Guild Wars 2

bingo! well said!!
The pvp community market sales is a billion dollar business.

http://www.pcgamer.com/league-of-legends-has-made-almost-1-billion-in-microtransactions/

this is simply out of the pvers league, the problem is you can’t treat the pvprs like pvers.

but it can be done, and gw2 is perfect for it, they just need to follow the game flow of difficulty…

level 1 – learn the game ( levels 1 – 20 )
level 2 – practice and learn skills and teamwork – (Dungeons )
level 3 – practice against others who mastered pve skills – wvw
level 4 – competitive play / sports – pvp

the current rules have people stuck on level 2. – not the game itself, the game is a masterpiece, it’s the rules. Treating pve and pvp as different modes is wrong, they are different levels of difficulty. A mode is single player or multi player.

basically you don’t insist a person playing level 3 or 4 difficulty grind in level 2 to have items that are critical to having the best stats to practice for competitive play. This does nothing to change pve, it simply changes the way level 3 and level 4 competitors acquire new items and features in expansions. – the key to fixing wvw is balancing the servers, they need the mega server and a way to keep guilds together for the matches so it can be an indirect loosely functional guild vs guild type scenario. server vs server doesn’t work because people used it to win over lower population servers. It’s pure strategy, we love to compete, in order to win, people who love to compete join the most populated servers…we won. basic pvp thinking. lol

a simple fix for the equipment in wvw is to use the weapon and items system being used in spvp, if they want to keep the stats in the pve levels exclusive to grind. maybe then i can stop grinding for ascended armor and pvp again.

“No, that (PvE training area and lobby, PvP endgame) was how GW1 was supposed to work originally, but that design model was abandoned shortly after launch,”
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What they did was abandon a fundamental concept in gaming, because of bad advice from people that spend money in the black lion shop.

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“when devs realized that far more people are interested in PvE than PvP. By the time GW2 came around, this idea was long forgotten.”
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the only problem with that comment, is the front page of gw2 has a Huuuge banner announcing a twitch event for pvp “Pro League” finals with all these big name tech sponsors.. That should be self evident.
www.guildwars2.com

anet is dating pvers, but their heart belongs to pvprs. the banner says it all.

pve is supposed to teach you how to play the game. Playing vs others who know how to play well is a sport, competition.

This is how it works, not an opinion.

@vayne – point taken, but I wasn’t posting about what anet planned or didn’t plan…

I was talking about the natural order of progress in an mmorpg.

level 1 – learn the game
level 2 – practice and get good
level 3 – practice vs other players that got good
level 4 – compete vs the best player

Anet abandoned this basic concept with going extreme pve – and placed a focus on level 2. which gets old. – not that level 3 and 4 isn’t there, level 3 and 4 don’t work because there are too many ways to cheat that have not been addressed. – ie – unbalanced server in wvw – this was left in place for pve reasons – not for pvp reasons. Someone wanted it to be real life – this is an rpg view, not a pvp view where balance is important.

your point is stronger because the extreme pve approach chased away the pvprs. So yeah…of course most of the complaints will be about how pve could be made better, but the pve audience overall in gaming is a minority in contrast to pvp. Consider the number of players in dota2 vs D&DOnline. no such thing as pvesports. You won’t see MSI hosting a competition any time soon for who can take tequatl down the fastest. Granted, there are leader boards of who scored most against the machine, but that is not direct pvp, That is arcade level, not sports level. so we can redefine this as arcade vs sports. That said, Dota2 is a sports model game, DDOnline is an arcade model game. Sports games have a bigger draw than Arcade games.

pitting the 2 players that took tequatl down the fastest to compete vs each other in direct pvp, is worth betting on.

and just for the record, different modes is SUPPOSED TO MEAN – multi player vs single player mode. – pvp is not a mode as much as it is a level of difficulty.

i am absitively popsolutely 100% sure of what i wrote, I lived it with an arcade / blackjack in the back shop down the block from my old neighborhood, and lets not forget the time square 42nd street arcades, i was there too, and watched it’s birth online with home computers and dial up. Home computers allowed arcade games to become sports by allowing difficulty levels 3 and 4 to exist at home. What I’ve lived and grew up with, is what books are made of.

which btw, i can also discuss music and it’s evolution in great detail too, i was raised in new york in areas that many cultures were exploding and I was very lucky to have been able to watch it all come to life, first hand…I remember hip hop when it was a distorted cassette on somones “Box” and radio was dominated by classic rock and pop. A time when dub steps predecessor was acid rock lol, and edm’s grandmother was disco, when barry white was doing justin beibers job. :p

the games and music changed, but people are the same. People haven’t changed, the way we get news just got more efficient.

the flow that’s missing in gw2 is – in the roots of mmorpg, there were no expansions, bug fixes yes, but expansions no – the original expansion was enabling pvp.

The game flow is supposed to be, easy replayable pve – things that teach you the basic mechanics of the game – casual , simple fun, something you can roleplay with ……then dungeons – where more focus is required, which taught you skills with the mechanics learned in the ez areas ….from there it went into hard mode which introduced strategies…….after this …the final mission was hardened pve’rs looking for the ultimate challenge – competing directly vs other hardened pve’rs. Once it got to that level, no strategy the game could offer would compare – because it was never repetitive – it was pure lively strategy full of surprises.

hot is trying to make pve endgame – and it’s just not a natural flow in a game that was originally supposed to be gvg end game

so, level / adventure —-> dungeon —->hard mode —-> pvp —-> Deathmatch
(death match being the most extreme level of difficulty )

These aren’t different modes, as much as they are different levels of difficulty.

That game flow is broken in gw2 – and the only real problem the game has is cheating. People cheating and gaming the system caused all the changes we hate. casual players are being imposed with rules made for hardcore players that need the highest scores, the most money, the most skins, the fastest wins, the cutest cats, and the biggest titles.

PVP’rs just want to win vs the best fighters. Our title, prize, shiny, is that win.

the problem with hot isn’t the content, the content is great….it’s the rules, the rules are for hardcore extreme pve’rs. The problem with these rules is people who want to end game in the natural order, are forced to go backwards to get new “expansion” options / perks that are important to wvw / pvp. wvw is basically open world gvg.

and just for reference, npc’s were part of original pvp – as original pvp didn’t have special arenas, the ability to attack other players was enabled in the regular world.
In fact, npc’s were an important part of pvp strategies. From there players would agree to fight different locations of the game, and clear the npc’s first for a different rule based pvp session.

3 full servers of wvw guilds in the top tier is hardly “small” further, because of the neglect ….10 x that amount left. PvP’rs are by far the biggest community in any respectable game…the pve community is the small one …it only seems bigger here because the ‘extreme’ pve chased the pvprs away.

In fact, PVP is TRUE end game – it’s where legendary pve’rs go to fight the ultimate opponent. – no one wants to play the same routine game vs the same monsters thousands of time for years and years, thats just the training area for pvp.

somehow this minority pve insider community convinced anet that pve is end game… No …just No. Nothing can be further from the truth.

why even bother with beta now that numbers are so low, why not just go with a test server ( only for those who bought game …not f2p ) ….and when the wvw community agrees it’s done, ….it’s done.

The irony that the players would be the one to say when it’s done …which will probably be never lol

not to mention a test server will probably reduce the stress on the developers since they won’t have to “hope” it goes over well, it is a test server, so you’d be free to “test” new things without fear of repercussion / buyers remorse. Whatever works and is community approved in the test server, gets moved to the main wvw map. This way it’s not one big shocking change. Make everyone sign a no whining agreement for jumping in the test server.

I’m guessing it wont be the overwhelming numbers in beta that you think it would be, since some people just want to play, not test and deal with bugs….doing real beta can be work.

and make sure you put that skritt gambling bookie, if no one bets, it’s not a good wvw map, no matter what anyone says. it’s really that simple.

I think I figured out what would greatly improve wvw, and hot for that matter.

Anet has to fire their beta testers, all of them…they are obviously misrepresenting what the majority of players want in game. We really should try this and let anet go back to making cool games they enjoy in office without em, that’s how gw1 came out so cool!!

I’m starting to really think their current beta selection is greatly misleading them, look at borderlands, you would think they would have stopped it, but they are the only ones that come here to defend them. Meanwhile poor anet is bleeding customers based on this bad feedback.

“get rid of them, they are costing you money, It’s disgusting” – donald trump’ish

it’s unfortunate that in the past, people have abused the pvp aspect of internet gaming. getting offended at pvp is like getting offended at a game of tennis. Tennis would be bad too if it was just about making the people who lost feel bad.

yes @Qugi – see part of the idea, is that it can be entertaining to watch while people wait for a meta event to start. Some people like to fight, some like to watch without having to fight.

not to mention it opens doors to have unique title fights for pvpr’s as opposed to fixed match areas – imagine agreeing to a title fight in the Canopy in Hot ? that would be a cool option for a pvpr. big fight, canopy …after wyvern meta event – spectators can come and watch. It brings an rpg aspect to pvp.

too programmed, on schedule, timed…..stuff needs to be spontaneous. like before waiting for a meta to start, that children of the corn thing ’hardcore pvers" do while waiting for an event to start is not fun. no different than a waterballoon fight – just pvp.

part of the problem of the game is how everyone gets along, which is not good. This would simply make various areas of the game more accommodating for all types of players.

he would build a wall, a great big wall….and make blizzard pay for it! ^.^

you get an item in your inventory like a booster, it allows you to invite one person to duel with you in any area, if they accept, it’s a fight right there on the spot!

fun for the whole family!

server pride ? you mean when all the biggest guilds pay to transfer to 1 server to pounce on smaller servers ?

no…..that’s not pride, that’s trolling on a massive scale :p

sorry, I’m a firm believer that Anet made a great thing with wvw, but because some people don’t know how to play fair, anet has to change it. But RIGHT NOW we have a great playing field for some amazing games , if people stopped using “server pride” as a crutch to justify their false wins.

The game is changing because people don’t play fair, not because it’s bad.

Poker doesn’t use goggles, because players respect that you don’t go throwing your cards in your opponents face.

what anet has to change is the ability to cheat. The game itself is fine.

If anet doesn’t address the fact that some gamers just don’t play fair, i don’t care how great anything new is, it will not be good.

missions would be nice though, not in home instance, but something i can bring with me ….

example of usage, i just finished a large meta event, and the people in that area were a fun lively crew – but we aren’t a guild …just a bunch of roamers looking for fun that met up for a meta, I pop up an adventure that i unlocked to my own account / guild and we all join and do something new on the spot. ( as opposed to just repeating the same meta over and over )

A roaming adventure if you may. Similar to many adventures guilds already have. It would give me the power to make pug guild adventures on the fly. casual / hardcore option. casual, as I’m not in a guild, hardcore as I found a group of adventurers from a meta that would appreciate the adventure i’m about to put up.

portable raids!! ^.^

The lore could be “I Found this map…..” and a portal opens up! lol

i want to repeat this as it is the heart of my post really – Whatever you do, change / upgrade/ overhaul in wvw ….

It has to be worthy of a bet.

I think this is a key guide to doing a great wvw update the wvw community would endorse and support. It’s the heart of competition. If you keep nothing else of my ideas, please keep that. Put a skritt gambling bookie on your betas, if no one bets, it’s not a good idea. if everyone bets on the same team every time, it’s not a good idea.

you just can’t get more honest feedback, than someone betting their own gold! Lol

Endorsed by the mantra of competitive sports “Talk is cheap!”

it wouldn’t be possible, but that flow wouldn’t be traditional in a competitive field where there are only 3 colors. You’d need multiple matches going on to keep that aspect fair to all sides. so in match 1 ( red vs blue vs green )you are with guild x …in match 2 ( yellow vs orange vs purple ) you could be in another guild – then guild swapping would work. and come to think of it, it would be a great option for a wvw’r where one match might be dead / slow , they can jump into another match where their adversary guild is playing on another team/color of the week.

say, 3 matches of 3 colors so you can guild swap without disrupting the score ?

and by traditional i mean like a bowling team, you don’t join multiple bowling teams and change sides during competition. In my approach, the color is the team ( which is actually a team of guilds ) so you can measure performance, swapping sides eliminates a measurable stat – My idea is about bringing measurable competition to balanced matches in wvw – thus soulbinding a guild would be necessary to have the results of the match mean anything. causing the gambling to be fun, not fixed.

whether or not the gambling is implemented, the idea is in place to organize some system that someone would bet on, it’s more of a checks and balances thing, than an actual wish…….if the matches are balanced – the gambling option would obviously work. so it’s more of a guide, whatever you do, it has to be worthy of a bet. ( with an all pug team/color being an underdog ^.^ )

well, in theory it works

on the multiple guilds- you could be soulbound to the color of the week based on the guild you were with on reset ….but I can appreciate that this idea sounds easier than it is to implement. Once a match is set a player shouldn’t be allowed to jump from guild to guild. I would think this would also give more meaning to joining a wvw guild for competition sake. Ofcourse you will have pve jumpers who want to dabble in it, but only the guild they were with during reset will apply when they jump into wvw. Just like we have alt stat settings for characters in wvw – you can have alt guild settings kick in when you jump into wvw.

I’m actually more into wvw than pve – I started PVE’ng because wvw wasn’t fun anymore – especially after new borderlands. Not that I dislike the borderlands itself, but I’m in a low pop server …….and the borderlands were mostly empty before the update, the new large map makes it even emptier now – so the larger area actually gives the larger server an advantage because our small server just can’t keep up on all spots. We have an awesome crew of devoted wvwr’s …..simply not enough to fill up all the maps.

For mastery points – I specifically mentioned hot only stats like Viper’s / Yassith’s. Those are critical stat’s for a pvp environment – bringing the adventure mini games to wvw, would be a way to soften the pve time needed to get mastery points, to get the vendors to unlock those stats for wvw – without having to rewrite the whole wvw set up to include them.

I’m a wvw’r who also pve’s, trying to think of a middle ground that an all wvw gamer would use, without overly compromising anet’s pve. Those mini adventures aren’t extreme pve – but getting to them in hot, to get the mastery points is a pve task.

why rewrite the mastery points for wvw, when you can simply just add a few entrances to those adventures in wvw – and if you want to guard them from low level players – make a wvw rank requirement to access them, to keep it from being over used by any non wvw’r.

but again, I can certainly appreciate that it’s easier to write the above list ideas, than actually implement them in code. It just appears that all the code is in place to simply move a few things around, than have to overhaul wvw. That word overhaul concerns me to be honest, especially when there are a few things we need fixed in wvw – not a complete rewrite.

the new borderland was a complete rewrite, but it didn’t work because it didn’t consider the implications of low population servers. Larger servers have the advantage of scoring more points on maps that smaller servers just can’t cover. Basically its a sitting duck map. here’ just take my points, i’m too busy defending my base from your main zerg.

further history shows, that the automated matchups don’t work……each tier has 1 evenly matched set of 3 servers – anything other than those 3 matched servers is an unbalanced fight – a mega server set up will fix that. Fighting the same fights over and over gets old, fighting a new random guild known for good pvp strategy, would be more interesting.

it’s a great idea, but if the ability to implement them isn’t there, then it’s a moot point.

1 – bring the mega server system to wvw

2 – soulbind guilds to the color of the week matches – create an automated list that shows what guilds are what colors for the week.

3 – add skritt gambling bookies so people can gamble on team / colors based on what guilds are playing for what color during that week – and a spectator mode

4 – add the adventures found in hot in the borderlands so people can get mastery points without having to grind pve – to get the yassith’s ascended gear.

this will turn wvw into a balanced e-sport – it would turn wvw into gvg because guilds will be soulbound to their respective colors …..and matches would have more value as guild vs guild …as opposed to server vs server.

for high level games – you could simply make a smaller 3 team map – like the good ole gvg days. Wvw is the intelligent / hardcore team strategy pvp – plus all the new specialty builds you added in hot, are great for high strategy gvg – but gvg starts in wvw …not spvp. adding the mega server system and soulbinding wvw guilds to their respective colors, brings some of that guild vs guild back, but in a gvg2 kind of way since pugs can join in.

guys, i hate to say it , but you aren’t asking the guys who made wvw cool to overhaul it, you are asking the guys that replaced them and the borderlands we knew, don’t you think “overhaul” is a bit of an overkill request…..can’t we just be more specific about specific things that we want fixed in a specific way ? i don’t want to pvp on a jumping puzzle, please rethink.

it’s scary enough that donald trump might be our next president….. why push our luck ?

“I love the new WvW maps I don’t understand why people dislike them.”

just to be fair, i tried it, i ran with a group i found and for 30 minutes all I did was walk around with yaks.

the new borderlands should have been something new in addition to what we already developed strategies for. Instead they replaced the areas we were already familiar with and barely holding on to ( for smaller population servers ), and most servers simply don’t have enough numbers to fill them, thus rendering any new potential strategies and advantages moot. The unbalanced fights for smaller servers is already stressful enough, than to have to learn a new map that is larger than your server can fill.

that’s downplaying the wvw culture though, some people just want to play wvw. I’ve maxed at least 1 character in wvw only and very often can be found crafting there.

The autoloot, you’d have to be chased by a zerg trying to avenge the person you just killed to really appreciate how important it is. Sometimes staying alive is more important than stopping to grab loot. Even then in wvw, you move around so fast, it’s very easy to miss your loot, I can’t begin to count how many precursor Items i’ve lost that way!

I mentioned N.O. because it doesn’t work in wvw and highlights why i call the current list extreme.

i want to look like this when you bring gliding to wvw!

i disagree – firstly autoloot should be a part of wvw, so this just worsens the matter actually. Second, we have crafting stations in wvw borderlands, 3rd, supply line management is how we could get stuff from hot in wvw without going to hot, and revive character speed is critical in pvp – which is not a factor in wvw but like autoloot, should be.

you really should show more love to our veterans, they do after all, protect you from other servers lol

someone died to give you that extra piece of orichalcum through server bonuses.

you wont get to the secret palace without mushroom jumping or gliding. Again, getting those are easy, but i have to stop playing wvw for a while to get it.

I’ve got yassith’s so i really can’t complain, but i can appreciate what is making a lot of people not want to play or update…the game is great – those mechanisms that make you play x to get y are not. stat’s are everything in pvp, to say you have to stop pvp to get something so critical to pvp from pve, is extreme. Granted, I’m using extreme in a context that there are zero options in wvw.

further, this is not exclusive to wvw, this generally applies to anyone that was playing the game in a way they find enjoyable, interrupted. We have to play x way now to get y so we can apply new updated stuff to our routine. so it’s not just wvw that got effected, I’m just explaining it through a wvw perspective. everyone got hit in their own way.

it doesn’t have to only be in the pvp lounge, you can certainly give a little more swag to the borderlands with mini events found in hot.

you can’t argue that gambling wouldn’t be fun! ironically enough i wouldn’t bet much if at all, but i know guilds and pugs will gladly place bets vs each other in wvw on a megaserver system where guilds are soulbound :p

how do you get the yassith’s ascended greatsword for wvw ?

i’ll agree, ‘extreme’ is also subjective, but i’ll keep it because not having a way of obtaining mastery points in wvw , and the fact that getting a viper’s stat / inscription is all pve and locked behind such mastery points, puts it in an extreme category. the viper’s stat is great for creating dps / condition builds. – not to mention some of the new specializations are game changers to pvp strategy, also locked behind 100% pve. thus extreme.

I’d like to be able to do what guilds do in my own home instance.

I’m finding all this cool stuff for guilds only that i’d like to use, but don’t want to join a guild that i’ll be a part of for 2-3 months and just give the stuff away, and chances are they have it and don’t need it anyways. I’m in my own 1 man guild that i enjoy simple perks like being able to boost supply on a tower in wvw, start an open world event in an active area, or put up banners for others before an event.

So i would like options to dress up my home instance, so i can use this guild stuff i found – it might even be a nice option to move my home instance to a new area in hot.

i’m even thinking that a home instance can grow into a full guild hall with people teaming up and merging their home instances, and if i left the group, i go back to what i put into my own home instance. This way roamers and small guilds acquire what they can handle, the more they grow, the more people they team up with to handle bigger missions / quests / scribing , the more options available to them…..a scaling guild mechanic.

now lets say i was once in a big guild and chipped in for a new and bigger mechanic, that mechanic will still be available to me in my home instance, but until i team up with x amount of people required to activate it…it will be greyed out. This way I don’t feel like I’ve lost any progress in my donations to past guilds that are now inactive.

“Those 31 can be done fairly easily”

that is subjective, this is assuming that everyone likes to play gw2 the same way. That list of 31 is EXTREME pve. Exploring the entire world and doing every single thing in them for one mastery point is EXTREME. So all you are telling me is Normal in GW2, is an EXTREME pver, hence guildwars is a war against the machine. To some that is not normal. In fact, not only is it not normal, but I’m prepared to argue that it is actually quite anti-social. This makes that list not so easy for me.

The only thing social about tequatl is the time spent waiting, organizing and chatting before the fight starts, and even then it depends on if people want to chat or just hurry up and make their 2gold run… – the fun thing about tequatl is that everyone heals you and you won’t get booted off the map if it’s your first time. It’s fun, stress free, but not as social as studying your opponent for the next match and discussing strategies with them. In a game that is so focused on Esport, THAT should be normal, PVE is NOT endgame material, PVP is, PVE is just something to do in between big PVP matches.
That list of 31 doesn’t reflect this, especially considering that stats such as viper’s are locked behind pve. I can’t stress how offensive and not -normal this is to the pvp community. it’s blasphemy!!

Try this, make it so that people can bet gold on pvp matches lol…..that’s a form of corruption we can live with! At least people will have something to blog about when players get caught cheating! That, my friend, is social! Make the Skritt gambling bookies for wvw and pvp – after you put wvw on the megaserver system where guilds are soulbound to the server of the week, this will give value to the betting in a mega server system – “this week, x guild is on the red team, I’m betting the red will win this week’s match!” – make the pvp waiting areas lounges, where people can play those mini games in hot while they wait for their next fight, sell drinks, have quaggan go go dancers, play lively music, put the bot matches there, a virtual arcade room, make it the second life area, and a fun place to get mastery points and special gear! :p

i’m thinking the game itself is really great – but what i keep finding is that there is always some mechanic in place somewhere as if someone made it their job to say “This will upset them”, “This will really mess them up, haha” “awww, they are going to hate this” – looks like your efforts to frustrate people worked.

stuff like account bound, soulbound, masteries gated by achievements, you can only play poker if you play old maid 500 times, you can have your desert only if you ate carrots 4 days ago, here’s a bunch of stuff for your inventory that we won’t give you space for and you have to play a part of the game very few people like 800 times to make something you don’t want, but if you discard it you will NEVER be able to make it again….gate skins, thats fair game, gating stats is bullying.

I think these “Bully Mechanics” took it’s toll……..Other wise the game itself is obviously fun. there is a lot to enjoy…..“But first you have to do everything you hate”

a few examples are -

it’s painfully obvious they want me to play a ton of fractals to get certain things only available in fractals, that I’d like for wvw or roaming in pve ie – ascended backpack, tyria mastery points – I’m sure fractals is great but I don’t like the 5 man team mechanics because more often than not no one in those areas like noobs, – so it’s not a “hot join” type area. Most players in this area expect you to know everything about being pro before even going in the first time, so the ‘elite’ players in those areas killed that part of the game for me.

then there’s all the account bound / soulbound stuff ( which I am so happy that they made ascended account bound only – because I think that would have made me quit if they made it all soulbound – I’m not concerned about skins, my goal is to have the best stats, and you really can’t betray a pvpr ( wvw in this case ) any worse than forcing them to grind insane amounts of pve to get the best gear stats, then forcing them into a world of unbalanced fights you refuse to balance. I feel more like the victim of a bad joke than a gamer on that point.

the gw2 hot game and concept is great, the mechanics are kitten.

dear whomever, I’m sorry your character got popped in diablo 1 and they took all your stuff, I didn’t do that, please don’t take revenge on me in wvw…thanks!
Trivia – in diablo 1 – when they enabled pvp, if someone killed you, all your money and items would drop to the floor and everyone in the area would take your stuff while you respawned naked, and you had to go back to the area you got dropped, naked, to see if there was anything left. This bug was coined “popping” a character. In D2 – they fixed that and made the victims drop ears and pvp became a big thing.

ps – would be nice to have a character like the D2 trap assassin in a future upgrade ^.^
and yes, we have traps now, but nothing like the lb trap the D2 Trapsin had! Those were great! trapsin explained :p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btbuhXZa9Og

*his trapsin build is lite, my traps would do 10k damage per bolt, I miss that run actually.

actually – factions is to oil and water, as alignment is to yin yang – one doesn’t mix, the other compliments each other. bad chaos vs good chaos :p

I need to be able to be your best friend with one character, your darkest nightmare with another, and a drunken dwarf that doesn’t recognize you on yet another. That is not factions or division, that is character and gaming depth.

at the moment, the only gaming depth is doing the same routine fights on a schedule around artificially intelligent characters. – that will grind anyone to a burnout, including the developers trying to figure out what to entertain you with next. Entertain yourselves with individuality so anet can focus on giving you the tools to better express yourself.

Magic is all about perception, you can look at a tree, change your view on that tree, and like magic it becomes a door, a house, or firewood. The magic is in YOU the individual expressing his/her visions of what that tree means to you.

back to a simple deck of cards, to some it means poker, to others it means solitaire, and yet to someone else it means a house. – that’s replayability.

I’ve studied this on more levels than i care to admit lol

Splitting the playerbase is the wrong approach to factions, this is once again a scenario that a choice is being made not only for your character based on what server you are on, but your account. – bad implementation.

Allowing me to be my evil, neutral or good, self on the character of my choosing, is freedom of expression. That isn’t splitting the community, that is enhancing it with personality.

“HUUUUUUUUGE Difference” – ( in bernie sanders voice )

they do work, i’ve seen it work, but that is part of a community effort and there are zero tools to express that individuality.

Nothing has to work, if I insist it doesn’t work. The electric candle wasn’t supposed to work, and we’d be typing on our computers in the dark if it didn’t. So, no it does not work, FOR YOU. but it does work. Just like Hot doesn’t work for many others, but it works for some. never stop someone from doing something you cant.

which ironically enough, wvw is a faction based part of the game, and it at one time was huuuuuge – worst lag ever from so many people logging on to 1 area to fight in gw2. so, yeah…it works :p All i’m saying is to go back to your roots anet, school the next gen, that’s what made gw1 huuuuge! don’t give them wow, give them a deck of cards!

their world pvp may have died, but to be honest, i was never fond of wow to begin with.

For the “factions” to work, there does have to be a community effort, many of today’s games have “Trained” next gen of gamers differently – I suppose to get them into loot – so there would be a market for selling loot you can’t find in game.

It does work, but the wow crowd is certainly not the kind of audience you’d see playing pen and paper D&D for that matter.

Somehow, things happen the way they happen because at the end of the day it’s always about money. I suppose that’s why games start great, but when keeping up with monthly expenses, they lose their appeal due to adjusting mechanics to keep the lights on. something a deck of cards or chess never had to deal with.

I keep bringing up chess and cards, because of their replayability. – Specifically cards, you can play a variety of games – but part of that is an agreement of 2 players to a set of rules. In GW2, The game is making the rules, not the players. I think that specific point is what is causing burnout – “i’m not playing by my rules anymore”

That is probably also the core element of why it didn’t work in wow, that’s a generation of players that need rules and never learned to agree on rules. That’s a hard core pvp attitude, they agree on rules and stick to them, because their win is about honor, not about loot.

anet has, or at least one time had an intelligent audience that were capable of being part of such a system. Unfortunately, I see that audience dwindling, and more skritt looking for shinies recently lol

and for the record, i love all genres and understand all the headsets, I am a roamer after all, so I do have some of that skritt in me rofl….but that use to be a side thing for fun, my main persona was a drow. Drows are about power, making money, and killing people was not for fun for us, people were just in our way to power and money, although i do admit i had fun moving them out the way so.. lol ( as the general rp-pvp story goes )

that said, it would be a hoot to see people have personal pages, that give their own character a rich background and story, i mean…stats are nice and all, but how a person perceives those stats is the story – anet needs to give people more space to play by their own rules, the recent changes are slowly removing that freedom to be distinctly yourself, “live” and play the way you want in the GW2 world.

interesting that you compare grind to hardcore …. it makes sense, and I like the comparison.

I always thought, it’s the difference between being forced to watch the same movie 1,000 times as opposed to playing 1,000 games of cards.

Which is why I point to pvp, and use the phrase “Playing against artificial intelligence”

there is nothing surprising and fun about playing against artificial intelligence……vs the surprise twists and turns found in pvp. – PVP is way more fun, funny, surprising, than playing against a computer.

Somehow, I think this simple concept has eluded anet – look at blade and soul, every review agrees that their pve is horrible, but their pvp is amazing……and as a result they are over a million people playing.

The problem with pvp, is the stigma it took on with the internet, people have come to know pvp as a trolls tool to harass others. In reality, pvp is what games are all about, socializing and competing vs other players…….and I don’t mean competing vs a score another player made against a computer……I mean playing against another player to get a better score on the computer. There is a difference.

The game itself, is quite fun, and fascinating in how they create this lively world ….but it’s still artificial intelligence and even if you gave 50 different possible outcomes, it’s still predictable, and not social.

The problem with hot, ironically enough, is it removed the “social” aspect of gaming. Sure you can make guilds and form big pug teams, but in the end, you are just watching the same movie, just not alone. In a theatre, you tell others to please be quiet, in a baseball game when someone shouts, you shout back “OH YEAH??” and the match takes on a new meaning from that alone.

“Huuuuuuuge” difference …. ( in donald trump voice )

if I had to summarize everything wrong with hot and the direction anet is taking gw2….I’d have to say, they just want us to watch the same movie 5 million times and pretend it was the first time every time. That just gets old for any gamer in any subculture.

look at it this way, a deck of cards, or a chess game, never gets old, out dated, nor does it need an expansion pack, patches or bonus content.

play wvw or spvp, they don’t give any mastery points – they got totally dissed with hot, so you wont miss anything.

I have the exact opposite problem, i hate the idea that i have to become ocd about playing against artificial intelligence to get some mastery points to spend. That’s not gaming, that’s programming, no mind control for me thanks!

Guildwars is turning into super mario bros!

yall want to see this game take over the top slot again with numbers. I kid you not, as silly as this suggestion sounds, it works, i’ve seen it work, and the sociological impact is phenomenal. it’s a simple little tweak that strikes at the core of being ‘human’.

alignments. - create good / evil / neutral alignments – then create a town that is open pvp.

It’s that simple, out of that – for the first month, you will hear whining about how everyone is getting jumped…..the 2nd month, you will hear about a bunch of vigilante groups form to combat these villains, the 3rd month, you will see guilds rise to fame for either making the town a ghetto or a safe haven. the 4th month, you will see civil wars of guilds vs guilds fighting for control of the town, blogs popping up left and right gossiping about who said what and the on going drama, full rp coverage of the wars over who will control that town.

IF implemented correctly, it’s nothing less than phenomenal. :p

of course, it’s a silly suggestion until you actually do it and see the results.

this game is ripe for that because of all the sub cultures – not to mention, the increase in merchandise sales that cater to each alignment.

Fugetabout it.

and i know it won’t be done in gw2, but i’ll have the satisfaction of yall remembering this post when someone does it right. ^.^

I was really hoping they’d make something of the alignments they already had in place, but they didn’t.

and don’t think for 1 second that people will hesitate to call themselves evil, in the pvp mindset, only the best pvp’rs call themselves evil because everyone hunts them, most legit merchants don’t want to deal with them, they only get to travel in public at night to avoid guards, and there are constant bounties on their heads. – ez fame :p

now tell me the implications of someone having a 100g bounty on their heads. ^.^

it would also instantly rewrite wvw, since the focus wouldn’t be server vs server, now your enemy is in your own back yard.

while graphics and mechanics are great and all, the biggest selling point is the best story. This simple mechanic, will allow the players to tell the bestest stories ever!

i mean, not the servers themselves, but the ncsoft bandwidth ? – like remember in wvw, when 3 full servers fought in the center of the castle ? that kind of lag / rubber banding / disconnecting / skills flashing – but unresponsive kind of stuff – like the black lion market said i wasn’t logged in. – when it was my isp, i’d just get disconnects….not logged out of game, while in game.

another strange thing, was in splintered coast, near tequatl, on the jumping pad, the jumping pad became unresponsive, so i just started running instead, like 4 seconds later, i got launched, from where i was running, it ended up shooting me way further than the 2nd pad you normally land around, and it didn’t rubberband, because i kept playing from that point ….was strange – definitely a local thing to anet / ncsoft. and i disconnected right when tequatl died, that was fun, in a not kind of way lol

it’s happening to others too, i kept asking in areas i was getting it. it seems to happen only when the server map is full. recently too, i haven’t seen it this bad since early wvw.

makes me wonder if we are sharing servers with blade and soul ?

did ncsoft throw anet under the bus with bandwidth ? when no one is around, the fun hot fights are undoable, but when there are people on the server now suddenly I’m getting server / skill lag – disconnects! – ain’t that a kick in the pants ? and i highly doubt there is a little green man that says “oh look, he’s starting to have fun, give him lag Nao!!” at my isp, so let’s not go there! my isp can’t log me out of the market while still in game! :p

it’s not a complex one either, wvw just want to zerg each other, for those that want bragging rights, they join guilds and whatever server their guild is on they get ported to.
That would be huge, especially if individual guilds got credit for all the fights they were in that won. You would see wvw come to life, and not be a major server issue because all fights would be balanced.

Plus thats a great way to create a nice social atmosphere , one minute you are fighting against someone, next minute you are fighting with them on the same side, that’s how esport teams are formed.

back in my super hardcore 4 v 4 pvp days in another game, after a ranked match , our team would kill each other off in a ffa lol …it was great! I miss those days! ( and yes, it was possible, because the game was all ffa – so pvp became extremely strategic since you could kill off your own team mates by accident, so it was a riot to win a match, then snuff your bro! )

I don’t think that’s the solution either ….imo, there isn’t one big fix….there are many little fixes. And yes, exactly what you said with second life, that would be lions arch, divinity’s reach or any of the other major towns where there is no fighting in town. – that rp group got grounded a long time ago with the mega server. Meanwhile wvw would have done really well with the mega server for balancing out fights – guilds could still fight together, and pugs would have a blast. But scoring poorly matched fights was unreasonable. The mega server is fine for pve environments, but for arguments sake, places like lions arch are not pve – they are the second life type area, and the shops here were for craftsmen to sell their wares. I wanted to have fun being a craftsman and selling off stuff making stuff, but my jeweler got thrown under the bus long long ago, lol.

the problem I’m seeing is there is no one big fix, just a bunch of little fixes that shows a little love to all the sub-cultures. I think that would go much further than trying to do major changes that shows favoritism to any one subculture. The whole hot expansion was pure favoritism to hardcore pve – and if that wasn’t enough, it took the few perks subcultures had away to drive them to hardcore pve. That’s like some new world order move and a lot of people didn’t like it.

you can’t fix gw2 like one big community, you have to address it as the mmorpg subculture melting pot that it is, "and this next patch goes out to the “sub culture of the moment here” " seriously, unless it’s free gold, there isn’t any one thing that’s going to please everyone, there is simply too much variety to consider that a reasonable approach.

my usage of pvp / wvw is just one example. The common denominator with all the subcultures, is they all feel the same…neglected for this greater idea of rpg utopia.
Not everyone likes the idea of having to play against artificial intelligence. It’s like a good movie, fun the first time I watched it , but dam, how many times do i have to watch it before I can go back to playing cards ?

Just like not everyone likes to player vs player ( mainly because meta-trolls have dominated it, true hard core pvp’rs are the coolest rp’rs, social cats in the world,that’s 0why esports exists to begin with – it is the most social aspect of mmo gaming ) – not everyone likes playing against a computer. Heck, some people don’t want to play against anything and just play dress up in town building stuff and rp’ng …..drunken dwarves are a hoot!! what was second life ? huuuge, pure rp community, zero quests all social. There are people who hate the idea of killing animals, even if virtual, doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy gw2 either – they got shoved under the bus too! lol

here’s a thought for you, at the heart of any great game in history, is pvp.

player verse player …..that was the foundation of a deck of cards or chess. You never played against chess pieces lol.

gw2, is several cultures of mmo gaming, you have dedicated dungeon crawlers…..you have roamers / pugs ( that’s me ), you have spvprs, you have wvwrs, then you have the guys that do open world, then the guys that enjoy rp, and then you have casual groups that do a little bit of everything, groups that want to focus on legendary stuff, even groups that want to focus on making gold…….you can’t take a one size fits all approach to this, because gw2, is a community, of various kinds of cultures.

i think it’s a mistake to think that everyone in gw2 likes to be face rolled and gated by artificial intelligence.

but i am justified in saying, because I was one of those lacking numbers. I only bought hot after they said they were bringing gliding to tyria, and now my revenant is my fav pvp character.

I’m telling you why i wasn’t interested in hot before that, it did nothing for wvw, if anything , they made wvw worse by forcing a game change – in a strategy based environment, and they didn’t address the old issues. I am in 2 very large guilds that don’t log on because they were all wvw also.

so my comments do relate in a huge way.

further, i’ve heard complaints from various groups, dungeon crawlers, factal runners, spvprs,…..it comes down to the same thing…..hot focused on a one size fits all update and ended up shoving many subcultures under the bus as a result.

yall can’t keep spin doctoring stories if you want to help anet. the pvp was a huuge part of the community, and the fact that the vipers stats are restricted by forced pve play is not good. you can’t spin a bad thing and expect a good thing to come out of it. just because people complain, doesn’t mean they want something to fail – in fact….there are many games i don’t complain about…..guess why ?

and here’s the twist, i like hot, it’s really well made and I wish there were more people there too. – but as a pvp’r – namely in wvw ….I’m not an spvpr…..I can see clearly what is upsetting. Luckily i enjoy pve too, but i can’t begin to express how upset i am at how they have forsaken wvw. – i knew in beta i wanted to live ‘there’ – there is gone.

i maxed my main character specialization in like 3 days…once i learned the ropes, it takes like 2 days average play.

Fastest way I found, is get around 30-40 in tyria 1×1, they actually go very fast and you’ll be doubling up on efforts of getting xp – you want autoloot.

in HOT – the further you get in game, the harder the hp’s are to get….so having the 30-40 tyria hp head start is a big push – because by the time you get the remaining points in HOT, is when you start running into the really hard hp points to get.

if you want to get it over quickly for all your characters, then plan on at least a week of being a pve’r – it will be easy for you because you have the dodging skills from pvp to get to the hp sites in hot fast. it’s actually fun, you’ll wish they had gliding in wvw. lol

forget about the mastery points though, they are unreasonably restricted and have illuminati control over them….but since you’ll be getting a ton of xp in this process, also take advantage and max a few fun things – i maxed out gliding and autoloot myself, i totally kittened myself for everything else though because it’s totally inconsiderate to pvprs since it forces you to do insane amounts of pve to max.

oh, and you may want to consider spending any necessary mastery points to get the viper weap and armor stats – that’s a pretty intense power stat combo for pvp and it’s account only, so you can’t buy it. i made a vipers ascended greatsword, stats to die for! lol

ok, i figured out why hot is the way it is!! – or at least came up with a great idea for a movie!! ^.^

anet hooked up with the military, and designed the game to search for talent to fly drones!! they are looking for the people that just don’t quit no matter how insane and unreasonable the scenario!

watch! if the draft comes back, the people who have more than one legendary will be the first to get shipped out!

it’s a step up from my game insurance theory!

yeah, the mastery points is also stressing me out. The things i’m seeing as requirements are like finishing entire game map, check out every new element they added to game and score silver or gold, or build an entire collection from things that will take me 6 years to get in casual play…i dont want to play fractals, but apparently i have to. what I want to play is wvw, and just have masteries to do stuff when I’m not in wvw …apparently i can’t play how i want, which in a way doesn’t even matter anymore because wvw is pretty much dead at this point.

serious, at this point, i simply enjoy the art and just enjoy gliding around in it, i’ve really lowered my expectations because it’s just a game, it’s paid for and better than watching the presidential debates.