Guild Wars 2

Celtic Lady.3729:

I admire you for putting your money where your mouth is, Vayne. I don’t see many people that love HoT saying much to people that dislike it that doesn’t include some version of L2P. So, it’s refreshing to see someone actually offering their time to help.

I’d change a lot about HoT no doubt, but I’ve found it less intensely unfriendly a month later than I did upon release. There’s much to be said for keeping plugging away at something until you can reach a level of comfort.

That said, the only thing that I really want right now is if you can get me into a map that guarantees the Gerent goes down successfully.

Yeah… stick me in that party too. I’ve never seen that guy go down (in fact, I’ve never even heard about anyone succeeding the meta). Seriously, even just telling that it is in fact possible will brighten my day!

Chaba.5410:

That’s nothing. Did you see the score in NA T8 last match?

Eredon Terrace: 39 323
Ferguson’s Crossing: 518 381
Devona’s Rest: 166 690

Good lord… what happened to ET? We used to spar with them… but for them to drop that far below DR (which I thought was the lowest-populated server), they must have lost pretty much everyone…

Wait… why do people keep suggesting the removal of EBG and the implementation of EotM as a borderland? They’re different styles of maps and are quite nice as alternatives.

If it’s a matter of pushing populations around, Anet could implement a connection strategy like Planetside 2 (where to take another territory you need to own the one attached to it) and have the connections go between EBG and the BLs… but that would probably play havoc on raiding groups and would probably render scouting more or less useless. But hey, if we’re talking about the upheaval of the two WvW maps that are ever full at the moment…

The chief issue I’ve had with the WvW map changes is that Alpine was removed entirely. It could just have easily been implemented as an optional map.

But who knows? Maybe the upcoming WvW change will be awesome. Might even bring back Alpine, eh?

Randulf.7614:

Just dont eat the bacon….i hear it is iffy at the moment

What kind of a Thanksgiving meal is loaded with bacon? O.o

smiling.9028:

Being able to openly exclude or humiliate people in GW2 isn’t easy so the elitist element up until now has grown bored with this game and left. All thats left are the actual players who would rather work with other people towards goals and rewards. By game design rude and sadistic players are the only ones who are limited.

Unfortunately now with raids the exclusion part of that equation has been removed so the game is a little more toxic but still a far cry from some of the really bad ones who attract the 13 year olds in droves.

Out of curiosity, in what game (I’m thinking MMO, since those were the OP’s post) is it possible to exclude/humiliate people in a way that is not possible in GW2?

Or more to the point… how is it done? I’ve pretty much only played the GW series on the MMO side of things (oh, and Planetside 2, which has a reasonable community).

Aye, happy thanksgiving Anet =)

Seriously… there’s tiny tiny beards and there’s one MASSIVE (but not long) beard. I’ve still yet to find a great use for the massive beard. I tried it with my warrior for a while, but eventually just had to trim.

Funny, because one of the marketing points of Guild Wars 2 (although a minor one) was “you can have beards now!”

Misguided.5139:

Swift.1930:

kuritsutian.2987:

Swift.1930:

Too true! In Maguuma, it’s I swung my sword, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, come on… still not dead?

Followed by wait… I was full health and I dodged! How’d that Axemaster insta-down me?

lol that’s cause you’ve been doing nothing but swinging the sword, kinda need defensive skills sometimes :P

Well… if it’s the axemaster you’re talking about, I’ve tried jumping, dodging, blocking, gliding, reflecting… haven’t gone online in search of a way to stop being downed yet (because there has to be some way to figure it out in-game), but seriously… I don’t understand this mechanic. If he dropped us to 1 hp, I’d be able to cope. I built up my stacks and I guarded them jealously until he cheated…

I believe it says it right on the attribute list when you have him targeted, but you have to deplete his breakbar to prevent that attack.

Ah, so I’ve just had too few people there with me. Still… the idea of relying on other people’s CC to prevent me from losing all stacks when I was at full health (not to mention inconveniencing the people around me by having them revive me, since I normally don’t go down)… is a pretty frustrating mechanic.

And voila! I have taken the thread off-topic again. My bad.

ZachAttack.3957:

Personally what I would like to see for explorers is a jungle map (like tangled depths and auric basin) without such a huge mob population. That would mean people don’t have to be on their toes all the time.

I actually don’t think mastery lockouts are a bad thing, as long as they are in the first 3 tiers and don’t take millions upon millions of exp to get the final tier. I would also suggest mastery lockouts be for more hidden areas, like an oasis or grove vs big open areas (kind of thinking hidden areas like the areas that open up in Dragon’s Stand after he mouth of Mordy dies). On top of this I would make sure there are not a whole lot of these, just enough to effectively demonstrate what I mention below.

Basically the affect this would have on players is that every time they come back to the map with something else unlocked there are new areas to explore, and it gives another sense of satisfaction to see these new areas that not every average Joe can reach.

Why I would like to see a jungle map like Tangled Depths is because of the verticallity. You can have layers of explorable areas stacked on top of each other, and gliding way above in the canopy. I would like to see a few wide open areas, but I don’t really prefer the map just being a big wide open area. It’s very easy to blow through a wide open map in like twenty minutes, and then you’re finished. A jungle would provide you with multiple layers and hidden areas inaccesible to you at first, and you will have tons of reason to go back if you like to explore.

I would love all future explorable maps to have gliding. Even then, just have up drafts all around the sky. One of the most enjoyable thing for explorers has been just gliding up way above the map. It’s actually pretty dang cool.

I would also like the map to have some events, as you said. But more so, I love the idea of it (in the future- again, as you said) changing from a peaceful jungle area to a war zone between the first and second time you go to it (as a result of living story plot).

Overall I think the new jungle is pretty awesome to explore, and I would like to see something similar with just a few changes:

-Less mastery gates
-Less mobs (!)
-Probably no MAP-wide meta (there can be a small meta, but not enough to have people want to kick you from the map as a result of trying to beat it)
-Variey of open, vertical, and hidden areas (preferably an equal amount)
-A better underground layer with expansive cave systems

So yeah, those are just my thoughts

Uhoh, more jungle? I see what you mean, though. From a development/time/resource side of things, I know that it takes a very very long time to make jungle maps work properly. But they make for some curious exploration, definitely.

You wouldn’t enjoy exploring other areas like northern Shiverpeaks/Crystal Desert/etc? (I mostly ask this because I was bored by jungles before HoT launched, so it’s legitimately curious to me as to why so many people prefer jungle terrain to other landscapes.)

Some good other ideas you mentioned, too.

And now we’re up to the lucky empty page bug. =)

Further to my post on the last page, the issue with soloing HoT is that a lot of the challenges are enemy health bars rather than tactics. Thick health bars discourage using multiple skills and encourage falling asleep/going to the toilet/cooking while auto-attacking.

kuritsutian.2987:

Swift.1930:

Too true! In Maguuma, it’s I swung my sword, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, come on… still not dead?

Followed by wait… I was full health and I dodged! How’d that Axemaster insta-down me?

lol that’s cause you’ve been doing nothing but swinging the sword, kinda need defensive skills sometimes :P

Well… if it’s the axemaster you’re talking about, I’ve tried jumping, dodging, blocking, gliding, reflecting… haven’t gone online in search of a way to stop being downed yet (because there has to be some way to figure it out in-game), but seriously… I don’t understand this mechanic. If he dropped us to 1 hp, I’d be able to cope. I built up my stacks and I guarded them jealously until he cheated…

Rin.1046:

I appreciate Anet’s efforts in adding extra things to do, but I have a few issues with these adventures:

1) They are not as on demand as I feel they should be. One of the things severely lacking in GW2’s PvE content is on demand content. We have dungeons and fractals, and now raids, which are fine. But those require set group sizes to have a good chance at completing, which leaves nothing for smaller groups or players who want to do something solo.

2) They don’t really live up to their name. I mean, I do not consider jumping around some branches in a very small area, just to catch bugs, an adventure. A mini game worthy of the term adventure, in my opinion, was Super Adventure Box. Now THAT really was an adventure worthy of the name.

3) Many of them feel too similar to each other, such as gather this while avoiding attacks, or gather these while jumping around branches. I know it is not always easy to come up with completely different activites for each ‘adventure’, but if you cannot think of something different then don’t add it. I would prefer quality over quantity any day.

4) Many of these adventures, after a few play throughs, feel no different to the age old ‘kill 10 rats’ or ‘gather 10 items’ quests that plagued MMOS for years, and still do. All they have done is add a time limit to make it a little more exciting. But they don’t last long and get repetitive quite quickly.

There are so many missed opportunities with these adventures it has made me wonder what it is Anet truly wants to achieve with them. In my opinion adventures could have been so much more. I have nothing against short mini games, and they can be a great addition, but there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground in HoT. You either have big meta events that can last an hour or more, or short 3-5 minute mini games. I would love to have seen some games that lasted between 15 and 45 mins, and gave you more than one task to perform. Some games I would love to see added are:

SAB (obviously)
A Tower Defense style game (with the option to play cooperatively with other players)
Polymock Tournaments (vs AI and players)

Another thing I think is questionable about adventures, is making them integral to achievements. I always find those design choices an indication that they do not have faith in the adventures to entertain for long, so add in incentives to keep you playing them. When I played SAB, I didn’t care about rewards in the slightest (with the exception of rewards you could use within SAB, such as extra hearts, etc.). It was all about playing and enjoying the game itself, I didn’t hunt achievements or try to get SAB weapon/backpack skins, it was just about enjoying the adventure, and that to me is great game design.

To me, excellent game design makes you want to play because you enjoy the activities and content within it, bad design is when you feel obliged to play it to get something else (rewards).

Agreed. I’ve made a similar post (maybe a couple… can’t recall) in this same thread. It’s all cool for them to add content like this, but 1) don’t call them adventures when there’s a perfectly good name for them already (mini-games), 2) the location is really weird, 3) Super Adventure Box was actually a smart addition placed in a lore-friendly location, and 4) yay, timed fetch quests.

And all the things you said. Not quite as convinced about the tower defense thing, but could work. Would be more interested in a Dota-style game mode in PvP myself (really couldn’t care less about Stronghold, which is both slow and – somehow – short at the same time).

Broom.2561:

nezroy.8492:

Broom.2561:

Jaxom.7310:

Compass.9621:

Quote from Swift.1930: A different size of guild hall for a different size of guild? With smaller services? That would make sense.

ZachAttack.3957:

Ashen.2907:

Swift.1930:

A different size of guild hall for a different size of guild? With smaller services? That would make sense.

Totally agree.

I third the motion.

I fourth the motion.

i fifth the motion.

Can I sixth?

It already exists; it’s the guild initiative office in lion’s arch. You have your guild armorer and weaponsmith, your bank, and a private place to hang with one or two friends.

Good lord, have you not been reading? What you are listing are the bare basics, which my guild earned the week after launch, just-about. Other things the 25 of us EARNED were the ability to earn banners, the ability to earn PVE boosts (like more magic find for the entire guild for 2 days), the ability to earn WvW upgrades and WvW tools (siege suits and weaponry), etc. AND THOSE ARE ALL UNAVAILABLE NOW.

Fact of the matter is, most of the guild do not play anymore, or log in very irregularly. But we were sitting on a fully built guild pre-HoT. And all those things we could earn the influence for, are now UNAVAILABLE. What’s left of the guild in this game is NOT going to be able (or willing) to grind up humongous amounts of resources, so they’re basically gone for good. And I REALLY don’t think I can lure guild mates back from the other games we play to this game with the promise they need to be grind monkeys if they want to be any help in WvW.

It really ticks me off that all the boosts we’d already earned the influence for and built, are now gone. We’re left with 25 of each banner, which we can’t make new ones of. What a GREAT improvement.

Not to quote myself (okay, I’m quoting myself), but yeah… not sure why people didn’t read the follow-ups to a sixthing of a motion if they really had anything to input about the string of motions. There were a couple of responses, and I replied to one a little higher up in the thread with this:

Swift.1930:

nezroy.8492:

Broom.2561:

Jaxom.7310:

Compass.9621:

Quote from Swift.1930: A different size of guild hall for a different size of guild? With smaller services? That would make sense.

ZachAttack.3957:

Ashen.2907:

Swift.1930:

A different size of guild hall for a different size of guild? With smaller services? That would make sense.

Totally agree.

I third the motion.

I fourth the motion.

i fifth the motion.

Can I sixth?

It already exists; it’s the guild initiative office in lion’s arch. You have your guild armorer and weaponsmith, your bank, and a private place to hang with one or two friends.

I want to seventh my own motion but I’m pretty sure double-voting is against the rules =P

@nezroy a guild wants its own real estate. Not some second-hand minister’s office in a crowded city… so… seriously?

Quote from Guild Wars 1: “Truly, what guild can call itself a guild without an island of its own? Come with me. I can take you on a tour of each island, and you can choose which you like the best.”

Not to mention the fact that you can’t get there through the guild menu. Loading into Lion’s Arch is a pain… as for myself, I’ve actively avoided the place for a couple of years.

nacario.9417:

What does casual mean though, what is it that makes it unpleasant for casuals? Do you want to facetank mobs till they die? Now we have to use more of our skillbars compared to core tyria autoattacking i swung a sword, hey i swung a sword again!. Isnt it a fresh breath of air experiencing something new, the jungle is scary, and if u better yourself you can overcome most parts of it. Find other casuals to roam around with.

Too true! In Maguuma, it’s I swung my sword, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, I swung my sword again, come on… still not dead?

Followed by wait… I was full health and I dodged! How’d that Axemaster insta-down me?

But seriously, I don’t mind the new maps that much. I still end up using only one or two skills most of the time (it’s only my health bar that prevents me from soloing most content), but the Mordrem fights are usually interesting.

Sicarius.4639:

warbignime.4610:

2)WVW is not empty, it’s simply because alot of players are still enjoying the pve content as well that new borderlands are so huge that it still feels empty even the server reached player cap.

That’s weird, where have all my queues gone then? Used to find every borderland queued most days / nights, now you’ll barely have to wait 10mins for EB on reset. It’s dead.

There’s two things warbignime is missing…
1) there’s the people who left who ONLY played WvW. They’re still gone. The ones who are left are on on EBG – or on EotM while EBG is full;
2) there’s the people who are not enjoying the PvE content, but are stuck in it trying to regain their guild upgrades for use in WvW.

I’ve yet to see the new BLs with anything vaguely resembling a population, but I’ve seen blobs in EotM become much, much bigger and I’ve seen EBG pretty much constantly queued on resets.

rojoka.5976:

Wander.5780:

Aren’t all of the WPs in DS locked at all times? every time I’ve logged in and tried to travel to one it bounces me to the nearest one available, which is in the northeastern corner of DS, where the story NPC is located. Unless it’s because I haven’t defeated Mordremoth yet, I’m not sure why I’m unable to run to any of them either.

DS is a pure event map. there are 3 zergs starting at the start of the event. when a zerg clears the event-mobs at a waypoint it becomes unlocked (for the event time). all 3 zergs have to reach the main boss area to start the end fight.
the map closes 15 mins after the end fight (or after 2 hours) resetting all waypoints to blocked status.
you cannot explore the map alone as there are a lot of areas gated behind the event phases. and you need to get into the map at the start of the event (try to get a taxi group in lfg-finder).
you need a some luck to get into a map with enough people and commanders to organize the event. and even more luck to stay on the map until the end without disconnects.

Yep, disconnects are an issue – you want to squad up as soon as you have settled into a decent instance.

It’s really annoying to get to the map vendor (only accessible at the end of the meta) and find out that you’re missing items, too… so make sure you research exactly what you need before going through the whole thing only to be given two inventories full of fine equipment and a vendor’s firm refusal to trade fine goods for the item you need.

The sad locked state of much of the Tyria map is one reason I started this thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Exploration-Maps/first#post5795113

There are many places that would be very, very nice to get to that aren’t reachable yet – even though most of the map designs existed already in GW1.

Aomine.5012:

Serophous.9085:

Ashern.5328:

It’s very saddening for me to come to this revelation. I don’t understand what’s going on. Everything that has been implemented since the expansion has completely stabbed everyone in the back. Ascended crafting has practically tripled in cost; we now have to salvage multiple pieces of those pricey gears for a ball of dark energy for a collection or three.

They talk of keeping Legendary stats the same as ascended because they don’t believe in the “new tier of gear,” yet they practically contradict themselves directly by successfully draining gold and items from the economy and then requiring additional gold and items to be spent on gear that has always been available.

Hate to turn this thread into a bash HoT one, so I’ll stop. Thanks four your input, and I’ll know not to look at another precursor collection. I halfway want to drop Colossus but since I’ve already spent this much on it -.-.

Ask yourself WHY the cost tripled. What do you think caused it? Did it just “happen” out of thin air? Did Anet somehow “remove” people able to craft the ascended mats? No? Then what caused the price to triple?

Players did by wanting to rush and be first. Anet added more areas to the game that needs ascended mats (guild halls, precursor crafting) and the supply remained the same. So in a sense, the price tripled mainly because demand for the mats increased, and the supply is drying up. So anet needs to increase the supply in order to start to balance things out.

Until then, I’m just gonna keep selling all my ascended mats and enjoying the liquid gold and buy what I want.

Do you know why the price is tripled?

There’re 2 simple reasons.

One is requiring MASSIVE time-gated materials. Some of them requires up to 100~110 of the same type of time-gated material. It’s a very very cheap way to lock people away from legendaries for 3~4 months, not because of the difficulty and the challenges, but because of the pure time-gate issue.

The second reason is NO-ONE likes to do the boring low level zones for HUNDRED of hours just to gather 30000 worth of woods/ores. That’s why people ended up paying triple of the amount BECAUSE Anet is forcing them to do the most boring/brainless stuffs in game for hundred of hours.

So basically it’s not because of the challenge that push people away from legendaries. Is not because of the effort that push people away from the legendaries. It’s because of this cheap time-gate strategy in addition to asking you NOT to “play the game” for hundred of hours that drive people away from this new precursor crafting (I don’t consider roaming in maps that cause me 0 threat, skipping all mobs and just running around for woods/ores = playing the game)

If they ask for 5000 of currencies from HoT contents or 20000 badge of honors, people would be more willing to do so because it’s more engaging and fun. It’d be a long journey sure, but at least it’s more meaningful than gathering 30000 woods/ores. But instead, it’s all about money and time-gate again.

The flip side of this is that people who do spend time with their little axes and picks and sickles can now make a decent amount of money. It’s the rich-feeds-poor (or simply hard-working) economy. Is it fun for mid-tier people who want to get legendaries/ascendeds? Not particularly. Not for a while, either… but until prices stabilize, we could always go gather resources and make our fortunes. At that stage we’ll be able to collect our own legendaries for cheap. =)

Fengzhou.9853:

You CAN design a map and give the aura of danger and challenge without going overkill on the cheese. One shot mechanics aren’t skill testers, it’s lazy design.

This was something that confused me as well. I tried blocking, dodging, blinding, flying away with a glider… nothing worked. Am I missing something? What kind of attack should completely down random people from full health?

OP’s offer was with the intention of helping people… curious that it has been decoded as a statement of soloability. Seriously, guys… plenty of those threads elsewhere. =/

Skyline Crash.6254:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

This sort of thread has come up time and time again. I’d recommend googling similar topics and having a quick flick through them.

Here’s a quick summary of why your suggestion can’t/won’t happen:

-New outfits appear often and are cheap because they are fast to design as they are one solid piece (apart from headpiece). Your suggestion would mean that the design process would take a fair bit longer, meaning fewer and more expensive outfits.

-Outfits will never be able to be mix and matched because how current armours work. Different armour weights cannot be mixed together because the game is not coded that way, and aesthetically it would be terrible. The waist-bands (for instance) on light, medium and heavy are placed differently, resulting in clipping if pieces were mixed.

-Outfits are inherently designed to be outfits- they are not built around the separate head/shoulder/chest/gloves/legs/feet template used for armours. There are features on outfits that would not make sense if changed to armour skins.

-Outfits and armours serve two different purposes and each fulfill their tasks wonderfully. Outfits have always sold better than armours- I assume this is one of the reasons gem-store armour skins will become a thing of the past.

True, but I at least wish you can toggle off shoulder and glove pieces

Except the idea that it can’t/won’t happen due to those points… non sequitur.

Sviel.7493:

It would make more sense to increase the size of the guild hall arena and let that fill the need. If that causes a huge drop-off in WvW players, that’s too bad, but at least the remaining crowd will have more focused wants and, therefore, be easier to please.

So… cut small guilds and loners completely out of the picture?

You’re certainly not the only one who thinks this; it’s been a very common request, haha. We’re still waiting on a response.

As there were so many other threads like this, I imagine it will be merged shortly.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

This sort of thread has come up time and time again. I’d recommend googling similar topics and having a quick flick through them.

Here’s a quick summary of why your suggestion can’t/won’t happen:

-New outfits appear often and are cheap because they are fast to design as they are one solid piece (apart from headpiece). Your suggestion would mean that the design process would take a fair bit longer, meaning fewer and more expensive outfits.

-Outfits will never be able to be mix and matched because how current armours work. Different armour weights cannot be mixed together because the game is not coded that way, and aesthetically it would be terrible. The waist-bands (for instance) on light, medium and heavy are placed differently, resulting in clipping if pieces were mixed.

-Outfits are inherently designed to be outfits- they are not built around the separate head/shoulder/chest/gloves/legs/feet template used for armours. There are features on outfits that would not make sense if changed to armour skins.

-Outfits and armours serve two different purposes and each fulfill their tasks wonderfully. Outfits have always sold better than armours- I assume this is one of the reasons gem-store armour skins will become a thing of the past.

Just some responses to your summary of why the suggestion can’t/won’t happen:

1) The art template/texture is the main part of the work. The rest fits over the character mesh. It couldn’t take terribly long to segment them into individually-togglable pieces (do you know how long it took fans to come out with new skins/textures for Skyrim after release?)

2) You’re keeping in mind, of course, that people who are looking to mix and match are (probably) not about to complain about some clipping. Some things will clip, others won’t. People aren’t about to wear something that looks ugly – unless that was what they were aiming for. That’s already possible without clipping issues. If you’ve even heard of Elder Scrolls Online, there’s tons of light/medium/heavy mixing-and-matching going on, and (clipping aside) combinations can look super cool.

3) It’s nice for outfits to be whole items/sets/matching, but it’s also awesome if we can use things we’ve bought with other things we’ve bought. People generally don’t wear single armor textures (scale, chain, etc… or even ascended); they mix and match things until they find a combination that looks even better.

4) Keep also in mind that if outfits sell so well, Anet would make considerably more money if they allowed people to choose which parts they are wearing. I’ve personally not purchased any outfit because I only like 25-50% of the elements of most outfits.

But yup, this kind of thread keeps popping up a lot. Some people suggest that pieces of outfits be bought separately… but I think that would just make the gem store a mess. We just need a more customizable outfit panel.

SirDerp.3520:

Wish I would have been around for the LS because I do not enjoy the meta events and mastery grind.

To be fair, mastery grind isn’t really LS content. It’s expansion content provided as long-term progression that (hopefully) will be of use in later patches/maps/updates. (Gliding especially.)

Vayne.8563:

Vanive.3804:

I didn’t read any of the posts,I think $29.99 would have been fair if this is all we get, but correct me if I’m wrong….Isn’t this like buying a new season of GW2? I mean I expect them to continue to expand upon things beyond this expansion.

Yes we should be getting more living story, among other things.

(fingers crossed) … things like maps!

DeShadowWolf.6854:

Swift.1930:

DeShadowWolf.6854:

I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.

For someone to have 10k hours of GW2 over the 3 years it’s been out, they’d have to have been in the game ~40% longer than a full-time employee would have worked during the same amount of years. With all the changes that have been implemented in the past few months, a more-than-full-time gamer is going to be impacted most by those changes – and if people who (assuming it’s true) have 10k in-game hours in 3 years are surfacing to the forums with complaints, the devs have most certainly changed something drastic. Yoiks.

I was being semi-sarcastic. Wanze is the one with 10k hours; I doubt Ohoni does. The latter was claiming that a difference in wealth had nothing to do with time spent, thus the sarcasm.

And mine was partial sarcasm as well. =)

Oh yeah… I forgot to add the O.o at the end.

Skyline Crash.6254:

Swift.1930:

@Skyline – pretty sure you missed my post (the one directly above yours). HoT changed core elements for people who never even planned to buy the expansion.

Okay, list exactly what changed.

Haven’t got the full list on hand, but two of the biggest changes:
World vs World (upended); people who were happy with things how they stood (and that was their reason for not paying for the expansion) weren’t looking for their primary game mode to change completely.
Guild upgrades (specifically, banners and siege weapons); completely reset and re-gated. Small WvW guilds will be handicapped for many many months – assuming they even try to rebuild.

Can’t immediately think of all the changes that affected those who only have vanilla, because I have the expansion myself.

Beldin.5498:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I hope the living story brings more depth into the HoT-maps (because the maps itself are the best I’ve seen in any rpg/mmo-game I’ve played so far)

Living story is dead since we finished Scarlet. LS2 is just a bunch of instances that don’t
change anything (beside some very small changed) in the open world.

Its more a dead story .. but people wanted it so it seems since they don’t liked the
temporary character that made the world more alive in LS1.

Yep, living world/story was going to be about little updates every week or two. Maybe that became unsustainable? Not sure… but replacing that by adding maps that loop map-wide metas indefinitely… is a population magnet, but not a great change. We’ve defeated the dragon about two hundred times, but it still manages to lock us out of half of Dragon’s Reach every two hours. At least the first dragon was part of a dungeon story.

Other metas just become kind of like robotic farming events (Silverwastes), which to be honest I thought Anet was cutting out when it nerfed dungeon rewards, hah.

But the main issue is that maps like that continue. It makes sense on Dry Top, because it’s mostly related to the sandstorm-prone landscape… but Silverwastes should be pretty well fortified by now, what with several thousand heroes living in Verdant Brink.

@Skyline – pretty sure you missed my post (the one directly above yours). HoT changed core elements for people who never even planned to buy the expansion.

Jayne.9251:

Thank you Swift

Discworld?

Uh… not quite. Think funnier. Think Douglas Adams. =P

Vayne.8563:

Well, it takes a lot because they have to add updrafts and stuff like that, to make sure the distances you need to be reached to get stuff can be reached. It’s not “just” gliding. Those maps are a huge amount of work. Ask anyone who’s involved in coding. It’s nuts.

As for not affecting the rest of the game, you can play your revenant anywhere and your elite specialization anywhere, which is something and the collection quests take you all over the world. Many of the collections take you back to earlier zones and events.

Certainly a lot of work on the design, yes.

Revenant, yes, elite, yes (after picking up HCs throughout the new maps), mistward armor, yes, guild halls… kind of, (real) masteries, no. The masteries system is the only form of long-term horizontal progression that has so far been added to the game. As I said, I enjoy most things about the expansion (just don’t mention WvW); it’s the fact that the long-term progression is only useful in HoT maps that bugs me.

Vayne.8563:

Swift.1930:

Vayne.8563:

Swift.1930:

Vayne.8563:

Swift.1930:

Vayne.8563:

Yes there was more content in the core game than there is in the “expansion”. I put expansion in quotes, because so many people seem to think of this as a standard expansion. It’s not. It’s added stuff to the game that goes far beyond what a normal expansion adds. Not in more maps, but in a roadmap for the game ahead. It’s almost like Guild Wars 2 2.0 or something. Specializations and elite specializations are a complete rewrite of the trait system. Masteries are a complete rewrite of the post 80 progression system. Guilds now have a form of progress as well, and guild halls are entire maps.

Pretty sure Age of Empires 2 expansions are still counted as expansions… and they add mechanics, civilizations, units, functions, maps, storylines, and tons of other things that in some cases go beyond the original vision for the game. Check out the latest one (released ~two weeks ago?) if you don’t believe me. =P

I’m pretty sure Age of Empires isn’t an MMO and can’t really be compared to an MMORPG. You have to look at what MMORPGs are, not what other games are. I’ve been playing baseball my whole life, but they’ve yet ot release an expansion.

You’re clearly just arguing here to argue.

It’s one thing to say that Age of Empires isn’t an MMO; it’s another thing entirely to make a pointed attack on my intentions. You never mentioned anything about specifically referring to MMO expansions. You simply said “a standard expansion”. You took a stab at the history of expansions (my reference to Age of Empires was a completely random shot in the dark). If you want to argue MMO expansions, I’d delightedly point you at the two Guild Wars 1 titles and their Eye of the North expansion. But the thing is, games on a whole have had both expansions and DLC since (nearly) the dawn of gaming; so far, HoT has provided a few hints at being an expansion, but more at being a living world/seasonal update. Hopefully there’s more content to come that we don’t know about yet.

Baseball? Uh… to the best of my knowledge, baseball never advertised an expansion. Not sure where you’re going with that one.

But I guess if I’m just here to argue… what would I know?

When I’m watching a baseball game and I talk about a champion, it’s obviously I’m not talking about a chess champion. Because the context can be assumed.

Chess is a game with an end game but you couldn’t apply that end game to chess. It’s logical to assume (yes really) that expansions for MMOs are different from other genres and when one is playing an MMO and talking about an expansion, they’re talking about MMO expansions and yes, I think it’s disingenuous to ignore that.

I mean you could be talking about expansions for driving games next. There’s no point in comparing expansions in games for different genres, because they’re different animals completely. No point at all.

Yup, and I did correct my assumption in my reply, too! I presented Guild Wars 1 and its second/third/expansion titles to replace my Age of Empires example (a poor choice on my part). Looks like I forgot to actually expand on that… But seriously, I’m here for discussion, not argument. =/

@ZachAttack and @Vayne – Upon revision, I’m aware that my previous posts were less than charming. My apologies. Not here to antagonize you guys…

One more thing. Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO. It was a lobby game. You met in a city, you got your party together, and you went out into an instance that contained at most 12 people. Guild Wars 1 was pathed. It had no Z axis. You simply can’t compare the complexity of the games.

And it was ten years ago, in a much less competitive arena. There are very few games that can compare with this game. Do you have any idea how much it probably took to add gliding to this game alone?

The complexity of the new maps is huge and probably took ages to create. If you don’t like that sort of thing you might well think oh Anet did no work on this, but it’s probably not true.

How much could gliding have taken to add? We already had the jump mechanic (which allows for Z axis and for non-surface movement) and leap skills from day one; gliding is a guided fall, which is a sub-process of the jumping process code that slows fall speed, increases forward movement, and probably utilizes a switch that loops a [player on surface?] query.

But generally speaking, I enjoy the expansion. The main thing I’ve disliked about it is that pretty much everything you see and do in the HoT maps stays in the HoT maps. Will that change? Possibly. Hopefully. But currently the main masteries provide long-term horizontal progression that only affects gameplay in four maps. A bit of a sad design choice when they put so much effort (yes, I’m sure they did) into the new content.

Also, keep in mind that pathing is part of the engine, not the map creation process. Creating maps doesn’t become a harder process due to the Z axis until the developers decide to add jumping challenges and things like that.

misterdevious.6482:

Note to self: For current WvW news check Reddit Engineer threads.
P.S. Beware of the Leopard.

Hahaha, great reference. (The following quotes are for Jayne.)

“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”

Vayne.8563:

Swift.1930:

Vayne.8563:

Swift.1930:

Vayne.8563:

Yes there was more content in the core game than there is in the “expansion”. I put expansion in quotes, because so many people seem to think of this as a standard expansion. It’s not. It’s added stuff to the game that goes far beyond what a normal expansion adds. Not in more maps, but in a roadmap for the game ahead. It’s almost like Guild Wars 2 2.0 or something. Specializations and elite specializations are a complete rewrite of the trait system. Masteries are a complete rewrite of the post 80 progression system. Guilds now have a form of progress as well, and guild halls are entire maps.

Pretty sure Age of Empires 2 expansions are still counted as expansions… and they add mechanics, civilizations, units, functions, maps, storylines, and tons of other things that in some cases go beyond the original vision for the game. Check out the latest one (released ~two weeks ago?) if you don’t believe me. =P

I’m pretty sure Age of Empires isn’t an MMO and can’t really be compared to an MMORPG. You have to look at what MMORPGs are, not what other games are. I’ve been playing baseball my whole life, but they’ve yet ot release an expansion.

You’re clearly just arguing here to argue.

It’s one thing to say that Age of Empires isn’t an MMO; it’s another thing entirely to make a pointed attack on my intentions. You never mentioned anything about specifically referring to MMO expansions. You simply said “a standard expansion”. You took a stab at the history of expansions (my reference to Age of Empires was a completely random shot in the dark). If you want to argue MMO expansions, I’d delightedly point you at the two Guild Wars 1 titles and their Eye of the North expansion. But the thing is, games on a whole have had both expansions and DLC since (nearly) the dawn of gaming; so far, HoT has provided a few hints at being an expansion, but more at being a living world/seasonal update. Hopefully there’s more content to come that we don’t know about yet.

Baseball? Uh… to the best of my knowledge, baseball never advertised an expansion. Not sure where you’re going with that one.

But I guess if I’m just here to argue… what would I know?

When I’m watching a baseball game and I talk about a champion, it’s obviously I’m not talking about a chess champion. Because the context can be assumed.

Chess is a game with an end game but you couldn’t apply that end game to chess. It’s logical to assume (yes really) that expansions for MMOs are different from other genres and when one is playing an MMO and talking about an expansion, they’re talking about MMO expansions and yes, I think it’s disingenuous to ignore that.

I mean you could be talking about expansions for driving games next. There’s no point in comparing expansions in games for different genres, because they’re different animals completely. No point at all.

Yup, and I did correct my assumption in my reply, too! I presented Guild Wars 1 and its second/third/expansion titles to replace my Age of Empires example (a poor choice on my part). Looks like I forgot to actually expand on that… But seriously, I’m here for discussion, not argument. =/

@ZachAttack and @Vayne – Upon revision, I’m aware that my previous posts were less than charming. My apologies. Not here to antagonize you guys…

FogLeg.9354:

Imagine fights between the players with gliders and players without. Just is not fair. The ones without would call it pay-to-win game mode.

Considering it’s a flight-begging map, non-HoT players should also be able to use gliders in WvW. It would even become a marketing point for people to buy HoT. Not that complicated, really. =P

(Also, if getting technical, the line between play-to-win and pay-to-win kinda died with the guild reset. Gotta pay hefty amounts of gold/resources to get WvW buffs, and when time = money, small guilds – and servers without big WvW guilds – have reason to fume about pay-to-win.)

kroter.1326:

I have even simpler idea – cut out every wvw-specific reward out of EOTM. Because it’s stealing players in huge numbers.

Thing is, EotM is still WvW. And cutting out their rewards won’t bring those people back to borderlands – it will just antagonize them. It’s not like they left in search of WvW-specific rewards.

Seriously… how is “hey, he’s enjoying that – quick, take away his loot” a good fix to anything? People are lured by rewards, not confiscation.

DeShadowWolf.6854:

I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.

For someone to have 10k hours of GW2 over the 3 years it’s been out, they’d have to have been in the game ~40% longer than a full-time employee would have worked during the same amount of years. With all the changes that have been implemented in the past few months, a more-than-full-time gamer is going to be impacted most by those changes – and if people who (assuming it’s true) have 10k in-game hours in 3 years are surfacing to the forums with complaints, the devs have most certainly changed something drastic. Yoiks.

Avster.1935:

Did you not get the memo? ArenaNet said that HoT would have challenging open world PvE, since the Central Tyria open world PvE was far too easy for most of us.

As for the difficulty of it getting HP, yes they can be challenging to find, but that’s part of the HoT experience, go wild and explore.

I’d like to think that you’re right, but so far I’ve found that most of the challenge is being unexpectedly insta-downed (Axemaster) or kiting in a circle with auto-attack on for a couple of hours while a legendary or a a HC champion’s health pools crawl steadily downwards. Mordrem enemies are interesting, but are also not as common as the others.

Meneh.2954:

It get’s better. In the beginning I felt pretty frustrated as well, places gated by mastery, you don’t know whats up or down in the zone, mobs are tougher and running around exploring in your own pace often ends up with smashing your face into a group event, you die and can’t WP to any place in reasonable distance.

That being said, after a while when you understand it all, know the events, have the masteries, know where the HPs are and how to get there – even if you can’t solo them always you can get there within reasonable time if someone ask in map chat – the new zones become much nicer even if you are super casual. On my first toon I had a terrible time in the new zones, but now on my third I’m having fun and I don’t mind them.

I personally don’t mind the new zones, except that they are map-wide-meta population sinks; what I do mind is that while we’re in them we’re putting hundreds of hours of “horizontal progression” into masteries that only work in four maps (gliding) or belong in the maguuma jungle (all the other masteries).

Notsoperky.2348:

Harper.4173:

Swift.1930:

Harper.4173:

Obtena.7952:

Maybe you don’t want a sub par FPS experience in an MMO but it’s not about what you want. I’ve never played an MMO that was about ‘what I want’. Anet wanted a collection of activities for unlock; if the requirement for those activities were based on ‘what everyone wants’, there would be no collection that would fulfill it.

But you can build something based on what the majority of your player demographic wants.
Why would you assume your player base that’s currently playing an MMO with MMO mechanics would want to stop playing that and enjoy your sub-par FPS or Race simulator experience?
Why not make the adventures use the mechanics that are linked to the game type your players are actually playing?

Also, curiously (although I was not on the forums), I’d say that Guild Wars 1 devs seemed to know where the game was going and what its players wanted. I don’t recall any kind of update that added completely unrelated or unwanted gameplay to core areas (unless I’ve forgotten about it). Perhaps that was partially a mood thing, though, because GW1 also had a stronger sense of atmosphere.

I completely agree on both fronts. GW1 never tried to tack on so many things, nor did it try to be something it was not.
Some whacky things existed but they were few and far between and usually associated with festive moments and limited time events.
Also – GW1 had a much stronger sense of atmosphere – a thing that GW2 I feel is strongly missing.

Make it easy for people.

There was Guild Wars, the game. Great game, good pvp (when it was mainstream title), lots of things to do, could swap builds easily, share templates, form teams and being in a guild meant something.

Then they released GW2, which is about as similar to Guild Wars as it is to SM8. Actually, now I think on it, GW2 has a lot more in common with SM8 than Guild Wars.

These mini games are like something some devs did in their spare time then decided to tack on to the maps as they needed more gates for mastery points as they couldn’t work on any more within the 4 maps.

Guild Wars also had many collection events (like one on now) which are fun and rewarding as well as a good number of festivals (themed to the game) with lots of fun quests to do.

I just don’t feel connected with GW2.

If they want us to feel connected, they could give us some of the GW1 maps to wander around and remember things… running into Gwen Thackeray’s grave was probably the most impactful thing that happened to me over the course of playing GW2.

I recently posted a thread (Exploration Maps) suggesting that kind of content be added to the game. Would be curious if the devs run into it and notice how many of us actually care about their first Guild Wars title. With more responses… who knows?

Tiger Ashante.1792:

I agree with much of your sentiment, i too feel deceived and betrayed. I busted my gut for 3+ years, virtually on my own to get my guild where it is and all my efforts were wiped overnight.

Prior to HoT launch, I attentively listened to all the live announcements and guild chats from PAX and Twitchcom, read all the blogs i could find and not once, did they ever indicate how small guilds would get shafted. In fact i remember Colin J specifically stating in a live stream that small guilds would not be excluded. Well look where we’re at now, in nowhere land. This is worse than if they raised the lvl cap and we had to grind for another tier of gear like all other MMO’s. B/c at least with that, you can go and play the game and earn that gear over time.

What really annoyed me, is when i learned after HoT launched, we now have to earn 150 favor even b4 we can claim the GH in addition to 100g fee, same as large guilds do. Seriously? They could have at least told us prior, i could have bought some influence to convert to favor. There was no info on the conversion rate to my knowledge, but had i known in advance, i could have used the 200g + i spent on upgrading my guild in the last few weeks leading to Hot release ( that was completely made worthless) into influence and keep it to convert into favor. But since i spent it all on upgrading the guild as they kept saying we should do that b4 HoT as influence is going away, i could have kept that influence and converted it and had enough to at least claim the GH. Do u know how long it would take me to get 150 favor via missions now that only pays 3 per mission? a year if not more when u factor in that u can’t even get a suitable mission for 3-5 ppl every week.

So yea i do feel betrayed, who wouldn’t? I feel they kept us in the dark and fed us on BS so they wouldn’t lose sales and I will never trust anything they say ever again. It’s their loss though, i was a big spender in the gem store and i trusted them, but even if they changed it now, it’s too late as far as i’m concerned, they’ve lost my confidence and my business and it would take much more than that to make me trust them again.

Sorry if i sound bitter, it’s coz i am actually. I worked so hard to get my guild to where it was and it was all for nothing and i’ve lost quite a few members when they realized what the situation was and others haven’t even bothered logging in for ages, event thought they bought the expac. It’s a sad state of affairs for small guilds and my feeling for gw2 may never be the same again.

Unfortunately, yeah. Same; my guild is small, and the main upgrades we did were to help out in WvW – we certainly won’t be able to get back to that stage (at least not if the 5000g scribing profession remains in the way). The most gold the members of my guild have accumulated (over 3 years, during which 2 or 3 of us put in more than 1000 hours) reached maybe 1600g, which of course was shared out for crafting and other random things.

No more guild catapults, no more banners, etc. =/

Wander.5780:

anyone else beginning to think the whole Masteries system was put in place to create the illusion of content? making you do the same meta events over and over again to disguise the fact that the only real content here is the short, underwhelming story, and the access to guild halls.

It’s been touched on a few times, yes. I think the addition of four huge map-wide meta chains was a far bigger hint at illusion, though – the necessity of so many people to remain at least reasonably co-ordinated for periods of up to two hours on so many maps (Silverwastes, Dry Top, Verdant Brink, Tangled Depths, Auric Basin, Dragon’s Stand) is a pretty big pointer at something chilling: the developers possibly prefer to absorb players into less maps via peer pressure and event requirements than to give us more content with less density. And although gliding is kind of cool, it only exists on the new maps, which is another possible hint at the same thing.

But since I’m sure they still care about their playerbase (cash flow if nothing else), I’m not sure why their business managers wouldn’t have considered us catching on to that. The question is, if they are planning to release more maps, why would they need to keep silent about it? Even just hinting at further maps will give the forums fodder for rumor/discussion beyond complaints.

Beldin.5498:

mauried.5608:

I dont understand the OPs post.
If the game was so much fun prior to HOT, and now playing HOT isnt fun , then just dont play HOT.
Play the part of the game that was fun before HOT.
In an MMO its not compulsory to do everything.

Thats what i do .. but it still also sometimes simply sucks the fun out of that if you
know that you payed for an expansion and you simply dont play it because it
is no fun for you.

It simply often makes me feel torn that i on the one hand think i really should do
some of the HoT stuff, but on the other hand feel absolutely no motivation to
ever go there again.

Not to mention the fact that the HoT update completely upended WvW (which housed something like 30% of the playerbase) and changed a number of other core features. Even people who never paid for the expansion were hit by those changes.

qbalrog.8017:

Cyninja.2954:

- accept that you don’t HAVE to get every reward there is in 1 week time

It feels more like I can’t get any reward with a week’s time.

Not true – you can get several inventories full of fine/masterwork equipment! Cool, right? =)

Jaxom.7310:

it shouldn’t charge u for choosing the highest buy offer. technically u aren’t listing it for sell, u are directly selling it, it never gets listed. so remove that 5% for not listing but for selling direct

Especially since GW2 doesn’t have a messaging system like Elder Scrolls Online, where you can sell items directly via message – and the message requires the recipient to pay before he/she can take the items out of the delivery.

saturn.4810:

One reason the charge exists it to prevent that you use the TP to store items, by listing them with a very high sell price.

Unless, of course, it was reversed – and you are only charged (a higher rate than now) if you remove the item from its listing. Would make more sense, in my opinion. Tax on sales could still be a thing, but that’s a very high tax at the moment, especially since it goes to NPCs, who are usually pretty happy just to buy complete junk from players (yay, our tax money’s being used to buy our trophy/junk items).

@Subtlemuse: Agreed. (Although I’m a little mixed on the guild halls, which are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big for my guild to set up out 8 tents in.)

I’m not leaving, certainly, but it’d be nice to see some more positive updates where a lot of things have been either flatlining or going downhill.

I’ve actually got a thread going with a suggestion that could alleviate the tedium of going through new event-heavy maps for 200 hours/week – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Exploration-Maps/first#post5795113

HtFde.3856:

It’s not so much the damage as the being able to double-click it out of combat to reselect stats – if legendary armor has the same fearure it would mean a lot more free slots for the character or the bank …

Huh. Something I didn’t actually realize. Not bad. I might need to reconsider my goals slightly O.o (Not that I change build a lot, but still… choice/flexibility is nice.)

Question: with that kind of feature, why did it take so long to release legendary armor?

Dejavu.2349:

Jaxom.7310:

maybe not in mmos, but gw2 wasn’t suppose to be same as all other mmos…

The premise of my entire argument.

While some people have made very good points about why Anet made these changes and what I can do to gain access to the Big-Guild exclusive content, I maintain that none of the anecdotes mentioned are in line with the game I was originally sold. I know Things change over time and understand all good things must come to an end, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be disappointed enough in the current trajectory to speak up. If enough people speak up, maybe their future decisions won’t be so punitive to smaller guilds or individuals.

Well said. And with many of us coming from Guild Wars 1 (where we quite happily chewed through four releases with few complaints other than PvP balances), it’s somewhat confounding to see where things are going with out beloved franchise.