Guild Wars 2

Lafiel.9372:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

If you haven’t done CM for months, you should try it again with a pug group ~ CM exp 2…the barrel part with a pug is painful. The problems many people face is that pugs are the only way for most players to get into these instances, not many are lucky enough to have static or constant guilds running like an army camp.

Dungeon content needs to be challenging sure, but not down right stupid or idiotic. Everyone has different ideas and tastes, in my vast experience from running dungeons/raids at varying different levels, from casually to hardcore to semi-pro levels ~ Honestly, GW2 has some which are the worst in terms of design faults.

Eh, I had a feeling it was the barrels you were talking about. It kinda requires a bit of tactics. It’s similar to the bombs in dredge fotm but they don’t pick up the bombs as fast, if you put down a sanctuary as a guardian it helps a lot. Otherwise, you should be able to outrun them over time, I don’t recall any current mechanics that would make this part game breaking (we never needed to waypoint or anything for that part, besides you’d be in combat anyways). Was there some new introduction there that I missed?

I was running my guardian and using sanctuary, like you said ~ it helps but for pugs….you really really need a mesmer or thief for group invisibility – anything less and its stressful.

Before, most people would just exploit this part because its a pain in the rear. And there are many areas in dungeons which people will readily exploit to bypass or at least make certain parts easier, anet really could do well and look at these – not to fix them, but to actually make it so players don’t want to exploit or have no reason too.

Another typical dungeon feature is giving bosses such an insanely large HP pool, there isn’t any reason for it. It just makes the fights boring and unnecessarily drawn out – you can thank speed runners for that I guess.

CoF 2 is going to cause alot of headaches now, good group ~ it’ll probably be easier, but with a bad group I can see it being a disaster. I did CoF 2 a few days ago with the new system and we cleared it without any major problems, sure it was a pretty crazy intensive fight but it was more or less a guild run and we had a good balanced team.

The problems with pugs is simple, you don’t know the builds they are running, you don’t even know if they are even fully geared out properly either.

If you haven’t done CM for months, you should try it again with a pug group ~ CM exp 2…the barrel part with a pug is painful. The problems many people face is that pugs are the only way for most players to get into these instances, not many are lucky enough to have static or constant guilds running like an army camp.

Dungeon content needs to be challenging sure, but not down right stupid or idiotic. Everyone has different ideas and tastes, in my vast experience from running dungeons/raids at varying different levels, from casually to hardcore to semi-pro levels ~ Honestly, GW2 has some which are the worst in terms of design faults.

Gamble Boxes ~ need I say more? Also, worth noted there was some issues with them, so I’d check up on that. I don’t know if they fixed them yet.

I just posted about dungeons actually, not for this reason ~ But the problems is that not all paths are easy for pug groups. In fact, each dungeon has that ‘one’ path which is notoriously difficult, bordering impossible ~ and thats a serious problem.

Look at CoF path 3…or AC path 3 for instance, as a reference. Or CM path 2….you’ve got a whole host of dungeons which for the most part, many players are not easily going to finish because of poor design.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Poor-dungeon-design-is-hurting-GW2

As the title stats, the design of some of the dungeons is just atrocious. Its easy to pick out many offenders here, CoE// CM//Arah are some of the worst offenders here, okay Arah can be seen as one of the few ‘end game’ dungeons here, only in the respect its the current last dungeon however many other dungeons suffer from design flaws in general.

Look at CM path 2 for instance, the many recent nerfs and exploit fixes has created an extremely poor instance, especially when you have events which require the whole party to perform a task simultaneously, for a pug group ~ this doesn’t work well at all. So stop putting mechanics like this in game unless you actually stress test them to perfection, any mechanic that requires a high degree of accuracy/timing whilst underfire is in the realms of hardcore raids, and not dungeons.

Its not just design flaws like that, its the placement of mobs ~ masses and masses of them, its like whoever designed the dungeons got bored and said to him/herself…screw this and randomly placed down hordes of mobs for the players to kill without actually thinking it though carefully. My honest opinion here, GW2 will continue to suffer major declines of players, and among all the other issues the game has – dungeon design and implementation is something that really does need to be looked at for a plethora of reasons.

Here is a serious question I’m putting down here, how many dungeons both story and exp modes which ‘average’ pug group will most likely fail at some part of the instance and then breakup? I’m talking about grabbing a random team here ~ these are the instances Anet need to look at and adjust -

PiSquare.2904:

So right now i have a serious issue. By now we already know that GW 2 alienated most of the GW 1 playerbase.

I wonder tough and i might get a ban for wording this so hard. What the kitten went trough the dev teams brains, when they implemented better gear that you cant get for a certain time period.

The charm of GW is and was that you could swap builds on the fly. Here? Oh you want to use the best gear with your build? Well you have to farm for at least 20 days now. And nope cant get it faster because there is a limit on how many laurels you can get per day. So if i grind an amulet for 20 days and at the end i want to swap my build, well guess what another 20 days, lets not even think about gearing a second character. I wouldnt mind it if those were only items that looked better, but no, these are items that have plain better stats.

I never really got into WoW because of this gear threadmill, but atm, it feels like it would be better to go play WoW as they handle the threadmill better at least.

The major problem with WoW threadmill is a two-fold problem, first you require a hardcore raid guild thats dedicated enough, and secondly you need to be already on that treadmill in order to progress further.

This is why WoW is new-player unfriendly and each expansion totally resets that treadmill, so all the work and gear you’ve acquired over the space of a few years is pretty much wiped out and everything starts again. The problem for WoW is that, its getting old and its playerbase is ever shrinking as people burn out from the endless gear grind.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

If you want something, you have to work for it. It’s called perspective.

The key is allowing everyone the ability to achieve something in an MMo, regardless or being a casual or a hardcore player. If the developer does that, the game already is heading in the right direction.

Tarn.1374:

The problem is that whenever there’s a reward involved, players invariably focus on the reward as the sole reason to do anything. They don’t care about what they’re doing, only what reward they’ll get for doing it.

Hence the ‘grind’ is born.

It’s a materialistic world we (most of us) choose to live in, and many bring that outlook into the gaming world.

Ask yourself why you play the game? If it’s to do with getting loot/material/equipment/looking the best/being the best/etc etc, well of course there’s going to be a grind for you involved.

Sure, game mechanics play a lesser, secondary role, but whether you grind or don’t grind is based largely on your own outlook. People that complain about grinding have created that as their own ‘reality’ in the game.

The other problem is, and always has been with MMos in general is entitlement. Hardcore players always use this as an argument against casual players, but in actual reality, its the hardcore players who are to blame in the first place, since they assume they are entitled to everything.

Look at each event, look at Endless Tonics for instance ~ MMo developers always have made silly mistakes by creating content that only a small fraction of players will ever get, either by sheer RNG luck or by joining a super hardcore guild and wall slamming until you achieve your goals. GW2 was supposed to be different, and in the end ~ failed the same way D3 failed its community.

A grind by the very nature is required in some form in MMos to keep the players, playing simple as that ~ the trick is gating them so one core group will always be ‘slightly’ ahead of the rest, so it gives time for the developers to create new content without losing too much of the playerbase.

GW2 fails in this type of gated content because of a whole morass of issues, I think if GW2 followed the holy trinity path, I think some of the problems in game wouldn’t be so bad to be really honest even though, it would make doing dungeons far harder.

Its not really so much the original manifesto anymore, but more what happened with the reddit panel and what was talked about on there – so far, many of the promises and commitments haven’t materialized yet or even have been talked about. Let alone things like the so-called Scavenger Hunt which most people think will never happen.

Anet, you had a perfectly good chance to change some of the most frustrating and downright evil aspects of acquiring a legendary with the new Laurel system, so why didn’t you?

I think players would have rather used laurels and have a guaranteed way to get them, if drawn out than a RNG money sink which most casual and legit players are screwed over.

The only real problem with getting Twilight is getting Dusk, as is the prices will just keep going up and up, because its an easy way for market players to rake in the cash. Simple economics that create a huge problem for MMos.

Too a lesser extent, being unlucky with Clovers doesn’t help either. They really need to make acquiring them easier, far far easier.

I used to play this game for 6 – 8 hours per day, mostly because I’m a alt-a-holic and love gearing them out. However, one thing I hate is farm grinding – unfortunately this is pretty much endgame for GW2. Your either grinding gold to buy a pre-cursor, your grinding dungeons/fractals for gold or attempting to get DM title or your grinding out WvW titles which is perhaps, the biggest grind in history. Since Wintersday ended, I’m playing less than 2 hours per day working on my Final 80, after that ~ Alls I have to do is work on getting Dungeon Master Title and then, a Legendary…and then, if I actually get those…what then?

To the players who say this game doesn’t have any or little grind, need to seriously re-consider that statement.

The two reasons I’m not going after one is because of the Pre-Cursors and because of Mystic Clovers, both need serious changes. What Dontain didn’t explain in the video is how he attained all that gold to make Twilight, guessing was taking handouts from guildies, exploiting broken events like plinx for weeks on end maybe? Or playing the TP like crazy.

Preyar.6783:

I got 4700 points and 11 titles so far. Only got 16 points in the salvage achievement and I’ve missed about 170 points due to not completing dailies for some time.

How many of those titles are from HoM though?

Ulion.5476:

Eastevil.1534:

Someone exploited this and came onto the forums to give himself a pat on the back for reaching 20k achivement points.

It is not an exploit when 2 pts of agent of entropy are 200 salvaged items. That means the 20k pts guy would have had to salvage ~2 million items. Why would that be an exploit since agent of entropy has always been infinite and you get nothing from achievement point atm? Agent of entropy does not have a number tier by it is only shows the infinite symbol like it always has.

BTW A-net stated they plan on adding a cap to agent of entropy later on once they find a way to reward player for achievement points.

There was an exploit with a HoM item that you could keep salvaging over and over ~ this is how many players got insane amounts of points.

I finished master crafter title a while ago when the mat prices was cheaper, even now I still have maxed extra crafts. I’ve noticed that T3 mats price wise have gone up considerably, so this is where the cost increases.

Killigraphy.3075:

I find it hilarious and still saddening that the Devs released with; “No Holy Trinity” , but still keep the same archaic form of grinding gold. I’m not saying give gold away, but it isn’t exactly easy earning it. Yes you could always auction for it, but even then that very notion supports my point. Nothing is really done to break the monotony of grinding for gold yet again…on another MMORPG.

WoW did the same thing for years, it was hard to get decent amounts of gold until they changed one simple aspect of the game, and that changed everything. They made it so once you hit the level cap you was rewarded with gold each time you finished a quest, instantly getting gold for epic mounts etc..etc wasn’t so much of a choir.

The problem is, this game isn’t WoW (thankfully) but still, the gold grind is very apparent, and the bigger question still…how to fix it? After all, most of the really rich people in game right now, are either massively hacking/exploiting/botting/lucky? or playing the markets exceptionally hard.

Ensign.2189:

How much more damage do you think a full dunk zerker Warrior deals over a dunkmaster Thief?

How do you think a Rifle Warrior’s damage compares to a Pistol Thief or Shortbow Ranger?

What percentage difference would be acceptable if the current paradigm is not acceptable?

I don’t know actually, Pistol Thief unleashing multiple unloads will do a fair amount of damage in short space of time, the problem is after that..they are very vulnerable and pretty much require stealth to recharge where as the warrior can do a hefty amount of damage with Volley and Kill Shot alone, probably around the region of 18 – 25k maybe? My thief is pure condition build so I don’t know how much damage unload will do but I imagine its pretty decent.

Falcon, the Warrior is highly viable in PvP – with the right build/talents/runes/Utilities. But with the nature of PvP in general, someone is always going to have a spec/class etc which is just going to be your nemesis, there really isn’t such a thing as a perfect PvP class which will always own 100% of the time.

Yenkin.5410:

I was doing a run yesterday the first dungeon run after the patch (I only have time on weekends to do a dungeon or two). With Rez Rushing gone it really changed how the game is played. If they are going to do that, they need to do a couple of things.

1. The Choas of the mixed groups need to be fixed, there needs to be a tank type that can hold agro on a boss fight.
2. There needs to be a support mode where someone can play healer with a battle rez, trying to rez a completed downed target is almost impossible. I don’t mind the downed player, but one that is defeated is almost impossible to get back up in a fight.

We did mange to get the boss down after a few tries, but frankly when you walk away with blues after every boss fight, I can get those off of trash mobs anywhere even low level events like Maw.

GW2 I like because of its casual nature but the state of the game is worrying me at the moment.

cheers

I completely agree with this post ~ Something needs to be changed, if it doesn’t – honestly, its just going to cause more people to quit the game. And right now, that’s a bad thing.

Zenith.7301:

Zerker warrior is never bad in any dungeon. They can just switch to rifle and lose the aoe mass damage, while still retaining ridiculous single target.

And bingo, the reason why the Warrior is the king/queen of PvE content and always will be. How many other classes can do the same?

Until other classes get viable, and I mean proper viable burst damage in the same league as the warrior – no classes will match it in PvE/Dungeons

kenshinakh.3672:

Revolution.6301:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Many aspects of this game are a major grind, so major in fact it puts other games to shame. Look at the gold grind for instance, the average player has several options ~ exploit grind aka Plinx style fights or power trade, and to a lesser extent must get extremely lucky with either a pre-cursor drop or a highly valued unique exotic drop – all other players will struggle to even make 100g over the course of several months.

My point of view, I’ve been playing since launch ~ close to 1200 hours played, yet the maximum amount of gold I’ve had/could have had is around 240g. That’s taking into account the gold I’ve spent to level up all the crafting, gearing up 7 level 80s in exotic gear – the amount of gold I’ve got in my bank right now in assets is 120g. Because, I haven’t exploited broken events, haven’t used bots/gold farm websites, haven’t got lucky with drops and finally, not powertraded.

wow so you understand what I’m talking about? And here I thought I was crazy.

What he said is the point. The grind is silly and not really fun. Please Anet if your going to have grind atleast make it enjoyable. Let us leave Orr!! Please let us leave that blank, boring area! If you do so I shall give you cookies

You’re not crazy. You just have a perspective that not everyone shares. Maybe 50/50 at best, but even as a casual player as myself, I don’t feel the grind. That’s because there are content out there that I know will take a long time to get, so I chose to not grind and get it over a longer time period. And yes, I’m a casual player. Just because something takes a long time to get, that doesn’t mean it is a grind.

The problem is timeframe vs reward too, did you consider that? Lets say, you want a legendary item and the average time frame for a casual player is 1 – 3 years, would you still feel the same way about the games grind then? Knowing that for the next 1 – 3 years you would be forever grinding out in Orr or whatever new areas replace it?

How many of these players will still be playing in 1 – 3 years time? Obviously, there has to be a medium in place to offer a challenge the problem is, RNG and DR get in the way for many players.

@Xiv Yes, I play primarily 95% PvE which for my write up, is 100% true. This game’s PvP aspect is pretty poor, you have WvW which is ruined because of hackers – and I don’t sPvP because I’m not into arena based PvP anymore.

Its very difficult to make a huge write up, because of the idiosyncrasy of all the specs possible, and all the situations those specs might crop up. Obviously, there are situations when a pure DPS zerker Warrior in certain dungeons is a really really bad idea and other classes will really shine through – this is the very nature of PvE – But you already knew that right?..

Achievement points are useless, since there was several exploits related to HoM..

Thing is, all GW2 boss monsters are just not utilized properly at all, example ~ look at some fights in Orr, like Balt ~ sure you could say thats an ‘NM’ fight but its drop rate for anything is a laugh, your reward and only reward really is the karma vendor.

What I’m talking about is a whole new set of monsters/bosses completely separate from these sorry excuses =P

Its like with Claw of Jomag, sure you can say those bosses drop chests…but in all reality, the chances for actually getting something ‘good’ from those chests, again is a joke.

What I’m talking about is a literally, 100% surefire chance of getting something good, whether its a unique skin, a cool looking pet, a cosmetic just-for-fun or a pre-cursor. This gives the players of all calibers something to work towards, its doable by everyone.

Heck, for Level 80 NM you could even slap on ascended items as part of the treasure tables.

Also you have to realize that running 20+ is far far harder and takes longer than 1 – 19, but I agree, I’ve been running my alts from 1 – 10 and notice a significant improvement over 21+ in fact, one of my friends who is in the 40s told me not to even bother going past 20 since he didn’t notice any significant loot increases except for a very very slight chance for a fractal weapon. Not to mention, running 20+ with pugs is less fun than having teeth extracted.

They don’t, they don’t have unique drop tables for instance. N.M monsters are not events for a start. They are like regular mobs, just unique that separates them from the rest. If you’ve played many Triple A MMos, you would know what they are. How many players here played FF11 or Everquest 1? Camping there NMs was some of the best/fun and most frustrating times ever lol ~ Frustrating as finding an NM that another player had already tagged.

After reading the various posts about content etc, and other issues plaguing the game especially being so long after launch, players are getting bored. I had a pretty decent idea which honestly, could really work well in GW2 – not only it could solve many problems.

What is an N.M monster? Essentially, a notorious monster used in many different MMos. These monsters are considered on a range scale from rare to super rare spawn rate and always contain some of the best equipment possible. This got me thinking, this could work exceptionally well in GW2, not only it could fix the pre-cursor issues but also add in new events and new cosmetic items, plus would increase overall player co-operation in finding these rare monsters. These N.M could also be both solo and group style fights, lets say two N.M per zone and these fights could have a treasure table specific for the fight, so you could get ‘lucky’ or you could get ‘super lucky’

This could be used to deploy new skin types, thus increasing the amount of different looking players in the game, also could be a way to acquire pre-cursors and many different items, including pets.

Example ~

Queensdale
N.M – Bandit King
Type: Group NM
Level X
Location: Roams the vale with his entourage
Special Attacks: Summons bandit swarm (10 adds every 25% HP loss)
Each member of his entourage has a specific special attack
Reward:
Lowest reward ~ Pirate’s Cutlass Skin
Highest reward ~ Zap
Spawn Time ~ Once every 3 – 4 days

Queensdale
N.M Sky Griffon
Type: Solo N.M (Veteran Level)
Level X
Location: Roams Tunwatch area
Special Attacks: AoE knockback, Summons 2 regular Griffons occasionally
Reward:
Lowest reward ~ Winged Boots Skin
Highest reward ~ Griffon pet
Spawn Time: 12 hours

With a system like this, it would definitely increase player presence in all areas. The trick would be to have the N.M spawn in various different locations with a non-logical path to prevent bots from farming them, not that a bot could solo farm a group based one.

The argument is the same for the drop rate from Champions, they claim to have improved the drop rate – I personally haven’t seen any changes period, they still drop either nothing or blue items.

Many aspects of this game are a major grind, so major in fact it puts other games to shame. Look at the gold grind for instance, the average player has several options ~ exploit grind aka Plinx style fights or power trade, and to a lesser extent must get extremely lucky with either a pre-cursor drop or a highly valued unique exotic drop – all other players will struggle to even make 100g over the course of several months.

My point of view, I’ve been playing since launch ~ close to 1200 hours played, yet the maximum amount of gold I’ve had/could have had is around 240g. That’s taking into account the gold I’ve spent to level up all the crafting, gearing up 7 level 80s in exotic gear – the amount of gold I’ve got in my bank right now in assets is 120g. Because, I haven’t exploited broken events, haven’t used bots/gold farm websites, haven’t got lucky with drops and finally, not powertraded.

Okay, I have almost all the classes at 80 now – properly played not crafted all the way – 4 of those 80s have world 100% so, here is my 2c on the classes – One of the biggest problems for classes is near useless or just seriously underpowered weapon skills.

Warriors

The best class in the PVE game, no other class can match the cookie cutter builds for pure burst damage, heavy armor increases survivability for zerker builds so most of the more serious attacks can just be dodged. My Warrior can routinely do as much as 35k – 45k damage in around 5 seconds, how many other classes in the game can do that amount of damage in that time frame? – The short answer, NONE. This doesn’t mean the warrior is broken, it means all the other classes are – and honestly, they really are.

In WvW/sPvP warriors are also fine, you’re probably running into many players who are using either the wrong runes, or sigil stackers instead of more PvP utilities.

Thiefs

I’d honestly say these are the 2nd best class in the game, and thats mostly due to condition builds own WvW. In PvE, they have one of the best utility skills – group stealth allowing for safe rezs, bypassing groups of mobs etc etc, Thief is just well balanced, in that respect. Power/Crit builds are not really viable anymore though due to various nerfs in the past, no longer can you get ridiculously high back stabs, but still even a power/crit build is still more or less viable compared to other classes.

Mesmer

Honestly, they need some minor changes. Most use GS which is fine at long range, but how often does that really happen? I think the range vs damage aspect of the GS main attack should be removed and re-done, this would help the mesmer class. Everyone says they are the king of WvW or at least was before the nerfs, at least for utility and exploits, damage wise they are pretty bad. Not to mention, in WvW they are pretty easy to kill 1 v 1 compared to other classes, I guess this is why you see them running/teleporting away most of the time.

In PvE they are so-so, again the utility skills is what makes the class really any good – many of the weapon skills are underpowered and lacking serious burst potential. Phantasms are really in the end, just a distraction – even shatter builds are not really ‘that’ great in terms of damage, especially if you compare to Warriors output.

Ranger

Class needs a revamp, totally – What can I say? Both the Longbow and Shortbow weapon skills are underpowered for any type of build, pets damage/utility is lacking. In PvP, the ranger is a wreck as many attacks are dodgable with or without DRoll. I’ve seen probably the least amount of rangers in Fractal runs than any other class period, so that should say something about rangers. In many ways, they probably on a par with Engineers for needing a class revamp.

Engineer

Another class that needs a revamp, everything about the Engineer is just wrong. The weapon skills are terrible, I mean ~ look at poison volley one of the pistol skills, unless your PB range, it can literally miss 90% of the time – where as other volley skills…don’t. All the kits don’t take advantage of the players condition damage/power/crit etc, which makes them pretty useless, I’ve spent a ton of time changing builds trying to find something that works, not to mention Engineers have suffered the most NERFS – the latest nerf to the Elixir Gun, because its crappy healing ‘was overpowered’ and was nerfed into the ground.

Guardians

I can’t really say anything bad about them, they are pretty well balanced all around. Obviously, they have the best survivability in any situation. I think overall, I think they could do with a few minor tweaks and a DPS boost, but overall – compared to other classes, its more or less fine.

Elementalist

Too much work involved to be honest, reminds me of playing FF13..swopping between elements to maximize the damage output is annoying, the damage output in general isn’t even that high anyway, not to mention the survivability is pretty lousy especially with D/D builds. Whilst the class doesn’t really need a major revamp, I think the class does need some significant buffs.

Necromancer

Okay, so my Necromancer is only level 65 at the moment and Its my current ‘active’ class, at least until 80. The main problems are clearly apparent though, pets are useless in the extreme, even the flesh golem is near useless, it dies pretty fast – love to aggro random mobs and if it wasn’t for its charge, it would be a waste of 10 skill points. I also can tell the Necromancer at 80 is probably going to have very limited builds since Condition Dmg is pretty much what its all about here, the weapon skills are more or less fine except one issue I have and thats animation/cast speed of several attacks is on the slow side, as for PvP – I can’t answer that yet..

And this is why I’ll ultimately quit this game, and leave a pretty negative review in the end. What you said Scoota, unfortunately is the undeniable truth for GW2 – notice how Anet hasn’t said a single word about the ‘hunts’?

The problem with both power-trading and farming is simple ~ Farming requires intense amounts of time/luck and exploitation, anyone remember Plinx? And power-trading requires gold, lots and lots of it, always requires you do be a pretty nasty player who’ll stop at nothing, often raising the prices of materials/items to pretty insane prices.

Word of warning to anet again – the future of GW2 is pretty bleak unless you seriously, and I mean very seriously take whats happening in the TP and make incredibly significant changes to the game to stop power traders, this is one of the major problems GW2, and everyone, and I mean everyone knows that an MMo’s economy can make and break the game, right now – GW2 economy is heavily breaking the game.

The chests and drops in general was nerfed along time ago, in the early days it was pretty common to have as many as 6 rares/exotics drop per run, over time that’s since deteriorated into a far less drop chance, I’ve done runs without getting one rare now so I’m guessing most people are just noticing it now? And as for MF, its broken it doesn’t work at all – I’ve done fotm 10 speed runs with my full MF geared/MF guild buffs/Food buffs character and noticed the loot drops was more or less the same as any of my other characters, I didn’t notice any impact and others have said the same thing since launch.

As for the guy who claimed to have gotten 28g in 3 runs? I call BS on that, unless he/she got a few good unique exotic drops.

Arriving dead upon arriving into the staging area, anyone else had this problem?

You can’t deny its true though, especially if you was an early adopter or someone who has followed the development since the early days. The turning point was with the lost shores update which is where all the problem started.

I could honestly write up a 2000 word essay on all the current problems and issues that currently plague the game. One of the biggest problems right now anet are trying to play a stalling game, slow down development of characters, slow down any progression so they can re-group and address the games greatest issues – shame that time is going to be their biggest enemy now.

Its to stop ‘under-the-ground’ telebot hackers from farming nodes with low level characters. The obvious effect will be higher prices for Ori and other higher tier mats.

Unspecified.9142:

There is exactly TWO (major) problem with fractals currently.

1) People believe they need to be able to do them successfully.
and
2) There is gear that is not merely cosmetic and (currently) not available elsewhere which promotes the idea they need to be able to complete the fractals at high levels.

Fractals is, and should remain, focused on providing something for players who WANT to do an extremely challenging instanced PvE activity that requires a solid group with good coordination.

The complaint about not being able to complete fractals 20+ with a PuG is silly. It’s not meant for PuGs. That’s really all there is to it.

Actually, your wrong ~ it was. Everything in this game was/is and always has been created for the casual players. I think the problem is here, especially it seems to me there is just alot of newer posters who haven’t been around here since the very start, and in fact way ‘before’ launch.

The casual player makes up way more of the playerbase than the current hardcore players, the problem is ~ most of the current playerbase who hasn’t quit are the hardcore/elitist base who want a much more controlled game (in their favor)

This is one of the major reasons I have problems with elitist players, they tend to ruin MMos in general – often using entitlement against players, when its really the opposite – its more like, I have this (insert item/title/shiny) and you don’t… so its more like egoism. The problem is in the MMo world, there just isn’t enough of humble players, whether its a casual or a hardcore player.

The problem is, you ~ From just reading the short amount of posts I can tell the type of person you are; seen them in every single MMo from the original EQ through to, ahem GW2 and honestly no offense here, you are the type of person which is bad for the game.

This game is, and always will be a casual friendly game. This was marketed as a casual game – everything about this game is casual, a ‘carebear’ game and I hate using that term because its idiotic and stinks of elitism. Once anet betrayed its original manifesto and headed down a completely different path, all hell broke loose – you honestly think, anet is going to risk another ‘storm’ like before?

CoE is a prime example of a nearly unpuggable instance – mostly from my point of view, sloppy design. Honestly, you could debate this games flaws until doomsday, but I’ve wasted enough time today on forum banter.

Gisei.5749:

gotdamned.5318:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Legendary Imbued Shaman ~ Volcano/Grawl Fractal scale 20+

What attack do you mean?
I can evade every attack of him, even at LV 30+

I was hoping people would just leave that one alone. It was a terrible example of a hard to dodge boss.

But you can’t deny that the boss truely does need a nerf in that respect, not just because of his attacks but the entire encounter. I’ve yet to see any pug group do volcano fractal 20+ efficiently.

Since I haven’t been a forum warrior for about a month since I’ve been busy, I’m guessing ATTHWSM is the latest forum troll by the sounds of your posts and attitude, this should be fun ~ let the games commence.

How many casual players do you know with dungeon master title? I rest my case

maddoctor.2738:

Gisei.5749:

I support this fully. All PvE content should be easy enough that a sloppily thrown together pug of nubs can breeze on through it. /s

No, just no. There should be PVE content that is not doable by sloppily thrown together pugs of nubs. What PVE needs right now is challenging content, sadly there is none.

This is called ‘Raids’ – not going to happen in GW2, if it did – it’d destroy the game completely because it would seriously unbalance the game.

gotdamned.5318:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Legendary Imbued Shaman ~ Volcano/Grawl Fractal scale 20+

What attack do you mean?
I can evade every attack of him, even at LV 30+

I call BS on that, its not possible to avoid every single attack unless your a thief and constantly in and out of stealth, even then if the boss concentrates his main attacks he can down anyone with his main chain, and thats also accounting for 30 AR.

But again, your probably not taking into consideration PUG groups, most players don’t have the luxury of static fotm farming groups, with highly co-ordinated throughly geared-out, maxed AR and voice over IP programs like vent etc..

Besides, that boss attacks are not really the issue, its the 20 – 30 elementals every 25% which are.

LordByron.8369:

despite the fact wheel is nowhere a problem, mostly because is boring and you can do easily the boss either way.

I will laugh to Death if they remove spykits efficience from dredge stage…

Its almost impossible without them, and the necessity of having some is unacceptable imho.

Its easy with a static group at higher fotm levels, try with a pug group though and come back here – same with LIS on the grawl fractal. This is one of the major problems right now, anet needs to really consider the future between a more casual friendly game, and a more hardcore friendly game – they can’t have both. We’ve seen what happens in many other MMos that try to appease by player archetypes.

Legendary Imbued Shaman ~ Volcano/Grawl Fractal scale 20+

Ascended Weapons will be a major grind, trust me on that by looking at the current track record. Especially if the MF has anything to do with it…

TWMagimay.9057:

Eviscera.9703:

Why wouldn’t they both be possible? If you read my post i said ‘’only cosmetic’’ And even that lacks in this game. The legendary weapons lack in the story part, and doesn’t feel ’’legendary’’ at all. This game should be for everyone from casual to competetive. And i think you misssunderstood me. I don’t want to be superior to others and have better gear then other people. I simply want a better reward system. Everything from good looking cosmetic gear to ladders to achievments that tells people who are the best PvPers or PvE:ers.

It’s simple, really. Casual players feel left out when placed in competitive environment. And since games are all about satisfying players, they tend to choose their direction. GW2 devs opted for casual-friendly possibly because casual players tend to be the people more likely to spend money on the game after the initial purchase(obvious reasons). It’s a very smart choice xD

The problem is, the game isn’t very casual really. How many casual players have you seen clear Arah exp? How many casual players with a legendary? How many casual players with 4000+ achievement points?

Any casual player can get to 80, but after that the game becomes very competitive and almost ridiculously hardcore.

ATTHWSM.7840:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Legendaries hurt the game way to much, so many mistakes made with them. Allowing hackers to get them easily, giving out pre-cursors during lost shores and the icing is allowing them to be tradable on the TP and in all honestly, one of the very major errors anet made with GW2.

Each time I see a player with any legendary, I always think ‘hacker or legit’ and honestly, you can’t tell ~ you can’t prove it, and they can’t prove it. How I wish this game had some serious anti-hacker protection…heck, some protection would be better than none…lol

You care as if the legendary actually improves there ability to clear content… so sad

They will when they are bumped to Ascended status

There isn’t any difficulty, thats the problem ~ its just, pile on 20+ mobs for an encounter, or giving a boss an overpowered attack that the players can’t dodge, this is anets mentality for so called difficulty, and this is why you have many players cheat in the game, or actively look for the latest exploits.

Legendaries hurt the game way to much, so many mistakes made with them. Allowing hackers to get them easily, giving out pre-cursors during lost shores and the icing is allowing them to be tradable on the TP and in all honestly, one of the very major errors anet made with GW2.

Each time I see a player with any legendary, I always think ‘hacker or legit’ and honestly, you can’t tell ~ you can’t prove it, and they can’t prove it. How I wish this game had some serious anti-hacker protection…heck, some protection would be better than none…lol

Everyone knows, lots of fractal nerfs are coming with this patch and frankly, unless alot of re-balancing is done, I see even less people doing fractals, lets break it down ~

The entire fractals right now are more or less pug unfriendly, especially at higher tiers. Just look at Grawl/Volcano fractals, almost everyone is skipping so many now which really is a major indicator that something is wrong, with the up and coming nerfs/exploit fixes even more of this will become just a horrible frustrating experience, a prime example is the dredge fractal…

Everyone uses the wheel trick to avoid most of the mobs here, You’re talking the boss who alone is pretty potent + veterans + a morass of regular mobs, for a pug group without using any exploits its almost doomed to fail.

Anet has spouted boss mechanic changes, but when? And how will these fights change…if at all? Right now, many of the fractal boss encounters are just rubbish, no innovation – just more mobs to kill, mobs become tougher and do more damage, whilst you do less damage, meaning the player has to get more skillful and work better as a cohesive team, and trust me with most pug groups…not going to happen.

Whoever designed most of the fractals, did so with the utmost disgust for the casual player base, just look at most of the level designs in general, most seemed to be designed for maximum frustration, clearly well beyond the original ideas, that each one was supposed to be done in 15/20 minutes no matter the tier? Cliffside fractal for instance with an average group is so long, boring and how many players fall off? Look at the prison level with the knockdown spamming harpies…

Lets hope, for future content that is actually innovate and fun, because lets face it ~ after doing Fotm for any period of time, it gets extremely boring – and extremely frustrating with a bad group.