Guild Wars 2

The grind was supposed to be only for cosmetic things – armor and weapon skins.
Max stat gear however was supposed to be easily to get trough many different means so everyone could get it.
Since ANET introduced ascended gear that has changed.

Red Falcon.8257:

The problem with this is that if there wasn’t a gear progression a lot of people would say there is no endgame.
If there is, a lot of people will cry about it.
That’s why they found a middle ground, they give us a tier between Exo and Lege that needs to be aquired by doing content (while exotic can be merely bought).

This will not be reverted or they would incur again into the “no endgame” critic, nor will be extended or they will incur in the opposite critic.
Anet found a good spot to be, it ain’t going to change guys. It won’t change.
If you can’t bear it play another game.

One of the major GW2 selling points was that you ll be able to get the best gear in many different ways: buy, loot, karma, tokens, crafting. That has since been reduced to doing one dungeon over and over. Now they ll partially revert it back to doing stuff in the open world aswell and many of the “progression” crybabies ll start crying again because everyone ll be able to be just as powerful as they are.

So no this is not a good spot for ANET to be. They ve already lost much faith with their existing community and now by reverting the “endgame” partially to what it was they ll loose even more support. You cannot cater to everyone and that s exactly what ANET is trying to do, even to the extent on giving up on their promises and visions.

As for the last sentence: why didnt the whiners that demanded “progression” and “endgame” go play another game instead of bearing with it?

Stacks are 250 max for a very good reason – a technical one, so no that change wont happen.
Instead you could argue to just divide the rewards and requirements by 10 but that would require remanaging of all the current tokens owned by players. More trouble than its worth.
So yea storage is a good investment and so is getting rid of items you dont really need.

It boggles my mind that even to this date there are zero server side checks being done on player movement that would at least prevent teleportation, clipping and limit speed hacks to a certain maximum speed.
I understand ANET wants to be efficient with their resources but this is inexcusable.

Its been said already many times before but what the heck:
Either:
Remove it from the game.
Or:
Make it have the same stats as exotics but with infusions slots that only affect agony resistance.

getzzzonked.7609:

Conner.4702:

You couldn’t be more wrong bluejay. Grinding skill points IS horizontal progression. Due to the nature of the 8 slot skillbar you plateau your powerlevel. Gaining new skills didn’t gain you more power it made you more versatile. So while you are able to do specific content easier it doesn’t mean the other player can’t do it with the exact same build without grinding out skillpoints by thinking his builds ahead.

Yes and no. The meta game in GW1 made it a lot more like vertical progression than you are letting on.
You would grind skill points to get more skills to keep up with what other people were doing and how they were playing.

What a load of kittens. The small fee for a skill was a higher “grind” than getting the measly 15k XP for a skill point and the only meta to speak of was the one in PVP and there you didnt need skill points at all.

Mackdose.6504:

CoRtex.2157:

You can create a character, get him to 20, and you can go where ever you like to go. You want to do fow? you run to toa, you want to finish all missions, fine you’ll do that, you want to vanquish stuff, fine. There is nothing you need to do before to start those things. Buying max armor is cheap, so are runes & max weapons. And you can get them anywhere, any time you want.

This sounds an awful lot like GW2, just so you know.

It did till ascended gear was introduced. After that “buying max stuff” and the “getting it anywhere” parts are a clear distinction.

There was one place, one mission that was infamous for being the death of pugs, where rage and tears were as common as the snow around them and where monks were treated as gods:
Thunderhead keep

Considering the make or (more specifically) break time happened on nov 15 this wont be a make or break but rather a fix or fail time.

I think i ve gotten only a single exotic drop from a non guaranteed source in well over 1000 hours of play.
I dont do dungeons much if at all so its either my bad luck or that the open world is completely shafted compared to dungeons in terms of valuable drops. Probably both.

Guildies of mine are getting exotics out of the chest while i get a gift and some socks.

Up to a few weeks ago i d recommend it to any stranger (and i did) but now that its clear where the game is going i cant recommend it to anyone. In fact i d tell them to stay away.

The AMA did nothing but confirm to me that either the devs after 5 years of mostly brilliant, logical decisions suddenly turned stupid or more likely that they are being dictated from above with clear deadlines and a focus on more monetization and short term profits.

In any case this move turned the game into a single dungeon gear grind and also completely destroyed my trust in the company that i ve supported for 7 years.

GW1 (whether you say its an MMO, CORPG or a kitten is entirely irrelevant) proved that you dont need stat increases for people to play and pay for your game – in fact to pay enough to warrant a sequel – a better GW1! That s what we were promissed. Not WoW clone nr.435.

Everyone loves new areas, dungeons, mobs… that s what makes the game, not ever increasing stat increases so a few elite can feel better about wasting all their time in a game.

World of Grind Wars 2 seems appropriate.

Saved PVE?

Now the new dungeon is nice but the gear grind and the fact that its centred into it basically killed all the other parts of the game.

IMO whoever made this decision really shouldnt be making any more decisions for GW2.

It is but the infusions in ascended gear can go to ascended as well.

Well this is what you get once you start catering to the WoW babies.
I guess its time for a server merge. Which wouldnt be a bad thing considering sharding the servers into worlds was a stupid idea to begin with anyway.

You know what… i thought the lag crabs were bad but this guy tops that.
Someone will probably make a 10hr version on YT soon.

The dungeons themselves are actual very good designed content. I bet a lot of work went into that and everyone appreciates that. Even the weapons and backslot item art is a nice addition.
The ascended stuffs stats and grind requirement though… anyone with a spreadsheet can do that in 5 minutes.

Aelelan.1639:

They’ve stated this before. They only implemented what people have perceived to be the beginning of a gear grind because they felt as though the difficulty/time invested in getting a Legendary and the difficulty/time invested in getting an Exotic set were too far apart. They introduced Ascended as a means by which to give people some sort of a middle ground between those two things. I think they could have achieved the same goal without adding extra stats, but this act was founded in a very real and justifiable reason. If they’re willing to make changes these big as soon as this, they are probably willing to rethink their changes just as quickly. Anet isn’t some demon company, and they don’t implement changes with malice – contrary to how some people would imply by their vehement anger. They care about the game, and anyone willing to delude themselves into thinking otherwise hasn’t seen this quote:

“I’m going to try to get some sleep, because I’m exhausted, and tomorrow is going to be a very long day. There is such a range of emotion I’m experiencing right now, but mostly I just want to say that I hope you guys love it. Love it forever, or love it and then move on to something else, but just love it, and know that three hundred of us melted down our hearts to give it to you. It’s all yours soon.”

We’re talking about people here – introducing free content not only because it’s their job but because they are extremely passionate about their work. It’s easy to just turn these people into faceless monsters out to annihilate all the hopes and dreams you POURED into getting your Exotic sets (lol). You’re not happy about it, fine – say it and go do something else for a bit but don’t hold some arbitrary grudge against these people as though they have some sort of vendetta against you and your virtual accomplishments.

Please spare me diplomatic spin crap. I already heard that from ANET PR guys. What we want is actual reasons and justifications for those actions not some watered down text that has no real answers and just begs for more questions. Saying legendaries are too grindy so we ll introduce more grind for stats so you actually need to grind is ridiculous without first justifying stat grind in the first place.

Me and many others have known and supported ANET for the past seven years. Pulling a stunt like this without any previous communication on why the stat increases and grind are actually necessary and good for the game is just not something anyone of us expected or rather even perceived as possible. Maybe we got spoiled by all the information given to us during production but even so a clear departure of the manifesto and countless blog posts and interviews is not something you just forget to mention.

No company is a demon but they are companies, especially the ones in the back who deal only in money and dont give 2 kittens for the actual product. Even so NCsoft has stayed clear of direct dictation to ANET. To me it seems this has changed.

As for the actual people at ANET. no they are not faceless monsters. We ve grown to trust them, watch them give interviews and some even talked to them live. Noone here holds any grudge against the hard working programmers, artists, etc. but the people who made this decision or rather dictated it… well i d really like to know their side of the story… but we r not getting it.

Also because you mentioned it: i have no max level exotic sets but could have easily afforded them for all my max lvl characters at this point. I m a very cautions person with how i spend my money, virtual or otherwise and was still weighing my options for armor that should have lasted me longer than a few months (as it did for most people).
That doesnt mean that this didnt affect me and i should stay silent about it. A clear departure of principles is something far more important than some pieces of virtual gear and could mean the end of the game and even ANET that we all have grown to love and trust.

Osculim.2983:

All doom and gloom. GW2 is going strong and will go on for a long time to come.

If its going strong why did they completely reverse one of their core principles and not tell us a single thing about it before? They have not told us why they did this, why it was necessary, on what feedback they acted on… nothing!

A company that doesnt provide answers to its customers is always hiding something. Its usually trouble.

Dont worry they ll add it soon enough. I mean they r totally catering to demanding elitist WoW fans now with gear grind and treadmills. I bet you ll be getting mounts, gear checks, the holy trinity and pandas soon enough.

Hanata.3098:

Come on now.

To those people who are complaining that Anet lied and whatnot..are you really that naive to believe that any MMO will not be grindy to a certain extent, or are you just using that as an excuse to hate on the game/genre?

The only game that I’ve ever played that was always dynamic and lacked a grind would be a table top RPG with the GM making things up on the fly, if we took an unexpected turn.

If you can’t deal with grind, I would honestly say just quit MMOs altogether.

GW1 didnt have any grind and many of us played it for years. And even if you are that person who will immediately exclaim “but GW1 was not an MMO” due to your narrow minded view people play and have played games without progression or in this matter STAT progression for years.
GW2 was to be an MMO without grind, without treadmills and artificial barriers.

But apparently too many people got so locked into this narrow minded perspective of what an MMO is due to WoW and other EQ clones that the devs just gave into their demands without any explanation of complete reversal of their policies alienating their core playerbase that has supported them for more than 7 years financially and morally.

Also OP never go posting a letter on behalf of anyone who you do not represent – in this case the majority.

Roven Leafsong.8917:

Crater.1625:

A Gear Treadmill is when you are at 100% of the maximum character power, then the game moves you back to less than 100% of the maximum character power, and you have to go grind more and collect more gear to reach 100% power again.

It’s called a “Treadmill” because you have to keep ‘running’ (grinding) just to stay in the same place that you started.

Hmm, but by that definition, wouldn’t any new content added to the game represent the addition of a “treadmill” of some kind?

For example, whenever a new area is released everyone would be moved back from 100% maximum world exploration, so they would have to jump back on the “exploration treadmill” to return to their previous 100% position.

Another example would be whenever a new story arc is introduced, everyone would be moved back from 100% story completion, so they have to jump back on the “story treadmill” to return to their previous 100% position.

Or consider whenever new skills or advanced traits are introduced, everyone would again be moved back from having 100% skill acquisition, so they have to jump back on the “skill treadmill” to collect those skills/traits necessary to return to their previous 100% position.

I don’t think of any of those examples of fresh content is well described by a ‘treadmill’ metaphor. Surely the OP’s definition makes more sense, doesn’t it?

Perhaps what you have described might fit a different metaphor better – how about “shifting goal posts”?

It think you r confusing things a bit:
We are talking about a gear treadmill here.
New places to explore offer variety. If no must-have-loot (cosmetics) drops there its perfectly fine as it offers an alternative. If statistically higher loot only drops there it is a part of the treadmill.
New story arcs arent a treadmill because you are experiencing actual new things, not increasing a few numbers. It is real progression.
New skills offer variety – unless they are statistically better.
Even gear with different stat distribution is variety.

Doom.7053:

Well, this threads being watched/read I got an infraction from an earlier comment. Seriously though, wait and see, if it is as bad as you guys fear then the game dies(eventually, even the worst games retain a loyal fan base), and if it doesn’t then great for everybody.

I’d prefer to play a game where the Dev’s have a vision and work toward it, even if that vision shifts through time, than for them to bow down to… anti-fan-bois who are usually more fanboi’ish than the defenders.

Devs with a changing – evolving vision. Yes that s what it was with ANET/GW2 so far but this update is basically the complete contradiction of what was said many times over the course of 5 years and iterated from GW1. No gear progression past the maximum and no grind is one of the core pillars of the game.
You take that away and who knows where you ll end up…. but wait, we do know where.
This is not something that hasnt happened before. This isnt something new, unknown. This has been going on in countless MMOs in the past 8 years. The results were always the same:

A hardcore group hits maximum level, gets the best gear, grinds out the toughest dungeons and then demands more.
The devs add a new dungeon, new tougher mobs and new gear all with better stats.
These people again finish it all get it all and demand more.
Eventually the game gets stale and those people leave.
The developer is now left with only a portion of their playerbase because with all this catering to the hardcore they alienated their core audience targeted by the original vision of the game. The game is most likely not sustainable anymore and it dies and with it the developer.

I and many others do not want this to happen to GW2/ANET. That s why we are so vocal about it. The damage has already been done however. Trust and reputation is something very hard to get and easy to loose and they will have to work hard to get them back.

How is introducing a new tier of items not already a treadmill?
It is the first step in that exact process. Something previously unavailable is now dangling in front of your nose. You want it? Well guess what: go grind for it!

But, but they ll stop after this!
Will they really? They ve said themselves they listened to “player feedback” (not mine for sure) but they obviously did listen to people who “have done it all”.
Guess what happens when those exact people “do it all” again?
Will they then just say no to them then?

Why cant they say no to those people now?
Why cant they stay true to the manifesto and many blog posts?

Ainianu.5693:

158 pages of people crying over stuff that is not even in the game to see how it effects…

Many of us have seen this process in plenty of other MMOs. We do not need to see it in GW2 to know what it does and where it leads to. It is well documented and there are many videos and articles about it even linked in this thread.
If you are uninformed about this, that is your problem.

heavyscythe.9780:

Seriously I don’t get why people are so angry about new content being released.

If this update came 3 months from now we would be celebrating but instead we are complaining. All Areanet has done is keep things fresh by giving us things to work towards.

I am a casual player with only 1 lvl 80 character and 2 alts below 30 yet I find the challenge appealing. I’m not the type of player who skips straight to end game I spend most of my time playing through each level range of the game.

Considering the number of lvl 80 players with exotic or legendary armors that already exist, this update only gives players more activities to spend time on rather than getting bored and leaving as soon as they get to 80 and get 100% map completion.

The only people who would really worry about this new tier level are those who spend a lot of time in PvP and all it does in that case is to give people a bit more variety in opponents, instead of several opponents with the exact same equipment sets.

It also makes it so you have to challenge yourself to keep up with the new tier. The reason games are fun is because they are challenging, what is the point of a game that gives you everything with little effort on your part.

A new tier level just keeps the game interesting, if you want to continue to get the legendary instead of the new tier that is fine. But if you want to keep up with the rest of the players you should work towards getting the new tier equipment.

We are not angry because new content is being released.

We are angry because we were lied to.
We are angry because higher gear numbers are not content. They are also not challenging or interesting.
WoW made people believe this and this stupid belief spread trough the entire MMO genre. GW2 was supposed to stop this crap once and for all.

Also this is not a subscription game. People leaving and coming back is perfectly natural.

Ryan.6951:

OP is vocal minority.

Stick to what you said for years in blog posts, AMAs, manifesto videos, interviews, at the gamescoms.

Gear grind is lazy bad game design and it ruins fun.

People like the OP that burn trough what they perceive as content then demand more have always been the minority in MMOs.
So yes ANET do not cave into their never ending demands.

ovan.5947:

Well, it seems like haters gonna hate, one more time.

Seriously guys, what are we going to have friday?

-new pvp map
-new pve map
-new dungeon
-new stuff (seems like this is the problem isn’t it?)

Well 2 points seems to be a problem :

1) that new stuff that you have to have to do that new dungeon
2) Anet dared to make something we weren’t expecting.

Let’s begin with 1 )
Only rings and back item are coming now. So basically, i still have a masterpiece rarity back item, so i’m glad i’ll be able to have a better one. Concerning rings….come on, it’s really so terrible to have to change 2 rings now?

Then, you need this stuff to do the dungeon? Ok let’s look at it.
That dungeon is 3x 3 “smaller dungeon”. Ok, so basically, the first 3 will be done without the stuff, since you need to drop it.
The 3 next may certainly be the same.
Come the 3 last where you may need these infusions. Come on, if 3 items with infusion are enough ( that means 8 items without it) to do this last part, then my finger tell me it’s not gonna be that hard right now.
Where is the problem?

Grind? come one, how many thread could we see until 1 week ago saying " omg i can just grind, that’s so boring, i hate risen i want a new map, i find that armors are ugly i want some new ones …). Wait, grind? omg i will have to get 3 new items ! (1 even will be crafted with the mystic forge….).

But that’s only 3 kittening items ! the rest will progressively come with other updateS.

Running after some new stuff? come on you blind bots, that’s a new rarity king. Does it look like wow? do you have to grind that new item to be able to do another dungeon to get an even better event to make another….. ?
No you just have to get 3 items so please, don’t come crying about that, it’s not even near to what wow or other clones are like.

Concerning 2)….

Well, once my mother told me we would go to new york for summer hollidays. Then, they said : sorry, we can’t do that in fact, we’ll go somewhere else.

What did i answer?

Kitten you ! you kittening kitten i wanna go in NewYork you kitten ! ?

No.

Did i say : kitten you ! i can’t trust you anymore, you’re a kittening kitten liar I hate you i won’t speak to you anymore!

No.

I said Ok, i’m sad but i can understand.

You guys are crying river over something like that? they add another rarity and so it’s going to be hell in tyria?

Come one, if you’re that stupid, just live, i’ll be happy like loads of others.

Don’t just say that same as others, try to understand.

TL DR :

skritts are smarter the more numerous they are, gw2 players aren’t skritts, obviously.

Understand? Understand what? They haven explained anything. They just all of a sudden changed their entire theory, vision, mentality of what their game should be about! If i take your stupid example it would be like your mother suddenly deciding to take you to take you to a forced labor camp instead of hollidays.

The only thing from ANET so far we ve gotten is something straight out of a spinroom in politics.
We have no data on why they decided this is the right course of action, we have no assurance that this will be the last power creep in the game and no reason to even believe anything they say from this point out.

Not only is that a problem but also companies dont just change their strategy out of the blue. Something bad must be going on at ANET for this to have been even considered.

I ve become attached to my characters but this new gear threadmill and what s worse lies from ANET made me so disheartened i cant even get myself to play anymore.

Actually most people ran dungeons for the (no longer) max stat exotic gear.
There is now no point in that.

Untouch.2541:

Faze.6948:

Untouch.2541:

If you NEEDED ascended to even try, it’d be impossible because we don’t get a full set right away, and you get rings in the dungeon.

Sure. But let’s say RL forces a break from the game and you come back six months later to the next patch with the next dungeon, that does require the gear. Now to get back on the treadmill you’ve got to run the previous dungeon no one wants to run anymore because it won’t drop anything they want.

Welcome to gear treadmill hell, GW2 was meant to be free of this nonsense.

Stop using slippery slope arguments.
They’ve said they aren’t going to add more tiers.

They also said many things that they are now breaking with this update.
They ve already adding a tier with this update. That is already a treadmill for anyone that worked hard to obtain exotics.
Why should ve ever trust them again?

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

Why don’t you wait until Lost Shores is actually released and you’ve had a chance to experience what it’s about before you complain?

I personally don’t belong to either group. I’m a middle of the road kind of person. So far this game is still what I purchased and I’m perfectly happy with it.

I’m sorry you are upset. But I would say if you actually do enjoy this game as much as you say you do, you should give the new content a shot. You might find yourself enjoying it.

I’m excited about Lost Shores.

There is no point in waiting. They said exactly what is going to happen and its contradictory to what was promised to us over and over.
This thread has nothing to do with actual lost shores content but the gear and gear mechanics it introduces. Numerical gear values are NOT content to me. They are a progression mechanic to keep grinders happy running in their wheels.

ShadowBorn.6984:

This is mental, all of it. All the commotion created from this UPDATE is just silly. When they make an update obviously they don’t want to lose people. So in their minds they are trying to make things BETTER for us…otherwise, why bother.

So either you(hypothetical you) play the game however you like and for whatever reasons you like, or you simply just stop.

I’m not a so called “fanboy” ANet makes mistakes, and some stuff is just not what I want it to be, but let’s just focus on whichever aspects of the GAME we like.

How is this better? How is lying to your playerbase better? How is loosing your credibility kittening better?
How the kitten is this a mistake? A mistake that all the leads at ANET suddenly made?

This is a kittenstorm of epic proportions and it will not end until we get a definitive answer from ANET.

camoflaugz.5031:

The game has no future if you don’t have something to look forward to and the progression stops.. C’mon how do you not see it? Guildwars 1 and WOW came out around the same time. Where is guildwars 1 today and why does the other game have millions of people 8 years later.. How do you explain that? Anet is doing the right thing here. And by the way I bought the game because it didnt have set roles.. I hate the whole tank, healer, dps thing. Thats what made me buy GW2

GW1 is now GW2 because of this. Because we stuck with ANET and supported them GW2 was made. It was to follow the same principles and be better. Without all of that you d still be playing WoW. Oh snap!

But no. Now we are here with the masses of ex-wow players whining they want progression so they can feel progression to progress for the sake of progression.
With power creep you are not progressing anywhere. You stay in the wheel right in the same spot you were.

Azjenco.9425:

Just curious…

Will people be less upset if ascended gear becomes available in WvW?

No. Its power creep either way and goes against the manifesto and blog posts.
The only way this would be fine is if the infusion thing only applied to the dungeon and you could put it on any exotic or on items with the same stats as exotics only found in that dungeon.

I ve tried playing GW2 since this news came out and i just cant any more. Not out of protest but i just see no point in it.
ANET has lost all and any credibility they had in my eyes and the more questions i ask myself on this the worse it gets:

Was this done to please a vocal minority of raiders that expected WoW 2.0?
Was it done because the sales are bad?
What of the above is worse or does it even matter if its both?
Is this game even financially viable anymore or will there be severe cash shop “limitations” in the future?
Is there any point in playing this game if further patches are going to include gear based progression?
What point is there in achieving something, gearing up your chars only to have to do it again when the next update comes along?
Where are the fixes for the many problems like performance, broken DEs, WvW?
What happened to esports, observer mode?
What happened to endgame starts at lvl 1?
What happened to the manifesto?
Why turn your back on your core playerbase?
Why is there no response at all?
Will they really go trough with this?
Does it even matter anymore?

Zanthrax.6538:

Dear all people who dislike this change…tell me how 2-5 stats will effect your wvw or PvE experience? By that mark why aren’t you complaining that legendaries have a 1 damage point increase on exotics…clearly that 1 point of damage is making all the difference.

You do not understand gear creep and tiering.
It starts with one small stat increase and then another and another and so on and so forth completely devaluing everything you ve done. While tiering separates the playerbase, locks you out of content and promotes elitism – all things we didnt want in GW2. Or should i call it GWoW2 now?

I could say it in a thousand words…. disbelief, anger, sadness, hate, disappointment… and many kittens.

But i ll put it simple:
ANET you have lost my trust.

hplee.2839:

Evee.2714:

hplee.2839:

right….“millions of people on your side”

The grind-for-stats World of Warcraft still has more people playing than this so-called “grind-for-appearance” game.

that is the inconvenient truth fanboys don’t want to see. lol

then they can go play WoW, this is a different game

they advertised it differently than WoW

If you want WoW go play WoW or one of it’s clones, leave this game alone

yep, a lot of people have already left…so that’s why you have people complaining about their server is dead.

No progression = No desire to log = No players

Players are mostly leaving the game because of the many issues (performance, balancing, bugs) that are still not fixed and because they are not married to the game like other subscription MMOs. Even i took a break for a few days to play XCOM and BL2.

People that are leaving because there is no visible numerical progression just ruin games anyway. This kitten been going on since EQ because of a vocal hardcore PVE minority. GW1 stopped it and now we r going back to this kitten with GW2? No thanks and go back to WoW.

So ANET is now catering to the many screams of WoW sheep that want a new WoW instead of their core playerbase? Why? Just so these people can play the game for another month then complain they dont have anything more to do and then this kittentarts over again and again… the game doesnt have a sub so what justification is there for this kitten?

Vertical progression systems like infusion or the lightbringer buff were ok but better general stats that apply to each and every area of the game definitely are not.

Makes perfect sense apparently (Q6600@3GHz, 560Ti):

Sylvari face 2 weird shadow in left eye:

Avectius.3271:

Ashley, isn’t this supposed to be an issue with the GAME? There have been hundreds of players experiencing slow performance despite possessing strong enough machines to run this game flawlessly. People can’t even get good FPS results with all settings set to low.

With that said, I don’t think this is an isolated issue.

Can we at least get an official announcement on what’s being done to fix the game? Or at least SOMETHING. Please.

I ll second this.
There s been so many down right stupid suggestions on how to fix these issues like changing flash settings to even harmful things like overvolting your GPU suggested by other players when the real problem is the game engine itself.
Yes a certain small percentage of players have old drivers, messed up systems or very old dual cores/bad laptops but even they would get a significant FPS improvement if the major issues with the game engine would be fixed.
I wont pretend i know what exactly these issues are but bad optimization, no occlusion, horrible threading and improper CPU and GPU usage all come to mind when i see this:

Q6600 at 3.0 with 560Ti
Horrible performance.
PVE 20-40
Larger events 10-20
WvW sieges 5-10

Do not bother getting an old quad for this game as its horribly unoptimized and i ve yet to hear anything from ANET that this is gonna change.

See this for info: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Performance-inconsistencies/first#

I m playing trough the game on my second character and i m really getting tired of stuck events and skill points. Every zone i go to there s at least 2 or 3 of them not working. Worst case scenario – the zones main chain is bugged.

I m pretty sure by this point all of them have been reported several times but can we get at least a temporary fix like a server restart/reset every few days or so till the actual fixes are applied?
Another temp option would be to have a kill timer for events that dont progress anywhere in x hours but i m not sure how your event engine works so this might be more trouble than its worth.

I m bumping this up because its the best explanation i ve found so far as to why people like me are getting horrid framerates. Devs really need to look at this.

As i already said in the betas I m rather disappointed by the variety of armors. Most heavy armor is just plate tin cans and most leather just coats with pants. Sure there are a few exceptions but the variety just isnt there.
GW1 was much better in this aspect: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prophecies_armor

Also from what i ve seen the sylvari armor could use a few more revealing sets for medium/heavy.

Bloom is indeed overdone in this game. I very much liked how they used it in GW1 – properly for things like snow in the sun.
I d rather see they just tone it down a little but options are always a good thing. I asked for the option to turn off depth blur and they got it into release – props to ANET.

Yes finally someone who knows what s going on and isnt spouting the “oh your computer is bad, time to upgrade” nonsense.

The game engine has horrible issues. I m not sure what exactly they are but this should not be happening:

Q6600 @3GHz
560Ti
6GB RAM
SSD
Win7 x64

If i turn off reflections and shadows the FPS goes to 53 BUT for drawing not even 10k polys (or is it? – occlusion) that is still horrible. Not to mention my PC is not even being used properly.