I want to play, with a view to becoming one of the most powerful player characters in Tyria, and look great while doing that.
Pity it’s not possible; Max Level = 80, and “‘Skill’ Points” after level 80 add zero vertical progression (which is ridiculous).
Ya just gotta ask why people play MMOs, specifically Guild Wars 2.
If the game—any MMO game—doesn’t provide essentially what people are looking for in real life, you’re going to see all the complaints people have raised in this and many other posts;
In a nutshell, the player wants some or all of these (Not in any particular order):
A) To experience, participate in, and affect the story, or a story relevant to all
B) To become rich and more powerful over time through effort and skill
C) To feel famously important, useful and needed
D) To portray themselves fully, the way they want, aesthetically
E) To conquer and rise above others either through direct combat or other means
Does Guild Wars 2 deliver?
A) Yes: Personal Story/Dynamic Events; but their meaning is significantly reduced due to the fact that no one else cares about anyone else’s Personal Story, and, Dynamic Events repeat too often, are too few, and have no real impact on the main story arc.
B) Yes: Level to 80 and get gear. but “every man and his dog” are at level 80, and once there, further vertical progression is miniscule to none. Legendary weapons are acquired almost purely through random means and provide no advantage over regular weapons.
C) No: Everyone is level 80 and everyone has the same ‘power’, therefore while Thieves and Mesmers are sometimes ‘useful’ or ‘needed’ in the general sense, they are so by reason of class ability, not for reason of the player’s personal skill and power.
D) Yes: Character customization is excellent, but there are serious issues with variety in armour, hair styles and emotes
E) Yes & No: Players can defeat others, in front of others, in a limited way (WvW and SPvP) but ultimately, theoretically (subconsciously) everyone has the same power. See ‘C’ above.
Final Answer
Guild Wars 2 delivers in part on most of the crucial points, however the “buts” are serious obstacles to true success that are bringing about a great deal of dis-satisfaction by players on the forums.
Finally, (and this is implied in the above already) rewards are disproportionate to effort and often ultimately irrelevant to each of the above points—i.e. that new weapon or armour makes no difference whatsoever to any sense of fame, fortune or vertical progression that anyone else needs to care about. Therefore, you see a large portion of people ignoring the greater breadth of the game to focus purely on grinding in a desperate attempt to satiate that desire for wealth, fame and power (gold, aesthetics, reputation). There is currently no other way to have these human needs met in this game.
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[snip]
That leaves us with two groups of players directly opposed to one another, and the developers cannot – no matter how much they’d like to – please both at once. They’re either going to release content that is easy enough for virtually anyone to complete or they’re going to release challenging content that leaves less-skilled players crying foul. Either way, someone’s going to feel alienated.[snip]
I respectfully disagree—Anet could please both groups—and I’d like to point out that the players complaining about the level of difficulty are not so much complaining about the level of difficulty so much as they are about its implementation.
It’s ‘hard’ to get a legendary weapon, because of the random component.
It’s ‘hard’ to beat Liadri because of so many factor’s out of the player’s control.
Anet could please both groups by providing hard content that can be mastered and overcome through player skill when it is applied to more non random and logical challenges, in less random environments.
Even I’m not happy with the way Anet handles precusors (and I both have a precusor and I’m a rabid fan boi…ask anyone lol).
It’s too random, too hard, too annoying. It’s not legendary. It’s luck. And yes you can farm gold and buy one, but that’s not particularly legendary either.
I think the way legendary weapons are acquired is one of the big problems with the game as it stands.
Anet had to make it where legendary weapons were super rare to get. Would you really want to see everyone shooting unicorns?
As long as Legendary Weapons are only as strong as the highest naturally obtainable gear (ascended weapons soon) then I have no problems.
I also don’t like that it is luck and I wish legendary weapons where obtainable through a scavenger hunt or something. I’m glad that soon precursors can be crafted.
1) Yes, they had to make it super rare to get.
2) It sucks how Legendary Weapons don’t have more power than regular weapons.
3) Implementation of #1 is really awful with the RNG component.
It’s posts like the OP’s that made my choice of not ever trying for a Legendary, at least, not via the Mystic Forge.
What an unjust and horrible, horrible experience.
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I noticed this too—they totally forgot who I was. Sux.
“Hidden throughout Tyria”—they wouldn’t remain that way for very long before the locations were all over the net. And then, because everyone can find them immediately, the whole journey and mystery of it all would be lost and the devs may as well have just added some extra skills to the current list from the current menus…
I do SB/LB—with the -20% cooldown on bow skills.
I’m not gonna list all the other stuff I’ve got to support this, but I’ll tell you how my game plays out;
In a group, the LB with Sigil of Doom and skill 5 combined with Zephyr and/or Sharpening Stone for massive AoE direct and condition damage. Skill 4 is great for saving allies from enemy finishers. Elite Skill Entangle—no explanation required.
Lone Roaming, The LB with Sigil of Energy, Skill 1 to waste enemy block skills, before using Skill 4 to maintain distance. Pop the Zephyr and Sharpening Stone then Skill 2 for burst damage as they’re recovering from the knockback. Hit Might on the Pet Cat, Switch to SB and it Skill 2 (Poison) also augmented by other gear to hinder their healing ability and apply the poison condition. Burn through the SB skills as necessary (only using Skill 3 to evade) before switching back to LB (Get energy from LB Sigil for more evades here) Skill 4 to knockback…. rinse and repeat.
My gear/runes and accessory stats lean slightly towards condition damage/duration but otherwise generally follow a Power, Precision, Toughness theme, the final result brings about a fairly balanced and solid damage output/survivability ratio.
Ranger rocks so hard I create earthquakes in Japan!
So many possibilities, but here is my current favourite;
Long Bow|Sigil of Energy (Endurance on weapon swap)
Short Bow|Sigil of Hydromancy (Chill blast on weapon swap)
When enemies close in after you’ve burned through your skills on LB, they get hit with a chill blast, and when you burn through those skills and swap back to LB you’ve more energy to dodge/evade.
Your pet choice is important—-need burst damage? Take the Cat. F2 for Might, combine this with Zephyr, and Sharpening Stone and Long Bow skill 2 for some wicked burst + condition damage. Take the dog as your other pet—F2 for an immobilize, and one of its normal attacks is a knockdown. Also when you go down, your pet rezz is soooo helpful.
Wanna play support? No problem. Take the Sword and Warhorn, use skill 5 after dropping a healing spring (best heal in game) to splash you and your entire party with healing. Also check the trait lines for that trait that gives everyone +precision, which will increase the crits for the whole party!
So many possibilties not listed here, the Ranger is so versatile… uh oh… I feel a tremor…
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That creature was put there specifically to be avoided. It’s on a long patrol path around the temple, and easy to avoid. In a similar fashion, if you stop to fight a patrolling knight, you’re likely to have another one wander in during the fight, then another, etc. Not every story step is “Destroy every enemy on the map”.
Dear Jeffrey,
Indeed, it should be as you say.
Now, this may be slightly out of your jurisdiction to answer, however I’d really like to know what you think about the concept of ‘Champions’, in terms of how they co-exist with player characters everywhere in GW2. To be more specific;
A ‘Champion’ is a powerful foe, with special abilities and lots of hitpoints, presumably garnered through hard training, or magical means.
At this point, Player characters can never achieve this kind of power; Put another way, the players can never become ‘Champions’.
This juxtaposition poses a problem, in that while a massive undead creature can believably hold ‘Champion’ status, a Queensdale Bandit does not. As a player, I feel ‘lame’ and unimportant when I am defeated by a mere ‘Champion’ bandit, or other similarly unimpressive foe. This issue stands by itself, but I also feel it impacts the Personal Story.
Do you have any thoughts?
Point taken.
Our characters would be even more awesome if they could do some more of these;
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Emote
Allowing us to interact with our defeated foes, and live human friends more meaningfully.
There’s a block with a shield skill, there’s a greatsword block skill.
The GS block skill in particular has an awesome animation.
Add more block skills for other weapon types with cool animations like the GS!
Players could enjoy an aerial view of Tyria from the safety and security of an Air Balloon!
See also this topic on Hang Gliders!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Hang-gliders-no-not-flying-mounts
They had an opportunity to play with flight with the air balloons in Queen Jennah’s Jubilee… they lost that opportunity.
When you make new shoulder armour, make versions of it that have both pieces (left & right) the same, in addition to the version where each side is different.
Why?
I would have bought some new armour from the gemstore if the shoulders were the same on alternate sides.
For kitten’s sake, its not hard to implement. They could give people a colour slider to adjust the actual colour/intensity of UI stuff, like circles and and other stuff. No big deal.
Excellent. Dye tracker for sure!
I’m for capes.
If people don’t want to wear them, they don’t have to.
Events in the Crown Pavilion portray Queen Jennah as a cruel and barbaric Queen, which just doesn’t seem right.
In the Arenas, all combatants are ‘ejected’, dropped a (usually) unsurvivable distance onto spikes after the fight reaches two minutes. Losing a fight in under 2 minutes places your body mere feet away from none other than the Ring Master, the Fight Master, the Announcer and the Gambit Master—I can understand the Gambit Master not wanting to help, but the others they just stand there uncaring of your predicament.
How does this in any way, fit in with the friendly spirit and celebratory ‘sportsmanship’ that she seems to intend during the opening ceremony?
Queen Jennah is a kitten. I hope the Aetherblades kill her.
If we have to pay, we have to pay. At least make it convenient to pay!
There should absolutely, without question be an NPC that resurrects you after you lose an arena fight.
It is both frustrating and a waste of time to have to WP to the center of the map and then run back to the arenas when no human players are there to resurrect you.
It is ridiculous that the Fight Manager, the Ring Master, the Gambit Manager and the announcer all stand there doing nothing to help you up.
At the very least, if Anet wants their 1S gold sink, just put a freaking waypoint near the arena as well.
Anet should create a usable food-removal item, that removes all food in the area.
Large scale combat could be viable, if the developers bothered to create some reasonable artificial intelligence for the mobs.
For example, a boss (any enemy for that matter) could be programmed to fight intelligently thus;
Heavy Damage Knockback Skill
If attacking melee players > X, periodically execute knockback skill
Ranged Defense Skill
If attacking ranged players > X, periodically use shield/bubble shield with dangerous retaliation (reflection of damage)
Evade and relocate Skill
Not really a ‘skill’, but the boss should be able to jump somewhere, away from combat, or roll somewhere away from combat.
If you simply combined only the above 3 basic examples of AI programming, we would all immediately see the “blind” zerging at both melee and ranged distances disappear. Players would be forced to watch carefully what the boss was doing due to the danger in being hit. Everyone could no longer just mindlessly spam all in the one location, hugging the boss.
It’s doable. The boss AI needs a little work, that’s all.
Aspect Arena played too slowly.
If movement speed was substantially increased, and cooldown time on the skills was reduced, I believe it would have been a lot better.
For example, it was both a chore and a bore to make your way, all the way to the crystal ball, and then make your way all the back to base at an even slower than normal speed. Argh! I played it only for the achievement/reward.—which is not to say it didn’t have its moments.
If the ‘Soulbound/Account Bound’ mechanic is merely to reduce item saturation in the game and game markets, why not remove Soulbind entirely, and keep only Account Bound?
If however, Soulbind exists for the purpose of forcibly requiring players to spend more time in game in order to equip all their characters (alts) with the gear they like, then that’s another issue.
Please enlighten me.
Condition damage is great fun, ya just gotta learn how to apply the right kinds at the right time—maybe not your gameplay style—in which case, you might need to roll a new character. (It doesn’t take long, especially if you’ve done a lot of ‘ground work’ with your Engineer main already)
There is nothing to stop Anet from creating the ‘losing’ fractal at a later date, neither ethically or logically;
Sure, Ellen won—so we get the reactor fractal now, and Abaddon is not created, now. However, Anet could introduce the Abaddon fractal on a completely different premise (or even a different take on the Abaddon story i.e. non-fractal) at a later date, without trivialising the election.
I cannot lose my pet! They just need to work on them, that’s all.
What, the very same juvenile pet that I have? …and that everyone else has? Can’t even remember my pet’s name… why so attached?
Wait. How can we be sure that the votes weren’t tampered with?
We can’t—so ultimately, Anet could do whatever they wanted with either candidate regardless of our votes and we’d never know the difference.
Which means, it is pointless to discuss “the reason” why Ellen won/Evon lost.
I get where the OP is coming from.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Steampunk myself, but Guild Wars 2 is 70/30 leaning towards traditional fantasy rpg (swords/magic) so the 30% ‘sci-fi tech’ I can swallow, for the most part.
But, careful… too much Steampunk and Guild Wars 2 could lose its ‘magic’, pardon the pun!
A Title for beating Liadra. yes! A Title for completing all Gauntlet Achievements including the other Liadri one. No!
Careful, too many titles will make titles themselves meaningless and try not to confuse titles with achievements.
Also, and this is probably the most important, giving titles for temporary content is meaningless;
Titles are given to people (in the real world) for being someone important.
They are important because they are either of these;
1) They fulfill an important and persistent role (King, Queen, War Commander etc.)
2) Through sustained effort and subsequent contribution to society, they have earned this persistent title (“Sir” (Knighthood) or say, ‘Nobel Prize Winner’)
Giving titles for a one-time-only ‘achievement’, that no-one else can ever aspire to achieve or even learn the meaning of the title months or years later is, well, out-of-place.
2 weeks is too short (for busy people) 3 weeks would be best in terms of a compromise; i.e. lots-of-free-time players wouldn’t have to wait a full month for new content, and busy players would have a bit more time.
The inventory space issue doesn’t really concern me, but yes, it’s disconcerting not knowing what to do with the leftover ‘rubbish’.
Anet should ‘cleanup’ after events.
1-shot kills have been condemned since the beginning (Dungeons).
no-one likes being one-shotted.
It’s not a smart way to create challenge.
Hence, in my view,
Anet has failed to realise that 1-shot kills aren’t fun, and has failed to create an inspired challenge mechanic.
but my NA friends play on the EU server with me fine… T_T I don’t see why we can’t guest to NA servers when na players can home on eu servers without issue.
That’s because their characters are saved on the EU data center. It doesn’t matter where the players are it matters where the character data is.
the data is still travelling from the servers in eu to na, can someone that understands networking explain why this is insurmountable?
The issue is not ‘insurmountable’. It could be done, more or less “easily” in fact.
However, the issue is whether it is desirable, and it’s not desirable.
The reason is, the length of the route the data would need to travel would increase a great deal, and this would translate into lag.
Players in EU or Players in NA but on EU Server
EU Players <—> EU Server <—> NA Players
Players in EU or Players in NA but each player on different server
EU Players <—> EU Server <—> NA Server <—> NA Players
You can see the route is longer when you allow players on different servers to play with one another = more lag.
(edited by Pure Heart.1456)
It is troublesome to invite someone to a party with a long or difficult-to-type name—even without ALT codes. Even more so when you’re in a hurry to join a party before it fills up.
I wonder how different this would have been if Evon had his own living story content before hand.
This. It was entirely lopsided in Ellen’s favour. I called it from the start.
Hot chick.
Player is familiar with character.
Seen as hero.It’s a no brainer for the ones with no brains.
Yes. And, I don’t know about anyone else, but I see the Black Lion Trading company (which is very closely affiliated with the Trading Post and Gem Store) in a somewhat dubious and infamous way—trading cost at 15% is too high; almost usury! and prices in the Gem Store, basically the whole shebang, is a scam.
Ellen Kiel FTW!!
For some serious Ranger offense against a group;
Might->
Superior Sigil of Doom (Poison) on Long Bow->
Zephyr->
Long Bow Skill 5->
Sit back and watch the enemy group panic.
Rangers are a sadly underrated offensive and control class.
(edited by Pure Heart.1456)
idk why we shouldnt be able to have a burst. “Because you are ranged” is a bs excuse when scepter ele’s have it and it really only buys us an extra 2 seconds to do mediocre damage.
Here’s a great Ranger burst;
Pop Might (with Cat Pet Skill or Rampage as One Elite Skill)
Pop Zephyr
Pop Skill 2 on Long Bow
So many conflicting opinions!
(Ranger viable/not viable, and in X situation but not Y and vice-versa)
Putting any lackluster pet mechanics aside—*as a Ranger player myself, I can testify to being ‘viable’ both in WvW group battles and WvW 1v1, and some 2v1 encounters.*
WvW Group Battles
On several occasions, after arriving at a group battle in its beginning stages and unleashing the Ranger abilities on the enemy group, it has forced them into retreat, soon followed by their complete defeat as we pursued.
WvW 1v1/2v1 Battles
Obviously the success of any fight depends on the skill of your opponent(s), and their own unique build and so many other factors—having said that, I have defeated members of every class, and I believe they were at least of average or better skilled in a 1v1/2v1 situation (whereby I was against 2)
There are some players out there with some awesome gear (stats), a build suited to their play style and some neat skills. If you go up against these kinds of players, either in 1v1 or in group battles, you’ll likely get trounced unless you and your group are similarly outfitted.
Anyway, after getting your kitten kicked, it’s easy to come to forums and suggest that X class isn’t viable. There are so many factors and areas one can tweak to tip the scales in one’s favour.
Having said all this, I guess what some people want is to have a greater freedom of choice in creating ‘viable’ builds.
(edited by Pure Heart.1456)
I didn’t spend 1000 hours in PvE and WvW to get all my gear and equipment, only to not be able to use it in sPvP.
Indeed, the entire skillset more or less changes when underwater rendering your land build non-existent. Which, I think is a good thing in and of itself.
However, the skills one receives in place, need to be exciting and fulfilling—most of them are not.
Also, maneuverability is sluggish and frustrating.
P.S. I regularly use the water to escape or gain advantage to defeat enemies in WvW, as most players don’t have decent underwater equipment. Also, as a Ranger the pets seem to prove more troublesome and dangerous to enemies.
(edited by Pure Heart.1456)
PvE: Living World content (there’s been some decent stuff recently) and the upcoming stuff on the August 6th looks like its going to be great! Maybe try soloing champions, as the rewards for them will be mega updated as well.
WvW: Go out there and hunt people, see if you can kill anyone with your new gear.
And I know for a fact that our guild leader (Regan) has an awesome burst ranger that will kill 4 players in seconds.. So I assume he’ll be feared as well in time..
Could you please post Regan’s build?
There have been some calls for perma-stowed pets, and while I have said this in other areas I will say it again here. I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package. Right now the micromanage is difficult and more tools are desired, and I honestly feel that once we make micromanaging pets easier, more responsive, and better in general that players won’t mind that they don’t have perma-stow capabilities.
This is the single most disappointing ‘news’ I have heard concerning Guild Wars 2 since release.
Those are going to have to be some pretty rad “tools” to placate my desire for perma-stow. At the absolute very least, the current stow pet feature should keep the pet stowed unless the player attacks—not release the pet on damage taken.
There needs to be some sense of ‘permanency’ for all the effort that you go to.
Without this, it gets as you say—pointless, when everything just resets.
There needs to be some permanent or semi-permanent reward and further utility for success—and something completely separate to achievement points.
I see some players (non-Rangers) out there (WvW) that seem to have an incredible amount of survivability and/or damage output.
I play a Ranger with full exotic armour, and full ascended accessories, but I still feel like I am often only half as ‘tough’ as some other people out there.
I realise there is myriad combination of stats possible to have on all of the pieces, but what I am most curious about are the final stats people end up with in their ‘H’ character breakdown screen—what are reasonable and effective final numbers?
If people could list their;
Profession
Vitality/Hit points
Power
Precision
Toughness
Crit%/CritDmg
It might help to put things into perspective. Particularly interested in the bold stats.
(edited by Pure Heart.1456)
Is it still possible to get the tokens to buy skins from earlier Living World content?
Or is there any way to get the skins without the tokens?
For example, if I wanted a Fused weapon skin, or a Dragon skin now, even though the living world content is finished, is it possible to get them somehow?
Notwithstanding that improvements should be made to the group system,
I feel that ‘trolling’ incidents like you describe are the minority of cases.
However, one ‘technique’ that I have used to great effect is; not to join a group where the instance owner, or the ‘leader’ of the group has even the slightest hint of a bad attitude. block I guarantee this will save you those 2 hours you lost.
Nuka, I think the 6th is just adding more themepark content. Have no idea when the game changing stuff is going to start appearing. Hopefully it is soon, as I am in a rotation of making/deleting alts right now to keep gameplay fresh.
Read the notes on game startup, and the separate link listed there as well for details!