. i hate that this might be the case. i really do. This trait system has broken the game IMO. No amount of NPE is going to make it right either. Fifty five pages and 5 months and…yeah…nothing.

Vayne.8563:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Vayne.8563:

I get to level 15 in an hour and a half. Yes several people DO disagree with me. You’re clearly ignoring the people who agree with me. I’m not so sure what percentage is what anymore.

Most of the complaining about the NPE stopped after Anet made changes to it. Most people seemed relatively content after that.

Are there still complaints? Sure. There are also complaints about no mounts, no open world PvE, and Keg Brawl…so yeah.

It had NEVER taken me, and i mean NEVER taken me an hour or more to get to level 7 in this game. Ever. I could get to level 10 in about 15-20 minutes, so saying that gating something like weapons swap behind level 15 being the same as it being at level 7 is disingenuous. I find it hard to believe anyone that has played this game regularly took that long to get to level 7. Ever.

You must be special then, because it took many people a whole lot longer. Sure, if you know the game and you run run run, you could always do things fast. Now you do things fast without particularly trying. I never got to level 10 in 15-20 minutes or even in an hour, so I have no idea what you’re on about.

I played the game, did the hearts, gathered mats, discovered vistas and poi’s, and did personal story steps for plenty of XP to get me there that fast. Now I have to more or less clear most of the starter zone and do the level 10 story step just to get to the point of swapping my weapons. That’s ridiculous.

Vayne.8563:

I get to level 15 in an hour and a half. Yes several people DO disagree with me. You’re clearly ignoring the people who agree with me. I’m not so sure what percentage is what anymore.

Most of the complaining about the NPE stopped after Anet made changes to it. Most people seemed relatively content after that.

Are there still complaints? Sure. There are also complaints about no mounts, no open world PvE, and Keg Brawl…so yeah.

It had NEVER taken me, and i mean NEVER taken me an hour or more to get to level 7 in this game. Ever. I could get to level 10 in about 15-20 minutes, so saying that gating something like weapons swap behind level 15 being the same as it being at level 7 is disingenuous. I find it hard to believe anyone that has played this game regularly took that long to get to level 7. Ever.

eyestrain.3056:

OK, I caved and decided rather than buying traits for my new necro i’d really try to go out in the field and unlock them. I wanted a basic adept skill and it sent me to Hirathi Hinterlands.
Ok.
Even this wouldn’t have been so bad but using the telescope to show me where I need to go, it told me about an event and pointed me to a waypoint. I got up there and… could not for the life of me find who I was supposed to help. I first completed an unrelated (and very slow event) assuming it was the one the trait pointed me to find. Not so. I more carefully read the npc’s name. I looked more.
After about 20min of trying to meet this goal just by playing the game, I got frustrated and wiki’d the npc and event.

I still could not find the blasted thing. I’ve even gotten 100% map completion and definitely recalled the enemy, I just couldn’t remember how I got there because I had wandered there naturally.
One hour later and I’m very disinclined to try and unlock this or any other trait. I used to be able to do what I wanted freely and get rewarded for it. Now I have to go out of my way, even look outside the game for directions and I still don’t have my trait. How would this feel for someone new to the game?

Attached is where the trait pointed me to go. Help Shining Blade Kimber defeat Kol Skullsmasher. Wiki location for the event: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hidden_Ourobon

ps- the fact I can’t even touch a grandmaster trait until level 60 sucks. I’ve heard a lot of complaining here but now that it’s really affecting me it just sucks. I wanted to slowly enjoy my level up, not be rushed ahead just so I can access what my necro can do. This cap needs to be lowered, if not for everyone at least for people who already have a level 80 and want their traits.

pps- before anyone says i’m an idiot for not going further north, i’m an idiot for not going further north. I found the event. But I wasted an hour and an hour’s worth of patience because I thought the telescope would point me to the event, not the waypoint in the general area.

Fighting him alone is also almost an impossible fight unless you are a complete boss. Eventually he will down you by yourself. There is one vaguely in an area in Dredgehaunt that I have yet to get because the directions in the game are too vague.

GOSU.9574:

Well not to be the devil’s advocate but when removing repair costs on gear it was stated that the money sink would be shifted.

And if it were the least bit comparable in cost I’d agree. That, however, is far from the case here.

OK, I’ll play along. Again. (But to be honest, its getting a bit tedious. And that is about as kindly as I can put it.)

For Veterans with multiple Alts and who have already unlocked the traits (barring any GM ones still locked):
***All traits need to be unlocked on the account. Full stop. Do not pass Go. making vets run around the world and do events to unlock traits on alts is annoying at best.

For ALL Players:

Trait cost is abhorrent: Remove skill points as part of the cost completely and bring the prices down to half of their total cost as it is. it will still be a gold sink, but won’t be a character limiting one for new (mostly casual) players.

Trait Tasks: Remove all WvW/EoTM based requirements for obtaining Traits. Make all Traits that require more than 2 people change to events that at most require only 2 people. Anything that requires more than that is broken. Traits are things that are essential for CHARACTER development and should be earned by an individual’s effort and skill. it should never require a group to get the trait for one person. Make sure that Trait tasks are in LEVEL APPROPRIATE areas. Adept in 30-40, Master in 50-60, and GM in 70-80.

Vayne.8563:

They’re taking icons new players don’t need off the maps in order so that they can focus on the icons they’re supposed to focus on. I learned to ride a bike the same way you did. My dad was a big believer in going out and doing stuff yourself and try and if you fall off, get back on again.

It doesn’t change the fact that a lot of dads aren’t like that and a lot of people weren’t raised that way.

Some people need more guidance, or more encouragement or more direction. They need to assimilate stuff more slowly. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I know what the NPE looks like to a brand new player though. I made the free account specifically to see it with “new” eyes. The problems I ran into though were jarring to me (a vet), and I could just imagine how jarring it would be for a brand spanking new player. To continue the bike analogy real fast, it would be as if you had training wheels on the bike and after riding for a block, someone suddenly threw some confetti at you, but you had no idea why, then after a few more blocks and some more confetti at random points someone blasts an airhorn in your face and hands you a small present for going 10 blocks. No explanation WHY you got the confetti and the small present, just that you got it. This is what “finding” POIs that you can’t see and doing dailies or monthlies before they are made visible to you is like for a new player. Not to mention the frustration of seeing someone walk up to a skill point communing spot, do something funky and have that plum of light shoot up around them and when you get there it tells you that its not for you. No explanation. Just not for you. Or when you see someone who knows what a Vista is running up to it and an icon appear above their head, you still may not know what its there for or if you should check it out because the icon isn’t there. Then suddenly…ICONS. Then suddenly…SKILL POINTS. Then suddenly…wait, i though there wre training wheels on this bike. Nope, those were just torn off and you have a personal story to start now that you have your last weapon skill unlocked on your bar. Oh, and those other weapons you have…yeah, those might be fun. Learn them while you do that story. Good luck.

That, to me, is a broken system that does nothing but hurt a new player.

Narkodx.1472:

Many things make a skilled gw2 player – however I think it is easier to see what makes a not so skilled player

1. skill clicking
2. keyboard turning
3. back pedaling

Anyone who still does those is most definitely not skilled

Hey now, back pedaling has its place in WvW. its called “lure”. I also call it tail forming and rabbit making. heheh

Tron.3471:

Doesn’t spam knockbacks during group events indicating that they are not just mindlessly mashing keys….

What if someone in that group was annoying you so you pop knock backs just to troll them? Not saying I’ve done that, per se, but you know, hypothetically.

OK, so, after some of the more recent updates to the NPE: Does the NPE really affect me as a vet poorly? Nope. not at all. I can disable the infernal compass and go about my leveling as i always have on my main account. Do I think the weapon skill gating is dumb? Yup. Why? Because it went from people learning and getting familiar with what a skill did and how it might be used with the prior skill and having to do that with each weapon set to, you have 5 skills on this weapon by level 10 and ZOMGYOUHAVEALLTHESEOTHERSKILLS on your weapons that if you are new won’t have any clue what they do. have fun learning them all now. While doing your personal story. After vaguely being told about dodges. And nothing about combo fields and finishers. Hope you also enjoy that heal skill you’ll have for a bit. But don’t worry, they levels come hard and fast and soon you will be level 15 and can take on the world. So no, the NPE doesn’t hurt vets in any way. It just doesn’t really help new players much when it comes to learning anything either. (Kudos on the rewards though. They are pretty neat for starting toons.) Sadly the NPE also hurts every new player/alt when it comes to traits and the getting thereof. So, in essence, you’ve made the act of leveling up a touch more engaging (ignoring the power spikes and valleys issue for now), but have further crippled the ability to buy traits and instead force exploration and group play just to have a well rounded character.

DeathMetal.8264:

NinjaEd.3946:

Somehow they never fail to release more item mall skins heaven forbid they add aesthetics that can be obtained from playing the game :/
…snip…

You do realize Anet could have altogether removed Gold to Gem conversion right?
By that same idea, all items in the gemstore can be bought, in your own words, “from playing the game”.

Sure, the inflation has gone up, but players who save up and play the game, always have the option to get the items they “want” (thank goodness, it’s NOT about the items we NEED) by playing the game.

You do realize that with the INSANE gold sink that they’ve turned Traits into, that they are also leeching so much out of the game with it that it further forces new players to BUY gems to turn into gold, or BUY gems to get things from the gem store. Its just sad that their gemstore devs are so much more efficient at what they do. Glad I’ve not bought a gem card since April.

DaveyC.4398:

Crovax.7854:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Thanks for this feedback, it’s very informative!

What rubs me the wrong way is that this looks like a confirmation by an Anet official that this is exactly the kind of player they want to appeal to…

I’d just love a clarification if this is the route this game will take from now on (/since a few patches ago) or if we can expect some changes and additions that aren’t targetted at people who are overwhelmed by bank space (what?!).

See the thing is I have been playing this game since the beta and have invested close to 2000 hours in game.

I more than anyone would like to see changes that would affect end game users.

I have no problems with new players joining a game as ultimately, that’s how a community grows.

I also work for a software company and have been involved with blended learning for over 8 years. As a result I understand that the core founding’s of an application need to be in order before significant changes can be made that will impact experienced users, after all if you are experienced, you already know the basics…

You are not a new player and cannot appreciate the view of a new user. This patch was not tailored to veterans, it was aimed at improvements to people who are new.

This does not mean that improvements for veterans will not come, its just that improvements come from the ground up.

Here’s the thing,
when I was a kid and i got my first bike, I didn’t get one with training wheels. My “training wheels” was my dad holding the back of the seat as i learned how to center my weight on the seat. At some point he let go and didn’t tell me, and I flopped right off the thing. I didn’t get angry at him and refuse to ride the bike since he told me I went a good 20 feet without him there. All I did was tell him to warn me when he let go. The next time, he did and I made an effort to keep myself righted on my own and never needed his help riding a bike after that.

While i’m all for certain parts of the gameplay being worked into the environment for early level learning, I feel like they’ve brought the 1-15 areas (or rather the 1-7 level parts of them) down to a pre-school level, then shift it to about 5th grade level with no real warning, whereas before the NPE I felt it was more of a gradual 2-8th grade progression through the 1-15 areas. In essence all they really needed to add to the NPE was better reward progression and explanations of things to do and how to do them. They still need to add proper dodge tutorials and combo field lessons.

I’ve already suggested elswhere in one of these kitten posts about using an Ettin type trainer/heart thing to teach the dodging, and I’m sure there are other skill challenges (perhaps the one by the floating wizards island) where combo fields and advanced dodging can be taught.

Also, I’m sorry, but confused by banks and storage/crafting materials? Other than Anet needing to maybe show mew players where to go to see/store those items and then an actual tutorial on how to craft at the crafting tables when first getting your initial crafting profession, new players need to take it upon themselves to talk to NPCs and read what they have to say. Also, as everyone else has done for YEARS: ask in map and consult the wiki. The information is out there. its best they get used to looking up things in the wiki early on anyway since thats the only way they are going to have any idea where to go to get half of their traits anyway.

So, do we think any of the free week players got high enough level to even weigh in on the trait system? Do we think their feedback will matter?

While I get where you are coming from OP, you are forgetting one thing: We were all new players at one point and time and we all had to buck up and learn. Also, its not like these other games we played were oh so great at explaining every nuance in the game. For me, having played GW1 and WoW and some EQ, it still took me a while to learn and figure out things like dodge timing and combo fields/finishers. I didn’t leave the game. I learned it. i asked questions or sought answers. Now, could Anet have more seemless tutorials in game? Sure. Do they have some neat (and slyly disguised ones) already? Yes. So i know they can do it. Does that mean they have to cripple early play to cater to people that might get spooked? No, not at all. Putting your game on training wheels for as long as GW2 does now is not the answer. Ever.

Anyori.4598:

I don’t mind this system
I’m playing since August this year, but I like having to actually work a bit before you can use strong builds with good traits
Oh and I haven’t bought a single trait yet, and have bout 12 more to go before i got them all I think, maybe 15

So how many alts do you have? Almost fully traited on all of them?

While i agree that the skill point cost on top of the gold is both annoying and atrocious, I think in the grand scheme of things its more “manageable” as by the time a new player has gotten to level 80 and might be looking to round out traits on their first toon, they have probably already bought most if not all of their utilities/elites and are starting to build up surplus skill points. The problem, unfortunately, is that they probably have under 100 spare skill points to spare and can’t just unlock their remaining traits either forcing them to play a toon with non-complimentary traits/skills or buying a specific meta and hoping it doesn’t get nerfed before they can buy more traits. I just think that the gold cost would be more prohibitive since they are also probably wanting to buy or make exotic armor and weapons along with runes and sigils for this toon which would also eat up whatever gold they made up until this point.

I came across 3 or 4 people RPing at the hunting lodge in QD this past weekend. Just a normal everyday chat at the bar kind of thing. No harm, no foul.

The reason why I say this is because if there are altaholics out there willing to drop their gold on buying a vast majority of these traits instead of map opening for the 345786234 time, then they are going to quickly see their gold go away on traits for those toons. i think that makes it a fairly good gold sink as well as a good way to take gold away from new players in a way that keeps them from getting too rich too fast since they will be dropping more of their earnings on getting more troublesome traits even if they are world exploring for the first time. Like i said, its honestly the only good reason I can come up with for the traits costing that amount of gold.

Good luck with getting a response on this one. This was brought up a while ago with nary a cricket to be heard.

The trait changes, more than anything else, are a major gold sink. i think after the first Pavilion event, Anet realized that they injected a TON of gold into the economy and have been trying to find ways to bleed it and the materials from it out of the economy so they introduced the Bazaar and a few other things, but this wasn’t removing it fast enough. i honestly think these traits changes (aside from dragging out the leveling and growth of new toons) was meant to tear out more gold from the world and also make it near impossible for new players to hold onto vast amounts of gold as they leveled. Its honestly the only “logical” reason I can think of for these changes to still be here.

Has there even been a simple “we know and are working on the fix” from them on this one? I mean, really.

They can join guilds.

Seriously not even a peep on this yet???

The other major downfall to the LS is the fact that right now, if i want to enjoy the content as a block of play I need to log in to unlock it, then not play a bit of it until the story has run it’s course so I can play it as one large chunk. This also means that I open myself to spoilers to that same story because its not like I can tell everyone to not talk about it because I’m waiting to play it all at once.

I want to list now some of the needed changes that have stuck out most to me over the time I’ve played this game since beta:

RNG Precursor Issues: The obtaining of the materials for a legendary are a fun little adventure. Think back to the Moa chick in GW1. Hunt around the world for the ingredients and combine them in such a way to get that minipet. To get all of those items for the legendary is no small feat for most players, especially the more casual ones. From day one, the RNG nonsense to obtain a precursor has been annoying, frustrating, and frankly unfair. From day one people had been begging for those drops to be better. Maybe have be a 100% chance of getting one from completing the Personal Story. Or having at least a 20% chance of getting it from a level 80 world boss chest instead of the current less than 1% chance of getting it at all.
Pet AI: Although I understand the issue of not being able to just tweak the pet AI as its tied to the creature AI in the game, there have been post after post outlining ways to make them or those that might use them more useful. For rangers, the ability to perma-stow a pet and instead get damage buffs, or instant commands working better, or in the case of undead minions, them ever attacking something instead of having a tea party while you die 10 feet away.
Traits: This shouldn’t even BE here. Traits were fine in the past. Instead, some random ideas were taken completely out of context and this new trait system was implemented in the most odd and painfully wrong way. Its as if the devs looked at the skill capture/questing from GW1 in a funhouse mirror and produced what we have today for traits. I wish I could enumerate the ideas that have been given for fixing this, but it was a thread 4 months in the making and at this point the only things I can see that will fix this one are either full reversion or one time trait unlocks on accounts/account wide. This was not the place to put the gold sink. It wasn’t. Full stop.
Rewards (General): Good substantial rewards for event completion with bigger and harder events giving bigger and better rewards and NO rewards other than consolatory karma and XP for failed events. Simply put, failing an event should never generate more loot/rewards than completing it. This is just basic logic. Why there are still issues with this is beyond me. have an event that generates Champs? Great, award those champ bags in a chest after the event completes SUCCESSFULLY. Where have I seen that implemented before? Oh that’s right! YOU GUYS DID THAT! In the Pavilion. If you can do it there, then you can do that in the open word stuff too.
Dungeons (hard mode): Maybe I really don’t understand what goes into it, but why can’t there be more dev work put to dungeons to either make a new path for existing dungeons, or allow people looking for a challenge to select a dungeon and choose to make it a “hard mode” type instance where the enemies are tougher, have different fight mechanics, or even allow things like perma-wipe in them so if your party all goes down, you get bounced from the instance and have to try again. SOMETHING. Anything for those people that like running the dungeons and want a challenge for small 5-man group play.
WvW: SO many things about WvW are broken, but those of us that play it continue to do so in the hops that one day you might fix, upgrade commanding menus, PPT issues, world balance issues, hackers, maps, siege traps, stop doing tournaments until any of those prior things are even addressed, etc. Sadly, what we finally got after2 years were colors for tags and more siege mastery to sink some points into. All of those things in my list for WvW have been brought up WAY too much to continue to effectively ignore it, but that is exactly how many in the WvW community feel, and at worse they probably feel numb to it all as well since its gone on as long as it has without being addressed.

These are by no means the only things people seem to want from the game, but they are some major ones that I’ve seen complained about since launch. I’m sure others know of some more. Please Anet. Stop simply catering to the people who have left the game or who are so new to it that they will willingly just throw some money at the gem store for some keys here and there. There are plenty of us vets that have stopped encouraging people to come to the game, and in some instances discouraged people. There are plenty of us that were gleefully buying character slots, etc to build up new toons with new looks, etc that have just stopped. We stopped because we grew tired of seemingly getting nothing from our financial and time investment into the game we loved. If that isn’t an important metric, then I’m honestly not sure what is.

Changes for Guild Wars 2 – Suggestions
I keep seeing a lot of red posts asking for suggestions that are well thought out, and then pages upon pages of suggestions that are seemingly well received. I also see many things that are well received fall by the wayside as if they were never said. Sometimes its stated that it got lost in the shuffle/deluge of threads on similar or related topics, and other times a change is made that may or may not have had something to do with a suggestion from some obscure thread 3 months prior.

I get that the dev team is not huge and that there are a good number of people wearing a good number of hats over at Anet. I also understand your stance on messaging/communicating with the users. Here’s the thing though: Many of us are not daft and know when we are being placated or only half listened to. We also tend to be avid gamers with a fairly vast library of games that we play or replay at times because we get something out of it. There was a game series that came out some years ago. Its a trilogy of games. It reworked the genre in a way that I’d not seen before offering robust story and characters. It even made a HUGE misstep with its final chapter’s ending which lead to outrage from fans, and ultimately a very smart fix to the story. Not a fix that the players had to pay for either. They also put out TONS of DLC for this game that I just recently purchased some of to play. This has been robust content delivered to the tune of 10 or 20 dollars that added some significant fun to the game.

I can’t tell you how much money I’ve spent on GW2 in the way of gem cards, but suffice to say that number is FAR more than I ever paid for all of the DLC for this other game, and I’ve only seen a fraction of new playable content. From other posts that I’ve seen, others have also spent inordinate amounts of money as well. All in the hopes that by supporting Anet in this way that we’d be able to help further push development of new content and to streamline existing content. many of us have been fans of and players of GW since the first game.

Instead of feeling heard when we made suggestions (when asked for them) however, we felt ignored and more importantly unvalued as customers/players. A year and a half into the life of the game and things started to shift. And now, after the latest update those veteran players who have been the most vocal are shouted down by others, or at worse silenced on the boards after a time.

I want this game to do more than succeed. I want it to flourish as long as if not longer than GW1, but as of today it feels like it is getting choked out and is desperately trying to grasp onto new players to feed more new funds into the game because the former whales are tired of spending their money on something that is increasingly not “for them”.

Ashandar.2570:

Anet does nothing. I have asked them, they responded with we can’t do anything, try guesting on a low-pop server.

I call BS on Anet then. They have done things in the past. Problem is they don’t want to do anything because that will just incite the farmers to make more posts in visible places about Anet taking away stuff, and Anet is keen on not having that happen. Instead it seems like the “go to a different instance” argument is in play. Prob with that is that if you are in a low enough pop map to get this event done, you are also probably in a low enough pop map to be bounced from it as well. :/

Actually, let me be a little more specific for you: If you’ve been gone for 6 months, that means you remember a time when you could unlock your traits to the tune of roughly 3gp. This is not the case anymore and there is a 51 page post here in this area of the forums outlining this change that occurred back in April.

Hopefully you are not an altaholic. If so, then I apologize profusely.

What’s another day after 5 months? Hell the first response was somewhere on page 40-something. Sad part is, any new players they DO get from the NPE won’t even realize what they are in for trait wise, nor will they be able to roll with the vets who have plenty of toons with full trait lists that can shift builds on the fly.

Maybe Anet’s gift to vet players are going to be all the fun WvW loot bags that won’t be able to adjust to various players and tactics because they couldn’t afford half of their traits.

Tachenon.5270:

So, how about those changes coming to the NPE? Have they all been rolled out already? What about the cows and the golems and the other things in the low level areas that once added unique flavor and color and texture to the game? Any chance of these things being restored? Hello?

Oh. You poor misguided player. No. There will be no changes to anything between the 25th and the 1st or even the 5th. This is Anet trying to get new blood in the door and getting THEIR input (either through words or potentially upgrading/buying the full game), and THEN they will see if something needs changing based on THOSE players. Those of us that have mentioned these others things have already been heard from, multiple times, in multiple threads, as they are quick to remind us. The only logical extrapolation then is that we’ve been heard and that they are not going to make those changes unless those new players (without our input to them) see those same things as problems. If they don’t, then it won’t change.

I’ll def check that vid out later. For me though, I think that if they are going to have them in the game, they need to give that skill a little extra…something, to make it a thing that more thieves might say, yes, this is definitely viable for me. I don’t know what that something would be, but it would definitely be something that should compensate for the loss of 2 skills in the bar. Or maybe as others have mentioned allowing for some kind of punch and kick default in the final 2 slots while single wielding. Maybe the punch can daze for 2 seconds and the kick can do a small knock back/interrupt with both doing small damage and be more general utility type things that won’t throw off the balance, but add to the game play.

Penarddun.6827:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

If you are not using the personality stuff in the game anymore, then please just remove it from character creation. It honestly has no meaning anymore and just saddens me to see it there.

The personality stuff was another thing I loved about the game. I enjoy the character creation process so much. Even though they don’t use it anymore in the game really, except for the odd conversation where it is still there.

I like that I can choose that during character creation, even if that mechanic has been removed from in-game. I really don’t want more personality stuff removed. We have so little that gives our characters any uniqueness.

While i agree on one level, I find that it hurts more to see it there unused and and essentially vestigial. I’d rather they had come up with a good use for it, like i thought they might (like npcs ACTUALLY reacting to you based on your personality or by remembering you after certain events) but now its just..i don’t know. Beyond lame.

My bigger question is why did they even bother with that skill set up in the first place? its not like that 3rd skill (sans an offhand weapon) is so wonderful that it is worth losing 2 additional skills on your bar, and its the only class that works that way. i mean, did they honestly think that people would opt to cripple themselves skill wise and just use 3 skills on one class? This is even more evident now with the NPE as well. it just feels wrong in so many ways. Has Anet ever said why they designed it this way?

OmaiGodman.2098:

AncientYs.8613:

OmaiGodman.2098:

I will never understand that people who obviously want to be left on their own play massive multiplayer online games…

then maybe you understand people who play mmo’s who solo? or prefer NOT to be under some form of pressure of group play? an MMO is for some people as much as what a single player game is; An open expansive world with quests to do and adventures to be had =) and group players/people who prefer to play in groups and not want to be solo are also there !

both in a single player game and an MMO. it’s just two different demographics playing the same game.. what is there not to understand?

Don’t get me wrong, I often play solo myself. It’s just that I don’t understand when people start complaining about the fact that they have to share the map with other people. If you want to play completely by yourself, go play Dragon Age or something.

Whenever I play solo I actually like it when people will join in for any random group event, finish a champion off together, and after that everybody goes their own way again.

Part of the problem is also with the people on the map and the blathering in map chat. I can ignore it fairly well, but others cannot. For them its tantamount to noise that is being forced on them when forced onto highly populated maps. For them its events that they liked doing, but now have some random large group plow through and they are left either waiting for the event/enemies to re-pop (without the bonus xp mind you) or trying to move on to another part of the map where those people hopefully aren’t.

Scenario: last night i was testing a newbie out in Queensdale and was at the orchard. It was early morning, about 4-5am and I could barely get the heart done because there were a number of fairly high leveled people there obliterating the spiders before i could get my lowbie to them to tag them for credit. Thankfully the clear the spiders event popped and i was able to exploit what little mobility i had to tag enough enemies to get the heart, whereas before I could find myself doing that area by myself or with 1 or 2 other people and it would be both challenging and fun. Also map chat was less inane and toxic as it tends to get the more the population of a map rises.

Also, feel free to start using kitten in your daily speech as most of us have started to do anyway. It makes dealing with people here and in real life that much more fun. So i say kitten it and throw caution to the wind. Also, sorry you got pulled into an in-active guild. Be sure to tell whomever you are talking to at the time what you are looking for in a guild and be very specific. Twenty people that log in at odd times might be “active” for the person you spoke with.

Testing Gameplay with free weekend Alt:

So i decided to give Anet a chance here and experience the NPE with an alt that i could generate completely vanilla thanks to the free weekend. So absolutely no money/karma/bank/ anything.

I played for about an hour, leaving everything except for a few key binds the way it was configured and set out into Queensdale as a thief. I hit level 9 before logging off and will admit to feeling a little giddy each time a new achievement unlocked on top of the normal level up stuff going on.

I won’t focus on the good stuff though. Not because I want to make a negative post, but because i feel if Anet doesn’t hear what could be wrong, it will never get fixed.

POIs: They are hidden from view for a good while and in the early parts of the map, even though i knew where they were, seeing I’d discovered something like that was a little jarring, but I was able to shrug it off. Not major, but something to think about.

Skill Point Spots: STILL annoying to see it there and see i can interact with it and then be told that i can’kittens still dumb. Please revert this back so people can just get skill points when they come across them. Seriously. its just too dumb the way it is now. just let us get them.

Dailies: Wow, ok, i hadn’t thought about how jarring this would be for starting players, but holy hell this was both jarring and could be pretty confusing for a starting player. Every time I completed something for my daily, the normal pop up fan fare, light show out my bum occurred, but there was no way for me to really see what all it was. Being a vet I knew, but a new player won’t. When I got my reward for the daily later, although once again I knew what it was, the new player might wonder what they did to get that and more importantly, are they going to get it again (possibly soon). Please turn dailies back into something you unlock/see at something like level 3. At least then they can get used to seeing it on their HUD.

Off-Hand weapon: Oh man did this irk me to no end. If you make them available at level 7, then just start everyone off with one of their 2 handed weapons. Its annoying to get those messages reminding you that you are too daft to use a second weapon. Don’t even get me started on weapon set swapping that is just….GAH!

Clippy…i mean, the Compass: It’s like…we need to give that compass Adderall or something. At first it was all “Hey dude, go here. Great. You’re done? Awesome maaaan, no go here. its just over this next hill.” But soon it was all, “Dude, you should so go talk to this scout…somewhere…over…here? NO WAIT! Go do this event. Where? Uhm…in that cave? Maybe? You should really talk to that scout though. CAVE!” Once again, being a vet made dealing with this thing’s issues easier, but a new player is going to feel ping ponged a bit. I kept it on though, for science. Good thing i did too, since it was determined to keep pushing me out to things 2+ levels above my current level, instead of say pointing me to the boar and wasp area, then Beetletun, which would have been more appropriate. My only guess is that it still has much to do with where you are on the map and not necessarily the level of your toon.
Maybe a setting that tells it to direct you to actual level related areas of the map? yes

If you are not using the personality stuff in the game anymore, then please just remove it from character creation. It honestly has no meaning anymore and just saddens me to see it there.