Guild Wars 2

Maz.8604:

Grindiest Western MMO.

It would fit in quite nicely with the KMMO crowd.

A pimple amongst the pockmarks.

Lotro is a Western MMO and it’s far grindier than GW 2.

Living story content is key to this games success. Those who want to play dungeons have lots and lots of game options. Those who want a living world have none but this. I think developing the living story is the smartest thing Anet can do.

In the process they might lose some players who don’t appreciate it, and that’s okay. There are a whole lot of people running around Southsun Cove these days. And before that, there were a whole lot of people running around in Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Valanga.5942:

Vayne.8563:

Genophix.3098:

I agree, I think I’m in the minority in that I enjoy this game just for what it is. I’m not saying I’m better than players who don’t, I guess everyone has a different view.

I thought this game was going to please a far larger percentage of MMO players but I can see I was wrong now. I happy to be in the slice that does love it, let the good time roll

I’m not sure why you think you’re in the minority. You may well, however, be in the minority of people who post on forums. In game might show a different story. Someone who logs in to relax or play the game solo, or just doesn’t spend as much time is far less likely to post on a forum than people who min/max. I mean it’s not like you have to ask about what’s the best build, or what class performs the best, because you play what you like.

In fact, I’m actually convinced there are far more people who play solo or just immerse themselves in the world than anyone suspects. I can’t prove it but it sure seems like there’s a bunch of us out there.

The fact that YOU are actually convinced about something, or YOU do something in a way rather than another, doesn’t mean that it must be the right way.
There’s people who enjoy reward and gratification by playing the game, and GW2 is far from rewarding, because 99% of the things you loot is useless and hold little to no value.
That comes from someone who actually like to lose herself around, chatting with guildies, doing world events and some wvw from time to time… And absolutely can’t stand more than one CoF run every 4 or 5 days.

So what you’re saying is that your desire for loot is so basic to your play style that you can’t enjoy the game because of the way loot drops work. Other people can enjoy the game because they’re not as focused on loot. This is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a mindset.

The Guild Wars series was never really a loot series to begin with. Loot drops in Guild Wars 1 felt the same way. It’s entirely possible you want a different game from this one, because you’re trying to play other games here. You’re focusing on an aspect of the game that clearly isn’t what the game was designed for.

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.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

So what happens when you transfer then? Why not adapt the transfer mechanic since it seems to work fine? Why not just ditch the guesting mechanic?

If as you say people’s latency is so bad and so distruptive to game play Why even allow player to roll on opposite region servers at all? Because if it’s as disruptive as you say Why not just seperate EU and Rest of the world for stop people getting such a bad experience?

I’ll agree the problem is the design, but to me all the transfer mechanics are in place and working and did so just fine at launch so there is no reason why they wont still work now once you solve the WvW and node jumping issues. All of which seem pretty simple too.

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.

Paul.4081:

Vayne.8563:

CoRtex.2157:

Yes it’s empty. Almost everyone stopped playing because there is no end game. Really, if you hit 80, there is no challange anywhere in the game (PVE). The only people left, are casual people or people who like to level up characters (cus the leveling is superior compared to other mmo’s). GW2 has a big audiance, i just hope they know that if they fix the game, ALOT of people will come back. Yes i said ‘fix’, cus the amount of people that left is broken

No, not almost everyone stopped playing. Maybe almost everyone of a certain mindset stopped playing. The problem is, you make the assumption that most people want end game and, arguably, many do not.

Those who play for end game may very well have left. But that isn’t close to almost everyone. If end game was all important, games like Skyrim wouldn’t have been successful.

My Guild is flourishing when I logged in after a lot of time off. I don’t think it’s fair to compare this game to Skyrim though, Skyrim has tons of mods to add that endgame feeling and more because of said mods, harder dragons etc. etc. In this game we’re pretty much stuck with what we get given.

Christ if you want to in Skyrim you can take down Randy Savage headed dragons with a lightsaber

With all due respect, I didn’t compare this game to Skyrim. I compared the type of player who plays Skyrim to the type of player who plays for end game. Skyrim has no end game.

Also, Skyrim sold far more copies on console than it did on the PC and console users have no mods. Even without mods it was still a massively popular game.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Dangbat.2804:

Neko.6735:

Why have different data centers, is the question….

Latency. Not everybody is connected to the game using high quality bandwidth. Connecting to a US server from across the ocean with a low quality bandwidth provider would have hellish latency.

If latency is so much of a problem they won’t let players guest to different regions because it will detract from the game then why allow players from one regions to roll on the opposite region at all? Especially since the degradation would be all the time, not just for the few hours the guesting would allow?

Besides isnt it down to the player to decide what’s good and bad?

The problem is the way the thing is designed. There’s a difference between being in the US and playing on a European server and being in the US and guesting to a European server.

If you’re on a European server, then your data is on the European server park. Your information can only exist in one server park at at time…so the only lag is your connection to Europe.

If you guest to a European server from the US, your information is still in the US server park. The difference in ping is now from your machine, to europe but it constantly has to go back and access the US server park. It’s simply not playable for the biggest percentage of the player base. It basically means that the discrepancy between what your client-side server sees (what’s on your computer) will be too different from what the server in the server park sees.

They tested it and it really was unplayable. It’s more than just lag.

void.6705:

Vayne.8563:

void.6705:

Just another good spot to farm wiped out oh well, not surprised at all since almost every spot that people have gone in mass has be wiped out where it is almost useless to farm anymore. Why can’t they leave some of these places in? Spend more time fixing other content that needs a boost not removing a farm spot that people go to generate cash to enjoy the game!

Because in this particular case, it prevented people from opening a temple they may have wanted. Nice that people want to farm but not at other people’s expense.

if u wanted to do the event take down the walls not like players can stop you its not WvW

It’s a lot harder if you’re solo. And of course as soon as you try it, people start yelling at you…for some people that’s fine. There have been several comments in various threads about people who have been bad-mouthed because they tried to do the chain.

Most of them walk away. You might continue to do it anyway, but it annoys a lot of people.

void.6705:

Just another good spot to farm wiped out oh well, not surprised at all since almost every spot that people have gone in mass has be wiped out where it is almost useless to farm anymore. Why can’t they leave some of these places in? Spend more time fixing other content that needs a boost not removing a farm spot that people go to generate cash to enjoy the game!

Because in this particular case, it prevented people from opening a temple they may have wanted. Nice that people want to farm but not at other people’s expense.

goldenwing.8473:

Sorry Vayne I have to disagree. And agree. And the two are not in conflict.

I enjoy min/maxing my characters, I enjoy goals, I enjoy challenges (try doing fractals with only 4), I enjoy the scenery, I enjoy rolling alts, I enjoy being “casual” during the week, solo wandering and exploring, I enjoy being “hardcore” during the weekends with my guild on my designated “main” and enjoy both PvE and WvW. Heck, I even enjoy farming. I sit in both of the cultures you describe.

Having said all that, I don’t ever think of myself as a GW player. And I don’t think I ever will. There’s just something about this game that irritates me in a way that no other MMO has, outside of GW1. (I will let you know as soon I figure out what exactly it is. ) Btw, I hated GW1. There’s a lot about GW2 I don’t like, starting with some of the values the devs have demonstrated via content/direction since release. That’s a whole other thread and I think most of us have thrashed that one to bits.

I appreciate the artwork and the time and energy that has gone into the game. And the fact that the environment is more community-oriented and less competitive than most other MMOs (DAoC exception).

I like a lot of the GW2 game mechanics and don’t think I could ever go back to any of the 7 or 8 other MMOs I have played over the years. The devs are onto something there.

However, like most MMO’s that I play, I found myself bored 3 months after release and in the space of exploring the game to see if I could get past that feeling by finding new experiences. I’m here because my guild is here. So I’m trying to make the best out the game they enjoy.

No MMO will ever have all that I want. That’s just a given.

I can’t even say GW2 comes close or is “as good as could get”. Because it doesn’t feel that way… to me.

To other players, if that works for you, fantastic! Happy Gaming.

I will continue, as I have before, to try and keep a balanced approach (there’s that concept!) with the understanding that every MMO has trade-offs, and it’s a matter of what can be accepted/tolerated. And I’m sure, at some point I will walk away. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy what I can.

Approach indeed.

Yep, the game isn’t for everyone. No game is.

But it’s certainly better for certain types of players than others. I’d definitely be interested to know what annoys you about the game, though. I find that interesting.

CoRtex.2157:

Yes it’s empty. Almost everyone stopped playing because there is no end game. Really, if you hit 80, there is no challange anywhere in the game (PVE). The only people left, are casual people or people who like to level up characters (cus the leveling is superior compared to other mmo’s). GW2 has a big audiance, i just hope they know that if they fix the game, ALOT of people will come back. Yes i said ‘fix’, cus the amount of people that left is broken

No, not almost everyone stopped playing. Maybe almost everyone of a certain mindset stopped playing. The problem is, you make the assumption that most people want end game and, arguably, many do not.

Those who play for end game may very well have left. But that isn’t close to almost everyone. If end game was all important, games like Skyrim wouldn’t have been successful.

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

The reason repetition exists in MMOs is because of the whole longevity factor. MMOs are expected to last hundreds, if not thousands of hours. There’s simply no way to program that into a game without repetition.

People say they want stuff a certain way and I really believe they feel they want it…but that doesn’t mean that when they get it they’ll actually be happier.

My son got his legendary weapon and stopped playing. He’s probably just taking a break, but you know…his attention span isn’t my attention span. He may never come back to the game. As long as he was working on it, he was there.

It’s true that people can get frustrated having to do the same stuff over again, but too much time saving actually works against the best interests of the game…even if players want to save time.

If they would *program" in some better community support/tools/enahncements that would aid this mmo’s longevity. After all one of a mmo’s major major draws is community and w/o proper support (which we could definitely have improved), the mmo suffers.

Yep, I agree with this, and i’m sure stuff will come in time. We already know a looking for group tool is in the works. Should it have come out earlier in the game’s life cycle. For sure. Let’s hope it comes out sooner rather than later.

Better Guild tools would help too. Smaller guilds could use guild alliances, similar to what they did in Guild Wars 1, the ability to make custom channels wouldn’t hurt either.

I really do think it’s harder to play this game and chat at the same time. In Guild Wars 1, without having to move, I could type and cast skills quite easily. Here, while moving around and dodging and having an event spawn on top of me, I find it much harder to even watch map chat, let alone participate in it.

And if you’re in mumble with your guild you’re already multi-tasking.

A lot of interesting replies…thanks for that.

On the topic of focus…this is where it sort of gets hairy. No MMORPG today can really afford to focus, because I’m not sure that any one demographic is enough to support any AAA title. Sure if you have a smaller, more modest offering, you can get away with a really small player base, but if you want to do something extraordinary, and take some risks, you have to appeal to a wider range of people.

As an example PvP-centric MMOs tend not to do as well or get as big. The one exception to this is Eve, which is a subscription game of about half a million players. In that case it’s the subscription that allows it to function.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really trying to be all things to all people. It really is a theme park in the truest sense of the word…like Disney World. You have fantasy land for the little kids, you have space mountain for the thrill seekers, you have the Hall of Presidents for an older audience. There’s something for everyone, but there are plenty of individual attractions that each person would ignore.

But those attractions take time and manpower and money to build. No one can afford to do it all at once, so you lay down the bare bones system and you hope to grow it. They took culling out o WvW, and they’re making changes there, coming up very shortly. They’re added an observer mode and private arenas to SPvP and both of those are strong options. It’s a backbone for what I believe will be their first paid tournament. And PvE gets the living story, which like it or not, some people really like. The only harder core experiences in the game are likely Arah, the Temples in Orr and Fractals.

There’s stuff for everyone to do but for certain demographics there’s not enough stuff. But the more you like a variety of styles the more happy you’ll be with the over all theme park experience. You pay one price, you get into the gate.

On the topic of RNG, that’s a hot topic for everyone (including me) well the last I checked Disneyworld still had expensive food and expensive souvenirs. You want a t-shirt from Disney World, you’ll be paying top dollar. Plenty of people go to Disney World for the experience and not for the t-shirts and plenty complain about the price of the t-shirts, but you don’t need one to ride Space Mountain.

Of all the problems I have with the game, RNG (both in the sense of getting a precuror and skins in the boxes in the cash shop) are probably the things that irk me the most. But they don’t change my over all experience of everything else offered, any more than a t-shirt or souvenir of any kind changes my opinion of the experience of going to a theme park. The question, as always is, it helps the overhead, which helps develop more attractions, which I get for the price of admission whether I buy that t-shirt or not.

There are flaws in this game…there’s no doubt about it. But there is no game in existence that offers this breadth of experience to me. In fact, this is the firsr game in which I’ve truly enjoyed PvP. In other games, it was too much like a second job.

In the end, we all pull from the game what we want. If we’re limited in our play styles there’ll be less rides for us to enjoy personally and the game will be worth less to us. For guys like me this is about as good as an MMO gets.

Sorry for the ramble…it’s 6 am. lol

Instead of removing item rarity, I’d like to see some really awesome crafting recipes using some of these mats. Better than just making it not yellow anymore. Give it some value.

Because of the magic find buff. Southsun Cove is the most profitable place in the game right now.

Genophix.3098:

I agree, I think I’m in the minority in that I enjoy this game just for what it is. I’m not saying I’m better than players who don’t, I guess everyone has a different view.

I thought this game was going to please a far larger percentage of MMO players but I can see I was wrong now. I happy to be in the slice that does love it, let the good time roll

I’m not sure why you think you’re in the minority. You may well, however, be in the minority of people who post on forums. In game might show a different story. Someone who logs in to relax or play the game solo, or just doesn’t spend as much time is far less likely to post on a forum than people who min/max. I mean it’s not like you have to ask about what’s the best build, or what class performs the best, because you play what you like.

In fact, I’m actually convinced there are far more people who play solo or just immerse themselves in the world than anyone suspects. I can’t prove it but it sure seems like there’s a bunch of us out there.

nirvana.8245:

Vayne.8563:

nirvana.8245:

Seems like everytime I log into these forums for a quick read I see this Vayne character defending Anet from complaints and grievances that their users have. You sure your not employed by Anet Vayne? Seems like you have a full time job for yourself here.

And this adds to the conversation how?

Frankly, I only defend Anet when people make spurious claims or use hyperbole. In this particular case, I’m not defending Anet at all. The OPs premise is based on a play style that not everyone shares and I’m pointing that out.

How you can get defending Anet from that is beyond me.

It’s on a premise of a playstyle that Anets model does not support, hence how it is defending Anet here. But you didn’t answer the question, are you employed by Anet? Its just an observation. Literally everytime I have come to these forums I just glance over topics and there is Vayne defending Anet.

No, I’m not employeed by Anet. As far as I know, Anet doesn’t employ anyone in Australia.

Shezu Tsukai.8291:

The magic number in GW2 is 5 players. All Training Missions and T1 should be doable by 5 level 80 exotic geared players.

Any guild larger than 5 can’t truly play together unless they are WvWing or rampaging Orr. Even then you can’t chat unless you have a commander in WvW and only with non game comms in other places.

My guild players together with larger numbers. We just use mumble and guild chat when doing missions.

The reason repetition exists in MMOs is because of the whole longevity factor. MMOs are expected to last hundreds, if not thousands of hours. There’s simply no way to program that into a game without repetition.

People say they want stuff a certain way and I really believe they feel they want it…but that doesn’t mean that when they get it they’ll actually be happier.

My son got his legendary weapon and stopped playing. He’s probably just taking a break, but you know…his attention span isn’t my attention span. He may never come back to the game. As long as he was working on it, he was there.

It’s true that people can get frustrated having to do the same stuff over again, but too much time saving actually works against the best interests of the game…even if players want to save time.

I have two (one already used to make a legendary).

I got the hunter during the karka even back in November. I bought venom on the TP for 29 gold while I was still working on the Predator. Last I looked it was 22 gold. And it has really cool eels on it. I love the animation (which is why I’m working on getting it now).

Azure Prower.8701:

nirvana.8245:

Seems like everytime I log into these forums for a quick read I see this Vayne character defending Anet from complaints and grievances that their users have. You sure your not employed by Anet Vayne? Seems like you have a full time job for yourself here.

I doubt he’s employed by Anet.

How ever. The more one posts on the forums. The less they are playing the game. Meaning they’re not enjoying the game as much as they say they do or else they would be playing it instead of posting here for lengthy periods of time.

Which leads to one thing. Boredom.

People don’t want to do long grindy tasks multiple times for multiple characters. It is boring. Especially the second time around.

Look up my achievement points and tell me I’m not playing the game. lol

nirvana.8245:

Seems like everytime I log into these forums for a quick read I see this Vayne character defending Anet from complaints and grievances that their users have. You sure your not employed by Anet Vayne? Seems like you have a full time job for yourself here.

And this adds to the conversation how?

Frankly, I only defend Anet when people make spurious claims or use hyperbole. In this particular case, I’m not defending Anet at all. The OPs premise is based on a play style that not everyone shares and I’m pointing that out.

How you can get defending Anet from that is beyond me.

Anonymous.6935:

Vayne.8563:

Anonymous.6935:

Me and a friend left as the game was becoming boring. The final straw was the big update that nerfed alot of our only character (Elementalist)…haven’t logged in since.

This game lacks anything but repetitive content, and the only people who stay are the ones who are retired/like grinding for skins/have nothing better to do with their lives.

Right, those are the only people play the game. Narrow-minded much?

I guess the working people in my guild and the younger students aren’t playing.

Nerf to eles. Anyone who can’t deal with the nerf to eles doesn’t belong playing MMOs.

Oh I know. If I can’t play a bunker build that makes me invincible, I’m not going to play at all. Shows a lot more about your inability to adapt than anything else because plenty of people still successfully play eles.

I thought you’d reply. Yes people like you who like to sit on the forum everyday as you’re retired, and play with your wife on this game. Not a bad thing, just a fact. There’s many others like you. The people left in this game log in, perhaps do their daily, and then just grind away at the same COF for money or some other boring crap.

It’s a shame as could have been a good game, but with so many people leaving and the elitists staying and wasting $100’s on real life money on the gem store for temporary content, I don’t see why they’d want to add in a proper expansion anytime soon atleast. Not to worry, onwards and upwards!

But the FACT is, I know working people playing this game, students playing this game, single moms with schedules playing this game…so what you say is in fact demonstrably false. Many people play this game. Your comments about who is left playing it is not only unprovable, but demonstrably untrue.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Nice. Dismiss me as a pessimist. I’m a “That’s a glass of water” kinda guy.
All players are affected by it, including off peaks. Putting people back in the world helps everyone. I’m not trying to change your mind, believe whatever you wikitten

was said in jest. And no, splitting the people online at off hours all over the world will not give enough people in each zone to do anything. Those people will suffer.

The only way people will get people to play with off hours is to have hot spots.

Sorry, it’s late (early) here. Apologize for not taking it in jest.

On topic.
Except…no one is splitting them up all over the world. They can play however they want to play, without being made to feel they need to do certain things in order to see the best rewards. It’s a philosophy, and one that Anet shares I believe.

It won’t fix things overnight, it’s not supposed to. But it starts a trend, and that trend will attract more players, and more players will fill up the zones. It’s the only answer I’ve got, and I’ve been discussing it on the boards for a few months now with a fair amount of intelligent and passionate individuals. When I first started, all I had was “Randomize timers, and spawn locations”, with others help and discussion it has changed into what I spew nowadays. I’d rather have your ideas on how to help get people back into the open world than just do this dance, but up to you.

What we really need (and what we don’t have) is actual metrics about how many people are playing at one time. Because without that, we can’t know how successful not herding people is going to be.

If there’s a time of day, for example, where a server only has 100 people on it, and there are 25 zones, it becomes 4 people per zone. That doesn’t take into account WvWers, PvPers, people doing dungeons and people doing fractals, nor people standing around chatting in LA.

If most of those 100 people are in Southsun you have some company. Do you see my problem?

We’re making suggestions but we don’t really have the metrics.

Anonymous.6935:

Me and a friend left as the game was becoming boring. The final straw was the big update that nerfed alot of our only character (Elementalist)…haven’t logged in since.

This game lacks anything but repetitive content, and the only people who stay are the ones who are retired/like grinding for skins/have nothing better to do with their lives.

Right, those are the only people play the game. Narrow-minded much?

I guess the working people in my guild and the younger students aren’t playing.

Nerf to eles. Anyone who can’t deal with the nerf to eles doesn’t belong playing MMOs.

Oh I know. If I can’t play a bunker build that makes me invincible, I’m not going to play at all. Shows a lot more about your inability to adapt than anything else because plenty of people still successfully play eles.

killcannon.2576:

Nice. Dismiss me as a pessimist. I’m a “That’s a glass of water” kinda guy.
All players are affected by it, including off peaks. Putting people back in the world helps everyone. I’m not trying to change your mind, believe whatever you wikitten

was said in jest. And no, splitting the people online at off hours all over the world will not give enough people in each zone to do anything. Those people will suffer.

The only way people will get people to play with off hours is to have hot spots.

I would imagine the reason for this is that by adding extra conditions, or states to events requires more testing and opens the game up to more bugs.

As it is, events can be bugged. Imagine how hard it would be to keep them all going with that sort of dynamic?

Keep in mind most games have about 500 quests, because devs know the path through the game from quest hub to quest hub. Guild Wars 2 had to start with 1500 dynamic events because you never know when someone will catch events and which they’ll catch.

Mathias.9657:

maddoctor.2738:

Mathias.9657:

Perception has nothing to do with being statistically inferior and not being able to advance on an alt if I made one in fractals as opposed to my main with 35AR.

Yet I have 6 characters with 20-40 AR, while only one of them is at level 48 Fotm, 2 at their early 20s and he rest of them are at fotm 0 and yet they have 20 AR. Yet I still have mats to continue gearing them for even higher AR.

Which means I can easily play with any of my characters in Fotm without any issues, it only depends on which character I’m interested in leveling at that moment. Then I remember how I got my max level gear in other mmos… raiding, dungeon running in epic dungeons, character bound gear, full gear treadmill. THAT was alt-unfriendly, Guild Wars 2 is not.

Cool, you must play a lot. I made an alt mage in Cata (1-85), got full epic raid geared ready to go in 3 days. About a billion times faster than getting ascended+leveling in GW2, so don’t tell me other MMOs were alt unfriendly. Some (a lot) of people argue WoW is too casual. GW2 casual? Nah, not even close. Maybe in some aspects but certainly not when it comes down to legendary or alts.

Vayne.8563:

Mathias.9657:

Vayne.8563:

Mathias.9657:

You heard it, OP. Just be inferior on alts and enjoy it, even if you don’t enjoy it. (really guys? blaming the problem on him? Lol…) this game actually requires you to have a main with fractals and WvW ranks, etc.

Right, but it doesn’t have to be the same main. And inferior is an interesting word. What’s superior, having fun or killing stuff faster?

Because my goal is to enjoy myself, I will play what I want, how I want. My warrior kills stuff faster than my other characters, but I enjoy my other characters more. So my warrior is the inferior experience.

It all comes down to how you filter your perceptions.

Perception has nothing to do with being statistically inferior and not being able to advance on an alt if I made one in fractals as opposed to my main with 35AR.

Stop trying to fancy talk me, I know the facts. ANet time gates everything in the game and blocks most of the fun that is making alts. (more time gating) I would have to go through hell to get 2 characters full ascended. Screw that…

I’m not fancy talking you at all. If I’m PVeing, it doesn’t MATTER how statistically inferior I am. You ever play golf? There’s something called a handicap. The better you are, the more of a handicap you get. Your rewarded for being good by being given a statistical nerf.

So if you’re really the kind of guy who likes challenging content, you’d be in favor of challenging yourself, thus providing the superior experience.

If you think doing things the easy boring way is more fun, and superior go right ahead. I think beating the game on my terms is superior.

The fact is, statistically superior would only matter to me if content was unavailable to me because of that statistical superiority.

You do realize you will get smashed in high level fractals without AR right? Try doing them on an alt. Grind doesn’t = challenging to me either..

Completely irrelevant to my original argument. As I said, if all you care about is the fractals, you’re going to suffer in this game anyway. You don’t need full ascended gear for anything else, including WvW.

And you can level another alt through fractals if you like by taking your time and not wanting everything NOW.

Time gating isn’t grind btw, so you know.

I mean by the time you’re at level 40 you should have plenty of extra rings for your next alt to start.

Conner.4702:

@killcannon. There is a reason I don’t bother arguing with certain people. They don’t bring anything to the table except be negative about any criticism. We are not going to get most people away from chest events or temp content that offers vastly superior money gain, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored no.

I’d say add a long term achievements per region that promotes doing things in areas other than those situated around the chest events. The more you do in such an area the bigger the gain towards the end goal of the achievement. Link some rewards to them and we are set. A reason for some to venture out into the open world. A similar long term achievement could revolve around minor races, like skritt and dredge.

Sadly Anet is moving away from promoting open world content more and more with the release of things like the event api.

Last I saw, all the content on Southsun Cove is open world, and most of the content in the last living story was open world.

Anet isn’t moving away from open world content. It’s just directing traffic to where the best/newest open world content can be found.

I don’t know. The broomstick is sort of a mount. lol

Mathias.9657:

Vayne.8563:

Mathias.9657:

You heard it, OP. Just be inferior on alts and enjoy it, even if you don’t enjoy it. (really guys? blaming the problem on him? Lol…) this game actually requires you to have a main with fractals and WvW ranks, etc.

Right, but it doesn’t have to be the same main. And inferior is an interesting word. What’s superior, having fun or killing stuff faster?

Because my goal is to enjoy myself, I will play what I want, how I want. My warrior kills stuff faster than my other characters, but I enjoy my other characters more. So my warrior is the inferior experience.

It all comes down to how you filter your perceptions.

Perception has nothing to do with being statistically inferior and not being able to advance on an alt if I made one in fractals as opposed to my main with 35AR.

Stop trying to fancy talk me, I know the facts. ANet time gates everything in the game and blocks most of the fun that is making alts. (more time gating) I would have to go through hell to get 2 characters full ascended. Screw that…

I’m not fancy talking you at all. If I’m PVeing, it doesn’t MATTER how statistically inferior I am. You ever play golf? There’s something called a handicap. The better you are, the more of a handicap you get. Your rewarded for being good by being given a statistical nerf.

So if you’re really the kind of guy who likes challenging content, you’d be in favor of challenging yourself, thus providing the superior experience.

If you think doing things the easy boring way is more fun, and superior go right ahead. I think beating the game on my terms is superior.

The fact is, statistically superior would only matter to me if content was unavailable to me because of that statistical superiority.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Rewards are concentrated, causes people to be concentrated, causes zones to be dead.

Devs problem, whether they will remedy the situation or not remains to be seen.

I don’t see it as a devs problem though I know you do. I think it’s smart. So a few people complain about empty zones and most people take advantage of the comraderie of a busy zone and what’s being offered.

Other games do it by making it so that the only area anyone cares about are the zones at the end, and most of the other zones are empty. It’s the same thing.

snip111

People are going to gather if you put enough of them in the same area.

Human nature isn’t a problem, it’s a variable. There have been many good ideas put forth, so until I see them implemented to fail or succeed in the environment, it’s a dev problem.

In your opinion.

But everyone has ideas and not all of them are viable or would solve the problem.

The problem being that the world is large, there are too many zones, and I don’t think ANY server will have the population for people to be pretty much everywhere. Even if that happens at peak times, you doom everyone who plays off peak to have a terrible experience. Right now, those people CAN go to South Sun and play with people.

I say it’s not a developer problem because no developer in ANY game has found an answer. I know you think you have, and I’ve said before I don’t think it will work.

There aren’t enough people to population the entire game on every server. Not having hot spots will hurt the game more than it will help it, in my opinion.

Tell me, have you seen any MMORPG that doesn’t have this problem?

Do we have to do this again? If you don’t try the ideas, there’s no way to tell if they are viable. We know that there is currently a problem, ignoring it won’t make it go away.

snip

The human condition as a variable and not a problem is not my opinion, it’s a fact. The same way gravity isn’t a problem for spaceflight, it’s a variable. Game devs know where people will go, to the rewards, and it’s up to them to design with that in mind. I suppose they could instead sell a device that provides an electric shock every time a player decides to do something rewarding to them, but that’s still a reward factor (not getting shocked is the reward), dunno how that would sell. Might be big in China. They can only work with what they can change or control, and as a game dev, human nature is a little out of their ballpark.

I’ve stated it before. Anet needs to decide the focus of their game. Journey or Endgame. I bought it for the Journey, other games do endgame content better, but they are not supporting the Journey. If they continue on this route, the game will evolve fully into exactly what every single other mmo is. Level up as quickly and efficiently as possible, ignore all leveling zones, farm mats for end game content in specific areas set aside for those pursuits, once endgame gear is acquired, log out and don’t come back till new stuff that is relevant to me is released.

“But Kill, every other single mmo can do it, why not gw2?” Because players have a reason to in other mmos, it’s called endgame content. There is none here, all the good stuff is in the leveling zones. All the lore and story is in the leveling zones. All the challenge is in the leveling zones. All the beauty is in the leveling zones. You want to experience what GW2 has to offer? You need to do the Journey. But the Journey is unpopulated.

“Come and experience all of what GW2 currently has to offer to a new player!! Underpopulated leveling zones and an end game that revolves around hitting a dragon’s kneecap for 30 seconds while akitten. Join the zerg in WvW and not be able to tell wtf is going on under all the spell effects, but don’t worry I’m sure you killed that guy/gal, Experience our Living Story that may or may not be here by the time you log in”
Put that on a box and try to sell it.

You’re a glass is half empty kind of guy, aren’t you?

First of all, even new players can come to Southsun Cove and last month’s story was in beginners zones. Anet has made it so that even low level people can come and do content, and there’s nothing stopping them from doing so.

On the topic of what can and can’t be done to get people out into all the zones, the only way you can know that will or wont’ work is if you have the metrics of how many people are playing at what hour of days.

You never did answer the question about people who play at off hours. How does any of your solutions help them?

Zacchary.6183:

If my guild ever hit 500, I would just start a new one and combine them into an alliance.

Simple.

It really isn’t this simple. The amount of time it would take in this second guild to unlock say guild missions would be prohibitive. It would take weeks, maybe months. People in that guild simply couldn’t participate in Guild Missions with the first guild, because they couldn’t rep it, and so couldn’t get personal rewards.

Mathias.9657:

You heard it, OP. Just be inferior on alts and enjoy it, even if you don’t enjoy it. (really guys? blaming the problem on him? Lol…) this game actually requires you to have a main with fractals and WvW ranks, etc.

Right, but it doesn’t have to be the same main. And inferior is an interesting word. What’s superior, having fun or killing stuff faster?

Because my goal is to enjoy myself, I will play what I want, how I want. My warrior kills stuff faster than my other characters, but I enjoy my other characters more. So my warrior is the inferior experience.

It all comes down to how you filter your perceptions.

People probably think I take this game too seriously. The truth is, I do this with everything all the time, no matter what it is. When I’m into something I’m into it. Just the way I am. Psychologists probably have a name for it.

When I was young I was into Star Trek. When I was writing I was into writing. When I’m gaming, I’m into game and usually one game specifically, at least at a time.

I go through these phases all the time. I guess I’m an all the eggs in one basket kind of guy.

On the other hand, what I like about the game probably has as much to do with social contact and hanging out with people I enjoy as the game itself.

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

To condesnse my post, all I said is many of the personal story do overlap. I’m pretty sure you agree with that. If you don’t agree, you can read the remaining of my post. If you do, don’t read the rest.

Read your own post Vayne, you said all of them are different and say “For example at the end of the Sylvari scene which everyone goes through”. That means you do need to repeat “that specific part” right?

I said many of them are the same. And 3 options don’t help when I have 8 character. There sure arn’t 18 options. And the main questline take for example the lvl50 quest is the same for everyone. So is the ending.

There are 15 options in the early game. And yes, the end game has some repetition. As opposed to say which other game? End game in WoW has no repetition? End game in Guild Wars 1 has no repetition?

When you finish the content in any MMORPG, and I’ve played a bunch, you repeat stuff. This isn’t news. At least there are a few different paths and some differences, is my point.

Which MMO have you played that gives you more variety of things that change at end game is really the question.

Even great games like Dragon Age all lead you to the same choices at the end, and that’s all they are is an RPG, not an MMO.

All I said is the personal story “do” have overlap. That’s all I said. Can you chill please?

I don’t want to keep talking about other mmo. But you keep talking about it. There are mmorpg that is so hard that I never need to do repetitive content, because I can never get pass it. And you probably going to start the why mmorpg developer need to creat content for 1% of the hardcore players again.

Stop running in circle. I didn’t even say anything besides the personal story “do have overlap”.

I didn’t say anything, and I mean anything. All I said is the personal story do have overlap.

Yes, but the topic of this thread is discouraging people to play multiple characters. What you said relates to what the thread is about. The implication is that there is overlap and that discourages people from playing alts. I’m telling the other side of the story. That there are differences. Not as many as you would like, perhaps, not as many as would be ideal, but still more than any competitor that I know of. And that is my point.

If this thread had not been about being discouraged to play alts, I’d not have said anything.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Rewards are concentrated, causes people to be concentrated, causes zones to be dead.

Devs problem, whether they will remedy the situation or not remains to be seen.

I don’t see it as a devs problem though I know you do. I think it’s smart. So a few people complain about empty zones and most people take advantage of the comraderie of a busy zone and what’s being offered.

Other games do it by making it so that the only area anyone cares about are the zones at the end, and most of the other zones are empty. It’s the same thing.

Since no game has ever found a way to solve this, you can say it’s a dev problem from dawn till dusk. What it really is is a human nature problem.

People are going to gather if you put enough of them in the same area.

Human nature isn’t a problem, it’s a variable. There have been many good ideas put forth, so until I see them implemented to fail or succeed in the environment, it’s a dev problem.

In your opinion.

But everyone has ideas and not all of them are viable or would solve the problem.

The problem being that the world is large, there are too many zones, and I don’t think ANY server will have the population for people to be pretty much everywhere. Even if that happens at peak times, you doom everyone who plays off peak to have a terrible experience. Right now, those people CAN go to South Sun and play with people.

I say it’s not a developer problem because no developer in ANY game has found an answer. I know you think you have, and I’ve said before I don’t think it will work.

There aren’t enough people to population the entire game on every server. Not having hot spots will hurt the game more than it will help it, in my opinion.

Tell me, have you seen any MMORPG that doesn’t have this problem?

PvP is quite different from PvE. I think SPvP is probably the least popular part of the game for a number of reasons.

First, only one game mode is boring over the long haul. The lack of meaningful (I hate using that word) tournaments and standings are something PvPers really want, and various other odds and ends that make the game hard to stay with.

I think PVe is faring better over all to PvP and I think WvW is probably doing okay too (not sure how it compares over all though).

I think once Anet annouces some real PvP tournaments, with a cash prize, suddenly you’ll see interest. And I think that’s coming. First they had to get the observer mode going which is really good.

Then they put in the competitive aspects and it should come back to life.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

OP I find if funny that no one’s mentioned the obvious to you. A company that directly works for and speaks for Anet said that they released an expansions worth of content. Since that content has all been removed each time it’s worked thru it’s time table all of that content is now gone.

Your concerns are valid, very little permanent content (other then guild events) has been added to the game and the major content has all gone the way of the dinosaurs after they put it out.

Which company is this? Are you making stuff up again?

The reviewer who said that was actually using his own words. After Colin’s original post and clarification, Anet has not again used those words, nor has any company owned or controlled by them.

We know you don’t like the game because you get bad drops but please, stop making stuff up. It doesn’t strengthen the legitimate points you make at all.

The firm who wrote the piece supposedly work for NCSoft, or ArenaNet, or some such as a PR firm. The posts talking about it can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/p3y3qx6

I don’t care one way or the other, anyone that believes PR hype get’s what they deserve. Just giving out info.

The firm that wrote that story has nothing to do with Anet or Guild Wars 2. It’s a colunmist who wrote that. Colin posted in the thread saying it’s not marketing that did that, it’s some guy completely unaffiliated with Anet. The guy who posted it wasn’t sure who or what it was…people made assumptions and those assumptions are now taken as fact, when they’re completely fictitious.

This is precisely the kind of thing I object to.

Apparently you did not read it, because they have a direct link to the company. They are a PR firm working directly for NCSoft. There were no assumptions made.

Yep, my bad. I read the earlier part of the thread, saw Colin’s post and ended up not returning to that thread, thinking it had run it’s course.

Apologies are in order. No one was making anything up.

laokoko.7403:

To condesnse my post, all I said is many of the personal story do overlap. I’m pretty sure you agree with that. If you don’t agree, you can read the remaining of my post. If you do, don’t read the rest.

Read your own post Vayne, you said all of them are different and say “For example at the end of the Sylvari scene which everyone goes through”. That means you do need to repeat “that specific part” right?

I said many of them are the same. And 3 options don’t help when I have 8 character. There sure arn’t 18 options. And the main questline take for example the lvl50 quest is the same for everyone. So is the ending.

There are 15 options in the early game. And yes, the end game has some repetition. As opposed to say which other game? End game in WoW has no repetition? End game in Guild Wars 1 has no repetition?

When you finish the content in any MMORPG, and I’ve played a bunch, you repeat stuff. This isn’t news. At least there are a few different paths and some differences, is my point.

Which MMO have you played that gives you more variety of things that change at end game is really the question.

Even great games like Dragon Age all lead you to the same choices at the end, and that’s all they are is an RPG, not an MMO.

killcannon.2576:

Rewards are concentrated, causes people to be concentrated, causes zones to be dead.

Devs problem, whether they will remedy the situation or not remains to be seen.

I don’t see it as a devs problem though I know you do. I think it’s smart. So a few people complain about empty zones and most people take advantage of the comraderie of a busy zone and what’s being offered.

Other games do it by making it so that the only area anyone cares about are the zones at the end, and most of the other zones are empty. It’s the same thing.

Since no game has ever found a way to solve this, you can say it’s a dev problem from dawn till dusk. What it really is is a human nature problem.

People are going to gather if you put enough of them in the same area.

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

The problem is everyone wants everything NOW. Why can’t you slowly level a character, over a long period of time, doing a second fractal run occasionally until he gets there.

It’s kind of like the unique 18 personal quest line people talk about. Actually many of those quest line past lvl50 overlap. People dont’ want to do the samething over and over again. It get boring.

If people already done it once, they probably don’t want to do it all over again. It’s the grind. Grind 48 level of fractal till you can play the challenging part or the part which offer reward.

Simply put, it’s very repetitive. And repetitive things do get boring. Kind of like the I swung a sword anology GW2 lead developer make.

I do have mix fealing on this. Making progress character bound instead of account bound do mean “I have to play my alt to progress”. It does offer more replayability.

But they are all different, because later on, the stuff that comes out is different depending on who you are. For example, to most people Trahearne is this guy who just shows up, and takes over. But if you play a Sylvari you see him from the beginning. Dr. Gorr’s Asuran invention is really responsible for taking down Zhaitan in the end, but if you don’t play an Asura you don’t get that.

There are subtle differences, not only depending on what you play but what choices you make.

For example at the end of the Sylvari scene which everyone goes through where you get a preview of Orr from the Pale tree, there are three diffrerent options at the end of that. Depending on which option you choose, you get 3 different storylines later in the game. Some people meet and get to interact with Apatia, some with the asuran bomb maker (Thom I think his name is) and some with a saboteur. That means you need at least 3 characters to play all the missions.

And many of the later stories (with some exceptions) have two options.

So yeah, for at least three characters, you should be able to get enough variety. Now, that doesn’t include all the different beginnings.

Even just making your character act differently or make different choices during the game gives you different dialogue options to choose later in the game. Not too many of them, but they’re definitely there. For example, I can threaten some people on my bullying character, but I have completely different dialogue options on my charismatic character.

I’m not even sure most people realize there are more options than just charming, dignified and aggressive (or whatever it’s called). For example you can end up being a rogue,w hich is somewhere between charming and aggressive1.

Anyway, until you’ve done all five races, you really can’t appreciate the contribute of each race to the defeat of Zhaitan. You really only get part of the story.

I’m not sure what you expect. People gravitate to the most profitable area of the game. Right now, with the magic find buff available there for free, that’s South Sun. People moved on from Orr because it’s no longer profitable.

Go to any meta event that rewards a chest and you’ll find people.

The problem with ALL games is that people congregate where the loot is. If you don’t do the same, you’ll see a lot less people.

jacksonbenete.8042:

Well, in the answer of the support ticket they said to me that I would lose all of my itens in the transfer…
Well, I deleted all my characters already, and I already in the new server, and all my Bank Itens, and all my achievements are in there, and I could use the same name in the characters.
Thanks for all answers! Everything is fine now! \o

Gratz! Glad it worked out for you.