Guild Wars 2

If the quote below were still true, I’d have voted for GW2.

“Guild Wars 2 is an innovative MMORPG that lets you play how you want.”

Tomorrow will have one patch note:

Disabled all zones except Lion’s Arch to re-purpose servers for Lion’s Arch overflow.

Flynch.6034:

Epic boss invasions every few hours or so would probably solve the issue.

Gojira!

For world completion and leveling, I like figuring things out for myself, looking around and such.

I’ll join groups if asked when doing an event chain or hopping events in Orr, though I’ll likely bounce off and on, making me a poor party mate. Most everything else in my life takes priority over playing games, so it is hard to build extended relationships with other players.

I can’t figure out why they’d nerf the results of one type of grinding just to replace it with another. It really doesn’t make sense.

Nothing beat the massive battles all across Orr to make it feel like you were really in a war for the fate of life on Tyria. IMO the old Orr DE runs were more fun than the November event.

I miss the old Orr. The massive battles were fun. It wasn’t as bad moving around before – you could ride the events around pretty much anywhere you wanted to go. And there were plenty of people farming, so it wasn’t hard to informally team up and whack things as you went. That is probably what I miss most – the teamwork without an artificial structure around it. Even to the point of people stopping mid-event to revive each other, even though it was costing them drops to do so…

In the other world areas I’ve been lately, if you stop to help someone who is getting beat up, he’ll rally, then farm the node and run away, leaving you stuck with all the mobs.

The poor gold-to-gem ratio makes this a kind of a non-starter for me.

Naoko.7096:

Earth (Positive/Negative emotions) > Utopia (No human emotions)Before 15th November, gw2 was very near to utopia-like. The game starts to improve on the basic needs of players which I feel they made a good effort. I naturally want a game world where I can feel different types of emotions when I play. It’s basic human needs since everyone is born with emotions. It’s normal to want to be in a world to experience all that. Mmorpg is a game in “world” setting instead of “console” setting.

The game allowed you to experience different types of emotions without ascended gear.

The emotion you want to feel isn’t game related. What you get out of grinding for better gear that gives you a statistical advantage is a metagame experience of having your enjoyment at the expense of others who don’t have as much time.

You’re paying to win, just with time not money.

Naoko.7096:

Zoul.1087:

They are spending time in the fractals a lot, because they can’t spend it anywhere else since nothing else will improve their character.

Yes. It’s because it’s human nature to constantly keep ourselves improve all the time. If it isn’t human nature to not improve themselves, they wouldn’t naturally chose to do fractals. In reality, people sub-consciously wants to keep improving and progress too.

Here’s the thing – they aren’t improving themselves by grinding.

The idea that people constantly want to improve themselves runs completely counter to the idea that people should be willing to spend an excessive amount of time grinding for gear in a MMO.

They really aren’t improving their characters either, since content is being adjusted to meet the new tier. Hamster meet wheel…

cegorach.5624:

If you’re someone who in real life believes that only those who work hard should be rewarded, is that a view you will transpose onto a game and vice versa?

If you believe that everyone deserves an equal chance and should be supported in order to reach their potential, do you apply that to both online and offline activities?

I’d be curious to hear from people who are strongly progressive or conservative in real life but reverse their position in an online game.

It is because we work hard, fulfill family obligations and better ourselves in real life that we don’t have an endless amount of time to grind in a game. That is why we purchased a game sold on the basis that there wouldn’t be an excessive grind. And that is why we don’t want the precious time we have invested in that game doing the amount of grinding that was necessary to have been wasted, which it is if we just walk away rather than expressing our displeasure and pushing for a change.

This is a lot like the the people saying that if the changes bother you, you need to get a life. We have a life, that is why the changes bother us.

I’m in the same boat. A lot of the luster is gone from the time I play. Little things like getting held or pulled on my way to an event aren’t just a challenge of the game, it feels like every bit of time I lose is falling further behind.

Eder.9120:

The only area this really affects is WvW. A lot of people who like the new tier of gear readily admit they don’t even play WvW, which is why they can’t see the other point of view.

With PvE, if you don’t care about Fractals, you won’t need Agony counters anyway. And the stats increase other people get won’t really bother you.

I really wish WvWvW players would stop throwing open world PvE players under the bus to try to get what they want.

In open PvE, most of your wealth is generated off events. Most don’t grind as hard as the dungeon grinders, but if you want something, it is hard to avoid spending some time farming events to pay for it.

If the person next to you has a statistical advantage, he’ll down more mobs faster, meaning fewer you can tag, essentially making money at your expense. So, if you have a limited time to play, you’re getting less money for the time you spend doing something just to get money.

There is a subset of players that don’t just want more, pretty much everyone wants more, but they want more than others. Ascended gear in open PvE lets them not only get more, but keep others making less. And those dungeon grinders that just (rightfully) want to show off their hard-earned gear where there are a lot of people will end up doing it just by playing events.

You have to pay your dues and earn a little less when you’re running in lesser gear now. But the time you spend doing that is reasonable with what you need to earn for exotics. The amount of time needed for ascended gear means a lot of people will never get past having someone steal gold out of their characters pockets just by playing the same event.

After doing nothing but grinding for the items for the year and a half it would take to get a full set of ascended, not counting the additional time doing nothing but grinding to get infusions for the ascended gear?

Probably rot in the ground, because I’d slit my wrists somewhere along the way…

And that year-and-a-half is being generous as my dungeon experience to date has been to wait outside the gate trying to find four other people doing level 1 or playing partway through and having members of the group suddenly bounce out to Lion’s Arch for no discernible reason.

All the items from the random chests except the minis are selling cheap on the trading post. Unless you really want to see karka ever again, it is a much better deal to just buy the skins you want.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

MisterEction.9382:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

The “something is missing” feeling is flaw in the anti-grouping, solo-friendly design of the game. The lack of dedicated roles leads to an identify crisis that leads down a single path. Eventually you realize there is no opportunity in this game to rise up and be recognized for your skills as a good healer, a good range player or a good tank. In spite of what some are saying about this combination always being dull, in many games playing your role correctly in strategic team play scenarios is an amazing rush…. Beyond that it gives you identity in the game and is a core mechanic of what makes an MMORPG successful for the long run. GW2 does not offer this. This is why GW2 is dyeing and will collapse faster than even the harshest critic would have anticipated.

Nope, that’s not it. You aren’t going to fix alienating a bunch of your player base by changing a core concept to make your game more like other MMOs by changing another core concept to make your game more like other MMOs.

The ability to play solo is all those of us who can’t grind for ascended gear have left.

You don’t need to take away the ability to solo play to create more strategic team scenarios where dedicated roles (within the team, not by profession) are required.

Yes, you do. A character with enough healing, damage output and durability to solo is either going to be overpowered, and capable of fitting any of the three roles in a group or underpowered and incapable of filling any of the three roles in group environment.

So that is a bunch more content created only for people willing to play a role adding more new content that players who are forced to solo because they can’t grind for the best gear to fit into groups are excluded from.

So basically, if you can’t grind, you can then only play solo in the limited content available that isn’t geared for people that can participate in an excessive grind or geared for people that are willing to have their spec dictated by some arbitrary role.

Wow, this sounds a lot like a game I didn’t buy.

Thrashbarg.9820:

It’s somewhat strange to me that a company as large and profitable as ANet (or even their owners, NCsoft) would put the future of a game that’s been in development for over 5 years into the hands of someone who hasn’t been able to hold a job for more than 2 years. I guess maybe that’s how the software industry functions, but maybe that is also part of the problem.

Five years of game development is expensive, so I’m sure 688 million dollars looked pretty appealing at the time.

I don’t see a big market in the U.S. for gear purchased via gems that works out to $107 per piece given the current economy. Is there someplace in the world that is doing so well that there are a lot of people willing to spend $1926 to get gear for their character?

I just don’t see how they plan to make money off the store with this. The grinders I know don’t spend anything, that is why they grind. They look down on people that spend real money.

And with the dungeon both dropping ascended stuff and kicking out a ton of gold, I can’t see any incentive for dungeon grinders to spend a dime of real money. They’ll have more than enough collaterally to buy whatever they want with in-game gold.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

The “something is missing” feeling is flaw in the anti-grouping, solo-friendly design of the game. The lack of dedicated roles leads to an identify crisis that leads down a single path. Eventually you realize there is no opportunity in this game to rise up and be recognized for your skills as a good healer, a good range player or a good tank. In spite of what some are saying about this combination always being dull, in many games playing your role correctly in strategic team play scenarios is an amazing rush…. Beyond that it gives you identity in the game and is a core mechanic of what makes an MMORPG successful for the long run. GW2 does not offer this. This is why GW2 is dyeing and will collapse faster than even the harshest critic would have anticipated.

Nope, that’s not it. You aren’t going to fix alienating a bunch of your player base by changing a core concept to make your game more like other MMOs by changing another core concept to make your game more like other MMOs.

The ability to play solo is all those of us who can’t grind for ascended gear have left.

Female Asura have the best voice acting and script in the game IMO. By far. I was actually thinking of filling all my slots with female Asura of different professions.

Hardcore grinders are in the dungeons. I can’t see making enough off farming to make anywhere near what is required to get my gear back up to par even if I did nothing else with all my free time, so I can’t really see the point. Even getting abyss dye for one of my alts would cost about 10 gold which is just too much time for the value. I’ve been taking a melancholy journey around doing world completion, and I haven’t seen any significant number of people anywhere farming.

Awesome.6120:

Only if you agree to trade all your exotics right now for the… 2? ascended items currently available. You can figure out what to do with the rest of your slots.

I’ll do that. Even with reduced drop rates I can get my other gear back faster than I can pick up one piece of ascended gear.

Colton.9460:

Sometimes people on this forum confuse me. How does rewarding players for playing the game not equate to people having more reasons to play the game? Sure people will say that this is a BTP game they dont need people to keep playing…….to me that doesnt make sense; why would anyone make a game and not want people to play it extensively.

Then people will argue that stuff need to be more difficult, or it needs to be easier, no one can just be happy. It seems like the people the most hurt by progression are the casuals; is this supposed to be a casual only kind of game? Aren’t diehard players what a MMO community thrives on? Can the casuals not see that some people have more free time and that to us the game needed a little more to work through?

I understand your problems, and respect your opinions; however I think that focusing a game around people that can only play a few hours a week sounds good on paper but has to evolve as the game matures.

I will be honest and say I can understand however that most of you want skill to be more important than gear. If skill progression( how well you play) should be the determining factor of the game then dont you have to say that being skilled is easier, and take less time then getting gear?

Would you have the same problems if the game was so hard that only people who played all the time were good enough to do dungeons? Or do you want everyting to be available all the time for no effort? This is a sincere question since I really just dont understand.

60 hours a piece at 2 hours a day is a piece a month. Or a whole set in a year and a half. That’s playing 2 hours a day, every day, for a year and a half. If that is casual, how often does an average player play?

SpaceTurtle.1923:

I certainly agree with the OP. The important thing to understand is they have stated ascended gear can be obtained not only through the dungeons but in other methods. They have confirmed alternate methods to obtain it WILL be in the game so that any play style can obtain the gear.

It isn’t a matter of methods, it is a matter of time. If you have to do anything for the same amount of time it currently takes to get a single piece – currently sitting at about 60 hours, on the low side, that excludes a lot of players. And all that time the players who can’t grind a ton are at a disadvantage while they do play, whether it be in PVP or PVE.

CrassBippy.4619:

The people who left because there wasnt “enough to do” arent worth anyones time, do people stop playing Call of duty because “they played all the maps.” No, they keep playing because its a (mostly) balanced competitive game that puts people on a balanced system and lets them have FUN. you think any FPS/RTS would last if one guy got things other people didnt have?

It is interesting that you bring up Call of Duty, since the same thing that just happened to GW2 trying to cater to the WoW fans happens to FPS games trying to cater to Call of Duty fans.

They marginalize the aspects of the game that make it unique and implement changes to make it more like Call of Duty and end up with a cheap clone of Call of Duty. The players that liked it for what it was are alienated and leave.

Eventually, the Call of Duty fans go back to Call of Duty. I don’t recall a game where things got better after the changes…

I spoke with Blingg and have no fragment. Was there a certain dialog option or something I missed?

Since the other thread is evidently not going to be read by ArenaNet or at least not responded to, I’ll sum up my issue with the ascended items again here.

They take too much time. It doesn’t matter how many ways there are to get them, if they all take the same excessive amount of time, I’ll never be able to get them. Or, it will take so long to get them that I’ll be so far behind financially compared to players that grind them fast that I’ll never be able to afford anything nice.

If you don’t have gear that matches everyone else’s in PVE, you earn less from events than the players you are working with that do have it, while they earn more.

Over time, this means prices on the TP on any nice item climb to sell to the wealthier players with Ascended gear. They don’t just get ascended gear or the skin associated with what they grind for. They get every nice thing in the game.

So, unless you grind, you’re not only stuck with second rate stats, but garbage skins, dyes, minis and whatever else.

There were already a set of specific things that hardcore grinders were going to achieve that I wouldn’t. Adding some more would have been fine. But making it so that pretty much everything nice will be out of my reach isn’t acceptable to me. I want be able to get the same amount of nice things for my characters as I could before the addition of ascended items with the same amount of time invested. If I choose to compete in WvWvW later, I want to be able to be on an equal footing. And even if I don’t decide to play WvWvW, on principle, those players that do and don’t have the time to grind hardcore shouldn’t be at a disadvantage either. That was what we were told leading up to this. Honor your word.

If you want any more of my money, this needs to be addressed in a way that protects those of us with limited time in regard to economics and accessibility and enjoyability of content for the PVE players and in regard to economics and competitive balance for the WvWvW players.

John Lucier.5486:

MisterEction.9382:

John Lucier.5486:

One simple thing they could do to please tens of thousands of players(if not hundreds of thousands) about to quit over the ascended gear, like myself. They just make wvwvw seperate from PVE. Have it have the same gear system as sPVP except you can transmute PVE skins onto them, this will make everyone happy, and by everyone I mean the real wvwvw players who care about beating someone with skill and not stat increases, the real players, the one that played this game because progression was supposed to be cosmetic only.

Real players? Good luck geting anything changed if you’re going to start throwing people with other play styles under the bus. I don’t WvWvW. I PVE. I build alts. I explore. This change affects PVE players that aren’t hardcore grinders as much as it does WvWvW players.

Better gear means faster killing, which means more money. In events, that means more money for the people with ascended gear and less for those without it.

Which means prices on the TP go up to match the players with the higher stat gear, so they get more high stat gear, and all the best skins and pretty much everything else. Because not only can the other players not match the higher stat players income, they’ll actually be making less in an event than they did before.

Run events with a character in rares, then the same character in exotics and see the difference in the number of drops you end up with.

And those areas to explore? They’re getting adjusted to compensate for the new gear, so the players that don’t hardcore grind get the fun of those becoming a miserable slog.

A. it wasnt throwing anyone under the bus. It was targeted at alot of us that only do wvwvw that will quit

B. Your events and stuff can be completed in blues, so you have a LOT less to complain about. You fight 1 mob, or run the dungeon, when you fight that mob/run the dungeon again nothing will change, just like WoW.

C. With B in mind, you aren’t going to have to worry about that same mob youve been fighting is now going to be doing 20-50% more damage to you or having 20-50% more tank because of the new gear like a wwvw pvper will, going up against people that are just wow locusts that will dungeon farm and then roll into wvwvw because they can only win with stat increases.

Completing the events in blues generates less money than completing events in better gear. While the players in better gear get more, the players in lesser gear get less. economically, you end up being able to earn less and less over time while the other players have more. The amount of time you have to deal with that with the investment needed to get exotics is manageable. The time needed to get ascended gear isn’t. Those guys you’re fighting that are suddenly tougher and doing more damage are also taking a larger share of the income available from events from PVE players.

And, you’re throwing PVE players under the bus in the same way as if I said, “Hey, just allow the stuff to be usable in WvWvW so the grinders can get their ego fix killing other people and leave the PVE area out of it.”

Logun.2349:

Urxx.6840:

Logun.2349:

Guys we are not going to win this gear fight

Personally I don’t realize myself by fighting imaginary cyberwars on forums.

I’m not here to fight ArenaNet. I’m here because I don’t like where this is going to lead a game I personally loved and spent a lot of time into.

I’d rather be in-game playing than here posting. That was the case before this fiasco.

Well then you’re here protesting changes aren’t you because you want the game not to change …Right!

So if you’re here expressing an opinion then your fighting for what you believe to be the right course for the game is ….Right?

All I’m saying is Arena Net has their reasons they see this change as being needed, and you have your reasons you want it to stay the same as it is ….as I do, but we are not getting anywhere are we?

I’m trying to find a compromise here…. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-win-me-back-a-simple-compromise/first#post770150

Your compromise doesn’t address time. Multiple avenues that take the same excessive amount of time don’t really fix things. Gradually, if you can’t grind hardcore in whatever way, you’ll fall behind. Actually, gradually at first, then exponentially, you’ll fall behind.

John Lucier.5486:

One simple thing they could do to please tens of thousands of players(if not hundreds of thousands) about to quit over the ascended gear, like myself. They just make wvwvw seperate from PVE. Have it have the same gear system as sPVP except you can transmute PVE skins onto them, this will make everyone happy, and by everyone I mean the real wvwvw players who care about beating someone with skill and not stat increases, the real players, the one that played this game because progression was supposed to be cosmetic only.

Real players? Good luck geting anything changed if you’re going to start throwing people with other play styles under the bus. I don’t WvWvW. I PVE. I build alts. I explore. This change affects PVE players that aren’t hardcore grinders as much as it does WvWvW players.

Better gear means faster killing, which means more money. In events, that means more money for the people with ascended gear and less for those without it.

Which means prices on the TP go up to match the players with the higher stat gear, so they get more high stat gear, and all the best skins and pretty much everything else. Because not only can the other players not match the higher stat players income, they’ll actually be making less in an event than they did before.

Run events with a character in rares, then the same character in exotics and see the difference in the number of drops you end up with.

And those areas to explore? They’re getting adjusted to compensate for the new gear, so the players that don’t hardcore grind get the fun of those becoming a miserable slog.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

So here’s another question and forgive me if it’s been asked as I don’t feel like wading through 198 pages of responses:

If this new Ascended gear could be achieved through all the current ways that Exotics are available (crafting, drops, karma, dungeons, forge) would you still be against them having the slightly greater stat increase?

It isn’t slightly greater, it is a full tier worth of increase.

But, yes I would still be against it. It took me three months of playing every chance I got to get my existing exotics, and that includes time I was grinding in Orr rather than exploring (my main was at 47% world completion at the point I finished my gear IIRC) or playing through the stories of my alts, including those in the three extra slots I bought.

The amount of grind required for exotics was at the threshold I could manage, so I don’t want to re-do the same amount of grind on my main, let alone more.

I want to spend the time I have to play now playing through the world content I like, leveling up alts and getting them end-game gear to skin with skins I buy/earn or already bought/earned and be able to participate in the few aspects of monthly events that don’t require me to try to find four other people who can play at times that work around my real-life commitments.

Here’s the thing – the money I spent, which wasn’t negligible, pales in comparison to the time I spent. I don’t want the money back, I want the time I spent getting that gear to be worth it, which means that that gear is is end-game gear. And I want to be able to continue to get end-game gear for the other characters I’ve invested time and money in at a reasonable rate.

I don’t care if that means dropping the stat bonus on infused items or giving out a sets of 18 soulbound ascended transformation stones in the same way they give out the pre-order ring so that existing players who spent time or have been spending time to get end-game gear under the pre-update system aren’t forced to participate in the new grind. But, since they haven’t committing to stopping at ascended, that would mean giving out a set of stones every time they do this, or making the stones set a bit of data on the items that triggers an automatic update just like legendaries receive each each time. If these new players they are so set on attracting like the increased grind, they shouldn’t be bothered by the fact that those of us who didn’t sign on for it don’t need to participate.

If it hadn’t been for the way things were described leading up to the game, I wouldn’t have bought it. If I saw after starting to play I’d have needed to grind more than I already had to for end-game gear, I wouldn’t have spent the time and money I did over the last three months. All I want is for ArenaNet to honor their word.

No, they’re marketing it as Guild Wars 2: NGE.

I hope these new players bring in a bunch of money for them. They aren’t getting any more of mine unless something changes.

It took me a lot of time to get my main character into exotics. Nothing like waking up one day and finding out you have a bunch of hard-earned, expensively skinned, second-rate gear.