Guild Wars 2

Cathgar.7581:

Spawne.3128:

Cathgar.7581:

angelpaladin.7921:

Cathgar.7581:

Spawne.3128:

angelpaladin.7921:

what I am reading people would prefer to get what they want now at the cost of the entire game tomorrow. Thats what this boils down to upset a few thousand people who bought the armor now or end up losing credibility with the majority of the community.

I feel like a broken record but you guys sound like broken records also. Think about this on a much larger skill not just me and you. They let this slide why would people have any incentive to do anything? People’s trust in arena.net is already shaky because of the fractals update where people lost progression. People are fuming over the living story and scarlet. Adding this to the mix could easily destroy the game over the next few months.

trust me, a few thousand people did not buy this armor, maybe a couple hundred, and maybe less then 100 of them are actually complaining about getting a refund.

Lol @ a couple of hundred.

Most likely it will be around a few 100 I was being generous with my figure. How many people do you really think play the game? How many people do you think logged in on the one day it was available? The armor was not even on the store for 24hr’s. Assuming there where (I am being crazy generous) 15-20k people who logged in over the course of the armor being available. How many people do you think really bought that armor? Where hearing the very vocal minority who are upset the armor is being removed.

Without any figures, no one will know except ANET as to how many sold and it is also a minority of T3 owners that are complaining as well.

The only thing I can see for certain is that for the entire day today, ive only seen ONE person wearing this armor in all of lions arch.

Seen a lot on Tarnished Coast and a lot of people complaining that it has been removed from store in game chat.

Well my server (northern shiverpeaks) is probably significantly smaller, only complaints i saw about armor were in regards to someone who linked the asceneded armor, in particular the “wupwup” sets.

Sabyne.6329:

If so few people bought it and that it has now been removed. I don’t quite see what would be the problem of letting the people who bought it keep it. Chances are, there are so few of them you won’t even see it in game most of the time.

That would be far too logical lol

Cathgar.7581:

angelpaladin.7921:

Cathgar.7581:

Spawne.3128:

angelpaladin.7921:

what I am reading people would prefer to get what they want now at the cost of the entire game tomorrow. Thats what this boils down to upset a few thousand people who bought the armor now or end up losing credibility with the majority of the community.

I feel like a broken record but you guys sound like broken records also. Think about this on a much larger skill not just me and you. They let this slide why would people have any incentive to do anything? People’s trust in arena.net is already shaky because of the fractals update where people lost progression. People are fuming over the living story and scarlet. Adding this to the mix could easily destroy the game over the next few months.

trust me, a few thousand people did not buy this armor, maybe a couple hundred, and maybe less then 100 of them are actually complaining about getting a refund.

Lol @ a couple of hundred.

Most likely it will be around a few 100 I was being generous with my figure. How many people do you really think play the game? How many people do you think logged in on the one day it was available? The armor was not even on the store for 24hr’s. Assuming there where (I am being crazy generous) 15-20k people who logged in over the course of the armor being available. How many people do you think really bought that armor? Where hearing the very vocal minority who are upset the armor is being removed.

Without any figures, no one will know except ANET as to how many sold and it is also a minority of T3 owners that are complaining as well.

The only thing I can see for certain is that for the entire day today, ive only seen ONE person wearing this armor in all of lions arch.

angelpaladin.7921:

what I am reading people would prefer to get what they want now at the cost of the entire game tomorrow. Thats what this boils down to upset a few thousand people who bought the armor now or end up losing credibility with the majority of the community.

I feel like a broken record but you guys sound like broken records also. Think about this on a much larger skill not just me and you. They let this slide why would people have any incentive to do anything? People’s trust in arena.net is already shaky because of the fractals update where people lost progression. People are fuming over the living story and scarlet. Adding this to the mix could easily destroy the game over the next few months.

trust me, a few thousand people did not buy this armor, maybe a couple hundred, and maybe less then 100 of them are actually complaining about getting a refund.

Yes, IMO. I mean thats the whole point of having levels, enjoying the progression through the game as you level up. Obtaining new and more awesome gear, etc etc. That’s essentially what keeps you playing.

the concept art has always been great in this game

TFeldt.4560:

Spawne.3128:

Yes, in fact I do, and thats the reason why Anet removed it. Just because you and a select few others like the skin, doesnt mean it doesnt show laziness on the part of the art designer. Give me one good reason why they were incapable of coming up with a brand new skin to introduce in the game? Especially given the fact that you are paying cash money for it. It amazes me that people are so happy getting crumbs from anet when they should be upset that they arent getting crackers.

Like I said, they screwed up, I didn’t. All I did was buy a skin in a game that I enjoy. Arguing with me about arenanet having lazy designers (which I think is unfair, but fine, that’s up to you) is rather pointless. Why would I give you reasons when I don’t even work for them? I paid for a product, I want the product I paid for. I don’t want to pay for something that I might or might not like at some undefined point in the future.

Im not arguing about it, just merely stating my opinion, and this will be my third infraction anet forum mods have given me for expressing my opinion in an otherwise completely civilized manner. Along with the many others i know that are also getting infractions for saying the same thing. lol

TFeldt.4560:

Spawne.3128:

It’s funny listening to people defend a mistake that undermines the methodology of the game.

Do you honestly believe that the methodology of the game is more important to a company than giving customers what they paid for? Anyone who had the human cultural t3 armor has lost nothing but a sense of exclusivity from others having the flame skin. If they ruin the light flame skin then I’ve lost €20 (yes, I bought it for two characters).

You can argue the value of abstract concepts (even feelings) and I might very well agree with you, since many invested a lot of time to grind that gold (and arenanet themselves offer a gem to gold conversion). But you’ll never convince me that I’m not entitled to the product I paid real money for. They screwed up, I didn’t.

Yes, in fact I do, and thats the reason why Anet removed it. Just because you and a select few others like the skin, doesnt mean it doesnt show laziness on the part of the art designer. Give me one good reason why they were incapable of coming up with a brand new skin to introduce in the game? Especially given the fact that you are paying cash money for it. It amazes me that people are so happy getting crumbs from anet when they should be upset that they arent getting crackers.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

StriderShinryu.6923:

I’ve already spoken my piece on the 1 thread VS 3 threads question. Honestly, while I would prefer 3 threads (or even just 3 topics without a need to keep it specifically to the 3 “core” areas of the game), it really comes down to what ANet can do. We need real interaction in these threads moving forward and if the only way ANet can do that is to limit it to one thread at a time, then that’s probably the way to go.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

FYI: Keeping you up to date (-:

Jocksy.3415:
Chris Whiteside.6102:
Would you like us to discuss Population Imbalance again and then follow with Commander functionality?

I would like to know / feel that the discussions of the pop imbalance thread are not just useless venting, but that some kind of action is going to be taken… If the only point of CDI is discussing, and nothing is actually being done… It’s a loss of time both for the players who give ideas and for the devs who are reading through it all.
We need some feedback on the previous CDI before we start another one on the same topic. We need to know what might be possible and what is off limit.

Absolutely true. Without openness and willingness to involve players in the planning and design elements of the game, the CDI is pretty much a waste of time for everyone involved. Or, even if there are actual tangible results, with no known time frames and no clarity, there is certainly the appearance of it being a waste of time.

Hi Strider,

The CDI is a GW2 design discussion whereby our philosophies and ideas will evolve. We will not be going into any planning details. I am sorry if this gives the ‘impression’ that the exercise is a waste of time, i can only assure you that it is not, and over time the proof will be in the pudding as they say.

Chris

I believe what Strider was trying to put into context was that people are looking for some sort okittennowledge by the dev team that the suggestions they are making are in fact valid, and what sort of opinions or ideas you guys have at your round table and hope to put forward in the near future to appease all of these diverse opinions.

Without any sort of public acknowledgement of how our opinions are being interpreted, it makes people feel as though they are wasting their breath. Especially given the public reaction of the past 3 living story and content updates.

Aridia.3042:

Good lord, Anet. Please get your design team to play some Lineage 2 for inspiration because the well seems to be tapped dry if you guys didn’t see how badly of a recycled job this is.

It’s F2P and it doesn’t feature flaming armor on everything…

lineage 2 looks really good lol might have to give that a try if the next living story update is this bad lol

DarksunG.9537:

Ok,so now I’m even more confused… so… you take the time to remake a suit of armor because a few ppl complained. SOOOOO confused. I can’t grasp what motivates anything anymore.

I can think of other things that WAYYYY more ppl are upset about. Feels more like damage control for Scarlet & her amazing friends.

It’s funny listening to people defend a mistake that undermines the methodology of the game.

GW2 will never be a P2W game, because there is nothing to win. The game is a “skin” based game, everyone stats are basically exactly the same on some general scale, making the game very balanced. You merely skin your character to the way you like, that has been the central idea behind the way the game has been played, and probably the central flaw as well.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Hey, everyone. We’ve been reading all your feedback about the Flamekissed Armor Skin that was released into the Gem Store yesterday.

Although the Flamekissed Armor uses the same mesh as the Tier 3 Human Cultural Armor, it was not our intention to create an armor skin that so closely matched the existing Tier 3 Human Cultural armor set. The intention was to use the mesh as a basis for creating an armor set that stands apart and is distinct in appearance. However, after reading your feedback, we agree that the Flamekissed armor is not visually distinct enough from Human Cultural Tier 3 armor.

We will do a few things to address this issue.

• We will temporarily remove Flamekissed Armor Skin from the Gem Store.
• Players who have purchased Flamekissed Armor Skin will keep the skin.
• We will make new art for the Flamekissed Armor Skin that achieves our goal of making a visually distinct and attractive armor set and does not closely resemble the Human Tier 3 Cultural armor.
• Once this new artwork is completed, we will then update the Flamekissed Armor Skin so that all existing sets that players have purchased get the new art. We will also offer the Flamekissed Armor Skin for sale again at that time.
• When we update the Flamekissed Armor Skins with the new artwork, any player that has already purchased the set and who does not like the new, updated look, can get a full refund by contacting Customer Support.

Note that there is no ETA on when this change will happen. We need to work with the Character Art Team to determine when we can have a new armor skin ready, and this could take some time.

Thank you everyone for providing your feedback. We appreciate that you took the time to let us know how you feel about the new armor set.

I’m glad that you took the time to respond to this thread Regina, but I have to ask, as a team leader for this game, do you understand the fundamental problems with what has been going on with the development side of this game? I’m sure that it has been painfully obvious given the type of posts this forum see’s that there is a major issue over there. Not just with living story but content generation itself, I mean not only are these armors bad, but they are just poorly drawn copies of already existing armor in the game, why would something like this be endorsed for release? At they very least if you are going to copy an already available in game armor template, make it look BETTER if you have to buy it for cash money.

4/10 it gave me something to do for 45 minutes. The only thing I can say is that the final boss fight in the story mode was probably the most interesting boss ive fought in the game since I got it. I would hope that the complexity in the way you have to fight a boss (while not hard, but keeps you on your toes) is a trend that continues. Other then that the story was weak, and you also lost a ton of points for putting scarlet in yet another completely non sense living story.

Meglobob.8620:

This video was very, very funny…

Good way to promote the game in the run up to xmas…

Best bit was, ‘you won’t notice the grind in Tyria’…lol

Obviously GW2 and this forum has players with no sense of humour at all…

Your missing the picture here, were discussing the business aspect of what was done here. You realize Anet spent a tremendous amount of money on a marketing campaign geared towards people who take taxis rides? People are saying it has to be a bad joke because it literally is that bad from a business standpoint. It’s almost an attempt at in house sabotage to ruin the game.

As a person who has been in the field of marketing with computer companies for years, I can say that this is probably one of the worst targeted campaigns I have ever seen in my entire life. If i was an ad agency looking to come up with an innovative way to bring in new users to a video game, I wouldn’t be targeting taxi cabs in the middle of NYC. Is it funny and lighthearted? Yes. But it doesn’t target the correct audience by any means, you could run that campaign for a month and I bet you would maybe get 10-20 people who ride in that cab who even know what guild wars is let alone play video games long enough to actually play an MMO.

In the end all this does is take away money from a budget from a game that is already suffering the effects of poor management.

Avster.1935:

Here is how my character looked in Vindictus:

devs would have to put flames and rainbows and ponies and stuff on it for it to be approved by anet for release

Substance E.4852:

Finnway.2183:

Spawne.3128:

Lol The next great MMO migration is going to be everyone leaving GW2 for the next new MMO that hits the market.

• Elder Scrolls Online — Spring 2014

• Wildstar — Spring 2014

• Diablo 3 Expansion — Spring 2014

• WoW Expansion — Winter 2014

• EverQuest Next — release date unannounced

At this point they really need an expansion because the living story has not been good enough to draw people to the game based on word of mouth.

At this point I’m trying to find reasons to not just go back to EvE. Missile boats are probably still near useless in pvp but at least CCP respects their player base. That used to be something I thought I could say with certainty about anet…

Ugh god, is it bad that I was thinking exactly the same thing? I swore id never go back to eve strictly because im a pve player not a pvper, and CCP caters to PVP play. I lost a 1.5 billion dollar ship last year in a .9 system to griefers and swore id never play again.

Leo Paul.1659:

THESE.

and ritualist armors.

Nailed it, right there. There is SOOOOOOOO much potential for ascended armor in this game, and i just cringe at how it has been squandered thus far. The idea’s myself and others have for armor skins are just absolutely amazing, i mean the list of potential ideas are endless. But not only armors, new weapons and items as well that expand the game even further, and hopefully, eventually…make RNG actually work properly so that you are rewarded for your time you spend fighting bosses.

I would love to see some sort of shadow effect armor like what you posted. WoW armors are kinda similar to that, although aions graphics are 100x better then wow ever was.

Leo Paul.1659:

I can’t wait for EverQuest Next.. Looks really promising.

The funny thing about everquest next is they took alot of the concepts that GW2 was SUPPOSED to have and made them work so much better, such as living world in GW2, is made to work on a much larger scale as permanent environmental changes in everquest. I mean christ, there isnt even realistic weather changes or a day/night cycle with the actual clock in GW2.

So in other words, good by GW2 come Q1 2014. Oh well, had a good run and some potential.

SonicTHI.3217:

I thought ANET had standards.
Wait let me rephrase that:
I thought ANET had at least some standards left at this point.

Reskinning armors and putting some glow and fire effects on them… so much for art direction.

What is this? A small studio low budget F2P game? Pathetic.

I’ve seen better content come out of small studio low budget F2P games then this. This is pathetic. Someone needs to lose their job over there, likely their lead project manager.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Spawne.3128:

Xae Isareth.1364:

The problem is that everyone’s idea of fun is different.

I want raids and hardmode dungeons. I want the devs to make content which they’ll think ‘this is ridiculous…..’, then make it a bit harder, and on of that add a hardmode for it.

But, that’s also someone else’s idea of pure frustration.

I think the reason why its pure frustration is that you would go through all that trouble to defeat a raid or dungeon instance, and then get NOTHING as a reward except more stuff you have to buy in the gem store.

That’s up to them to place a worthy reward in the raid.

Besides, the first time I conquer a raid, the triumph of doing it is the reward in itself, it’s just the not-so-glorious wins afterwards that needs a reward.

Yes, the triumph is doing it I suppose, i guess if theres no reward, might as well move on to the next game to overcome bigger and better missions then too. No point in playing this one as theres no reason to repeat the dungeon again. lol

Xae Isareth.1364:

The problem is that everyone’s idea of fun is different.

I want raids and hardmode dungeons. I want the devs to make content which they’ll think ‘this is ridiculous…..’, then make it a bit harder, and on of that add a hardmode for it.

But, that’s also someone else’s idea of pure frustration.

I think the reason why its pure frustration is that you would go through all that trouble to defeat a raid or dungeon instance, and then get NOTHING as a reward except more stuff you have to buy in the gem store.

If you consider all the factors involved right now, yes the game is dying, and quickly at that. For the games size and competition at the present time, there should be roughly 5x as many people playing at any given time as there are right now, but we aren’t seeing that at all, in fact I would go as far as to say there has been a gradual decline in the amount of OG players online now. Mainly from a sheer lack of new content and story being introduced by the developers. You can throw as much into WvW and Fractals as you want, but its not going to keep the majority of the player base coming back once it gets new competition from other MMO’s in the works. The vast majority of people buy these games for the story and content, which this game lacks considerably. The new ascended armors are even more evidence of this, there is nothing interesting, or enticing about them and the majority of owners will just transmute right over them back to OLD style gear.

Sir, your adaption of how the final story mission should have ended is borderline GENIUS.

I wanted to get some opinions because ive been debating about what I want to use for my primary melee weapon on my zerker specced guard. Ive used both greatsword and hammer and while i LOVE the hammer and all it represents, I feel that the skills and rate of attack are just far to weak to be an effective melee weapon.

I was wondering what everyones opinion was on the hammer skills vs the greatsword skills. I find that the hammer being so slow is not well accommodated with its skillset. Skills 4 and 5 on the standard keybinds (banish and ring of warding) are completely useless i feel on this particular weapon. Banish tends to launch your foe into another group causing you to aggro in situations where you do not want to, and ring of warding….well it really serves no purpose on a melee weapon, because you need to be up close, ive really found no situation where it has been useful.

You would think that the hammer would have more AOE or heavy damage or crit based skills given what it represents like some sort of ground quake or cone type AOE explosive smash or something, but it doesnt have any of that.

copied my post from the suggestion forums, someone said it would be relevant here

Let me start by saying, im just about 2 months into this game, and I do enjoy it, probably better then most of the MMO’s out there. I love the “adult” feel of the game, it doesnt feel like a child’s game like WoW did when I first started playing that many many years ago (which i eventually gave up on after 6 months of life sucking game play). However I feel the game is lacking in most respects compared to what it is hyped up to be, mainly in 3 major category that I think need to be seriously re-evaluated and modified to at least some extent to extend the life of the of the game.

1) Living World: I love the concept of living world updates and the continually updated storyline, however for both living world updates i have been around for, I felt they were severely disconnected from the rest of the game and the content itself was just weak. Both the LS tower of nightmares updates I was able to complete in a matter of 4-6 hours, with minimal effort and minimal reward (even though by some miracle I managed to get an RNG drop ascended weapon on the end of the first tower of nightmares mission). This storylines i feel are very very weak, they need to be more like the personal storyline missions in the sense that they have at least some what of a plot line, connect with the rest of the world on some deeper level, and take more then a few hours to complete. I could go on to elaborate but I feel that there has been such a rejection of this latest update that its almost like beating a dead horse here, which brings me to my next point….

2) Expanding The World: So here we drive to the heart of the issue, the game has been out for over a year, and there is no word on when we will get a major update to allow us to explore new zones, get new dungeons, or new bosses to fight. You write into the main storyline of the game 9 different elder dragons, and yet people are only able to fight 1 of them, in an absolutely HORRIBLY put together and written final story personal story mission, with nothing but CRAP rewards for taking the 2 hours to complete this mission. While there is alot to this game as it is, after a while it does eventually start to feel repetitious if you are not interested in WvW or PvP. You are either fighting a world boss, doing a dungeon, playing the very short living story lines for all but a few hours, or…doing what drives me to my final point….

3) Content, in particular ITEMS: Yes and here we get down to the singular driving purpose of “end game” with GW2, and thats ascended weapons. A 6 month to year long quest to craft 1 weapon out of probably 10 overall and that is literally the singular focus of what everyone strives towards after they exhaust every other avenue of the game. There is no grinding for weapons or gear, there is no great areas to farm for loot to sell to drive the economy, its all centered around “skinning”. There are a set few weapon classes with specific weapon characteristics, and then you pick a skin and “transmute” to get your character appearing a certain way.

This is probably the single biggest issue with the game more then anything. Yes you can say, well thats the way the game is supposed to be, but then we come back to the living world situation, which is what people are complaining about. You grind out the living world update for a few hours if that, you get to the top, you beat the boss, its all crap drops, and you complete the achievements and get a skin. Meanwhile the actual cool skins you have to BUY with cash money on the auction house. This is, a fatal flaw to the games continuity to be successful. And the biggest problem with this is the fact that there literally isnt enough variety in the items (weapons/armor) to support RNG drops to make the effort in these things truely worthwhile. If you werent interested in the gas mask skin, you did it because you needed the gold, why, because you are saving to craft and ascended!! lol

As much as I hate referencing WoW, the thing that drove the game for so long is literally how much STUFF there was in the game. You had a 45 man raid in a dungeon which took 2 hours to fight a boss, and everyone was chomping at the bit to get their hands on like 2 epic drops that could be only distributed over the 45 people. This was the system that drove the game, you consistently had to come back to get the cool gear, and grind, and fight to get it.

Now im not saying that GW2 needs to turn into WoW by no means, but a page needs to be taken out of that book to actually give this game some purpose and some life, otherwise, i have a feeling these living world updates, if they continue to be this bad, arent going to keep peoples attention span long enough before the next MMO comes around.

wookiee.4631:

On the gameplay side of things, yeah, it’s unique and pretty good. I like how everyone can contribute to bringing the tower down. The way people have been zerging through it reminds me of Mad King’s Labyrinth, which I thought was also fun in short bouts. Also, the Gas mask skin is cool.

Story-wise, I finally have a detailed impression of Scarlet, and she’s annoying and out of place as crap. I hope the next big villain, and all afterward are, for lack of a better term, more “adult”. With her I feel like she’s the villain of a kid’s show who wandered into the GW universe. You can have “adult” villains who are crazy or comedic, but they should fit the tone of the game better.

My other big problem with the story and writing is the fact that nothing seems to have been accomplished again. I know nothing more about Scarlet’s plot or character, and the threat of the Toxic Alliance has been foiled. Everything’s back to square one. It feels like nothing changed in the story whatsoever. There’s no sense of escalation. Things happened and were then resolved.

First impression of Nightmares Within is just like most other releases, pretty good in terms of gameplay, really mediocre for the writing. I hope the next one has better writing. At some point we should be seeing the results of all the feedback Anet has received.

The real question about the story is, where did this thing come from, why did no one notice, why is all of kessex hills still business as usual and more importantly, what happens when its over? lol You would think that prior to this thing being rolled out in the first place there would be some happenings in kessex or elsewhere, things appearing, NPC’s commenting, changes in the surrounding areas missions etc to accommodate the eventual release of this, but it just pops in out of no where, which i imagine will be the same for when this is over, it will vanish like a fart in the wind.

What really made me laugh was the fact that, this gigantic thing appeared in the middle of the lake, and the centaurs and seraph and bandits around it, are still doing the same kitten they were doing before.

well like i said in my thread i just made, the issue is, its too easy, the story is weak, and the rewards are terrible. In the end it just winds up being a source of revenue for the thing that people are only focused on in this game because its all their is, and thats to craft that almighty ascended weapon, beyond that there is nothing. You would think that the game would some how incorporate the fact that there are 9 elder dragons or so that are tearing the world apart, but you only get to fight 1 of them in an absolutely horrendous personal storyline mission.

Let me start by saying, im just about 2 months into this game, and I do enjoy it, probably better then most of the MMO’s out there. I love the “adult” feel of the game, it doesnt feel like a child’s game like WoW did when I first started playing that many many years ago (which i eventually gave up on after 6 months of life sucking game play). However I feel the game is lacking in most respects compared to what it is hyped up to be, mainly in 3 major category that I think need to be seriously re-evaluated and modified to at least some extent to extend the life of the of the game.

1) Living World: I love the concept of living world updates and the continually updated storyline, however for both living world updates i have been around for, I felt they were severely disconnected from the rest of the game and the content itself was just weak. Both the LS tower of nightmares updates I was able to complete in a matter of 4-6 hours, with minimal effort and minimal reward (even though by some miracle I managed to get an RNG drop ascended weapon on the end of the first tower of nightmares mission). This storylines i feel are very very weak, they need to be more like the personal storyline missions in the sense that they have at least some what of a plot line, connect with the rest of the world on some deeper level, and take more then a few hours to complete. I could go on to elaborate but I feel that there has been such a rejection of this latest update that its almost like beating a dead horse here, which brings me to my next point….

2) Expanding The World: So here we drive to the heart of the issue, the game has been out for over a year, and there is no word on when we will get a major update to allow us to explore new zones, get new dungeons, or new bosses to fight. You write into the main storyline of the game 9 different elder dragons, and yet people are only able to fight 1 of them, in an absolutely HORRIBLY put together and written final story personal story mission, with nothing but CRAP rewards for taking the 2 hours to complete this mission. While there is alot to this game as it is, after a while it does eventually start to feel repetitious if you are not interested in WvW or PvP. You are either fighting a world boss, doing a dungeon, playing the very short living story lines for all but a few hours, or…doing what drives me to my final point….

3) Content, in particular ITEMS: Yes and here we get down to the singular driving purpose of “end game” with GW2, and thats ascended weapons. A 6 month to year long quest to craft 1 weapon out of probably 10 overall and that is literally the singular focus of what everyone strives towards after they exhaust every other avenue of the game. There is no grinding for weapons or gear, there is no great areas to farm for loot to sell to drive the economy, its all centered around “skinning”. There are a set few weapon classes with specific weapon characteristics, and then you pick a skin and “transmute” to get your character appearing a certain way.

This is probably the single biggest issue with the game more then anything. Yes you can say, well thats the way the game is supposed to be, but then we come back to the living world situation, which is what people are complaining about. You grind out the living world update for a few hours if that, you get to the top, you beat the boss, its all crap drops, and you complete the achievements and get a skin. Meanwhile the actual cool skins you have to BUY with cash money on the auction house. This is, a fatal flaw to the games continuity to be successful. And the biggest problem with this is the fact that there literally isnt enough variety in the items (weapons/armor) to support RNG drops to make the effort in these things truely worthwhile. If you werent interested in the gas mask skin, you did it because you needed the gold, why, because you are saving to craft and ascended!! lol

As much as I hate referencing WoW, the thing that drove the game for so long is literally how much STUFF there was in the game. You had a 45 man raid in a dungeon which took 2 hours to fight a boss, and everyone was chomping at the bit to get their hands on like 2 epic drops that could be only distributed over the 45 people. This was the system that drove the game, you consistently had to come back to get the cool gear, and grind, and fight to get it.

Now im not saying that GW2 needs to turn into WoW by no means, but a page needs to be taken out of that book to actually give this game some purpose and some life, otherwise, i have a feeling these living world updates, if they continue to be this bad, arent going to keep peoples attention span long enough before the next MMO comes around.

i dont understand the difficulty with the dwayna fight, yes there is a specific set of things that you have to do to defeat her, but literally the first time i ever did it i had not a single issue with the group I was with. We stacked like 40 tears in the corner of the wall, 3 of us kept her kited and dps’ed while two others worked the sparks in the center.

Seriously :rofl: +1 on this

vilemonster in northern shiverpeaks

I was actually kinda disappointed by him, his signature move was “evolves rapidly”, but he wasnt a challenge at all. Especially in a 5 man group, you would think “evolves rapidly” would imply that he would develop some sort of defenses against your specific classes attacks, but that just didnt happen. He changed the way he looked, he did some different things that werent very threatening at all, and we beat his kitten consistently 5 times without ever losing a single person. lol

Nay of the Ether.8913:

• RNG is bad, it has always been bad, we have known this since the beginning. Gambling away trying to get a single skin and failing is no one’s fault but your own. The fact they put the skins behind RNG chests is beside the point. If you gamble away trying to get it, you are to blame, not them. Is it good to put stuff behind RNG? Nope, but no one is forcing you to do it and it’s not required to play the game at all, nor does it give you some advantage over anyone else.

Your right, but RNG is bad for a reason, because there isnt enough items in the game to allow RNG to work properly. Let’s face it, there are zero decent drops for characters under level 80, theres no point in even trying to get cool stuff while you level, because the game makes it so easy to grind to 80 its not even funny. Which isnt necessarily a bad thing, but the entire “weapon/armor” aspect of the game is centered around a small set of 5-10 legendary items that take forever to craft. Other then that, what other option do you have besides dungeon weapons and the AH?

This is probably a kitten poor example but if any of you have played WoW (which i hate comparing to) people fought instance bosses in 45 man raids, and would literally fight to the death over getting 1 or 2 awesome drops. That gave that game purpose, and continuity. This game doesn’t have that.

There needs to be a compromise if your not going to employ a system like that otherwise you will never keep peoples attention spans held long enough before the next MMO comes along and people jump ship. Living world content needs to be more engaging and the rewards need to be greater, but more importantly, there needs to be more then just 1 or 2 sources for great rewards. I mean there litterally was NOTHING rewarding about doing the storyline mission as I have said in the past, ZHAITAN WASNT EVEN HARD, HE WAS ANNOYING. That single mission, victory or death, really broke my hopes for this game and Ive only had it for 2 months. The mission should have been called, “Bored to death: the worlds longest trans-continental flight”

TendererLemon.2450:

Honestly, their living stories have so much potential, I know they can’t satisfy everyone and that one living story might not be what appeals to someone, but the next might…Yet their living stories have turned into nothing more than Farms, its a waste if you ask me… what happened to the actual story telling side of the living story.

Then theres the rewards, which have been slowly becoming less and less, used to be that a few skins where added and some nice items…now look, those items what might’ve been the rewards back then are simply tossed in the gem store at a whopping 400 gems per price… thats 30g currently (not too bad) or $5s if you bought the gems with real money.

I know we all have our opinions…but I really do hope we can agree that $5 for one piece of armor is NOT worth it…the models are nice and def had some work done to them…but why take the lazy route and throw them in the gem store? (yes lazy since theres no need to implement them as a reward / drop of some in game content).

I loved GW1, played it for years, Loved GW2… I even considered myself a bit of a fan… but what Anet just did, made me lose respect for the company by so much…and if they want it back, they’ll have to earn it. In a way its what broke the camels back.

Now again, I know this is my opinion and everyone has their own, speak it! But please, lets not bother trying to change each others opinions since thats how mindless fights start, since we both already have a made up mind.

That’s basically it right here. This living story had the potential to be alot more, and it just turned into nothing more then a quick side track to add a few more dollars of revenue through the gem store with the armor pieces. These living storylines should be taking TIME to complete, sort of like how your storyline missions take time to complete. I did the whole nightmare tower story in 4-6 hours, which is LONG by most peoples standards.

Theres alot of talk about how the way the game is designed it releases newer content consistently, but im not seeing that at all. Im seeing a few new temporary missions, and a couple new pieces added to the game for a very limited time, but no real content updates. I come from games that where the more you worked to quest or explore or dungeon or play with your guildies, the better items you got, this game doesnt seem to have that. There is one singular goal you work towards in this game, thats getting the 1 or 2 legendary weapons that take a year to complete for whatever character class you have, and that seems to be all it is.

3

I feel the latest living world update is so disconnected from the lore of the game. Not to mention easily completed within a day or two, which is about 4-6 hours of gameplay for me. I love the idea and concept of living world updates, but more time needs to be spent on content development, items, drops, dungeons, and more things to do in the world, then just these sole single line living world updates.

As its been said before, this last one felt completely disconnected from the surrounding world story, one day it just popped into existence, and you went in, did your thing, and went back to business as usual, grinding for that single legendary weapon that you want which will take a year to get.

For the most part I agree with you, i find that there is just a lack of…well lets just say creativity, in the way the living world events have been deployed. Although ive only been around for two, i kinda felt the same way, like this thing just appeared out of no where one day with a patch, and it just didn’t fit with the surrounding NPC’s and storyline.

While im new to the game, I can appreciate the whole living world concept, I think its a fantastic idea, but I think the living world content needs to be rolled out slower like others have said and integrate it into the existing storyline better. The sole purpose of the living world is to keep people interested in the game, but I dont feel it really does that. It just gives us something new to do for a day or two. I literally completed all of the tower of nightmares in less then 2 days, playing about 4-6 hours.

I think they need to focus their energy into CONTENT, out of all the MMO games ive played of this style, this is the only game I feel that has such a limited number of items. While I realize the focus tends to be more towards crafting rather then drop rate, the drop rate is so low strictly because of the sheer LACK of items in the game. If your a hardcore player, your only rocking 5-8 different kinds of weapons or gear in the legendary class. And everything else under it can just be bought on the AH house. Im 2 months into the game, and im already starting to feel the repetitive of it now. While I still have world bosses left to fight, and zones to finish exploring, the overall amount of content is still a limiting factor. I know that no matter how much I dungeon run, or how much I explore or quest, the chances of me actually working towards finding something cool through my efforts is slim to none.

And largely this game is unfinished, I dont know why the idea of a large expansion to the games existing content (mainly the storyline mission) hasnt been on the table at least for 2014. They wrote in at least the possibility of 9 different elder dragons, and TONS of other content in the story, yet we are only able to fight 1 of those dragons, in a storyline mission that felt like it was written by a 5 year old. Fighting zhaitan, while looking forward to doing the mission was excitement in itself, was probably one of the single most boring missions ive ever played. I literally spent more minutes flying around aimlessly with nothing happening then I did killing things. Only to have the dragon sit there and get pelted with cannons.

That in itself was a massive disappointment to me, the game has SOOOO much potential, but i just feel its being directed to all the wrong things.