Guild Wars 2

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I bought the trilogy. How to associate that game to this one so I can get the HoM stuff and achievements? They seem completely separate. Do I need the EotN one?

You definitely need Eye of the North. That’s where the Hall of Monuments is located, and that’s what links Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2.

Skype will get you a couple of friends. Mumble or teamspeak will get you online with your server or guild.

Forget about skype, find yourself a nice guild and get yourself on their voice server. It’s a much better alternative.

Welcome to the game. Hope you have a great time!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think I hear an echo….lol. ; )

I would have posted that faster but due to infractions I have a cooldown between posts. I typed it and didn’t look at the thread again until I posted. lol

Esplen.3940:

Esplen.3940:

however that doesn’t guarantee that they will auto-activate and stay activated (see: dying and waypointing, entering water, and other ways of despawning mini-pets, unintentionally).

Call me skeptical.

It’s okay to be skeptical. That what you’re not disappointed if it doesn’t work out. I just think it probably will (which means I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t lol).

Zenith.7301:

Goldberg.4831:

While I may have had my ups and downs in the last 2 years of this game, and may not always agree on the changes within the game or the gem store. I have to say as a consumer and one who has tried a wide range of MMO’s (I get bored easy), Areanet has the best subscription model hands down. Thank you for respecting me as a gamer first and a consumer second. If you don’t believe me check out what Trion is doing to archeage, 15/dollars a month for patron status, and locking crafting mats behind the p2w store.

So let’s hear it for all those happy the b2p model.

You mean this game isn’t p2w with precursors doubling in price from when I left at 600g now to 1200-1400g? lol

You’re pathetically deluded, they just put in a metric ton of gold grinds that are a roundabout way of getting people to buy gems to convert to gold on their store.

All new skins on this game have not come from content but the gem store as well. I’m willing to bet this model makes them a lot more money.

Do you live on some basement? 15 bucks a month is chump change. 2 visits to McDonald’s by yourself will cost you more, and that’s money you crap down in a couple of hours as opposed to a sub game whose content you enjoy for thousands of hours.

If you feel getting a legendary is winning, you’ll feel this game is pay to win. But there are a whole lot of cool skins you can get a lot easier than legendaries.

The pay to win, in this case, is strictly a matter of perception.

I really don’t get the I must have a legendary to play this game crowd.

The OP is quite right. Not having an option to move skills feels sort of backwards in this day and age. There are work arounds, and I understand why Anet went in this direction, but I think it’s better to be able to put skills where you want.

The two reasons Anet has done it this way is easy of use for people starting and easy of use for people returning.

It’s easier if all characters work the same for people coming back after long absences…of which there are many.

However, I’d still rather have the option.

qbalrog.8017:

What I look for in end-game is variety. I’d prefer truly randomized content where the fights aren’t scripted and good play is required for success (as opposed to endless repetition to learn arbitrary boss mechanics). Alternately, I’ll accept a wide variety of things to do, some combination of alt-leveling, exploration, farming (like RIFT’s artifacts), and pvp.

What I won’t do is run the same scripted battles over and over again. WoW cured me of that

I don’t care about end-game gear, aside from aesthetics, especially when the next expansion makes all that gear-grind worthless.

I do like GW2 where I can take my max level character and still be (somewhat) at level anywhere in the world. And I find pvp interesting (although not wvwvw- too much zerg v zerg).

Random mechanics come with a price. You can’t script stuff, so it’s just spawning random guys.

If you make something difficult but not scripted most people won’t touch it. So, random becomes generic, because nothing is uique. You get different mobs, but they all have to attack in roughly the same way.

But I agree with you. I don’t like scripted bosses.

I’m an alt guy too and I love a lot of the new changes.

From the blog post.

“When shown, minis will appear next to you in every map you travel to with no further work necessary to deploy them.”

Aenesthesia.1697:

My two cents: I think Anet seriously underestimates casual players.

I used to play wow, daily, for the hardcore endgame. I didn’t care about rewards, but the fact I could stand up to a challenge with my guild, become a better player and help my guilmates play better, and overcome the greatest odds or whatever.

Now I cannot commit 2 straight, uninterrupted hours a day. That’s what makes me a casual player. I may play 2 or more hours one day, then dissappear for 3 weeks, then come back. I quit fractals because I often had to leave even though I thought I was going to have the time to do the full run. For the same reason I don’t run aetherblade even though it was cool the first time (even though it took us like 3 hours), or Arah.

But I still want to feel all I is run around pressing key #1. I greatly enjoyed the marionette event, it had all a raid boss is supposed to have: changing mechanics, difficulty, and little chance of success if all the group don’t stand up to the challenge. It only lacked a good reward but i didn’t care because bosses like that we’re so hard to come by. I can try challenging content, I just don’t have time for long content. But the two don’t need to go together.

The idea that the endgame of this game is the game in itself is cool as a concept, but the execution is lacking. I don’t enjoy events after the 100th time. I don’t enjoy 24 dungeon paths after repeating them for the nth time (and since I mention dungeons, WOW has like 160 of them…. that would be 16 new ones per year…. GW2?). I don’t enjoy exploring the map or levelling the fourth character to 80 (I have 4 characters I am trying to level and I cannot force myself to play with them more than a few minutes).

We don’t need new maps (that just spreads players too much), we need changes and variety to the existing ones, and the LS may be a good way to achieve this, but the piñata bosses are just too boring, even for a casual player.

I don’t think casual means you dont’ want a challenge. But there are plenty of people playing this game solo, who don’t know what a meta is.

It’s being remedied on the patch on the 9th.

Ipan that sounds like a huge amount of work and something very risky. Which isn’t to say we won’t get underground zones.

ipan.4356:

Dungeons are very formulaic – not at all based on exploration.

Every time I go into a dungeon, it’s “do this”..“ok, now do this”.

“Stand here”, “kill this”, “now move to this room”, “stand here”.

That’s all it is, most of the time.

It’s incredibly linear and formulaic, and not much fun at all.

If dungeons were about exploring Tyria’s vast, dark underworld, then I bet more people would do it.

But, the only reason to do them at all is to get tokens for skins – otherwise, they’re some of the least interesting content in the game.

I don’t agree with a lot of the stuff you say, but this is one of the reasons I don’t do dungeons. I don’t care as much about the money. I care about having fun.

tigirius.9014:

Here’s a bit of a history lesson. When you scare away your casuals, your RP, and your open world PVE players almost all you’re left with is the hardcore players and the terrible cookie cutter grinders. That’s it. That’s what’s happened to the game, seriously. And what’s more is we warned them this would occur back in Nov 2012 that they were scaring away the players who actually typically stuck with good games for years and improved the community. I’ve never been on an RP server ever where an RP player is actually acting like this, the same goes for a true casual, they generally have great communities on these servers. Many of those players became disgusted at the direction of the game and decided either to leave permanently or to wait. I personally am waiting. Give it time, if they keep in this direction they’ll get the good players back.

Still plenty of nice casual people playing the game in PvE. It’s PvP that’s the problem here. I PvE all the time and I run into nice people pretty much every day.

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

Ian.1349:

I really don’t understand why this is even a debate. More challenging content should = higher rewards, less challenging content should = lesser rewards. It’s such a basic concept, anyone who is defending the current reward structure (which for whatever reason relies heavily on RNG for the more challenging content in the game, FoTM/Aether path/Teq/Wurm) is straight up stupid.

It’s a debate because it’s not written in stone. It’s how it’s done elsewhere. Doesn’t mostly seem to be how it’s done here.

That’s why it’s a debate.

One would assume it was done here for a reason. To put less pressure on people not to do content they don’t want to do.

moiraine.2753:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Illuminati.2431:

Hi there,
When you read the posts carefully, you can see there are 2 different groups and we want endgame content that is way different from each other.

There are more than two different groups and that’s a big part of why it’s difficult for us to discuss this (and why ANet has such a tricky time explaining their goals and road map).

If you have read everything that has been written to here you would know what already has been said about having more than 2 groups.So please stop right here.

No reason to stop if another point is being made, which in this case it is. Someone is not just saying there are more than two groups but why it’s so hard for Anet to communicate.

Take the current reaction to the new feature patch. A whole lot of people are saying there’s nothing in it for veterans. It’s only for new people.

And here am I, a veteran as much as anyone, thinking there’s a lot of cool stuff for veterans, even stuff that veterans have been asking for.

It’s not just enough to say yes there are more than two groups, but you have to go further and ask, well if there are 8,9, maybe 10 groups, how is any update going to please people.

It is reasonable for us to expect something for every group in every update?

I understand the OP’s point, but even if the people who want end game content aren’t looking for grind, it doesn’t substantively change the situation because there are so many groups.

Lhos.1643:

ArchonWing.9480:

Working as intended. They don’t want to handle trade scams.

I fail to see how anyone can get legitimately scammed when trading comes down to “put things in this box, look at them, look at what the other party has put in the box, ready up if you agree, changing anything unreadies both parties”. Not reading item names/paying attention is your own fault.

Fault or not, people are tired, people have been drinking, people are distracted by real life. They have insomnia, they’re on medication..there’s a whole plethora of reasons why someone might make that mistake.

The fault is always with the scammer. If people didn’t scam, it wouldn’t matter.

chemiclord.3978:

kta.6502:

There are popular games that have more complicated gameplay, and the average player didn’t give up on those games. WoW has complicated mechanics, and there are many different kinds of players (from casual to hardcore) that enjoy it. ArcheAge, Final Fantasy 14, and MapleStory also have mechanics that requires that players take time to learn them. Even uber-casual games like Angry Birds and Super Mario Galaxy have a learning curve. Instead of dumbing down the game, the devs for those programs just created tutorials. And guess what? People still play them.

WoW has actually been dumbed down considerably since the vanilla days, just for the record… because apparently people WEREN’T playing because it was too confusing.

Talent trees have been pared down to the point where the game practically chooses FOR you. Items are now normalized so that you know EXACTLY what best in slot is without having to actually, ya know, LOOK at what you’re equipping.

So yeah, WoW isn’t a very good example for your cause. Just sayin’.

It’s not even just games. I bought a pair of socks recently that came with instructions. I kid you not.

It depends on who you ask and what you like. There are a ton of quality of life features that have been added and more are being added.

I’d almost suggest waiting till the 9th to come back, so you get the new update because there are going to be many changes.

Frankly if you already own the game, the best thing to do is see for yourself. Because no one can tell you what you’re going to enjoy.

I’ve been playing this game since beta 1 and I’m still having fun. Other people aren’t. It’s well worth checking out if nothing else.

Dalanor.5387:

Vayne.8563:

kta.6502:

Vayne.8563:

So what exactly is Anet doing besides making it easier for everyone to get into their game?

Delaying the Downed State to level 5 doesn’t solve the problem. If there are confused players, there should be an interactive tutorial that teaches people about the game mechanic. Once the tutorial is created, it should be put back in front of the focus group for testing.

When people enter PvP for the first time, they’re sent to a starting area where they learn game mechanics like using a finisher and claiming territory. I don’t see why the devs couldn’t add a similar tutorial for PvE.

Anet tested it and said that got the best results. So it obviously solves the problem for someone.

I’m starting to really feel depressed about the QA team mental capabilities …

It’s not the QA team that tested it. The QA team thought it was fine as it was. They tested in on thousands of people who’d never played. Just read Colin’s comment.

kta.6502:

Vayne.8563:

So what exactly is Anet doing besides making it easier for everyone to get into their game?

Delaying the Downed State to level 5 doesn’t solve the problem. If there are confused players, there should be an interactive tutorial that teaches people about the game mechanic. Once the tutorial is created, it should be put back in front of the focus group for testing.

When people enter PvP for the first time, they’re sent to a starting area where they learn game mechanics like using a finisher and claiming territory. I don’t see why the devs couldn’t add a similar tutorial for PvE.

Anet tested it and said that got the best results. So it obviously solves the problem for someone.

Decrypter.1785:

well we loved , GVG HoH, Capes , Anet run mats/sats/dats , Hardmode , End game worlds

Lots of builds/templates/skills

all i can think of for now

I didn’t love GvG, I didn’t love HoH, I could do without capes. Please try not to talk for everyone.

And you know, it’s a four year old line already. Can we move on?

Conski Deshan.2057:

Vayne.8563:

It’s not really that small a difference. If you play random arenas you can only get a certain amount of points. You have to go to team arena to get more per day, which really stretches out how long it takes to get something.

Then you receive more than double the points every time you win a match. I’d say that taking three four times longer to get the same rewards is more than a small difference.

In theory you could grind an entire reward track in a day if you wanted in tournaments. You can’t do that with hot join. Hot join wasn’t really meant to be the competitive mode anyway.

I may be in a different group from the other two, as the appeal to me is not earning more gold per hour than the other player but specifically earning an item they will never have. Truly rare items are one of the things I love in games even when I don’t have them. That being the basis of why I don’t like token systems that reward failed attempts.

One of the appeals for Gw2 initially was the living world where i knew there’d be once off items that would never be obtainable again. I could show I was there, and in some item cases that I had rapidly mastered the content or beaten a limited time challenge. I was devastated when they re-released all the LS1 rewards.

I definitely hear what you’re saying and that’s a difficult call from Anet’s point of view. I mean, people who come on late and can’t get a lot of cool rewards have less reason to keep playing.

I guess the question is which group is actually bigger. The people who need unique rewards or the people who hate that there are rewards they can never get, ever.

I don’t know the answer myself.

sorrow.2364:

Vayne.8563:

It’s not really that small a difference. If you play random arenas you can only get a certain amount of points. You have to go to team arena to get more per day, which really stretches out how long it takes to get something.

Then you receive more than double the points every time you win a match. I’d say that taking three four times longer to get the same rewards is more than a small difference.

In theory you could grind an entire reward track in a day if you wanted in tournaments. You can’t do that with hot join. Hot join wasn’t really meant to be the competitive mode anyway.

That was not my point.

Of course you get more rewards playing Team Arena and I know that, the point is that the efforts to get those points are not worth the advantage itself so people are not encouraged to compete rather than just abusing Hotjoin.

They shouldn’t be encouraged to compete in my opinion. People who only play competitive games for the reward will leech just to get the losing reward instead of getting better, ruining the competitive mode. It’s already happening to some degree. People are saying solo queue is the new hot join. It would only get worse if that was what you had to to do get rewards. It would ruin the experience of most PvPers.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Actually even relatively casual players can get a legendary…depending of course on the legendary. It would take them longer, but it’s doable.

First of all, anyone “can” get a precursor drop. Anyone “can” play with the mystic forge. And anyone can run the boss champ route or EOTM in order to get badges and karma and money. It’s not difficult just time consuming. Hell you can take out a credit card and buy a legendary, or a precusor, but you don’t need to.

There are ways for people who play more casually to farm. 9 dungeon runs. If you’re not after Arah (and runs are sold anyway for that), then most dungeons are easily doable, even if you have to learn them. They’re just dungeon runs. A helpful guild will get people through those. T6 mats you get from champ bags, dry top, and of course you can buy with gold.

It’s a time sink and a gold sink….not a skill sink.

The only real problem for some people, in my opinion, might be the WvW component of world complete, which I’ve gotten on four characters already.

I’m relatively casual as far as style preference, but not hours played. I haven’t beaten liadri. But I have four legendaries.

Ok – so give us unique skins as hardcore content rewards that casuals can get too – but only through a huge time sink.

Example :

1 skin = 300 tokens.
One successful run = 5 tokens.
One attempted run = 1 guaranteed token.

If they work at it long enough they will get it.

This isn’t a bad idea at all.

sorrow.2364:

Vayne.8563:

Yep and winning is the most efficient reward. You get rewards much faster when winning in PvP.

Yes, but it does not encourage to put efforts into getting better.

People, in fact, don’t wants the max reward but they want want to make the most reward possible with the lowest effort.

To win you are supposed to build up a proper team, train your skill, set up a schedule for team training and so on. That’s an huge amount of efforts to get just a slightly more rewards.

People don’t do that because they can just switch to the winning team in hotjoin and reap the maximum reward possible with little to no efforts or involvement.

It’s not really that small a difference. If you play random arenas you can only get a certain amount of points. You have to go to team arena to get more per day, which really stretches out how long it takes to get something.

Then you receive more than double the points every time you win a match. I’d say that taking three four times longer to get the same rewards is more than a small difference.

In theory you could grind an entire reward track in a day if you wanted in tournaments. You can’t do that with hot join. Hot join wasn’t really meant to be the competitive mode anyway.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Windsagio.1340:

Vix.6730:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, what exactly do you wish to see? It would probably be helpful if players gave the Devs something more specific than ‘non-gear-treadmill end-game content’.

Raids. Dungeons. Post-80 continents. Unlockable secondary professions post-80 after questing. Unlockable skills post-80 through questing. Or we can just call it an expansion.

Aka, learnable content and vertical progression, not skillbased content and horizontal progression.

It’s a funny comment. People usually get better with more experience. Most skill based content do get easier because the player get more skilled.

I like to know what skill based content GW2 current have which isn’t learnable.

Pretty sure the poster is referring to stuff like dungeons and raids, where you’re literally memorizing a response to a preprogrammed script. There used to be time keepers in hard raids that would count of the seconds until X happened.

PvP end game isn’t as predictable or easy to learn.

well GW2 have pve too. have dungeon too, or Liadri encounter.

You make it sound like GW2 PvP is so special in someway that is skill based, and all other game isn’t.

maybe you are just ignoring GW2 pve, much like how the developer have been ignoring it. Unless you felt GW2 is very not skill based… or whatever.

Hope you’re not talking to me. I’m a PvE’er not a PvPer. I just find some of the dungeons with the current stacking meta to be far too easy. Not enough risk. Not enough skill involved. Stack here, hit buttons. It trivializes the skill required to do the bosses without stacking (which I often prefer). And yes, sometimes I run non-stacking groups.

The thing is, PvE AI IS far more predictable than PvP, because you never really know what a player might do.

While it’s true PvP is less predictable than PvE we come back to the same problem again, the rewards issue.
What does a person who looses 100 PvP matches get vs someone who wins 50? They both get the same reward, so what is the motivation to win why strive to be at the top if there are no rewards at the top and the idiot running in circles in the base gets to join you there?
They’d have to add in unique rewards for win-streaks , kill ratios and win ratios (all after over 100 Pvp matches played obviously to prevent win 1 unlock everything) for it to be end game.

My vision of “End-game” is that successful completion makes you stand out from the crowd, which is something pretty lacking in the game.

The only reward is ranking, that’s it. That’s the reward. It used to be winning was its own reward. Today people have to be rewarded to win.

Do you know, when I was playing little league, we won a trophy if we came in first. But there was a feeling of competitive sportsmanship. Even if we had no chance of winning that trophy, we always tried to win the game, because you know, that’s why you play games.

Why should anyone have to be bribed to win?

Because when there is a lot of different content, but no variation in rewards, people will only play the thing that is most efficient in rewards.

Yep and winning is the most efficient reward. You get rewards much faster when winning in PvP.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Windsagio.1340:

Vix.6730:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, what exactly do you wish to see? It would probably be helpful if players gave the Devs something more specific than ‘non-gear-treadmill end-game content’.

Raids. Dungeons. Post-80 continents. Unlockable secondary professions post-80 after questing. Unlockable skills post-80 through questing. Or we can just call it an expansion.

Aka, learnable content and vertical progression, not skillbased content and horizontal progression.

It’s a funny comment. People usually get better with more experience. Most skill based content do get easier because the player get more skilled.

I like to know what skill based content GW2 current have which isn’t learnable.

Pretty sure the poster is referring to stuff like dungeons and raids, where you’re literally memorizing a response to a preprogrammed script. There used to be time keepers in hard raids that would count of the seconds until X happened.

PvP end game isn’t as predictable or easy to learn.

well GW2 have pve too. have dungeon too, or Liadri encounter.

You make it sound like GW2 PvP is so special in someway that is skill based, and all other game isn’t.

maybe you are just ignoring GW2 pve, much like how the developer have been ignoring it. Unless you felt GW2 is very not skill based… or whatever.

Hope you’re not talking to me. I’m a PvE’er not a PvPer. I just find some of the dungeons with the current stacking meta to be far too easy. Not enough risk. Not enough skill involved. Stack here, hit buttons. It trivializes the skill required to do the bosses without stacking (which I often prefer). And yes, sometimes I run non-stacking groups.

The thing is, PvE AI IS far more predictable than PvP, because you never really know what a player might do.

While it’s true PvP is less predictable than PvE we come back to the same problem again, the rewards issue.
What does a person who looses 100 PvP matches get vs someone who wins 50? They both get the same reward, so what is the motivation to win why strive to be at the top if there are no rewards at the top and the idiot running in circles in the base gets to join you there?
They’d have to add in unique rewards for win-streaks , kill ratios and win ratios (all after over 100 Pvp matches played obviously to prevent win 1 unlock everything) for it to be end game.

My vision of “End-game” is that successful completion makes you stand out from the crowd, which is something pretty lacking in the game.

The only reward is ranking, that’s it. That’s the reward. It used to be winning was its own reward. Today people have to be rewarded to win.

Do you know, when I was playing little league, we won a trophy if we came in first. But there was a feeling of competitive sportsmanship. Even if we had no chance of winning that trophy, we always tried to win the game, because you know, that’s why you play games.

Why should anyone have to be bribed to win?

kta.6502:

Vayne.8563:

Bobby.3721:

Because you know, no one can learn the simple way we all did, and instead of putting a tool tip in the game that explains what to do to clear out this “confusion” we just decided to remove it until your a certain level…..because again its apparently “confusing and overwhelming”.
Honestly if you didn’t put two and two together when you first went into your downed state then I don’t know what to say.
Yet another pointless update in this fail of a feature patch.

First of all, this was one component of a major structural redo, given as an example that was extensively tested. You may think it’s pointless and indeed it may be pointless to you. What isn’t pointless to me is that more people who start stay with the game. That helps me. Therefore it’s not entirely pointless.

Anet went through the effort to test this stuff. How can you think you know better than the testing?

I think Bob was just being sarcastic.

About your question: This game has done a very good job to attract alot more than just teens. I’ve met and talked to alot of college educated adults during my first year in this game. With knowledge and experience, alot of us are able to see through what Anet is doing. The one gift that a college education can give you is the ability to think for yourself and question what others do esp. when their actions are suspicious.

Myself and others aren’t questioning to be mean. We’re questioning Anet’s decision because we think it’s a bad decision that will hurt their game and destroy their innovative product.

You’re right. Anet has a attracted a lot of people to this game, including many who are in their 40s and 50s, and may not have your vast experience with MMOs.

I’m 52. My wife plays. We have 60 year olds in our guild.

It’s all very nice to be college educated, but it doesn’t give you special insight into the needs of all players. I don’t think any one group has a monopoly on being observant or on knowledge and experience.

So what exactly is Anet doing besides making it easier for everyone to get into their game?

Well I’m sure it’ll be in the patch notes.

Bobby.3721:

Because you know, no one can learn the simple way we all did, and instead of putting a tool tip in the game that explains what to do to clear out this “confusion” we just decided to remove it until your a certain level…..because again its apparently “confusing and overwhelming”.
Honestly if you didn’t put two and two together when you first went into your downed state then I don’t know what to say.
Yet another pointless update in this fail of a feature patch.

First of all, this was one component of a major structural redo, given as an example that was extensively tested. You may think it’s pointless and indeed it may be pointless to you. What isn’t pointless to me is that more people who start stay with the game. That helps me. Therefore it’s not entirely pointless.

Anet went through the effort to test this stuff. How can you think you know better than the testing?

Harper.4173:

Astralporing.1957:

SkiTz.4590:

Who on earth wastes time doing challenging content that has abysmal rewards?

Theoretically, people claiming to be interested in challenging content should. If they were really interested in the challenge, that is.

Harper.4173:

End-game doesn’t just mean mastering hard content – it means mastering hard content for a reason – that reason being rewards for most players.

If rewards weren’t the reason people wouldn’t complain about the lack of hard content since you can make any content hard by imposing your own restrictions such as going naked, with no traits,etc.

The whole point of end-game is playing hard, improving, and being rewarded for it. Feeling that you’ve earned it.

Then we’re back at it separating community into haves small minority and have-nots majority. If this is the kind of endgame we’re talking about, then no, i’d rather not have any more of it in this game.

I’m sorry to say but we already have that.

Legendary weapons.
Very expensive skins.

We already have this situation in the game.
So you propose that everyone should have easy access to everything? What’s’ the point then?
What do you work towards ? What do you strive for?!

If everyone has everything they want and/or can get everything they want easy what’s the point?

Also the " have-nots majority" of today can be the " have majority of tomorrow" – at launch very few players had exotic gear – but right now people are rolling in it.

Same with ascended – most people don’t have it – but still it’s in the game. So why is it they can do this with gear and not skins?

I’m talking about a purely cosmetic reward so the " have nots" won’t be 1 bit less effective than those who do have the rewards.

You want a fair and square playing field ? You got it.

You want to be the shiniest most hardcore looking player?Work for it.

Actually even relatively casual players can get a legendary…depending of course on the legendary. It would take them longer, but it’s doable.

First of all, anyone “can” get a precursor drop. Anyone “can” play with the mystic forge. And anyone can run the boss champ route or EOTM in order to get badges and karma and money. It’s not difficult just time consuming. Hell you can take out a credit card and buy a legendary, or a precusor, but you don’t need to.

There are ways for people who play more casually to farm. 9 dungeon runs. If you’re not after Arah (and runs are sold anyway for that), then most dungeons are easily doable, even if you have to learn them. They’re just dungeon runs. A helpful guild will get people through those. T6 mats you get from champ bags, dry top, and of course you can buy with gold.

It’s a time sink and a gold sink….not a skill sink.

The only real problem for some people, in my opinion, might be the WvW component of world complete, which I’ve gotten on four characters already.

I’m relatively casual as far as style preference, but not hours played. I haven’t beaten liadri. But I have four legendaries.

Doggie.3184:

“Not Viable” in this context means that it’s weaker/not as useful as other builds and weapon sets.

The actual definition of the word viable is: capable of working successfully

Since you can use all manner of builds to successfully complete content (albeit less efficiently), viable is the wrong word to use. That’s all.

I understand what people mean when they use it. It’s still the wrong word.

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Windsagio.1340:

Vix.6730:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, what exactly do you wish to see? It would probably be helpful if players gave the Devs something more specific than ‘non-gear-treadmill end-game content’.

Raids. Dungeons. Post-80 continents. Unlockable secondary professions post-80 after questing. Unlockable skills post-80 through questing. Or we can just call it an expansion.

Aka, learnable content and vertical progression, not skillbased content and horizontal progression.

It’s a funny comment. People usually get better with more experience. Most skill based content do get easier because the player get more skilled.

I like to know what skill based content GW2 current have which isn’t learnable.

Pretty sure the poster is referring to stuff like dungeons and raids, where you’re literally memorizing a response to a preprogrammed script. There used to be time keepers in hard raids that would count of the seconds until X happened.

PvP end game isn’t as predictable or easy to learn.

well GW2 have pve too. have dungeon too, or Liadri encounter.

You make it sound like GW2 PvP is so special in someway that is skill based, and all other game isn’t.

maybe you are just ignoring GW2 pve, much like how the developer have been ignoring it. Unless you felt GW2 is very not skill based… or whatever.

Hope you’re not talking to me. I’m a PvE’er not a PvPer. I just find some of the dungeons with the current stacking meta to be far too easy. Not enough risk. Not enough skill involved. Stack here, hit buttons. It trivializes the skill required to do the bosses without stacking (which I often prefer). And yes, sometimes I run non-stacking groups.

The thing is, PvE AI IS far more predictable than PvP, because you never really know what a player might do.

Reisinger.4203:

Some background info on my own experience: I have had no prior experience with GW – GW2 was my first game out of the two Guild Wars games – and I haven’t even seen trailers of the predecessor prior to buying GW2. Seeing it for sale on Steam, I did some searching and found a free trial which lets me start prophecies. Well, I was somewhat unimpressed as expected, but mostly disappointed… but the disappointment was at GW2, rather than GW1. GW1 seemed a lot more vibrant, immersed me into lore instantly, and had a certain type of charm to it that GW2 has. I prefer the GW1 camera, skill flexibility, exploring, and even the questing. The characters look a lot better too. Also, humans being the only selectable race is actually something I prefer. The first cutscene with that King and Scribe had better voice acting than anything I’ve heard in GW2… What went wrong with the sequel?

I also felt a bit ripped off after running around and doing stuff for about 30 minutes… The music was way too familiar and some of the skills I unlocked I recognized right away… Whether or not it’s acceptable to recycle your own content is a different discussion topic altogether, but personally I felt like I was playing Sims 2 after buying Sims 3 (and several expansions)… In Sims 3, everything was presented as some authentic, unique feature. To a Sims newbie like myself at the time, it was true. Then I managed to try Sims 2 and was surprised to see a lot of that “new and authentic content” actually be recycled content from the previous game… Sorry about digressing, I hope it is at least a helpful metaphor for some.

I realize that people will disagree, and if you do, I see your point. There is no reason in reinventing the wheel. We have all seen that over-development play out in the traits update, which people are still being vocal about it on and off forums. So maybe it was a good idea to recycle things after all. I was not there to experience the transition from GW1 to GW2, so I don’t know how this impacted the people who did go through it.

The only thing stopping me from purchasing GW1 and expansions is just the age of the game… but aside from being evidently dated, the game to me felt like what GW2 failed to become. If Anet just remade GW1 with GW2 character models and skills, I would’ve happily bought it.

tl;dr: I have never tried GW1 but my experience with the game was fun and enjoyable. It made me wish GW2 was more similar to GW1 in many aspects.

The problem with this is that you probably didn’t “really” play Guild Wars 1 at all, at least not end game stuff and high level PvP.

So stuff you think should be carried over, say the secondary profession, the huge number of skills, and the affect builds have on the game over all, might be seen to be a huge boon..but by the same token, they were the game’s strongest weakness as well.

You’ve never had to deal with permasins and 600 monks and that sort of thing.

Some of the stuff that wasn’t brought from that game wasn’t carried over for good reason. And those things can still be missed. But it was what prevented Guild Wars 1 from going mainstream.

Relshdan.6854:

pleasant surprise.
anything that further helps theory-craft and bug-detection is a plus in my book.

Yeah the very people complaining there’s nothing for harder core players, probably didn’t remember or know this was coming.

A lot of people use viable when what they mean to say is not optimal. And to their mindset, if it’s not optimal its’ not viable.

It’s a definite misuse of the word.

I’m a bit mystified as to why this sort of change wouldn’t get a major annoucement. After all people have been asking for improvements to the combat log for a long time. Probably as much or more than people were asking for a minipet slot.

I’m sure they’re completely different groups, though. lol

laokoko.7403:

Windsagio.1340:

Vix.6730:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, what exactly do you wish to see? It would probably be helpful if players gave the Devs something more specific than ‘non-gear-treadmill end-game content’.

Raids. Dungeons. Post-80 continents. Unlockable secondary professions post-80 after questing. Unlockable skills post-80 through questing. Or we can just call it an expansion.

Aka, learnable content and vertical progression, not skillbased content and horizontal progression.

It’s a funny comment. People usually get better with more experience. Most skill based content do get easier because the player get more skilled.

I like to know what skill based content GW2 current have which isn’t learnable.

Pretty sure the poster is referring to stuff like dungeons and raids, where you’re literally memorizing a response to a preprogrammed script. There used to be time keepers in hard raids that would count of the seconds until X happened.

PvP end game isn’t as predictable or easy to learn.

Here’s a thread in reddit listing all the feature patch changes in one place:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2fk9n8/sept_feature_pack_summary_of_changes/

In one of the comments an Anet dev said that though they didn’t have an article on it, the new combat log (much improved) will be coming with the patch.

For those who don’t know, the combat log has been largely redone to including more accurate and detailed information.

Loboling.5293:

I had originally assumed they would convert some megaserver servers to the various episodes of season 1. Then when someone would activate that specific episode, next time they would zone change, they would be brought into that part of the story, playing with all other players playing that episode. You could go back to lions arch in an earlier episode, and see it before the destruction, or even play your personal story in these maps.

Anyway, something along those lines. I actually thought it was the main reason for the megaservers. So they could offer players the chance to play together on different content from the previous season, all in one “feels like” cohesive world.

They never said or implied anything like this.

FireOfTal.4563:

Well I mean a Trading system like in Diablo II, where you would meet the player and a window would pop up and you could place the item you both were trading in your windows. Then both have to confirm trade for it to go through,

We had it in Guild Wars 1…and people still got spammed. It was taken out to minimize scamming.

Vix.6730:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, what exactly do you wish to see? It would probably be helpful if players gave the Devs something more specific than ‘non-gear-treadmill end-game content’.

Raids. Dungeons. Post-80 continents. Unlockable secondary professions post-80 after questing. Unlockable skills post-80 through questing. Or we can just call it an expansion.

Raid I doubt you’ll ever see here. Unless they’re more open world like Triple Threat. Dungeons they’re not currently focusing on right now. Post 80 continents I’m sure will come in time. They wanted the megaserver up first. Skills will come too. There’ll never be secondary professions in this game, because they couldn’t balance it in the first game.

I have a very happy and healthy guild of about 150 players. 30-50 of us are really active. We don’t use the guild as a buff factory or a way to do events.

Because some guilds are social guilds. We play with friends. We enjoy ourselves more. If someone needs help with a dungeon, there’s usually someone to fill in the fifth spot, you got someone. If you need a tower in WvW for the last point in world completion…we’ll help you take it.

We have fun events that are fun, not profitable. We run guild missions because we have fun doing it.

One of the last events we did, our 2nd birthday event, we had games including hide and seek, and “darts” where someone jumped off the top of a tower to get to a really hard spot in divinty’s reach and everyone else tried to land as close to him as possible for prizes.

Guilds don’t always have to be about profit.

Talon Silverhawk.3574:

“Downed State” frightening , really, ppl need to get a grip if this is scary.

The thing is no one ever used the word frightening except in the OP. Anet was saying that people didn’t “get it” which was true. Baffling might have been a better word. Hard to understand even better. I don’t think anyone was frightened of it.

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Most companies won’t come right out and say, you guys are a minority and we’re not going to cater to you. Why would they? Would you? They’ll do the best they can, but they’ll not usually say it.

But we’ve had comments over the years from devs from different companies, including Anet devs talking about Guild War 1, where they said the bulk of the people never do the challenging content. This isn’t something new, or something I just decided, or something I figured out recently. It’s been talked about in MMO forums for years. The most recent quote that I can find came form a lotro dev. Less than 10% of the game PvPed and did raids, not just at this point, but pretty much all along. 10% isn’t a big number to include both PvP and raids. He was talking about why they’re no longer making the raid instances they used to.

Again, if enough people were playing dungeons in general, Anet would have a dungeon team working full time on dungeons. Can you tell me why you think they wouldn’t?

Because a huge playerbase played SAB, asked them to death about it to rerelease, open old worlds etc. and nothing that even comes close to SAB in mechanics, reward system etc. has come out since what, like 1 year?

That’s why I think they wouldn’t.

A very passionate playerbase certainly but how do you know huge? Where are the stats? Anet knows how many people played it, and they know how many people didn’t. We can only guess at this.

A passionate playerbase isn’t necessarily a large one. In that same lotro dev quote, the dev said that though less than 10% of people ever raided, more than 50% of forum posts were made by raiders.

Kind of makes you think, no?

It really amazes me that former DJ turned community manager (Not Dev) Rick Heaton`s <10% statement gets posted on other forums.

Heres why:

After the ensuing kitten storm, Mr Heaton was sacked retired from his position at Turbine.

LOTROs producer has since posted:

“the 10% thing. Just drop that. I just don’t look at a game that way. I will consider anything if it is good for the game, and good for the players. There are realities like resources and time and money that do come into play. "

I`m sure Mr Heaton regrets his statement that created a nasty divide within the lotro community.

Kind of makes you think, no?

No it doesn’t. You see, if you’re fired from the game, and you’re making a statement that supports what the company did, it’s more likely true not false. Devs, when they work for a company, can only really tow the company line.

As I said before, Devs are never going to come to the forums and say you guys are a vast minority and we won’t support you that much. Never going to happen.

Once you leave a company, it sure can happen. Why would you think what a company isn’t telling you is more valid than what someone who left the company is. Particularly because it doesn’t actually isn’t contradicted by the company’s response.

The company didn’t say it wasn’t true. They just went into reassurance mode and said, we take you all seriously. Well yeah. What do you think a company is going to say.

When I dealt with people who had apples instead of PCs, I always went out of my way to reassure them that we took their concerns very seriously, because they were a minority. I never told them but we take PC users concerns more seriously, even though it was true.

Where in the response does it actually say the 10% figure isn’t true. It doesn’t. It just tells you to forget that number. Because they don’t want those players to know that number.

fourhim.3584:

There may be a third group, which I am in. I am a casual player and I just want more beautiful places to see, scary monsters to kill, etc. I could care less if I get any “stuff” while doing so. I just want to explore the game and marvel at the beautiful zones they create. This is why we have been so excited (my son and I) with Dry Top. I hope more stuff like that keeps coming. But I’m probably in the minority

I don’t think you’re in as much of a minority as you think you are. You’ve pretty much described most of my guild. We’re looking for stuff to do that isn’t instanced, and isn’t “over=challenging”. Something we can enjoy playing together without having to get mad at one guy because he didn’t do X. Or exclude one profession because they can’t bring Y.

I’m not saying you’re a majority, but I don’t think any one group has a majority. You could be 30% and still be more than many of the other groups who play this game.

You are not alone.

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

I think that if you want new content you have to wait for new MMO relase like TES . Then Anet was really afraid and we got in april patch megaserver,wardrobe etc etc . Maybe when blizzard will strike they will announce new content .

Why is it so hard to acknowledge that it’s only been 5 months since that patch and that programming takes actual time? During that time they were releasing in China which kept a lot of people busy as well.

There’s a perfectly logical explanation as to why a feature patch that had less time has less than a feature pack that had more.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Vayne.8563:

-snip-

In this instance (pun intended), I don’t think enough of the playerbase by percentage runs dungeons to justify an investment in them. I can’t think of many more reasons why they don’t do more dungeons as a priority.

The above could be easily explained by players completing the dungeon and obtaining the desired token rewards, then never doing it again.

It doesn’t mean they don’t -want- dungeons, just that they’ve grown tired of the old ones.

Your point makes sense, though. Just wanted to point that out.

Well it’s more than that….

I’m actually convinced that the majority of the playerbase has barely ever set food in a dungeon. I have a relatively casual guild of over 150 people.

This^^ and this is what I mean by the majority of players never bought GW2 to even consider dungeons in the first place, in fact it was the opposite for most because we heard the early interviews saying exactly what the most recent one has said now, that dungeons are an afterthought and aren’t the focus of the game. I’m so hopeful now you have no idea.

I’ve spent very little time in these dungeons because they literally had nothing for me. The nerfs to Engineers in PVE has made it almost impossible to group. Even in grouping in dungeons it really didn’t do much especially since I’m condi build for soloing that I do most of the time. And then we have the leetist groups that even if I weren’t Engi would most likely boot me for some other reason, possibly because I’m not cookie cutter exploit ready.

So really, it’s not been a positive experience even from an afterthought pov.

This is why you need to stop pugging and find a casual guild of people who play like you. We have engineers in our guild, that run dungeons with us sometimes. Not often, because they’re not much into it, but no one ever says they can’t come.