Guild Wars 2

@Pax

Stuff you listed as promised content, wasn’t actually promised. We were told before the launch there would be 4 maps. We were told there would be no new race.

Nor did Anet promise a branching story line for HoT.

Not sure where you got that from.

Atma.4175:

HoT have a relation of Love and hate.

You love the new class, the prestige class, new weapons, new fractals, guild halls, and a lot of things.

You will hate the HoT maps, because is too dificult to play alone, you are forced to farm mastery skills to not die in the jungle.

You should probably say “I” instead of “you”, because I don’t find HoT too difficult to play alone, I didn’t feel like I was farming mastery skills, and I didn’t particularly die that much in the jungle.

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

While they replaced dungeons as the challenging content, they didn’t carry the spirit of dungeons. Raids did.

Except they didn’t. Dungeons had multiple paths, raids don’t. You could do story mode and see at least the inside the dungeon, even if you didn’t see every boss. Not true for raids.

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Sartharina.3542:

Raids are what Dungeons wanted to be at launch. The raids are our new dungeons. Unfortunately, dungeons weren’t what dungeons were supposed to be at launch, and aren’t what they’re really supposed to be now. It’s part of why they’ve been abandoned.

I disagree with this. Dungeons were meant to be challenging 5 man content and according to Anet they were replaced by Fractals not raids. Raids were an additional level of difficulty added.

Fractals have the advantage of not excluding people by having multiple difficulties. Dungeons have story mode, which is easier and explorable modes.

Raids have one difficulty. That’s it.

And raids have legendary armor. Dungeons had only skins.

Fractals are the true spiritual successor to dungeons, and raids were never mentioned by Anet at all, until the expansion.

Fractals were not the spiritual successor to dungeons – they all had their rewards clumped together, had multiple difficulty tiers per mini-dungeon (Every core dungeon has one difficult level for the content. Story mode is NOT ‘easy mode’ for Explorable, and each Path has its own bosses and mechanics). Also, fractals inhabit no space in the world, and while they have some lore tidbits, they’re explicitly stripped from the world itself. Individual dungeons are also a component of legendary weapons.

Raids have space in the world and current events, like dungeons, and, like dungeons, provide unique weapon and armor skins of the highest tier available when they were released, themed to the content. I could see an argument that Raid wings could have been closer to the Dungeon Paths, with all wings offering the same reward, but they went with a more linear approach to the story, instead of “Do One Thing One of Three Ways.”

Fractals are a treadmill. Raids are a challenge.

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

Sartharina.3542:

Raids are what Dungeons wanted to be at launch. The raids are our new dungeons. Unfortunately, dungeons weren’t what dungeons were supposed to be at launch, and aren’t what they’re really supposed to be now. It’s part of why they’ve been abandoned.

I disagree with this. Dungeons were meant to be challenging 5 man content and according to Anet they were replaced by Fractals not raids. Raids were an additional level of difficulty added.

Fractals have the advantage of not excluding people by having multiple difficulties. Dungeons have story mode, which is easier and explorable modes.

Raids have one difficulty. That’s it.

And raids have legendary armor. Dungeons had only skins.

Fractals are the true spiritual successor to dungeons, and raids were never mentioned by Anet at all, until the expansion.

Sykper.6583:

Just as an fyi Vayne, earning currency as you get further along in a raid encounter is not ‘no rewards’.

Provided you are raiding to Shard cap every week with due diligence, everyone raiding will get shards to purchase ascended gear of any stat they choose, at a much larger gold discount mind you.

And on the off-chance you do kill another raid boss just once, you unlock its equipment for purchase, the lovely unique skins and so forth.

After hours and hours and hours and hours of doing the escort, I still don’t have enough for a single piece of ascended armor. I could have build one out of oatmeal in this time. For all intents and purposes, it’s a very slow trickle of reward, while doing something I’m NOT ENJOYING.

Those are the key words. If I were enjoying it, the rewards would matter a lot less. To make the rewards worth it, you really do have to actually kill the bosses. Learning how to kill the bosses is NOT WORTH MY TIME.

I do want the rewards. I don’t want to do something I hate for hours on end.

Fatalyz.7168:

Hjorje.9453:

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Then those players are not the target audience for that content, and that is OK. Just because people that are not the target audience are not able to complete it, is not a reason to change the content to suit them.

And before anyone says that you aren’t asking to change the content, that you want to increase the accessibility, there are two scenarios for that to happen: 1) they create an infantile-like mode, but do not increase dev resources resulting in either poorer quality or increased time between releases, or 2) they increase raid dev resources by bringing in devs from other departments/areas, Raids are now able to get multi-layered content but content in other parts of the game now has reduced quality or increased time between releases. Neither of those situations is conducive to “adding onto”. You could say that there is a third option, hire more resources, and while I don’t see that happening, I’ve been wrong before.

Except you’re getting a reward for that content that no one else is going to get, and you think that’s fine and dandy, even though you’re a minority. In Guild Wars 1 not everyone could do DOA to get tormented weapons, but they could buy what they needed from other players to get tormented weapons, without doing DOA. That’s how the game worked.

When the game started, you could buy legendaries, without doing anything but farming gold, or even taking out your credit card.

If that’s not a change of identity, I don’t know what is.

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

When my guild started doing raids, “raid night” consisted of wiping on VG for three hours. Now we have the wings on farm mode.

Your guild is going through progression, you wipe until you don’t and then you put it on farm and move on to the next boss.

See that’s the thing. You may find it acceptable or fun to play for hours for no reward except getting a little better or a little further. I don’t.

Some of the people in my guild can only play for four hours a week. Their entire game time then would be not progressing at all for weeks and months. You think that’s okay? You think they’ll want to keep playing this game?

I have tons of stuff I actually WANT to do in this game. I don’t really think repeating the same thing over and over again just to get a bit better so I can finally beat it is fun, and it’s certainly not effective use of my time.

Put it another way. If I enjoy crossword puzzles and I get a hard one, that’s fine. I’ll bang my head against it because I enjoy it. It might take a long time, because I’m having fun.

I’m doing the same thing with raids….minus the fun.

Sure we beat the escort, but when we did, I didn’t feel this tremendous sense of elation. I felt this tremendous sense of relief. Finally it’s over.

And I’m going to have to do this how much to get to legendary armor, something I’d have been okay working on with any other content in the game?

Sorry, this doesn’t work for me.

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

10 people that don’t do rotation should still do more dps than 1 person on a solo’ing build.

Enrage timers are irrelevant. The enrage itself is trivial and the checks required to not hit enrage are trivial.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

Fatalyz.7168:

Vayne.8563:

It’s different with raids, because dungeons never had an enrage timer. That’s what makes the entire situation different.

Could I beat a dungeon with an entire team of people in soldier’s gear? Sure I can. Because it doesn’t matter if I take longer. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.

I run a super casual guild and we run dungeons for years including Arah. When people were killing lupi in a minute, it took us ten. Didn’t matter. We could spend as much time as we wanted. We weren’t hurting anyone. We were having fun.

The enrage timer changes all that. You have to do more DPS so you have to have enough people with the right builds. It means vetting people in my guild. Telling them they have to play a different way.

You say it’s not different from dungeons, but it is, because it was possible to beat dungeons without changing builds. That’s not always the case for raids.

If enrage timers prevent people from completing bosses at their own pace, how is it that someone has soloed a raid boss (Cairn) and last I saw a Mesmer was getting close to soloing VG.

Yes enrage timers exist, however it doesn’t mean that the fight is a hard fail. Chances are if you are hitting the enrage timer, you are failing mechanics more than anything else.

Even if you do hit enrage, on most fights, so long as you are still able to handle the mechanics, you can still beat and pass the encounter.

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

Astralporing.1957:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Astralporing.1957:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Astralporing.1957:

Yep, the system is really unfriendly for all new guilds. Which is a problem.

Why is it a problem? Why should a new guild be easy to establish? Running a social network well is a lot of work; perhaps it’s better if the incentives are better for joining an established organization rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Nope. That eventually ends up killing any attempts to make new guilds in game. And a game where every community is an old one is a dying game.

I can’t disagree more that it “ends up killing any attempts to make new guilds.” It discourages people from starting guilds for the sake of starting a guild. It encourages people to be ready to commit to the enormous effort that is required to establish a long-lasting social structure.

No, it discourages guilds that grow. It creates a situation, where if you can’t create a big guild from the day one, you should give up. It has nothing to do with long-lasting social structures. In fact, of the guilds i have been in in my long MMO history, the most fragile ones were those with more members, as those tend to have less group cohesion.

Or it weeds out the fly by night guilds that get created and die anyway because of lack of commitment that would have died anyway.

Too many guilds isn’t good for an MMO either, particularly if they’re going to suck.

OniGiri.9461:

Blaeys.3102:

In almost every case, the first thing “training” guilds do is push players toward meta builds – which is pretty much the opposite of the points we’re trying to make here. It’s about realistically (important word) opening the experience to more playstyles and builds.

This isnt about hard walls or extremes. It is about degrees and the point at which content is unnecessarily restrictive and creates a Stepford Wife syndrome in the game – one in which every player either plays to the mold or gets left behind.

This hung up about changing your gear and build because of raids seems so fake to me.

I’m a warrior main.
When i started doing dungeons back in the day i had to change my gear and playstyle to zerker so i could pull my weight in the encounter and be able to join more pug groups.

When i started doing fractals about 2,5 years ago i had to change my build and utilities to phalanx strength so i could be as usefull as possible in the encounter and be able to join more pug groups.

Its no different with raids. This is truely no argument for an identity change for guild wars 2.

Maybe the time has come to close this thread. We are at the point were its exlusivly a thread complaining about “why i don’t like guild wars 2 raids”.

It’s different with raids, because dungeons never had an enrage timer. That’s what makes the entire situation different.

Could I beat a dungeon with an entire team of people in soldier’s gear? Sure I can. Because it doesn’t matter if I take longer. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.

I run a super casual guild and we run dungeons for years including Arah. When people were killing lupi in a minute, it took us ten. Didn’t matter. We could spend as much time as we wanted. We weren’t hurting anyone. We were having fun.

The enrage timer changes all that. You have to do more DPS so you have to have enough people with the right builds. It means vetting people in my guild. Telling them they have to play a different way.

You say it’s not different from dungeons, but it is, because it was possible to beat dungeons without changing builds. That’s not always the case for raids.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

nosleepdemon.1368:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Playing MMO’s (and other video games) is wasting time, unless you’re one of those playing an ESport game and are making money doing so. I would not be concerned about playing this game being a waste of time — it probably already is.

The only point to a video game for most is to have fun. If you’re concerned about something other than fun, I’d say you’d be better off giving up video games completely. If you like GW2 as you claim, you’re probably having fun. If so, I’d say keep playing until that changes.

I’m not concerned about the game dying. Not at all. I expect GW2 to last for years more. I’ve seen games with much lower populations hang on for a half a decade and they’re still hanging on.

Truer words are rarely spoken in gaming. People forget, because games are designed to make them forget, that they have a choice: Games are entertainment, they are not crucial, they are not some sort of personal identity without which one is less of a person. One does not have to play a game if it proves frustrating.

If you are slaving away at a game, because you have been told it “gets good at max level”, or because item X will make it all better, then you are making yourself miserable based on an empty promise.

Play games that are enjoyable right now, and if they aren’t, throw them in the bin and do something worth your time.

I don’t know that I can agree with this completely. While it seems self-evident, there is something that called to this whole immediate gratification thing that teaches people to not really give something a chance.

Some of the best books I’ve ever read started slowly and I didn’t really enjoy them until the halfway mark, but I’d have been poorer for not having read them.

The first season of Babylon 5 was meh, but it turned out to be one of my favorite scifi series of all time.

There are plenty of people who come to this game from other games and “don’t get it” because its’ different from many other games. Not giving the game a chance, seems like what you’re advocating.

How many people come here and say it’s hard to level, or they’re bored, because they don’t really understand how the game is laid out or what they’re supposed to do.

Sure, if something isn’t fun over the long haul, by all means, get it out of your life. But there are plenty of things in my life that weren’t fun at first, but I perservered and they became more than I could have imagined.

I guess I’m an old guy. The need for instant gratification to me is something I think that’s a problem…one that’s not likely to go away.

While I understand your point, I think as far as MMO’s go, it is possible for those for whom a given MMO is not their first rodeo to pull the not-fun trigger sooner rather than later. For instance, I liked the story presentation in SWtOR a lot more than GW2’s (imo Anet could learn something from that game). However, after a short stint in beta I recognized that the game play in tOR was going to drive me bat kitten crazy as it was patterned after WoW’s — which I find dated and insipid. In fact, what keeps me in GW2 despite ANet’s many vigorous attempts to convince me to leave is this game’s game play.

\

Then you gave WoW a chance, and didn’t give SWToR a chance, because it was essentially WoW with a Bioware Story. You don’t need to play a game that’s exactly like another game for a long time to know you won’t like it.

On the other hand, how many times have we seen people return to this game 2, or 3 times and leave, because they really didn’t “get it” because it’s fundametally different from MMOs that they’ve been playing for years….only to come back and find they loved this game. I played WoW and then Rift and they were very very simlar games. I came here to get away from those games.

But if someone enjoyed those games and came here and tried to play this game like they play those games, they might get a completely different experience. Particularly with an MMO, if it’s not just like another MMO, it takes time to “get it”.

In fact, most MMOs change drastically at max level. There are many people who speed level to get to the fun stuff, but when they get there, it really is fun stuff…. to them. I’m not one of those people as I like the leveling experience.

But people coming from other MMOs, often don’t like Guild Wars 2 because they haven’t grasped what the game is trying to accomplish within MMO space.

Casual players probably won’t have as many transmutation charges, but long time, more dedicated players will have tons. I’m sitting on 773 of them.

Pretty sure this isn’t the reaction the OP was looking for.

Why poll for something that simply won’t happen?

Einlanzer.1627:

Anyone with half a brain and little bit of experience knows that most MMOs have both better quality and better speed than Anet has. If there’s any doubt, just pick up FF14 for a few months. So all of these “take forever so it can be more polished” arguments are kittenhit.

As for mounts, yes I do think they are very attractive to the majority of MMO players as they are an attractive collection item while also adding immersion to the setting. I’m not sure what’s so extravagant about them, considering nearly every other MMO has them. I would wager my life that they generate more interest and revenue than they cost to produce in virtually all cases. I would actually take the argument even further and state that the fact that GW2 launched without them did damage to the game that it may never recover from.

Even if that were true about FF XIV and it might be, that doesn’t make your statement true, since you claim MOST MMOs have better quality and speed than Anet. That would involve polling all MMOs, and 50% of them having better quality and speed.

Because you picked the MMO that’s probably doing best right now, you’ve put doubt into your whole argument. Because I’ve played a lot of other MMOs where this wasn’t true, far more than it is true for.

Even WoW doesn’t make content faster than Anet and they’re a much bigger MMO. And of course, quality is a subjective matter.

I’d be willing to wager most MMOs don’t have nearly the speed and quality of these updates, as in more than 50% of them.

I’d go as far to say very few developers update their MMOs as frequently.

Not happening. Shouldn’t happen. Won’t happen. There are games for that, but this isn’t one of them. Changing the core of the game is just a bad idea.

Actually I’ve always wanted to see mounts in this game, and I love the game and the way point system. I never saw mounts as a way to get places faster. I saw mounts as something to collect and a further way to customize my character.

Some of my characters would ride things that other characters wouldn’t because it fit their character. As a further way to customize my character, something else to collect, I would absolutely welcome mounts.

But do I expect to see mounts in this game in some future expansion? Not really, no.

coso.9173:

some people really hate others to bring ideas from other MMOs in here. they feel threatened somehow. I couldn’t care less for BDO specifically but I’m sure it does something right and we could always learn a thing of two from how other games do things.

Sure we can but these suggestions fundamentally change something that exists in this game, and some people like it.

I’m not a mechanics player, I’m an immersion player. I don’t need to hit more keys, or more sets of keys, or more combinations of keys to feel a game is good or bad. I don’t need to change up my build constantly to feel a game is good or bad. That’s not why I play these games and it’s not what I like about them.

So to me, adding more that I have to think about, that takes me out of the game world and looking at the world and reacting to the world is a suggestion that doesn’t enhance my game play. I prefer to not think that much about the combat and just react without a lot of complication, because that’s not what I’m playing the game for.

This isn’t something like adding fishing to this game, which I’d welcome. These are fundamental changes to the way I’d play this game…and I play this game for a reason.

Carighan.6758:

You had me until “more underwater combat”, which is obviously never going to happen.

I suspect the one person who knew how underwater combat works in the engine got fired near the end of LS1, and then they also found out that now they no longer have someone in the team to rip out UW-combat entirely. So um… just let it sit and hope players forget about it?

I think it’s more likely on a list for a complete overhaul as part of a larger upgrade, but they have too much going on now to focus on it. They’ll get to it, at some point, perhaps in an expansion in the future.

First of all, there is zero point doing any sort of heavy advertising between expansions. There are ads up on sites like MMORPG.com and Facebook. It’s not like no advertising is happening, but advertising is expensive. Until an expansion comes out there’s very little reason to put money into it. You’ll never get the return on it. Keep in mind this is a four year old game. Most people interested in it would have gotten it already.

There are new zones with new bosses every 2-3 months. I don’t think that’s an issue for the game at this point.

I have no comment about PvP but I know for a fact WvW players are angry every time you add PvE stuff like bosses to their game mode.

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Just because it doesn’t say “kill 10 rats”, hearts still have you killing 10 rats. It’s just disguised.

Not quite true. Events scale. It’s not a fixed number of rats. Obviously there are going to be killing quests in ANY MMO. Not having a fixed number is the difference.

In most MMOs if you kill ten rats, there are still 40 rats still here. In Guild Wars 2, you drive off the enemy. It makes a huge difference…to me anyway.

The way to handle it is to find a safe spot near the checkpoints, and not go on them till everyone is there. In my guild we assign a number from left to right so we always hit the keys in the same order.

It also helps if everyone is on voice, so you can say go and everyone goes at once, but that can be typed as well.

nosleepdemon.1368:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Playing MMO’s (and other video games) is wasting time, unless you’re one of those playing an ESport game and are making money doing so. I would not be concerned about playing this game being a waste of time — it probably already is.

The only point to a video game for most is to have fun. If you’re concerned about something other than fun, I’d say you’d be better off giving up video games completely. If you like GW2 as you claim, you’re probably having fun. If so, I’d say keep playing until that changes.

I’m not concerned about the game dying. Not at all. I expect GW2 to last for years more. I’ve seen games with much lower populations hang on for a half a decade and they’re still hanging on.

Truer words are rarely spoken in gaming. People forget, because games are designed to make them forget, that they have a choice: Games are entertainment, they are not crucial, they are not some sort of personal identity without which one is less of a person. One does not have to play a game if it proves frustrating.

If you are slaving away at a game, because you have been told it “gets good at max level”, or because item X will make it all better, then you are making yourself miserable based on an empty promise.

Play games that are enjoyable right now, and if they aren’t, throw them in the bin and do something worth your time.

I don’t know that I can agree with this completely. While it seems self-evident, there is something that called to this whole immediate gratification thing that teaches people to not really give something a chance.

Some of the best books I’ve ever read started slowly and I didn’t really enjoy them until the halfway mark, but I’d have been poorer for not having read them.

The first season of Babylon 5 was meh, but it turned out to be one of my favorite scifi series of all time.

There are plenty of people who come to this game from other games and “don’t get it” because its’ different from many other games. Not giving the game a chance, seems like what you’re advocating.

How many people come here and say it’s hard to level, or they’re bored, because they don’t really understand how the game is laid out or what they’re supposed to do.

Sure, if something isn’t fun over the long haul, by all means, get it out of your life. But there are plenty of things in my life that weren’t fun at first, but I perservered and they became more than I could have imagined.

I guess I’m an old guy. The need for instant gratification to me is something I think that’s a problem…one that’s not likely to go away.

I don’t know, the game comes out with a new story and new zone every 2-3 months. They’re making new raid wings. If you’re a PvE player, there’s plenty to do and plenty of people playing.

I can’t speak to the other game modes, though I have people in my guild who live in WvW, so they have to be fighting someone. lol

TheJokester.4672:

Why not compare anets previous game to this one? and the amount of content that was brought to the table? instead of blizzard use their own track record and when I looked at gw2 given how gw1 was when they announced I was super stoked I understand graphics animations etc are a lot more intricate and advanced visuals but they also have an enormous team compared to gw1 days just saying.

Because it’s easier to program a lobby game than an MMO by an order of magnitude. A lobby game without jumping, that was almost completely pathed, where you didn’t have 100 people using skills all at the same time in the same zone.

Different time, different game. The bar was set, in some ways, much lower. You may not realize it, but Guild Wars 1 was a much easier thing to program in general. You can compare them if you like, but it’s like comparing a bicycle to a motorcycle. They’re both two wheeled vehicles, but one of them is far more complex.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Vayne.8563:

ProtoGunner.4953:

OniGiri.9461:

ProtoGunner.4953:

FF14: ARR came out a year later and releases a 2nd expansion this summer…

Just to make people feel how extremely slow anet is. I lost motivation after a couple of months after HoT and I don’t bother to log in anymore because I am so bored (and some great games coming out the past months).

They need to learn that a steady stream of content is needed to keep players coming online. Why they only think they have to reinvent the wheel with new ‘concepts’ etc. is beyond my comprehension. People just want cool and meaty content like dungeons (non-gimmicky like Aetherpath). They just need to gaze upon their ex-company Blizzard to know how you do things.

Generalize much?

“People” want different things. Different players, different expactaitions.
Im perfectly fine with the speed we are getting new things.
New maps, new and revamped fractals, new raids, new story stuff, new pvp seasons, new legendaries, etc.

Im glad they try out new stuff. If i wanted the same ol’ same ol’ – there are plenty of other games that deliever that.

I know, I know. GW2 people tend to be very patient. I assume it’s part conditioning part ‘you have to get along with it’. But imagine the standard MMO player back in the days and you release an expansion with only 3.5 maps and not a single dungeon. The people I talked with wished much more. So to speak, no I don’t speak for the general GW2 community, but at least with those who played with me GW2 and GW1 the past 10 years.

And yet this is the sentiment I came to this game to get away from. I don’t care if they EVER introduce another dungeon.

In most games you burn through the new zones, go quest hub to quest hub, get everything done and never return to that zone. This game is a very different animal.

I can’t compare VB or TD or DS for that matter to any expansion zone in any game I’ve played, ever. I got far more replayability out of those zones.

The number of zones is not as important to me as the complexity of the zones.

Ever heard of reputation farming? I returned to a lot of WoW zones to farm reputation until I hit exalted and/or there were other mechanics to do.

I don’t think the HoT maps are bad, but I had most done in like 3-4 weeks, and map achievements in a couple of weeks later. The story content was very short (4 hours, compared to GW: Nightfall which took me nearly a week of daily playing to finish), there were no dungeons to run with friends and no reputation to farm for glorious rewards. And let’s face it: 3 and a half maps (DS being one meta zerg event which is fun for 1-2 times – rest is farming for skins/achievements/mastery points) the content was just too little. Especially if you consider the rather high price of 50€.

After that I expected at least some content but the drought until the first LS release was too long. It was okay, but actually, I lost motivation. I really am bored. I made two new legendaries and my interest is dwindling.

That said the raids are of course fine, but unfortunately I lost interest in them. My theory is supported by the fact that less and less people are playing – popularity is low and friends asked me if the game is still live. I will buy the new expansion of course – I play since vanilla GW1, but my hope for the franchise are a bit low. Alas the whole MMO industry is bleeding. There’s a huge shift towards MOBAS and other team based games.

At least I still have my PS4 with great single player games. Why repeating tons of the same content in an MMO when I can play games like Nier: Automata, Horizon, Nioh, Bloodborne, Uncharted 4, Persona 5 etc.

So farming rep is a thing but farming currency isn’t? You mean the ascended weapons you could get and the new armor skins aren’t sweet rewards?

First of all, I did rep farming in most games, they were basically just specific daily quests in different areas. This is completely different.

For one thing, I enjoy completing the hot zones on different characters and if I’m making HoT legendaries (I’ve made 2 so far), I need zone complete on all the zones to do it.

Dragon Stand as an event, not a daily is a fun event to me. So is the Chak Garent for that matter.

But more, all the events in the zones are repeatable and some of those event chains are excellent. They’re also a good way to farm currency.

In most MMOs, just about all the ones I’ve played, the quests are one time only unless you go through on another character. It’s quest hub to quest hub to quest hub. This is completely different.

As for the story, since you’re only counting instances and ignoring the story in the zones themselves, which is probably half the story, I’m not sure what to tell you.

I think you and I are playing completely different games.

Doam.8305:

They announce an expac now and it’s dead in the water

Reviewers, players, and on lookers will know or hear about the fact that the last expansion didn’t keep all its promises. Thus no one would have any reason to beleive anything they said regarding the new one. This would be easy fodder for rage reviewers and any critics of the game the bad word of mouth would spread much faster than any ad they could put out.

It’s simply a bad idea all around to announce an expac before releasing the full set of legendaries. They’d basically be offering hefty bait for every troll, competing shill, and click bait reviewer to rip the announcement apart. Including others wouldn’t trust anything they promise regarding the next expansion the game would boil down to a few knights and F2p players with no doubt less sales than HoT. HoT came in on a wave of good will the next expac would have a level of negative press the first expac never had to deal with.

I can almost guarantee that they’ll announce the expansion before they finish the full set. I mean if they’re doing a new weapon every 2-3 months, it’ll be years before a full set is finished.

There’s no way they can wait years to announce the expansion.

Carighan.6758:

Vayne.8563:

I’d honestly be surprised if this is the case.

Why? Will only be one Dragon? I mean I suspect it’ll only be one (can release two smaller xpacks back-to-back, one for Jormag, one for Primordeus), but I bet they keep the general MO from HoT.

I have my own theories that I don’t share, but like I said, I’d be surprised if either of those dragons were the next dragon.

Nyel.1843:

zealex.9410:

Nyel.1843:

As long as it happens this year I am happy. Expansion 2 at the soonest next year would be… risky.

Why? This year the competition is gonna be really tough with both ff14 and eso releasing theirs and i dought gw2 can take on them both. Tbh i prefer having this lw season have like what? 8 to 10 episodes then the expansion to make sure they have the time they need.That way we get a quality product that brings the lvl of detail and quality this game has shown to be able to pull off.

FF14 and ESO release their expansions in June. So it would be smart to release the GW2 expansion in September / October / November when most players are already done with the other two expansions (Stormblood will have massive content but Morrowind is pretty small compared to other MMORPG expansions). To release an expansion 4-5 months after the competitors did is pretty smart because in that time frame won’t be any bigger game expansion for the next 6-12 months.

Battling in late 2018 with WoWs next expansion seems to be much harder than battling with half a year old FF14/ESO expansions.

So much this. It’s one of the reasons I expect the expansion this year.

Sartharina.3542:

I’m pretty sure that Xpac 2 will be the big beatdown of Primordus and Jormag, with LS3 serving simply as the prelude (As LS2 was the prelude to Heart of Thorns)

I’d honestly be surprised if this is the case.

Conncept.7638:

Carighan.6758:

Or, more likely, RIP and in GW3.

I think you mean “RIP and goodbye ANet.” As NCSoft/Nexon pulls all their funding to funnel into another game like they’ve done with many other promising games their meddling and dishonest business practices have utterly tanked.

Nexon doesn’t have a controlling interest in NcSoft and has no control at all over what happens to Guild Wars 2. Just saying.

ProtoGunner.4953:

OniGiri.9461:

ProtoGunner.4953:

FF14: ARR came out a year later and releases a 2nd expansion this summer…

Just to make people feel how extremely slow anet is. I lost motivation after a couple of months after HoT and I don’t bother to log in anymore because I am so bored (and some great games coming out the past months).

They need to learn that a steady stream of content is needed to keep players coming online. Why they only think they have to reinvent the wheel with new ‘concepts’ etc. is beyond my comprehension. People just want cool and meaty content like dungeons (non-gimmicky like Aetherpath). They just need to gaze upon their ex-company Blizzard to know how you do things.

Generalize much?

“People” want different things. Different players, different expactaitions.
Im perfectly fine with the speed we are getting new things.
New maps, new and revamped fractals, new raids, new story stuff, new pvp seasons, new legendaries, etc.

Im glad they try out new stuff. If i wanted the same ol’ same ol’ – there are plenty of other games that deliever that.

I know, I know. GW2 people tend to be very patient. I assume it’s part conditioning part ‘you have to get along with it’. But imagine the standard MMO player back in the days and you release an expansion with only 3.5 maps and not a single dungeon. The people I talked with wished much more. So to speak, no I don’t speak for the general GW2 community, but at least with those who played with me GW2 and GW1 the past 10 years.

And yet this is the sentiment I came to this game to get away from. I don’t care if they EVER introduce another dungeon.

In most games you burn through the new zones, go quest hub to quest hub, get everything done and never return to that zone. This game is a very different animal.

I can’t compare VB or TD or DS for that matter to any expansion zone in any game I’ve played, ever. I got far more replayability out of those zones.

The number of zones is not as important to me as the complexity of the zones.

I’m sure Mike O said they wanted to have a smaller window between the announcement of the expansion and release this time, so what happened before may not be much of a barometer. In theory it could be announced in June and still come out before the end of the year.

I even have this problem on my main account when I do a fractal or jump into WvW, since I spend most of my time in open world PvE.

Anet doesn’t provide the number of active accounts. Still plenty of people playing, but no one can give you an accurate number.

Astralporing.1957:

castlemanic.3198:

Isn’t June way too soon for an expansion? Especially because there hasn’t been a single word on the matter?

He didn’t say the expansion will be in June, just the news.
Personally, i wouldn’t count on next expac happening this year – if that was a plan, we would have first news about it already. I’d say August next year is the earliest something can happen.

And as for any general news, state of the game posts, or game direction updates. I wouldn’t expect them at all. Anet seems institutionally incapable of communicating on that level.

I don’t think they’re going to have as long a lead time this time around. That is I expect less than 9 months from the annoucement to shipping. I could still come the end of this year.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Vayne.8563:

Abelisk.4527:

I think Anet will take a while before deciding to release its next xpac.

There was a thread somewhere where NCSoft told Anet to release its next xpac within 1-2 years, but Anet said they do what they wanna do and that the next xpac will likely not be released in that timeframe.

I don’t believe this was ever said. First of all, Anet never said we do what we want to. The one time NcSoft did say when an expansion would be released, Anet simply ignored them. They never commented on it. Why would they? NcSoft owns Anet completely. Saying no publicly to anything NcSoft says is a bad business decision.

And Anet certainly never gave a later date for this expansion, considering they haven’t even announced it yet.

Actually, Mike did say that, or something very close, somewhat recently, though nothing specific about a 1-2 year timeframe (which I don’t believe NCSoft specified, either). And, it’s been stated before. It was either in one of the recent AMAs, or one of his recent forum posts. (Recent being within the last year or so.)

They certainly never said the next expansion won’t be released in a 1-2 year time frame, though. That would be nuts.

Abelisk.4527:

I think Anet will take a while before deciding to release its next xpac.

There was a thread somewhere where NCSoft told Anet to release its next xpac within 1-2 years, but Anet said they do what they wanna do and that the next xpac will likely not be released in that timeframe.

I don’t believe this was ever said. First of all, Anet never said we do what we want to. The one time NcSoft did say when an expansion would be released, Anet simply ignored them. They never commented on it. Why would they? NcSoft owns Anet completely. Saying no publicly to anything NcSoft says is a bad business decision.

And Anet certainly never gave a later date for this expansion, considering they haven’t even announced it yet.

We’ve had a number of dungeon dailies recently. Much harder than that I don’t expect to see.

Danikat.8537:

Vayne.8563:

Even if they do add a Cantha or Elona expansion it won’t start you from level 1 in those areas. They’ll all be level 80 content. At least that’s what Anet said.

Not that any of us know anything about it yet, but that does seem likely.

I hope they do eventually add Cantha and Elona into the game, but if they do it will be an expansion like HoT – not a stand-alone campaign like GW1 had where you can start a new character at level 1 in those maps. Part of the reason they made GW2 was because they found the separate campaign model impractical: it meant every time they made a new release they had to have a new tutorial zone (which was getting more complicated each time) and low level maps. And then they had to make the story work for both new characters starting on that campaign and existing characters.

This was said a long time ago, before launch, that they learned from the first game and didn’t want different starting areas with different games because they didn’t want to divide the player base. They said expansions will be more like Eye of the North, rather than stand alone games.

I took that to mean all expansions will be level 80 content.

Even if they do add a Cantha or Elona expansion it won’t start you from level 1 in those areas. They’ll all be level 80 content. At least that’s what Anet said.

Genlog.4983:

Vayne.8563:

marelooke.9708:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Cyninja.2954:

My advice: get used to using the LFG feature in this game.

Good advice for us all, regardless of which metas we love or hate, which story instance we can master.

1. Go to DS way on time
2. Get in a good squad through LFG
2. Dragon blasts everyone off the map
3. You get dumped along with a few others in empty instances away from your initial squad
4. Can’t rejoin the instance of the squad you were in the same instance with seconds before, because full
5. Game over, wait another two hours and try the slot machine again

I’ve done dragon stand dozens of times. This has literally never happened to me, not even once.

i have the same problem and Anet really need to fix that
had a very big zerk to get ready for DS

dragon blow us away from map i ress back and wola am on a empty map -.-
it happens allot

You join a squad or set up a squad in the map before you die. Then you join on the commander right after.

You don’t just stand on the map and wait to die until it goes.

You can also use LFG to join a squad that’s about to go in.

That’s how you do it. Standing there not joining a squad, of course it doesn’t work. Why would it?

I don’t think a simpler story is necessarily a better story. I agree the story could be told better, though.

Healix.5819:

maddoctor.2738:

Now that players can try it without paying anything, revenue is dropping.

Sales aren’t the only thing that suddenly dropped after the launch of HoT. The number of people posting on the forums is down 50%, which had been fairly stable at around 20k since the end of 2013. 1Q2017 is currently down 18% compared to 4Q2016.

Free to play people can’t post on the forums and I’m sure there are a bunch of them. All games suffer natural attrition. Some of those are replaced by new players. But in this case, a lot of the replacement players can’t post here.

Reddit would probably be a better way to check, since free to play players can post on reddit.

LoL Blaeys! Yeah it felt like a long time for me too.

Because the core game was much cheaper. Cheaper often sells better.

Nah, Danikat. You’re still stuck with me for a long while yet.

Yeah, well…I’m too serious too often here (which isn’t how I am in real life) so I figured I should add a bit of silliness. It’s a good day for it.

Well given what you just said, it’s likely most people did buy it, so the few that didn’t, I’m not sure how much difference that makes.

More important is the people that bought it that don’t play it, at least in my opinion.

I thought the new zones were better than the old ones, but clearly some people really dislike them.