There’s some real value, if you’re one of those who like the personal story, of making characters of different races and seeing the other starting stories. For one thing, the end of the game calls back to the beginnings of various stories. There are things that can happen in the Asuran story, for example, that introduce you to one of the NPCs who comes into play at the end of the game. There are things in the Sylvari story that are used in later missions. The entire thing is really a web, and pretty interesting.
I’d much rather play a different storyline than replay the same one.
Saying that the game is on sale and equating that with the game not doing well is just plain silly. Pepsi ran a sale the other day, and I’m pretty sure they’re doing fine. I’ve seen WoW on sale too.
Games always drop in price after release. Anet wants more people playing, because that means more people will be buying stuff through the cash shop. Most of the people interested have already bought the game, so now they discount it to entice new people who might not have tried it previously. It’s a marketing strategy. There’s no way anyone can construe this as indication of the game’s health, unless they can show that other healthy companies don’t run sales…which they can’t.
It’s a smart move on their part, whether the game is doing well or not.
You can’t just isolate hearts though from the questing system in Guild Wars 2. It’s disingenuous at least.
The questing system in standard MMOs is the way you experience content in the open world. Hearts were added later in the game to give people something to do when waiting for dynamic events. They were never meant to replace quests, or compare to them.
They were added to slow people’s progress through zones. Orr doesn’t have hearts at all for example and is a better example of what a zone would be if they’d stayed with their original plan. Many would have preferred it.
But the hearts were simply a compromise and part of the system. You have to compare hearts and dynamic events as a package, compared with quests from other games to be fair.
In other words, compare open world content to open world content, not just one small aspect of it.
You use the word immersion in your comments about why someone would prefer the quest system. I’ve come to a different conclusion than yours. The quest system is the least immersive part of any game to me, for several reasons.
First, quests in most games are static. They’re just there. This is not true in single player RPGs, with no persistent world, but it is true in MMOs. Someone’s going to attack the town..but it can’t because there are other people in the world who aren’t doing that quest. The town can’t be burning. No one would understand why,.
Rift did have a burning town in it, but it was ALWAYS burning. You could save the town and it would still be burning. In what way is this immersive (because I can’t see it).
The whole quest system is riddled with immersion flaws. People asking you to do ridiculous things, and then standing there and handing you a piece of gear for a reward, that they happened to have lying around. Most of the rewards make no sense and most of the stuff they ask you makes no sense.
At least with hearts you get to help out in the way you choose, and dynamic events are a reaction to a given situation. If I see a town under attack by undead or centaurs, of course I’ll want to help out the town. Why not? My favorite merchant is in there.
See, I find this type of dynamic questing system to be far more immersive than the traditional quest system as used in MMOs. Again, in single player games where the world can change, it’s a very different animal.
MMO quests basically suck. The Guild Wars 2 dyanmic events suck a bit less. lol
The game doesn’t have players because it has no depth and there are some fundamental design flaws that push people away without them even understanding why.
I must not be a player. The seventy plus people in my guild…they must not be players. The people who respond for dungeon runs on gw2lfg.com they aren’t players either, I guess. The guys who show up to kill the dragon or for the maw, or that are in a zerg running around Orr or WvW, they must not be players either.
There are plenty of people playing this game….they’re called players. As for depth, some people see depth and some don’t. But you know, anyone can state opinion as fact.
You know, I would LOVE to see someone post proof saying the population is/isn’t declining…
But this day and age, anyone can say anything on the net and declare they are true…
WHO NEEDS FACTS, right?The point is, there aren’t any facts here because no matter what you see on your server, with guesting it’s all moot anyway. And how many people are in fractals or dugeons or WvW or SPvP. No one really knows, so it’s all perception.
But annecdotally at least, a lot of people guest to my server, so I see more people than ever before. That doesn’t mean the game has more people playing.
It doesn’t mean it has less people either, though some servers might seem that way.
But watch this…
What proof do you have that everyone is guesting?
None right?Move along…
I didn’t say I have proof. But I do have annecdotal evidence. If nothing else, it’s been posted here in several threads that Tarnished Coast is where everyone is guesting too, and of course, I’ve met people guesting to TC. Now, that doesn’t mean everyone is, but you know, a lot of people look at these forums.
So if only a percentage of them see it and guest over, then some people are indeed guesting. I don’t have stats on guesting but I KNOW it happens.
Add to that I see more players around than I used to, makes me feel guesting is at least partly responsible.
There are guesses and there are educated guesses. I at least try to have something back up what I say, even if it’s not “provable”.
Doesn’t anyone do anything for fun anymore? Why is it always about rewards? I do some things for rewards, and I do some things for fun. Everything doesn’t have to have a monetary or power reward.
In real life, I can talk a walk on a nice day. I enjoy walking, but there’s no real reward for it, unless you count it as exercise. It’s just…well…nice to do.
I go back to older zones for some of the same reasons. I find them fun, or beautiful. And sometimes I get level appropriate drops. But I also get karma and gold and farm some lower level mats. Sure I don’t make as much.
I just don’t care.
I guess you guys don’t play games like Skyrim or Dragon Age. Because it doesn’t always have to be about progression.
You know, I would LOVE to see someone post proof saying the population is/isn’t declining…
But this day and age, anyone can say anything on the net and declare they are true…
WHO NEEDS FACTS, right?
The point is, there aren’t any facts here because no matter what you see on your server, with guesting it’s all moot anyway. And how many people are in fractals or dugeons or WvW or SPvP. No one really knows, so it’s all perception.
But annecdotally at least, a lot of people guest to my server, so I see more people than ever before. That doesn’t mean the game has more people playing.
It doesn’t mean it has less people either, though some servers might seem that way.
I don’t think it’s a matter of trusting Anet. It’s more of a matter of proving your case with statistics. Personal experience doesn’t count by the way as others have stated contradicting experiences.
There are no metrics backing up Anets claim, either. They say there are, there may very well be, but they’re certainly not making them public.
Anyway, increased hours played over the past two months isn’t especially noteworthy; by December, hours played as tracked by Xfire had dropped something like 90% from the release. I know fanboys curse Xfire, but its proven reliable across multiple MMOs I’ve played.
So you think Anet is lying? I think if any company says that there’s more concurrancy or there are more people playing, there probably are. How many more, no one knows, but I don’t really see companies lying about it.
As for December hours of gametime dropping from release, I think if you checked ANY game you’d find the same thing after six months. I have yet to see a game released that people haven’t cooled off on. It just doesn’t exist.
When Skyrim came out, I played that game to death for a month. Then I played it like a couple of times a week. Then I played it once a week. Then I played it once a month. It’s still a great game and I still log onto it from time to time, so what does that mean? That I’m not a Skyrim player anymore, because I log less hours?
I know people who took time off from work to play Guild Wars for like two weeks straight when it comes out. It’s like raiding guilds in WoW who long on two times a week to raid. You always put in more hours when leveling.
There are certainly more people on my server than there were back in November, that’s all I’m saying.
Points earned and total points is a way to track how well you’re doing in achievements. Each time you pass a phase of achievements, you get awarded a certain number of points. For example getting all the tiers of active guild member will get you 45 points.
The total points are the points of all the achievements you got added up. It’s your total achievement score.
You are viewing balancing only from PvP point of view. If they buff all of them together, they would have to buff PvE difficultly too. 90% of balance they did so far, they nerfed something and buffed another thing in one proffesion.
Most people use similar build, because it is “the best”. By nerfing & buffing together they can make more viable builds to play with.
PVE is already at a level which was based on pre-BWE 1 and has not been nerfed.
I think the only professions which still have the damage levels they had in BWE1 are warriors, guardians, and thieves.
for everyone else every enemy unit in pve feels like an epic boss fight.
seriously, try killing something with a staff ele or condie pistol eng and let me know how that goes compared to warrior or guardian.
Every weapon isn’t great for every purpose. But saying that engies, as an example, are gimped because one of their weapons just does conditions shows a complete lack of understanding in how this game was meant to be played.
My first 80 was an engie. Any engie who sits there and just shoots a guy with a pistol pretty much deservers to take a long time to kill him. But using the pistol conditions and then switching into the bomb or grenade kit, will take things out pretty fast. In fact, I farm Orr with a bomb kit. Use a pistol to pull a bunch of guys over to me, swap into bomb kit and blow them all up. It’s quite painless.
Anyway picking one weapon that might be geared more for another purpose that pure damage output to use as examples is simply silly. I mean I kill stuff much slower on my hammer warrior than I do on my greatsword warrior. But the hammer gives me control options that can keep me alive.
The playerbase is NOT declining.
Anet have said the playerbase is growing at a steady pace and this has been the case since launch and I believe them, on the evidence if you go anywhere that is known to attract players there are hordes of them…
The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope. Anet are obviously going to say the game is growing, where as to the contrary there is much more clear evidence to support the opposite.
Also, your server is also important in this equation. Some servers are very dead, whilst others are still very much alive. Emhry Bay (ebay) for instance, is struggling for players with many zones just devoid of players, often feels like there are maybe 50 people on the entire server some days.
I’ve seen an increase in players since Lost Shores. Not just a little one either. Now it could be that more people are coming to my server, but there’s definitely more people around.
Not really because you are still essentially screwing over many guilds. So many other people who have responded notice the direct threat with this patch. Small guilds will not be able to do any of this content period -
Guild Missions will require large amounts of Influence
Large amount of players online at all timesThe small guilds will never raise up enough influence, and they will not have enough players online/active to participate in the activities. This is gating many players, forcing them to join different guilds if they want to do these quests, and because of the rewards they will abandon the small/medium sized guilds practically instantly.
To be very blunt here, this up and coming patch is a dagger in the backs of many players – and needs to be stopped.
Daggers in the back? Dramatic much?
This game is designed for 5 man teams. Everything in the whole game. The complaint from a lot of larger guilds was that we didn’t have anything for US to do, except WvW. If you’re a PVe’er and in a larger guild, you have to break up into many smaller guilds. If you have 12 guys who want to hang out and play with their guildies, it’s hard. Because dungeons only have 5 guys. Fractals only 5. Parties in Orr only 5.
They’re finally introducing something to give larger guilds something to do. The way the game has been so far has been a problem for our guild because people always have to be excluded from stuff.
So if you have a small guild and everything else is designed for you, what’s there really to complain about? That Anet wants to include larger guilds in the game too?
The reaction to this news from many of the smaller guilds is pretty selfish. The entire game has been made for guys like you (again with the exception of WvW). Why shouldn’t larger guilds have a reason to exist?
In a game with no subscription people come and go, and then come back again. This might seem unusual to those who played games that had much longer to obtain goals or subscription models.
That being said I came to GW2 from the original Guild Wars as part of an alliance of around 100 people in 4 active guilds. Many of these people built new Computers to handle the game and were dedicated GW players. We are down to 3 that log in now and I have not in about 2 weeks.
Changes need to be made and many of us are carefully watching these updates. I know that the forums get a tad hostile to anyone who has things to say that are “bad” without it being notarized and submitted like a criminal trial. I am using Inductive reasoning here that is a loose science. Please know that it is my honest view and not an attempt to mangle this games image. The player base is declining, and I hope it is recovered. I want to see that happen. Just remember not to be hostile towards people in the forums and that will go a long way in you helping preserve this game.
I had a guild of over 80 at launch that dropped to about 60 after launch. Most of us were Guild Wars 1 players. Most of us are still playing.
The guild is back up to over 70 members, some of whom also played Guild Wars 1. I do think though that generally speaking Guild Wars 1 PvPers are less satisfied overall than Guild Wars 1 PVe’ers (many exceptions, of course).
But since this game is far more mainstream than Guild Wars 1 ever was, I think that the few Guild Wars players that are leaving are more than replaced by people people who didn’t play the first game.
This game isn’t in trouble and you don’t know how many people have stayed or left. My guild, at least, has grown. Saying something is true doesn’t make it true.
In fact, most of the OP is filled with opinion stated as fact, when in fact many who enjoy the game don’t agree with those opinions.
The game is doing fine. It will continue to grow as well. And naysayers like the OP will be eating crow for years to come.
This entire game is for small guilds. Just about everything in this game can be done with a small guild. Even WvW, with five guys you have things you can do. And you can find a zerg if you want to do bigger things. Dungeons, SPvP, running around Orr with a party limit of 5…small guilds have the run of this game.
The problem has always been that big guilds could only do one thing. WvW. The rest of the time we had to ACT like small guilds. This content was obviously designed to give larger groups something to do to work together.
So if you only have five guys in your guild, what makes you think you’ll be able to do the content anyway?
I wonder if anyone has gotten exotics and thought they were rares, because at a quick glance, at least on my monitor, it can appear that way. I’ve had exotics that I’ve thought were rares, and didn’t realize it until much later.
Not to say this happens to everyone, but I do wonder.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The whole idea behind guild missions is to give guilds something to do.
Now, the entire game, with the exception of WvW, is based around 5 man content. 5 man guilds have a ton of stuff to do. It’s the bigger guilds, the guilds that have 20 guys…if they don’t WvW, that’s pretty much it. How many times did we want to do something as a guild and we end up with 12 guys. So two groups can two a dungeon and two guys are sitting alone, wishing they were with the rest of us. It’s a bad situation.
These missions probably require bigger groups, and so they’re probably aimed at bigger guilds. Which may not sit well with smaller guilds, but if the content requires 15 people and you have a 5 person guild, you’re excluded anyway.
And while I think Anet should provide content for smaller guilds, I do believe what they’re trying to do here is to provide what was missing. That is stuff for larger groups to do that isn’t WvW.
Well the game is only 6 months old, not 8.
So half a years time is not enough to fix…. well anything? Other than nerfs…
So you haven’t noticed the stuff that have been fixed? Really.
Though I shouldn’t be surprised, not everything that has been fixed even makes it into the patch notes. Two of the things I noticed (and reported) were the signet of inspiration for the mesmer not working, and the entire trait line for the ranger that gives you opening shot being bugged, with regards to causing vulnerability. Both of those things were fixed, though it never said anything in the patch notes. Which sorta sucks, because I had to test again to see if they were fixed…but fixed they were.
Many skill points that used to be bugged are now working, one of which got completely changed so it could remain working. Several events that used to bug now work as intended, even though other events still bug.
But if you visited Orr shortly after launch, you’d realize 75% of the quests were bugged, and now it’s like 10%. That means 65% have been fixed.
The game released too early because they had to beat MoP out of the gate. That’s it. Every MMO releases too early for one reason or another. The next six months, for every MMO, is catch up. That’s how it’s been for years and years. You might not like it, but that’s the industry. You have to deal with it (or stop playing new MMOs).
So much stuff has been fixed. And features have been added that should have come out at launch as well. Guesting was finally put in, and this month we’re getting the ability to preview stuff from the trading post.
Some people see this as long overdue, but I think what you’re getting now is actually what the game should have been at launch.
And I don’t blame Anet for launching before MoP, because believe it or not, that’s a good business decision. Good business decisions are better for the game. More people bought the game and tried the game, because MoP wasn’t out first. Even those who don’t like it, still helped support it for the rest of us.
Six months, in programming time, is a really really short amount of time. I think people should lower their expectations about how long bugs can take in a program this big to isolate and fix.
Or join a larger guild with everyone in your smaller guild to access that content. That’s also on the table. I belong to more than one guild myself. It’s not like you have to limit yourself to only one guild.
I’m a bit surprised by this too, and I’m not a fan of it, even though my guild has already maxed everything it could (and we’re sitting on 150,000 influence that doesn’t do all that much for us).
The game’s been out six or seven months and I bet there are a lot of guilds that have excess influence with nothing to spend it on. And this is probably where the aim of these missions are.
I’d imagine smaller guilds wouldn’t have a great shot of even doing the smaller missions.
Still, it would be nice if they had something for smaller guilds to do as well. My guild isn’t a problem, we have 70, 80 members, with a good 20-30 who play pretty often. But I’m sure I’d feel pretty bad if I were in a small guild.
GW2 Dev team is struggling, and it’s sad to see.
They really are and it is.
They are but I disagree. It’s nice to see a company that produces below-par games to finally get what it deserves for screwing it’s customers. Is Bioware being shut down over the $300 million disaster that is SWTOR? Is Blizzard hurting over Diablo 3? No and no.
Arenanet thought they could screw their customers and get away with it. Who’s laughing now? Not Arenanet that’s for sure.
It scares me every time an mmo does bad. Other developers see this happen and are going to be hesitant when it comes to making a new mmo.
Maybe because MMO companies keep trying to re-make WOW… GW2 is just another WOW rehash, albeit a cleverly disguised one. Some of the classes/skills/traits are named after GW1 classes/skills, but that’s about where the legacy ends.
Most ridiculous comment of the thread. It can’t be like WoW, because I didn’t like WoW. I found it boring. And since I don’t find this game boring, they can’t be that much alike. Hell even just voice most stuff makes it less boring, never mind the wall of text thing.
But then WoW had a lot of things I really hated, like kill stealling, like node-stealing and yes, like the holy trinity. It never made sense to me. It always felt contrived.
This game really isn’t a whole lot like WoW. Those who think it is aren’t paying attention…or they’re playing it like WOW, in which case, no wonder they’re dissatisfied.
You’re absolutely right…but you’re partly wrong too. That’s because when you run dungeons a lot, or do fractals, vitality and toughness do play a role, where as in the open world, that happens very rarely.
Toughness stops you from taking spike damage, when combined of course with vitality. If you have everything in power, precision and damage, let’s say, and nothing in toughness and vitality, there are times when you will be one shotted. At which point, you will go down.
No matter how well you dodge, no matter how good you are, eventually it happens. Which means in a party situation that someone has to rez you. Which means everyone else in the party is risking their life for you, because rezzing people in dungeons is often when people do go down. A lot of bosses focus downed players.
I’ve run enough dungeons with enough people who think this way, including my son. Consequently he’s down 2-3 times more often than I am. Sure, when he’s up, he’d doing a boatload more damage. But there are times when he wipes and people try to get him up that the entire party ends up wiping, which means a long run back from the rez point And it’s not just him. I’ve seen this again and again over the years….even in Guild Wars 1 which has a similar situation.
Guild Wars is really designed around a balanced build, as opposed to a glass cannon build. Sure there are certain players who play glass cannon really really well, but they are definitely the minority. It doesn’t help that many (if not most) players think they’re better than they actually are. Actually I’ve found this true with a lot of glass cannon players (again including my son).
In the end, if you can get one shotted, you will, and if that happens the entire party is in danger from it. In the world, it’s not likely to be a big deal. In a group situation, it’s a bit different.
It depends a lot on the specific dungeon, the specific boss, the specific event but there are times when you want that toughness, because even if you kill a boss twice as fast as you normally would, it still takes many minutes, during which you can’t afford a single mistake…and that’s what gets most people.
I’ll stick with my balanced build, because I’ve tried it both ways. I play much better with some points in toughness and vitality (though most in power).
I have a novel idea. Why not see the content before commenting on it? A blog post doesn’t give you an idea of how hard this stuff gets in the long haul. Or how much coordination you need.
Do you know the word prejudice? It means to prejudge. At least wait until you see something before saying it sucks.
It doesn’t matter how many mobs they put in the way of the chicken race or how many platforms i have to jump on, this sort of stuff is shallow to me for reasons listed, i’m judging it by what they’ve said and what i’ve seen. Plus, when has anything promised in this game actually been better than first advertised? Let’s make a check list.
Personal Story: Nope
Lost Shores: Nope
Must i go on?
I apologize if you can’t handle a negative opinion, but i feel that i have more than enough to go on to judge the salt of the upcoming patch. The only thing i can see actually making a difference to player movement would be the reward systems going along with this shallow zerg content. Transforming into a chicken and running past enemies with a skill bar made up in 5 minutes..well, that may appeal to more casual, traditional MMO fans, but i played GW1 for 6 years and i’d like to know when long time fans can actually expect this game to feel more like a sequel rather than a curtained cash shop operation to rake in the casual kitten cash.
Apparently ArenaNet’s idea of fun content is changing into an animal and running a dopey, clunky race for a pittance. Taking out the complexity and depth with one fell swoop. Why not just design an angry-birds like game mode? While they’re at it, they can open up the floor to the players to design GW2 themed mobile games and integrate scoreboards for those games into GW2, talk about a freaking mockery of GW1.
Most of the stuff that was advertise was as advertised. I knew what I was getting in this game before I got the game. Why you didn’t, I can’t say. And listing two things is by no means a pattern.
I knew from what I read prior to launch approximately would the personal story would be. I knew what dynamic events would be. In fact, there are people who are fine with both and people who don’t like both.
The fact is, you don’t like this game. So go and play a game you do like. But there are those of us who don’t find the combat system shallow. Who don’t find the content shallow.
Could the game do with longer and more involved types of missions. Sure it could. But that doesn’t mean anyone lied or misled you.
Anyway the word depth itself is hard to define and different people have different ideas of what depth means. But since post after post, all I’ve ever seen you do is complain, well, it’s obvious you don’t like the game. Which is okay. You don’t have to like every game.
But there are those of us who do that disagree. The combat system has depth you ignore. You can play together as a team. And you can get more out of this game than you’re currently getting.
A good guild can fix most of the “problems” you talk about. Pugging dungeons with a bunch of randoms isn’t going to lead to great depth. Same with WvW or PvP.
I have a novel idea. Why not see the content before commenting on it? A blog post doesn’t give you an idea of how hard this stuff gets in the long haul. Or how much coordination you need.
Do you know the word prejudice? It means to prejudge. At least wait until you see something before saying it sucks.
I finished all of the content and got as far as I wanted in the HOM so there is no motivation for me to go back.
Actually GW1 is much more of a game than GW2, almost superior in every way.
I agree, but it wasn’t when GW1 was released (ahhh, my youth). It took over a year or two before GW1 was the game it eventually was. I am cautiously optimistic we will see the same with GW2.
Very much this. Prophecies by itself wasn’t Guild Wars 1. It took a long time for Guild Wars 1 to come into its own. The variety we talk about when we talk about Guild Wars 1 didn’t exist on launch. The amount of content didn’t exist.
When you compare Guild Wars 1 at launch to Guild Wars 2 at launch, it’s a completely different comparison. And Guild Wars 2 has a lot of advantages Guild Wars never had.
No matter how you slice it, not having a marketplace, not being able to jump, not being able to swim, these were all problems. Henchmen AI (there were no heroes at launch) was abysmal, and hard mode didn’t even exist.
I wouldn’t be surprised if people six months into Guild Wars 1 had many of the same complaints as they do about Guild Wars 2.
No, you won’t get reimbursed for getting stuck and having to use a waypoint. The reason for this should be obvious. Zillions of people who aren’t stuck would claim they were stuck at times to get a refund on their waypoint fee. Each would have to be reviewed. It would make the game unsustainable.
It sucks that we get stuck sometimes. If you’re not in combat, you can click on the double swords icon and go into the mists, and then leave the mists and, sometimes, you’re not stuck when you come out. Beats the heck out of paying.
But there isn’t really a good way for them to reimburse everyone who gets stuck. As always it’s those who would abuse the system that screws it for the rest of us.
In Guild Wars 1, you had instanced areas, not persistent areas. It makes all the difference in the world. Because enemies never spawned in Guild Wars 1, they couldn’t patrol. Naturally, in instances in Guild Wars 2, like dungeons, enemies do patrol.
But when you add in the respawn rate in the open world with what a patrol would do (hint: people already complain about the respawn rate in certain areas), then patrols are much harder to predict.
At any rate, there are some creatures that patrol, including the giants in Orr.
It doesnt. GW2 was advertised as a living, breathing world. It isnt. Just a few scripted events here and there, nowhere near enough to give that feeling.
I feel in a lot of ways it is a living/breathing world. The sounds and the conversations in the background make it feel that way. It’s one example. And yeah, of course they repeat, because you know, no company has unlimited funds for voice acting.
But if you follow NPCs, there’s quite a lot going on that you never see if you dont’ follow them. A lot of event chains go for quite a while, and interact with each other. I think it was one of the guys from MMORPG.com that made a great video about dynamic events, and what makes them dynamic.
And sure they’re scripted. This is a program. Everything is scripted. Even AI is ultimately scripted.
The difference is in most MMOs when guys are supposed to invade a town, they really don’t. They just stand around and you have to kill ten of them to stop them from invading a town. In Guild Wars 2, when guys invade a town, you have to fight them off and you see the town being invaded. You see structures destroyed, and when the town is liberated the structures are rebuilt.
Compared to most MMOs, this is a living breathing world. It’s closer to living and breathing and than other MMO I’ve played, and I’ve played quite a few. But in the end, there are still budgetary and programming limits to what any game company can do.
MMOs are evolving. But it may be another ten years before you get the kinds of worlds your after.
The first six items on your list are all account bound. You have to do them. You have to run the dungeon of your choice and complete it 9 times. You have to play WvW enough to get 500 badges.
The fact is, nothing in this game is particularly hard. That is to say it’s not hard to run a dungeon 9 times. Particularly because most dungeons have an easier path. I had to run CoE and I ran it 9 times. But is making someone run it 100 times better? Not for me. I’ve proven I can beat it, and enough is enough.
Same with farming badges of honor. 500 is a decent number. Of course, a lot of people just do it doing the jumping puzzle in every borderland every day, and that’s sorta cheesy, but so what? It’s a game, not an occupation.
For most people, those who don’t have a fortune to spent, it takes a lot of time and energy (and discipline because you have to save for it) to get a legendary.
At any rate, I doubt Anet is going to change the existing legendary recipes because people have already gone through this. They might, moving forward, give some thought to this for new legendaries, however.
In Guild Wars 1, you had instanced areas, not persistent areas. It makes all the difference in the world. Because enemies never spawned in Guild Wars 1, they couldn’t patrol. Naturally, in instances in Guild Wars 2, like dungeons, enemies do patrol.
But when you add in the respawn rate in the open world with what a patrol would do (hint: people already complain about the respawn rate in certain areas), then patrols are much harder to predict.
At any rate, there are some creatures that patrol, including the giants in Orr.
I’ve just made 3 runs on my guardian.
Level 28
I got 1 rare from dungeon and 1 rare from putting greens into MF.
Using Black Lion Salvage Kit I got 0 globes from them.
Level 16
I got 1 rare from dungeon and 0 rares from putting greens into MF.
Using Black Lion Salvage Kit I got 1 glob from this one.
Level 2
I got 2 rares from dungeon and 1 rare from putting greens into MF.
Using Black Lion Salvage Kit I got 1 glob from them.So is this really a point in doing higher lvls, where much more effort and time is needed and you get worse rewards than on earlier levels? Guess not.
3 runs….really? That’s like saying there aren’t better drops in Explorable modes, because you ran a story mode and got something better. You’d need to do dozens if not hundreds of runs for anything conclusive. It’s like baseball.
Any team can beat any team on a given day but the odds change over a longer series.
I’ve only been back to check for birthday presents, though the last time I was back, I decided to see if I could still run a dungeon in hard mode. I went into Sparkfly swamp and run over to Bloodstone caves, killing raptors and angorodons along the way. I still had it!
Then I got into the dungeon and realized I couldn’t start it, because I’d forgotten to take the quest in Gadd’s Encampment. I was so annoyed. lmao
So I closed the game down and haven’t been back since. That’s one thing I won’t miss from GW 1. lol
I have this problem with just about every single RPG I play. No matter how good it is, even some of the better Bioware games, someone is always going to say something totally annoying.
At least in the Bioware games you can be a dark horse, which is fun. Not so much here.
But I can’t think of any game that I’ve played where I haven’t run into this problem. The witcher, Dragon Age, Skyrim, no matter what preprogrammed responses exist, I’m going to be annoyed by a percentage of them.
From what we know, they can participate and help out and get personal rewards for that in the end. Why would they just stand around?
I was not thinking they would stand around doing nothing, just that they won’t be able to keep up with the full exotic-bounty hunters who initiated the event in the first place. One example would be that they bring condition builds, which makes them do effectively zero damage while still ramping up the scaling. This could effectively lead to them only extending the time it takes to kill the mob.
Normally, that isn’t much of a problem, but if the timers are supposed to be challenging, it could be.
I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. Things only scale a certain amount anyway, and even with the condition build guys, all the big world events are doable. And a lot of guys who do conditions also do healing and stuff like that, so they can help in that way. A staff mesmer using chaos storm will do conditions as well as grant boons to allies, which will help.
I think we’ll have to see how it works but I doubt very much it’s going to be a problem.
If think there are a lot of people who never played GW1.
You are right. The game was not popular and filled little more than a niche role in the MMO community. So yes, few have played GW1. However, Anet was supposed to be trying to compete with WoW. You do not compete with WoW by having an end game that turns the player base into teenage girls looking for the perfect outfit.
You do not compete with WoW by making yet another clone either. If it’s WoW or WoW-like you want, there are plenty of other options out there for you.
I find it comical that people such as yourself do everything in your power to shove people out the door in an effort to maintain the status quo. It is clear with the rapidly declining populations that a lot of people do not enjoy the game. Yet every other post I see you attacking anyone that criticizes it. I simply do not understand that mentality. People did the exact same thing in SWTOR and the game tanked. I find it odd that you want the same to happen to GW2.
The population is not rapidly declining. It declined for a bit and I’m pretty sure at the moment it’s growing. At least my server is growing.
When you say stuff like that with no evidence to back it up, it makes your entire argument suspect. Why not concentrate on facts, instead of inventing fictions?
I’m not sure how my topic name got changed with a sentence from something but it’s fixed.
Don’t get me wrong everyone, I am happy with the constant progress in the game, I just have a hard time deciding are we being listened to when certain issues that I see the majority of players asking for haven’t even been spoken on. More direct answers would really help understand what Arenanet is thinking.
If it’s all time they need but have a straight answer for something, I’m 100% satisfied. They back the game and for no subscription fee with a smaller team than WoW or some MMO’s, that is completely acceptable.
I also updated my original post at the bottom.
So what are these issues that the majority of players are asking for? I know the culling issue is a big one and we know for a fact that that’s being worked on. We know people asked for leaderboards and tournament stuff and we know that’s being worked on. We know people asked for other ways to get ascended items besides fractals and that’s being worked on. A new PvP map was introduced, so they’re adding variety there. They’re adding the ability to preview items from the trading post in the next patch and that’s a big one.
I think what someone else said is true. They’re listening, but they can’t implement faster than they can listen. Things are changing all the time, but all of this stuff takes time. And you know, if there’s a bug in it, everyone will be screaming, so it has to be tested anyway. And there are still bugs and people still scream.
Put yourself in the developers place. Everyone wants everything yesterday but no one wants bugs. If they announce anything and use the wrong words, they get jumped on. And half the stuff people ask for, other people are against. It’s just not that easy.
I know they’re listening because they added stuff to the game people asked for. 90% of the bugs I’ve reported have been fixed, often without mention in the patch notes. They’re listening.
But they’re human and they have a schedule and they have an order of priority. Just like every other game developer.
Sorry, OP but the way you phrase things invite vitriol. The second most broken thing, the first most broken thing. People who don’t mind these things or like them, don’t perceive them as broken. I don’t think teleportation is broken. I don’t think that stealth is broken. I think that these are things that make PvP challenging/interesting, because you have to think outside your normal box. By calling them broken, you’re immediately invalidated the opinion of every person who doesn’t.
In phrasing things this way you make a situation combative. You could have said you don’t like it. You could have said something other than this is the most broken thing and you might experience a more even discussion.
But don’t say you want an even discussion and then descend into opiniated hyperbole. Because what you said is not reasonably phrased.
I get an exotic drop every second or third day, usually from a dungeon run, ocassionally from an in world chest. Very rarely from a mob.
My wife has been mad lucky lately she keeps getting named exotics. She doesn’t have long to live. lol
Many of you know me as a fanboi who loves this game, but I agree with the OP on this. It’s annoying to travel in a group with everyone moving at different speeds. It doesn’t lend itself to playing with your friends. It’s an oversight on Anet’s part and it should be corrected.
This has nothing to do with mounts or how things are handled in any other game. It’s just silly to have to wait for one straggler, or always be chasing up the tail of a group, losing out on rewards because the event is over before you can catch up. It’s just bad design.
From what we know, they can participate and help out and get personal rewards for that in the end. Why would they just stand around?
It’s a good list. I have one that keeps me occupied. Help other people to achieve their goals.
Plenty of people in my guild are “behind me” as far as achieving what they want. Maybe they need dungeon runs for armor, or maybe they need a couple of story mode dungeons, because they’ve never done them. Maybe they just need help figuring out a tricky vista for world complete, or capping a skill point. Maybe they need help getting that last nasty POI in WvW for their world completion. Hell, maybe they don’t know their way around Orr and need a guide to get to Gaevborn to get their 80th level underwater mask for karma.
Helping people is a reasonable part of my personsal end game.
That is pretty much it. Get to 80 and then stop playing or level another character. This is probably the most boring MMO at max level that I have played. The entire reason is because of there being very little character development once you hit max level. How this got into an MMORPG I will never know. The entire point of an RPG is to develop your character.
Think about what this game actually does. You hit max level and the game then says now that you have reached the pinnacle, you are going to grind for clothes. Not clothes that make you all that more powerful but instead just clothes in a fashion sense. In other words “End Game” turns you into a teenage girl who has to find the perfect outfit. That is supposed to keep people playing?
I really did enjoy leveling up but after getting necro and thief to 80 I see little point to do the content over again knowing that once I hit max level it is game over.
Confirmed WoW player (or any like MMORPGs). Such people are those that push for vertical progression in this game.
I do have to add that in GW1 you had other activities such as : Guild battles, farming, Z-keys, Zaishen dailys,… which had some end-game feel to it.
My favorite part in GW1 was farming, just because I thought it was relaxing and trying to come up with new builds etc,..
And how long after launch did Z-quests and Zkeys appear? 5 years? How can you compare.
The game is six month old. It has a lot more content than most games at lauch, a fact people seem to ignore. You might not enjoy the content, but it’s there. More stuff will get added over time. That’s it.
Honestly, comparing four games seven years after the first one launched to a new game that just launched is just bad form. It misleads people into thinking that Guild Wars 1 is somehow better because it has more to do. But at six months old, it didn’t have a lot of the stuff that came later. Not even Sorrow’s Furnace. I don’t even think hard mode had been introduced by that point.
Just be patient, more content, particularly end game stuff is coming.
The question is, how many people joined for SPvP, how many joined for WvW and how many joined for PVe and how many joined for two of the three or all three.
The concerns of the OP don’t affect me, or my guild at all. There ARE other people like me. That’s my point. These aren’t necessarily mainstream concerns.
Development costs money and time. So the percentage of people who want something IS important. Because every developer has a limited amount of time and money TO develop. So Anet has to ask the question where is the money coming from. Who’s buying our game? Who’s spending money in the cash shop. Those are business decisions, and you know, those are the people they have to listen to.
They know who those people are a lot better than we do. That’s all I’m saying.
Once you say the combat system is poor, you’ve lost all credibility with the number of people who love the combat system of this game (and there are a lot of us). Ditto for the skill system. This is the first MMO with a decent skill system, at least that I’ve played.
And your inability to find the synergy in group combat is more your failing than the games.
Actually, I think most of what you’ve said is 100% true…from your point of view. Unfortunately, lots of people don’t share that point of view.
BTW, my guild is doing fine and has a ton of fun playing this game.
Programming takes time. It doesn’t happen all at once or at your convenience, or anyone’s for that matter. You don’t just wave a magic want and poof, there’s a new feature in the game. Stuff takes time.
There’s stuff for at least WvW coming in March, it was originally scheduled for February but got pushed back because it wasn’t finished yet.
It’s not that Anet isn’t listening. It’s that people aren’t patient.
Not to mention even if Anet were to listen, not everyone wants the same stuff. Have you ever listened to the PvP crowd talk.
Rangers are OP, no rangers need a buff. Thieves are OP, no thieves are fine, L2P noob! I even saw a thread that said warriors are worthless in PvP.
Look at any PvP thread that states ANYTHING and then look at the comments that follow. Who, exactly should Anet be listening to?
And that’s aside from the fact that the average gamer is less interested in the good for the game as a whole and more interested in only the small part of the game that affects them. The biggest part of the playerbase is basically self-interested.
I’m not so sure Anet should be listening to most players.
Technically my main concern is in parts of the game that affects everyone playing, not just individuals. I really don’t involve in nerfing situations unless I notice something very obvious because it is so judgmental. However, if you read what I said, I have waited 3 months since playing and took a break. I’m aware it takes time, I think most of us are but certain things as simple as (Last logged on) for guilds you would think be updated or at the very least mentioned upon so we have an idea what to expect.
You shouldn’t lump impatience and communication in one. I admit arenanet is better at communication that many other devs and I am thankful for that but I would like to see more involvement into problems that I think (along with others comments) that are pretty obvious still have no progress or discussion.
Sorry but SPvP balance doesn’t affect me at all. Not one whit. Not even a little. The couple of times I’ve tried SPvP I was fine with it, along with several people I know.
So if this post is about SPvP balance it would be nice if any two groups of people agreed on HOW it should be balanced. And that’s what I’m talking about here.
You have feelings about how PvP would be more balanced, but would it really? It’s just your opinion. Is Anet listening? Sure. Does that mean they have to agree. Nope. Not even a little.
Stuff affects me that doesn’t affect you at all, and vice versa. Plus the PvP upgrade hasn’t even happened yet, so until we see what happens, it’s all moot anyway. Programming STILL takes time.
Finally, even something as simple as dueling has just as many people against it as for it. Look at the dueling threads in these forums. Every time someone posts one, a bunch of people log on saying they don’t want it. Maybe THOSE are the people Anet is listening to.
Custom arenas are coming at some point and at that point, you’ll be able to duel in a custom arena. They’ve been announced it’s under development.
Anet has major issues that do affect pretty much everyone they’re working on, including the culling. It’s a big, long, complicated process to get that right. When they fix that so it’s tolerable, they’ll get to major concerns like dueling…which doesn’t affect me at all, because I find it obnoxious and annoying.
Those who talk for the PvP crowd aren’t talking for everyone.
Programming takes time. It doesn’t happen all at once or at your convenience, or anyone’s for that matter. You don’t just wave a magic want and poof, there’s a new feature in the game. Stuff takes time.
There’s stuff for at least WvW coming in March, it was originally scheduled for February but got pushed back because it wasn’t finished yet.
It’s not that Anet isn’t listening. It’s that people aren’t patient.
Not to mention even if Anet were to listen, not everyone wants the same stuff. Have you ever listened to the PvP crowd talk.
Rangers are OP, no rangers need a buff. Thieves are OP, no thieves are fine, L2P noob! I even saw a thread that said warriors are worthless in PvP.
Look at any PvP thread that states ANYTHING and then look at the comments that follow. Who, exactly should Anet be listening to?
And that’s aside from the fact that the average gamer is less interested in the good for the game as a whole and more interested in only the small part of the game that affects them. The biggest part of the playerbase is basically self-interested.
I’m not so sure Anet should be listening to most players.
saw the update, It did not address the utter dearth of rares for many while it rains rares for others, consistently, for months on end
This was not at all addressed.
I’m happy to see some resolution, but this is NOT what is plaguing my account, and the accounts of many, many other players, since 11/15.
I also notice the massive thread is now buried. Nice..
I’ve done dragons plenty of times, I have yet to receive anything more than a green since mid-november. Like I said before Anet doesn’t really care about your feelings, it’s all about the money, hence new gem content every month yet PvE is still lacking and bugged in many ways. Protip, find another game to play, I did and I’m not looking back. Hopefully Anet goes bankrupt and stops making games.
Before you wish bankruptcy on any company, affecting the employees and family of that company and the people still enjoying and playing the game, you should probably think a bit more. It’s not a good thing to wish for, whether you like the game or not.
Loads of people are still playing and enjoying the game. Why would you wish this on them?
Sensitive much? Perceived was the right word to use. If you don’t know there IS a problem, you can’t acknowledge it AS a problem, and therefore, it’s a perceived problem until they know more.
They can’t call it a problem because people (I know this is hard for you to believe), sometimes lie on the internet. Or exaagerate. So until they have hard date, it’s a perceived problem. That’s the right thing to call it. I don’t acknowedge things my kids say as problems until I know they’re problems, because half the time they’re not.
Have you ever seen this community over-react to anything that wasn’t a problem (gem store coughs). There were pages and pages of people talking about P2W and all sorts of stuff. For days. Weeks even. And it all went away and that was that.
Anet has no reason to believe a bunch of people saying stuff until it’s backed up by actual data. People should stop being so sensitive.
Actual data was provided at every step along this issue by many players, and was ignored untill months later. As stated above a few posts up they clearly state they looked BACK into this, they wernt looking into it the whole time they had given up after their first obviously lacking look into this matter, i mean after all they thought we were all tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists why take us seriously.
Also if they really wanted data why did not allow log files to be recorded, or any other method of data collection? They have the means to do this it was a option during beta code is already written for data logging. The truth is they did nothing to aid us in submitting data because they didnt believe us, thats not going to help their credability any because we are right and have been the whole time.
For every time the community is right about something, there’s another time that they’ve been wrong about something. It happens all the time. Instead of people picking on a single word, perceived, and making it an insult, they should just take it for what the word means.
It’s like when someone’s charged with a crime, it’s always an alleged crime. It doesn’t mean the guy didn’t do the crime, it means it hasn’t been proven.
I still maintain people are too sensitive about the word itself. Because that’s what most people picked up on.
Sensitive much? Perceived was the right word to use. If you don’t know there IS a problem, you can’t acknowledge it AS a problem, and therefore, it’s a perceived problem until they know more.
They can’t call it a problem because people (I know this is hard for you to believe), sometimes lie on the internet. Or exaagerate. So until they have hard date, it’s a perceived problem. That’s the right thing to call it. I don’t acknowedge things my kids say as problems until I know they’re problems, because half the time they’re not.
Have you ever seen this community over-react to anything that wasn’t a problem (gem store coughs). There were pages and pages of people talking about P2W and all sorts of stuff. For days. Weeks even. And it all went away and that was that.
Anet has no reason to believe a bunch of people saying stuff until it’s backed up by actual data. People should stop being so sensitive.