Guild Wars 2

I agree completely, this was a poor way to change progression to 80. I’m not exactly sure what they tried to accomplish with this, I’m level 35 with my second Necromancer and I still can’t get a class defining characteristic through any major trait. That’s pretty horrendous.

Oliver.4017:

I wasn’t disputing what the game’s core content was about, or what content players believe should be considered more important than others. The game title itself was not named for the guild mechanic, pretty much every RPG contains some sort of guild mechanic. The game was titled after the Guild War event. That is fact. Whether or not you guys insist on arguing about what mechanics and content is more important, I won’t play any part in that. I am just clarifying the origin of the game title. Nothing more, nothing less. The guild wars has nothing to do with the competitive battles between guilds. If this was the case, we should be calling every game out there with competitive guild battles ‘guild wars’. Does that make sense? Sorry to sound a little catty, but disputing an opinion is one thing, but disputing a fact is entirely different =P If anything, I hope this helps you understand something you didn’t know. I suggest you read in on the lore of Guild Wars if you have not already. It is very fascinating and I have always enjoyed the stories that Arena Net has created/added to the Guild Wars Universe and look forward to more of it with Living Story Season 2.

If you’re debating the origin of the title of the game, you’re also arguing the intent of the developers as far as it concerns marketing, branding, audience, etc. There’s no way to make your case without invoking the importance of the components of the game. The title doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

And it’s quite a generic title, yes. Nice observation. Runes aren’t unique to Runescape and Wars aren’t unique to Warcraft though so your point holds no weight. Considering it’s very easy to go your entire time playing GW1 without knowing much, if anything at all, about an event that happened prior to the original game, it’s difficult to think of the original intent of the developers as having been focused exclusively on this backdrop when branding their game.

Furthermore, we know that Guild Wars 1 was first and foremost a PvP game. It was marketed as a competitive role playing game. Everything from the skill systems to the way people were taken through content reinforced this. And at the center of this was Guilds, Guild halls, and GvGs.

You’re certainly not wrong that the name, as far as the lore is concerned, references that event, but to claim that the branding (mainly the title of the game) had nothing to do with the competitive guild battles is an outright falsehood.

Guaranteeing you you’re the only one in that game who had any fun. :/

-bump-

This post cannot be allowed to get buried! I think it’ll be okay since this is the anniversary of its creation.

Uhh, here’s an update to my warrior’s appearance in order to avoid infraction, hehe.

edit: caught while blinking, ew.

I’m in complete agreement with the OP, and watching people battle with them on this is very strange considering the points offered. I don’t know why someone should not be rewarded for investing a lot of time in the game each day when that’s the entire point of the daily.

It’s functioning this way in both PvP, and to a lesser extent, WvW, but most areas of general PvE you have to go out of your way to gain your daily reward.

beelzebub.1289:

1. Yeah…if the idea is to toss kegs around i would gladly chuck it at my friends and have a laugh as they get knocked in the face by an exploding barrel of ale.

2. IF THE IDEA OF CRAB TOSS IS TO TOSS CRABS… WHY NOT MAKE IT A TEAM GAME… IT’S LIKE TEAM BASED MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE… seriously… i still dont understand crab toss… “Crab Toss”… should be 100% team game based upon the name itself.

3. once a week is pretty bad considering bar brawl was one of the main highlights in their intro videos. The put a lot of emphasis upon it. I was expecting a more indoor WWE type of thing. not just throwing kegs around willy nilly

lol, Keg Brawl and bar brawl are two different things. Bar Brawl was never actually put into the game, but I still think there’s an NPC advertising for it in Divinity’s Reach. It’s supposed to take place in the tavern in the South West, south of Mina’s Target Shootout (which also never came out)

Would probably help if they made activities desirable to most people, but they didn’t. Instead they’re an excuse for another AP on the daily.

Needed a condi build for my necro, here’s a fairly generic look I threw on it. I’m a big fan of green, I’ll be honest.

My Guardian and Elementalist in some beautifully lazy photoshop. I think I uploaded these two before but not with the same armor/backpieces.

Hope you like.

Dean Calaway.9718:

They could start by improving the stability.
Then make Team join or Solo join like in PvP.
Have teams registry, uniforms and everything.

With that maybe they could create a community around it, there’s no short of people with too much time that have “nothing” to do in game.

I couldn’t agree more. The worst part about the entire situation revolving around Keg Brawl is the silence. I don’t think they’ve mentioned a specific feature update to Keg Brawl since like January 2013, even when they have patches that make severe changes to it.

And then refuse to make any explanation of these changes anywhere. Who asked for these? I didn’t. Why are they doing them?

LunarNacht.8913:

I hope these mini games will be made guild games at some point. Like personal pvp arenas, you buy a guild game and your guild can join it when ever they want together.

Do want.

-He has CoF helm, purchased with tokens from the citadel of flame dungeon explorable paths.
-TA chest piece. Similarly, purchased with tokens from Twilight Arbor explorable path.
-Draconic leggings purchased from trading post.
-I can’t see what his boots are. Mostly covered by the leggings.
-Toxic guantlets that were sold on the gem store a while ago.
-Human t2 shoulder piece purchased in Divinity’s Reach
All dyed assumedly abyss if not midnight fire.
He has the legendary hammer The Juggernaut and the legendary Greatsword Twilight.
The wings are Hologrphic shattered and they’re no longer available in the game as they were part of a tempoirary event some time ago.

This made me feel whole it better about it actually.

Add [DPS] to Fort Aspenwood list. Should also add [GODS]

You may be on different servers or worlds. You should find out what server you both are on by going to character select and then world selection in the bottom left. One of you should then highlight the other persons server and select the guest option. This will allow you to play on that server on the next time you Load in with a character. You have to do this each time you load into the game from character select otherwise you’ll be placed in the default server.

You can tell what is your original server by the one that has a house icon. You can only be guests to 2 additional servers at a time for 24 hours.

-breaks down and begins to sob-

WOE IS ME, etc.

The threat of a gear treadmill or linear progression focused endgame is still looming dangerously low over the potential future of the game.

I’ll never understand what the point of having competitive game modes if you won’t allow them to actually be competitive.

Where was all this support 5 Months Ago?

Introducing….

Freedomancer!

She bombs her enemies with unmanned clones. :O

SlothBear.9846:

But hey at least it’s not Crab Toss.

10/10, would laugh again

robertul.3679:

Also you forgot to mention the way balancing works.

There’s a lot of stuff I didn’t mention.

Vayne.8563:

Well, if it’s not a good game, and no one likes it, maybe it should just be removed from the game.

+1

I don’t like being reminded every Saturday that ArenaNet hates me.

RedStar.4218:

Serelisk.6573:

It’s pretty much only in there as an homage to GW1 Eye of the North fans, it has no place in the current lore of the game.

…As far as I know, Primordus didn’t magically disappear nor did the dwarves fighting its minions underground. It’s not a homage. The HoM is a homage to GW1 players. Events in GW1 are part of the lore of GW2 because it’s the same world.

I was just offering an explanation for why this is seemingly unexplained in GW2. Which is largely because the current story of GW2 told so far (Zhaitan, Scarlet)… makes zero mention of, nor does it include any relevance to, the Dwarves, Primordus, or pretty much anything that happens in GW1 really.

Maybe homage was the wrong word, but Ogden’s place in that portion of the Personal Story can only be appreciated by the people who followed the lore explained through the events of GW1 whether they played the game or looked it up on the wiki afterwards.

Just because it took place in the same world does not make it relevant to the current story that is being told.

It’s pretty much only in there as an homage to GW1 Eye of the North fans, it has no place in the current lore of the game.

Not really a whine thread, just thought I’d provide my current thoughts on a part of the game-type I invested heavily in last year.

#6.) No Community
Every other part of this game has a forum, and active participation from the GW2 community to discuss that segment of the game, but I don’t even know if General Discussion was the right place to put this list, lol. Nowhere is there a place that labels or even implies discussion of activities in the game. How do you know if people actually like Keg Brawl? Without any outside-game participation, the game doesn’t evolve. The meta doesn’t change and the game doesn’t garner enough interest to develop for. Perhaps it’s in large part because of the problems listed here that we know everyone doesn’t like Keg Brawl at this point.

Which makes it difficult to understand why it’s even still in the game. It’s a slap in the face to anyone (mostly me) who desperately wants Keg Brawl to be more, and a chore for the other 99.99999% of players who purchased and still play this game just so they can get another achievement point for their daily participation. And I don’t enjoy being slapped.

#5.) No Support
Because the game doesn’t have any competitive support such as leader boards, or cosmetic rewards more than a single title, no one will or should care about this game type. So if Anet does not think it’s worth developing further into, and clearly the entire GW2 community doesn’t enjoy it as it currently is, then why is it still in this game?

Maybe at one point they planned for activities to be worth something, but now you can’t even list them as a feature of the game. More people actively engage in the sport that is Lion’s Arch map chat than do people who even acknowledge Keg Brawl’s existence in this game…

#4.) Every game has blatant server-side lag
Seriously, is Anet hosting the servers for Keg Brawl (and possibly the other activities) in the bathroom or something? It’s always suffered from horribly weird and buggy up and down lag spikes that lead to so many obnoxious glitches.

I can’t fathom why Keg Brawl, a game of 10 players in an instanced version of Hoelbrak, lags more frequently, and in larger magnitude than any I’ve experienced in my entire time playing in World versus World.

#3.) Rampant afk’ers for daily achievement
As if you needed any more of a reason to take this dog out back… Keg Brawl is the only activity on the rotation that is a team based competitive game-type, so it suffers a lot more from people who join an activity and AFK just to get a daily done while they go make some hot chocolate.

It makes anything aspiring to be a competitive game-type a joke when 20 or 40 percent of your team is comprised of leeches. You’re pretty much asking people not to try and win, but only to be happy with their daily activity participation and move on.

#2.) Only available once a week
This is one of the worst offenders, because if we can forget for a moment that this game is terrible, and pretend there’s someone… anyone… out there who enjoys this game type enough to spend more than a single game playing it per week, you’ve artificially limited them to being unable to play 85% of the time.

I would love to hear the reasoning behind that, because I honestly feel sorrow for people who enjoy any of the other activities who couldn’t get one extra day to play, say, Southsun Survival because ArenaNet’s artificially keeping this Spirit-of-the-Wild forsaken creature alive by shoehorning it into the rotation…

#1.) Still can’t play with friends
Every other part of this game allows you to play with friends. From something as simple as your personal story, to huge fundamental mechanics of the game like guesting or waypoint/fast travel that exist so that you can enjoy the game with friends. You can even play hot-join PvP with friends…

However, the activities, which are expressly for fun and offer such a wide variety of play experiences that can appeal to both the humbly-casual and the hardcore-competitive, still carries on with the gross oversight that you are not able to enjoy this with your friends?… Sadness everlasting.

Tl;dr: Serelisk uses General Discussion as his soapbox for ANet conspiracy to overthrow his enjoyment of Keg Brawl

There doesn’t exist powerful enough words to describe how much I would like to play any of the activities with friends or guildees. I couldn’t give two kittens if this game gave achievements points or not, I thought one of the design pillars of the game was playing with your friends.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

Phantom.8130:

killcannon.2576:

Progression doesn’t have to be about stats. And for me it isn’t about stats, it’s about reason.

Sweeping Generalizations

The game lacks progression because the idea behind it is very inclusive instead of exclusive. There is no reason to log in because you never fall behind (one reason they introduced LS was to give the illusion of falling behind). No one stands out, everyone is equal, everyone is the same. No one gets shut out of any content ever. You don’t have to do AC to experience Arah. You don’t have to do your personal story to get to Cursed Shore. You never have to craft. You never have to leave the starting zone, you can rescue bunnies till you fall over dead. You don’t have to do anything.

It’s the epitome of the casual MMO, and that’s a good thing for many players and I’m glad they made a game for that crowd. But progression minded players (horizontal or vertical) don’t have much to shoot for. It’s the Minecraft of MMO’s.

i understand what you’re saying entirely. if make a new character and get him to level 80, and decide that i’d like to run arah, all i would have to do is just go to arah. the same with everything else. i don’t even have to acknowledge the existence of the lower level dungeon leading up it. progression would be starting with only AC available, and having to complete it to unlock CM, and so on up the list until i’ve done them all and am able to do arah. the same with everything else you’ve mentioned. it has nothing to do with gear whatsoever, but about actions. needing to complete easy tasks before being able to graduate up to doing harder and harder ones. starting off at the bottom and working your way up through the ranks. that sense of accomplishment is pretty much nonexistent in gw2. to use an analogy, it’s the difference between starting off in the mailroom and working to be promoted higher and higher up the corporate ladder, and being able to just start off as the CEO right off the bat. when you look back, and see all that you had to accomplish to get where you are, it means a hell of a lot more to you than if it was just hand delivered to you from the get-go. it also gives you goals to strive for. if you start off at the top, there’s nothing left for you to shoot for. if you start off at the bottom and need to earn your way up, each step becomes a goal in itself. gear is so often viewed as progression simply because acquiring each tier is a ladder of goals in itself. once you get the top tier of gear, there’s no new goals, so most MMOs spew out another few tiers of gear every now because it’s absurdly simple to do from a developer standpoint. it’s also extremely lazy and unimaginative, but it’s been done by so many companies for so long that it’s just become the accepted practice as well as the accepted definition of the word progression. it doesn’t reflect well on MMOs as a whole, when you think about it.

So you want linear progression. If that works for you, that’s great.

I don’t particularly want linear progression. If I’m good enough to do a higher level dungeon without doing a lower level one, I should be able to.

Well, luckily for you, that’s the game we currently have in GW2. And I’m glad there is a game for the players who don’t like progression out there.

‘For players who don’t like linear progression*, which is still not entirely accurate because, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t that the whole reason Fractals even exist?

I’ve posted a lot of these already telling what armor and dyes they have, this is all my current characters though.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Scriniel.2930:

Cerai.9741:

Wow, your guys are pretty neat. A lot of armor blends. I tend to use full sets and go color schemed, with only a couple exceptions… Couldn’t really say who is best looking though. I have too many toons and tons of armor sets, I so I will humbly submit my “family photo” of all my toons and you guys can pick for yourselves. Sadly, no back slots or weapons shown, but to get them all in a row like that would be hard anywhere but the login screen.

Hey! I decided to make a family photo of mine too!

I salute you sir! Isn’t having lots of characters great!

Agreed.

Hehe, I like the dichotomy of my two Asurans.

Lol, it’s your thread. The burden of proof is on you to support the claim you made in the OP so people can have a worthwhile discussion about it.

It’s nearing Wintersday again so I figured I’d pull up an old screenshot.

Unless you’re planning on crafting more than 64 legendary weapons with one account… you can just buy more character slots…

Unless I missed something.

DeWolfe.2174:

Gold may be "easy " to come by but, it certainly isn’t plentiful enough to cover all my alts and desires. I do not have a single legendary, nor ever had a precursor drop, or even a really great dye. The best drop has been one I just received yesterday, it was white dye. That’s after 4k hours of play!

So I’m stuck just trying to keep up with the cost of virtual living with a family of 11 alts to feed and cloth

I know this feel so bad… Q.Q

Asuran technology isn’t necessarily any better or worse than Charr. It’s not like theirs is future tech, respectively. It’s more the focus of the science and study of magic and the eternal alchemy, whereas the Charr focus on the science and study of physics and engineering.

If we’re talking about the long run, the reasons that the Elder Dragons have awoken is to consume the excess of magic in the world that runs on the ley lines of Tyria.

So, regardless of whether or not the dragon destroys either of those two races, if the 5 races can not defeat the dragons, there’s potentially a time limit on the amount of time they can tap into the pool of magic before they start noticing the adverse effects of a low magic state Tyria. And I think one of those adverse effects would be the collapse of Asuran society. Everything they do is closely associated with the excessive amounts of magic that’s available to use on the planet. Rata Sum could come crashing down, instantly destroying their capital city that was held up by, what I would assume is, magic.

Whereas the Charr don’t have and will never have that handicap because their society rejects the use and, certainly, the dependence on magic.

You can very well hold ArenaNet accountable for what they say because what they say about their product before purchase should have a direct impact on who purchases it and why. That’s what marketing and advertising is…

Definitely this one… lol

I named her…

Bloom.

When your teammate has th keg, pretty much stay as close to him as possible. Especiwlly when he’s knocked down because someone for sure is gonna try to knock it out of his hand. If you’re rrally trying, you can get 3 or 4 recoveries per game.

However, its not the most enjoyable way to play. I got it eventually playing normally but it, alongside assists are for sure gonna take the longest amount of time to get regarding the conditions of the keg bral matchup

I’ve already suggested that, but yeah, I agree, it’s a FAR better solution than to make me not allowed to play the activity I liked to play on my leisure time for 6/7ths out of the whole year.

Vayne’s post is a poor representation of Keg Brawl and the other activities at best, and a detriment to any hope of seeing things change at worst. As long as ArenaNet accepts that apologist sentiment as feedback, things are never going to get better. He’s pushing a tired, metric-driven argument that has no critical analysis of the condition of the game, it’s player base, and the actions ArenaNet has or has not taken since the game has launched.

I’m largely in agreement with you, OP. I like Keg Brawl, as evidenced by my signature. I was even willing to create a guild that served (very successfully) as a roster for people who also liked Keg Brawl and wanted easy access to finding people to play with if and when they wanted. But I don’t like Southsun Survival. And I do not like either Crab Toss or Sanctum Sprint as they exist in the daily activity rotation. There’s no community dialogue, no leader board, no way to even play or compete with friends. No social or competition tools whatsoever to bring out the best parts of free for all game types.

At least when Keg Brawl was the only activity and barely played, I could somewhat guarantee getting into a match with my friends. I far prefer that over the daily-afk’ers, and severely lowered competition level that makes Keg Brawl so incredibly boring to play now.

I won’t like this until they add a Keg Brawl finisher for achieving the title/achievement Keg master, and make it something spectacular like dropping a giant guild keg (from the banquet consumable) on top of them and not just a stake with a tiny flag on it that says “Kegmaster”… and players who already received it would obtain that retroactively.

Until then, I will forever be bitter that ArenaNet only made this unbalanced change simply to promote their gem store finishers in open world.

Svarty.8019:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I don’t like the fact that it’s only the gem store and converting gold-> gems is less than practical. I guess you have to wait for expensive ascended armors that look pretty hideous.

1. Is it impractical? Really? I don’t think it is. The amount of play/work required to acquire the gold to buy a whole set of gear on the TP is probably somewhere near the amount of effort required to earn tokens in dungeons for the nice sets there.
2. Ascended armour may look ugly, but there are already transmutation stones in the game. Use those.

Who’s next?

1.) Did you dismiss someone’s argument based on ballpark speculation?
2.) Transmutation crystals are not in the game, they are exclusively purchased through the gem store I’m pretty sure.

80 Guardian 1 Asura: WvW main w/Commander title, rarely dungeons
80 Warrior 1 Norn: PvE Dungeon & Living Story main, WvW alternative
80 Mesmer Sylvari: PvE Dungeon alternative, WvW alternative, Keg Brawl character, go-to jumping puzzle character
80 Engineer Charr: WvW alternative, made to look cool & play open world content with friends
80 Necromancer Human: carries account name, WvW alternative,
sub 80 Elementalist 1 Norn: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Elementalist 2 Asura:made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Guardian 2 Sylvari: SPvP main, made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Warrior 2 Human: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Ranger Charr: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Engineer 2 Sylvari: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Thief Human: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Necromancer 2 Human: made to look cool & play open world content with friends
sub 80 Thief Asura 2: made to look cool & play open world content with friends

I think that about covers it for now. I like the open world content this game launched with (and hasn’t received any real support since). I also like the potential for cool and unique sets of armor which you can view most of in my sig.

All I did for a long time was WvW and Keg brawl exclusively, but since the former is suffering from a lot of problems and I’ve since had no motivation to level any more characters to 80 to play Wvw and ArenaNet basically took Keg brawl out of the game…

Doing dungeons to get gold → most of my gold goes to alts getting expensive weapons like Sclerite or equipping them in some combination of cultural and exotic armor sets or buying gems to get more character slots.

Zelkovan.2630:

Y’know what’s funny? Months ago the forums were complaining about RNG boxes and saying that they would much rather purchase new armor/weapon skins off the gem store. Lo and behold, Anet does that, and what does the forums start doing? Complaining that the armor skins are in the gem store.

It’s like a baby who wants candy but when she gets the candy she starts crying and wants to give it back.

Anyways, idk about you OP, but I would gladly shell out 10$ to purchase armor if it keeps the game running. It is MUCH better than them being locked away via RNG or having stupid grind amounts to get them.

I don’t remember any of the armor sets being locked behind RNG. Even the holiday costumes were the same straightforward buy that they are now.

What you’re referring to is the weapons that were & are still locked away behind quite an amount of RNG boxes via Black Lion Tickets from BLC keys and chests. Weapons which eventually make their way onto the the trading post for a considerably large amount of gold.

So your post is a very inaccurate depiction of the events of this game and forum community.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about Town Clothes and how to change them to cultivate the social community ArenaNet attempted (and failed miserably) at.

It’s a good idea, though, if they were gonna put any further support whatsoever in supporting the mini games. They’re not though. :/

Dante.1508:

Nuka Cola.8520:

i do NOT want mini games. I want to play ‘hairy’ content with friends where strategy is needed, not kick a red shiny ball across the room and talk to 4 npcs. That said, fishing and poker are the two mini games i would enjoy.

Really this, i joined Guildwars 2 to play Guildwars 2 not “minigameswars”, i think we need more real game content and such, most mini games i’ve seen were quite lackluster and attached to ridiculous grindy achievements..

I don’t hate mini games as such but i do see them taking developers away from the big picture so to speak..

Once upon a time, the big picture of this game was to (attempt to) provide unadulterated fun at every turn while providing cosmetic or prestige rewards as the primary form of progression.

Since activities/mini games are very much capable of providing both of these things in spades, it’s a very understandable desire for people to want to see these things get more support in the future, including the ability to play them with friends.

I missed something. What image?

I got on my Sylvari Guardian and the Heavy Sylvari t2 armor was dyed gold instead of Sky for some reason, assumedly because colors reset. They changed something surely but I haven’t noticed what it could be.

My Sylvari t3 heavy gloves appear to have stayed the same.

lalalalalala lala lalalala laaaaa

More ideas for heavy armor, courtesy of my two Warriors and Sylvari Guardian :-) Enjoy.