Guild Wars 2

Oh my. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a terrible use of statistics or math to support an argument outside of a political campaign.

The forum users, a vocal group, are still a minority of the playerbase.

What’s more: people who are satisfied rarely post to the forums. They are too busy playing the game, and it’s human nature to not give much feedback for a product that you are satisfied with. I always make a point of letting the floor manager know when my wait staff at a restaurant that I am eating at does a great job; I frequently hear that such feedback is rare and greatly appreciated.

As for me, I’m very satisfied with GW2. I like the concept of Ascended gear, though I recognize that the implementation needs work; but then again, so does ArenaNet. I enjoy the leveling process and don’t stress when I’m in a lightly-populated zone and cannot complete a group event because there are so many other Dynamic Events out there. I think the classes all play pretty well but recognize that there is room for improvement.

I’ve mentioned things like this a few times, but I’ve been largely shouted down by angry, disgruntled people who should probably move on to a different game. I have had constructive discussions with rational people who enjoy the game and want to see it succeed but disagree with design decisions; however, these kinds of interactions are not the norm.

As a result, I post increasingly less frequently. I would be concerned, but to be honest it seems like all MMO communities are like this. Even WoW — an incredibly successful MMO with a mind-bogglingly large player base that obviously enjoys the game — has forums that are rife with little but complaints and anger.

Aren’t there something like… THREE Ascended items at the moment?

And they are ALL secondary items — not a single primary item in the bunch?

So doesn’t that make all those Exotics worthwhile still?

They even said that the Ascended gear would be rolled out slowly. December doesn’t even show plans to have a new dungeon with more Ascended items in them, so that’s another month of life at least out of every non-Ascended available slot right now.

Overblown complaints are overblown.

Cheyenne.1085:

…only to have a thief on the opposing team run in, use heartseeker one time and get the 25 points.

Please fix this awful game.

In MOBAs, the good teams know not to start in on a Baron/Kongor/etc. try while other members of the team are MIA SPECIFICALLY to avoid this issue.

You didn’t account for the position of an opposing team member. It so happened that they saw your boss kill attempt and set themselves up to steal it from you.

The game doesn’t need to be changed because you got outplayed.

What exactly IS the Elementalist’s greatest flaw?

Range Locking: an inability to operate effectively across the entire spectrum of ranges on a battlefield. More simply: being locked into either a long-range or short-range set of skills that function poorly (or not at all) at the opposite range.

This is a flaw that is common with all classes in most class-based MMOs, but which ArenaNet solved with the concept of skills tied to the weapon instead of the class. For example: a Warrior can keep an Axe and Shield on their primary weapon set and a Rifle on their secondary weapon set; this setup allows them to be at least partially effective (depending on traits and utility skills) across the entire range of the battlefield.

However, the Elementalist is one of two classes in the game with no weapon swap — the Engineer is the other. Both are designed to operate primarily at range, but the Engineer has an advantage the Elementalist notably lacks: Kits. These Kits allow the Engineer to replace their weapon skills with Kit skills that are appropriate to the situation and the role they wish to fill.

These leaves the Elementalist as the only range locked class in the game. Once in combat, the mainhand weapon dictates the Elementalist’s effective range, with a dagger completely non-functional beyond 600 units and the staff and scepter operating at dramatically reduced effectiveness once a target is inside 300 units.

There is a solution to this glaring weakness that already exists within the game: Conjured Weapons.

These utility skills see very little use outside of the somewhat gimmicky Lightning Hammer because of their vast array of drawbacks, not the least of which is the fact that they are doubly-impaired by being items that are limited by both charges and time. In almost every situations, having a more flexible utility skill will serve the Elementalist better.

Consider, however, if Conjured Weapons were placed on the weapon swap slot, had their time and charge limitations removed, and had their skills rebalanced to the power level of normal weapon skills:

1. Upon hitting level 10 and opening up the weapon swap slot, the Elementalist would get access to their choice of Conjured Weapon to utilize in that slot, with the exception of the Fiery Greatsword. The selection could be changed any time the Elementalist isn’t in combat, and could function like selecting a pop-up “utility skill” from the character sheet.

2. Swapping to the Conjured Weapon would start the normal weapon swap timer and lock the Elementalist out of switching elemental attunements, though the passive effects of the current attunement would remain. Swapping to the weapon from the right attunement would be important!

3. Swapping back to the primary weapon set from the Conjured Weapon would place the Elementalist back in the attunement they were last in before the swap and active the normal attunement cooldown for ALL attunements (as reduced by the Arcana trait).

4. Upon reaching level 30 and purchasing the Fiery Greatsword elite skill, the ability would become available as a weapon swap, but selecting it as the Conjured Weapon swap would consume the Elementalist’s Elite skill slot.

There are two issues with this solution:

The Conjured Weapons could no longer be shared with other players like they can be now. I would argue that this isn’t that great of a loss.

The weapons would have to be re-balanced around the concept of being permanent weapons available on-demand.

These two issues aside, however, this solution allows a dagger-wielding Elementalist to keep a Frost Bow on a weapon swap for times when closing to 600 units or closer isn’t a viable combat option or for a staff-wielding Elementalist to keep a Lightning Hammer on the swap for when closing to melee range is unavoidable.

This would grant the Elementalist the ability to adjust to a dynamic battlefield without making weapon swapping compulsory like it is for some classes: the Elementalist will still benefit more by remaining on their primary weapon set unless the changing battlefield devalues the range at which the primary weapon skills function.

The same people who are complaining about the new “tier” of gear are the same people who were complaining that there was nothing to do three weeks ago.

Conjured weapons should be the “weapon swap” for the Elementalist. You should get access to all of them except the Elite (greatsword) as soon as you get your weapon swap slot open. You would get to pick one for your slot and you could change it any time you are not in combat just like your regular off-hand weapon (it would function like a pop-up slot for your utility skills). Upon reaching level 30 you would get access to the Flaming Greatsword as well, but setting it as your swap would consume your Elite as well.

This would solve the huge problem that Elementalists have with being range-locked. If you are using a staff you could keep the shield or hammer on the “swap” for when people close with you. If you are using double-daggers you could keep the bow on a swap for instances where staying at long range makes more sense.

And you don’t have the situation where providing a swap gives the Elementalist 16 more cooldown-oriented skills to use.

Yes, yes… this means that you wouldn’t be able to throw out these weapons for your teammates to use. Additionally, the damage of the skills may have to be tuned since they don’t currently scale with stats but would if you make them swaps.

kKagari.6804:

I sure don’t. Not a fan of her tone in her red posts here tbh, and I’m not the only who will attest to that.

So a group of players don’t like a well-respected CM who has been with the game and the ArenaNet team for years…

Great. Then don’t meet her. The rest of us will be off without you, having fun with GG and the frog.

Judging by your post and your sig, you aren’t having much fun with GW2 anyway. No need to ruin it for the rest of us.

okaygo.5473:

The playerbase wants to know, why no open world pvp?

Because it doesn’t work.

ArenaNet has answered this question already — multiple times.

The dynamic events are supposed to bring people together, but on a PvP server they act as beacons for people who just want to grief. Due to event scaling the “spoiler” players in the event cause the event to grow more difficult while acting AGAINST the event’s goal.

Furthermore: area combos. Remember, this game is specifically designed to allow you to remain outside of a party with someone while still being able to combo with them, help them, rally/revive them, etc. Now you have a bunch of people with PvP flags all turned on — whom can you combo with? Is that smokescreen supposed to be a friendly effect or a hostile one?

Stop for just a minute and think about all the game systems that are SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to encourage organic, spontaneous group play. Now think about how you would account for them on a PvP server.

This game is not WoW. You aren’t supposed to go out solo and grind quests in static areas where you can set up a basecamp of sorts and be on the lookout for gankers. This game has events that are specifically designed to draw people to certain areas from long distances, and that operates on the principal of everyone in an area working together.

The only thing I can figure with this change is that ArenaNet believes that stacked phantasms are too powerful.

In some ways I agree, but I believe that this is the wrong approach. A better solution would have been thus:

1. Unlink clones and phantasms. Clones now “attach” to the Mesmer and phantasms “attach” to the target (like they currently do).

2. Only one Phantasm can be active on any one target; attaching a new phantasm to a target destroys the original.

3. Only three clones can be on the field at any one time. Creating a new clone when three are active destroys the oldest clone.

4. Shatter skills only consume clones.

5. Clones have a maximum lifespan of one minute and disappear if the Mesmer falls out of combat. Phantasms have no time limit given their current limitation.

Given these new limitations on phantasms, they could be buffed to have larger health pools and convey greater utility for the Mesmer. Some phantasms could be made to be almost entirely utility. Picking the right phantasm for the target would become important.

Long cooldowns would make sense, and targets of phantasms would be encouraged to drop what they are doing and try to kill the phantasm, which in turn encourages the Mesmer to try to keep the phantasm alive or to trick the target by using a disposable phantasm first then throwing the “real” phantasm at them after the kill the less-desirable one.

Perhaps more importantly, Mesmers could use their Shatter skills more frequently without worrying about consuming the tactically valuable phantasms in the process.

…Is this thread a joke? I really can’t tell anymore.

The timers weren’t “hidden” intentionally. A display bug was truncating the skill text and preventing the cast timers from being shown. The patch today fixed them.

No they won’t.

Seriously, quit with the inane hyperbole. You aren’t promoting any discussion with it which means you aren’t helping.

In a brand-new game you are going to see a lot of nerfs, buffs, bug fixes, and adjustments over the course of the first year. In most cases they will be sudden and occasionally sweeping as the developers try out different ways to correct problems.

You must accept this as an early adopter of a technology product — even a video game.

I main the class that took the hardest nerfs from today’s patch — a Mesmer — and despite all the doomcalling the class still functions. I’ll admit to being a little mystified over the changes, since if the point was to lower phantasm DPS it didn’t really accomplish that end and if the point was to keep a phantom army from being built too quickly it didn’t really accomplish that end either. Nevertheless, I recognize that there is a problem out there that ArenaNet is trying to resolve without heavy-handed, game-changing nerfs.

So relax a bit, and if you are seriously irritated with some recent change just play a different game for a bit. It’s not like you are paying a subscription fee in GW2; you don’t have to feel guilty for not spending all of your time in-game.

Edit:

Protip: if the developers are trying to weaken a class because it is overperforming, don’t expect a buff to be served alongside your nerfs.

All rhetoric aside, a Mesmers without Phantasms is basically an Elementalist with single-point instead of AoE damage.

The clones don’t really add much in group-based PvE. In that environment one of the most important jobs a Mesmer has is to set up ranged phantasms in safe places so that they can deal steady damage. The increase to cooldowns makes this harder, and will negatively impact DPS more in situations where they are dying.

Time Warp is a million times better, but doesn’t have as noticeable a “tell” when it is used.

TW is a 10s Quickness buff — by far the largest in the game — in a massive AoE — the only one of its kind — ETHEREAL field.

Do you have any concept of how insane that is?

In literally any situation except a 1vX, Time Warp is better. If the Mesmer has even ONE other ally nearby, Time Warp is better.

I want to lead this off by saying that while I have been playing my Mesmer since release he is not yet 80, largely because I have taken the opportunity to try out almost every other class to some degree.

That aside, for the entirety of my time playing my Mesmer I have enjoyed a Phantasm-heavy build. Until today I was playing with a Staff/Sword+Pistol setup, the traits that reduce the recharge times of the skills of those weapons, and the general Illusion recharge reduction trait. I keep iDefender on a utility slot because it really is a good Phantasm for a lot of situations.

This has allowed me to pretty much keep up a Phantom army most of the time and focus on CC and protecting myself. The damage output was good but not amazing, and large pulls can be problematic (the adds kills the Phantasms quickly), but overall the kill speed is acceptable given the safety factor.

Given this, I don’t understand the nearly across-the-board change to the Phantasm recharge times, and I’m hoping for a little insight.

I’m not angry about the nerfs — the class performs well and I know you have a vision for how skills are supposed to work — but given that the time-to-live of phantasms in PvE is typically quite low and in PvP is frequently measured in single-digit seconds, I can’t help but wonder if a better solution may have been to reduce the base damage or the scaling a bit and then make the phantasms a bit more durable instead of increasing the cooldown.

Honestly, I’d like to see the phantasms on the battlefield a bit longer or see them not get one-shot by pretty much everything than have them deal out one decent hit of damage then get destroyed.

Bring back the Dervish please.

Put them in heavy armor this time, restrict them to two-handed weapons, introduce scythes for them (could also be used by Necros and perhaps Warriors), and focus their gameplay on creating and then consuming short-term non-boon buffs, attacking in an area around themselves, and stealing boons from struck enemies.

Anywhere there are ghosts. PLEASE take a look at this. A great example is the area around the “Grendich Ruins” point of interest in Diessa Plateau. The ghosts literally spawn so quickly and the cannons and trebuchets rebuild so insanely fast that it is impossible for a group of three or less people to have any impact on the area whatsoever. Complicating the matter is the fact that the ghosts all come in packs of 2-5(!) at a time and use very power abilities that mimic player abilities in their effects and strength.

This is quite literally one of the most frustrating areas in the game, but it is only an example of the many, many areas where the ghosts are on ONE MINUTE respawn timers permanently, regardless of the number of people in the area.

There should never, in any instance other than a dynamic event, be an open-world area with respawn timers less than five minutes when a single player or a small group is in the area unless the enemy density is very low.

How about this is a completely legitimate, non-sarcastic suggestion:

Go do something else other than farm.

So many modern MMOs have driven players to be goal-oriented: do THIS to get THAT so that you can now do a harder THIS to get a better THAT.

Guild Wars is not that game. The endgame armor sets are small upgrades across tiers, and as such the game drives you to simply go out and experience a diversity of content instead of having a laser-like focus on some particular goal.

This is an adventure game; go out and ADVENTURE. After a while you will have enough money to get what you want, but you may have to actively save in the meantime.

Remember: the company that built this game is the same company that built GW1, a game where the level cap was 20 and there were absolutely, positively no incremental level or gear improvements once at endgame.

Demosthene.2195:

Conflict stirs from lack of communication, and the said lack is a breeding ground for ignorance, xenophobia, nationalism and racism. Like it or not, <snip>

The conflict is only in your head.

And English is NOT the global language of the internet. What an ignorant statement to make!

The rest of your post is naval-gazing, but I gotta tell you that you do no favors to your culture with this kind of mentality.

No, they do not.

The list of boons and conditions are very limited and very specific. You can find more information on the Wiki by reading the page under combat mechanics that pertain to them.

JoxerNL.3752:

douceline.2741:

So any Germans, for example, who want to game with both German and English-speaking people are SOL, basically?

Think it’s save to say these germans can speak english then, no?

I think it’s SAFE to say that you cannot speak English that well yourself.

Thus, why get angry when someone else decides to converse in their native language?

EU stands for EUROPEAN Union. There are many countries in the EUROPEAN Union that have English as a secondary language.

The falsely privileged mindset of many English speakers embarrasses us as a whole.

People who are offended by the mere sight of a foreign language are closed-minded bigots.

If the people are spamming you can blacklist them; otherwise you can just deal.

It’s not like there are a certain number of bits and bytes on the internet available to everyone and these people are taking them up. There is room here for all of us in this globalized culture.

Build a bridge and get over your bigotry.

Edge.4180:

Dinocool.3069:

Arenanet does not want to making repetitive grinding profitable, killing the same mob over and over again is one example of this.

I seriously almost spit up the water I was drinking when I read this.

After I spent 3 days grinding through the same patch of Grawl to collect the 100+ totem drops I needed to craft my latest equipment set, all I can say is that their hopes clearly aren’t mirrored by the cruel reality of their design.

You are stuck in a WoW mentality.

I am hard-pressed to think of a crafting material that is soulbound in this game. Go out and do something more fun, then use the money generated from that activity to buy your materials.

You DO realize that what you described — standing in one place for 20-30 minutes at a time and repeatedly killing the same rapidly-spawning enemies — is basically the very DEFINITION of grinding, right?

Not grinding would be something along the lines of going out into the world and just doing whatever, then using the money gained to buy the venom. And this is what they would prefer that you do, instead of endlessly grinding a world event to artificially generate vast amount of venom, thereby devaluing it.

Nemmar.8491:

I get so more intrigued at the skill set in GW1 and GW2. I see an interesting Warrior build with mixed skills from different campaigns aimed at survivability, on the left i see a boring mesmer whose copies desapwn everytime you kill an enemy and 2 dps skills to use + lots of auto-attack.
It actually makes me feel like logging on GW1. The screenshot from GW1 was one of the worst ever though. The game looked alot better on EotN.

I am not sure if you and I are looking at the same GW2 picture.

I see a Mesmer who has only three weapons skills unlocked, no utility skills slotted (and two slots locked), and no elite skill available.

However, on my own Mesmer (which I can see on the other screen) I see a character completely capable of using illusions properly (i.e. not “tagging” the same enemy with all three of them) to solo huge pulls of mobs at once while not taking a single point of damage.

Not to mention what and absolute fiend I am in PvP.

Perhaps you are looking at the wrong picture?

What you call “grind” is actually called “playing the game”.

Have you noticed that?

The reason it is a “grind” to you is because you are reward-focused from years of playing MMOs that have distilled boring activities into loot pinatas — you go out and do “this” activity to get “that” loot or you cannot do anything else because of “gear checks”.

GW2 is not that kind of game. Upgrades are extremely minor and you can do whatever you feel like doing at the moment and typically work towards multiple ends at the same time.

Of course, if you aren’t enjoying the game you can just take a break. It’s not like it has a subscription, after all. You should not expect any single game to consume every single waking minute of your life.

Currently:

Staff main.
Sword/Pistol on swap.

Utilities:
iDefender
Null Field
Feedback

Point spread:

30 Dueling
30 Chaos
10 Illusions

Mostly this is a farming / dynamic events build. It’s designed to be tough to kill while dealing out decent damage. The point spread is not optimized — it gives me access to specific traits that I want, such as both the increased Sword and Pistol cooldowns in the same line.

I’ll update with a PvP build when I get more experience in that realm.

Elementalists cannot change weapons in combat.

Since their weapon choice dramatically impacts their pacing and range, Elementalists are locked into a role once combat begins. For example, if an Elementalist has a mainhand dagger equipped and the encounter ramps into a large-scale poking engagement occurring at ranges in excess of 600 yards then the Elementalist cannot contribute unless they can get out of combat to swap weapons.

This is actually the reason that I don’t like the Elementalist. I don’t like being locked into a range and playstyle like they are by being unable to switch weapons in combat.

A condition damage + precision build with Scepter+Torch / Staff can be very powerful.

It is a frenetic playstyle, with a lot of weapon swapping and cooldowns to watch.

The main issue you will have with not keeping a 1h sword on a weapon swap is the inability to output high sustained damage on-demand in close quarters.

Without factoring in any of the other skills available to the sword, at close range the auto-attack greatly surpasses the sustained damage of both the staff and the greatsword. There are many locations in the world that are simply not conducive to kiting.

Furthermore, the ability for the sword to dispel boons off the target makes some fights much, much easier. For example: it can take the regeneration off of Skale-type enemies, making them trivial kills.

I’m not saying that it isn’t possible to level without a 1h sword on a swap, but it certainly can make some situations very difficult.

The suggestions from the original post are some of the worst ideas I have seen in a while. More than just changing a system of the class, they would dramatically alter the entire dynamic of the Mesmer as a highly elusive force multiplier by neutering the primary system upon which the foundation of the class is built.

I cannot help but feel that this post is a thinly-veiled “nerf Mesmers!” thread. Three second duration on clones? Fifteen second duration on phantasms that don’t start attacking until they have been on the playing field for 5 seconds and doesn’t attack again for 8 seconds? Those suggestions are simply a call to gut the entire illusion system.

The Mesmer class is one of the better-designed classes in the game, even if they are complex to learn and somewhat frenetic to operate. Wrecking the illusion system because a handful of players don’t like a “cluttered” playing field is neither required nor desired.

Overall this thread contributes nothing of value to the discussion on Mesmers.

Illusions are awesome and don’t need any changes. What DOES need a change are your expectations:

1. Illusions are designed to provide distractions, both in PvP and PvE.

2. Illusions are designed to be utterly expendable.

3. Illusions are designed to last until they are destroyed or until the enemy dies to give the Mesmer options in long fights.

Alright, personally I think that they are fine. There are plenty of very strong non-elite abilities as well, but this is a good thing since it adds complexity to a fight and reward players who understand other classes as well as their own.

This is especially since almost every single ability has a counter that is directly available to every other class in the game. There are rare exceptions, but in a lot of cases those exceptions exist on abilities that are so niche that they balance themselves out by not being generally useful but better applied in very specific situations or strategies (a good example of this would be the Mesmer’s “Portal” ability).

Until it is replaced with GW3.

There is no subscription fee, so — just like Guild Wars 1, which I still occasionally logged into until the launch of Guild Wars 2 — if I feel like playing I can just fire the game up and play it.

Isn’t the “Pay to own” model just plain wonderful?

The problem here is that you have played 350 hours in less than a month.

There is no subscription fee so you don’t have to feel like you are wasting money by participating in another activity for a while.

Death Aggro.9602:

Amadeus.5687:

Greetings everyone!

Many would start the topic with a long introduction about how many games they have played, how many hours they played this ect ect. But I won’t, cause it won’t change anything about what I’m going to say.

I been been reading the forums since they opened them! (woho). Hence, I haven’t been able to not notice, the huge amount of complains being raised on the forums. I won’t say all off them ain’t without reason, nor will I say the game is without flaws either(Like WvsW wait times, money rewards, and bugs). But the point I would like to raise, is against this “Challenge vs Reward”, “The game being to hard” and the “there is no endgame and it fells like a grind”.

I know many of you want “New gear with large numbers on”, so you can use this “new gear with with large numbers on, to get gear with EVEN larger numbers on”. You want a carrot in front of you, telling you to “go do that, then this is yours!”. And I’m glad to tell you this: There is plenty of MMORPG’s out there, doing just that! yay! Then you can level to max level, be forced to do dungeons after dungeon, or PvP for insane amount’s of time, to get the “gear with the best numbers”, and start the entire chain again (See the theory called Skinner’s Box to learn about why this system works)
t:)

Where are OP getting this bigger numbers kittens. I have not read a single thread asking for statted gear. What i do see is ppl wanting a reward for their time. Ive come to realize this game is to be played for a bit then shelved till new content comes out. B/c in less than 300 hrs you can have everything you want in this game. Except rewarding loot you didnt grind a dungeon for. 100% map, everything. As i have. with the exception of a legendary. Only casuals are putting these threads up. Who are you to tell me what i paid for isnt for me.

Why do you want a reward for your time?

That is the “Skinner Box” problem that the OP brought up: so many other MMOs have ingrained this “task-reward” system into MMO players that they simply cannot step off the treadmill.

Did you ever play Baulder’s Gate or Planescape: Torment or any of those other old-school isometric RPGs? There were locations to explore and things to do that dramatically violated the risk/reward or time/reward calculation.

Why did they exist? Because some developer thought that a player may enjoy the challenge. It turns out that they are correct: those old SPRPGs are some of the best-remembered games even to this day.

Last night I ran though a challenge area that took an hour and multiple deaths to complete. At the end I got a chest with a handful of items, less money than it cost to repair my gear, and some achievement points — totally not “worth” either the time or the risk. Nevertheless, I had a blast and that, after all, is the point of a game.

“Loot seeking” does not need to be the focus of every MMO. Some of them can just focus on giving you a living, breathing world and a fun, level playing field for PvP.

Which specific “I win” abilities are you referring to?

There is no shame in deciding that you do not enjoy a game and would rather continue playing one that you are more familiar with.

Let me take a second to distill the message of the original post, as it was a little to glib and unfocused:

If you are playing an aspect of the game for a “reward”, then this is not the game for you.

Sure, the various aspects of the game provide rewards, such as levels, items, and money; however, these rewards are ancillary to the actual game itself, which is instead focused on the EXPERIENCE of the game.

Notice that the rewards are modest and, in general, do not result in dramatic contributions to wealth or improved performance even from the most difficult of events and activities. Even the legendary items — which require a huge amount of time and expense to create — are not dramatic improvements over similar items of lower quality.

If you will remember, this was the case with the original Guild Wars. In that game, the level system stopped at level 20 and the item system reached a terminal baseline at an extremely close point after the final level. For nearly a decade the level cap and item power baseline were not increased, and this was thought by many to be a huge selling point of that game.

At the same time, this quickly and easily attained baseline was a turn-off to some potential players. There are those who actively seek advantages — who want to progress in power beyond content and other players so that they can leverage the power differential into easier victories. That is in and off itself not a problem, but it does run counter to many of the game systems of Guild Wars 2 and almost every single game system of Guild Wars 1.

So perhaps this isn’t the game for you. There is nothing wrong with that admission, and given that there is no monthly fee there is no harm in stepping away for several months while the game evolves — and perhaps you as well.

Waypoints are designed an an economy drain. Without the constant outflow of money — directly into the ether as opposed to another player — you get steady inflation that devalues the currency to the point where the amount of money being earned in low-level areas is completely insufficient to allow a new player to participate in the economy in any meaningful manner.

In addition to waypoints the game also has repair costs, vendor-purchased crafting materials, salvage kit costs, cosmetic items, gold to gems exchange, etc.

The costs for waypoints are actually pretty modest if you are participating in the economy. If you cannot afford the costs you can always walk to where you are going, which will likely involve you in a few dynamic events and allow you to make some money.

Overall, it’s a good system. It could use some tweaks, but its heart is in the right place.

So these “professional” reviewers approached the game as if the leveling process was a quest treadmill like a typical MMO instead of an adventure game with more in common with single player RPGs and were then disappointed to find that the endgame was ALSO more like single player RPGs than a gear treadmill like typical MMOs?

Why should I give a [small, immature feline] about those reviews?

No.

It will have nearly no impact on anyone in the game who is not level 80 yet, and whatever impact it might have had will be erased within a month or two.

Thus is the mutable nature of living MMOs.

My take on this:

1. The costs need to be based on the zone level and not the player level, which makes sense for those who are going back to lower-level areas. Right now going back to clear out lower levels can result in waypoint fees that cost more than the rewards for 6 quests.

2. The costs should be flat-rate across a zone, which would result in an increase for short distances and a decrease for long distances as compared to what they are now. This would encourage people to simply walk short distances and thus run into more dynamic events.

3. Traveling from the vicinity of one waypoint to another (within 600 yards) should grant a 50% discount. Again, this encourages people to walk somewhere instead of just “mapping over” so that they run into more dynamic events. It would also allow people to be more frugal if they are willing to spend a bit of time to return to a “home base”.

I would simply like the ability to filter materials based on profession.

So if you apply a “Tailoring” filter then you would not see materials that have nothing to do with Tailoring.

The problem may be that people are powerleveling crafting and then complaining that it’s worthless.

I personally have found a way to make decent money with crafting while leveling it at the same time. A little bit of thought and research will reveal this method.

The developers have to provide something worthwhile for you to “chase” with a single character. Different games handle this differently, but without certain difficult-to-achieve goals towards the end of the game, playing alts becomes all there is to do.

You may not agree with the design, and your arguments that it could be implemented in such a way that it works across multiple characters hold merit, but it is common to have activities in the endgame that encourage investment in a single character.

Bear in mind that the legendary system is completely optional.

At this point you may get more mileage out of staying in the higher-level zones to work on farming up Karma or high-level materials, make money at the increased rate that those zones provide, and using that money to buy the lower-level materials.

You should, however, go back and get the zone completions unless you plan to see the world with your other characters. You will naturally pick up materials and have the opportunity to see new dynamics events and lore. You can also use the money gained to buy the materials you need to level your crafting.

Overall it’s not as bad as you would think. If you invest some money and time in it you can get both professions to 400 within a few weeks of reasonably playtime.

Alright, let me lay this out for you all since you CLEARLY don’t understand how this game is designed:

This is not your old-school MMO. Those hearts on the map? They are just there to get you out exploring the world — to drive you towards dynamic events, crafting nodes, skill challenges, and other locations where you will find other players.

This game is supposed to be an adventure, not a grind.

Case in point: has anyone seen the cave of shaman in the Norn starting area? There is no heart there. There are no skill challenges there. I don’t think there is even a point of interest there (I could be wrong on that). However, it is an area with a good reward and an achievement tied to it if you complete it.

There is a heart nearby. There is a skill challenge nearby. How do you know about the cave? EXPLORING.

If you rush heart to heart and treat zone completion like the destination instead of part of the journey then — yes — you will miss out on a lot of great content as you fly through the zone two levels faster than you should.

If you don’t bother to explore the major cities AND craft AND PvP AND STILL refuse to go to other zones then yes, you may find yourself getting behind on the content.

This is not Everquest 2, or WoW, or SWTOR where you are given a set series of quests to complete that guarantees that you are ready to move to the next zone where you can start the grind again. This is an adventure game — you are expected to ADVENTURE.

Part of that adventure may be going to lateral zone. Alternately you could run an instance or help a guildmate. Completing the hearts in each zone doesn’t mean you are suddenly DONE with that zone — it just means that you can now purchase items from all of the influence vendors there.

In other words, your whole mentality is wrong. You are stuck in the WoW-loop of “I’m done with all the quest givers! Time for the next zone!” That isn’t how GW2 works.

If you are in a PvP zone then whatever you are doing is a PvP activity.

Farming enemies for drops or money? It’s a PvP activity.
Trying to do a jumping puzzle? It’s a PvP activity.
Assaulting a keep? It’s a PvP activity.
Standing around AFK? It’s a PvP activity.

As long as you have your PvP flag set to “on”, you are participating in a PvP activity.

By the time this thread is finished I bet that it receives the same basic response from at least 10 different people:

Go to other zones that are appropriate for your level and see the content there. That is why those zones exist.

Furthermore, this is a common theme among MMOs, but it is made more explicit by having zones literally overlap in level ranges (i.e. the first zone has level 1-10 content, the next linear zone has level 8-16 content, the third linear zone has level 15-21 content, etc.).

Bear in mind that a lot of races have zones that start to come together in terms of lore, so visiting your race’s “next door neighbor” may actually give you a better understanding as to what is going on with your own race’s storyline.