Guild Wars 2

It might be enabled a different week? This content is around for awhile.

But as far as what I think of it, I enjoyed it. The rewards are terrible of course (same for Inquisition though and it’s all I’m playing right now) but people will still play it anyway. We’re not all loot treadmill players.

Maybe they should just pop a portal that takes you to the event only when it’s time or something. And the portal should reject under-80s and blue gears and things like that. Instantly weed out all the AFKs and unprepared. This is not casual content or trolly troll fun times and they do need to handle that in some way.

Grats to them. Instead of complaining they just buckled down and won, imagine that.

Fighting a dragon isn’t really where they’re going to focus casual fun gameplay. I can see why people like that gameplay, but it just isn’t going to be a part of everything. Sometimes they need some content that’s a change of pace and requires hardcore organization.

Geeo.2154:

I was in group with a dev (Frucanis??) an he/she made it sound like there is a way to kill it but no one has worked it out yet

Yeah this is what I figured. Just watching the fights it’s clear people are doing things mindlessly and ignoring the ‘puzzle’ aspect of defeating a super deadly enemy like this. Of course we’re failing because we’re all Tequatl noobs right now.

I’m going to give them some credit and assume that a big part of the failure rate right now is people don’t know how to play this.

Give it time. GW1 had a lot of high level content you had to either figure out or fail. It’s nice to see something like that.

Well possibly. One thing that stinks for me is I spread out the gear I got in W1 over different characters which screws up soloing a fair bit. So I guess I’ll have to go back there first.

Am I the only one who can’t get a party for world 2 on my server? I’ve had zero luck since release date. Is everyone playing tribulation mode or just avoiding SAB?

I guess I won’t get to progress in it which is annoying. I did want to see all of w2 but got stopped by totally dysfunctional rapids on release day.

I love how much effort you put into your work Josh.

I think it’s just an odd case where certain stuff here turned out to need so much more testing.

It’s cool, it could happen to anyone dealing with something as complicated as an MMO engine.

Hope there’s some more fixes to this one but I do appreciate all the work.

I played the rapids for 40 min yesterday. Haven’t played since. It was an exercise in randomly getting punched in the face. I like challenge but the mechanics felt broken. There was nothing demonstrate if we were lagging, if the spouts were breaking or what but getting washed down the river 80 times wasn’t much of an adventure.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

But wouldn’t that just reward a lucky player who got chosen.

Sure, which adds an element of intrigue to a capture. Who will get the honor? Of course you will at some point if you play a lot.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Give him WXP/karma for standing there and dancing for an hour or two until an enemy decides to try to take it back. Heck, he could just hold weight down the “w” key while walking into a wall and walk away to do something else.

Well that’s defending in a nutshell, can’t really do much about the concept of defense involving downtime. But obviously the point would be it would be cool to be this character and use unique abilities so you’d want to be around for the fight.

Nitross.6987:

The idea has potential though. Maybe make it optional? Have a dialog option on the lord to ask to take over overseeing this tower?

The way I see it what would happen is that your transformation is lost as soon as you walk too far away from the area and so an AI NPC returns.

I kind of like the dialog idea but it seems like people would hog the position too often to give others a turn.

ALTHOUGH, if there was just an AI there already I guess that would work just fine. So if someone abandoned it you could take it.

WvW is boring, zergy, lacks dynamism.

My suggestion is simple but amazing:

When you claim a tower, keep, or castle, a random lvl 80 player contributor to the event transforms into the new lord. As the lord they have unique powers to fight the enemy AS LONG as they stay in that territory. (Think hilarious knockback abilities, potentially harder to kill than an AI lord)

I really like this concept because think about it, it takes some of the static “there’s a braindead NPC in there all we have to do is bust down the door” concept out of WvW. A small group might have a serious fight on their hands and have to think twice if they’re fighting a super powered real player inside.

Also you could reward the human Lord with XP/karma for staying there, so essentially it finally gives the game a human defense, which can often be missing entirely.

If the player left they just get their normal character back and the AI fills in again.

They’d need to add an arena or something.

It could be fun, but in the open world it would just slow everyone’s computer down.

It’s interesting although I don’t think it’s very clear visually. People don’t understand all those gears laying around.

I think it’s a great character for the type of content. Keep in mind she’s only there to toss some events at you. She can’t deliver 10 page monologues while that’s going on.

Also keep in mind you just had a very political event with the election. Why should they follow that up with something else serious? Why not let them mix it up so you’ll be more moved when something big does happen. You can’t expect with an ongoing plot for them to lay out all the coming secrets.

How cliche. The old Hobo-Tron in distress trope. ANet needs to go back to writing school.

/s

So I’m just wondering lately with another big MMO announced with rather insane player creation features (EQN and the building tools) where is GW2 in terms of letting us create anything?

Honestly, I’d have to say Guild Wars 2 doesn’t really have any features for that. We might have a lot of dyes to pick from for armor but that’s palette swapping. You’re still stuck inside their coloring book lines. You’re not going to make Wonder Woman look like Batman just because you color her blue or whatever.

I’d be interested in some more creative tools in the game. Even if you had to pay like $10 or even $20 for an armor customizing tool that gave you armors with a massive list of morphs and options. Another thing I don’t understand is why there’s no “overlay” texture or pattern type option to customize yourself. The guild armor options are rather unimpressive, and besides I never even liked the idea from GW1 that some guild leader gets to pick your one creative option. Where’s something for the player is basically what I wonder all the time.

As fascinated as I am by GW2’s updates and the team’s hard work, I wonder if I’d be happy jumping ship to that other game (or playing both) if they do customization and diverse builds and all that better. I just like playing games that let me put some kind of personal thought into it, I guess.

Fiontar.4695:

What should you have done? Well, you should have stuck to the original plan you talked about last fall and created boatloads of new Dynamic Event content. Content that would have advanced the story with in each game zone told by the Dynamic Events that were there at launch. Adapting some, replacing some, rotating some in and out of circulation. That would have created a Living World. that would have preserved the sense of a dynamic game environment.

I love this update. It’s nothing but fun times and finally we have a go grind mission (the balloon achievement and arena) that doesn’t feel like it.

But I agree with you that dynamic events are broken. Their loops are so small that the world feels like a static world. I totally agree that just removing tons of them and replacing them with new content would be cool. However the logistics of that aren’t easy. It’s lots and lots of new scripts and development for something that in the end still is just going to feel like “lesser” pre-80 content for most people. I’m not sure it’s something they can solve, short of adding some experimental new AI to some areas like Everquest Next where the AI itself works on making the world dynamic.

No way it should be F2P for another 3-4 years. Not without some kind of reputation system where we can vote out trolls and farmer bots on F2P accounts. It would be terrible and wreck the game’s community (at least somewhat.)

In short, yes.

It was the same in GW1, and the same with light armor and staff/focus/scepter in GW2. They just seem to have different aesthetic rules between melee and casters.

They seem to hate casters having any flare. Yet the professions of necro/elementalist/mesmer aren’t over the top? Especially necros, and there’s virtually no “death/horror” gear in the game. It’s a shame and more reason to just open up all armor/weps to all classes over time and let people choose how the heck they envision their character, not be stuck on a rigid system of looks.

As said it turns on every map change no matter the setting. For me anyway. I can turn it off by toggling it again, but the setting isn’t sticking.

The real question is why are unused tickets worth something but representation buttons worthless?

Well I’m at about 110 scraps, but at this rate I will not get a backpiece before kite fortunes stop dropping. Why? Mainly because I didn’t even start collecting them until support tokens started dropping, and I get those all the time but not kite fortunes. It’s really annoying. The only option would be to farm the game all day today (not fun as I seem to be getting about 1 fortune every 10-15 minutes) which there’s no way I can do since I work anyway.

Yeah I tend to agree. Most people can’t play weekdays until they get home, and they might actually leave the house on weekends. It’s stressful trying to get so much stuff done in the game in limited windows.

The game runs fine on any cheap gaming rig. Now if you’re talking a computer with no quality gaming parts… this is an age old problem. You have to be careful what you buy because there are plenty of lame companies that will sell you a junk parts computer because they just don’t care.

Your best bet is to go to hardware websites and check in the forums what kind of parts someone would build a cheap gaming rig with right now.

Personally I wish all the focus would be on a pool of weapon skill choices or new weapon options.

I don’t want more utility skills or even traits really. Those things aren’t particularly fun or hands-on.

The game has been out almost a year. It’s amazing in some ways, but in others it feels like they still need to capture something something special. They update a TON, which is cool, but I’m not sure of the direction all the time.

What are your thoughts on what’s missing? Here are my biggest problems:

- PVE isn’t that fun on alt characters. Do I want to mine, craft, grind away at events alone over and over? No. I struggle to level my alts. It just isn’t very fun in an empty world, especially on non-OP classes where combat becomes tiresome after 10 minutes. Why isn’t ANet introducing new ways to make leveling fun?

- A lot of new content involves killing 10,000 rats level of tedium. The achievements to kill holographic monsters to get an event reward or get laurels to get ascended stuff and so on… go against EVERYTHING Anet once was about with ‘play this content because you’re having fun’ game. And so I do these achievements sparsely here and there then log out because I’m not having fun.

- WvW isn’t changing enough. Where’s the new siege, and more options to alter the battle dynamics. It’s almost a static process of ‘zerg comes, zerg goes’ and very, very little else. That is NOT what makes war games fun. It’s almost PVE-ized in how it works right now. They need to trust players more with big stupid powers that can turn a tide, or at least DEMAND strategic play from the zerg.

Right now those are the things I’d love to see a change of direction. If we get a new currency or grind treadmill instead soon I’m going to weep.

Yeah I’m not crazy about LS.

Also look at the sheer number of things going up on the gem store. Some that aren’t even purchasable but a sad old RNG.

Would you rather buy 20 new weapons off the gem store this year and get the paltry content of LS?

Or they just make an expansion and stop micro-content.

For me 100% expansion.

It’s pretty fun. And you don’t need actual coordination as much as some smarts at playing the game. Most people should be able to handle that tbh. Rage quitters are wasting their time when it’s doable.

It’s a challenge. Don’t like that? Skip it. Content isn’t mandatory.

I liked it. And the lasers are relatively easy considering you can stand on boxes or keep moving. The final boss takes forever but that’s good. It challenges you to accomplish something.

Back in the day it would have been miserable with not being able to bring in a party member if someone leaves, but now it’s fine and working as dungeons should be… i.e. long play content for people who really like to game and not just be handed everything.

Fireworks went off in Yak’s. No one got the achievement when they stopped 20 min later.

I agree.

- Leveling zones are EMPTY. It’s not fun making every event take 5x longer as you grind away solo.

- Monthly updates aren’t content, they’re cash shop teasers. They don’t need to be monthly if you don’t have great content. You’re hurting the game with updates like this more than just waiting and putting out really good ones.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s a mini pet. What do you expect…

One that is in some way nicer than the 4 you have to put in the mystic forge for it?

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Would I like a sure way to get a skin, sure. But that was not advertised, so I don’t expect it.

Sure, you shouldn’t expect to “win” something, but that doesn’t mean Anet isn’t guilty of an exploitative gem store item here.

Say some guy had a bad day and gets dumped by his girlfriend. He’s emotional and dumps $50 into the gem store in dragon coffers to get the weapon skin, and gets no weapon skin. It’s truly stupid. At least just sell the weapons so people that make bad purchasing decisions at get the item they wanted. This is not ethical.

Just so people know, you have consumer options.

One is file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

Two is ask your credit card company for a charge back and explain to them. In this option I don’t know if Anet will go crazy and ban your account (game developers are thin on support staff and prone to take the fast option there) but you should at least get back the money you spent in the store.

Hopefully you don’t have to do those but it is getting to the point where they are really offensively scamming free money from the GW2 audience. RNG chests in the store need AT LEAST a collectible you can trade in for the ticket after a certain amount of tries.

I don’t find myself enjoying it really. The arena space is terribly small and the power ups don’t feel fun or anything.

Just a heads up don’t do the mystic forge recipe it’s an ugly http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Icebrood_Colossus not the fractals giant.

Thank you Anet!

Hexgame.4802:

They already stated no new armor skins were coming out with this event. Don’t know why you expected anything different.

Nobody saw that. I certainly didn’t. Whole map was disappointed when we unlocked the merchant.

It makes no sense at any rate. It’s supposed to be an incentive to keep playing Southsun, but I can’t see how it is for anyone.

Awesome. Holidays in GW2 are amazing.

One thing I noticed working on a new character is that environmental items (shovel, etc) are such a lost cause. Nobody picks them up and uses them because figuring out a new skill set on the cuff in a fast-paced game isn’t worth the risk/reward.

But I was reminded of Super Adventure Box that uses the items in versatile ways. Wouldn’t it be nice if these items you find on the regular map had special purposes? Like somewhere to dig with a shovel, a place you could drop a plank, somebody who wants a rum, etc. To me that would be really entertaining to complete all the those kind of item-given-a-purpose tasks on a map and there could be a surprise or two thrown in.

I’m not crazy about the mini-game.

Particularly the randomness is just too much. There’s no slowdown on the person with the crab so instead of being able to close in, you’re just following them. Chasing them with your run skill is nearly impossible since it overshoots no matter how you use it. (why is it a hold to charge skill when it does the same charge no matter if you just tap it?) You need items to succeed but they’re random, so probably the best strategy is to get lucky shadowing on other people’s heels and stealing the crab after they do the work.

What’s sad is I love Keg Brawl. I think that is really well constructed. This just feels like playing Keg Brawl on an oil slick with crazy people.

Traps sound fun. One thing that was definitely missing from WvW is a feeling of a diversity to what’s going on. Things are very predictable especially with the game having relatively locked skillsets. I like the notion of this new store type.

Add my voice to someone that dislikes all the grind content.

Dailies are an imposition. Oh I should keep playing just for some x/5 number to hit 5? I’d prefer my time be respected more and daily accomplishments carry over if you didn’t finish. Since that doesn’t happen I just stop caring altogether, because yes I value real life more than a game putting a treadmill there.

Legendary… never been interested. It’s clearly grind.

Getting a really high level in Fractals… what’s the point really.

The WvW leveling system. You mean grind system.

So, yes I’m waiting for this year’s fun updates. Super Adventure Box certainly counts as one. There weren’t really any others, but maybe it’s just some growing pains.

Edit: and also what happened to this game being about DYNAMIC / crazy / event chains and game rules? F&F events wouldn’t even be good as a heart, why is it so basic?

Did not get the gauntlet ticket. That’s annoying that it would be in some weird achievement chest.

Well they’ve done a TON of work on the back-end of the game, where they could have just left things the same way it was at launch. So I wouldn’t say there wasn’t an expansion’s worth of content… it’s just that most of it becomes “the new normal” after it’s out and not exciting to talk about.

On the other hand I do agree things seemed really, really, really weird with the whole implementation of F&F. Mad King was spot-on. Fractals were spot-on. Super Adventure Box was a great treat.

But F&F has felt at a loss for the kind of leadership those other projects had. Oh well. Hope Living Story gets a total reboot in the next chapter personally. Simplify the confusing quest structure, and diversify the underwhelming missions.

I think it’s just the style of graphics. Your eyes are used to sucking up a ton of graphic detail in GW2/on your comp screen and suddenly it’s sort of suffocating to be in relatively detail-less world. I do think it’s adorable, not knocking it, but I can understand how it might ruffle the visual center in some people’s head to have such a dramatic switch.

Yeah I threw away some gold on keys, got nada. But I’m not surprised and I only do this thing with limits.

Looks interesting. This is good stuff in terms of setting up the game’s longevity. It must have been some monumental work for them to get out a new rendering backend for WvW.

I will say they might be forgetting the “sizzle” factor lately. Nerds want epic, we want big splashy dynamic new gameplay and so forth. So while it’s nice to keep getting new systems it might be time to move on to WvW content and PVE content.