Guild Wars 2

Ramethzero.3785:

I don’t have a problem with any greatsword because its a game, and not showstopping enough for me to put my life on hold to make a thread about it.

…but you had enough time to reply to one about it. Excellent job sir, you are clearly better than the rest of us.

i hate that as a male charr, when i have my greatsword drawn, my legs are placed such that my front leg always clips my leg armor. always.

no problem with any other weapons…just the silly GS

Great vids! Build is pretty cool. But one question: HOW DO YOU HAVE SO MANY KITTEN LEGENDARIES!?!?! I saw Juggernaut, Sunrise and The Moot. mad jealous…

You know what works exactly like it says it does? Mighty blow. WW is overrated. Always has been. Channeled abilites like WW or 100B only really do damage if the target is stationary and eats the whole thing (projectiles included) right in the face.

I think scooby hit on what is bothering me the most. I just didn’t realize it til someone said it. It’s not that there isn’t enough content, it’s just too easy. Other MMOs felt longer to me because things like raids were hard enough to hold my attention. The PvE content in this game is laughable at best. High level fractals are hard but not in a good way. Giving the same enemies and the same encounters more health and more damage just makes the fights longer not more exciting.

The gear system is cool in one way and awful in another. I hit 80 and had my first full set of exotics (BiS at the time) in a week! Now I own countless sets of armor. It was never that easy in other games. I’m sure I’ve overplayed this game but still: I’m feeling a touch of boredom.

The changes to some of the Temple events in Orr are decent and almost feel like really easy raids. I’d kill for some 8-10 player content that is instanced so I can run it with guildies and face a prolonged but exciting challenge. (i.e. Guild Raids)

I bought this game for the PvP but heck, WvW is such a mess. All the previews of WvW that sold me on GW2 didn’t metion the horrific culling and invisible armies. Had I only known…

6 months into the game and I’m starting to feel like there is a lack of cohesive objectives and incentives in this game. I’m working on my legendary but one can only farm so much in a day before it becomes painful. WvW is mildly entertaining until I die to bad culling behavior or a perma stealth thief a few times. Dungeons are a cakewalk. Fractals are kind of dumb, but the reason they aren’t very exciting is a whole different thread.

I’m not trying to whine about the game as much as I’m curious if anyone else feels like they’ve run out of stuff to do already? Some folks in my guild haven’t even hit 80 yet! Others still haven’t gotten 100% map completion. I did these things in September. Now I feel like I’ve kinda stalled. I never thought I’d miss raiding but it at least gave me something to look forward to.

Anyone else feeling like Tyria keeps getting smaller?

I hope the Devs are really serious when they say they are looking into risk vs. reward, unlike the other things they said they are working on but aren’t (looking at you precursors). This is one of the key elements desperately missing in GW2. There is simply no reward for doing anything.

Why do people do crazy multi-hour raids multiple nights a week in other MMOs? The reward usually is worth the time. Sure they wipe a lot and its tough and frustrating…. but eventually there is a reward for all the hard work.

Meanwhile, in GW2, people can beat their faces against the instakill mechanics of grenth for blues and greens from a chest….or just kill random mobs in the world for blues and greens. Even worse, magic find does not work on chests so statistically, the odds of getting something valuable are better with random mobs than scripted, challenging fights. All across GW2 there are things to do where the reward is not worth the time/risk to do it. As a result….everyone just does a handfull of things because so much of the content is wasted time.

Look at Southsun Cove: an island full of really nasty tough enemies. Now that the rich orichalcum node is gone, the place is even emptier. Why? Players can get better rewards, be it money, items, karma, etc, in Orr than in Southsun with far less risk.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that Feb. patch is gonna have some serious game updates in it… for the sake of the game and the players.

Smite hits targets through floors and walls…. that is amazing. Scepter auto is mediocre but smite is full of laughs. Love using it to demolish siege through walls

Looking for a build for PvE/WvW that has obnoxious levels of survival. I don’t care about damage output necessarily. It’d be nice to be able to kill someone 1v1 if they stick around and want to fight me. Mainly though, I’d prefer that when someone attacks me solo, they get frustrated and just leave. Also, I’d like to be a pain in the backside for groups to drag under so I can hold the line for my allies. Thanks!

..it isn’t. 21 attempts at mystic forge for 2 Mystic Clovers. Always get about 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 attempts. This is a new level of awful. Really hope new year brings some improvements to the RNG. That cranky Djinn is really pissin’ me off.

Thanks for the positive comments. @TheDaiBish – love your ideas for dungeons. Certainly connecting trash mobs to either boss difficulty or bonus rewards helps encourage the content be played as intended while preventing dungeon loot from overshadowing the open world.

Another thought to improve the open world is to have the bonus XP effect removed at level 80 and replaced by a bonus magic find effect. For those who don’t know, killing a mob who hasn’t been killed in a while results in standard xp + a bonus amount. As gaining levels for skill points is the least challenging portion of the legendary grind, I suggest that instead of a mob awarding bonus xp to a level 80 character, it should have an improved chance to drop better loot. This would reward players who seek out those hard to reach areas of Tyria and kill that troll way deep in the caves. Thoughts?

Let me begin by saying this is not a complaint or gripe post. It is meant to offer some constructive criticism and suggestions for simple fixes to issues that I have found with various aspects of the game. I would prefer that responses and discussion remain focused on evaluating and attempting to solve these issues rather than a descent into bickering and name-calling.

That having been said, let’s begin:

Issue 1: The open world and the lack of PvE participation

The world of Tyria is beautifully crafted and the designers have worked hard to create numerous areas, characters, and events….that are virtually abandoned. The concept of dynamic scaling is great and in theory it allows a zone, any zone… to be both level appropriate for new players, and end-game content for those at 80. Unfortunately, there seems to be little reason for most players to explore the world. How can Arenanet get players back into Tyria?

Some suggestions: rework daily achievement to be more zone specific and offer better rewards to entice players to complete this daily. Rather than a generic “kill 15 enemy types” or “gather 20 of anything”, make the daily more specifc i.e: “gather 20 copper ore” or “kill 1 Risen, 1 Moa, 1 Cat, etc” forcing players to spend some time traveling the world and really getting to know Tyria better. To promote this objective, offer reward options like "pick one: 1 mystic coin + karma, 1 random elemental shard (the tier below cores) + karma, or 1 bag of coins (random amount between 10-30silver) + karma.

This would create an objective that tempts players back into the world and helps alleviate that constant complaint about lodestone prices. (2 birds, 1 stone)

Issue 2: Dynamic events are not being utilized to their full extent and players only do certain events (read: dragons and some orr temples)

Suggestion: create a system that scales event rewards for completion of chains and meta events. For example: event 1 – xp, karma, coin. event 2 in chain – xp+,karma+,coin+ (same reward but maybe a bit more), event 3 in chain – xp+,karma+,item(low%blue,green,low%yellow). A chance at a better reward would motivate players to stick around for an event. Meta completion: xp, karma, chest. Which brings us to the sub issue of chests.

If the reward is so good it’s worth keeping in an enormous chest, then why is it always so crummy? Let’s have a chest give a better chance at some decent loot. In addition have the chance at loot scale in relation to the number of preevents completed. Nobody wants to help with steps 1-4 of a meta but they all sure want that final part when the chest pops up…. let’s make it worthwhile to participate.

Issue 3: Dungeons are a mess and skipping/shortcutting is a bad system. Mobs in dungeons are above veterans but below champions in difficulty but they seldom drop any loot. As a result, most groups feel that the risk is not worth the reward of fighting them and parties devise ways to skip or evade enemies. Why bother having them in the dungeon at all if they are to be ignored and run past?

Suggestion: Either A) tone down the trash to make clearing it easier and faster, improve the loot from trash to make it worthwhile to kill them, or C) remove the majority of the trash mobs and let players just fight bosses as they are now. Of these solutions, I prefer B. I think making enemies easier just turns dungeons into more of a zergfest than they already are and thats no fun in the long run nor does it challenge and excite players. Removing enemies would also make dungeons silly, essentially creating instanced boss encounters. However, improving the quality of loot from dungeon enemies (better chance at tier6 or rare quality mats maybe) would make killing trash mobs more appealing. Sure, groups focused on expediency might still want to skip the trash, but I believe that more groups would consider fighting some of the enemies Arenanet has worked to design and place in dungeons if it was worth their time.

These are just a few suggestions for issues that I feel are hurting the long-term playability of the game. I will likely address some of my concerns about WvW in another post (maybe in that forum) as WvW is a whole other mess and I believe Arenanet is already working quite hard to improve it.

Thanks for reading my wall of text and I would appreciate any feedback that furthers the discussion.

1/3 of the way into January. Still no posts or discussion of Jan update or the supposed big content patches in Feb/Mar….. seems kinda like that whole mission to improve communication has really worked.

Just sayin’

I still don’t know why or how we got onto the subject of the holidays or how/why that is an excuse for 3 months of nearly no communication between players and developers. Yes, I understand that if they answered every forum post all day they would never develop anything. No, that is NOT a valid argument for the current state of things.

For those of you whom GW2 is your first MMO, this will not make sense. For the rest of us who have played other MMOs, we like to be informed of upcoming changes so they aren’t a surprise.

How crappy does it feel to gear out a character for a build and really learn how to play it well, only to have it suddenly get nerfed into the ground or changed to no longer be viable without warning. Sure players can find new builds and adapt. But it disheartens players to have to constantly rework everything. However, if someone discovers that ABC is the uber build and devs communicate that the potency of said build is not what was intended, players know that a potential nerf or change is on the horizon.

Bored over lack of content as so many on these forums bemoan? How cool would it be to see info regarding possible updates or additional content? That might certainly keep players in the game longer. Even if not all of the content made it to final release, having seen the process develop would give players more reasonable expectations as the game goes on.

Occasionally, we get small posts on the main webpage from one dev or another with very broad, very generalized overviews of upcoming changes. I think a lot of players would appreciate these posts to be more detail (at least more than they are now) and more frequent.

I want to believe there are great things in the works for GW2 2013, now show me some evidence. Just a little morsel.

I would like to clarify this post in hopes that the discussion stays constructive. Some people have misinterpreted this thread as being focused on reduced communication during the holidays. It is not. I get that we all want to take Christmas week off and chill with the family and the employees at Arenanet deserve to do the same. They’re just regular working people too.

What I am looking for is a stronger level of communication the rest of the year. Things I do not want:
– Replies to threads about such and such is OP
– Replies to silly posts about QQ my profession can’t 1 shot the universe
– Replies to trolls and flamers in general

What I would love to see posted:
– The developer’s ideas: your thoughts on the state of play, what is working what isn’t
– Specifics: don’t tease us with “we’re implementing a change of some sort sometime” tell us what you’re lookin to do and approximately when.
– Put patch notes on the launcher so I don’t need to hunt them down. If a change is made that has a large impact on a proffession, try to include a few notes so we know why you guys felt X needed to be buffed/nerfed.

Overall, I fell that if we, the players, better knew what you, the developers, were working on and when we could expect to see it (roughly, I know hard deadlines can be tough), the amount of posts that contain nothing but complaints and whining on these forums would shrink. Moreover, the GW2 is not stupid. There are some pretty sharp folks on here and I think you’d be surprised how much useful feedback and analysis you could get if the players had a little more concrete info to work with.

Thanks for keeping this thread mostly mature and constructive. Flamers and trolls the door is —-→

Anyone familiar with MMO-champion.com can see the dev notes Blizzard puts out. Often these notes detail changes the devs are working on/trying out as well as their thinking behind them. i.e “Class X isn’t performing as strongly as we’d like and we are examining some possible fixes” or “we’ve noticed skill X is hitting a little too hard in most encounters and we’d like to tone it down.”

I think that’s all many of would like. To hear that our concerns are being heard and to know what possible fixes are on the table. I’m patient enough to wait for content/patches/fixes IF I know they are coming. The vaguery that Arenanet puts forth is so cloudy that they might as well just say, “We’re gonna do something sometime” and leave it at that.

Communication is key in any business and the level of communication Arenanet has put forth displays either an utter lack of understanding the basics of business or a toal disregard for the concerns of the players. Either one is unacceptable IMO.

Every forum of every type on this site has the same things: posts that support the game, posts that hate on the game, and posts that many times offer thoughtful or constructive ideas for improving the game. The one thing that is consistently absent on the forums is Arenanet. Official responses or really any feedback of any sort is so few and far between it begs the question: WHERE IS ARENANET???? 99% of the time a post with the Anet tag is simply a mod shutting down or moving a thread. When players come together to offer serious suggestions for improving the game – Arenanet ignores them. When players offer legitimate complaints about seriously broken aspects of the game – silence.

Arenanet, I am asking you to start communicating with players and the community at large in a more active and meaningful way. But I’m sure that instead of actually being responsive or addressing issues….you’ll just infract my account or delete this thread.

Thanks.

I get that some folks are happy, thrilled even, to do stuff like play jingle bells in LA. That’s cool, but I find myself getting bored. WvW is a mess and everything we’ve been told says Feb is the earliest we MIGHT see some changes. sPvP is kinda pointless and its hard to keep a team together. I was farming for a legendary to pass the time but now that drop rates are nerfed to almost zero, well…you get the point. I don’t have gobs of real dollars to invest in buying gems/gold and frankly, that takes away from the sense of earning things through play. Fractals is amusing but running it more than one or two times a day is kinda boring too.

I hope Arenanet realizes that giving us periodic holidays and temporary events is like putting bandaids on the shotgun wound that is content. Please open up some actual level 80 zones besides Cursed Shore and whatever that lolKarka island is. If balancing and fixing pvp and wvw is too hard right now, at least try to placate some of us with somewhere new to explore.

With the changes to VP, is 0/15/30/20/5 still a viable choice for pve/wvw?? Is monk’s focus better than AH given the relatively short CD on Smite Condition? Am I better off using a greatsword and just judge-bombing people instead? Any ideas/info appreciated!

Why is there no option to return items to a vendor when incorrectly purchased? Every other game ever has this option. It is little things like this which show players you are thinking about their enjoyment in a game. By negelecting simple features such as vendor returns, GW2 sets itself up to irritate and discourage players from continued play.

Thanks Arenanet for allowing playes to build arrowcarts and balistas in there. Cuz you know, all my attacks also have a 2000 range. Bunch of idiots. It’s like not one single dev ever thought that a player could do something abusive in the game.

Jammed overflows, a 2hour long event that wipes huge groups of people endlessly, precursors and exotics going to trial accounts??? Arenanet, I have heard you made a game once called Guild Wars but I find that hard to believe because this game and this event show your total lack of development and thought. GW2 is really starting to feel like all of us are being trolled every time we log in.

I am running about 165% MF when I farm. Here are some things I have observed that may help others:

1) As far as I can tell, MF works like this: it increases the base % chance of a drop on the loot table by the MF%. This means that when a mob would drop a junk item 60% of the time, it becomes 120% with 100% MF. The loot table places the rarest items at the bottom of the table so that as you increase MF% you increase the chance of the good stuff dropping while pushing the excess chance of junkie loot “off” the table entirely.

2) The chance a mob drops loot during an event seems in some way contingent on the total damage you deal to it compared to other players in the event. I notice that if I solo an event, the total number of drops I get is much much higher than when a lot of other players are helping. However, group members seem to add the damage they deal to your total so if your pal does 1000 and you only do 1 you still are counted as dealing 1001 damage. I’ve observed that solo using a hammer I will hit mobs in a wave for 1200+ and get no loot frequently. Meanwhile, using a staff in a group, I can hit mobs for 300 damage (staff is so so bad) but my drop frequency is much higher. This means that either someone in my party contributes damage as I have suggested, or that drop rates in general increase for parties, though I have other experiences that contradict that assertion.

3)MF% really really matters. Some of the items, such as rares on event mobs, have abyssmally low drop rates so you really need to do everything you can to raise the odds.

4)Don’t salvage stuff. Just don’t. When ectos were worth a truckload it was worth the gamble. I find that most rares I get, if I sell them by matching the lowest seller, sell withing 10 minutes often for 2-8s more than an ecto. Sure there is always the chance you strike it big and salvage 3 ectos. But once you factor in all the times you end up with a single chunk or ore/wood/cloth, it’s a wash and you basically salvage about .75-1 ecto per rare. Just sell the darn thing unless you really want ectos. But based on OP’s remarks I think what you are after is cash.

Just tunnel farming in Cursed Shore (so boring but $$$), you should get 1.5ish silver per event every 5-6 min just for being there. That’s about 18s an hour. On average, the junk + blues + greens + misc crud in my bags after each event gives me about 25s per event. That’s around 3g per hour. Additionally, I “usually but not always” get at least 1 rare per event. Sometimes I get as many as 5-7 rares in one event followed by an event or two with nothing. Assuming an average of 1.5 rares per event at and average sale price of 16s, that’s 2g88s per hour.

So its very possible to make in the neighborhood of 6g per hour by farming. Find some players who make good conversation to pass the time between events, group up and farm. The money will add up faster than you realize.

TL;DR – If you’re farming and making no money, you’re doing it wrong.

With all the upset over the rising cost of precursors and the fact that most all other items, including exotics, are relatively flat, I’d like to offer this solution.

Let’s have 4 rares give x% chance of yielding a precursor.
Have 4 exotics give y% chance.
Have 4 unique skin exotics give z% chance.
Where z>y>x.

This would allow players to mindlessly gamble small amounts of coin at a time (rares average 20s a piece on my server), feeding sweet delicious rares to Zommoros.

At the same time, the riskier cash investment of exotics (average 3-4g) may still feed that Genie little more than your tears but at least the odds are better.

Finally, the unique skinned exotics (currently the same price as other exotics for the most part), would now be slightly more valuable as they would yield the best odds. This would raise the desirability of some of these often ignored items and help create a greater diversity of prices on the trading post.

Just an idea to help bridge the gap between those 4g something Greatsword of something else and the 310g Dusk is moving for this week….

I have never produced an MMO. That being said, is it really so difficult to keep DEs working. Half the events I actually “like” to do are always broken/bugged. I’m thrilled that Arenanet is pushing forward with new content but is it too much to ask that the content from launch work first??