Guild Wars 2

I hadn’t seen that text. That’s excellent, it means you’ll only lose any middle of the road transmuted stat items and that’s absolutely fine. If we could get a confirmation those Splitters are coming, that would be all that is necessary to feel fine transmuting your legendary.

That depends on what a transmute -does-. If the data structure is always “Skin of A, Stats of B”, where A and B are immutable, then yes, if that item were released and if that item does what everyone supposes, you’d get your legendary back.

If however, A and B are not immutable, if Transmuting A and B creates a C (that knows of A and, and then you transmute again, it is possible that C transmuted with D becomes a merged C, with the properties of A as a skin and B as stats, creating an E that knows of C and D but not of A or B.

In that case, multiple transmutes would destroy the information necessary to get your legendary back, as what you’d get is an item that looked like A and had the stats of B, but was really a C.

Is that the likely method? Probably not… but unless you’re a developer at ArenaNet you can’t say for certain.

A string description and supposed functionality doesn’t produce confidence necessary to feel the question is answered. It’s also not even certain the item will be released, whatever it does. The item also can’t address multiple transmutes (not that this will be as common as individual transmutes).

Axe/Mace with the right build/traits is ~5% better than any GS build (yes, this is taking runes, sigils, self might stacks etc. into account) in terms of potential DPS. It also has better burst if you shrink the burst window to < 2 seconds with Eviscerate. GS has better mobility, and in the right circumstances a useful free evade, but 100b roots you.

That’s a huge problem. It’s a problem because being rooted means that if for whatever reason you need to move or dodge during it you lose the most potent section of the abilities damage and lose it for at minimum another 6 seconds. Highly mobile encounters this can also mean that you’ve moved to an edge where you’re safe form an AOE circle and the boss edges out of 100b distance and again the damage is lost.

Yes, 100b can reach 40k (especially in QP). That number feels great when you see it. However, Axe is more reliable and slightly better DPS at the same time. Unless you really need the charge, there just isn’t any reason to use greatsword as it stands (Axe/Sword will give you a block to replace the evade).

Planning a much larger post to go over the different build options, but thanks to where the traits are located, axe will win out whether you use 30/30/0/10/0 or 30/0//0/10/30.

They should get their ducks in a row. Players right now may be just blindly ruining what represent at minimum weeks worth of time investment or significant financial investment. The question of “Is there data saved that represents the chain of transmutation for an item?” is one that can be answered within days, not weeks. It’s either yes, we know what you transmuted every time you have, or no, we do not. If they don’t know what you’ve transmuted each time, a permanent record, there is no way for them to give you legendary item benefits with a future patch. They just won’t have the data to do it -unless- they’re also willing to restore a legendary item to you based on your equipped inventory history. If they go that route, then you’re looking at people having 2 instances of that skin, only one of which has the stat change.

Either way, an official statement saying “Transmute to get the stats you need, your legendaries are safe no matter how we go about solving it” is something that could be done in a timely fashion if they felt the matter worthy of a reply and less than an hour of effort. An hour of their time against weeks of thousands of players…

Just had one sitting on the centaur boss. Nothing like an invincible spawn that cripples sitting on top of a boss that spams AOE circles akittens feet and has an arrow cart.

I would not let that stand if I were in your shoes. They are monumentally difficult to acquire no matter how you look at it (yes, you can buy them with cash→gems→gold, but at their current prices, however you acquired those funds to spend on them required effort as well). To have a new feature announced and not take into account transmuted legendaries… Surely they won’t do that. I just can’t believe they wouldn’t have some solution, but until they say otherwise, I would never transmute another legendary item.

You can’t blame people playing the game for how they play. They will play the way you reward them to play. The reason they zerg instead of perform team tactics is because due to design, it is -more effective- to zerg than to perform team tactics. It is more effective because unlike real combat or high end structured PvP, you do not have perfect command line authority over your subordinates and it is impossible, even properly coordinated, for a 20 person group to overcome a 50 or 80 person group.

People were not as enthralled by the events because the events gave them nothing. Movies are an experience. The first time you complete an event it’s like a short story movie. Once you’ve done it once, twice, maybe three times, the excitement of the experience is gone and all that remains is the question of whether or not it is rewarding.

This is why you will never, never outpace the player with content. It can’t be done. People made fun of Guild Wars 1 (or just lovingly poked at it) calling it Build Wars. That’s kind of the point though, they hit on a solution to the content chase. You put it in the build. Like Magic the Gathering or other card games. Your content is the build variety you can introduce by bringing in new skills. All your content, far more expensive to build than new abilities, is then fresh again. You have a new way to conquer it.

Players are not to blame for what they do, what they do is something you can know very easily in advance. The design is to blame if its not reaching its goals. Events would be wildly popular if they added stacks of magic find stacks for their completion, no matter where they are, you would have a group chasing them down before doing their champ runs. WvW would be more tactical if there were friendly fire damage for players not inside a party together (increase party sizes in WvW to compensate). Design can solve these things, players will be who they are.

As it happens, expressing a desire to know something in large enough numbers can often speed up the process of getting a reply. There is no harm in asking, and certainly no harm in more than one person asking something that fundamental. Imagine the outcry if it turns out that transmuted legendaries are effectively lost outside of their skin?

Interesting, but not quite conclusive enough to risk transmuting a legendary.

Considering the cost, time investment and potential impact you’d imagine this would be more of an issue and something worth making an official comment on?

It’s been said that in the future, you can modify the stats of your legendary out of combat to have the type you want (zerker/valk/etc). It has never been made clear whether or not, if you buy a legendary now and transmute it so it’s not using the mostly useless stats they have by default, that you will have this benefit in the future.

This is the main reason I have no interest in obtaining a legendary at the moment. It won’t be transmuted until I would know for sure, and an item taking that much time investment to sit in my bank for an unknown number of months is not worth it, especially given the potential changes to precursors.

Hopefully someone from ArenaNet can take the time to comment.

Captain Winters sat on the bench eating yet another bowl of tasteless sludge. The training had been grueling, bending him to the point of breaking, but the safety of his men depended on getting through it, so get through it he would. He looked across the mess hall at the loyal men he served with. Each wore a face more haggard than the last. Scars were in abundance. Smiles were rare.

Everything hinged on his ability to grasp the strategies handed down to him by command from Bellevue. He looked down at his gloveless hands instinctively at the thought, realizing they were just not enough. To master being a general in the wilds of the borderlands, he would need more than his two hands and two feet.

After breaking fast, he ran his men through their paces in the yard. They donned their sheep skin cloaks. He went to the kennel to check the dogs. They were hungry, nearly rabid, barking and spinning in circles. he donned his own sheep skin cloak, a red target painted on the back. He unlocked the kennel doors and ran through his own training while the kennel masters leashed the dogs.

“1… 2….3….4….5….6…7….8…9…10…” He then switched to looking down at his toes, wishing for miracle to arrive to allow him to go even further than twenty, but none appeared… “11…12…13…14….15…16….17…18…19…20…”. The kennel master interrupted him on the fourth run to 20, his fingers and toes weary from the counting that was the backbone of any general’s strategy.

“The dogs are ready sire.”

He walked to the yard to view his herd, happy to see that their number exceeded that of his toes and fingers. He knew then, unless their enemies general had more fingers and toes than he, they would be victorious.

He handed the leashed dogs, three in a pair, to handlers in his platoon. “Run men! Together now, be the herd! Follow the target, if you find yourself alone, panic immediately! Use a waypoint to find your herd-brothers. Remember your training, remember your motto!”

They all shouted in unison, “WE ARE THE HERD. WHERE THERE ARE MANY THERE IS ONE. WHERE THERE IS ONE OF MANY THERE IS VICTORY! LET THEIR GENERAL BE SHY OF FINGERS AND BARE OF TOES!”

He smiled wide with pride as he prepared the herd march, knowing that night he could enter the days work in his journal as follows: “Once again was able to gather more sheep than I could count, all willing to run as the herd of one. Our count was bigger and so our strategy greater. My general’s creed: My count is my strength, naught else matters. My herd is my tactic. May the seven grant me ever more fingers and toes so that my strategy may rise.” He would rest happy that night knowing he was the greatest general to ever grace the field of combat, for he could count to 20, and his herd outnumbered even his lofty ability for sums.

Is there a significant difference between tracking it per person vs upping the cap count? Make the cap count 125 to allow for 5 person parties and be done with it.

Unless they’re using a complex method of tracking stack counts which somehow compresses multiple stack types, there is no data size difference between 25 and 125 so it wouldn’t affect memory in any way. (If they’re using char/short for single stacks for some reason and have avoided the pitfalls of default promo to int elsewhere, like in equations, maybe you’d see some increase, but I really doubt they’re doing that, and even if so, 125 still fits into either).

It seemed as though the dwayna fight lighting was in fact a VFX scaling bug, and not intended. It is a dangerous level of strobing and I’d forgot about it until you just mentioned it. Submit a bug report!

For world events, where you have multiple parties worth, you’re right, it’s a negative in that only one party full of guild mates can be assured to be in the same instance. This already happens with high pop events like the new LS Queen’s event where two guild parties were in separate instances.

The other complaint I don’t quite agree is an issue. As you say, separate servers have a common problem because everyone is instanced apart from one another. The assumption I disagree with is that you’re more likely to encounter an overflow instance where people aren’t doing the event. The quantity of people necessary to make a zone overflow usually indicates a large quantity interested in an event that’s going on. I don’t think you’re more likely to see events untouched with n instances than you are with n servers. In fact, because some of the n servers have populations too low to consolidate and complete them, you’re probably more likely overall to complete them than otherwise.

Load times in a populated area are not the same as load times caused by connecting to an overflow. Connecting to a highly populated area can cause longer loading times because you’re both getting more player data and having to draw more texture/model/audio etc. data for all the different assets in play when many players are gathered.

Instance clocks could be synched to ensure that what is happening in one instance of a zone is happening in all.

There are other features that could be introduced to reduce the impact of less organized grouping (servers provide this very automatically). You could matchmake based on guild representation or world representation, attempting to keep players together that were previously together by default.

These would add some overhead, but the benefits are significant to those on poorly populated servers or for those who enjoy less mainstream content.

I do know what servers are.

The top paragraph in fact mentions this as a potential problem, directly. It’s a potential problem and not a definite one because there are multiple ways to handle data migration, storage and access. In one storage method, it’s possible to have permanent stores and cached stores that act as temporary repositories for information that’s frequently changing but would be too taxing to have on a single machine. When the update frequency slows to either nothing or stops long enough to allow it, copies from the cache are sent back to the permanent store and the two remain synched.

The time for this copy to happen in either direction, barring it being MB sized info (and it wouldn’t be, you don’t transfer information about the art/sounds, just very compact text to represent it), is on the order of milliseconds not seconds. In fact, you notice that this is a fast process every time you play. How? Because the character’s state is replicated to you at intervals like 100ms to 300ms depending on your latency. It doesn’t have all the same information necessary to permanently track your character, but really, most of the information that isn’t necessary for state replication is rarely read/written from a permanent store anyway, even in its current state it is almost certainly cached.

And no, I haven’t noticed any difference in load times. A server “going down a list” is not going to add even a second to the time it takes to connect. Why? Because whenever you connect to -any- instance, it goes through the whole handshake process just like any other, and iterating through a list of servers can be done, even on slow server hardware, many millions of times per second.

Each zone is already an instance, which is why you see overflow, and is also why everyone does not and would not connect to the same server to request information every second (and it’s rarely on a per second basis anyway, ticks are separated depending on the type of content in question and are responsible for things like interest levels, determining who needs to be sent what, and the type of content, as in some needs to be updated with each message sent but others can wait a few ticks depending on how far away you may be from that object or how likely/often it is to change state).

That said, I don’t know their architecture, but I imagine given how easy it is to guest, how well the overflow system works, and their many years of experience with GW1 and now GW2, it’s not a system that would crumble under the weight of consolidating servers.

Snarkiness like “you do know that servers are not this magical machines” wasn’t necessary, especially when it should be clear to you that your own experience with such systems is underwhelming. Before lecturing a librarian about books, you should at least read one, and likely should stick to lecturing about things you truly know. That isn’t me being snarky, it’s just solid advice.

I would say do the QJ until it’s changed (“nerfed”). It’s fun and rewarding right now, which everyone knows is a sign it won’t last long in its current state.

The one potential pitfall to this could be how the data is managed and accessed. The “guesting” process could either be an administrative flag or some actual move of data between databases. Which I do not know, but this suggestion assumes they’re not copying character information across servers or that if they are, consolidating all players into a single database would not present insurmountable performance problems.

Points:

1) The overflow system works very well.
2) Players who can migrate to more populated servers will (I did)
3) Players who can’t migrate to more populated servers will be more likely to leave the game, making the problem worse for those who remain
4) Server mergers can be effective if widespread enough, but may only move the goalpost rather than reach it

Suggestion:

All servers merged into a single server. You choose to represent a world as you do a guild. World representation is kept based on the server you originated from. Switching world representation costs the same amount of gems as server transfers. World representation is used for WvW purposes in the same manner as the server you’re on does now.

Positive Outcomes:

1) Population is always robust for every player.
2) World events such as taking temples in Orr become far more common
3) Players are likely to interact far more with people from other world representations, increasing the chances they’ll want to spend gems to transfer and be part of that WvW group.
4) You can be certain that if your WvW focused friend is representing a different world the two of you can enjoy PvE together, even if you’re a more casual WvW player happy to play in less active/capable WvW world representation.

Negative Outcomes (with short ideas on how to address if needed):

1) Constant overflow division. However, it’s hard to see how this is more divisive than separate servers and in fact feels less so.
2) Less feeling of “I’m battling for my server” in WvW. World representation should be looked at to ensure that, perhaps like guilds, servers have emblems and they can be displayed, and perhaps the acronym for a server shown like either a guild tag or title type addition to the nameplate.

One massive server with world representation (similar to guild representation) would be an excellent shift that wouldn’t break WvW. Charge gems to switch world representation just as you would transfers. Stop naming overflow overflow and just have it #’d instances as with GW1.

The Pavilion is likely to see a nerf for the fourth time since its release. Mainly because it can be fun and rewarding, and it’s easier to make it NOT fun and rewarding than it is to make everything else equally fun and rewarding.

I mean, who knew that people would enjoy getting together with a bunch of other people and beating the living kitten out of giant mobs and getting decently rewarded for it?

The ambient dialog at times was pretty good, very rarely bad.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the wit and charm of the ambient text to show up in future story dialog!

As a note, the way you introduce the benefit of support abilities without requiring a holy trinity is to tone down on the mega spike hits that force dodges, way down in fact. It’s fine for them to hit you hard enough to wince, but many of them are either insta-kills or death sentences. Binary success/failure. You’ve either won, or lost. There is no “become better over time at dodging thus relying less on support” because you either win every dodge or lose one and lose. Think of it like a motorcycle game where you jump across a canyon. You either make it across and win, or you don’t and you lose. You can’t win 70% and try to work to improve that to 75%. Change that game to have a series of jumps across plateaus in that canyon, providing better bonuses the fewer mid canyon jumps you need, and now you have people that can make it across in one jump being rewarded most while new players and less skilled can still get across with less rewards.

With dungeon bosses, by making so that you can’t eat every hit, but with proper support can eat many and get through slowly, you allow groups to improve efficiency in steps. It also increases the value of support skills as a nice side effect because mitigating and recovering from these hurtful but survivable abilities becomes a valuable tool to have in your belt.

On the other end, you also then force a player to take some hits. You have less potent but more frequent attacks. This makes it so the very peak of skill does not completely remove the utility of support.

shrug

I’m glad they removed the “holy trinity” as it used to exist, but it did come with a nasty consequence. If the holy trinity disappears, you can’t think of battles in terms of mitigating/eating damage or healing your way to recovery afterwards. What you’re left with is “damage, do lots of damage”. It’s the only pillar in the trinity that remains. This is why the meta for high end content clearing has shifted so much to zerker builds.

This also means that once you move into pure zerker territory, the desire to engage with mobs that provide no reward, at all (no loot, no exp) is drastically reduced because the effort per individual is higher than it is in a game with a trinity. Keeping up that level of effort with no reward over an entire dungeon run just isn’t what most people want to mess with.

The very end result is gameplay where the goal is to zerk dps down bosses while avoiding as much trash as possible through exploits/map glitches/stealth abilities/portal abilities etc. Exactly what we have, where most of the “learn the dungeon” is really learning how to avoid fighting trash and when to dodge.

Pugs and people that play for fun may decide to forego the optimal and play defensive builds (AH Guardian etc.) so they feel like a more active participant in mechanics, but as the ‘elite’ farmers will point out and several AH to Zerker converts have realized, it isn’t making your run more efficient, only more tolerant of mistakes.

Gamers flock to efficiency. Always. If you introduce the most mind numbingly boring task like “bang head against wall” that offers more gold/loot/experience per hour than the most fun and exciting activity ever, they’ll migrate to banging heads against wall. Not all, some overcome that ingrained instinct that constantly alerts us to lost time or inefficiency, but most will not. When a game forces you to play with others to enjoy that content, your love for fun at the cost of being inefficient is effectively moving you out of the larger community and into a subset.

What can they do to improve the situation without reintroducing a trinity? Every class has utility/support/defensive abilities. Reward their use equally to that of DPS. It will introduce a duality, where support + dps are required, but as every class can spec for either it shouldn’t be an issue. Add suitable rewards to trash mobs. Loot should drop at something between a veteran and open world champion per mob killed. If that’s “too much loot”, then reduce the trash mobs. Throwing in 100 distractions into a dungeon isn’t any better than 20 if everyone just finds way to skip 80 of them anyway. Even better, you’ll be less aware you’re gaming/gimmicking a system than you are now.

The best part about normalizing the need for utility/dps, is that every action you take is engaging. Those situational abilities and traits can suddenly become valuable. A mixture of gear can suddenly become valuable.

The best part about reducing the quantity of trash mobs and introducing loot to those that remain? Less learning curve for new players. You just learn to fight the packs, not have to memorize where to hug a wall and where to jump through a collision gap.

Another benefit to these changes is that they do not require total overhauls, only tweaks. Adding loot and removing monsters is grunt work, but no new systems are required. Changing up the abilities that a boss uses is more difficult, but still requires no new systems.

Jski.6180:

But you can solo most of GW2 there just a few events you cant. In most mmorpg most things you cant solo and you MUST have a pt. If any thing GW2 is one of the more friendly solo mmorpg games out there.

Arah. CoF. CoE etc. etc. etc.

It is solo friendly, but no more so than other MMOs. In GW1, essentially all PvE content was soloable. GW2 is much more in line with the 20 other template MMOs on the market at the moment. Gimmick builds exist for most of those to solo party content as well.

Blissified.8369:

If you want to be able to play ALL the content by yourself, then why are you playing an MMO? even if you could play dungeons in gw2 by yourself, it would be way less exciting then playing say a singleplayer only game where you have 5 npcs that help you (DRAGON AGE ORIGINS / MASS EFFECT 1,2,3 BAULDRS GATE, DIABLO, SKYRIM.FALLOUT)

There are times it is obvious someone hits reply and types a response before thinking something through. This is one of those times. These are not mutually exclusive:

- I want to have the option to play with other people when I’m able.
- I want to trade with real people.
- I want to play in areas like WvW with and against other people
- I want to be able to complete all PvE content when I’m unable to do any of those things with people.

You know, somewhat ike GW1, that other game that shares a name, company and lore to which this is supposedly a sequel.

I think it’s important to make a distinction between “GW2 is horrible” and “GW2 could benefit from elements of GW1 it’s missing and is currently headed in a direction away from that rather than towards it which will make it worse than it is and fail to reach its full potential”

I feel the latter is true, but that GW2 remains the best template MMO on the market at the moment. The argument is that it could be even better with some migration towards what made GW1 great.

GW2 is a great game. Once the “Next Big Thing” releases and the locust swarm of MMO misfits moves on I think the game will begin to change for the better. Most anyone over 25 I’m sure has dated someone else that is frustratingly detached. It can take years to realize that there was never anything you or anyone else could do to make the relationship work. They were always going to move on. No matter what, it was about them, not you, not the next person or the one before you. This is true of the MMO locust. It’s not the game, it’s them. No one company can ever satisfy the appetite they have for content / new experiences. Once Anet is relieved of the burden of trying to find ways to stay true to their creed while satisfying the locust swarm, they’ll find it much easier to rediscover what was in the soul of GW1.

silvermember.8941:

..and ones that are whining which would be your camp, are the ones who to make any argument or not. Ultimately, all this whining wont suddenly make gw2 gw1.

Constructive suggestions about how to incorporate excellent elements of a company’s previous product into their current product, a product named after the previous product in fact, with a 2 on the end of that name, does not constitute whining.

No one is looking for an outright copy of GW1. If we were, we would just play GW1. We’re looking for key elements of the Guild Wars franchise that made it unique to be present here. If it had been named World of Guild Wars, you would see less threads like these. It would be clear the intent was not a sequel but a new game in the same universe. Instead, it’s Guild Wars 2. It implies something about the product, something that is missing currently.

You disagree and that’s great. No problem. However, every opinion you disagree with is not whining.

The trouble with this is that I want to keep both armors. I don’t want to lose a zerker set for a knights or settlers set. In order to have zerker, knight and settler with the skin, it has to be purchased 3 times, even if I only want 1 piece, say a chest piece, of different stats configurations.

I just don’t understand how some people react with “love it or leave it”, not thinking that perhaps improvements could be made to the game and make the current game, with its updated engine and improvements, even better than it is.

If they ported the graphics engine, different races and a few other small updates to GW1, and continue building expansions and new content for it afterwards I -would- go back. Seems it would be much easier to just make the changes here necessary to cover the most fundamental parts of what made GW1 great.

Yeah, I like GW2 for a game by itself, but I’m really hoping for an -actual- GW2 to evolve from this game or come out on its own. I didn’t want Warhammer Online in Tyria, though I’m happy to play it for now until someone else does an actual GW2 or a better MMO template game appears.

Morrigan.2809:

I think Vayne had a very good point about people skipping dialogue.

I have lost count of how many times I have heard people complain here that they don’t like the Story- only to say in the same post that they either didn’t do it at all or skipped the actual story parts.

To be fair to them, perhaps they were looking for writing that didn’t make them want to laugh (and not in a good way). In order to enjoy the game, you have to ignore a lot of the dialogue.

Legendary hero of the Norn to you after half a dozen interactions, “You’ve taught me to be a hero again”, which btw, is right after (on the priory line) your “mentor” tells you that you’ve changed their life and taught them how to be heroic…

The writing in a game is never likely to make Cormac McCarthy brim with envy, but it shouldn’t be as bad as it is either.

I hope that the bright minds that remain (as their only bright minds can’t be those that left) have some plan to slowly reintroduce some of what made GW1 great that’s missing here.

If we see another six months to a year of content full of mini-games and temporary rewards, no massive continental expansion, new classes, new story line (please, please, please, change up how the writing is handled. Games don’t have to be award winning novel quality, but it shouldn’t be so bad as to make you laugh out loud in a bad way almost every time a character opens their mouths)… I just don’t see the point.

Break up the expansion into pieces, but don’t use the pieces as an excuse to never introduce content worthy of comparison. A release per month that totals an expansion is great. A release per month of meaningless mini-game filler and temporary dungeons is horrible.

Banquetto.9521:

Unleashed.6195:

In every way that’s crucially important, GW1 was an MMO.

You don’t think it’s “crucially important” that an MMO should feature Massively-Multiplayer Online gameplay?

I kinda do, personally.

What’s your favourite MMO? Counterstrike is pretty cool, isn’t it?

As fun as it is to quip with extended acronyms, maybe you can get into specifics as to what qualifies for “massive” and in what context? I mean, I somehow doubt the words multiplayer and online are what bother you, as those are pretty black and white. It is online. It is multiplayer.

So… massive? Massive where? Dungeons you have 5 people. Group events I’ve seen 50-60 show up. ZvZ in WvW I’ve seen maybe 120 or so at once. The vast majority of content however you usually are seeing < 10 people at a time in GW2, and certainly less than 50, especially with culling in mind.

Is it “30 people interacting at once in a combat zone that is open world, not instanced” that makes it massive? 25? Combat zone not a part of it?

It’s great that everyone can have an opinion and with those opinions take to defining acronyms to mean what they want, you know, defining scotsmen (look up no true scotsmen!). The reality is, MMO may be able to be used slightly more broadly.

When I say it was an MMO in every way that matters, I meant that: The world you inhabited changed with/without you. Players leveled, earned gear, sold things. Guilds chatted and completed content. Permanent change? Sometimes, but no more or less than GW2. (ZOMG, there is a huge beast terrorizing the countryside… again… swear I killed it a few times last week…). You could party up to complete content, trade with people in city zones where everyone could see one another. The world didn’t disappear when you quit, unlike Counter-Strike, Diablo III or whatever else you had in mind to toss out there.

The difference that seems to be the difference for you is the number of instances and quantity of people you can shove into each instance? Pretty weak dividing line imho.

Vayne.8563:

One of the major differences between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 as far as being ….stuff respawns and people solo without heroes. That alone makes the game significantly different. But there are other issues too.

This isn’t a matter of persistence, and neither design makes the other “not an MMO”. It does mean the open world as it stands wouldn’t work well with heroes/henchmen.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 never had to deal with the challenges of having a hundred players on the screen at the same…… have been 24 in a relatively big map in Alliance battles, or 12 in PvE in the Deep or Urgoz’s Warren.

As you stated here though, this isn’t a shift in terms of whether or not it’s an MMO, it’s a shift in what sized groups will work when next to another. Culling still happens, instances still happen, it’s just now that the size is larger before it has to be engaged.

Vayne.8563:

As for dungeons, it’s true instances are instances, but Anet has never focused on dungeons per se…and they still don’t. There are 8 dungeons and 1500 dynamic events over 26 zones. I’m pretty sure Anet is more focused on the open world than dugeons, one of the reasons I like this game.

Every npc combat area was a dungeon in GW1. They may have been open fields. A castle. A city. But they were instanced dungeons you + others or you + heroes/hench completed. GW2 is an improvement in this regard. There is more open world emphasis which is excellent. It’s true that dungeons are not required, but they are where a good deal of the relatively difficult content lay in the game and are where you have some of your best opportunities for highest quality items, crafted goods and coins.

Vayne.8563:

At any rate, a game of this scope requires a bigger budget, which means niche won’t work. That is to say, making the game bigger with more updates requires funding and funding requires people. A niche game was never going to be in the cards for Guild Wars 2. And to appeal to the masses you have to make compromises.

This game’s development was funded by the success of that niche game (though perhaps incidentally, it’s impossible to know whether the purchase by NCSoft provided funds that didn’t exist or whether it simply provided a financial windfall/exit for founders and less risky financing for the future. Even still, NCSoft purchased them based on GW1’s success).

It’s also true that GW1’s scope was comparable in terms of content you could play and enjoy, and that they did just fine releasing several expansions. Sorry, but I just don’t see the benefit to political campaigns fueled by the cash shop being added as game content when you compare it against something like Factions, Nightfall or EotN.

Vayne.8563:

The stuff Guild Wars 1 got away with 8 years ago, it would have never gotten away with in today’s climate. There’s far more competition, far more free to play games, far more expectation from multiplayer games.

You’re right, it needs many of the improvements that exist in GW2. I don’t think that it’s a requirement that they give up what were some fundamental tenets and differences between GW1 and every other MMO that exists. GW1 was unique. It stood alone. There was WoW, AoC, Aion, Rift, Lineage 2, LotRO, SwtoR etc. etc. etc. to do what they do with their own brand of IP slathered on top. GW1 didn’t fit into those categories. Not because it wasn’t an MMO, but because they were brave enough to build an MMO that didn’t fit the template and stick to it.

Zones that shifted as you progressed in the story. Awesome. Can’t find a full party? No problem, remember that alt you leveled up and geared? Just add him as a party member and deck him out and you’re fine. Awesome. Want a new alt? No problem you can reach level 20 going through one of the 3 main story lines and bring your first level 20 along to help ease the way. Awesome.

I don’t see anything about what it did well that would make people say, “What? No thanks. I’d much rather play Lord of the Orcelves World Online XIII because it’s free to play and has minipets.”

GW2 is a good game. It’s a very good mostly template MMO (other than the writing… wth happened to the writing!?!?). It does some unique things very well (events/hearts for instance are an excellent way to move away from some of that feeling of “gather 10 boar kitten ”, and WvW seems very well done overall). It also no longer gets to place itself in a category on its own, and that’s a shame.

What’s not a shame, is that it could return to that category on its own without ruining all it does better than GW1.

Except that what made it magical wasn’t the sense of wonder at something new, but the option to play content with or -without- people through even the most difficult aspects of PvE while the monetization was done in a way that was respectful of players yet allowed me to spend far more on it than I would have if it were b2p or subscription based.

This isn’t a matter of rose tinted nostalgia. It’s a matter of this isn’t a sequel to GW1. It’s a more heavy handed cash shop built inside of a GW themed MMO missing a central component of GW1 (AI companions).

You’re right, I won’t go back to playing GW1. I played it for several years. The engine is dated. It needs some of the improvements from GW2. It needs dedicated content support and updates. What I would do however, is play GW2 in a blissful state with heroes/henchmen and less cash shop integration.

Why is it you feel that just because something is new it can’t benefit in any way from what is old? GW2 does many things right GW1 did not, but GW1 did many things right GW2 gets wrong. Even better, and the point of this thread, nothing inherent in GW2’s design prevents bringing what was right about GW1 over and having the best of both worlds.

If the new medium armor aether set wasn’t so perfect for an engineer (minus the helm), I’d have protested by never buying it again once I realized it was single use per item. $10 for one set of armor restyle…. ugh.

Shrug I hope their financial success allows them to move a little back towards the magic of GW1 rather than cements their belief that this new philosophy is the way forward. If that happens, then I hope someone else creates a modern tribute to GW1 and does it justice.

The new skin ticket system is a prime example, as are the visual skins being one time use only @ $10 a pop. There’s no reason they can’t be reusable, indefinitely, and depending on how many gear sets you try out at max level, if you really like a cash skin, using it could cost you $30-$40 for your combinations. Answer of course is to just not buy them. Same with upgrades. If you’re fine risking losing a rune on an upgrade, no reason to buy the BL salvage kits, but the 100% recovery come at a pretty high cost.

All that said, you may be right that I will feel differently after much more time in the game where gold is not a constant restriction. I tend to level all chars to max first and THEN do end game, which usually is pretty expensive.

As for playing with others instead of Koss of your alt heroes? Nothing prevented that in GW1. I played with real people often. The option NOT to play with real people when you need to is what’s missing.

It’s not so much that I’m stuck in the past either, I just was looking for more from GW2 than a nicely refined MMO in GW skin. I was looking for a spiritual successor to GW1, something where the 2 made sense.

Agreed. I just don’t see that it hast o remain that game. Something as simple (in terms of explaining what to do, I realize this isn’t necessarily simple to implement) as reintroducing heroes/henchmen for 5-man PvE content and clamping down on the grinds (they’re everywhere right now…) to keep them from spreading any further while moving some of them to be account bound would bring back much of the magic from GW1 in terms of gameplay.

There is nothing magical about GW2’s persistence compared to GW1 in terms of game design. Take a city center and put mobs in it you can kill and you have the open world areas. Dungeons are still instanced. Want to remove heroes/henchmen from open world? That’s fine, nothing there requires a party outside of group events which don’t require a pre-made party to begin with.

In every way that’s crucially important, GW1 was an MMO. Your character persisted. You could trade with other players with that persistent character and know that their character was persisted under the same rules as yours. You could see many players in a city and interact with them.

I’m not really advocating for a second profession per character though, easy enough to live without that, but it will be nice to see a new set of abilities released per class and much better balance in terms of group utility in PvE/PvP OR the return of henchmen so you can get rid of the need to be optimal rather than just viable.

Being “niche” funded a massive company that was able to fund development of GW2 over several years. Solving skill bloat, balance issues and new user overload can all be done while still incorporating things that made GW1 unique and incredible.

That another game is worse doesn’t remove all burden from this game to examine itself. This game is not a tragedy in terms of cash shop greed, but the direction it is moving is the wrong direction, no matter how slight that movement may be. This is what happens when game design decisions are weighed by how they will impact the gem shop.

GW2 has far more in common with standard MMOs that GW1. I can’t comprehend at all how you would say it was a generic MMO when you could run around as a full party with nothing but you and AI you’d configured and complete all PvE content, including dungeons/bosses.

Classes were just as individually defined because when you had a primary class in GW1 it gave you a primary class stat that you could not get as a secondary. This make the mixture one of synergy rather than blurring the lines. I played GW1 for -years-, and every grind in GW1 was for something cosmetic or so inconsequential in terms of player power that it wasn’t necessary.

Even if they maintain that same stat disparity and power disparity with items you grind for here, the trouble is that now it’s a party based game where you have to play with other people. What do other people want? Min/Max party members. If you’re not optimal, you’re not viable, and if you’re not considered viable under this rework of the definition, your access to content is restricted.