Guild Wars 2

Karka Queen. I should know better than to melee anything in GW2 (they really don’t like that, doncha know), but it’s 100x worse when you can’t even see the boss past all the players/shinykitten-effects.

And then, my game stalled!

Luckily, megaserver put me in with my friend so I could get my loot. (…still worth it, just aggravating.)

Or a compromise… Three week rotations!

Really though, let the Living Story segments lead to dungeon chains or new world bosses. Don’t take the whole thing away.

Some people can live with being bored. You can never make enough for a content locust anyway. Again, you can never make enough for a content locust. Bonus hint: if it’s good content, they’ll be back for more again, anyway.

I wonder what the password one would choose for this hypothetical bank lock would be, anyway. One’s GW2 password?

70% likely, by phantom estimation. If the account already got hacked, the invader would just guess the same password and get into the bank anyway.

Plus what Invictus identified. It’s just not good use of manpower.

Iris Ng.9845:

…Staff elementalist traited for Aquatic Benevolence and runes of Monk can fill the niche effortlessly. The problem? The ele don’t get much loot due to poor tagging. Risk >> Rewards.

I get all the loot I deserve when I play my water ele. That comes from being high on Arcane and switching out of water when the party is doing well. Fire and Earth are great elements for extra dps when not healing.

DonQuack.9025:

Fully agreed. Also as a charr ele I’d like to wear something other than a sheet.

More ontopic- i turned on supersampling yesterday and it only dropped my fps to around 50-60 . I must say I was quite pleased at that discovery.

Awesome. I have to wonder what your specs are like. I have mid-line settings for GW2, and it works just fine on my laptop, zergblobs excluded, and even then, I usually have enough to know what’s going on. (Except Karka Queen. Yeugh.)

I suppose my reason for the post is to vent a bit? I was all set to give the other game a chance, but it utterly failed to deliver. The regressed aesthetics don’t warrant such a high graphical requirement. Even WoW works on the basis of being available to as many systems as possible, and it still looks good (if dated) while doing it.

DonQuack.9025:

hallelujah! another wayward lamb found! Come pray with me!

Our Father who art in Guild Wars
hallowed be your might
your fury come
your crits be done
in Arah as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily gold
and forgive us the knight
as we have forgiven the assassin
And lead us not into pugs,
but deliver us from evil clerics.

Amen.

Now my brother go forth. Smite the rabbit, smite the undead, smite thy fellow brother, smite the heathens called invaders, smite them all.
and when thou art done sayeth unto the Lord "Look! Before me, all lay dead! All lay vanquished! Are you not pleased?!?’

And the Lord will look upon the lands and see champions slain.
And the lord will look upon the dungeons and see chests opened.
And the Lord will look upon the mists and see glorious tears.
And the Lord will say " I am pleased."

This is beautiful. [/tearsniffle]

mtpelion.4562:

On the flip side, making Precursors more available would increase the number of people working on a Legendary which will increase demand for the parts. If we increase the demand of already rare parts (the t6 fine materials), the price will rise.

Basically, right now it costs a lot of gold to complete step 1 (“get a precursor”). If we make step 1 cheaper, then you’ll have a lot of people who have completed step 1 and now need to complete step 2 (“get T6 fine materials”). All we’ve done is shifted the cost to step 2, so you’re really no closer to your goal at all, you just feel a bit better about your progress because you were able to check off a cheap step 1.

And actual, measurable, steady progress is the best we could ask for. Not gold-grinding for a moving target of inflated prices or randomly flinging gear into the toilet hole and praying with your toes crossed.

Make precursors craftable, and the economy will certainly jumpstart in the same way it did with Ascended crafting (though I’ll bite my tongue about silk, right now).

Ashadow.6874:

You know… just in case you didn’t get that the first time. =P

Careful you don’t troll too hard. Or else 50 people will come beat you up for your lunch money. Then ANet will nerf your lunch money. They they will still come and beat you up.

Also, most needed item on the patch list, character auto-aggro. I’m so tired of having to walk my character over to a monster before I auto-attack it to death and steal its loot. GW2 would be much better if I could just leave my character near some mobs, go make a sammich or something, and come back to full loot bags.

Zanshin.5379:

Here’s a serious suggestion: remove the megaservers…

lol no

FIX the megaservers. Give capital cities back to home worlds. Lower the population limit for players who stray into the zone. Add/increase the limit for those who taxi in with other party members.

Oh, and replace the anti-swear word kitten for puppeh. Dogs need love too.

Rock on, man! Good to hear some positivity in forums (or any game’s forums) for once.

If you need any tips, drop me a line!

So, wow, I didn’t even know Defiant could hit 75 stacks.

….That’s how many people were kittenbanging the last world boss champ I was at.

Please, please lower the population limit per megaserver. The system itself works okay, it just needs some heavy refinement. Even the big bosses only need or scale well to no more than 50 people, and that’s for Tequatl. Ulgoth doesn’t need 75 people beating on him.

I’d recommend setting the strays to about 50/server, and allow twice that for people who taxi in from other party members. The extra cap would help guild members in parties get together to do the bigger world content.

Purple Miku.7032:

I admit that I don’t know enough about them yet to come up with instructions on how to be a casual engi

Flame thrower juggernaut. There’s your casual. :P Or maybe turrets. I could see turrets being casual.

Granted, with so little condition mitigation, even flamethrower more hardcore than bearbow. To which, I at least use SHORTbow. It requires/rewards me for paying attention to position, but sadly, it’s a condition build, which the devs obviously hate for PvE. :\

It might be a bit backhanded, but I was trying out another game, and the aesthetic was so poor and the frame rate so inexcusably bad, that I really came to appreciate how relatively well-tuned GW2 is. The character models look good (excluding the Charrmour problem! plx fix), many of the zones feel great to travel in, and many of the vista set pieces really give a sense of size for the world.

And it all runs great on my PC. So, hat-tip to the staff who did such a good job putting it all together.

(Now just fix the megaserver population size and stick in some persistent end-game content in there, and it’ll be cherry. Oh, and fix the kitten’d Charr armor. Seriously.)

lakdav.3694:

I have no illusion that they will roll the system back, even for a time while they get it to work as it should (even though i wish they do that). However, i think it is important to point out how mindless their development process and how unpolished and not at all refined their actual releases appear to be each and every time. That is a thing to improve as well, not just the actual releases.

Megaserver was good in concept. It just had terrible execution. Terrible.

There are so many things that happened that they didn’t anticipate. I have to wonder how many people were working on these projects and why they were so thinly thought out.

I’d settle for the game remembering what names I give to my pets after I switch them out.

Aberrant.6749:

Nah, just increase the supply of all cloth (it’s not just silk that’s the problem). That way people that have already made it don’t feel as bad about it.

I wouldn’t mind this as a solution, either. Though, really, it’s still massively irritating that the 100-silk demand is far too blatant and affects every armor crafter. It’s even more punitive for Tailors.

ANet really should suck it up and apologize for the overcorrection and bring silk in line with the other ascended crafts.

I’m patiently waiting for the cost to rise. I’ve got 350 of them in my inventory right now (after going on a huge duplicate dye-buying binge).

Still, I’m not shocked they were at 24 silver or so over the past few weeks.

I’m less concerned about the laurel timegate as I am about the “special Ascended piece” timegate that won’t let me craft more than one every 24 hours.
It wasn’t fun in WoW, and it’s not fun here.

Thanks for the advice!

On a whim (also as a “last straw” test), I went to do Svanir Shaman, and the rewards worked properly. Sucks that I’m going to have to port zones, but at least I can get some efficient dragonite farming again.

Exotics would shoot up in price.
Engineers would laugh. Or cry. One of the two.
The UI would have to change.
Weapon sets with overlapping skills would remain on cooldown after use.
Players would cheer about flexibility.
Players would kitten about everything else.

Once is a fluke, twice is annoying as f—-.

On two separate days, twice I got gold rank for the Mark II event, but I didn’t get a single scrap of loot. No automatic chest, no chest spawn.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Don’t know what’s worse: the writing or the voice acting.

If you’re Norn, both.

Pretty sure the directing for that went something like:
“Hey, Abigail from accounting, we need you to read these lines! But try not to sound so enthused.”

I’m sure it’s been debated elsewhere.

Treeherne. Treesus. The man who “helps” get Saladbog, only to forget your name 5 levels later.

Losing your warband/crewe/friends that you’ve built up. Apparently, having ally NPCs go with you into combat was a shining point in GW1. GW2 doesn’t even remember they exist past their relevant vignettes.

You can look at the fact the Story forum has been “archived” (shut down) as proof ANet’s probably not going to fix/extend the Personal Story any further.

Worst part about the zergs?

Scaling.

A fight that takes 2 minutes with 5 people can take 8 with 40 people. And with the condition cap, the damage output of a large group is even worse.

Fishing no. Fish recipes, yes! There’s salmon and tuna and grouper and barracuda ….

Cooking 500 and Tengu! (Because sushi.)

Whenever my character dies, I delete him. HARDCORE

No wait, that’s a different game I do that for. :P

If this means I can get Charr armor that’s actually made for Charr, I’m all for it. }]:3

I get in with my party/friends/guildies without a problem. What seems to be a problem I haven’t had before is the lag. The connection-killing lag.

I love that the megaserver brings together enough people to run world content, but the cap needs to be lowered dramatically.

I’ve always been one for alt characters and lateral growth. Hoo boy did I get what I paid for. 8 characters at 80, 7 maxed classes, and my last on the way. All crafting disciplines at 400 or more, and I’ve still got a lot of work to do.

But I don’t feel overly pressed to rush the content, and my gear (while not ascended, yet) works fine for all the new content. So it’s been good so far! Just a few tweaks, and I’ll be very content.

Larenc.1269:

LoreChief.8391:

Zerging is human nature. It is how wars are won, how battle are won, how fights are won. The more people you have the better. The game emulates life in that regard.

So your telling me that if I went out picked a fight with a bunch of wonnabe tough guys and end up beating them by myself I’m breaking the law of nature? Forget that crap.

The weak, The stupid, The lazy, The worthless zerg by nature NOT the people who stand out. Look back at human history. Thousands of people have stood over the peek. Simple really some people are better then others at different things. Over all tho most of the general people are useless in their own right. Why do you think half the world can barely use a computer[besides lack of funds] For example my father/sis cant do anything with a computer yet my brother/myself are great using one even able to make programs. Its all in genetics whether a person will be good at something or not, and 9 outa 10 times people follow a crowd instead of doing what they want to do.

Like the OP said zerging takes out all the fun out of the game thats why i’ve been asking for a hard mode that would get rid of the zerging. Cause the people who zerg wont be able to handle the harder setting.

Hard mode = courses in logic and philosophy.

/ahem

Instead of blaming the players, consider how the game is designed to interact with the players. There’s any number of psychological principles involved in gamecraft: risk/reward structures, time investment and commitment, social attachment, difficulty/frustration curves…

The list of research topics is HUGE. (And covered in an ongoing series by the Extra Credits team~)

Rather than fighting the zerg, the devs would be better to learn to manipulate and disperse it. Tequatl, Marionette, and Triple Trouble were all good starts in that direction. Wurm especially, since it involves completing objectives while in combat, rather than “bash all the things.”

Changing the reward structure would help as well, but that has a high chance to backfire if not done with total elegance. (I don’t have much confidence in the current thinkers on the topic…)

TheDaiBish.9735:

Lankybrit.4598:

Zergs are simply a by-product of:

Non-existent and non-enforced encounter mechanics.

Simple as that.

Fixed for you

---

I think the main problem with the open-world events is the fact that the events don’t really accommodate larger groups as it scales up in terms of the mechanics of the fight.

Look at the Shatterer: No matter how many people arrive, mechanics such as the healing crystals and imprisoning players doesn’t really scale up, meaning the majority of players can ignore the mechanics of the fight without the success being really affected.

Now, if each of these boss fight had its own scaling formula that caused the scaling to make the fight equally challenging on all levels (and not simple ‘more adds and more health’), you’d find less of a problem, because the mechanics couldn’t be ignored by 50% of the players there.

So taking the Shatterer as an example again:

• For every 5 players, an additional healing crystal spawns in a random place in the area of the event.
• For every 10 players, the Shatterer will also do an AoE imprisonment aimed at the largest congregation of players.

Another change I’d personally make is, as well as scaling mechanics, don’t simply have one mechanic happen at a time.

For example, when you’re breaking the healing crystals, nothing else is going on. Now, imagine at certain intervals that two mechanics happened at once. For example, the Shatterer does his healing crystals, and as an additional effect, the next mechanic immediately after / any mechanics done while the healing crystals are in effect are boosted. Imprisonment crystals also emit a Static Field, for example.

Stuff like this would go a long, long way to making bosses and champs more interesting. Imagine how surprised the QD zerg would be if the boar suddenly did a breakthrough charge that left a burning field after it. Instead, sad piggy bops its nose at one person at a time. :\

Devata.6589:

Invisible walls and objects with no collision detection all over the place. Me being somebody who like to jump on everything I run into both all the time. Extremely immersion breaking.

Falling (to your death) because you jumped on an edge you could not reach because there was an invisible wall in the way or because it did not have collision detection is very frustrating and feels like the game is cheating.

>.> So much this. I loathe free-roam games with invisible walls. And every mountain slope in every MMO, ever. There are some steep slopes that are “obviously” (no they’re not) climbable, and others at half that gradient are slipperier than an oiled kitten near a bath tub. Worse still are the jumping puzzle hit detections. In many cases, I academically know where to jump, but the ledge is so badly coded that a pixel’s difference is all it takes for me to have to start the whole thing over.

Corpus Christi.2057:

I love the game and that’s why I still play it ( although rarely now that I have spent 2 years here ). Nevertheless, it needs acknowledging that the game lacks fresh, permanent content and I believe that, now that we have received a feature pack, we ought to get an expansion pack ( or the equivalent thereof ) as an update. No more trashy LS updates. Hopefully.

Cheers

^ Yeah, I’ve been lamenting this for a while. I’d forgive the whole “Treesus stole my story” if they’d add some permanent content to the end of my Personal Story. I loved the first part of it, since it focused on my decisions, but then it just got so meaningless.

Lankybrit.4598:

Zergs are simply a by-product of:

No Holy Trinity.

Simple as that.

Ugh, gods no. It’s a much more complicated issue than that. There’d be zergs even if there were tanks and healers. Because tanks would sit up front trading off aggro while the healers lazily lob heals and dps safely nicks away at the boss.

So just no. It’s not that.

If you wanted a simple answer, it’s because the content is open world and anyone can wander in or out at their leisure. The zerg’d content provides some of the better rewards (I don’t want to say “best”, because rewards in GW2 are… bad) for relatively safe and efficient participation.

Well good for ya!

I’m a fan of the game as well. It needs improvements, and if I seem grumpy at points, it’s because: 1) the devs are missing out on so much potential, 2) the community is so toxic, like more than Scarlet’s minions. ;_;

Still, I love the fluid combat, the simple yet (mostly) potent character options, the art style (in most cases), and the approachable nature of the game.

Zergs are a byproduct of a lot of things:

“Open world” bosses that are intended to occupy 5-100 people.
Shared mob tagging. Everyone gets loot, as long as they contribute to damage.
Most mobs have very pitiful AI and attacks that are singularly focused. This encourages “auto-attack” gameplay and “stacking” in dungeons.

Additionally:
Bosses are kept under lock and key, except for when they’re “allowed” to come out, once every 3 hours. This makes for a rush of people trying to get the credit when it’s still possible in their slim play windows.

Lazuli.2098:

They nerfed the mobs in the lower levels to compensate for the lack of trait points on lower level characters with the new trait system. It doesn’t seem like they have downleveled higher characters to compensate for these weaker mobs ‘cause I’ve noticed the same thing with higher leveled characters one-shotting everything in the low levels. The update broke the balance between higher level characters accompanying lower level friends.

^ This ^

Without traits on a steady, linear curve, the low zones are far, far too easy for upper level characters, especially geared-out 80s. It’s a secondary disappointment, but a major one.

Parade around Vigil Keep, showing off your footsteps and shiny weapon effects? That’s what move of them do. Oh, and show up low-tier events for no reason. That happens too.

/silly

Anyway, GW2 is a lot more about lateral growth, and very unique in that as far as MMOs go. If you haven’t done much in dungeons or fractals, lead a group for those. WvW and PvP are (allegedly) good for dynamic gameplay.

Or hang tight and wait for the next Living Story chapter. It’s pretty calm right now, but I’m sure they’ll be back to their 2-week grindfests soon enough.

I’m rather fond of the chef set! Like, almost eerily so.

For my Norn, he’s running around with is, sans hat, and he actually looks like he’s wearing a variety of tribal robe.

My Asura chef/engineer has it too. It really fits with her flame thrower. <3

My Charr warrior has it as well, and he looks delightfully brutal. I really should give him two axes to go with it. }]:3 I also get to actually see his fur pattern! Being heavy armor, I missed it so.

neonreaper.4805:

Chakrams similar to Kingdom of Amalur, those were actually a blast

Oh gawd, the number of humans running around with variants of the name Sun Shang Xiang. XD

…all of which doing it wrong if they don’t weapon switch a bow. Just sayin’. :P

MithranArkanere.8957:

What the mystic forge is guaranteed result versions of his recipes, not more annoying randomness.

For example: A stack of 50 of a masterwork rune + 3 other materials-> Rare version of that rune. Stack of 25 of that rare rune + 3 other materials -> Exotic version of that rune.

Randomness is never a good source of anything. There has to be always a guaranteed method.

I’d be fine with a definitive progress token of some sort. And I don’t mean a chance at a token kitten Mystic Clover), but an actual guarantee of progress. Simple Skinner box, people. Simple.

Anyway, I outlined this in another thread but it bears repeating.

For example, because precursors are all the rage right now:

4 rares of the same type → 1 random rare/exotic + 1-5 precursor fragments of that type
250 Precursor Fragments + 1 Exotic weapon of the same type (ie, a gold sink)+ special item from mystic forge vendor (karma or laurel sink) + another item from the mystic forge vendor (skill point sink) yields the coveted Precursor.

That would remove the randomness of receiving one, and a player would have immediate feedback and motivation to press toward making that precursor. It would still be easier, faster, and probably cheaper to buy the precursor off the trading post and it would moderate the prices.

Not to be insulting, but really, devs. Game theory, player conditioning… This is stuff that should be obvious. :\

For all-new weapons?

Fist/Knuckle, oh yes. Totally want my Charr beating people up with his bare hands.

Some other kind of two-hander, greatspear/axe.

Maybe if they release Tengu, we could get some other faux-Asian martial styles? Hmm.

I’m hoping season two of Living Story is actually a permanent extension of the end of Personal Story.

Noooot, holding my breath, though.

Honestly, just waiting for some feature fixes before they release new content.

Yeah.. I’m stuck with a full Melandru set in my exotics, and I’ll have to spend a huge amount if I want them moved/repurchased for my Ascended set.

Not too much skin off my nose, since I can still use my reserve Dolyak set, but still, they need a cleaner, more reasonable way to manage it.

As I pitched in another thread, A Silver-fed Upgrade Extractor would totally get my gems.

I think I have 5 charr now? 6? I forget. But obviously they’re my favorite. }}:3

It’s so shabby that they don’t have a few team art asset programmers to go back and fix some of the terrible costume applications ]{:(

Mystic.5934:

yes it does. there will be lower demand for dyes, so they decreased the supply of dyes. unid dye price is pretty much guaranteed to go up to ~1g, but no one knows when that will happen, so it may be a very very long term investment.

Got over 300 in my bank. Waiting for when they finally get back up in price~

Yugh, CD-key. I had to go through that to uncouple my authentication, since Yahoo was blocking the emails without even telling me.

G’bye Yahoo! :P

Still, if they got in, does that mean they also got your email as well? :\ Scary.

tim.3258:

A game that lets me fight 20-24 world bosses a week as opposed to 2-4 a week because dragons\wurms\wizards\shaman\beasts\etc. don’t typically walk into the office, punch a timecard and say, “O.K. world, I’m in the office! come and kill me!”

… You know, kind of like it was a couple of weeks ago.

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” – C.S. Lewis

Yeah, a more robust schedule would be great.

3 times a day for each hardmode boss is pretty slim. Each tier of boss should be on its own rotation. Heck, each boss should be on its own rotation.

But barring that, each tier.
Half hour to hour per easy boss (Fire Ele, Shadow Behemoth, etc)
Hour to two hours per medium boss (Mark II tier)
Two to three hours per hard boss (Karka, etc.)

And I don’t mean the staggering system they have now, where each monster is “on shift,” but setting their timing so that each one happens independent of each other. Let them be concurrent, so it’ll siphon some of the massive zergs into multiple places at once.

I like the schedule, because it means I can actually find bosses to fight, when I want to. I don’t like that it’s so sparse and leaves little choice for the guilds who want to organize content on their time.

IndigoSundown.5419:

GW2 trait hunting is superficially similar to GW elite skills — you do something in game to get something you can use with your build. It’s also superficially similar to the 30 extra stat points available in GW via questing. The differences you allude to are the point of contention.
______________________________________________________________

@ those saying that L36 abilities obtainable via doing content much later in the leveling process is fine, please answer these questions honestly.

• If a new game came out with this mechanic, what would the general reaction from the public be? Would the design be lauded as a great one?
• If the intent is to make certain adept traits unavailable until later in the leveling process, why allow them to be bought for coin and skill points?
• Normally, higher level content is going to be perceived as more difficult than lower level content. If two traits which are at the same tier — which would presumably mean they are approximately equal in value — are available through content playable at vastly different levels, is the system balanced appropriately?

Excellent questions! …and, sadly, ones I fear weren’t asked at the design table before the patch rolled out.

It’s not a game-killer for me, but I really hope they fix it.