Guild Wars 2

You came from Diablo III to this ~ I immediately jumped off that failwagon soon as GW2 was launched, arguably the game was much better back then. Obviously, a game has to evolve and obviously, it isn’t going to please everyone all the time – the problem is, it honestly feels like anet are catering to the minority here, being the hardcore but vocal crowd who wanted a proper endgame progression, anet delivered it without thinking what that actually ment for the game.

Well, I love playing alts since I’m an alt-o-holic however, to stay in the fractal level range on my main character, that requires me to hover around in Lions Arch for hours in the attempt to find a group, if I log off and play and alt ~ then I get left behind on the power creeping treadmill.

Such a sad tale that, alot of players are not creating alts and exploring the world again. I said it two months ago, and I’ll say it again ~ Levelling from 1 to 80, exploring each zone without the worry about gearchecks/threadmills is great, but once you get to 80 and the game truly starts, thats when most MMos start to fail the player. Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be that exception to the rule, and now it seems anet are essentially going back on what was promised to the players who followed the developmental progress over the years.

Southern Lord.7254:

dalendria.3762:

I appreciate everyone’s feedback but please stay on topic. They have already locked one of my other posts. Do not want to give them a reason to lock this one.

I would really like someone to explain if they believe adding “gear stat progression” makes GW2 distinct now, a different MMO. And if you feel it does not, why not.

All I’ll say is this:

As a level 13 Thief, I am looking forward to earning better weapons and items for my class. I want this feeling to last until level 80. I am also excited that there is now gear for me to aim towards, that is not mandatory for every player, and is entirely optional.

The problem there is, this game was already intended as a thoughly balanced game in terms of items. Casual players could steadily work zones for karma exotics which was exactly the same as exotic gear farmed in dungeons. The WvWvW playing field was more or less level.

In one fell swoop, all future balance has been thrown out of the window and now, the players are forced into a very standard grind your gear or die method.

“that is not mandatory for every player” Your very wrong, it’ll become very mandatory for every player to have ascended items, you want to do new future dungeons? You want to remain viable in WvW? Anet pointed you in one direction for you to travel and essentially gave the player two options now, grind for your ascended gear or quit.

I made a post a few days ago about Welfare Ascended items, and I stand by that fact ~ the current situation will almost guarantee core-casual players will need to be feed these items in the future unless anet somehow manages to fix it so every player can get gear. Personally, the biggest mistake they made was involving the MF for ascended, that alone made everyones fears a reality, and also made the pursuit of karma almost pointless too.

And by fix, I mean every player can get ascended gear without a month+ gold farm grind per item.

Nergrom.7592:

I am a shouthealing hammer warrior in glass gear. I can solo 4 young karkas or 3 drakes without getting downed.

While hammer CC and condition removal make this a breeze for me to solo, every class has builds that will shine in the new zone.

The key is learning when to dodge and bringing some kind of reflect and/or condition removal. The part where the karka rears up and shoots projectiles is the part you can easily see coming and dodge or CC.

Drakes are harder, but all you really need is condition removal and circle-strafing/kiting.

Your a warrior though, enough said ~ My full glass warrior has no real problems ~ I can even take down Vets. Yet, my other 80s all in decent gear…have massive problems. Sure, you can say the warrior class is OP ~ when it really isn’t, its just the other classes are underwhelming and thus require more skill/patience to achieve the same results.

Like the Ranger, Elementalist and Engineer – all three classes need revamping. I was hesitant to also say Mesmer, but I have only levelled mine to 30 so I can’t say yet :P

Natural.7013:

These threads are truly great examples of hyperbole. Anet needs to work out the kinks in their event systems and other aspects of the game. They need to continue to add systems and make the game progression yet progressive. It has the “potential” to be greta and we will not know if it hits the mark until we look back months or a year or two down the road.

The problem is, we don’t know if this game has a year of life in it. Usually new MMos go through what is called “The Storm”, usually 3 – 9 months after launch, this is usually when core/hardcore players have hit the current cap, done all the current content and starting whining – this is also usually the time nerfs generally hit so player subscriptions start to decline, this period is when any MMo is very vulnerable – even games like WoW went through this back in late 2004/early 2005.

My personal advice to Anet/Developers/Ncsoft is simple ~ get back in the game, create content the 99% can finish, create gear the 99% can attain. Generally, you guys need to entertain the players that are consider the core-casuals because these are the players who tend the quit sinking ships first, once those types leave – the game is in serious trouble. If you start catering to hardcore players now, then this game will lose vast amounts of players which’ll force server merges, which in turn will detrimentally effect WvW and will see the game get ever close to sunset.

They just need to make gold easier to get without damaging the economy too much, best way to do this would be to make Pre-Cursors account bound and non-sellable and then increase the gold from DEs by a factor of say 5 so for an ORR event instead of getting 2s per event, the player got 25s etc.

This would make players go back out into the world to hunt for DEs. The problem is then, if people playing the markets got greedy and started to inflate the costs of mats etc etc

Trust me, GW 2 is in serious trouble its just alot of people are in-denial. My guild has saw many people quit since launch, we’re talking 50+ people quit the game and some of these was fanboys from beta weekends.

Posted is a xfires data for Guild Wars 2, clearly shows the event spikes and quick drop offs. Sure, you can say…well not everyone uses xfire. Raptr also shows big drop off in players too. Even if not everyone uses either, it still shows a shocking amount of people quitting the game.

1. Free to play = People can play whenever they want, no reason to get $15 a month value out of the game – so quite alot of players will probably just log on for events // new content then go on haitus for months at a time.

1. Poor events // Bad content updates // Nerfs – tend to make people ragequit, which again ~ isn’t constructive or good for the game in general. Getting fractal groups for instance, taking countless hours to run 1 dungeon is very bad.

1. Server populations // WvWvW populations – If your on a low population server who always loses at W3, and don’t want to transfer servers, lets say you have a highly matured guild with many upgrades pre-done, but everyone else has quit the game / left the server..what do you do? Most likely quit the game yourself

lenpup.3765:

QFT.
Obtaining a precursor is a massively game changing occasion. And in one fell swoop they reduced countless players massive effort to obtain one into a joke, and countless other players got a hand out, while countless more were completely screwed out of even having the CHANCE to have this game-changing occasion occur for them.

This apology was practically a spit in the face.
Chris Whiteside needs to reach down, palm the family jewels, and say,
“Guys, we really screwed up in a number of ways with that one time event. We realize now that it was an extremely unfair and broken way of distributing game-changing items, and we’re both very sorry and FIXING IT AS A TOP PRIORITY.”

Basically, all he DID say served only to paint a public picture of a dedicated developer who cares about player feedback. It was a PR stunt, not an apology, and I’m even more pissed off after reading it than I was before.

I also love the response about the exploiting the overflow server in order to get more loot, when one of the community managers posted that this wasn’t consider ‘exploiting’ then promptly closed the thread and it disappeared after that. It was blatantly exploiting and they just didn’t want to deal with it, I don’t care know because next events I’m going to do the same thing though, screw principals and conduct ~ it seems to get you no where in Tyria.

Warlord.9074:

Its supposed to be hard, the drop tables are better.

Your joking right? The loot table in Southsun Cove is atrociously bad

Robbyx.1284:

Respect is earned, not given…they completely misled their customers, and their apparent lack of concern over players real concerns isnt helping….they deserve neither my respect nor my money.

The problem is the world is alot of people don’t see it that way ~ The developers are the easiest to blame since they created the game, so even ‘if’ they had no part in the direction which I refuse to believe by the way, they still share some of the blame.

Anet = developers = nexon = ncsoft? whoever you want to blame, it really doesn’t matter ~ the entire major reason why the majority of players are upset is because of the fractal dungeon and ascended items. But you have to understand the reasoning behind it too before you can just blinding say ~ this sucks and I’m going to QQ The entire idea behind fractal and ascended items was rushed to the servers without any degree of testing, without any player feedback and certainly without looking ahead.

Fractal + Ascended ‘on paper’

Infinite progressing dungeon to 99
Progress is saved after completing each dungeon
Items better than exotics to be a stepping stone to Legendary
Better quality items over exotics

Fractal + Ascended ‘reality check’

Infinite progressing dungeon that everyone has to wait hours to get a party for any particular scale level
Progress is saved per character and not account, meaning no reason to play alts now
Progress is saved, if your not on the same scale level as guildies/friends/pugs then your screwed
Ascended items cost a fortune in gold if you want particular items for your build
Ascended items require a very significant dedication to grinding
Ascended items have a large RNG element to them
Ascended items vs Exotics create a huge gear imbalance, which will be very noticeable in WvWvW combat

I agree, but I see things in a much darker light than you. Unless things change and fast, this game will die.

It doesn’t matter regardless, if you can’t get a group to run the fractal level you require – all these arguments are a moot point anyway. How many of you guys that are not in a static fractal group and are running fractals your level without waiting for hours for a party?

I got my first vial today after 36 fractal runs, so basically if I take that as a precedent for getting more, I’ll need to run the dungeon another 144 times to get 5 – unacceptable.

Couple that with the 1hr+ waiting around Lions Arch for a party to run the scale level I need, then the hour or so to finish it. Your talking 288 hours to get 5 vials – obviously RNG is RNG, so could take less, but it could also take even longer.

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

I agree ~ I have 800 hours on my account, and I’ve yet to break 50g. Let alone farming 300 ectos + 250 T6 mats. Lets not even talk about the hour+ time sitting around Lions Arch trying to get a group your scale level so you can progress. The entire Fractal Dungeon system + Ascended is a huge failure, and the entire game will suffer greatly for it unless Anet developers can think of some otherway to balance everything out again, especially that doesn’t requiring 3+ months of grinding for gold/mats etc ~ because if nothing changes, this game will be dead in 3 months time.

Our guild is doing actually better than most, I’m saying the guild system in general needs an overhaul. Plus, if you read into the new plans for guild progression, small or 1 person guilds are going to get no where. If you read the launchers new story, then you’ll start to understand that the new changes could destroy small or medium sized guilds that don’t have close friends in them.

The point is, this game isn’t like WoW where you could join and then guild hop to epic loot. Guilds here are almost like living entities that need attention and care from its members in order to grow, alot of players don’t see that element because they just care about loot.

Zeke Minus.5720:

This isn’t against their Manifesto.

They’re just adding a more obtainable step between Exotic and Legendary items. Most people think this means they’re going to keep adding items higher than Legendary rarity, stat-wise.

Their loss, honestly. I think it’s great that Anet can take a step back and say, “Ahh, yeah, there should be something in between Exotic and Legendary that people can get, yet still feel accomplished about.”

EDIT: To be more clear, they’re going to add Legendary armor eventually, and people are going to complain like this. They have said that Legendary is the be-all, end-all in terms of difficulty and spectacle, so I’d take this to mean that they’re just bringing armor up to par with Legendary-tier weapons.

Um..wrong ~ many of the ascended items are a major grind to get, in terms of mats and gold costs. Grinding gold in this game is one of the worst I’ve ever seen and that is part of the problem, a casual player isn’t going to farm up 100g+ not before just quitting from boredom, even core players have trouble enough farming 50g let alone 100g+

Case and point, if 100g was easy to farm ~ Every 3rd player you met would be a commander.

Ualtar.5047:

WHAT!!! 1 gold! really?!?!

I have a smallish guild, many of us have played together since LOTRO was brand new. So we should be split up until we could scrape together 1 gold? Sorry, but that isn’t a good idea at all. That would basically kill all small guilds, and lead to horrible faceless mega guilds and a bunch of soloers.

It really depends on your server, on a low population server ~ small guilds is detrimental to pretty much everything from W3 to running dungeons. If your on a high population server, then it doesn’t really matter because finding people to content etc, isn’t a problem.

I just think it would be more beneficial to have guilds with at least 5+ members in them, its pretty obvious, I know it ~ you guys know it that there are crazy amounts of 1 person guilds out there.

If there was guild chat that worked across all the guilds you joined, then most of the issues wouldn’t be a problem.

krookie.6378:

Raydaq.5421:

I have the Tome of the rubicon. it is an ascended item, and i made it on my first day of doing fractals. (I also started that day with 60s to my name)

If you are having trouble getting the mist essence then try using full MF gear. I wasn’t when i looted mine, but the guy that got the 3 in one fractal had full MF gear on. Hopefully you guys get yours soon. Btw dont make the one with the powerful bloods or it will cost you 100G however if you go for the scale one (i think that one has same stats, but i can’t check atm) it will cost maybe 2 gold for 250 of them.

Hopefully you guys get your mist essence’s soon

They don’t have the same stats.

Quiver of Swift Flight(vial of powerful blood):
+24 Power
+17 Precision
+1% Critical Damage
+32 Power
+18 Precision
+4% Critical Damage

Sight be True(armored scales):
+17 Power
+24 Toughness
+1% Critical Damage
+32 Toughness
+18 Power
+4% Critical Damage

Yes, and those stats are a big difference. Basically, like I’ve said ~ Ascended items need re-thinking so non-hardcore grinders/cheaters/exploiters can get them without spending half a year grinding up 100g+

Ganzo.5079:

Really funny, so you have to grind, and use MF gear too? and this isnt grind? only the fact tha ppl use that cursed MF gear in a dungeon group to drop a particular item, is synonymous of GRIND.

Also it annoys people like me to have proper DPS, no MF gear so I can maximise the chances of actual finishing dungeons, whilst others capitalise on that.

I think honestly, the in-game protests, hate mail and boycotts will start appearing soon.

So far, anet has made some very questionable design decisions without taking the time to think carefully what would happen. The amount of bad judgement since the game opened has been dreadful really.

Making guilds far too easy to create, I remember even GW1 was much harder to create a guild, each server is represented by a few mega 400s, and the rest are guilds made up of 1 – 5 people

They should have made guilds far harder to create, this would have meant far more loyalty to any given guild, not to mention they could have many unique options like sGvG combat etc, right now ~ its pointless since there are so many tiny pointless guilds, a few couple of average sized ones and a few megas.

All in all, the entire way the guild system here is pretty bad. What they should have done was require at least 1g to create to the guild and have a full party present when creating the guild to begin with. Also, they should give penalties for guild hopping and the entire idea of being in multiple guilds sounds great on paper, in actual reality it doesn’t really work well for the game.

The funny thing is people who are doing fractals in the hope to get ascended items are going to be sorely disappointed when they find out they’ll need hundreds and hundreds of gold to craft them.

So you think grinding about 80g+ for one ascended isn’t a grind? Its stupid, boring and a game breaking

If you are still looking for a guild, why not look at what Lucky Stars has to offer!
Lucky Stars Recruitment Thread

If you are still looking for a guild, why not look at what Lucky Stars has to offer!
Lucky Stars Recruitment Thread

If you are still looking for a guild, why not look at what Lucky Stars has to offer!
Lucky Stars Recruitment Thread

If you are still looking for a guild, why not look at what Lucky Stars has to offer!
Lucky Stars Recruitment Thread

If you are still looking for a guild, why not look at what Lucky Stars has to offer!
Lucky Stars Recruitment Thread

Completely re-wrote the guild information, we are once again actively recruiting new members for up and coming content, not to mention new guild progression upgrades soon. Lucky Stars is in a great position for new guild content.

I was thinking of creating something similar, but you guys already beat me to it :P

I post constantly on the forums with meaningful suggestions all the time to improve the game, mix that in with the occasional QQ post – does that mean I hate the game? No, I want to see this game succeed where others have failed – the problem right now, is anet is doing a rather good job of making the game fail and not listening to all the signficiantly well thought out criticisms and genuine concerns of the players ~ we just get forum infractions from over zealous moderators instead.

Yes, this needed a bump and honestly ~ anet you have to start listening to the players now and what we need otherwise, I can see GW2 possibly sunsetting as people will get discouraged and/or ratequit and the player populations will continue to slide ever downwards.

Someone posted the need for a proper cross server LFG tool, now it the time we do need it. I took the pic about 15 minutes ago, area is dead. Trying to somehow force myself into an overflow server in the hope someone is running fractals my level.

I’m about to post a pic explain why this game needs a proper LFG tool now.

Posted this pic, explains everything and why we need a proper way to search for groups.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/This-Pic-explains-why-Fractals-will-FAIL

Unanimous.1486:

they want to make sure you spend a decade trying to get full ascended gear and a legendary weapon. They fear people wouldn’t otherwise play their game for much longer.

I’m personally about the quit Guild Wars 2 over the ascended gear problem ~ personally spent the best part of an hour in LA trying to get a group to do fractals at my level -

Fractals needs a solo mode if the only reward is an increase in scale so players can remain viable.

Also, not to mention ~ this could be a guild destroyer. Player wants to run hardcore fractals 8hrs a day, players in the guild do not – Player leaves the guild and creates a hardcore fractal progression guild promising constant guild fractal runs….what do you think will happen?

Your on a server with low population and no overflow server? You want to run fractals but getting a group takes forever? You transfer servers, making the W3 balance even more unstable.

Seriously anet, when creating content ~ you have to think about all the knock-on effects that content might have, not from catering to a small % of players complaining about no endgame – in all honesty, like many people have feared – this could be potentially a gamebreaker for many players.

Since the whole fractal dungeon idea sounds great on paper, if you get left behind or unable to run them for various reasons – too low scale – too high scale etc etc….and don’t feel like sitting in LA for hours on end trying to get a group going. Basically, it is going to create a massive divide in players equipment level, and for people saying that ascended gear is only slightly better than exotics, believe me ~ it isn’t. I posted kitten of one of the weaker ascended items that someone linked – I’ve seen way better, even one that had a vendor value of 6g !!

Already noticed in LA, getting a group for fractals yesterday wasn’t that easy – I personally wanted to run a higher scale version, no one else did so I was left with two decisions, wait around for X amount of time hoping others showed up or run a lower level one and not level up my scale. Believe me, this dungeon will become hardcore paradise soon, its not going to be about getting tokens, it’ll be all about the scale.

Basically, like the title mentioned. To keep the playing field as balanced as possible, which was one of GW2 main emphasis and we all saw that with exotics and legendary items, however Ascended items can and will totally destroy any balance unless every player can get them and right now, we all know that probably isn’t going to happen unless something changes in the near future regarding these

If Fractal dungeon isn’t going to be playable for most casual/core players because of scale problems and thus, cannot get high enough level in order to get drops then other means needs to be available for players to achieve the same gear level so current balance in game remains.

Idea #1

New Dungeons/Dungeon NPC vendors that offer same level ascended items for tokens, the same way current dungeon gear is attained.

Idea #2

New zones that give ascended items for 100% map completion

In closing, I’ve personally witnessed many MMo’s suffer from poor gearing decisions and obvious knee-jerk reactions to fix them, such as WoW’s infamous Welfare Epics. Anet, if you want to keep this game more or less balanced – you have to rethink pandora’s box that is Fractal, you’ve opened it and now, you have to deal with the backlash it’s inevitably going to cause.

No, that would really screw over low population servers that don’t get overflows in any other zone besides LA, my server didn’t even get an overflow in Lions Arch until the Halloween events started.

IF your on a very low population server, if you need a constant overflow server just in order to get a group to do dungeons. Without that, you might as well transfer off the server or quit the game entirely.

Max Lexandre.6279:

The new map requires parties, if you find a Veteran Karka in your way you better run!

Good luck with trying to find a party to farm that area..

1)graphics (1-bad…10-amazing) –7
2)sound(1-bad…10-amazing) – 2
3)story concept/originality (1-boring…10-captivating) – 6
4)loot/reward (1-lost all my money…10-gained amazing items) – 2
5)stability (1-extremly buggy…10-no bugs) – 3
6)network connection/speed (1-laggy,disconnections, 10 – perfect connection) – 1
7)mini events length (1-to long/short…10-just right) – 7
8)overall event length (1-to long/short…10-just right) – 4
9)overall Satisfaction (1-worst experience ever,10-best experience ever) – 3

It would be better if it didn’t take so long to complete >.>

SundayTrash.9562:

Kandrick.8054:

So pre-cursors got cheaper – your complaint is ?

errr last time I heard 260g still takes forever to farm

Too true, My raptr page report says I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 for over 800 hours, in that time I’ve levelled 4 80s and geared them out, attained master crafter title and two world 100%s, however in terms of gold, I have yet to break the 50g barrier.

Reasons, #1 I hate playing markets in order to earn gold. This is an MMO, not a spreadsheet financial simulator. #2 RNG and #3 RNG hates me and finally #4 I’m not lucky.

And as the OP mentioned, exploiting the overflow server to repeat the events is and should be a bannable offense. There was even a few posts (which got deleted) about how to even do it yesterday.

Speaking as an Alt-a-holic, its a horrible approach and actively discourages playing alts because its all about staying in the game, meaning staying within a certain fractal level so getting group will not take you hours and hours of sitting around and hoping you actually can get one your level.

I originally liked the Fractal idea, however thinking more about what it means for GW2 in general, I think the fractal dungeon will be extremely, EXTREMELY bad for the game in the near future, and yes I cannot emphasis that word enough. Right now, people are not remotely thinking about the future ramifications of not being able to run fractal dungeons, level too low – level too high. Meaning, the average wait time to get a group together will slowly spiral out of control, people will get bored waiting and then get left behind on the loot treadmill.

Where as, people on the loot treadmill will start to develop a significant advantage in W3 over someone who isn’t in ascended gear. Essentially, what needs to happen is somehow, the level 1 fractal needs to be done solo if groups are not available and still increase the players fractal level, so that player can still remain viable when groups are available.

Otherwise, we’re going to start seeing Fractal Raid Guilds appearing, static groups running fractals and slowly but surely, you’ll see less and less pugs waiting to run the higher levels, which is obviously —-where the loot is. Basically, by adding this method to extend the game for the hardcore whiners, you screwed over perhaps half if not more of the casual/core players.

Plus it wasn’t ‘just’ a matter of quickly changing characters, there was some significant backdoor ways to get back on to overflow servers that had the event running, ofter required having a friend or something invite you to a group so you could join them.

Basically, hate to say it ~ but someone back in Diablo III said it correctly I guess, exploit and exploit as often as possible if you want to get anywhere.

I think the only major problem the entire event had was the reward chest having a slight chance for pre-cursors, obviously ~ I’m willing to bet somewhere code was added that trial accounts had a better chance for them in the ‘hopes’ they would buy the game – I’ve seen it happen in many many times before with trial accounts getting enticing drops so the player might subscribe. Trust me, it happens ~ had it happen to me many times during my past 15 years of playing MMos.

If no pre-cursors was in the chest so everyone more or less roughly got equal loot then I think overall, the forums would be alot less p’d off. Sure, the bugs and problems in general didn’t help but it definitely gave Anet data to work with for future events.

The problem is that gold in general isn’t that easy to get, it takes a significant amount of grinding to get decent gold and non-hardcores are just going to get bored fast. So if you make gold easier to get and take pre-cursors off the market so they are attained by other means then this game, might start heading in the right direction.

I thought about it, but it does really account to an exploit and I didn’t want to risk a ban. However saying that now, if I had known before hand that the chests had a chance for pre-cursors I would have taken that risk, because its obviously ~ anet are not banning anyone.