Guild Wars 2

If it goes to DX11, I’ll probably have to stop playing rather than just be taking a break. Frankly, I can’t afford a new computer right now and that’s what it’d take for me to get something in motion to be able to run DX11.

Mostly because I’d have to buy a newer version of Windows, which would then require more upgrades (which I can’t do) . . .

I would like to choose to stop playing GW2, thank you, rather than be forced to quit due to tech specs.

TheVirtualFrog.8714:

/shrug

I woudl like to find a game that I can stick with. If it means incorporating ideas from numerous other games then so be it. Yes, I could download a thousand little flash games that do the same thing but do I really want to? I can’t talk to my guild members during it and my scores on one flash game has no bearing on the others.

This is true, and it is a valid point.

However, I would like a game I buy to . . . you know, focus on being the game I bought and not a half-dozen other ones.

Guild Wars 2 “new content” seems to consist of temporary events that require you to treat them as jobs and work on farming them till you can because they’ll be gone and with them gone the fun skins as well.

Farm? Work? Sorry but I cannot agree on that score. I can agree on the temporary content bit, but seeing as how it seems a lot of the forums hated Frost and Flame, Wintersday, and Mad King’s Shadow (at least one of the three anyway) . . .

Temporary is the best thing about them, then.

Oh and of course fractal. Good luck if you are slow on upping your fractal level though, people are looking for 20+ fractal level so they can farm the fractal skins and upgraded equipment.

What upgraded equipment? Oh, right, the rings you can get with Laurels. Silly me

It’s underwhelming. A lack of activities beyond repeating the same dungeons and the same dynamic events. Daily achivement is basically giving a fancy name to a boring grind. Kill x of y mobs, do x of y events, craft x of y stuff, etc. Same with Zaishan that focuses on just events instead. How is that content?

How is “Farmville: Azeroth Edition” content?

TheVirtualFrog.8714:

I hate to bring WoW into this but I have to admit, it has gone a long way. Pet battles? Interesting PvE achivements? Millions of weapons, armours, pets, mounts to collect? Your own farm? Mini games like the Zombies vs. Plants daily in Hillsbrad? None of them require grinding or offer leet rewards yet they keep the people happy and playing.

I hate that you brought WoW into it too. Because this looks like Blizzard trying to put more games into their game as “mini games” just to get people to spend more time playing on WoW instead of, you know, those other games. Yes, they keep people happy and playing. So does Farmville, or half a dozen free browser flash games.

I’m playing one in another window right now, mostly to check it out since my brother shot me a link. Frankly, I don’t like what I see in it. And on my iPad I have enough other types of games meant to keep people playing regularly . . . but it’s mostly empty filler of time.

It’s why I like Guild Wars 2’s Daily Achievement system, and the Zaishen Challenges before it. They draw you into actively going out and doing things in the world.

. . . now I haven’t done my dailies in a week, but that’s largely due to my job being night shift and sucking all the energy out of me. And without many of my friends around to play and chatter with? It’s not as much fun. I have a lot of fun on my off days when I can make it on with them.

Also, the whole thing about locking or deleting “I’m leaving!!!!!!!!” threads? Because 9 times out of 10, the replies are either of these sentiments:

“Preach it, brother, this game sucks!”
or
“Bye!”

. . . there’s no discussion there, and it usually devolves into a nice little screaming match on the playground where both sides are not entirely correct, but not entirely wrong either.

DiogoSilva.7089:

2. The world is beautiful, but mathematical and mechanical. Where is the story and the lore behind it?

Here’s a point where I’ll throw in some support. The lore probably needs to be punched up and shored up with books, historians, et cetera. The Priory exists to discover and record . . . why don’t we have some around Tyria who would be willing even to stand and explain things to players?

Seriously, when I explore beatiful places around Tyria, or intriguing places (mount maelstrom comes to mind), I’m always interested to know more about them, and to feel them, and how distinct they are from other places. It happens they usually aren’t, at all.

Mount Maelstrom is odd because you have a few parts of it which are nods to one of the more famous parts of old Tyria: Droknar’s Forge and the area around it. I say “odd” because there’s lore there, but unlike the Granite Citadel ruins it’s . . . not easy to get to due to the area being kinda-sorta in use by the Inquest.

2.1) Exploring maps becomes a repetitive, mathematical grind very early, very fast. There’s no difficulty most of the time, there’s no interesting storytelling to break the pace, there’s no distinct rewards to break the pace, there’s no diversity to… guess what, break the pace. And we leave them out without knowing much more about those maps than when we first entered them.

I’ve only had this experience a few times. A lot of times, I do remember areas I’ve completed 100% and do remember some of the more interesting ones. Some areas do blend together a bit, I agree. But I’m curious where you get “no diversity” . . . some of those early areas have a pretty diverse feel. And some in the middle also do . . . people can say what they will about Timberline Falls being a “dead zone” but it is actually pretty good to play around in. And Lornar’s Pass has a fair amount of variety as well from north to south. Kessex Hills has at least four distinct regions you can tick off without much effort.

On the flip side, I really have trouble liking the Iron Marches, Dredgehaunt Cliffs, and Brisban Wilderness. It’s not that I dislike them, I just don’t . . . find a use for them.

2.2) Seriously, why do all events play the same? I can understand that you can only do so much with the system, but I feel that not enough was done. There are times where the devs have tried to express the world’s lore through their events, but first, events are clearly not enough for that, and second, most of the events seem like filler.

Actually, a bigger issue is that people don’t pay attention to what’s actually happening in the events lore-wise. More interested in getting it done as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, devs are compensating with new story mechanics, like the new living world concept, but there’s still much to evolve.

The concept is nice, the events they added show some variety, but there really needs to be more of the “pushing things” rather than reusing the same type of events.

Also, please look into scaling on the gathering type events. I know you want to make it so all the active players can contribute but sometimes they pick up players for the scaling who aren’t doing anything . . . making it harder for the two people collecting :P

2.3) Meanwhile, the story in this game doesn’t even bothers to make us interested in the world.

The story just moves too fast sometimes, I agree. Really needed to have the pace varied more with some parts where there’s time to stop and absorb just how things are changing after the mid-point. There’s only one “lull” of sorts, and that’s the first chapter where you are inducted into the order of your choice.

DiogoSilva.7089:

GW1 had an healer, GW1 could have a tank in pve, but GW1 had a much higher diversity of roles than GW2 ever came close to be.

GW1 was also very nicely done with six classes. After it hit ten, though, the roles and classes got murky and messy. Frankly, Ritualists took over a lot of roles as “most effective” and Assassins played in a certain way walked through a lot of things. The core six classes, however, were very well done and could . . . in theory anyway, work in one role well and one other not so well but passably.

Meanwhile, GW2’s roles can be simplified to this:
GW2’s pve roles: Being a zerker zerger;

. . . yeah, I don’t think so. I do mostly fine not wearing Berserker gear other than one piece (I haven’t replaced it yet). Swarms of players is a natural extension of some other issues which arose in Guild Wars 2’s design, but it’s almost preferable than the alternative. (For reference, that would be “how do we make sure we don’t have players fighting over camps?” and the result opened up the option to just “zerg it”.)

… pve has too many mechanical or design problems that prevent role diversity in this game:

You say “problems”, I say “choices”. Or even “trade-offs”. Again, I disagree there’s only “one role” in PvE. It might seem that way in some instances (speed clear) but there are some definite differences between classes enough to suggest “roles” in a loose way.

1.3) Crowd control and disruption are pointless against the bosses where it most matters, due to their anti-control buff. What else is there to say here? This alone renders useless many traits, utilities and even entire weapon sets for pve content.

Actually, more to blame are the people not watching the buff and just spamming control skills so it resets before anyone can make use of the window to really make it useful. Defiant exists for a reason – to keep mobs from getting stun-locked. And in smaller group encounters, it works very well. In larger, it becomes a little crazy but that’s because . . . as I said, often people just cycle their control skills through spamming for extra DPS. Or they just don’t care.

1.4) Aoe and spash damage is king. You can make the highest bursts in this game with aoe (hundred blades, lightning hammer, guardian’s GS, etc). You can farm events far more effectively by spamming aoe. What’s the point of single target attacks, when aoe is better in almost any situation. Fortunately, we have official confirmation that AoE will be nerfed.

The point of single target attacks? Single target encounters, naturally. Simple answer.

1.5) Normal content is too easy, and GW2’s defensive mechanics place too much emphasis on skills and too little on stats…

Erm, hmm . . . no. This is not a good idea to begin working with. You see, once you decide to start having statistics matter more than skill, you get into that point where it’s stats and not skill which can give you the edge. You’re probably aware of the whole fuss over Ascended gear and it’s stat increase. Now picture if it was made even more important to people who track that, or important at all to those who don’t.

Please. No.

Written out? Yes. He can be played off to the background and stay there;; his role is done as far as the Wyld Hunt goes and the Pact has solidified enough that someone else probably can lead it now. (The biggest problem early on was inter-order issues, now that’s mostly gone down to a more grudging respect.)

Killed off? Why discard a character you may need to use later? We really don’t need another death for no reason, first off. Secondly, if the writers want to show us they’re better than what mess the personal story turned out to be then they can find a way to take this character and make him useful without letting him take over.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

(This was on SoS, btw…)

Again, based on what I was seeing in WvW, all of Sea of Sorrows was in the battleground/borderlands

(Yes, I’m joking slightly. However there was an alarming amount of you folks running around everywhere, at all times.)

Obsidian.1328:

I’m pretty sure they knew this stuff was going to be in this game before they wrote out the story for it.

I’m not so sure, speaking from the experience of a tabletop GM who had a persistent game world I used for several years and several gaming groups which sometimes had the same people around who wanted to know what their old characters had been doing. You figure out pretty quickly that if the two games are far apart enough spatially or temporally then you don’t have to worry about that kind of continuity as close as if you were starting up in the backyard of where your last group had been playing around.

It gets worse if, as in the case of GW1 and GW2 . . . two games are connected lore-wise and one hasn’t quite . . . kinda, sorta maybe finished . . .

OliverT.9021:

When everyone goes melee, the benefits are -

1. Being able to res each other when one of the members gets downed because the boss targetted him instead of the rest

2. Tossing out buffs that nearby players can benefit, and this is possible when everyone is within range of each other and usually that is in melee range.

3. AOE heals and debuffs etc.

When I go melee as a ranger, the detriments are:

- In melee reach range of the target. This can be inconsequential or very important. General trash mobs? Not always important. Champion Risen Abomination? Very important.

- Not having my best weapon out. Seriously, my melee weapons are all behind my longbow currently. I’m working on that, but right now that’s only a Greatsword and maybe you can count the Axe/Torch (or Axe/Warhorn).

- Oftentimes, less ability for me to spot tells on attacks directed at me. Which means I get worse at dodging since things obscure the enemy. Which means I take more damage.

I get the point of “don’t want it ping-ponging around” – I played EverQuest where it was a big issue if someone accidentally kinda over-nuked with their wizard. (Usually resulting in “rez pls” or a wipe.) And I get the point of “being in range for buffs” . . . but if I am using a bow on, say, that Searing Effigy at the end of CoF1 I’m not in melee and more than likely not where it’s going to be doing damage. Which means I’ll be doing damage semi-consistently, rather than either being made dead or having to stop repeatedly.

People might (and probably will) call me a bad player for this sort of thing. The final kernel of truth is: Don’t care, I’m having fun not dying and not messing the group up by going down every 30 seconds

Edit: Also reminds me of a few times in old Guild Wars where I was the last man standing on a few things . . . and had a reusable resurrect skill. Which meant “hey we don’t wipe this time”. Fun times . . .

PercussiveJR.4372:

Crystal Desert. I guess that’s the problem, I’m level 50 at the moment, just a little bummed walking around…deserted areas.

If my WvW nights tells me anything, all of Crystal Desert is on their Borderlands and SBI’s

Jelle.2807:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bombs and cannons were present in Guild Wars 1.

Bombs and cannons are pretty crude. Sure it requires enormous craftsmanship and precision to make and operate a cannon for instance, but the technology behind it is late medieval at best.

Automatic fire arms and motorized vehicles however….what such tech ingame swords and bows would be long since outdated.

Thing is, the rifles may behave like automatic fire (Warrior skill 3) but they look primarily like flintlock and such . . .

Vayne.8563:

I’ve never been to a game forum for any MMORPG that didn’t have complaints about balance. Not one. Not ever.

I’ve been on exactly one where balance was not the hot topic, rather the access to accounts. Three online from one IP at any given time but no limit to the number of accounts which could be owned by one person. So the topic was more a social balance than game balance.

Notably, add in that game could have PvP . . .

ASB.4295:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

They don’t want to feel they must do this content to stay competitive. They’d like to choose not to do it, and not be at a disadvantage. It’s not just about stats either!

Bolded the important part. Even if the advantages of better gear or tools would be next to non existent, these players feel pressured into going for those things despite actually wanting to work towards something else. Titles, cosmetics, horizontal stuff.
These players won’t be able to enjoy going for things they like until the nagging voice in the back of their head constantly whispering “…you could be as efficient as everybody else if you did the other content instead…”
Just as a lot of players crave the need for constant improvement and progression, there are players that crave a feeling of not wasting their time with trivialities when they could go for better stats.

Those two mindsets are direct opposites of each other(at least on the stat level), and from what we have seen, the number of people wanting meaningful progression is… well, orders larger than the niche GW1 managed to satisfy.

Yeah . . . I get a response encapsulating this (not as nicely worded) when I say “Ascended gear is optional and not required”. Which is why I gave up trying to argue that point. It’s evident, but the fact people feel otherwise means it’s a lost cause trying to argue it.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

This is why people want to insist on cosmetic rewards such as titles, gear models, achievements, et cetera.

And is that really so bad? It’s worked for EIGHT years for GW1…so apparently it’s doing something right.

Nope. Not saying it’s bad, or good even. I mean, that’s what I would want, but then again . . .

. . . I’m still banging my head against a post-game bonus boss in Digital Devil Saga for a shiny item I might not even NEED in the second part. Why? Because it’s there, but oh my gods and angels it required a lot of grind. A lot. No, more than that.

SolidTx.3249:

completely fair question. I would hope that the devs are able to figure that out. Not you, but others have suggested that me and my guild and the thousands of others who want “progression” features go away and play Wildstar or whatever. Your question is just as valid for those folks as it is for me.

I suppose it is valid, but what would you suggest? I mean, me? I have Minecraft. If I want something, chances are there’s some mod or server out there which will let me get it.

I’ve never said that my view is right and the other is wrong, and I dont believe that.

And I checked before saying that. However, I was approaching the question with the intent of “assuming this is so”.

Despite what some may say or believe, I understand and appreciate the disdain for grinding and activities in games that take time but add no value. I dont want those either and I’ve said that in multiple posts (but some don’t care to read those sentences).

I don’t like grinding for nothing, unless I choose to; I have done that before if I really like playing a game. “I’ll keep playing it, I enjoy X about it so grinding it a bit more for Y thing doesn’t seem that bad.” However, as a choice rather than forced . . . and, for note, not for a significant edge against those who chose not to when we’re talking about multiplayer.

I’ll just use one phrase to sum up what I mean: “I play Monster Hunter.”

My first post, the original honest question was FAR more about asking for raid-like content, additional dungeons, open up more of the map, give us more hearts and quests and yes ADD more rewards to that. My follow-up original question was “what is the disdain for gear progression” and that inspired a mostly healthy debate.

Ah. See, the content of more areas, hearts, events? I expect that’s coming. I hope it is. Raid-like content? If it’s handled better than their current World Boss system (I love it and hate it at the same time for the same reason: everyone who can fit in the zone can come do it) and if it’s also not bringing gear progression to affect the rest of the game.

I don’t mind the Ascended gear that much because (from where I stand) outside of Fractals, it’s not terribly important. If something is introduced which is akin to that style of “progression” where it is tied to more challenging versions of future content and not impacting the rest of the game? I’ll tentatively give a thumbs-up.

Where we seem to differ is what those rewards might be. Yes me and many others would like those rewards to improve our characters. Opposing that view others have expressed those rewards need only add new visuals and titles and not be stat impacting. That stands as our disagreement.

It’s simple, and been adequately explained. They don’t want to feel they must do this content to stay competitive. They’d like to choose not to do it, and not be at a disadvantage. It’s not just about stats either!

See the Molten Alliance pick? Imagine if that was (only) a 0.001% chance drop from the Weapons Factory coming up. Suddenly people who don’t do it are at a disadvantage because this rather useful tool is dropped there and it’s not just a cosmetic reward.

This is why people want to insist on cosmetic rewards such as titles, gear models, achievements, et cetera.

SolidTx.3249:

Adding more content to the game does not detract from your enjoyment.

Funny, I said that to someone about the Super Adventure Box not long ago, and they told me it was the crudest and silliest argument, essentially sticking my head in the sand and ignoring that it was a pile of charr excrement. Okay, there MAY have been some more swear words involved and some rude references to certain parts of anatomy (and uses of which are either illegal or physically impossible).

I’d also ask one question though, assuming you are right and there are more people on the side wanting this type of gear progression than those who don’t.

What makes it right to do such excruciating amount of content development for only one group over another, who will never use it? Why spend the man-hours working on that, when you could work on something both sides would actually do? Such as the aforementioned Box.

Talloc.6835:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Talloc.6835:

Sorry, Runescape claims the title of best MMO.

. . . if you tell the scam-spammers to stop emailing me about my nonexistant Runescape account being suspended/banned then I promise to try it.

How do you know that your account from the future hasn’t been compromised and now they have to send back emails to warn you?

Causality doesn’t work that way . . .

Well, it might, but it requires a blue box, a nerdy guy in a tweed jacket and bowtie, and maybe a fez.

Talloc.6835:

Sorry, Runescape claims the title of best MMO.

. . . if you tell the scam-spammers to stop emailing me about my nonexistant Runescape account being suspended/banned then I promise to try it.

There’s Dungeons and Dragons Online, but your mileage will probably vary with it. I’m sure there’s others.

Curuniel.4830:

I don’t know, Tybalt is obviously the prime example, but a lot of the Order of Whispers stuff is pretty light-hearted, if only because they tend to get a lot of combat-light, character-heavy missions. To be clear, I have no problem with this! But most of the ‘secret messages’ and coded conversations you have from that order are a bit silly, in part because the player character keeps seeming to forget it’s meant to be secret (I mean everyone knows, right?).

And yet, there are hidden agents in areas around Tyria before they start operating openly as part of the Pact.

Brutallyk.1250:

The game is evolving, but some mechanics are the same since day 1 and these turn the game into non-fun.

Some mechanics in other games aren’t fun. Super Mario had me lose all powerups on being hit once. Some games are worse about being hit. (Hi, Gradius!) Dragon Quest/Warrior has the “Beat/Defeat” spell set, and Final Fantasy “Petrify” and so on . . .

. . . and on the other side of “not fun” there’s Quick Time Events. I swear the mad, twisted genius who started these needs to be very well protected from the angry gamers who are out looking for them.

Examining your point, though:

I just wanted progress towards precursor. The other stuff you need for legendary accumulates slowly but precursor doesn’t. Getting 77 Mystic Clovers can be difficult but I see them growing in my inventory, this gives me power and will to continue.

Why doesn’t Zommoros award me with a special coin for every attempt for precursor? And I can get a precursor for 100 coins for example? There is progress here. This is what I want. Not dumping all of my hard earned gold into nothing.

It seems you’re mostly kitten off about your Precursor. The rest of the RNG based stuff isn’t an issue, but the Precursor is where you keep coming back to.

It’s also the only part I won’t defend other than to say it’s been said ArenaNet devs are aware of the issue. Whether they’re actively working on it, idly plugging away at it while not working on something else, or put it in a locked cabinet and air-dropped it into the ocean . . .

Well, that’s just for us to speculate.

Curuniel.4830:

… so Whispers secrecy is played for laughs more often than it’s emphasised for story.

Not so much played for laughs . . . except in Tybalt’s case

ArchonWing.9480:

If you want to look at what not to do, look at ascended gear.

No. That’s not a good example I mean, it’s a good current example for people in this game. I’d rather point to the gear progression of good ol’ EverQuest when level caps weren’t being raised. That was pretty bad, especially in Planes of Power.

Brutallyk.1250:

Hey you wrote on the forum this, didnt want to write the same thing again so here is my response as I wrote on first post:

“I don’t wanna play a game where a single party member gets 3 Charged Lodestones from one path and I get nothing from 13 paths.” This is creating inequality. He gets 10 gold I end up with nothing and I invested 13 times the effort he did.

Another example would be if I salvage 10 rares and get 0 ectos and you salvage 10 rares and 30 ectos, wouldn’t you consider that inequality?This was what I meant by inequality.

Also:
I get 2 precursor from 8 rares
you dont get one from 800 rares

Hi. I like how you replied via PM instead of on the topic.

In the sense of 1 =\= 2, yes. That sort of luck is definitely not the same. But you already knew that, or you wouldn’t have asked the question. Presenting an obvious example and inviting someone to disagree with you over it is not good form. Unless you’re going for the Socratic Method of debate. I don’t think you were, though, you’re just trying to get a silly soundbite from that question

In the sense of game balance? Ehhh . . . not really. I’d consider it crushingly bad if you couldn’t trade things to people (and mailing attachments counts for that) or if every item which dropped was the equivalent of “Account Bound”. I’ve played games like that, it was very . . . not great. The rest of the game? Pretty great. The RNG drops? Ugh.

Here, of course, you can trade off lodestones or ecto. Or exotics. Or Precursors even. The fact people charge for doing so? Not in the control of the game, it’s in the control of the person. I’ve personally donated stuff to people I know or have played with long enough to feel generous towards. I’ve willingly handed over siege golems I get in the Borderland jumping puzzles.

I know not everyone does. I know there are people who find it inconceivable (yes I am using that word and mean it properly) to give something away when it is worth money. Some people even offer “at cost” crafting, which basically is at a loss anyway.

I said in my post. Randomness isn’t the big issue killing the game. People running out of things they want to do is.

alan.5863:

I mostly agree with the OP. Perhaps gear progression is something that can be left out of the equation, but many of the “challenges” that exist just aren’t exciting.

One can have endgame without gear progression. It can be something players of all stripes can participate in. It might be hard to fathom, but not all of us like WvW (for all intents and purposes, WvW is similar to a WoW battleground) or sPvP.

I do play WoW, and I rather enjoy raiding there. The only big problem in WoW is how quickly you can get behind in gear if you’re not part of a team that is progressing through the latest raids. I really don’t see why we can’t have raiding in this game, sans a need to push for “better” gear. No sense in adding a gear gate for a community who seems staunchly opposed to the addition of better gear, but there’s also no sense in opposing a need for more challenging content that one can do as a guild.

What’s fun for some isn’t necessarily fun for all. PvP, in all it’s forms, just isn’t fun for me. There are others in my guild who feel the same, so we all just run dungeons and fractals. We do wish for more, though.

I like how this guy thinks.

BurntTree.3857:

Without a gear treadmill, the endgame is pretty much WvW, s/tPvP, and skin collection (dungeons, events, legendaries etc.). That’s why the game has such a low population, this strategy is dedicated for a niche of players who enjoys the things I stated above, while the rest played for 2-3 months and left.

True enough, and that’s the downside of it. I freely admit to not playing all that much lately because I have run out of a lot of things to do and the routine was getting a little dull. I try to make it on on days where I don’t work. (I work second shift, also known as “prime time”, CST. I miss a lot of people doing stuff then, and doing it alone is . . . not as much fun.)

Obsidian.1328:

Umm…why is everyone trying to come up with a plausible explanation for this? The decision to put rifles/guns/bombs in the game was made waaaay before the lore was written to support it, not the other way around.

I’m terribly sorry, but I feel the need to tell you some bad news and I need you to be sitting down for it.

Bombs and cannons were present in Guild Wars 1.

I know this might come as a bit of a shock, but I’m sure with counseling we can get you through this.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I always rather thought it was fugly on most classes, but meh.

Hence why I never busted balls trying to get it I had only one class it looked “okay” on (Paragon) but all their armor sets looked so similar, it was a case of “why?”.

There is some gear progression in all games. The difference is whether or not that progression is a grind treadmill that is outside the flow of the game. If you absolutely have to do it to get to content.

The games I listed, it is treadmill. Especially the UFO example – Elerium powers all the cool stuff so you need it. Constantly. In Dragon Warrior, those weapons/armor were practically the only ones which would let you survive the push for final gear (found, not bought, and you could “cheat” and get the ultimate armor before Magic Armor, but details details)

We don’t want Anet to say…re-implement FoW….but now you can ONLY access it if you have ‘x’ set of armor with ‘y’ rating. Not ‘you have to be ascended’ (which was part of the normal story in Prophecies, Factions, AND Nightfall)…not that you have to complete the game (like for DoA)…you have to acquire armor set ‘x’ from dungeons a-e and each piece only has like a 0.01% chance of dropping. See the difference?

I see the difference, but do we have that kind of gating? I mean, there’s Agony Resist (“You must have this much not to have the Jade Maw kill you.”) but that’s about it isn’t it? So far, I mean.

I mind being told I can’t move on unless I go out of my way to obtain them.

So far, that’s just Fractals 10+ and if we can keep it to that I’ll be satisfied. Mostly because nothing truly jaw-droppingly unbalancing drops in there.

Edit: No Tobias, I’m not grumping at you.

Pfft, even if you were it’s well-said enough that I don’t mind.

Dustfinger.9510:

The Brigadier.3847:

Swords and Pistols were usually reserved for officers and Cavalry. Fusiliers or Line infantry had a bayonet(shovel maybe a small knife for food). On that note the chances of you being killed by a bayonet were incredibly low. You see melee combat primarily in cities, towns, and Forts. On a open battle field you usually charged when the enemy is physically and emotionally exhausted. The reason for this is most of the time infantry charges were repeled by the people shooting at them.

Battle in cities, towns and forts is still combat. You might as well separate snipers into their own element to prove how a sniper rifle is the ultimate weapon.

In some cases, it is, isn’t it?

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I don’t want others to suffer for hours being made to feel like they aren’t ‘good enough’ or treated like kitten because they aren’t up to speed on the gear treadmill.

I feel I’m not “good enough” simply for being a ranger often enough Or for not being able to do PvP successfully when sitting in the Borderlands.

There are alternatives to what you seek in simpler solutions, but those don’t seem to be good enough answers for you. Like many who refuse to hear arguments in favor of gear treadmills, you’re equally as bigoted about accepting logical, reasonable arguments against it.

It is, in my opinion, a matter of ingrained expectations.

Because gear supremacy is so prevalent elsewhere, and in just about any RPG solo or not, it’s an attitude that “oh X gear means they must be awesome”. Above it was mentioned Obsidian Armor in GW1 as one yardstick of “worth”.

(Personally I always saw it as a sign they were rich enough to get the materials off the Trader and knew someone who would run them through to the Eternal Forgemaster. The toughest part of Obsidian Armor was getting the Ecto/Shards, and that was a matter of platinum. Nearly anything in GW1 could be bought with enough platinum.)

I have never played World of Warcraft, but I’ve played some F2P games where gear grind was an integral part. I’ve played some single player RPGs where gear grind was an integral part (Dragon Quest 1, “Flame Sword, Magic Armor, Silver Shield”). I’ve played non-RPGs which had gear grind as an integral part (Hello UFO: Enemy Unknown, how’s the Elerium treating you?).

And I enjoyed both games of example. Except for the grind, which was a lot of boring search-and-destroy. (Okay, maybe the UFO example was a lot more fun getting your Elerium by exploding Sectoid bases.)

The problem is, these days . . . I don’t have the time I used to. Especially on an MMO where I rely on time windows which often aren’t by my own choices. I don’t want a mandatory gear grind any more than anyone else. Much as with GW1, though, I’m content for optional gear grind. (Please back away from the edge you walked to with Ascended, ArenaNet. You haven’t jumped off the cliff yet, so just . . . back away slowly.)

tolunart.2095:

lethlora.1320:

i hear things being optional is a justification for them being hilariously overpriced. this is why all non-mandatory things in life are several times more expensive than they should be

like hilariously unhealthy comfort food

Tell the guy in the shiny new Ferrari that he should have bought a 20-year old pickup truck for $500 because both get you from point A to point B but the Ferrari costs 100x more per mile, which means it will take another 350 years to pay for itself vs. the cost of the pickup.

Write down how long it takes him to stop laughing.

Courtesy of “Castle”:

“Dude do you know how fast those things go?”
“Same as any other car in rush hour traffic.”

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Every game has their gimmick builds. We’re already seeing them here in GW2 (why, hello speed clears. No ones killed you yet? sigh) But even gimmicks require skill, be it timing or synergy or what have you. You don’t just spring forth being good at them. You have to learn them, and possibly even adapt them a little bit to your play style. One size does not fit all.

True, I totally could never get trap builds to work on my ranger. I also for some reason could never land D-shot. Savage Shot all day long, even interrupt Mesmer 1/4 second spells. D-Shot? Never, ever managed to time it right. It would always hit too late.

That said, Guild Wars 1 is a different animal for another reason: no “multi necro and ritualist hero party” which would walk over everything. Here? It’s the speed clear “Full Zerker and don’t stop til you see the end chest” process. I would ki . . . maim. I would maim someone . . . to see something where they were actually the WORST possible way to take a challenge

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Skill > Time. We championed it in GW1, we continue to call for it in GW2.

The problem I ran into in GW1 wasn’t that skill was “greater than” time. It was the fact one particular setup could steamroll everything PvE side and leeched the fun out of the game as I was playing it.

Sure, it took some skill to make those strategies. It took (almost) no skill to load it off a website, gear up with the proper Attributes/Runes/Insignia and get to crushing things. That was my issue with GW1.

I still enjoyed it. You know, when I got a chance to dump off that baggage and just have fun exploring or hanging around with friends. Other than that, after I finished 90% of Hard Mode I took one look at what was left and it was such a grind for nothing.

Gear should not be the deciding factor in a fight…ever. Getting my kitten rolled because I didn’t have 10 hours a day (for ‘x’ many weeks) to dedicate to ‘gearing up’ is not fun. Many of us (I won’t use the word ‘most’ because I’d hate to imply that I’m making a general assumption. Absolute blasphemy that) have school, or work, or families and just don’t have that much ‘free time.’ If I lose a fight, I want to know its because the other person was more SKILLED than I was, not because they had better gear.

I don’t have free time much anymore. Okay, I do, sort of. However my job saps a lot of my energy and I just don’t feel like it. I log in and still am as effective as I was last week. Last month. (Except in WvW – there I’m just as ineffective as ever.)

That’s the good news. Currently, someone can walk away from GW2 for most of a week and not have to worry about being behind. I hesitate to say “for a month” because then they’d have missed Frost and Flame, with the small goodies which came out of it. (Free 12 Slot Bag, communal bonfire, and karma.)

I don’t want to not be able to access content ‘x’ because I don’t meet gear requirement ‘y’.

And this is why I stay the heck out of Fractals 10+. Also, they were fun the first few times until the PUGs decided “path of least resistance” was best for taking on some of those things. I still sort-of-enjoy the Swamp Fractal and about three others. The Volcanic and Underground can go to the Underworld.

Can’t access it because I haven’t completed a specific chunk of a story? Sure, this was common (and acceptable) in Factions and Nightfall. I expect this trend; after all, it can get a little confusing if you try reading the book out of order. Can’t kill a foe because you’re not infused to defend against them…sure (Why hello Prophecies), as long as the incorporation into the game is part of the flow. But ‘requires gear rating of blah blah’? Which I now have to go out of my way for, and do some lame extra grind… Nope, no thank you.

Thank goodness there’s one instance of that (Agony Resistance) and it’s not a strict requirement to progression. If you’re not going into Fractals 10+, don’t worry about it. Heck, if you don’t plan on going into there you can just take any problem with “Ascended Gear” attached (currently) and shove it off a cliff.

Exotics are good enough for 90% of the game.

Lyndis.2584:

This should be titled SoS/Trolls/Spies.

I can’t go a single day in WvW without seeing 20+ sieges built in lowlands.

. . . really? So which of us are the trolls, which are the spies?

I guess the fact I don’t take my stabs at WvW that seriously anymore probably makes me the troll. Alas, if only I was so effective as them. (Fricking rock showers and stun.)

Risingashes.8694:

Hypothetical Example

“You actually like pizza? Wow. I mean I always thought that people just ate pizza because they had no other food available- but okay. I guess that’s fine.

Heh, learn something new every day."

Sounds like a bit of a tool, no?

I get that daily when I let people in on what I put on my sandwiches. It no longer bothers me as much. (“You actually fry your bologna?”)

I get that when I tell people what shows I watch (“Doctor Who? Isn’t that a British show? Why do you watch that, British TV sucks.”)

I don’t feel the least bit ashamed saying something akin to that, though more “well, whatever you like as your fun”. So long as people don’t mind me saying “you know you’re getting all worked up over something which doesn’t have any point right? Just chestbeating and bragging rights”.

I’m out of the topic though, but really . . . if this is the most dire thing that Guild Wars 2 has to face this month I will be freaking awesomely pleased.

Solid Gold.9310:

Shikigami.4013

“Counterquestion: I paid €40 for the game, the pick costs €10 in gems. Do you think 4 of these picks are worth as much as a complete game account?”

Yup that about sums up what a rip off it is.

This question was posed about the character slot enhancements a while back, I think. Where you could get 5 with a new game account, but only get 4 for the price in cash.

The answer then is the same now: no, it’s not worthwhile except for the convenience of having things in a single place. (Or in this case, single pick.) Same as when GW1 was cheap as dirt and the Xunlai Expansions cost $10 each.

It was a “rip off” then, and is now, if you want to look objectively and weigh it as an economic thought. On the other hand, it’s also more economical to get bread, cheese, and meat rather than to go out for fast food. Strangely, those businesses are still busy day in, day out

Bottom line: people are idiots about their money. Myself included.

Risingashes.8694:

But people do want achievement points. Despite their mechanical meaninglessness, perhaps because of their mechanical meaninglessness. I certainly don’t like grinding, and if I was offered a minipet for grinding 1000 Ogres I wouldn’t even consider it. But I did it for 16 achievement points.

I picked those up largely on accident. Truth. I raked them up doing events in eastern Plains of Ashford, southern Fields of Ruin, and eastern Blazeridge Steppes. Having a minipet or town clothing for these would be something I wouldn’t mind. Or the option of displaying it, even.

Is mechanical relevance really the only standard by which you judge the worth of a game feature?

No, but it is part of how I sort whether or not something “matters enough” to get worked up over. If a game feature is broken, but has little to no impact on the gameplay itself? I’d rather only just note “this is broken” and move on. I’d much rather talk about problematic event balancing, or lacking the same level of pet control I had in Guild Wars 1 (“Lock this target for your pet”), or Random Number Generator provided Precursors.

Or, failing at those, why Trahearne isn’t the Worst RPG Character Ever. No, that’s still going to be Kai Leng and I didn’t even play that game.

Risingashes.8694:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

_There’s literally no advantage to having a high Achievement Score. The leaderboards serve barely any purpose.

For you. There is no purpose to the leaderboards for you. For me the purpose is a fun, casual, friendly competition. I like achievements, and I like the achievement leaderboards.

Okay, I should perhaps clarify when I said “no point”. There’s no mechanical advantage to being anywhere on there. Can you produce something where there is an advantage?

Yet you certainly threw your sarcasm and mocking towards something you don’t care about. And that’s my point. Why are you in this thread if you don’t care either way? Why is mocking a cause you have no stake or opinion about okay, but supporting a cause that you don’t particularly care about unspeakable?

This? This isn’t mocking you. Sarcasm, I can agree with, but if I try to keep away from straight mockery. There’s no joy in it for me, honestly.

However, I mentioned above, I “jumped in” because this sort of things bugs me. To be clear: The idea Achievement Score needs to be some sort of yardstick of worth bugs me. I know that’s what you see in it, but I see arbitrary numbers with no impact on anything. It’s a high score screen for the new century, with exactly as little meaning to people who aren’t chasing being on it.

If you make a logical argument that only enhances everyone’s playtime then of course I would.

My support or obstruction is based upon fair judgement, a courtesy you’ve not afforded me.

No, no, I have not judged you . . . I judged this cause. You are very passionate about this, and you have made a good point.

However, as I repeat: the achievement system has absolutely no mechanical effect on anything. There’s no gating by it, there’s no reward for having X Achievement Score instead of Y . . . there’s barely titles outside of the PvP ranking ones.

If you were fighting for it to have some impact, I’d definitely start putting some thought into that. If you were fighting for even more titles or the ability to show every track after a point like in Guild Wars 1? I’d even vouch on that. But worrying about the total score?

It baffles me why anyone cares about who’s in the top 10% of the board. Like I said I, myself am there and nobody gives two craps about what I think/do.

Risingashes.8694:

So since you agree with me, and you don’t care about the subsystem- why not support me. Why not say ‘yes’? Then when something you care about comes along and you make a reasonable argument, I’ll be there to support you.

Explain your attitude to me.

Because I shouldn’t throw my support into something I don’t care about one way or the other. I should throw my support into something I actually care about or believe in, or else my support loses some semblance of meaning. (Not to other people, they wouldn’t give two skritt behinds. To myself.)

If you can check way back, you’ll find I also hold a lot of unpopular opinions, so maybe you should hold off even a suggestion of supporting me

marnick.4305:

That’s not what leaderboards should be about. But I’m just someone with a rational mind and a competitive mindset, I want the best to triumph, not the one with the most time. Maybe, having a clue about the real world isn’t relevant in videogames. But hey, we can try to make this game better right, even though I’ll personally never feature on a top rank.

The problem is, there’s no triumph. There’s no prize for topping the leaderboard. There’s no tournament, league, whatever. That’s what drove me to post in this thread, to answer the question bluntly.

There’s literally no advantage to having a high Achievement Score. The leaderboards serve barely any purpose. I say “barely” because someone did figure out you can use them to look for inactive guild members in a curious roundabout fashion. So far, that’s the only use I’ve seen mentioned for these.

Risingashes.8694:

You might need a bit of reading comprehension then because it seems you’ve totally missed the point.

It seems I did, but it wasn’t much of a point to miss really.

I’m talking specifically about dailies. Fixed achievements are great, there should be more of them, but no one wants to take away peoples achievements.

Agreed, I really wish the Daily track did have either a cap or no tracking at all. It doesn’t really need any.

But playing the game on the 14th of November 2012 shouldn’t be an achievement. That isn’t fair. That isn’t what the system should be based around. Reward completion, not attendance.

. . . you know what, I’m slightly in agreement with you, but we’re going to disagree a lot because of one minor difference.

I just don’t care what the achievement score is. I don’t care about where I fall on the leaderboard. And I think it’s a pointless yardstick to measure yourself by, even before the leaderboard was started.

Risingashes.8694:

You can play GW1 right now and get the achievement. In fact there was a Reddit thread just a day ago where people were specifically doing just that.

Yup, I noticed it. You know what else? I still don’t care about that particular title. I just don’t have enough time on my hands to sit down and crank through: Wisdom, Luck, Treasure Hunter, Unlucky, Faction Allegiance, Survivor, Legendary Defender of Ascalon . . .

No, thank you. I had three years to get a lot of those and I gave up after one. It just was way too much grind and repetition for me. Not when I could do more interesting things.

Currently HoM, the thing you’re pointing to as something even more ridiculous than dailies is in fact possible. If you didn’t play yesterday you’ll forever be 13 points behind someone who did.

That’s 500,000 dolyaks, 60 HoM points (there were only 50 HoM points btw), 100,000 spvp kills.

No. I’m not pointing to it as ridiculous. I just know that people WILL because it’s a favorite regular target about how unfair it is for people who need to start some forum drama. Or try starting it.

Repeating . . . I honestly do not care about my achievement score. I didn’t even check myself on the leaderboard until someone told me I was in the top 90%. I snatch up achievements I think I can do, but I’ll leave the ones which are excessively grind-y or otherwise requiring obscene work (“Emperor’s New Wardrobe”) to people who care about them.

I care about finishing three categories: Explorer, Hero, Jumping Puzzles. I’m 90% of the way through Jumping Puzzles and Explorer.

marnick.4305:

And yet, GWAMM had a definitive cap that was achievable by all. It wasn’t even that difficult to get. It didn’t increase day by day.

Show of hands, who expects a topic now about how that title is available in Guild Wars 2 as a bonus from Guild Wars 1 is unfair to people who didn’t bother or didn’t play the first game?

I’m sorry, what’s the issue here? No, seriously . . . I’ve been reading this and I’m really trying to understand what the crushing problem is. I’ve worked for my points, and spent a lot of time going to do the jumping puzzles, the boss achievements, the explorer bits . . .

. . . and someone is going to start yelling at me that because I played for longer I’m not as good as I think I am? My friend, I play a ranger main. I know I’m not as good as I think I am.

Lokheit.7943:

Some of Krytan NPCs even look like comming from an african culture for the way they dress and paint their bodies.

I still go by “Mediterranean” myself . . . also some of the Krytan NPCs are probably Elonian expatriates?

Though since I don’t travel I mostly am at the mercy of others’ reports.

I really don’t like the Tier 3 human medium armor, for my ranger. But then I’ve always loved the Monument Armor out of GW1. The Armageddon temple armor was the closest option. If it weren’t for that silly Undertaker hat.

Grok Krog.9581:

Ranger: Rampage As One is great. Entangle can be good. Spirit needs AoE damage reduction and it will be good

Avatar of Melandru doesn’t seem as useful as Rampage as One, which makes me ponder why. Entangle I found kind of useful using it in WvW sometimes, but it was never all that useful . . . as, say, diving with my 50% Fall Reduction trait off a wall

I was using the racial “Hounds of Balthazar” and still do for when I kick around solo. The Avatar of Grenth I’ve seen used also as a “Point-blank AoE” type melee effect.

Jaxon.5392:

Those that weren’t heavily into the game around 1 year in just prior to the factions release have no right to talk about GW1 IMO. That was the golden age of the game where it was beautifully balanced, build variety was varied, about the time you saw the rise of WM with their standard 4 warrior, 2 crip shot ranger, 2 monk GvG build. That time. That period in the game was the pinnacle of GW1.
If you weren’t heavily invested into GW1 then you do not understand the comments by those that are comparing GW1 to GW2.

Hey, GW1 veteran here who was with the game from Week 1 of the live release. I was trudging through Prophecies steadily at that point, and remember when Sorrow’s Furnace got added. I was, unfortunately, a PvE player primarily since I totally lacked the intuitive grasp of the metagame.

(Seriously, I got the “L2P” speech way too much for PvP of any stripe to be fun.)

I don’t get the comments saying GW1 was near perfect and GW2 is trash, not using the same words. The economy was practically nonexistant for anything but the rarest of drops or what was desired for use in certain builds. Gold items weren’t wanted at all unless:

- They were Unidentified. (Grinding Wisdom)
- They had good upgrades to salvage.
- It was a desired skin with a Req <11.

If it didn’t have any of that, better to vendor it than try to sell it even at the sell value. Also, good luck selling minis which weren’t gold or green for anything other than pocket change. I suppose the good thing was money got largely superfluous after a while. You know, unless you were sinking it into trying to chase Lucky.

The “build elitism” was worse at times. As a BM/Marksman ranger, I was told way too often by PUGs to go either no pet or traps. Skills/attributes were more important than gear, to the point where “ping your build” was followed by the hope they didn’t kick you because it wasn’t “a good build”.

(This is why when I got into a guild/alliance I was very pleased they said “play what you like and we’ll make it work”. This led to an epic fail of a 6 hour Urgoz’s Warren run but that’s a story for another time. It was also the most fun ever even though it was a failure.)

The titles were grindy as all heck. Especially Legendary Defender of Ascalon. And the luck-based Survivor (until it was changed recently). Many tears were shed by someone who hit a lag pocket with their Survivor . . .

Given the amount of people I saw who were only in missions for a run, rather than actually trying to do the mission legitimately? Or the people finding crazy ways of farming valuable things / title points . . . I have to really question if anyone played GW1 for the “non-grindy fun”.

I don’t know if people considered it but . . .

Has anyone considered asking for help? I’m halfway sure there are people who would be willing to help in Wayfarer’s Foothills (there’s always people hanging around). Or Diessa Plateau (just not for the Nageling Giant). Generally I found if I say in /map “Molten Alliance event near X”, I get a couple people coming around.

I might . . . might . . . have to grab my ranger and keep “roflstomping” the periscopes and events in these areas until people complain I’m not letting them do anything.

ophidic.1279:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mirta.5029:

Morrowind was a grindfest so I would disagree.

Oh there’s plenty wrong with Morrowind.

(“I have to go WHERE? Where the F is that?!”)
(“So I level up, and my reward is random spawns of monsters getting tougher. Sweet.”)

I am not entirely sure what grind you were thinking of?

You actually had to read the log and use maps and place and write on your own map markers, which I thought was kind of a nice touch. Map travel makes me feel lazy, although if it’s there I can’t help but use it. lol

Oh I understood that, I played games before where there were no hints on where to go next. Morrowind was not something I was stranger to “go into the wilderness and find it”. I enjoyed that bit, myself.

Friends, though, not so much.

. . . and honestly, I never had to grind “levels” in that game, save for in the start where I was no good at anything.

Mirta.5029:

Morrowind was a grindfest so I would disagree.

Oh there’s plenty wrong with Morrowind.

(“I have to go WHERE? Where the F is that?!”)
(“So I level up, and my reward is random spawns of monsters getting tougher. Sweet.”)

I am not entirely sure what grind you were thinking of?

nachtnebel.9168:

The funny thing about raids is:
Most raids are actually only really played by 5-7 people per raid while the remainig 18-35 slots could easily be filled by dps- or healbots with no real AI. Most people don’t like raids because of the content, they like it because of the social aspect.

. . . I’ve seen it done in old EverQuest. It was sort of a big concern of mine that without the GMS going after people using automation it was possible for one group of six to completely waste things with multiple “AI-run” characters each. Primarily for healing, consistent DPS (but not to the point of pulling agro) and one even had a tank who would use high-DPS weapons and taunt with very little variation.

About there I lost my interest in raids. Actually, I lost interest when the boss would drop 2-6 items for the 40 characters (not people) who were in the area and thus some people were going to get lucky. Boy do I NOT miss that.