Guild Wars 2

Zenith.7301:

Vayne.8563:

I wasn’t aware that a primary purpose of dungeons was to provide more story.

Different paths give different experiences to people. The dungeon physically doesn’t change, but the area you go to may, as in Twilight Arbor. The dungeons are showing what happened to that area after you did what you did in it the first time.

In AC, King Adelburn warns you there are things much worse than ghosts deeper, and those things become a problem when he’s dead. I’m not sure I need much more of a story than that.

Dungeons are supposed to be challenging play…that’s it. The place where people go with a team to challenge themselves. Sometimes this works well and sometimes not. The thing is the most popular path is CoF path 1 because it’s easiest and fastest so people farm it. The rest of the dungeons are there for tokens to get armor or weapon skins…that’s what they’re designed to do.

I don’t love the dungeons as they’re laid out, but then, the redesign of some of the bosses might help. There are dungeons I like more and dungeons I like less. But they all have the story in common. CoE is about shutting down an Inquest lab, after the inquest have been defeated. You’re fighting the experiments they left behind. Three paths, all of which lead to different challenges. I’m not sure I’m seeing a problem here.

To be sure, the Destiny’s Edge story mode dungeons were not done as well as they might have been, but having read the books, I know there’s a story there, even if they didn’t do a great job in translating that into the game. Actually the best indication of what happened is the kids on the steps in the beginning of one of the personal story missions (level 30 I believe) when you go to Lion’s Arch. Just listen to the kids and you’ll get the substance of what happened.

But once dungeon bosses become more interesting, dungeons will server the purpose for which they were designed.

What part of mmoRPg isn’t clear? RPG’s have story elements pervading them. If storytelling isn’t going to be central to what the player does, then perhaps it’s time to change the genre you define your game under?

Have you PLAYED MMORPG’s before? Because story is not usually huge in instances anyway. And most MMOs don’t give you a personal story at all. Guild Wars 2 at least does that. So they have a place for story and the dungeons aren’t it.

It’s nice that you want more story in your dungeon but from the beginning, it’s pretty clear that Anet wanted to make the dungeons the challenging area of the game. It’s also pretty clear to me that many who like story don’t particularly like dungeons. I know a lot of people like this.

So putting the story in dungeons will only exclude from the story many who really want to experience it.

When Anet let anyone have any trait, they found most traits were simply ignored and only a handful of builds existed that used only the best traits and no one went far in any line, because they got the best trait in all five lines.

This led to a build stagnation one of the major reasons it was changed. A lot of people complained about it at the time, a huge stir it caused, until people saw it and most people said it was okay the new way. There are still some hold outs though.

I think it’s better for the game the way it is, than the way it was.

It’s not competition because if another guild starts it, and your guild gets a couple of hits in you BOTH get credit for it. This was tested a couple of days ago when TV and WoD on Tarnished Coast both had The Prisoner in Iron Marches and both got credit for the kill. We also helped each other find him.

In fact, I’ve found far more guilds cooperating than giving wrong locations.

I can’t stress enough the value of finding a guild of like-minded players. Much of the post 80 content requires coordination of some kind. Instead of pugging dungeons, be part of a team that plays together. It’s much more fun.

And you get to see stuff you’d never see solo. Some of it is very cool.

They should sync the dragon events so they all happen at the same time. That would force people to choose. People trying to get to another dragon after the easy one is dead would probably end up in an overflow and get screwed.

It would solve some problems, and annoy pretty much everyone. A win/win if you ask me. lol

I wasn’t aware that a primary purpose of dungeons was to provide more story.

Different paths give different experiences to people. The dungeon physically doesn’t change, but the area you go to may, as in Twilight Arbor. The dungeons are showing what happened to that area after you did what you did in it the first time.

In AC, King Adelburn warns you there are things much worse than ghosts deeper, and those things become a problem when he’s dead. I’m not sure I need much more of a story than that.

Dungeons are supposed to be challenging play…that’s it. The place where people go with a team to challenge themselves. Sometimes this works well and sometimes not. The thing is the most popular path is CoF path 1 because it’s easiest and fastest so people farm it. The rest of the dungeons are there for tokens to get armor or weapon skins…that’s what they’re designed to do.

I don’t love the dungeons as they’re laid out, but then, the redesign of some of the bosses might help. There are dungeons I like more and dungeons I like less. But they all have the story in common. CoE is about shutting down an Inquest lab, after the inquest have been defeated. You’re fighting the experiments they left behind. Three paths, all of which lead to different challenges. I’m not sure I’m seeing a problem here.

To be sure, the Destiny’s Edge story mode dungeons were not done as well as they might have been, but having read the books, I know there’s a story there, even if they didn’t do a great job in translating that into the game. Actually the best indication of what happened is the kids on the steps in the beginning of one of the personal story missions (level 30 I believe) when you go to Lion’s Arch. Just listen to the kids and you’ll get the substance of what happened.

But once dungeon bosses become more interesting, dungeons will server the purpose for which they were designed.

Geikamir.6329:

Hume.2876:

The lack of trinity was a pretty big mistake on Arenanet part. Essentially all the classes play like DPSers with some added utility. Yes sure in theory there is still teamwork but its as if you decided to run a dungeon in WoW with 5 warlocks. Maybe they could do it with some awesome teamwork.

But the average run of the mill encounter/boss/world boss etc doesn’t use any team work. So called ‘easy’ teamwork isn’t there – and none of the other systems whether the combo system or the utility skills really compensate.

The end result is that the learning curve for this game is all messed up. Its either ultra easy all casual – but tricky in certain PvP situations/dungeons etc. I hate to break it to Arenanet but the holy trinity (group roles) really WAS a step forward for MMOs.

The rest of their problems – lack of progression etc can be fixed. But this fundamental design error weakens the game dramatically. I guess even GW1 had roles.

I feared it wouldn’t really work when I read about it – and it doesn’t. World Bosses are just zerg fests/buttom spams. That’s because as I explained before if they balanced it to be hard you might need some really tricky teamwork or like say a "burn’ team of all skilled glass cannons.

World bosses are zerg fests because scaling doesn’t work past a certain number and they aren’t instanced.

Also, the lack of trinity is the only thing that they have stood firm on and it’s the best thing about the entire game. Well, no trinity and active combat.

They stood firm on no monthly fee, beautiful scenary design, active combat, a branching storyline (storylines do branch), dynamic events, and a whole plethora of other things they said. People forget so easily.

Kromica.2831:

Its not for you if you bought it based on what was said in the manifesto.

I bought it based on what was said in the manifesto and I’m happy with the product. Everyone likes to pick on the manifesto but plenty of people think the game got fairly close to what they said they wanted to do. If you didn’t, shrugs. Doesn’t change the game for anyone else.

This game is for me and people who play like me.

It’s a game for people who don’t look to “level” at all, and accept leveling as a byproduct of everything else you’re doing. I don’t care if I’m ever level 80 because I’m having fun on the journy TO level 80. And I have fun after.

I like to find hidden stuff that’s not all that obvious (like recently discovering the secret room in CM, as an example). I like doing all kinds of stuff, including dynamic events, particularly winning back contested way points. I like going back into a zone to see stuff I’ve never seen before, such as the jumping puzzle/key event in Metrica Province, which I just did for the first time two days ago.

I don’t look at wikis to see where jumping puzzles are. I try to find them by exploring. My wife turns off her map markers altogether and tries to complete zones without knowing where vistas are and were points of interest are. It’s challenging and fun for her.

This game is for people who don’t like gated content that exists in other games. You can’t enter this dungeon because you don’t have stat X. I don’t mind the Fractals because I can see them all without getting special gear. Higher levels are for grinders, and that’s fine. I’m up to level 19 now, and I may never go further, but I’ve had a lot of fun in the fractals. I actually find lower level fractals more enjoyable than higher level ones, because I don’t care about challenge in my play. Life is challenging enough. I play to have fun.

This is how I play Guild Wars 2 and so this game is for me. I’m sure there are other people enjoying other aspects of the game as well. But this game won’t be for everyone which is sort of the point. On the other hand, if you’re a grinder, who only likes better and better gear, this game may not be for you. Fortutately you have many other options.

Players like me don’t.

I’m not sure why you think the DR is creature based, not area based. I haven’t found it so. Do you have evidence of this?

Parthis.2091:

Purgatory.5296:

Will they agree that the “No Holy Trinity” combat system is a failure or at least needs some improvement?

Quoting this to echo it too. The removal of the trinity, or at the very least treat management tools is a major mistake IMHO. I don’t feel like I have a real role in this game and PvE is very shallow.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for the guild I lead; PvE is dull as no matter how you dress it up you win by “Dodging out of red circles” and dealing damage. Every member has at some point uttered “I miss being a healer” or “I miss being a tank” etc etc.

It seems to me that removing the trinity is a reaction to grouping problems as opposed to removal of the trinity because the trinity as a mechanic is flawed.

What’s worse is groups running the game’s higher level content (high fractals, etc) are already asking for specific classes.

And everyone in my guild says the exact opposite, most of us saying we’d never play a trinity role again…ever. If they put a trinity in this game, I’d leave. It’s a terrible, lousy, lazy, contrived device that other people like because it’s easy to know what you’re doing. There’s plenty of synergy and roles in Guild Wars 2 combat, if you’re playing with a guild particularly. It’s a lot harder on pugs I’d wager.

This is just a comment to let Jon Peters know that some of us really despise the trinity and not having it here is one of the reasons we play Guild Wars 2.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Saying that he’s saying something “completly wrong” means that you are sure that he IS wrong when he state the devs lied, but as you have already highlighted no one know what they were thinking when they made the manifesto.
So you’re using an hyperbole too, aren’t you?
He may be right or he may be wrong, we will never know, all we know is that we bought the game because of that manifesto and we were expecting something “a bit” different xD
(And it WAS different, then november came…)

Anyhow, we are off-topic so let’s just stop here >.> we’re both right and wrong the truth lies somewhere in between.

He’s completely wrong to make a statement of fact from something he doesn’t know. That’s not hyperbole it’s fact. It’s an unwarranted assumption. I’m not exaagerating what he’s saying. He’s calling someone a liar and it simply can’t be proved. And since a manifesto is only a statement of intent, there’s no reason to believe it’s a lie at all.

Also hyperbole is an exaageration in order to make something sound worse than it is. Calling someone completely wrong by saying something unprovable as fact is in no way hyperbole.

Rifter.6591:

Short answer is they dont care, they wont do anything, so dont waste your time.

This has been sent to support hundreds of times, nothing gets done.

Albery Einstien once said insanity is

“doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So dont be insane and just carry on with your life.

FYI this exact senario is why i dont bother with dungeons unless im friends of 3 members of the party and we only have 1 pug.

They don’t care, or they don’t have the man-power to actively investigate what would likely be hundreds of claims, maybe thousands.

There are support issues that have to be taken care of, as a priority. This isn’t one of them. If they had zillions of support guys sitting around doing nothing, they’d have time to investigate this sort of thing. But to expect it?

Maybe people don’t realize how time intensive this would be.

Shiren.9532:

joric.1042:

GW2 is the alpha dog on the block right now on the MMO scene. Tried going back to a couple of other MMOs, I didn’t stay long

I’m pretty WoW is still the biggest MMO out there. It thrives with more active players – and these people are paying monthly to play it. It’s still one of the primary reasons new MMOs can’t come out with subscription models – they will always compete with WoW. ArenaNet knew they couldn’t compete with WoW, so they made their business model exist beside WoW. For as long as people are designing their business model to co-exist with a more competitive MMO, I don’t think it’s accurate to call their MMO the alpha.

I’ll second the idea that GW2 doesn’t have the content to compete. ArenaNet are desperately trying to push out more content, but all they are managing to do is artifically create more grind to give the illusion of content. Even the new tier of gear is pretty much exclusively simple stat increases, with the exception of backslots, no new skins have been added.

Superior games thrive on real content, games like GW2 have to force grind into their design to stretch their content as thin as possible to make it last longer because there is very little content there. That’s another reason why everything bring added to GW2 these days is gated by real world time rather than content itself being rewarding.

Guild Wars 2 has more content at launch than WoW did. A lot more actually. WoW took years to get to the level of content they have now including a number of paid expansions.

Compared to most games at launch, Guild Wars 2 is a breath of fresh air. Of course there are problems. But no game can launch with as much content as a 7 year old successful game, because no game has enough time to wait to launch before they have that much content. Anyone who expect this is fooling themselves.

However, compared to other launches (I"ll leave SWToR out of this because it’s clearly not a good example of a new MMO), Rift had a very smooth launch, but a tiny tiny world with very little content. Games like AoC and Warhammer were unplayable due to bugs and imbalances. People say that about Guild Wars 2 but it’s on a whole different level in those games. In fact, when I tried AoC even in later years, I couldn’t play it because it continually crashed my system. I enjoyed what I saw of it, but not enough to keep rebooting to play it, every 15 to 20 minutes.

No MMO has launched with as much content as Guild Wars 2, ever, or if it has, I haven’t seen it. And no MMO has launched with a specific no-competitive PVe framework that seems to appeal to a whole lot of people….including me.

I played WoW for several months and never really enjoyed it. There are a lot of people like me out there. I daresay there are as many people who loathe WoW as love it.

Safer Saviour.9685:

Red Falcon.8257:

Rukia.4802:

@Aeon I think you hit the nail on the head there, and at least no one else is going to try removing trinity without a proper replacement, thank god. I don’t think combat is ‘amazing’ though, more of just meh. I like actually using my brain and strategizing which is why I loved GW1.

I think you confuse combat with enemy depth.
It’s not our combat mechanics that are boring, it’s the AI.

GW1 required more tactics because:
- AI used proper teams (healer, rupter mesmer, condi necro, 2 warriors, ranger)
- AI had proper skillbars that would make sense for a player to use, sometimes even great builds with 10 skills, elites and all.
Therefore you needed to setup a good strategy to counter their builds and their comp.

GW2 lacks exactly that.
Mobs rarely have a proper “team”, it’s a miracle if they collaborate.
Mobs have 1-2 skills. Very rarely 3.
Mobs have no builds. They spam their 1-2 skills over and over.
Mobs have no team AI. They won’t try to act as a team and help each other.

Combat is great, AI is terrible.
Anet needs to stop making mobs use “mob skills” and give them proper builds like in GW1.
I expect a Warrior mob to come Bull+HB me.
A Guardian mob should give protection/aegis to the team, use bubbles and walls.

I find most of the complaints on this thread to be worthless to me, but this? This is spot on and I’d never actually thought about it before. The mobs in GW2 are varied but there are very few which actively synergise with their own allies and the area around them. The closest the game comes to that kind of content is… probably the dredge and even then, there are some severe limitations.

The developers would do well to look at their AI systems and see how they could improve. Patrols and unified groups would be a very nice upgrade, for sure.

There’s a reason for this, though. Guild Wars 1, being completely instanced, means you can control the environment quite specifically. Nothing respawns. So if you get a group, Anet can insure that’s the only group.

In a game with a persistent world, those types of groups can only appear in instanced content and they do. You simply have to go into instanced to find them.

Imagine a game where things respawn all the time that has a number of players in it and suddenly some guy appears there alone. He has multiple healers, who he tries to kill but its’ not like GW 1 where you have heroes or henchmen. This guy really is alone.

It would be impossible to put this stuff in the open world without making the open world unplayable for a whole lot of people…maybe even people who liked it in Guild wars 1.

Valanga.5942:

Fanboys fails to understands that most of the “whines” comes from people who love the game and would be it the way it was presented back when the manifesto came out.
Anyway, watching that video again, now and see how the game is actually, really makes me sad.

There are things I don’t like about the game too. And I’ll post in response to people who have posted negatively about them. Which is quite different than saying the manifesto is a pack of lies, which is actually unprovable. Even if everything in it was different from what was shown, which isn’t the case, a manifesto is nothing more than a statement of intent.

If I intend to take the kids out to the movies and tell them so, but then I’m called into work, I didn’t lie to them. The situation changed and I reacted to it. When I made the statement, I fully intended to do what I said I was going to. No one could call that a lie.

Now, there are plenty of things in the manifesto that are true, and some which are questionable, but not as many as people say. Taken in context there are very few things in the manifesto that you can’t find in the game. That said, since a manifesto is only a statement of intent, then calling those who made it liars is like saying you know what they were thinking when they made it.

This form of verbal attack is called hyperbole. It’s an unfair attack because it’s misleading. Furthermore, calling the manifesto is lie isn’t helpful to the game at all, and if you like the game and keep saying it, you’re helping nothing. You’re attacking devs who created a statement of intent years before a product launch. It wasn’t a promise of what would be in the game but a set of intentions.

Within the bounds of technology I think Anet has come quite close to what they wanted. I have little doubt they’ll continue to come close.

Saying something that is completely wrong and has no value to the game, whether you have the right to say it or not, simply isn’t productive. And those who disagree with you aren’t automatically fan bois for pointing it out.

I can’t remember the last time I ran a dungeon with a warrior. I think they’re highly overrated because I don’t really care if I get a dungeon done 5 minutes faster or not.

I also don’t pug, because people like to “run” dungeons, where as I just enjoy playing the game. I’m not in any rush.

So I play with guildies. No one gets excluded in my guild, no matter the profession. And though I main a mesmer and there are several guardians in the guild (and several other mesmers), we regularly run dungeons with a ranger, a necro, and a couple of engineers, oh and and an ele. Overall we do quite well.

Naturally we know each other and play with each other very well, which is the point. If you’re just trying to build a team of strangers who have no experience together, you want to fill roles. If you play with people you play with all the time, you naturally fit yourself into roles that work…they won’t necessarily be the standard roles though.

gillius.2856:

Vayne.8563:

gillius.2856:

gw1 i still have loads of quest lines to do… they came from everywhere, so many sometimes that i didnt know what to do.
GW2 well 6 months in an all done except for the grind…:(

Guild Wars 1 is four games. If you only count Prophecies, you could finish everything in Prophecies in well under six months. Compare apples to apples. When guild Wars 2 has three expansions out, then compare the amount of content.

im pretty sure i still have things to do in prophecies to be fair, altho thats not the point. there was always something to do, and quests to finish. also i heard that there arnt gonna be ‘expoansions’ like in gw1 more like expansions.
The point still stands tho.. run out of stuff to do except the grind. dont get me wrong i still log on and play with friends,

What was there to do in Prophecies. Quests weren’t generally repeatable, only missions were. You finished a quest, it was done…forever. You couldn’t go back and do the same quest. All you could repeat were the 25 missions.

Of the 25 missions there was hard mode and normal mode, though I don’t believe hard mode existed at launch. Some of those missions were highly entertaining. Some of those missions just plain sucked. I mean they were bad. Particularly the bonuses on some of them.

So if you say you can do the same 25 missions over and over again, that’s all well and good, but if you played Prophecies for 6 months and didn’t run out of quests, I’d say you didn’t play very much.

Rico.1025:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Rico.1025:

This should be added to OP:

*If you wanted an exact copy of Guild Wars 1… this game isn’t for you.

Fixed that for you.

I liked GW1. Wouldnt want a clone anymore. GW2 is fine.

No you didn’t, at least not for me, or for some of my friends…
We wanted GW1 with better graphics and persistent world. But GW2, with beautiful graphics and persistent world, is nothing like GW1… all those little details that made GW1 the greatest MMO (for me and my friends) is all gone…
It’s just a mix of different MMO’s, with a brand new quest system (which is epic btw… but not enough to be as great as GW1)

Well, you don’t speak for me or my friends or most of my old Guild Wars 1 guild. Most of us walked away from Guild Wars 1 at one point because it was old hat already. Maybe if there was more content it would have been okay but there were many issues with the game, particularly game balance, that were completely out of whack. Like anyone with a rit in the party was essentially god. Sure it’s cool to be able to walk through everything without thinking because your heroes are so kitten powerful, but you know, it wears thin after a while.

Guild Wars kept me busy for a long time, but in order for me to have kept playing that game or something like it, certain things would have had to have been added to the mix. Dynamic events, or something like them, a marketplace (because Spamdan sucked), the ability to jump, without all that pathing, more races to make things more interested, with different starting zones, crafting and a personal story.

Looks pretty much like the game Anet made. Would I want to go back to professions that couldn’t be balanced at all, had no hope of being balanced, because there were too many build possibilities? No, I wouldn’t want to go back to that. As badly as people say GW 2 is balanced, they really have no idea, until they played GW 1.

Guild Wars 2 has flaws of course, but it’s a much better game from my point of view than Guild Wars 1 was.

Conner.4702:

Vayne.8563:

gillius.2856:

gw1 i still have loads of quest lines to do… they came from everywhere, so many sometimes that i didnt know what to do.
GW2 well 6 months in an all done except for the grind…:(

Guild Wars 1 is four games. If you only count Prophecies, you could finish everything in Prophecies in well under six months. Compare apples to apples. When guild Wars 2 has three expansions out, then compare the amount of content.

Gw2 also has 6 times the manpower that GW1 had behind it. Or are we going to sweep that under the rug here.

What rug? It’s an ambitious game. If you compare Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2 at launch, you’ll find Guild Wars 2 is much larger and has far more content. Five starting cities, instead of just pre-searing Ascalon is a lot more content. One story track compared to multiple story lines is a lot more content.

Prophecies had 25 missions and probably under 500 quests. Guild Wars 2 has 3x the number of dynamic events over what Prophecies had as quests, plus hearts, plus personal story quests. Add to that WvW something Guild Wars 1 had nothing like, and the size of the world, underwater areas and eight dungeons, each with four modes. No one with any degree of honesty can say Prophecies had more content than Guild Wars 2.

But content STILL takes time. and Prophecies plus Factions plus Nightfall, Plus Eye of the North, well yeah, that gives Guild Wars 2 a run for the money in Content.

When Guild Wars 2 is 2 years old, it’ll have far more content than all those games together.

Not to mention a lobby based game always takes less development time and resources than a true MMO.

gillius.2856:

gw1 i still have loads of quest lines to do… they came from everywhere, so many sometimes that i didnt know what to do.
GW2 well 6 months in an all done except for the grind…:(

Guild Wars 1 is four games. If you only count Prophecies, you could finish everything in Prophecies in well under six months. Compare apples to apples. When guild Wars 2 has three expansions out, then compare the amount of content.

I think the OP underestimates how many hard core players there are compared to casuals. kitten off the hard core players and they leave, and shrugs. So what?

kitten off the casual players and there’ll be no one to fund the game. This is actually true in most games. There are far more casual players than there are hard core players.

Then there are guys like me who play a LOT for a long time and don’t want gear progression in my game. Because I know how to make my own fun. The game gives me the tools to have fun and I go and have it. I don’t have to be ultra competitive or get phat lootz to enjoy playing this game.

Everyone seems to think that their demographic represents the majority of players. We can’t ALL be right. lol

Anything under 50% magic find will hardly be noticable anyway unless you record results for a very long period of time. Above that it’s more noticable, but of course you can still have bad days.

I have one farming warrior with magic find gear I use and I tend to get more/better drops on him. But I’ve got a bunch of magic find on him. I don’t use him in dungeons, just to run around Orr or Frostgorge mostly.

As already pointed out, magic find doesn’t affect chests at all, only drops.

In the fractals, there are certain fractals with very little drops, like the swamp, where magic find will do you nothing. There are fractals like the dredge that have pretty good drops.

How many creatures do you kill in the dredge fractal, compared to say the ocean one with the krait?

Magic find has increased my drop rate over time.

I don’t think that this game is made for a very narrow audience at all. I think this game is made for an audience most people don’t realize is as large as it is. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Games like Skyrim or Dragon Age or The Witcher are all popular games. They’re games about people who like RPGs. MMORPGs have had the letters in the name for a long time, but the love of exploring and the world detail have largely been ignored by companies. Very few companies really wanted to make a living world. That’s why everything in WoW ends up in dungeons and raids, and people standing around cities.

But when you actually poll the WoW playerbase, you end up with a whole lot more people who solo than anyone expected and a whole lot less raiders. More to the point, Scott Hartsman, the lead developer of Rift, said (and I’m paraphrasing here, it was a long time ago), no MMO developer in his right mind could possibly ignore those who play MMOs solo because it’s such a large percentage of the playerbase. Even the Guild Wars 2 FAQ has a question about being able to solo.

The thing is, since the people who play games for immersion often do solo, no one knows what they think. They don’t have to come to forums to exchange builds, or group with people, or find out about dungeon runs, or the best min/max builds. They just play the game.

There’s a whole lot of us out here. No one knows how many. Why? Because when you’re a raider there’s a very specific activity you do, and you KNOW you’re a raider. When you’re a PvPer there’s a very specific activity you’re into. But when you’re an immersion player, just enjoying the open world exploring and having fun, there’s no real name for that. So many people I’ve talked to share my play style, but there’s no word for it, because you’re not really doing any specific activity.

I believe that Guild Wars 2 is popular for players like me, because other MMOs don’t even take us into account most of the time.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Lexandro.1456:

You can get fine stones from BL chests for free. I have done so myself using keys from the personal story. I have also bought 5 via the gem store with in game gold. It is not expensive in the slightest.

Again, the feature of changing armor prefixes is already in the game. If you want to do so, spend game gold on it there is no need to spend any cash.

Gold>gems exchange>gem store>job done

If there was a “free” way to change prefixes on exotic 80 gear, no-one would buy mutation stones.

Argument is invalid.

well if anet made my suggested LIVING EQUIPMENT system into the game i am sure a lot of people would buy fine transmutation stones.

forcing players to use fine transmutation stones like this is wrong.

But it wasn’t the case in Guild Wars 1 at launch. You had to wait 2 years to get that into Guild Wars 1. It didn’t happen at launch.

Actually, you’re acting quite entitled. It doesn’t MATTER if it was in Guild Wars 1 or not. It’s completely irrelevant. The inability to jump was in Guild Wars 1 too. Second professions were in Guild Wars 1. Energy was in Guild Wars 1. Dyes were in bottles, and you had to buy a new one every time you used it. There’s a lot of stuff in Guild Wars 1 that’s not here.

I don’t believe this game is going to change and I don’t believe it should. So pony up and buy some gems, or don’t. But what you’re asking is actually not reasonable.

Zepidel.5349:

emikochan.8504:

Just use the skill a few times jeez. I agree with Vayne.

Still hoping for the option to turn the damage numbers off :/

I do like immersion, but uh have you played the main story line? lol… I like this game but its not for its story or RP elements. It’s for the PvP etc… you would expect to find in a MMO. If you are here for the RP and immersion you are in a bad place.

The personal story isn’t particularly immersive to me. The world is. The cities, the events, the hidden things…yes, I can immerse myself readily in this world. There are a few personal story instances that I really liked too, but not too many. But this world, compared to any other MMO I’ve played, is immersive. There’s a whole lot of attention to detail here, that I quite like.

FLFW.3105:

The irony here is that :

You dont get major fixes because ’ they take time ’ .

You dont get minor fixes because ’ they are low on priority list’ .

What you get thou is..

New back packs.

Yes,cause they are sure at the top of priority list now and game would come crashing from sky without new backpack every week.

Oh you fanny fanny Anet.

A whole rafter of things have been improved and implemented. Just being able to preview items from the marketplace, and preview weapons while drawn instead of sheathed was a major thing in the last update. Made a big difference to my game.

Today we did a guild mission. Yes, it’s new content that needs work, but it was fun. This is the second one we finished. One more and we can unlock the next type. We expect to do this on Sunday.

Fractals were added after launch and some people seem to like that. There are tons of bug fixes that have happened, many not even documented. There are, of course, still bugs left.

But saying the dev team isn’t doing anything but putting cute stuff in the store is disingenuous at best.

I get one or two a week. Got a decent exotic named bow day before yesterday. Usually they’re just the regular unnamed exotics though.

OP, how often do you get rares?

Chuo.4238:

Too bad they overhauled this game a time or three before release. They tried to please the GW1 fans, tried to please the WoW hardcores, and failed at pleasing anyone. Somewhere in the middle, the Manifesto became rubbish.
kitten shame. Had they just made the game they announced right after Eye of the North, we might just be looking at the millions who wanted something other than World of Warcraft.

Thanks to you artists at ArenaNet. kitten shame your management is what it is.

So what…the people that post that they like the game don’t exist? They haven’t pleased anyone?

I’m a GW 1 player and I’m pleased. So’s my wife. So are several of my guildies. I wish people would learn to speak for themselves, instead of trying to talk for everyone.

Bubbles.1047:

Vayne.8563:

Bubbles.1047:

Anyone arguing that ascendeds are a marginal upgrade will get a harsh lesson in humility should they ever decide to join WvW and face fully ascended geared players. Also, you are naive to think that Anet will not be introducing new PvE content tailored specifically for that level of gear, or that progression will stop with ascended.

I can already smell the forum posts. ‘I never did my ascended grind, coz everyone kept saying it wasn’t mandatory. And now these elitists won’t take me in their groups!’

My advice, stop listening to these kittens, get on the treadmill and save yourself future grief.

Because you know how the rest of ascended gear will be required, or even what WvW upgrades to get ascended gear will hit in March.

Can I borrow your crystal ball when you’re done with it?

Wait, what? Who said anything about March?

And yeah, you can borrow my crystal ball. It’s called Common Sense with a special flavor Past Experience.

It’s called making stuff up, because you simply don’t know. March is supposedly the WvW update. Let’s wait to at least see that WvW (even if they move it back) before we preempt. Because otherwise, it is just making stuff up.

There was a clarification after the manifesto was posted, because it confused people due to editing. Colin is talking about dynamic events, Ree was talking about personal story.

So a couple of years before the game comes out, developers talked loosely about the idea of what they wanted to do with the game, which is what a manifesto is, btw, a statement of intent, and then people pick it apart word by word, often completely out of context.

Old promo tool is an old promo tool that 90% holds up. It’s a pretty good average. I just wish people would let it go already, because it’s getting old.

It won’t happen because Anet used these skins to reward players, some of which worked very hard to get them. I know people who bought GW 1 before GW 2 came out just to get those skins. How do you think they’d feel if Anet allowed everyone else to get them?

Knighthonor.4061:

Vayne.8563:

Zenith.6403:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Remember there are no melee and no ranged professions. Every class is fully capable of being fully melee, fully ranged or both.

- Except the Engineer…

The toolkit uses the wrench as a melee weapon and it’s a kitten good one.

We have a new King of Comedy here…

hey can I get tickets to your next show?

Can you afford them?

Bubbles.1047:

Anyone arguing that ascendeds are a marginal upgrade will get a harsh lesson in humility should they ever decide to join WvW and face fully ascended geared players. Also, you are naive to think that Anet will not be introducing new PvE content tailored specifically for that level of gear, or that progression will stop with ascended.

I can already smell the forum posts. ‘I never did my ascended grind, coz everyone kept saying it wasn’t mandatory. And now these elitists won’t take me in their groups!’

My advice, stop listening to these kittens, get on the treadmill and save yourself future grief.

Because you know how the rest of ascended gear will be required, or even what WvW upgrades to get ascended gear will hit in March.

Can I borrow your crystal ball when you’re done with it?

I still maintain no one NEEDS ascended gear unless they want to grind fractals. If you want to grind fractals, you get the ascended gear you need. It’s really not that difficult.

I don’t need ascended gear to do anything else in the game. Are you saying you can’t beat the dungeons in the game without ascended gear? Or any open world events? Can you SPVP without ascended gear? Can you WvW?

I do all those things, without ascended gear….and I do fine. I’m quite successful. If you feel you NEED to have that ascended gear, because it’s BIS, that’s for you. In other games it would be true, because content is literally gated if you don’t have the right stats.

But that’s not true in Guild Wars 2, which happens to be the game I’m playing.

You’re mistaken. NCsoft did not buy out Anet. At least not before Guild Wars 1 launched. Anet was part of NCSoft before the launch of Guild Wars 1. For seven years, Anet has been part of NCSoft, so nothing has really changed in that regard. Maybe you should do some research before posting.

Nor are you specific enough in your complaints for anyone to actually coherently answer them.

So, a red herring is a red herring. Try being direct in what you think is wrong, instead of trying to blame NCsoft. And try being specific. Otherwise your post acccomplished nothing.

Six month old MMO is a six month old MMO. Every single six month MMO I’ve ever played has the we don’t have enough content thing on the forum. Content takes time to make. The game takes time to make. Bugs take time to fix. It’s all about time.

In two years time this game will have a ton of stuff. No game company can put out an MMO that has enough for you to do, particularly if you have like a legendary after two months.

Content burners will be in the same box no matter how much content a developer offers.

critickitten.1498:

Heijincks.9267:

You haven’t played any other MMOs if you can make that statement. Yes, GW2 significantly upped the amount of grind. Despite that, it’s still substantially less grindier than most other MMOs.

If it’s grindy, then you’re only choosing to do so.

X The Manimal.5293:

So easy to tell GW2 is your first MMO.

It’s funny you should both say this, because we’ve had people who came from WoW in this forum who say that nowadays, WoW is actually less of a grind at the high end than GW2.

I just think it’s interesting that folks in this forum will outright deny that GW2 has any grind in it when we have players who came from other, grindy games saying that they’re surprised how much grind GW2 has. I’d think we should listen to them, since they have this “experience” you’re both talking about.

Yeah, it’s less grindy than many games out there. But it’s not grind-free. I do wish people would stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Sure, because the people who come from WoW must have BIS gear because all the content in WoW is gated that way.

But if you change your perspective and say I don’t need BIS gear (and you really don’t) suddenly all the grind is voluntary. I can see all the content without a single piece of ascended gear, including all 9 fractals. I can even get all the fractal achievements, every one of them, without ever getting ascended gear.

So WoW players, trained to believe BIS gear is required to play the game see required grind. I don’t.

I’m still playing the same game I played before I had any ascended gear.

I honestly wish there were no number at all. I know the min/max crowd is crazy about them, and loves them, but to me, it’s the least immersive part of any game. I mean, if you’re thinking about numbers, you’re not in the world.

If I attack a wolf with a sword in real life, a number doesn’t pop out of it. Likewise in many other games, numbers don’t necessarily pop up. Numbers cheapen the entire experience for me.

I kill stuff, or I die. If I die too much, I change my build until I don’t die and still kill stuff. Reducing a game like this to numbers is exactly the opposite of how I’d rather play.

Lots of action/adventure games don’t have numbers at all and people still play them in great numbers.

But I guess I’m probably the exception to all this, so carry on.

Spawn.7014:

didn’t RIFT came with one?

Nope, Rift didn’t come with one. I was very active in Rift and on the Rift forums during launch and for months after. People on the forums were madly asking for an LFG tool or a dungeon finder, neither of which existed in game. It took months for them to get it out, and it wasn’t cross server at first either. Not sure if it is now, since I stopped following the game.

Zenith.6403:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Remember there are no melee and no ranged professions. Every class is fully capable of being fully melee, fully ranged or both.

- Except the Engineer…

The toolkit uses the wrench as a melee weapon and it’s a kitten good one.

I’m working on my sixth level 80, a necro. I only have thief and elementalist left after that. My first character was an engie, but my main is currently mesmer. I also use my ranger alot.

Sousui.1635:

I was going from a finished shatter to jormag, they just touched each other.

Oh yea.. and F- THAT! This isn’t a trip to the mall, or driving to work. There is no such thing as “oh well if you left early, you wouldn’t get there late.” Its a game, a game in which there should be no such thing as over flow. You know what overflow is right? It is an additional feature implimented to handle the times when the servers cannot handle the amount of data they are given. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN! EVER! Its a temporary solution and is fine for extreme cases, like christmas. christmas offers up extreme crowding. Not in the middle of freaking march.

The overflow is an elegant solution to a problem of congestion in specific servers. When Rift launched, they didn’t have overflow servers. They had queues to get into games. For months after, there were some servers you’d still get queues on.

So instead of logging in and playing and having some fun, you started at a number, hoping it would go down. One day when I logged in I was 514 in the queue. I was not impressed.

Guild Wars 2 solved this problem. You want a thousand people on a server all at the same time? You’ll be so lagged you could neither move, nor play.

Overflow servers are totally awesome even if you occasionally miss events because of them. Because the other viable option stops you from playing completely.

Hey OP, can you list all the AAA MMOs that had an LFG at launch. Cause I’m having trouble thinking of any.

kKagari.6804:

Vayne.8563:

kKagari.6804:

I abhor the ‘its too hard to do .’. we streamlined it’ approach developers take these days. God forbid setting challenges for yourself and following through with them.

Is it that it’s too hard to do, or is it that every time they do something, half the people in the game complain?

A lot of things people want done, that makes perfect sense to them, would completely turn off another segment of the population. When you invest your money into a game development company, and you see that a majority of players are very casual, how would you go about programming?

A lot of stuff isn’t hard to do, but is more accurately translated into it would take too much time (read money) to put this in while we have other things to work on. It’s a developers nightmare. The game Anet really wanted to make they had to change several times. There would have been a whole lot less hand-holding in the game for example, if they didn’t have problems during early play-testing with people that just ran by events and did nothing. It’s why they added hearts, as one example.

Developers aren’t free to do anything they want to a game. They have to make sure people play the game. And sure sometimes they get that wrong. But it’s not just about something being too hard to do. It’s about how much it costs to do.

I’d argue that removing an aspect of the game that was extremely well received actually hurts your pockets more. People complaining hasn’t deterred them this far, i.e. they completely ignore the people anyways.

What part is that?

Anchorwind.9016:

Within the GW model, I [as many others have] enjoyed the tactical nature of squad-based synergies and counter-play. I applaud the developers of GW for having a system that places ‘weaker’ builds on foes in appropriate areas and ‘stronger’ builds on foes in appropriate areas without resorting to ‘buckets of HP’ and other duller replacements. I give Slavers’ Exile as an example. Many of the foes in Slavers’ Exile had builds that encouraged their foes [we, the players] to possess a higher skill level than foes in other areas. Fortunately, Slavers’ Exile was also labelled appropriately [Elite]. By diversifying the builds we faced, and giving foes builds [more] worth having, we received difficulty increases without needless tediousness presently seen. Effectively built and run squads could still move out with purpose in any given area, a talent lost in 250 years with up/down scaling and buckets of HP.

Skill[s] over Stats. Perhaps a philosophy lost in the mists.

Yep. Slaver’s Exiles was an awesomely hard dungeon to beat for a lot of people. You really had to think to beat it. Of course that was introduced two years after release and not there at this point in Guild Wars 1’s development. What you had was the Underworld and the Fissure of Woe, neither of which has the complexity or synergy of Slaver’s.

As time goes on, I believe you’ll see more challenges in harder dungeons, maybe even harder dungeon modes for people who want that challenge.

The real question is what percentage of people want it. Because if it’s not a big enough percentage, then Anet would have to spend time programming something that only a small percentage of the player base would ever see or make use of.

CoRtex.2157:

Lexandro.1456:

I disagree. Its one of the things I didnt like about GW1 was the constant feeling of playing PVP in the PVE enviroment. Factions was a prime example of this. Everywhere you went each encounter was essentially an AI “team” that all had synergistic skills. This showed up the huge gap in player vs enemy skillsets, and was one of the reasons so many players were turned off Factions/Cantha as a whole. PvP is fine for those that like it, I have nothing against it and participated in plenty of PvP events. But when I am playing PvE, it is BECAUSE I dont want to play PvP and do not want the “same” experience with the game.

Thats why Nightfall didnt have this as much in PVE. Yes there were numerous encounters that were the same as factions but there was also plenty that were also just “units” and not entire teams.

Its why I believe that in this respect Gw2 is far superior. Much less enemy skill synergy, no PvP bleedthrough in the PvE enviroment, and much easier to understand enemies skillsets.

If PvE is like PvP for u, than you are saying that the AI’s in the game is smarter than you as a person.. Cus i don’t really get it.. If you see a group of mobs, you need 10 minutes to kill it in normal mode… cus that’s PVP.. so i find it really sad for u, but for normal people it takes 5-20 seconds to kill a group of mobs.

Actually, in PvP, a good player is much smarter than any AI, but what’s the percentage of good PvPers to really bad ones? I’m not a major PvPer, but even I, with little experience, have seen some really bad PVPers out there. I’m pretty sure AI is superior to them in a fight. lol

kKagari.6804:

I abhor the ‘its too hard to do .’. we streamlined it’ approach developers take these days. God forbid setting challenges for yourself and following through with them.

Is it that it’s too hard to do, or is it that every time they do something, half the people in the game complain?

A lot of things people want done, that makes perfect sense to them, would completely turn off another segment of the population. When you invest your money into a game development company, and you see that a majority of players are very casual, how would you go about programming?

A lot of stuff isn’t hard to do, but is more accurately translated into it would take too much time (read money) to put this in while we have other things to work on. It’s a developers nightmare. The game Anet really wanted to make they had to change several times. There would have been a whole lot less hand-holding in the game for example, if they didn’t have problems during early play-testing with people that just ran by events and did nothing. It’s why they added hearts, as one example.

Developers aren’t free to do anything they want to a game. They have to make sure people play the game. And sure sometimes they get that wrong. But it’s not just about something being too hard to do. It’s about how much it costs to do.

kKagari.6804:

Vayne.8563:

The difference between Guild Wars 1 and 2 has nothing to do with the quality of the AI. It has to do with the fact GW 1 was instanced and GW 2 is open world. Saying this AI doesn’t exist in Guild Wars 2 shows me people that haven’t looked at dungeon and fractal groups. The team synergy there is pretty strong, trust me.

Like in CM explorable mode where you have riflemen who do more damage to moving targets, while you have bombers who make sure you have to move, or you get blown up. Or thugs who heal and buff allies. The dredge are another good example of various roles that do various things.

But even Guild Wars 1 players like me, wouldn’t be happy or stand a chance in a game where you have mobs respawning that have that kind of synergy. That’s why groups like that have to be reserved for instances.

You might argue that they should have more groups like that on a longer repawn timer, but that wouldn’t work either, because once you kill the group, the next guy running through will have nothing to do.

Well, I’m not really sure why I should trust you I ran dungeons enough to get a full set of armor from each.

Think of it in terms of the events then. When bandits or whatever assault a camp, they could very well play the group synergy card here. Enemies could very well assault a camp not clumped together to get AoE’d down. I’m not saying theres none of this in the game, but it is very shallow in the scope of the whole game.

As for general running around in the field. Why do brackish skale have to inhabit the whole area. The diversity of the enemies and the nature of engaging ‘world’ mobs could be so much better if they had a few types of these guys around, rather than just one.

The dynamic events, again, are made for open world They could put those mobs in there, but they’d have to complete redo scaling to do it, because if you happen to be one guy and stumble on that event, you’d likely be eaten alive. The entire thing I said about the open world is true. It’s too hard to balance it out that way. It’s why those things are only found in instances.

As for the diversity of the world. sure they could put in different skales but being the game is centered around events, not just killing random mobs, it would make a difference to a whole lot less people than you think.

Every single developer has to make time choices about how much time something takes to produce including maintainence. So they make changes. They made changes, recently to the krait. They’re much harder now.

Did you see the complaint threads about them? I did. And it’s fair enough. You make something that hard, and it is harder, and you turn off a lot of the casual players who are just minding their own business having fun. You want challenge and I like challenge too. But I also recognized that I’m in a vast minority. The game was never going to be tailor made for me…but I understand why that is.

CoRtex.2157:

Vayne.8563:

I’m another long time Guild Wars 1 player, who likes Guild Wars 2 more.

First of all, you can only really compare Guild Wars 2 to Prophecies at launch. At this point in it’s development, Factions wasn’t out yet. And a lot of people seem to be comparing four games with one. Take away professions like the Rit, sin and dervish and see how many people are still saying Guild Wars 1 was much better. Certainly not as many PVe people.

25 missions, no hard mode. That’s what you had. And the mission bonuses were annoying and story breaking in some cases. Many were badly done (particularly in Nightfall).

snip

I did like the skill system in Guild Wars 1 and loved making builds. It was my favorite part of the game. But it wasn’t enough to compensate for the incredible lack of necessary game functions, like marketplaces and jumping. The last thing I wanted to do was stand around Spamadan all day, trying to sell a bunch of stuff, instead of playing.

There was plenty wrong with Guild Wars 1. It was still one of the best games of its time but I think too many people remember it with rose-colored glasses on, and even more, many are comparing the full range of games that appear over a couple of years with what we’re seeing in Guild Wars 2 after six months.

In two years, I think this game is going to rock.

First, you say, you have to look at prophecies only, then you cry about kamadan… i don’t get it. All in all, i loved prophecies, because back then, there was something they called “runners”. And there were soooo many runs to do back then, some of them were pretty hard to do like droknar run with warrior. This all died when factions came out. Solo farming existed before factions. The 2 most played dungeons FoW & UW are from prophecies. Prophecies was AWESOME!

At the end of the day, GW1 had also issues when it launched and became better bit by bit. The only difference is that i don’t see it happening for GW2. I’m waiting for more skills since launch. Without build crafting there is no point in changing your skills ever, you just take the best ones and role with it. And that’s just boring. Remember the anet quote?? “We took everything you loved about GW1 and putted into a persistent world”, well that’s just talking BS to get more buyers for your game. I’m still waiting for the day that GW2 will be like how anet told us how it was going be like.

Build crafting is one thing you likely won’t get here….at least not build crafting the way it was in Guild Wars 1. It was too hard to balance. For PvP, that’s a bad, bad thing, but it even affected PvE. Once they changed the rit signet of spirits, PVe in Guild Wars 1 became laughably easy. A necro and a couple of rits in your party, and you could do pretty much anything in the game solo with heros and henchmen. This very thing which a lot of GW 1 players loved, would be hated by a lot of the MMO world.

I say you have to compare Prophecies with Guild Wars 2, and bring up Kamadan because that’s where people sold stuff. I could have said Lion’s Arch but my point was that Guild Wars 1 at no point had a marketplace to sell stuff. Doesn’t matter what city I named where you had to go and sell stuff. The point is the same. No marketplace in Guild Wars 1, marketplace in Guild Wars 2. From launch. That’s comparing Prophecies to Guild Wars 2 at this stage, no matter what city I happened to name. I said Kamadan because that’s where everyone eventually sold stuff. So many peoiple hated going there, I used it to make a point…but that point was still valid for Prophecies.

Prophecies was a decent game if you had live people to play with or you liked pugging. It was a terrible game for soloers, because there were no heroes and some of that stuff you weren’t going to do with henchmen, at least not without becoming frustrated to the nth degree.

So yeah, people who don’t want to group would find Guild Wars 2 at this point better than Guild Wars 1 at the Prophecies stage. People who don’t want to stand around trying to sell stuff in chat would find that aspect better as well. People who like a more active combat might like Guild Wars 2 better. People who want a world that’s not pathed, so my ranger could like you know, go over a log instead of around it might like Guild Wars 2 better.

There were great things in Prophecies for some people but some of those things were the very things that prevented the game from going mainstream…like the builds. It was neither intuitive, nor new player friendly. Those who loved making builds, and there were many of us, enjoyed it. Everyone else, which was most people, went and got builds offline because it as too hard for them to figure out.

I think you overestimate how many people would want that kind of complexity in their build system.