Guild Wars 2

SKATE.1394:

I have a feeling the Labyrinth will still end up a ghost town well before the event’s end simply due to the Lich. The sheer amount of skeleton adds and the power of their non removable retaliation makes the risk/reward ratio not worth the effort

A bit of a tangent, but the Lich isn’t hard. Last night I was commanding a farming zerg around the Labyrinth for two hours and defeated the Lich many times.

Tips:
1) clear the area of adds, and clear the other nearby door event first
2) get everyone to stand in melee range (preferably push him into “his hut”), typical GW2 stacking behaviour here
3) stress the importance of watching out for the Retaliation boon, try to get your zerg to understand to stop attacking until that boon is removed
4) stress the importance to the farming zerg’s Mesmers and Necros that they need to put down AoE boon ripping when Retaliation comes up
5) give people a moment to adjust their utilities
6) Open the door and kill the Lich

If your farming zerg fails, DO NOT IMMEDIATELY RE-ATTEMPT. Your zerg’s moral will be crushed, and many people would have rage quitted. If you attempt immediately, you are just going to fail again, further crushing moral, and your map will probably clear out since you’re “obviously a commander that doesn’t know what you’re doing”.

Clear the rest of the map of doors, if there are no doors than just farm a bit in the middle. Build your farming zergs numbers and moral back up. Re-brief them on the tactics for fighting the Lich (because you will have many new members of the zerg, replacing all the rage quitters), then go kill the Lich.

Esmee.1067:

followed by thinking it is a clever move from a business perspective

It is not cleaver, it is sleazy, scummy behaviour and incredibly transparent. Anet’s customers already seem to be a bit annoyed with developments. Combine that annoyance with being treated like idiots more and more (concern mentioned by the OP), then further acting like a sleaze ball is just showing a lack of respect for the customers.

Sure, this might still be a successful business move (appealing more to “idiots” could be profitable, as idiots are more likely to waste their money on poor purchases, which the gemshop provides an abundance of opportunities for stupid purchases). It’s just that many people would appreciate a bit more honesty.

Encounters in GW2 do not scale very well. As said multiple times in this thread, many of the large scale fights are mind numbing boring and easy, or just plagued with one shot kills (that many times you cannot even see coming). Besides the downside of individual contribution and satisfaction becoming less and less important with the more players involved, the massive amount of particle effects are at embarrassingly large amounts (view attached images of typical zerg bosses, NOTE: the “low particle effects” option is enabled). As a side note, the reason given for no cast bars is that you can see animations (how is anyone supposed to see attack animations from a big blindingly bright ball of particles?).

I agree with everything stated in the OP. Private instanced zones for things like the Straits of Devastation, instanced zones for Vanquishing, and instanced zones for guild missions/RP events and the like were something that I was hoping for for almost the entire time… until megaservers showed that Anet was moving in the opposite direction.

The “holy trinity being removed” is not the issue with lack of meaningful cooperation from my perspective, its simply that much of the content is just so simplified (and easy mode). There are many, many games that do not rely on the holy trinity gimmick, and heralding it as the reason why GW2 PvE is so simplistic is a bit of a close minded opinion from MMO players who only really play MMOs.

Well, if it isn’t the intrepid investigator from Dragon Bakitten

hat’s the first NPC line that I heard after patching and logging back in. Followed by the Bloody Prince acting like he’s just been released for the first time. I can’t really think of a more disappointing way to start the event. At the very least Anet could have adjusted some NPC voice lines, so that it doesn’t look like we’ve come right out of Dragon Bash (well over a year ago now) and releasing the BP for the first time.

I fully understand, and expect, for there to be a lot of rehashed content for every festival. However this isn’t even rehashed content… besides the decorations in the new (and still) destroyed LA, it appears like everything else is a literal copy-paste job, even ignoring dialog and such that specifically dates the events as happening in Halloween 2013.

That would be disappointing, but at least not insulting… except for the fact that the gemshop gets it’s updates. Apparently there’s “new content” for gambling addicts as well with some sort of lottery for a bunch of skins unavailable since the first GW2 Halloween apparently? The gemshop, LS and gambling opportunities get love from the devs, the rest of the game just has to make due with only getting love from the players it seems.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Has ArenaNet learned NOTHING from the hundreds of complaints about removing content over the past two years?

I think I know the reason: that Black Lion merchant’s running out of tab space, and they want to keep pumping out new BLC weapon skins. But this does not require a removal of the skins. Just like Sclerite.

Actually the reasoning is more likely that Anet is trying to appeal to impulse buyers. Impulse buyers ill see this removal of skins, and buy without thinking. This is just how the gemshop has operate much of the time, with little to no regard for actual players, but only really focusing on impulse buyers and problem gamblers.

deSade.9437:

war/elly/guard/thief – but I wasn’t playing mesmer as I often do.

[…]

That is my favourite teamcomp (no, not with the necro)

That is my favourite teamcomp for Fractals as well (Mesmer, not the Necro). As you pointed out, it covers much of the utility you’ll need, while still bringing a good amount of damage. If one of the classes was to be cut for something else, then the Thief would go, as Stealth isn’t really that needed, and the Ele can handle the AoE blinds (to an extent).

The image looking like paper/scroll, perhaps it is a scroll with the Foefire ritual on it? “Adelbern ’s Burden” then meaning the foefire he caused (thus enslaving his own people in a purgatory of his creation to continue to fight the Charr)?

“You will join my kingdom! You and all the world of the living!”
— King Adelbern

“His kingdom”, and the reference to “the world of the living”, being post-Foefire Ascalon. “You” (Ascalonian subjects) joining “his kingdom” was not an option, hence the exclamation point.

The human model doesn’t have a manly enough chest option for that.

I’ve seen a perfect Vladimir Putin, a shame I don’t have the pic on me.

Garrisyl.7402:

lordkrall.7241:

I am sure people would love to have a unique cosmetic item locked behind something that will be impossible for some people.

Not sure if you’re sarcastic or not, but yes. I would love that very much. Just like I loved my mini Liadri, before everyone got it on easymode by exploiting game mechanics and basically rendering it worthless.

GW2 has a severe lack of items that display any kind of skill that was required for getting said items.

This. For a year I was proud of my Mini Liadri, and it was the only mini I actually liked because of what it meant. The second round of the Queen’s Bloodsports came around, I quickly got my “The Blazing Light” title and proudly displayed it. Then “The Blazing Light” became the new “Combat Medic”, and everyone had a Mini Liadri… then that title and that mini were sadly retired for me.

Still though, I am very excited for the Halloween festivities (I’ve been enjoying the GW1 festivities since last Saturday).

Etien.4601:

I wonder if we play the same game or not lol

It is very apparent that we do not, as you are clearly talking about a different game, or you are simply a noob/scrub if you were talking about GW2.

Etien.4601:

Without a guardian by it’s side, an elementalist is a total failure nowadays imo. So your argument is invalid.

A normal zerker DPS traited Guardian’s Aegis is just as strong as whatever crazy “tank” Guardian’s Aegis… if that is what you were referring too. Support comes from skills (and traits), not from stats (for PvE).

kolompi.1287:

How are 100 skills out of you would never touch 90 better than 10 that you actually use? It’s basically the same like you said. So you would prefer quantity over quality in skills but not armor?

Yes, quality of armour (who wants to use horrible looking armour?), and quality of skills. The other 90% of skills aren’t simply thrown away and never used, as the game has a lot more depth than GW2 and many of those skills can see use in different builds, non-meta builds to challenge meta builds, etc.

Diovid.9506:

Surbrus.6942:

Anything other than a Charr vs Human war would not fit the lore.

Unless by that time cultural change of Charr and Humans, combined with political, technological and economical interdependencies reduces their willingness to go to war (as happened in Europe after the 2nd World War).

The Charr have been at war for their entire existence. When they don’t have an outside threat then they will simply war amongst themselves. They have stopped their war with the humans like two years ago, because the Dragons’ threat that has been building for 250 years is now recognized as more important than the humans.

Your example of Europe after WW2 is a bit flawed, as you are talking about (RL) humans, and even then they had a new threat to unite against (Communism). Even after the Soviets were defeated (economically), its not like wars and conflicts have stopped. If RL humans cannot stop fighting wars for even a couple years, I don’t think that the Charr could ever stop, it’s just their nature.

The only way that there could be enough cultural changes to stop a renewed Charr/Human war would be lore-ignoring hand waving by Anet, or if say, Iron joined the humans to fight against Blood and Ash. If we’re taking such hand waving into account, we should also take into account the chance of castles becoming sentient, and pink bunnies laying eggs that hatch into cell phones.

Actually the sentient castles could work, that might be a pretty awesome concept (maybe the Wizard’s Tower in Garenhoff could itself be a sentient dungeon).

kolompi.1287:

Not clipping/stretching meshes? Are you for real? GW1 is a clipping nightmare.

Ok let’s just say more effort put into the armours. Since almost all armour in GW2 is designed for humans, then just lazily stretched onto the other four races, there are a whole lot of armour pieces that just look downright horrible. Norn and Sylvari are often given mega-shoulders, and Charr would probably be better to be simply excluded from new armour the majority of the time, since the quality of Charr armour is so bad it generally just elicits a vicarious feeling of embarrassment on behalf of Anet for even releasing something like that.

The main issue with armour is that for GW2 Anet’s policy is clearly “quantity over quality”. Yes it would be more work to make higher quality armours that actually fit the other four races, but seeing how small a selection those races have, it could be argued that that is a wise use of dev resources rather than just making yet another human outfit that looks bad on the other four races. Again if we look at GW1, each armour set was designed for each class and sex, which means that the same armour was made 20 times to ensure quality.

Yes, some new skills will overshadow others, and some will not be used at all. How is that any different than GW2 now, besides the point that GW2 has hardly produced anything new? The existence of all the new heal skills besides the Ele and Mesmer heal were basically forgotten a month later… whereas the new Ele and Mesmer heals simply became the only heal for those classes you see in PvE. The main argument for simplifying GW2 so much in comparison to GW1 was that it would be easier to balance… however the balance in GW2 is arguably worse, since there just do not exist the tools for any sort of self balancing meta, due to a massive lack of options.

And not everyone is speaking from a point of view clouded by nostalgia.

pdavis.8031:

If GW1 is soooo much better then GW2 why aren’t you playing that instead?

Anet abandoned GW1 like 7 years ago, and who’s to say that we aren’t still playing GW1? It only reflects positively on the game that it can go so long without any new content and still have so many loyal players… whereas GW2 has gone only 2 years with hardly any new (permanent) content and it doesn’t look like it could ever last another five in this state.

GW2 doesn’t even have basic functions that GW1 did, and there is no reason whatsoever to argue against many of the suggestions of “just do what you did for GW1”. Trait/skill templates, more skills, more classes, more interesting mechanics, more good skins (not clipping/stretching messes), more maps, more game modes, more PvE-PvP skill splits, more interesting enemies, more content… those are a few suggestions that you cannot possibly argue against.

Then there’s a lot more suggestions of “just do what GW1 did”, which could be argued against (make more challenging/complex skills/content, but that might “confuse new players”).

The Charr go back to war against the humans while the Norn sit back and watch (maybe acting as mercenaries to either side). The Asura go back underground (but keep their surface holdings). The Sylvari go dormant as their purpose has been fulfiled.

Anything other than a Charr vs Human war would not fit the lore (not that that has stopped what happened in the LS…).

zallis.2138:

I am assuming your mentioning aetherpath towards the top, and come on, dude. YOUR TELLIN ME that you went through aetherpath and thought it was the same as the other path but they moved some kitten around?

They cant just open up the map. That takes a lot of time. They ARE opening up the map, but you didn’t seem to like that when they did it with dry top.

He was obviously talking about all the little pointless changes to dungeons, not Aetherpath TA (which coincided with removing another path for some stupid reason). Some of those pointless changes being removing the room in CoF by the Acolytes, the hackjob of removing the SE P3 JP skip, moving some boxes around in CoE, allowing the golem boss to move in CoE, and the wealth of little inconsequential adjustments that were done to many Fractals. This is what Anet has been doing for dungeons rather than making new ones.

As for making new maps taking a long time, look at the next quote referenced:

kyubi.3620:

maybe we should compare between gw 1 developement and guild wars 2 development

If you’re talking about 2years, then you could probably include Nightfall as well into “what GW1 added in this time”. NF added even more than Factions did.

The big problem here is that the gemshop is a tool to “milk” the game, not a reason for people to keep playing it. There needs to be something else, some meat to the game to keep people interested for the gemshop to actually be successful. The gemshop by itself is not content, and is not keeping people playing.

I’m not entirely sure why “raids” are asked for again and again, this game doesn’t do larger scale fights that well, and that is basically all you mean by “raid” isn’kitten… just a dungeon with a larger group of players? The game is a lot better in smaller scale encounters, therefore more smaller scale encounters (dungeons) should be made, with their own unique rewards (not just reskins or other lazy ways of “adding” content).

I am assuming no stat inflation and other horribly artificial difficulty mechanics with these “raid” suggestions, as it is to my understanding most of those treadmill proponents left before Ascended gear even came out.

All Anet has to do is balance dungeons around a party of five, rather than… balance the part around a party of two or however they are balanced now. Maybe introduce Hard Mode dungeons.

As for people getting /kicked at the end, that’s just the risk you run when you pug, that’s always been a threat (even moreso nowadays since the elimination of the dungeon leader). Also revert their “no dungeon leader” change. Although I suppose under the current system it is less likely to see a /kick at the end, because the way to redeem that gold reward is to bring in a friend… and people that act that way probably don’t have many friends.

None of this will happen though, because Anet is too stubborn to reverse changes that they have made (don’t expect dungeon leader coming back, enjoy your /kick for the time being), and they have actually said that they are not working on Hard Mode dungeons (massive blow to my guild’s moral, and resulted in many people simply quitting the game).

Wearing Nomads gear is trolling. All this player is doing is scalling up the event, and spawning more enemies for the other players to kill. It is a bit more subtle than sitting on a turret and not doing anything in the Teq fight though. In both cases the troll will plead ignorance, although a player wearing full Nomads has a higher chance that they simply lack understanding about the game, rather than doing so only for the purposes of trolling.

The argument that a downed zerker is doing less damage is false. The zerker will do more damage in 10 seconds than the “tank” will do in the time it takes for the zerker to rez and return to the fight. Additionally the best way to rez most the time is by doing damage to rally the downed players… which the “tank” is not contributing to in a positive way (they are only scaling up the fights, making more enemies and giving some enemies higher max HP).

If you want to tank and be effective/useful, then go to WvW or sPvP. That’s where the many stat distributions actually have a viable place in this game.

Starsurfer.7209:

They’re meant to be a means of attaining loot. Rushing through them makes sense. But Story mode and personal story quests aren’t like that. They are meant to be played FOR THE STORY.

What are you rushing for? The silver coins at the end? (Or in the case of another player’s PS, nothing?) Again, this isn’t to say vets can’t play a story run. I do it all the time. But why approach it with a “speed-run” mentality when there’s nothing truly worth getting at the end of it?

Says who? Even if something was “meant” to be played a certain way, that only really comes into play if the product of the design encouraged/incentivized that behaviour that was “meant to be”? Yes, story modes generally have terrible loot in comparison to other paths, but so do some explorable modes (SE P2, CoF P3 have rewards no where near what they should be).

Unfortunately, there are some actual fun encounters and boss fights locked away in story modes. Why is a player that wishes to play those encounters subject to being told that they are “meant to” play a different way?… especially when this way it was mysteriously “meant to be” is only really backed by a small minority.

It’s a game, people want to play the game, they don’t want to sit back and watch (very low quality) cutscenes that they’ve already seen. You are inconveniencing four other people by having them stand around and wait for you rather than playing the game, don’t get all high and mighty if some voice their annoyance.

Also, we’re talking about pugs. Pugs are the option of last resort for filling out a party. In the end you’re not really different from anyone else complaining about pugs, and the advice is the exact same: if you don’t like pugs than don’t do pugs, play with guildies/friends.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

Well, time for this to go unnoticed since a moderator moved it.

This is NOT a Lore and Story issue, it is a Failure to Pay Attention before making huge changes issue.

At least the mod didn’t just delete the thread and give you an infraction, I guess.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Add a “new” fractal boss where you have to fight the boss from (Insert recycled Living story instance here).

As unfortunate as this is, at least it would allow access to previous content that was removed. If the Marionette and the Battle for Lion’s Arch + final Scarlet battle could be turned into Fractals (and balanced to be challenging for a party of five, rather than just a big zergfest) that would be pretty nice. The only problems with those fights were 1) temporary content and 2) zergfests. In this case the poor story/lore logic can be pushed aside because that story aspect was simply used to deliver good content.

At least Anet has seemed to learn that temporary content is a terrible concept, especially for the specific market they’ve placed GW2 in.

Nick.6972:

It’s all uncertain, however we can be sure about one thing, the 2014 FOTM update will somehow be tied to the Living Story.

Anet recently hired a new Head of Narrative, Leah Hoyer. I like what I’ve seen of her. With a new person on Narrative, LS might not just be lazily shoehorned into everything like it has been up until now.

The fears of Taimi annexing Wintersday from Tixx, and the members of Destiny’s B-Team being hamfisted into everything might not be as warranted as before.

…

Anyways as much as I would love to see a good Fractal update, I’ve been there done that during almost all of Anet’s Fractal updates and pointless changes over the last year, so I’m used to being lied to, having the LS hamfisted into Fractals, and disappointment.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

I fail to see how adding Town Clothing into the new costume mechanic would be impossible. Even if they just were extremely lazy about it, and turned them into one piece outfits (obviously it would be far, far better to be able to mix and match, but this gets in the way of the “quantity over quality” approach Anet is starting to like more and more).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

You’ve never fought a team of five minimum height Asura all in Mad King outfits see. This wasn’t that good of an argument before, and it is clearly not the reason for the changes, as the changes were moving in the opposite direction. Town Clothing also removed your skills, any sort of tiny advantage here was coming at a heavy price.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Anet are the ones that restricted Town Clothing mainly to the gemshop. Anet are also the ones that created, but then withheld very popular Town Clothing such as swimware and school uniforms. This was just a case of Anet shooting themselves in the foot, then treating that gunshot wound by amputating the leg above the knee.

Because the game has a lot of potential, even though Anet has failed to realize that (and in fact they go in the opposite direction much of the time). Just hoping that there’s some change in management with the company and they can start getting back to what made GW1 and GW2 good… or at the least hanging around for the festivals and hoping that Anet does not remove too much of the good content from previous years.

Then everyone has the more standard reasons why people come back to any MMO (not necessarily all of the following will apply): friends, community, invested in their “progress” of knowledge/stats/etc, Role Playing, buyer’s remorse, etc.

Illuminerdi.9153:

I wish I could watch even a single one of the cutscenes to actually find out what the heck is going on in them. I’ve run CoF more than a dozen times and I honestly have no idea what’s happening on any of its paths.

Read what you’re typing.

And no you’re not getting yelled at for not sinking thousands of hours into dungeons. You have absolutely zero experience with actual speedrunning or dungeon tours. Even 30 minutes of experience with that would give you much more of an understanding.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Or just letting stacking sigils operate in sPvP alone and give flat bonuses in the world.

The reasons why it still works fine in PvP, is because you don’t need to pay 10g per sigil, and Anet removed underwater combat entirely from PvP. The problem is that Anet has abandoned underwater combat when they consider anything about the game balance and the like… however it still exists as a thorn in their side.

Personally I think sigil stacks are a boring mechanic (as it is just arbitrary numbers), but they’re just too powerful to ignore in favour of something else.

Illuminerdi.9153:

As stated on page 1, this is just treating the symptoms of people not wanting to do the boring parts of the dungeons, rather than addressing the cause. Everyone has killed enough simplistic enemies with primitive AI. You are suggestion that (horribly limited) dungeon team resources should be going toward further fiddling with existing dungeons rather than making new dungeons, new more interesting encounters/mechanics and the like.

Anet has already spent more than enough time making minor, pointless changes to the dungeons that they could have produced new dungeons, and/or made more fun encounters with those resources.

Illuminerdi.9153:

I am…a casual player! Oh the horror! How can he possibly have a legitimate opinion! Come back when you’ve sunk 10,000 hours into the game and been divorced because you missed the birth of your children for a Teq Taxi!

Do you still wonder why we were saying that you’re throwing insults around? Right here you are accusing knowledgeable dungeon runners here of being obsessive and failures at life without any provocation.

[I want to play how I want, but I am unwilling to look for like minded people]

Then join a guild, play with friends. Pugs are not the end all be all, they are option of last resort. Most people who play seriously, and many people who play casually have taken the time to find people they want to play with, this is how MMO’s are supposed to be played.

I don’t care if ANet ever shuts those people down or not – what I do care about is the fact that they’re getting rewards faster, which has encouraged an entire community of people to behave as they are, killing diverse play styles and ruining this section of the game for the rest of us.

We’ve already determined that you don’t care about other people, and that you only care about yourself. We have already determined that you are jealous that players who put in the time and effort to master the content can get rewards faster than you. This is (one of the reasons) why no one is taking you seriously.

Ranger pets have a similar oddity to them. As you are on the surface of the water, you have no access to any of your skills or profession mechanics, this includes the Ranger’s pet. The pet simply despawns when you hit the surface of the water.

This means that if you are using the trait that builds up attribute stacks on your pet, or your pet has boons, touching the water (or diving in) will destroy that. Unlike the sigil stack issue, you cannot “simply” pay 10g to get around this clunky behaviour.

Illuminerdi.9153:

Thank you so much, you seriously just made my day in a way you can’t possibly ever know… Faith in humanity restored

You say that your faith in humanity is restored when someone agrees with you, but act confused when other people are saying that you are insulting people who do not agree with you? You outright ignore arguments that shut down your opinion, or “misunderstand” them. Either you somehow are missing all of this and just aren’t that great at communication, or this is some epic troll you are trying to pull off? If its trolling, you’re doing a bad job at it.

Wethospu.6437:

If no effort is spend on dungeons how can they expect them to be popular?

Just like Charr armour. Anet did a kittenty job at making armour for Charr in a game which focuses on aesthetics. When most people don’t play Charr specifically because of the lazy job on armour, Anet then claims that there is no reason to spend time on Charr armour because not many people use it.

This might be Anet’s reasoning for Medium armour trenchcoats and the lack of swimsuits even though everyone has been inquiring about these things. The metrics, graphs and charts say that everyone’s wearing trenchcoats and no one’s wearing swim suits!

Illuminerdi.9153:

I’m pretty certain that 90% of all “solos” are using glitches to bypass the expectation that they will be handled by a group.

And I’m pretty sure that 90% of people don’t know what they’re talking about, but I’ll hear them out first before I tell them that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Illuminerdi.9153:

I fail to see how a party of 5 people killing a group of enemies that none of them could kill individually does not count as coordinating together.

Dungeon solos and duos are still reliant on skipping enemies – they are still using what amounts to “glitches” and “gaming the system”.

[…]

I think though that much of that also boils down to enabling more defined combat roles than GW2 currently does. I’m not saying we should go back to Tank/Healer/DPS like other games, but I think current combat roles in GW2 are far not strongly defined enough and something in the middle would work better than where we’re at currently. But that’s a whole different discussion…

So your response to “Solo and Duos” is to basically call me (and everyone else that does undermanned dungeons all the time) a glitcher/hacker? You’ve demonstrated with that statement that you don’t know what you’re talking about, why should anyone take anything else you’re saying seriously now?

Why is it always “Tank/Healer?DPS like other games”?… why not the variety or roles that were present in GW1? That was far more diverse and flexible than any boring trinity game. As for GW2 roles being expanded, that is something that Anet has demonstrated that they are very hostile to. Everything but straight up DPS has been nerfed ever since launch, when something new and interesting comes up it is usually an unintentional bug and fixed with more haste than any of the numerous infuriating bugs that simply break skills (Power Block initially allowed for interrupts to bypass Defiant, meaning that if built accordingly, the GW1 role of interrupt/lockdown finally made it’s glorious arrival in GW2, making for much excitement and hope for the future of GW2’s future mechanics… then that trait was Smiter’s Booned and forgotten three days later).

Illuminerdi.9153:

You’ve got to be kidding me! The very first video I found on Youtube for how to solo Arah P2 says “go here to get out of combat when you’re low on health without resetting [the boss’s] health”

You’re telling me that’s not a glitch? That you’re supposed to be able to run from a boss, drop aggro, refill your health, and then resume the battle without her resetting??

And some people “solo” bosses AFK from under the map. Just because there are glitches that allow for bad players to do content undermanned doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who can’t do the content legitimately while undermanned. The mechanics are so basic in almost all of the content here that it is more than possible, and no not everyone who does undermanned content feels the need to brag about it on youtube for everyone to see.

Illuminerdi.9153:

The difference is that you’re still talking about fixed rewards. Any fixed reward can (and will be) farmed, because it boils down to simple math: find which reward gives the highest payout for the shortest amount of time expressed in terms of reward/time.

So your “fix” is to just have it so that people will only farm the first half of dungeon path X, Y times a day rather than infinite times a day? How does “just do SE P1 2-3 times a day then move onto another dungeon” fix anything?

Again, you’re solution to “people are avoiding boring content” is to try to force them to do it (by either locking the things people want behind boring content, or just disincentivizing the content people want to do further). This is the opposite of a solution because all your concerned with is treating a symptom.

Illuminerdi.9153:

[…]

Your last question is more difficult to answer succinctly. No, I don’t find killing trash mobs to be “super fun” or something, but I do find it (only slightly) more enjoyable than speedrunning. The thing is, I see the necessity of trash mobs; they (in theory) exist to serve a function in dungeons. Their function is to help the group coordinate and learn to work together, and to discourage players from skipping content by just running past. They exist to provide an obstacle that the team needs to work together to overcome. Running past trash mobs to unlock a waypoint is not really “working together” – it only takes 1 success to accomplish this, and isn’t the whole point of doing a dungeon to be a team? You’re just gaming the system by increasing the odds, you’re not really encouraging team play or community when you allow content skipping.

The other thing that trash mobs exist for is, well, to deter insular gameplay. Speedrunning exists because people have figured out a very specific and non-intuitive method(s) for skipping dungeon content. I’m not saying that this option should be removed, but the problem is that the alternative (playing intuitively rather than specifically) has been removed. It’s not removed in the sense that it’s disallowed, but it’s removed in a passive sense, since the dungeon rewards system is so heavily skewed in favor of speedruns that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase wants nothing more than to do them that way.

[…]

Oh please. Killing boring enemies with horribly simplified mechanics and terrible AI does not, even in theory provide an obstacle that the party needs to coordinate to overcome. If it did, then dungeon solo and duos would not be a common thing for players in this game to be doing if they are looking for anything near a challenge.

As for why Anet put horribly boring trash into the dungeon, rather than interesting encounters? That is simply laziness, there is no mysterious hidden meaning behind any of this, it’s just a poorly done job, simple as that. If you want to see how to do trash mobs right, there are examples already mentioned in this thread (mostly to do with Fractals), or you could look at Guild Wars 1 (something we’ve been telling Anet to do all this time).

GW1 had a wealth of mechanics, and the “trash” had the same access to them as the players did. The “trash” was put together intelligently into groups (or parties) so that they could work together (just as the player parties had to). GW2 is not only gutted in comparison to GW1 when it comes to mechanics, but GW2 trash is even gutted mechanicswise in comparison to what little the players have to work with… they largely consists of slow auto attacks, and only slow auto attacks. (GW1 AI also wasn’t as primitive as GW2 AI)

laokoko.7403:

May I ask why you “enjoy” killing trash mob first?

To me dungeon is fun because of fighting “interesting” encounters. For example interesting boss fight(like legendary imbued shaman).

I don’t mind fighting trash if it is designed to be interesting. Like the cliff fractal where we have to break the seal. Or the harpy fractal where harpies shoot you off the plateform.

I would say many skipping are more interesting than actually fighting trash. To me it is sort of like guild rush where you have to use ability to avoid damage.

If Anet design really hard trash fight, I don’t mind. Else I would say kill a bunch of scavengers is even more boring than trying to use stability to pick up the sceptor in AC path 1.

I agree with everything in this post. Largely, trash is boring, that’s one of the reasons why we call it trash (the other reason being that it’s generally pointless and just wastes time).

Some fights really are fun, even if they have “trash”. Some bosses are really fun (Imbued Shaman and Mai Trin being my two favourite bosses that are repeated ad infinitum, a lot of the story mode bosses are fun too, even though there is no reason to repeat them).

Skipping is fun sometimes. Pulling off smooth skips, or recovering from botched skips in Arah is one of those fun things to do in this game. Doing Jumping Puzzle skips in dungeons is also really fun (too bad Anet’s stance on fun is “NO FUN ALLOWED”, and they do a hack job at removing this content like in SE P3).

Focusing on treating the symptom is not going to solve anything. Incentivising/forcing people to do boring content is only going to drive people away from the game. The main causes of the problems are that rewards completely out of whack (SE P2 is very long and gives terrible rewards, all Story mode dungeons give terrible rewards), most all rewards are simply the same currency (gold), and almost all new content to the game as far as skins and fun things are in the gemshop (which means that either real money or gold is the only way to access this new content).

Fixing the rewards and the gemshop, and giving more fun things to do will solve this issue, NOT simply forcing people to do boring things… I think we’ve all sat in enough corners LoSing trash then max DPSing the stack that we don’t need to be incentivized/forced to do this more often every dungeon run.

I prefer a 10s junk item than a 1s junk item. They should be auto sold when you click “Sell Junk” though, not even kidding.

I do hope they are located in the Junk part of the loot table though, and not taking place of a rare or something actually useful.

The worst thing about the Sword/Focus nerfs is that it jut feels so clunky now. In previous versions of those weapons, they felt so smooth and polished; you could tell that a lot of work went into making them just feel good… but now it almost feels like we’re dealing with some unpolished alpha versions of GW2 weapons or something.

Like seriously, a stiff breeze will just suddenly remove your ability to use the Sword3 leap, when before the location to teleport to was remained until the duration expired. Blurred Frenzy nerfs ok fine I guess. Focus4 nerfs, putting you into combat… now this is where it feels really clunky, where before it felt so incredibly smooth (even after the applying condition=combat nerf, you could still use “Into the Void” before some random rabbit stepped on it).

GW2 Mesmer balance, one of the few cases where the longer the game’s been out, the more polish is scraped off, when you would expect polish to be added over time.

At least iWarden actually works most the time now, after almost a year of it being horribly broken.

Arikyali.5804:

Where as mesmer sword is strong for both pvp and pve.

To be fair, sword is the only weapon Mesmer’s have for PvE.

wouw.5837:

What about the other species? If I remember correctly there was A charr in the Realm of Torment.

Not sure if this is good evidence of “what normally happens”, since at the time we saw the Realm of Torment, Abaddon (and Dhuum) were diverting a lot of souls into the Realm of Torment that did not belong there. Kormir and Dunkoro’s son were also bound to the Realm of Torment, and they were paragons (not just their class, but the meaning of the word).

Wanze.8410:

…

Rings are worth 4s95c. Asc rings are in insult, and worth so little that I honestly do not care about that tiny sum of money. Hoarding them allows for them to be redeemed if a real way to get rid of them comes around, and if not, then it makes for a statement/insult to Anet to their inability to give suitable rewards for their content.

I basically have all the expensive skins and such I want, so any extra money from dungeons/investments is perfectly fine going towards expanding alts’ inventory space. NOTE: the price of 20 slot bags is negligible if you are a Fractal runner.

maddoctor.2738:

[real RPGs don’t need specific party compositions]

True, but the strategy will be entirely different if you bring a homogeneous party to a real RPG. To use D&D as an example: a party of Fighters is going to play completely different than a party of Wizards, or a party of Clerics/Druids, etc (obviously I’m not talking about D&D4e, as that game suffers from the same “samey” class variety that GW2 does).

The party might play so differently that the DM will have to greatly alter encounters to either challenge powerful party compositions, or go easy on weak compositions. Some party compositions (or even just strategies) might even be entirely non-violent.

Video games simply do not have this flexibility much of the time, particularly for MMOs. In GW2’s case all the classes are so similar that it largely doesn’t matter which classes or builds you bring because of the “everyone is a winner” difficulty level of GW2 PvE.

I hadn’t played GW1 before, but upon learning about GW2 I did a great deal of research for myself into the series during the slow wait for the betas, the stress tests and actual release. I really, really liked what I learned from GW1, and was very excited to play a sequel that was “everything and more you liked about GW1”.

I ended up later purchasing and playing GW1 for myself after it became apparent that GW2 was in fact nothing like the pre-release promise to be like GW1. When I’m feeling a bit silly, I still have a bit of hope that GW2 will become more like GW1, that GW1 might get a content update (even if it is just mostly unfinished and abandoned content), or that another game similar to GW1 might come out before the next video gaming market crash.

How about no. More creepy stuff should be added.

How about we go back to the Realm of Torment, travelling through what appears to be pulsating intestines filled with spiders, or navigating a landscape that is literally a pile of gigantic dead bugs was an experience.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Mega servers ruined calling for help in the cities when you needed it or recruiting for your wvw guild.

And simply just WvW related chatting in /map was also destroyed by Megaservers. As I’m on TC my server still has a large presence on some of the megaserver overflows, but the only server-related chat that happens in /map since the megaservers is people complaining about how much megaservers kittened up our server and sense of community, with a couple people from other servers piping up to say how they like being thrown into our instances (you could have just guested or got a server transfer).

I think the megaserver system is a nice concept, but feel like it was implemented horribly. The game’s population is too large to have a single server+overflows (which is almost exactly what megaservers are). The lower pop servers may benefit from this server merge, but the high pop servers (especially Tarnished Coast) have only suffered because of it.

Friendly NPCs are far more useless in GW2 than they are in GW1 though. The AI is just so bad in GW2 that an AI controlled version of a player character would just would not really fit.

In GW1 the AI was able to do everything that human players could, and would use skills somewhat intelligently much of the time as well (such as interrupts, healing, buffing/debuffing), they would maintain optimal range, falling back to try to lose aggro if they are heavily injured, etc. AI in GW2 is more like your basic RTS AI when told to auto cast their abilities off cool down, and told to Attack-Move

If you just want a bunch of zombies following you, attacking things at random, not evading incoming attacks, and hitting their knockbacks whenever they’re off cool down, just turn on your commander tag.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You’ll rarely see a non-necromancer/guardian/thief that isn’t Flame Legion. Even then, most charr are engineers and warriors. The only cases of mesmers in modern charr society I can recall is a couple heart NPCs, such as the Ash Legion guy in south-central Diessa that disguises you as Flame Legion/Separatist with an illusion (seemingly at least).

I outright stated that nearly half of all GW2 Charr NPCs are magic users, particularly as nameless Necromancers and Guardians as Ash and Iron NPCs respectively. Yes the generic NPCs are going to be copy and pasted, but the fact is that Necromancers and Guardians were being copy pasted so often, not Engineers and Warriors.

Even named Charr NPCs are largely magic users. Of your initial Warband, Reeva and Maverick are the only ones that do not use magic. I’m not entirely sure, but all of the new warband members that you can recruit in the PS are all magic users. Rytlock is a Warrior (not a magic user), but I do not know of the other tribunes though.

Most Iron Legion, in lore, are engineers – not guardians.

Iron’s specialty is Engineering, I do not believe I’ve heard anywhere that they are mostly comprised of Engineers. This just sounds like the same sort of baseless assumptions that Ash Legion is comprised mostly of Thieves, and that they wouldn’t have a more realistic composition of classes just because they specialize in subterfuge and espionage.

This is not my usual colour palette, as I am already in my festive Halloween colours… even though I’m a bit early on that.