Guild Wars 2

I was like the OP once I was a big supporter, been following the development of GW2 for years, been in all the beta events ~ purchased the digital deluxe edition and everything was great for the first 2 months (more or less) ~ then all this happened and the happy marriage between player and game ended with a bitter divorce. Lets see what happens during the next few weeks ~ and I’m guessing, many other players will be watching and waiting too.

Yep, mmorpg.com forums are filled with hate towards guild wars 2 – so you think all the negativity here is bad, then you should look there. This Monday will be d-day for anet really, alot of players are looking for some important information and a time frame when we can see actual rock solid improvements for everyone, not just a select group of players.

If they keep talking about the gear threadmill on Monday, I expect things to turn south for them very quickly. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the ascended items and infusions currently in game are just the beginning – lets face it, Blue Infusions…next will be green then yellow..etc Anet really needs to close Pandoras Box and fast.

Caedmon.6798:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

In the past 15 minutes since I posted this message, the cost of ectos has gone up to 29s each now. People are playing the markets out of pure greed and screwing over the rest. At launch, salvaging rare/exotic level 70+ gear almost always netted you ectos, now its quite possible to salvage 5 exotics in a row and don’t get any, and thats using a BL kit.

Tell me an mmo where people arent greedy ? Just one.

Any MMo where you don’t have a stock exchange style auction house where players can manipulate the prices on important items/materials.

Okay, so its not really ‘killing’ the game, but its certainly not helping it either. They really should make it so you can actually farm Ectos, lets say random drop in dungeons or from chests etc, multiple ways to increase supply.

Veltoss.9135:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Aleaf.8174:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Veltoss.9135:

They already said they’re adding more ascended gear with more ways to get it, including from dungeons and more fun ways as well.

source?

“Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content.”

Source

Oh I read that already ~ its all smoke and mirrors without an solid information. I wouldn’t put too much into that.

How the kitten is that not solid when it comes straight from them? You people are just trying your best to have a reason to freak the kitten out and keep your conspiracy theories going.

Um..because look at all the other people saying the same thing, hundreds ~ if not thousands of players can’t be wrong..right?

Aleaf.8174:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Veltoss.9135:

They already said they’re adding more ascended gear with more ways to get it, including from dungeons and more fun ways as well.

source?

“Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content.”

Source

Oh I read that already ~ its all smoke and mirrors without an solid information. I wouldn’t put too much into that.

Silentstorm.7531:

The dungeon didn’t cause the shift the events slow timers and bugging is what really caused no one to do them. They should of left things alone like grenth and plinx. That all but murdered Orr.

Plinx should have been nerfed months ago ~ this was exploited constantly and don’t say it wasn’t. This is how a small portion of the playerbase got rich.

Veltoss.9135:

They already said they’re adding more ascended gear with more ways to get it, including from dungeons and more fun ways as well.

source?

It doesn’t really matter, in the end its all apples and oranges. Comparing this to that, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens in Guild Wars 2, whether it has direct grind or indirect.

Opening up the game so everyone can actually achieve everything is what will save this game. Restricting content is what will destroy the game, nobody can say with a straight face that the current methods proposed by anet are not restricting content or pigeon-holing players.

The trick is time frame – You need to make it so the utmost of casual players can achieve the same as elitists, you just need to make it so the elitists reach there first without having such a large open gap in between so nobody gets bored and looks elsewhere. This is the trick and solution to fix the game.

Aleaf.8174:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Aleaf.8174:

Merthax.5172:

Casca Longinus.3168:

once again, you want the reward without the work

Let’s say I invite a friend to play GW2 with me. How long should it take them to start a new character, get to maximum level, and get max stat gear? What is a realistic amount of time where they have “earned” it?

This is a game, which I play it for fun. Once it has devolved into work, I know it’s time to move on to something else. If it’s work, I want to get paid for it.

This is an RPG. RPGs are known to have some form of work to show off an achievement. This “work” is often called a grind. It’s the genre.

No, thats called e-pe.. (stupid kitten lol) When you start showing off, the game sinks down to a pre-school level. RPGS are not really about work, its about skill and making careful decisions. MMos was originally designed as social games not about grinding 10 hours a day.

The “grind” came about from the very first Korean based MMos, before even games like Everquest 1, which emulated that direction of actually working to progress your character. Somewhere along the lines, gold farming appeared and the rest is history. GW2 isn’t really grindy in terms of levelling, but it’s got a significant gold farming grind, and that alone puts off many players, which again is highly characteristic of Korean MMos.

Themes of MMORPG

Pretty sure grind is a traditional part of MMORPGs. MMORPGs derived from MUDs which also held similar themes. Ultima Online, one of the oldest MMORPGs, have elements of grind.

Progression has always been a theme in MMORPGs. It’s the very nature of the game. You play the game as a character to progress yourself.

Sorry if you thought MMORPGs are something else. WoW does that to people.

They wasn’t nearly as grindy though. Original MUDS wasn’t really grindy at all. SoE really was responsible for bringing grindfests to the US shores, and those was more or less modelled after early Korean MMos.

As for WoW, it really didn’t have any grind. You did the content up to 80, you then did dungeons for gear and ultimately raided for the best gear. Gold in WoW didn’t really do much, that was for really crafting and epic mounts.

EQ1 grind was more about progressing your character, especially through AA. Sure it was grindy, but you always more or less progressed.

Look at some games like Ragnarok for instance, that certainly wasn’t the first Korean MMo, but that game is among the worst for grinds in gaming history.

Even 20g actually does take a while to farm, its not like you can farm up 20g in a few hours. Subjectively speaking, farming even 10g probably would take several days depending on how kind the RNG is being.

The major problem here, is that people are assuming based on there own personal experiences and not generalizing enough. Alot of the current rich players attained this two ways, either by cheating or farming Plinx until there eyes bled. The average player is not going to have much more than 20g, I myself who has 800 hrs on my account now, I have what amounts to about 60g because I refused to take part in Plinx farming, couple that with me not getting lucky with RNG.

Anet needs to look at concurrency for the amount of funds the average player has and work around that before settling on new content that requires crafting and luck.

Aleaf.8174:

Merthax.5172:

Casca Longinus.3168:

once again, you want the reward without the work

Let’s say I invite a friend to play GW2 with me. How long should it take them to start a new character, get to maximum level, and get max stat gear? What is a realistic amount of time where they have “earned” it?

This is a game, which I play it for fun. Once it has devolved into work, I know it’s time to move on to something else. If it’s work, I want to get paid for it.

This is an RPG. RPGs are known to have some form of work to show off an achievement. This “work” is often called a grind. It’s the genre.

No, thats called e-pe.. (stupid kitten lol) When you start showing off, the game sinks down to a pre-school level. RPGS are not really about work, its about skill and making careful decisions. MMos was originally designed as social games not about grinding 10 hours a day.

The “grind” came about from the very first Korean based MMos, before even games like Everquest 1, which emulated that direction of actually working to progress your character. Somewhere along the lines, gold farming appeared and the rest is history. GW2 isn’t really grindy in terms of levelling, but it’s got a significant gold farming grind, and that alone puts off many players, which again is highly characteristic of Korean MMos.

Casca Longinus.3168:

once again, you want the reward without the work

There are far better ways to achieve the same results without forcing players to become gold farmers. You have to also realize, not everyone who plays GW2 has countless hours per day to dedicate to sheer farming gold – I blame Anet for not nerfing Plinx along time ago, this gave hardcore farmers far too much gold and as such, see casual players with very little gold as wanting the same gear for a realistic price.

You actually realize how long it actually will take to farm 50 ectos starting from 0g and 0 ectos? New players joining the game for instance will have actually no chance to ever catch up either. You look at the current supply and demand for ectos, soon the price will most likely hit 50s each and probably continue to rise until anet is forced, literally forced to flood the market with them.

The better method to gain ascended items would be the classic non-crafting way or via karma. Personally, I didn’t sign up to play GearGrind2 or GoldGrind2.

This is one of the main reasons the game has problems ~ forcing everyone to become gold farmers. Essentially, if you don’t want to farm gold for x hours per day – you might as well quit the game because you’re not going to get anything now.

Those Who Remain.1987:

I can’t say I have seen that much skills that are ‘OP’. It is far from a huge flaw, but could be addressed if there are some unpredictable, too strong spells.

I honestly think you are overreacting a bit.

The OP isn’t overreacting at all. You just haven’t done that much content – many mob skills just hit you without any animation frames at all, some of these attacks are also extremely OP. Look at the Champion Shark in Sparkfly Swamp for instance who can pretty much one shot anyone without even being close to it – this is a significant problem and design flaw.

I’ve personally lost count how many times I’ve died to cheap attacks that have been unavoidable.

Keiran.1896:

60 of any dungeon token = 1 Dungeon Shard.
100 Fractal Relics = 1 Fractal Shard.

10 Dungeon Shards + 2 Fractal Shard + 50 ectos + 1 Eldritch Scroll = Ascended Gear.

Simple and you got your players playing everything. Not just fractals.

Why not?

Still far too grindy, you realize that 50 ectos cost a fortune for most players? Swop 50 ectos for 50 T6 mats, and that would work so most players will be able to get them. Lets face it, farming 50 T6 mats is significantly easier than farming 50 ectos or farming the cash to buy 50 ectos.

How true are the following statements for you on a scale of 0 to 5?

1) I felt like I had little to do once my main character hit level 80, I got full exotic gear and 100% world completion. By the time of the patch my enthusiasm for the game had already lost a lot of momentum and I was really looking forward to new content.

2 — I have 4 level 80s, two world 100% and I’m in a position to get 4 world 100% if I wanted, I’m an alt-a-holic ~ playing the game from different story perspectives, gearing each character out in exotic gear and doing regular dungeons for better looking armor, there was still plenty to do. The patch actually reduced the amount of content in game because players are now forced to stick with one main character and farm – farm – farm – farm – fotm – fotm – fotm

2) Obtaining ascended gear gives me something new to aim for and boosts/refreshes my enthusiasm for GW2.

0 — It actually makes me what to quit GW2, the infused ascended gear requires an almost sickening amount of materials/gold and a very lengthy amount of time grinding in a dungeon that requires people in the very best gear and skillful players, especially true after scale 10 when trash mobs hit harder than bosses.

3)The lack of a tier after exotic is something that always bothered me. I feel that equipping my toon with better and better gear is something I look forward to in a game and that element was missing from GW2.

0 — Exotic Tier was the equivalent to epic items in other games, why add another teir? Especially since you can’t add superior runes on them, only infusions so how long before we start seeing higher and higher level infusions with bonuses on them? My friends, the gear treadmill has only just begun…

4) I believe that future paid expansion packs should introduce new tiers of gear.

0 — You need to understand what tiered gear actually means. WoW tier gear means not a new type but just a better gear level. Adding in a new tier after ascended is just stupid.

5) In my wishlist of things to come for GW2 three months after its release (new areas/foes/weapons/events/skills, fixing bugs, tweaking class balance, anything at all) the introduction of a tier slightly better than exotic ranked pretty high.

0 — Many events are still bugged, class balance is abysmal – bots and exploiters not banned, many skills still not working as intended and/or broken. Two badly done events, Lost Shores event being a complete disaster, introduction of ascended gear and vertical progression which was not supposed to happen, bait and switch tactics of NCSoft.

As for the vocal minority, your totally wrong~ Its more like the vocal Majority just because people don’t post in forums doesn’t mean people in game like it either, the vast amount of players I’ve spoken too also hate the changes and the ascended/fotm problems.

Trust me, this is a dark path Anet are taking and its not going to end well. Not without levelling the playing field and that would literally require handing out equal level ascended items for 10% of the cost current best in slot ascended and future ascended items ~ otherwise, the gear divide will become so bad, the only people left playing the game will be the hardcore crowd and lets see how the game functions with 10k people playing or less.

Everquest 1 is the king of exp grinding games, nothing can match it in that department. However, the gold farming/gear grinding department can be said its worse than EQ1 was. Lets face it, gold just isn’t that easy for the average player to farm without spending a significant portion of time devoted to it.

Average Player EQ1 – quite possible to take a year perhaps more to level a character to cap, however during that time the gear you acquire gets better and better, your always earning coin so your platinum starts increasing especially in later zones. Not taking into account raids.

Average Player GW2 – Probably would take a few weeks to hit 80, in that time that player is perhaps going to amass a maximum of about 10g in that time give or take. If the player wants a legendary item, you’re talking maybe as much as 250 hours of hardcore farming, perhaps much longer depending on TP prices and/or the player getting lucky. Not counting Pre-cursor drops.

The problem is for new players to GW2, the costs in mats to acquire exotics especially specific sets, karma items suck because it’ll take far longer – especially since the the karma DR, nerfs to ORR etc. Basically, new players to GW2 are really in a bad place – unless they do plenty of homework, get on a highly populated server/guild and even then, new players would need some handouts/help and even then, its going to be a hostile environment for them.

Teleport hack, its nothing new. Earlier today, in one of the 15-25 zones there was alot of new bots appearing already.

Its because infused ascended items require alot of ectos, and I mean ALOT. So people are stockpiling for the inevitable time they become 50s+ heck, if anet doesn’t do anything about the supply problem, the price could even eventually hit 1g+…god what a horrible future the game will have then.

Azure Prower.8701:

Kromsin.6359:

Apparently this is what the majority wanted. A grindy gear game.

If the majority wanted it. Why is the majority complaining about it?

The majority didn’t want it, only the hardcore players who was whining there was no endgame. These new changes will destroy the game.

I love all the posts actually defended the game and actions of anet/ncsoft. I suppose with it being an MMo you have to have fanboys and/or people in denial. I’ve played 15 years worth of online games now, I’ve seen big ones rise and others fail – certain games rise from ashes and be reborn. Right now, Guild Wars 2 is obviously in a transitional period, that being said ~ that transition is not what many players signed up for – the vertical progression for instance being one of them.

Sure, people can say ~ our guild is doing great, what about the thousands of other guilds on your particular server which have probably died in the past month? Look at all the guilds which are on the verge of dying because of people quitting the game, and/or moving onto more populated guilds. I know it, you guys know it ~ the game is in a sheer state of exodus right now. People are quitting the game in far higher numbers than people are joining, and there are many reasons why.

Its quite possible to list a hundred different areas and problems that need fixing right now ranging from bugs and exploits through to major crash related issues. There are very few areas in game right now that anet or ncsoft can truely say its working 100%, and even then they’ll be a thousand players who would probably disagree.

Right now though is what counts, not what happened in the past or even the future and right now, the game has problems ~ the players are not happy, overall confidence is low and people are quitting the game in droves, the evidence is all over the place. The question is, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do to instil confidence in your product to keep the majority playing?

I personally would like the softcore GW2 back, where everyone was on the same page. It was more of a skill based game, than who exploited/botted/purchased gold/got lucky with event precursors etc etc etc game. In closing, if you still think the game is doing fine – I think I can recommend a good psychiatrist.

Groovy.6749:

A new dungeon’s been released just a week ago in which players of all levels can partake. It’s just that new shiny effect that lures everyone to LA…. it’ll wear off.

Give it a couple of weeks and things will return to normal. It does suck for those who aren’t that fussed by FotM at the moment, true, but it won’t remain a permanent thing.

Christmas totally needs an event though, don’t get all moppy and be a grinch now :p it’s the time to be jolly !

The problem is right now, Anet will seem like the grinch so the players will have a hard time to be jolly. Christmas presents anyone? That’ll be 500 gems a box, oh! you got a shiny peice of coal worth 1c in your box? Try again.. /sarcasm

Ahem* Don’t you mean a grind with RNG elements added?

Silentstorm.7531:

Like I said above it’s not hard to get you can farm the mats. And then craft items for free break them down with a kit. The price is high mainly because people don’t know you can easily make it.

Its still RNG though, you could have a black lion salvage kit and break down 10 rares/exotics and get 1 ecto. Where as someone else, could buy 10 rares/exotics and get 20 ectos.

Good first time post, it really sums up part of the problem but its much more than that. Anet really burned alot of players, and I’m talking maybe as much as 40 – 60% of the currently playing population.

I’ve attempted scale 10 twice today, both times we’ve had one person d/c, getting old and frustrating.

The real question begs, how long before we start to see in-game protests? Like my signature states, I’ve seen games with alot less problems have many many players protest such as EvE and this is very effective in getting developers to actually listen to the players, because lets face it ~ most developers are pretty arrogant sometimes, the famous story of a certain ‘developer’ having a Monday morning staff meetings to discuss forum suggestions, or should I say laugh at them?

Not to mention, the FotM isn’t nearly as good for farming as people say it is. Past 4 sets I’ve done, I’ve got 1 exotic worth 1g, and 1 rare worth 18s the rest was blues and greens. Total money earned is about1g 80s for about 8 hours work , and the past two fractal attempts both ended in failure because of people d/cing.

ASP.8093:

You need to run difficulty level 10+ to get the ascended rings.

Infusions have real stats in addition to agony resistance.

The new back slots and infusions use those ever-so-popular “… and 250 t6 mats” style recipes.

Nothing about this setup is “casual-friendly.”

And that what is killing the game, because one of the initial selling points to Guild Wars 2 was the casual nature of the game, this patch destroys everything that was casual based.

Lets see pugs complete scale 11+ ~ its not going to happen. The gear treadmill will become every more unbalanced, more casual players will quit – hardcore players will eventually quit because WvW will steadily become more and more unbalanced, with less and less people showing up, and finally ~ you’ll have a dead game.

That last paragraph would almost be funny if it wasn’t more or less true right now.

I’ve got less ectos, and I still have 4 black lion salvage kits.

kiba.2768:

kumu is 100% correct.

since fotm launched, i’ve been salving my rares and selling the ecto. usually i just sell the rare, but since there is a demand for them right now, it would be the wiser thing to do IMO.

i just crafted a full set of exotic valkyrie heavy and exotic knight’s trinkets for basically free. i can’t imagine the price of 16g to be realistic, because…to be realistic, you’ve gotta have SOME of the mats laying around like ori/gossamer. what do you do with all the lvl 70+ rares you find?

Its correct, I totaled it up myself. This is buying all the mats without doing any farming. It would be cheaper obviously using your own mats, but still with the price of ectos being so high ~ the cost for crafting right now, just isn’t worth it.

Talking about 9g for 30 ectos. How long before we start to see ectos in the gem store?

In the past 15 minutes since I posted this message, the cost of ectos has gone up to 29s each now. People are playing the markets out of pure greed and screwing over the rest. At launch, salvaging rare/exotic level 70+ gear almost always netted you ectos, now its quite possible to salvage 5 exotics in a row and don’t get any, and thats using a BL kit.

Working out to make full exotic heavy armor set right now, the cheapest it’ll cost is 16g 70s – that’s nearly double the cost it was a few weeks ago.

lol ~ Abyss is the rarest dye, most have never seen it. I’ve had it drop once myself a few weeks after launch. Dyes in general have had drop rates nerfed into the ground, before the nerf you could see dyes drop once or twice a day, now its maybe once or twice a week…if that.

I mean seriously, the price is insane right now. Couple that with the drop rate has steadily been nerfed since launch, it looks like people are trying to corner the market on them, thats the only explanation is the massive increase in cost and honest, since its a core component to making exotic gear, it is making a mess of crafting.

You would have thought that FotM would have made ectos easier to get and lower the price, yet since FotM that prices are gone way up, and because of that ~ its going to make it harder and harder for core-casuals to get gear, I would love to see a casual player in greens/rares attempt FotM scale 10+ where the trash mobs can hit you for 12k+

Overflow server is very much needed to get groups to run dungeons, not every server has a high population you know.

The problem is, whilst Koreans make great MMOs, they tend to make them extremely grindy – Maple Story for instance was perhaps one of the biggest grinders in history, I haven’t played many F2P MMos that haven’t either been pay to win or grindfests.

Dead.7385:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The entire zone needs a remake, all the mobs need nerfing to at least the level of mobs in ORR.

I think it says something when people are asking it to be brought down to Orr level.

Been there once, seemed desolate and boring. Got the WP’s and PoI’s and left.

You missed the jumping puzzles? There are the only decent thing in the zone? lol

I would say, even this is partially true then the future of GW2 will be very bad indeed.

Trust me, the best ascended items are ‘roughly’ about 40% better than regular exotics.

This pic is one of the lower quality rings, look at the difference in stats. There are ascended items that have been linked that have had vendor values of 6g

Exotic Berserker Ring total stats combined 155 +6% CTD
That low end Ascended RIng total stats combined 222 + 5% CTD + Agony Resis + MF

It even took WoW years before it got implemented, to be brutally honest ~ if an MMo has dungeons, it should be in-game at launch. It is necessary to prevent stalling whilst looking for a group, this is perhaps one of the most frustrating parts about playing MMos when you literally are wasting time, unable to do anything except spam chat and wait…spam chat…wait

The main reason I originally quit FFXI was the abysmal wait times trying to find a party to level with. I remember, sitting in the main City for about 5 hours trying to put together a levelling party.

Jrunyon.3012:

What does this even mean?

Almost all complaint posts about ascended equips have the exact same argument, that they have to have ascended to stay competitive.

But what exactly is there in this game to be competitive with?

PVE
- Not applicable at all, there are no benefits over exotic.
WvW
- Gear means nothing since most of the time its about who has the bigger group
- I guarantee almost everyone complaining about higher gear has absolutely stomped a level 10 wearing basic gear and enjoyed it
SPVP
- Not applicable

Please, enlighten me how if you dont have ascended equips you suddenly do half damage and get one-shotted because im not seeing it at all.

Lets see here -

PVE
- Not applicable at all, there are no benefits over exotic.

Wrong ~ The best ascended games are roughly 40% better than exotics

WvW
- Gear means nothing since most of the time its about who has the bigger group
- I guarantee almost everyone complaining about higher gear has absolutely stomped a level 10 wearing basic gear and enjoyed it

You obviously don’t spend time in WvWvW then ~ Gear is everything. Pre-Ascended, the PvP aspect of GW2 was more like Class x Skill x [Gear*] vs Class x Skill x [Gear*] and post-Ascended it will be Class x Skill x Ascended x [Gear]

*Pre-ascended most players who regularly play in WvW will be fully equipped in exotics/best sigils/runes. Now with Ascended gear, if you want to remain competitive, you’ll have to stay on the same gear level as your opponents otherwise, you risk being totally steamrolled.

Even the fractal dungeon isn’t that rewarding unless you go in with very high MF, and then you risk being kicked out for not bringing proper DPS gear. Since the fractals do start to get tougher and not being properly geared for them, lowers the chances of finishing the instance.

That being said, the loot varies greatly from general crap, to occasionally getting rare items. Exotic drops are still very rare though – I will say ORR farming is still better for farming than Fractals, at least you don’t have to wait an hour plus per group.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Wasn’t it said on one of the blog posts they were looking at putting new DEs in Southsun? I really hope so, and hope they can get like a waypoint AT LEAST at Cadach’s Folly . . .

I mean I haven’t found a way to use Owain’s waypoint to reach that volcanic plains

They could put in 20 new DEs, isn’t going to make any different since the mobs are way too hard, the entire zone seems to favor small/regular group play and how often does that happen? The entire zone needs a remake, all the mobs need nerfing to at least the level of mobs in ORR.

They stack faster, but they will only go up to 25 regardless.

Elementalist
Style: 10 (Great looking armor sets, good skill sets)
Strength 3 (It doesn’t HAVE burst damage…low damage, low survivability unless spec’d)
Variability 5 (Class needs a rebalance, some skills can bug especially with scepters)
Feels: Too weak, not enough damage and if you spec into glass cannon you have 0 survivability where as other classes can have both

Warrior
Style: 8 (Heavy armor looks decent, skill sets are balanced)
Strength 10 (Best Burst DPS in the game, moderate survivability even with glass builds)
Variability 3 (GS/Rifle builds everywhere)
Feels: Great class overall, highly balanced unfortuntely other classes don’t perform half as good as the warrior class does, does it need a nerf? No, other classes need buffs badly.

Ranger
Style: 7 (Pets…Pets..Pets ~ Medium armor is kinder bland, Ranger skill sets are bad)
Strength 5 (DPS needs buffing, survivability is pretty good with a tanking pet)
Variability 10 (Each ranger tends to use different pets, so its a more or less unique class)
Feels: Ranged weapons and burst don’t pack enough punch compared to other classes, pet skills range from useless to powerful, mostly on the useless side.

Engineer
Style: 10 (Flame Thrower looks cool, kits add flair and turrets add uniqueness)
Strength 1 (Weakest DPS class in the game, entire class needs to be revamped)
Variability 5 (Many different types of Engs using various builds)
Feels: The entire Engineer class needs revamping, it needs buffs in many areas especially damage, kits need to be able to take advanced of stats instead of having flat rate damage. General survivability is average, uses medium armor which is just mediocre at best.

Mesmer
Style: 8 (Skills are PRO level, takes some practice and skill to use the mesmer)
Strength 3 (Damage is on the low side, survivability is low – best utility class)
Variability: 7 (Phants add another unique element to the class, good utility spells)
Feels: Was the king of WvW matches, the nerfs hurt the class greatly – its still a highly useful class though. Would benefit from a few buffs – Would be a better class if Phants didn’t disappear after the target mob is dead.

Guardian
Style: 8 (good balanced skills, heavy armor which looks good)
Strength 8 (Best tanking class in the game (obviously) with good damage)
Variability 6 (Hammer and Mace are underused)
Feels: Probably the 2nd best class in the game right now – probably one of the best classes for solo champions

I posted in the suggestions yesterday that being suppressed whilst trying to find a fractal group is insane and a poor decision, the post was deleted and I got an infraction so I posted on they frecking facebook page. So far, I have questioned almost everything anet has done to the game since launch. It doesn’t suppress spam at all, because they learned to change the context of the message each time.

If you spam LFG Fractals 3 – 5 times, you’ll get suppressed. If you change your message slightly each time, then you don’t.

Believe me, I’ve noticed it too. We’ve started to think about cutting down on having a single guild buff running now instead of multiple ones. Couple that with people not running events in general, non-representers and people who have quit the game.

Xandax.1753:

Welcome to GW2 : Lost Shore patch.
It’s not going to change, but only get worse as more people progress higher into the FotM (love the acronym though, most fitting) levels.
You’re going to find fewer and fewer in the pool of players with your specific level – and that will only make grouping harder and people more elitists about who they’ll join with.

Levels like that for a dungeon were quite a bad idea from ANet – on top of many other things this patch IMO. But many of us knew that the moment they said it.

^ This 100% true, and like the OP said ~ getting a group requires wasting valuable time sitting in Lions Arch spamming for a group, occasionally taking a break whilst your map chat is suppressed. This is the new improved Guild Wars 2 – gg

""I’m just waiting for the phrase “Welfare Ascendeds” to be introduced.""

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Welfare-Ascended-Items-will-be-needed-soon/first#post816245

Sorry, I already came up with that phase ~ I even have a thread somewhere about it (If mods didn’t delete it)