This thread makes me proud to be Tyrian. You’re all playing so nice. lol
Most of it has been said already but I’d love to stress joining a guild of like minded players. It can make all the difference in the world.
A good guild can make even a mediocre game better. Think of how much a good guild can do for you in a good game.
I guess I am in the minority here. I PREFER lower levels to be easier.
If I am a level 50 going to a level 10-15 area to pursue a specific agenda, ie dynamic events to get my dailies quickly then I do NOT want to be challenged. I want to quickly move through the area and kill things quickly. If I wanted a challenge I would stay in my level area or go one higher. A friend and I took our level 50’s to a level 40 area. We got trounced, not sure why, as when we were level 40’s this did not happen, but we see a group of 3 including a veteran. We engage them, and four additional monsters popped up right next to us. Needless to say we wasted a few silver on waypointing /repairs. If THIS is what Anet wants, for us to waste our silver on waypointing and repairs, then they can keep this game because that’s not MY idea of fun, especially since the drops we received were literally “sell as junk” to the Merchant. There was no way to recoup our losses.
Unfortunately, this means that you’ll ruin the experience for others in the zone, who are there, not to have an easy time of dailies, but are trying to level up characters. I’m convinced this is one of the reasons that this change was made.
I’ve been there on an alt, trying to level up, doing a dynamic event and I’m getting bronzes, or even no reward at all, because a bunch of 80s are down there trying to get their easy events. Great for them, not so great for me. I target something and it’s dead. Bronze reward.
So yeah, you may prefer it one way, but you know, it’s not better for those who are actually supposed to be in those areas and can’t go to higher areas, because they’re in their appropriate level zones.
That just totally sucks. I don’t even know what to say. Gah!
The name comes from the actual Guild Wars, wars that were fought in Tyria before the events that led to Prophecies. A lot of people think they’re from guild vs. guild battles, but that’s simply not the case.
Content isn’t gated by your gear. You can still do all the dungeons.
FotM lvl 20+ says hello, you can’t live past jade maw with 0 ar. Heck FotM is now completely gated at lvl 49 because of the unavoidable agony.
Right and you get those drops from the fractals themselves. It’s self-perpetuating. I can go into the fractals all day and farm tier 10 and I’m doing that content. And if that’s what I’m into, then I’m there anyway to get the drops. Simple as.
But that’s the point. I’ve done all the fractals, and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done and I’ve stopped, because that content doesn’t interest me. If it does, I can keep doing it and get the stuff from that fractal. Ergo the content isn’t gated.
This how it was designed. It was designed to let grinders have something to grind without affecting the rest of the game. It’s called a compromise.
Would it really kill you to get your ascended amulate in 30 days instead of 20? Or 40? Who cares?
It’s not going to make that much difference in your game, unless you decide it will. I’m doing all the same stuff I enjoy doing without a single piece of ascended gear. Getting that gear won’t noticably change my game at all.
Honestly, people who feel they need this stuff are ruining the game for themselves. Get it when you get it, and stop worrying. You can still log in. You can still play. You can still enjoy yourself.
Anet didn’t make this game about gear…people are doing it.
It’s always the same. Those are love grind, and want “meaningful” end game (unquote) are saying there’s nothing to do. Those who love to experience the world and see that as its own reward say there’s plenty to do.
There was nothing for me to do in Rift or WoW. Nothing at all. I was bored, because I didn’t enjoy the world. Well, I enjoyed Rift for a short time, before I realized that the world was tiny. I mean really small. This was at launch, I understand it’s grown.
But running from quest hub to quest hub, to eventually gear up to do dungeons and then raids to me is a hamster wheel. It’s like being channeled through a pipe. The further you go, the narrower what you can do becomes…and to me that’s the real beauty of this game.
I can go anywhere and do anything. I’m not going to find low level stuff to boring that I can’t go back because if I’m not paying attention, I can die. I’m not going force to do the same three dungeons over and over again because I’ve outgeared everything else. I can jump into WvW, do a bit of SPvP, go anywhere in the world and have fun.
To me, this is superior game design. To some people, there’s nothing to do. I’m not right and they’re not right. It’s just a different perspective.
For players like me, this game has a ton of stuff to do. For players who want gear progression, not so much.
the game need to be built around having fun not grind. this way people wouldnt feel this way anymore.
the game started out with grind in mind. from the time of player’s first character, the player is made to grind levels, and grind other things after that.
it poor game design really.
Grind You say? Just like the other person said, it’s a state of mind… But, name me an MMO please that didn’t have leveling involved or working to get the best gear when you don’t have to work to get the easy gear?
On GW 2 I got 80 within a week, and other MMO’s it took forever to reach max level.. So if anything GW 2 is by far least grindy than most MMO’s but that’s my opinion. I soloed myself through the story until the last mission…. The gear? not hard to get, just do events and sell the junk.
I played Darkfall. And I didnt have character level. I would venture into the world and just explore and have fun doing whatever I wanted. no heart quest or anything time sinky like that. Only issue was the FFA PvP which killed PvE server trust.
Levels arent everything. its boring grind. most people feel that way as well. 1-80 feel pretty useless since every reward you get will be outleveled, and all it acts is as a content lock. forcing players to grind the levels to get to the next stage. wasnt that the same argument against Raid Dungeons, was that treadmill feeling of grinding to unlock the next raid and on and on. thats the same mess with level.
“Hey I am level 5 now. Now I can use 2 sets of weapons. But man, I still dont have a utility slot yet. have to grind 5 more levels… crap.
Hey I am level 10 now. Oh but I have to grind another level to unlock trait.
Hey I am level 11 now, but I have only 1 trait point, and cant do much with that. also I dont get a new utility slot until 9 more levels are gained.. crap. back to grinding those levels."
man that can go on an on.
Progression =/= grind. Every MMO has progression of some kind, level or gear or skill. Every single one.
But since you can level multiple ways in this game, it’s not grinding, because you don’t have to do one thing. You can mix it up. You can explore, gather, craft, kill stuff, do hearts, do events, WvW and all if it gives you XP.
If you don’t enjoy any of this, why are you even playing an MMO?
In fact, people who don’t enjoy any of it are welcome to PvP at max level without doing any of it. So I’d say the grind’s in your mind.
the game need to be built around having fun not grind. this way people wouldnt feel this way anymore.
the game started out with grind in mind. from the time of player’s first character, the player is made to grind levels, and grind other things after that.
it poor game design really.
Except that I’ve been playing this game since beta and I don’t grind. Grind is a state of mind. The game isn’t designed to grind, it allows people to grind if that’s what they choose to do. And if you choose not to, it allows you to do that as well.
Every game that entertains people who burn through content must include some kind of grind, or at least some very steep time sinks.
Tricky question. It depends on the person. I know if I wanted to introduce my wife to something, I’d simply tell her don’t bother, this isn’t for her. She’s be all over it.
And she’d definitely hate having me stand over her while she learned it.
Of course, she plays this game almost as well as I do, and in some ways better. lol
Fill out a service ticket and screenshot it. They’ll help you out.
My Dear Vayne… you’re one with wisdom. I hope more people can think like you =)
Don’t let my wife hear you say that. She’d probably laugh if she heard this. But you know, it’s just experience. Every forum for every game I’ve frequented people say the same exact stuff. You could almost change the name of the game and no one would know the difference.
You know the people complaining on these forums about pretty much everything? That was me on the Rift forums. lol
In most MMOs you don’t end up using more than ten skills, no matter how many they give you. I think the same is true in Guild Wars 2.
When I played Rift, I had everything macroed to 2 buttons. I used maybe five buttons. more skills, but all the skills did the same thing with different cooldowns. It wasn’t choice…it was the illusion of choice.
To some degree, one might say the same thing about Guild Wars 1. You had optimum builds most people used and then there were skills like mending. Besides a few “trick” farming builds, most skills went unused.
I didn’t know a ton of memsers in Guild Wars 1 that ran around with illusory weapon or Signet of Illusion. There were better skills to use.
And one of the biggest problems in Guild Wars 1, the one that really killed the game for a lot of people was that Anet was unable to balance the skills. Part of this was the number of skills and part was the dual professions. Regardless, the balancing became more and more strained as more and more skills were added.
Which is why I’m against adding skills too quickly. I’m sure more will come with more weapon selections in expansions.
Actually, a ton of people left Aion back then because they were forced to PvP and couldn’t level through PVe, which is why it was later changed, at least somewhat. And PvP content is not PvE content, they’re different animals.
Now I know people who live, eat and breath WvW, and still have fun doing it, but I’ll never be one of those people. I enjoy it every now and again. And I know people who want to SPvP, but there’s not observer mode, no rankings, nothing for the competitive people.
And look at that, six months after launch, they’ll be doing a major WvW upgrade and a major upgrade to SPvP, starting in February.
Aion didn’t have a ton of stuff to do. The grind was so bad that it just took longer to get through the stuff that was there. But there was actually way less content.
Unless you consider killing the same boss over and over again 1000 times content, until you leveled high enough to get to the next area.
Ok fair points but I just wanted to point out that Aion is a MMO that could take you months to accomplish everything regardless if it has less content which it does.
Back then even the level 50 armor could take you months to get and I am talking about the Mira set, forget what it’s called on the asmo side.Oh and are you Vayne the mod on another guild wars 2 site I read daily? Hi.
I am that Vayne, but recently left the site.
On the topic of content, this is what most MMOs do. They make it take a long long time to do what’s there. You do a dungeon and it locks you out for X number of hours. You do a raid and it locks you out for a week. That isn’t more content. It’s more hours you need to spend. Making you travel around a world by flight paths is a time sink. Games that have monthly fees have tons of time sinks. It makes it seem like there’s a lot of content, but really it’s just a lot of time to do less content.
Not quite the same thing. For example, most games don’t have a personal story, and launch with between 500 and 600 quests. Guild Wars 2 has 1500 dynamic events and personal stories. And though it has only 8 dungeons, it has four paths for each. And WvW and SPvP. It’s more than most games launch with.
In two years, it’ll have a ton of content. Pretty much the same thing Rift did. Just go to any game forum six months after launch and look at the number of people complaining about nothing to do. Remember SWToR and the no end game complaints? Rift had them. Every MMO I can remember has them.
People just need to be patient because no developer can make enough content to satisfy people who burn through content. It’s just not possible.
I’m a self-professed fan boi and like most things about this game. But there are definitely areas where it can be improved and precursors are one of them. RNG is just not fun for a lot of people. And I have my precusor through sheer luck, without ever having tried to get one. I’m not one of the people trying for it. I just think the current system needs to be looked at.
I understand why it was done, but I don’t agree with how it was done. RNG can’t take the place of content, and that’s what it’s trying to do.
I’m sure that over time it will change. And since getting a legendary is a long term process, get all the stuff you need for all the legendaries first and watch and see.
Something’s going to have to give.
Actually, a ton of people left Aion back then because they were forced to PvP and couldn’t level through PVe, which is why it was later changed, at least somewhat. And PvP content is not PvE content, they’re different animals.
Now I know people who live, eat and breath WvW, and still have fun doing it, but I’ll never be one of those people. I enjoy it every now and again. And I know people who want to SPvP, but there’s not observer mode, no rankings, nothing for the competitive people.
And look at that, six months after launch, they’ll be doing a major WvW upgrade and a major upgrade to SPvP, starting in February.
Aion didn’t have a ton of stuff to do. The grind was so bad that it just took longer to get through the stuff that was there. But there was actually way less content.
Unless you consider killing the same boss over and over again 1000 times content, until you leveled high enough to get to the next area.
I can’t think any ANY MMO that was out for six months and didn’t have this problem. Not one.
I can’t think of any MMO that charged a monthly fee even that didn’t have this problem. Six month into Rift, I was ready to gnaw my own arm off. Six months into Aion and you’d better PvP, because there weren’t enough quests.
The ONLY except would be sandbox MMOs where people make their own content. In a themepark MMO, every game released too early, every game needs a zillion bug fixes, every game has to balance stuff out, and that happens about six months after release, if you’re lucky.
Only then will more content be on the plate.
You should be happy there’s no monthly fee to this game, and you haven’t been paying for it for six months.
People are so used to games where stats make the major difference. When fractals first came out, I was naked from broken armor and still finished a fractal without dying again. The gear in this game isn’t like the gear in most games. So the one stat on each piece of armor (assuming the person in question has magic find on EVERYTHING) isn’t going to be that much of a difference. It might, by the end of the dungeon, save you a couple of minutes and it might not. But it’s not as big a deal as people are making out.
Stats on armor are a small percentage of your overall stats, and one of the three attributes on each piece is even less than that.
We have guys in our guild who run dungeons in magic find armor all the time and they don’t die any more than anyone else (which isn’t much in most dungeons anyway).
I think legendaries for a casual player should take a year or more to get and you know, so what? I don’t have my legendary yet, and I play every day…but I don’t grind or farm. I’ll get it. Until I get it, I have other weapons I’m using. Not having a legendary tomorrow isn’t affecting my gameplay.
I don’t get why everyone has to have everything today or tomorrow. If you keep chipping away at stuff eventually you’ll get it.
By percentage, probably not many. But many complete them as well. I’m well over halfway to getting The Predator.
That really needs to be fixed. I’ve not had it happen to me yet (I play with my guild and we don’t usually leave dungeons until we finish) but yeah, there’s no excuse for that.
There are so many ways and places to do the dailies, it’s not funny. There are tons of dead NPCs and events in the Wayfarer Foothills. If you’re in Orr, you should have no problem with either of them.
Any crowded event should get you your dodge. I get it just playing, usually in about half an hour if I’m not focused on it, doing other stuff.
I mean this stuff isn’t rocket science. People seem to find it hard to rez 10 people in a game filled with dead NPCs in just about every zone.
If you rez dead NPCs when you see them, which is pretty much everywhere by the end of your play session you’ll have it done.
Underwater combat, so many places to do this. If you want it done fast, Wayfarer foothills, right outside Hoelbrak, the skelk are dead easy, as are the fish. I’ve been doing my underwater in Bloodtide Coast, which is a bit harder and takes a bit longer, but since I always have someone in LA, it’s just right out the gate. Still only takes ten minutes for all of them.
One of the guys in my guild I run dungeons with regularly is an elementalist. He hardly ever goes down. I have guardians in my group who go down more than he does. That said, he builds for dungeons. He’s very good at it. And he doesn’t mind spending 3.5 silver to respec to do specific dungeons because he knows he’ll make more than that.
Just a thought.
Every dungeon in this game, can be completed with exotics at least, certainly without ascended. I know this because I’ve completed just about all of them. And that’s mostly without any exotic jewelry or backpiece at all. Only my armor is exotic. I’ve done it on an engineer and a mesmer. I have people in my guild who’ve done it on every profession,. including thieves. And since no one in my guild has ascended gear (we don’t really grind the fractals), it’s definitely possible to play this game and win without having ascended gear at all.
Not to say having ascended gear won’t make the game 1% easier (or some percent easier). It’s simply not necessary.
In Guild Wars 1, I beat just about everything without ever using a con set (which are buffs). Doesn’t mean a con set wouldn’t have made it easier, but it wasn’t necessary. Some things were really tough without them, but everything could be beaten.
But this difference we’re talking about here isn’t a con set. It’s a tiny advantage that might get you through a dungeon 1 minute faster if that.
You don’t need this gear. In other games, content is gated. You can’t queue for a dungeon in Rift with a caster if your focus isn’t at least X. That’s it. Can’t use their group finder to queue for a dungeon. It won’t let you. That’s content gating. So you have to grind for gear to get your focus higher (or your to hit if you’re a rogue or your toughness if you’re a tank).
In Guild Wars 2, all the content is viable without ascended gear, and all your builds will function without it. And if you try a build and like it, you can then later decide to save laurels for the rings.
And that’s assuming they don’t introduce other ways to get laurals.
Except that story mode dungeons were meant to be casual and explorable mode dungeons were meant to be challenging. Since story mode dungeons count, you shouldn’t have a problem.
Anyway, there are dungeon paths that aren’t very challenging at all (and some that are more so). Pick an easier one.
A reasonable group can get through Ascalon Catacombs in less than half an hour on the Ghost Eater path. A good group can do it faster.
For those who claim Guild Wars 2 betrayed fans from their manifesto, this is 100% totally untrue. I defy you to listen to the manifeso and write down what’s actually being said in it. Not one word about gear treadmill or about vertical progression. This is what the manifesto says about grind.
“I swung a sword, I swung it again, hey I swung it again…that’s just great. We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one likes to grind, no one finds it fun, we want to change the way that people view combat.”
This is the only place in the manifesto that Guild Wars 2 mentioned grind, and it clearly refers to combat grind as in having to kill monsters to level. Have you guys ever played Aion? In Aion, when it came out, you ran out of quests around level 25, and you had to either PvP or grind the same mobs over and over to level. That was it. There was no other way. And that’s clearly what Colin was talking about in the manifesto. And substantively, they’ve stayed true to the manifesto. Every single word of it.
In addition there were interviews, maybe two of them with single line quotes from a dev, who said they didn’t want to make a game about vertical progression.
So cut to the game. They had exotics, which are relatively easy to get, and then they had legendaries…with nothing in between. Nothing. And people, rightly, found that legendaries were just too far to go for just a cosmetic look. Most people can’t even get them, because the grind is too long…but it was just cosmetic.
There absolutely had to be a tier of gear between exotics and legendaries or this game would have lost far more players than it did (and it’s not dying by any means, it’s still healthy and my server is still busy).
This isn’t a gear treadmill for one single reason. Content isn’t gated by your gear. You can still do all the dungeons. You can still do SPvP. You can still WvW. I do all of it. And I do fine. Those who say you can’t WvW without ascended gear, well, that’s their opinion. I don’t agree with it. And certainly PVe is relatively easy and can be done with rares or even greens. You don’t need this stuff.
You can make the build of your choice without a ring or and still test it and then decide if you want to go for a ring. The ascended gear difference will not stop your build from being viable. This is just a red herring. If you like the build, then go for the gear. But you’ll be able to use the build in exotics just fine. And if you can’t, the build doesn’t work.
But stop bringing up the manifesto. Guild Wars 2, like every MMO on the planet, has changed a facet of the game to replace something the devs perceived was missing…a gear tier between legendary and exotic. But they didn’t gate content and they’re not going to keep doing it.
This is how games evolve. Deal with it.
Because the way other MMOs are structured sucks. Because in most MMOs when you see someone in the area you’re playing, you’re immediately thinking, great, they’re going to tag my mob, or steal my kill, and then I’ll have to wait for the boss to respawn. Or they’re going to steal my node.
Guild Wars 2 solved that problem. I never look around and think, man there’s another guy, I hope he goes away. And you know, that’s not a bad thing for an MMO.
Because we need yet ANOTHER thread to complain about the same thing that people have been complaining about. Those other threads weren’t good enough and the OP decided we need a new thread about how Anet said one thing and did something else…and if that were truly the case, well, that would be fine. But it’s not really the case.
A lot of people bring up the manifesto, which said “I swung a sword, I swung it again, I swung it again. We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one likes to grind. We want to change the way that people view combat.”
A lot of people somehow take this to mean that there will be no grind in the game at all, where clearly the type of grind Colin is talking about there is combat grind, as in grinding mobs to level. Since I didn’t have to grind mobs to level (exploring and crafting are far faster), it’s hard to say that was misleading.
This game is different from Guild Wars 1, but even Guild Wars 1 had grindy bits, including getting certain achievements, or very hard to get weapons or armor. People did farm the voltaic spear, after all.
None of the content in this game is gated. The only reason you NEED ascended gear is because it’s in your head that you need it. I do everything in this game without that gear just fine. It’s easy enough to get exotics and even that’s more than you need to do anything in the game.
Anet made a game, and made some changes. Not in the entire direction of the game, since I’m playing exactly the same way I’ve been playing since launch.
And yes, people did leave, but the overall game population is still going up. Those who think it’s not are clearly not playing on my server. In fact, Colin recently said that both the population and the concurrent player population has been increasingly lately.
Yes, some people who took the devs literally and hung on every single word they said were disappointed with some of the changes. And some people think you absolutely must have ascended gear.
Shrugs. Thinking something doesn’t make it true.
I love how people keep bringing up “play your way” as an excuse for Anet not to do anything that might require them to react to stimulous.
Play your way doesn’t mean take any skill you want at any time for any reason. It means that you can do dungeons if you want and level and be rewarded or you can do open world stuff, or you can WvW. You can jump right into SPvP, without PvEing. That’s what it means.
To say that certain specific instances would have some skills that are beneficial that people will take is ludicrous. It’s enough that most professions can be useful. People keep bringing up thieves for example.
We run dungeons with a thief all the time. The fact that he can stealth while reviving makes him very useful indeed.
I know people love to take things literally, but this requoting “play my way” every time the game requires you to react to the specific situation is probably not what the devs had in mind when they first said it.
I’ve always found Jennur’s Hoarde easy, even with h/h. Even in hard mode. But Dzaganur Bastion tasked me. I mean, yeah I could beat it some of the time in hard mode, but sometimes, I’d wipe too. I never had that problem in Jennur’s Hoard.
I really can’t believe people feel they NEED to hold aggro to finish a dungeon. My advice, and I’ve repeated this often, is find a guild with people who play like you do and learn to play with them.
My guild has done dungeons since the change, and yeah, they’re a bit harder. Sometimes it takes a while to get someone back up. You start rezzing them a bit, dodge away, wait for an opportunity, someone else dances in adds a bit of rez, and then they get back up. And you know, it works.
But I could imagine that with pugging all this stuff seems like weird science. There are plenty of ways to get around this change, including several skills that people can take to help up downed players before they actually die.
It’s just that people would rather complain than figure out how the stuff is supposed to be done.
Edit: Oh yeah, it helps if you’re all in mumble, vent or teamspeak, since you can say I need rez, instead of trying to type it and hoping someone reads it in time.
WTG! At 4377, I’ve got a ways to go to catch up to you. That’s just impressive.
It’s the difference between pugging and running a dungeon with some sort of plan. I hardly ever pug, and I never do it by choice. I play with my guildies 99% of the time. We run dungeons together and we build ourselves to play with each other. We make sure all the bases are covered. Is there enough condition removal. Do we have the right balance of damage and healing, that sort of thing. We know certain characters work better than others and we know why.
Sure we can zerg a dungeon and keep banging our heads against the wall until we get through and then pay a fortune on armor repair. We simply prefer not to do that. As we play together, we get better and better, faster and faster. We take less falls, we have less wipes.
There’s plenty of synergy to be found in this game if that’s what you’re looking for. Or you could just zerg.
I guess it’s nice that they give you a choice in the matter.
But there is a reason to party. It’s fun. That’s a reason. Me and my guild party for PVe all the time, even in lower level areas.
Events scale up when you play with people and you kill stuff faster, so you get loot faster. It’s not like waiting for a random person to show up.
Those who want to group can find groups, as I do. Those who don’t won’t. And who’s fault is that really?
Games shouldn’t force people to play together.
The dailies are driving it now, because people are too stupid to realize it’s not that hard. You should be able to get the dodging daily at very last just playing. The rezzing daily doesn’t require people to jump of cliffs for each other either. This behavior is new because the dailies are new and as they get older and people realize they don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) do it this way will change it back to how it was.
Give it two more weeks and this behavior will be practically not existent…because it’s not more efficient than just playing.
The elite instances in Guild Wars 1 are indeed challenging. When Prophecies was first released, you had FoW and The Underworld and without heroes, you had to have a full team of people. You couldn’t take henchmen into it. And it was tough. Much tougher than most of the stuff in Guild Wars 2.
However, Prophecies on release had NO dungeons. Those two areas were only really hard areas in the game. Even Sorrow’s Furnace wasn’t released till later.
So you have two hard areas. Guild Wars 2 has 8 dungeons each with 3 explorable mode paths, which is about 24 pretty hard areas (admittedly some are harder than others). There are no heroes so you need players, (though 5 instead of 8 like you did for the underworld).
Each of those paths, when added up aren’t much smaller than the Underworld. There’s plenty of challenging content. Do the harder dungeon paths if you don’t believe it.
But any content, eventually, gets relegated to being too easy due to farming builds. They found ways to speed clear UW and they’ve found ways to speed clear the hardest dungeons. In about the same length of time.
Both games have challenging stuff to do. In Guild Wars 1, it was all in one place. Here it’s a bit more scattered…but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Well, it certainly makes it a lot more fun for the people at level in that zone who couldn’t get credit for the events they needed because high level characters were killing stuff way too fast. lol
I never claimed people didn’t leave the game. A percentage of people leave games all the time. Every game. WoW probably lost more people in the past two years than all the people playing Guild Wars 2 now. Shrugs.
But there are also players coming in. A big influx of them since Christmas. My server is busier. I see more people around. I have new people in my guild (not from other guilds but people who just started playing).
People come and go from games all the time. That doesn’t mean the game isn’t building an audience.
I’m wondering if you’re wearing magic find gear, OP. Admittedly exotics are rarish, but I’ve had a fair share of them. But if you want a legendary precursor, what most people do is craft exotics with farmed mats and then put them in the mystic forge, four of the same, and play it that way. Just waiting for one to drop is harsh.
I guess you don’t count WvW. I guess the guild I"m in all play alone, and we never group up and have no fun. Who knew?
/sarcasm
I don’t farm. I play the game. Whatever I get is incidental to me playing the game. Saying that everyone plays the way you do is a misnomer.
Ok, I looked at the UI for the monthly, then opened the achievement panel and looked, and I am seeing 2 different completion amounts. Which is the correct one? Hoping the panel on since it’s about 1/5 of the UI one..lol
The ones in the achievement window are tiered, so you’re probably only seeing the first tier. If you point to the bar, it’ll say tier 1 of 3 or 2 of 3 or whatever.
The ones on your list on the screen will be more accurate.
I see your point, and would like to agree with it, but I have some reservations: How do you know those few extra points aren’t the difference between skill and just numbers? What happens when you get enough extra points, after a few of these gear tiers are implemented, and running around in the open world becomes a faceroll because it’s now imbalanced? Sure, maybe a few extra points are essentially meaningless – but that begs the question: if they are mostly meaningless, why bother putting them in? I think it’s a cheap, easy copout. It’s so much easier to just add some gear with more points than it is to add really good, fun content.
So to me, this indicates that ArenaNet aren’t all that interested in making a really really good game. They’re trying to make a buck (which I completely understand), but it seems like that’s the only thing they’re trying to do.
Fair enough, but while you may make some money doing that, you’re not going to win very many hearts and souls like you did with Guild Wars.
I think you miss the point. Anet was placed in a position I don’t particularly envy. They have a bunch of players like me, who are happy to play for just cosmetic differences. Then they have a million or so players who play other MMOs who aren’t. So what should they do? After investing five years and however much money, there are two schools, incompatible and neither of them alone is big enough to support your vision of the game. You do what Anet did…you compromise.
You don’t introduce gear grind. You introduce a meaningless upgrade that has some numbers that don’t affect too much. Then the grinders will stay locked away in the fractals (and still maybe spend some money in the cash shop, and do some open world stuff or WvW) and the explorers can ignore it if they don’t want to grind. I truly believe this was done as a compromise.
You can’t please everyone. But you can create an illusion that will please most people, or at least let them keep playing. The fractals, screwed up as the introduction was, kept lots of people playing who normally would have left. I don’t see this as a bad thing.
I’m not convinced Anet wanted to introduce that stuff. Anet’s not a person. It’s a company with you know, 250 plus employees, many of them devs. You don’t think they discussed and argued about this, and some guys lost and some guys won? Cause I do.
In the end, they didn’t betray anyone. They made a necessary compromise. And as more content comes out and the games grow, you’ll see that that’s all it was.
Most of the players in my guild are from Guild Wars 1. Most love Guild Wars 2. There is a vocal minority that quit. There are people who really believe that these few stat points make a difference. They apparently don’t know what gear grind is. Let me explain it to you.
What makes gear grind in most MMOs is that you NEED (as in are required to have) specific stats to do specific content. You can’t even queue for a dungeon in Rift if you don’t check the right stat boxes. That’s it. You can’t even queue.
I can run every single dungeon in this game in greens if I please, and in rares, well, you could do pretty much anything. The content here isn’t gated by stats. People’s minds are gated by stats.
There’s a difference between wanting ascended gear and needing it to play. Well, I don’t have a single piece of ascended gear…not one. And you know, I still got all my kills in WvW last month, pretty much as fast as I got them before ascended gear was introduced. I still play the same dungeons I used to play and get through them pretty kitten fast.
I’m relatively sure that the half a minute in a dungeon the ascended gear might save me won’t affect my enjoyment of this game.
Gear grind has an actual definition. This ain’t it.
If you do the daily every day, which isn’t that hard, and you save your karma jugs, which isn’t that hard, by the time you hit level 80, you’ll have enough karma to purchase a full set of exotic armor from any of the temples in Orr. This is indeed how I’ve done this on each of my characters. I never spent 1 gold on exotic armor.
Since karma is ridiculously easy to get in this game, you can even farm it effectively in low level starting zones, it’s very easy to get a full set of exotic armor…even for the most casual player.
Of course, the guardian doesn’t just have damage mitigation as a native stat, but also blocks periodically, far more than the warrior does. I’ve played a warrior to max level, and I’m leveling a guardian now, who’s level 52.
Basically, my guardian is more survivable than my warrior by far. Not a little. A lot. Stuff that would burn through my warrior, my guardian takes without thinking.
I don’t think guardians are underpowered compared to warriors. I think they’re different professions with different advantges and disadvantages.
One of the things a guardian brings to the table is the ability to protect others in their party, something a warrior has a much harder time doing. Guardians are more about support than warriors. Sure you can build a support warrior, but I can tell you now that it will never be as strong as a support guardian.
You’re viewing this equation in the very simplest terms. Given a choice between the two, as they stand now, I find the guardian far more useful than my warrior, and far more survivable.
Just the fact that I can use blind every time I use virtue of justice, which resets every time I kill a foe is a huge mitigating factor.
You can’t just just a profession by looking at the part of it you want to focus on. There’s a much broader picture here.
Interesting convo. My main is a mesmer because I basically like to mess with people’s heads…even in real life. It’s fun for me. So I chose a mesmer. I always tend to play harrasser professions in games anyway. I’m not a griefer, but it’s fun to play a profession that turns people’s power against them, or turns them into a moa or tuna, that sort of thing.
I also love animals in real life, so a ranger is a natural profession for me to play. I feel the play style fits who I am.
That said, I enjoy my warrior, but he’s not one of my mains. You may be onto something here.
Actually, I don’t find the dailies grindy. The crafting for example can be done in five minutes tops. The veterans can be done in almost any zone your’re in just by playing and doing dynamic events anyway. Worse case scenario, kill a couple of veteran oak hearts or pinesouls. There are plenty of places those guys hang out. Underwater kills are like easy.
This is stuff you’re getting basically for free. It takes me 20 minutes to do my daily and if I do it at the end of the day, most of the time, I have done just about all of it, and only need to fill in one gap.
This stuff isn’t hard or a big deal. There are tons of places you can go to do the daily healer. If you’re running around Orr, you’ll get it just doing events. If you’re in Frostgorge SOund the, event where you rezz quaggan is almost always up. If you’re in early zones, almost every early zone has areas where there are NPCs that continually die. Yesterday I got that achievement in Bloodtide Coast.
Anet has given people something to think about. What’s an efficient and easy way to get this daily done (because there are efficient and easy ways to get them done).
The amount of complaining about them, compared to the actual difficulty is staggering. What people are really saying is they want stuff for just logging in, without doing anything else, just by playing their normal game. And while that situation exists, now that there’s a reward you need, it’s not so unusual to have to “work” for it. However the amount of work these dailies ask for is so trivial, I can’t believe people are complaining about it.
What they want and what the daily is designed for are two different things. Made harsher because the old daily seemed to fit what they want. They want something that fits in line with how they play.
That’s all fine and good when all it gives is an achievement point which is just bragging rights. But now it gives currency you could use to buy things with. So it’s only fair that ANet asks that you consciously have do it or part of it.
However, I wouldn’t say no to an achievement that is designed for “Hey, look! I logged in and played the game!” However, the Daily and Monthly achievements are not meant to be those achievements. At least not in my mind.
When the dailies were largely giving you stuff you could get anywhere, you’re probably right. Why not have them so you can just do them without thinking about them. But as you’ve pointed out yourself, the anti-has been upped.
They’re giving you something now that can improve your character. It only makes sense that they make them a bit tough to do, or at least a bit less convenient.
Basically, the stuff they’re asking is so minimal, compared to the rewards, I don’t see a problem.
People complained that they didn’t want to grind fractals to get ascended gear. If they offered ascended gear just to do the old dailies, it would be like giving everyone ascended gear free. Because you could get the old dailies without a thought process.
New rewards justify some degree of effort on the part of the player. That said, this is hardly grinding, in any sense of the term I know.
I think people keep lowering and lowering the bar of what it means to grind.
Actually, I don’t find the dailies grindy. The crafting for example can be done in five minutes tops. The veterans can be done in almost any zone your’re in just by playing and doing dynamic events anyway. Worse case scenario, kill a couple of veteran oak hearts or pinesouls. There are plenty of places those guys hang out. Underwater kills are like easy.
This is stuff you’re getting basically for free. It takes me 20 minutes to do my daily and if I do it at the end of the day, most of the time, I have done just about all of it, and only need to fill in one gap.
This stuff isn’t hard or a big deal. There are tons of places you can go to do the daily healer. If you’re running around Orr, you’ll get it just doing events. If you’re in Frostgorge SOund the, event where you rezz quaggan is almost always up. If you’re in early zones, almost every early zone has areas where there are NPCs that continually die. Yesterday I got that achievement in Bloodtide Coast.
Anet has given people something to think about. What’s an efficient and easy way to get this daily done (because there are efficient and easy ways to get them done).
The amount of complaining about them, compared to the actual difficulty is staggering. What people are really saying is they want stuff for just logging in, without doing anything else, just by playing their normal game. And while that situation exists, now that there’s a reward you need, it’s not so unusual to have to “work” for it. However the amount of work these dailies ask for is so trivial, I can’t believe people are complaining about it.