Guild Wars 2

Ever tried chatting to anyone in party or guild while actually playing the game? you can manage a couple of sentences at best.

Because of this, I have a theory that the quieter the guild chat, the more players are actually playing the game. The busier, the more of them are messing around in LA

My 3
1. Armor repair costs
2. Splitting WvW server choice from the PvE server you play on
3. Map completion in WvW

I’d be interested to know how these responses will be processed and down-selected for discussion. If it’s a pure count of topics and the highest count wins then that may not reflect the real issues that need to be addressed. So we end up with a list of symptoms that are part of a wider issue that did not come up so often.

So in effect we end up talking about sticking plasters rather stitches.

The cynical part of me says that we will get 3 simple ‘fluff’ issues to satisfy the ‘we are listening’ accusations and the real core issues will get left out. My hope, as a customer is please don’t dodge the real issues.

TLDR: In short the game is the tin man. It has a brain what it lacks and needs is a heart

I’d be interested to know how these responses will be processed and down-selected for discussion. If it’s a pure count of topics and the highest count wins then that may not reflect the real issues that need to be addressed. So we end up with a list of symptoms that are part of a wider issue that did not come up so often.

So in effect we end up talking about sticking plasters rather stitches.

With that in mind my three(yes they are broad but are I feel the root cause of many issues)

1. Social stickiness (aspects like region splits, server and overflow issues, sub standard chat systems, not seeing guild chat of non repp’d guilds etc)

2. Creating gaming memories (being able to have memorable gaming moments with friends, combat system limitations, build flexibility and viability and living story issues)

3. Community expression (very little in game to bring the gaming community together, server pride is currently individual hatred, over use of soulbound/account bound items etc)

The cynical part of me says that we will get 3 simple ‘fluff’ issues to satisfy the ‘we are listening’ accusations and the real core issues will get left out. My challenge as a customer is please don’t dodge the real issues.

TLDR: In short the game is the tin man. It has a brain what it lacks and needs is a heart.

It may seem a petty point. But “Anet lied to us” is different to “I feel that anet lied to us” The former could be seen as insulting because it’s stating it as a fact and the latter is expressing a feeling, an emotion.

So for sure, beat down on the deliberately vindictive but please don’t quash the ’I’m feeling this way’ threads and posts.

One of the key phases in dispute resolution and indeed taking criticism from passionate customers is recognizing and respecting how they feel even if it’s factually wrong.

E.g

‘I feel Anet lied to us about the manifesto’

I’m sorry you feel that way, but here’s how we are addressing the issue.
I think you have a valid point here, and we’re sorry if it appears we gave the wrong message. We’re learning all the time, and we’re doing XYZ to make sure it doesn’t happen again

Both of which are waaaayyyy better than deletion, infraction or banning which does nothing to resolve the conflict in feelings and only drives them underground to be spread by other means.

I’d be interested to hear how such threads and posts will be handled.

Astewart.8415:

I didn’t travel to Kessex since the patch, but this is the type of things that the living story should be about. Awesome.

Being pedantic i’d have rather have had new DE’s around the area. Perhaps seeing krait chop down the forests, seeing and protecting refugees from the wrecked village etc. While it’s kinda neat to have stuff pouf overnight it’d really exploits and highlight how good the DE system is to have the wood and structures be subject to DE’s rather than the press of a dev keyboard.

1. Getting rid of servers and region locks for PvE. Keep em for WvW. But let us play with anyone, anywhere. This would include sorting out over and underflow systems.
2. Chat functions as befits a AAA game. E.g Custom chat channels, being able to see all the guild chats of all your guilds even when you’re not repping.
3. Guild last login etc etc
4. Moving away from the dodge>all mechanic
5. Far less soul and account bound items (make them the exception, not the rule)

The solution would be to work from material already in the core game, or leave some context or background in after the LS has done.

Vayne.8563:

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

That doesn’t mean that big things can’t happen or won’t happen…but the living story was never supposed to further the main story or be the main story. If you expect it to, you’re bound to be disappointed.

If there were expansions planned then I would agree with you. But as yet it seems like the main story is what is going on in the living story so that’s really all we can go by,
I think I said in another post. it’s like if return of the jedi showed us a few clips of the new death star being built and then spent the rest of the movie(instead of half of it) having our heroes play with ewoks, forgetting all about this big metal moon thing in orbit.

The pacing just feels.. wrong. If there is a main story forming, then we need reminding of it. If we are going after other dragons then they need to start making more of an impact. In short, remind us there is a moon sized death star above us that’s slowly being completed while we play with Ewoks.

The other main issue I have with the living story(and one which makes me totally disengage from it and focus on just doing the content) is that it has no story. It’s just a middle and a bit later on middle.

Every LS pretty much presses the reset button on things, there is no insight into characters motivations, past or dreams. For example Elen Kiel. All of a sudden she’s running for the LA council. Not once when we met her or previously did she say something like ‘you know I could do a lot of good if only I had more resources’

Eir never once mentions she has a son, or even that she’s hiding something that could be a son.

If Scarlet is so unique and graduated from all Asuran colleges you’d think she’d get a mention. Esp being a non Asura.

and so on and so on.

In order to be effective as a story previously referenced stuff from the core game needs to be brought in. Chekov’s guns that have been placed on walls need to be bought into play. Whereas now we get guns appearing from mid air, characters who’s motivations and history there is no reference to outside of that content all of which makes the LS look like a 10 year olds made up story.

In short, the encapsulated nature of the LS is actually detracting from the LS.. If players missed some LS content, then at least retcon it into the core game so there is some context.

I’m sure it’s not the writers fault. We know they can write good material. I just think they are not given the time or the scope or do so. It just seems to me that they are writing the LS more like a cheap day time soap than a breaking bad.

Story wise, I too feel Gw2 has kinda lost it’s way with the living story. Any mention of dragons, their champions and all the threads left dangling have seemingly been forgotten.

It’d be like star wars showing us the second death star being built, and then switching to our heroes playing with Ewoks for the entire rest of the film with scant regard for what’s going on around them. At least in RotJ we get back to the second death star and the empire. But here it’s like we’re playing with Ewoks..

On a narrative level the LS fails also, mainly because there is no ’Chekov’s gun’s’ laying around for us to link the stories.

Scarlett comes from nowhere. I would have thought a non asura who went to all the colleges would at least get a mention in the asura or sylvari PS even as an aside
Teq gets buffed due to Zhaitan, so how come the big Z didn’t make him super Teq in the first place?
Eir has a son? Since when? we share in her most intimate moments in game, help her get back together with her friends and zero mention of him. Just a soap opera style ’I’m Eir’s son’ moment in content long gone.

Remember the stories you wrote as a kid, where enemies, gadgets, friends and solutions came from left field?

Kinda reminds me of lost, how they clearly made it up as they went along and then had to retcon and shoe horn stuff in to try to make it fit.

That’s how the living story feels. A return of the Jedi with just Ewoks playing, more retcon than a bad comic series and the plot foreshadowing of a 10 year old’s story writing.

Sorry to be so harsh on it, but it’s just how it seems to me.

I’d rather have an average solo player but knew how to work as a team than a player who can solo lupi and did liadri who doesn’t.

That was my main issue with the gauntlet content. It did nothing to promote team play, build synergies or selfless play. All of which IMHO should be more important than how well a player can play as an individual.

I like the idea of a shatterer rework. Personally if we could use what happened in the beta it’d be great in that dead players would come back as branded versions of themselves(complete with new skillbars) who would then have to go after the living players.

Basically dead players PvP live ones trying to kill the shatterer.

Just think how awesome it’s be if we didn’t have servers and have a district system instead. The zones would always be full and no need to worry about server mergers, times of day and being able to join your friends no matter where in the world they are…

Server mergers are inevitable at some point along the way, especially with world events like Teq driving players towards the higher population ones.

imho you don’t need to train to use the 2 skill on recharge. Press CTRL-T on Teq and then press T to re-target him.

The most useful prep a turret user can do is make sure their zerg is in range and communicate with the commander in that zerg. If i’m on a turret or in a zerg I always ask for a range check. Too many people die simply because they drift out of range of the turret’s cleanse or the turret user is so focused on pressing 2 they forget to cleanse.

It’s probably harder than it sounds even though the game knows how many overflows there are, knows where your friends are and also allows you to jump to them.

I thought it went away after you did the boss week meta?

Paradox.5498:

Ending up on overflow ain’t got anything to do with ppl guesting. There are thousands of people on your server while a zone only has room for a couple of hundred or not even that many. It’s the zone population caps that suck big time, not the guesting mechanism.

It’s actually all of it needs fixing. People need to be able to choose what overflow they can go in, any perceived notion of server loyalty has turned into poisonous server bigotry and basically it’s a mess.

Now Anet can paper over the cracks and keep having this happen or they can get the backend right giving them the space and time to do world bosses right.

Ohoni.6057:

There are lots of suggestions to guest onto other servers or join guilds, I don’t want that hassle. I just want to be able to log in when the message pops up, show up in the zone, and stand a solid chance of getting through it so long as I do my part. Right now that’s statistically unlikely.

Until Anet sort the overflow and server systems out that will be unlikely to happen. The best we can do is what people have suggested.

Future world bosses will also suffer from the same issues..

Get on a server super early and then map to brample pass waypoint and keep trying going through the portal and out again until you get in. Just after a teq spawn is best.

Alas you will probably spend all day trying to kill him. Such is the lame nature of the overflow and server system here. BUT once you get in, stay in. It will happen

Or maybe they are giving the metrics gathered during each and every spawn time so they can draw meaningful conclusions from them?

Fix the back end (note do not remove guesting!) , so as not to condemn thousands of players to hundreds of hours waiting to join their friends.

Unless that’s done every world boss will end up like this one, no matter the mechanics in play.

It’s not the fight that needs to change. But the whole backend mechanics of servers and overflows. Until that’s done we’ll get this fiasco every single time they do a new large scale world event regardless of the fight mechanics

Don’t make it easier. fix the server backend (overflows etc) . Making the event easier won’t solve the main issues people are having, neither will it help for the next one they do.

Nick.6972:

Remove overflows, add districts.

Agreed. Basically, if they are going to add similar content in the future they need to sort out the back end server infrastructure. Anything else is a band-aid, covering the cracks and hoping we don’t notice.

This time, we very much did.

Been turret gunner a few times and have had this happen fairly regularly. As was mentioned above jump off and on and it fixes it or it doesn’t seem to happen if you have to jump off to heal yourself due to cleanse on cooldown and poison around you about to take you out.

Basically, I think it’s to do with to some buffer breaking in the turret code making it lag/not work which is reset when you jump on/off. I.e stay on too long and you’ll get it.

The best way, to be sure is to go to each battery(note NOT the laser) at each phase and stay close to it.

You know you’ve done enough when you get the event reward pop up after the event.

A good tip is to remember where the batteries are before the event starts and use a speed buff. If you get sucked under it’s easy to get disorientated so learn the map first.

I have mixed feelings. When I first killed him it was a ‘Yess!’ moment, but mostly relief. Like the relief of leaving the dentist/hospital after a long procedure knowing you never need to go back…

The reasons for me feeling like that is nothing to do with the difficulty or the mechanics of the fight. But it’s all the hoops and waiting needing to be endured by the player to get there, play with your friends and then dodge the whims of fate with AFK and griefers.

yup, or if the attempt is going to fail and you’ve not lost a turret just ignore the boss and protect the turrets at all costs. Another tip is to fight the mobs at their spawn point, not at the turrets

People also need to realise that success or failure depends not only by how well the people who WANT to do the content play, but also the actions of those who DON’T want do the content either by greifing or AFK or even the whims of the game engine that splits the whole team up and ruins the carefully planned coordination

First time in a game for me, that the actions or otherwise of people who don’t want to do something can affect so dramatically the chances of those who do

;)

The majority are doing this to avoid the event being screwed by AFK’ers and griefers. What happens is the group in question hunt for a sparsely populated server/overflow, get everyone they want to take along ready and spike guest/inviting there to make sure it’s how they want it.

Essentially they are creating their own instance

A quick quote from the now infamous manifesto by Mike O’Brian

So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

Having spent many, many hours seemingly in server jail waiting to finally get my sunbringer title the bolded bit is exactly how I feel. It made me spend hours and hours preparing to have fun, rather than doing having it.

It’s great it’s got servers co-operating, but that cooperation plus is almost wiped out by the frustration of stuff the players just cannot control or have to wait up to 90 mins for.

It seems, so rapid now is the pace of development scant thought is given as to how the content will work within the community. The little 15% of polish that makes trying and doing the events a lot more pleasurable(note I didn’t say easier)

For example, halving the spawn time if a TQ event fails. Give us pre-events to do so that completing them spawns him, and allows us plenty of notice for when he comes. If you’re going to have it open world then give us the players the tools to manage that open world as best we can. From overflows to afk’ers if you are going to make this the new raiding it has to be way slicker, not feel as though you are fighting the game’s limitations at every step to get it done.

Make it instanced so stuff outside of peoples control like Afk’s, griefers, non WP’ers, lag aren’t a factor

/Fixed

Doesn’t need any mechanic changes. The main issue I think is that it has the tolerances for failure as a raid boss, with the whims of fate that the open world brings with it.

Kudos to anet for trying something different, but real life practicalities and game limitations bring it down imho.

There are a few and I think compelling reasons why this should have been instanced.
1. It removes the variables beyond a players ability to control.. Afk’s, leachers and griefers
2. It allows me to play with my friends/guildies and helps develop that social stickiness the game desperatley needs
3. it removes the waiting for hours, hoping to not to get overflow issues
4. It helps keep morale and willingness to keep trying up. For sure overflow issues will have been solved but by that time people will cba to do it.

None of these have anything to do with the difficulty of the encounter or LTP which is what a boss should be about. Open worlding the boss just highlights the game mechanics and technical limitations of GW2 wheres instancing it would allow those same mechanics to shine.

Hi, this has already happened. A bunch of guilds has formed a guild called Teq who are trying to down him. They are also using Gandara’s TS server to try to coordinate.

Ask in game for details.

I think there is a difference between people QQ’ing it’s too hard nerf nerf and people pointing out the flaws in the current mechanics that seem to stymy so many attempts.

The former is stuff like it has too much HP, the tidal waves hit too hard etc etc. All that stuff is directly avoidable by the player. You get hit by a tidal wave, learn to dodge, you take the wrong build well next time take the right one.

I think the issue with this fight is that the tolerances for success is set to the levels of an instanced raid, but it doesn’t take into account its actually an open world boss. I.e stuff that is outside of a single players or even groups control.

Stuff like:
AFK players scewing the scaling
Overflow separating pre-organised groups, adding lag and generally messing coordination up
In EU areas, language differences
There is no way to enforce who goes where and does what and when
The low pop server issues with scaling

These are not LTP issues. they are failures of the inherent game mechanics and should be addressed first.

I love that Anet are trying to do Raid encounters open world, but if there was to be a change it wouldn’t be to reduce the HP or stuff like that it would be make greater allowances for stuff a player cannot change or cannot LTP. It does seem immensely frustrating to hear or failure after failure not because the players didnt know what to do, or were not good enough but that the whims of fate condemned the attempt right at the start through no fault of their own.

Vol.5241:

I’m glad overflows can’t do it. It punishes those that refuse to work together. If you want faceroll meta content, do kitten or Jorlag.

Teq is for the hardcore, dedicated and competent. If you don’t want to dedicate any type of effort to it, you will lose, and justly so.

I think the issue people are pointing out is that it doesn’t just punish those that refuse to work together, but also those who do.

The 2 skill isn’t the be and end all of the skill of using a turret. if all you do is spam 2 on recharge you’re denying the attempt increased DPS and condition removal.

There’s a third group of players who think having an arbitrary timer is a lazy mechanics and would like it changed to something more meaningful within the context of the fight. Such as instant fail is 2 turrets are destroyed, a battery is taken out, dead players on the ground hits a certain level.

Just something that would cause TQ to have a victory over the attackers within the lore and story of the game. It’s supposed to be living story, not living timer..

From observation the turret users are essential. Not only do they have to keep removing the scales, they need to be cleansing and buffing the DPS groups in order to keep the rate of damage greater than the amount of time remaining.

While forum feedback will be important to Anet(I suspect they had a sweepstake on how much ‘nerf this’ posts will be on the forum ) what will be telling is the metrics of the number of people attempting it over time and at which points they are failing.

I really don’t expect many changes during the LS events as these will take time to analyse. IF there are any changes it’ll happen later once it’s clear how popular or otherwise TQ2 is.

Stacking with buffs from the turrets would seem to be the way to go. The waves are easy to dodge and as a whole player’s who have done at least a few dungeons should be able to do it.

The other things the BG video showed was that defeated players didn’t wait around to be ressed. Within moments they had WP’d back and rejoined the fray. In every attempt I’ve been in people not doing this has kitten the attempt sereverly

As someone mentioned in another thread, the 15 min timer doesn’t make sense within the context of the game. A better mechanic would be for the event to fail if a certain number of cannons are destroyed, he hits 20 scale stacks too many times or a laser battery is taken out.

This would still give the required difficulty and need to co-operate without the need for a shoe horned in artificial time limit.

http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=299

That’s 5 people not defending a turret or DPS’ing per dead person. It soon mounts up alas.

Like I said. I really wish the mechanics didn’t drive it down this route but it seems to atm

yup res downed people so long as it’s safe, defeated people need to run back. It’s anti community and is selfish and nasty but dead players can’t contribute, attract kind hearted others who then get killed in AoE or aren’t available to defend/repairs things also and so with the end result that the chances of success are reduced.

Don’t like saying it, and would much rather be helpful but with such a tight timer it forces that behavoir

More importantly, they are not contributing by means of being dead

in my mind, it’s like the move to small calibre weapons in war. Kill one guy and you stop 1 soldier, wound him and you stop more from helping as they come to help. Same for this.

It sounds really heartless and I hate that it’s this way and would love to have the mechanic changed but dead players who don’t WP back as soon as they are defeated really hinder the event even if it doesn’t scale as they are bait for kind souls to come help(who then also get killed) and aren’t actually guarding/helping etc

Nope, and i’m glad people did’nt.

I like difficult content, and we got used to zerging so this is a nice challenge. People seem to forget that often Raid bosses take weeks to kill, the first time you went to the UW in GW1 you got mashed by an aataxe and even getting to rastigans house in FoW was an achievement.

I can understand the frustration due to lag, but if you are on a turret and it happens get off and let someone else who has’nt have a go.

I love you can fail this event, as you can’t fail anything else in game unless you run out of money or patience.

You would get a larger sample size, but my gut feeling is most players would just click on the ‘average’ or middle option just to get rid of the pop up whilst getting to feel useful

Was having a chat in guild a few days ago, theorising that there comes a point when a zerg gets so large the amount of drops for the average player will go down to the point where it is almost a waste of time. I.e the time taken to register enough damage to a mob decreases to the point where only those at the very front will have enough time to tag it.

The reasoning was this. Mobs only scale to a certain point. I.e they have a limited HP pool. Therefore the more people damaging them past this point the faster they die.

Since reward on a mob are primarily calculated on damage done, there has to be a point where it becomes harder and harder to score enough damage on a mob to get a box before it’s killed.

Personally I’ve seen this happen(and experienced it) in invasions where champ mobs just evaporate by the time large portions of the playerbase turn up. People leading the zerg ofc don’t see this as they know where it’s going next, but for those playing catch up it does seem to have an effect.

We all know the obvious solution is for a zerg to hold DPS a few seconds, but that’s about as rare as a precursor dropping from a level 2 centaur.

Now the counter to this is that the more players there are, the more champs spawn but again this is capped so only slightly off-sets the issue.

So the question is(let’s take invasions as an example) for the average not leading a zerg player. Is it better for their drops to have say 2 smaller zergs in different places or one huge one given the mechanics listed above as is commonly thought?

While it’s down to pure personal taste I think none of the legendaries look particularly ‘mesmerish’ The great swords are too big and as mentioned above they dont really stand out when you use them, Bifrost is nice but it’s an ele looking staff rather than a mesmer one.

Personally I think the ‘mists’ weapons fit the bill looks wise. Suitably ethereal, no so wide as you can use them for gliding practice and cheap enough so as not to grind any love for the game out of you.

I would save your money and mats for ascended armor, which hopefully will look amazing.