Guild Wars 2

Interesting; it seems some people are viewing this post as a “Anet should remove bags” suggestion. I agree with the general consensus that there are too many bags (karma and money and laurel bags are account-bound and go straight into your wallet when you use them), but some obviously need to stick around (such as bags of random materials, which make a big difference to the trading post economy). Boss-specific bags/chests are also fine in my opinion; it’s pretty much just the account-bound wallet items that shouldn’t be in their own little bags. We already know exactly what is inside them, so there’s no hint of mystery and no random loot factor to consider.

Test.8734:

Sicarius.4639:

fixit.7189:

Unlike other MMO game expansions, this ones uses a metric ton of recycled assets and then called new. I know no other MMO expansion that makes you go back to old world stuff I have been doing for three years; it’s always completely new stuff, with new loots/rewards/etc. But not so in HoT! Here I am, in new expansion farming the same junk I have been doing for years. Instead, all the cool stuff is in the gem store; frankly, I am not impressed with this new direction they are going where less is supposedly more.

You need to recycle things so you can put all your new shiny toys in the gemstore for more profit! It’s actually laughable how we’ve seen more skins in the last couple of weeks than that in an entire expansion.

Right?

The thing that makes me the most sad about GW2 is that it’s not really improving. Time and time again, ArenaNet is making decisions that have clearly been made to benefit them to the detriment of their players. Such as:

• Releasing VERY few new skins with HoT, but then following with a deluge of new skins in the gem store. There really isn’t any excuse for this – it’s obvious that they had the manpower to make the new skins, but they chose to not add them to the game because they knew they could just sell them apart for a bigger profit, despite how expensive HoT is. The fact they weren’t even trying to hide it speaks a lot about how ArenaNet doesn’t even care.

• Things like the Bifrost collection that, as described, require players to do something completely dependable of pure RNG such as being locked inside one of the Shatterer’s crystals. The collections as a whole are a bunch of RNG and grind that are meant to be endured, not enjoyed, but to add something like this, in what was meant to be a system to reduce the RNG in acquiring precursors, is just a slap on the players’ face.

• Reducing the value of things in the core game right when HoT is released. Not only the dungeon nerf, but also the many things that used to be part of the core GW2 and were moved to HoT – a huge number of guild buffs, for example, and even earning many rewards in Fractals that are now gated by the Fractals mastery. Removing things from the core game in order to drive people to get HoT is far from being something done for the players.

• Locking progression on the Living Story by masteries, and locking the elite specializations – which we all know was one of the features players were excited the most for – behind grind gates. This was obviously meant to artificially inflate the longevity of HoT by forcing people to grind before they could reach the end of the story or unlock their specializations.

People often quote the ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto for the line “We don’t want players to grind”. But at the end, ArenaNet said something else:

“The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

And no, that’s not true. The game has been built against the players.

Is this the best MMO around? Maybe. Which is proof of how bad MMORPGs are, not of how good GW2 would be.

Agreed. You forgot a key element, though: the deconstruction of WvW with the roll-out of the HoT expansion. Automatic upgrades (one issue, but plenty more exist) have taken away a massive part of the risk/reward of defending places you’ve upgraded, and have also made it much harder for small groups to take places on abandoned servers (in other words, little raids are now timesinks even when noone has personally put effort into upgrading).

I’ve been big on Guild Wars for years, but I’m watching updates come out with increasing alarm: I’m not sure why the development team has now decided to gradually deconstruct its game and dissolve its player base.

Honestly, obtaining legendary weapons should be a hunting process, not a gathering process. I’m 100% sure my input is too late (Anet won’t rework the system this much at this stage), but here’s what I see: crafting ascended equipment is a mark of personal prowess, and as such should be a crafting experience. Legendaries, on the other hand, simply can’t be crafted. Look up “legendary” in the dictionary. There should be other processes for obtaining legendary weapons; there should be rumors about them, maps to last known locations, battles, quests, ghosts of previous owners, battles with current owners, and more. Maybe obscenely long and challenging tasks that require groups to complete. But not crafting. Unless, of course, the hunt was to lead us to multiple pieces of the legendary item and the crafting side of things was finding materials strong enough to repair it.

I’ve never really understood the crafting process for legendary equipment, and this system (while interesting and useful for some people) seems to make it even less motivating. By all means, give us “highly-ascended” or “ultra-cool” weapon types to craft, but if it’s legendary it shouldn’t be something we craft ourselves.

(Note: don’t actually give us weapon types of “highly-ascended” or “ultra-cool”.)

Ayrilana.1396:

ChrizZcE.5981:

the most valuable item I´ve found in 500hours of play was an exotic worth 3 gold.

There is no loot in this game. If you want gear you have to farm gold and buy it of the TP.

Here’s the thing. If they increased the drop rate on those items that are more rare, the price would drop. The loot has value because it is rare (and desirable).

However, there could be a slightly better balance. It wouldn’t hurt to raise drop rates slightly and increase player motivation, even if the prices drop by 1-10 gold. Rather than seat us with a few items that drop super rarely, Anet could give us more items to loot (most items are just skins anyways, and textures come cheap).

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.

I believe I mentioned that the names were completely fictitious? So were the scenarios. I was taking creative license. I’ve personally reached ascended crafting on two of my characters (armor and smithing) and have high levels in other crafting areas as well. I’m not looking for a shortcut for myself; I like having ascended stuff, but I seriously want to help my guildmates out. It’s awesome to have the power to forge cool things – but if I could use it to benefit my guild, I would feel that it was also an accomplishment of importance.

And thanks for the support, Kaleban

Perfect world scenario:
You sign in. You listen to the birds chirping outside (real life) and hear the menu music. Life is good. You load up your Level 80 warrior, and you find that he had gone to sleep in your guild hall. You peer around and admire the work of your guild scribe, TalosTinyMouse.
Then you are greeted by the thundering voice of MightySmith04. “Ha! I knew you would be back! I was forging these all night. The hall boomed with the cries of my anvil.”
You nearly squeal in delight. “Aha! Are they ready?”
MightySmith04 /nods and /bows. “I present to you your new chestplate and greaves – may they serve you well in battle.”
You accept the trade and don your fresh ascended armor. The farming was worth it. The whole guild had already pitched in for the lord’s set, and for TalosTinyMouse’s set, since he was usually so busy, but now, finally, your turn had come.
“The rest of the set may take a while,” says MightySmith04, “but for now, I need some rest. Go, go and break those in! And fetch me some more dragonite ore while you’re at it; I’m fresh out.”

Imperfect world scenario:
You sign in. Your guild armorer hasn’t signed in for several months now; he seems to have given up since the WvW changes took place. You go to the forge and half-heartedly pick up the hammer. You’ve only 200 more levels of armorsmithing to go – you’ll get there eventually. You put down the hammer and weave the lining for a pair of gloves. You pick the hammer up again and heat up the furnace – only to find out that you’re all out of platinum. Again. You slump to the floor, /cry, and sign out.

Pitch:
This has probably been brought up before, but Guild Wars really ought to be just that – guild wars. And as such, high-level crafting should be something that players can use to contribute to their guild. You didn’t get that far just to piece everything together all by yourself and all for yourself, did you?

I’m not saying ascended materials and equipment should be sellable – nope, not at all. I’m not trying to destroy economy here. I’m saying that it would be awesome if ascended materials could be passed along to guild craftsmen, after which the craftsman could craft ascended items and select an option to make the creation guild-bound. He/she can then send it to anyone in the same guild, or leave it in the guild bank. This adds value to each player in the guild, and emphasis on self-leveling (trying to get every crafting skill to 500) is not encouraged as much as specialization within the player’s community. It also increases guild-based building and development and encourages guild members to act like a guild outside guild missions/GvG/WvW.

Suggestion: ascended equipment to be given a guild-binding option, and materials to become guild-bound.
Exploits to be covered: guild members could take equipment and then leave – this can be covered/prevented by said items mailing themselves back to either the guild leader or the creator (or depositing themselves in the guild bank if slots are free).

I want to go more in-depth with this, so I may add edits at a later stage.

Thoughts?

(Note: all names are fictional. Any correspondence with real player names/tags is unintentional. Also, no player pets were harmed during the writing of this suggestion.)

To be honest, I feel like too many things are account/soulbound… So many times when I look at ascended materials (or semi-amusing-looking unique items) I got from events or drops and wonder whether I should delete them to make room in my inventory. Not to mention collectible pieces. I’m not upsizing my bank for 600 a pop just to complete collections…

Dante.1763:

Shostie.6435:

Fluffball.8307:

I’m getting too much loot. After a meta event it takes me like 10 minutes to open 5 inventories worth of random bags while talking to a merchant. I’m not complaining, but holy cow does a lot of stuff drop.

In the HoT zones, sure. In Dry Top and Silverwastes? No.

this thread is basically for HOT, everyone knows drytop and silverwastes dont drop much of anything.

HOT though…good gawd so much from events its getting annoying to /empty/ my bags

I’ve mostly found junk items, and those are annoying to remove from bags. Haven’t found any valuable loot in HoT yet (2+ hours farming isn’t a huge sample source, but still… there could at least be something for someone with +133% magic find).

It wouldn’t hurt to keep some element of automatic upgrade system in WvW – like a 3-hour hold upgrades walls/gates, and that’s the full extend of auto-upgrade – but the way it’s currently set up doesn’t really encourage any kind of defense or offensive strategy. Half the fun in WvW was choosing what to upgrade and where, or whether to save resources, etc. Maybe something else Anet could consider is the assault consequences that the Elder Scrolls Online WvW mode uses – where you have to repair any damage you did to the fortress/tower when you cap it. That might almost make auto-upgrades plausible.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Swift.1930:

I miss my stacks awfully

On the flip side, I was so glad to see stacks disappear from the game. A PvP scenario that already has power creep doesn’t need more buffs that require NPC farm time to feel like you can go out and fight.

Well… not like the stacks made us all-powerful; they just made it possible for small groups to be more effective during non-peak times. Now if someone’s just finished taking a battering from guards when a player ambushes them, they won’t have that slight edge to get them out.

Nate.3927:

Swift.1930:

And yeah, I wasn’t looking for Edge of the Mists gameplay in borderlands combat. We don’t need all these cliffs and bridges, we need fun sieges and open combat and strategy (like little groups knocking out partially-upgraded towers and camps while big groups distract defenders).

I would argue that fighting near cliffs and bridges are actually quite fun and requires more awareness than fighting on flat open terrain.

But again, we already had Edge of the Mists for that! The sprawling Alpine hills were brilliantly designed, and WvW borderlands used to be my favorite map in Guild Wars 2 (Guild Wars 1 had some awesome similar maps in the Eye of the North expansion). Not just favorite for WvW, which they were brilliant for, but favorite in style/layout/terrain/construction.

I’d not remove the new map if I was Anet (certainly not after they spent resources building it); I’d use it as an alternative WvW map.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Define dead.

If you mean does anyone play the game mode anymore, then, NO it is not dead. Just last night I seen a map queue in EBG rolling tower after tower with the occasional roamer getting splattered like a bug on a windshield.

If however you mean dead as in the BL’s then YES it is. We have told ANet time and time again we don’t want more PvE with our WvW. Instead they feel that all we really needed to become happy was dinosaurs.

I cannot offer any suggestions save maybe having ANet get some suggestions in the form of a cdi from actual WvW players. but I cannot see that happening anytime soon; sadly.

But dinosaurs make everything worthwhile!

Okay, not really.

Where are my old borderlands… where is my home? They can add dinosaurs to those if they really have to, but don’t take away the home I’ve fought off so many invaders to protect!

Dawdler.8521:

coglin.1867:

Sanity Points.8073:

Too large, too gimmicky, too much PvE.

How do you suggest it is too large, when is literally the same size land mass as the old borderlands?

Alpine was a rectangle, in case you forgot. The new desert border is a full square larger than EB. Its about 50-70% larger than alpine in pure landmass. Then add another 20-30% below the desert. Also take into account that alpine focused combat below the citadel line, which meant that maybe 70% of alpine was used for most combat. That doesnt change landmass sure, but it make alot of difference.

So no. You are wrong.

(Not to mention the vertical elements – 5-minute climbs add a lot of landmass, as landmass is not 2D.)

I was just about to start a thread about this – I hadn’t really looked through the borderlands until today when I got the daily…. and yeah, I tried shrines in case they just hadn’t reworded it or something, but apparently ruins are just history now. I miss the old borderland maps – I go to Heart of the Mists for this kind of gameplay xP

I feel like it’s not a 32/64-bit client issue; crashes are happening around the board in places that have run butter-smooth since forever (Lornar’s Pass, Queensdale, etc). Personally, I’m not getting character-screen crashes (that’s a server/connection issue), I’m getting CtDs (and I’ve had one bluescreen).

But I’ll give the 64-bit client a go in case it changes anything. Anything’s better than crashing every five minutes…

(Edit: Nope, the 64-bit client didn’t change a thing. Also tried a -repair shortcut, but it’s still a no-go. Sigh… where did my favorite MMO go…)

Naevius.3185:

The only thing my OOM crashes have in common is that I’ve been playing for a while when they happen. I’m pretty sure there is a leak. VB seems to be the worst by far.

I’ve started pre-emptively re-launching the game every hour or so.

It doesn’t seem to be a memory leak; I’m one of those people in the never-ever-crashed-the-game-before basket (okay, maybe it died twice in three years), but my game crashed four times within ten minutes in the PvP lobby. I’m also getting crashes just walking around in old territory (Lornar’s Pass) where nothing is happening (there were maybe five people on the whole map at the time). It’s not a population spike/graphical/memory bug, it’s something else.

Narrrz.7532:

Well, i’m glad they gave us a new, novel borderland to play with, but i’m still disappointed that every one is identical…

Yup, it’s new and (for a brief moment) novel, but honestly I’m not sure why the expansion replaced our classic map instead of adding an alternative map.

I’d like to write a longer response (I’ll come back later for that), but one thing I need to mention about the current WvW borderlands is that I was looking forward to expansion content, not replacement content. I’ve mentioned this on other threads, too – it would work as an additional map, or even as a part of a borderland map rotation (the borderlands would be much more interesting if each borderland was a different map, and the server based on each map cycled per round), but completely replacing the classic WvW gameplay and layout was a hard pill for us WvW players to swallow (some of us were going to live in our borderlands for the rest of our lives, with the hope of invading other maps in the future). Automatic upgrades remove the sense of achievement from upgrading towers/castles (some of us were proud dolyak defenders), and we play PvE or Heart of the Mists for NPC events.

All in all, the new borderland map_could_ work as a borderland rotation map, but it is designed more like an alternative map, like Heart of the Mists. And it would possibly even shine as that.

I’d not say R.I.P. to the WvW map change (although the new one does need to be made into an actual WvW map), but rather l think we should have three different borderland maps (and servers cycle through them, as usual). That way people can choose which map suits their preference or playstyle most and assault or defend it. This would also give more character and drive to WvW gameplay. (What would inspire me to assault someone else’s desert/ice/grassland/lava/jungle borderland when mine looks exactly the same and gives me exactly the same benefits and dolyaks and everything?) I was hoping for a WvW update, but apparently Anet decided to chop down the WvW beanstalk altogether :/

Tiffany.8576:

It’s amusing. The other month people were up in arms because Mike O’Brien insinuated that very few people played the WvW game mode exclusively. Now when you ask where all the WvW players are, you’ll be told “they’re in PvE.” Guess he was right afterall.

Well… given that you wrote that after the expansion only recently released, it’s 1) not wrong for WvW players to try out the other content they paid $50+ for, 2) a new and non-WvW-player-friendly map as the borderland map, and 3) limited-time collectibles (Halloween) to collect in PvE. It also depends on the server you’re on. I wonder if the high-pop servers still have large WvW battles; Ehmry Bay is pretty quiet now, even though it was a mid-range server. But as per other comments (in pretty much every WvW thread), the WvW map update may have actually killed the game mode.

Definitely a far higher PvE focus, what with the Vitality/Power stacks being cut out of WvW mechanics. Now we only get increased effects when hitting/killing guards or lords from those WvW trait lines.

I miss my stacks awfully

And yeah, I wasn’t looking for Edge of the Mists gameplay in borderlands combat. We don’t need all these cliffs and bridges, we need fun sieges and open combat and strategy (like little groups knocking out partially-upgraded towers and camps while big groups distract defenders).

I’d not say R.I.P. to the WvW map change, but rather l think we should have three different borderland maps (and servers cycle through them, as usual). That way people can choose which map suits their preference or playstyle most and assault or defend it. This would give more character and drive to WvW gameplay. (What would inspire me to assault someone else’s desert/ice/grassland/lava/jungle borderland when mine looks exactly the same and gives me exactly the same benefits and dolyaks and everything?)

I don’t like the idea of a full revert – l support the idea of having three different borderland maps. That way people can choose which map suits their preference or playstyle most and assault or defend it. This gives more character and drive to the gameplay. (Why would I need to assault someone else’s desert/ice/grassland/lava/jungle borderland when mine looks exactly the same and gives me exactly the same benefits and dolyaks and everything?)

Loot is always a thing in any MMO like Guild Wars. I agree with people who argue the psychological worth for the lifespan of events – so many players flock to one or two places in the game where they can earn worthwhile loot, rather than playing everything in the game and making the whole world a more populated, interesting, and supportive place. It can’t cost Anet too much to add significantly more weapon/armor skins and make them drops/droppable by mobs or events (no balancing required), and the result would be twofold: 1) people would enjoy fighting random mobs and participating in events more, and 2) people would feel urged to buy bank/inventory slots from Anet. Win-win! Loot it general could also be made more valuable, but that would require some kind of budget from Anet; they’d need to find other aspects to add to the game that balance the shift of economy and make it change (a daily/weekly economy change mechanic due to NPC purchases/sales and supply/demand due to war effects could be quite interesting).

I’ve long thought that ascended crafting should have the option of items being guild-bound by their maker (this is Guild Wars, isn’t it?), where each guild prizes and pays its armorer/weaponsmith/etc in cash or materials, but since things like that don’t exist, players need to rely more on drops and personal crafting to get useful items. And that requires loot.

I’m wavering somewhere between 6 and 7.

The Revenant has certain aspects and elements are really, really fun, but I think it still needs a bit of work to make builds more enjoyable (it’s not great that you essentially have no choice of skillset, but so far at least the Shiro build is decent), and it needs some degen/regen modifiers for equipment.

Elite specialization traits/skills/skill lines have to be heavily farmed. It’s nice that we now have a use for skill points, but I’d rather Anet added new skills (even just PvE if it was balancing issues, like they did in Guild Wars 1) rather than force drastic grinds.

The WvW borderland maps used to be great. Now they’re just miniature Edge of the Mists maps. I’ve long thought Anet should have different maps for each borderland (makes it worth taking another over, or holding your own, if you like and can play the style of gameplay a certain map suits), but rather than doing that, Heart of Thorns has replaced all the (perfectly enjoyable) borderlands with confusing mazes and unappealing terrain.

I haven’t had a good chance to experience Stronghold yet, but so far it feels too much like a supply grind. I thought it was going to be more like a Dota-style mode, and I was super-excited about that. Heroes shouldn’t be focusing on picking up supplies. Maybe they could protect supply-gatherers, but why would they drop their swords on the battlefield to carry barrels to and fro? That said, with a bit of development, Stronghold could be something neat on the PvP front. As it currently stands, it’s pretty much just the same as Strategy gameplay – dust off enemy heroes while you try to kill their lord.

As per earlier comments, I’m noticing the empty maps as well. I’m guessing that’s because so many people are discouraged by the price-tag (and are either waiting for a sale of have left the game), but if that’s the reason it’s so hard to move through the new maps, Anet could probably scale the difficulty better to accommodate that.

I’ve not unlocked the glider mastery yet, but I have looked through information about it, and I have to say… if gliding is really only something you can do in specific areas, I’m disappointed. If my character learns how to glide, why couldn’t he/she jump off a Shiverpeak mountain and experience the fall in style (and without dying)? I’m not asking Anet to seed all other maps with thermals and other gliding assists, I’d just like to be able to pure-glide in maps that aren’t eyesores (personal opinion, yes; I’m not big on jungles).

I’m a bit sad that the war/story/expansion didn’t go north, where there was an actual invasion. Asura have Inquest (civil war), Norn have Sons of Svanir (again, civil war rather than invaders), Sylvari have Nightmare (civil war again), Charr have Flame legion and ghosts (civil war and historical haunting), and all the races have Risen to contend with. Only humans have an actual invasion going on – Centaurs raid and ransack human holdings on an hourly basis! And even with all the Living World story updates, it still appears that no effort has been put into pushing them out.

But I’m still in the 6 or 7 range, which means I’d give it 6.5.

Updates:
-Gliding is fun and interesting, but the fact that my character has mastered gliding and cannot glide in the Shiverpeaks is kind of annoying. Just… use the wings?
-The Revenant is still a lot of fun. Not too worried about the skillset rigidness, but I do agree with other people that it’s strange they can’t use race abilities.

NTDK.4897:

Your rewards are the time and contents that you enjoyed for the past years that new players won’t be able to experience and play. As for the Play For Free players, they can’t enjoy the game restriction free like you can (go read more on all the restrictions they have)

this has already been discussed here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HoT-Price-Feedback-Base-game-included-merged

This is a good comment. It’s true that we’ve had all those good events and things, and some people even had time to come out of the events with items/loot/rewards. Unfortunately, not everyone has time to be on for all those events (and when they’re over, well… they don’t come back). But that’s something that’s special about the Living World idea.

However, I’d still say that veterans (something determined by amount of hours played, perhaps?) should have been offered some kind of benefits or bonuses. I remember the awesome way we transitioned into Guild Wars 2 – we were given achievements and collections to assemble in Guild Wars 1 that gave us cooler items, titles, and skins to start with in Guild Wars 2. Something like that would have been nice for the transition to Heart of Thorns. Cheap for developers (especially titles, but we did get some of those from Living world events), and yet gives us veterans a stronger sense of belonging and accomplishment.

I’m not really for or against the price issue here; I know the developers need cash to keep the game going, and I also know they’ve lost several fans with the price (I did a pretty stunned doubletake myself). I just feel that there are economical ways to keep both consumers and developers cordial with each other, and that those ways have been largely unconsidered.

Straylight.7529:

Varrg.2704:

I really really doubt it has enough content for 1000 hours.

It doesn’t have to. It only costs $50 afterall.

Well… Guild Wars 1 (with all expansions) cost me something like $100 all up (years before GW2) and I got ~1500 hours in without even scratching the surface of a lot of gameplay elements. It’s a bit of a pity they couldn’t add two professions with the HoT expansion, but ultimately it’s still nice to know that the Guild Wars universe is continuing. It’s a bit of a shame we’re delving deeper into jungle terrain, though – I much preferred the Ascalon-esque landscapes of Eye of the North and had hoped to go northeast (when are we going to push these centaurs out of Kryta?).