Guild Wars 2

AlabamaKush.3246:

I read “thiefs and mesmers are getting a new condition” and nothing about engineers and rangers and i was done :P

There are changes to every profession’s traits and most professions skills. A new condition is a new condition. It’s put in for a specific reason. To say that rangers and engies don’t get this specific condition so you’re done is probably premature.

Sorry you feel that way. They did say there was a rare chance for a weapon skin, and there are a whole lot of people on the forums talking about boycotting the RNG chests. As long as people keep buying them, Anet will keep selling them.

There’s no guarantee you’ll get a skin for $20. In fact, the odds are highly against it. On the other hand, people did farm boxes in world and got skins without paying any money at all.

I agree, you shouldn’t waste your money on RNG boxes.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I still don’t know how that forge works. I don’t like reading guides I suppose. I just throw some stuff in there and see what happens, usually some junky spear.

Most of the time, throwing in random items will get you random items. There are some recipes out there for high end items, like mystic weapons.

But if you throw in four of the same type of items, like four spears, you’ll always get a spear back.

You also have a small chance (roughly 20%) of getting back an item of a higher level than the objects you put in. For example, putting in four green short bows, can get you a yellow short bow. Throwing in four yellow short bows will most likely get you a yellow short bow, but might also get you an exotic one, including, VERY rarely, a precusor.

Throwing in four exotic showbows will give you a better chance of getting the precusor.

The OP was very lucky.

Gratz OP!

Khal Drogo.9631:

Vayne.8563:

I went berserker and I went back. It made the game too boring. Simple as that. I don’t care about speed. I don’t care about farming. I don’t care about efficiency.

I care about fun. Boring just isn’t fun to me.

Stacking is so efficient because the boss designers either intentionally or unintentionally made it that way.

Yes, I agree. But either way, it’s not for me.

I went berserker and I went back. It made the game too boring. Simple as that. I don’t care about speed. I don’t care about farming. I don’t care about efficiency.

I care about fun. Boring just isn’t fun to me.

tigirius.9014:

Crawford.4135:

BobbyStein.2315:

The credits list that Inculpatus cedo.9234 posted is way out of date (probably from the Nightfall days if memory serves), so don’t refer to it for GW2-related discussions, please. Many of those folks have change roles or moved on to other companies.

Yet you avoided the OP question ?

Mine won’t be answered either, I simply want to know if the people from the manifesto are still there.

I doubt I’ll get an answer.

Everyone from the manifesto is still there as far as I know. Certainly Ree Soesbee, Colin Johanson and Mike O’brien are still there. And as far as I know so is the lead artist, so yes. everyone is here.

Okay OP the new PPS is better than the last, but of course, who gets to judge which arguments are ignorant. It’s like saying if you think an argument is ignorant than it must be…which is still offensive…but it’s better than it was…so I’ll reply to the post now.

I get exactly what you’re saying about the whole ascended gear/legendary thing. This game has a problem, and the problem is, it’s not really made for people who are goal-oriented to the exclusion of all else. I understand you play this way, but not everyone is going to.

I like having smaller more easily attained goals, rather than longer goals (though I find a mix of both best). So with the living story I have 2 week goals (or a month or whatever) and with the legendary I have the longer goal that doesn’t consume me. It’s fine. I’ll get my second legendary eventually. Same with gearing up my guys in ascended gear. I’ll get it when I get it.

This is the best attitude to approach the game with. For those who really want to be constantly challenged, this game probably doesn’t provide enough variety. But for those of us who want the occasional challenge, mixed in with a beautiful world that we enjoy exploring or even just re-experiencing, it’s a different story.

Progression is what a lot of people crave in MMOs, but in the old days, it wasn’t this way. In older RPGs your progress was determined by where you were in the story, not what gear you had. And I think that’s what Guild Wars 2 is trying to recapture (with mixed success I might add).

I think certain player types love this game, because there’s no other MMO really like it, and other player types don’t love this game because they’ve come to expect other experiences from MMOs, and they’re really not equipped to see what Anet is trying to do.

My thing is, by starting with pen and paper RPing many years ago, this is more like that experience to me than any other MMO has been. Since that experience is what I’ve been looking for, this is a good (though not a great) MMO for me. I assume it will get better over time as well.

In the mean time, it’s not the game that’s deficient and it’s not that you’re wrong. It’s the compatibility between your desires for a game and what the developers are actively trying to do.

This is why so many people do end up saying things like, “this game is not for you.” I’m not saying it, but maybe now you see the reasoning.

jheryn.8390:

Brutal Arts.6307:

Vayne.8563:

Your last P.P.S. is ruins your entire post and you should remove it. Just because someone is a fan boy or in fact someone disagrees with you doesn’t make their arguments fallacious. By dismissing their arguments before they can even make them, you’re weakening your own argument.

Why should ANYONE take you seriously if you go ahead and pretty much say anyone who’s a fan boy and disagrees with me is presenting a fallacious argument.

If your arguments are strong enough to stand on their own you shouldn’t need that line.

But do you have anything to add/detract or do you just want to pick at that one line like the rabid fanboys OP is talking about?

I think he did indeed add to the conversation. He told the OP that he thought the conversation was moot if the OP planned on dismissing anyone who disagreed with him.

Very well said Vayne. +1 for you. I would add that if someone disagrees with a person that has an issue with the game, it does not make them a ‘fan boy’ or and ‘Anet groupie’.

I didn’t agree with many of the things the OP said, but he stated things in a non-confrontational manner. Until his last P.P.S. He didn’t present his arguments in a way that suggested that it was everyone else’s opinion too.

I think what Vayne was trying to tell him that his arguments were valid from his point of view until his last remark. A person cannot invite honest feedback on his or her post if he or she intends to exclude people that do not agree with them.

I feel differently about many things the OP said, but I support the way he presented his concerns until the end and then it was ruined for me.

Yep, I thought the OP’s arguments were for the most part valid and I felt the last line undermined the rest of the post.

Thanks for wording it that way. It’s exactly what I meant.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Vayne.8563:

Your last P.P.S. is ruins your entire post and you should remove it. Just because someone is a fan boy or in fact someone disagrees with you doesn’t make their arguments fallacious. By dismissing their arguments before they can even make them, you’re weakening your own argument.

Why should ANYONE take you seriously if you go ahead and pretty much say anyone who’s a fan boy and disagrees with me is presenting a fallacious argument.

If your arguments are strong enough to stand on their own you shouldn’t need that line.

But do you have anything to add/detract or do you just want to pick at that one line like the rabid fanboys OP is talking about?

I didn’t comment on the body of the post, because of the last line. Because the OP is going to dismiss anything against what was said as just being the ravings of a rabid fan boy, I don’t see why I should consider the rest of the post with any degree of seriousness.

I’m 51, mostly retired and have a good deal of time on my hands. But I’m also past the point where I want my game to be a second job.

I like challenge, but I like challenge on my schedule. I don’t always know when I’ll feel well enough to do a dungeon like Arah or a Fractal. So this game works perfectly for me.

I don’t always love the personal story however, particularly stuff like the 50 effigies at the end. But it’s definitely better for me than any other MMO has been to date.

I think Anet is on the right track with personal stories, but many areas of the game obviously need work. Fortunately Anet has the time to do that work. They launched in a pretty good window of opportunity where there’s not much competition.

It’s a good game…one day, it may well be a great game.

killcannon.2576:

Lol, I love all the people saying “Introduce gear progression and people will leave” or “GW2 was built with no gear progression as a selling point”. That argument was dead 7 months ago with the introduction of Ascended.

People won’t leave, it will make people stay and play the game. Example? The current game.

GW2 has never said it would not contain gear progression. Never.

It doesn’t matter what the casuals, hardcores, elites, or baddies think. There will be progression simply because it keeps people playing more hours of the day.

And in the end, that’s what MMO publishers want.

Eric Flannum has said straight out in interviews that the game wouldn’t contain vertical progression. There are two examples of it that people commonly post. He was wrong, obviously but he did say it.

3335 Hours over the past 9 months. Mind you, quite a bit of that time I’ve been on the forums at the same time. lol

OP, if you wanted the game more like Guild Wars 1, you should have welcomed Trahearne. After all, he’s not that different from Komir. lol

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

You’re saying you’d rather have better content less often…so would I…but not at the expense of the overall game.

The funny thing is that I think that the many patches with lower quality content in stead of less patches with better content (and an expansion on the way) are bad for the game.

Except that a lot of people do like the content, and that’s where your theory falls down. Those that don’t like it don’t HAVE to do it, those that like it can do it. It’s giving something for the achievement hounds to bash their head against.

I can almost guarantee you, not giving people something to DO will lose more people than giving them something meaningless to do.

I’ve just spent the last half hour cashing in candies for buffs. Not only do you have to buy them one at at time, but you have to verify each purchase. This is just not good policy. It’s a 5 candy purchase. Candy is practically free. I shouldn’t have to verify each one.

What I should be able to do is buy them in lots of 10, 50, 100 or even enter an amount.

I’m not sure the reason for this. No one wants carpal tunnel syndrome.

Edit: This shouldn’t just be before these events either. You have to buy 100 icy runestones to get your legendary. Everyone who buys them needs 100. Why make us buy one at a time?

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

I’m on TC and even there the mid level zones are all empty most of the time, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone there or even run across anyone while playing. Most people are in the really low levels doing dailies or really high level zones gathering or focused in LA running FotM because the other dungeons save for CoF P1 aren’t profitable.

LS sometimes focuses people in a single zone for a time but that’s all you’ll see.

Until their kitchen sink is implemented (the massive UI update that all mmo’s must have in order to keep things fresh) and the combat updates are complete to fix the problems with CC, support, and condition damage we’ll be seeing alot more empty zones.

I’ll call you on this. I’m on TC and there’s almost always people in the middle zones, even in prime Australian time.

Actually no, unless they have some kind of weird overflow thing going that’s not being told to the public because I’m constantly in these zones and no one is there. I rarely see anyone, ever, I see only people in the Queens and the Norn starter zones and I see people in Orr occassionally but never in the mid level zones even with people guesting so that’s one thing you’ll definitely not win the argument on man I have hundreds of hours of play time with it being empty because those are the places I go to to finish my dailies and to gather certain types of materials to sell to the TP because they are typically higher then the ones that sell for copper.

Well if you’re constantly in zones and I’m constantly in zones, what…we’re the only two? It doesn’t make sense. There are other people in my guild constantly all over the place. Are we such exceptions?

and there are 24 hours in a day, 26 zones to fill, and 51 server to fill.

51 server across 26 zones is like 1326 zones.

It take like 2 hours to do map completion in a zone. 6478 hours have pass since the game is launch. So the 2 of you who spend like 2 hours in a mid level zone don’t help.

I didn’t even include wvw zones and city maps and dungeon that is where most people is.

I’m only talking about TC at the moment, which both tigirius and me are both on…and other members of my guild and other people. I’m not talking about other servers, since I can only be on one server at a time.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Box sales for a B2P game MUST slow down as everyone who’s interested in the game buys it. There aren’t more people newly interested in it, than people who bought it at launch. So who plays the 300 employees of the company? Where is all this content coming from? Who’s financing it?

It’s not reasonable to expect a game to give content upgrades and work on bug fixes with no real incoming. Guild Wars 1 didn’t update this fast (and didn’t have to back then, but today it probably would have had to).

People need to reassess what’s reasonable for a company to make to keep a new MMORPG running.

Well I indeed prefer less patches if they are of better quality and no temporary content. Who pays it? The same way as none MMO’s are payed.. Why you think the box-sales would not be enough for an MMO but they are enough for all other games on the market.. Yes keeping it running cost some more money then another game but making a new expansion cost less then making a totally new game (like that go’s with none-mmo’s) so the evens out. If they would have focused on a expansions (and lets hope they do, and there claim that they are not working on it was just to make it as a surprise) then we might have gotten a big expansion 2 months from now (1 year anniversary). The first box-sales would have then payed the game for the first year and the expansion would have paid it for the next year. And when I say paid I mean they make money.. The gem-store would then just have been a nice extra. The whole living story stuff sins January with exception of MF dungeon could have been left out. SaB and MF as permanent would have kept people playing and the then now soon upcoming expansion would have kept people interested.

I don’t think you get it. You won’t have less patches…you’ll have no patches. Because that’s what keeps people coming in and spending money which pays the guys who make the content.

From a business point of view, today an MMO today really does have to come out constantly with new stuff, or it loses market share. It’s not like it was five years ago.

They can’t make an expansion fast enough with the complexity and testing needed to keep people interested. People burn through content.

You’re saying you’d rather have better content less often…so would I…but not at the expense of the overall game.

If they game came out with six months upgrades, it would probably not enough enough income to stay alive. I can’t prove it, but I do believe it.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

I’m on TC and even there the mid level zones are all empty most of the time, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone there or even run across anyone while playing. Most people are in the really low levels doing dailies or really high level zones gathering or focused in LA running FotM because the other dungeons save for CoF P1 aren’t profitable.

LS sometimes focuses people in a single zone for a time but that’s all you’ll see.

Until their kitchen sink is implemented (the massive UI update that all mmo’s must have in order to keep things fresh) and the combat updates are complete to fix the problems with CC, support, and condition damage we’ll be seeing alot more empty zones.

I’ll call you on this. I’m on TC and there’s almost always people in the middle zones, even in prime Australian time.

Actually no, unless they have some kind of weird overflow thing going that’s not being told to the public because I’m constantly in these zones and no one is there. I rarely see anyone, ever, I see only people in the Queens and the Norn starter zones and I see people in Orr occassionally but never in the mid level zones even with people guesting so that’s one thing you’ll definitely not win the argument on man I have hundreds of hours of play time with it being empty because those are the places I go to to finish my dailies and to gather certain types of materials to sell to the TP because they are typically higher then the ones that sell for copper.

Well if you’re constantly in zones and I’m constantly in zones, what…we’re the only two? It doesn’t make sense. There are other people in my guild constantly all over the place. Are we such exceptions?

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

I’ll call you on this. I’m on TC and there’s almost always people in the middle zones, even in prime Australian time.

Exactly, I spend 30+ minutes making a full circle around sparkfly fen, dredgehaunt cliff, and timberline fall. And manage to find 1 person on TC.

If people arn’t finding people, they are just not trying hard enough.

all joke aside, I think some sort of scavenge hunt can bring people back to lowbie zone.

Talk about a straw man argument. You could have someone 10 feet away from you, around the corner and you wouldn’t see them. You could have players even culled if there are lots of creatures in an area.

Use map chat and talk to people. I almost always get a response so someone has to be there. And some people don’t even have map chat on.

You mean finding people in a zone is like guild bounty mission? I’m really just joking but there really is no one. I make a full circle across 3 zones, which take 30+ minutes and see 1 person.

So you said. And I asked if you talked in map chat. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that even if there’s a dozen people in a zone, you could cross entire zones without running into them.

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

I’ll call you on this. I’m on TC and there’s almost always people in the middle zones, even in prime Australian time.

Exactly, I spend 30+ minutes making a full circle around sparkfly fen, dredgehaunt cliff, and timberline fall. And manage to find 1 person on TC.

If people arn’t finding people, they are just not trying hard enough.

all joke aside, I think some sort of scavenge hunt can bring people back to lowbie zone.

Talk about a straw man argument. You could have someone 10 feet away from you, around the corner and you wouldn’t see them. You could have players even culled if there are lots of creatures in an area.

Use map chat and talk to people. I almost always get a response so someone has to be there. And some people don’t even have map chat on.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

I’m on TC and even there the mid level zones are all empty most of the time, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone there or even run across anyone while playing. Most people are in the really low levels doing dailies or really high level zones gathering or focused in LA running FotM because the other dungeons save for CoF P1 aren’t profitable.

LS sometimes focuses people in a single zone for a time but that’s all you’ll see.

Until their kitchen sink is implemented (the massive UI update that all mmo’s must have in order to keep things fresh) and the combat updates are complete to fix the problems with CC, support, and condition damage we’ll be seeing alot more empty zones.

I’ll call you on this. I’m on TC and there’s almost always people in the middle zones, even in prime Australian time.

That’s my point of my previous post…
Some say it’s empty and some say it full off life, how empty is empty to OP? To give him help to decide if it’s empty or not is to know how full of life the server has to be according to OP.

I base this on assuming OP’s server isn’t realy empty it may be low populated.

I never said it’s full….I did say it’s not empty. There’s a big big difference between that.

I hardly go to a zone where I don’t see people in the zone. Not hundreds of people…but people none the less.

I think some people expect 100 people in a zone, and that’s not reasonable off hours. But that doesn’t mean that people are in the zones. And if you want to do an event, often you can start it, call it out in map chat and get people coming in.

And of course, it’s always going to be less busy on patch days, when new content encourages us to go to one area.

tigirius.9014:

I’m on TC and even there the mid level zones are all empty most of the time, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone there or even run across anyone while playing. Most people are in the really low levels doing dailies or really high level zones gathering or focused in LA running FotM because the other dungeons save for CoF P1 aren’t profitable.

LS sometimes focuses people in a single zone for a time but that’s all you’ll see.

Until their kitchen sink is implemented (the massive UI update that all mmo’s must have in order to keep things fresh) and the combat updates are complete to fix the problems with CC, support, and condition damage we’ll be seeing alot more empty zones.

I’ll call you on this. I’m on TC and there’s almost always people in the middle zones, even in prime Australian time.

Try guesting to Tarnished Coast.

Guilds can work across servers, except for WvW. So if you don’t care about WvW and you only want to PvE (or SPvP) you could join a guild on a busier server. It just depends on the type of guild you want to join.

Hardcore, casual, somewhere in between. PvE, WvW, SPvP or a combination of all of them.

I mean when I looked for a guild, I looked for a PvE centered guild that was casual and social, but that obviously wouldn’t fit everyone.

I don’t think most players do this. It seems like a lot of players because they’re all grouped up> There are also plenty of players in WvW, in dungeons, in fractals, in Orr.

If anything those events bring people back to other zones and they run around and do events while waiting for the spawn.

Do you know how many threads there have been about just this topic? You’re not alone. A lot of people have complained. There’s plans to bring people back to Arah but they’re not going to be executed immediately.

I suspect the coincide with the plans to revamp the loot system.

SirDrygan.1823:

Erasculio.2914:

Bazookajoe.5624:

Bla bla bla

Most of your issues come from the fact you want a WoW clone – a game in which the goal is to grind levels and then grind gear. The original intention behind Guild Wars 2 was to avoid exactly those things (see the link in my signature). So I can’t say I’m sad you are not happy with the game.

Yes, in the beginning it is not a gear grind. In the beginning it is not a level grind.
But that all change when Fractals appears. No matter how much you and others try to defend Fractals, it is still a grind. However, compared with WoW, we have a choice on if we want to grind or not. That is all.

Of course Fractals is a grind. It was designed to give people who want to grind something to do. It was always meant to be a grind. It was also meant to be optional.

This game has tried to give different players different ways to play. Grinding was pretty much missing from the original game, so they threw a bone to the grinders.

You can also do what I do and play the Fractals every now and again as your mood takes you. In which case, you’re not grinding them.

Honestly this game could do with some form of AA (alternative advancement) similar to what you have in WvW for example. It isn’t gear grind, it doesn’t make THAT much of a difference, but it gives people somethiung to work for.

AA was good in games like AoC and Rift. It can work here too.

Gear grind it tragic. There are plenty of games that have gear grind in them…we don’t need another one.

I don’t get why people think it’s not okay to have a game that has 300,000 people playing it regularly, instead of 7 million.

If the game has 7 million people playing it, because they’re addicted to grind, that doesn’t make it a better game. It makes it a worse game with more addicted people.

Why not just play the game less, instead of having some mechanic force people to have to play it?

BTW, you can ignore the dragon ball achievements as they don’t help toward the meta achievement for the event (assuming you are going to try for the wings).

morrolan.9608:

tolunart.2095:

Sub-based games give you an endless revolving door to go through where you never quite get there but you can always see the exit.

Apart from the most grindy games its usually easier to get the gear you want in a sub game than it is in GW2.

Oh sure. But in those games it’s no gear you want…it’s gear you NEED. If I never get a jade weapon skin, my game doesn’t change at all.

That can’t be said for gear in other games.

The first thing is, if you’re in a grindy mood, get the new content in Lion’s Arch, the dragon bash festival cause it’s going away soon.

So there are things you can do right now to get some achievements and even earn a pair of holographic wings back cover. But I won’t kid you, you’ll have to play like hell to get it all before it goes away.

The next chapter in the living story however is about to start.

nirvana.8245:

Yes Vayne, there was a poll. Didn’t you fill it in?

LMAO! No, I was absent that day.

Wryscher.1432:

Vayne.8563:

I think what some of you might be experiencing is the lag between what the server is doing and what you’re seeing.

What you see in your screen is client-side information. The server doesn’t have you at the exact same place you are on screen (which is why rubber banding can happen). So you are somewhere, but on the server, you’re not in exactly the same place.

When you’re running, you’re ahead on your screen and then the server updates as it comes.

When you fall, the server updates your health/damage, but if you’ve moved on from the fall, it doesn’t catch up with your machine until you’re on that second drop and it treats it as more falling damage.

It’s just a matter of the fact that server information takes time to get interpreted by your client.

Except you are walking down stairs, so there never was any fall damage to be interpreted at all. Happens to me all the time in wvw going down stairs on towers. Now I notice mostly on my chars with natural speed buffs so maybe that makes a difference.

And it may be a server communication error with where you are and where you were due to lag. But you are still taking fall damage from somewhere you never really fell, and should not have fallen.

That’s why I said some of you. I was talking about the people in WvW who fall first and then run off right away without allowing the damage to catch up with them. I was responding to the thread, rather than the OP. Sorry about that, I should have been clearer.

Devata.6589:

tolunart.2095:

I understand and disagree.

Of course they are not focused on the long run. A subscription-based MMO is focused on the long run because they make their money from X players paying monthly fees for Y months. The longer they get players to stay on the hamster wheel, the more money they make.

Cash-shop based games are focused on the short term, because if you aren’t interested in the Jade weapons set, then the Steampunk weapons set might get you to whip out your credit card. Or the next set, or the next.

Yeah but There are subscription-based games, there are F2P games (Cash-shops) and there are B2P games. I would say B2P games should go for the long run and GW2 is a B2P game but with there current focus on the cash-shop it indeed looks like they are more or more focusing on the long run probably not understanding that by doing that they might destroy it for them-self in the long run. Now it is not to late yet but it’s really time to start rethinking there actions and hopefully they will do that in time.

It is like all those subscription-based MMO’s of the last few years.. The people behind that did see Blizz getting very very rich with that so they also focused on that, not understanding that it would not work anymore. Now all? those games failed (I personally can’t name one of them that has not been going F2P or totally stopped by now) so the wrong focus does more harm then good.

There are very very very few buy to play MMOs and I can’t think of ANY buy to play MMOs that launched as B2P besides Guild Wars 2. Games like TSW for example, may be buy to play now but it launched with a subscription fee. Guild Wars 2 is the only b2p MMO that launched as a B2P game. Even Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a true MMO.

From the beginning Anet said the cash shop would be part of the business plan for this game and that it would be important to keep the money flowing in so they could keep creating content.

So if you don’t want the content, and you want to sit around for months or years at a time to get the next patch, I guess they should focus less on the cash shop. It’s not realistic.

Box sales for a B2P game MUST slow down as everyone who’s interested in the game buys it. There aren’t more people newly interested in it, than people who bought it at launch. So who plays the 300 employees of the company? Where is all this content coming from? Who’s financing it?

It’s not reasonable to expect a game to give content upgrades and work on bug fixes with no real incoming. Guild Wars 1 didn’t update this fast (and didn’t have to back then, but today it probably would have had to).

People need to reassess what’s reasonable for a company to make to keep a new MMORPG running.

I think what some of you might be experiencing is the lag between what the server is doing and what you’re seeing.

What you see in your screen is client-side information. The server doesn’t have you at the exact same place you are on screen (which is why rubber banding can happen). So you are somewhere, but on the server, you’re not in exactly the same place.

When you’re running, you’re ahead on your screen and then the server updates as it comes.

When you fall, the server updates your health/damage, but if you’ve moved on from the fall, it doesn’t catch up with your machine until you’re on that second drop and it treats it as more falling damage.

It’s just a matter of the fact that server information takes time to get interpreted by your client.

Stormcrow.7513:

You sir are one of the few then that haven’t found the content getting dull.

I would be ok if I never had to do a World Event ever again unless they change the “hit toe to get gold”™ mentality of them.

The lack of risk vs reward and challenging content with meaningful mechanics hurts GW2 alot

I really really want this game to be better than it is and constructive criticism is what motivates any developer and makes the game better.

Why do you make the claim that so and so is one of the few who aren’t bored. Did you poll everyone playing the game? I’m curious because I’ve heard other people claim this too.

Let’s put it another way. What was the last game you played for ten months straight that didn’t bore you. I got bored of Skyrim before that. I got bored of WoW before that, I got rid of Lotro before that.

There are no games, particularly at release, that weren’t boring months later. Rift lasted me 3 months. Guild Wars 2 lasted me about 9.

But am I bored because there’s nothing to do, or am I bored because I’m waiting for new content.

One of the biggest complaints about WoW is boredom. How do you fight it? You play with friends or a guild.

Korrigan.4837:

MrRuin.9740:

Grounder.7381:

you know.. theres this groups of people that think that gw2 will get destroyed to oblivion by eso once its comes out..

I have no opinion one way other other on this…….but this crap happens every time a new MMO comes out. gw2 was also going to dethrone WoW as were many others going to destroy each other. Its no wonder people are so disappointed by an MMO when they play it when this kind of hype is built up around them for months before release. They have nowhere to go but down to disappointment. I’d hate to be a developer with this kind of hype out there.

The kind of games I could see harming GW2 would be one with similar combat and content mechanics (action based combat with dynamic dodging, no fixed trinity roles, dynamic events, level downscaling, etc…) but with a more “serious” tone to it. Some content is GW2 is, no offense meant, quite ridiculous. Back pieces come to my mind as prime examples… quaggan packs, tentacles, etc… those new hats in the shop are also not very “serious” looking either. All those things are (for me) quite immersion breaking, thankfully they aren’t very popular in my guild.
If another game offers the same great gameplay and open world in a more “serious” or “dark” setting, I will most likely consider it. So yeah, if ESO copies the best of GW2 while ignoring the “my little pony” style fluff content, it will be a serious contender for the position of “main MMORPG” for me, no matter how much I enjoy all the other GW2 features.

My prediction is they won’t be able to pull it off, because A. It’s not being made by Bethesda and B. they’re trying to put everything on a single shard and I don’t think the technology is there to do that.

Also because it’s probably going to be more focused on the consoles than computers, computer users might end up not enjoying it nearly as much.

It’s true the observer mode is pretty kitten ed good. I do like that…and forgot all about it. I’m probably going to get a custom arena for my guild too.

DiogoSilva.7089:

@Vayne,

You’re right that my examples were too narrow, but that was for clarity’s sake. I also like both story and exploration, and even more so with friends, but unlike you, I don’t find GW2 to be as satisfying at offering those things as it could.

There’s almost no reason to meet new people in the game, so unless I have friends I know in the real world that also play GW2, exploring the world is a lonely experience. I’ve 100% explored Tyria with my elementalist – completed it a few days ago, and I don’t recall any friendship I made. Besides, pve experience is so easy, that when i was playing with friends, combat got very trivial.

Some people blame the players for not interacting more with the in-game community, but it’s not the player’s fault, it’s the mechanics. If there are no mechanics that make people play together (guild-driven content, party-driven content, etc, etc), most players won’t play together. Surely, it’s still important to add support for those who like to play solo, but GW2 mostly only cared about those. There’s no healthy balance between community and solo experience in this game, it’s mostly one-sided to solo content, with the except of a few dungeons, which are only a small thing of what there is to experience in Tyria, and a few guild missions, which are gated.

But as you’ve said, there’s no game coming that offers a real alternative (well, maybe the new ff14, but it has a monthly paying model). We’re left waiting for for this game to get better, expecially and hopefully in an expansion, but it still doesn’t changes that this game was very unfocused when it was launched, it tried to appeal to every player with quantity of content, but then there was not enough time to focus on the quality of each type of content.

Maybe, the Living Story development is going to change that – it certainly seems very focused, with new content revolved around the same premise; but living story is still at an experimental phase, and the only thing we see anet focusing mostly at the moment, is on online shop and RNG content. I don’t mind that as long as that’s what is needed to keep supporting the game, so it can get massive updates later on; but should all future content in GW2 revolve around this RNG content model each month, with little else to bring to the table but a few unfocused, independent gated content, I’ll lose hope in this game.

What’s the difference if you don’t need people to do content. I think it’s a hoot to have a couple of people doing hard group events together. A lot of people duo this game.

And my guild has tons of fun, not just in dungeons, but in the open world. It doesn’t matter, if it’s easy or hard if you’re having fun to some people…maybe even most people. Who knows?

The point is, different people do like different things and for a lot of people this game IS social. My guild has close to 100 members, about 30 or play quite a bit. We’re always hanging out and having a good time. I don’t need a game to force me to play together to join a guild.

Again, for those who don’t want to join a guild, they’re not forced to by game mechanics, and as a result, it’s not as focused…but it still offers more freedom.

I don’t think Final Fantasy is going to do that well. Many many MMOs have tried to ressurect themselves, and none that I know of are resurrecting themselves without being free to play. I just don’t think that’s going to work.

At any rate, Guild Wars 2 is probably destined to be more of a niche game long term…but I think there are enough people for it’s niche that are willing to support it via the cash shop.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

tolunart.2095:

Erasculio.2914:

Tolmos.8395:

If you have another suggestion on how they can afford to keep the servers up without us needing to buy gems for cosmetic things that we want in the game, please by all means share it with the crowd

Using the same system seen in the original Guild Wars. This isn’t exactly hard to figure out.

I hope you don’t own or manage a company. Just keep doing things the same way you did ten years ago is not the path to success.

But thinking that everything thats ‘new’ is good just because it’s new and everything thats old is bad just because it is ‘old’ is also not a good quality for a manager.

I did not play enough GW1 to know how they did it, the the whole gem-store focus is scaring people away. Remembers, people that want F2P games for to a F2P game but people that want B2P go for B2P you know like GW2.

So they should focus on the B2P.. So the game and expansions. A gem-store as a nice extra (like it was the first few months) is fine but the focus is bad for the game. Scare people away and they will not pay anything anymore.

There big question is, as always, what percentage of people are scared away, compared with a small percentage of people that spend stupid money on stuff.

A game can get away with a much smaller playerbase, if people are throwing money at it. So even if people are scared away it may not mean that much. It depends how many people are happy to pay.

In my opinion there are way too many of them.

Well I don’t have the numbers but I have a big guild and I am active on 2 fan forums and this forums. Judging by that they scare away many people. And I know you see complainers more then none complainers but like I said, I am also active on some fan-sites / forums and I now see the real ‘fanboys’ saying they might leave soon. Besides that, once you lose players you will lose more players because they don’t want to be in empty worlds so it only get worse. I do think that in the short run they are indeed making some proper money with this tactic but if they keep doing this there is no long run and for an MMO the real profit is in the long run I would say.

But the people who post on forums also represent a very small percentage of the player base, and I know from long experience, it’s not necessarily indicative of most players. It’s just not that easy to look at specific subsets of the population and predict what the big population is doing.

Put it another way. Anet has exact figures on how many people stopped buying, how many people continue buying and how many people don’t log in. They KNOW. We’re guessing.

Don’t you think if their data showed you were right, they would change something?

Devata.6589:

tolunart.2095:

Erasculio.2914:

Tolmos.8395:

If you have another suggestion on how they can afford to keep the servers up without us needing to buy gems for cosmetic things that we want in the game, please by all means share it with the crowd

Using the same system seen in the original Guild Wars. This isn’t exactly hard to figure out.

I hope you don’t own or manage a company. Just keep doing things the same way you did ten years ago is not the path to success.

But thinking that everything thats ‘new’ is good just because it’s new and everything thats old is bad just because it is ‘old’ is also not a good quality for a manager.

I did not play enough GW1 to know how they did it, the the whole gem-store focus is scaring people away. Remembers, people that want F2P games for to a F2P game but people that want B2P go for B2P you know like GW2.

So they should focus on the B2P.. So the game and expansions. A gem-store as a nice extra (like it was the first few months) is fine but the focus is bad for the game. Scare people away and they will not pay anything anymore.

There big question is, as always, what percentage of people are scared away, compared with a small percentage of people that spend stupid money on stuff.

A game can get away with a much smaller playerbase, if people are throwing money at it. So even if people are scared away it may not mean that much. It depends how many people are happy to pay.

In my opinion there are way too many of them.

A relatively big balance patch is supposed to be coming in a couple of days too.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Different people are attracted by different kinds of content, that’s why there’s many different games out there, and you get to choice the ones that best pick your interest.

An unfocused game can’t compete against focused games, because it revolves more around quantity than quality. Let’s imagine an example:

Game A: Mediocre/ decent at world exploration, story and pvp.
Game B: Excellent story.
Game C: Excellent exploration.
Game D : Excellent pvp.

Which game do you think story-driven players will pick? B. And those who love exploring? Game C. And those who love pvp? Game D. Hybrid players might pick game A, but they’ll never get extreme satisfaction out of each of its features.

GW2 has one big detail akittens side: it has no direct competition (although that’s debatable). There’s little diversity in the MMO genre out there, which is mostly filled with WoW and WoW clones. There’s no good pvp-driven mmo out there, or else, gw2’s pvp would already have lost the little support and faith it still has. There’s no good world-versus-world pvpve driven mmo out there, although one is already in the making. And most pve experiences follow the wow’s formula and combat, or archaic formulas and combat. GW1 is not a MMO, and is outdated too.

GW2 gives you “freedom”, but it’s a very restricted freedom. It gives you freedom to grind where you want: grind world exploration, or events, and do a dungeon or two inbetween. GW2’s “freedom” is almost never exciting, because there’s no tension, epic feeling or danger created from challenging encounters. GW2’s “freedom” is restricting, because most builds you can do will suck or will be very niche (pvp only, dungeon only), most things you want are gotten from the TP (which means all you’re doing with your “freedom” is farming gold), and most things you can pick are unfocused (dungeons revolve around predictable fights with enemies with a looot of hp, world exploration is repetitive because the devs don’t have time to focus on expanding it; events are repetitive because the devs don’t have time to focus on them, etc, etc).

This is the “freedom” of GW2. Giving you the choice between several tasks, most of them mediocre because they were not fleshed out, and they were not fleshed out because the devs didn’t focus enough time to flesh them out.

What is GW2 best at? The (solo) combat? Although it still has ways to go, the combat in GW2 is fun because it was focused – the devs clearly spend a lot of time on it, as it shows when you have an entire team devoted to balancing and expanding it. The streamlined content? GW2’s devs focused a lot on making the content as streamlined as possible (no talking to npcs, automatic event system, etc). These things make this game stand out from other mmos.

Okay, this is where I can directly disagree with your comments.

Because you’re breaking people down into simple categories that don’t really work.

You say if you’re interested in story, you pick game A, if you’re interested in exploration you pick game b. That might be true for lots of people, but it’s not true for lots of others.

Because some people like exploration AND story and very few games give you both. On top of that, people like exploration and story with friends, and that’s where Guild Wars 2 comes in.

Of course I could play Skyrim. I did in fact. I got probably about 75 hours of play out of Skyrim. I have 3000 hours play out of Guild Wars 2. And that just couldn’t happen without the guild I’m in, and that’s where it all falls apart. A lot of people ARE looking for a social experience on top of their game.

And to me, the cooperative play of Guild Wars 2 PvE is a godsend in MMO space. And you’re right. It’s not great at story. It’s not even particularly great at exploration. But then I’m not a one trick pony. I like it all, and this is the only place I can get it all. And a lot of people don’t want to play three or four or five different games at one time. Some do, but some don’t.

The real thing is this. There really isn’t a game coming out any time soon that offers an alternative to Guild Wars 2 for players like me. Probably the first one to come along will be ESO, but that won’t be out till second quarter next year. And you know, like all MMOs when it launches it’ll either be small, or a buggy mess. No large MMO with tons of content has launched in ages that wasn’t a buggy mess.

Guild Wars 2 has almost a year to stabilize this game, get stuff right, get people more into it.

ESO will be new and shiny but it’s coming to this area with some very high expectations attached to it. Little can sink an MMO faster.

DiogoSilva.7089:

By “lack of focus”, I mean from a design-view, not from the player’s view, which are different things.

GW1 was a focused game, but the player could still participate in different kind of content. Outside of pvp, they could follow the story, explore the world, or design builds espefically for farming, running, etc. Granted, this only got better with future expansions, when titles were added in, where world exploration became less tied to story progression, and where more casual pvp modes were added in.

I don’t have anything against the idea of GW2 offering many different things to do for each player. What I do have against, however, is how those many different tasks, instead of complemeting each other, they are way too independent of each other – sometimes to the point of clashing with each other.

So a player can have a lack of focus, which is not a bad thing by itself, but they will get punished by many things they do, because the game design also lacks focus.

No, I got your meaning. But there’s also the issue of this.

If a game has focus, in many cases, it forces players to play a certain way. When I played Rift, originally at launch, the focus of the devs was clearly on dungeons and raids. I’m not a raider, but I felt forced by the game’s focus to channel me into those areas. As an example: the currency used for open world rifts and events was called planarite. I had already hit the planarite cap, had nothing left to buy with it, and I wasn’t alone. Because of this, many people at that time stopped doing Rifts and zone wide events. They just completely ignored them. Not helped by the fact that you didn’t have to do them. It’s not like an outpost being taken over in Guild Wars 2. Invasions would simply disappear after a time if people did nothing about them.

I wanted to play an open world game, and I felt Rift had been advertised that way. They talked up their open world content, but focused on dungeons and raids. It may have changed now, but it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

By not focusing, Guild Wars 2 is giving me a freedom. It doesn’t really push you into anything. You have to do 1 dungeon to finish your personal story…and that’s really the extent of the push. You don’t really have to PvE to PvP. You can sit and do events all day and get rewarded for it. You can do dungeons if you like that. So yeah…the focus of the devs can make a big difference to how people play their game.

Erasculio.2914:

Tolmos.8395:

If you have another suggestion on how they can afford to keep the servers up without us needing to buy gems for cosmetic things that we want in the game, please by all means share it with the crowd

Using the same system seen in the original Guild Wars. This isn’t exactly hard to figure out.

Except that it’s not the same thing as the original Guild Wars. You can’t possibly compare a lobby game to a full MMO and you certainly can’t compare a staff of 50 to a staff of over 300 people. Nor can you compare the speed at which content is provided, whether you like the content or not.

You could get away with very infrequent content up dates 8 years ago. It was a different world. Things have changed.

There’s too much competition. People need reasons to log in and since many people have finished the content, devs have to make MORE content. Because they make that content fast, it’s a mixed bag. And they need devs also for bug fixes and they need devs for longer term permanent content. Artists too.

Someone has to pay for that, and it’s not going to be box sales. Hence the current state of the cash shop.

Of course, its’ not the consumers problem that companies need money to run. But if companies don’t get the money to support the staff, they’ll lay off staff, upgrades and fixes will be less frequent, more people will leave the game or not log in each month and the expansion, when it finally comes out, won’t attract enough interest to keep the game going.

Guild Wars 1 could easily exist on a shoestring budget. Not so, Guild Wars 2.

DiogoSilva.7089:

What is GW2 about? This is one of the biggest problems with GW2: it doesn’t knows what it wants to be.

Is it a story-driven game? It sorta wants to be one, but for months, it has been lacking infrastructure, systems and cutscenes to present its story, and the story itself was rushed. It still sorta wants to be one, with new content being called Living Story, but we’re still at an experimental phase, and no one knows when it’ll kick off for real.

Is it a party-driven game? It sorta wants to be one. The damage/ control/ support trinity is broken, party synergy is lacking, events are completed with mindless zergs, and the only places that are designed around parties, are few and thrown to a few corners of the world.

Is it a skill-driven game? It sorta wants to be one, it surely was the devs’ original intention. The devs wanted this game to reward players for skill instead of farming, but it completely failed at that. GW2 is an extremely casual game that can be farmed, explored and completed mindlessly. There’s little to no adrenaline, tension or epic adventuring going on, challenging-wise.

Is it a pvp-driven game? It sorta wants to be one, but its pvp was completely bare-bones at launch, and only very slowing have they been expanding it, but at least it’s going there.

Is GW2 a casual-driven game? Yes, absolutely yes. Outside of the initial challenge of learning how to dodge and some other mechanics, GW2 is all about casuals doing easy stuff for fun. Farming events where you are highly rewarded for watching your characters auto-attack, grinding mindless, repetitive, story-less hearts, grinding numbers for repetitive world exploration, not requiring any form of coordenation and near to no strategy, etc.

GW2 has some good foundations, but it greatly lacks polish. Many of the things that it tried to accomplish, it didn’t. It’s a game that wants to be a little bit of everything, and ends up having little to no identity.

In comparison, GW1, even though it was far from a perfect game at launch (and even for its lifetime), it accomplished a lot of its goals.

GW1 knew it wanted to be a story-driven game, and revolved around a mission structure to tell its story, with quests inbetween to keep the storytelling flow, and with cutscenes to boot. GW2 launched with neither of those features, and slowly has been bringing them back. We’ve seen cutscenes in F&F, we’re starting to see quests to tell small stories for the living world content, and we know the devs are working on infrastructure/ systems to improve the way the story is presented and guided.

GW1 knew it wanted to have a deep party-driven system, and so its content revolves around parties and its skill system around party synergy. For solo-players, it very elegantly features a henchmen/ hero system, which would allow players to play alone in instances, without sacrificing the party-driven content. In comparison, making party-driven builds in GW2 and grinding equipment to support them is a waste, unless you only log into this game to do dungeons, and even then…

GW1 knew it wanted a very fun building system, and so it streamlined building, features rules and restrictions to keep each build unique, and had a skill-collecting mini-game.

GW1 knew it wanted to have strong pvp, and had multiple game modes, matchmaking, etc. GW2 is slowing going the GW1’s way.

In the end, GW1 knew what it wanted to be, and attempted to be as good as possible at what it was; while GW2 wanted to be a little of everything, and failed at being great at any of those goals.

This is a really interesting critique. I almost agree with it.

I like the lack of focus. It allows me to concentrate on what I want to, instead of being “channeled by the game”. I agree it doesn’t so certain things well enough, but not necessarily the things you think.

I agree it doesn’t do story well enough. That’s one of it’s biggest problems in my opinion. The personal story had its shortcomings, and the living story, though it has its moments is just that…moments. It’s hard to feel connected to it.

And that may be the biggest issue for me for Guild Wars 2. In Guild Wars 1 I felt connected to my character, so it didn’t matter what I was doing. In Guild Wars 2, I feel less connected to my character, so what I’m doing matters more.

Good stuff.

Erasculio.2914:

HiddenNick.7206:

Developers gives you new ways to acquire more powerful items and then you can use those items to overcome certain challenges and receive even more powerful gear or other rewards like unique skins or mounts.

In other words, other MMORPGs are about rewarding time spent in gear treadmills. As flawed as GW2 is, I’m happy it’s not about that (yet). Regardless, this game has been released more than six months ago, had you done a minimum of research about it you would have learned that no, gear treadmill isn’t the focus of GW2. Buying without research = “a fool and his money…”.

Vayne.8563:

Your last line isn’t expressed like an opinion at all

Vayne, you need better arguments than “it’s just YOUR opinion!”. People don’t need to say “Disclaimer: what I’m going to say next is my opinion” all the time. It’s implicit in the context of what someone says (I thought editors knew all about this kind of thing). Likewise, saying something is irrelevant just because it’s an opinion is also a very weak argument. There are baseless opinions (“the sky isn’t blue, it’s yellow!”) and opinions with a strong reasoning behind them that are worth discussing.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

There is a serious reward deficiency. It would be nice if the PvE was well designed enough that it could be played for its own sake

This is what I believe the game should be. Increasing the rewards would likely make people play more than they do today, sure, but to me it would be a sign of ArenaNet stating they cannot make a fun game, hence the need to fill that void with bigger rewards.

I’m replying to Nick who tried to call me on how my opinion was expressed. I was comparing it to how HIS opinion is expressed. It’s called responding to a direct comment, it wasn’t just a general observation.

Nick.6972:

True, Maybe I’m just too too kitten good in this game, 380 hour playtime with large breaks between – playing casually, but hating easy content – press F/E/1 For the win.

Climbing up a random mountain and enjoying the view is not my way of enjoying the game, neither do I personally care about the story, It could be about Zombie Pigs attacking the Tyria for all I care.

I have never said this with more meaning.

I don’t believe this game was designed for players like you. I really really mean that.

I’m not saying that your way of playing is wrong. I’m sayign the devs weren’t targetting your demographic. Surely not in PvE at any rate.