Guild Wars 2

Nappychappy.7046:

Heijincks.9267:

Nappychappy.7046:

Heijincks.9267:

Nappychappy.7046:

Vayne.8563:

Anet had an anti-farming policy.

Please link, or copy/paste this policy for me to read over – Thanks.

Actually I think the inclusion of DR is enough to explain that.

That isn’t a policy, that is their pitiful attempt at stopping bots with a line of code. Which it did slow them down on farming DE’s, but like all who run bots, adapt to new strategies, such as tele-gather, or worse hacking.

If they had a policy, I’d think that Diminishing Returns would have been in since release, not months after.

Anet tells us it’s for bots, but despite that, it affects legit players enormously as well (and as farming is concerned, not in a good way). The reason it’s there months after release was because, like some players put it, “not playing the game Anet wants us to”. The message there is quite clear and obvious, especially since DR extends beyond just outside world farming.

You asked for an “anti-farming policy”. Obviously there’s no official policy, but from DR, we can tell that farming isn’t Anet’s intention (eg. they don’t want people farming). If the game was about farming, we wouldn’t have any of it.

That’s a satisfactory enough of an answer. If you’re not happy with it, then I don’t think you’d be satisfied with any answer.

If you read up a little bit, you will see why I am requesting the policy from the poster who keeps telling me “ITS IN THE POLICY”.

If the game isn’t about farming, actually if the game didn’t have a cash shop we wouldn’t have DR’s, DR’s are there to stop botting and to ensure that people would still buy gems with money, not just IGC. If the game wasn’t about farming there would be 1 set generic gear, 1 set generic weapons, no loot, no currency.

If the idea is to just play and enjoy the game, all those things like blue to legendary/cosmedics are completely unneeded to do so.

Wait, come back? Why would anyone ever come back after completing something? >.> It’s almost as if I was hungry once a day, and this place in the woods had food… Hrmmm..

You keep saying this, and I keep saying that Guild Wars 1 had an anti-farming policy, yet it had no gems for gold policy at all. In other words, Anet had an anti farming policy long before they were making any profit from it.

The policy was in place for game economy reasons, not because of any profit on the companies end. You’ve yet to explain why a continued policy from a previous game is suddenly a cash grab.

Repeating that the cash shop is the reason for DR doesn’t make it true. It’s an opinion you have and, considering Anet’s propensity to make it tough on farmers, I don’t see where you have a leg to stand on.

Mitch.4781:

Thrumdi.9216:

I actually feel sorry for other MMO’s. I just don’t know how they can compete with GW2.

Oo I duuno..Maybe they add actual legitimate content and not juvenile fluff?

Because so many MMOs have more content than Guild Wars 2, or add it as fast. I think you’ll find that most MMOs don’t add stuff this fast, so if some upgrades aren’t to one’s taste…well, others are.

The fractals was a major update in November. Since then they’ve added new PvP maps, and fixed culling. The game was launched prematurely, and a lot of time has been spent getting it up to scratch, and it still launched with more content than any MMO I can think of.

Sure some updates are frivolous, but if you take out those, it STILL provides more content updates than most MMOs and perhaps all of them.

Tarnished Coast is busy most of the time, though as of this addition, alot of people are playing around in the Super Fun Box. But it’s still one of the busiest servers at least for open world content.

This isn’t like a monthly update. This month we had the WvW update The lack of culling makes WvW a much better experience. We’ve had new instances with the personal story, new weapon skins from guild missions and black lion chests, and now a bit of fun for April Fools day.

There’ll be a lot of updates to come and not all of them are going to fit every single person. How about being a bit open-minded to what other people are interested in, and not think that every update has to be for you.

There’s plenty of updates to come. Some will be Pve, some will be PvP, some will be WvW and some will just be for fun. If you want ALL the updates just for you, you’re probably going to be very disappointed.

If you don’t think more armor updates are coming, or more weapons updates, or more dugneons, or whatever, you’re mistaken. But other people play games for other reasons.

This game offers a lot of content to a lot of different people. My guess is, that will continue to happen.

Veldan.4637:

Vayne.8563:

This survey could have been a lot better. Things like what do you prefer…hearts or traditional quests. Anet didn’t add the hearts to replace additional quests. They replaced traditional quests with dynamic events. The purpose of hearts was to get people to hang around in the areas where dynamic events spawn, since people were just running around missing dynamic events.

Several of the questions had no middle option. Like would you prefer one time events or the living story. Well, I’d prefer first of all to see how the living story evolves, but surely there are more options than just those two.

For example the Karka was a one time event and it failed miserably but that doesn’t mean other one time events wouldn’t work out. Given a choice between the living story as it stands now and the Karka event, I’d take the living story every time. But these two things are not all we’ve seen in the updates. Mad King Thorn’s instance wasn’t really a one time event and it wasn’t really living story. It was it’s own thing and it was great.

There are several questions in which the answers are leading, and for that reason, I’d say this survey isn’t going to provide the best information.

Thanks for your feedback, if I ever make a survey again it’s helpful :P However:

1) I do think the quests or hearts question was right, because most people I know/knew ingame, and also myself, used hearts as method of leveling rather than DEs. DEs were sort of a little extra when you ran into them. This was caused by the fact that hearts are reliable and always available. To use DEs as main leveling method, you either need to search for them or be lucky and have them spawn close to you. Add to this that people want to do hearts for world completion, and you’ll probably find hearts are used a lot more than DEs as quest replacement.

2) I didn’t think the karka event failed miserably, cause it was probably the day that me and some guildies had most fun in GW2

Re Hearts, you can’t level reliably with hearts, because you can only do them once, and then they run out. Anet has stated straight out that dynamic events have replaced quests in Traditional MMOs. Dynamic events are the meat of the game not hearts. That’s why they’re repeatable.

The question isn’t a good one, not because of how you play, but how the game was designed. Lots of people know that dynamic events are among the fastest way to level, it’s not like secret hidden voodoo knowledge or anything.

Again, the hearts didn’t even exist until much later in the game’s development cycle, because people were too thick to look for events. But to compare something that’s designed for a specific purpose, rather than the thing actually designed to compare makes the question unfair, no matter how you try to defend it.

The Karka event was so laggy, that a lot of people complained about it and Anet was forced to issue make up rewards for all the people who were kicked off the server and didn’t get one. Most people do consider the Karka event a failure, so much so that Anet has not since done a huge one time event.

I don’t get much lag at all in WvW unless it’s two giant zergs smashing into each other. Most of the time, my WvW runs pretty smooth…but I have a fairly high end machine and video card.

And I agree, that if you ask for advice, you shouldn’t be rude when people give it to you, even if you don’t like it.

Nick.6972:

Easier said than done, we’re outmanned all the time and my guild is PvE oriented.

My guild is PVe oriented too. Best reason in the world to run a WvW skill point/vista, point of interest capping event. Get the whole guild into it and try it out.

You’ll likely never like WvW, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And we have fun in there, even though it’s just 10 or 15 of us from the guild.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

You’re acting like this new gear is so significant a portion of the game, but it’s really not. It’s a couple of rings, an amulet you can get from dailiys and a couple of earrings…and a backpiece.

That’s all there is, so far. You’re making it sound like this will just keep getting worse. What I think is likely is this is a stopgap measure to keep people playing while more content is developed.

I don’t know if it’s going to get worse, but I am concerned that it will. They’ve already indicated that there are Ascended weapons and armor planned. They’ve left the door open to increasing the level cap.

What this means is, are they going to go the cheap and easy route of keeping players, rather than focusing on really, really good content? From a management and creativity perspective, it’s probably easier to just throw in some shiny new gear.

I realize they’re battling short attention spans as well, and every time a new game releases they’re going to have to deal with a new competitor. There’s enough brilliance at ArenaNet, however, that I should think they’d be able to keep the creative engines rolling, rather than falling back on gear grind to keep players. Supposedly we’re getting a “Super Adventure Box” soon. THIS is the kind of thing that’ll keep me interested and playing. Add some tier gear and I’ll get bored and annoyed and go play something else.

But hey, maybe I’m not the kind of player they care to keep playing. Time will tell.

Edit: I’m really enjoying this conversation with you, Vayne.

I’m enjoying this convo too.

The thing is, they said before launch they would likely raise the level cap with an expansion, and I went in knowing this…and I don’t mind. Because really what is leveling in this game? How long did it take to get from 70 to 80 for example? It seems to me that the higher I leveled the faster I leveled.

More to the point, if you want more achievement points, that’s one way to get them. They open up new achievements and thus more interesting build varieties. And of course, an expansion should come with more skills, and possibly more weapons.

I’m not worry about raising the level cap, particularly in a game with level scaling.

In other games, level means a whole lot more than it does here.

Ooshi.8607:

Vayne.8563:

You’d have to implement it on a PvP server, which doesn’t exist. It would be one more thing for Anet to fix bugs on, I’d rather have them working on the core game than add this sort of thing to the game for the small percentage of people who want it…and it is a small percentage.

In every game that offers it, people eventually end up moving to PVe servers, and don’t bother with PvP servers. There’ll be a couple of PvP servers but almost all of them will be Pve.

I don’t see why Anet should spent their resources. Once they make that server, it has to be maintained and then people will start complaining about specific issues…not a great idea.

How do you reach those conclusions?
40% of the servers on WoW are PvP servers.
43 out of 50 of the top EU servers are PvP.
38 out of 50 of the top US servers are PvP.

These are figures that are readily available for anyone to see. Unless you have a reason to suspect that the Guild Wars 2 playing population has a completely different bias regarding PvP I don’t really see how you can maintain you assertions that it is a small percentage of people that want it.

And again, if something like this where to be implemented in would have to be on a specific PvP server. It would not affect the PvE-only player in any way shape or form.

It would be a lot smarter to say that GW2 doesn’t have factions and as such doesn’t support this type of gameplay, although if they wanted to implement it they could go with something like the Luxon/Kurzick factions in GW1.

I for one never ganked anyone in the sense that I’ve never went with a high level character into a low level area to hunt, but how I miss being ganked while fighting a mob and then proceding to kill the mob and kill the ganker, or many times dyeing to the ganker, but that would be alright as well, that was what I signed up for when I rolled into a PvP server.
Or how I miss when a battle between 2 people would grow into massive impromptu battles between 100-200 people.
Small things like you knowing that because guild [xyz] always ganks and camps, so every time you see a group of them you make sure to organize a group of your own faction to chase them away and protect lower level areas.
Every one starts kittening about low level gankers every time one of these threads comes up, but no one seems to remember the loads of people that went with their high levels characters and patrolled and protected these areas.
Overall I just feel that a PvP server by it’s very nature encourages a more close knit community. We might hate each other in some cases, but at least we interact with one another.

And no, WvW is not the same thing.

And since WoW is not the only game in the world let’s try seeing what happened in OTHER games with open PvP.

Look at games like Rift, which came later. The later the game, the less open PvP servers seemed to make an impact on the population. The world is changing. There are plenty of people who go to FPS to beat each other up, which didn’t happen back in the old days.

Here’s a link to the Rift server shard status…you’ll note in America they are down to a single PvP server and in Europe they’re down to 3. That’s comapred with seven PvE servers in each zone.

Seems to me, your figures are misleading. In every game that’s come down the road, every game I’ve played…more and more people are moving off PvP servers, mostly because ganking is so annoying.

Even Guild Wars 1, originally a game geared to PvP ended up being more about PVe, because it’s simply more popular.

I know PvPers really don’t want to hear this truth, but it is truth.

Edit: Forgot to add the link lol

http://au.riftgame.com/en/shardstatus/

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Maybe this is some strange usage of the word interesting I wasn’t previously aware of.

Nope, it’s exactly what I mean.

And it’s more interesting than a gear tier because a new skill gave you something new to play with. Something you could add to a build, or make a build around. I agree that there were certain “stock builds” and elites that were more popular than others, but one of the genius things about Guild Wars that a lot of people seem to forget is how much creativity you could put into character and team builds.

Which is far more interesting than getting another piece of tier gear, who’s only purpose is to add a few numbers to my character sheet. You can do so much more with a new skill than you can with a new piece of gear.

Well the problem is, you’re comparing skill to gear, but in reality, what takes the place of those skills is traits. And I personally find traits far more interesting.

As you prefer. It’s the same idea, though. I’d rather have new traits to unlock than gear. Traits engage the brain. Gear is, or should be by now, very uncreative, cheap, and passé.

You’re acting like this new gear is so significant a portion of the game, but it’s really not. It’s a couple of rings, an amulet you can get from dailiys and a couple of earrings…and a backpiece.

That’s all there is, so far. You’re making it sound like this will just keep getting worse. What I think is likely is this is a stopgap measure to keep people playing while more content is developed.

The problem with adding skills, adding traits, anything like that, is more work on balance. No matter what you do, that upsets balance. That’s why the WvW stuff is all passive and not player vs player related.

So Anet comes out with a game, people play all the content, and there was plenty with it, and then they get bored. You’re right. Stats are cheap and easy but real content takes time and, as we’ve already seen, people have the attention span of a newt. They need to be constantly entertained. So better something than nothing.

Keep people in the game while you work on new content. It’s the challenge every new MMO has, and it’s not going to change. Sure new content or more/better skills or traits would be better…but they then cause other issues. What’s been offered so far really hasn’t, except in the minds of some people.

Once more content is here, then it’ll be a moot point.

I love the downed-state in PvE. Since we’re already acknowledged that SPvP is the minority of this game, no decision should be made on the basis of just SPvP.

In WvW, which has far less one on one battles, I welcome it. People need time to get in on the kill, or they lose out on badges.

Khal Drogo.9631:

tolunart.2095:

I started playing a couple of weeks after launch. I don’t PVP and never went into a dungeon.

As for offering PVE-focused rewards for PVP, that just kittens off the vocal minority who enjoy PVP because PVE players are usually pretty bad at it. It’s best when the only motivation to PVP is PVP.

Eventually you will go into dungeons. Why wouldnt the vocal minority want more PVP noobs to kill? A lot of PVE builds dont work well in PvP and vice versa.

Why do you assume that people will eventually go into dungeons. Do you realize, by percentage, the amount of people who solo MMOs? Probably not, but let me give you a clue.

Scott Hartsman, the lead designer of Rift, said and I’m paraphrasing here) an MMO today only ignores solo players at its own peril. In addition, Guild Wars 2 in their own FAQ had a question about soloing, even when the FAQ was a lot smaller.

Everyone keeps thinking their preferred play style is in the majority, but I know from experience, solo players rarely come to forums and almost never join guilds so how would you know they were out there.

But just looking at this forum, you’d still see plenty of solo posters posting. And many of them will have never entered a dungeon. I have a dozen people in my guild who don’t do dungeons at all, and don’t PvP at all, but love the open world.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Maybe this is some strange usage of the word interesting I wasn’t previously aware of.

Nope, it’s exactly what I mean.

And it’s more interesting than a gear tier because a new skill gave you something new to play with. Something you could add to a build, or make a build around. I agree that there were certain “stock builds” and elites that were more popular than others, but one of the genius things about Guild Wars that a lot of people seem to forget is how much creativity you could put into character and team builds.

Which is far more interesting than getting another piece of tier gear, who’s only purpose is to add a few numbers to my character sheet. You can do so much more with a new skill than you can with a new piece of gear.

Well the problem is, you’re comparing skill to gear, but in reality, what takes the place of those skills is traits. And I personally find traits far more interesting.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

I’m curious, because I’ve never played, could you go through guild wars 1 and complete all the content with the skills you would normally acquire just by leveling to twenty (no buying skills, getting them from dungeons, doing quests for them, etc etc) ? If so, would this be a wise play choice? Would a character who did do this be considered underpowered? Did you need certain skills to do certain content? Did having certain skills make content easier? In pvp?

In Guild Wars 1, you could get skills leveling, but you didn’t get skills BY leveling. You got skills by doing skill quests, or buying them from skill NPCs who were in certain towns. You never just leveled and unlocked skills.

Elite skills, however, had to be captured, unless you’d already unlocked them under a different character, then you could use skill tomes.

In PvP you could get PvP currency to buy elite skills.

Which is a far more fun and interesting and rewarding way to progress than stupid gear tiers.

I didn’t really find it that interesting, to be honest. Going to a guy to buy a skill, or finding the guy who sold the skill to buy it wasn’t interesting at all. Which leaves the skill capture component.

You went to the wiki, found out which boss had your kill, paid up to a platinum for a signet of capture, found the boss and killed him. Then took the skill. You might have already killed that boss 80 times in the state of game play, but never with a signet of capture on you. It was busy work.

And since you only needed a very few elite skills per profession (I’m assuming rangers for example never captured quick shot), you really didn’t have to do much work to get the skills you wanted. The only time it became “interesting” is when you wanted to work for your skill cap title, which was a form of grind. Make a list of all the bosses ikittenone, run out, cap their one skill, run back, buy another signet of capture, run back, kill another boss.

Maybe this is some strange usage of the word interesting I wasn’t previously aware of.

I think I’m addicted to the forums, more than the game. I enjoy the game more though. The forums to me, are just another form of PvP. lol

korgoth.5924:

Ghettoblade.7962:

I had a slight addiction before the patch..now that they sucked the fun out of the things i was addicted to..I am as clean as a whistle.

Did you know real bad addictions have people in denial?

Didnt you know denial is a river in Egypt

sucks when an mmo is like smoking.. easier to quit with every patch….

a sure sign things are moving in the wrong direction

For you, I guess they are. I enjoy things from every patch. Maybe you need to smoke a different brand.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Twiceasnice.7961:

Personally (as a former hard-core WoW raider), I miss similar content. I know that Guild Wars 2 is the wrong avenue to reciprocate this experience, but I believe that the implementation of something along the lines of 10-15 man dungeons (different from raids mind you) would greatly increase my enjoyment and extend the playability of the game for myself. Think back to UBRS / Scholo days, that’s what I miss and I think Arenanet would be able to improve upon the roots set down by other games.

I can’t get PUGs or even my own guild mates to run Twilight Arbor with me. They all just want to do their own thing. If you mention CoF, they jump all over that opportunity, but not TA. I can’t imagine trying to get 15 people to do a large scale dungeon with.

Me and four guildies ran TA today. We’ve finished all the paths, and though it has some annoying bits, it’s really not that bad. There are two paths of CoE that are far worse than TA, so I don’t really get why.

There’s one challenging fight in the beginning of each path and the rest of it is moderately easy.

Alad QB.8904:

Vayne, the OP is demanding “hardore content with proper rewards”. I’ll let you guess what “proper” means to him, and what it’ll mean to you and me if that gets implemented.
Also, from a certain chat with the devs that occured a couple of months ago, I was left with the impression that Ascended gear was not going to remain just a requirement for FotM. Can you imagine all that variety of gear, with more introduced every now and then, just to be used in one dungeon? Do you really believe that??

They said there won’t be another quality of gear (higher than ascended), but did you look at the infusions? +4 Power?? Do you honestly believe they intend to keep those upgrades like that? Of course the players will ask for more, and then they’ll comply, with a good excuse. When the infusions start giving 3×50 stats, will you be sitting here saying you don’t feel you need Ascended gear?

I feel like by the time I need ascended gear, it will be easy to get. That’s how it’s been with lots of stuff.

If you run fractals, you don’t need any ascended gear at all to do level 10. If you run a level 10 fractal daily for 10 days you’ll get a fractal ring of your choice. However, during that time, you have a random chance to get a fractal ring every single day. I get them about every third day. So by the end of ten days, you’re bound to have two, or more rings. That’s all you need

I’m sure that by the time we need this stuff it’ll be easy to get, at which time I’ll get it.

Alad QB.8904:

From what I understood in the infamous Manifesto, GW2 was/is not supposed to be just another WoW. Therefore, it’s not supposed, nor was intended, to satisfy players who enjoy WoW and the hundred other copycats, but those who are, on the contrary, disappointed with that model and who are looking for something different.

The Wikipedia page on Guild Wars states:
ArenaNet believed that players would not pay subscription fees for every online game they play and that paying a fee would cause players to make a “lifestyle commitment” to a particular game, rather than the usual behaviour of playing many different games and switching between them. Jeff Strain, a founder of ArenaNet, said, “It is our opinion that the free online gaming model combined with frequent content updates is the optimum online paradigm for interfacing with consumers and creating a significant, enduring gaming franchise.”

This suggests that they’re people who know and accept that their players will not be hanging around their game forever, as is perfectly normal. It would therefore make perfect sense that they not try to create end game grinds such as FotM, or Ascended gear, or anything which requires the majority of players to feel they have to do some boring grind to not be left behind. It also suggests that they will produce more paid real content for the game on a regular basis, attracting back those players who leave to do something else. This is a game, after all, not a full time hard core occupation.

The current 180° direction trend from the Manifesto seems to imply to me that so many WoW players, or traditional MMO players were attracted by GW2 early on, and put so much demand on Anet, that they lost their vision, the one they spoke of in the manifesto and which they were able to preserve during development as long as they were isolated from those masses. It seems almost like they were overwhelmed with traditional demands, and lost hope in being able to realize their dream and promise. (The alternative would be ugly to consider.)

Now the real question is, how much has ArenaNet’s vision changed, and how satisfied are they with their accomplishment as compared to their initial goals.

They didn’t lose their vision. I don’t understand why people keep saying they did.

The grind they put into the game to get ascended gear is mitigated by the idea that you don’t need ascended gear at all to do anything in the game, except higher level fractals which give you ascended gear. A compromise is not an abandonment of principle.

They also said you could play your way, and a bunch of players couldn’t. There was nothing for them to grind for. So if Anet didn’t put that stuff in, then they’d be going against that principle. What they’ve tried to do, from the beginning, its to offer different things for different people.

There are tons of people playing this game who could care less about ascended gear, because unlike other games, it doesn’t gate them. It doesn’t prevent them from doing what they want to do.

Do you know how many people in this game spend laurels on dyes instead of an ascended amulet? Or save for the minipets.

There are two reasons why people feel they "Need’ ascended gear. One is WvW (which was never balanced for 1v1 anyway, something Anet also said) and 2. because they’ve been trained by other games that if they don’t have BIS gear, they’re somehow missing out.

I dont’ have BIS gear on most of my characters and they all do just fine.

killcannon.2576:

I’m curious, because I’ve never played, could you go through guild wars 1 and complete all the content with the skills you would normally acquire just by leveling to twenty (no buying skills, getting them from dungeons, doing quests for them, etc etc) ? If so, would this be a wise play choice? Would a character who did do this be considered underpowered? Did you need certain skills to do certain content? Did having certain skills make content easier? In pvp?

In Guild Wars 1, you could get skills leveling, but you didn’t get skills BY leveling. You got skills by doing skill quests, or buying them from skill NPCs who were in certain towns. You never just leveled and unlocked skills.

Elite skills, however, had to be captured, unless you’d already unlocked them under a different character, then you could use skill tomes.

In PvP you could get PvP currency to buy elite skills.

eisberg.2379:

Vayne.8563:

Take the dynamic events. Rift had them, in the form of Rifts. Warhammer had them in the guise of public events. But both those games also had traditional questing systems, and the other events are just tacked on.

Interestingly enough though, is that Arenanet was the first one to announce Dynamic events. Rifts and WARs came later. IMO, this makes it that GW2 was actually the first, and should still get the revolutionary title.

Warhammers dynamic events, public quests, existed before Guild Wars 2 annouced them. Quite a bit before. Rift built on those.

It’s an evolution of the genre, but not a revolution.

So what about games like Dear Esther which you can “win” but it’s really just a story. You can’t attack anything. It’s very artfully done. It’s extremely creative.

I think that most video games aren’t art, but they mostly contain art within them. There are areas of games designed to instill a certain feeling in players. This is done with graphics and sound. How is that not art?

I’d say it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary. It’s helping the genre evolve. Nothing in it is really all that revolutionary but the combination of ingredients makes it at least evolutionary.

Take the dynamic events. Rift had them, in the form of Rifts. Warhammer had them in the guise of public events. But both those games also had traditional questing systems, and the other events are just tacked on.

Guild Wars 2 is the first and only game to include events instead of traditional questing. Even hearts aren’t traditional questing. There’s multiple ways to complete them, they can be gotten incidentally by doing dynamic events, and there’s no real order you have to or need to do them in. In other words, the quest hub structure has been eliminated. This wasn’t true of Warhammer or Rift.

In Rift one of the major problems was that if you wanted to quest, zone wide events would screw you over. There’s no real problem with that here, because there are no actual quest hubs or traditional quests.

There are many examples I could cite that would show the combination of factors make this game evolutionary. Rift could have been evolutionary but the devs didn’t take it far enough. That’s why so many people called it WoW 2.0.

PvE is too broad a term. I’d argue that a lot of people PvP but don’t do dungeons at all. Dungeons and fractals are really their own separate thing. I know people who only want to run dungeons/fractals and could care less about the open world and vice versa.

I agree, there’s very little ultra hard content, but even the stuff that’s sorta hard, is hard for a lot of people.

The ultra competitive PVe guys aren’t going to have a huge amount to do in this game. Unless Anet eventually institutes a hard mode for dungeons.

For most people however, the content is hard enough. There are plenty of people who find dungeons hard.

There’s nothing in this game I can’t do in PVe…but some of it definitely pushes my boundaries (Arah for one, higher level fractals for another).

You’d have to implement it on a PvP server, which doesn’t exist. It would be one more thing for Anet to fix bugs on, I’d rather have them working on the core game than add this sort of thing to the game for the small percentage of people who want it…and it is a small percentage.

In every game that offers it, people eventually end up moving to PVe servers, and don’t bother with PvP servers. There’ll be a couple of PvP servers but almost all of them will be Pve.

I don’t see why Anet should spent their resources. Once they make that server, it has to be maintained and then people will start complaining about specific issues…not a great idea.

This survey could have been a lot better. Things like what do you prefer…hearts or traditional quests. Anet didn’t add the hearts to replace additional quests. They replaced traditional quests with dynamic events. The purpose of hearts was to get people to hang around in the areas where dynamic events spawn, since people were just running around missing dynamic events.

Several of the questions had no middle option. Like would you prefer one time events or the living story. Well, I’d prefer first of all to see how the living story evolves, but surely there are more options than just those two.

For example the Karka was a one time event and it failed miserably but that doesn’t mean other one time events wouldn’t work out. Given a choice between the living story as it stands now and the Karka event, I’d take the living story every time. But these two things are not all we’ve seen in the updates. Mad King Thorn’s instance wasn’t really a one time event and it wasn’t really living story. It was it’s own thing and it was great.

There are several questions in which the answers are leading, and for that reason, I’d say this survey isn’t going to provide the best information.

Ghanto.9784:

Vayne.8563:

Ghanto.9784:

Former Guild Wars 1 and DAoC players, etc. So it seems a bit of an odd choice for someone who’s interested primarily in PvE. There’s plenty of other MMO’s out there that cater primarily – and many exclusively – to PvE players, so my advice is to try playing some of those. Variety is the spice of life and all that, right?

Based on what evidence? This game is by far more PVe oriented, than PvP. There’s more PVe content overall, a ton of it, the major upgrades have mostly been PVe upgrades and the biggest portion of the design budget, including tons of voice acting, all went to PVe.

There are a couple of tabs for PvP achievements and everything else is a PvE achievement. Even WvW has PvE elements in it.

If this game centered around PvP there’d be open world PvP servers and dueling. This game has far more PVe content than PvP content.

In fact, the entire first year of promotion was ONLY about PvE, and all they showed at shows for the longest time was PVe.

I have no idea why some people still believe this.

Apparently you need to reread what I actually wrote, in particular the very first line:

“First off, this game is primarily about WvW/PvP – or at least is was supposed to be, and is why most of the initial players were so eager to play it.”

Note the “at least it was supposed to be” and “why most of the initial players…”

What I basically meant was that I would have thought that the “majority” of the buyers of this game, the people who bought it before launch and soon after, were looking for a good wvw/pvp game. I wouldn’t have thought a lot of people would have gravitated toward it because they heard what a great pve MMO it was – or was supposed to be.

And even though I personally agree with you that there has been too much emphasis on PvE by ArenaNet, I still think the end game – which this person is complaning about – is more rewarding for those who like to pvp. I can’t imagine just doing dungeons or fractals over and over again, or standing around in Divinity’s Reach role-playing. I’d probably want to quit too if that’s what I were spending all my time on.

I never said there was was too much emphasis on PvE (since I’m a Pve’er by nature), But I disagree that most people who bought the game are PvPers. I think there are at least as many Pve’ers playing this game, is not more.

I think the perspective that this game was supposed to be about PvP is off. I don’t know where you got the idea. Certainly they spent more time promoting PvE and a lot of the people who bought it were Pve’ers.

Ghanto.9784:

First off, this game is primarily about WvW/PvP – or at least is was supposed to be, and is why most of the initial players were so eager to play it. Former Guild Wars 1 and DAoC players, etc. So it seems a bit of an odd choice for someone who’s interested primarily in PvE. There’s plenty of other MMO’s out there that cater primarily – and many exclusively – to PvE players, so my advice is to try playing some of those. Variety is the spice of life and all that, right?

Based on what evidence? This game is by far more PVe oriented, than PvP. There’s more PVe content overall, a ton of it, the major upgrades have mostly been PVe upgrades and the biggest portion of the design budget, including tons of voice acting, all went to PVe.

There are a couple of tabs for PvP achievements and everything else is a PvE achievement. Even WvW has PvE elements in it.

If this game centered around PvP there’d be open world PvP servers and dueling. This game has far more PVe content than PvP content.

In fact, the entire first year of promotion was ONLY about PvE, and all they showed at shows for the longest time was PVe.

I have no idea why some people still believe this.

Nah not addictive. WoW which I didn’t like, was more addictive than Guild Wars 2. This is more of a playground. I might be addicted to the social contact I get from my guild, however, but not the game itself.

The game is fun, but I do other things as well.

FrouFrou.4958:

Serophous.9085:

Geotherma.2395:

1. The bounty training is for.. Training.
2. It rewards 3,000 influence for small guilds who may have trouble unlocking regular ones.
3. They are meant to help you obtain the regular bounty missions over time as was the complaint of small guilds “we don’t make enough influence”.
4. Almost every guild I’ve seen has offered help to small guilds to complete bounties if they ASK.

If i am ever ikittenone and I see a bounty person, I call it out in map chat with the closest waypoint. If I see a guild fighting a bounty I (and sometimes my other guildies) will hop in to help

Nice to know there are helpful people out there, but unfortunately the majority of the people seem to have really bad attitude when it comes to helping out since they won’t get any credits for doing that. I was doing guild bounties with my guildmates, had a bit of trouble finding the NPC so naturally I asked in the map chat if anyone have seen the NPC around, only to get replies “Why would we help you? It’s a guild thing, you are supposed to do it with guildies and not with random people!”.

You must have a bad server, because guilds help each other all the time on Tarnished Coast. Almost every time we do a bounty there’s at least a couple of guilds that help us and we help everyone.

I think maybe twice we ran into a couple of idiots, but far more, we’ve gotten help when we needed it.

Infernia.9847:

@Vayne – I agree totally. Especially about the ‘good people’ part. I still feel a little out of place in the guild I’m in but at the same time I don’t want to abandon them. At some point I hope to find some players I ‘fit’ with better.
It would help if I could somehow figure out how to type in chat and run at the same time. I find myself typing a lot of “wwwww”. I wish we had some voice in gw2 because all the different people use different voice chat.
People to share the fun are the endgame, at least for me.

Forget about typing and play. Get a headset and get on mumble, or ventrilo, or teamspeak or whatever your guild uses. That’s what I do. I can’t type and play at the same time either. Also, you know you can join multiple guilds, right? This is a game that you play for fun. You should be doing what you think if fun.

It’s not life and death. If I didn’t feel comfortable or at home in my guild, you could bet I’d look for one where I feel more comfortable.

Infernia.9847:

Vayne.8563:

So many people aren’t in guilds it’s not funny. You see it on the forums all the time. People have trouble with pugs, I suggest joining a guild and people say they don’t want to. They don’t have time or they don’t like people, or they like to meet random people. I don’t get it.

I’d say a much larger percentage of people in this game don’t have a guild than you’d think. which is why it worked.

Let me preface by saying, I’m now in a guild. But… there is a reason I wasn’t in one for a long time.
I have a lot of RL responsibilities and I didn’t want to join a guild only to let them down by not logging in for a week or not being able to join in dungeons, which I still haven’t really done, not joining WvW when everyone else is on during primetime. The list of ways to let down a guild could go on. Some people view a guild as a big commitment and finding the right ‘kind’ of guild to fit the player, can be difficult.

I found a semi-casual guild that I enjoy helping out when I can. I still feel a little isolated but only due to a big age gap.
Even though I’m not always on at the same time they are, I have supported them 100% so they keep me.

I understand. I’m older too, but we have a lot of older people in my guild. And we’re pretty casual (meaning very lol).

The right guild can make all the difference in an MMO. Just join a guild that is a social guild, rather than a dungeon or WvW guild and you’ll get the best of all worlds.

We do dungeons, we WvW (sometimes) even SPvP, but it’s all pretty casual. We have fun. That’s it.

We have people in our guild that log in once a week for an hour, what do we care if they’re good people?

alfik.8423:

There’s one thing I forgot to add that bothers me a lot as well.

There is no sense of progression of your character (which is one of the most important things in a mmorpg, if not the most important). I had access to almost all the abilities at level 25 (except the elite ones). Makes me feel that there would be no progress during the other 55 levels, just bigger numbers.

I guess you don’t count traits as progression. It might depend on the profession. Some trait are hugely important to the power of your character. Bomb kits that heal allies for the engineer or give you regeneration for example, are very helpful. Necro wells that pulse and steal life, the same. But you can’t get them till you’re in the higher levels.

In fact, you can’t really complete the best builds until you’re a higher level. Unlocking skills is only part of the build. Unlocking traits can make a vast difference.

Funny video. I found this puzzle a whole lot easier to do with other people. One person carries the bomb, others distract griffons, though I have carried the bomb to the end alone.

There’s one place where you can save some time using a mesmer portal as well. So my main stayed there, waited for the bomb carrier and portaled her up.

This is one of my favorite jumping puzzles in the game.

I find the exploring comment here interesting. People shouldn’t make a checklist of stuff to explore. I agree.

So turn off your map markers and explore without them. You can you know. I didn’t play this game like a checklist, and I’m enjoying it a lot more than I would if I left those map markers on.

I’ve completed entire zones with all the map markers off. It’s far more challenging, but it’s fun for me anyway.

rtommaso.3120:

Stark.1350:

Xsorus.2507:

Stark.1350:

Xsorus.2507:

Best MMO? No..not by a long shot….

Best Game? again no..not by a long shot..

GW2 is an average MMO, other games do things better..PvP for example is done better in both DAOC and Warhammer Online.

If you narrow it down, WvW is better then SWTOR’s World PvP, but GW2 SPvP is worse then SWTOR’s SPvP

PVE wise, This game has some pretty awful PvE…plenty of games do it better…Story/Content wise this game doesn’t hold a candle to SWTOR, and it comes no where NEAR The Secret World which is one of the best RPG’s released in the past 10 years.

GW2 should be thankful its Buy 2 Play to be honest..if it was subscriber based it would of already crashed and burned pretty badly.

Yes, comparing GW2 to the MMO’s that are dead. Makes sense I guess.

Warhammer Online is pretty dead.

TSW and SWTOR though? SWTOR has a subscriber base somewhere between 500k and 1 Million players, + 2 Million F2P accounts.. and is neck and neck on time played with GW2.

Is that why TSW and SWTOR has laid off people and ANET is hiring? And why SWTOR went f2p because it was tanking so bad?

TSW is a WAY BETTER game than GW2. Waaay better. But GW2 sold more copies. TSW put their chips in a bad business model at the beggining. GW2 made way better publicity (Funcom sux on this).

But there is something that explains GW2 being more successful than TSW. Basically TSW s a hard game. As GW1 was. You need to think, you need to find a good build, you need to improve this build. You need to make your skills work together. GW2 is designed to be an easy game. Even a monkey can play it, since you dont need to make a build: anything goes. That happens because you cant really make a build, you can chose from a pool of half a dozen skills and place them in the slots they are allowed.

You have 10 skills. 5 of them you cant change. 1 MUST be a heal skill. Other MUST be an elite skill. Actually you only really chose 3 skills. And you dont have many skills to chose from. The game is also made as a cooperative game. No open world pvp, you have your own nods, no ks… it is a game designed for children.

Is it a bad game? No. Is it a good game? Kind of, but nothing special. Nothing compared to TSW or even GW1, which are challenging games. It is a new version of Lotro, with better graphics, better technology, a terrible (and I really mean terrible, even amateur) story, a worse build system (MUCH worse).

Overall, GW2 is a generic MMO. Is it fun? Well, if you dont mind grind it is. I dont mind grindind. When Im tried and too lazy to think, I play GW2, Diablo 3 or Minecraft. They are games where you dont need to think, you just go there and press the buttons.

I didn’t like TSW that much. It was “okay” I bought the game, played it for a few weeks and I had problems with it. Some of them that really annoyed me.

For example, though TSW had great voice acting and writing, the choice not to voice the main character never sat well with me. I felt like I was playing a mute. Every single quest was someone with a monologue. That got old real fast.

The combat wasn’t that much fun either. You’re right, it’s more of a build game but going into an area and just beating the same undead guys over and over didn’t feel like fun. It felt like a routine. I didn’t feel involved in the combat itself.

I did like the longer quests, though, and the mood of the game.

However, I disagree that Guild Wars 2 is the standard fantasy MMO. It might be in story, but it added and changed a lot of things in MMO space for the better. Not having to tag mobs, the downed state, which I love, not competing for nodes, the way weapon skills work, the active dodging, the personal story (which I realize is uneven at best, but I liked some of them), the lack of a trinity (a big deal for me), the way dynamic events work (and scale)…hell this is the first game that made escort quests fun for me.

At any rate, I couldn’t stay with TSW because I just didn’t find it fun.

I think it’s got the foundation to be a great MMO at some point. It’s not a great MMO yet, because there are flaws that prevent it from being a great MMO. A lot depends on what you expect from your MMO though.

Flaws and all this is still the best MMO for my play style of any I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a bunch.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that a 7 month old MMO is going to take a lot of time to develop into something really big. Until then, there’s a lot of filler content that just keeps people playing. That’s the downside.

The upside is that it’s a beautiful world, the PVe is more cooperative than competitive, the WvW is a lot of fun, even if some people think it’s just zerg vs. zerg (I have fun there and I hardly ever zerg).

By and large the people most disappointed with the game are the PVPers and the competitive raider types. By and large the people least disappointed with the game are people who are looking for a bunch of fun things to do without being led around by the nose. It’s a journey game rather than a destination game.

I like it a lot. One day I’ll probably love it.

Nappychappy.7046:

Vayne.8563:

Nappychappy.7046:

Snip

I do enjoy farming, I see it as part of the game. I meakittenome point, that is what all games become – farming. If someone enjoys killing bandit’s all day should they be punished for not killing 10 of each critters in 10 different zones? Both can be considered a grind, farming, but only 1 is punished for this type of “farming”. The game wasn’t sold on the basis that I could only play the way ANet deemed “correct”, but as “How I wanted to play”.

“Play how you want to” unless it skews the Cash shop.

You keep saying cash shop. You’re OBSESSED by it. Even after I pointed out that long before they had this cash shop and the ability to change gems to gold, Anet had an anti-farming policy. You use some other excuse as to why they used to, instead of accepting the extremely reasonable view that maybe the company has another reason for not liking farming, besides just making it hard for botters even.

Farming screws with game economies. It’s that simple. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to believe it, but it’s true. Game economies, unlike real life economies, aren’t complex enough to be sustained without some kind of management. In games where loot is easy to get, farmable and freely available they inflation becomes HUGE. And then people who have less time get screwed over. Clearly Anet doesn’t want this to happen. This is as much a possibility as why DR exists than the cash shop because Anet’s anti-farming policy preceded the gem/cash issue. You just don’t want to see it, because you’re stuck in your point of view. You want to farm no matter who it affects.

Well its’ like life. Everyone can play the way they want, until someone else is affected and then there are repercussions. Anet doesn’t allow griefing either, but griefing is a play style for some. Every game has rules. Within the boundaries of those rules, written or unwritten, you’re free to play the way you want.

But if you’re just going to farm the same area over and over again, you might as well be a bot. Bots are eliminated for a reason. DR affects people who do the work of bots in just the same way. It ruins the economy for a whole lot of people.

It’s not that hard to farm an area and move to another area long before DR kicks in, which is why it’s a good strategy to use against bots, at least to some degree.

The object of the game is farming. How you perceive it, doesn’t change what it is.

>Kill bad guys > loot.

Gibson.4036:

Nappychappy.7046:

This game wouldn’t last a month with a sub-fee, that alone judges how great this game is.

Recent history indicates that’s true of most games. Sub-fees are becoming less and less common.

Yes common knowledge is common, right? I think it is mostly the fault of greed, because no way should a sub-fee still be 15 dollars a month and to be fair it is hard on middle class families where 15 turns into 30-45 a month. Seems like every time sub-fee is brought up, it’s followed by “15 a month is a rip-off” – My question is: Why does it always have to be 15 dollars?

F2P is great until you realize how much it costs to play at a games full potential, seems to be the same with B2P.

My complaint is simply the game is gated, no matter what you do is hampered buy the cash shop. Does blizzard care if you have a bazillion gold? Nope. Do they care if you have 2 hours to play, or 12 hours to play? Nope. Do they care if you kill Green Whelps for a month? Nope.

Because they get paid and if that’s all you want to do, so be it.

This game isn’t gated by the cash shop. Your expectations are. I don’t play the same game you do, because I’ve never sold a gem in my life and I don’t feel I need to.

The object of the game for me is NOT farming. I could care less about farming. The drops I get are completely incidental to me playing the game. I don’t go through a dungeon for drops. I don’t go through fractals for drops. I get drops doing them, but that’s not why I’m there.

I do different things in this game for different reasons. Sometimes, like today, I ran CM explorable mode to help a guildie who need to complete CM. I didn’t need or want the tokens. I didn’t need or want the drops. But I did want to help a guildie.

I also play to have fun. I enjoy certain things. I enjoy finding things I’ve never seen before. I enjoy some dynamic events. I enjoy leveling alts. I enjoy running fractals. I do them because I enjoy them.

The only things I’ve done in this game that I haven’t enjoyed, I’ve done to progress a storyline, not for loot.

I’m not convinced most people play games like either one of us.

They’re collecting data for it, but it’s not live yet. Expect another week or two before it goes live.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

So many people aren’t in guilds it’s not funny. You see it on the forums all the time. People have trouble with pugs, I suggest joining a guild and people say they don’t want to. They don’t have time or they don’t like people, or they like to meet random people. I don’t get it.

I’d say a much larger percentage of people in this game don’t have a guild than you’d think. which is why it worked.

Vayne, I’ve never agreed with you more…

You’ve never agreed with me at all…lmao

I agree, playing this game solo or trying to pug it is really much worse than finding a guild of like-minded players. Casual guilds are all over the place. Hell my guild is ultra casual but we have a lot of fun together.

It’s definitely better than just playing alone…particularly in this game.

Right, everyone should do less work and get the same reward. Brilliant!

As far as I can tell, it’s on a seperate table. This is because when I did a puzzle chest, I got two items. I did the same chest again, got 2 items and a coin. Same character, same chest, 24 hours apart.

KazNaka.4718:

Vayne.8563:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Kicking for no reason should be banable for at least 7 days, maybe some ppl grow and take a lesson to not kick anyone but bc “i dont like him”. I always starting the dungeon to make myself save from kick when i meet some dogb in group that thinks he knows better than i does.

So who gets to decide what no reason is? Maybe Anet should take a few dozen people, put them on payroll and let them listen to the arguments? What if both parties are wrong? What if it’s just a misunderstanding?

I agree abusive behavior needs to be punished, but everyone has a different reason for what’s an acceptable reason to kick someone. Unless Anet posts hard and fast rules for what you can kick for, this is just a bad idea.

I’m not looking for ANet to ban or police anyone. I’m just trying to make it harder to to kick someone. If someone is really bad really deserves a kick I’m sure 3 or even 4 votes is not hard to get. But if one or two persons have an argument and disagrees/gets kitten off/etc, he can get kicked with just 2 votes? That, to me, doesn’t make sense at all. It’s not even the majority of the party.

Everyone has his/her reasons as to why someone should deserve a kick. But is it really fair that only 2 persons are needed to decide his/her fate and take away all the time/effort spent?

I’m not even thinking about my situation anymore; I’m over that. I just hope people can see how the current system is messed up atm.

Oh I agree with you…but that ‘s not what the poster I responded to was saying. I think it should be three votes to kick, not two. But the poster I responded to was asking for people to be banned for “wrongful” kicking. That’s just way too big brother for me.

Considering the new upgrade has revitalized the game, I’m not surprised. Are you trying all the borderlands too, or just EB?

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Well, while I do agree that you can get character slots from the gem store to get those last professions, I do still think it is rather bad that we have to pay for them.

Other games in the genre give you more than enough character slots to make all their classes. Games like WoW, Aion, Rift, Tera, SW:ToR, etc heck even pretty much most F2P games give you enough character slots to make all your classes, without having to make you spend extra money to unlock them.

GW2 for some reason, being a new game, went kind of backwards on that. They promise innovation and new ideas, yet they downgraded completely normal features like this. Limiting your character slots to only 5, when there is 8 professions. Meaning you can only make 5 of the professions unless you spend more money or farm gold ingame to get the other 3. While all these other games give you more than enough character slots to make all their professions/class and don’t limit you by pushing you to the cash shop to experience the rest of the content.

So yeah, while you can still buy them or farm gold to buy them, it is still rather sad that they are not already available to you.

Every single one of those games you listed started as pay to play and charged money for months. Sure they’re free to play now, but they also took $15 a month (the price of 1.5 character slots) every single month.

If you played SWToR since launch and 7 motnhs in wanted another character slot, you’d haev paid by that time $90 just to play the game. Right now, you can in fact use SWToR as a free to play game…as long as you don’t want to do anything. In fact, many subscription games even have a cash shop in addition to a monthly fee.

Guild Wars 2 gives you five slots, one for each race. Not everyone needs to play every profession. In addition, of the games you listed, it’s the only one that allows you to farm gold in game to get it, instead of using real world cash.

I think you might want to look up backwards in the dictionary, I’m not sure you know what it means.

So many people aren’t in guilds it’s not funny. You see it on the forums all the time. People have trouble with pugs, I suggest joining a guild and people say they don’t want to. They don’t have time or they don’t like people, or they like to meet random people. I don’t get it.

I’d say a much larger percentage of people in this game don’t have a guild than you’d think. which is why it worked.

AOE will hit them even when stealthed.

I have a couple of double professions already and I’ve never regretted it. I just play them differently. I meakittenerker warrior and a support warrior play completely different. I have one mesmer who I use to play dungeons with guilds that that’s more geared out to support. My second mesmer is made just for the open world and just to have fun.

Nothing wrong with doing what you want to have fun.