Guild Wars 2

Leo G.4501:

Lol you guys are acting like a bunch of simpletons.

Apparently, lacking a mana system reduces the value of the game to mere auto-attacking and likely the same people complain that Orr is now too hard because apparently they can’t auto attack everything mindlessly.

Forget that you need to watch your position, aim your skills properly, time them for optimal effect or to save your life or any of that. No, it’s just cheap and only auto-attacking…and when it’s not it’s too hard…and somehow having everything cost mp would change all that.

Heh, okay. Sure…

The problem is a lot of players of Guild Wars 2 have come from Guild Wars 1 which was a much more “strategic” game. The difference in strategy is huge. But it wasn’t nearly as action based.

They don’t see the depth because the nature of the depth has changed. It’s not as in your face as the depth of combat in Guild Wars 1.

laokoko.7403:

I do believe people like open world content.

I’m just saying there isn’t much “repeatable open world end game content” in this game.

Really most people just do those daily chest event and that’s it.

Again, how do you know what “most” people do? That’s my question. What makes you think you have intimate knowledge of the majority.

Let’s pretend there are casual players who just log in to play the game. I know you don’t believe they exist in any numbers, but here me out.

There’s no where where they’re all going to be at one point in time. They’ll be in five different starting zones, different mid range zones, and maybe, eventually different end game zones. So how do you know how many of them there are?

By contrast, everyone who goes to dragon events uses a timer screen, jumps in and stands around or does events in the zone until the dragon shows up. So you see them all at the same time.

This creates the illusion that this is what most people do..but we don’t really know. Only Anet knows what most people do.

I suspect we’d be surprised by how many people are still traipsing around the open world. I know there are dozens of people in my guild doing it.

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

They say MMOs are dead when they’re down to 1 or 2 servers. Like 1 PvP server and 1 PvE server.

I hope “they” are not doctors.

Doctor: Time of death, 3:52 pm.

Patient: Uh, I’m not dead.

Doctor: Well you’re not moving fast enough, that’s close enough for me.

I always thought that “dead” means, you know, lifeless. As in nothing there any more. Not “merely 50,000 people playing the game” or something.

I guess no one told them their game died.

Dead, in MMO terms, means it’s down to it’s last players who stubbornly cling to the game even though it will never get another update, and no one is left to fix the bugs…or something close to it.

Like Sony abandoned work on Vanguard, even though it had the potential to be one of the greatest MMOs of all time. But it launched with so many bugs, and played so badly on so many people’s systems, that it was dead before the honeymoon phase wore off. If you wanted to see a buggy game, that’s the one to look at. Guild Wars 2 is flawless by comparison.

Though the game had a lot of neat ideas, a few of which I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Chuo.4238:

Angelus.1042:

Ah “soft” has the iron ball grip of death on “net” I see….

They have for the entire life-cycle of GW2. Which is why it’s just not really a game that should have the words “Guild Wars” in the title…

Grileenor.1497:

Don’t look too much on what the devs of ArenaNet told us about expansion. Most they told us in their blogs have not been true, just boasting.

They do tend to waaaaaay over-hype, don’t they?

Well, with the direction this game has taken since November, and with the completely underwhelming Personal Storylines and Flame & Frost, all I can really see in an expansion is more leveling, more gear-grind, and possibly a new piece of real estate (that’s not Asian-themed, and therefore not Cantha) to play the same world bosses and events in over and over and over and over and over and over…

But no doubt they’ll have some fantastic blog posts and promo videos out on random social networking sites that describe the game that we all want, but will never, ever see released.

Yea…I think ArenaNet and NCSoft have done a fantastic job of killing any interest I might have had in a GW2 expansion.

When are they actually going to release the real Guild Wars 2? You know, the one they have been describing since they announced it when Eye of the North released? I’d be interested in that.

The problem is they delivered the game that some of us wanted, just not the game YOU wanted. There is a portion of the player base who feels just like you and a portion who feels just like me. So when you say stuff like they’ll be showing the game we all want but never see, maybe you should remove the word all…because you’re not talking for all of us.

tolunart.2095:

The last I heard, Warhammer Online was still… online. Did it shut down? I’m wondering because I often hear about “dying” and “dead” MMOs, yet when I did some searching for them I found that most were still online, and in the case of WO and Age of Conan, had recently been updated. If no one is playing these games, I imagine the servers would be shut down because they just drain money from the companies that run them. So I assume there are still people playing, and the claims that they have died are greatly exaggerated.

I only know of a few MMOs that have permanently shut down. Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa are the only ones I can recall at the moment. Oh, and City of Heroes, most recently, and Star Wars Galaxies, in favor of the newer SW MMO.

They say MMOs are dead when they’re down to 1 or 2 servers. Like 1 PvP server and 1 PvE server.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Vayne.8563:

I think they started slow because they were testing stuff out. Of course, it could just be that they don’t have the time to properly do this stuff and they feel the need to keep doing it. I guess we’ll see.

True, but then they should not have marketed it this way. Grand announcements, devs posting teasers, interviews with how awesome it was going to be… I think it was mostly because of my too-high expectations it fell flat. It was like the OP said “an expansion worth of content” was no where near what it acutally turned out to be.

It reminds me of last year, when the weather announcers promised giant thunderstorms in my area. Now, I am a huge fan of thunderstorms, so I bought snacks, pulled the plug of the phone and settled myself to watch the promised inferno.
The air smelled faintly of ozone, but other than that, I did not even see a single lightning bolt to brighten my evening sky.

Oh yeah, 100%. I said several times they should have said nothing about it and just let people find stuff and start talking about it. It would have been sooo much more effective.

This was badly handled by Anet.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne:

You seem to be willfully ignoring the fact there are artificially created clumps of people not doing anything but world event farming. I’m not sure why you’re doing it, maybe you’re one of them, but whatever. Putting those clumps of however many people back into the world would be a great first step. Or not.

Merging low pop servers, and having to guest where people are actually playing are a couple of signs of a dying game. Which is oddly all I hear you saying.

I’m not ignoring it. There are also people doing events in those zones, which you seem to be ignoring. Not everyone wants to sit around and wait for half an hour for an event to spawn so they move around and do other stuff and wait for the map annoucement. Why do you keep ignoring that?

Nick.6972:

Raind or not, this game lacks end game.
I don’t consider level 80 zones an end game.

This game does not lack end game. This game has end game that you don’t consider end game…which is significantly different.

It has end game for me. I’m sorry you can’t see it.

laokoko.7403:

what’s there to do in the open world. puzzled my mind.

You know how most players always say they enjoy open world content. Yet they rarely do them. Must be pretty hard making world content people actually want to do.

Except for the world meta event which drop chest. I dont’ think people do anything else.

What evidence do you actually have that people don’t do open world content. The fact is there are more people who solo MMOs than most people like to believe, and all of them do open world content. I’m a group player and I prefer open world content. I’m in a guild that tends to prefer open world content and we do plenty of it.

But here’s the real question. Everyone talks about an MMO being a massively multiplayer game…instances aren’t massively multiplayer. People say Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a true MMO because it was instanced.

Yet those who claim to love MMOs spend all their time in cities waiting for instances. Seems a bit odd to me.

I think you’d be surprised about how many people actually enjoy open world content.

Why isn’t it done even more than it is? Because no manufacturer has ever made it more rewarding than instanced content and a percentage of players follow the rewards. That’s what’s happening now. There were plenty of people running Orr when Orr was profitable. Now that it’s not, it’s not as busy.

So the question isn’t whether people like or dislike it, the question is where is the profit. In most games the profit is in dungeons and raids, so that’s where you’ll find the people. But it doesn’t necessarily indicate preference.

killcannon.2576:

To Vayne:

lol, I’m not missing your point. Your point is you think it’s not a problem, and my point is I believe it is a problem.

Here is my statement based on my opinion: (wall of text inbound)
World population has taken a hit with the introduction of chests to easily farmable world events. People like to farm these events because it’s an easy way to get rares which can give ectos or to just use them for the Mystic Forge or to make money from them. Because these events are such an easy way to farm for mats, it pulls people out of the open world and into small clusters who waypoint from boss to boss and do little of consequence between. As more and more of the player population hits level cap and is searching for ways to make money or create legendaries, more and more people either choose to do these events or go to farm pent/shelt. While there will always be places where players will accumulate naturally, these places were created artificially. These groups can number from between fifteen to the upper limit of server capacity.

This in turn concentrates more and more of the population in these areas, leaving leveling areas where new players are first experiencing the game lightly populated (not starting zones, these are generally full due to events or players looking for easy daily completions). As there are less people in these areas, it creates a “less fun”, less immersive experience for some new players. Especially ones who may have chosen a server which is not as highly populated as others, either because they did not understand the way Anet labels server activity or for some other unknown to me reason. As time has progressed, more and more unique posters have posted on the forums asking why the world seems dead. They are greeted with derision by other posters who choose to ignore the problem or they are offered ideas to alleviate the symptoms instead of discussing what may be the cause of the perceived lack of population in the first place, at worst they are labeled trolls and written off.

It is my opinion that in order to alleviate these situations of perceived lack of population that rewards should not be put into easily farmable events and that vets and champs have loot tables that directly reflect their challenge. That each zone should have a chest event that is tied to a meta chain that spans the zone entirely, not just a small area, and that rewards should be tied to a percentage of meta completion much the way events are now. Also a look must be taken at the downscaling of level 80’s, not the upscaling of events. Either a greater removal of attributes or special debuffs applied as the way 80’s are now downscaled is not effective and trivializes most events. An 80 in Queensdale should be just as vulnerable as a level 15.

The perceived loss of population of servers and zones can also be addressed with cheaper realm transfer prices, perhaps free in some cases, and a buff system akin to wvw now. This population loss will not be seen across all servers, especially due to some servers being unofficially known for this or that. Or possibly a server merge, although none of these actually serve to distribute the population. While a population will never be truly equal across all zones, avoiding population concentrations if possible are the ideal, not the exception.

I have included my opinion and various fixes. In previous posts on this thread I have stated my opinion on why the checklists are not a good fix to this problem, please see for more info.

The problem is there just isn’t a solution. Think about it. In most games everyone ends up in the end game areas and stays there. This has it’s own set of problems, including rendering the rest of the game world obsolete. In some ways its better, but people leveling new characters will virtually always end up in a ghost town with no one to help them.

Guild Wars 2 has changed the game by making the entire world viable. I say this again, there aren’t enough people on each server for everyone to be able to go wherever they want. They need to be guided to hot spots, because there are not enough people. This isn’t just true of Guild Wars 2. It’s true of all MMOs.

Either you have a tiny world (which sucks for other reasons), you have a big world where you direct traffic, or you have a world with a few viable zones. Those really are the only options.

Because there will never be enough people playing any MMO with a world of any size that can go anywhere they want and still find people.

It’s simply not realistic.

Not many MMOs close within a year, but many of them were killed by bugs that made them upplayable. The one that comes immediately to mind is Warhammer online, which was so buggy it was literally unplayable. AoC when it came out was absolutely dreadful and continues to have bugs to this day, years later.

WoW when it came out was very buggy, so much so that during its first weeks the servers were down almost as much as they were up.

Vangard was beyond buggy at launch and remains so to this day.

All the PW games are riddles with bugs and so are the Turbine games. Mind you, games do tend to get better after a year or two, but some bugs are never fixed.

I can’t imagine people think most MMOs are less buggy than Guild Wars 2.

Omen.1879:

Jaall.3420:

Erasculio.2914:

And the amount of bugs in this game, plus how slow ArenaNet is in fixing them, is not something you see in good games.

Actually it is.

Actually, it’s not.

Do some research on how many bugs still exist in GW2. Then drill down further and find out how many bugs still exist for each profession. How long has it been since release? We’re talking the type of bugs that any other competitor has generally patched within the first few months of an MMOs release. It is, in a word, ridiculous. I actually have not seen a game with more bugs than GW2 – Ever – That be the truth

Guess you didn’t play Skyrim…and that’s not even an MMO.

laokoko.7403:

killcannon.2576:

I complain more about the general lack of activity in the middle, leveling zones. I suppose increasing event rewards world wide would help, but I expect it would just cause people to do repeatable events over and over instead of spreading out.

The reality is people dont’ even do them any more. They just use craft to level up or switching to alt at end of dungeon to level up faster.

Most people leveling just skip the mid level zone. Even if you try to play normally, you’ll out level the zone, and mid level zone is the one people usually skip.

This may be true for people leveling alts (not all of them, since most of my guild does play through the game on alts), but there’s also been a pretty big influx of new players and returning players who didn’t get very far.

Which is why people should guest to busier servers, or servers with more traffic. With the bulk of the population having leveled, but enough new people for a couple of servers but probably not all of them, being together with others who are leveling would be a better experience for them.

I think it’s pretty obvious that it would be better for new players who never leveled a character to play through those zones rather than skip them.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

killcannon.2576:

Do you know how many times I post in map chat about an event and no one shows up? Plenty

With that attitude, you better be beside me when I’m asking for help in map chat.

I’m sure people will show up if it is an event “with world chest”.

Other than that, other event have like a respawn rates of 20 minutes. Which have like no purpose. So what if you complete an event, it respawn in 20 minutes and give nothing in rewards.

From the guy who refuses to go to a more populated server, of which there are many. Noted.

Again I’d rather light a candle than complain about darkness.

Sigh. I would prefer to bring light into the darkness than huddle in my home over a feeble candle.

I expect the next new, unique poster to be inundated with clever prose as well. Shame clever prose doesn’t fix anything.

You’ve yet to prove that this is specifically something that needs to be fixed.

You seem to think there are enough people playing ANY MMO to have traffic in all zones on all servers. As long as you believe this, there’s nothing else I can say. It doesn’t exist in any MMO because it’s really not possible.

In most games, most zones are dead except for end game zones. The fact that Guild Wars 2 has some traffic in other zones is not a bad thing, but there’s never going to be tons of people in every zone, because if every zone was viable the population would be spread too thin. You see a problem where no problem really exists.

There will always be places where people group, because people like to group. All you can do as a dev is give them predictable places to group or control where they group.

Clever lines aside, you’re still missing my point. This simply is not a problem.

pullnointer.1476:

kokiman.2364:

pullnointer.1476:

will a mana system ever be introduced? I feel cooldowns only are inadequate

No, at some point it was in the game but they scraped the idea.

they scrapped the original mana system and released early before having a chance to introduce a new one

The scrapped the original mana system with no intent of introducing a new one. At the time the devs felt that cool downs were enough. They said mana slowed the game play down and they didn’t want that. It simply wasn’t necessary.

At the time there were all sorts of negative feedback about mana potions, and since those went with the mana most saw it as a positive change.

laokoko.7403:

killcannon.2576:

Do you know how many times I post in map chat about an event and no one shows up? Plenty

With that attitude, you better be beside me when I’m asking for help in map chat.

I’m sure people will show up if it is an event “with world chest”.

Other than that, other event have like a respawn rates of 20 minutes. Which have like no purpose. So what if you complete an event, it respawn in 20 minutes and give nothing in rewards.

From the guy who refuses to go to a more populated server, of which there are many. Noted.

Again I’d rather light a candle than complain about darkness.

For an action combat game, the mana system just slows things down. For a strategic combat game, it’s far more appropriate.

I think both types of combat have something to offer.

killcannon.2576:

Mirta:

On Servers:
New players have no idea about your personal anecdotes with the servers. On occasion one pops up on the forums asking which is a good server to join, and I have to answer TC because that’s where I see the majority of positive posts come from about healthy player population. The new players who don’t? Well they are screwed till they find out later, if they find out later and haven’t stopped playing because they chose incorrectly. The questions become, Should Anet track servers by actual player numbers instead of accounts? Should Anet step in and merge low player pop servers?(would be bad pr if they do, one reason why we won’t see it even if it is necessary) Should Anet only allow transfers to lower pop or decrease the amount required to transfer to a lower pop server to balance populations? I would say yes to all those simply for the sake of game balance, but that’s only my op. And doesn’t address the problem in the first place. Guesting actually compounds the problem. It maintains the idea that a server has high pop while there may actually be a much lower population. Anet is actually lying to new players when they go to chose a server. I’m not 100%, but I believe WoW servers track by people actually playing rather than GW2’s version of accounts made.

On Guilds
I think people should join large guilds if they choose to, or small ones or medium ones. But it doesn’t address zone population at all. It just gives someone to chat with, or call upon if they really need help. It’s an artificial solution to the issue. It addresses symptoms, not the problem.What are the guilds doing? The same thing everyone else is, farming world events, doing the pent/shelt run, occasionally doing Guild events. The problem with the population isn’t whether you’re in a guild or not, but that there is no reason to go to these zones because there is no chest there. I am not saying put chests there, I’m saying remove the need to farm chests. Or put chests everywhere and tie them into the zone in a meaningful way. Being in a guild doesn’t magically populate a zone you’re leveling in. It doesn’t magically make people show up at events naturally.

There is one thing you mentioned though does actually address the problem.

It’s the same way in all games
What makes GW2 different than almost any other mmo out there? Down leveling. Any zone can be just as relevant as any other zone. It’s a core feature, something the entire game was built around. But by adding chest events to only certain zones, this is no longer true and shifts population density. And even shifts density within those zones to areas only around the event.

This is the problem. This is why I say that the checklist doesn’t address it, and it doesn’t. It just mollifies people. New players see dead areas, they don’t see a population, they don’t see guilds. And Anet has the tools to fix it, they even built their game around these tools.

I want to see a living world again. I don’t want to see globs of people standing on a hill waiting for the sky to fall.

I’ve played on five or six different servers and most of the ones I’ve been to have people in other zones besides the event zones. I tend to go to higher pop servers like Blackgate, Sea of Sorrows, KC that sort of thing and yes, there are people in other zones and not at events.

I’m thinking that there are two things going on here. First is that the zones are huge. Do you know how many times I’m in a zone and I see no one, and then I post on map chat with a waypoint about an event and half a dozen people show up? I’ve lost count of how many times that happens.

And other times people respond in map chat and tell me they’re busy. If people don’t use map chat to find people in zones these size, they might as well think they’re alone.

Even just the layout of the zones. I’m in a cave doing a jumping puzzle, someone is 20 feet away from me around a corner. They have no idea I’m there.

It’s just not that simple to say zones are empty even if they seem empty.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

I think TESO will bomb because it’s a new MMO and people have no patience. People want bug fixes fast and it just can’t happen. They have not just expectations but unrealistic ones. I mean a lot of bugs in Guild Wars 2 have been fixed, but people don’t think about them once they have been. They only think about what hasn’t been fixed.

Bugs are the devs fault, they don’t get a cookie for making the game work as intended. They aren’t doing something for us by fixing their own mistakes. That’s like praising the wait staff for removing a fly from your soup.

Bugs are the devs fault. Interesting. Not necessarily 100% true.

It is true that SOME bugs are the devs fault, others come from things devs can’t possibly know before an update goes live. And then some things are simply hard to track.

If you have one person working on a project, and he’s doing one thing, then if something goes wrong, it’s his fault. If you have a hundred people working on code and that code all has to mesh and interface and work properly together…well…fault is a funny word.

Have you noticed that there are no big ambitious programs without tons and tons of bugs. From Microsoft Windows, to WoW, to high end flight sims…all programs have bugs. I guess the word fault is to say that devs were careless or didn’t think things through, but these systems are so complex, people can’t see everything. It’s reasonable to assume some mistakes were made and those errors are the fault of some devs. It’s just as reasonable to assume that some stuff happened that the devs couldn’t have forseen and therefore the word fault would be inappropriate.

Regardless, MMOs don’t function in a vacuum. If EVERY MMORPG has tons of bugs (and they all do), then clearly not all devs are incompetent. Bugs exist in big, ambitious programs and they get fixed as devs get the time to fix them. This is pretty much how ever big ambitious program works.

I never claimed devs deserve a cookie for making the game work as intended and I don’t see how you can get that from anything I’ve said. But I have said that reasonable expectations are different from unreasonable ones. If every single MMORPG has tons of bugs that go unfixed, one has to wonder why. Maybe it’s unreasonble to expect in a program of this scope that all or even most bugs will end up fixed, particularly because adding content often adds new bugs.

I beat that one. Took me a while, but it’s definitely possible.

I think TESO will bomb because it’s a new MMO and people have no patience. People want bug fixes fast and it just can’t happen. They have not just expectations but unrealistic ones. I mean a lot of bugs in Guild Wars 2 have been fixed, but people don’t think about them once they have been. They only think about what hasn’t been fixed.

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

If you really wanted people to bother going to all the zones and staying there for any length of time you would have to implement Mat drops potentially being upscaled to your level just like items.

This will never happen.

But that won’t actually get people to the same zones, which is more what Anet is atempting to do with things like dailies and living stories. The world is too big for Anet not to attempt to focus the population more.

This is also true…see, we’re AGREEING with each other. Fancy a cup of tea and a biscuit?

This seems to happen a lot with me. I start off arguing with someone and the we end up agreeing. I’m really not as argumentative as people make me out to be. I just hate people making unsubstantiated claims and stating them as fact. Beyond that, I recognize the game needs a lot of work. But it’s still better for me than anything else out there (at last in MMORPG land).

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

I never said the game doesn’t have legit issues. But yeah, every MMO I’ve played has legit issues. The issues in this game don’t seem much different than the issues on other games. Stuff needs to be fixed, some of it will eventually be fixed. Some people will wait around for those fixes and others will leave. Some new people will start playing to replace some of those who left. This forum looks exactly like every other MMORPG forum.

This doesn’t mean I’m trivilizing legit complaints. But saying the game is dying or people are leaving in droves isn’t a legit complaint, it’s at best an anecdotal bit of information that servers no real purpose. It doesn’t help or fix the game.

If you bring up the fact that we need more build variety, I’d not have said a word.

I agree. But there is a lot of static from the developers on some of the key issues that is becoming annoying. And by that I mean the major, gameplay breaking issues that have been reported since the beginning and still arent fixed…not the more trivial issues like loot drops and so on.

The problem is everyone has different “key” issues. There are people horribly annoyed that warriors do so much damage in PVe, for example, which I don’t really care much about. It would be nice if they did something about it, but it’s not a quality of life issue for me.

In fact, I bet my list of key issues is completely different from yours. lol

pricer.5091:

If you really wanted people to bother going to all the zones and staying there for any length of time you would have to implement Mat drops potentially being upscaled to your level just like items.

This will never happen.

But that won’t actually get people to the same zones, which is more what Anet is atempting to do with things like dailies and living stories. The world is too big for Anet not to attempt to focus the population more.

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

It runs fractals all the time…and CoF. As it says above in fact. I’ve ran them till my ears bleed. MF sucks. Its just another horribly designed dungeon with poor rewards for time. Although it DOES have one or two slightly more interesting than others boss fights.

I know a whole lot of people who disagree with you about whether MF sucks for not. People ran it dozens of times. There’s threads right here on these forums saying it was the best dungeon Anet has done to date, with tons of people agreeing. So yeah, you may think it sucks, but a whole lot of people liked it.

As for rewards, there were some decent ones. The new recipes of course, the chance to get a jet pack or a rare mini were other reasons people ran it.

And when I say my guild runs dungeons, I mean TA, HotW, SoE, SE even AC sometimes. Not just fractals and CoF.

Though dungeon runs have slowed down, since the content is older. But that normally happens in all games. Newer content gets more looks than older content. That’s why people ran MF so much.

If you think running a dungeon over and over again for the chance to get a backpack is the pinnacle of gaming evolution…good for you.

And I know a lot of people who DIDNT like MF….what does that prove? That human beings have differing opinions? Hold on, I’m just going to phone someone and let them know…there might be a Nobel prize in it.

It doesn’t prove anytrhing. I’m not trying to prove it’s good or bad. I am trying to point out that there’s a counter point to your opinion. A lot of people did like it and ran it multiple times, including me.

Frankly I think the Fractals are the best dungeon in the game, but there’s no denying that MF was mad popular, which you seem to have left out of your equation. That’s why I brought it up as I did. You said no one is running dungeons and I brought up MF. You said it sucked, I said a lot of people liked it.

Why is a dissenting opinion so upsetting to you?

Edit: I also never said it was the pinnacle of gaming or even my favorite dungeon. Nice way to try to twist what I said.

It isn’t. I’m happy for you. But I was talking about MY opinions as I have more familiarity with them. So why are my opinions so upsetting for you?

EDIT: I KNOW there is a counter-point to my opinion. There always will be. Vive la difference. But, this may come as a surprise, I’m not alone in thinking the game has gotten very boring….the entire forum is full of it. So even if it was 50/50 (which it isnt because there are WAY more negative posts than positive) then that would suggest that perhaps someone should start listening?

There have ALWAYS been way more negative posts than positive. Why not go check out every MMO forum out there, including WoW’s. There are always more negative posts on forums than positive posts. Proving pricely nothing.

Far more people are willing to complain than compliment. It’s just human nature.

Unhappy people complain. SOME of those people will always complain…because they want the moon on a stick and they want it NOW. MANY of those people have legitimate observations and deserve to be taken seriously…not written off by people like you because they have a different opinion. Does Guardian Scepter need fixing yes/ no? Are the concerns about the loot issues warranted yes / no? There are many, many, many valid complaints right here on this forum about issues that are spoiling peoples enjoyment of a “game”. And there are some whiners….

Proving, precisely, that some people are so set in their opinions that anyone else with a differing opinion is automatically wrong.

I never said the game doesn’t have legit issues. But yeah, every MMO I’ve played has legit issues. The issues in this game don’t seem much different than the issues on other games. Stuff needs to be fixed, some of it will eventually be fixed. Some people will wait around for those fixes and others will leave. Some new people will start playing to replace some of those who left. This forum looks exactly like every other MMORPG forum.

This doesn’t mean I’m trivilizing legit complaints. But saying the game is dying or people are leaving in droves isn’t a legit complaint, it’s at best an anecdotal bit of information that servers no real purpose. It doesn’t help or fix the game.

If you bring up the fact that we need more build variety, I’d not have said a word.

I think they started slow because they were testing stuff out. Of course, it could just be that they don’t have the time to properly do this stuff and they feel the need to keep doing it. I guess we’ll see.

pricer.5091:

tolunart.2095:

killcannon.2576:

5. This statement makes no sense “Every single world event I go to is packed. Every one. Even ones that happen at the same time” How can you be a two or more world events at the same time?

Shortly after the patch tonight I was at the Fire Elemental event. When it was halfway dead, someone posted in chat “Hurry! Wurm pre-event is up!” As soon as I grabbed the loot from the FE I teleported to the Wurm event and got there just in time to see it spawn. There was already a crowd of people there who cleared the pre-events.

So, yes, there were two events going on at the same time, both with a crowd of people doing them, and I was at both.

But this is exactly whats wrong. You got to a zone, kill a boss (in less than 2 minutes with the exception of the Dragons, but even then is only Jormag that takes any time) and then you leave and go to the next one. How is that giving anyone the impression that those zones are full? They’re full for two minutes and empty for 2 hours.

Except that the bosses don’t spawn like clockwork. There are timer sites with windows. People go through the zone doing other stuff (not everyone but many) while waiting for the boss. Someone eventually annouces in map chat that the pre-event is up and everyone goes there.

This is particularly true when supported by specific dailies like Maguuma or Shiverpeak event completer.

It’s not just that people spent two minutes a zone. People spent half an hour in a zone which culminates in their guaranteed gold.

Last night, while running around Wayfarers waiting for the Maw, I got two rare drops from mobs. Then I got the guaranteed rare.

It was good fun.

Rift did the same thing with their events…and thats where I first thought of it. The world is too big to let everyone go anywhere they want and to expect a crowd. The only way for people to really see other people is for the company to funnel them into specific areas.

The big area used to be Orr. You’d see mad numbers of people in Orr running specific event chains. That’s mostly gone now, by design.

Last couple of months I’ve been running around Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills a lot (I’m up to 20 giants killed thanks to the Nageling giant lol) and those zones have been quite crowded and it’s been good fun to run there. But yeah I’m ready for a break.

I need a new zone to hang out in for a while.

It should be noted that at least for some people, DR was not the cause for the bad drops they’d been getting and some people claim since the fix went in they’ve been getting better drops. Other people haven’t been affected in the same way.

The only way to see what kind of drops you’d get is to log in and try it.

killcannon.2576:

tolunart.2095:

killcannon.2576:

5. This statement makes no sense “Every single world event I go to is packed. Every one. Even ones that happen at the same time” How can you be a two or more world events at the same time?

Shortly after the patch tonight I was at the Fire Elemental event. When it was halfway dead, someone posted in chat “Hurry! Wurm pre-event is up!” As soon as I grabbed the loot from the FE I teleported to the Wurm event and got there just in time to see it spawn. There was already a crowd of people there who cleared the pre-events.

So, yes, there were two events going on at the same time, both with a crowd of people doing them, and I was at both.

Uh…you completed the one event, then went to another event that just started. That is not at the same time.

Would be true though if you didn’t get credit for the event if you didn’t do the pre events which would be a good idea.

My wife and I sit next to each other and we’ve been at different events at the exact same time. Both events had guildies try to get to them who ended up on overflow servers.

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

It runs fractals all the time…and CoF. As it says above in fact. I’ve ran them till my ears bleed. MF sucks. Its just another horribly designed dungeon with poor rewards for time. Although it DOES have one or two slightly more interesting than others boss fights.

I know a whole lot of people who disagree with you about whether MF sucks for not. People ran it dozens of times. There’s threads right here on these forums saying it was the best dungeon Anet has done to date, with tons of people agreeing. So yeah, you may think it sucks, but a whole lot of people liked it.

As for rewards, there were some decent ones. The new recipes of course, the chance to get a jet pack or a rare mini were other reasons people ran it.

And when I say my guild runs dungeons, I mean TA, HotW, SoE, SE even AC sometimes. Not just fractals and CoF.

Though dungeon runs have slowed down, since the content is older. But that normally happens in all games. Newer content gets more looks than older content. That’s why people ran MF so much.

If you think running a dungeon over and over again for the chance to get a backpack is the pinnacle of gaming evolution…good for you.

And I know a lot of people who DIDNT like MF….what does that prove? That human beings have differing opinions? Hold on, I’m just going to phone someone and let them know…there might be a Nobel prize in it.

It doesn’t prove anytrhing. I’m not trying to prove it’s good or bad. I am trying to point out that there’s a counter point to your opinion. A lot of people did like it and ran it multiple times, including me.

Frankly I think the Fractals are the best dungeon in the game, but there’s no denying that MF was mad popular, which you seem to have left out of your equation. That’s why I brought it up as I did. You said no one is running dungeons and I brought up MF. You said it sucked, I said a lot of people liked it.

Why is a dissenting opinion so upsetting to you?

Edit: I also never said it was the pinnacle of gaming or even my favorite dungeon. Nice way to try to twist what I said.

It isn’t. I’m happy for you. But I was talking about MY opinions as I have more familiarity with them. So why are my opinions so upsetting for you?

EDIT: I KNOW there is a counter-point to my opinion. There always will be. Vive la difference. But, this may come as a surprise, I’m not alone in thinking the game has gotten very boring….the entire forum is full of it. So even if it was 50/50 (which it isnt because there are WAY more negative posts than positive) then that would suggest that perhaps someone should start listening?

There have ALWAYS been way more negative posts than positive. Why not go check out every MMO forum out there, including WoW’s. There are always more negative posts on forums than positive posts. Proving pricely nothing.

Far more people are willing to complain than compliment. It’s just human nature.

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

It runs fractals all the time…and CoF. As it says above in fact. I’ve ran them till my ears bleed. MF sucks. Its just another horribly designed dungeon with poor rewards for time. Although it DOES have one or two slightly more interesting than others boss fights.

I know a whole lot of people who disagree with you about whether MF sucks for not. People ran it dozens of times. There’s threads right here on these forums saying it was the best dungeon Anet has done to date, with tons of people agreeing. So yeah, you may think it sucks, but a whole lot of people liked it.

As for rewards, there were some decent ones. The new recipes of course, the chance to get a jet pack or a rare mini were other reasons people ran it.

And when I say my guild runs dungeons, I mean TA, HotW, SoE, SE even AC sometimes. Not just fractals and CoF.

Though dungeon runs have slowed down, since the content is older. But that normally happens in all games. Newer content gets more looks than older content. That’s why people ran MF so much.

If you think running a dungeon over and over again for the chance to get a backpack is the pinnacle of gaming evolution…good for you.

And I know a lot of people who DIDNT like MF….what does that prove? That human beings have differing opinions? Hold on, I’m just going to phone someone and let them know…there might be a Nobel prize in it.

It doesn’t prove anytrhing. I’m not trying to prove it’s good or bad. I am trying to point out that there’s a counter point to your opinion. A lot of people did like it and ran it multiple times, including me.

Frankly I think the Fractals are the best dungeon in the game, but there’s no denying that MF was mad popular, which you seem to have left out of your equation. That’s why I brought it up as I did. You said no one is running dungeons and I brought up MF. You said it sucked, I said a lot of people liked it.

Why is a dissenting opinion so upsetting to you?

Edit: I also never said it was the pinnacle of gaming or even my favorite dungeon. Nice way to try to twist what I said.

Aside from the final dungeon, which I quite liked, I agree with you about Flame and Frost. But I do see a logic to removing things from the game.

The game is better and feels more alive when everyone is doing the same things, because everyone is in the same place. Most games have raids and dungeons that do this, but Anet wants to do it with the open world. So they use the world as a stage, rotating where people go for different acts. This next bit will be on a different part of the stage, but the population of people will be higher, because people will be doing it. More events spawn, events scale up, everyone has, in theory, more fun.

You’re looking at the living story as an end, when I think Anet sees it as more of a means.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

pRoJeKT.9360:

Vayne.8563:

pRoJeKT.9360:

It’s because arenanet sucks, and think they are untouchable…They will learn fast.

But they won’t and years from now we’ll still be enjoying the game while you’re wasting time hoping that hundreds of people are out of a job because you don’t enjoy a game.

Doing what? FotM 150? lol, kidding.

I still enjoy the game very much. Sadly, there aren’t much of us that feel this way anymore. The game isn’t even a year old and it’s already lost a lot of players, people can lie to themselves all they want buy they know it’s true. I hope Guild Wars survives for a looooong time, just not looking very promising atm because people are already getting bored. I could make a new toon and be level 80 max gear in ONE DAY. that is a joke, an absolute joke. You’re probably one of those people that wanna get to 80, get your exotics/worthless legendary and call it a day and play that for 5 years. If you call that fun then that’s fine, but you’re the minority. I know people are going to get offended because for some reason trying to improve a game you like is a sin for the GW community. I just want to say I’m not trying to bash GW at all, I love the game. They just need to change somethings if they want to survive like (oh god forbid you say this name) WoW has.

Guest on over to Tarnished Coast, and open your eyes. There are tons of people playing since launch who are still playing. There are plenty of people who left and came back and are now playing.

If you have no evidence, and you supposedly care about the game, why post something that’s detrimental?

Same response as always “Switch to the most populated servers” The whole place might be burning down around them, but the people in the room without smoke think that everything is great.

But that’s how it is in all games. Even WoW has lower and higher population servers. Do you think WoW is dying with it’s ten million subscribers.

Yeah, go where the people are IS the answer. Staying where they’re not and then complaining no one is there is NOT the answer. I thought this was self-evident.

It’s like you’ve never played an MMO before. Every MMO has slow servers and busy ones. The people who like to play with other people migrate to the busy ones. It was like this in WoW, in Rift, in Lotro…the only exception are the games that had to close servers and only have one or two left.

Ahh the ad hominems “You act like you never played a mmo before”, gotta love em.

Your solution is not a solution. Nor does it help the discussion. What about new players? Too bad for them if they want to level up in a populated zone, they just need to grin and bear it till they can also join in the farming. What about the people who don’t want to farm the events? Too bad for them, they have to play that way if they don’t want to play alone.

The only thing your defense of the current system does is make it worse. Move to a new server = other servers become even more depopulated. Enforce the idea of farming the WEB’s = make the open world even less populated. Join a guild = the only way to enjoy the world is if you are in a guild. I’ll give you peak times because it has always made sense but I like throwing it on my list anyway for drama.

The player is not at fault, the current in game systems are.

That wasn’t an attack. Someone states there’s a problem with not having enough people around, I suggest to go where people are. That’s simple and logical particularly because it’s free to do so. It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Some people would rather complain than solve the problem.

tigirius.9014:

Mirta.5029:

tigirius.9014:

I’m thinking it’s only the open world content so they won’t worry about it honestly. If it were a dungeon or something they’d actually fix it. It’s been happening to me off and on since launch. It’s just like DR they didn’t look to see if there was an actual code problem (the killcredit bug) until it started to affect the dungeon runners, then they had a serious issue, if it’s a casual open world player, it’s not worth it apparently.

Sorry to sound so jaded but here we are almost a year after launch and there’s just too much ignored that should have been handled more professionally.

dungeon runners get ignored plenty as well
“Because we took out the ability to revive during combat we’ll add more waypoints!”
Months later no extra waypoints in most (if not all) dungeons.

Thanks for that as I’m not a dungeon fan in this title I had no idea. WoW even better huh. Got told we would get retro’d for our achievements in the form of laurels too, still haven’t seen that drop. It’s starting to pile up in here, can’t all be those of us who are noticing the large number of promises missed over the past 8 months or so.

Actually I’m pretty sure no one said laurels. I’d expect that the achievement reward wouldn’t be laurels.

pricer.5091:

It runs fractals all the time…and CoF. As it says above in fact. I’ve ran them till my ears bleed. MF sucks. Its just another horribly designed dungeon with poor rewards for time. Although it DOES have one or two slightly more interesting than others boss fights.

I know a whole lot of people who disagree with you about whether MF sucks for not. People ran it dozens of times. There’s threads right here on these forums saying it was the best dungeon Anet has done to date, with tons of people agreeing. So yeah, you may think it sucks, but a whole lot of people liked it.

As for rewards, there were some decent ones. The new recipes of course, the chance to get a jet pack or a rare mini were other reasons people ran it.

And when I say my guild runs dungeons, I mean TA, HotW, SoE, SE even AC sometimes. Not just fractals and CoF.

Though dungeon runs have slowed down, since the content is older. But that normally happens in all games. Newer content gets more looks than older content. That’s why people ran MF so much.

I don’t know pricer….my guild still runs dungeons and fractals. Not sure why yours doesn’t. And of course tons of people ran the MF dungeon fairly often. So maybe they’re not in fractals or AC, but are you seriously suggesting your guild wasn’t running MF?

killcannon.2576:

Mirta.5029:

What a troll thread.
It seems that in some servers the population decreased, in other increased.
You will probably meet most people in map events http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/events.php?serverKey=212&langKey=en . While some servers are very big on WvW I’m guessing that yours isn’t. Try also searching the location of the next living story (that will start in 2 days), you might find a lot of people there. CoF and Fotm are very popular on my servers – maybe that’s where your server population is too?
If your server did get depopulated, no worries, most of the PVE in the game is soloable, if you feel lonely I’m sure that your server still has some lively guilds, if joining a guild is not your thing you can always guest on a higher pop server for free (you can guest on 2 servers for free. What servers you’re guesting on reset every 24 hours), regarding running dungeons http://www.gw2lfg.com/ – team up with people from other servers (as long as people are from the same continent (NA or EU) you can party up and enter the same instance), if you really like WvW and that’s what you plan on doing with your time, I suggest asking the forums which are very WvW heavy servers, saving up the gems and transferring.
Also, I know that others already said that you will be asked this – but what time of the day was it that you were searching for people? 2 AM, 1PM and such seem very unpopular hours, population slightly picks up early in the morning and is normally at its highest in the early evening (around 6 to 11 PM).

Here’s the checklist again

Peak server
Peak time
World event boss area
Join a big Guild

And even throws out the troll comment.

And again, peak servers make sense, because even WoW has slow/dead servers. Every MMO has them, unless they only have a couple of servers.

Joining a big guild makes sense too. If someone has a problem, I suggestion solutions. You suggest they stay where they are and suffer.

Good plan.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

pRoJeKT.9360:

Vayne.8563:

pRoJeKT.9360:

It’s because arenanet sucks, and think they are untouchable…They will learn fast.

But they won’t and years from now we’ll still be enjoying the game while you’re wasting time hoping that hundreds of people are out of a job because you don’t enjoy a game.

Doing what? FotM 150? lol, kidding.

I still enjoy the game very much. Sadly, there aren’t much of us that feel this way anymore. The game isn’t even a year old and it’s already lost a lot of players, people can lie to themselves all they want buy they know it’s true. I hope Guild Wars survives for a looooong time, just not looking very promising atm because people are already getting bored. I could make a new toon and be level 80 max gear in ONE DAY. that is a joke, an absolute joke. You’re probably one of those people that wanna get to 80, get your exotics/worthless legendary and call it a day and play that for 5 years. If you call that fun then that’s fine, but you’re the minority. I know people are going to get offended because for some reason trying to improve a game you like is a sin for the GW community. I just want to say I’m not trying to bash GW at all, I love the game. They just need to change somethings if they want to survive like (oh god forbid you say this name) WoW has.

Guest on over to Tarnished Coast, and open your eyes. There are tons of people playing since launch who are still playing. There are plenty of people who left and came back and are now playing.

If you have no evidence, and you supposedly care about the game, why post something that’s detrimental?

Same response as always “Switch to the most populated servers” The whole place might be burning down around them, but the people in the room without smoke think that everything is great.

But that’s how it is in all games. Even WoW has lower and higher population servers. Do you think WoW is dying with it’s ten million subscribers.

Yeah, go where the people are IS the answer. Staying where they’re not and then complaining no one is there is NOT the answer. I thought this was self-evident.

It’s like you’ve never played an MMO before. Every MMO has slow servers and busy ones. The people who like to play with other people migrate to the busy ones. It was like this in WoW, in Rift, in Lotro…the only exception are the games that had to close servers and only have one or two left.

pricer.5091:

Iknow some will flame me for saying this and say its just RNG etc etc. BUT.
Up until the last patch (not the most recent one last week, the one before that put the Roxand Brahm story in) I was pretty happy farming Orr and in (maybe) 2 months I saved up about 500g. Primary source of acquisition was Heavy Moldy Bags and I always opened them and sold the T6 Mats. Out of 250 bags I was making maybe 8-9 g…depending on how many bloods dropped….I even got a fair few Giant Eyes. On a typical Penitent event I would get about 20 bags.

NOW, on a typical Penitent I get 5-6. Opening these bags gives me T5 Mats just about all the time. I haven’t seen a Giant Eye drop from these since the patch.

With the cost of the desirable items being what they are I would expect it to be possible to grind / farm/ or just play about 10g an hour….would be a reasonable expectation. Last time I actually bothered playing Orr for an hour I got less than 1g.

I don’t know what happened, whether was loot nerf or whetehr it was just I have hit this mystical DR everyone talks about, but its not just me that has noticed….many in guild are having the same problems.

Either way, I will nto continue playing unless something gets done. I have bought gems in the past, but that was when I considered loot gathering fair…..now it is totally and unforgivably unfair.

If the farming isn’t there in Orr, look for alternatives. There are people who have had better luck farming in other places, like Southsun Cove and Frostgorge Sound. Naturally you have to figure out where to farm to get better, but because powerful blood is quite costly now in terms of the market, a lot of people are farming it.

I’m surprised more people aren’t trying to farm armored scales now, considering how much they cost.

pRoJeKT.9360:

Vayne.8563:

pRoJeKT.9360:

It’s because arenanet sucks, and think they are untouchable…They will learn fast.

But they won’t and years from now we’ll still be enjoying the game while you’re wasting time hoping that hundreds of people are out of a job because you don’t enjoy a game.

Doing what? FotM 150? lol, kidding.

I still enjoy the game very much. Sadly, there aren’t much of us that feel this way anymore. The game isn’t even a year old and it’s already lost a lot of players, people can lie to themselves all they want buy they know it’s true. I hope Guild Wars survives for a looooong time, just not looking very promising atm because people are already getting bored. I could make a new toon and be level 80 max gear in ONE DAY. that is a joke, an absolute joke. You’re probably one of those people that wanna get to 80, get your exotics/worthless legendary and call it a day and play that for 5 years. If you call that fun then that’s fine, but you’re the minority. I know people are going to get offended because for some reason trying to improve a game you like is a sin for the GW community. I just want to say I’m not trying to bash GW at all, I love the game. They just need to change somethings if they want to survive like (oh god forbid you say this name) WoW has.

Guest on over to Tarnished Coast, and open your eyes. There are tons of people playing since launch who are still playing. There are plenty of people who left and came back and are now playing.

If you have no evidence, and you supposedly care about the game, why post something that’s detrimental?

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure why people are so anxious to prove a game is dying with no evidence to back it up.

Ya but Anet won’t release it’s current player population. You can’t prove GW2 didn’t loss a significant amount of players too.

I’m not the one making the claim that the game has increased in population. Others are claiming it’s dying. In theory, they should have some proof before making that kind of claim. I’m simply saying those people have no proof.

Had I come on first and said the population is increasing, you’d have a point. All we know for sure is that Anet IS hiring (that’s a fact) and that server caps have been expanded (that’s a fact too).

Beyond those two facts, we know nothing. So in your opinion, does those two facts suggestion a dying population or a growing one?

Kichwas.7152:

Vayne.8563:

It’s always been the other way around. While MMOs are selling, they generally don’t launch expansions. Expansions are what you launch when you need the influx of money.

Many of them seem to put expansions onto a regular release cycle.

WoW even starts making X-Pac 2 now about 6 months before X-Pac 1 goes live. EQII has them like clockwork, but I don’t follow it well enough to know details. Guild Wars 1 had them about once every 6 to 9 months for the first 3, then had the fourth some time after and called it quits.

City of Heroes had two, period. City of Villains shortly after launch, and then Paragon years later.

There doesn’t seem to be a predictable pattern.

For GW2 it will be a bit of a balancing act.

We know there are 2 other confirmed continents. There is a fourth continent that never hit anything live anywhere and has never been mentioned in in-game lore so it could be scrapped or anythinged.

But for the other 2, they HAVE to come out or some point or their lack will hurt the game. But coming out too fast could also hurt the game.

They have to find that perfect point where the fans have nothing left but to demand it, but haven’t started quitting over it yet.

I’m obviously not talking about WoW, because WoW doesn’t have to worry about sales falling off. They fell off to 9.1 million subscribers last year..do the math at 15 bucks a month and you’ll see that WoW is in a class by itself.

Guild Wars 1 also can’t be counted, because the entire marketing plan wasn’t based around subscription prices or even the cash shop. The marketing plan of the game was about bringing out new expansions in a fast manner.

But there are hundreds of MMOs out there, and the cycle, even in WoW is always that the player density always falls off as players finish the old content. They stop logging in. They wait for the new content. Guild Wars 2 has a similar traffic pattern when you see the monthly stuff released, for a few days to a week, traffic gets mad busy, then slows down again until the next month’s patch.

But most MMOs don’t have monthly content patches. Most of their big patches are all done at one time, with the idea of bringing people back to the game. It’s a balancing act for most developers.

You can only make a certain amount of content in the time you have. You have old content out there that people are going through. Enough of the people get through all the content, they get bored and move to other games. You don’t want to release a patch too early because you don’t want to waste it. You want it to have maximum impact…because you can’t make another patch with a small staff soon enough to make more people log in more often. And that’s what it’s about for most MMOs, getting people to log in.

So the population drops, an expansion brings them back, which is what most MMOs are looking for.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

snip

Anyway, the biggest difference in my point of view is that I play the game for the sake of playing the game, not to have bigger shinies than everyone else. So I don’t look at the rewards as something I deserve for giving Anet money, but rather as a bonus for playing the game. So when a rare pops up, I say “hey, cool!” instead of “it’s about time!”

The purpose of people needing loot isn’t to have bigger shinies, there’s a cost of living in this game like there is in every other game but only 1 currency for it, thus the need for drops to be sold or items from drops to be sold to earn enough currency to survive.

When the loot isn’t equal there’s an issue.

It’s not different then pay. If the pay isn’t equal for the same job, same amount of money, same equipment being used, with no discernable reason other then one person is mysteriously different then the other (somewhere in the aether) then there’s a problem.

Are you really telling me you don’t get enough loot for repairs and teleporting? Because frankly I find that hard to believe.

As for loot not being equal, I’m not sure how true it is, but I have suggested reasons why it might be different for different people and I’ve suggested in different threads something people can try to try to reset their DR if that’s indeed what’s causing the problem (if there is a problem).

Try to understand this. I play in a guild with 100 members, and of those hundred members about 25-30 log in often. I’ve talked to most of the regulars about this and of all of them, one guy says he’s unluckier than everyone else. One guy.

And when I run with him, he usually gets at least one decent drop, so I think he’s just like an Eeyore. I think he likes to complain. From what Ive’ seen of him, I don’t think his drops are significantly less than mine. Maybe a little, but I’ve run with this guy quite a bit.

So yeah, if there is a problem, and there may be, it may be affecting a small enough percentage of the overall population where it’s difficult to track down or even verify.

Doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. Part of the cost of living as every PVE player knows who’s played for the past 7 months is their indecisions regarding build choices so part of the cost has also been the rebuilding of the character entirely which costs money to do as they only have 1 currency that allows for this to occur quickly.

3.5 silver to rebuild your character which you get from 3 dynamic events, or a small percentage of a dungeon or fractal run. That’s what we’re talking about to respec. Hit a dynamic event chain and you can respec. Hit a couple of them you can repair, respec and teleport.

Do you know that if you sell the loot bag drops, you do quite well, even in relatively low level areas? There’s plenty of ways to make money in this game for the basics. And then you can go to a couple of events a day for your guaranteed gold and even if you don’t salvage them and sell them most go for more than 10 silver, so you should get 15 silver from a single event MINIMUM, enough to pay for 4 full changes.

It’s one thing to say you don’t get good drops due to some bug in the program, it’s another to be completely disingenuous about the amount of money you can get quite easily, guaranteed.

killcannon.2576:

People will give you the checklist which is:

Join a big guild
Only do the world event bosses
Only log in at peak hours
Only go to peak servers

Some will say the game is dying, some will say it’s continually growing, while neither camp can prove it is correct.

I don’t know if the game is dying or not, but the way the population density is currently, it certainly makes it feel that way.

Here we go again. Every positive post must be met with someone saying the game is dying or the population is low (as opposed to spread out or focused in specific areas). Every single world event I go to is packed. Every one. Even ones that happen at the same time. Doesn’t matter the time of day. So a lot of people are obviously doing world events.

That means those same people aren’t all in other locations, like Orr. Orrs population has dropped, where other places have gotten busier.

I still get queues for WvW on my server. I still see giant zergs there. I still get put on overflow servers if I get to world events too late.

Star Wars Tor, six months after launch was forced to lay off half it’s staff. That’s the sign of an MMO not doing well. TSW in less time had to lay off a third of its staff. Both matters of public record. There has been no major layoffs from Anet, in fact they’re hiring. Server caps have been expanded.

I’m not sure why people are so anxious to prove a game is dying with no evidence to back it up.

tigirius.9014:

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

snip

Anyway, the biggest difference in my point of view is that I play the game for the sake of playing the game, not to have bigger shinies than everyone else. So I don’t look at the rewards as something I deserve for giving Anet money, but rather as a bonus for playing the game. So when a rare pops up, I say “hey, cool!” instead of “it’s about time!”

The purpose of people needing loot isn’t to have bigger shinies, there’s a cost of living in this game like there is in every other game but only 1 currency for it, thus the need for drops to be sold or items from drops to be sold to earn enough currency to survive.

When the loot isn’t equal there’s an issue.

It’s not different then pay. If the pay isn’t equal for the same job, same amount of money, same equipment being used, with no discernable reason other then one person is mysteriously different then the other (somewhere in the aether) then there’s a problem.

Are you really telling me you don’t get enough loot for repairs and teleporting? Because frankly I find that hard to believe.

As for loot not being equal, I’m not sure how true it is, but I have suggested reasons why it might be different for different people and I’ve suggested in different threads something people can try to try to reset their DR if that’s indeed what’s causing the problem (if there is a problem).

Try to understand this. I play in a guild with 100 members, and of those hundred members about 25-30 log in often. I’ve talked to most of the regulars about this and of all of them, one guy says he’s unluckier than everyone else. One guy.

And when I run with him, he usually gets at least one decent drop, so I think he’s just like an Eeyore. I think he likes to complain. From what Ive’ seen of him, I don’t think his drops are significantly less than mine. Maybe a little, but I’ve run with this guy quite a bit.

So yeah, if there is a problem, and there may be, it may be affecting a small enough percentage of the overall population where it’s difficult to track down or even verify.

This is a particularly interesting post for me, because I don’t really care about prestige in a game, and I’m fascinated by people who do. I suspect only a very small percentage of players look at me with my lengendary and are impressed. Most don’t care. Some don’t even notice. And I don’t care that they don’t notice, because I wanted the legendary for one reason and one reason only. To get that stupid blank icon off my load screen.

The second legendary I’m going for is an underwater one for my necro, which no one will likely ever see, so I really don’t care about this stuff. I’ve never looked at anyone in game and thought, wow, I’m impressed. And I don’t expect people to look at me that way either.

I do think, though, that prestige items shouldn’t be sold on the auction house. And I definitely disagree with having RNG for skins in black lion chests. That kind of prestige we call all do without.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

Galtrix.7369:

People forget what the definition of casual actually is. Relaxed and unconcerned. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel obligated to participate in dungeons to earn as much money as people that play for 10 hours a day and I DO NOT get the “relaxed” feeling when I have to play for 3 hours or more to actually accomplish something. I have not seen Anet implement a single casual activity to do since the game was released. FoTM, Guild Missions, Ascended gear, all of those things are for hardcore players. And, if you disagree, think about the ways to get ascended gear. 30 laurels, which is 30 days of playing. 30 days is a ridiculous amount of time for a “casual” player. Guild Missions, which require massive amounts of time to organize, again, not a casual activity. Fractals, is the longest dungeon in GW2 and requires the most time. Tell me again how GW2 is made for casual players.

Dailies are for casuals, they take 20 minutes. Most of the living story was for casuals too. Did you even do the instances that happened in the month before the end dungeon was released. Each instance takes less than half an hour and can be soloed. SAB could certainly be enjoyed by casuals. The christmas jumping puzzle and music game, enjoyed by casuals too. The halloween minidungeon, easy to enjoy for casuals.

I’m not sure why you think nothing has been released for casuals, when so much of it has been.

He’s most likely talking about what I’m talking about permanent new open world content. all of that other stuff is not permanent. the living story is not permanent, the holidays are not permanent.

What the world is wrong with folks, can’t see the forest…

Galtrix you’re right. but don’t expect people to understand. All play styles leading to the same end game results equally.

But if they’re adding stuff every month and you have a month to do it and the next month they do more , that is stuff for casuals. Arguably, casuals would need less permanent stuff than people that play constantly, since it’s unlikely they’ll burn through all the content in the first place. It’s the content locusts who need more permanent content.

And again, dailies are primary done the way they are for the casuals.

Insidious.3720:

In before all the people telling you that you just aren’t playing the game right or in the right area to see people because, based off their experiences, people are everywhere and you are wrong.

Ok then, the population has dropped fairly significantly. There’s just no other way to say it or sugar coat it. You can try switching to a higher pop server, i.e. a server in the top 5 for wvw. Personally, I am just killing time until FFXIV is re-released. After that, I’m Outtie 5000 again.

You have zero evidence of this. It’s literally unprovable. And there are always trolls on forums (not suggesting that you are one of them), that love to come in and say how bad any game is doing.

But it doesn’t make it true.

Drew.1865:

Essence Snow.3194:

tolunart.2095:

Essence Snow.3194:

I remember each of the 3…yeah 3, open world exotic drops I have gotten in my 2,772 hours of play. I highly expect my ratio to be 1:1000 hrs and yeah I do expect better b/c that is pathetic at best.

Thanx for proving my point… if you expect to see a pattern come out of random events, then I can almost guarantee disappointment.

Shortly after I began following the dragon timer and getting those bonus chests, I got two exotics. One from a chest, the other from the Mystic Forge, on two consecutive days. It’s been about two weeks since then and I haven’t seen another. I never got an exotic before, and I may never get another exotic drop, or I could get one tomorrow. I have no expectations.

So your point is that those 3 drops I have had is only pathetic in my mind? That we should not expect loot at all in a game where loot is a major aspect of said game? Maybe we shouldn’t expect stories, dungeons, modern graphics, or anything for that matter?
Where is that line? What should be expected from this type of game? I feel that my expectations are completely reasonable given the context of the game. Expectations are not all unreasonable or unfounded.

The fanboys will next use the “but there’s no sub” excuse. There’s always a reason why criticism of the game is unreasonable as far as they’re concerned.

Except that I don’t use that excuse, and most of the “fan boys” I’ve seen don’t either. Why invent stuff?