Guild Wars 2

I mean… I know this is veering off the original topic slightly, but what if I was to change the idea from it being ascended items to just guild uniforms or equipment that require lvl 500 (or 400, or 450) to craft and (as per the previous comment) repair/maintain?

Miku.6297:

Swift.1930:

Wouldn’t be a resource sink anymore, no, because only one person needs to be leveled in each profession! But the system is just a tool; whether players choose to throw all their resources at profession leveling or just contribute for their guild equipment is up to them. More interaction choices. Or you can ignore helping fellow players with ascended equipment altogether – which is another interaction choice.

People who just don’t want to level their crafting are unlikely to be given access to equipment.

And like I said above, where there’s a problem there’s room for brainstorming a fix: maybe guild-bound ascended equipment cannot be equipped by a character who hasn’t mastered at least one profession.

If your set on something like this, I still feel like having the “guild crafted” ascended be timed for 3days to 1 week, after which the person would need to get another set from the crafter. (ideal an NPC vendor thing that you earn with donations/influence/gold/mats in the guild hall). Obviously the mats to make the armor would cost less and be easier to get, but there would still be a cost. This would also circumvent the issues with “buying” ascended armor and leaving, or “selling” ascended armor and kicking.

Or a repair function, perhaps; I can’t see any logic behind creating a whole new one every time. Yes, not a bad idea. Also increases interactions. Also encourages more people to get crafting levels if the main armorer/weaponsmith/etc goes offline for a few days. Good call!

PopeUrban.2578:

Swift.1930:

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Often it isn’t about what’s better for a single poster. it would be better for me, personally, if I could unlock every skin in the game and every dye color just by logging in today.

It would, however, be horrible for the game as a whole.

MMOs are not about the experience of single players exclusively. They are about how those experiences add value to and interact with the experiences of all of the other players, both new and old.

This is why people have forum discussions about things, and they’re often pretty productive and occasionally useful to developers.

If every player of an MMO got what they thought they wanted, that MMO would be dead in a week. Players are selfish and often uncaring or ignorant of the long term consequences of their personal desires on the overall health of the game.

Aye, and I understand that; my point isn’t that everyone should be given everything for free (not like $60 USD is free, but this is, after all, an MMO), but rather that when something would not ruin the game on a whole is suggested, why should someone who is cozy and happy in his/her own gamespace go out of his/her way to create a rant?

(I mean, three years of Guild Wars 1 and three years of Guild Wars 2 and I didn’t even start to add my voice to the forum conversations until a couple of weeks ago, when Heart of Thorns made a gigantic mess by being more of a replacement than an expansion.)

Wouldn’t be a resource sink anymore, no, because only one person needs to be leveled in each profession! But the system is just a tool; whether players choose to throw all their resources at profession leveling or just contribute for their guild equipment is up to them. More interaction choices. Or you can ignore helping fellow players with ascended equipment altogether – which is another interaction choice.

People who just don’t want to level their crafting are unlikely to be given access to equipment.

And like I said above, where there’s a problem there’s room for brainstorming a fix: maybe guild-bound ascended equipment cannot be equipped by a character who hasn’t mastered at least one profession.

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Labjax.2465:

fixit.7189:

This is by far the most buggiest and content light expansion I have ever played in any MMO to date. I started in EQ/UO btw so that’s a pretty impressive feat. Only a few weeks later after HoT launch, I don’t want to log in and play no more; it’s the same old grind doing the same old things. Well played anet, well played. /standingovation

It’s probably just because I’ve been reading the forums too much, but I’m beginning to feel the same way. I don’t regret buying it, but I do feel like I’m already running out of interesting things to do. And it’s not like I don’t have stuff I can do… it’s just something about the design is boring me.

If I had to put my finger on it, off the cuff, I’d say the main thing bothering me is 1) how long it takes to do meta events and 2) the wait in-between. When I go farm SW, there’s a rhythm to it I can get into and the wait in-between is virtually nothing, especially if you watch LFG. With this stuff, it’s like… ok, I did the two hour long meta, now I wait twenty to thirty minutes to start again, so I can spend another two hours before we even see the bosses.

I have stamina, but not that much stamina. It’s exhausting, frankly.

Yeah, a lot of long time investments for very few elements. I’d personally have preferred a ton more maps with very little developed content/events on them; I loved exploration in Guild Wars 1, but 2 seems a lot smaller and more restrictive about walking space. As someone who has “Been there, done that” and waited three years for the expansion, I was hoping for more places to roam!

A map doesn’t have to have any other purpose than to be explored (maybe minor events or quests can be added, but that can even happen later). See Elite: Dangerous if you don’t believe me! (Space exploration MMO that builds itself as players explore.)

Labjax.2465:

Swift.1930:

My feelings too. I would say that some degree of armor class theme is still reasonable (an elementalist in full plate “light” armor would be kind of odd), but limiting styles based on class is just closed-minded.

Yeah, I’m definitely ok with some class style. I just don’t like it when it overshadows sub-styles within the theme. For instance, plate almost invariably is going to (and does) have a more weighted look to the fabric, like parts of it are smelted steel. Cloth almost always has a wispier style, like the fabric is lightly woven together. Leather almost always has a thick look to it.

Those aspects I’m completely ok with. It’s more…. everything else. Like the fact that heavy and light have almost zero plain pant designs and medium has almost nothing but trenchcoats. I mean, for one thing, the fact that heavy and light share the butt cape obsession can barely even be called class distinction, since they both have that same problem. :P

Exactly, haha. Pretty sure I remember rangers having more styles in Guild Wars 1 than in 2. Maybe I’m misremembering, though.

Zachary Stiers.1879:

The next patch will contain adjustments to arrow cart line of sight calculations to address this problem. Due to feedback the new calculation will give advantage to defenders by being forgiving when the arrow cart is being fired from higher ground to lower ground.

Ah, this is what I’ve been waiting for. Will this allow dropping arrows much longer distances downward as well? (Not further away horizontally, but further vertically?)

SlateSloan.3654:

best thing a gw2 player can do is not to take care or worry about anything.

i dont make suggestions or reports to these “pay for comfort”-mmo hosters anymore.

if another game comes out with better realm vs realm id say good bye.

we have the problem with gw2 that it got not enough serious competitors for realm vs realm. its only the market that would make them move, posts on the forums they dont care about, the gemstore skin sales are there so from their sight “game is successful” “players like the game otherswise they not buy in store”.

how many times people have reported stuff and made suggestions for functions or content anet could easy create cause they can.

its not that everything is sooooo complex. they dont want to work on it.

for the AC thing:
show me one single arrow cart in the real world that can shoot in a way the gw2 acs do.

you wont find any ac irl which can just be fired infront of a wall and hit something inside the building…. the angle alone makes it impossible to hit over the wall.

i sincerely whish that community complete stops to buy on the gemstore for half year. you will be suprised how fast you see game updates flying in which fix all that crap and deliver content.

Really? A comparison to real life is your case? I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen men hurling infinite hammers at distant objects either, or giant icicles forming mid-air and plunging into the ground on command for that matter. Or shield generators. Or lords who can take all manner of incoming damage without so much as being scratched – until their timers tick down to 0:00.

The arrow cart, on the other hand, makes reasonable enough sense. It flings arrows upward at an angle and speed relevant to its target location. Gravity/tactical mechanics. Sit at a wall and fire a very slightly angled shot, and it will come down on the other side. Fire with more tension/power/drawback, and it will land further.

I don’t know how easy it would be to code, but rather than changing the FOV, it would make more sense for an AC in such a blind position to have a far wider and much less effective damage radius.

Dream In A Dream.7213:

The map is better than the old one. Its not getting play since its not as easy to zerg.
If they fix pop issues it will be fine.

You do realize you just contradicted yourself… right? You can’t fix pop issues as well as keep the new map when the reason there is a pop issue is the new map.

Not to mention the fact that zerging is WvW and WvW is zerging. Sure, small groups exist (and are vital), but zergs are still the chief mode of gameplay. It wouldn’t feel like a world vs world battle if there weren’t massive clumps of players hitting each other with sharp things. Just look at the concept art for WvW – that’s several banners and a lot of warriors.

Wanze.8410:

Swift.1930:

One reason I brought this topic up was because as soon as I reached ascended crafting and had myself kitted out, I had no choice but to become bored of ascended crafting – I have no use for it anymore. I can’t use it to help others, and I can’t use it for myself (unless I’m desperate to kit out two of my other characters, who I don’t even use that much), even though it was quite a lengthy/expensive leveling process.

Of course you can use it to help your guildies.
I am sure there are guildies that would like to send you the wood, ore, leather or cloth to craft some ascended mats because they already crafted their daily one. They save a couple of gold, if you donate your daily cooldown.
If they arent able to craft ascended gear for themselves yet because they havent leveled their crafting profession yet, you could donate mats for leveling, if you wish to make a contribution, or help mentoring them, if they struggle to find the most effective way of leveling their crafts.
Helping out others isnt limited because Anet doesnt provide a UI or other mechanics for it.

Yes, those are a couple of limited options. Giant resource sinks, but otherwise, sure, still options.

It still hurts like hell when you and a friend both focus on different crafting levels because you want to complement each other – and then you both get to the pricey top and realize that you can’t actually help each other.

This suggestion is (mostly, but definitely not solely) aimed at assisting small guilds and casual players. With all the fresh issues (and old ones that have been re-raised) that have hit Guild Wars 2 (see 60% of the other threads), the playerbase is going to sink somewhat – so even though you have a big, active (and apparently rich?) guild now, you’ll eventually know what I’m talking about.

And again – more support options, more guild interaction, more gameplay, more immersion, more (here’s one for Anet) addiction.

Mishi.7058:

I prefer the “world” model myself, and I don’t think grouping people into set “time’s” will work well for those like myself who have varying time zones which they play in wvw during. (I think creating the time zone based play would drive people like myself away from the game completely.) Not to mention many WvW’ers like to have “pride” in the server they are fighting for. Having it to where you’re in a global theater and you can also play elsewhere would ruin the server pride furthermore than it is currently.

I love the fact wvw is 24 hours a day, as I am located in NA, but I play on “weekdays” varying times from OCX to EU, and on my “weekends” I play NA primes. So it allows me to play during any time that I want, while not being restricted by “server”, or “specified times” to be able to enjoy wvw. (I hate games which do not have 24-7 fighting.)

I disagree with doing a “world reboot” and throwing people off from their current servers as many have made friends, and established wvw communities, and that would do no good for those servers wvw communities. (It’d possibly even disconnect people from one another and cause a loss of those who like playing with xxx on a server.)

In all honesty, Anet should remove mega servers, remove EOTM, and make everything “server” based again for playing, and have the overflows which they had 3 years ago in pve if “needed”. Prior to the general pve mega servers, each server had server pride, and fighting. Some servers were RP ones, others WvW, some PVE orientated and guesting was always an option. However with the servers having the pve on their server unless in overflow, it allowed guilds and communities to recruit new WvW players fairly easily, which is not as feasible any longer due to the mega servers. Players used to port into LA on their server and even be able to shout for backup in wvw if needed, without the enemy seeing them do it, which is another thing which was lost due to mega server implementation.

As for EOTM, I would love to see it removed. Let the players who are going around in EOTM, funnel back in WvW or PvE. (The worst that could happen is they start playing the different game modes for more then just farming.)

Three little comments:
1- Judging by the base idea, I’m pretty sure choosing a timezone wouldn’t really cut you out of anything. You could just choose the same timezone your server currently is, and you would get the same experience.
2- I wouldn’t suggest removing EotM… whether or not it is a great feature, it’s still an element of the game. I’m not a fan of the new borderland, but I’d still suggest moving it to the sidelines and leaving it in the game. Can’t hurt to have extra content. A lot of people love EotM, and making one or two people happy by completely removing something completely isn’t worth much when it ultimately ruins several other players’ experiences.
3- As far as I recall, megaserving was because of a drop in the playerbase that left people in emptier servers pretty much out to dry with events like The Shatterer. Server pride is a great thing – if your server can still function and complete events that require large numbers.

But I’ll agree that a reboot isn’t exactly a fun or player-friendly way to go about fixing WvW problems.

Miku.6297:

Swift.1930:

But you do realize that this can already happen, right? Players can already put effort/time/etc into building up a guild hall and then get kicked out. Or building up a guild’s reputation. Etc. Etc. When you think about it, though, most players aren’t about to hand over everything right after joining a guild, and most guild leaders aren’t as evil as you’re giving them credit for. What people do with the system is up to them, certainly. Maybe some leaders take a regular tax (resources, money, influence). Maybe some guild leaders kick people out if they don’t represent them for a week.

Right but as it stands, if you donate money/items to the guilds growth you know what you are doing, and you are NOT getting any item back, (theres no obvious temptation/reward for paying) If you purchase/craft armor that you THINK you will get to keep but then get removed to simply take your resources that is a very different situation then we currently have.

Swift.1930:

Development is the key here; I’m using this thread as a brainstorm for collecting ideas about making something that could be a reality. You tell me it can be abused? Great! Now we brainstorm how to counter the abuse. A voting system for kicking abusive guild leaders? A minimum number of members to be maintained to be able to access its own ascended equipment? A small Anet support team to take complaints about events like that? Or even a player council (Greek oligarchy for the win) of proven reliable players who voluntarily view and vote on replacing abusive guild leaders at weekly gatherings? (Either in Lion’s Arch or somewhere less laggy, but my thoughts were on adding an actual voting module/location in this case, and LA is both central and neutral.)

Brainstorming for successful development has to look at both sides the pros and the cons of any idea, if the cons out weigh the pros some times it’s better to just scrap or not carry through with a plan. The current crafting system works, the current guild system (minus guild missions for a large part) works. There is really no need to add more guild reliant dedication or interaction. As you said players can allready put time/effort/etc into building a guild and its reputation. Why does there need to be a crafting short cut or armor reward as well?

As far as anti abuse, I really don’t think A-net should invest any time or effort into something like this as there are other things that need their attention. As far as player brought justice is concerned, I’m not a big fan. To make something like that even remotely feasible the players voting would need to have evidence and facts presented concerning each individual case.

Swift.1930:

But to restate the contents of my first paragraph, abuse is already possible and already there. Think of the human balances, though – if guild leaders are going to care SOLELY about ascended items, how many people will join them? And are people really gullible enough to say yes to “you can join us if you give us 99999 platinum ore”? Last I checked, people weren’t joining guilds to give their stuff away. And if human nature prevails, people concerned about losing resources will look for the “cheapest” guild anyways. Or create their own.

The game doesn’t have to be stale. Thinking within the box is an issue. I’m suggesting legitimate development; doing so means more than just adding a single module.

You are 100% right people aren’t joining guilds to give their stuff away. Of course what I’m talking about isn’t giving it away either, they would be being tricked and exploited for gain. As I said, current “abuse” is an opt in NO personal equipment reward type of thing. This suggestion puts a potentially desirable armor set/weapon as a lure to get people to donate that could be removed from them at any time.

Adding something like this wouldn’t make content or play for the most part any more or less stale. As the only thing it affects is another way to gain ascended armor other then crafting or having it RNGd. It’s not about thinking inside, outside, or ontop of the box. The FIRST thing that needs to be addressed is does the game really need this to be enjoyed by the majority of players.

Fix guild missions, add the raids/more raids… Add some Guild vs Guild interactions… There are tons of gameplay related improvements and additions that would enhance guild gameplay. Making ascended armor without crafting really isn’t something that should be high on A-nets priority list.

It’s not about the suggestion being the top priority list, it’s about it being on the list. More guild options, more guild gameplay, more development. Maybe it wouldn’t even be “ascended” equipment in the guild vault – maybe it would be a guild “uniform” or something. But, of course, that’s changing the thread.

One reason I brought this topic up was because as soon as I reached ascended crafting and had myself kitted out, I had no choice but to become bored of ascended crafting – I have no use for it anymore. I can’t use it to help others, and I can’t use it for myself (unless I’m desperate to kit out two of my other characters, who I don’t even use that much), even though it was quite a lengthy/expensive leveling process.

Something that might work, if it’s a matter of WvW dying in general, is expanding the player capacity for EBG and expanding the map behind each server’s keep to include either something similar to the Alpine maps or something new (and different terrain – like swamp, alpine, desert – for each corner). A couple more keeps and a new primary garrison in each corner. More like the Elder Scrolls Online WvW map in some ways, I suppose, but less square.

Gideon.6742:

Then there will be even less players because, hell no I’d quit playing

Thing is, it’s mostly because players are quitting that such a change has become a necessity.

If WvW continues to be empty, this idea of taking temporary alliances while retaining our individual servers might work (three alliances; each alliance = a balanced combination of servers based on server scores or something else).

It’d be nice to stick with purely using our servers, but with things in decline, Anet is more likely to stick us on a megaserver (like with PvE) with three colors than find other ways to fix the situation. Who knows what calculation would choose our colors…

Phantom.5389:

List of changes that I like

(1) The new sentry detection system is great. It mades sentry more useful and allows players to not lose time going where the ennemy is not (it goes well with point 2). This new sentry was also suposed to kill yaks and get people to go flip the sentries… sadly… yaks are useless so on that part it failed to hit the mark.

(2) The map calls when a structure is taken by X server is also great. It might only be a solo roamer, but it will still improve the information network. This combined with a sentry that scouted a group of players earlier allows you to walk directly to where you think the group will be in the next few seconds.

(3) I like the fact that lord HP scales up with the number of players. It gives people a better response time to gather enough folks to get a good fight instead of getting structures flipped without a good brawl in the lord room.

Here is a list of things that needs a little tweak before being things that I would like.

(1) Auto upgrades seems awesome on paper… But I think simply making it so upgrades are forced to be in a specific order would of solved the troll problem. Make it so yaks count! Yaks are useless now. Also, waypoint on T0 keep makes WvW lose its touch. I remember when we did map calls on every map to get our people to defend our T3 keep with a waypoint. Those were fun fights in the lord room. Now? Keep flips and it doesn’t matter since we will grab it back while gaining access to the only upgrade which truly did matters as a welcome gift. Also, removing Bay and Hills waypoint on the new map just bring less fights (less incentive to actually go defend it since it will never get a waypoint).

(2) The new event in the Desert bordeland map. This event seems great and all. But I still think that a big area with a cap point could of been a better choice than to kill those PVE monsters. Imagine a large cap where there is a timer ticking down for every second your server control the point. I feel like it would be more appropriate for a players vs players environnement. King of the hills kind of tournament would of been amazing I think. Atleast the event as it is is not so fun, it’s just that those Dinos don’t really belong to WvW if you ask me (my opinion, sorry if some people love those Dinos XD). A king of the hill tournament could of been one big platform or up to 3 big platform where each platform control gives you -1 second on the total timer. Once it reachs 0 the canon is yours.

Things that I truly do not like

(1) The non players automated things in the Desert borderland map. I’m talking about those slow turrets, those flame turrets, those winds turrets and those earth walls. They are annoying more than anything. As to replace those things, I would simply take them off and get the blessing of the element when near that area (no more need to actually go and click the shrine to get the move speed boost). I would also take back the combat boost that those elemental buffs gives, environement should not give such a potent stats boost which vary depending on the region you are playing on (same with the imune to burning in fire keep). Also, invisible zergs is simply a bad concept, but I got no idea how to replace that buff without imbalacing the fights (need help finding a solution so I can edit that part later on).Finally, since earth keep have 2 automated things, (turrets and walls). I would simply give them a detector (like a sentry would if it spotted an ennemy) all over the keep so it can detect any hiding ennemies inside that keep and in the close periphery of that keep.

(2) Fortified gate… Those are new and they are slow to take down. Also guild catapults got nerfed to the ground so breaking a fortified wall takes an army or will simply take forever if you are a roaming squad. But gate is now also fortified… So it just means more time raming or catapulting those objectives…which in the end me and my roaming friends just leave them be since it’s too much of a chore.

(3) The pathing of the map seems to be worse than what Alpine borderland offered. Zigzaging and going up and down makes the map that is slightly larger to feel like walking from point A to point B to take much more time than what it used to be on Alpine borderland. Or atleast it feels less straightfoward and more about dodging the ennemy than to engage them. Those keeps are just so vast with so many pathway. Keeping it simple is not always a bad thing.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Basically, I think a tweaked Alpine would be better. Alpine had its flaws, but people still loved that map after 3 years (sure they asked some fix there and there, but a total revamp of the map doesn’t seem to get us to a better place, fixed some problems only to make new ones arise).

You and Wetpaw nailed it. I would likewise have preferred to see the Alpine map tweaked a tiny bit and reskinned (Alpine theme for one server, Desert theme for the second, Jungle theme for the third, and rotating them – the rotation mechanic already exists but is not used) rather than replacing the vanilla (classic) map.

The gameplay elements… yeah, as Phantom said. We aren’t in WvW to be countered and killed by AI. I’d say tweak the lords slightly, though; from what I’ve seen, they scale too highly for small groups.

Vayne.8563:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

There are bugs/issues from the Core game that took over 2 years to address. Some stuff STILL is an issue.
Unrealistic expectations with complete inability to see or understand the process.
Why not just ask them to remove the update and revert back to pre Oct.23rd code?

Not everyone is arguing about bugs. Some people have problems with the direction of the content.

And the direction of the content was clearly indicated well before the release of HoT. The feigned surprise is bizarre.

Now this I disagree with. If they had said right off the bat: we’re going to go in a more hardcore time consuming grindy direction, rather than what Guild Wars 2 has been up till now, I wouldn’t be complaining. However, if they said this, they weren’t blunt enough.

Well they definitely spoke about progression which involves the concept of having to do certain things before other things and they definitely 100% spoke about harder content, and even said the jungle was the hardest open world content in the game.

So I’m not sure why people were stunned. Minimal research could have unearthed much of this.

To be sure, no company is going to say we’re going to make the game grindy but they did explain exactly how masteries worked….exactliy. And they we didn’t have a point total, they also explained how elite specializations worked and when people complained, Anet lowered the point total required, so again, I say they did tell us, and people simply weren’t listening.

Some things certainly weren’t mentioned. I don’t recall anywhere seeing anything about how they were going to completely replace WvW borderland maps, for instance. Unless I missed that one.

Substance E.4852:

The point of the system is to give you an alternative to farming gold to get the precursor. You aren’t supposed to just buy all the items off the TP.

Way to miss the purpose entirely.

And as far as the cost goes, HoT just launched. Everyone is trying out the new system causing the price of things to go up with demand which is why precursor prices are falling because less people are just buying a completed one.

The point of the changes was to give an option of bypassing the trading post and RNG entirely. Anyone who thought this would be easy or a short method was kidding themselves.

This has probably been said a few times, but the thread wasn’t about making the acquisition easy. It’s about the sheer time/cost it takes to put everything together.

It’s completely easy to gather materials. It’s very, very easy. Almost stupidly so. But it also takes absolutely forever. Instead of an epic journey, we get a repetitive slog around the same maps 2000+ times each, pressing (F?) to hit rocks and trees and plants. So instead of adding something fun and interesting, the precursor collection method is just a time/money sink. And it didn’t need to take three years for Anet to come up with it, either – it would take one programmer about ten minutes to come up with a material collection tree.

And apart from a skin, a precursor – or even a legendary, really – adds extraordinarily little to the game.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Why do people look at crafting like some kind of demon or something? Just gather the materials (as is done in the example anyway) and get to it. A few clicks here and there aren’t going to kill anyone.

As someone who crafted half a server’s end-game weaponry on another MMO, I’m glad that this isn’t possible on GW2. Why should some people (who “enjoy” crafting or something, it doesn’t work like that) put in the work, just for others to piggyback off of it. If crafting is so bad, why are you so happy to make someone else do it for you? If it’s not so bad, then stop slacking and get past level 100 tailor.

Everyone should put in the same effort and investment to get the same end reward, not just pushing the workload onto other people.

And there’s nothing stopping you from doing that! Same way there’s nothing stopping someone from buying sufficient gems and gold to get to lvl 500 in any profession straight off the bat. Doesn’t mean we should applaud all current limitations; the game should be expanding, not narrowing.

If your comment was an attack on me, I mentioned earlier that I’ve already hit 500 with several crafting levels. I’m pro-development rather than pro-stagnation, and there’s a lot more that can be added to guild gameplay.

But as someone who has crafted half a server’s end-game weaponry, that’s something on your rep. You can claim that. You wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t 1) profitable, 2) fun, or 3) something to be proud of.

Labjax.2465:

Concerning armor numbers, I am every bit a Fashion Wars 2 enthusiast as anyone, but one should keep in mind that many of the easy-to-acquire skins in the core game are largely reskins of each other. At least in style if not in detail.

As much as I love new armor skins, I would rather 2 with some thought put into them than 10 that look like copies of the existing skins.

That said, it constantly frustrates me that they are stuck on things like trenchcoats for medium armor and buttcapes for both light and heavy. It’s such a common theme, even in new skins, that I have to believe they’re got a rulebook pinned on the wall somewhere telling them to stick to the theme. I’ve heard all the stuff about models and races and whatnot, but there is no “technical constraints” excuse for having a handful of skins that break the theme while most of them stick to it, i.e. if some can break the theme, they all can.

I get the argument for wanting to keep armor classes in line with a particular artistic feel and I get that there’s a portion of the playerbase (a portion I vehemently disagree with) who thinks armor class themes, and even profession armor themes, are something important. I feel very differently. Personalizing a character’s look to fit with my perception of the profession and armor class is very important to me.

My feelings too. I would say that some degree of armor class theme is still reasonable (an elementalist in full plate “light” armor would be kind of odd), but limiting styles based on class is just closed-minded.

Gendou.9620:

You are comparing apples and oranges bro; both of these games are entirely different concepts of content where one is dynamically always active and one is completely instanced(making content much easier to create in large quantities). Anet already stated they wanted a living world, but people seem to think this is some easy task…. This isnt some WoW map with stationary npcs and flat terrain that a team can just regurgitate out. Yeah places like southsun cove were thrown out, but these maps are built around huge meta events and are much larger on an XYZ scale(even if people can’t wrap their head around this concept due to two dimensional map views).

XYZ means pretty much full-map jumping puzzles. Some people weren’t big on jumping puzzles (one friend spent 3 hours on Obsidian Sanctum and then gave up on the game), so that was a funny design choice for EVERY new map. Not to mention WvW borderlands.

The thing is, it’s cool that Anet brought in these new maps. And it’s cool that they added jumping puzzle mechanics as well. But it’s not cool that they didn’t also add a bunch more places to explore (stationary NPCs and semi-flat terrain) that they could build upon in the future but let people explore for now. Seriously, the amount of places to explore was underwhelming. It would be completely cool with me if they just used the same terrain layouts as in Guild Wars 1 and added some nostalgia maps without major events on them. But just releasing a couple of arcade maps…. didn’t really seem to warrant paying the same price as vanilla. It doesn’t really matter how XYZ a map is – after you’ve gotten all the waypoints, you feel like you’ve got very little more to see (even though there sometimes is more).

It’s also not cool that you can’t really use much of your HoT content outside the jungle. I learned how to glide, and I can’t do it anywhere pretty (jungle gets tiring after a while – I was kind of over jungles a few hours after creating my first Sylvari, but that could be just me). Everything you level and grind XP up for in HoT has zero use in 90% of world maps. Will this change in the future? I’ve no clue, but it’d be nice.

I don’t know; maybe they will add a lot of maps under the HoT expansion free of charge. For me, though, a lot of the gameplay is exploration. Vanilla GW2 gave a pretty decent chunk of that. I’ve already “Been there, done that” though, now, and I’ve been desperate for more places to run around for ages. I’m not saying Anet has to release maps with massive events stitched to every corner (I’d rather they didn’t; maps like Southsun Cove feel bloated), but rather that many, many more maps be released with the possibility of future content/events be added to them later.

SilverThorn.5047:

I believe the ascended equipment are at the right spot as of now in terms of time/money invested. i’ve got about 5 ascended chests from various contents of game and crafted a full set. With the recent addition of events making 300g (even as a casual player) takes less than a week. Any reduction in the amount of mats required in crafting ascended gear will be unfair to the ones who have crafted multiple sets and is likely to crash the material market which is source of gold for many.

So yeah, i dun think the ascended crafting is aimed at the hardcore players a casual can get as lucky with a chest and score an ascended piece. Crafting is just a sure way of getting one

Wow… I barely scraped together 1000g in over 1000 hours of gameplay (that’s including vanilla, where rewards were legitimate). And I went through both hardcore and casual times (some 1-hour weeks, some 14-hour days, etc). I’m all ears for a 300g/week earning. (Or do you just mean PvP ascended chests – associated value – rather than actual gold?)

Edit: Just saw your reply post. Hmm, that’s only assuming you’re on at the same time champion trains are on… and that by “casual” you mean 4 hours (casual for me is ~45 mins to an hour per day).

Miku.6297:

Swift.1930:

Exactly like that, yep. Anything flagged as guild-bound is automatically (as part of the “leave guild” button’s programming sequence) sent to the guild’s ascended equipment vault (a material-storage-style panel which should also be added). The confiscation of guild-bound items is an extremely simple line of code.

Guilder leader -> recruits players who help progress the guild crafters, or donate/buy/whatever it takes to make this “guild bound ascended”… He then KICKS players and keeps the profit/items for himself or other guild members…

An extremely simple line of code that could become EXTREMELY abusive.

But you do realize that this can already happen, right? Players can already put effort/time/etc into building up a guild hall and then get kicked out. Or building up a guild’s reputation. Etc. Etc. When you think about it, though, most players aren’t about to hand over everything right after joining a guild, and most guild leaders aren’t as evil as you’re giving them credit for. What people do with the system is up to them, certainly. Maybe some leaders take a regular tax (resources, money, influence). Maybe some guild leaders kick people out if they don’t represent them for a week.

Development is the key here; I’m using this thread as a brainstorm for collecting ideas about making something that could be a reality. You tell me it can be abused? Great! Now we brainstorm how to counter the abuse. A voting system for kicking abusive guild leaders? A minimum number of members to be maintained to be able to access its own ascended equipment? A small Anet support team to take complaints about events like that? Or even a player council (Greek oligarchy for the win) of proven reliable players who voluntarily view and vote on replacing abusive guild leaders at weekly gatherings? (Either in Lion’s Arch or somewhere less laggy, but my thoughts were on adding an actual voting module/location in this case, and LA is both central and neutral.)

But to restate the contents of my first paragraph, abuse is already possible and already there. Think of the human balances, though – if guild leaders are going to care SOLELY about ascended items, how many people will join them? And are people really gullible enough to say yes to “you can join us if you give us 99999 platinum ore”? Last I checked, people weren’t joining guilds to give their stuff away. And if human nature prevails, people concerned about losing resources will look for the “cheapest” guild anyways. Or create their own.

The game doesn’t have to be stale. Thinking within the box is an issue. I’m suggesting legitimate development; doing so means more than just adding a single module.

geekgirlonezeroone.1793:

Everything I said about HoT I take back. I thought 4 zones would be a sham for its price, but they are really big and there’s a lot involved, far more than what the early testers parroted. It would be nice though if it didn’t have so many breaking bugs in it, but we weren’t given everything to test so I guess it’s no surprise if you only allow 50% of the content to be tested then the other 50% is gonna have many unreported bugs.

I’m not certain though about druid class, I gave it a go and wasn’t impressed with both the healing and the dps. I don’t think it fits in with a class that originates purely as physical dps.

I catch what you mean, and they are kind of cool maps, but they also feel… like giant arcade machines. “Insert Coin” in the jumping mushroom minigame to allow you to jump up some places, “Insert Coin” to go through a door, “Insert Coin”, etc, etc… and so much leveling to reach each coin, too. Not to mention mastery farming (but so far that hasn’t been an issue for me). And if you have no coins, it’s very nearly impossible to do anything on the maps!

But every corner you turn, there’s a little place where an event happens every few minutes. Back in vanilla maps, you can wander quite a ways before you encounter events sometimes. You can walk past houses, caves, villages, wandering merchants, bandits, etc; some of them spawned events that reacted to you or another player, but others happened on their own. HoT maps don’t appear to have any of that, and provide little cause or fuel for wanderlust.

I wonder if it would be possible for a game like Guild Wars 2 to keep its core maps and add procedurally-generated maps like Elite: Dangerous does… that would add huge chunks of adventure and exploration to the picture, and if players discover cool places that Anet thinks it can develop into something cooler, Anet could do just that.

Good points both, Trajan and Tommyknocker.

JVJD.4912:

Narrrz.7532:

Again, i get that ANet is terrified of people farming these things to too great personal advantage, but in the process of trying to counteract these few players, they’re really killing a lot of the enjoyment of a major slice of their playerbase.

Lmao its not few, it was basically everyone, nobody was completing events and those who were trying to do the event were considered grievers by the ppl over there and reported (Haha reported for doing content as it was intended)
When the champ bags were introduced every Jormag event i went was a camp farm event nobody was completing it

This highlights one of the reasons people are dropping out – not only has Anet pushed to make loot hard to come by (which started karma trains and champion zergs in the first place), but it has then nerfed/reduced the rewards of a lot of those trains/zergs (Queensdale, for instance). Less loot from the few good loot places? Less players, too. Anet should be flooding players with decent loot and giving players reasons to use/accumulate such loot, and thus expanding the game, rather than saying “this is all you will get, so we will make it harder and harder for you to reach the current goals so that you can play for longer”. That’s known as stagnant gameplay. Prolonging stagnant gameplay is… cheap.

thehipone.6812:

Aomine.5012:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Christonya.3856:

SO we’re left in the following position. A: Do the collection and spend just as much money doing it as buying the item off the TP. Or B: skip the hoops and just buy it off the TP.

Which goes back to my title: I don’t get it. What’s the point of the precursor crafting when the over whelming majority of it is spending time on the TP? I might as well just buy the pre and enjoy it immediately rather then suffer through the collection which is the same cost any ways.

I realize the argument of “Oh well just go run around lower level zones and mine 15k iron and 10 platinum you don’t have to deal with the TP!” Ignoring how egregious those numbers are, why not just … SELL the items on the TP at that point instead of stocking up 15k of any ore which you probably don’t even have the bank space for in the first place? At which point it goes back to the original argument…. Why not do content you want to do IE the maguuma jungle, and sell items from it for gold to buy the precursor?

You’ve basically answered your own thread question. Precursor crafting was an alternative way to obtain Precursors. It wasn’t meant to be easier or cheaper. In fact, the Devs confirmed that they purposely balanced the cost of crafting a Precursors to around what the value is on the TP. If you value your time more than anything, then purchasing a Precursor from one of us is the faster way to go. If you want to save money, and have the time to farm mats, then mining nodes yourself (or simply playing the game) is the way to go.

You can play the game any way you choose. But if you do choose to buy a Precursor from the TP, do note that the player you purchased it from thanks you very much.

Turns out it’s not balanced because Anet ALWAYS IGNORE INFLATION.
Dawn requires 100 Deldrimor Steel Ingot, which cost 1050g on TP now.
Add the other bunch of material cost, the crafting fee can easily exceeding 1200g.
In addition, you have to waste 30+ hours doing lots of activities, and many of them are even bugged and prevent your entire progression.

Now look at the TP Price of Dawn. 700g.
So which way would you choose then?

If they diversify materials much more, the inflation wouldn’t be as bad..
But nope, they want to break the market by requiring 12k iron ores, 8k platinum ores, which cannot be obtained through salvaging from lv80 gears.

Now it not only makes people who tried to craft Precursors suffer, but also make regular players who’re using those materials suffer too. Everyone is mad and sad, everyone loses. Only the richest 0.001% of people who manipulate the market for profit win this battle.

Great job Anet. You ruin the economy and kitten up everyone once again. You make people even wish they never wish for having Precursors being craft-able because it’s even worse than RNG. (RNG market = TP market)

First – Increased demand does not equal inflation. Sure, crafting mats have shot up, but this also increased the earning power of miners. Everyone can mine and make more money now. If you insist on buying in a market with extreme demand, of course you will pay high prices. However, everyone can mine. My usual gathering routes and stats are showing 19.5 raw gold/hr or 16.5 after TP tax, the highest I’ve ever seen. But as long as people keep thinking “must grind silverwastes and buy mats” it will be a strong seller’s market. Based on the 10g/hr general rule of thumb, you’re paying about a 50% “I don’t want to gather it myself” premium on everything.

What people also continue to ignore is how large the “I want it now” factor is. If you look at the cost of deldrimor ingots, there is a 4.5 gold premium (or 3.3 gold after TP tax) over the cost to buy the ore and make a deldrimor ingot. But you can only make 1 a day. In effect, people are willing to buy your daily time gate for 3+ gold. Multiply by 100 ingots, and right away you add 350-400+ gold higher price for the collection. The 100 ingots that you cite as costing 1050g only cost 510 gold in raw mats, even at the current prices. The same mats would be about 380 gold at the more recent average prices of about 2s/ea for iron and plat. So of that 1050g cost, about 1050 – 380 = 670g is due to market conditions and demand.

tl;dr Markets function like markets. If you don’t want to gather or wait 100 days to make your own ingots, you’re gonna pay.

That’s another funny thing about GW2’s economy; not only do prices go up, but there’s that weird and utter gold-sink – the trading post tax. Does it seem a little high to anyone else? There’s no good reason for it to be there, as there’s no direct player-to-player fee-free trade option in the game. (Unless you want to risk sending 500g-valued precursors through mail.)

Elder Scrolls Online has a really fantastic trading option – sending a message that requires the recipient to pay a fee (determined by the sender) before he/she can open it. It can be recalled, I believe, otherwise it expires and returns to the sender if not paid for. There’s a normal trading post as well, but for player-player trades they really provided a brilliant system.

Wanze.8410:

The crafting proficiency of guild members has always been visible in the roster.

What would a guild leader stop to invite a new player, let him pay for guild bound ascended armor and then kick him?

It certainly has; I remember it from all the way back at the start. The thing is, it has no use yet. There have been several placeholders in the game (Dominion of the Winds, the Tengu capital, is a big example of that) since launch.

If a player was hiring himself out as a journeyman smith (not journeyman in the Guild Wars sense of the word, but rather in the historical sense), it would make plenty of sense. I mean it also depends on what humans do; some guild leaders might kick them out, some might keep them, some journeymen might leave on their own accord, some might stay on, and so on and so forth. So long as Anet gives us the tools for interaction, the interactions themselves become organic. I’m not saying anyone’s going to get kicked out (but let’s face it, it can happen even now to someone who has donated a lot to a guild).

Kichwas.7152:

Swift.1930:

flman.6057:

More skins, armor sets, hair and faces, rework lazy reused animation, be less european, be less zergish, revive dungeons, make condi builds viable. And I will tell everyone that GW2 is the best for me and probably for them.
Until now it is korean p2p BnS, which really isn’t so bad for Arena, since NCSoft owns them.

I’m actually glad Guild Wars 2 is European; that’s what’s held me to it so long, as quite a few MMOs are Asian in style and content.

GW2 Is American developed. Not European.
And the world of Guild Wars has a full diversity to it already established as Canon since 2005. The theme here should be more global – as that is what is in the Canon.

We’re actually, predominately, in Kryta, which is NOT a Caucasian region… but somehow “became that” in GW2 despite the Ascalonians still being a separate ethnic group from the Krytans. The best ‘earth like’ description for a Krytan would probably be a Polynesian or South Asian – they seemed a hybrid of this originally.

Global, yes, that would be fine. Regarding Kryta, however, you may have missed the whole migration lore where Ascalon pretty much up and moved to Kryta. The culture is predominantly European now (although I’m not quite sure about the monsters). When creating a character it certainly is possible to appear South Asian, though, so those ethnicities (whether predominant or not) are still true to lore.

When a kingdom as large as Ascalon commits to a mass exodus, the culture and ethnicity of a region it moves to is completely prone to change. Australian people, for instance, are no longer dark-skinned as a majority. The U.S. is not predominantly American Indian now, either. Certainly don’t have a tent as the white house…

At least that’s my take on what happened. And since we can’t spawn in human Ascalon, I’m personally glad the European culture/style migrated. I’d hate to have to spawn as a Charr to have my home area look vaguely European…

Furthermore, Lion’s Arch used to have the South Asian (Canthan) vibe you mentioned until it was destroyed. Now I’m not exactly sure what it is.

Vayne.8563:

BrooksP.4318:

To play devil’s advocate, the MMO market has been pretty terrible the past 4 years, so it’s not that much of an honor. For years to come is also iffy at best, unless Anet actually figures out a long term plan they are doomed to only appease diehard GW fans. Pre-HoT and HoT has shown that Anet doesn’t seem to know where they want to take GW2.

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, if the MMO market sucks so badly maybe there’s a reason for it. Maybe it’s actually harder to make an MMO that everyone enjoys than people seem to think. Do you think it’s a coincidence that so few MMOs succeed or become popular?

Every MMO that comes down the pike faces the same problems. They have to have the capital to make the game. They need the time to make the game. They need the to appeal to audiences that have vastly different ideas of what even makes a good MMO. They have to make money but not look greedy. They have to satisfy some very high expectations and they have to launch smoothly because it’s very very rare that fans give an MMO a second chance.

I mean you got some big companies making these games that came out with games that weren’t well received. There was SWToR made by EA and Bioware. Not well received. You’ve got ESO based on the Elder Scrolls game, not well received. You have Wildstar and Archeage with terrible launches.

But the question is why are all these launches bad? Maybe it’s because all these games face the same issues, and those issues are largely unsolvable.

I predict future games are going to face the same problem.

The issue is that devs don’t seem to be looking at new ways of doing things, but rather are reskinning old business models based on old market information.

And then, next game – same problem.

And again.

I honestly thought Guild Wars would be breaking standards to try and steal the MMO community, but it looks like it’s actually settled into a downhill trend instead. It really wouldn’t take many tweaks to send it back uphill, but they don’t seem to do that.

flman.6057:

More skins, armor sets, hair and faces, rework lazy reused animation, be less european, be less zergish, revive dungeons, make condi builds viable. And I will tell everyone that GW2 is the best for me and probably for them.
Until now it is korean p2p BnS, which really isn’t so bad for Arena, since NCSoft owns them.

I’m actually glad Guild Wars 2 is European; that’s what’s held me to it so long, as quite a few MMOs are Asian in style and content. I love European castles, villages, houses, creatures, etc, and the Scandinavian Norn style was pretty epic too. It’d be nice if Anet came out with expansions with different cultures (e.g. Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall), but the European-style fantasy setting is really the reason I joined. Even though my main in Guild Wars 1 was a ritualist, I primarily roamed Ascalon and Norn lands.

But still, I wouldn’t mind expansions with different cultures.

Yeah, the necessity and drive for zergs to form and roam is a bit… so-so. But don’t ask Anet to stop them – if patterns from the past prove anything, it’s that Anet will stop zergs by removing champion/veteran loot from the game!

The new ones are pretty unpathable; it would be okay if gliders were accessible, but not as gameplay currently stands. The original maps had maybe three fatal drops all up, and one or two only if you were impatient enough to try the whole jump in one go instead of take it in segments. The new ones have a lot of drop deaths.

Miku.6297:

Swift.1930:

I’m confused. When was that indicated? The whole idea so far has been that the armor would be bound to the guild. That way non-guild-members cannot, as you put it, buy it.

If you’re indicating that ascended equipment should be purchasable on the market, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Then it becomes an economy focus rather than a guild community focus. Anet already has plenty of cash sinks on the trading post that anyone (including guilds) can purchase at any time already purely for gold. The whole idea is to bring more importance and interaction to half of Guild Wars’s title.

If only guild members can buy it, how does that prevent someone from doing this..

/map tipping for guild with ascended armor crafters ready to use —-> join guild —-> buy/craft armor from guild crafters —-> pay inviter —-> leave guild. Unless you are saying that A-net would some how flag the armor to be useable by members only in a certain guild, and only when repping said guild, the final result would be a way to acquire ascended armor without having to level crafting or get RNG lucky.

Exactly like that, yep. Anything flagged as guild-bound is automatically (as part of the “leave guild” button’s programming sequence) sent to the guild’s ascended equipment vault (a material-storage-style panel which should also be added). The confiscation of guild-bound items is an extremely simple line of code.

Also, I just noticed something in Guild Wars that indicates that something like this is coming in the future: in the guild window, you can see what level and profession of craftsman fellow members are. If ascended crafting isn’t going to be accessible to guild members, why do you need to know crafting levels? It could just have the professions, or even just not show any profession information at all. As crafting and guild interaction currently stands, the last thing guild members need to even think of caring about is others’ crafting levels. The information is completely useless – exotic equipment is available anywhere and (mostly) for cheaper than crafting it yourself, so there’s no good reason to requisition it from fellow guildies.

shaquinna.2869:

I got a few points

1. Crashes in new HoT content (for example during long lasting map events)
2. Crashes in Lion’s Arch
3. Crashes in Silverwaste
4. Crashes in Queensdale
5. Crashes in the guild hall
6. Crashes while opening the Guild Panel
7. Crashes while opening the Hero Panel
8. Crashes while opening the Gem store
9. Crashes while opening the
10. Crashes during Shadow Behemoth
11. Crashes during Guild Missions
12. Crashes during Tequatle
13. Crashes during dungeons

Just … crashes

Ever since HoT release.. crashes everywhere. Not just me, a lot of others.
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/CRASHES-CRASHES-AND-MORE-CRASHES/first)

To point out the seriousness of these issues and the time span it should be fixed in.. see point 8.

Haven’t read all the posts to see if your crashes have been addressed yet, but I was getting infinite crashes that seemed exactly like that. I updated vid card drivers and have only had occasional issues since. I guess HoT accesses more varied elements of animation than vanilla GW2 that the old video drivers weren’t optimized for.

That said, different computer can mean completely different resolution. One of my friends is stuck with the 1 file remaining error (and we’ve tried every resolution imaginable), which is great because I finally had time this weekend to play it with him. Sigh…

Miku.6297:

Swift.1930:

It doesn’t matter if there are journeyman crafters out there; materials or fees would still need to be collected. The idea is not to exchange exorbitant fees for ascended items, but rather to use them as guild community items.

But my question about selling items and your answer does NOT support guild community items. It supports non guild members buying ascended armor.

I’m confused. When was that indicated? The whole idea so far has been that the armor would be bound to the guild. That way non-guild-members cannot, as you put it, buy it.

If you’re indicating that ascended equipment should be purchasable on the market, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Then it becomes an economy focus rather than a guild community focus. Anet already has plenty of cash sinks on the trading post that anyone (including guilds) can purchase at any time already purely for gold. The whole idea is to bring more importance and interaction to half of Guild Wars’s title.

Miku.6297:

Swift.1930:

Essentially, jobs/job descriptions. I mean, so long as it works out for both the guild members and the crafters, that’s another positive community interaction. You could even have journeymen who craft in one guild for a couple of days, pick up some gold as payment, and then move on to another guild. Fullfill guild-member-determined “contracts” and move on with life. More cool ideas – nice input there!

So why even bother having ascended as “account bound”? If guilds could be used to buy/sell the armor, why not just go ahead and have it be available on the TP?

What I might be able to support a bit more… Have the guild armor “rent” ascended stat armor. If the guild crafter is the proper level you can buy timed (3 day duration for example) ascended armor once per duration cycle. This way, you would need to be in a guild to have the armor. It would also let people try out different stat combos without having to fully invest in buying a new set.

It doesn’t matter if there are journeyman crafters out there; materials or fees would still need to be collected. The idea is not to exchange exorbitant fees for ascended items, but rather to use them as guild community items. If a guild doesn’t want to hire an expensive journeyman, they train up their own craftsman. Either way, the guild still pitches in for the final result. Also, as I mentioned, the guild equipment would not be transmutable and would have a rune of the guild’s choice (in the same way a banner is chosen). That way, if you’re looking for customisability, you’re still going to need to craft your own armor/weapons.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Kaleban.9834:

And here’s the thing in terms of gameplay. Ascended gear means only a very small numerical advantage over exotics, generally, not including AR for Fractals. So if its a very marginal increase, and as you pointed out we can already do the trading/equipping with exotics, then from a gameplay/twinking aspect, Ascended offers no big advantage. Then, combine that with the massive number of different stat sets compared to other MMOs, the mat requirements per set, the fact that almost any profession can be built for power, condi, or any of several viable combinations AND ANet has stated it wants to break up the Zerk meta (which is likely what everyone’s primary or sole Ascended set is), and you begin to see that Ascended crafting as a Guild Service is a great idea.

On top of all that, ANet has said that in some unspecified way, Ascended will be REQUIRED to participate/succeed in the upcoming Raid content. No word on stat combinations (Do we need Nomad and Soldier or Berserk and Assassin?), so we’re left to guess as usual.

So when you break it down, combine all the points listed above, it becomes nearly logically inexcusable to NOT introduce something like a Guild Crafting ability.

Not saying I disagree with the idea, I think it would be a cool community thing.

However, you are overlooking a couple of key points.
Anet wants everyone to grind up their own smithing, that’s the only reason to start making it more necessary.

They want tons more players pouring gold and mats into that sink
(only reason to push for ascended for raids)

They want those sinks burning as many mats as possible
(only reason to increase the crafting cost of stuff people have said was already too expensive)

Given those two factors I doubt we’ll ever see anything of the sort that lets players help each other bypass those sinks, at least not on a direct level, they’d still be able to do stuff like carry friends through fractals or other content that has a higher chance for ascended, but I imagine that’s about it.

Thing is, it’s insanely easy for developers to come up with new ways for people to spend materials and money. I could brainstorm a list of things they could implement without so much as blinking, let alone needing to budget for them. (Little deployable tents that can be crafted at level 300? Not to mention the cooler-looking gem store tents? Seriously, we’d be seeing massive and varied camps within hours.) If it’s all about economy/economic drive/individual farming/grinding/etc instead of about bringing guilds and communities together and encouraging player interaction, Anet may as well strip Guild Wars 2 down into a single-player game with hostable co-op gameplay and instanced WvW/PvP servers.

Griffin.5379:

Something in the direction of: “guild-bound stuff can’t be carried outside the guild”
was mentioned, though that is a topic for itself.

Hm, Idea based on that, a Guild-Shop, NPC to place in a town that can sell stuff from a special guild inventory.
With the AH this is pretty much useless, but would become interesting when you can buy things that can’t be sold in the AH.

Not really sure how a shop would work out. It could, but I haven’t really considered that as a mechanic. I suppose it would be a bit like the guild shops in Elder Scrolls Online? Couldn’t really have ascended items in there due to the guild-binding mechanic, but other than that it’s a good idea (guildies could list items/materials/etc for cheaper to other guildies than they would on the trading post, for example). But that’s a whole new topic to think about.

Miku.6297:

I’m not sure if this has been answered yet; what happens when guilds start “selling” access to ascended crafters?

Essentially, jobs/job descriptions. I mean, so long as it works out for both the guild members and the crafters, that’s another positive community interaction. You could even have journeymen who craft in one guild for a couple of days, pick up some gold as payment, and then move on to another guild. Fullfill guild-member-determined “contracts” and move on with life. More cool ideas – nice input there!

Wanze.8410:

Griffin.5379:

Wanze.8410:

For me it seems you only dont want to spend the mats to level your crafting but still would like to have access to the perks it provides.

Then you read it wrong, he already has a view crafts on 500.

It is all about sharing.
Yes, leveling from 400-500 eats up a lot of resources, but you do it for what? One or two armor sets and a view weapons, only for your character, after that, you don’t need that craft anymore.

The Point of that Guild-Bound System is to make high level crafting useful for more player then just you, give you the opportunity to help others with the results of your hours of work.

But as said, there should still be reasons to level up your crafting yourself eventually, maybe to replace the Guild Smith, for a special Item/Gift or whatever. Maybe limit the stuff one can craft at a “Guild Forge” limited, so you can only make a hand full of stat-sets but not all, or maybe just one, celestial.
There are a lot of clever people here with a lot of ideas to keep the resource and money sink, or even build in more AND make high level crafting more useful.

There is so much to share between guild members, i dont think ascended armor or account bound mats in general should be one of them, just for the sake of being able to share more as it would have too much impact on other parts of the game.

The way you put it sounds like you just don’t want an extra feature in the game. Plenty of similar systems already exist in guild/clan/outfit-based games: Warframe, for instance, has weapons and frames that you could create your own personal clan for and put aaaaaaall the materials into the research for – or you could join a clan of players who all farm up the pieces and chip in. Either way is acceptable and either way directly affects players and gameplay. Ascended equipment in Guild Wars doesn’t have crippling affects on gameplay, so I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “too much impact on other parts of the game”. For a game called “Guild Wars”, not “Craftsmen Wars”, I’d like to see Anet making guild interaction and collaboration and community a focus with increasingly-interesting and evolving features.

A system like this would also encourage the recruitment of new players who are long-standing friends of current players. (Yes, Anet, I just suggested that you could even market the idea. Uhoh.)

BunjiKugashira.9754:

While the suggestion sounds nice and I’d really like to help out my guildmates with their crafting, there are some problems to be considered:

1. Who does the equipment belong to?
The player? The one wearing the equipment probably paid for the mats or farmed them, so it’s only fair to say that the equipment belongs to him and if he ever leaves the guild, gets to keep it. This opens the possibility to invite players and “sell” ascended stuff.

The guild? This would prevent people from joining a guild to buy ascended stuff and leave again, because the items would stay with the guild. However it would artificially force people to stick to their guild even if there is a dispute. It could even be used to threaten members.

---

I just thought about something good: The item stays with it’s wearer. Always. However if you leave the guild it was adjusted (or forged) in, then it becomes unusable until it’s either adjusted in another guild that you join, or you have the crafting profession at 500 and can turn the item into a personal one.

The same thing happens if the one who forged or adjusted the item leaves the guild.

A completely valid point, but for the sake of discussion, let’s say that the idea is that people are aware that it would belong to the guild. That way, they can either level their own crafting levels and craft their own ascended items (and equip them and make them soulbound), or pitch in for the guild craftsman to make them, with full awareness that if they aren’t sure about sticking with the guild, they probably shouldn’t pitch in too heavily.

A similar issue was dealt with in Guild Wars 1 in that manner – you could farm Luxon/Kurzik points and invest them in your guild; they were not refundable if you left the guild.

However, I did notice another valid point that I previously overlooked. The guild armorer has no obligation to craft things and make them guild-bound. So another balance (again, a simple one) could be that crafting benches in the guild hall could stockpile items (maybe a crafting material storage panel in the guild bank). If an armorer/weaponsmith/etc creates items at a bench, he/she can either choose to use personal items or the guild cache. If using the cache, the crafted item is only going to be guild bound.

Perhaps there could even be a guild rune that automatically becomes part of the armor. The guild’s rune would be decided upon by the leader (or anyone authorized to update rune). The rune would then become part of the construction requirements.

Thoughts?

briggah.7910:

I’m still waiting for all the f2p account spies to take over wvw and populate the maps.. When f2p was announced people said it was the end of wvw because 1000 of spies would impact the scores.

:P

I mean… easy fix (theoretically) – take F2P out of WvW. Make them pay for such (previously) epic content! Or let them only go into Edge of the Mists. One or the other.

coglin.1867:

Zanther Deathbringer.4762:

Sidizen.9048:

I think that Anet should bring the old BL’s back just for a week to see if some people come back to WvW and play on the old BL’s. This could help us see if WvW is truly dead.

People would just play the maps purely as a reason to justify the new map hate. Then they’ll go back to complaining that WvW gets ignored as people continue to zerg blob ktrain.

Couldn’t agree more.

I mean, as things currently stand, rather than playing and complaining, the WvW playerbase is fading and complaints still issue daily. I can’t see how bringing back old complaints while reviving the numbers is a worse idea…

Uh… I mean, you can find plenty of empty banks to go to. The level-up noise is quite mild, and never bothers me because either I can mute Guild Wars or I just accept it as part of the game. I mean, come on, tell me you’ve never 80-ed a character at a bank with tomes. I appreciate having the sound in the game; it’s part of the experience, and has always been there. It’s become part of the natural background sound for crowded banks… would never be the same if it wasn’t there!

Although… we could ask Anet to give us full-on trumpet fanfares upon leveling up. That could make for awesome bank ambiance.

Kraggy.4169:

Kaleban.9834:

Triangulator.2867:

Search up crafting guides and increase your account value by ‘forging’ ascended. How much are we willing to lean on others to accomplish benign personal account/character growth?

You want it. You make it. A guild can send you materials to help. But they won’t give you a shortcut. Earn you stripes.

You do know that in the military, each private does not forge their own rifle from solid cast steel, nor does every airman personally assemble their own jet right? A seaman does not build from scratch each boat in the Navy, etc..

This is a GAME .. some people seem to lose sight of that apparently.

I mean… that was still part of Kaleban’s point – as stated at the end of his reply.

Now that I think about it, as an feature, there could be a guild rank check-box for whether certain ranks can use guild-bound ascended equipment. That way (depending on how strict/lax the guild is), access to such equipment could still be “earned”. This would also prove to be a way to balance out the possible issue where a member could take equipment for all his/her characters when he/she doesn’t need to do so or has been forbidden to do so (a single-outfit guild rule).

Also, guild-bound ascended items would not be able to have their skins altered by other guild members. Doing so would only be an option for the creator, and doing so would (as usual) make the item soulbound. This would add a certain uniformity to a guild that builds up full ascended sets for everyone in them – they would be outfitted like armies. But of course people can still mix and match their own equipment with their guild-bound things.

Furthermore, should someone add runes to their armor, the runes would remove upon leaving the guild, putting the equipment in the guild bank, trading to another guild member, etc.

Adine.2184:

knight.8926:

So I don’t know if this is the usual but I usually pvp or wvw and I came to notice the difference of people on pve and wvw are. I go to lion’s arch or anywhere in the pve world and ask for help only to be ignored and when they do respond they make it sound like a hassle to help out. In wvw, the people there actually coordinate and help each other out. They relay things to you just to let you know what’s going on without really asking too. It seems a much more tight knit than pve content people. Sadly, I’m starting to give up getting help on pve content and just stick to wvw. Sadly, I’m starting to give up getting help in pve and just stay in wvw. Do you guys notice any difference between pve and wvw people you’ve noticed?

This is interesting because ive always found the exact opposite to be true where PvE players are helpful and the PvP populace are to put it politely …….supercalifagalisticexpialadipshyts and quite frankly sound quite like nincompoops and nitwits .

Thing is, the post was about PvE and WvW players – PvP players are somewhat different from WvW, who are more community-based than people who just skirmish in PvP matches.

I can’t say I’ve noticed huge differences between the two, but generally PvE players are more loot/boss/gathering/story/events/Living World savvy, whereas WvW players tend to have a good grasp of map strategy and generally have team spirit. Still, if you aren’t willing to be useful in WvW, players may not on a whole be terribly interested in chatting. That said, ever since the WvW system changed with the release of HoT, things have been different. I’ve only encountered karma trains since then, and most of those people are, well… nearly identical to PvE players.

Also, I’ve found that a lot of the better players (especially in WvW) tend to use TeamSpeak and seem to only occasionally glance at chat.

Congratulations to you both

There’ve been a few threads about it. Maybe it’s an indication that the new borderlands are only temporarily replacing vanilla? (Fingers crossed… the new borderland map would work better as an alternative, like Edge of the Mists.)

My suggestion is guild-centered, with the intention of bringing more life and interaction to guilds as a whole. I mean, I could bring up a pretty long list of features for Anet to add (along with detailed plans for implementation), but this is something both simple and beneficial to the community that could revitalize guild gameplay.