Guild Wars 2

I’m sure you’ll be able to get the holiday achievements. It’s not worth the time to program new stuff for every single holiday. They may well add to it, but something really popular like the Mad King dungeon they’d be crazy not to bring back. Then again, this is Anet. lol

Caedmon.6798:

Paying money for emotes…emotes that should have been in the game from day one ? Like the 50+ emotes missing from guild wars 1,that we could use playing for Free ? No….

Why should emotes have been in the game from day one? Because you want them? What percentage of the playbase even uses or cares about emotes. I’m guessing not a big percentage.

When a small group of people require an investment in time and energy of the devs, let them pay for the time. It’s not like the game has a monthly fee.

Lotro sells tons of emote packs and that’s a game known for it’s roleplayers. Emotes in the cash shop are fair game. You could hardly call it pay to win.

@Rhinala

They’ve redone the dungeon bosses so they have longer leashes…at least most of them. Today I did SE and the boss at the end of ..whichever the Asura path is used to leash just past the steps. You can pull her much further now.

Adjustments are being made. The problem is, I don’t really think those adjustments will ever be enough.

For example, I’m pretty sure all the servers have the same general respawn time for creatures. On a server like Tarnished Coast, a busy one, that’s less of a problem because in a lot of places you NEED a high respawn rate. IN other servers it could be much more of a problem.

Sure, stuff needs to be tweaked. But probably not as much of it as most people think. The respawn rate in Rift was also commented about quite frequently on their forums. There’s simply no way to get it right.

For everyone person who hates it, someone else likes it.

The very skill system that was the life of Guild Wars 1, also spelled the death of Guild Wars 1. Without the ability to balance the game, content became meaningless. Those who loved the minutiae of making very complex builds loved it. Casuals found it hard, and most people just want to PVx wiki for the build of the month. Getting into a pug group for elite content without the build of the month became ridiculously hard. You played with your guild, or not at all.

The balance issues continually plagued the game. Sabway, I-way, Imbagon Paragons, discord mesmers, 600 monks, spirit spammer solo farm builds were fun for some people. But other people disliked them immensely.

There’s a price you pay for variety in a game. And Guild Wars 1 started with less skills and added as it went. Guild Wars 2 will do the same thing. It will grow in complexity as time goes on.

It will NEVER get to the kind of complexity Guild Wars 1 got to. I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. I see this as a good thing.

Without my guild I don’t know that I’d still be playing…but with a good guild this game is awesome. Possibly because I dislike pugging so much.

I don’t know…I’ve defeated bigger zergs with smaller ones. It depends on how well coordinated they are. I’ve defeated zergs of 30-40 people with about 20 people.

So I don’t necessarily agree it’s all about the size of the zerg. I will say this though.

If two unskilled or unled zergs meet, then its’ probably about the size of the zerg.

Daharahj.1325:

Kaizer.7135:

A lot of people (including myself) prefer that there be no trinity, it saves time on making groups since you don’t have to wait for specific classes that nobody likes playing, well, except for a few (monks).

Then how do you explain advertisements like “need 1 more mesmer” or “only warriors”?

The loss of the holy trinity has its pros and its cons, and there are times where the cons severely outweigh the pros, especially when some classes have underwhelming dps compared to warriors or mesmers (aka necros).

There are always people in every single game who absolutely MUST do things most efficiently. They feel somehow they’re wasting time if a boss battle takes 7 minutes instead of 5. I’m not one of them and a lot of other people aren’t too.

The difference between a trinity system and what we have here is that in other games, you absolutely MUST have a tank and you absolutely MUST have a healer. There is no alternative.

Here there is. I run dungeons all the time, and almost never run with a warrior. My guild is mostly engies, necros, rangers, guardians and mesmers…with a couple of eles. And we run dungeons all the time…and beat them.

Try that with a trinity.

For many of the same reason you don’t like this game, I love it. Sorry to see you go. Hope you find something more suited to you.

There was an interview where he said he did it in his spare time, I’m sure someone will find it.

Space Cow.2431:

GW1:

-7 of 1026 normal skills (roughly 130 per profession, everyone has 2 professions, second profession can be changed. 81 skills are common across all professions).
-1 of 293 elite skills (you can choose to drop an elite for a normal skill instead)
-200 attribute points (to distribute across 1 primary attribute and 8 of 36 secondary attributes)

GW2:

-5 sets of 5 weapon skills with aquatic counterparts (on average).
-3 of 22 utility skills (2 racial)
-1 of 4 healing skills (1 racial)
-1 of 6 elite skills (3 racial)
-70 points (to distribute across 5 trait lines)
-7 traits (1 for each 10 spent in a single trait line)

GW2’s skill system is far too restrictive, and your weapon makes up 90% of your build and fully determines what you do in combat. The game becomes monotonous fast.

The pool of skills to choose from in GW2 is simply too small once you’ve committed to your race and profession at character creation. The biggest problem is the weapon skill system. Interesting in concept but lackluster in execution. Compare this to GW1 where you have the freedom to mix and match everything you want and crazy-yet-functional builds flourish in any environment.

The only thing GW2 does better than GW1 as far as the skill system goes is Traits. Traits are infinitely better than attribute points.

Good comparison.

Guild Wars 1 system, a free for all, open to all sorts of exploitation, followed by no end to nerfs of builds because half of what was out there were “trick” builds.

Many of those skills were totally useless. I guess you designed a ranger build around “quickshot”?

If you were a necro, you took Aura of the Lich or Discord or Blood is Power…one of those three. MAYBE, you took Flesh Golem. That’s four elites…the rest were pretty much wasted when I played.

There were always builds of the month that you had to have to get into groups. So much for freedom.

On paper it was great, but it was unwieldy, impossible to balance and led to a whole lot of people getting bored with the game.

Sure some people loved it. But to many it was inaccessible and to others it was a simple as going to PVx wiki and copying and pasting the build of the month.

Of course they’re working on the game. There is a vision there, though some people can’t see it. They have said many times they want to create a living/breathing world. To some small degree they have accomplished it, but they want to take it further. They want these events they’re doing to change the world, so that it evolves as time goes on. So it’s not always the same game. They want to add more dynamic events into the world and stagger them. This is all stuff they’ve said before.

And that’s all content.

People have it in their head that the only way to provide content for games is paid expansion. And in the past that may well have been true.

But Anet has a different vision. Whether they can pull it off or not is a matter that only time will tell.

Flamenco.3894:

Lafiel.9372:

SirDrygan.1823:

Why is Arenanet wasting resources on this? -> https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/presenting-the-rytlocks-critter-rampage-game/

The time could be used to FIX bugs or ADD new stuff to the game. Even the Super Adventure Box is a WASTE of resources and time when you all could use the time to MAKE CONTENT RELEVANT to the storyline on Tyria. Make a new dragon appear or some new dynamic events that actually did PERMANENT change to the world of Tyria or something!

Yes, the Molten Alliance storyline is cool and all, but if you all could just stop wasting time on making a Mario Brothers wannabe in 3D, you all could have make the Molten Alliance storyline even better.

Every department is responsible for different things. No resource was wasted or pulled away to make SAB. If SAB didn’t exist, nothing new or additional fixes would have moved faster.

Non-logic. Do you claim that this man is not getting paid?

If you do something in your spare time, you’re not getting paid for it. I used to manage a store where I was paid to work until closing. Often I stayed late and did some work in that store, mostly because I was conscientious. I didn’t get a dime for it. That is, I made the same money whether I did that work or not.

So yes, I worked for a company without getting paid. This is what this programmer did. He programmed this in his spare time, because he thought it was fun.

Rhinala.1739:

GW2 is lacking in one thing that GW1 done right, the fun factor. i done countless dungeon runs not because i wanted something from it, it was because it was fun and challenging, In GW1 the challenge was in the game mechanics in GW2 the challange is in the insane pool of HP, there are some fun dungeons like cof (what can i say this dungeon is smarter then the other).

The amount of grind in this game is insane, the daily grind and the monthly grind that should be done in order to get the laurels that will give us access to ascended gear, Anet created time gating and a boring one. and we shouldn’t forget that this game was announced as a game without grinding.

The little things bother me like:

In the open world the challenge is the insane respawn rate, in GW1 it was knowing the rauts of the enemies.

In GW2 if a player pull too far it will reset the enemies, in GW1 it would separate close groups, something that let the player think on how to tackle the problem.

When the game came i couldn’t get enough of it, i constantly played but now i’m looking for other games. This is the only game that iv’e seen where patches made it worst.

It’s the difference between an open world game and an instanced game. What you want is an instanced game, because some of these things can’t be done in an open world game.

Take the respawning of mobs. In an instanced game they can stay dead. In an open world game, they can’t because there’s someone half a minute behind you who needs stuff to kill. This is the same reason for leashing.

In old games, it was quite easy to troll people by running around, getting half the zone to follow you and then run by some poor, unsuspecting guy who doesn’t know what hit him when 30 guys suddenly zero in on him in passing. That’s the reason for the leashing mechanic. It’s sort of important to have.

The same thing with having complex groups of enemies in Guild Wars 1 in the open world. You had heroes. You don’t here. You can’t have a group of guys with a healer, a minion master and an ele, in case someone is soloing. Again in an instanced game with heroes you can.

But you can’t have 8 heroes in this game, because if you think the lag and culling is bad now, imagine how bad it would be if everyone in a zerg had their own personal zerg with them.

People who played Guild Wars 1 as their primary game don’t see why these things are necessary in an open world game..but they are. And since Guild Wars 2 was designed to be open world, I don’t see how it can really change to suit you, which is unfortunate, because out of the true MMOs, this one is my favorite.

What was it useful for?

BadHabitZz.1856:

huh? i dont think iam playing same game as OP is this gw2 forum?

It is. And yes, Anet listens to fans. They always have to some degree. Doesn’t mean they’ll do everything you want, because different people want different things.

But this is the sort of snarky negativity I’ve come to expect from some of the posters here. Obviously some people do think Anet listens to fans. I’m not so sure your post adds much to this discussion.

I had problems with immersion in Guild Wars 1 too….like no cities at all. What was LA in Guild Wars 1? After all the build up I finally get there and there are some guys standing around and some guys selling stuff in front of tents. No houses, no buildings, no structures you can enter. It was very anti-climatic for me to reach LA. The first thing that looked like a city didn’t come in Till Factions, with KC and that was the last city in the game. I have friends with back yards as big as LA was.

Shame you didn’t bother following the lore, or you’d know why LA looks the way it does. It was destroyed by a tidal wave, and rebuilt from the wrecks of boats over time. As for story tellling, yes, I agree the overall story was probably better in Guild Wars 1…but Prophecies by itself had some glaring errors. Matter of opinion I suppose.

I hated that I knew a bad guy when I saw one but my characters were so stupid they trusted everyone. I hated every mission in the Maguuma Jungle. Pure filler. Ways to slow down the game.

I didn’t love the missions in the Southern Shiverpeaks either. The story telling was okay..not brilliant in Guild Wars 1.

Here the stories and information is more hidden. It isn’t in your face. I sorta like that.

I do prefer the types of cut scenes they had in GW 1 better, but I understand why it had to change.

Anyway, if they lost you they lost you. Leaving threads are generally locked, so have fun wherever you end up.

ArchonWing.9480:

Vayne.8563:

ArchonWing.9480:

I suddenly thought of something.

Someone demands superfast runs, and others ping their gear while nitpicking things to the tune of a stopwatch…. sounds elitist right?

But it’s also the mark of some one that is lazy/unskilled and wants to be carried. And naturally they’d try to find flaws in someone else to mask their own mistakes. Hmm… It’s quite possible OP that they need you more then you need them.

I’m not lazy, unskilled and I hate being carried. But that isn’t the same thing as saying I must do everything as efficiently as possible.

Why yes, life tends to contain more than two things, it’s not just black and white, and that’s probably why people are complaining in the first place. Though of course I never really said that either. Some feel that others dictate the “right” way to play, and thus others get mad.

When I used to work in NYC, there was a very fast way for me to get to work. Fastest way possible. There was another way that was more scenic. Sometimes I wanted to get to work fast, but often I wanted to relax and just enjoy the scenic route. Nothing wrong with it. Doesn’t make me lazy.

Sometimes I’d carpool with someone who also enjoyed the scenic route, even though the other route was more efficient.

We got to work on time anyway, who cares if it took five minutes longer.

People who don’t watch every second on a run aren’t looking to be carried. They’re looking for a different play experience.

Everyone plays games for their own reasons, and it is indeed unfair to impose that on everyone else. But at the same time, one has to realize that it would be best that in situations such as 5 person instances that everyone agrees on what kind of play experience to seek. Some groups have naturally higher expectations.

Some groups do have higher expectations. I have a higher expectation in my groups. I expect people to have fun and enjoy themselves. That’s a high expectation. Doing it as fast as possible, from my point of view, is a lower expectation. <grins>

clay.7849:

ScottBroChill.3254:

I say any argument about gw1 that includes things from Eye of the North should be dismissed. That is when they were testing ideas they wanted to include in gw2 and for the most part ruined a lot of the fun of the game. It was a scrapped mess that they released so people wouldn’t be upset about losing out on the Utopia expansion and in the end added more problems and ruined every other part of the game besides Eye of the North.

I agree 100%. The game was practically unplayable after EOTN, IMO.

Wow you and Scott agree on something? Imagine that? I think you might be the same person.

Unfortunately you can’t pick and choose what you talk about when you talk about Guild Wars 1. Well you can but you CERTAINLY can’t talk about what other people use as a basis of comparison. You’re not the Guild Wars 1 police any more than I’m the Guild Wars 2 police.

And the problems with Guild Wars 1 started all the way in Factions, where faction grind was a travesty, because people wanted to get the most power they could out of the Luxon/Kurzick skills. And in Nightfall, also before Eye of the North, people wanted to get all the benefit they could from Sunspear/Lightbringer skills.

And in case you haven’t noticed, builds like sabway and permasin predated Eye of the North. Later on there were other “trick” builds that imbalanced the game and made it unplayable. Eye of the North showed a progression toward what Guild Wars 1 was going towards. You choose to ignore it and then blame Guild Wars 2 for continuing the trend that should have been obvious in the first place.

Eye of the North, btw, was my favorite of all the Guild Wars titles.

Plenty to do at 80 for certain types of players and not plenty to do at 80 for other types of players. I’m an old fashioned RPG player and I find plenty to do. I also know how to make my own fun. I don’t need to be spoonfed fun, like many people do. I guess that comes from not having 8 zillion entertainment options at your fingertips. When I was growing up, if I had a TV show I liked I saw it one night a week and had to wait till the next week to see it again. I couldn’t even go rent it at a video store because there was no such thing.

Today people want to be constantly entertained, but they often don’t take responsibility for their own entertainment. Take jumping puzzles. I’ve done about 2/3s of them.

I’ve yet to go look up where one was, I’m looking for them, which takes time. If I looked up the solution to everything on the net instead of figuring it out for myself, I’d probably be out of things to do too.

ArchonWing.9480:

I suddenly thought of something.

Someone demands superfast runs, and others ping their gear while nitpicking things to the tune of a stopwatch…. sounds elitist right?

But it’s also the mark of some one that is lazy/unskilled and wants to be carried. And naturally they’d try to find flaws in someone else to mask their own mistakes. Hmm… It’s quite possible OP that they need you more then you need them.

I’m not lazy, unskilled and I hate being carried. But that isn’t the same thing as saying I must do everything as efficiently as possible.

When I used to work in NYC, there was a very fast way for me to get to work. Fastest way possible. There was another way that was more scenic. Sometimes I wanted to get to work fast, but often I wanted to relax and just enjoy the scenic route. Nothing wrong with it. Doesn’t make me lazy.

Sometimes I’d carpool with someone who also enjoyed the scenic route, even though the other route was more efficient.

We got to work on time anyway, who cares if it took five minutes longer.

People who don’t watch every second on a run aren’t looking to be carried. They’re looking for a different play experience.

Yep, I do them every day, often without even trying. Today I ran three dungeon paths back to back and when I was done I needed only gathering or salvaging to finish it, both of which I’d do normally anyway.

But I enjoy keg brawl so I went there instead…a few minutes doing something I enjoy and I had my daily.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Weird perception. There are more than ten who post here regularly with concerns about the game. There are also more than ten who post here regularly praising the game. Apparently counting is difficult for some people.

The negativity is about as much as any major gaming forum I’ve visited over the years. From what I’ve read, statistically most people don’t even visit the forums, so it’s not even a significant factor if they are “negative.” The majority of players are going to form their opinion of the game playing it, rather than whatever is said on a forum they don’t even read. When people feel a need to constantly defend the game anytime a criticism is made—that’s irrational and leads to a kind of myopia that prevents any serious and constructive criticism from ever getting off the ground.

I can count just fine. But I’m not talking about the guys that have legit complaints about the game. I’m talking about the guys who say its’ dying with no evidence, or this feature won’t be coming with no evidence, or saying pretty much anything that’s negative just to get in a cheap jibe.

Saying the game is dying, for example, can’t in any way be construed as constructive. I’m quite happy to entertain constructive criticism of the game. That’s not the issue. It’s the guys who are so kitten because this game isn’t what they expected that they think everyone feels as they do. There are less than ten of them.

Anet has said they’re not working on expansions at this time. Therefore, what can Anet actually say. They haven’t actually decided there won’t be a full-fledged expansion, so they can’t say there won’t be, and they haven’t ruled it out so they can’t say their will be. I’d call that communication.

The Flame and Frost story, I’m guessing here, is a test case. It started off slow, they want to see what they can/cant’ do with it, and then they’re going to move it forward. I have a feeling the living story thing is going to kick up a notch the next time they have it. I think this is setting the stage for something bigger.

Most MMOs don’t have monthly content updates anyway. When you add up everything that’s come out in monthly content updates so far, it’s actually quite a lot of stuff. I expect more stuff in the future, particularly as the major infrastructure gets filled like the LFG tool, custom arenas, observer mode and the like.

There are two ways to get content. Wait a year or a year and a half, pay some money and get all your content at once, or get some content every month that you don’t pay for. When you look back over the course of a year and a half, how much content did you really end up getting?

And you’re not paying for that content, so that’s a bonus.

For the record, I believe there is an expansion planned but they’re not going to work on it until the game is in the shape it should have been in at launch (which it’s getting to around now). Now with the culling fixed, guesting in, an LFG tool coming, you’ll start to see more moves toward more ambitious content.

And let’s not forget, something like the Fractals usually only comes in a major update, like paid expansion. We got it free. No telling what else we’ll get for free over the next year.

By my count there are less than ten people who post here regularly who have serious issues with the game. Because they post a lot and back each other up, it seems like there’s a whole lot of negativity on the forum. There’s really not. There’s a handful of guys who are all kitten for different reasons. And those reasons are completely legitimate—to them. They should be allowed to have their say, as long as what they’re saying has some basis in reality and they’re not just making stuff up because they feel hurt and see everything through a veneer of disappointment.

Saying the game is not doing well, for example, when they don’t know. Their opinion is based on the idea that they don’t like the game, so no one is playing it. Or they think their opinion is so wide spread that it represents the majority.

Obviously I do enjoy the game, and I do enjoy coming here and talking to the people who don’t, not for them, but for other people who are watching and aren’t posting.

But don’t let the naysayers get you down. Their opinion is worth as much as ours…but not more. And others who are reading what they say will see the other side of things as long as people who like the game keep posting in response.

Of course, the game needs some work..but that’s true of every MMO in existence.

I like the character too. That said, I also liked the second book, Edge of Destiny. I liked it for different reasons. But it would probably make more sense to make an Edge of Destiny movie, just because of the direct link to the game.

On the other hand this is all theoretical because I’m pretty sure there’ll be no movie. Still can’t wait for the last book.

The Orr chains are really no joke. Some of them are challenging. You do have to have some coordination to cap the Temple of Balthazar for example.

It’s a good idea. I like it.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Vayne.8563:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

The storyline and characters aren’t fleshed out enough to warrant a movie. They would definitely have to expand on certain parts of the lore (such as the Pale Tree possibly being a champion of the jungle dragon), improve certain characters (Trahearne, namely), and slow the pace down into multiple movies to warrant a film adaptation.

But they could make movies from the books.

True enough, but only Ghosts of Ascalon was good enough to make a good movie, IMO. I loved the character of Dougal Keane and was extremely disappointed in the fact that you can’t go on adventures with him.

But you can find him in game….have you spoken to him?

Duke Blackrose.4981:

The storyline and characters aren’t fleshed out enough to warrant a movie. They would definitely have to expand on certain parts of the lore (such as the Pale Tree possibly being a champion of the jungle dragon), improve certain characters (Trahearne, namely), and slow the pace down into multiple movies to warrant a film adaptation.

But they could make movies from the books.

I’ve done several of the minidungeons and the problem really isn’t that they’re easy. The problem is people can just look on the internet to see how to get through them. That’s the real problem.

Me, I’d just as soon go into a dungeon and figure it out than watch a video about it or read a website. But a lot of people get frustrated by something, run to the internet, follow a walk-through and then they’re done with everything and they complain.

I’ve done now close to 2/3rds of the jumping puzzles. I haven’t looked up where they are to find them. I look for them and do them when I find them. And it takes me a REALLY long time to look up something online to see how to get through it. That makes the game harder for me.

There’s an interesting mini dungeon in one of the charr zones, where there are a number of puzzles. At the end of an event chain a gate appears and takes you to it. You’d never know it was there if you didn’t finish that event chain. The dungeon itself is a lot of fun.

But what made it fun for me was that the first time I experienced it, it was me and three strangers, all caught up in it, with no idea how to get through. And no one went to the internet. We figured it out, over time. It was a blast.

Did it really require coordination. Not so much. But it required group problem solving and throwing ideas around to see where to go.

I haven’t found all the mini dungeons yet, and I’m looking forward to them.

RebelYell.7132:

Oh, I’ve no doubt Fractals are the most popular non-CoFp1 content on GW2LFG. I see no reason why someone would like the launch dungeons but not Fractals. But I don’t see why that crowd would have asked for another tier above Exotic. Gear progression is more the love of the Burning Crusade fan.

But people did ask. People wanted a way to progress their character and anything besides that mild gear progression would take a whole lot of time to implement. Time Anet just didn’t have.

It’s so easy to sit back and judge what other’s do when you have so little invested in it. It’s not five years of your life and your millions of dollars. It’s Anets. They made a business decision based on what they thought was right for their game. You see that as somehow selling out.

Letting the game tank because too many people didn’t give it a chance, because there was no gear progression and that’s what they were used to wasn’t a better choice. And I think it would have happened. Certainly I think without the fractals there would be less players today.

Naturally I can’t prove it, but it’s very popularity must say something about it.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Are you saying people didn’t want higher stats. They actually probably wanted a lot more than Anet gave them, but Anet gave them just enough. Enough to keep them busy while they worked on other stuff. Not enough to ruin the game for guys like me.

So when you said the following, you didn’t mean it?

But you can’t prove and have no idea if you’re going to win a battle you would have lost or if you’d still have lost the battle.
As far as I’m concerned, ascended gear is most often used as an excuse for one someone was beaten in 1v1, even though they have no actual clue whether the person they’re fighting is in rares or exotics, or has ascended jewelry.

You can’t have it both ways. Either Ascended gear is beneficial and useful in winning a battle or it isn’t.

You like to say it isn’t useful when people say that they need to grind for it in WvW – but then when asked why put something in the game that isn’t useful, you make a long post about how it is useful.

Either it is – and it is a reasonable problem for people wanted to use it in WvW to have no good way to get access to it – or it isn’t useful – and therefore shouldn’t be in the game.

Which is it?

I think you completely misread my post and you should read it again. I didn’t at all say in that post that it was useful. I said the opposite. I said people use it as an excuse to excuse the fact that they lost. The implication is that they lost and would have lost anyway.

People like to blame their own failures on other stuff. So if they lose 1v1, it’s easy to say, I bet that guy had ascended gear. In reality they don’t know. I think that only a very very small percentage of times that you’d actually lose, you’d suddenly win due to ascended gear. I’ve said this before too.

When you meet someone 1v1 in WvW, you have a profession and a build and they have a profession and a build and certain builds have advantages over certain other builds. Often the nature of the builds will determine the outcome, followed by player skill. The stats, of course, add to that, but it’s skill selection as much as anything that make the difference. That and skill. Much more than stats.

So I’m not contradicting myself at all. You just completely missed the point.

Shootsfoot.9276:

Snow White.9680:

I found the ranger to be boring and flavorless. It’s just your generic pet class. There’s literally nothing exciting or new about it.

I like the mesmer because no other game offers it. It’s ANet exclusive and super fun.

The problem with the ranger is the pet is so useless.

I loved the ranger class in GW1…you were the interrupt god.

The pet is relatively useless against champions and in dungeons, unless you use spiders, in which case they’re not to bad. In the rest of the game, if you spec right, pets can be very useful.

And yes with stuff like search and rescue on your tool bar, even in dungeons they can be mad useful.

RebelYell.7132:

Vayne.8563:

RebelYell.7132:

Who is Fractals a compromise with? The WoW expatriots? Dungeons that take forever, and frequently take away your unique profession abilities so you can be a dolphin or whatever, smack of stuff they hate, like The Oculus. The casuals? Well good going making a dungeon that requires a 5-man party, doesn’t scale to any level except 80, and doesn’t give XP, then. People used to GOOD alternate advancement systems, like City of Heroes Incarnate Enhancements and Dark Age of Camelot Realm Ranks? LMAO

If anyone asked for Fractals, Laurels, and Ascended, then what they got is like asking for Lego for Christmas and getting Mega Blocks.

Are you saying Fractals wasn’t/isn’t popular?

Do I have empirical evidence that it isn’t? No. What I bring is logical conjecture.

All you have to do to see if Fractals are popular is look at how many people are constantly looking for fractal groups. People complain there’s no one in dungeons, because everyone is doing fractals.

My guild may not be typical but just about everyone in my guild likes Fractals, including me, and I don’t love grinding.

Because there are 9 of them and you’re only doing three for four at a time, there’s a bit of variety, as well as variety in each of the fractals. For example, in the dolphin on, I rarely get to be a dolphin. There’s another path through that which you might get which doesn’t turn you into a dolphin, but instead you have to swim through the piranha infested waters.

I’d go as far to say the fractals are the most popular dungeon in Guild Wars 2, with the exception of CoF path 1 and that’s only for farming. For pure fun and challenge far more people run Fractals.

If you’re seriously arguing they’re not popular, there’s not much left to argue about.

I haven’t particularly noticed anything. Where is this happening? Anywhere in particular?

RebelYell.7132:

Who is Fractals a compromise with? The WoW expatriots? Dungeons that take forever, and frequently take away your unique profession abilities so you can be a dolphin or whatever, smack of stuff they hate, like The Oculus. The casuals? Well good going making a dungeon that requires a 5-man party, doesn’t scale to any level except 80, and doesn’t give XP, then. People used to GOOD alternate advancement systems, like City of Heroes Incarnate Enhancements and Dark Age of Camelot Realm Ranks? LMAO

If anyone asked for Fractals, Laurels, and Ascended, then what they got is like asking for Lego for Christmas and getting Mega Blocks.

Are you saying Fractals wasn’t/isn’t popular?

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Vayne.8563:

Faster completion by how much? Do you have any idea? Do you know what percentage of the playerbase cares about completing something 1 minute or 2 minutes sooner.

Yes, there are a some hard core farmers who care. I say let them care. I’m pretty sure that the largest percentage of the playerbase isn’t stressed by this.

If you are…okay. Doesn’t phase me at all. I’m playing the game and enjoying myself.

BTW, I have ascended gear on a single character and a number of alts. I think I’d need stop watch to see a difference.

Erm, I don’t really need a stopwatch to see how much ascended works in WvW. I have 3 ascended items and I already noticed a difference in my burst damage attacks.

But you can’t prove and have no idea if you’re going to win a battle you would have lost or if you’d still have lost the battle.

As far as I’m concerned, ascended gear is most often used as an excuse for one someone was beaten in 1v1, even though they have no actual clue whether the person they’re fighting is in rares or exotics, or has ascended jewelry.

So why did the developers take the time to make Ascended Gear that in your opinion, is not beneficial?

Wouldn’t it have been better to have either made gear that is useful or to have focused their attention elsewhere?

Yet another example of bad time and resource management by ANet by making something that has no benefit in the game.

We’ve been over this and over this and you’ve already asked me this question and I’ve already answered. It was called a compromise. It gave the people who wanted that kind of progression something to do without jeopardizing the rest of the game in the process. They could have not put it in, but I bet you the player population would be lower today than it would have been otherwise. I can’t prove that, of course, but I deeply believe it.

Some people left over it, but far more people stayed and more people joined. So yeah, it was a compromise. The people who need hard core gear grind won’t stay anyway, but many others who just need something to work for will.

Who were the people that wanted progression through gear that didn’t add any value to their stats as you are implying they don’t?

I mean you have to understand that, based on your argument, ascended gear is worthless. Therefore, who would want a worthless gear progression?

I don’t see that as a compromise, I see that as lazy.

Well you can see it any way you want. I see it differently.

The situation was people were not staying with the game at 80. I did. Other people like me did. But some people weren’t. Most of them who were leaving were saying there was nothing to do and what was most asked for was something to “work for”…which means grind in English. Because no developer can make enough content to keep the content locusts happy.

Are you saying people didn’t want higher stats. They actually probably wanted a lot more than Anet gave them, but Anet gave them just enough. Enough to keep them busy while they worked on other stuff. Not enough to ruin the game for guys like me.

They were always going to lose the ends of the spectrum with this. The people who absolutely couldn’t deal with any kind of vertical progression at all, and the people who wanted full on vertical progression, and raids and whatever. They weren’t going to please everyone. But they seemed to have pleased enough people to have kept the game going strong.

There are so many little cool things in this game. I keep finding them. Every time I turn around there’s something I hadn’t noticed before my first six times through the game. That’s pretty cool.

And so many oblique (and sometimes no so oblique) references to Guild Wars 1 also. I particularly enjoy those.

Reanne.5462:

No, there is no ‘reset’, you are experiencing RNG (alimo)
maybe anet would be willing to remove any doubt by standing up and being transparent about their policies instead of being afraid of telling us what they are.

The DR policy is, at least in part, there to thwart bots and gold sellers who farm. It prevents them from farming the same thing over and over.

If you become transparent, all you’re really doing it telling them how to design better bots.

Khal Drogo.9631:

GW2 must suck because it has a bad storyline according to many people. Personally I dont find the storyline to be bad, just too short.

It is too short…because it’s just the beginning. It’s like the story of Prophecies isn’t the story of all Guild Wars. We still have more to do, as in killing the other elder dragons. Hell even the Karka event continued the story, and now the living story is driving it further (though I think the living story has been way overhyped).

DrixTrix.7168:

wow, a nice answer with an explanation, thanks a bunch, love these forums sometimes, on others all you get is ‘’rar rar your a rar’’

anywho i agree the weapon swap and skills being tied to them is innovative, the way its done hasn’t been implemented in any mmo i have played before and i rather enjoy it, encourages more diversity and choices, hopefully if they do housing it will be done well.

on a side note how did Aions housing turn out if any of you guys/gals played it? the advertisement looked promising with the way the introduced it, i didn’t play it for any longer than a month or so, though.

I only got a basic house in Aion and it wasn’t too bad. It was an instanced neighborhood that you went to, and you were pretty much given your first starter house. I could see where it could be fun, another thing to do in the game.

I was never much of a “house” guy anyway at least in MMOs, but I did have quite a collection of interesting houses back in Second Life.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Mathias.9657:

It’s already a carbon copy in terms of grind, thanks to vertical stat progression that was added. May as well go the extra mile and put in raids if you ask me. I would have liked if this game was much more like GW1 but it obviously isn’t going that route, just to put that out there. I don’t want a WoW2 but hey we already got the grind, why not better and bigger raid dungeons for end-game that uses 10 players instead of 5.

Dungeons are just used to grind, a big enough raid wouldn’t even allow you to, if it had enough boss progression it would take up a lot of players time (a good thing) instead of just repeating it over and over. Add some difficulty, cool rewards, and people will flock. And no 1shot mechanics are not what I call entertaining difficulty (hint hint ANet)

Nothing more rewarding in this game than downing a boss and getting blues out of it /sarcasm

I think you should look up carbon copy in the dictionary. I’m not sure it means what you think it means.

This game may indeed have some vertical progression in it, but comparing it to other games with vertical progression, anyone actually looking could see the vast differences.

Maybe you haven’t actually played those other games, and you’re a Guild Wars 1 player, who talks about them as if he had. I’ve played those others game. There’s no way anyone could actually say this game is a carbon copy of them, or even very similar.

In Rift, back when I played, I had to do certain dungeons in order to get the gear to do the next dungeon, or raid. You did one till you were completely geared up, then you did the next one. Want to know why? Because the game didn’t allow you to queue for a dungeon if you didn’t have the requisite gear.

During the leveling process in Rift, you had certain stats. When you reached level cap they added a NEW stat for each profession. One that didn’t exist while you were leveling. For casters it was focus. For tanks it was toughness. For melee classes it was “to hit”. Those had to be increased only by gear gotten from running specific dungeons. If you didn’t have that gear when you went to the LFG tool, which is how people formed parties, it would check to make sure you had that gear, or you couldn’t queue.

How can anyone say this mild vertical gear progression like that?

But hat was your choice to do that content. Just like in GW2. No one made you do it. You didn’t need to do it. It was your choice.

Actually it’s not quite that simple. In that game, you were literally funneled into it, because there was only one single epic questline in the game and it ran through a raid. Do you know how people in Guild Wars 2 complain that the personal story ends in a dungeon. Well in Rift, the epic quest chain went through every dungeon and then the first raid. If you didn’t want to gear up for the raid, you could never finish the only epic quest line in the game. But it was more than that.

in Guild Wars 2, dynamic events are repeatable. In Rift, you did a quest and it was gone. All you had left were Rifts and Zone WIde events. The problem there is that Zone Wide events could only be done with enough people doing them, but no one did them. At all. It would be like if the group events that people couldn’t solo in Guild Wars 2 covered the entire zone. And you really couldn’t go back to earlier zones, because there was nothing to do there. The creatures wouldn’t even attack you.

The entire game funneled you into doing one thing and one thing only. People accuse Guild Wars 2 of that, but in reality, I’m quite happy to go back and play in earlier zones due to down leveling and there are plenty of events I can do and enjoy here.

In Rift, you really didn’t have much choice.

DrixTrix.7168:

how has weapon swapping got anything to do with GW2 housing?

on topic:

i hope they never add it, personally i think it will end up making people/guilds hiding out in these places and never in the open world, as soon as housing is out (if there planning on it) then the’ll be calls for smiths, trainers of various type, repair shop, TP merchant….before you know it you’ll have an entire town to yourself.

we’ll see but i am against it, of course they might do it decently.

You’re quite correct, the weapon swapping came in because of the concepts of innovation. And I believe if housing is introduced, it will be innovative, unlike say the housing in Lotro, which was a complete waste.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Vayne.8563:

Faster completion by how much? Do you have any idea? Do you know what percentage of the playerbase cares about completing something 1 minute or 2 minutes sooner.

Yes, there are a some hard core farmers who care. I say let them care. I’m pretty sure that the largest percentage of the playerbase isn’t stressed by this.

If you are…okay. Doesn’t phase me at all. I’m playing the game and enjoying myself.

BTW, I have ascended gear on a single character and a number of alts. I think I’d need stop watch to see a difference.

Erm, I don’t really need a stopwatch to see how much ascended works in WvW. I have 3 ascended items and I already noticed a difference in my burst damage attacks.

But you can’t prove and have no idea if you’re going to win a battle you would have lost or if you’d still have lost the battle.

As far as I’m concerned, ascended gear is most often used as an excuse for one someone was beaten in 1v1, even though they have no actual clue whether the person they’re fighting is in rares or exotics, or has ascended jewelry.

So why did the developers take the time to make Ascended Gear that in your opinion, is not beneficial?

Wouldn’t it have been better to have either made gear that is useful or to have focused their attention elsewhere?

Yet another example of bad time and resource management by ANet by making something that has no benefit in the game.

We’ve been over this and over this and you’ve already asked me this question and I’ve already answered. It was called a compromise. It gave the people who wanted that kind of progression something to do without jeopardizing the rest of the game in the process. They could have not put it in, but I bet you the player population would be lower today than it would have been otherwise. I can’t prove that, of course, but I deeply believe it.

Some people left over it, but far more people stayed and more people joined. So yeah, it was a compromise. The people who need hard core gear grind won’t stay anyway, but many others who just need something to work for will.

clay.7849:

Not that different. Certainly nothing ground breaking. Most of the functionality is used to dumb down mechanics that were much more skill based in GW1.

Did you ever swap weapons in GW1 Vayne? Ever have a negative energy and a high energy set? Prolly not, eh?

Sure I swapped weapons. Doesn’t change the basic fact that my skills weren’t directly linked to those weapons. If I swapped from a sword to a hammer, I’d also have to swap the sword skills on my bar, with the hammer skills on my bar. And all of that is irrelevant because it’s a different system. You don’t get your skills in GW 1 from the weapons, but you got them independent of the weapons.

You could train a sword skill without ever owning a sword. It’s entirely possible. Of course, since you’ve already admitted you love to troll me, no one can take what you say seriously anyway. Good job that.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

My knowledge of the genre is fine. Let’s look at some MMOs and see which one has skills linked specifically to weapons. This doesn’t mean that some weapons give you some skills. It means ALL your base skills are based on weapon and when you change your weapon the skill changes. I haven’t seen any other MMO that’s done this, and I’ve seen a bunch of them.

Deliberately misinterpreting something to support your agenda does nothing for your credibility.

You claimed that “The skills linked to weapons, whether you like it or not, is ground-breaking for an MMO.” There’s no other way to interpret your post except as claiming that skills linked to weapons is ground-breaking. It’s not. Your charge of misinterpretation is false and does nothing for your credibility.

Now you’re filling in a broader definition after the fact. If you meant swapping on the fly, you should have said that. But even that’s not profoundly new in any radical sense.

I also played SWG. Weapon swapping was just a click away:

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=114149

Actually no, I shouldn’t have said anything because I was communicating with people who KNEW the Guild Wars 2 weapon system. The only people who didn’t get what I was saying was people trying to get me into a linguistic trap instead of listening to actually what was being said.

People are saying the weapons system in this game has been done before. It hasn’t. There are variations and such, but no MMO has a weapon system like this game has. You may not like the weapon system, but it doesn’t change the fact.

Yes, the SWG weapon system is very nice…but it’s also very different to this one. Indeed if it’s much better as claimed, it pretty much has to be different.

I wasn’t trying to describe the GW 2 weapon system in detail. I was trying to say the weapon system didn’t exist prior to the release of this game.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Vayne.8563:

Faster completion by how much? Do you have any idea? Do you know what percentage of the playerbase cares about completing something 1 minute or 2 minutes sooner.

Yes, there are a some hard core farmers who care. I say let them care. I’m pretty sure that the largest percentage of the playerbase isn’t stressed by this.

If you are…okay. Doesn’t phase me at all. I’m playing the game and enjoying myself.

BTW, I have ascended gear on a single character and a number of alts. I think I’d need stop watch to see a difference.

Erm, I don’t really need a stopwatch to see how much ascended works in WvW. I have 3 ascended items and I already noticed a difference in my burst damage attacks.

But you can’t prove and have no idea if you’re going to win a battle you would have lost or if you’d still have lost the battle.

As far as I’m concerned, ascended gear is most often used as an excuse for one someone was beaten in 1v1, even though they have no actual clue whether the person they’re fighting is in rares or exotics, or has ascended jewelry.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Then focus on how they did things Vayne, instead of constantly claiming they invented everything. Leave that to Al Gore.

Most of this game has been done, before. Very little can be claimed as innovation.

Doesn’t make it a bad game. Or good. Or diminish anything they have done.

Again, the way things are combined is what makes it unique, and original. There are plenty of examples I can give of recombined things that are far better than any of the originals.

I’ve spent time writing and editing and there are simply very few new ideas. That doesn’t mean that certain books don’t take those ideas to a new level. That’s what Guild Wars 2 did.

It doesn’t matter that other games did various things. That’s not what makes the game unique. What makes it unique is the specific combination of things.

By your standards no book can ever be innovative, because everything in it has been done before. I’d categorically disagree with this assessment.

When you make an absolute statement like this I question your knowledge of the genre;
“Actually, Guild Wars 2 did break a lot of MMO ground. The skills linked to weapons, whether you like it or not, is ground-breaking for an MMO.”

Weapons linked skills are common, have been around for years, and in many games. Try using a common skill like “shield bash” in the many games that have it.. without a shield? As I said before, in 2003 my SWG chars had skillsets based on weapons choice.

What Anet did was functionality of weapons swapping, in that it flips your weapon and skill bar in one step. That is it.

When you flatly overstate an argument, I tend to suspect a lot of your other claims.

My knowledge of the genre is fine. Let’s look at some MMOs and see which one has skills linked specifically to weapons. This doesn’t mean that some weapons give you some skills. It means ALL your base skills are based on weapon and when you change your weapon the skill changes. I haven’t seen any other MMO that’s done this, and I’ve seen a bunch of them.

Deliberately misinterpreting something to support your agenda does nothing for your credibility.

The fact is, no MMO has a combat system like Guild War 2. Not one of them. Sure there was Guild Wars 1, where different weapons offered options for different skills, but that’s not what we have here.

The idea of swapping a single weapon and getting five new skills…on the fly? What MMO does that, pray tell?

You are talking UI function swap, not weapons tied to skills. All that this game does that others have not is the auto Hotkey swap tied to the weapon swap. Often something not needed with configurable hotbars, swappable hot bars, and other mechanics. In SWG, 9 years ago, a simple macro if you wished accomplished the same thing, or two UI clicks vs one here. 9 years ago. And 9 years ago, swapping a weapon gave me far more than 5 skills linked to it, and in fact required a hotbar change to use it. Many games give you different skills with a weapons change, and you use a separate toolbar. I will repeat, nothing new except for one button functionality.

I can log into EQ2, hit my ranged key, and “on the fly” have all of my Assassins bow skills instantly usable, as my bow is equipped. Hit tilde and use my daggers, instantly, with all of my dagger skills. The only difference is I have 20 hotkeys there, and no need to switch hotbars.

Argue UI function. Weapons linked skills.. no, you are wrong, period. Elementalist attunements.. yes, that is new, but you didn’t mention that.

My point is, this system is DIFFERENT from the one in SWG whether it was nine years ago, or yesterday. Different is different. Now, you may like that system better, that’s entirely possible, but don’t claim the system is the same if it’s not the same. It’s a different system.

When we talk about innovation we talk about this system, as compared to other systems out there in other MMOs. Some people quite like this system and some people don’t. But I’ve never seen this system before and I’m pretty sure no MMO has had it.

The ability to swap out every skill at the same time by changing what’s in your hand isnt’ just used for weapons. It’s used for morphs, puzzles, environmental weapons…it opens up an entire world of opportunity for what the devs can do with the game. Things like Guild Rush for example.

It’s one thing to love your old game (9 years ago, 9!), and it’s even cool to prefer it, but don’t say this did it first…because this game is different.

Mathias.9657:

It’s already a carbon copy in terms of grind, thanks to vertical stat progression that was added. May as well go the extra mile and put in raids if you ask me. I would have liked if this game was much more like GW1 but it obviously isn’t going that route, just to put that out there. I don’t want a WoW2 but hey we already got the grind, why not better and bigger raid dungeons for end-game that uses 10 players instead of 5.

Dungeons are just used to grind, a big enough raid wouldn’t even allow you to, if it had enough boss progression it would take up a lot of players time (a good thing) instead of just repeating it over and over. Add some difficulty, cool rewards, and people will flock. And no 1shot mechanics are not what I call entertaining difficulty (hint hint ANet)

Nothing more rewarding in this game than downing a boss and getting blues out of it /sarcasm

I think you should look up carbon copy in the dictionary. I’m not sure it means what you think it means.

This game may indeed have some vertical progression in it, but comparing it to other games with vertical progression, anyone actually looking could see the vast differences.

Maybe you haven’t actually played those other games, and you’re a Guild Wars 1 player, who talks about them as if he had. I’ve played those others game. There’s no way anyone could actually say this game is a carbon copy of them, or even very similar.

In Rift, back when I played, I had to do certain dungeons in order to get the gear to do the next dungeon, or raid. You did one till you were completely geared up, then you did the next one. Want to know why? Because the game didn’t allow you to queue for a dungeon if you didn’t have the requisite gear.

During the leveling process in Rift, you had certain stats. When you reached level cap they added a NEW stat for each profession. One that didn’t exist while you were leveling. For casters it was focus. For tanks it was toughness. For melee classes it was “to hit”. Those had to be increased only by gear gotten from running specific dungeons. If you didn’t have that gear when you went to the LFG tool, which is how people formed parties, it would check to make sure you had that gear, or you couldn’t queue.

How can anyone say this mild vertical gear progression like that?

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Then focus on how they did things Vayne, instead of constantly claiming they invented everything. Leave that to Al Gore.

Most of this game has been done, before. Very little can be claimed as innovation.

Doesn’t make it a bad game. Or good. Or diminish anything they have done.

Again, the way things are combined is what makes it unique, and original. There are plenty of examples I can give of recombined things that are far better than any of the originals.

I’ve spent time writing and editing and there are simply very few new ideas. That doesn’t mean that certain books don’t take those ideas to a new level. That’s what Guild Wars 2 did.

It doesn’t matter that other games did various things. That’s not what makes the game unique. What makes it unique is the specific combination of things.

By your standards no book can ever be innovative, because everything in it has been done before. I’d categorically disagree with this assessment.

When you make an absolute statement like this I question your knowledge of the genre;
“Actually, Guild Wars 2 did break a lot of MMO ground. The skills linked to weapons, whether you like it or not, is ground-breaking for an MMO.”

Weapons linked skills are common, have been around for years, and in many games. Try using a common skill like “shield bash” in the many games that have it.. without a shield? As I said before, in 2003 my SWG chars had skillsets based on weapons choice.

What Anet did was functionality of weapons swapping, in that it flips your weapon and skill bar in one step. That is it.

When you flatly overstate an argument, I tend to suspect a lot of your other claims.

My knowledge of the genre is fine. Let’s look at some MMOs and see which one has skills linked specifically to weapons. This doesn’t mean that some weapons give you some skills. It means ALL your base skills are based on weapon and when you change your weapon the skill changes. I haven’t seen any other MMO that’s done this, and I’ve seen a bunch of them.

Deliberately misinterpreting something to support your agenda does nothing for your credibility.

The fact is, no MMO has a combat system like Guild War 2. Not one of them. Sure there was Guild Wars 1, where different weapons offered options for different skills, but that’s not what we have here.

The idea of swapping a single weapon and getting five new skills…on the fly? What MMO does that, pray tell?

Space Cow.2431:

Just because some skills were OP doesn’t mean it wasn’t awesome to have thousands of skills to choose from.

It kept gameplay from being BORING. I’m BORED of GW2 because the weapon skills is what you use the most, and they are ALWAYS THE SAME.

Right and other people aren’t bored by Guild Wars 2. That’s what opinions mean. In your opinion, more skills make a better game. In my opinion, more skills make a harder to balance game that will eventually fall to the wolves. It’s not worth the risk.

At any rate, I find the combat in Guild Wars 2 to be MORE involving that Guild Wars 1, at least in PVe. As I’ve said in other threads, once you outfit your heroes, even before you could take 7 heroes with you, I could practically AFK even in hard mode content.

There’s no way you can tell me that standing there and pressing 1 repeatedly is any worse than standing there and doing nothing and STILL winning. If you brought a minion master, a spirit spammer and a healer with you, you were all but invincible in all but a couple of instances. If you played with the sabway build or the even more widespread discord team which came later, you were godlike no matter what build and skills you personally took.

You want to talk about boring combat? The imbalance in PVe was so bad, that I ended up not playing the game because it was too easy.