Guild Wars 2

How come when people consider permanennt content than always bring up fractals and a new PvP map, but they completely forget to bring up guild missions (of which there are a lot).

Guild rushes are some of my favorite content in the game.

In MMO space, games generallly get expansions when interest in in decline. It’s how MMOs make money…at least one of the main ways.

Think about it. You’ve already got a huge staff of people working for you, who are already being paid. So making an expansion is actually not that expensive. You’ve already made your money back on the game, you already have the engine. You already have cash shop sales funding you.

Why would people think a game has to be doing WELL to have an expansion.

In most MMOs, traffic is at an all time low when an expansion comes out.

If Anet is planning living world stuff and giving away content basically for free…how does that mean they’re not doing well. They’ve already made the bulk of the investment in a game. If interest a down, an expansion is almost a requirement.

I have 18 characters, but pretty much four mains….well 3.5 mains. lol

Chuo.4238:

TheOnlyOneNL.3821:

Almost everybody is in Southsun Cove participating in the last chapter of the Living Story.

If that’s ‘almost everybody’, then it’s also hardly anybody.

I logged on over the weekend to do the content, and had difficulty with getting events done because I only saw one or two other players. Group events were impossible. Map chat was dead and unresponsive.

And I’m on a supposedly high population server (SoR).

This doesn’t prove anything, but it sure suggests something…

So how come I keep ending up on overflow servers and they always seem to be full because others in my party end up on different overflows?

Rama.6439:

Gasoline.2570:

Well my experience is complete opposite. But somehow I just cannot believe all you “lucky” people with no magic find getting exotics all day all night.

Their called Anet Trolls. They stick around and post on the forums and say how good the games doing and how great the drops are and how good the kitten is but they are just talking kitten, they know everyone is pised off, they just don’t want everyone to leave so they didn’t waste all their money on gems so they can eventually turn it into gold and make a huge profit.
I would never buy gems from these idiots, I would much rather pay a modest sub fee and be able to run a hard dungeon and be rewarded for it, is that so hard to ask? God, ESO, where are you when we need you???

You just wait till ESO comes out. Just wait.

I predict you’ll be on their forums saying much the same stuff you say here. The grass is always greener on the other side…unless of course you’re color blind.

I would like to see this feature also. As of now, we have a guild page with enjin and we use the guild calendar there, but of course, not everyone visits the website regularly (myself included…I’m such a slacker).

The enjin one isn’t bad, but I’d much rather have one in game.4

Archmortal.1027:

Astralporing.1957:

That is the difference between how you’d want the game to be (and how it was advertised as) and how the game actually is.

Disagree on that. The game certainly doesn’t have GW1’s level of convenience when it comes to stat distribution and switches between playstyle but the sentiment of “progression shouldn’t be as important as enjoying the game” is still perfectly viable to play by in this game, even when switching between equipment sets. The trade-off is of course that focusing on progression is a nuisance (i.e. not enjoyable). And really, it’s only a nuisance when talking about Precursors or Ascended items. Prior to Ascended (and I suppose that ludicrous Diminishing Return drop mechanic) the only time I saw this discussion pop up was when people who wanted progression were arguing for it.

I don’t know re the convenience argument. I like being able to switch out skills and sometimes even major traits without running back to a town and having to go back out into the world and start again.

The stat distribution means less to me than being able to change skills at will. Such as when doing the fractals, some bosses I want condition removal for and some mobs I want reflection for and some mobs I want to use blink for mobility. And I can change it up whenever I want.

That wasn’t true in Guild Wars 1. I had eight skills and those eight skills were what I had to finish a dungeon with. In some ways that’s a lot less flexible.

stof.9341:

Vayne.8563:

Most people, the vast majority, don’t care much about ascended gear. The people who most care about it are hard core WvWers and min-maxers. I’m not convinced either group makes up the bulk of the population of the game.

So basically, we got two populations in GW2 : the hardcore WvWers and the min-maers that complain about ascended gear, and the people that don’t care that the gear exists?

Pray tell me then, is there someone that is happy that the gear exists at all? :p

I’ve seen people post that they’re happy with it. As I’ve said in a number of threads, there are extremists who will never be satisfied unless their way is the only way. So those who can’t live with vertical progression at all left the game, and it was a significant hit on the game’s population. Many others didn’t like it for felt uncomfortable with it, but gave it a chance.

On the other end of the spectrum were people who would NOT play the game just for cosmetic gear—at all. They care only about stats and the look of the gear is largely irrelevant to them. Those people want to grind stuff. They want to work for a couple of percentage points more. When that stuff wasn’t in the game, many of those people didn’t continue to play the game. In their mind there was nothing to work for. They certainly weren’t going to work for skins.

Anet made a compromise. They lost the people who need BIG stat increases and the people who wanted NO stat increases…but most of the population are somewhere in the middle. I like having stuff to work for….as long as I don’t absolutely need it to do content.

So I’m happy with the way things are, because I don’t find ascended gear too hard to get. In fact, I have more ascended rings now than I can possibly use, even with all the alts I have.

However, I’m not one of the people who must have BIS gear on every alt in every slot.

I got lucky. My first character was an engineer. He was the first guy I leveled to 80 and I love using the rifle. I got the Hunter as a precursor drop back during the karka event.

Admittedly I’m not sure if I had to pick one out of all of them that was the one I’d have picked, but since it dropped, it seemed like destiny. And I really do like the Predator after all so it worked out great.

Guild missions were meant to be some of the hardest content in the game. It’s not a free run to get your loot for anyone.

Some people like difficult content and some people do not. Some people are better at jumping puzzles, some people are terrible at them. But you really do need to come together as a guild to do them.

Guild rushes aren’t easy for some people either…but guilds have found ways to do them.

So either you find a way to do them, or you don’t.

That said, I can only go by hearsay on both sides, since I haven’t tried one myself. It is possible that Anet will fine tune it based on comments from the forum, but your best chance of that happening is to phrase it in such a way that makes you at least sound reasonable.

This depends on how you play. If you’re one of those people who play strictly for efficiency (something I don’t recommend in this game), you might want to think about an Asura…not for everyone though. The race is, in many ways, a bit of comic relief. The charr are more serious.

However, I think you’ll enjoy the game more if you just choose a race that looks cool to you, because you’re going to be looking at your character every second you play the game.

Edit: the reason for the Asura is because of the racial skill pain inverter, which meshes with the mesmer very nicely.

Huck.1405:

I’m pretty sure that Anet is attempting to discourage farming because they want us to buy our gold with gems. All these nerfs of farming areas has convinced me of that.

All that’s going to do is make players look elsewhere for another MMO that dos’nt force them to use real $$$$ to get what one can obtain by farming in any other MMO.

So why then did they discourage farming in Guild Wars 1, which also had DR? There were no gems to buy there.

Nick.6972:

Its not hard to earn money, its just boring, same as everything else in this game.

Actually it’s boring for you. I’m quite entertained. This is the most entertaining MMO I’ve ever played. Still not sure why you don’t just go off and find something kitten ring. Presumably you’d have gotten your $60 worth by now.

HawkMeister.4758:

ANet so desperately wants to be different that they ignore basic human nature and the very reason that makes MMOs profitable.

Don´t take away new stuff(content) without a proper substitute!

The best part of F&F, the Molten Dungeon, is now lost(possibly even deleted?) and got replaced with the loot extravaganza on Southsun, which is then simultaneously crippled with quasi instant DR.

There´s hardly anybody doing anything else but running from one Settler Champion at the Barricades to the other one at the shore. Just because of the guaranteed chest loot.

What irks me personally is that Fractals provide a perfect way to still leave us with access to the Molten Dungeon. While nicely expanding the by now pretty repetitive couple of Dungeons in there.

Oh well. Let´s see how Neverwinter pans out.

PWE games for the win. Good luck with Neverwinter.

tigirius.9014:

Shockwave.1230:

What’s up all. I’m back from a long hiatus, it’s been 6 or 7 months. This past week I started playing again.

I gotta say, I’m really shocked at what I see. All the zones are empty, as in I’m lucky to run into 2 other players in a zone and I’ve been running through level 30-60 zones (trying to get a second level 80).

What happened to the open world? It’s barren. I know I didn’t like how hearts and dynamic events were all the same couple events skinned differently, but I didn’t expect that the majority of the playerbase would stop doing the bulk of the games content.

What’s the playerbase doing now?

LS has failed to get players back into the zones and they refuse to actually add permanent DE’s and permanent metas to the open world in all of the zones monthly. So what naturally occurs in this case is all of the players will go to where the focus of the new content will be to further make the world even more empty then before. It backfired.

Regular DEs won’t get people back into the open world. Meta events, as some people claim, will get people to stay around the meta area with the timer until it pops. It’s not a solution.

They changed him recently. We got him tonight and failed our guild bounty. I can’t figure out how to get him out of his fire shield.

Don’t demand stuff. It makes you look petulant and weakens your argument. People will take you less seriously.

I’m not saying you don’t have a legit grievance, I haven’t tried a guild puzzle yet, but suggesting will get you a lot more traction than demanding.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

Valanga.5942:

Vayne.8563:

D I V A.6018:

8 months is not new. Period.

I can’t think of a single MMO that was particularly good at 8 months.

RIFT was perfect since day one.

Does that include the MAJOR security breach launch week that saw THOUSANDS of accounts hacked in very short order?

Does that include the first major world event Rift did for which they had to apologize?

Here’s a better question… do you remember when Rift launched and every second or third day they’d completely change the skills in skill trees? It was ridiculous.

If it was perfect, they probably wouldn’t have had to do that.

Do you remember when everyone wakittenting the planarite cap and there was nothing to spend planarite on, so no one was doing zone wide events?

Do you remember before the dungeon finder was launched, how many people were complaining that there was no group finder.

Do you remember how many people complained about getting knocked off their mounts, and being slowed when trying to run places, until Trion fixed it.

You must have a short memory.

I remember because I played that game however there’s a ton of things they did to improve people’s participation in the world.

Remember how they didn’t limit loot to 0?

Remember how they DID make mobile apps complete with scratchoffs with currency and resource wins?

Remember how they did add large numbers of minigames and activities to keep players going in their world when their publisher said they were receiving profits?

Remember when they actually balanced PVE despite never separating the two types of combat?

Remember how they actually added and supported players doing solo content without the need to constantly be in a team/raid/guild for everything worthwhile and how they actually rewarded you for time spent doing things solo?

Seems like he’s not the only one with a short memory. I remember these same things happening in every other AAA MMO to date by this time or by the anniversary at the very least.

That’s not happening in this title, someone and It’s not the players who are complaining, has not learned from basic mmo development history and it shows. Businesses in every other corporate system across the planet communicate and learn from the processes and policies of their competition and adapt. This is no different.

Guild Wars 2 has made improvements. You just seem to forget them.

They’ve added the preview to the auction house a huge one most people overlook. Yes, they added fractals. They added an SPvP map. They found a workaround for culling in SPvP.

And though you don’t like temporary content, there’s actually more and better temp content in Guild Wars 2 than there ever was in Rift. Maybe you don’t remember those early events month after month.

Every single event was a new currency based around a daily that was the same set of quests every day. Every single one. Not like you do it once like Southsun Cove and you get that reward. No. It’s like do this event today and every single day until you get enough to buy a mask that allows you to breathe underwater permanently.

Every event with a new currency just for that event.

Then you have the single and duo events they added…but they added them after everyone has already done dungeons so that you had already long outgeared them. You think Guild Wars 2 is faceroll easy. In the gear I was up to, those experiences were so dull, I might as well have slept through them.

Sorry but Rift was WoW 2.0. I didn’t like WoW either.

Siigari.6587:

I want to clear up the “free 200% MF” thing right here.

1. 200% MF is given away so people can log in, do some events and pick up some loot then be done with SS for the day. It caters to casuals, directly and pointedly.
2. A free 200% MF only gets you better loot until Anet’s system says no more and they cut you off. When you’re cut off, MF serves no additional function.
3. The 200% MF buff only works in SS. Which means those unique mobs could have their loot table skewed to account for that.

I’m tired of hearing about SS. The work you need to put in to get anything of gain is paltry at best, yet Anet wants to shove people into SS like sardines into a can. Even the dailies push you there.

I don’t know. I’m not even a farmer and I do quite well on Southsun with the buff. Armored scales, powerful bloods and poison sacks, a relatively decent amount of rares.

I’m not quite sure what you’re on about.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Vayne.8563:

AlietteFaye.7316:

1. Dungeons. – Unrewarding and grindy after the first few times you do them.
2. Map completion. – One time deal.
3. Personal Story. – One time deal.
4. Special Explorer challanges. – Not even sure what this means?
5. Jumping Puzzles. – One time deal, maybe once every now and then after.
6. Try to find all event’s. – Why? They’re unrewarding and mostly a very basic copy/paste of one another.
7. Living Story (That is new atleast every two weeks) – 2-3 hours once every few weeks?
8. Finding world stories. – Unrewarding and only for lore folks.
9. Guild Missions – Fairly enjoyable, but are usually done maybe once or twice a day.
10. Mini-games – Keg Brawl and Costume Brawl? That’s not really PvE, and it gets dull after a while.
11. Mini-dungeons – One time deals.
12. Fractals – Fractals are an option.
13. Costume Brawl – Mini-game.
14. Holiday Events – Temporary content and not accessible most of the time.
15. Dynamic Events – Same as earlier. Why would you want to? They’re unrewarding and generally are the same.
16. Meta Event Chains – Aside from World Bosses, these are unrewarding and take way more time than almost any reward would be worth.
18. Leveling Alts – Fair if you don’t have all your alts done and enjoy that.
19. Dailies – These aren’t fun, and only take 30 minutes tops.

Not trying to say that you’re wrong, but be realistic. There isn’t very much PvE to do in the game that will last you very long.

The problem here is you keep using the word rewarding. For some reason the current crop of gamer has to be rewarded for everything they do. Would you play chess, if nothing dropped at the end of a match?

Some people play for fun. This game was made to play for fun. I play this game for fun. I have fun doing dynamic events. I like discovering ones I haven’t seen, or redoing ones I haven’t seen often. Some I like better than others.

I find the combat fun in and of itself. I don’t need a bright shiny to enjoy this game….or any game.

Chess is a completely different mindset. The game is 100% reliant on skill and outsmarting your opponent. The reward for chess is knowing that you are better than your opponent.

Sure, you can play for fun. But as the old saying goes, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Can you imagine what that says for mediocre things? It gets boring really quick to do almost any of the content in the game. And that is because it lacks any reward. Including the reward of feeling accomplished. Almost everything in the game is so easy that it’s unrewarding in even feeling like you just overcame a hardship. It just feels like you came through without much trouble at all.

Sounds like you need a more challenging game.

Think of a game like Skyrim. It wasn’t really rewarding. Not in the sense you’re talking about. It wasn’t particularly challenging either. It was mad popular though.

Some games are MADE to challenge you. Some games are made to entertain you in other ways.

I rather think this kind of game was made for people like me.

EXireXs.3602:

Vayne.8563:

darkace.8925:

cesmode.4257:

So, you’re trying to make a point that you got one of the easiest legendaries in the game? Then your point becomes that much weaker.

If you tried telling us that you acquired The Dreamer, Twilight, Incinerator, or Bolt…one of the legendaries where the buyout on the TP is 500-600+, then thats a different story and Id call BS on you not farming it(or being one of the few lucky ones).

So sure I can go and buy three or four aquatic precursors if I truely wanted. But not many people place high value on them. So when you come here and justify your point of “I dont grind” with the fact that you acquired the easiest legendary in the game, I consider your words very light and without weight. Yes, the gifts might have taken sometime but like you said you can play the game at your pace for those.

Lots of people farm certain events for T6 drops.

Then people farm the chest events for rares for ectos AND precursors.

Its the farm and the grind for the precursor and the ecto requirement that people are finding most tedious.
You bought yours for a mere 22 gold. Big whoop.

If I went to the TP now, bought my aquatic precursor for under 50g..I would have my legendary in a month or so.

You’re missing the point. He’s not saying “I got a Legendary, so can you.” He’s saying “I enjoyed the game without grinding for a Legendary, so can you.” If the only thing standing between you and the ability to enjoy this game is owning a Legendary, then ownership of a Legendary isn’t going to change much for you.

Yep that’s exactly my point. Once I got the legendary I stopped caring about it. While I was saving up for it, it gave me something to do…now…shrugs. I’m just having fun playing.

Oh so i guess ur point of view depends on ur goal right?
well i got my twillight, but i still want to farm and get golds as much as i can?
is that a problem for you? i find it enjoyable for me :P

Not a problem for me, since I’m not the one who’s unhappy.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Vayne.8563:

But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, it’s only been like this for a very short period of time. If you watched television in the 80s, there were no TV series on DvD waiting for you. If you taped them yourself you could watch them again. In the 70s, you couldn’t. And people still watched TV including soap operaa they could never catch up with.

There are events in every MMO that happen and then stop happening. Rift had them all the time. Limited time events. Why?

Because they’re really, for the most part, not worth keeping around, but while they’re there, they give something people do to.

Permanent content will come out too (more when they get the LFG tool and the culling fix for PVe working), but it will come.

In the mean time, this is a great stop gap measure. It’s not like we’re paying a sub for this stuff.

So it’s okay to have temporary content that won’t be returning because technology back in the 70s wasn’t as accessible as it is today? Come on. They weren’t saying it was comparable to your favorite TV shows from the 70s, they meant in today’s world.

Why would you even add something to your game if it wasn’t worth keeping around? Do you understand the implications of that? It says that you are literally just adding it because there’s nothing else to do in your game. That’s terrible.

I agree that more permanent content will probably come out after the LFG tool. The PvE culling “fix” is ridiculous, seeing as they added it in themselves. There wasn’t PvE culling for the first few months, so them needing to fix it is a bit.. dumb.

As for not paying a monthly sub for this, sure. But honestly, I don’t think many people would pay monthly fees to play with the updates they’ve been handing out.

They added the PVe culling in because without it, big events would lag too much. At the time, there was no way to fix it, but they reworked some stuff and now they can have better FPS without the culling so they’re removing it. When they put it in it was necessary, particularly for people on lower end machines. If you were a company you’d have put it in too, as it increases the number of people who can play your game.

And no it’s okay to have temporary content for other reasons I’ve listed in other threads,..such as not dividing the playerbase further. That’s one of the big problems they encountered in Guild Wars 1 and they don’t want to repeat the same mistake.

In a couple of days a new dungeon is coming out. Now the more they split the player base, the harder it will be to find groups for the older dungeon. So people will be frustrated.

MMOs have always had challenges with empty zones or people unable to find groups for things. This is one way Anet is trying to remedy the situation.

cesmode.4257:

So you got lucky with an RNG precursor drop, or spent nearly 500g on your hunter precursor? Or did you benefit from the BS that happened early on in the game?

Because 488 gold(current price of the hunter) is no easy feat to save up. That requires…farming.

Oh, I got lucky on the precusor drop, but as I said earlier it would have taken me another 3 months to save enough gold to buy the precusor, and I’d have gotten it then. When I get it is not important to me. That’s the point.

The whole point is having something to work toward. Once you have it, you need something else to work toward. Since people are saying there’s not enough end game content to begin with, what’s the rush to get one?

darkace.8925:

cesmode.4257:

So, you’re trying to make a point that you got one of the easiest legendaries in the game? Then your point becomes that much weaker.

If you tried telling us that you acquired The Dreamer, Twilight, Incinerator, or Bolt…one of the legendaries where the buyout on the TP is 500-600+, then thats a different story and Id call BS on you not farming it(or being one of the few lucky ones).

So sure I can go and buy three or four aquatic precursors if I truely wanted. But not many people place high value on them. So when you come here and justify your point of “I dont grind” with the fact that you acquired the easiest legendary in the game, I consider your words very light and without weight. Yes, the gifts might have taken sometime but like you said you can play the game at your pace for those.

Lots of people farm certain events for T6 drops.

Then people farm the chest events for rares for ectos AND precursors.

Its the farm and the grind for the precursor and the ecto requirement that people are finding most tedious.
You bought yours for a mere 22 gold. Big whoop.

If I went to the TP now, bought my aquatic precursor for under 50g..I would have my legendary in a month or so.

You’re missing the point. He’s not saying “I got a Legendary, so can you.” He’s saying “I enjoyed the game without grinding for a Legendary, so can you.” If the only thing standing between you and the ability to enjoy this game is owning a Legendary, then ownership of a Legendary isn’t going to change much for you.

Yep that’s exactly my point. Once I got the legendary I stopped caring about it. While I was saving up for it, it gave me something to do…now…shrugs. I’m just having fun playing.

cesmode.4257:

So, you’re trying to make a point that you got one of the easiest legendaries in the game? Then your point becomes that much weaker.

If you tried telling us that you acquired The Dreamer, Twilight, Incinerator, or Bolt…one of the legendaries where the buyout on the TP is 500-600+, then thats a different story and Id call BS on you not farming it(or being one of the few lucky ones).

So sure I can go and buy three or four aquatic precursors if I truely wanted. But not many people place high value on them. So when you come here and justify your point of “I dont grind” with the fact that you acquired the easiest legendary in the game, I consider your words very light and without weight. Yes, the gifts might have taken sometime but like you said you can play the game at your pace for those.

Lots of people farm certain events for T6 drops.

Then people farm the chest events for rares for ectos AND precursors.

Its the farm and the grind for the precursor and the ecto requirement that people are finding most tedious.
You bought yours for a mere 22 gold. Big whoop.

If I went to the TP now, bought my aquatic precursor for under 50g..I would have my legendary in a month or so.

I got the predator. I’m trying for kraitkin now. Nice try.

Yep, Southsun Cove is the place to be.

Valanga.5942:

Vayne.8563:

D I V A.6018:

8 months is not new. Period.

I can’t think of a single MMO that was particularly good at 8 months.

RIFT was perfect since day one.

Does that include the MAJOR security breach launch week that saw THOUSANDS of accounts hacked in very short order?

Does that include the first major world event Rift did for which they had to apologize?

Here’s a better question… do you remember when Rift launched and every second or third day they’d completely change the skills in skill trees? It was ridiculous.

If it was perfect, they probably wouldn’t have had to do that.

Do you remember when everyone wakittenting the planarite cap and there was nothing to spend planarite on, so no one was doing zone wide events?

Do you remember before the dungeon finder was launched, how many people were complaining that there was no group finder.

Do you remember how many people complained about getting knocked off their mounts, and being slowed when trying to run places, until Trion fixed it.

You must have a short memory.

cesmode.4257:

Ah the eternal optimist Vayne. So, tell us how you got that legendary without farming?

edit: Tell us how you got that legendary without farming in the last..5 months(after the surge of precursors early on and after handing out precursors during the karka event)

First of all, even if I didn’t get the precusor, I love the legendary trident, and last I checked the precusor for that was on the TP for 22 gold. So yes, I could still have a legendary even if the karka event didn’t drop one for me. I bought the precusor for kraitkin from the TP.

Where did I get the gold to do it? By playing the game. I do dynamic events, I run dungeons with my guild, I do some fractals, some WvW. And you know, at the end of the day, I put gold in my chest. I don’t need 7 gold an hour. I’m happy with 3-4 gold a day if that. I don’t farm it, because I don’t WANT to farm it. I’d stop playing if I had to do stuff I didn’t enjoy.

So that’s how you get a legendary without farming. You play the game and save your earnings.

Sure I’ll go to a dragon event if someone in the guild shouts it out. Why not? But only if I’m free at the moment to do so. The other day I was playing keg brawl and someone said the fire ele is up. If I were farming I’d have had to stop playing but I was enjoying myself so I didn’t.

I don’t farm.

Aegis.9724:

8 months were enough to kill SWOTOR.

To be fair, time-lapse comparisons with gw1 or wow are pointless.
Wow came out 10 years ago, there were not so many competitors on the market, and surely none with a big name on their back.

Todays market is different, your quick or your dead. If people have issues with the game, they’re much less willing to cringe their teeths and wait, due to the numberless big-budget mmos on the market, many of which even f2p

Most of which have issues of their own. That’s my point.

This game is what it is. It’s different from other MMOs, most of which I don’t like and won’t play. I’ve always seen the potential of the format, but never found an MMO I could call home…until now. Keep in mind I did called Guild Wars 1 home for five years. I like Guild Wars 2 better.

This game is designed for people like me. Something I can sort of enjoy at my own pace. I don’t need to keep up with anyone to do content. I don’t have to grind for anything if I don’t want to. I do what I want, when I want, with the exception of scheduled guild missions.

There’s no other MMORPG that I’d rather play than this and there are a whole lot of people who feel the same way. I’m not sure you realize how many people had given up on the MMO genre before Guild Wars 2 came out. I’m guessing it’s more than those currently playing.

AlietteFaye.7316:

1. Dungeons. – Unrewarding and grindy after the first few times you do them.
2. Map completion. – One time deal.
3. Personal Story. – One time deal.
4. Special Explorer challanges. – Not even sure what this means?
5. Jumping Puzzles. – One time deal, maybe once every now and then after.
6. Try to find all event’s. – Why? They’re unrewarding and mostly a very basic copy/paste of one another.
7. Living Story (That is new atleast every two weeks) – 2-3 hours once every few weeks?
8. Finding world stories. – Unrewarding and only for lore folks.
9. Guild Missions – Fairly enjoyable, but are usually done maybe once or twice a day.
10. Mini-games – Keg Brawl and Costume Brawl? That’s not really PvE, and it gets dull after a while.
11. Mini-dungeons – One time deals.
12. Fractals – Fractals are an option.
13. Costume Brawl – Mini-game.
14. Holiday Events – Temporary content and not accessible most of the time.
15. Dynamic Events – Same as earlier. Why would you want to? They’re unrewarding and generally are the same.
16. Meta Event Chains – Aside from World Bosses, these are unrewarding and take way more time than almost any reward would be worth.
18. Leveling Alts – Fair if you don’t have all your alts done and enjoy that.
19. Dailies – These aren’t fun, and only take 30 minutes tops.

Not trying to say that you’re wrong, but be realistic. There isn’t very much PvE to do in the game that will last you very long.

The problem here is you keep using the word rewarding. For some reason the current crop of gamer has to be rewarded for everything they do. Would you play chess, if nothing dropped at the end of a match?

Some people play for fun. This game was made to play for fun. I play this game for fun. I have fun doing dynamic events. I like discovering ones I haven’t seen, or redoing ones I haven’t seen often. Some I like better than others.

I find the combat fun in and of itself. I don’t need a bright shiny to enjoy this game….or any game.

taomang.2183:

Vayne.8563:

The funny bit is, when I played Guild Wars 1, the loot was, for the most part, equally unrewarding. I mean you’d do a dungeon and you’d get these yellow drops (which we called gold drops) and they’d be worthless. You could get some coin by selling them as unidentified golds for people who were working on their wisdom title, but basically, they were worthless.

It would get to the point after a while where nothing that dropped really meant anything unless it was a black or white dye….or an ecto if you were in the underworld. Or a lock pick.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t really a loot based game, and neither is Guild Wars 2.

I very much disagree that GW2 isn’t a loot based game. I don’t know if you noticed but a lot of desirable items require you to get hundreds of very rare items. I have only played GW1 to get the first 6 HoM points, and quite frankly i don’t even care about GW1, so i can’t really share your sentiments.

You don’t acquire best looking items by completing a list of achievements and challenges in a dungeon, or completing a jumping puzzle in a certain amount of time, or reaching a benchmark on your PVP/WvW kills. You get the most desirable items by repeating the same content over and over and over again, until you either get the loot you need or exchange the gold you earned by doing that content, for the items you didn’t loot yourself. This is still called farming, no matter how you look at it. Some people “are having fun” some are not, but this doesn’t mean that this is not farming.

And GW2 needs A LOT of farming, be it for items or gold. In both cases this is loot. Yes it is OPTIONAL. But really whenever someone says “it’s optional” to me it seems like a poor defense to the state of this game.

However, i have always said that this is a necessary evil, since poor rewards make people buy gems and exchange it for gold. The question is, how much are people willing to put up with this. Even if it’s not pay to win, people sense that GW2 is kinda a cash cow, and some people just don’t like that feeling. Way too much importance has been placed on gold.

I got a legendary without farming. It’s not necessary. It’s a state of mind.

I do whatever I feel like doing in the game. If it’s keg brawl then that’s what I do. I don’t make a single gold coin playing keg brawl, I do it for fun.

And I do the other stuff I do for fun also. And I have a legendary weapon, and started my second. It would have taken me another three months if I hadn’t had a precusor drop….so?

If you want it NOW you can grind for it. If you play the game you’ll get it when you get it. Neither way is wrong, but one of us is content.

god.2659:

so we’re excusing a game’s faults and its problems because OTHER games were the same or worse at their age of gw2? fanboys, please.

you guys are apologists- the more pressure developers have the better. if you’re not going to complain simply because the game is young then why should the developers work on the game’s problems if they see so few complaints? the only reason you pessimistikittentle snowflakes even have guild wars 2 be this good akittens age is partly because of people like us who point out the game’s problems. Although, this is not to say some complaints are not insignificant and that some faults are irrelevant.

We’re excusing nothing. We’re being realistic.

There’s not enough end game is true. For those who like end game, there’s not enough. But is this a legitimate complaint? Is it reasonable to expect a 10 month old MMO to have more end game (particularly one that didn’t advertise itself as an MMO with end game?). It’s probably not realistic to expect more.

Profession balance is a completely different story and yes, I think people can expect more to be done with profession balance than what we’ve seen so far.

It’s not about excusing faults, it’s about realistic expectations. I used to manage a computer store. I knew how long certain repairs could take. I could tell the tech team that I want every single computer repaired by 5 and I could yell at them if it wasn’t done, but it wasn’t reasonable to do so. Because some repairs take a whole lot longer than others. Without knowing what is wrong with the machines, there’s no way to tell how long it will take to fix them.

The same can be said for tracking down bugs. Anet repairs quite a few bugs every single month, but there are still bugs left. And with all the new content there are new bugs introduced as well. Is it reasonable to think most bugs would be fixed by now?

I don’t know why it should be. No other MMO has managed it.

Constructive criticism is great. Unrealistic expectations…not so much.

killcannon.2576:

The main difference is what it brings to the game overall.

What does temporary content bring to the game in the short term? A reason for vets to log in when they have exhausted other reasons, it generates news bites, it gives the illusion of an overall active game world, time gated rewards for players who are active at the time of the content, a feeling of achievement for being there.

What does it bring in the long term? The idea of progression for people who have been around to experience the content, a bond formed with other players who have been around to also experience that content.
Feel free to add anything I may have overlooked.

Overall it gives a reason to keep some veteran players coming back.

But what is the selling point to future purchasers? Many people, from developers to players, have likened this influx of temporary content to a television show. One thing I believe many don’t take into account with this point of view is the fact you can always catch old seasons or episodes either through digital recording, reruns, or purchase of physical media, something not possible in the way they are releasing this content. There’s a reason why tv shows don’t try this. Or actually any other form of media.

Imagine a book you buy bursting into flames after you finish reading it, and it no longer being available for you to buy, rent, or share with friends afterwards. I wouldn’t recommend the company or the author who was behind such a practice to new readers.

In the same vein, I find myself reluctant to suggest this game to new players. I just don’t see any value added content for any new player with the emphasis on this form of temporary content.

But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, it’s only been like this for a very short period of time. If you watched television in the 80s, there were no TV series on DvD waiting for you. If you taped them yourself you could watch them again. In the 70s, you couldn’t. And people still watched TV including soap operaa they could never catch up with.

There are events in every MMO that happen and then stop happening. Rift had them all the time. Limited time events. Why?

Because they’re really, for the most part, not worth keeping around, but while they’re there, they give something people do to.

Permanent content will come out too (more when they get the LFG tool and the culling fix for PVe working), but it will come.

In the mean time, this is a great stop gap measure. It’s not like we’re paying a sub for this stuff.

DaniGiret.6924:

Drew.1865:

This isn’t GW1 so people should stop expecting it to be.

You are right, this isn’t GW1, however, GW2 should be better than GW1.

And in many ways it is. Of course, better is completely subjective.

I agree that Guild Wars 1 was more immersive than Guild Wars 2 is. I think that’s because of how fragmented the story is.

In Guild Wars 1, you were ALWAYS in your personal story, even though it was always the same as everyone else (with the exception of some profession quests). Other than that we all had the same exact story from day one.

In Guild Wars 2, the personal story is told as one part of the story telling but what you’re doing in the world doesn’t necessarily relate to your personal story. Each zone basically has it’s own story which is nice and and of itself, but that doesn’t tie in with your personal story. Not directly anyway.

And then you have the story of Destiny’s Edge, which is told through the dungeons. Interesting design decision that to me, ultimately failed. A lot of people don’t do dungeons at all, and getting groups together for story mode dungeons is always annoyingly tough.

In the end, I think the living story might be more along the lines of what I’m after, but they have to do something to include me more in the cut scenes to make it more involving.

void.6705:

Vayne.8563:

void.6705:

I have a hard time believing they nerfed this area due to bots, you would think if they thought or knew they had bots in the area they would have some sort of program to monitor what each account does in there game.

I know very little about bots but from what i looked up they run a pretty static program and would almost do the same thing every time. If that is true look for those kind of things and ban those accounts where you see that happening.

But someone posted earlier saying something that kinda made sense as well, Anet and whoever else runs the show are here to generate money and by reducing the farming they think they are increasing gem sales.

Often those who use bots also are the same people who steal accounts. All you’d be doing by banning the bots is to make them cycle through the stolen accounts faster. It’s not really a solution.

Gotcha, didn’t even think about that…

In Guild Wars 1 I had my account stolen by gold sellers and they used it to bot. It’s the only reason I know about it.

lorazcyk.8927:

Nuka Cola.8520:

lorazcyk.8927:

They don’t take 20 minutes to me.
But even if it were only 20 minutes, that’s less 20 minutes I have to actually play the game… I have limited time to play, let alone do chores in game. Know what I mean?

so you’re playing an MMO and don’t have 20 minutes. Why are you playing an MMO? Play bro-gamer kind of games like CoD.

Well, that’s about as relevant as a stripper at your great-grandma’s 100th birthday party, but I’ll answer.

What I meant was: even if it can be done in 20-30 minutes, it would mean I now have less time to play the game and have fun, as I had to spend that time doing chores instead of playing.
So if you have 40 minutes to play, now you only have 10 or 20 minutes left to play.

Not that it’s any of your business.

There’s a relatively good chance that you can do most of the daily WHILE playing the game and having fun.

I mean what do you do in the game for fun in the first place?

Kimbald.2697:

Games don’t start in a vacuum.
A new game is never compared to the state of other games when they launched.
It is compared to the state those other games are in, when the new game launches.

So the basic premasis of this topic, namely that the game is new, is not accounting for the fact it was designed with the best of other games in mind, not their infant state worst aspects.

Topics like this are a reaction to overly negative posts, but at the same time they are overly positive or ‘excusing’ because they compare GW2 to the launch of other games, not their state when this game launched.

Rest assured: the dev’s took the best state of other games into account when they tried to develop this one, I’m confident they didn’t have meetings where they said ’That’s ok, X or Y game didn’t have that at launch even though they have it now.’

New products compete with the best of the current products out there, not with how bad those other products were a long time ago.
Simple as that.

I can’t really agree with this.

First, if every single MMO has the same problems, it’s entirely possible those problems exist for a reason.

It’s like comparing a theme park that’s just being built with a theme park that’s been running for years. The odds are the older one is going to have more rides. It’s had time to work stuff out.

The reason why MMOs are all in roughly the same boat at launch is because they’re the most complex games you can make, the require the most financial investment and the most creation time and as a result, at some point, they have to launch. No one has infinite money to work on a game until it has as much content, as much polish and as much balance as a game that’s been around a while.

The problem isn’t giving games a free pass. The problem is what is and isn’t reasoanble to expect.

I’d go and say that if every MMO is suffering from the same problems, it’s much harder to blame developers than if some games didn’t have these problems and some games did.

But I’ve been on MMO forums before and they call look exactly like this one.

Since when did being reasonable become the wrong thing to do?

void.6705:

I have a hard time believing they nerfed this area due to bots, you would think if they thought or knew they had bots in the area they would have some sort of program to monitor what each account does in there game.

I know very little about bots but from what i looked up they run a pretty static program and would almost do the same thing every time. If that is true look for those kind of things and ban those accounts where you see that happening.

But someone posted earlier saying something that kinda made sense as well, Anet and whoever else runs the show are here to generate money and by reducing the farming they think they are increasing gem sales.

Often those who use bots also are the same people who steal accounts. All you’d be doing by banning the bots is to make them cycle through the stolen accounts faster. It’s not really a solution.

No, there’s not…but dailies can literally be done in 20 minutes to half an hour. Maybe you just need someone to show you how to do them?

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Then ditch guesting and move to a transfer system instead. If it works better to transfer the data permanently than shift it for a while then do that. I’ve already suggested a way to pay for an extra bandwidth(Gem store selling quicker cooldowns) and i’m sure there are other ways too.

For sure we don’t know the design parameters used, but I do know it had some constraints that seem to have directed the design decision.
1. The desire for ‘server pride’
2. WvW being server based
3. Wanting to limit people to a ‘server community’

These design decisions very much affect the solution as much as the technical side. These design decisions come with some very serious downsides such as:
1. Community fragmentation(players forced to choose which friends they play with)
2. A greater impact of Server Merges. Server merges have little or no effect on serverless or freedom to choose a server whenever systems.
3. People being stuck on empty servers.
4. Limitations on recruitment and choice of guild

If you look at TSW, EvE, the up and coming TESO then it is certainly and technically possible to have a world wide MMO without the divsion of servers that is playable from anywhere.

The technology side we cant do much about now. But we can challenge the non technical design and suggest a better way of doing things. Think different was always something I attributed to Anet, perhaps it’s time they did.

But Guesting solves a host of problems. Because transferring DOES change your WvW world and hosting does it. If you did this, you’d enrage pretty much every hard core WvW player in the entire game.

The whole reason transfers are as expensive as they are is to stop people from transferring constantly to the winning server. And the reason that guesting was introduced was to allow people to go to another world to play with their friends. Right now, those on US servers can play with their friends on different servers, go to open temples on different servers without transferring.

Making transferring free is a major problem for this game. In fact, when the game came out, because guesting wasn’t in, you were allowed to transfer once per day but people were taking advantage of it, so they changed it to once a week and still the WvW players complained about free transfers.

While I sympathize with your situation, free transfers aren’t going to happen for that reason.

Nick.6972:

GW1 was mostly PvP game when it launched. And after first year we already had Factions.

Right, after the first year, you had a brand new game. 100% true.

So?

The point is it wasn’t an MMO. Guild Wars 1 was in no way ambitious. To even TRY to compare the amount of content from Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2 is ludicrous. Guild Wars 2 launched with more content than Prophecies and Factions PUT TOGETHER.

So the addition of Factions at the 1 year mark (adding 13 more missions to original 25 missions) isn’t really that much of a stretch.

Do you remember people complaining that Factions could be finished completely in one week? Cause I do.

Paul.4081:

Vayne.8563:

Paul.4081:

Vayne.8563:

Paul.4081:

Vayne.8563:

Paul.4081:

Vayne.8563:

Paul.4081:

Vayne it was different for me, I loved doing the dungeons and always felt rewarded. Especially when it was the daily, even when I got a green drop ( worth 1k) from the chest my heart beat a little faster and the one and only time I got a froggy sceptre in Bogroots I almost had a heart attack. Sadly it was crappy stats but still had fun selling in Spamadan.

But realistically how often did you get a green drop that was worth 1k. Surely you remember doing dungeons and just getting a gold drop that was worth crap. For every ten dunegons you did, maybe you go one decent drop. That was it.

In later days, once the HoM calculator was out, at least the onyx and diamonds were worth something but most of the yellow drops and even most of the green drops become worthless. There were so many green drops you had to merch because no one wanted them. Cyndr’s Heart anyone?

Thing is I enjoyed doing them, when it was the daily double win. I’d help someone who hadn’t done it with my heroes or if there was Rraggars (spellcheck) with Guild/Alliance I’d go. I don’t feel that in this game.

In GW I could slowly save up for skins etc. if I tried that with a legendary or some weapons on the TP, I’d be here till doomsday and with nothing fun like pugging being an option, what to do.

At the 10 month mark in Guild Wars 1, something like Obby armor was almost completely out of everyone’s reach. In two, three years time, the times you’re talking about, the whole situation will be different.

In vanilla Prophecies, money was very hard to come by.

I never played the vanilla (first game was GW/EotN thing), I was too busy being a sucker on games like Flyff at the time

This is my usual point. People are comparing this game to Guild Wars 1 after Guild Wars 1 had three games and an expansion. As MMOs age everything becomes easier to get, and there’s more stuff to get.

I think the reason things are harder to get early on is because that replaces content that can’t exist because there’s not enough time for it TO exist. So the company makes it harder to get things and some people don’t like that. Maybe those people will leave the game.

But I’d be happy to wager that more people will leave a game after they get everything they want than those people who have stuff to work towards.

For me the obtainable becomes the impossible though. I got all I wanted in GW’s and the game should have the learned from the first game in total of the whole experience. In GW2 it’s just too many hoops for me, I still play the game with alt’s but feel excluded from many things I could achieve in the first game by comparison, if that makes sense.

But you didn’t play the game at 10 months. You don’t know how far out of reach that stuff would have seen had you played then. There’s a lot of stuff when I started playing Guild Wars 1 that I felt were completely out of reach…but eventually they weren’t.

If you hang around or come back later, the same situation will exist here. Nothing I said is changed by what you said.

I get what you’re saying (I think), but we can’t disregard the learning curve of the actual game and rewards. Did GW change for the worse (excluding shadow form or Ursan) or were the drop rates ever so brutally nerfed that people left because of them? The granted chests for world events seem to say that people felt unrewarded.

People left Guild Wars 1 for all sorts of reasons, including feeling forced to play the build of the month. It wasn’t called Build Wars for nothing. Guild Wars 1 always had lots of trick/farming builds that made PVe content trivial. Not just Ursan and perma, but sabway, discord builds, imba paragons ( who could almost permanently eliminate 90% of the entire team’s damage), 600 monks…there were always builds that broke the system.

In fact, with a party of heroes I could do 99% of the game’s content without even playing. I could Akitten and my heroes could beat the game without me. There were plenty of problems on the PVe side of Guild Wars 1, even though I loved it.

And yes, people left every time a farming build was nerfed. But they weren’t the people I particularly cared about leaving anyway.

Wolfheart.1938:

I need to make you a “Vayne’s seal of approval” image.

Welcome back Vaske.

Can I get a walrus of approval? I’m allegic to seals.

Nick.6972:

GW1 was.
/15char

Point 1. Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO. Anet said it’s not an MMO. It wasn’t nearly as ambitious as most MMOs were.

Point 2. Guild Wars 1 had glaring problems even if you don’t want to acknowledge them. Tons of people left that game in the first six months, including both my sons. Sorry to disappoint you but the core Guild Wars 1 crowd was a niche crowd.

Prophecies had 25 missions. How many of those missions were really good? Be honest now. How many? The only thing Guild Wars Prophecies really had going for it was the PvP. PvE-wise…it took a long time for Guild Wars 1 to get going.

So from a PvP point of view, you MIGHT have a point. From a PvE point of view, not so much.

No one said Anet isn’t working on permanent content. They only said that they will be focusing on the living story. Someone said it took them 2 days to do the living story. That’s true. But then, it’s only 3 weeks until the next update of the living story. I don’t see how adding permanent content changes that comment.

Let’s say everything they added for the living story is permanent. Okay so it still takes 2 days to do. They still can’t create content faster than you can do it. It really is that simple.

If they can keep chapters of the living story coming a couple of times a month (and I’m not saying they can) then it will help people have a steady stream of stuff to do.

The rest of the time, the rest of the game is still there, and there are changes being made their too, including WvW changes.

There’s plenty to do in game, even if Living Story takes not that much time to do.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think the problem is as simple as you’re thinking it is.

You can only have one unique account because you can send game mail from US servers to European servers. So you can’t duplicate someone’s info in both server parks.

A transfer presumably moves all your information permanently from one server park to the other. That transfer takes bandwidth and presumably processor power. To do it back and forth every time someone wants to guest would probably be prohibitive, particularly if you have large numbers of people doing it.

In other words, if you play on a European server, your data is in the European server park. If you play on a North American server, your data is there.

If you were guesting, you’d have to go from your computer to Europe and then back to your server park, back to Europe and then back to your computer. At least this is my understanding of it. It would double the lag of transferring.

Firstly, when there were far more concurrent users at launch you could transfer freely and quickly. Why would it be any different now

Secondly, as I said above and in the suggestion, you simply have a cooldown and/or a restriction on how many times you can transfer in a given time period. If you are in a hurry, or really want to go there buy a consumable item from the gem store to help pay for any extra bandwidth used.

Even if you have to wait 10-15 mins for the stuff to copy over I know people would rather have that than be unable to play with friends or switch to a server from their native timezone once it goes quiet in the one they normally play for.

Thirdly it helps alliviate the issue of server merges (and they will come) and quiet servers if people can just go where they want to.

Transferring was never the problem only guesting is. It’s not about you waiting for the stuff to copy over. It’s about bandwidth usage over all, and how that would affect other things.

I don’t know the details if the system, only that when trying to guest to the other region, the lag made the game unplayable. As for the rest of it, would someone switch servers to get onto a better WvW server in Europe so they could switch back to a better WvW server in the US?

Again, I understand your desire for this, but without knowing all the details we can’t know all the problems. It’s easy to say that it’s easy to do….but that doesn’t mean that it is.

Welcome back. Try not to let the forum naysayers get you down.

D I V A.6018:

8 months is not new. Period.

I can’t think of a single MMO that was particularly good at 8 months. most MMOs take a year or two to even become playable….if they ever become playable. WoW had serious issues for the first couple of years, but very little competition. SWToR was a disaster at this point in it’s life cycle. AoC and Warhammer took years to become playable. Lotro has many issues in it’s first years.

Anyone who says 8 months is not new isn’t paying attention.

Icelin.8412:

People can keep pretending like we have many pve options out there but we don’t. Dungeons, Fractals, Map completions, Story and World boss every 2-3 hours. That’s it for pve. Not many people farm events and the ones that we do, Arena net tends to shut them down in some way or tamper with the loot.

I am starting to think they don’t want a Pve community. Pve content is suffering, but I honestly think they care more for WvW.

PVe isn’t suffering at all. People who insist on playing the game like every other MMO, they’re the ones who are suffering.

Take those who complain about Orr at this time. With the magic find buff on Southsun Cove, the farming is much much better. Anyone who’s still trying to farm Orr is losing out on tons and tons of really profitable farming.

But they don’t care about that because they don’t want to adapt.

Playing an MMO is about adapting. Those who can’t adapt should probably try a driving game. Those never change or evolve.