Guild Wars 2

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

cesmode.4257:

Meglobob.8620:

JSmooth.7654:

Remember the Mad King’s Clock Tower? That’s the way to reward people… Imagine if the chest a the top rewarded one of the dragon weapon skins… I’d be ok if you could only do it once per account. Right now, getting a weapon skin all about luck.

You would get a storm of protest from the 9/10 who couldn’t do it…

A lot of people would quit with GW2 being renamed Jump Wars 2…

Because the game is already dubbed Daily Wars 2, or Grind Wars 2.

I am having a hard time understanding the logic behind rng boxes. Do the devs sit around a conference room and say “Hmm, this is such a success. they love RNG boxes”.

By a small minority of disenchanted people, not by any majority. Sure on the forums like a half a dozen guys have dubbed it that. But it’s no where near the grind of most MMOs and the dailies aren’t as bad as most MMOs, so it’s not a big deal.

It would be if it were true, I suppose. Glad it isn’t.

In game map chat says otherwise. Not all people who complain about the game come to the forums some complain in public chat rooms and on other websites. Calling it a minority just because of the few that come here doesn’t discredit that they’re right anymore then not being a game designer means you can’t possibly understand what’s going on in that same process or realize just what’s possibly happening behind the scenes. The prerequisite for arguments requiring the majority or requiring expertise is a strawman designed to take away from the truth of the matters at hand in everything.

I call it a minority because people complain more than they compliment. A perfect example is the forums I used to moderate.

There were half a dozen REALLY negative people there (this was before November) and they drove all the people that liked the game out. Many of those people ended up in my guild and most of them still play.

The point is, 6 idiots drove out 50-60 people who liked the game.

People who are enjoying themselves aren’t mostly like me. This sort of stuff annoys them and they avoid it. But since only a handful of people can prevent a lot of people form talking (as I’ve seen first head) talking in game is as meaningless as talking here.

I know a whole lot of people who leave map chat off because there are too many people in map chat they’d rather not listen to.

I also find it amazing that just because people sound negative alot about something that somehow makes them wrong. It’s not wrong to expect what you paid for in any sense of the word. Those people who complained could have just been repeating the things they noticed that someone else mentioned first. It happens all the time.

Someone mentions the gas prices and others chime in. People who stop using gasoline aren’t necessarily worse off in their daily lives or find alternatives that do make them happier.

There’s going to be loss in this field especially when there were prelaunch promises that were put on indefinitely hold, that’s no secret and it’s not going away until something’s done. People don’t like being told 1 thing and then discovering that what they paid for was something entirely different. That’s just the way of consumerism.

There are also people who jump on the bandwagon without even understanding the conversation. This happens all the time. Like the number of climate change skeptics out there who don’t have a clue about the science.

Agreeing with something doesn’t make it right, even if a whole bunch of people agree. Most people are sheep. They hear people saying stuff and they want to fit in. This isn’t some obscure concept, but a very normal psychological one. It’s how peer pressure works.

You can tell a joke that has no meaning at all, have a few people laugh at it and a room full of people will also laugh, even if there’s no joke.

cesmode.4257:

Vayne.8563:

cesmode.4257:

Minos.3450:

Vayne.8563:

Don’t get your hopes up.

yep, this is the best way to get disappointed.

Like the way we got our hopes up with this game?

I still have hope for the game but at this point it is just going off in a direction that is difficult for me to follow, despite its enormous potential. And this began in November.

Like the way YOU had your hopes up for this game. We is a very strong word. You should probably use it less often.

Yes, there are people disappointed with this game. There are also people who love this game, even people with relatively high expectations. They were DIFFERENT expectations than yours.

I could theorize why they were different, but that ship sailed a long time ago. My expectations were largely met (with a few exceptions).

Right back atcha chief. Quit calling the kettle black. You are telling me the sky is blue. No sh_t. There are people that love the game, people that are disappointed, people that hate it. Im in the disappointed category at the moment. You are inferring that when I said “We” I meant 100% of the playerbase. Don’t be naieve .

I’m saying some guys make it sound like the sky is falling. I’m not alone in feeling that way. Yes, there’s stuff that needs improvement. No, it’s not unusual in an MMO that’s only out a year. Yes, stuff is being worked on. Yes, it takes a long time.

But it’s just as easy to say “I” as “We” and a lot more accurate.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

cesmode.4257:

Meglobob.8620:

JSmooth.7654:

Remember the Mad King’s Clock Tower? That’s the way to reward people… Imagine if the chest a the top rewarded one of the dragon weapon skins… I’d be ok if you could only do it once per account. Right now, getting a weapon skin all about luck.

You would get a storm of protest from the 9/10 who couldn’t do it…

A lot of people would quit with GW2 being renamed Jump Wars 2…

Because the game is already dubbed Daily Wars 2, or Grind Wars 2.

I am having a hard time understanding the logic behind rng boxes. Do the devs sit around a conference room and say “Hmm, this is such a success. they love RNG boxes”.

By a small minority of disenchanted people, not by any majority. Sure on the forums like a half a dozen guys have dubbed it that. But it’s no where near the grind of most MMOs and the dailies aren’t as bad as most MMOs, so it’s not a big deal.

It would be if it were true, I suppose. Glad it isn’t.

In game map chat says otherwise. Not all people who complain about the game come to the forums some complain in public chat rooms and on other websites. Calling it a minority just because of the few that come here doesn’t discredit that they’re right anymore then not being a game designer means you can’t possibly understand what’s going on in that same process or realize just what’s possibly happening behind the scenes. The prerequisite for arguments requiring the majority or requiring expertise is a strawman designed to take away from the truth of the matters at hand in everything.

I call it a minority because people complain more than they compliment. A perfect example is the forums I used to moderate.

There were half a dozen REALLY negative people there (this was before November) and they drove all the people that liked the game out. Many of those people ended up in my guild and most of them still play.

The point is, 6 idiots drove out 50-60 people who liked the game.

People who are enjoying themselves aren’t mostly like me. This sort of stuff annoys them and they avoid it. But since only a handful of people can prevent a lot of people form talking (as I’ve seen first head) talking in game is as meaningless as talking here.

I know a whole lot of people who leave map chat off because there are too many people in map chat they’d rather not listen to.

cesmode.4257:

Minos.3450:

Vayne.8563:

Don’t get your hopes up.

yep, this is the best way to get disappointed.

Like the way we got our hopes up with this game?

I still have hope for the game but at this point it is just going off in a direction that is difficult for me to follow, despite its enormous potential. And this began in November.

Like the way YOU had your hopes up for this game. We is a very strong word. You should probably use it less often.

Yes, there are people disappointed with this game. There are also people who love this game, even people with relatively high expectations. They were DIFFERENT expectations than yours.

I could theorize why they were different, but that ship sailed a long time ago. My expectations were largely met (with a few exceptions).

Deleted because I don’t need another infraction. lol

cesmode.4257:

Meglobob.8620:

JSmooth.7654:

Remember the Mad King’s Clock Tower? That’s the way to reward people… Imagine if the chest a the top rewarded one of the dragon weapon skins… I’d be ok if you could only do it once per account. Right now, getting a weapon skin all about luck.

You would get a storm of protest from the 9/10 who couldn’t do it…

A lot of people would quit with GW2 being renamed Jump Wars 2…

Because the game is already dubbed Daily Wars 2, or Grind Wars 2.

I am having a hard time understanding the logic behind rng boxes. Do the devs sit around a conference room and say “Hmm, this is such a success. they love RNG boxes”.

By a small minority of disenchanted people, not by any majority. Sure on the forums like a half a dozen guys have dubbed it that. But it’s no where near the grind of most MMOs and the dailies aren’t as bad as most MMOs, so it’s not a big deal.

It would be if it were true, I suppose. Glad it isn’t.

Erasculio.2914:

Gathslan.1870:

Storytelling>characters

Especially when the characters have all the same personality and same dialog and there are thousands of them trying to lie to themselfs each of them are the hero of the story.

Being the hero of a story does not work in MMOs :P

It does; the limitation is bad design in the other MMOs, not an issue inherent to the genre.

In fact, good storytelling more often than not requires the players to be the hero in the story. We need characters to move a story along, and, due to the nature of games, our characters are usually the active party in the world. In the current event, for example, we are the ones looking around the world trying to find the suspects – and that’s how it had to be, considering how our characters would not just stand still in Lion’s Arch waiting for someone to actually do something for us. In this context, having NPCs who we do everything for yet who are the center of the story creates the same issues we got with Traheanne.

Astraea.6075:

but the predominant style of 2 talking marionettes used in the personal story really didn’t work for me.

I agree. I understand using that style in the open world, but in the personal instances it doesn’t make any sense. Compare the usual cutscenes to what we had seen in the original Guild Wars, like:

Palawa Joko vs Turai Ossa

Gwen escapes the Charr

Those are rendered using in-game models, yet they are far better than the talking bodies we got in GW2. Even the few action cinematics here and there in the story are not well developed like that.

KrisHQ.4719:

Here is how it is done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAlf0-THkCU

The guy who talks the most in that video and who was cinematics lead has left ArenaNet… They don’t do cinematic like that anymore. Even in the core game, they are very rarely used.

I’m honestly not a fan of cinematics in the personal story or the dungeons. I mean they’re okay…but I preferred the ones in Guild Wars 1 (with the exception of the minions and spirits screwing them up).

I do like the evolution of the scenes in Guild Wars 2 since launch, but I’d like to see more of them and more of them with my characters in them.

Rama.6439:

Siphaed.9235:

Zero.6082:

Has anyone ever seen some one from anet actually play the game. Most of the time they talk about what is in the best interest of us or what they think would be more fun. But it seems to be going in the wrong direction cause everyone keeps complaining. I all most wonder if they even play there own game. I mean i wonder if they are satisfied with how it turned out.

Does everyone think that Anet or NCsoft or who ever makes the decisions is creating better content that the gamer actually wants or just easy filler to appease people cause they promised they would give us new stuff?

Are you freakin’ kidding me?! They do a 30min-1hr Live Stream every Friday of them playing the game. (Check their YouTube channel).

Most of the devs are members of the same guild on SBI server. I’ve played with a few in Dynamic Events, sPvP, and WvW when that server was my home.

As for people “keep complaining”, that’s because they’re a very vocal minority. You cannot please all the people, all of the time; you can please some of the people, most of the time. And right now, what they’re doing as far as the direction of the game and what’s “fun”, I think it’s brilliant.

You’re totally wrong on it being a vocal minority, it’s a vocal majority, just look at the forums, most are posts about what people don’t like and what’s wrong with the game, and where they see the game headed. The people that stick up for Anet in these posts, look at their post histories, I have they LIVE IN THE FORUMS, they can’t possibly play the game with the amount of time they spend on these forums, some people who stick up for the DEV’s post in almost every single post on these forums, now how does someone like that spend quality time in game and find the time to post on the forums all day? I’ll tell you how, they are actually Anet employees posting under their own game accounts, just like the the Anet employee in this post said he plays on his own account, employees are posting in the forums on their own accounts to look like regular players.

I know this for a fact cause I was banned for calling one of them out and posting his name I will not say who but it happened and I got banned from the forums for it, it was a temp ban.

Accusing someone of being an Anet employee is accusing them of lying. You can check my achievement points (over 8000 now) which I didn’t get by not playing the game. Clearly you think that no one can put 2-3 hours into the forums a day and still play the game for 5-6 hours a day. Clearly that’s incorrect.

And getting banned for calling someone an Anet employee doesn’t prove anything. Hell, if you make enough personal attacks on people you’re bound to get banned.

Are you really surprised the way you come off that the mods reacted?

Zepidel.5349:

>And intent to do something is not the same thing as the promise of doing it.

I stoped reading right there

That doesn’t make it untrue. If I intend to take the kids to the movies, and I get called into work, then I can’t take them to the movies. It doesn’t mean I told them I would take them to the movies in bad faith.

A manifesto is a statement of intent. Of goals. This is the vision for the game. That’s it. That’s ALL it is. It’s not a guarantee, it’s not a promise, it’s not even a statement of this is what we’re going to do. It’s a statement of this is what we’re HOPING to do. And eventually they may do that.

But to take individual lines from a full document, try to pass them off as what people are saying, ignoring the rest of the words around them, and then claiming it’s a guarantee of what to come isn’t just naive.

It’s irresponsible.

Unless you’re claiming that manifesto was so good that at that point you stopped looking into the game, didn’t think about it again until it came out and ignored every other thing that Anet said about the game, because you’re too brainwashed by “advertising” to actually think about what is being said.

Just ignore the effigies. Not like you need them to get the wings.

Mesmer: You know, I’d love to come to the party tonight, but I’m playing bridge with my clones.

stof.9341:

Vayne.8563:

(…) Aion (…) launched with so many bugs, they were virtually unplayable.

Wait, what? You must be talking about a different game or you played in the betas somehow.

Much more interestingly, it came out with level cap at 45 only despite OBVIOUSLY the cap was meant to be 50. Visible because you could actually loot and buy items that required level 50, you could see the skills for level 50, there was an instance that was practically impossible to finish because the last boss was meant for level 50 players etc… :p And shortly after the game release came the first “expansion pack” that added the missing high level zone and unlocked the level cap.

You’re right Aion can in no way compare to something like Warhammer Online as far as bugs. However, a ton of people left Aion very quickly because there weren’t enough quests to level you to get to where you needed to go.

People had to grind bosses over and over again to level high enough to get to the PvP end. And if you didn’t PvP, you were totally screwed. And there were some major bugs on the Asian release as well, but nothing like the bugs that occured in Warhammer.

I probably meant a different game than Aion when I was typing (I often type fast and don’t recheck my posts), but at this point I have no idea which game I meant.

Regardless, a lot of people left Aion very quickly due to lack of content, one of the things on my list of deficiencies in a new game. Basically you can’t have it all…you have to skimp somewhere and hope to catch up after launch. That’s what I’m saying.

Edit: I think I was probably going to type AoC not Aion. Sorry for that.

Maybe or maybe not, but some other variation on it probably will come out at some point. It might not be the molten pick axe, but some other everlasting pick axe that has some new animation.

FearedbytheGods.8617:

marnick.4305:

You can’t compare a 7 years old game with a game at the 10 month mark.

While I’m sure it’s not your intention. You would argue that we should expect this to occur many years in the future, despite other MMO’s having it now?
Imo your falling into the trap that I’ve stated in my post.

I think the problem here is expecations and what is reasonable. Is it reasonable for a new game to have a big world, lots of content AND every bell and whistle before release? Honestly, I don’t think so.

You only need look at every MMO release to see that no one has put every single feature into their MMO before launch. Rift and SWToR launched without a group finder. Rift lauched with a laughably small world (11 zones, 2 starting areas and none of the zones were particularly big even), TSW launched with a small amount of content. Warhammer, Aion and Vanguard launched with so many bugs, they were virtually unplayable.

Seems to me if no game can launch with size, features and lack of bugs, no one can expect them too. Different companies focus on different things. Rift focused on a smooth launch, which they could get away with because the word was small. They didn’t launch with all the bells and whistles, however.

SWToR launched with a full story line but no end game content and lots of bugs. Why?

Because no matter how good you are, you still have to put the game out at some point. It costs to much money. Guild Wars 2 could have had all the features and many of the bugs sorted out if it launched a year or two later…but who can afford to support an MMO seven years in development paying all that money to staff, rent, electric, and everything that goes with it.

I think that if a company could do it, it would have been done by now. It hasn’t, so logically it’s not helpful to expect it. Not to the companies who have to live with the limitations of the genre, or the the players who inevitably end up disappointed by the reality of the situation.

Lue.6538:

Truffles.4362:

Am I the only one who is REALLY disappointed in Guild Wars 2 mechanic wise? Don’t get me wrong, i still enjoy the game, just not even remotely close the fun i got out of the original. When they released the skill/weapon sets for the game it broke my heart.:(

P.S. Have they(ANet) mentioned why the didn’t make the skill bar at least similar to the original?

The potentional to completely build my own skillbar as in GW1 was indeed a huge letdown and personally I think the GW2 mesmer is a pretty poor followup to what the GW1 mesmer was.

And aside from all the ranting in the previous comments, there are grinds in this, huge ones, but they’re not obligatory to reach level 80, doesn’t mean they don’t exist tho.

So are you saying there weren’t huge grinds in Guild Wars 1, because that seems to be the comparison.

I seem to remember a lot of FFF runs when I was there, People really did grind to get max Lightbringer, max Luxon, max Kurzick…people even ground (grinded) the Eye of the North titles.

Don’t get your hopes up.

Gathslan.1870:

Much rather have high quality cutscenes like this than drop them just so we could see our characters….

Storytelling>characters

Especially when the characters have all the same personality and same dialog and there are thousands of them trying to lie to themselfs each of them are the hero of the story.

Being the hero of a story does not work in MMOs :P

I agree. What I’d like to see is our characters in these cut scenes.

Resonance.4216:

Vayne.8563:

I mean there’s NOTHING in Guild Wars 2 like a permasin. There’s nothing like a party of level 8 ursans (though probably zerker warriors come pretty close). There’s nothing like dual 600 monks. There’s nothing like Sabway. There’s nothing like a dual discord build.

I would dearly like to watch the current playerbase try to get their heads around 600/Smite, Permasins, or any of the more hilarious HA builds.

This is probably a valid comment. There’s certainly more skill involved in learning some of the Guild Wars 1 builds….HOWEVER…

You don’t have to learn anything to take a party of three heroes for the sabway build, for example, or some of the other builds. This is in the past when you could only have three heroes with you, of course, when now you can have 7.

But even when you could have three heroes with you and 4 henchies, I found that I didn’t even need to play in order to clear hard mode content. In other words, there was no skill involved in looking up team builds on PvX wiki for PvE and just playing like crap, because your heroes could kill for you.

If you didn’t do it, you don’t get the dragon helms. I would think that’s the OP’s problem.

I’ve been trying NOT to look at leaderboards, because I think it affects how I play. Oh this is soooo bad. lol

IndigoSundown.5419:

Guild Wars was superior mechanic wise to GW2. I’m not going to debate the skills, etc, because most of that has been gone over exhaustively already. Why is GW2 inferior? Stats on gear. This mechanic was a bone thrown towards the mainstream MMO crowd who have gotten used to the idea.

Many of the imbalances between builds and the discrepancy in PvE difficulty (or lack thereof ) for different players can be traced to the egregious damage done by berserker builds coupled with invulnerability mechanics. GW had very few stats on gear, and there was not a lot of variation in builds because of gear. ANet talked about the nightmare of balancing hundreds of skills in GW. In GW2 there is little PvE balance between builds/gear — and that problem did not exist in GW.

Sure, but other problems of a similar nature did, because of the number of skills and this was particularly compounded in PvE by the PvE only skills.

I mean there’s NOTHING in Guild Wars 2 like a permasin. There’s nothing like a party of level 8 ursans (though probably zerker warriors come pretty close). There’s nothing like dual 600 monks. There’s nothing like Sabway. There’s nothing like a dual discord build.

So yes, the problems that exist in Guild Wars 2 due to stats didn’t exist in Guild Wars 1, but the problems that existed in Guild Wars 1 due to dual classing and skills available were every bit as “bad”.

I think Erasculio has a valid point.

While I did love the cut scene (I thought it was extremely well done), I don’t “feel” my characters as much in Guild Wars 2 as I do in Guild Wars 1. I started wondering why that might be.

In Guild Wars 1, I could repeat cut scenes with my character in it, and in fact, did so every time I did a mission. It was me standing there talking to Prince Rurik or being blocked by a minion who was attacking Togo. lol But it was still me.

If we appeared in some of these scenes, and if we could repeat certain scenes, I’d feel more attached to my characters. The way Guild Wars 2 is set up now, I’m not nearly as attached to my characters as I was in Guild Wars 1.

Holy smokes! I Didn’t know you could sort of server!

I’m 22 on Tarnished Coast. Soon to be less because I don’t go for the PvP achievements every day anymore.

Azure Prower.8701:

Vayne.8563:

Not quite true. In Dragonball you have to press 1 to win.

And what exactly do you win?

The game…as in have the highest score. Or you can be like me and try to get the most kills of anyone on your team (which might not be fun for everyone but it is fun for me).

Zepidel.5349:

>A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government.¹²³ A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus and/or promotes a new idea with prescriptive notions for carrying out changes the author believes should be made. It often is political or artistic in nature, but may present an individual’s life stance. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds.

Regardless of what they decided to call their pre-release video showcasing the game it still counts as a promise in my book or at the very least false advertising. But you know what Warhammer did the SAME EXACT thing. There no difference between this here thread on the gw2 forums and many many many many others I seen on the Warhammer forums were people linked to videos of the Warhammer dev diaries and then said “see look they didn’t do anything they said they were!” I’m sure most post WoW MMO’s did the same same. Still its really shady to get people on the hype train with false advertising / saying you are going to do something then do a 180 tailspin on it.

so idk idc anymore lol

And intent to do something is not the same thing as the promise of doing it. And you forget Anet released TONS of information post manifesto that explained exactly what dynamic events were, exactly what personal story was…no court in the world would consider a manifesto two years before a product came out false advertising, if they continued to bring out current accurate information about the product…which they did.

And since people didn’t even UNDERSTAND the manifesto, or at least decided to hang their own definitions on some of the words provided, even though the words didn’t lie, I’d say people misled themselves.

It happens all the time. But if it’s so misleading, why did I go into the game knowing what a dynamic event was, knowing what the personal story was, knowing what to expect by way of gameplay.

Hell, Eric Flannum said in multiple interviews there would be stuff to grind for.

Sinoran.9140:

I agree. ascended amulets are just so kitten hard to get. I mean come on Anet, 50 kills? 1 champion kill? 5 events? PLAY THE GAME? kitten that, that’s GRINDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay this made me laugh out loud. lol

Okay so I had a cleric in Rift and I wanted to go DPS. There was precisely 1 way to do that. That is to say the same skills, the same tree, the same everything I had my entire rotation macroed to three keys. The combat so dull…I wish I’d never heard of a macro.

Now I could lower my DPS and that was fine for the open world, but once you hit the dungeons and raids that had the enrage timer, you needed a minimum amount of damage to do the boss before he pretty much automatically wiped everybody. It was a DSP check on most bosses. So you had to kill them within that certain time limit. Which means you had to use the most efficient build, whether you liked it or not.

Frankly it sucked. I don’t mind taking longer to kill a boss in Guild Wars 2, as long as I have the freedom to kill him the way I want. And since I had out with people who enjoy the same thing, I’m not inconveniencing anyone by playing that way.

I dont’ think it’s an advantage to just have a most efficient equation for skills/damage that you have to use, or else. Sounds to me like a lot of wasted skills. I’d rather play the way I want and have fun.

Pretty much what Guild Wars 2 was designed for. You may not be the most efficient, but you can still bring builds that aren’t the most efficient and still clear content.

Resonance.4216:

And the idea behind the term korean grinder? None of what you do has any value or point to it, you grind “just because”. The same applies here. Why do we need to kill 300 holograms? JUST CAUSE! Why break hundreds of pinatas? JUST CAUSE! (2)!.

We have to kill 300 holograms, because if it gets people who want the achievement to log in. Pretty simple really. It’s part of a celebration. Breaking isn’t an achievement. Actually breaking 10,000 of them isn’t really an achievement either, except it shows some degree of dedication or at least stubbornness.

There are achievements of attrition on almost every MMO. Titles that are so hard to do only the craziest people will tackle them. They existed in Guild Wars 1, they exist in other games.

The question is, is killing 250 holos in a couple of weeks, or roughly 20 a day (when you get four from each dispenser…is it really that hard? Of course it isn’t. And of course you get increased chest drop rates which at least gives you a chance of something decent.

And the candy you get can be turned into a food that’s the equivalent of the very popular omonom berry bar, so it’s not like you can’t make some dragon cupcakes for yourself and maybe get some better drops while you’re farming if you use them.

I’m not sure breaking 250 of something over two weeks can be compared to a korean grinder. And if you want the holowings, you don’t even have to do the two grindiest achievements, because you can get the wings with 8 achievements instead of 10 now.

I think people don’t really know what grind is.

Zepidel.5349:

Vayne.8563:

Resonance.4216:

It’s a generic fantasy korean grinder MMO that just happens to be set in Tyria.

LMAO! Really?

Because I’ve played some Korean grinders…they’re nothing like that at all.

IDK ANET sure had me fooled into thinking it was when i checked the Dragon Bash achievements (Must just be a 1 time deal when they went overboard right?).

In a Korean grinder, it takes ages to level. Are you saying that due to this new content it takes ages to level?

Did you see my post about the treasure hunter title in Guild Wars 1?

/thread.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

The line wasn’t about gear grind at all, even though people who take it out of context claim it is. They’re using the traditional (original) usage of grind as in grinding for levels. As long as people continue to misquote, I’ll continue to correct.

There’s no point debating this, you’ve been proved wrong on this issue.

Umm no. I’ve not been proved wrong. I’ve had a couple of people say that I was wrong, so I contacted a few of my old colleagues just to make sure. Eight in all. Asked them…editors/writers. Every single one of them agreed with me.

You can’t change the interpretation of a word once it’s defined in a document just because you want to.

And people who have an agenda, me or them, shouldn’t be believed out of hand. That’s why I asked an outside source for verification.

Sinoran.9140:

Resonance.4216:

Vayne.8563:

when your’e quite demonstrably wrong.

300 holos (spam 1)

150 pinatas (spam F)

250 candies (spam doubleclick)

50 effigies (Spam F then esc)

and that’s just the current “event”.

And as usual, there’s no backstory to any of this. Why the hell are pinatas around? They don’t even remotely fit the lore. Why Holograms?

Dragon Bash…. Dragon pinatas that you bash…. are you even trying?

Nah, Resonance isn’t trying. We all know there’s some story behind having a celebration to thumb our noses at the dragons, except him, apparently.

It’s clear that if the story isn’t spoodfed, some players won’t take the time to see what’s up. I blame the internet. lol

Resonance.4216:

Vayne.8563:

when your’e quite demonstrably wrong.

300 holos (spam 1)

150 pinatas (spam F)

250 candies (spam doubleclick)

50 effigies (Spam F then esc)

and that’s just the current “event”.

And as usual, there’s no backstory to any of this. Why the hell are pinatas around? They don’t even remotely fit the lore. Why Holograms?

And you’re comparing this to a korean grinder? You should compare it instead to the titles in Guild Wars 1, like the lucky title, the luxon title, the treasure hunter title, then come back and talk to me.

Take the Treasure Hunter title as an example. For the treasure hunter title, you had to open 10,000 chests, which could only be opened with a lockpick that either dropped rarely or cost 1.5 plat. (Sometimes you could buy them cheaper from players at 1.2 plat).

Lockpicks would break quite frequently, depending on your lucky title bonus. In fact, you had more than a 2/3rds chance to break a lockpick when you were first starting out.

10,000 chests.

And the two grindiest bits of this you don’t have to do to get the holo wings. You don’t have to do say the 250 creatures, or the 50 effigies and you can still get the wings. I got the wings without doing the effigies.

So yeah, calling this a korean grinder based on those numbers isn’t correct.

Zepidel.5349:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

The manifesto didn’t mention vertical progression at all. It talked about grind in a completely different way. It talked about “this boring grind to get to the fun stuff”, such as leveling up before you can raid. They wanted to give people fun stuff to do RIGHT AWAY in the game, like the Shadow Behemoth encounter.

Thats rather ironic given that SB is on a rather lengthy timetable. I didn’t actually get to do the event until long long after I finished queensdale. In those early days you actually had to be lucky to be at that part of the map when he came up.

Vayne.8563:

The line after was “We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one likes it, no one finds it fun, we want to change the way people view combat”.

The first instance of the word grind defined what Colin was talking about. Nowhere in that paragraph did people talk about grinding for gear or anything else.

You’ve been comprehensively dismantled on this issue in that other thread so much so I’m surprised you would want to bring it up again.

As long as people continue to bring up the manifesto and try to throw gear grind into the equation, I’ll post what I see as the truth (and it’s pretty obviously the truth if you actually know how to read).

I don’t actually care if people are tired of it, because I’m tired of people bringing up the manifesto. It doesn’t further any conversation, it’s demonstrably false criticism anyway, and it’s pointless.

Hopefully people will stop bringing it up, because it clouds the issues rather than clarifies them.

Ya lets just close our eyes and ears and forget about all those stupid promises that made us buy the game, lets also forget about that terrible game that came out in 2005!

Actually, they didn’t make the “stupid promises” people are saying they made and if people would learn English, they’d realize that.

Hint: Taking a line out of context and using it to mean what you want it to mean is exactly what politicians and lawyers do. The most commonly misquoted portion of the manifesto is the words “We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2”. Unfortunately, that came a couple of lines after Anet defined the grind they were talking about.

“In most games there’s this boring grind before you can get to the fun stuff.” The paragraph ends with the words “We want to change the way people view combat.”

The line wasn’t about gear grind at all, even though people who take it out of context claim it is. They’re using the traditional (original) usage of grind as in grinding for levels. As long as people continue to misquote, I’ll continue to correct.

Resonance.4216:

Vayne.8563:

And making fun of me, just because your argument has little merit, doesn’t make you right.

You mentioned to everyone yesterday that you don’t care what we all think of you.

However, you’ll need to press F 150 times before any of us actually pay attention to you beyond laughing.

I don’t care what you think. I don’t post on the forums to talk to you. I post on the forums, mostly, to talk to those who lurk on the forums. I said that too.

I’m never going to change your mind about anything. I wouldn’t even try. But to allow you to say something that is completely inaccurate without rebutting it, might lead someone to believe that you’re right, when your’e quite demonstrably wrong.

Resonance.4216:

Vayne.8563:

Resonance.4216:

It’s a generic fantasy korean grinder MMO that just happens to be set in Tyria.

LMAO! Really?

Because I’ve played some Korean grinders…they’re nothing like that at all.

Ah yes, in comes Vayne, and The People Shall Start Singing Patriotic ArenaNET Songs.

I can be right and still be a Guild Wars 2 fan. How long does it take to hit max level in a korean grinder. Because that’s what people are usually talking about when they use the term korean grinder. There’s no way to level in a day through crafting, for example, in a Korean grinder. Perhaps you’ve never actually played one. Leveling takes forever.

And making fun of me, just because your argument has little merit, doesn’t make you right.

Resonance.4216:

It’s a generic fantasy korean grinder MMO that just happens to be set in Tyria.

LMAO! Really?

Because I’ve played some Korean grinders…they’re nothing like that at all.

I don’t see anything in the survey that’s particularly surprising. Lots of people buy gems, some don’t. Enough people in the high end of gem purchases, if they continue to buy gems, can support the game. Probably the people spending “big money” in the gem store do it for RNG or to convert to gold.

No surprises at all here, for me anyway.

Ashen.2907:

Xsorus.2507:

There is no way GW2 offers anything remotely close to Rift in terms of Class
differentiation

The amount of specs available in Rift is absolutely silly.

Not only did you have the “pure builds” you had all the hybrid ones as well.

I can actually name some of the “builds” off that were played back then on Mages

44 Necro
32 Necro/32 Warlock
32 Necro/32 Dom
44 Pyro/11 Necro (this was nerfed early on)
32 Storm Caller/32 Warlock
32 pyro/32 Warlock
51 Pyro
51 Stormcaller
32 Chloro/32 Dom
32 Dom/16 Chloro/16 PvP Soul
51 Archon
32 Pyro/32 Elementalist
32 Ele/32 Warlock

Thats all the ones i can think of off the top of my head only for Mage, there are more…

There are at several times that many builds available to just an Elementalist focussing on fire and dual daggers.

Multiply that by four elements…

Multiply that by the five weapon combination options…

and Elementalist alone has probably in the neighborhood of eighty to one hundred times as many builds as you list.

Vayne.8563:

but I still never really got an idea of who he was, because he was always changing.

Isnt this pretty much possible in GW2 as well ? Switching from support to tank to DPS with little effort ?

It’s possible, but it’s not the same because you have to actually go somewhere, pay money for it. In Rift, you had a soul and everything was switch on the fly.

For example, I could go into a dungeon in Rift, fight as a healing priest for one battle, click one button and everything changes, including my “attributes”, and the skills I had. Yeah, it was convenient as hell…but I never got the feel of who I was.

I might change sometimes in Guild Wars 2, but I’m changing to make my character more like he/she would be. It’s sort of like RPing without the interaction. I call it immersion play. My characters have back stories. I know who they are. This was much much harder for me to do in Rift…because every change was at your fingertips and your guild expected you to change.

I was playing this sort of dark semi-bad guy cleric and my guildies would come on and nag me until I healed for them. Honestly it didn’t take much nagging, because I’m a guild guy, but the act of healing was so against what the character was designed to be (essentially a DPS guy that used dark energy to damage foes) that it killed any enjoyment I might have had playing him.

One of the things I hated about Rift was the soul system. Not because of the variety, which was pretty good, but because I never “felt” my character. Okay I’m a tank, okay now I’m a DPS guy, okay now I’m a healer.

Because the skills you have, in my mind, determine who my character is. In Guild Wars 1 I had three warriors. One used a hammer, one a sword and one an axe, because those weapons fit that character. It’s who they were.

In Guild Wars 2, I feel far more attached to my characters than I ever did in Rift, because I never got to know my character in Rift. The story was generic (everyone in my faction had the same starting zone I did) and the builds made me generic, so it was very easy to leave the game.

Guild Wars 1 was better at making me feel my character than Guild Wars 2 is, but I still have far more attachment to my Guild Wars 2 characters than I ever did to my Rift characters. In fact, I only remember one of my Rift characters, but I still never really got an idea of who he was, because he was always changing.

Galphar.3901:

Monsoon.2589:

You dont NEED to do anything hence it is not a grind.
If you want to get the wings you can buy them using gems that you can buy at your local store or ingame…no need to grind anything here.

You don t have to grind for legendary or exotics, you don t have to grind for anything…you dod what you want and nothing is mandatory.

YOU chose what you want to acquire and how to play the game. What you want to grind or acquire is different from me or anybody else. The content is there for people who want something to do in game. Some see it as grind some like me see it as passing the time.

The problem is that you are doing a single thing many times like the pinatas…don t try to do 50 in a row. Just do 4 or 5 and do something else like a quest etc.

Problem is most of us have already done EVERYTHING else or are sick of WvWvW and PvP in general

Yep, this is true. The problem is most people have done everything. I had that problem in every MMO I ever started. Eventually you do everything and since REAL content takes ages, companies throw either temporary or really bad content at you until the good stuff is ready. The except was Rift, which had such a laughably small world at launch, that they HAD to keep coming out with content and even months later, there wasn’t that much to do even with the new content. Everyone sat around waiting for the new monthly event because everyone had done everything.

It would be lovely if content could be made faster than people could consume it…but it can’t. Go play another game, read a book, do the monthly stuff and wait for the big permanent updates.

Those updates are in the works, but they take time to produce, that’s all.

Not quite true. In Dragonball you have to press 1 to win.

Knighthonor.4061:

Galphar.3901:

Korrigan.4837:

If GW2 was anything like Rift, I know I would NOT be playing it, and even less giving 20€ or more worth of gems per month to the developers.
There’s some things like housing and mounts that I hope to see in GW2 someday, but other things like raiding that would make me quit immediately.

Agreed! Now if Anet would give us Professions and skills like we had in GW in the open world of GW2 then you would have a game that is not faltering and on verge of loosing it’s playerbase.

GW2 is much different from GW1. But at first most of you said you hated many of the ideas until it was revealed during Gw2 revealing.

To me it seem like people are just scared of what’s different and what they don’t understand.

I played Rift. I alpha tested it and played from beta 4. I had max level characters, did all the dungeons, was raid ready and I hope to never play that game again. It had good points, but that doesn’t make it a good game for my play style.

Don’t go and say people are scared of what’s different because they don’t enjoy what you enjoy.

cesmode.4257:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Didn’t we get this all out of our system back in November?

Well, thats what I thought when I saw this thread. But if people are speaking pro ascended gear, I must voice my opposite opinion.

Vayne,
I could still raid in blues if I wanted to(other than LFR).

In WoW I could level to max level and regardless of what gear I had, I could run any dungeon or heroic(up until cataclysm when the dungeon finder placed ilvl requirements on dungeons). I could experience every dungeon in whatever shoddy greens and blues I had. Much like GW2 where you can experience every dungeon with whatever gear you have on.

If I wanted to raid, I could still go to these raids. Much like Fractals in GW2….provided I have the appropriate fractal level and my group accepts that, I can go into those fractals. In either scenario, you would be one shotted by a boss mechanic in WoW or the lazy-agony mechanic in GW2. And only THEN is when gear really comes into play. Proper gear to be able to stand up in raids vs a certain agony resist to be able to stand up in fractals.

In both games, you are able to do all content until you get to the raids/fractals. (This is also speaking of every expansion up until cataclysm when ilvl requirements were in place..which was what..5 years of WoW without gear/ilvl requirements to experience all of the content?)

My arguement is still valid.

Well, I have less experience of raiding in WoW and more of raiding in Rift and as I said, in Rift, I literally couldn’t queue for a dungeon without the proper gear. And of course, WoW has those DPS checks because of the enrage timer which means you do need to have certain gear to attain the DPS needed. That’s not true in 99% of Guild Wars 2.

Those people who want to see what’s in the fractals without playing it hundreds of times to get to high level fractals can. That’s something most MMOs don’t give you either.

In the end, that makes a difference…whether or not it makes a difference to you. And surely enough people see the difference, because there are people who agree with me, just like there are people who agree with you.

What I think we’re talking about here is a difference in play style, and that’s really it. If you must have BIS gear, and that’s how you play, this game is probably going to be more annoying to you than if you don’t.

Shakki.3219:

Actually the Daily concept failed. Most players feel forced to do all dailies..

the system should rather be that we CAN choose 5 of them all. (like it is supposed to be) and u will NOT BE AWARDED with achievement points / exp w/e for the other ones.

so that is the true way that everyone can do what they want every day…

How do you know what most players feel? From my guild anyway, most players barely even think about dailies. There are a whole lot of people who just play the game and if they get the daily they’re happy and if they don’t, they don’t.

Please try not to talk for most players.

Ping.5739:

Vayne.8563:

Ping.5739:

In addition to what you have said, I feel you also enjoy “communicating” with other people on this game’s forum, alot.

Actually, I didn’t start on this forum. And I’m happy when people post reasonable critiques on stuff that needs to be fixed, but I will post where I feel that people are being unreasonable or using hyperbole. However, I’m not generally posting to speak to the people who are complaining (because their minds aren’t likely to change anyway).

I’m aware that most people who read forums don’t post ever, and without the balancing posts, it would look like the game is much worse than it is.

There are plenty of threads where I’ve made complaints of my own, but most people seem to ignore those.

And yes, I’m obsessive…always have been. Whatever I’m into at a time is what I’m into. Hopefully I’ll get back into writing again and you guys will never see me. lol

Don’t get me wrong, I love reading your posts. It’s just sometime make me wonder how much free time you have when I see you arguing in almost every thread.

I’m relatively homebound, caring for someone with a disability. That’s what I do…7 days a week, sometimes it feels like 24 hours a day. I sleep very little on most days. So yeah, I have free time, this is what I do with it.

I suppose I could go back to writing, but deadlines and caring for someone with a disability don’t really go all that well together. This is something I can do for ten minutes, stop for ten minutes and do again for another five minutes, in between doing other things I’m required to do.

Sometimes I’m too busy in real life to play the game, but I can take a minute to write a post.

Spiderwick.1879:

Vayne.8563:

Not at all. I play my own game.

Didn’t expect anything different from you.

Yep. I’m nothing if not predictable. lol

cesmode.4257:

Vayne, hi

I look at ascended gear, and the frequency of its release like this(assuming GW2 releases an expansion and increases level cap):

WoW/Rift raiding and gear treadmill:
-Gain Tier 1 set (takes approx 1-2 months to acquire)
-3-5 months later Tier 2 is released
-Gain Tier 2 set (takes approx 1-2 months to acquire)
-3-5 months later Tier 3 is released
-Gain Tier 3 set (takes approx 1-2 months to acquire)
-Expansion is released, level cap increased
-Level up to new level cap, all gear acquired in previous expension rendered useless.

GW2 Ascended gear:
-Gain Ring/Back slot ascended gear (approx 1-2 months to acquire)
-2 months later amulets are released (I think this was next)
-Gain Amulets (One month of laurels?)
-1 month later accessories are released
-Gain Accessories (One month of Laurels + ecto?)
-Expansion released level cap increased rendering all previously acquired ascended gear useless.

In both scenarioes you now re-start the grind.

So if you compare the two styles, its the same thing. Every few months a new tier, or new ascended slot, is released. It takes approx 1-2 months to acquire the gear in either scenario. This process is repeated several times over the course of a year or 1.5 years. Eventually, expansions are released, level caps are increased. All gear in both scenarios are useless (unless ascended gear scales with level at that point).

Its the same thing in my view. Arenanet just masked it differently.

Grinding for one piece at a time is quite different from grinding or all the pieces at the same time, but there’s another vitally important difference.

I’m not locked out of dungeons or anything but high level fractals by not having ascended gear. Can I do Arah explorable modes without any ascended gear at all? Yes. Can I do every fractal up to level 20 without ascended gear…yes.

Can I do WvW and SPvP and everything in the open world without ascended gear…yes.

That’s the difference between the real gear grind games and Guild Wars 2. You may THINK/FEEL you need ascended gear, but in reality the content doesn’t gate you.

When I played Rift, there was a stat for my cleric called focus. If I didn’t have 100 focus, I couldn’t QUEUE for the dungeon. The game itself wouldn’t let me get into that dungeon without that level of focus. And each subsequent dungeon and raid raised the requirement. My content was gated by gear. I couldn’t even SEE the content, walk in take a look around and take my chances.

Without X about of focus in Rift, I was completely 100% unable to damage the targets in dungeons.

That’s the difference between what Guild Wars 2 has done and most other MMOs.

Ping.5739:

Vayne.8563:

Ping.5739:

Valanga.5942:

kRiza krimos.1637:

WoW became what it is only because of lucky circumstances. I guarantee that if it had another few MMO’s to compete with for playerbase it would never reach such success.

So did GW2… A WoW lite, for free, when the only other competition was The Secret World (a MMO when you have to actually use your brain in order do get the quest done? NEVER! Let’s go spam autoattack on a dragon… inb4 “go play it, then”, i’m doing it already.)
That’s for me (again, inb4 Vayne speaking for the whole community), why GW2 was release prematurely, when i should’ve need at least 5 or 6 months of REAL closed beta.

Master Vayne won’t even waste his/her time on pathetic folks like us.

Wow you guys are fixated on me. It’s really not healthy you know.

The reason this game is the #1 (and not just in that poll but in the minds of lots of people, but not all people) is because other MMOs mostly suck really badly.

It’s true. I never said this was a great game. I said it was a good game. But a good game in MMO space can be a whole lot better than the scores of mediocre and bad games that come out.

I agree…the game could have used more time in development. I mean Star Wars ToR was a much bigger project from a much bigger company and that didn’t launch early or have any bugs. TSW didn’t launch early or have any bugs either. Coughs.

Don’t get me wrong. Joking on those who directly target you doesn’t mean I don’t like you.

Don’t get me wrong. Nothing that has been said on this forum about me has bothered me. Most of it entertains me greatly. It’s certainly great fun for my guild to read.

Bright.9160:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve clicked the wrong button and put a poison field on a gate too, even though I’m well aware poison fields don’t work on gates. I get distracted, someone comes into the room, my dog nudges my arm, I have a slip of a finger (because I’m using a programmable mouse and sometimes I hit the wrong button), what does that even mean?

Maybe he was on the phone and only half paying attention. It’s a gate. Talk about judgmental.

I didn’t talk to him about it, I’m not going to draw any assumptions about it. For all you know, he could have been dead tired and on cold medication.

I’m willing to wager he knows that poison does nothing to a gate. It’s not like hitting skills that do nothing are particularly detrimental. I space out when we’re at a gate all the time.

I’m not talking about wrongfully casting a skill out of reflex… I’m talking about a dev SPAMMING (this is an important piece of my point) a poison field on a gate. By that I mean he repeatedly used the skill and targetted it at the gate using ground targetting. I don’t see why you’re not getting how depressing that behavior is.

Also, he wasn’t dead tired or on meds, he was streaming a live dev stream and talking about how they were doing.

There’s also a video of a group of 5 devs doing the molten facility dungeon and killing trash mobs slower than Wethospu, who solo’ed them. While saying “we’re doing quite well”. Do you know which devs were in the team? The guys that designed the dungeon. Yes, the guys that spent probably a couple of weeks designing a dungeon were outdone by a guy who had his hands on it for a couple of days.

I’m not asking that every dev is able to solo lupi or know all the traits or something unrealistic… But it would be nice if they weren’t so depressingly terrible at their own game.

The devs have said from day one, they designed this game to bring ANY build and be able to do content. Not to do the fast content run period. It’s irrelevant to me anyway how fast a dev does content. Completely irrelevant.

They could have taken a group of a necro, a ranger, and an engie just to prove the point. I think it would be way worse for the game if the devs came with four zerker warriors and a zerker mesmer.

The point is, they’re streaming and talking…which doesn’t necessarily mean paying attention to what’s going on on screen.

Are you suggesting Izzy doesn’t know a poison cloud doesn’t damage a gate? Really?

There was a HUGE amount of people leaving pre November, because they didn’t have anything to do at 80. A lot of people also left when Anet brought in the fractals. It was a lose/lose situation for Anet.

They lose the original fans who are dead set against progression or they lose everyone else. Which group was bigger? Who cared more?

Clearly the original fans had a bigger stake in the game and they were massively vocal about the change. I was personally skeptical about it, but I was also willing to wait and see. I don’t really see that ascended gear is that big a deal. It’s not like other games where three or four times a year there’s a whole new tier of gear. I don’t really mind a gentle acquistion curve. It gives me something to do.

But I completely understand why Guild Wars 1 players were frustrated by the change. I still think it’s not that bad and many people over-reacted.

They may have invested years following this game, but it’s not their livlihood. It’s not their game, it’s Anets. Anet made the game, NcSoft invested the money to make the game, and they saw people leaving the game. The game was far deader in December than it is now. There are more people playing now (at least it seems that way on my server) than there were in December.

I think Anet made the right choice even though I feel for the people who lost out because of it. But since those people neither invested the hours and years to make the game or the dollars necessary to produce the game, it’s really not their call.

Business make uncomfortable decisions all the time. That couldn’t have been an easy decision for Anet, but they made it for what they saw as the good of the game.

It takes a brave person to say they know more than the developer about that subject.