Guild Wars 2

I think what happens in if you log off the server knows you’re offline. But if you don’t give it the command to log off, I think there’s a check that it makes periodically to see if you’re there. I’ve been on mumble with people who say they’ve been kicked but I still see their portrait.

If you’re logging off completely it’s different because you’re informing the server of your intention to leave.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

From a pve standpoint all of my builds in GW are still viable for what I built them to do.
I have 320 builds. Some are single situation builds. Some are idiot proofed for Heroes.
Some are enemy specific, ie destroyers. Some are for solo.. some for VQ, some for VQ in 4 member group areas. I have NM builds for goofing off, and HM builds. RoJ is awesome in NM, in HM.. not so. Meteor the same.

I have builds simply for DoA to synergize with LB skills. Builds changing up 2nd profession. on and on.

And I have idiot builds so I can run 8 heroes with pets, because it is amusing. Not optimal at all.

If you want to blather about Meta only, well Meta is Meta, in all games, and always restrictive and undiversified.

I cannot see how anyone can shrug off the fact that GW has far more builds and variety.

That’s odd, because when I cleaned out my build folder I found about 80% of my builds, while perhaps viable, where no longer optimal due to changes that had been made in the skill sets. Of course, no changes have been made for a couple of years now, but prior to that, I had to adjust builds and after I did I found the old builds to be far more meh.

BlueZone.4236:

I would just like to say on record the percentages Vayne mentioned were pulled out of thin air, therefore meaningless. I hope this clarifies any mislead readers.

Thank you for your time.

They weren’t hard and fast percentage it’s called an example. There was nothing in that post that should have made anyone think they were supossed to represent actual numbers. Most people reading this would have understood that. Thanks for clarifying it further for those who didn’t get it.

Verificus.4320:

I don’t agree.. If you google mystic forge statistics reddit you will get a thread where people have done the math on how much approx gold you need to throw in assuming a static price of rare lvl 80 GS and I believe throwing in 700g resulted in an average of 1.2. precursors for a high percentage of people. 1000G will most likely almost always get you either dawn or dusk. However if you get Dusk instead of Dawn and have to resell then on some days/weeks having spend 1000g will not make you profit on dusk due to fees. Obviously there is always a small percentage that you will get nothing but honestly if you are that one seriously unlucky guy then I feel bad for you kid.

But there are people that have thrown more money than that into it and not gotten either. It’s still a gamble.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

darkace.8925:

DarcShriek.5829:

GW1 never added a new player race. Why should GW2 when it already has 5.

I would argue Canthans and Elonians were new races. They had their own leveling paths, their own capital cities, unique models, and exclusive Personal Story (or that game’s equivalent thereof) missions.

I’d agree with this. Other games have multiple human races as well.

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think saying these things is insulting to anyone. Put it this way. In order to really get the most out of Guild Wars 1, you really had to think about what you were doing. It meant familiarizing yourself with a lot of skills. But skills kept changing and the meta kept changing and the build of the month kept changing. You could go away for a couple of weeks, and have to learn things all over sometimes. That’s great for people who play every day, not so good for people to come and visit. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact of life.

Even less insulting is the comments on balancing. Anet bit off more than they could chew with the old system. There were always problems trying to balance it. They’ve admitted as much themselves. How is agreeing with them insulting?

I actually agree with you. I think they went too far. Anet has a habit of over-reacting to things in my opinion. The complains about Prophecies was that the pace was too slow and it took forever. So they came out with Factions. Where the pace was too fast and you could breeze through the game in a weekend. It was an overcompensation. They did pacing somewhat better in Nightfall, which was somewhat between the two. It was like a pendulum swinging.

I sort of expect the same thing to happen here. We’ve seen the swing to too simple and there’ll be an update at some point (maybe the first expansion), where the pendulum swings the other way. It might be one of those “big” projects they’re working on.

But I don’t think being honest about the limitations of the old game to appeal to a wider audience due to complexity is particularly insulting. Not everyone is looking for complexity.

The topic under discussion is… Guild Wars is it more diverse. The implication raised was that no, it wasn’t more diverse, which to many of us Guild Wars veterans seems to be an interesting position.

Now the OP tries to say that because BOTH have " as many optimal builds" that Gw2 is as diverse as Guild Wars.

To me this is nonsense. I have explained why. Now you want to derail the issue to " Gw2 made the game less diverse than Guild Wars, and had awesome reasons."

That is not the topic of this thread.

Someone that feels Gw2 is as diverse has basically said that the game many of us enjoyed playing was " full of useless skills." And that that is why gw2 is “as diverse” because it has the same number of " optimal " builds.

As I said…Nonsense. If one defines " Optimal" as" The absolute best for a given situation" then they obviously have the same number of “optimal” builds..since that = " the best build for a given situation" and that will be 1. By the definition of “Optimal”

MY position has always been that Guild Wars had more viable alternate builds that lent themselves to play…where content could be experienced, without having to play “the meta”.

THAT is the topic. Does Guild Wars having more viable alternate builds, that could be enjoyed " for fun" without having to " do the meta" or " only do the optimal"
provide more divergence in playstyles , so that If you have 2 Necromancers, could you have each play a totally different playstyle and still be viable? I say that since each necromancer had anywhere from 5 to 9 sub-classes, and each combination had hundreds of skills, and 9 " trait" lines…. THIS meant that each necromancer could play totally differently from one another and STILL be viable. STILL complete content.

Not whether the devs had reasons for making gw2 less diverse.

Seems that you agree with me, Gw2 is less diverse. WHY it’s less diverse is a topic for another thread.

Well according to that logic this thread should have been closed. Guild Wars 1 had more build diversity. Discussing why it’s a good idea to or not to have that is perfectly on topic, or close the thread. Those are pretty much the only options.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Fact :
More content was added to GW1 2 years after its release than was added to GW2 2 years after release.

They now have:

-More money
-More people
-Overall more resources.

Also the quality of the content that has been delivered so far has mostly been sub-par.

Most of season 1, the whole Southsun fiasco, and I could go on.
Permanent additions to the game have been few, and of those few only some are actually good.

That’s why people are complaining.

Fact:
More armor was added to GW1 after 2 years since its release than we’ve had in GW2 since release.

This is in my opinion inexcusable considering GW2 is a cosmetically driven game and that almost all new armor and weapon sets have been introduced via the gem store so they’ve made a profit by introducing them.

How is it that even though they have more resources and more people they seem to put out less armor sets?

Even worse is the fact is that people have been asking for GW1 armor to be brought back to GW2 ( which would be simpler since you wouldn’t have to start from scratch) and yet we’ve seen nothing.

snip

First of all, about the precusor crafting, they did say something, you just missed it. They were working on something that had to be scrapped because of other changes they made. So they’re back to the drawing board on it. Sad, but that’s what happened and they did post about it. Right here in these forums.

The sub par comment is your opinion. Anet isn’t doing a bunch of stuff every single game has done. They’re pretty much in unchartered territory. I’d say the start of the living story was unimpressive, but it got better as time went on, for me anyway. Because I could see improvement, I was happy to wait, because it meant they were on the right track (again my opinion only). The new season 2 stuff is better than anything in Season 1, but the last part of season 1 was pretty kitten ed good anyway. So I don’t agree with that.

I do agree on the armor comment, however, that said, if you look at the amount of elite armor total in Guild Wars 1, you’ll find there is currently far more variety in this game, because of transmutation.

See in Guild Wars 1, even at the end of it’s reign, you only had X number of elite armor sets and level 80 sets (some of which were dreadful in my opinion). However, you have to realize that in Guild Wars 2, with transmutation stones and the ability to mix and match and use ANY skin at level 80, it means there’s more armor in Guild Wars 2 for level 80s than Guild Wars 1. What they don’t have a special unique armor sets. But there are certainly more cosmetic options.

Every profession had it’s own unique armours. Transmutation, 3 tiers of professions all share the same skins. I don’t see how your math has lead you to believe more exist in gw2. This is not to mention the amount of weapon skins that have been recycled to lesser extend or are complete replica’s. Not wanting to split hairs, but your math is off if u think gw2 has overall more armours, it just has variation in customising.

You got it right in one. Every profession had it’s own unique armor. Right there. Perfect. That’s true. So as a Necromancer, you had less of a selection. Here’s the math.
On on a ranger right now so I’ll use that as an example.

Here’s the ranger armor page. There are 30 sets of armor total shown. Thirty sets total. That’s the options I had for my ranger.

I have 28 options available to be right now that I’ve already unlocked in chest pieces. I don’t have half the armor sets now. There are 56 chest pieces. You’ll find that particular in just about ever case. There are 59 boots my ranger can wear and still 30 in Guild Wars 1.

So in Guild Wars 1 my ranger had 30 × 5 pieces and here I have over 50 times 6 pieces. And there were capes in Guild Wars 1, which were guild capes, which you couldn’t really pick and choose. We have far more customizable back pieces here. You had a handful of dyes in Guild Wars 1 and over 400 here. Even with the ability to mix dyes, you didn’t have 400 colors. And there are multiple dye zones on each piece here, as opposed to Guild Wars 1.

See, that’s math.

Djinn.9245:

CaptainVanguard.4925:

For the love of the six gods, this setting was never about child geniuses playing with dragon magic like a 10 year old with play dough, it was about dark, deep, intense situations that forced the player to survive some of the worst possible things that a universe can “throw” at you.

…

Dragons destroying land is a good start, and taking lives away is yet another example of what the game needs.

It also needs signs of rebuilt civilization’s and signs that the races of Tyria are claiming land as well as loosing it.

Yet the struggle, the ambiance, the tone of joy against darkness feels wrong.

Take Dragon Bash.

Was Dragon Bash a good thing to have during the aftermath of Flame and Frost and the Southsun Cove events?

You’re going to suddenly make a happy joyous festivity out of a freaking slaughter?

I get the point, I do, but it feels like its delivered wrong.

And Taimi serves to prove what I’m trying to convey.

She isn’t a bad character, but she lacks the characteristics that make her apart of the ambiance naturally, rather instead, shes supposed to come across as some strong kid were all rooting for when really its like putting a brilliant minded child with epic machines in the middle of a dragon infested to- oh wait.

Not ignoring the rest of what you said, just pulling out some bits that I really resonate with.

This game is supposed to be about some really, REALLY BAD THINGS. The world is being taken over by undead. The dragons are waking. Scarlet has been wrecking havok and completely destroyed LA. In the midst of this a heroic team is created to face these dangers and one of the members is a cutesy child??!! This is one of the things that completely breaks my immersion, because I’m supposedly “the boss” and yet the very first thing I would do if I was really the boss is I would not have let Taimi join us in the first place.

People have these arguments like: she’s going to study Scarlet anyway. You know what would happen if some perky kid decided that they wanted to get involved in the hunt for Osama bin Laden? I mean come on, no one would say “well, she’s going to do it anyway so we might as well make her a highest-clearance member of the NSA…”

This decision by Anet to try to merge a “world in the middle of constant disaster and war” with cutesy plush backpacks for adventurers, “hot” comments and idle animations for female warriors, and a perky kid member of the highest level Multi-National Intelligence Team just makes this game completely nonsensical to me. I can’t care about anything because nothing is “real”. I’m not invested.

Except she’s not just a pesky child, she’s a talented prodigy who has been helpful in the past and is even more helpful currently. Her expertise about Scarlet does come in handy.

Essentially she’s Wesley Crusher from Star Trek the Next Generation. He was a pesky kid who kept saving the ship.

Riaky.8965:

Elder Dragons is like a side story of gw2 now. WvW & Spvp are the “end game” lol

Except that Anet said Living Story is end game.

If you didn’t feel like a hero during the personal story when we took back Claw Island, OP, I don’t know what to say.

It’s unanimous. Buy the precusor. lol

They’re both considered lore masters. They work with all the living story teams, and oversee lore and story in the whole game. It’s something like quality control for writing I guess. lol

There were always people charging for their services in Guild Wars 1, from the gate monkeys in Pre to the Drox Runners, to runners in most mission outposts, to the black widow spider runs in UW, to the people who ferried people in Kamadan to the Consolate Docks, to the people who did the last 2 minute Shiro battle. Dungeon runs were common too.

I’ve found plenty of nice people to help me out in Guild Wars 2. They’re called my guild.

Smith.1826:

Honestly, at this point, I’m just convinced that Guild Wars 2 didn’t need to be titled “Guild Wars 2”. The class/ability names and the setting are all that is has in relation to it’s predecessor, and for a game that’s certainly not enough.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a new game and audience, but then I definitely don’t see what they’d want it called Guild Wars 2 – unless it’s implied that GW2 would end up very differently if it wasn’t?

My other problem is that I want to support ANet, but I don’t want to support the payment model. I still recommend it, I still think it’s worth the box price, I just don’t agree with the methods a free-to-play model introduces.

And yet I play this game almost exactly the same way I played Guild Wars 1. I mean yeah with jumping puzzles, and all, but really the whole way I play really hasn’t changed that much.

In Guild Wars 1 I did what I found fun at any given time and here I do the same. This is actually a bit easier since the game isn’t as linear, but beyond that, I don’t play much differently.

I didn’t love switching up builds all the time in Guild Wars 1, so I concentrated on making balanced builds that could be used anywhere, and for more places that was great. I did the same with heroes. So I could take my team and do anything I wanted (pretty much) in the game.

The world is more or less the same world, and the way I play is more or less the same. So to me, Guild Wars 2 is a perfectly valid name.

Mungrul.9358:

I agree completely with the OP, and out of all the other uglies I’d add, this one’s foremost in my mind when I think about GW2 these days:

Forcing a free-to-play business model into a pay-to-play game.

This is where the spirit of Guild Wars has completely died. The gem shop is as intrusive in GW2 as it is in free-to-play games such as Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons Online and many others. Actually, moreso as it’s tied directly to the in-game economy.
When the only long-term rewards in this game are cosmetic, and most new cosmetic content is released via the gem store, it really has become pay-to-win.

It’s so intrusive in fact that many players think of it as a free-to-play game forgetting that they initially paid a large fee up front to play the game in the first place.

Except that you can farm gold to pay for everything in the gem store, and people do.

darkace.8925:

chemiclord.3978:

You know, you say “We need challenging content”… but the minute that ANY content of any significant difficulty appears in this game, these very forums are flooded with complaints that the new content is “too hard” and “not fun.”

So no, I would argue that the bulk of the player base DOESN’T want or need challenging content. YOU may want it (and honestly, I would too), but until Arena.net backs off their stance of instanced “raid” like content, I don’t think we’re gonna be seeing it any time soon.

The shop shouldn’t stop selling ice cream because some of its patrons are lactose intolerant. The shop owner should simply tell those complaining about ice cream, “if you can’t handle ice cream, order one of the many other items off our extensive menu.”

It’s not the same thing. In order for that to work, there has to be enough choices and selection for the other patrons. But since many are complaining there’s not enough content, making more challenging content for the minority would be a waste of time. Would you rather risk losing 5% of your audience our 25%? It’s a very simple business decision.

If I were in business, I’d rather kitten off a smaller percentage than a larger one.

Veydar.5017:

Agree with lack of challenge. And no, you can’t dump that on the players as in make your own challenge. We need challenging content that rewards us accordingly. Soloing Arah p2 in under 20 minutes will make you famous on youtube and maybe you can get rewarded by receiving donations for your stream but no sane person can say that’s a valid replacement for actual ingame rewards.
We need more stuff like super high level fractals or maybe Arah, basically dungeons you can’t semi afk faceroll as a half decent player.

See this is what bothers me. People talk about challenge. There’s not enough challenge in the game. We want more challenge. But then the challenge in the game gets back to rewards, not challenge. We want more rewards. We want the challenges to be worth doing. So what you’re really talking about is being rewarded better, because you’re a good player.

What’s the real percentage in doing that for most of the player base? In Guild Wars 1, we had people making dungeons runs all the time, and the ability to buy pretty much all the end game rewards except titles. And even most titles you could get by being run, or farming and paying gold.

It makes less than zero sense for a company to put huge amounts of time and energy making something for 5% of their playbase. Not when 95% is complaining they don’t have enough content. It’s just not going to happen.

Not because I don’t sympathize with you, but because it would be a bad business decision. This game isn’t that hard, but whenever challenging content is added, it tends to get ignored by the majority of the playerbase. So what impetus does Anet have to add more of it.

Do you think that the new path of Twilight Arbor got run more than CoF path 1 or SE path 1?

Galphar.3901:

Seems like now the discussion has changed to “What is Endgame?”. OK I’ll bite.

Depends on the person. For some Endgame is PvP, for others it’s Raids. In GW we had PvP(HA/RA/TA/GvG) and Skin grinding(farm for greens, do UW/FoW for mats to make Obsidian Armor). In GW2 we have the same thing, PvP(WvWvW/Arenas) and PvE(Dungeon farming for tokens for armor/weapons, World Boss farming).

The problem isn’t that there is no endgame in GW2 it’s that the Endgame was too easy. The hardest thing to do in GW was obtain Obsidian Armor. You had to farm both UW and FoW for mats to make it and once you had the mats you had to fight your way to the armorsmith in FoW. In GW2 we have Dungeon farming. Dungeons are now basically just “speed-runs” for tokens. People do speedruns and have what they want from that dungeon in hrs/days. This is why people say there is no endgame in GW2.

Except you could farm feathers, buy the mats from the trader or in Spamadan, and then pay for a run to get armor which is I think only the first two quests in FoW which aren’t that hard anyway. It took about 20 minutes to do the armor run, if I recalled correctly. It’s not like you had to finish FoW (which was long but wasn’t particularly hard. Underworld was much harder.

So you farm feathers pay for a run, and then where is your end game? A better example would have been DOA and a tormented weapon…which you could farm feathers for and buy in Spamadan as well.

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Xillllix.3485:

The Ugly: Lack of GvG everyone was expecting after GW1.

Everyone wasn’t expecting it, Anet never said it was coming and they were very clear that it might never come. Anyone who was expecting it simply wasn’t paying attention.

I’d also be extremely curious to know what percentage of Guild Wars 1 players even participated in GvG.

Why?

Because so many people are saying every Guild Wars 1 player expected it to be here, when I’m convinced most Guild Wars 1 players never even attempted it. It’s this huge debate all the time. Maybe there’s a reason it wasn’t a priority for Anet to put it in the game.

Why are you convinced when you have nothing to support your idea?

Im sure there IS a reason, I`m just not so sure its for the reason you think.

What makes you think I have nothing to support my idea?

Ah you do?

Can you share these facts with the rest of us?

Not in this thread, no. Because it’s not the place for it. But then, there is something besides fiction and fact. There is circumstantial evidence which is neither. There’s a difference between a fact and an educated guess. I consider my guesses to be educated. There’s something for me to go on. That doesn’t make them fact.

Which is why I said I’d be interested to know how many people actually participated in Guild vs Guild, instead of stating it wasn’t a big percentage of the playerbase (as I suspect).

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Actually, technically it’s quite right. Guild Wars 1 had a single expansion which was Eye of the North. Factions wasn’t an expansion, because it was a stand alone game. You could buy and play Factions without ever buying or playing Prophecies. Hence it wasn’t an expansion. Same for Nightfall. You needed neither Prophecies nor Factions to play Nightfall. Eye of the North was an expansion because it required one of the other three full games.

I know it’s just a technical difference, but you can’t call that poster wrong.

Technically, he was right. However, splitting that hair is a useless point. These campaigns offered many things other games’ expansions offered, and in some cases, more.

Not splitting hairs. I’m simply saying you can’t say he was wrong. I agree that those games offered expansion type content.

What people seem to have forgotten is how that content was met by a percentage of the fan base. Every time an expansion was released, Guild War 1 lost part of it’s player base. With Factions it was complaints about how the new professions fit into PvP, throwing the balance into disarray. With Nightfall it was the introduction of heroes and how they were going to kill the game now that people didn’t need to party.

Expansions did come out, but they had their share of problems and people still complained about them.

You saw it less because sites were run by fans back then. There was no official forum to complain about. I had complaint posts about Guild Wars 1 removed from Guild Wars guru in the past, even though they were perfectly legitimate complaints.

Edit: People also complaint Factions was too short, didn’t have enough content and wasn’t worth the cover price, because you could get through it in a weekend.

I leveled a character to 80 using the new trait system. I didn’t find it hard or onorous to level on that character, admittedly a warrior. However, even in the old days I’d sometimes forget to spend trait points for many many levels. This game isn’t really that hard in the open world, even without traits at all.

The real problem is being forced into doing stuff you simply aren’t interested in doing in order to have to unlock something. The new player comment doesn’t matter that much since a new player will just assume it’s part of the game. The problem comes from comparing it to what we had before. It’s punishing to experienced players who don’t really need that kind of gold sink, and it’s time consuming and annoying for those of us who have more than ten characters.

I probably won’t be making more characters until the system changes, or until a new profession or race comes out.

There are two reasons for this. Guild Wars 1 had the same cinematics for everyone. Every single player who played Prophecies got the same roughly 25 cut scenes, maybe 30. That’s was it for the whole game.

Guild Wars 2 has in its personal story several cut scenes per story, 50 personal stories for character and multiple variations. Many many times more cut scenes. Financially, they simply weren’t viable for that many. Now that the Living Story is the same thing that everyone is doing we’re getting better cut scenes again.

One final note. The big deficiency with Guild Wars 1 cut scenes came if you had minion masters or spirit spammers in your party. Then half the time you’d have minions attacking friendly NPCs while they were trying to talk. It was funny as hell, but not very dramatic.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Openly admitting that I didn’t read this entire thread, but as a Gw1 player myself I’d like to explain a few strong reasons why we (the gw1 playerbase) are entitled to complain/criticize Anet.

In Gw1 there were many things that, if you asked any Gw1 player, were done very well. There were flaws. But, ultimately there was very little that we sat around and complained about because we knew what this game was capable of and it delivered to an acceptable range on that exact scale.

However, when we take our standards of acceptance from Gw1 and transfer it to Gw2 we see many things that don’t meet that level of expectation.

snip

We understand that Gw2 isn’t Gw1, but we also understand that the people who made Gw2 are the same people who made Gw1 – the same people that we gave feedback to in both games since day 1 and praised various aspects of the game to. What we as Gw1 players are now feeling is that all that praise and guidance that we gave back in Gw1 about what we liked and didn’t like seems to have begun falling on deaf ears.

So the reason we complain is because we devoted up to 8 years in Gw1 helping shape it into the acceptable game that we as the players had asked for before Gw2 came out. We signed up for the Gw2 Beta and began helping point out the things we felt were missing from Gw1 that would make it feel more like home – and at the start – we thought they were listening. Now we don’t feel like we’re being heard and we’re trying to get attention. We’re trying to get the “old Anet” back. The ones who listened, were helpful, kind, cortious, and sent holiday letters to GL’s that thanked them for being a key component in the games livelihood. We simply want a better game and a better gaming family. Nothing more, nothing less.

So when you next see a Gw1 player trying to compare Gw1 to Gw2 sit back and ask yourself (and I use a metaphor here) if you put almost 10 years, a decade, of your life into a marriage and equally helped shape it to become the best it could be, and suddenly after you moved/tried to “improve” something in your lives you started to slowly go down hill because the other side started to care less and less and ignore you more and more – wouldn’t you feel a little betrayed?

This type of post is one of the types of posts I object to the most. Because the OP at very least implies like he’s talking for the majority of Guild Wars 1 players, and I’m not 100% sure that’s the case. Particularly when you say lines like we sat around and complained about.

We complained about Guild Wars 1 all the time. The difference between Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars 1 was that Guild Wars 1 didn’t have an official forums and other forums were moderated by fans. That’s why Reddit, which is self moderated is far more kind to the game than the official forums.

Official forums can’t really downvote every negative post. But there was TONS of complaining in my time in Guild Wars 1. Many people loved the game, but many people left the game as well. People complained bitterly when heroes were introduced and tons of people left the game. That was a well thought out aspect of an expansion that drove people from the game.

Either you’re viewing the past through rose-colored glasses, you’re not remembering, or you didn’t spend much time talking to people, but there were myriad complaints about myriad things.

There were people who despised factions when it was released (and not just a couple). The precious balance that was enjoyed with PvPers prior to that was blown apart with the addition of the Assassin and Ritualist professions.

And there were bugs in the game that existed for years and years that no one fixed, even though people cried out about it.

Guild Wars 2 DOES have more bugs, but it’s a larger and far more ambitious game. The total number of quests in all four Guild Wars 1 titles is less than the number of dynamic events in Guild Wars 2 at launch. It’s a much more ambitious undertaking. It’s going to have more bugs.

The industry has changed and there’s no way you could get away with producing a game like Guild Wars 1 today and expect it to be succussful in the same way. For one thing, when it came out, it was the only multiplayer game that didn’t have a monthly subscription attached to it.

Andrasta Ethereal.8726:

Firstly there was only one expansion, that that was released MORE THAN TWO YEARS after Prophecies.

Wrong, Factions was released 1 year later with Nightfall appearing 6 months after that
From Wiki..
Guild Wars is the first game created by developer ArenaNet. Senior developers from Blizzard Entertainment, some involved in the early development of World of Warcraft left to create ArenaNet to develop a game which took risks with game design and business model. Guild Wars development was first announced in April 2003. Guild Wars Prophecies, initially marketed simply as Guild Wars, was released in April 2005. Sorrow’s Furnace added further playable content to Prophecies in September 2005. Guild Wars Factions was released exactly a year after Prophecies in April 2006 followed six months later by Guild Wars Nightfall in October 2006. A fourth campaign was in development, but after reviewing feedback from fans and the sort of changes they wanted to make, ArenaNet elected to focus on an expansion pack, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, released in August 2007, a series of updates known as Guild Wars Beyond, and Guild Wars 2.

Actually, technically it’s quite right. Guild Wars 1 had a single expansion which was Eye of the North. Factions wasn’t an expansion, because it was a stand alone game. You could buy and play Factions without ever buying or playing Prophecies. Hence it wasn’t an expansion. Same for Nightfall. You needed neither Prophecies nor Factions to play Nightfall. Eye of the North was an expansion because it required one of the other three full games.

I know it’s just a technical difference, but you can’t call that poster wrong.

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Xillllix.3485:

The Ugly: Lack of GvG everyone was expecting after GW1.

Everyone wasn’t expecting it, Anet never said it was coming and they were very clear that it might never come. Anyone who was expecting it simply wasn’t paying attention.

I’d also be extremely curious to know what percentage of Guild Wars 1 players even participated in GvG.

Why?

Because so many people are saying every Guild Wars 1 player expected it to be here, when I’m convinced most Guild Wars 1 players never even attempted it. It’s this huge debate all the time. Maybe there’s a reason it wasn’t a priority for Anet to put it in the game.

Why are you convinced when you have nothing to support your idea?

Im sure there IS a reason, I`m just not so sure its for the reason you think.

What makes you think I have nothing to support my idea?

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Xillllix.3485:

The Ugly: Lack of GvG everyone was expecting after GW1.

Everyone wasn’t expecting it, Anet never said it was coming and they were very clear that it might never come. Anyone who was expecting it simply wasn’t paying attention.

I’d also be extremely curious to know what percentage of Guild Wars 1 players even participated in GvG.

Why?

Because so many people are saying every Guild Wars 1 player expected it to be here, when I’m convinced most Guild Wars 1 players never even attempted it. It’s this huge debate all the time. Maybe there’s a reason it wasn’t a priority for Anet to put it in the game.

Xillllix.3485:

The Ugly: Lack of GvG everyone was expecting after GW1.

Everyone wasn’t expecting it, Anet never said it was coming and they were very clear that it might never come. Anyone who was expecting it simply wasn’t paying attention.

I’d also be extremely curious to know what percentage of Guild Wars 1 players even participated in GvG.

I think the trick is to reward people for leaving their comfort zone, rather than penalizing them for not leaving it.

The only biggest issue I think is the potential for griefing…which is a pretty big concern. As much as I’d love to see mounts in the game, I can definitely understand why people don’t want them.

Cameirus.8407:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Daggos Skelito.2910:

“As part of this approach to making traits more approachable, we’ve pushed back the level at which the different trait tiers unlock for new characters in order to better pace the early game experience and to add more meaningful character progression from levels 30 to 80”

I must be missing something here? Wasn’t “traits more approachable” and “meaningful character progression” the old trait system? Serious, does anyone really know why this was changed for the worse???

My take on this? The business partner doing the Chinese conversion said, “Hey, after level 30 when you unlock Elite skills, there’s just Master traits at 40 and GM at 60? That’s not enough benefits for leveling. There needs to be more.”

I always thought the last 50 levels were a waste of time to be honest. Game shoudl have capped out at 30 when you got your last abilities, the last 50 levels dont give enough actual gameplay changes and are just a grind to hit 80.

Should have stopped at 30 and had many more “endgame” zones.

Actually I think there should have been no levels at all, because this whole end game zone thing is so pervasive, that people coming to this game think that’s what most people care about.

The idea of being able to go anywhere in the world and still get some kind of reward is what this game was promoted as and it’s very much how I play it. I’m not a farmer. My rewards can come slower, that’s fine. But I can go anywhere.

It doesn’t really matter if there’s 80 level zones or not to me, as long as I can have fun where I am.

I’ve been to Orr and run around and seen the people farm champs. That’s not what this game was advertised as surely. It’s what the game has largely become, thus people are frustrated.

If more people actually just enjoyed the zones and played, it wouldn’t matter if there were more end game zones.

chemiclord.3978:

EotM “fails” because players decided to ignore the maps intent and use it as a farming zone.

That’s a player-side problem. It has nothing to do with a lack of communication for the devs.

To be fair, if you design something that is capable of being farmed/exploited, its’ going to be farmed/exploited. Edge of the Mists was too good to be true for a farmer, and farmers used it. It’s a delicate balance.

Most troubling is a single guild that uses it to farm itself for bags, since they have chapters on different servers. They’ve pretty much destroyed EotM for anyone who doesn’t want to farm.

Lheimroo.2947:

Bellizare.5816:

“I know Colin has indicated a desire to push players out of their comfort zones to get them to try other aspects of the game”

Cut 4 brevity.

The operative word is ‘push’.

Pull me, that’s fine. Push me? Get lost. I have a severe reaction.

There’s a line…and I think it’s been crossed.

Teckos.1305:

Vayne.8563:

Teckos.1305:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Karuna.1357:

• Super-easy PvE Content — this is a bad thing. There really isn’t a single thing in the PvE side of the game that offers a significant challenge, thus making the content go stale quickly and negating the importance of skill

I’d say that soloing dungeons is pretty challenging.

I have a lot of problem with non arguments but gosh this one.. we can even make it better “playing GW2 with my tongue is challenging”.

It’s a bad argument. Soloing dungeons is something that can be done within the game and people do it for challenge. In a game like Guild Wars 2, you have to make your own challenges and there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

So many people want everything spoon fed. Here’s a challenge. Here’s another challenge. So while some people are saying there’s nothing challenging other people are out their soloing dungeons and competing for the fastest time.

If you’re good enough to do it, it should be relatively challenging.

At this point everything is challenging if i cripple my self enough.

Good golf players play with a handicap for a reason. But you know, there are games that are all spoon fed and games where you make your own fun. From my observations those who like to make their own fun enjoy this game more than those that want to be led by the game. Neither style of play is invalid.

Gdb.3492:

hannah mee.7925:

Gdb.3492:

I smell 2 kids still at home with moma and dady…. Otherwise you would know what does it mean to have a life.

Logging in for an extraordinarily small amount of time once every two weeks isn’t an imposition for people with lives. If it does manage to be an insurmountable wall for you, I suggest you uninstall because your life is far too busy to waste time on something silly like video games.

Lol what about a technical impossibility to log in the game? :O

I will explain by the way. Let’s take a game with expansion packs like Gw1 for example, and a game witouth expansion packs but that requires to log in for 30 sec 10 sec or whatever is it to unlock the content, also you can buy that content on the tp. Okay fine, follow the reasoning:

1st case: I can buy an expnasion pack with massive and huge contents for about 40$.
2nd case: I buy a small little piece of nothing new apart npc talking for about 20$ and I will have to spend more 20$ to pay the next step of the story and so on.

Simple Logic. By the way I will stop posting because you’re not understanding what I mean and because we’re going off topic. Who’s smart enough doesn’t need more words.

Or just use in game gold. Simple really. Or 2.00 or so. Which is what it actually is.

However, if you don’t have time to play an MMO don’t complain about not playing one. Because in other MMOs if you fall behind you can’t find anyone to do older content with anyway and you won’t be geared up enough to do new content.

Void argument is void.

Anet needs to hire a community manager who’s job is to engage the community, all the time. But a lot of questions still won’t be answered.

Gdb.3492:

Vayne.8563:

Gdb.3492:

What is permanent and accesible forever LOL. Please are you taking fun of us?…

All the new living story stuff. It’s in a journal. Every single bit of it can be done later. You have to log in during the living story for a few seconds, click on the stupid thing over your minimap and bam, unlocked forever in your journal. Playable and replayable.

“….You have to log in during the living story for a few seconds…”

This is your answer. No need to reply.

No you can buy it with gems or gold if you want to do it if you don’t log in. It’s STILL accessible. It’s a small enough amount of gold that it should be relatively easy to acquire.

That’s your answer. No need to reply.

Gdb.3492:

What is permanent and accesible forever LOL. Please are you taking fun of us?…

All the new living story stuff. It’s in a journal. Every single bit of it can be done later. You have to log in during the living story for a few seconds, click on the stupid thing over your minimap and bam, unlocked forever in your journal. Playable and replayable.

So is it bad that my hours played is far greater than that? lol

Gdb.3492:

Yargesh.4965:

Chuo.4238:

Belenwyn.8674:

Chuo.4238:

Except if you don’t play it for one year, you can’t go back and play a year’s worth of it. So it’s not an expansion, and will never be as good as that. They keep making temporary content as a carrot to try and get people to log in, but it will never be ‘an expansions worth of content’ unless I can go back and play everything I missed.

Why do people always postulate an expansion for GW2 would contain more/better content as the LW seasons plus feature packs? There are no proves for this assumption. While waiting for an expansion there would be no new content for one or more years. An expansion can’t fill this gap. With LW plus feature patch you will not have a gap. When season 2 ends season 3 will start a few months later. Between the seasons we will see a feature pack with a high odd.

At this rate for season 2 we will get a number of dynamic events equal to 5-6 new maps. We will get a dozens of new world bosses and hundreds of new recipes. We also get many new stat combos and weapon sets.

I can also make assumptions: the first four episodes are the Flame&Frost equivalents. The episodes afterwards will be quadrupled in content.

The size of a map is not important. You could triple the size southsun. People would still ignore it for most of the time. Important is the content and it’s density. The density of events in Dry Top until now is higher than in most other maps.
Two episodes are two less far an evaluation of season 2 like the first two episodes of season 1 where to less for an proper evaluation of season 1. A first decent evaluation can be done after 6-10 episodes.

I’m not disagreeing. What I AM saying is that if I miss this content, I can NEVER go play it. With an expansion. I could.

Why could you not play this content if you missed it?

Why Could I ?

Because the new journal not only let’s you play the content whenever you want, but even replay it if you want.

Teckos.1305:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Karuna.1357:

• Super-easy PvE Content — this is a bad thing. There really isn’t a single thing in the PvE side of the game that offers a significant challenge, thus making the content go stale quickly and negating the importance of skill

I’d say that soloing dungeons is pretty challenging.

I have a lot of problem with non arguments but gosh this one.. we can even make it better “playing GW2 with my tongue is challenging”.

It’s a bad argument. Soloing dungeons is something that can be done within the game and people do it for challenge. In a game like Guild Wars 2, you have to make your own challenges and there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

So many people want everything spoon fed. Here’s a challenge. Here’s another challenge. So while some people are saying there’s nothing challenging other people are out their soloing dungeons and competing for the fastest time.

If you’re good enough to do it, it should be relatively challenging.

Chuo.4238:

Belenwyn.8674:

Chuo.4238:

Except if you don’t play it for one year, you can’t go back and play a year’s worth of it. So it’s not an expansion, and will never be as good as that. They keep making temporary content as a carrot to try and get people to log in, but it will never be ‘an expansions worth of content’ unless I can go back and play everything I missed.

Why do people always postulate an expansion for GW2 would contain more/better content as the LW seasons plus feature packs? There are no proves for this assumption. While waiting for an expansion there would be no new content for one or more years. An expansion can’t fill this gap. With LW plus feature patch you will not have a gap. When season 2 ends season 3 will start a few months later. Between the seasons we will see a feature pack with a high odd.

At this rate for season 2 we will get a number of dynamic events equal to 5-6 new maps. We will get a dozens of new world bosses and hundreds of new recipes. We also get many new stat combos and weapon sets.

I can also make assumptions: the first four episodes are the Flame&Frost equivalents. The episodes afterwards will be quadrupled in content.

The size of a map is not important. You could triple the size southsun. People would still ignore it for most of the time. Important is the content and it’s density. The density of events in Dry Top until now is higher than in most other maps.
Two episodes are two less far an evaluation of season 2 like the first two episodes of season 1 where to less for an proper evaluation of season 1. A first decent evaluation can be done after 6-10 episodes.

I’m not disagreeing. What I AM saying is that if I miss this content, I can NEVER go play it. With an expansion. I could.

That was true for season one but not for season two. It’s a complaint about what already is past, but not what’s happening now.

Lord Krilik.3692:

Vayne.8563:

Warriors can’t be trappers either.

So you’re saying they have different mechanics…

I’m saying there are skills you can do with a ranger that you can’t do with a warrior. HOWEVER, it’s not the profession mechanic. Thieves ckittene traps too.

Again, it all goes back to the flavor of the profession. The ranger is agile, he’s a hunter. So he can trap. That’s part of the flavor, as well as a mechanic.

Back to the ranger’s agility, when I use a sword on my ranger, I start in front of a character and end up behind him. That’s the kind of agility I’m talking about. Warriors have rushes and jumps and stomps. Big, huge attacks.

Rangers use finesse….it’s all about the flavor. I don’t see how anyone can play both and say the melee combat feels the same.

Gervaise.4163:

Vayne.8563:

You’re looking at things in terms of mechanics, rather than terms of flavor. The professions exist to give flavor to the game. It’s not about being a warrior without a pet, flavor goes much deeper.

Ranger’s attacks are very mobile. You’re jumping all over the place. Not a big bashing attack but an agile, fleet-footed attack. A mechanics player sees only how much damage you do and the fact that it’s melee. But the melee feels very different to me. Blowing a warhorn as a ranger doesn’t give me a charge…it calls down three birds to attack my target. It’s a mechanic, but it’s the flavor of the attack that makes the difference.

I feel completely different playing a warrior and ranger, because I’m not focused on mechanics.

Warriors can’t be trappers either.

I’m not seeing how my Ranger is more agile than my Warrior that is literally jumping all over the place. Thief is an example of an agile class, Ranger not so much.

I understand that flavor is important but I do believe that classes need to be significantly different. Like the Mesmer and Elementalist. Completely different classes. If Mesmer was just a reskin of the Elementalist with different particles than I think it’s a bad design.

Rangers were marketed as “Unparalleled archers”, but I’m failing to see what makes them unparalled. This was supposed to their niche, but I’m failling to see how they fill this niche.

Anyway, I’m not hating on the Ranger class. I just think that they were poorly designed and don’t really offer anything unique outside of the pet system.

Nope, the pet is the niche. Usually the class mechanic is the function keys. Bows are just another weapon set.

You’re looking at things in terms of mechanics, rather than terms of flavor. The professions exist to give flavor to the game. It’s not about being a warrior without a pet, flavor goes much deeper.

Ranger’s attacks are very mobile. You’re jumping all over the place. Not a big bashing attack but an agile, fleet-footed attack. A mechanics player sees only how much damage you do and the fact that it’s melee. But the melee feels very different to me. Blowing a warhorn as a ranger doesn’t give me a charge…it calls down three birds to attack my target. It’s a mechanic, but it’s the flavor of the attack that makes the difference.

I feel completely different playing a warrior and ranger, because I’m not focused on mechanics.

Warriors can’t be trappers either.

No sense of wonder? Sometimes I wonder if I’m playing the same game as other people. For me the mega server was like a breath of fresh air.

The rest of it I agree with.

GuzziHero.2467:

With the removing of meta rewards (now there are just crafting rewards it seems and I don’t craft) plus this, I now log in to do the story for fun and then log back out till the next one.

This is new GW2. I had ideas for 2 more character to RP with, but now they’re not worth making. It’d be interesting to see the current population figures compared to pre April patch.

Well if Raptr’s numbers are any indication ( and I don’t see why they shouldn’t at least be an indication,. Guild Wars 1 was roughly stable up until June when it slipped a little. However, I’m interested to see what the numbers look like for July when the Living Story Season 2 came out.

Keep in mind Wildstar game out in July and is doing very well. Almost certainly some people went to try it.

ESO on the other hand, has been in a relatively steady decline.

Cionn.3415:

@Vayne

re #3: I’m not saying we should be able to knock them off cliffs, I’m saying that if we can’t, they shouldn’t either. One or the other.

As for #5, you can call the skills whatever you want and I don’t care if they’re exclusive, what I care about is that mobs can do things players can’t counter. Damage is damage and CC is CC, but if they do something we can’t we need to be able to respond appropriately.

Also, to add another: GW2 needs to take the time to scale instances to the class and number of players entering them, even if that means you can’t have a new player join the group without restarting the instance. I’m getting sick of having a storyline encounter that is easy for one class but kicks the spit out of another, as well as instances that are on level and still next to impossible to do. When an encounter is nothing but an endless string of deaths to whittle down one mob, it’s time to scale the difficulty.

BB!
C

Okay so I just disagree with you about point 3, then. I do think it’s okay to give creatures skills and abilities we don’t have. That game is too easy now to begin with. You start making this a thing and it’ll be laughable. Being knocked off is another think you have to watch for.

The entire purpose of this kind of game is to give you encounters you need to react to and think about. It’s a pretty small ask.

Rann.7198:

Mada.5319:

The lore was created to give ingame context to GvG. Do you think when Anet was developing gw1, they named it after lore that was not even mentioned during the story campaign? When promoting gw1, did they use this piece of lore or the pvp format which was the focal point of the entire game? Hmmmm

Anet is known for creating flavour lore to explain the existence of key features. Like waypoints for example.

I have no idea if that is true or not, I wasn’t around much for the first game and you are probably right about it. That said though, the initial marketing and design strategy for a game first introduced almost 10 years ago bears little relevance to what the IP has become and is today. I do wish they would of come up with a better name though.

You don’t change the name of your IP, no matter how much it changes. It would be like starting over and you never want to do that.

Galphar.3901:

Vayne.8563:

darkace.8925:

Serophous.9085:

So, what do you want?

Do people want to go back to WoW’s method of one new raid content patch once every three months? In which you get done the stuff in either a month or less unless you are grinding for gear?

I’d rather have the system they used in Guild Wars. A entirely new campaign, fully polished, that offers the option to experience it with either a new or existing character released once every two years sounds pretty swell to me; especially considering such a model offered new races, classes, regions, skills, and weapon and armor skins.

Anet has said, and I believe they’re firm on this, there won’t be any new stand alone scenarios. It divided the player base in the first game and they came to see it as a mistake.

The player base was divided long before the release of Factions. You had the PvEers and the PvPers. The PvEers focused mainly on farming UW and FoW while the PvPers focused on HA and GvG.

Not what they meant at all, but they did also say they had too many PvP types which divided players. But you could buy Factions and not own Prophecies at all. It was a stand alone game. That’s what they said they wouldn’t be doing.