Guild Wars 2

Dungeons aren’t for everyone. Since some people like them the way they are, I’m not going to push for changes to that type of content.

Instead, I’d like to propose something else: quick events you can play through with a duo or trio, for experience, and possibly a new currency type.

If you’re familiar with missions in City of Heroes, or Skirmishes in LOTRO, then that’s a good example to work with. You go in with your objectives marked, and kick butt on your way to them. They’re generally not challenging in the same way 5 man dungeons tend to be, but that’s not always a bad thing.

The idea struck me when doing Flower of Death, in which you lay siege to a walled town, using mechanics like a battering ram and capture zones, and then fight a boss ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=tI_vQytvhYc#t=126s ) alongside a friend. An already easy, cinematic affair became all the more trivial with two people.

Yet, it feels like the sort of thing it would be fun to do all the time, with more challenge (but not enough that it becomes just another dungeon), with rewards for both players, not just once for every time you level a Sylvari to 30. It’d also be a great alternative to running around filling in hearts, especially in those ghost town mid-level zones.

Eivene.9127:

For those who are really bothered by the music, I suggest you quickly toss together a Custom Soundtrack. Get a few songs or tracks you like or use the original menu music if you have the soundtrack, make a playlist called MainMenu, and put it in your Documents\GuildWars2\Music folder.

Only takes a few minutes =)

I have a “Menu” playlist already, it has been overridden.

I’d like it if at least they wouldn’t override your “Menu” playlist.

When they first allowed us to test this feature, I even tried it with a chiptune, the awesome menu music from Cave Story. I didn’t like it then, because it didn’t fit.

So now I use the Chrono Cross overture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs2y4Nqku2o Yasunori Mitsuda > Jeremy Soule

Vol.5241:

You completely forget about gold to gem trade…

I think about it a lot, myself. Especially when it comes to things like the skins from Vigil/Priory/Whispers. I can only spend gold on them, not an earned currency like Karma. How am I supposed to even have a “cosmetic grind” when you have so many skins that I could more quickly acquire with my credit card?

Certainly, before this came out, there were zero examples in Guild Wars 2 of game culture eating itself, such as “For great justice!”, “Roll For Initiative”, or “Shatter your foe’s dreams of becoming an adventurer with a single arrow to the knee.”

Vorch.2985:

Want more people while you run around? Guest on TC or JQ

Bored with a Zone? Do a different one.

Want to do dungeons? Use gw2lfg.com

Want to WvW? Join a T3-T6 Server

Want to have fun? DO WHAT YOU ENJOY.

I’m on Tarnished Coast and I don’t see enough people. If a zone has a lot of people in it, it means a world boss spawned, and I’ve been dumped into overflow because I refuse to camp them.

I don’t think the team that makes dungeons worked on this, because enemies have clearly telegraphed attacks, with projectiles that don’t home in on you.

If it took 15 seconds to DPS a Bunny down, THEN I might think this was siphoning developer resources from the PvE team.

I liked City of Heroes better, but I can hardly go back now can I?

Don’t play Guild Wars 1, the game this is a sequel to, then. It has grinches running around on Christmas, your inventory filling with things like candy canes or Easter eggs depending on the date. Oh, and a techologically sophisticated race known as the Asura, who have access to technology such as artificial intelligence, portal networks, and hardlight constructs capable of rendering an entire virtual world.

I always find it helps to check the dailies, and go to the starting zone associated with any “[Region] Slayer” or “[Region] Event” dailies. “[Region] Veteran Slayer” is not so good, since level 80s will just steamroll the easiest veterans, and not care one iota about helping new characters with them.

Rofocal.1360:

I am wondering what you think ANET can do about this problem. They CAN NOT force people to play in those lower level zones, unless they decide to delete everyones toons and make them start all over again .

Only solution i see is if the individuals themselves put the effort into finding others to play with and not rely on ANET to do everything for you.

Arenanet has gone on record stating they do not want to put tools in the game for people to find active events, or means to find crowds of people that’s not the commander diamond. Requests to remove waypoint costs to reflect superior design decisions in GW1 were also ignored, or worse yet, shouted down by the community, increasing the difficulty in moving yourself to an active area as well.

Fixing this poor attitude would do a lot to alleviate the issue, in fact.

There are a lot of funny achievement names that sound like titles. How cool would it be to run around as “Worm Slayer”? I know it won’t happen as “Slayer” is already a PvP title, but its just a thought.

As someone not in an active guild, and who might join one under the right circumstances, let me tell you my problem.

When I see someone advertise a guild on /map, or whisper me with a copy/pasted statement, I am forced to wonder what kind of community I am joining, when I have demonstrated zero value to the person recruiting me?

Will these be people I enjoy talking to? Or are they going to fill up my box with chat pollution? Am I going to want to spend time with them?

Here’s my suggestion. Go to events. Tell someone they did a good job, putting down/exploiting a field, raising people instead of going tunnel vision boss, whatever, just as long as it was something they had to go out of their way to do. Make it feel as though you want them because they’d be useful, not because they have a pulse.

If I don’t feel like I’m useful as an individual to a guild, I’m going to assume I’m only useful because I provide free influence, and assume the same about the masses that join alongside me.

I want an auto-grouping system.

GW2LFG exists. Guilds exist. But these carry expectations on them that are too much to ask of a new or casual player. They’re not going to know X boss needs Y ability interrupted. They’re not going to have the timing memorized on dodging Z boss ability that does 5/6ths of their health. Maybe they want to play a Mesmer who doesn’t use stealth and portals.

In events, these aren’t a problem. They’re designed so random people can congregate and play them together. Dungeons, as they are currently, could be a lot better designed as video games, and an auto-LFG might just be the kick in the butt Arenanet needs to polish them up.

When I played Ultima Online, I could get attacked while defenseless and say, “That’s good gameplay,” because the possibility of it happening affected your playstyle, what content you did, and how you specialized your character.

In World of Warcraft, its just an annoyance that breaks immersion. If I’m ikittenone, I’m there because I have to be, because at my level, that is where you get level-appropriate quest. Most areas had the Alliance and Horde fighting a mutual enemy, and it made no sense for them to be ganking each other. Any area where they were supposed to be fighting, like Wintergrasp, auto-flags you.

I’m afraid GW2 is more like the latter than the former in gameplay style, and it would suffer the same way with world PvP.

I’d like to see dungeon gear skins turned into a transmog item akin to the ones you buy from the Hall of Monuments.

Any chance of turrets getting fixed too? I was hoping to play a Heimerdinger, or spirit spam Ritualist, type character in GW2, but Mesmer seems to outshine both Necromancers and Engineers in that regard, since clone and phantasm abilities go on cooldown immediately, not on the death of the summon.

I’d like instanced content that isn’t 5 man dungeon runs in general. A lot of games use it to general success. Random missions in Anarchy Online and City of Heroes, Skirmishes in LOTRO, Scenarios in Mists of Pandaria, all serve as varied examples. Not to mention missions in GW1. Even with a full party of heroes, there were some I had to get help on to get a Master completion.

The trick I’ve found to getting undercut is, don’t be desperate enough to need money now. If you forget you posted the order, and the order was for a reasonable amount that the item has gone for in the past 24 hours, it will sell sooner or later.

I have to respectfully disagree here. I think putting a commodities market model into a game a lot more casual than EVE is a huge step forward. The lack of time limits leads less of the antagonistic behavior you get in WoW, too.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

I dislike the whole air of entitlement going on here even in wvw why should loot be automatically put in your inventory? For convenience?
Bah humbug I say, although the idea of auto loot minis sounds good and it gives a practical usage to mini pets

Last I checked, this thread was posted in the “suggestions” forum, not the “demands” forum. I see no air of “entitlement” (which doesn’t mean what you think it means) here.

First annual Whacking Day in Tyria was a little TOO successful.

If I was desperate to see some branch of the personal story I’ve never done before, I’d probably roll a second warrior.

I think the reason is, they don’t want Average Joe Gamer to be able to click a button, be put into a group, and wipe it because he doesn’t understand some dumb boss gimmick that had zero external testing done on it before launch.

Then, they might have to, Grenth forbid, BALANCE these encounters :o

GW2LFG works for them because Average Joe Gamer has to be aware that it exists in the first place, and are thus elevated above the Average Joe Gamer status into something else.

I don’t even understand why siege engines are a consumable you buy with money.

Not even Planetside 2, a pure cash shop game, uses such a bizarre mechanic.

MrRuin.9740:

Seems like most people in the gw2 community looking for a gear treadmill or ‘vertical progression’ haven’t actually been in a game with a gear treadmill.
I left the last MMO i was playing for mainly that reason, which I had played for 4 years. They kept adding tier after tier of new gear and if you wanted to compete in PvP you had to keep up, either by mindless grind day in and out of the same 2 instances (RNG, mind you) or throw hundreds/thousands of dollars at the cashshop to get it. It became a job. Either dedicate all my free time to trying to keep up to the gear treadmill or fall behind and get facerolled by people who have that kind of time or that kind of credit card.
gw2 and its more horizontal progression appeals to a large amount of people who do not have the time to invest in a gear treadmill.

I would rather see Anet and any developer of any MMO work on adding new content, events, instances, stories, areas to explore, more PvP/WvW content than mindlessly throw us new tiers of gear every 6 months or so that serves no purpose other than to keep the ‘hardcore’ entertained for a couple weeks farming it out.

YOU played a game with a badly designed alternate advancement/endgame gearing system. I’ve played some fun ones, such as the Incarnate system in City of Heroes.

As for PvP, what sense are we talking about here? GW2 has WvWvW, which you can already play as a level 2 character who has zero hope against even someone geared in level 80 white gear, much less exotics, and in which if you ever get into a 1v1 test of skill you’re playing it wrong. And you have sPvP, which by design gives everyone BiS gear already.

Alternate advancement systems don’t even have to be relevant in WvWvW, just as your sPvP traits and gear stay in sPvP.

Having played City of Heroes, I get the OP. I spent a lot of time customizing my characters, and admiring the characters of others (or laughing at them for being hilarious, intentionally or otherwise).

Notice the OP mentions titles such as Ultima Online, that predate the corruption of the MMORPG genre by eSports. People should give him more credit.

Palawa Joko is so much cooler than the dragons. I hope we get to fight him some day.

It would be cool if he became a bigger threat than the dragons as well. And humans helped bring him back into the world, all for the ability to ride around in a worm’s stomach.

I played pandaland, then came back to GW2. Part of the reason was that there were FEWER treadmills than in Cataclysm. You hit 90 in gear that was good enough for heroics, and almost good enough for LFR. You couldn’t get much better from chain running heroics, because the currency they gave for completion was nearly worthless. Some gear improvements were possible, but RNG based; you could run a dungeon a thousand times and never get the drop you wanted from it.

Instead, what you were expected to do was daily quests: play Farmville, or go do chores for factions in crowded zones that make Jormag look like an intimate dinner party.

It was, as the OP describes, an endless grind brought on by the lack of more substantial goals to chase. GW2 presents a similar syndrome of level cap ennui, but there’s no subscription fee, so I’m here instead of there.

They’re breeding like rabbits and eventually will starve themselves. While it is feasible that the Colleges may reconcile their differences with the Inquest and the followers of the Spirits of the Wild with the Svanir, the bandits and separatists are symptomatic of the coming collapse and a decent into barbarism is inevitable.

Man loathes the centaur, for in them they see their future.

I am getting this error as well.

Vertical grind doesn’t always have to mean gearing up in WoW. Incarnate system in City of Heroes was a lot of fun, and never made me feel ashamed for being behind other players. It wasn’t a competition any more than getting to 80 in GW2.

People vanquished in Guild Wars 1 for the feeling of having done everything there is to do in PvE. Having the medal on the character selection screen for 100% is a good parallel to that I think. Agreed with the OP.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

……
Also, we have removed all siege since

Fine with me. Until they make it a function of your desired role in WvWvW (sort of like the half baked Engineer elite that builds an operable mortar), Siege is just a pointless sink to encourage RMT.

It seems to me that the history of WvWvW has been a problem of the NPCs not scaling to PC behavior.

At first, we had dolyak escorting give XP. This caused people who were understandably bored of leveling in PvE to show up in droves. Since there was a zerg around the doyak, did it help the dolyak at all? Nope, it had the exact same amount of movement speed, HP, and defense. Dolyak XP removed, so people would play the game.

Then, there was keep defense. Nowadays, “Repel the enemy invaders” just goes away once it ticks off completely, no XP no money no karma. Again, the NPCs have the same stats whether you’re there or not, and the door has the same amount of HP and defense.

So the only thing left to do is run around ikittenerg and flip capture points. Zerging is, after all, the only thing that scales up based on your presence.

I wish they’d let me sell the boosters. Let me leverage the time the boosters would have saved me, with someone more clever and resourceful than I am.

My bank is filling up not only with my unused boosters, but with keys as well, since the only thing I can sell is the darn chests (which go for 1c above vendor price, as is the case for anything anyone can get on a regular basis).

Having a keybind for a fast skill swap at the very least would be incredibly useful for some professions, who have more than three useful skills, even without trait synergy, that they might wish to call upon situationally. Especially true in WvWvW. +1

marnick.4305:

In all seriousness… it was the exact same in GW1. I don’t know what you expected but you obviously didn’t do your research. If you’re leaving a well-alive and thriving game because of that … sure feel free. I’m not sure TESO will give you what you wanted though.

In the end, it’s almost impossible to create an MMO without RNG. I’m happy it’s only for cosmetics, while stats can be farmed in a definitive non-RNG way. That’s a huge improvement over , well, every other game on the market I guess.

You can get fairly far along in the HoM progression without grinding money or relying on a rare drop. I know around Prophecies the game was all about Underworld farming and all that boring stuff the OP is complaining about, but who the hell asked for Prophecies 2?

What I’ve always said is, make every profession as awesome as Warrior. Don’t bring Warrior down, bring the others up.

Agreed. It’s especially annoying in WvWvW. They changed it so loot appears at your feet, which doesn’t help at all since there’s no reason to stand still in WvWvW if you’re not on a siege weapon, and sometimes you get kills during a losing battle.

I don’t understand the argument where people say, for example, that their skill allows their engineer to outperform a “bad” warrior. They could take their skill and play, with a warrior’s mechanical advantages in DPS, and be downed less often than the bad warrior, thus doing even more DPS. Engineers still need a buff, regardless of how skilled you are.

I’d like to be able to farm things that aren’t gold. CoF is printing money. If I wanted to make money in a vacuum, I can kill things over and over offline in Final Fantasy.

Mats obtained by gathering are devalued by not having an associated skill grind. Trophies and unidentified dyes are subject to diminishing returns. Crafted gear has a value set by the supply of ectos. The ability to provide things like siege weapons are, for the most part, determined by the depth of your pockets.

If SOMETHING gave, that would be nice. There would be an “endgame” that isn’t the monotony of collecting dungeon tokens, zerging easy world bosses, or praying you get an easy fractal. Doing something economically useful for your fellow players can be fun! Many people PAY A SUBSCRIPTION so that they can be miners and factory workers in EVE. Imagine how many you could attract, appealing to their nature, but in a game where combat is exciting and vivid.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Mitch.4781:

Heijincks.9267:

I wonder how many times these types of posts are made per day.

Does that make them any less valid? Or do you comment with genuine curiosity and agreement with the points made?

Yes, it does make them less valid. Every game that exists and has players get similar posts. The more players, the more complaints.

Maybe they are correct in those instances too.

I know I’d put more faith in the word of a screaming horde of disgruntled players than, say, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street.

Why not give Engineers and Elementalists a weapon switch that cannot be used inside of combat? Let them do something useful with the swap key, while maintaining the design decision to not let them use swaps in the same way other professions do.

They also, at this point, have to give up inventory space to hold more weapons, and inventory space was never intended to be a profession feature.

Gord.8654:

Time warp was OP everywhere. The nerf was justified and won’t be reverted no matter how much people demand it. Moving on…

You’re not a red poster, so it seems to me you assume way too much by saying it “won’t be reverted”, or asserting that we should, in fact, “move on”.

uknortherner.2670:

Want a trinity? Go play a game that has it and stop trying to turn this one into WoW II.

I’ve done just that. I played the silly panda game when it came out. I’m back here, so obviously I see more potential for betterment in GW2.

So you don’t like primadonna tanks, spineless healers, or lazy DPS who are barely paying attention. Great! Neither do self-aware WoW players.

However, I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the OP just because he used the word “trinity”. There’s a legitimate issue here that needs addressing: professions have poorly defined roles on a team. Warriors, Guardians, and Mesmers are popular, because they have been theorycrafted into finely honed machines. Other GW2 professions fall victim to poor synergy between their traits, skills, and core mechanic This, I feel, is because they are a hodgepodge, rather than built with a cohesive playstyle in mind.

Instead of dismissing the trinity as being something iconic of the most popular MMORPG, lets take a look at what it does for the game. By taking on the role of DPS, Tank, or Healer, the game can be balanced so that you can perform that role to a certain degree of competitive efficacy. A healer that simulates at 95% of the FOTM healer is way more viable than any profession in GW2 playing Support compared to a Guardian.

But let’s go for something closer to home. In Guild Wars 1. Each profession had a trait only they could take, defining how they played. A necromancer gained energy as foes around them are defeated, causing their power to cascade. This allowed them to serve numerous roles, from summoning an army of minions that zerged the frontlines, to playing healers that became more effective as the fight progressed. Elementalists straight up had more energy reserves than any other profession, allowing them to be built for numerous tasks. See http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Team_roles

City of Heroes, a game I cannot go back to even if I wanted to, also did the “Damage/Support/Control” thing in a notable manner. Each “archetype” is designed for those in differing degrees. There were tanks and healers, but they were part of the grander scheme, and having done every type of content, from story arcs, to task forces, up through raiding, I never once encountered content that I needed a tank or healer to complete.

Jemmi.6058:

RebelYell.7132:

Jemmi.6058:

phys.7689:

Dahkeus.8243:

RebelYell.7132:

How was Time Warp OP? It has a ridiculously long downtime, as does anything in this game that does something cool.

It gave groups a huge boost in boss fights. The cooldown was long, but you only needed it for boss fights, so it doesn’t really matter. Also, stacked groups could often kill bosses before you would need another time warp anyways.

so what your saying is that increasing dps for 8 seconds out of 3 minutes and 30 seconds, boss fights were too easy?

Sounds like a problem with boss fights, not the skill.
lets be honest, this change had no good reason to happen in PVE at all. Its a pvp change.
if some one was going to kill a boss in 8 seconds, now they will take 12, wow we have solved the game.
Maybe if the other mesmer elites werent totally boring/useless it wouldnt be so annoying. To be honest time warp felt like a lot of fun, but it wasnt really that insane in pve, it was a lot more fun then a slow moa transform that barely matters or a mass invis, which in pve is pretty useless.

You just made a great point for and against your argument. The skill did not drastically change the outcome in a PvE battle. That means that the nerf is not very significant in a PvE battle.

That boss fight that takes 3 minutes and 30 seconds will now take 3 minutes and 34 seconds. Oh no!

The time it takes to down a boss is important. It’s important in WoW, which has healers, and clearly telegraphed and easily avoidable cleaves and damage patches. This game has no healers (on that scale), and avoiding damage is done with the immunity frames of a dodge roll, a very finite resource. With no other resource to combat attrition, DPS becomes hugely important.

OK you can look at this one of two ways.

1. Time it takes to down a boss is important. Therefore, quickness was overpowered for these fights and required tweaking.

2. A few seconds every now and then is pretty insignificant. Therefore, quickness was not very important for PvE and the change has a minuscule effect.

Both of those perspectives involve the conceit that the change was made with inscrutable developer wisdom, and in good faith.

I propose this as #3: The change is symptomatic of badly focused developer resources. If Time Warp going from a 200% buff to a 150% buff isn’t such a big deal, why was it necessary at all? This does nothing to address that, say, its still better to bring along a Mesmer’s Time Warp, than an Engineer with an army of turrets, it just makes a popular ability slightly worse.

“Battle” and “BossBattle” are extremely soft these days. They were not during BWE or launch. It’s really annoying, since I tend to populate those lists with stuff like Japanese metal.

Jemmi.6058:

phys.7689:

Dahkeus.8243:

RebelYell.7132:

How was Time Warp OP? It has a ridiculously long downtime, as does anything in this game that does something cool.

It gave groups a huge boost in boss fights. The cooldown was long, but you only needed it for boss fights, so it doesn’t really matter. Also, stacked groups could often kill bosses before you would need another time warp anyways.

so what your saying is that increasing dps for 8 seconds out of 3 minutes and 30 seconds, boss fights were too easy?

Sounds like a problem with boss fights, not the skill.
lets be honest, this change had no good reason to happen in PVE at all. Its a pvp change.
if some one was going to kill a boss in 8 seconds, now they will take 12, wow we have solved the game.
Maybe if the other mesmer elites werent totally boring/useless it wouldnt be so annoying. To be honest time warp felt like a lot of fun, but it wasnt really that insane in pve, it was a lot more fun then a slow moa transform that barely matters or a mass invis, which in pve is pretty useless.

You just made a great point for and against your argument. The skill did not drastically change the outcome in a PvE battle. That means that the nerf is not very significant in a PvE battle.

That boss fight that takes 3 minutes and 30 seconds will now take 3 minutes and 34 seconds. Oh no!

The time it takes to down a boss is important. It’s important in WoW, which has healers, and clearly telegraphed and easily avoidable cleaves and damage patches. This game has no healers (on that scale), and avoiding damage is done with the immunity frames of a dodge roll, a very finite resource. With no other resource to combat attrition, DPS becomes hugely important.

phys.7689:

RebelYell.7132:

How was Time Warp OP? It has a ridiculously long downtime, as does anything in this game that does something cool.

it wasnt really OP in PVE, people felt it was too powerful in pvp. Some berserk warriors mes parties used it to destroy COF fast probably, but really they were going to destroy it anyhow. not to mention now they can just bring a couple banners and get huge boosts to power and precision for everyone in an area.

I wish things worked like they did in GW1, where some skills just work differently in a PvP encounter. It would make sense for Quickness to be 100% in world PvE and dungeons, and 50% in WuvWuv and sPvP.

How was Time Warp OP? It has a ridiculously long downtime, as does anything in this game that does something cool.