Guild Wars 2

Unleashed.6195:

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

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

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

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

One of the major differences between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 as far as being an MMO has to do with the composition of parties in the open world.

You simply can’t have tons of parties in the open world comprised of healers and rits and necros with minions, because stuff respawns and people solo without heroes. That alone makes the game significantly different. But there are other issues too.

Guild Wars 1 never had to deal with the challenges of having a hundred players on the screen at the same time in combat. There is no combat in outposts. The most players you had together at one time would have been 24 in a relatively big map in Alliance battles, or 12 in PvE in the Deep or Urgoz’s Warren.

So where condition damage stacking wasn’t quite as a big a deal in Guild Wars 1, here it’s quite negative, particularly in large events.

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

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

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

Dante.1508:

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Well, I decided after many months to give it a go and make a new character (I deleted my old ones and don’t regret it). I’m level 16 I believe. Now, it’s been a while so I am getting sort of reacquainted with the game but all this stuff happens in place I haven’t heard of and it’s all sort of out there.

For me, I am just happy to ignore these events, because they don’t make much sense to me and I am apparently completely out of the loop.

I will just stick to a casual style leveling but I suspect that when I get to 80 again, that’d probably it again. Even though I quit and probably won’t play for that long again it probably was worth the 60 bucks but I kinda get that people aren’t happy with all this stuff coming and going. It certainly doesn’t give much stability to the activities and endgame by itself is a handful of dungeons and a legendary grind as far as I can tell.

But hey, what do I know…it’s just my impression at the moment but I find all this content that’s coming and going more irritating than interesting at the moment.

Some sort of elections now? Suppose it’s good I don’t care for politicians. I’ll just prod along as a diversion when I want a break from other games. It is a good diversion from time to time.

As long as you think in these terms, you probably will leave. But dismissing the new content before you’re seen or tried it doesn’t seem all that productive to me. Some of the new content is entertaining to some people.

Why cut yourself off from potential entertainment? Why is the previous definition of end game in an MMO something that can’t change…or even be improved upon?

Because to some the older MMO’s were fun as they were, and to some these so called changes aren’t any better or worse than what we had in the older MMO’s..

To give you an example this current addition…two npc’s fighting to get a trade agreement, nash and keil, nothing they offer even remotely excites me, i hated fractals since NOV 2012 so i do not care which gets added, its just more grind..

The rest is just fluff, cheaper keys… really why not free keys because i’m not going to buy any with this content at any price..

Both npc areas are identical wave mode boredom with broken lockpicks spam as rewards and more tickets i do not care about..

And the latest back packs well if i wanted a re-skinned rose or to look like a pack mule i’d be ecstatic..

Honestly Vayne you must be very easily pleased..

If I were easily pleased, then surely I’d have found an MMO to play prior to this one. Isn’t it just as likely I’m differently pleased.

Almost all MMOs prior to this share a lot of traits that I don’t like, including focus on dungeons and raids. I thought Rift would be different, but it wasn’t.

Just because I like something different than you doesn’t mean I’m easily pleased. In fact, from my point of view, you’re the one who’s easily pleased, because you found contentment in older MMOs that I’ve never had.

So which one of us is really easily pleased?

Guild War 1 isn’t an MMO at all…even Anet will tell you that. Guild Wars 1 is a CoRPG (cooperative RPG) and that makes a lot of the difference between the two. Just the act of adding the persistent world changes the game drastically.

It’s far easier to program a lobby game like Guild Wars 1 than a true MMO. It accounts for a lot of the differences in the game.

Other changes were made because of problems encountered in the first game. The simplest example is GW 1 has far more skills and had a second profession…which caused some of the worst balance issues I’ve seen in any game, ever. It was fun to make builds but that’s one of the downsides.

The other downside of it was how hard it was for people to learn to play it, which is why it remained niche.

With skills tied to weapons, everyone has a usable build.

Gehenna.3625:

Well, I decided after many months to give it a go and make a new character (I deleted my old ones and don’t regret it). I’m level 16 I believe. Now, it’s been a while so I am getting sort of reacquainted with the game but all this stuff happens in place I haven’t heard of and it’s all sort of out there.

For me, I am just happy to ignore these events, because they don’t make much sense to me and I am apparently completely out of the loop.

I will just stick to a casual style leveling but I suspect that when I get to 80 again, that’d probably it again. Even though I quit and probably won’t play for that long again it probably was worth the 60 bucks but I kinda get that people aren’t happy with all this stuff coming and going. It certainly doesn’t give much stability to the activities and endgame by itself is a handful of dungeons and a legendary grind as far as I can tell.

But hey, what do I know…it’s just my impression at the moment but I find all this content that’s coming and going more irritating than interesting at the moment.

Some sort of elections now? Suppose it’s good I don’t care for politicians. I’ll just prod along as a diversion when I want a break from other games. It is a good diversion from time to time.

As long as you think in these terms, you probably will leave. But dismissing the new content before you’re seen or tried it doesn’t seem all that productive to me. Some of the new content is entertaining to some people.

Why cut yourself off from potential entertainment? Why is the previous definition of end game in an MMO something that can’t change…or even be improved upon?

cesmode.4257:

Vayne.8563:

cesmode.4257:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I love how nobody’s bringing up the fact that ArenaNet is planning on providing permanent content with the new 4-team setup, whereas right now we’re still in the remnants of the 1-team bi-weekly rotation. We’re going to start seeing larger and larger updates for the next 4 months until it plateaus out, giving a balance of temporary and permanent content.

I could be wrong, but i think you’re mistaken. We arent in the remnants of anything. The bi weekly updates just started. We will get more perma content, but in the form of what? We HOPE its things like dungeons and stuff, but it could very well be cotton candy ‘F’ pushers in terms of mini games and things. We just dont know..no reason to jump to conclusion either way.

I really wish people would stop using the word cotton candy for everything that’s a dungeon or PvP. Not only does it dismiss content other people like but in fact, it’s totally misleading on a lot of fronts.

You might personally not like the new survival game, but how does that make it cotton candy. Seems that competitive people I know are enjoying it.

Liking one type of content over others is fair enough. Insulting content other people like doesn’t make anyone else that does like it sympathetic to your plight.

Likewise you could stop dismissing other peoples opinions…i think its cotton camdy content. My opinion is that ok? And i inlted noone by saying the ontent is fluff

I can have an opinion too but I don’t have to phrase it in such a way as to trivialize what other people like. If you’re comfortable doing that it’s fine but it creates animosity where no animosity need me and garners you less support for your opinion with anyone who happens to like that content.

If you’re only interested in expressing your opinion, you’re doing fine. If you’re interested in building support for your opinion, you’re less likely to get it.

DarksunG.9537:

Ghettoblade.7962:

They are just biding their time until the other game they are developing comes together.I havent played for a month or two,came back and am as bored as when i left,no challenge,playstyle even a monkey can master.I really am sorry i invested so much time into this game hoping it would get better,oh well 60 bucks down the drain.

They already stated they aren’t making another game.

The OP is refering to Wildstar, which is my Carbine Studios which NcSoft bought. NcSoft owns Anet and Carbine now.

DelOnasi.6051:

For the record, the current meta disagrees with most of this post. If you’re interested only in grouping with extremely good players or running dungeons as fast as possible, feel free to go with the meta builds.

For most dungeon groups there are other viable builds than pure damage. My non-meta runs are often smoother than my meta runs. If you’re DnT or LOD, or otherwise in a really hardcore group, go ahead and put everyone in full zerker gear – it works smoothly if the whole team is really good. If you’re doing more casual runs and aiming for smooth runs rather than fast runs, there are other good party builds. This becomes more the case the less perfect the rest of your group is.

This doesn’t mean every build is good, or that every armor type is good for every build – far from it (although I’m sure you could complete every dungeon with good players in random builds).

There are three main aspects to dungeon encounters:
– dealing damage as a group
– not dying as a group
– encounter-specific mechanics

The third aspect (things like bringing pulls/immobilize on the first boss in the grawl fractal) seems to mostly come from utility selection rather than build. If everyone is good enough, the second aspect can become irrelevant, which is why people claim DPS gear is always the best.

I think that long-term you’ll want to focus your build on one or both of the first two aspects. This means choosing group damage or group survivability over individual damage or individual damage. Choosing something like P/V/T in most situations isn’t a great long-term choice because it focuses only on your survivability, which is another reason a lot of players bash defensive gear. However, group survivability through boons such as protection/aegis, or heals through dodges/symbols/mace can be useful to the whole group especially if your group isn’t perfect.

I’d say start out playing dungeons how you’re comfortable playing them, and over time a lot of players gravitate towards berserker gear (more players have always preferred the DPS role in MMOs, so this wouldn’t be surprising even if there were a more optimal group setup). If/when you feel that, go for it; having multiple gear sets and knowing when to switch between them can be really useful.

Quoted for truth. One of the best posts I’ve seen in a long time.

tattyana.2356:

Glad to see I’m not the only one that feels this way about how anet is handling the game:)

You may not be the only one, but that doesn’t make you a majority either. The problem is, there are lots of games that focus on dungeons and raids and some of the people enjoying this game are relatively happy Guild Wars 2 isn’t.

I think I might like dungeons more if they weren’t instanced, and they had open world dungeons, but getting 5 guys from my guild together to run an instance that doesn’t change that much wears thin for me (and many others) very quickly.

cesmode.4257:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I love how nobody’s bringing up the fact that ArenaNet is planning on providing permanent content with the new 4-team setup, whereas right now we’re still in the remnants of the 1-team bi-weekly rotation. We’re going to start seeing larger and larger updates for the next 4 months until it plateaus out, giving a balance of temporary and permanent content.

I could be wrong, but i think you’re mistaken. We arent in the remnants of anything. The bi weekly updates just started. We will get more perma content, but in the form of what? We HOPE its things like dungeons and stuff, but it could very well be cotton candy ‘F’ pushers in terms of mini games and things. We just dont know..no reason to jump to conclusion either way.

I really wish people would stop using the word cotton candy for everything that’s a dungeon or PvP. Not only does it dismiss content other people like but in fact, it’s totally misleading on a lot of fronts.

You might personally not like the new survival game, but how does that make it cotton candy. Seems that competitive people I know are enjoying it.

Liking one type of content over others is fair enough. Insulting content other people like doesn’t make anyone else that does like it sympathetic to your plight.

RumStein.6859:

Here are my experiences when farming this event:
-People initiate the event, and begin farming it.
-Others join.
-Some people want to go to Arah, but heaven forbid they guest!
-Farmers inform the people wanting to finish the event that it is open on X server, and they can guest there to enter Arah.
-Dungeon runners refuse, demanding that people finish the event.
-Farmers keep farming, tensions are high.
-Event completer dies, spurts abuse, gets revived by farmers.
-Abuse is traded back and forth between the two groups.

Here’s the thing.
CoF is good to make money (it’s pretty much exactly on par with this from my experience), but I’ve seriously gotten sick of CoF. (Would have completed it about 200 times by now…). Nothing else gives quite as much money.
The farmers have always been polite about requesting the others that they don’t attack the giant, and that they guest to X server where Arah is open, but they don’t want to! This is when abuse starts getting flung around.

True, sometimes it’s the farmers who become rude first, but other times, it is the “completors”.

What really gets me is when “white knights” decide to end the farm just because. There is a particular guild on Sea of Sorrows who will decide they just want to stop the farming. They don’t want to do Arah, they do not care about the chest event after, they just want to stop the people farming it. So they recruit in Lion’s Arch, and the event soon ends. After this? Sea of Sorrows people move to a low population server, and begin the event chain from scratch.

You know a solution to this entire thing?
Implement multiple ways around the game to earn ~10g an hour at 80. This is what you get from CoF and Gates. With only 2? Of course this is gonna happen.

Oh yeah, look forward to the CoF P1 nerf incoming soon. No more gold from repeated runs!

One more note: I like it how the person with the screenshots from page 1 actually had their bags full, and then empty in different screenshots, indicating that they were participating in the farm too. Nice one!

Listen to what you’re saying. Heaven forbid they guest. What if the next server they have has the same farmers? And the next server? And the next?

Anet designed Arah to be opened by completing an event. These people are playing the game AS INTENDED. Those who farm, while not “exploiting” in the negative sense of the word, are exploiting in the english definition of the word. They’re taking advantage of something that was never meant to be taken advantage of. Clearly Anet wants people to fight to open the dungeon. Clearly the person who wants to do that is the one playing the game as intended.

Since this is apparently happening on multiple servers, where would you personally suggest they guest to.

I think they should do the event, kill the guy and the farmers can go guest to another server.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

farming =/= exploiting?

Op is a little baby kitten.

No one wants to do Arah. Also, guest if you REALLY want to (For whatever reason…) The reason people farm it is because it’s currently the only place in the game to actually make money, and it’s not incredibly boring. Not stupid 0.5% profits with crafting or CoF P1 spamming or pure blind luck. The game NEEDS stuff like this, with DIMINISHING RETURNS REMOVED FROM THE GAME IN ALL ASPECTS. Your whinging is utterly pathetic. Why you don’t join in is beyond me. Do you get enjoyment out of being a dud to everybody and ruining things for other people?

I’ve personally told people which server has Arah open to guest to and do the dungeon, but people like you just want to be complete kittening kittenwits to everybody around them, and you PROFUSELY REFUSE to guest to the server that YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD has Arah open.

Go figure you little troll.

I want to to Arah..a whole lot more than I’d like to farm.

You mean Anet made dungeons and no one wants to do them? Ummmm wrong. And there’s no reason to be rude.

I think I see the problem here. You missed the first mail for the event sent two weeks ago. Essentially this area is two weeks old. That’s why you can’t figure it out. You’ve skipped mails.

Go to the Sanctum Harbor docks in LA and on the middle dock there’s an NPC that will take you to the new map.

The portal to that area is in Lion’s arch, near sanctum harbor waypoint. In the middle dock is an NPC that will take you there.

It was in the last set of letters sent two weeks ago when the bazaar first got here.

You get a letter. Even if you can’t figure out what’s it’s saying the letter has a box that says show me on it and then actually opens your map and shows you.

If you can’t figure out how to find a place on the map the game is showing you, I’m not sure what else there is to say.

This game does a lot of things wrong in how it communicates with people, but finding the stuff for this event isn’t one of them.

Randulf.7614:

Vayne.8563:

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

Vayne.8563:

It’s anti fun if you don’t like it. It’s my favorite jumping puzzle in the game. We do this with my guild, usually takes about ten people. If you can’t get ten people together on your server, don’t do it. It’s not required.

But saying only PvE people deserve jumping puzzles, so putting them in PvP is not fun because it’s not fun to you isn’t great. Dungeons aren’t that much fun to me, but I acknowledge there are people that like it.

The dungeon wasn’t designed with mobs…it was designed with traps that one side could use against the other. In other words it was designed to PvP in. And for those who like that, it’s certainly fun.

It’s anti-fun to you because you’re not a PvPer. The answer here is simple. If you don’t enjoy PvPing, don’t do the puzzle, because you really don’t have to. It’s a choice.

I did it several times this week, just to help out guildies, even on days when I already had gotten the chest. Every time I beat it it was a rush, moreso than any other jumping puzzle in the game.

Edit: You need a bunch of mesmers in that group….so you can portal people up as they fall. That’s what we do.

but it’s required for zephyrum sanctum kite achivement, which is a mainly PvE/living story achievement, not PVP

Why is the living story ONLY PvE achievements. You can comfortably get your meta event from that. In fact, there are many PvP living world achievements and have been all along. The achievements in Sanctum Sprint? PvP. More obviously the Dragon Ball arena….PvP. You’re just assuming because it’s living story it’s only PvE but that hasn’t really be true for a long time. Not since the Crab Toss game.

This is a PvP achievement associated with the living story. You see it as a PvE achievement because you’re a PvE’er.

Yes..it is a pvp achievement…amongst a pve set. Something that shouldn’t exist at all

There is no reason whatsoever, a series of pvp achievements could not be made as part of the Living Story to cater for all players. Mixing pve and pvp is neither popular or something that has ever worked in MMOs. I have nothing against pvp, It’s just not my thing. Should pvpers have as much chance to earn rewards as pvers? Without question –
Along with Obsidian Sanctum, you could have specific Forts, camps, SM, BL jps.

Should pvp and pve be mixed in a single achievement? No, not ever.

Actually it’s not being mixed. Each kite achievement is a separate achievement. You don’t need all the kite achievements to get the meta achievement.

This is one achievement that I see as a PvP achievement, since it’s a PvP jumping puzzle. It really is that simple.

Anet has stated they’ll be adding more skills and traits in the future, and not some fuzzy distant future either…this year.

But limited skills don’t really bother me, because when I played Rift I only used a tiny percentage of the skills anyway, and most of those were macroed.

More skills doesn’t necessarily equal more fun.

Makai.3429:

I thought I learned my lesson with the Secret of Southsun boxes, but no, I had to be impulsive – 50g converted to gems netted 10 scraps. Shame on me, Anet.

10 scraps right now IS a skin though.

Devata.6589:

lordkrall.7241:

Devata.6589:

“Election Support Bundles can be used to help players support Evon Gnashblade or Ellen Kiel in their campaign to be elected to the Captain’s Council. Each support bundle contains a buff that will double the players’ votes cast for 30 minutes and display five banners that can be placed to visually show the players’ support in the world. Support bundles are available in the Consumable category for 125 gems each or 5 packs for 500 gems.”

Pay to win.. there we are.

Not really no.

If it had said: “Buy this to get xx free votes” I would have agreed, now you still need to actually DO stuff though.

Your votes are getting doubled. So whatever amount you get in those 30 min yourself you get also for free.

Pay 2 win does not mean you just pay to increase you rank on the leaderless.. you always have to do something with it.

But how is getting more votes winning?

Devata.6589:

“Election Support Bundles can be used to help players support Evon Gnashblade or Ellen Kiel in their campaign to be elected to the Captain’s Council. Each support bundle contains a buff that will double the players’ votes cast for 30 minutes and display five banners that can be placed to visually show the players’ support in the world. Support bundles are available in the Consumable category for 125 gems each or 5 packs for 500 gems.”

Pay to win.. there we are.

Win what? LMAO!

This is the weakest post I’ve seen you make. Normally you’re logical even if I don’t agree with you, but this time…wow…just wow

You gain no advantage, because you’re not winning anything. This will change which fractal gets added to the Fractals of the Mists for everyone. I’m pretty sure no matter what you do, Evon Gnashblade is going to win. There’s far too much support for the Abbadon fractal. So we’ll have cheaper keys instead of cheaper waypoint costs for a month. But everyone gets that fractal and that disount.

You’re paying so EVERYONE can win. Not quite what pay to win means.

Farmers aren’t the problem here. Rude people are the problem.

Farmers are a group are like anyone else. Some are considerate, some are idiots. That same is true of PvPers, PvE’ers and Kindergarten teachers. It’s true for any group.

The problem is people being rude, not people farming.

And those rude people are giving the rest of the farmers, I daresay most farmers, a bad name.

Isn’t there a way to log in invisibly from the log in screen?

Zafer, I suggest you look for my last post in this game and ask yourself is it fair that millions of people lost the upgrades to their game, in order to play this one due to Anet’s decision.

Many people here would have preferred the planned Guild Wars 1 expansion to Guild Wars 2. Many feel this isn’t fair at all.

UrMom.4205:

spoiler alert: Evon has already won

This made me laugh out loud! lol

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Vayne.8563:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I guess the boosters are supposed to make up the reward for the PvE crowd.

The gold and laurels can be enjoyed by PvE, WvW, and PvE.

The PvP gear is for the PvP crowd.

The badges of honor and blueprints are for the WvW crowd.

This is simply not true.

Everyone who PvEs can use badges of honor. In fact, you need 500 badges of honor for a legendary weapon. One of the hardest things for PvE’ers to get. They used to be called badges of jumping by some people because some people would only get them from the jumping puzzle.

Aside from that badges of honor can be used to buy exotic armor and weapons usable in PvE. It can even be used to buy ascended gear for less laurels.

I am well aware of the uses of the badges of honor. And I am very familiar with the badges of jumping from creating my first legendary.

I was simply stating that it should be obvious that these were included to give some reward to the WvW crowd who otherwise were going to be left out in the cold.

The same for the PvP gear for the PvP crowd.

They simply were including rewards for everyone in the game. I am not claiming they are useless to everyone else, just that the group each reward is geared towards is different.

Sorry then…my bad. It’s just that as an altoholic, it’s going to be a huge boon to me.

I think the living story is evolving into something very interesting. I’m enjoying it a lot…but I still think two weeks for each update feels rushed. It puts pressure on people to blow through content.

You can support both candidates a bit till you get both achievements, which most people will do, and after that continue to support your candidate.

Do you remembre the NPCs on southsun that gave you the MF and gold find buff?

You had to run the gold find one for a period of time to get achievements but the rest of the time you ran the MF one.

The same will be true here. And because everyone will be doing it, you won’t lose anything by doing it yourself.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I guess the boosters are supposed to make up the reward for the PvE crowd.

The gold and laurels can be enjoyed by PvE, WvW, and PvE.

The PvP gear is for the PvP crowd.

The badges of honor and blueprints are for the WvW crowd.

This is simply not true.

Everyone who PvEs can use badges of honor. In fact, you need 500 badges of honor for a legendary weapon. One of the hardest things for PvE’ers to get. They used to be called badges of jumping by some people because some people would only get them from the jumping puzzle.

Aside from that badges of honor can be used to buy exotic armor and weapons usable in PvE. It can even be used to buy ascended gear for less laurels.

Blueprints can be sold on the marketplace. Badges of honor can get you cheaper ascended gear or exotic weapons and armor. The other PvP stuff can be deleted.

Anet awards everyone the same thing, so they provide rewards for PvE players, PvP players and WvW players all at the same time. You use the ones you want.

MOST of the rewards are PvE oriented. Gold, karma, laurels, karma, XP and magic find boosts, weapon and armor skins, revive orbs (can’t be used in PvP), repair cannisters….I don’t even understand what you’re talking about.

I’m 90% a PvE’er and I’m stoked. I even got a makeover kit one day.

Erasculio.2914:

Vayne.8563:

You keep using words like failed. But failed is often used objectively. It’s seldomly used subjectively.

Tests are pass/fail.

That’s the same kind of reasoning as in your “But that’s only YOUR opinion!” arguments. GW2 is not a test. Ergo, by your definition, it’s not a matter of objectively passing or failing. Ergo, it’s logical I’m using the subjective definition of failure. I don’t know if it’s because English isn’t my mother language, but interpretations like the above are extremely obvious to me, and having them pointed out feel somewhat empty.

Vayne.8563:

Anet didn’t fail, so much as you don’t like what they’ve achieved, which is fair enough.

Actually, if you want to talk in objective terms, you would have to ask in what ArenaNet would have succeeded or failed. We know one of their stated goals was to make a MMO for people who don’t like MMOs. Did they succeed in this? We don’t know (which, for the records, mean you don’t know either). IMO (if you need that to be said) no, they didn’t – again IMO, you see a community here with the same issues as seen in the community of other MMORPGs, with GW2 being modified to cater to the same demands as in those games.

Amadan.9451:

but i’m having fun and never grind an ecto, i just had there while i play the content i liked.

So the requirement for 250 ectos never made you play more than you would have played anyway, and thus your comment that the ecto grind (and similar grinds) is necessary to give people something to do was wrong – the requirement was irrelevant to you yet you kept playing anyway.

Ergo, grind is not necessary to keep people playing.

Ergo, GW2 does not need to have grind.

Communication is all about nuance. The term failed, used mostly objectively, makes it hard to understand if someone is or isn’t using it objectively.

It’s just a choice of words I wouldn’t have chosen, because I think too many people will think you mean it objectively.

Erasculio.2914:

Vayne.8563:

Sorry but I disagree. I think Guild Wars 2 is very much in the spirit of the manifesto.

That is a massive surprise.

Vayne.8563:

The only thing that has changed is that Anet learned that a huge percentage of players won’t play for just cosmetics.

Or that ArenaNet has failed to cater to the players who would play just for cosmetics. The original Guild Wars is proof that those players exist and were enough to buy more than six million copies of the Guild Wars chapters.

Amadan.9451:

if you are so sure the game is not what you were expecting (and in most case it was all about your personal expectations), what is it that you want? should be easy to know!

A game about having fun, not about rewards.

You keep using words like failed. But failed is often used objectively. It’s seldomly used subjectively.

Tests are pass/fail. Anet didn’t fail, so much as you don’t like what they’ve achieved, which is fair enough.

I’d love to have failed at creating something as much as they did.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’d love to do Obsid Sanctum, but sadly anytime I pop into WvW, my server never seems to have access to it. I have managed to get into it once, but had to log out (kitten it husband!) for RL reasons, which booted my sorry kitten and when I came back….well, tough luck.

Hopefully I’ll be able to complete it once for the basic JP achievement. Sadly, I doubt I’ll be able to group with anyone for it. I’m so slow/terrible at JPs that people would literally be waiting for hours on my sry butt.

Too bad you’re not in my guild. We run it with ten people five of who are mesmers. Someone falls, we portal them. Plenty of people in my guild can’t jump and still get through that puzzle.

It’s sorta what guilds are for.

Chuo.4238:

Isn’t it kind of obvious, at least to the GW fans, that something changed at ArenaNet between the publication of the Manifesto in 2010 and release of GW2 in 2012?

It’s not the same company at all. I think they’re trying to weasel word as much as possible so nobody can technically ‘prove’ that the Manifesto and the game don’t match. But weasel words or no, Guild Wars 2 is NOT in the spirit of that manifesto.

Something has changed at ArenaNet, and not for the better if you’re a gamer and a fan.

Sorry but I disagree. I think Guild Wars 2 is very much in the spirit of the manifesto. The only thing that has changed is that Anet learned that a huge percentage of players won’t play for just cosmetics. Aside from that, Guild Wars 2 is pretty much what it was supposed to be.

So I was talking to my wife, and she said it would be really cool if there were mini packs from some of the most popular Guild Wars 1 minis available in Guild Wars 2. She, at least, would pay real money for them.

Minis like the kunnavang, or the celestials or mad king thorn.

I told her she should make a suggestion on the forums and she told me to do it. So here it is. lol

Meglobob.8620:

I don’t understand why GW2 is ‘stuck’ on 3 million sales?

A lot of people agree what a good game it is (everyone has there personal issues but overall very good), it tends to get a overall positive vibe across the net AFAIK.

Yet, it sold 2 million initially…3 million by xmas…then kinda stalled…

I know Blizzard are ALOT bigger than Anet but compare that to Diablo 3 for example, D3 got huge, massive amounts of critism, very, very negative internet profile. Yet sold 12 to 14 million initially and is now up to 20 million+…

When you compare official forums D3 is ’dead’ish’ compared with GW2 which is very, very active…

Its weird…why doesn’t GW2 sell a lot more? Is it really just down to the power of advertising?

It’s not just down to the power of advertising. There are a lot of factors. For one thing it’s an MMO. That alone means it sells less.

Compare it to sales of SWToR which had a big advertising budget. MMOs doesn’t sell a huge amount. How many copies did the new WoW expansion sell? Not ten million copies surely.

But again, WoW can continually advertise and Guild Wars 2 can not. But MMOs are, and have always been, relatively niche.

For example, more gamers play consoles than computers and most MMOs are only available on computer. It will be very interesting to see how ESO does because it’s launching on the new consoles.

The thing is, Guild Wars 2 is likely closing in on four million copies, but you’d expect growth to be slow, because most games sell most copies in their entire life span within 3 months of launch. I know this from working in the industry. Very few games continue to sell through the three month mark.

This is why most MMOs tend to come out with expansions when interest lags. It means more boxed sales (but it’s mostly usually the same people that bought the original game.

Guild Wars 2 is apparently doing well enough to not worry about an expansion at this point, which is pretty good.

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

Fernling.1729:

Saying WoW is popular because it’s a good game or it has depth is like saying McDonalds is fine dining because it’s so successful.

I think for the majority of players play WoW because there just isn’t anything better out there for them.
If I could choose between eating Mcdonalds or The Cheesecake factory, where Mcdonalds is more expensive, I would choose The Cheesecake factory. At the same time, I would be willing to pay more for The Cheesecake factory than I would pay for Mcdonalds. In short, I wouldn’t be willing to pay more for crappy food if there was much better food for cheaper(no monthly sub-B2P etc), yet people still keep playing WoW.
Mcdonalds is popular because it’s cheap, not because it is good. Cheesecake factory is popular because it’s good, not because it’s cheap.
Maybe WoW is just really the best for the majority?
This isn’t me, but mmo players in general.
I know it isn’t this simple and there are countless other things to consider. Not even sure this makes sense, it made sense in my head before I started writing it.
Gave me a headache trying to read back to myself hehe.

McDonalds isn’t the cheapest best food either. But it has lots of money to advertise. Never underestimate the effect of advertising.

I could see that. There is this little mexican fast food place here in my little town that is 10x better than tacobell, yet tacobell is always getting 10x the amount of business.
It seems that ncsoft/anet would put a hefty amount of work into advertising if they would be rewarded with a larger playerbase. Maybe, they figured it wouldn’t be worth the cost, idk.

Advertising is massively expensive. They’re competing with WoW who uses Chuck Norris and William Shatner in their commercials. It’s a very hard act to follow and sustaining it costs even more money.

Fernling.1729:

Saying WoW is popular because it’s a good game or it has depth is like saying McDonalds is fine dining because it’s so successful.

I think for the majority of players play WoW because there just isn’t anything better out there for them.
If I could choose between eating Mcdonalds or The Cheesecake factory, where Mcdonalds is more expensive, I would choose The Cheesecake factory. At the same time, I would be willing to pay more for The Cheesecake factory than I would pay for Mcdonalds. In short, I wouldn’t be willing to pay more for crappy food if there was much better food for cheaper(no monthly sub-B2P etc), yet people still keep playing WoW.
Mcdonalds is popular because it’s cheap, not because it is good. Cheesecake factory is popular because it’s good, not because it’s cheap.
Maybe WoW is just really the best for the majority?
This isn’t me, but mmo players in general.
I know it isn’t this simple and there are countless other things to consider. Not even sure this makes sense, it made sense in my head before I started writing it.
Gave me a headache trying to read back to myself hehe.

McDonalds isn’t the cheapest best food either. But it has lots of money to advertise. Never underestimate the effect of advertising.

Rangers have nothing to do with ranged weapons. Rangers have everything to do with ranging the wild. They patrol rangers.

The term comes to MMOs from D&D and it came to D&D from Lord of the Rings. But Aragorn in Lord of the Rings used a sword, not a bow.

And even in Guild Wars 2, rangers are far more effective as melee fighters than with ranged weapons, returning them perhaps to the original and real definition of the word, instead of what the genre painted them as.

Did you leave before or after the Fractals came out?

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

Vayne.8563:

It’s anti fun if you don’t like it. It’s my favorite jumping puzzle in the game. We do this with my guild, usually takes about ten people. If you can’t get ten people together on your server, don’t do it. It’s not required.

But saying only PvE people deserve jumping puzzles, so putting them in PvP is not fun because it’s not fun to you isn’t great. Dungeons aren’t that much fun to me, but I acknowledge there are people that like it.

The dungeon wasn’t designed with mobs…it was designed with traps that one side could use against the other. In other words it was designed to PvP in. And for those who like that, it’s certainly fun.

It’s anti-fun to you because you’re not a PvPer. The answer here is simple. If you don’t enjoy PvPing, don’t do the puzzle, because you really don’t have to. It’s a choice.

I did it several times this week, just to help out guildies, even on days when I already had gotten the chest. Every time I beat it it was a rush, moreso than any other jumping puzzle in the game.

Edit: You need a bunch of mesmers in that group….so you can portal people up as they fall. That’s what we do.

but it’s required for zephyrum sanctum kite achivement, which is a mainly PvE/living story achievement, not PVP

Why is the living story ONLY PvE achievements. You can comfortably get your meta event from that. In fact, there are many PvP living world achievements and have been all along. The achievements in Sanctum Sprint? PvP. More obviously the Dragon Ball arena….PvP. You’re just assuming because it’s living story it’s only PvE but that hasn’t really be true for a long time. Not since the Crab Toss game.

This is a PvP achievement associated with the living story. You see it as a PvE achievement because you’re a PvE’er.

So when Anet nerfs the drops from that particular spot, because some people like to farm it all day and night, thus ruining the game for other people, are the farmers going to blame Anet or their own behavior.

If the behavior of farmers is causing issues with people trying to do the hardest dungeon in the game, Anet will eventually just nerf the loot. Then farmers will complain the loot was nerfed, but it’s their own behavior that leads to it.

Obviously the event was meant to be beaten, because it unlocks a dungeon entrance…and that’s sort of the whole point of the zone. Getting the dungeon unlocked.

Now, if Anet wanted to, they could make it so the dungeon didn’t close and you could enter it whether people were farming there or not, but that actually goes against the design intention.

The idea is to fight your way into Arah. The entire personal story is centered around that fight.

Now some people are yelling at people for trying to play the game, yes, as intended.

When Anet does nerf those drops, I hope the farmers, particularly the rude ones, take responsibility for being part of the cause.

That’s pretty much it…wait until the server is empty…or farm gold and convert it to gems to pay for a server transfer later on. But it’s a lot of gold.

Mesmer and guardian are to me the best all round professions. Eles are pretty balanced too but harder to play.

It’s anti fun if you don’t like it. It’s my favorite jumping puzzle in the game. We do this with my guild, usually takes about ten people. If you can’t get ten people together on your server, don’t do it. It’s not required.

But saying only PvE people deserve jumping puzzles, so putting them in PvP is not fun because it’s not fun to you isn’t great. Dungeons aren’t that much fun to me, but I acknowledge there are people that like it.

The dungeon wasn’t designed with mobs…it was designed with traps that one side could use against the other. In other words it was designed to PvP in. And for those who like that, it’s certainly fun.

It’s anti-fun to you because you’re not a PvPer. The answer here is simple. If you don’t enjoy PvPing, don’t do the puzzle, because you really don’t have to. It’s a choice.

I did it several times this week, just to help out guildies, even on days when I already had gotten the chest. Every time I beat it it was a rush, moreso than any other jumping puzzle in the game.

Edit: You need a bunch of mesmers in that group….so you can portal people up as they fall. That’s what we do.

Field a team of people. It’s really the only way to do it.

And farming kills is not really no reason.

There are also places in the game where you can pick up invisibility from the environment that can help you get through..but the best way to do it is still to get a group of 10 people or so to go with you.

Instanced maps would be a great idea, if they didn’t take people out of the open world. And you know, I liked vanquishing too, but it only worked because you had an instance, and that nothing could respawn.

It would become just another dungeon, not the open world. You’d go in with a pug or with guildies, but the open world would end up suffering for it.

Indeed, there are some people who think the open world is a great place to be, because they find reasons to go back to the open world…even though you don’t. You play for reward, or loot. Some people play for experience.

People like me and most of the people in my guild see less reason to do dungeons or Orr and more reason to return to the open world.

I think making instanced zones would be a big mistake on Anet’s part unless they only made one at a time and rotated them. Because if they’re not rewarding enough no one would do them and if they were rewarding enough, they’d pull people from the world and everyone would just say the game was dead.

Nurvus.2891:

That’s super unfair, Noobkaka.
In World of Warcraft, you have a depth of gameplay, both in PvE and PvP, specially in PvP, that wasn’t – and arguably still isn’t – found in any other MMO out there.

In terms of graphics, animations – eye candy – it doesn’t prevail, but that’s not what counts.

Most games that came after WoW – specially the so-called WoW-clones – tried to copy the “supposed” qualities from WoW – like catering to casuals, dungeon finders, etc – but those aren’t qualities. And thus the clones failed.

This is like revisionist history, written by the winning side in the war. Let’s look at some facts about why WoW succeeded and those other clones “failed”.

First WoW came out at a time when the amount of competition is had to face was small. Really small. And Blizzard at that time, on the back of it’s very popular RTS games had a ton of money. They were a resource rich company.

So WoW piggybacked off the success of Warcraft and Starcraft and people bought it..but WoW also had a ton of money to advertise, something most companies can’t do. Because of this, WoW was uniquely positioned to get 12.4 million people.

Do you think WoW had more “depth” of gameplay than say Guild Wars 1 which came out about the same time…I don’t. But then, Guild Wars 1 was a first product from a company that didn’t have an advertising budget. There was no way they could throw the resources to beat WoW.

And because WoW at that point had millions of subscribers at $15 a month (do the math one day) they ALWAYS had a financial advantage over any competitor, particularly because of the head start in content.

Games like Warhammer and AoC didn’t do badly because they were worse than WoW or had less depth than WoW. They did badly because they ran out of money and had to launch early when they were full of bugs. WoW was also full of bugs, but there was no WoW to go back to when WoW launched. Everyone was full of bugs.

WoW is successful for two reasons. First it was in the right place at the right time and two, it was so rich compared to other companies it could advertise it’s kitten off.

You can believe it’s a superior game all you want, but it certainly wasn’t that good at launch. They just had the money and income to fix it. Other games didn’t stand a chance.

Later on new games failed because of how many people never wanted to go back to WoW again.That ship had sailed.

For people who like it no one can catch up, but there are very likely far more people who dislike WoW than like it.

WoW had at it’s peak 12.4 million subscribers across the entire world. You may think that’s a lot of players, but it’s actually a pretty small percentage of gamers. There are a whole lot of people who would rather gnaw off their own leg than play WoW.

Saying WoW is popular because it’s a good game or it has depth is like saying McDonalds is fine dining because it’s so successful.

Tarnished Coast has a huge PvE presence (which one would expect being the unofficial US RP server).

Anyone who bad mouths or insults someone else for playing the game as intended (and no one can honestly say that artificially keep events going longer is as intended), should be banned.

Not for doing the activity…but for insulting players trying to play the game.

It’s like keg brawl, when people are passing the keg back and forth to get achievement points. You know, I don’t care that they do it. I don’t even care that people farm the event.

But the moment people start insulting or badmouthing or being rude to people who are playing the intended game, they’re crossed a line.

A 72 hour ban should sort them out.

There’s no reason to be rude in the first place.

At the rate Anet is releasing “time-gated” content, if they left everything in the game, people would simply fall hopelessly behind.

Some people see not doing this content as falling behind. Some people seeing have a huge backlog of stuff to do that they’ll never have time to do falling behind.

Different people will feel pressured for different reasons. I’m not sure anyone can say with any certainty which group of players is bigger.

But I suspect after 26 updates in a year, the amount of catching up to do would put most people off….assuming they didn’t have the time to keep up to begin with.

I mean it sounds to me like some people are complaining they don’t have time to do the temp content when it’s here, but they think they’ll somehow magically have the time four months from now when there’s been 8 full updates.

TC is still relatively busy…certainly in the bazaare it is. But I do know the living story pulls a lot of people out of the open world.