Guild Wars 2

Rhyse.8176:

“End Game” is nothing more then a name for bad game design.

^^^ x10

That’s the real issue I have with the GW2 has no endgame complaints. As said before, the traditional MMO structure created large mass of players who have conditioned themselves to be after one goal after character creation is done. That goal? To hit level cap, grab max stat gear and then focus on content that requires max stats. This group came into GW2 and approached it the same way as the last ten MMOs they played in doing so they only hurt themselves because ArenaNet put the best parts of the game in the game not tucked away in end game. Some really can’t get their head around this. Instead of trying to just have fun at level 1 they choose the path of must grind to 80 I’m very happy ArenaNet has made a game that punishes the player who grinds to 80 instead of rewards them. It’s a new type of MMO if they don’t get it or respect it it’s best for all parties if they move on.

At first I was angry at this group for disrespecting the game. It’s like taking a child through the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and they just speed through and wonder what’s next. My emotions changed from anger to indifference. Now I’m quite happy they are moving on to other MMOs or back to told ones. I could say they are too narrow minded to get GW2 but I’ve settled on the reality that some people really, really love traditional MMOs. They love to repeat the same task over and over and grind, they love having a giant grid of skills blocking 1/4 of the screen in the HUD they don’t care about graphics or art direction…. The world’s a colorful place big enough for many different types of games.

With the traditional MMO grind crowd headed out the door angry GW2 isn’t another clone of that other game, the future community of GW2 can start to build up and I’m happy to be part of that new community.

When you radically redefine things as GW2 has there is always a cleansing period.

Electroflux.5320:

Coming from WoW, what is the actual endgame in this game? From what I’ve played so far, it’s basically heart hopping and doing repetitive typical boring events.

What is there to actually strive for? I mean, you pretty much get everything handed to you at the beginning of the game and PvP has absolutely no point in progression.

It’s interesting you see raids in WoW and the high stats on the very, very hard to get items as a reason to keep playing WoW. MMOs such as WoW and others with similar endgame content produce a group of players who grind to max level, speeding through all the games content only so they can enjoy the endgame. I’m not saying you did that or that all players approached it in that way, but a good number did. IMO that’s where the traditional endgame model goes to stale.

It has been fun seeing so many grind to 80 in GW2 and then scream “where is endgame”. The game has some real problems at level 80 (namely a broken system where rewards do not equal payout) but it’s like of raids is not one of them. Every dungeon has story mode and an explorable mode. Explore mode can take hours and very structured team play, you have three to pick from that are geared for level 80 (endgame) play. Honor the Waves, Crucible of Eternity and of course the dungeon where Zhitan is

@OP (since reply with quote is broken for me). I agree 100% Although ArenaNet boast about level scaling, I am taxed in wp travel, poor quality loot and occasional armor repair for going to help out friends at lower level. It’s a very kitten-ed up system. It seems like there are so many possible solutions to this, the most logical one is to remove waypoint travel cost (the games drop rates and going price for loot sell is money sink enough).

The bottom line is the is no logical argument for it. If you’re wondering where the gotcha comes into play with the gem store, this would be it. It seems they figure players will just spend $ for gems to convert to coin to solver the problem. It’s either that or grinding events for 30-45 minutes to get up 10-12 silver for event rewards loot sales. It’s a horrible system. Players have voiced they are uphappy. Not a small set of players, most of the community @80 who’ve cleared all zones have this problem it seems. I know it’s difficult for a game studio who’s built a game around micro-transactions to fuel future development, but the forced hard grind or spend real $ is not what I had envisioned and I am very, very disappointed.

I know three people who have left the game over this. This is not a sustainable model.

Kaizer.7135:

Don’t raise the amount of gold given for gems because then this game will be a cash shop game.

Strongly disagree for a few reasons.

• One of the purposes of the Gems to coin option is to help stop illegal gold sellers which also reduces the number of bots in game. Illegal gold sellers are selling gold about 80% less than the authorized gem to coin conversion process is allowing. Illegal gold selling is horrible thing, I think we can all agree on that, but if the game studio is to provide a legal alternative they should try to find the sweet spot about 10-15% above than the illegal price of gold. You want to make those risk illegal gold buys take much less appealing. You make it harder for illegal gold sellers to farm the gold and harder for them to sell the gold and you reduce the problem.

• As it stands now 2.2g for $10 USD is about average. Want to be a commander in WvW? that will be 100g or about $500 USD. Want to buy a full set of rare cultural armor? That’s about $1000 USD. Want to buy all the non-account bound mats you need for a legendary. try $8,000 USD (you can buy a low-end car for that, put a down payment on a house). What a level 80 character gains from its owner spending $10 USD to convert gems to coin is roughly 10-15 dungeon runs worth of armor repairs and a maybe weeks worth of way point travel. You can also buy about one level worth of crafting mats. This system was suppose to be positioned to help those who work more than they can play have a way to pay to offer the time…. Not working and the cost of gems to coin is insanely high. It seem the current system is designed to mask this from the player.

• The current system encourages those wealthy in the real-world to spend. It caters to them. Did you happen to see commanders running around in WvW the first week of release? I did. How do you think they got there? Never forget that although for many of us squeezing $10-$20 for gems a month requires some planning, for others dropping $500 on a credit card for gems a week is nothing. Some are willing to spend even more, a lot more! Millionaires and Billionaires (and the older children of each) are in this game, playing and the gem store currently caters to them. It shouldn’t.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

Race Kodan
World Location Far Shiverpeaks
Elder Dragon Jormag

Everyone wants Tengu next, but I don’t think that will be the case. Claw of Jormag is a level 80 meta event. Frostgorge Sound is 70-80 zone with a lot of level 80, this is Kodan territory. We know this race recently migrated to the region and that they dominate the Far Shiverspeaks now. Concept art shows a variety of Kodan armor and they were displayed pretty early on leading me to believe they may have been at one time slated to be one of the playable races at launch and plans changed.

The Claw of Jormag fight is a lead in for things to come.

Because of the spiritual and tribal characteristics of Kodan I would not be surprised to see a Shaman/Monk like profession (hope they don’t call it Monk for a few obvious reasons) but I could see a new spirit based light armor range class coming.

Thanks for the tips

Five suggestions for fixing the GW2 economy

• Make waypoint travel free for all points in a given zone once the zone is 100% clear (free WP become part of the reward for zone clear!). This gives people huge incentive to do the hearts!

• Reduce armor repair cost and make armor more durable outside of dungeons. Dungeons should have high payout and high risk IMO, although perhaps be much kinder in story mode.

• Allow more things to be purchased with Karma. There was a recent patch that made it so the armorsmith crafting supply NPC no longer sells salvage kits or gathering tools for karma. This patch should have made it so all the crafting supply NPC vendors sold their items for karma and not the other way around. At this point it seems karma is gathered only for high end gear down the road. I don’t understand how karma can be a respected currency when it seems the games system is geared around funneling players to spend coin or convert gems to coin

• Provide more data on TP for those looking to attempt to craft for profit. People who max a crafting skill can offer a service to those who have yet to max it. There is a problem with the current TP in that it does not show the seller what is selling. A simple rank column (as in popularity/number transactions) for all TP items would be an easy solution. It’s good for buyer and seller to know how popular an item is. Only knowing how many are available does not provide this data.

• Seed the Gems to coin rate a lot higher! It’s no secret this is controlled by ArenaNet “using an internal algorithm”. It’s a secret recipe we, we get it! Raise it! $10 USD should buy a player at minimum 8-9g not 2g!

Do all of these things and the blood will start pumping again.

For any of the crafting disciplines the crafter might wish to know what’s hot on the trading post to make decisions about what to craft and what not to. Unfortunately the trading post lacks this data.

I can see a single page of most popular items (when I come into TP) but I would like to be able to click on a item and see a small chart showing the number sold, price point over a given time period (perhaps a week). This data would be useful to buyer and to seller. As a cook for example, it’s very difficult to figure out what (if any) items are actually selling on TP.

“… living world”. My hope is that the game would get to a point where we have unannounced weekly special events going on. If the script design tools are well built it and the engine becomes more stable it shouldn’t take more than a few days to put one together, run though some rough testing and make it available -or- put it in the queue.

Tsuki.4013:

I do not get the OP and others that agree with him. How do you have money problems at lvl 80. Waypoint teleportation is cheap, repairs are cheap. Compared that even if you go into lowlvl zones to do map completion you still earn 1-2g just from running hears, events, and selling loot. if you go into Orr lvl 80 zones is just as SneakyErvin.3056 said. You get 3g in few minutes. I don’t even bother walking around much and use waypoints extensively. I do agree that geting 100g is not an easy task, and it should not be. I mean 100g is ALOT. 100g you can probably buy most if not all the best gear you need. Excluding the legendary, dungeon and cultural armors which are only aesthetics anyway.
I am 80 for about a week. I am currently sitting at about 13g, have not TPed a single rare lvl63+ and I am not selling the crafting materials. I maxed artificery in which i have put some gold and bought the full MF gear (which i think i used about 4g), and even bought gems with gold for bank expansion. I play about an hour a day. but i mostly do low level zones. The time I have spent in Orr is about 2-3 hours total, just to farm a bit of karma for the a piece of 42k gear.

You do earn that by doing map completion. My OP was referring to the point after you have cleared zones. The point where you want to take your level 80 and help others at lower level out. Your run though a zone you’ve done all hearts for and you just get 1-2s per 10-15 minutes of effort from events. The loot you get (mostly whites and blues) can sell for 20-30b each, if you’re lucky they may bring you a silver. A few hours of play and your left with maybe 10s in rewards from loot and events and you’ve hopped around a bit so you’ve spent 2-3s on way point travel.

If you want to run a dungeon you’d have to work an hour in game grinding events just to have some money in savings for armor repairs.

If you’re level 80 and have plenty of gold my guess is you either just completed all hearts or you still have some left to do and you’re still the pattern of using zone clear as a way to make some cash. My post is concerning the point you get to after that, once that source has dried up.

@SneakyErvin (since the quoting system is currently broken). A player should not have to go farm 30 minutes in Orr a day for 2.5-3g. Also I don’t believe your 2.5g from farming Orr considers travel and repair cost for farming (and your estimate is very liberal I might add, a more conservative and accurate number for selling all mats/loot on one of these runs would be ~1.5g). Given you can farm Orr in this manor but you forgot to calculate in waypoint travel cost to get to Orr (unless you want to pay the 2.5s be prepared to spend 15 minutes getting to Orr from nearest free travel major city (15 minutes assuming you have Swiftness boons up). Then you forgot to subtract the cost of armor repair. If you’re a horrible player you’ll go down all the time. If you good you can expect to drop at least a few times and damage a piece or two, 6-10s in repairs is a conservative number.

My only issue with the system you propose is

• You forgot to mention the hidden cost in armor repair travel

• Your numbers while in the ballpark are a bit off in my experience

• This system doesn’t encourage people to play together. 30 minutes a day just to farm for items to sell for gold in the most difficult zones on the map just so you have a little extra money to occasionally go play with friends? It’s a broken system and perhaps the worst grind scenario I’ve seen in a game that has been so adamant about being the anti-grind MMO. Forget farming for an exotic set, I’m just talking about having to do this to sustain in this game.

I can tell by the other responders I am not alone in my experience. If this is working for you great. If you’re in disagreement perhaps you can elaborate on your strategy?

BTW The trading post can absolutely be worked. It’s a very, very painful process going through items, calculating cost of mats vs returns over time. It’s something only a mathematician or economist would find fun. It would be great if the “playing the TP” approach yielded excellent returns, but as it is now this approach is required for people to just get by. The games economy seems to mimic too closely a real economy. The problem with this is the amount of time someone spends in the real world. This is a game that should put fun and focus on encouraging people to play together over an economy modeled on proven principles of real-world economies.

It seems to be when you have an economist on board that would be their task, to separate their text book and historical knowledge of how real world economies work (to be fair real world economies are heavily market focused).

If you were to model a real world economy in game you would create “work” scenarios which is exactly what we have now. I sign-in and in order to make enough money to keep playing the game I have to go to Orr do some unpleasant grind to get the money and I must do as part of a routine to sustain. If you model a real-world economy in game (and I think they have tried to do that) you end up with this. It’s very bad.

it’s not working and I hope ArenaNet sees the responses in this thread and realizes something must change.

I’m at level 80 and have been for a while. I don’t go down often, but if I get mobbed a few times I’m looking at 4s minimum on first cracked piece

Waypoint travel cost me 1.62 silver to travel, even if I’m standing 3 feet from the waypoint. If I want to go long distances I’m looking at 3-4s

If I run though events in zones lower than 70 I get ~1.6 silver payount for 10-15 minutes of work. If I get bored and want to change zones the waypoint system is imposing a tax of sorts. This is also true if I want to play with friends.

Please cap waypoint cost at a much lower level (1s should be max for all waypoint travel), leave armor repair rates as they are. I can deal with armor repair and take some responsibility for going down. I should not be taxed by the game because I want to go play with a friend in a low level zone!

Also please change it so all crafting supply NPCs sell their goods for Karma. Karma is a currency in game that doesn’t get enough attention. It really was a great idea to allow players to buy gathering tools and salvage kits with it. We need this back.

As the game is implemented now it seems to be an economy that makes money for one group, those who play the trading post market. It’s almost as if an economist designed it this way. The problem is we don’t all want to play the market to get to by

No. Those rewards should always be exclusive to GW1 players who earned them in game. To sell them or even make them available to earn in GW2 would be a very bad idea that would anger many players.

The Moa could easily be doubled with a new skin/texture and a variant could be made available.

What I think sPvP strongly needs

Ranking. I know it’s coming, but I want to challenge ArenaNet to not do Ranking like everyone else. You have this wonderful PvE side of the game with 2 million+ people playing. Most people are buying GW2 for that experience and many of them are scared of small scale PvP because of past experiences in other games getting ganked.

In a video describing sPvP Chaplan said
It’s about you bring your A game and I’ll bring my A game and one of us goes home licking our wounds

That’s exactly how it should be, yes. The problem I see is when you have two teams that are not in the same league as one another. You can’t pit a group of 40 year old business men who get together and play basketball after work on Thursday against NBA pro teams. In any sport you have this distinction of leagues that categorize players. A league should not only prevent pros / hardcores from competing with casuals but they should also have a reward system unique to that league.

NBA has it’s own yearly winner.
College basketball has its own, both are respected.

We need something like this for GW2. When ranking eventually comes in that’s step 1 but it’s only step 1. You also need monthly and yearly tournaments hosted by ArenaNet (letting the third-party party’s do this through private tournaments is not enough. We need private tournaments, yes. We also need ArenaNet to provide a reward system for the more casual type of sPvP players).

I’m envisioning a three league system.

Amateur
Lightweight
Hardcore

Once a player crosses over from one into the other they can’t go ganking in the lower skilled circuit/league (I’m a software developer of 12 years and can think of many ways this could be implemented in a way it would stay reasonably exploit free).

Each league would have it’s own monthly and yearly tournaments. If you did this you would open the door for sPvP to everyone regardless of skill level or how much time they could devote to practice each week. It would be a fun experience for all. The hardcore players would enjoy it more too. Can you imagine the pride in being the winning team on the hardcore league at the end of the year? Best of the best.

This is a good idea. This is a proven concept in real world sports.

While I love the idea of brining monks back into GW2 as a playable profession (Monks continue exist as NPCs so they are still around in regard to lore) they would have to be redesigned. Since Guardian ended up with a good number of Monk skills -and- since the Monk was a dedicated healer it would be a complete retooling of the profession.

I’d envision it to be a light armored caster that could transitioning between which god to offer prayers to sort of like a Ele switches attunements. Should not be overpowered in the area of support but similar to Guardian or Necro, unlike Guardian which is built for melee + support, Monk would be built for heavy range damage, AoE + support. The gods wouldn’t have to be all human. Pale Tree could be a choice as well… I Asuran monk might not make much sense but for each race you members who go against the norms so I don’t think it would be that silly to have a Asuran monk offering prayers to Balthazar

It would be interesting if a game studio were to provide max level focused RP features. Use your imagination on what those might be.

1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes
4. No
5. Yes

Questions for everyone

Please respond to the following five questions with simple Yes or No answers. I know everyone has opinions on why they feel the way they do and we have so many of those post already, I’m hoping this thread can provide a sample of opinions in a very simple uniform way.

Yes or No only please

1. Were you satisfied with the Guild Wars 2 launch and your first week of play?

2. As of today, do you think ArenaNet has done a good job of taking care of bugs, communicating with their customer base and making most players happy?

3. Are you still recommending Guild Wars 2 to friends?

4. If no new content has been released will you still be playing Guild Wars 2 six months from now?

5. Overall would you say Guild Wars 2 delivers as the game you envisioned it to be?

I have a long list, but let’s start with this one: I have to sign in twice every time I want to use the froums. I come into www.guildwars2.com and the site sometimes will display my name but when I click on forums I’ve been signed out (bug).

Sometimes I have to authenticate multiple times.

It’s been like this since the forums went live….

Imagine you could alter GW2 endgame to be what you envisioned it to be. If you could tell the developers exactly what you want in a few paragraphs or bullet list what would it be? Mine would be as follows

• Raid like system (described in another thread)

• Guild Halls with the ability for guild leaders to create their own dynamic events and chain them with events in other guilds (yes, a scenario builder for guild leaders where the guild leader can pay in gems or silver to buy specific NPCs, bosses. Each choice would bring with it the possibility of special loot)

• Player home instances should also provide scripting of events in their home instance and be able to open these instances up so guild members can access them even when members aren’t on-line. Chaining should also be possible. Here’s how I envision this would work

It’s two AM I sign into GW2. Most of my guild is sleeping and off-line, I’m looking for something to do in-game and I want to see what my fellow guildies have come up with to challenge me in their home instances. I see my friend Rinuka has recently updated his home instance (I know this because there is an icon lit up letting me know this when I see his name in the guild list). I click on the icon and I’m ask if I want to enter his instance. I go in and I’m challenged with whatever content he as scripted. Rinuka and another guildie Sabu worked together. Rinuka is human and Sabu is Norn so their home instances are in different locations but their scripted content is connected. When I enter Rinuka’s home instance to begin I’m greeted with a cut scene which shows his character on the right and my character on the left. When Rinuka was scripting the content for his home instance he wrote all the dialog his character is delivering in this cut scene. He tells me about Luntu an Asuran who escaped from prison and is holding prisioners hostage (Rinuka was able to pick a Asuran NPC as a prompt give it the name Luntu and script out the whole scenario). At the end of the scenario an Asuran gate is present that lets me travel to Sabu’s home instance where I can play out the rest of this story arch created by my guild members.

You could take this system as far as you want it (finding it’s sweet spot where fun is not crushed by complexity where the challenge will be). I imagine an array of prompts accessible for karma/coin/gems that can have pre-built script blocks attached to them (think of a story like lego-blocks) and all dialog could be overwritten. Of course this dialog would not be voice acted (that would be impossible) but I think that would matter. NPC enemys could also be purchased and placed in the script. I envision these would each come with a pre-set range of things that could drop. There might be a Centar boss that cost 40g that has a 15% chance of dropping an exotic. There are so many possibilities.

• You say PvP can be done low-level in most games but this is not true in most MMOs. In fact, in most PvP is an exclusive club for the players with the best gear (earned through PvP or PvE). GW2 is unique in that it gives you unlocked max stat gear at level 1

• Endgame for any game is repeatable content in the game that gives you reason to keep signing in once you completed all other content once through. The people complaining there is no endgame are thinking exclusively in terms of endgame=raids. Raids are an example of well executed endgame content, but it’s not the only way.

ArenaNet’s stated vision for endgame is level scaling (go back and help a friend, work towards, craft some more, do dungeons explorable or roll another character). There is also WvW which is PvP, but it’s not hardcore. Learn when to evade and stay in groups and WvW can be a lot of fun for anyone and you don’t have to have max stats to enjoy it. I would suggesting waiting until you have at least one elite skill unlocked (level 30)

• I define endgame more in terms of social aspects. Helping others working together to clear dungeons faster, finding my place in the team, exploring new ways to configure my character, etc… Although raids wouldn’t hurt (down the road) there is a lot to do now

Raids 2.0 please don’t call them raids, for the purpose of this post I’ll call them Onslaughts

Here’s how I envision something raid like playing out in GW2. I’ll describe the envisioned experience and then provide bullet list.

I’m level 80, I’m running around Forstgorge Sound. I’ve done all personal story but I see a little orange star with glitter (looks identical to my personal story markers expect it’s orange). I run up to it and I’m prompted to “Enter Onslaught ‘Turbulent Waves’”. My party members can also choose to enter (just like dungeon instances work as far the instance entry mechanic goes).

Once inside the instance I see I’ve been grouped with a party of 10. The other players on the typical face icons I usually see, they are sPvP style, little white markers and scaled to not steal too much screen real-estate.

The instance begins. It will last for 2-3 hours over a chain of six events each lasting 20-30 minutes and each event concluding with a chest leading up to the final chest at the end of the chain. The events in chain involve very large bosses (scale of Claw of Jormag) So that’s how I envision raids working in GW2.

What I’ve just described at first sounds a lot like dungeons and to an extent it is. Here are some key differences

• This feature would take place over an entire map (e.g. Frostgorge Sound) requiring players to move great distances as they follow the six events that chain

• The instance would only be open to max level characters

• The content would be designed for a group of 10 and allow a group of ten to be in party

Add one of these to each zone map (not just the level 70+ maps, but one per map). Publish a release schedule and release, revise all “onslaughts” on a three month schedule with a goal to eventually have a new one each month (these could cycle so that eventually every October you have the same set of onslaughts. People could look forward to upcoming months knowing their favorites would be cycling around again. It would be a similar mechanic to what you did in GW1 with Holiday events, but your version of raids would follow this.

That’s how I would design it.

Not a perfect game. Has a lot of bugs/balancing issues still, but even in it’s current state the best MMO value and the only one worth playing IMO.

1. Every great once in a while it’s fun to do

2. Not the best choice for everyone, one of the great thing about leading a guild is you’re ability to downsize at will

3. From my observation: Most people stop performing a res only when the incoming damage begins to risk their own life. It would be silly for you to both lay their dead.

4. if their concern is about the endgame then their concern is that GW2 has no raids and is therefor not enough like WoW for them. Recommending they go back to a game that better suits their taste makes more sense than allowing them to try and change GW2

5. It’s especially fun around 2 AM in guild chat. If you’re going to discuss these things and risk making life long enemies best do i with the people you are closet too in the game

6. BECUSE PEOPLE SH0ULDN’T BE CORECTED WHEN THEY MAKE MISTAKES

7. Guildies first, server second.

8. I agree.

9. Twice in a row

10. Unless you’re too poor to do so like the 99% of us (oh boy, there is something disturbing about that number) in which case asking for help makes much more sense than shrugging shoulder and heading back to PvE

Resetting traits should absolutely be free! what was the thinking in taxing players to change play styles? it just doesn’t make sense.

I’m not suggesting you should be able to have a recipe for black dye or abyssal dye, just saying if I invest in all those mats (spend a day gathering or 30s to buy them) I should have 0% chance of ending up with a white or blue (junk) dye. I should be able to land a rare of some sort in the gray range or yellow range, whatever. As implemented now it makes little sense.

When an Armorsmith can invest a similar amount of time and end up with a level 80 exotic armor set they can then sell or equip themselves it just seems cooking has been left in a state that’s off balance. What is the value in cooking? I don’t to hear “for the fun of it”. Sure we’re all playing the game for the fun of it, but balance is an important thing.

I don’t think some people realize cooking went through a major nerf in the first few weeks. Karma vendors sold many items and these were removed and put in loot bags. The entire system that spent months in development was rapid changed to address an exploit and I’m just saying it seems very unbalanced right now. Simply put, it’s not a worth while investment.

TL;DR: A level 400 Armorsmith has recipes that guarantee exotic armor and yet a level 400 cook can’t even get a rare dye without it being a proc? When the mats were wider available I think the system (might have) made sense, but now it does not.

I think a rare should be guaranteed

Better yet give us an API to develop our own chat clients with

Some thoughts

• Hearts – added very late in development only to give traditional MMO players something familiar. These are not a method of story delivery in this game, they were added as an after thought.

• Dynamic Events – Entirely different mechanic than traditional quest. Things are actively moving, voice acted dialog is generally happening, many of them chain two or three times. After the event ends, follow NPC to the other side of the map where things play out and a new event triggers. Aside from the ones clearly marked as gather events (which I tend to avoid) you aren’t taking item X back to NPC Y. Dynamic Events first appeared in RifT but the implementation in GW2 is much better. Dynamic Events tell the story of the world.

• Personal Story – A unique set of instanced zones. Nothing like quest, every chapter has voice acted dialog. These take you from level 1 (starting with the tutorial which you can think of as your first personal story chapter) all the way up to 80. Multiple story archs play out and these give you a reason to care about the things going on in the world. The story of your character is told through PS. This is the core story delivery method in this game and most MMOs do not have anything like this.

• Dungeons story mode – Tell the story of the Heros of Tyria. Dungeons are a common thing, but toned down story mode dungeons with dialog created as a means of story delivery is something rather new or at least their implementation is.

I feel sad for the players just running through the game only doing Heart quest. I want to say “No wonder you don’t like it, you don’t get it. Take the time to learn your options for how to play”

My opinion: Please don’t add them / this is not WoW / I think they take away from the landscape and overall aesthetic appeal. Mounts were actually one of things i found very distasteful about WoW, et al.

It seems cooking has gone through a few nerfs post launch. The recipes for level 400 dye crafting call for a lot of mats with low chance of proc. With the whole design of how these mats are acquired going through change (karma vendors no longer sell most of the cooking mats they once did) it seems the chance of proc should be altered a bit on the rare dyes to be more likely. No one is crafting dye and I don’t imagine that’s what you originally intended.

As it stands now cooking seems to be one of the least attractive professions. I think the nerfs put in place where done so to stop certain exploits and not well thought out so please revisit.

The answer from ArenaNet is that third-party tools are permitted as long as they don’t alter the running game code (i.e. hack) or invoke a multi-sequence macro on single key press or click. The combat mod apparently falls into the later group and they’ve made a public statement about it being not allowed.

That being said, what I find interesting is that the new Logitec G600 MMO mouse (which I have and love BTW) has an option to program multi-sequence macros . I have only one such macro coded and that macro was to trigger the key sequence to remove HUD and take a screen cap then put HUD back up. I’ve stopped using that because apparently this behavior is also not permitted?

It’s a strange rule to me.

I suspect the bottom line is they view combat mode as a mod that can give an advantage in certain scenarios (e.g. PvP) where it could disrupt things so I’m glad they are saying “No”. It would be nice to have the feature baked into the game down the road.

What I want in expansions.

• Cooperative Story chapters (would work just like personal story, but these would designed around team play… Think a lot more instances similar in style to Caudecus’s Manor story mode. That’s what I’m envisioning here)

• Tengu playable with ability to fly (even if it is in restricted zones, AION does restricted flight quite well pre-Abyss). Yes, I know the race lost it’s ability to fly, that doesn’t mean they can’t write it back in.

• Time travel. Do more with GW1 locations, take us into the future, etc…

• Give us Guild halls back and give guild leaders the tools to script their own scenarios that play out in guild halls (great idea for an add-on I think)

• Exotic and Legendary skills

• We need more defined short term win scenarios for WvW. I’m thinking meta events that cycle every three hours in the fashion of Claw of Jormag where PvE meets PvP, shakes things up a bit has reasonable payout and gives players a short term goal to work towards while in WvW. I’m not suggesting this be anything like Claw of Jormag I think it should be something designed that has a large scale PvP element but a cycling event no less that gives the server that wins the battle something special.

It’s been a few weeks since I last ran through AC story mode. Ran through it last night with a three party members who had not done it before and had fun. I configured my Guardian to play more of a support role (Staff + Tome of Courage, et al) and would shift to DPS only when needed (e.g. to get that last 15% of health off of a boss). Mobs didn’t seem overpowered (keeping in mind this is the first dungeon story mode).

It was great fun.

Then in the final battle the servers lagged horribly (skills stuck trying to complete) and I went down twice as a result. I checked my connection during the lag and had no issues outside GW2 so I’m confident it was a server issue. It’s good to see progress, but hope the servers stabilize a bit more soon.

All points here are solid. They just need to fix a few things, hopefully it will happen soon.

No. 1.) The best builds quickly rose to the top. Want to group play? “ping your build”. If your build didn’t match expectations of whatever you would get kicked or asked to leave. 2.) The GW2 system is more complex in the way traits alter skills. It makes it difficult for team mates to hate you for creativity or for not running a specific configuration.

As nice as of an idea as the build system in GW1 was ultimately it failed.

OP: I won’t argue the game needs some balancing tweaks, but after taking in your list of suggestions I agree with those who have said you need to up your game a bit. It’s not an easy game to master and some just aren’t as good at it as others. The PvP in this game is sick and probably more dynamic in terms of required hand-eye coordination than most FPS games. Some will be inherently better than others and the best of the best seem to flock to PvP. Just sayin’

Hi. Level 80 for a few weeks and loving Guardian still. After running through several config I’ve settled on Greatsword + Scepter/Focus (with spirits I should add. Spirits give you range DPS as well). Triats are configured to maximize spirits, PM me if you want the build. IMO if your class supports equipping a range weapon of any sort you should strongly consider it for your swap/alt. Guardian is designed to do melee and to fall back when needed.

Scepter is a better choice than a staff (unless your intent is support) because you get range and damage similar to a staff but you have the off-hand slot.

Build I’m running works for me and I believe it’s one of the most optimal Guardian builds available. ArenaNet’s done a great job so you can configure and play this profession several different ways, each configuration you try is going to take some practice to get good with.

Agree with these ideas! In future expansions I’d like to also see optional repeatable Cooperative Story chapters that occur between Personal Story levels. Really missing Cooperative Missions from GW1 in this game and they wouldn’t be that hard to add back. I guess you could argue “Dungeons” provide this. A dungeon like CM story is pretty much exactly what I’m envisioning here. But dungeons should remain unique in that they can be unlocked into an explorable mode.

BurningLobster.1953:

Guild Wars 2 is NOT dying.
In every MMORPG the game launches and undergoes changes, sometimes very large ones. From the various reboots of Star Wars Galaxy to the ever changing classes of WoW, the game you play at launch is rarely the game you play a year later. Quite a few gamers are aware of this, myself included, and so we are waiting to see what direction Anet will take this game in terms of content progression, balance and content addition.

I’m not going to argue this is the norm, but this is also probably the real reason most MMORPG’s die. The death of an MMORPG is a subjective thing For example. the remaining population of SWTOR would probably scream “it’s not dead” but I would say it certainly is relative to its launch numbers.

We’re all waiting for that MMORPG that doesn’t see this huge decline in numbers after the first few months. GW2 has all the design elements to be that game but it’s a bug ridden, unbalanced mess. I love the game. I played it five hours yesterday, I’m not leaving it, but I’m also not sugar coating what it currently is because that does no one any good. It’s not good enough to loose 40-50% of your user base and then say “well, they will come back when new content comes”. If that happens to your game then as a MMORPG developer you have failed.

In terms of having to go back and redesign systems in game, perform significant balancing. Yes, there will be a certain level of this happening, but what happened with SWTOR was unacceptable. That’s an example of failure on the part of the dev team to flush out things in beta testing. I know several players who quit in anger over some of those things. That’s not healthy for the game. I don’t think a post telling the community here “guys this is the norm” is healthy either. An MMO doesn’t die when they shut the servers down, it does when the population of the community falls off. As you pointed out, there are naturally going to be some who will leave, but when you have people who loved what the game was at launch and then leave because of broken systems and bugs that’s the fault of the game studio. They need to own that failure and work whatever hours are needed to fix things quickly. None of us want to see that happen. We don’t want this MMORPG to go the way so many before it have. Sadly at this point we have some reasons to be alarmed.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking of lately:
Beta testing is an important phase that fails often for MMORPGs. It seems to be a very difficult thing to get right. When you have major systems that have to be changed post launch so soon after launch that means the beta testing did not do its job. It also means you have a launch product in flames. Those flames must be put out quickly or the angry customers mount and leave in droves. I don’t think I’m the only one who believes it’s unacceptable. Just because every other MMO that comes out goes through all these things doesn’t mean we should accept that. I expected higher quality from an ArenaNet product.

Still looking for Collectors Edition? It’s in stock at amazon (sold by amazon) new for a non-inflated price if anyone is interested.

TinyHowie.3946:

Now there are still a lot of places I haven’t explored (only 48% completion) and I believe I’ll spent rest of the year visiting the world. The thing is WvW is so distracting and so money draining (siege weapons, repairs) I can’t even find a way to save money for the tier 3 cultural set. I’m beginning to think about spending $50 in gem store for that, seeing the money spent there seems more worthwhile than on other “collector’s” stuff.

Anyone can suggest some ways to make money other than hawking TP?

Feeling your pain regarding money. Hate to break it to you, but Gems to coin conversion is right now at about 2g per $10 USD -and- Tier 3 cultural set will cost you 120g or $600 USD if you intend to pay for it entirely with coin converted from gems.

Hi. Long time GW1 player here. Some thoughts.

• The build system in GW2 is just different. Although it’s locked while in combat, it’s set up for dynamic change. When you run a dungeon in GW2 you’re likely to be weapon swapping often and changing utility skills in between combat. You trait choices alter your utility skills and the conditions and boons of your weapon skills. The combination of your traits + skill choices is your build… Although I had concerns at first I’ve come to love it.

• Hearts were added as an afterthought. They are not a form of story delivery. Story delivery in GW2 comes from Dynamic Events, Dungeons and Personal Story. With personal story being the main set of story archs that give you reason to care about what’s going on in the world.

• You forgot to mention Cooperative Missions in GW1 being the primary vehicle for story delivery and how that has shifted now to Personal Story (one being team focued- GW1, the other being solo focused GW2). I think Personal Story should have been complemented by a set of Cooperative Missions designed around team strategy.

Soulwatcher.2604:

If you would like a example of a non WOW successful mmorpg look no further then FFXI. I played that game from 2004 until 2010 and from 2004 until 2007 all zones were packed like sardines. It wasn’t until late 2007 that the game started loosing players. And that’s was because SE was too hard headed and stopped listening to players.

Things have changed since FFXI. The MMO community in general has changed. They move like rabid dogs from new game to new game. The hop in, level cap, complain about lack of new content and then run to next new game. Look at SWTOR. A solid MMO a much better game than FFXI I would say in terms of play mechanics, story overall design (we could argue, let’s not. Let’s go by sales in the first 3 months, SWTOR wins that one). There’s a real problem with the community devouring games that is close to the heart of my original question.

In order for the game studio to have the funds to keep making new content they need players. In a game like GW2 they don’t have subscribers so they need box sales and money coming in through the gem store. The money they have on hand determines their ability to build what they want in future expansions.

If GW2 only has a community of 200-300,000 playing in a year then I would classify it as a dead MMO. We’re not looking for a WoW killer, but it should at least stand toe-to-toe with the runner up (another NCSoft game and also F2P) AION.

Here are some numbers over various years 2009-2012

World of Warcraft – 9,100,000 (2012)
Aion – 3,400,000 (mid 2010)
Guild Wars 2 – 2,000,000 (mid 2012)
Runescape – 1,300,000 (2009)
Lineage – 750,000 (2009)
Lineage II – 750,000 (2009)
Dofus – 520,000 (mid 2010)
Final Fantasy XI – 350,000 (mid 2010)
Eve Online – 325,000 (2011)
Lord of the Rings Online – 210,000 (mid 2010)
City of Heroes/Villains – 125,000 (2009)
Age of Conan – 120,000 (mid 2010)
Ultima Online – 100,000 (2009)
Everquest – 100,000 (mid 2010)
Warhammer Online – 80,000 (2010)

Moonthrower.1406:

They should be given the time they need to fix bugs. Here’s an analogy that the devs for SW:TOR came up with to explain bug fixing:

You’ve got rows and rows and rows of marbles lined up perfectly. And then there’s shelves of these marbles, dozens deep. You try to start tweeking a crooked line, but you bump the row above and below. That causes them to roll slightly, until you’ve messed up 4-5 lines on 3 different shelves.

THAT is bug fixing. Give them some time. :P

I like the SWTOR developer’s analogy. I believe there is a link between bugs (and include flawed design that must be repaired such as what happened with dungeons in GW2) and an MMO failure. You have a situation where 1.) customers are upset. You may be very patient most aren’t. 2.) You’re proven tested systems from beta are broken and you’re have a small window to retool them because of the angry customer base. It’s a horrible place to be in.

How well did the studio prepare to deal with bugs? Is it a case like like Titanic where they viewed their product as an unsinkable ship and now they are reallocating resources and working like mad day and night to fix problems? -Or- Was this part of a contingency plan with a dedicated team in place at launch to deal with these issues and the teams responsible for new content still working away on schedule.

Indications from recent interviews (Chaplin’s being the most recent) make me wonder. I’m not going to say there’s enough to strongly say they weren’t prepared but it does sound like all hands are on deck to deal with these unexpected issues. That is a concern.

In addition to DR I did not mention the obvious problems with waypoint travel cost. I’m not in the camp that says remove them altogether, but something has to be done. The current system taxes players who want to travel to help others… Point is there are a lot of broken systems in this game that after you rack about 160-200 hours in game become obvious. Not little cracks, huge cracks. These things are a threat to the game.

I was hoping to get opinions about what people think is an expected time frame. Instead it seems most people are kind of upset I even pose the question.

I’ve bolded all the obvious examples of massive hyperbole in your post. Honestly, you seem so utterly convinced this game is bleeding players like a severed artery all over your new MMO carpet, so why are you even asking this sort of question?

How much communication do you want? For the first week of launch, they had a day-by-day State of the Game.

1.) There are a lot of players upset about DR. 2.) There are a lot of players who are leaving because of this (we don’t have numbers but the forums are lit up over it). 3.) The implementation of DR came unplanned post launch as a response by the game studio to a problem (broken system) that did not reveal itself in beta testing 4.) Most MMOs fail, even the great ones like SWTOR. When you look at all the data and try to figure out why that happens it generally falls back on things like item 3. The studio in panic mode throwing solutions at broken systems. Solutions they have not properly tested or considered long term fall out of. My assessment right now based on what we do know is that all hands are on deck just trying to just keep the water out of the ship. Are resources focusing on new content? We don’t know! In a screen cast Friday Johnathan ‘Chaplin’ Sharp said that most resources were focused on fixing things right now.

They worked very hard to create a great game and then in haste end up destroying it. This is how great MMOs die unfortunately and I would say that statement isn’t even a point to dispute you can see it time and time again. So my question is how long before we know…

I don’t ask because I hate GW2, I ask because I love this game and don’t want to see it happen. I’m not happy with ArenaNet’s communication post launch, but that is subjective.

There were some rumors at Gamescon this year related to GvG, etc which Colin Johansen quickly squashed, but in his public statement on those rumors he said the community could expect to hear about ArenaNet’s post launch plans very soon. That was a month ago. I just think there’s some reason to be concerned at this point.

IMO when a new MMO launches we know there will be some issues and changes in the first few months. Bugs range from mild annoyances to catastrophic failure (crashes, story stoppers, etc.). Unfortunately GW2 has had a very bumpy launch filled with the full range of bugs. None of us wanted it to be this way, but that’s the way it’s turned out.

I believe they are busy fixing these things, but it’s clear in the rush to find a solution and to stop certain exploits they are making some changes that seem to be done with haste. It’s dangerous territory and we all know this. Systems that took years to design prove to fail post launch and suddenly the team decides to go and do something like DR without having time to properly test that and see long term ramifications.

Its these sort of decisions that can take a successful MMO launch and destroy it. Listening to the feedback of the community is critical, but that’s difficult because sometimes the community will rally behind really bad ideas.

So this leads up to my question: How long should a developer be given to get launch bugs worked out? With any MMO we all know there are going to be issues, but as the bug queue fills up and the developers work like mad to fix problems the game community are expecting some announcement on new content. What’s going on inside ArenaNet remains a mystery. Are all hands on deck to stop the hemorrhaging? Are the teams responsible for new content continuing on as planned isolated from the bugs? This seems like a time when communication between game studio and community would be critical, but instead information coming out seems to have slowed.

It’s a month after launch and it seems several major issues still remain. Some decisions post launch (DR) have angered the community. Will there come a point in time where it’s taking the developer too long to flush out the serious bugs and design flaws (IMO DR was a response by ArenaNet to a design flaw, this is an example of the worst type of patch). How long should the developer be given?

If the bug queue continues to stay full and no new content has been announced a few months into release of a new MMO how long can it last?

OP how are you envisioning this would be a problem. DR needs some rethinking perhaps (as with many GW2 features) but I don’t get your point.