Guild Wars 2

Kaiser.9873:

players would literally rather sit around playing single player games than your game

I’m already there, got a Xbone for Xmas and only login to GW2 for the login rewards. I’m keeping tabs on the game only to see if any future changes make it playable for me.

Mystle.9241:

You would think after saying WvW is a top priority, they would communicate more, but nope, still silent as ever and still probably as clueless as ever.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re keeping things quiet because they spent the entire WvW budget on PvE content.

Darkness.9732:

Mystle.9241:

So for a while now I have been on the sidelines just watching how this WvW disaster unfolds. There is one thing painfully obvious to me, and that is the fact that even now there isn’t much urgency shown by Anet. SAYING that it is top development priority doesn’t mean anything. SAYING that it’s been on that works for a year is meaningless because truthfully the WvW cimmunity cannot bring itself to trust that Anet knows what it’s doing.

For starters, they claim to be in communication with WvW players, however as far as my knowledge it’s only been like 1 black gate commander and really that’s it. Correct me if I’m wrong. I would not credit the recent interviews done by Reyana towards Anet’s efforts because that was more player/ community driven. No proof, no communication, nothing to really give me confidence they actually talk to players and ask for feedback. I know they read these forums, it doesn’t even take 10 minutes from my coffee break to read most of it. There have been millions of incredible suggestions on these forums these past years but none of them have been paid any attention.

Another thing I am curious about is the fact that Collin mentioned placing a heavy amount of resources towards the WvW. LOL WHAT? What does this even mean? More devs that don’t know what WvW is? PVE devs to add more PVE content? Because we all know they would never take resources away from their beloved esport dream. PvP takes top priority, no matter what they say. Honestly how many people are actually involved with WvW development?? Was there even one from the beginning or was WvW just a side projects for bored people at work to put out kitten content. Well kitten does seem to be Anet’s mantra so I guess it makes sense.

I have so many other questions, but I don’t wanna spend all day typing it all out, just I want to know. Where is the sense of urgency??? There are STILL big PVE and PVP updates happening, and WvW is still being put on the back burner despite massive dissatisfaction amongst the players. Seriously just some transparency goes a long way especially since most of the people that complain about this game are also the ones that care the most. Let me know your thoughts.

Man you are 100% right.
That’ s why I stil haven t bought Hot.
They say : yes we ll focus more on wvw.
Soon after they announce new pve content .

Good. My money will stay safe in my pocket i promise.

Me too

Yes please!!! but before the ruins were added, I liked the lake and Quagans. <3

I’d be happy with basic maps with no NPC’s or PvE crap. IMO a WvW map should be PvP in PvE gear with 500 per side, you know, the way it was at launch.

I don’t get the issue with the squad tag. Teamspeak and a good leader fixes everything, so in my opinion there’s no need to wait for Anet to give you something they refuse to give.

I think the bigger problem is Anet systematically killing WvW by injecting PvE crap into it and contaminating the player base by putting everyone on mega server’s which encourages guilds to exist over multiple servers so it’s less likely a guild will congregate in WvW and play together. Just my opinion.

Yes please! Without some feedback from ANet it just feels like they are giving us the bird.

DeWolfe.2174:

Here’s a pet peeve that hasn’t been listed, it’s a freaking Desert! Life doesn’t flourish in a Desert. It’s instinctual to avoid such an inhospitable environment. So why the Dev’s thought players would want to spend hundreds to thousands of hours in there, building and defending, boggles the mind.

Just like most of human history in real life… give me a tropical oasis any day!

I think the npcs outside the ring should drop some hints if you’ve died a few times.

So I did it with the help from the forum. Didn’t enjoy 1 second of the fight though.

OMG I need a skip button, I’m stuck on my 4th run of “The Wold Summit” because this stupid game keeps crashing and I have to relive the 15 minutes of boring as dialogue…

I just did this by accident today T.T

I was trying to upgrade the skinned item from blue to yellow and accidentally clicked on my salvage-o-matic instead of my transmutation stones (don’t know how I managed that). Before I realised my mistake I got the message ‘item destroyed’. I am amazed that gem skins can be destroyed without warning.

I’ve put in a ticket, hopefully they’ll give me back the skin.

If I want to play a 3d platformer I play Darksiders.

If I want to play a RPG I play Skyrim.

If I want to play a puzzle game I play Portal.

If I want to play a racing game I play Forza.

If I want to play a MMORPG I play any of the dozens of MMORPG’s out there that aren’t Guild Wars 2 because it isn’t an MMORPG any more. It’s Nintendo fan service.

And;

Josh Foreman.8250:

Rifter.6591:

Anet cant program a camera properly(or design a puzzle properly, either way it comes down to broken/lazy coding)

Grumpdogg.6910:

Step 1: Dedicate time, effort, talented devs and resources to create jumping puzzles.
Step 2: Promote Jumping Puzzles as a big feature of the game.
Step 3: Change the camera at the last minute to break all of the jumping puzzles and half of the vistas.
Step 4: Launch the game because “it’s ready”.

Here’s how it worked. I started putting little jumping challenges into my maps several years ago. About a year and a half ago Colin and a couple other designers decided that these were fun enough to turn into some kind of bonus content. About a year ago all the other map artists were told to put a bonus jumping challenge or two in all their maps. We were in our polish phase and these were never intended to be anything more than small diversions for people who like platforming. Not a lot of time was dedicated to this because it was seen almost as Easter Eggs. Just fun little hidden places to discover. As such, JPs were never advertised as primary content, never included in world complete, never required for any story step, and never containing loot that could not be obtained elsewhere.

Because JPs are such a minor part of the game, specific camera issues that are primarily caused by them are not super high on the list of systems that demand the camera code bends to their needs. This does not mean that JP camera issues are ignored by the programmers who work on the camera, simply that they have to prioritize things. And while I’m not happy with the way the camera works because I spend a lot my time doing JPs, I know the engine optimization guys are not happy either because part of the compromise they have to make with us JP guys means that there are places where the world drops out because the camera can get through the occlusion planes. If the optimization guys had it there way 100% the camera would never even get close to a wall and we would build all our maps as flat planes with waist high walls. (Not that they actually want that, but that would be the ideal for avoiding world-dropping bugs) Since the camera has to serve two or three masters, who all want it to do different things, its current implementation is a compromise. This is not due to laziness or bad coding. We simply don’t hire lazy people or bad coders, and we get rid of any who show that tendency.

One issue that a non-developer would not know is the difference between creating a single-player game and an MMO. So it’s easy to look at Uncharted’s camera or Skyrim’s camera and say “Why don’t they just do it that way?” In fact, a lot of us artists DO say that to the coders. And then we get taught a lesson in how incredibly more complex an MMO engine has to be. The sheer amount of dependencies on any one system is staggering, and there is hardly ever a time where a programmer slaps their forehead and says “Oh, I never THOUGHT about just doing like Skyrim!” There are always REASONS that our systems are the way they are. None of this is to say that all our systems are perfect and our team is perfect and nothing will improve. Of course we aren’t perfect, and we are just as frustrated by the limitations and quirks as you are.

So yeah, had we been inflexible, we would have not allowed JPs in the game because they expose weaknesses in the camera. Had we been omniscient, we would have planned the camera from the start to work with the extreme geometry that JPs have. Had we been perfect, maybe we could have come up with a solution to work for all the systems at once perfectly. We are none of those things. What we are is a bunch of people who love making this game and who are constantly looking for ways to provide interesting and new kinds of content. That means pushing against the limits of what our engine can do, then iterating the engine to try to keep up with the design ideas. It’s a process, not and end point. There will never be a point at which we are all happy with the game and declare it to be the perfect representation of our design wishes.

I’m currently in a conversation with the latest ‘owner’ of the camera system and we’ll see what comes of that.

I love Darksiders 1 & 2 movement an jumping puzzles (that is quality). Honestly ANet could have learnt a lot from other games but they didn’t. I think one of the game artists quotes below says a lot to whats wrong with the camera…

Josh Foreman.8250:

Can’t just switch camera systems. The system is the way it is in order to accommodate a number of systems including an occlusion system that makes things on the other side of walls not render, and messing with the camera collision can push it through walls then you end up with half the world disappearing at random times. This is just one of the important systems that need the camera to behave a certain way. In the big picture, having the world drop away is higher on the priority list than making all the jumping challenges feel good. It would have been nice to have had a final camera when most of the JPs were being built, but the occlusion system didn’t get in until near the end of production, so we couldn’t have foreseen the crazy camera demands it would have. We can make little tweaks to the existing JPs, but that’s got it’s own can of worms associated with it, like introducing new bugs. As to a First Person Cam, I would LOVE it. But that’s ANOTHER big can of worms, as we would have to create a new system for how we reconcile the direction of the camera to the orientation of the player’s face as they do all sorts of crazy maneuvers like back-flips, cartwheels, 720 spins, etc. Not to mention dealing with how to render the weapons and attacks which were not created with that viewpoint in mind.

KingClash.3186:

Imo it would be 100x better with a transparency slider so you could see through cliffs/low ceilings/trees/ect. and if with this added the camera would never auto zoom when moved.

I’ve been suggesting this for months…

To the OP, play a different game. That’s what I did, I’ve been back on Skyrim for the past month and having a blast, and when I want a new adventure I download a mod that adds massive content, and I get to choose what content to install and if it’s no good I remove it!

I still read the forums here to see if anything’s changed to bring me back but threads like this keep me away as it confirms my decision not to play.

1. Drop rates are too low (takes hours to get anything worth selling and months to get anything worth using).
2. RNG chests instead of direct purchases.
3. Lack of variety in gear (by this I mean there isn’t a variety of gear stats like other RPGs).

AntiGw.9367:

Last thing my norn needs is a dense forest camera insanity.

This, the camera wouldn’t work in a forest, it hardly works in the apple trees as it is…

Call me shallow but the lack of reward for my efforts is why I finally bit the bullet and left the game. I may return if I hear there’s some drastic improvements but I’ve returned to other games that actually give me something to work towards which for me is more fun than superficial activities designed to herd sheep into time sinks.

I agree with OP.

Shadowmoon.7986:

ref.8196:

The issue with discussing randomness in games is selective bias. Yes, the chances of getting a fractal sword 6 times (assuming you only do 6 fractals) is 8.82×10^-7% (yes, percent) (I actually don’t believe this happened until I see evidence). However, the chances of one person, out of everyone who plays, getting at least 6 fractal swords in their play time is significantly higher.

Odds of getting the same item 6 times in a role on a 1/22 drop rate(there are a possible 22 fractal weapons) is 1/22 ^ 6 ie 1 in 113379904 chance of happening. When such events happen I start getting skeptical.

^ This.

Why am I not surprised…

Almost all new content in this game seems to be designed to take gold away from you and direct you to buy gems and convert to gold so you can lose it again. I will avoid this content like the plague.

I am fortunate, I learnt from everyone else on this forum and never bought a chest/keys. In fact the punishing RNG system in GW2 has been pushing me away from the game for some time, long before the complaint threads appeared.

I am a loot driven player and if I have to ‘work’ for hours a day for a year to get an item I want then it’s time for me to find another game. I’m not quite there because WvW is keeping me entertained but I’m having to search for more and more reasons to log on instead of booting up Skyrim and the like…

Jumping puzzle time… :P

I’m sure the real reason they don’t have combination animations is because of the dynamic way they’ve set up the combat.

Main hand.
Axe × 3
Dagger × 3
Mace × 3
Pistol × 3
Scepter × 3
Sword × 3

Off Hand Only
Axe × 2
Dagger × 2
Mace × 2
Pistol × 2
Scepter × 2
Sword × 2
Focus × 2
Shield × 2
Torch × 2
Warhorn × 2

Total animations currently = 38

If you only wanted to cover the auto attack you’d have to add these animations over the 10 different weapon/shield combinations:

Main and off hand with unique auto attack based on off hand weapon/shield.
Axe + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Dagger + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Mace + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Pistol + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Scepter + Unique Combinations + Default = 13
Sword + Unique Combinations + Default = 13

Off Hand Only
Axe × 2
Dagger × 2
Mace × 2
Pistol × 2
Scepter × 2
Sword × 2
Focus × 2
Shield × 2
Torch × 2
Warhorn × 2

Total animation with unique auto attack = 98

Finally if you want to cover every animation combination for dual wielding weapons you’d have to extrapolate the combinations out.

Axe + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Dagger + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Mace + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Pistol + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Scepter + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50
Sword + Combinations * 5 attacks + Default = 50

Total of 300 animations.

I’m sure these numbers are accurate as I laid it all out on a spreadsheet to cover all combinations. The amount of work needed to even implement a unique animation for the auto attack would be almost 3 times that of the work done on the current animations. I doubt they would ever contemplate looking at this.

Kryptonite.9376:

…
Yes they should fix it.
No it won’t happen…

I agree as it has always bugged me too, but I don’t think it will ever be done. They seem to be too interested in adding silly festival events instead of fixing problematic content. I suppose once the box has been ticked (combat animations check, and so on) it is really hard to revisit unless enough people complain about it. The funny thing is I’ve had a blast going back to single player rpg’s where issues like these are fixed by the community if the developer drops the ball.

Dante.1508:

Saelune.5316:

Usually the TL:DR is shorter than what you didnt read…
I dont mind them wanting to make money, but they shouldnt force people to pay. Thats the appeal of GW2 over other MMOs. Those who actually put time into the game should be rewarded for it.

This is my opinion too, i want to be rewarded with nice gear for playing Guildwars 2 not buying Guildwars 2 over and over…

And before anyone says freeloader i’ve spent a lot on this game up until now, but enough is enough…

^ This. If there is an item I can buy outright without risk of not getting the item then I’ll think about buying gems.

RNG chests? No thanks!

Yeah that horde in Steampipe is a pain. If the only issue was getting past it I wouldn’t care but half the time I die there because they’ve spawned on top of me as I was about to engage the queen…

DeWolfe.2174:

Storm, the better rewards are only once per day per account. That’s why you weren’t receiving better loot on the follow up’s.

I haven’t even been able to do it today. The event has been bugged on JQ and several other servers.

Ahhh, thanks for the info!

I agree. I try and play permadeath and most of the time I get to about level 20-35 before a monster 1-2 hits me down and I die. The game isn’t designed for solo play unfortunately…

Most of my fun is with my level 80 WvW guardian and if that toon dies I just respawn and continue as if nothing happened. There is little incentive to avoid death in this game.

I think the idea is great

From a programming point of view it would be easy for me to implement in one of my games that I am writing now. All I’d have to do is set enemy spawn coordinates and the time of death.

enemySpawnLocation = [X,Y] // you could add a Z axis for 3d and a map reference as well
playerDeathLog = [enemyID + enemyDeathTime, enemyID + enemyDeathTime, and so on]

Then you would just have to do a time comparison and remove items in the array as they time period is passed.

Once you have this data it would be easy to build in conditions +/- magic find, drop rates etc.

Having said all this I have no idea how GW2 has been setup so this might not be possible like it would be for my program.

Tim.9850:

I see a lot of posts about this. And no posts from the developers, so I assume they don’t care.

Being killed in one or two shots is not fun. Basically its the game cheating to beat you.

The worst part is the loot is sometimes terrible.

My first time beating the queen I was amazed, got 3 exotic drops and 10 shells! I was like OMFG I’m going to do this all night!

The next 3 times I only got blues and 4 shells, so I went to bed.

I was either super lucky the first time or super unlucky the 3 following times.

Manu.6078:

Harder than Arah, this is hilarious.

I lol’ed at your numbers, then I remembered seeing this exact thing last night as I was lying on the floor in the fetal position drooling… O.o

Jakkson.4076:

Don’t count on it; they make too much money with their RNG skins from boxes and chests.

Buy the panda hats instead, so much better ;-)

This is exactly what NCSoft wants. They want you to regret not getting an item so next time you’ll be more willing to make the purchase if you don’t have enough in-game gold to convert to gems (this is becoming more likely as they reduce drop rates etc). They understand human psychology and they have done a great job in building a system to suck you in to buying virtual items that have little or no value. I don’t approve of a lot of their practices but I do acknowledge their achievement.

On second thought you’ve convinced me Reya. I don’t want to do any pre-event anymore because I’ve done them all countless times and why should I? ANet, can you please allow me to do any part of the game instantly without this annoying aspect of the game, I just want to fight {insert enemy/event/dungeon name here} over and over ad nauseum.

/sarcasm… :P

Uther Deathhand.1570:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Guest to a server with it open, run dungeon, profit. I never have to do the event when I want to do a dungeon.

This, if you really want to do the dungeon before you go to bed then you are probably joining that group on a 3rd party program. There are many other programs that tell you which server has it open. As for myself i try to run the event whenever i can because it just makes it easier for everyone. Also try to get story done, it makes it a lot easier on yourself if you have story unlocked rather than hoping that one of your groupmates has story and a unlocked dungeon.

This is also how I got my temple karma gear in Orr. My server never did the temples. After 2 weeks of waiting for someone to do them with me I discovered guesting and got the amrour within a couple of minutes.

I don’t bother with the living or personal story in GW2 as I think they’re a bit meh. If I want an engaging story I get better quality from a single player story driven game.

In my opinion with MMORPG’s and ARPG’s stories feel tacked on to the game/combat mechanic, but with single player RPG’s if feels the opposite.

Anwar.2018:

Very simple.
Have separate worlds for hardcore only…..don’t even advertise what cool gear they get to everybody else

(I betcha almost nobody would actually go there… hardcore just like to ask for challenging so they can pretend they are “skilled”.)

I absolutely would ;-)

Palador.2170:

StormageddonBK.9842:

@ the OP, you could always do a different dungeon like CM. Or, do yo just want the cheapest reward/effort ratio? If so you’re going to be one of the guys that really gets upset if they ever nerf CoF pt1… :P

Or when they realize they can use this event to nerf CoF pt1 without having to touch the dungeon at all.

I can see the patch note now: “The Flame Legion have gotten serious about protecting their home, expect increased resistance when trying to access the Citadel of Flame.”

Maybe this is their thinking, it could tie into the living story element of Tyria at some point.

Reya.1895:

The only post worth reading in this thread is 3rd one from the top, by Silver.

…so a sarcastic jab is OK but constructive suggestions are not? Tell me Obi Wan of forums, what should we say???

@ the OP, you could always do a different dungeon like CM. Or, do yo just want the cheapest reward/effort ratio? If so you’re going to be one of the guys that really gets upset if they ever nerf CoF pt1… :P

Geotherma.2395:

Saelune.5316:

All I am getting is defending the “living” part. Well…maybe I dont want a living story then. Doesnt make me any less…patient?

Then don’t do it? It is a core part of how they want their game, if you don’t like it you don’t have to do it. I doubt they will change it because it is how they wish to develop the game and its story. There are plenty of other things to do in game, and plenty of other games to enjoy. Lots of games have static, stale added content that you can repeat 1 million times for same rewards, if that’s what your in to.

^ I pretty much do this. It’s not because I don’t like it its because my permadeath toons die before I can get to them and I start all over again. I’m over 60 restarts already, but at least it increases the longevity of the game for me… :P

Nightarch.2943:

Mr. T can wear two amulets, why can’t we?

There’s an idea, have a Mr T character skin that can wear 2 and calls out ‘PAIN’ and ‘FOOL’ as hoes down the enemy. :P

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

this could be a best seller at the gem store!

level 80 upgrade!

Ooooh yes please. O_O

I agree there should be a warning, but corporate commander would say it’s working as intended.

My mistake was getting the wrong amulet for the infusion I wanted (got it before I knew about the 3 different types), wasted 50 laurels on that toon. T.T

This is where I think there is a problem when there is a real money mixed with an RNG system. As soon as there’s a bug you’re screwed with little or no recourse.

Clark Skinner.4902:

I don’t think the salvage rate is in a 10,000,000 line text file. Different parts of the game are contained in different files. Good design has it organized this way, as well as organizing mechanics so changing one element doesn’t affect an unrelated element.

Even if the mistake was that someone changed x, and it mistakenly affected y… What was the change to x?

I didn’t say the salvage rate was that large, I meant their whole code base might very well be, that is my point. You never know how everything will affect certain parts of the code, especially with shared scripts with many dependent variables. To say that it is only 1 number or 1 algorithm that determines the salvage rate is in my opinion incredibly over simplifying the problem and I would guess this is why it took John Smith and his team a day to find and fix.

foofad.5162:

Despite whatever fixes went in, the root and water animation don’t play for me about 80% of the time.

Same for me, I just get the sound.

MrSmiley.1543:

Clark Skinner.4902:

I just don’t understand how it was accidentally changed.

I mean files on my computer don’t change themselves. I need to open them, delete a number, replace it with another number, close and save the document. How does a decrease in salvage rate accidentally happen to code?

game design is way more complicated then that, and changes to one thing can create changes to other, possibly even unrelated things.

When you’re dealing with 10’s of millions of lines of code across a wide range of programmers (they are human after all) I’m sure the odd thing is going to go slightly out of whack. My code is usually 5,000 – 50,000 lines per script and at even that size they can quickly snowball into oblivion due to over complexity.