Guild Wars 2

There are lots of hidden things. Many of the jumping puzzles for example. But yes, sounds like you’re doing it right to me.

But the beauty of this game is, you can always go back on the same character and find more stuff, because the game downscales you. You’re not limited just to end game zones at max level.

Lothirieth.3408:

Vayne.8563:

Out of curiosity and this is a legit question, I wonder how many who played Guild Wars 2 first would think Guild Wars 1 was a better game.

That’s actually a tough question.

Obviously GW2’s world is better.. new engine, newer game and all that. I also enjoy active combat (dodging, jumping, casting on the move.)

But I find GW1’s stories to be better and I absolutely love how much stuff there is to complete. Achievements in it feel much more meaningful and I’m having a fun time slowly working towards filling out my HoM, complete vanquishing, exploration and all that. With the Zhaishen dailies (which I know weren’t always there), it doesn’t feel like a grind to slowly work my way through it all.

I also love how I can’t just faceroll through everything. Quite a bit of it feels harder than GW2. I really like the heroes too.. those have especially been a boon this late in the game.

It’s hard to really compare the two given their different ages, but I am tempted to say overall, GW1 is the better game. I know I so regret not playing this game in its prime. I’d be one of those working towards a character for DoA SC (takes me forever solo with my heroes :P .. and that third room of Foundry is a kitten!) and getting chaos gloves, etc. :P I feel GW2 misses some of the lofty goals GW1 has (complete everything plus bonuses on HM, vanquishing, gaining faction, etc) with specific, direct ways to attain most of what you want if you’re willing to put in the work.

Did you play Guild Wars 1 first though. Because most of the stories really aren’t all that good. Not from an objective point of view. There are flaws within flaws that pulled me out of Guild Wars 1 all the time. Saying that it’s good after experiencing it first gives you this nostalgic tinge that allows you to believe say that Prince Rurik was somehow some great character. Prince Rurik was a cardboard cutout. He was cliche. There weren’t very deep and meaningful characters in most of Guild Wars 1. We all heard complaints about Komir after all.

When we’re younger, we play a game and we think, wow this is great. Same with movies and books. But sometimes we revisit those stories 30 years later and cringe. I do this with my own writing. Stuff I thought was great thirty years ago makes me want to curl up and die.

You can’t experience Guild Wars 1 for the first time again and it hasn’t really been 30 years. The difference is the first time I experienced Guild Wars 1 I was in my 40s and already a professional editor. There were things in that game that made me want to burn my eyes out.

Simplest example I can think of was the Blacktide Den mission bonus. Kill all the Ringkhail Monitors. Nothing in game tells you to do this. There’s no reason to do it. It doesn’t further the story. In fact, it hinders the story.

You’re supposed to be following this guy. He’s leading you to a meeting with the general. You’re pretending to be someone you’re not after stealing their clothes. This is a clandestine operation during which you’d never ever want to do anything suspicious. But to get the bonus in that mission, you literally have to abandon the guy you’re following FOR NO IN GAME REASON, to get a bonus that I know about but my characters couldn’t possibly. There’s no in game motivation given. Just a text that appears on my screen to do it. This pulls me right out of the story. This is bad story telling.

Anyway, it’s not as great as people make it out to be and it still had the advantage of instanced content that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

Azhure.1857:

He isn’t the only one to think so, Vayne.

You can both be wrong. I’m okay with that. I don’t post on most negative feedback. I’m on record as saying that I think cities should be off the megaserver.

But you can believe anything you want. The evidence is on my side.

Isn’t it always? lol. When two people look at “evidence” they usually interpret it to fit whatever they had already decided when debating opinions. Opinions aren’t facts.

Are you really still doing this? Really?

Are you saying it’s not a fact that I’ve not said that the game has flaws that need to be worked on? Are you saying I haven’t said, in multiple places that the new trait system doesn’t work and needs to be fixed? Is that what you’re saying.

It’s an absolutely fact that I bring up things I don’t like about the game. That’s not opinion. That’s a fact.

I do have opinions that differ from yours. But trying to say that every post I make is positive and pro Anet is demonstrably 100% incorrect..

By trying to suppot that, you’re actually factually incorrect. That’s not an opinion. There’s no interpretation. You’re simply, demonstrably wrong.

That is a fact.

Godzzila.3752:

Taygus.4571:

Godzzila.3752:

Taygus.4571:

SkiTz.4590:

Taygus.4571:

SkiTz.4590:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

snip

You think GW2 has a massive player base? (not including china) I would be shocked if theres even close to 50k concurrent players at peak times in EU+NA

snip

Right..
how often id lv50 fractals completed?
Do you play lv50 fracs? in zerk ascended gear?

How often does arah get completed? (can you solo arah? )
or TA aetherblade path?

The majority of the community don’t want to even aim to be able to complete them.

And most importantly, for the hardcore players, how long do these dungeons stay challenging?

High lvl fracs is about the only thing I do with my group of guildies… its pretty kitten easy when you are with a group who knows what they are doing.done plenty of em, the only reason we continue to do them is because of fractal skins.. they aren’t hard at all, and yes, all of us run em in ascended zerk gear… why bother with any other type of gear in PvE?

Soloing a dung? why on earth do I want to waste time doing that? This is an MMO, if I want to solo, I play single player games lol. People play MMOs to do fun and challenging content with their group of friends…I would be bored to death if I’m soloing a freaking dung. Dungs also have pathetic rewards lol.

Then pug them, for the extra challenge. Those questions were for Godzella anyway.

If you solo arah, you can sell the spots for pretty decent “reward”.

However you’ve totally ignored the point of my questions.
How MANY people actually do it?
How many people actually want challenging content?
and How long does it stay challenging for the hardcore player?

No company can produce content quick enough for hardcore players, and tbh, it’s not worth it to them, to try. As you’re a minority.

This game as about 15~20% of its original playerbase. Yeah, I guess we are a minority :P

Numbers off the top of your head? links for proof please.

snip

btw, I noticed you compared an mmo to games like Dark Souls, a single player game.

If you want to look at things that end. There are more casual games, with a total of FAR higher sold numbers, than your hardcore games

Point number one: I Didn’t Compare This Game to Dark Souls – I said that games being more and more casual is NOT TRUE and used Dark Souls as an example.

Number two:
xFire makes statistics for games of the people that use their application. As of the release date the game used to have peaks of 16ks players (people that use xFire), as of right now it tends to peak with 2ks of players when a new patch is released while most of the time it sits at 500~1k.
http://social.xfire.com/games/gw2
Also, as of the release date of the game:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L42n7YnkFwY/UG0QkxAOmuI/AAAAAAAAAYo/d9hpl81D9xA/s1600/google_trends_combined_wow_and_pandaria.png

Dark Souls is a niche game. Compare its sales to a game like Skyrim and you’ll find it suffers severely. And yes lots of people bought it, but how many have finished it? How many bought it due to advertising and hype, tried for it for a bit and never touched it again because it was too hard. You have no idea.

And why is Dark Souls one of the tiny percentage of games that appeals to that audience. How many games are actually advertsied for being mega hard? Darksouls and…Dark Souls 2. Oh look. I can’t think of many more.

I’m talking about a trend. You’re sayign there’s no global warming because we had a cold day. The argument doesn’t really wash. Look I can think of an example it must be true.

All trends have contrary examples. Those examples prove the rule. I mean why would Dark Souls be advertised in this dark niche if it was a prevalent thing. Games have gotten much much easier.

Because if you tried to come out today with a game like Ultima 4, no one would play it. Or people would just run to the internet, look at a website on how to cheat through it, and that’s how they’d win.

hannah mee.7925:

Sekai.2987:

They change.3526:

Am I the only person who has played GW1 that feels that a lot of the lore of the series …

I never play an MMO for the story (tbh i think very few do), i have offline games for that.

Played GW1, Ragnarok, Aion, Lineage 2, Perfect World and some other which i dont even remember the name anymore, i never care about story , most of the time it´s a wall of text that i just skip by spaming the “next” button.

Guild Wars has one of the best told stories, a really well-crafted world that ties in with its lore. ANet really spent a lot of time crafting Tyria. With that in mind, though, I’m not naive enough to try and compare this game’s story to BioShock, Kingdom Hearts, Infamous, God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Final Fantasy, etc. The game has a beautifully crafted story but sure as hell isn’t one of those games that is a story in playable form.

But which of the games that you’d listed is an MMO? It’s an important question. MMOs have difficulties in story telling that single player games dont’ have. That’s not just Guild Wars 2, that’s all MMOs. There are problems here, because in an MMO you can’t be the one and only hero.

Take a game like Skyrim. In Skyrim you can be the one guy. You’re the guy who’s marked. Prophecied. You can be the head of all the guilds on a single character. Imagine if you could do that in Guild Wars 2. Then what would I do? After all, I’m one guy among myriad players all playing in the same world.

The same goes for story telling. In a single player game you can change the whole game, because something that happens affects only the person playing the game. You could even do that in Guild Wars 1. Because it was instanced. You can’t do that in an MMO though.

You can’t heal Orr because people haven’t done that yet. Any attempt to heal Orr would kill the entire premise of the game for anyone who’s yet to complete their personal story. Zhaitan must be alive.

Anet tried to do this with the first season of the living story, but people complained about temporary content and for other reasons, changing the open world causes problems. Like doing the stuff in LA after it’s been destroyed in the real world, but while it was still not destroyed in the Personal story.

Comparing single player games to MMOs is unfair for these reasons.

The reason why MMOs aren’t on your list at all is because they have specific challenges that have to be handled.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

Casuals are a REALLY small portion of gamers.
Also WoW prooves you wrong, it had the greatest online community any game ever had and even though its not at its peak anymore, it’s still pretty high.

WoW proves nothing. Ghostcrawler has made quotes about WOW raiding that matches what the Lotro guy said. I don’t care if you except it or not, but this stuff has been discussed for years. The only people who think raiders are a majority are raiders.

Do you know why most games get “dumbed down” and made more casual. Because there are more casual players than hard core players.

Games get “dumbed down”? Not even close to reality! IN fact games that are REALLY hard (like Super Meat Boy, Don’t Starve, DARK SOULS) keep appearing more and more. There’s a reason for that: Challenge.

Guild Wars 2 (according to most Guild Wars 1 players) is dumbed down. Argue with them. It’s simplified. Less build options etc. There have been many threads about it.

I don’t know anyone that thinks WoW is more complicated or tough than EQ. The raid finder raids in WOW are very simple raids. They come out with hard stuff and it keeps getting nerfed in game after game. Argue if you want. Most people who’ve been around know it’s true.

And that’s why that discussion even started: Guild Wars 2 was “dumbed down” and since when is Guild Wars 2 a good example anyway? The game was the quickest sold game of all time in pre-release sales, and quickly a lot of players started running away from it.

Based on what exactly? Your word?

Look believe what you want. I’m out of here.

Most people don’t do the hardest content in most games, and if you don’t want to believe it that’s absolutely okay with me.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

Casuals are a REALLY small portion of gamers.
Also WoW prooves you wrong, it had the greatest online community any game ever had and even though its not at its peak anymore, it’s still pretty high.

WoW proves nothing. Ghostcrawler has made quotes about WOW raiding that matches what the Lotro guy said. I don’t care if you except it or not, but this stuff has been discussed for years. The only people who think raiders are a majority are raiders.

Do you know why most games get “dumbed down” and made more casual. Because there are more casual players than hard core players.

Games get “dumbed down”? Not even close to reality! IN fact games that are REALLY hard (like Super Meat Boy, Don’t Starve, DARK SOULS) keep appearing more and more. There’s a reason for that: Challenge.

Guild Wars 2 (according to most Guild Wars 1 players) is dumbed down. Argue with them. It’s simplified. Less build options etc. There have been many threads about it.

I don’t know anyone that thinks WoW is more complicated or tough than EQ. The raid finder raids in WOW are very simple raids. They come out with hard stuff and it keeps getting nerfed in game after game. Argue if you want. Most people who’ve been around know it’s true.

Nick.6972:

I’m not even going to argue, especially with you Vayne.
If the game is built around ABC far more than D then using the basic math and logic it is obvious that ABC will get played more.
Now flip that around.

Easy to flip. If more peo ple played D, than the game wouldn’t be made for A,B,C.

Logically devs want to reach the most amount of players, because it makes them the most money.

Now, you had EQ which never had the popularity of WoW. But many EQ players complained that WoW was just a dumbed down version of EQ. And then people who played Vanilla WoW kept complaining about how it got dumbed down. And Guild Wars 1 players are complaining about how Guild Wars 2 is dumbed down.

There’s a reason why all these games shift to casual over time. It’s because hard core players are in shorter supply.

Rift started out as a raiding game and raids were centric to the game. And people left that game in droves. So much so that Scott Hartman came on the Rift forums to apologize to all the ignored people who were leaving and they came out with some stupid instances that weren’t very good as a stop gap measure.

They don’t dumb down games because people want harder content. They don’t make games easier because people want challenge.

If you were a business would you make more content for a smaller demographic or a larger one?

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

Casuals are a REALLY small portion of gamers.
Also WoW prooves you wrong, it had the greatest online community any game ever had and even though its not at its peak anymore, it’s still pretty high.

WoW proves nothing. Ghostcrawler has made quotes about WOW raiding that matches what the Lotro guy said. I don’t care if you except it or not, but this stuff has been discussed for years. The only people who think raiders are a majority are raiders.

Do you know why most games get “dumbed down” and made more casual. Because there are more casual players than hard core players.

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Because some of us want to play a multiplayer game with that kind of sensibility and that was lacking in MMO space. That’s why. That’s exactly why.

Are you saying someone who enjoys that KIND of experience can’t also be social and want to play with other people? I bet there are a lot more of us out here than you think their are.

I’m a social guy. I like being in my guild. I like playing with friends. And I like not having to sit there and plan a raid for an hour before I jump in and attempt to run it so I might or might not get gear I need to go to the next raid. I don’t want an instanced game. I want to play in the open world.

I’m happy to trade Skyrim’s solitude for a social MMO that centers around stuff I enjoy.

There are dozens of MMOs for people who like other stuff. Can’t we just have one?

Nope, that makes no sense. This game as no “Social Features”. You have chat and that’s it. You can Play with your friends and like your guild in a game that’s well made

You’ve got to be joking. You don’t need social features to play with people. Want to hear a social feature? Mumble. That’s a social feature.

We do our guild missions together, run dungeons together, clear zones together. I can’t do that in Skyrim.

I’m not sure why you don’t understand this.

So… when exactly does “Start Having End-Game Features” start overidding “Being Able to Play With Friends and/or Guild”?

It’s changing the game, that’s what it has to do with it. You asked the question, I answered. This is how the conversation went.

I play this game and like it, without a traditional end game. Traditional end games tend to make the community more competive rather than cooperative. I wanted a cooperative non-competitive PvE experience to enjoy with friends. This game offers that.

Traditional end games creates haves and have nots. That’s not what the devs are trying to do here. You suggest that many of the things I like would be better in single player games and you’re right about that. But you’re leaving out the social aspect.

People have come on these forums asking for things like dueling, dps meters, gear check, all the things that come with the end game you want. And every time someone posts for stuff like this, there’s a bunch of people who shout it down. Not one or two. A bunch of people. Why?

Because those things ruin the type of game we want to play. Adding the types of things you’re asking for will inevitably lead to the kind of game I don’t want to play.

And because there are dozens of games made for you and only one game (so far) made for us, it would be nice if it remained a game for us.

If by a bunch of people you mean something 5. And as far as Im noticing there are equally the amount of people supporting this idea. And by the way: At no point in time does having end-game features change at all the game, other than expand its longetivity and giving something to do when waiting for content.

Actually, it’s very easy to guess that you might see a lot of people posting heavily for end game. That’s because the people I describe don’t necessarily visit forums. They’re around in huge proliferation in every MMO but they don’t talk on forums.

I have almost 200 people in my guild and maybe three of us post of forums…but just about all of us play the way that I play. They left the forums because they feel it’s a toxic atmosphere that brings them down. Doesn’t mean they’re not there.

And it’s pretty well known that only a small percentage of people ever play the hardest content. Lotro stopped adding raids in their game for that reason.

One of the WoW devs said only 5% of the people in the game cleared the hardest content.

That would mean 95% didn’t.

Oh sure, let’s speak about people that figurativly exist and have a figurative opinion… Why do you think that not a lot more people post about no end-game features? Maybe because they stopped playing the game around the 12th day of sitting around doing nothing? I can Imagine their oppinion is also the same as mine so Im going to figurativly summon their possible opinion to this topic.

Read this: http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/03/turbine-raiders-make-up-the-smallest-player-group-in-lotro/#comments

Then come talk to me.

Beldin.5498:

Godzzila.3752:

If by a bunch of people you mean something 5. And as far as Im noticing there are equally the amount of people supporting this idea. And by the way: At no point in time does having end-game features change at all the game, other than expand its longetivity and giving something to do when waiting for content.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/03/turbine-raiders-make-up-the-smallest-player-group-in-lotro/#comments

And i’ve read similiar things often also for games like EQ2 or WoW.

Thank you so much for posting this. I’ve been saying this very thing to people for a very long time. It’s nice to see a dev say it.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Because some of us want to play a multiplayer game with that kind of sensibility and that was lacking in MMO space. That’s why. That’s exactly why.

Are you saying someone who enjoys that KIND of experience can’t also be social and want to play with other people? I bet there are a lot more of us out here than you think their are.

I’m a social guy. I like being in my guild. I like playing with friends. And I like not having to sit there and plan a raid for an hour before I jump in and attempt to run it so I might or might not get gear I need to go to the next raid. I don’t want an instanced game. I want to play in the open world.

I’m happy to trade Skyrim’s solitude for a social MMO that centers around stuff I enjoy.

There are dozens of MMOs for people who like other stuff. Can’t we just have one?

Nope, that makes no sense. This game as no “Social Features”. You have chat and that’s it. You can Play with your friends and like your guild in a game that’s well made

You’ve got to be joking. You don’t need social features to play with people. Want to hear a social feature? Mumble. That’s a social feature.

We do our guild missions together, run dungeons together, clear zones together. I can’t do that in Skyrim.

I’m not sure why you don’t understand this.

So… when exactly does “Start Having End-Game Features” start overidding “Being Able to Play With Friends and/or Guild”?

It’s changing the game, that’s what it has to do with it. You asked the question, I answered. This is how the conversation went.

I play this game and like it, without a traditional end game. Traditional end games tend to make the community more competive rather than cooperative. I wanted a cooperative non-competitive PvE experience to enjoy with friends. This game offers that.

Traditional end games creates haves and have nots. That’s not what the devs are trying to do here. You suggest that many of the things I like would be better in single player games and you’re right about that. But you’re leaving out the social aspect.

People have come on these forums asking for things like dueling, dps meters, gear check, all the things that come with the end game you want. And every time someone posts for stuff like this, there’s a bunch of people who shout it down. Not one or two. A bunch of people. Why?

Because those things ruin the type of game we want to play. Adding the types of things you’re asking for will inevitably lead to the kind of game I don’t want to play.

And because there are dozens of games made for you and only one game (so far) made for us, it would be nice if it remained a game for us.

If by a bunch of people you mean something 5. And as far as Im noticing there are equally the amount of people supporting this idea. And by the way: At no point in time does having end-game features change at all the game, other than expand its longetivity and giving something to do when waiting for content.

Actually, it’s very easy to guess that you might see a lot of people posting heavily for end game. That’s because the people I describe don’t necessarily visit forums. They’re around in huge proliferation in every MMO but they don’t talk on forums.

I have almost 200 people in my guild and maybe three of us post of forums…but just about all of us play the way that I play. They left the forums because they feel it’s a toxic atmosphere that brings them down. Doesn’t mean they’re not there.

And it’s pretty well known that only a small percentage of people ever play the hardest content. Lotro stopped adding raids in their game for that reason.

One of the WoW devs said only 5% of the people in the game cleared the hardest content.

That would mean 95% didn’t.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Because some of us want to play a multiplayer game with that kind of sensibility and that was lacking in MMO space. That’s why. That’s exactly why.

Are you saying someone who enjoys that KIND of experience can’t also be social and want to play with other people? I bet there are a lot more of us out here than you think their are.

I’m a social guy. I like being in my guild. I like playing with friends. And I like not having to sit there and plan a raid for an hour before I jump in and attempt to run it so I might or might not get gear I need to go to the next raid. I don’t want an instanced game. I want to play in the open world.

I’m happy to trade Skyrim’s solitude for a social MMO that centers around stuff I enjoy.

There are dozens of MMOs for people who like other stuff. Can’t we just have one?

Nope, that makes no sense. This game as no “Social Features”. You have chat and that’s it. You can Play with your friends and like your guild in a game that’s well made

You’ve got to be joking. You don’t need social features to play with people. Want to hear a social feature? Mumble. That’s a social feature.

We do our guild missions together, run dungeons together, clear zones together. I can’t do that in Skyrim.

I’m not sure why you don’t understand this.

So… when exactly does “Start Having End-Game Features” start overidding “Being Able to Play With Friends and/or Guild”?

It’s changing the game, that’s what it has to do with it. You asked the question, I answered. This is how the conversation went.

I play this game and like it, without a traditional end game. Traditional end games tend to make the community more competive rather than cooperative. I wanted a cooperative non-competitive PvE experience to enjoy with friends. This game offers that.

Traditional end games creates haves and have nots. That’s not what the devs are trying to do here. You suggest that many of the things I like would be better in single player games and you’re right about that. But you’re leaving out the social aspect.

People have come on these forums asking for things like dueling, dps meters, gear check, all the things that come with the end game you want. And every time someone posts for stuff like this, there’s a bunch of people who shout it down. Not one or two. A bunch of people. Why?

Because those things ruin the type of game we want to play. Adding the types of things you’re asking for will inevitably lead to the kind of game I don’t want to play.

And because there are dozens of games made for you and only one game (so far) made for us, it would be nice if it remained a game for us.

Vespero.6180:

Vayne.8563:

Tristar.2687:

To come back to the topic: It doesn’t make sense to write in here – Those few GW2-White-Knights countering any criticism won’t change this fact.

There’s still no content updates that affect the game, no additions comparable to add-ons, no new pvp-modes, no adjustment to wvw, anything that was known and written down here since beta. No new incentives to start the game except for the confusing LW-Story and the mini-areals, that can be played in around 50 Minuten each. Low quality, low standards, some people here even seem to be satisfied with that extremly low input of arenanet, even defending their work arguing that the ranger update, which was needed since beta-times, has been implemented last week.

You have many reasons to be completly disappointed, but there seems to be a customer-tier, that can be served anything tagged with the name of “Guild Wars” and they are satisfied. Pretty disappointing to me.

Dismissing people who have a different opinion as white knights doesn’t do anything for your arguments. It doesn’t make what you say right or true.

It does, however, break the spirit of the forum. People can disagree with you and still be right. Particularly if they’re offering an opinion.

It makes his opinion right by the way, many ppl here claim they listen to suggestion and they developed something asked by the player… but..

Ranger update was needed since the beta and that’s true, anyone saying it was not, is just a kitten . and this was like releasing a man without a leg.
Many things added were asked by the community but were ALREADY on their “to do list” from the beginning (a list made to kinda complete the half-game they released)
SO. can we really tell this changed was made thanks to community pressure? maybe we forced them to develop faster but they didn’t changed anything for/thanks to us

Choosing one example out of dozens doesn’t exactly prove your point though. Are you saying no changes at all have been made to the ranger since launch? I seem to remember some changes.

That they might not be the exact changes asked for is not really all that relevant since not everyone makes the same suggestions or agrees with every suggestion made. You’re making it sound like everyone who plays this game speaks with one voice. They don’t.

Did you see the recent Ready Up episode with upcoming ranger changes? Most people seem to think they’re pretty good.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Because some of us want to play a multiplayer game with that kind of sensibility and that was lacking in MMO space. That’s why. That’s exactly why.

Are you saying someone who enjoys that KIND of experience can’t also be social and want to play with other people? I bet there are a lot more of us out here than you think their are.

I’m a social guy. I like being in my guild. I like playing with friends. And I like not having to sit there and plan a raid for an hour before I jump in and attempt to run it so I might or might not get gear I need to go to the next raid. I don’t want an instanced game. I want to play in the open world.

I’m happy to trade Skyrim’s solitude for a social MMO that centers around stuff I enjoy.

There are dozens of MMOs for people who like other stuff. Can’t we just have one?

Nope, that makes no sense. This game as no “Social Features”. You have chat and that’s it. You can Play with your friends and like your guild in a game that’s well made

You’ve got to be joking. You don’t need social features to play with people. Want to hear a social feature? Mumble. That’s a social feature.

We do our guild missions together, run dungeons together, clear zones together. I can’t do that in Skyrim.

I’m not sure why you don’t understand this.

No but if you hold down both mouse buttons you run.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Danikat.8537:

The way I look at it levelling is just a way of giving you access to your skills, traits etc. gradually so you can learn them instead of being overwhelmed. It has very little to do with what type of content you can or should play.

When I got to level 80 one of the first things I did was map Diessa Plateau. Just because the Living Story took me there and I realised I hadn’t seen much of Ascalon and I felt like looking around. It would never have occurred to me to think that because I’d reached level 80 I was done with everything that was accessible before then and I should be looking for something new and different to do. In fact I felt completely the opposite – it was exciting to think that I could now go anywhere and do anything without having to worry about if I’m the right level for it or not.

I find it hard to believe many other people think like that either. I see level 80’s in lower level PvE zones all the time and I know a lot of people do dungeons after reaching level 80 (in fact I’ve seen some people say you shouldn’t do them before then even if you can).

A game where once you reach the level cap you’re supposed to drop everything you were doing and focus on a few specific activities sounds like a terrible idea to me.

If you really wanna look at a game about the Journey you should look at something like, let’s say: Skyrim. Since minute 1 you have lots of decisions, lots of paths to make. In that game you make your own story, here you have NOTHING even close like that. You have a pretty linear story with little to no decisions or anything being made. You can’t decide where to go next or anything like that, it’s always the same order of events for everyone, your “journey” is exacly the same as everyone else’s journey. And why would there be a way to introduce you to the skills and stuff progressivly if then you have nothing to use them with? The skills you use are 90% of the time completly irelevant, the only skill you need is the number 1, the TAB an occasionaly the heal.

Skyrim is a single player game. You can’t have that many paths in an MMO because you can’t make that many stories for that many people.

Anyway the Skyrim stories really aren’t all that flexible. They give the illusion of flexibility. But in Skyrim you are THE hero. There’s no way anyone can or should compare a single player game an MMO. They’re different animals.

Nor should you compare a theme park MMO with a sandbox one.

Guild Wars 2 is the only themepark MMO with this kind of flexibilty. But no MMO will ever have the flexibility of a single player game.

Exactly! If they can’t do something like that, why would they try to do something like that?

Because some of us want to play a multiplayer game with that kind of sensibility and that was lacking in MMO space. That’s why. That’s exactly why.

Are you saying someone who enjoys that KIND of experience can’t also be social and want to play with other people? I bet there are a lot more of us out here than you think their are.

I’m a social guy. I like being in my guild. I like playing with friends. And I like not having to sit there and plan a raid for an hour before I jump in and attempt to run it so I might or might not get gear I need to go to the next raid. I don’t want an instanced game. I want to play in the open world.

I’m happy to trade Skyrim’s solitude for a social MMO that centers around stuff I enjoy.

There are dozens of MMOs for people who like other stuff. Can’t we just have one?

Godzzila.3752:

Danikat.8537:

The way I look at it levelling is just a way of giving you access to your skills, traits etc. gradually so you can learn them instead of being overwhelmed. It has very little to do with what type of content you can or should play.

When I got to level 80 one of the first things I did was map Diessa Plateau. Just because the Living Story took me there and I realised I hadn’t seen much of Ascalon and I felt like looking around. It would never have occurred to me to think that because I’d reached level 80 I was done with everything that was accessible before then and I should be looking for something new and different to do. In fact I felt completely the opposite – it was exciting to think that I could now go anywhere and do anything without having to worry about if I’m the right level for it or not.

I find it hard to believe many other people think like that either. I see level 80’s in lower level PvE zones all the time and I know a lot of people do dungeons after reaching level 80 (in fact I’ve seen some people say you shouldn’t do them before then even if you can).

A game where once you reach the level cap you’re supposed to drop everything you were doing and focus on a few specific activities sounds like a terrible idea to me.

If you really wanna look at a game about the Journey you should look at something like, let’s say: Skyrim. Since minute 1 you have lots of decisions, lots of paths to make. In that game you make your own story, here you have NOTHING even close like that. You have a pretty linear story with little to no decisions or anything being made. You can’t decide where to go next or anything like that, it’s always the same order of events for everyone, your “journey” is exacly the same as everyone else’s journey. And why would there be a way to introduce you to the skills and stuff progressivly if then you have nothing to use them with? The skills you use are 90% of the time completly irelevant, the only skill you need is the number 1, the TAB an occasionaly the heal.

Skyrim is a single player game. You can’t have that many paths in an MMO because you can’t make that many stories for that many people.

Anyway the Skyrim stories really aren’t all that flexible. They give the illusion of flexibility. But in Skyrim you are THE hero. There’s no way anyone can or should compare a single player game an MMO. They’re different animals.

Nor should you compare a theme park MMO with a sandbox one.

Guild Wars 2 is the only themepark MMO with this kind of flexibilty. But no MMO will ever have the flexibility of a single player game.

You have to play through the story once on the character you want to attempt the achievements on. THey don’t unlock until the first playthrough, and then only on that character.

After that you can keep attempting them in any order you want, by replaying the story from your journal.

So finish it once. Go to your journal, click replay. Then go to the right place for your instance and you can enter as many times as you like until you get the achievements.

Quite a few older folks in my guild, including a couple of people in their 60s. Many in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

Some younguns too.

Guild Wars 2 made enough money according to financial reports, to place it in the area of the fifth highest MMO earner when compared to subscription or optional subscription MMOs.

I wouldn’t close down a game that profitable.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Can’t really compare a sequel to an 8 yo original which has been fully automated, no longer receives any updates, and which had lost a large share of its active player base to what was supposed to be its sequel. The impression the original gives now is a far cry of what it used to be, and it is far different from the experience made by those who played the game when it was in its prime.

That said, the game still plays well, it just doesn’t have the community it once did (and the game itself changed a lot, too), and that might be a problem to newcomers who expect activity in a game that has been abandoned by its devs.

Still if that’s a good game and this game is as bad as you say it is, it should be no contest. I suspect people who played Guild Wars 1 first would like it better on the whole and people who played Guild Wars 2 first would like it better on the whole.

52 here…you’re a kid. lol

Tristar.2687:

To come back to the topic: It doesn’t make sense to write in here – Those few GW2-White-Knights countering any criticism won’t change this fact.

There’s still no content updates that affect the game, no additions comparable to add-ons, no new pvp-modes, no adjustment to wvw, anything that was known and written down here since beta. No new incentives to start the game except for the confusing LW-Story and the mini-areals, that can be played in around 50 Minuten each. Low quality, low standards, some people here even seem to be satisfied with that extremly low input of arenanet, even defending their work arguing that the ranger update, which was needed since beta-times, has been implemented last week.

You have many reasons to be completly disappointed, but there seems to be a customer-tier, that can be served anything tagged with the name of “Guild Wars” and they are satisfied. Pretty disappointing to me.

Dismissing people who have a different opinion as white knights doesn’t do anything for your arguments. It doesn’t make what you say right or true.

It does, however, break the spirit of the forum. People can disagree with you and still be right. Particularly if they’re offering an opinion.

I’m pretty sure most of that stuff comes through. I haven’t tested everything, but you should probably test it before you ask for it to be added to the game.

Apparition.1576:

Guild Wars 1 was just a much better game. More in depth story, better replay value, more versatile builds, the ONLY downside to the game was there was a lack of player interaction in comparison to its competitors.

QQ still miss GW1 Ranger…

Out of curiosity and this is a legit question, I wonder how many who played Guild Wars 2 first would think Guild Wars 1 was a better game.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Quality is opinion not fact

Quality being an opinion? Are you even serious?

Nice way to see things, when I’ll graduate and start to work I’ll use the cheapest materials on the market to save and fast techniques to treat more patients in less time and thus gain more. When they’ll come back complaining because they’re vomiting pus, losing bone structure fast and getting all sorts of infections, complaining because I did some craplow quality job I’ll answer them quality is an opinion and they’re nuts.

Quality is an opinion. That is to say, saying that a GAME UPDATE, which is what we’re talking about here, is an opinion is pretty much the case.

A lot of people thought the Marionette and the Escape from Lions Arch were quality updates. And then there were people who thought Battle for Lion’s Arch was a quality update, but I didn’t.

People confuse preference for quality too often. If you only like dungeons and PvP then these updates might not seem like quality to you.

But they were quality to me.

Ok so you’d say that content that is unplayable due to gamebreaking bugs that prevent you from advancing the plot, like The Dragon’s Reach had in europe, bugs that crash your client every 2 minutes, that have bad optimization giving top-end machines awful framerates in certain areas, that have time-sink like tasks (like “go repair 1000000 refugees signs”) instead of carefully built missions like we have now, that have bad mechanics (like unjustified player deaths) and a soundtrack composed of burping tunes wouldn’t be objectively described as “low quality”?

Game bugs are a fact of life in MMOs. Every single MMO has game bugs. The bigger/faster the update, the more bugs it has. Most bugs are fixed in a day. Fact of life for MMOs, you should get used to it.

When I played Rift, every time there was an update, there’s be patches every single day for four days to sort out the mess.

Because the bug didn’t happen on all servers (some servers were okay some were bugged) it means that particular bug is harder to test.

I think people don’t realize quite how complex these games are and how much work and time goes into each patch. If they made the game with few enough bugs to release, we’d be waiting a whole lot longer for content. And people would complain about having nothing to do. Hell even with the patches some people complain about that.

Answer the question. Can a bug-ridden game update, with bugs that crash your client every 30 seconds or prevent it from loading, glitchy sound and soundtrack, trivial tasks given as game content to repeat an insane amount of times, cheap mechanics to improve durability or difficulty, unfinished maps and missions be objectively described as “low quality”?

Well sure, if it happens to everyone that would be the case. But since my game isn’t bug ridden and isn’t crashing every 30 seconds, and I don’t have those glitches, I’d say the update is a quality update.

Your experience may vary. But you having problems doesn’t make an update low quality.

Am I talking about this game? Am I talking about this update? No. I merely took some examples from it. I’m not having problems with these updates, I’m playing them and enjoying them a lot… but I think that entire maps stuck on bugged events weren’t.
I’m saying that quality is objective. Sure it may not be objectivable about arts. But some flaws are. So, when you said earlier quality is an opinion and not a fact you were raving since you said yourself a bug ridden update is objectively described as low quality. Once again you defend subjectivity but go ahead and make up stuff just to have fun saying people that are wrong.

In the case of these updates, they weren’t bug ridden enough in my opinion to be termed poor updates, particularly when most bugs were fixed quite quickly. We are after all, talking about Guild Wars 2. Other games might give you different mileage but most of the people here judging the quality of this update aren’t doing it on bugs alone and if they are, it’s probably not the only criteria they should be judging on, unless the bugs were so bad that they destroyed the game.

There were, in fact, bugs that prevent progress. Many of them were fixed the same day.

Shrugs. You can argue about this if you want, but it seems to me that the quality of the Living World stuff so far, bugs and all, has been good…in my opinion of course.

Sounds like a break would be a pretty good idea.

I’ve been enjoying trying to get to tier 5 in Drytop lately. It’s my favorite zone in the game to date.

KarlaGrey.5903:

My point was the derv is far easier to play than another melee class, which used to be only primary melee class – as a mater of fact, the entire game is a lot easier to play now than it used to be, so there’s honestly nothing to fear.
Perhaps the OP should try out the derv himself first, and who knows, he might find it ez pzy.

The problem I have with this is that, as the game goes, it is easier, but there’s still a difficulty that comes into the game much later. Remember, you’ve played that game for years.

So someone tries it out and you know, it’s really really easy in the Plains of Jarin. Of course it is. It’s easy in Zhelon Reach.

You have to play it for a really long time before you get to some of the harder encounters. By then you’re sort of stuck with it, if you don’t want to restart the game with another profession.

I played mostly ranged professions in Guild Wars 1 myself…well I played them all.

It’s a matter of preference to some degree, but there really is a difficulty curve.

Saying he should try it is a bit misleading considering how long he’d have to try it for to really try it.

Anet was working on a solution but other changes made to the game set them back on it, for the precusor crafting. They did post about that. They’re back to square one.

Looks like you’re in a demographic that this game wasn’t likely made to cater too, from my point of view. I don’t personally think the living story is a joke. And I could care less about dungeons (even though I’ve done them all).

KarlaGrey.5903:

Whatever works best for you. But once again you nitpicked a part of my post that wasn’t key to the discussion (especially since I listed it as an option, not a necessity).
To get back to the point, a dervish will still be at least somewhat efficient – more than a warrior – because of their innate design to scythe cleave and deal aoe damage with their flash enchantements.

I never mentioned the warrior. There’s a learning and understanding curve that comes with playing a dervish that certain people will do well with and others won’t do well with, which is my point and hasn’t changed.

Saying that you, as an experienced player knowing what to do would be successful with a dervish is great. But I do know people that started the game on dervish, tried it, found it too hard and left the game.

No doubt you have friends that are more skillful and knowledgeable.

While I agree with you as far as precusor goes, there are factual errors in your statement.

The list of game earnings you’ve seen was only for games that have subscriptions or optional subscriptions. Guild Wars 2 wasn’t on that list, because it didn’t meet the criteria for the list. Looking at earnings reports, you’d see that Guild Wars 2 would have fallen into 5th place as far as earnings go, about halfway up the list.

If this game is just about precusors and legendaries to you, not much anyone can do about it.

But I do think Anet needs to find a way to get precusors into the game in other ways.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Seems another point went over year head – in no part of my post did I imply you should copy paste builds. It’s about knowing what you’re facing, and to come prepared. Way to jump to conclusions and toss red herrings around (again).

Naturally you can roll whatever build you feel like, but bringing a minion master to an area where most mobs don’t leave any corpses behind is rather silly, don’t you think so. Of course you can enter the area without looking it up, fail and then build around it, or bite the bullet and proceed to the next one at a (much) slower pace.

Looking it up before I got to that place would ruin the game for me. It’s silly to look stuff up instead of experiencing it to me.

Go in, find out there are no corpses to be had then change your build. Some would call that playing the game.

KarlaGrey.5903:

I wouldn’t say everything works – you can bring no damage and just sit there ‘tanking’ damage, and you’re likely to wipe if you aggroed too many mobs (not killing fast enough), especially if your backline is hench.
But by the time you get to the harder parts, you normally learn/get the right feel for what works and what doesn’t, so it shouldn’t really be an issue.
Otherwise you can always use the wiki to see what mobs you can expect in a zone, and base your hero/build choice around that.

Further example that you and I play completely different games.

I don’t want to have to do research or look things up in a wiki to play a game. I want to figure out what works and what doesn’t on my own. Probably a holdover from the days when you had to figure stuff out on your own.

I’d rather make my own builds and try to learn the game through trial and error.

Sure anyone can go to the wiki or a build site and find a build and do okay with that build, and if that’s how you play that’s great.

But I strongly believe a minority of players do that.

Yep, everything works for easy content. And for leveling that’s fine. But then you start running into harder content and suddenly, it’s not that easy. At least for me it wasn’t.

Part of the problem with Guild Wars 1 from a players point of view is that most things work in normal mode. It’s like Guild Wars 2 in that way. You can throw together anything for the open world.

The nuances of getting through harder content is really what the game is about. No one is suggesting that you can’t play anything in the open world. It’s when the game scales up that dervish can become an issue.

I"m pretty sure tool tips change the damage done based on your armor. I just checked on the character I’m playing. I took off my shoulder armor and my damage on the tool tip went down.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Vayne.8563:

I wouldn’t start with a dervish, frankly. It’s a hard profession to play.

Well, that gave me a laugh.
We call them the ‘the poor man’s way to playing warrior’. Kind of like the paragon, or imbagon, if you will.

Anyhow, any profession is fine, as long as it fits your preference in a party (damage vs cc vs support/heal or a mix&match of the three – the nice thing about GW is you can really make a build that fits the situation and your preferences perfectly without fearing your gear/weap might not cut it).
I’m usually online in the evenings (gmt), and you’re free to send a whisp to Karla Grey, if you’ll have any particular questions build/proff-wise. And perhaps I might even tag along for pve, if I feel like it.

I’m glad it gave you a laugh. Guild Wars 1 players who forget how hard that game is to play because they’ve played it for five years give me one.

For a first character, dervish is particularly hard to play. No secret there. Many of the professions are easier to play.

For a new player, who’s never done anything, who’s starting the game with the third game, I consider dervish one of the harder professions to start with. No one said it can’t be done but I’d rather learn at least the basics of Guild Wars 1 on an easier profession to understand. I don’t particularly think that’s unreasonable.

The game is complicated for lots and lots of people. Suggesting starting with a simpler profession to get your feet wet is logical. Some people don’t remember how that game was when they first started.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Quality is opinion not fact

Quality being an opinion? Are you even serious?

Nice way to see things, when I’ll graduate and start to work I’ll use the cheapest materials on the market to save and fast techniques to treat more patients in less time and thus gain more. When they’ll come back complaining because they’re vomiting pus, losing bone structure fast and getting all sorts of infections, complaining because I did some craplow quality job I’ll answer them quality is an opinion and they’re nuts.

Quality is an opinion. That is to say, saying that a GAME UPDATE, which is what we’re talking about here, is an opinion is pretty much the case.

A lot of people thought the Marionette and the Escape from Lions Arch were quality updates. And then there were people who thought Battle for Lion’s Arch was a quality update, but I didn’t.

People confuse preference for quality too often. If you only like dungeons and PvP then these updates might not seem like quality to you.

But they were quality to me.

Ok so you’d say that content that is unplayable due to gamebreaking bugs that prevent you from advancing the plot, like The Dragon’s Reach had in europe, bugs that crash your client every 2 minutes, that have bad optimization giving top-end machines awful framerates in certain areas, that have time-sink like tasks (like “go repair 1000000 refugees signs”) instead of carefully built missions like we have now, that have bad mechanics (like unjustified player deaths) and a soundtrack composed of burping tunes wouldn’t be objectively described as “low quality”?

Game bugs are a fact of life in MMOs. Every single MMO has game bugs. The bigger/faster the update, the more bugs it has. Most bugs are fixed in a day. Fact of life for MMOs, you should get used to it.

When I played Rift, every time there was an update, there’s be patches every single day for four days to sort out the mess.

Because the bug didn’t happen on all servers (some servers were okay some were bugged) it means that particular bug is harder to test.

I think people don’t realize quite how complex these games are and how much work and time goes into each patch. If they made the game with few enough bugs to release, we’d be waiting a whole lot longer for content. And people would complain about having nothing to do. Hell even with the patches some people complain about that.

Answer the question. Can a bug-ridden game update, with bugs that crash your client every 30 seconds or prevent it from loading, glitchy sound and soundtrack, trivial tasks given as game content to repeat an insane amount of times, cheap mechanics to improve durability or difficulty, unfinished maps and missions be objectively described as “low quality”?

Well sure, if it happens to everyone that would be the case. But since my game isn’t bug ridden and isn’t crashing every 30 seconds, and I don’t have those glitches, I’d say the update is a quality update.

Your experience may vary. But you having problems doesn’t make an update low quality.

Vogue.6305:

@ Vayne

First of all, this is a terrible analogy. The human nation, which comprises a fifth of one of the major nations in Tyria is much more than some “isolated mountain farm”. Sorry, but if there are multiple giant dragons flying across Tyria (Which is one continent vs seven huge continents of Earth), I think it would affect me especially if I live right outside a major city of my nation. If you still want to continue with this analogy though, then don’t you think in WWII that Paris, London, Berlin, and the surrounding areas felt some sort of impact of the war? Farmers is Queensdale and the Gendarran fields are much more occupied with their moas than the threat of a giant dragon swooping down and destroying everything they’ve known. If a dragon has arisen and devastated a significant portion of the continent, then don’t you think people would be more wary of it?

Second of all, I think the point I was trying to make went straight over your head. When do our characters show any indication of their lives being affected by the dragon? Sure, the asura and norn were driven from their homes, but how do we experience this in the game? We never experience any sort of sentiment about how terrible the migration to the surface was and how devastated their race was by the loss of their underground cities. You also completely failed to address the point of caudecus. As the legate minister, don’t you think that his views on the elder dragon (Which we don’t even get to see) would effect his storyline somehow? That’s like if we found out that Russia had 1500 active nuclear weapons and had already released some in Europe, and all John Boehner wants to do is attack Obama and never address this bombs.

I will agree with you on the sylvari race. I feel that maybe because they are the new race, more effort may have been put into their role in the world, especially seeing how caithe is the only Destiny’s Edge character I find to be multi-faceted. Our sylvari heroes seem to be the only one with a direct motive to go after the dragons because we saw them in our dream.

Anyways I feel like this thread keeps getting thrown off track through attack of my examples, when instead the original purpose I think was to explore ways to better present the lore. And I have taken into Anet’s post about giving good feedback in my responses—identifying the issues, giving some ideas on how to make the content better, and providing examples of where I have seen improvement in other games. Constant critique of my posts isn’t going to take this discussion anywhere.

You might not have followed the lore that well. The human nation does not represent one fifth of anything. They’ve been driven back to a single city. They are on their last legs. They have NOT prospers. They have their hands full.

From the human opening sequence talks about how they’ve been driven back. Lion’s Arch isn’t a human city it’s a conglomerate.

Humans have Divinity’s Reach and Ebonhawke. They’re hardly the empire they once were. And what I said was said by the devs anyway, so it’s not a bad analogy it’s how they see the game.

If you don’t want to believe what the devs have said about their own game, that’s fine by me.

Taygus.4571:

Godzzila.3752:

People play games not because they like looking at stuff but because of the experience-reward balance. If you have a lot of great maps and no reward for that the game becomes boring and pointless. If you have a lot of rewards for a bad expirience you get a really frustrating game. So saying that this game is just seeking the Not Need To Work For Anything expirience, im sorry but that’s bs.

People?
I play because I like looking at stuff, thank you very much. I play to have fun, not grind. I won’t do something over and over if I feel it’s boring. (Dry Top atm, is boring for me, so I won’t play it…)
But that’s a GREAT thing. I don’t like it, and I don’t have to play it to keep up.

Rewards in this game are “yay, I did it”, and that’s also a good thing, it’s very console gaming like. Solo friendly, casual friendly.’ I have little time’ friendly. These are good things.
There aren’t many mmo’s like this.

It may not be something you like, and that’s ok too, but don’t try to change this game into something you want. Go play the game you want. They are out there.
And do not make it sound like your view of this game is the “right”/only view!

Want to buy an upvote.

I play games for a lot of reasons, but almost none of those are the reasons espoused by the OP.

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

FrostSpectre.4198:

Kinda odd, when thinking about all the talk that said “we can play them any time we want to, unlike season 1”.

In a way it’s still quite same as season 1 living story was, do it on time or it’ll be over and you cannot get it.

Propably gonna release as separate extras for additional £/$/€?

Except perhaps in my flat mates case where he hasn’t played all of the episodes but has them all unlocked because he logged in three times (once during each two week period) and can play them whenever he wants.

Logging in for a minute once every two weeks =/= being forced to play on their schedule like S1 did.

Just to be clear, you have to log in and click the icon above your minimap. Just logging in doesn’t unlock the episodes.

Some people logged in, didn’t click the icon and logged out then wondered why their stories didn’t unlock.

Fair point, I probably should stop assuming the obvious is obvious to everyone.

Sort of Anet’s fault, they repeated over and over again all you have to do is log in and people took it literally.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Quality is opinion not fact

Quality being an opinion? Are you even serious?

Nice way to see things, when I’ll graduate and start to work I’ll use the cheapest materials on the market to save and fast techniques to treat more patients in less time and thus gain more. When they’ll come back complaining because they’re vomiting pus, losing bone structure fast and getting all sorts of infections, complaining because I did some craplow quality job I’ll answer them quality is an opinion and they’re nuts.

Quality is an opinion. That is to say, saying that a GAME UPDATE, which is what we’re talking about here, is an opinion is pretty much the case.

A lot of people thought the Marionette and the Escape from Lions Arch were quality updates. And then there were people who thought Battle for Lion’s Arch was a quality update, but I didn’t.

People confuse preference for quality too often. If you only like dungeons and PvP then these updates might not seem like quality to you.

But they were quality to me.

Ok so you’d say that content that is unplayable due to gamebreaking bugs that prevent you from advancing the plot, like The Dragon’s Reach had in europe, bugs that crash your client every 2 minutes, that have bad optimization giving top-end machines awful framerates in certain areas, that have time-sink like tasks (like “go repair 1000000 refugees signs”) instead of carefully built missions like we have now, that have bad mechanics (like unjustified player deaths) and a soundtrack composed of burping tunes wouldn’t be objectively described as “low quality”?

Game bugs are a fact of life in MMOs. Every single MMO has game bugs. The bigger/faster the update, the more bugs it has. Most bugs are fixed in a day. Fact of life for MMOs, you should get used to it.

When I played Rift, every time there was an update, there’s be patches every single day for four days to sort out the mess.

Because the bug didn’t happen on all servers (some servers were okay some were bugged) it means that particular bug is harder to test.

I think people don’t realize quite how complex these games are and how much work and time goes into each patch. If they made the game with few enough bugs to release, we’d be waiting a whole lot longer for content. And people would complain about having nothing to do. Hell even with the patches some people complain about that.

ZoiN.4280:

Vayne.8563:

ZoiN.4280:

Vogue.6305:

JBDanger.2603:

I find it funny that the ESRB rating is T for teen when it should be E for everyone. The writing is so childish, that I’ve seen saturday morning cartoons with a better plot line.

Ugh! This! So much this. I was literally talking to my guildies today about how childish the game feels in comparison to GW1. We don’t even have a real fleshed out enemy in this game. I mean we have the elder dragon, but they literally get no character development themselves at all. They woke up, destroyed everything, and now what? What do they want? Idk maybe that’s clear in the lore somewhere, but the storyline doesn’t make it clear other than that they like to destroy things and we need to kill them.

At least GW1 had good villains—Varesh, who turned to Abaddon to try and benefit her nation. Shiro- who wanted revenge from Cantha. The Lich- he wanted to complete the flameseeker prophecies and unleash the titans. All these villains have strong back stories as well- the elder dragons literally just woke up and were like “gonna go wreck tyria now kbye”

I know I’m ranting here but one last thing. The way the storyline is laid out is so completely linear. From the moment you make your character you basically know you’re gonna kill zhaitan. In prophecies, you:

1. Try to save ascalon
2. Realize this is futile and get refugees to LA
3. Help the white mantle against the undead
4. Help the white mantle against the shining blaed
5. PLOT TWIST white mantle are evil
6. Help the shining blade
7. * My memory gets fuzzy after this point* There’s a traitor and you have to become ascended bc you’re the chosen.
8. Free evennia and kill markis
9. Help the dwarves defeat the stone summit to gain them as allies
10. KIll your ally vizier khilbron who PLOT TWIST was the Lich

see how engaging that storyline is compared to one where you’re just on a quest to kill a dragon? I REALLY want to like this game more. That’s why I’ve stuck around this long. But please anet make your characters more engaging. Also I hate logan (but that’s just personal :P)

The prophecies campaign litterally had the best story of all the guild wars games imo.
Absolutely adored and love the story of the prophecies, which also seemed to be the longest of them all if im not mistaken.

See I had issues with the Prophecies story. I thought my character was too stupid. He accepted the White Mantle, when I thought them to be untrustworthy. He was happy to give the scepter of orr over to a guy I didn’t trust at all. I liked neither the southern shiverpeake missions nor the maguuma missions.

There was a great moment toward the end with a plot twist, but over all, it was a relatively predictable standard fantasy story.

Rurik was so cliche it wasn’t funny.

Could be because I was 17 at the time when the game came out that I didden’t think of it that way, but I certainly felt immersed, and otherwise was pulled in to the story.

Yeah I was in my 40s and I’d read a lot of fantasy and scifi. For a multiplayer game the story was fine. Not great, but fine.

The thing is Guild Wars 2’s story is uneven, and one of the design decisions made pre launch made the personal story particularly weak.

They decided to do everything in 10 level chapters. It makes it feel quite artificial. They wrote the story to the game requirements instead of writing the game to story requirements.

Some of the stories I really liked. I didn’t love most of the human stories for example, but the charr and sylvari stories I thought were quite good.

ZoiN.4280:

Vogue.6305:

JBDanger.2603:

I find it funny that the ESRB rating is T for teen when it should be E for everyone. The writing is so childish, that I’ve seen saturday morning cartoons with a better plot line.

Ugh! This! So much this. I was literally talking to my guildies today about how childish the game feels in comparison to GW1. We don’t even have a real fleshed out enemy in this game. I mean we have the elder dragon, but they literally get no character development themselves at all. They woke up, destroyed everything, and now what? What do they want? Idk maybe that’s clear in the lore somewhere, but the storyline doesn’t make it clear other than that they like to destroy things and we need to kill them.

At least GW1 had good villains—Varesh, who turned to Abaddon to try and benefit her nation. Shiro- who wanted revenge from Cantha. The Lich- he wanted to complete the flameseeker prophecies and unleash the titans. All these villains have strong back stories as well- the elder dragons literally just woke up and were like “gonna go wreck tyria now kbye”

I know I’m ranting here but one last thing. The way the storyline is laid out is so completely linear. From the moment you make your character you basically know you’re gonna kill zhaitan. In prophecies, you:

1. Try to save ascalon
2. Realize this is futile and get refugees to LA
3. Help the white mantle against the undead
4. Help the white mantle against the shining blaed
5. PLOT TWIST white mantle are evil
6. Help the shining blade
7. * My memory gets fuzzy after this point* There’s a traitor and you have to become ascended bc you’re the chosen.
8. Free evennia and kill markis
9. Help the dwarves defeat the stone summit to gain them as allies
10. KIll your ally vizier khilbron who PLOT TWIST was the Lich

see how engaging that storyline is compared to one where you’re just on a quest to kill a dragon? I REALLY want to like this game more. That’s why I’ve stuck around this long. But please anet make your characters more engaging. Also I hate logan (but that’s just personal :P)

The prophecies campaign litterally had the best story of all the guild wars games imo.
Absolutely adored and love the story of the prophecies, which also seemed to be the longest of them all if im not mistaken.

See I had issues with the Prophecies story. I thought my character was too stupid. He accepted the White Mantle, when I thought them to be untrustworthy. He was happy to give the scepter of orr over to a guy I didn’t trust at all. I liked neither the southern shiverpeake missions nor the maguuma missions.

There was a great moment toward the end with a plot twist, but over all, it was a relatively predictable standard fantasy story.

Rurik was so cliche it wasn’t funny.

Vogue.6305:

Malkavian.4516:

Vogue.6305:

JBDanger.2603:

I find it funny that the ESRB rating is T for teen when it should be E for everyone. The writing is so childish, that I’ve seen saturday morning cartoons with a better plot line.

Ugh! This! So much this. I was literally talking to my guildies today about how childish the game feels in comparison to GW1. We don’t even have a real fleshed out enemy in this game. I mean we have the elder dragon, but they literally get no character development themselves at all. They woke up, destroyed everything, and now what? What do they want?)

Hmmm…. with regards to the elder dragons getting character development, I honestly do not think they need to. As for what do they want? Simple: dragon is hungry, dragon eats magic.

I really can’t agree with this. Having an intricate villain with multiple layers makes a story so much more interesting. Think about some of the great movie/comic/literature villains and how they contributed to creating a captivating plot… palpatine/the joker/ hannibal lecter/ even Smaug as a response to your dragon question. Remember all the ambition Anet showed pre-release? A game with such high aspirations deserves a better enemy than “dragon is hungry, dragon eats magic”. As players, we literally have no connection with zhaitan other than knowing that he damaged tyria. Our characters aren’t personally affected by him to begin with. Most of the contact we have with his devastation is secondhand… we help NPCs who were directly affected by his destruction.

Think about it like this. In GW1 prophecies, our first enemy was the charr… they destroyed our home, and from this point, the game furthers the plot, giving you a personal connection with the enemies you encounter. In factions, you’re working to fight this plague that threatens to wipe out your country and you see that even one of your fellow students has become infected, from here the story builds. In NF, Varesh Ossa invades your country, killing many of your comrades and capturing your leader, the entire plot deepens from this point.

Also, the threat and devastation of the dragon doesn’t really become an active presence in the game until you get to orr, which is pretty late on in the game. When I’m starting out and even in the surrounding areas when I’m mid-level, I have no real interaction with the dragon’s corruption aside from the few areas of the map that have rise.

In prophecies, the evidence of the searing was all around me. When I wasn’t fighting charr, my quests (hearts for gw2) involved me helping people overcome the problems the searing had caused them. I could give examples about factions and NF, but this post’ll get too long.

Another thing, if zhaitan’s power is really so threatening, then shouldn’t his presence reach into the subplots of our story? My last two characters I worked on were humans, so those are the ones I remember the best: the centaurs and bandits seem unphased and unaffected by the presence of the dragon. Especially among the centaurs. As a nation of intelligent beings (I mean, ventari was a centaur!), you would think something as powerful as the dragon would somehow affect their actions in the story . Also Caudecus plays a significant role in the human storyline, but I’m not even sure if he ever even brings up the elder dragon.

This is all stuff I feel like anet could improve upon when they introduce content for the other dragons. Thoughts?

Your comments about elder dragons and humans are intentional. It’s like World War 2. If you lived on an isolated mountain farm and didn’t listen to the radio, World Wars 2 wouldn’t have affected you nearly as much as it did if you lived in Europe somewhere. It’s a big world. People tend to focus on what’s happening locally.

The charr have the dragon brand right in the middle of their territory. The Asuran were driven to the surface by an elder dragon. The norn were driven from their homes by Jormag. The Sylvari believe their birth is somehow related to the dragon and they have the undead on their door step.

But Divinity’s Reach is removed from all that. Those dragons at the start of the story aren’t their problem. They have immediate problems. The development of leaving your insular human home and entering a bigger world is part of the human story.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Quality is opinion not fact

Quality being an opinion? Are you even serious?

Nice way to see things, when I’ll graduate and start to work I’ll use the cheapest materials on the market to save and fast techniques to treat more patients in less time and thus gain more. When they’ll come back complaining because they’re vomiting pus, losing bone structure fast and getting all sorts of infections, complaining because I did some craplow quality job I’ll answer them quality is an opinion and they’re nuts.

Quality is an opinion. That is to say, saying that a GAME UPDATE, which is what we’re talking about here, is an opinion is pretty much the case.

A lot of people thought the Marionette and the Escape from Lions Arch were quality updates. And then there were people who thought Battle for Lion’s Arch was a quality update, but I didn’t.

People confuse preference for quality too often. If you only like dungeons and PvP then these updates might not seem like quality to you.

But they were quality to me.

Protoavis.9107:

FrostSpectre.4198:

Kinda odd, when thinking about all the talk that said “we can play them any time we want to, unlike season 1”.

In a way it’s still quite same as season 1 living story was, do it on time or it’ll be over and you cannot get it.

Propably gonna release as separate extras for additional £/$/€?

Except perhaps in my flat mates case where he hasn’t played all of the episodes but has them all unlocked because he logged in three times (once during each two week period) and can play them whenever he wants.

Logging in for a minute once every two weeks =/= being forced to play on their schedule like S1 did.

Just to be clear, you have to log in and click the icon above your minimap. Just logging in doesn’t unlock the episodes.

Some people logged in, didn’t click the icon and logged out then wondered why their stories didn’t unlock.

ZoiN.4280:

Romek.4201:

in mmo games characters need PROGRESS – thats most important thing ever
but in gw2 they total ignore this and stop at lvl 80

all other content they have or have addet since release in this game to play after lvl 80 would be called in other games “Filler Content”

and cause someone wrote it^^ – no, story is no content

best in gw2 is the lvling from 1-80 and to equip the character + all traits and after this there is nothing

thats why i have 31 characterslots iwth over 20 lvl 80 chars – playing a characte on lvl 80 in this game is just boring

and to bring some progress in this game they could add:

• more infusions like this + 1 agony infusions with + 1 power, + 1 condi, + 1 critchance … and so on and let player decide how much work they wanna put in (2x+ 1 infusion gives 1x + 2)
• the new back item is something alot people has fun to work for so bring with this new armor or weapon skins and add this to content like Liadri

I tend to agree with this somewhat – I mean progression doesn’t have to be gear only, they do have story progression through the living story, but, when you’ve done that then you got nothing to do really.

In GW1 you had skill hunting, such as capturing elite skills, which imo is something I absolutely loved, and certianly served for progression, through more diversity when it came to builds and what not.

I think thats what they have been trying to do with traits instead, though I personally think it should be tied to skills, and not traits really :/

They tried to do it with traits, but it was executed in a haphhazard manner that didn’t really help the game in my opinion.

Tristar.2687:

lordkrall.7241:

Vespero.6180:

This is not the subject of the thread… by the way.. it’s not personal story, it’s swerver story, and you make it by zerging with 40 players on you left and other 50 on your right… not really personal..

it’s like going to the bathroom with 15 person looking at you.. not so personal

So what about those three maps that they didn’t add then?

And to be fair the majority of Season 2 have been instanced with small groups or solo. But I suppose that doesn’t count either?

Are you serious even counting these reworks / mini areas that have been added in the last TWO (2) years.

The quality of the added content was very very low, even lower than the personal story. The story telling was bad / is still on a very low level (do you feel involved or even appealed to the story?) and the whole added content was built around the gem shop. You can feel it in every corner.

So, writing here or trying to change something by giving well-thought input is rather useless than anything.

Quality is opinion not fact. I think the quality of some of the updates, like the Nightmare Tower for example, was very high.