Guild Wars 2

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

I personally don’t care about that balancing. It’s more that the direction of the game is completely geared towards the hardcore players. Check the latest update. It’s only a raid, nothing for those people that will never be able to do raids as raids are not made for casuals…

I’m going to presume that any new expansion will only add more content for the hard core people, and hardly anything for the rest of the player base.

This is a kittenumption Allow me to explain why I believe it’s so.

Anet has always been hyper-reactive. They can’t react fast however, but they do react. In Guild Wars 1 there was a ton of complaints about Prophecies being too long and too slow. So they came out with Factions which was too small and too fast. Then they game out with Nightfall which brought the pendulum back.

Anet spent years being told the content is too easy. There’s not enough challenging content. That’s what they responded too. Now people are complaining there’s not enough casual content and the next expansion will be like the pendulum swinging back.

Anet did with with the NPE which was overkill but most of it slid back too.

At the end of the stay, one data point does not a trend make.

It’s somone using the endless mystery cat tonic available from the laruel vendor.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Mystery_Cat_Tonic

Blude.6812:

Don’t care about Raids, but requiring you to play to get a mastery point is just wrong.

The mastery points from raids are only for raiding masteries, which you don’t need if you don’t raid. It’s essentialy a non-issue for non-raiders.

I’ve actually more or less taken a break from HoT now, until the rework comes out. That is to say I’ve hit the point of diminishing returns as far as farming stuff goes. I feel like I got my money’s worth and I’m working on stuff like precursor collecting and still doing guild missions, plus putting some alts through stories that I’ve fallen behind on.

I do hope people who don’t like it give it another try when the update hits. As always if anyone needs help learning or getting around the new zones, my proverbial door is always open.

Hot’s my favorite area of the game right now, and I’ve easily spent a couple of hundred hours in it. When I learned they were making it less grindy, however, I took a break. I’m catching up on other odds and ends now, and I’ll enjoy the rebirth of HoT after the spring patch changes (I hope anyway).

mastergreki.8017:

Vayne.8563:

But I’m absolutely convinced more people have played Guild Wars 2 than have ever played Guild Wars and that there are more people playing Guild Wars 2 right now than there were 3.5 years into Guild Wars 1’s life cycle.

Can I prove it? Nope. But it seems very likely.

We have had a dev say there are more Guild Wars 2 PvP players at one point than there were during the entire run of Guild Wars 1, or something to that affect anyway.

GW2 has sold around 5 mil and totalling about 7 mil accounts INCLUDING free to play accounts. GW1 has sold 6.5 mil, all paying accounts, which I regret telling you, it means the first game still outperforms the second by about 1.5 mil copies – not that your population pointing means anything relevant to the game’s actual quality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games

Guild Wars 1 sold 7 million games. I bought all 4 games, as part of that seven million. They never said seven million sales of Prophecies. Assuming most people who played bought all four games, that means that you have to divide that number by 4, which means less than 2 million copies sold. In fact, I have five accounts between me and my wife. Guild Wars 2 probably sold more copies pre launch than Guild Wars 1 did in it’s entire history.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The original gw had people running around the towns as giant candy corn golems, as either headless char or with flaming pumpkin heads or with giant black wings, as well as a bunch of other stuff.

I think you’re not remembering Guild Wars 1 very well.

Hey I loved my candy cane hammer!

I’m sure there are others who feel like you OP. And there are people who feel differently. And there are people in between.

But I’m absolutely convinced more people have played Guild Wars 2 than have ever played Guild Wars and that there are more people playing Guild Wars 2 right now than there were 3.5 years into Guild Wars 1’s life cycle.

Can I prove it? Nope. But it seems very likely.

We have had a dev say there are more Guild Wars 2 PvP players at one point than there were during the entire run of Guild Wars 1, or something to that affect anyway.

qbalrog.8017:

Vayne.8563:

Sure it’s how the human brains is wired. We look for patterns all the time in everything. Part of life is learning that that often doesn’t mean anything.

Very true.

Pattern matching is one of the strengths of our brains. Someone dies every time we use a particular waterhole? Let’s use a different one: maybe there’s a crocodile in the old one.

Trouble is, we’re too good at it, thus various superstitions and the like.

That said, there could very well be a link between Colin leaving and HoT. When a major new project does not meet expectations, it isn’t exactly unusual for the lead to move on or to be asked to move on. It could be something planned long ago, it could be he doesn’t feel like making the changes it is now apparent are needed, it could be he was asked to leave. While we don’t know for sure, some linkage is more likely than not.

Not knowing for sure isn’t the same as not having a suspicion

Except that we’ve been losing top guys to other companies for a long time even before HOT launched. Which is more likely. A game that has some heat but didn’t actually fail, because if it did we’d have heard that at the stock call, decided to ask a game director to leave after 12 years at the company, or he got hired away like Jeff Grub, Chris Whiteside, Jon Peters, Eric Flannum….this hiring away thing has been going on a long time. It doesn’t help that Amazon is in the same town and they’re looking to make some kind of online game. Anet can’t compete with Amazon.

So there’s more than one pattern to choose from and saying oh, it’s more likely they asked him to leave is probably crap, because if that were the case, he wouldn’t still be working his last week.

When you ask someone to leave, you don’t leave them around to finish up stuff. It’s just too much of a risk.

No, I don’t believe for a second he was asked to leave. There are far too many people being hired away to believe that that isn’t a more plausible explanation.

Kolinkar.4167:

Thanks Vayne – you are just one of the reasons I like this game. We’ll probably give it another shot. I’m a weirdo in wanting a game to be more fun than challenge. LOL. I should probably go back to Ms PacMan. Thank you so much to everyone that replied!

You’re not weird. I want this game to be more fun than challenge too. I don’t mind the occasional challenge, but some stuff like raids just wears me down. I don’t have the energy for it.

Seriously if you need help, message me in game. You can never have too many friends.

Also make sure everyone is using food and utlities, If you’re having trouble surviving try mango pies.

Astralporing.1957:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Raids currently employ 6 of the 300 devs at Anet, or 2% of their work force.

And at the same time they cannot hire even a single person for dungeons, which were more popular than raids are. You could easily say that the raids cost us a dungeon team.

The fact that they are using resources that could have been used for something else is not that important, however. The real problem lies in how their existence impacts the game.

The Raids are being treated as the end game content. This causes them to lock out things that otherwise would have been accessible through other means (legendary armor for example). This causes them to crowd out other design ideas (“the whole game is the endgame”). This also promotes the elitist way of thinking, like suggesting that only Raiders matter. They shift the focus of the whole game. It’s those things that are a main problem.

The dungeon team was disbanded long, long before there was a raid team. I think the issue is all the dungeons in game now were designed prelaunch with the exception of the Aetherblade Path and Fractals. Fractals are what cost you guys the dungeon team, not raids. Because Fractals were always supposed to be the way moving forward.

Now, the problem I think, is no one really had experience for making dungeons without a trinity and they tried some stuff which from Anet’s point of view didn’t work. The whole stacking and zerker thing was not how Anet intended dungeons to be played. It trivialized that content and made it nothing more than an easy farm for people who wanted quick gold. This was not what Anet had wanted for their dungeons.

Redesigning existing dungeons has a number of pitfalls. It’s actually just easier to start over. So they want with the dungeon team now being replaced by the Fractal team and the raid team an additional team for people who wanted the most challenging content.

I’m absolutely sure that the raid team didn’t cost anyone the dungeon team.

Kolinkar.4167:

Hey Vayne. I do appreciate the feedback, truly. I guess my question is if the need to ask for help from another guild makes sense in the game design? If it does, that’s fine. I would just rather do it with my friends. This isn’t international politics. And if the game is about bringing tens or dozens of people together to get things done, fine. It’s simply not what I want to do. That’s totally cool. The good news is that there are plenty of places where you can enjoy this game without needing so much assistance. And, of course, there are other places to go. I think I may have just needed to vent, which I why I started the thread.

Oh believe me, I understand the need to vent.

The whole game design question brings up the question of why it was designed that way, something players often don’t ask. It seems to me, and I could be completely wrong, that the less guild maps spawned at one time, the more efficiently the servers will run. From a game design point of view, that’s pretty important. I don’t know that that’s the answer, but I do know that more people are complaining about lag spikes now than before, so it’s a valid reason not to allow everyone and his brother to have a guild hall. But it’s all just speculation on my part. I could be completely wrong on this.

Anyway if you want help, it’ll probably only take a person or two. You won’t need a million people. Two people with experience and five of your own should be able to do it easily.

Does it make sense. Well yeah, it makes sense to get help. I’ve personally helped a number of smaller guilds capture their guild hall.

To put it from a gameplay perspective, five guys walk into Mordremoth territory, a dragon who’s already destroyed the entire pact fleet and you think you should just be able to take over a modrem controlled area on your own, totally?

From a story point of view, it makes perfect sense, unless you think you’re the only guild in the world. But we know other guilds exist.

The entire story of core Guild Wars 2 was talking about disparate factions coming together to tackle something they couldn’t do alone. How does getting some help not make sense.

Even when you get the guild hall, the cost of upgrading it is huge.

So let me ask you a couple of questions.

How will five people joining a bigger guild who continue to play together negatively affect your gaming experience, keeping in mind you didn’t have a guild hall at all till now?

Why wouldn’t your guild merge with a larger guild and keep your own voice chat and do things together anyway. You can be in up to five guilds after all.

You could join a guild together, make use of the ammeneties of a guild hall and still play the way you’ve always played.

Hell many guilds don’t even have a rep requirement anymore.

But from a strictly financial point of view, I wonder what it would do to the servers if thousands of 2, 3, 5 man guilds all had 1 person in the guild hall at the same time and the server had to spawn those maps?

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Some of the excuses here boggle my mind. Last night, the PvP room I frequent was empty for the first time. My wife cannot get a full map anywhere to get her legendary done. And certain areas are now all but ghosted.

Yes, a certain and new MMO is drawing attention away, but the writing was on the wall long before that came out.

Is HoT fail?

. . .

Can anyone ask that question with a straight face?

Doom and gloom.The PvP scene isn’t dead and I’m not encountering empty maps, unless it’s time for a meta and I don’t use the LFG tool, in which case, everyone else taxied off.

Also a new MMO launched a couple of days ago, and people go check it out, just like when ESO launched and Archeage launched. Yes, it affects the game’s population for a couple of weeks.

Given the nature of BDO, I strongly suspect most people will be back.

Edit; The recent change to PvP dailies has a big affect on the population of PvP rooms as does the season that just started, so yeah, I think you probably are reaching even suggesting your PvP room being empty means anything at all to the state of the game’s PvP.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Actually of the things you listed, time-gating is an anti-grind mechanism. People who wanted ascended stuff at launch had to build up their mats a bit every day which means you can’t grind it directly. That’s not grind it’s anti grind.

Of course you could grind for it. I saw people with ascended weapons on the second day after they were introduced. It’s the casuals that are slowed by timegates the most.

Vayne.8563:

Since a casual player wouldn’t want an ascended weapon the day it was released, it puts them on a more even footing with people who can spent more time.

Nah, it puts them even more behind.

Nope. Most people wouldn’t pay those prices.

Yes… those prices were not for casuals, while deep-pocketed veterans and hardcore grinders could shortcut the timegates.

Vayne.8563:

You’ll never stop the hardest core people from getting the stuff fast as they possibly can but casuals were definitely not punished by it. The average player couldn’t get it any faster than making one mat a day.

Sure, because the average player is a casual. The gate only ever stopped the people it was supposed to help.

Actually you’re simplifying this to the extreme. There are plenty of hard core players that felt the need to run out and get ascended armor the next day. And there were plenty who did NOT feel the need. You’re assuming all hard core players have deep pockets, but I assure that that wasn’t the case back then for most PvPers and most WvWer’s who didn’t make that much money in those game formats.

Back then the people in this game who had real money were people who played the trading post (who might not need ascended stuff anyway if that’s their game), and people who farmed the same stuff over and over again. Dungeon speed runners would have wanted it.

The harder core players I know, and yes I know some, didn’t run out and get ascended right away, because it would have depleted their funds completely. You had to pay a premium because of the gating, so most people, not just most casuals, were likely to go and craft up to 500 and start working on their sets, because if you were a WvWer you might need more than one stat combo too.

The fact is, there were many hard core players who weren’t rich back then and I assure you those hard core players didn’t have to grind to get what they needed to make ascended mats day by day…but if it all came out at once, they would have had to grind, if nothing else gold.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Actually of the things you listed, time-gating is an anti-grind mechanism. People who wanted ascended stuff at launch had to build up their mats a bit every day which means you can’t grind it directly. That’s not grind it’s anti grind.

Of course you could grind for it. I saw people with ascended weapons on the second day after they were introduced. It’s the casuals that are slowed by timegates the most.

Vayne.8563:

Since a casual player wouldn’t want an ascended weapon the day it was released, it puts them on a more even footing with people who can spent more time.

Nah, it puts them even more behind.

Nope. Most people wouldn’t pay those prices. You’ll never stop the hardest core people from getting the stuff fast as they possibly can but casuals were definitely not punished by it. The average player couldn’t get it any faster than making one mat a day.

Swagger.1459:

Leveling up a character is not a grind, but they added 10x more grind in other areas. Between the time gates and reward tracks and mastery points and tracks and locking items behind specific content to force players into it without other options… This game is not casual at all.

The game has become a mad and frenzied grind to progress and get stuff, and sucks for anyone who wants to play at a casual pace.

Actually of the things you listed, time-gating is an anti-grind mechanism. People who wanted ascended stuff at launch had to build up their mats a bit every day which means you can’t grind it directly. That’s not grind it’s anti grind.

Since a casual player wouldn’t want an ascended weapon the day it was released, it puts them on a more even footing with people who can spent more time.

Having stuff to do isn’t necessarily a bad thing for most casual players.

Raids are a mixed bag. What people who don’t like them may not realize is raids themselves are a form of progression for people who like to raid.

I don’t personally like raids and though my guild started raiding a couple of weeks ago, I suspect we’ll never get past the Vale Guardian. I don’t like banging my head against a wall for hours on end, because I don’t generally find it fun.

My biggest objection is when specific loot or story is locked behind raids and the only way to experience them is to invest time and energy that I’d rather invest elsewhere.

And yes, I know the argument if you want the loot, do the time. But if the loot is something I want, and the time isn’t worth the loot, then I see a bunch of things I won’t have fun attaining after hours of play. Sure I want them, but I also want to have fun playing the game.

So I either get them and don’t have fun for hours on end, or I don’t get them and eventually there’ll be enough of them where I’ll think it’s not worth playing anymore, because there’s too much stuff out of my reach.

Neither option particularly appeals to me.

Nero.8047:

Somehow I think it’s kind of scary that most people who reply are in the least past their 30’s, giving the image of this being the average age of the forums’ users.

Why is it scary you ask?
Because more than half of the posts on these forums are an abundance of salt, name-calling, plain hatred or insatiable desire.

I suppose it’s those of around my own age that act like this.
Just makes you think if there’s a certain group of teenagers raging or if it’s the grumpy elderly.

P.S.
I’m in my mid-twenties.

You never heard the expression grumpy old man?

Also ask if you refund it if it closes you entire account, because that’s the real issue. In other words, HoT gets added to your account. They might not be able to remove it, without closing the account.

I’m 54…but I feel like I’m 108. lol

Expansions take a lot of planning and programming before we see it. If they weren’t working on it by now, it’ll be too late.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Actually it is very different from the original game. Yes, you have to do events and map clearing to get to the next story in the original game, but you get to choose which events to do. In HoT because of mastery points, you don’t just level as usual but have to do specific often tedious tasks to get the points. I don’t know why experience wasn’t enough to satisfy the mastery bar demands. The mastery points are a real turnoff and an inhibitor to player freedom.

Not for just doing the story though. There are plenty enough points that are just communes, or lock boxes to get the story done, not to mention some VERY easy ones you can get from adventures.

For the story you only need gliding, updraft use, bouncing mushrooms and exalted lore, which is I think five points.

You get one point for just finishing the first story so you need four more. There are two communes right in the first zone. So those communes will get you through the first stories, each of which gives you a mastery point.

Getting later mastery points, I absolutely agree that they are harder to get. They’re also account bound and you only have to do them once, or it would be intolerable. However for a single time and done progression system, I find it acceptable.

There are obviously areas where it could be improved though.

Yep, I enjoyed it. Because like the original game, the story isn’t something you’re meant to do and fly through. In the original game you had to level. You had to do events in the open world to get to the next story. This isn’t that different.

I mean you need a handful of mastery points to do the story, not all the masteries anyway. And there are tons of XP buffs you can take that all stack. Guild XP buff, fireworks, food, utiltiies, celebration booster, birthday booster and a good old fashion XP buff.

This long grind people are talking about, some of us call playing the game.

Try the timer gw2timer.com. Show up about 15 minutes before the metas start. Open your LFG tool and use the new search feature to find a group for that map.

Best of luck, Colin. I’ll definitely miss you. Hope your future endeavours bring you fulfilment and success.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I totally agree with you about that Vayne, but I would be stunned if nobody else has wondered the same thing since the announcement came out.

Sure it’s how the human brains is wired. We look for patterns all the time in everything. Part of life is learning that that often doesn’t mean anything.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Did Colin leave because of HoT???? It’s barely been 4 months since HoT launched and he’s leaving? I just wonder if the mixed reception of HoT had anything to do with his decision. It just seems abrupt and out of the blue.

Because he didn’t consult us about it? He could have been thinking of leaving for years. When I left my position as manager of a computer store I’d been at for 13 years, not a single person expected it. Caught everyone off guard, but I’d been wanting to leave for many years. I just didn’t have the right situation lined up to do it. Eventually I left anyway. The point is, people who worked with me every day didn’t know.

There’s no real way to extrapolate that he left because of HoT.

LucianDK.8615:

I hate to break it to you, but HoT is very much group oriented. The wast majority of hot hero points requires goruping to get it down. And the hot mainly relies on large, map wide meta events.

They require people not grouping. So do temples in Orr.

Conner.5803:

Ticky.5831:

As frustrating as that may be, Anet clearly has more than one job.

Milking people’s money with incredibly bad gemstore items is clearly WAY more important to anet than actually fixing HUGE flaws that have been in the game for months/years….

I’m not really sure why people think that artists who make wings are qualified to fix server issues, or balance issues, or any issues for that matter.

Get into the map earlier and get on the fuller maps. If you show up just on time, the maps that are doing it are full. 15 minutes early is plenty.

After many years I decided to cancel my real life account and move to Tyria permanently. There are many reasons for this.

My biggest problem I found, was lag. Everywhere I went in my car mount, I’d be stuck with a bunch of other car mounts, waiting in a queue until we could get moving again. Also, my outside account went down for maintaince pretty much daily for several hours. I was told that this maintenance would keep my character both stronger and better looking, but it doesn’t seem to have worked for either. I’m absolutely sure that somewhere along the way they nerfed how my character looks, because I definitely did not create a character with all this gray hair.

My biggest problem without outside, however, is the ridiculous amount of money I have to pay just to sit and do nothing in my home instance. This is outrageous.

The problem is, I bought a life time subscription a long time ago, and even though I’ve left Outside behind, apparently they’ve kept my account open, tempting me to re-engage with limited time offers, that come through a slot in my home instance. The only way to access these deals it seems is to return to Outside.

Also some of the people in my outside guild continue to call and message me and I can’t get them to stop. Apparently the block feature doesn’t work in Outside.

Asumita.2174:

I don’t know what’s going on these days, but I haven’t seen one successful octovine event completed for a while now. Bad luck?

I completed one two days ago, but the one before that failed, due to some people leaving west to help south and then not being there for west’s burn. If too many people leave to help someone else, then it can cause a fail. But my last attempt was successful and I don’t run this event often

Dashingsteel.3410:

I understand where you are coming from Vayne. I just don’t think gold sinks are the way to go with guilds. Let’s say you are a guild member that has donated a lot of mats to the guild that are worth a lot of gold. Then there is a disagreement or some kind of rift in the guild. The guild member gets kicked out of the guild or because the environment is so hostile they choose to leave. Now their massive donations in mats(gold) have been for nothing. With the passive influence system, a player getting kicked is still not great but at least they aren’t robbed of their gold and mats.

There are a lot of competitive people in this game. The urge to have something first drives some players. I just wonder if this was in Anet’s thinking when they changed to the gold sink guild halls. Was there a thought that players might buy gems and convert to gold to have the first fully decked out guild hall?

I just think the new system is cynical. There have been tons of threads about how loot sucks in gw2 and now they implement a system that demands players part with their loot if they want the guild boons they used to get for just playing the game.

I don’t know…we don’t seem to have that kind of guild. I think we’ve kicked 2 people from the guild in 3.5 years. And there are enough people in my guild where very few people have do donate in any kind of quantity. Nor are we in any sort of rush. I think we’re level 42 now. We’ll finish it off at some point.

I agree that gold sink is not the best way to go, but gold sinks are necessary in games, as much as they suck and this is a big one.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Anet could have saved some of their development time by keeping the passive influence system for guilds. Unfortunately, they insist on reworking things we already have instead of working on solely new content. I guess the gold sinks were a priority.

As a guild leader, I hated the passive influence thing. Really hated it. It meant I either had to insist on higher rep or just be casual and let other people rep other guilds that require more rep.

In a game with 5 guild slots, passive guild influence made no sense, and it caused many guilds to be more mercenary than their natural tendencies.

I’m glad I never gave into temptation and made a rep requirement for my guild but I’m even more glad I don’t have to think about crap like that any more.

I’m not often speechless but gah…just gah. Congratulations. I’ll get there one day.

Avarice.2791:

Do you even need HoT to access WvW?

I mean if you’re not going to touch PvE don’t buy it lol

Unless you want to play a Revenant or one of the elite specs.

I enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) the expansion and look forward to the next one. Hopefully it’ll have more content and less core game changes though.

MrGhosty.4296:

I’m relatively new to these parts and have no intention of trying to brush off anyone’s particular perspective of the game. As a new(ish) player I would simply like to submit my personal experience.

I quite happily consider myself a casual player, but this doesn’t mean I don’t invest a lot of time into the game. When I say casual I mean to say that I enjoy good stories, exciting encounters and the ability to hop in and out of them with ease.

I came to GW2 from leading a guild in Elder Scrolls Online. I was frustrated by the content (or lack thereof) and the stupid restrictions it took to get my guildies together to play through any particular piece of content. None of these problems exists for us in GW2 (barring the obvious level requirements and other basic and expected gates).

With a couple button clicks I can have my people grouped up and we’re fighting a world boss. Then we can opt to go run through one of the end game zones like the Silverwastes or venture into HoT. After that we might knock out a fractal or two and finish up with some quick pvp matches.

These are all experiences I would definitely classify as casual friendly. They don’t require extensive prep time or gear swaps or whatever and for the most part are easy to jump in and out of. That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges in the game, but when did casual friendly have to mean easily achieved?

What I have loved about GW2 since migrating over is that no matter your predilection there is a path for you to achieve your aims. If you don’t want to grind mats for something, just play the game as usual and save up for it. If don’t want to grind OR spend a lot of gold you can continue to play as you like and eventually you will have what you want/need. These paths in no way require the same exact time to complete, some are faster than others but no matter how you want to play there is a way to achieve your goals.

If all goals were easy, nothing would be worth doing. I feel like Anet has done a very good job of providing meaningful progression no matter how much time you put in. If you only complete the dailies each day you have achieved something. If you only spend time gathering mats to craft ascended materials, again, you have achieved something. These smaller goals tend to dovetail into a greater goal such as crafting ascended gear, finishing up a dungeon path, or getting your next achievement chest that naturally take a longer period of time. For the people who would rather throw gold at the hurdle instead, there are usually options on that front as well.

While I can certainly understand how some might feel this game isn’t casual friendly, in my grumpy, bad mystic forge days I know I have certainly muttered it. I don’t think that to be the case and I would welcome anyone who feels differently to give me a shout in the game and I will happily hear you out and perhaps we can find a way to make the game fun for you again.

Great post. Thanks for making it.

I think what you’re seeing here is the disconnect between someone coming from a more typical style MMO and people who were here from day 1.

This game is still far less restrictive than most themepark MMOs by a good margin….but it’s considerably more restrictive than this game was at launch. That’s why people are annoyed by the changes.

When this game launched, world bosses weren’t on schedules at all. In fact, they appeared on different servers on different types. When Anet introduced the megaserver techology that was no longer an option and they had to go to a timer. Now a timer for a 15 minute world boss isn’t that big a deal, where as a timer for a two hour meta event could be.

If you have 3 hours to play every night, and you can’t make the beginning of the DS meta due to when you get home, it’s entirely likely you won’t be able to get into a map doing the meta. That means that you have to wait for the next time, which might be more than an hour away, which might mean having to stay up late or otherwise change your schedule in order to experience the last zone of the game. It’s simply not convenient.

Even when the world bosses schedule first came out, there were complaints by people who wanted to do say the Karka queen, but it only appeared every three hours and they couldn’t play during the time that it was there, so it killed that boss for them. Not a problem if you’re doing random bosses…more of a problem if you need that specific boss, which is happening more and more as the game progresses.

I agree with you. This game is still night and day as far as freedom goes, when compared to other MMOs. It’s just not as good as it was for some of us as it was at launch.

misterman.1530:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

It would have been much more fun to have some guild quests that guild members could do together to unlock certain aspects of the guild hall and upgrade it that way.

Didn’t see this part of your post. You made my point, but more succinct.

And it might well have set the expansion back another six months to a year, when you consider the number of quests that that would have entailed. This is not the way businesses run.

I mean yes, I would have enjoyed questing more than what we ended up with. That’s obvious. But every single game development lab has a schedule and a budget and clearly that fit into neither. If there a hundred upgrades that means created and testing 100 new quests. The best they could have done was send people to existing content in the open world, which they already did with precursor crafting and people would have complained about that too.

In my mind, as nice as it would be, it’s simply not realistic.

My guess between PvP, WvW and PvE, and now Raids, there wasn’t enough resources to do much more than was done within budget and time constraints.

Yes you can get the part you need from a non-completed dragon stand. Source, I did this myself. The only real difference is that it’s RNG and you have to open quite a few of them, and if you complete dragon stand, you have a lot more of them to open.

reikken.4961:

Ascended gear is in a pretty good spot as far as acquisition. There is one problem, though: The only real way to get a weapon is to craft it. You don’t have other alternatives. In a game that’s otherwise as open and freeform as this one, that is not good.

Actually if you own HoT the elite speicalization weapons are pretty easy to get without crafting. You don’t have a choice of every weapon but you can get staff, greatsword and a few others.

To be fair, PvP game modes are never happy on forums anywhere.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

As I recall the biggest problem/complaint about traits wasn’t doing the content. It was about having to do it on every alt. Most people didn’t have a problem doing it once. That and bugged events it was gated behind, which doesn’t seem to happen here.

There were plenty of other complaints.

Content levels not matching up with the level of the traits they rewarded was another big one, and plenty of people didn’t like how just playing naturally, levelling and going through the story, didn’t bring you anywhere near the places you needed to be to unlock traits.

It was quite terrible for more reasons I care to remember.

You’ve just supported my point. Masteries are all level 80, so the content you need to play will always be level appropriate. Again another complaint that has nothing to do with the mastery system.

And you know there are complaints about everything but the main complaints are pretty much the ones I listed and maybe the one about not level appropriate, none of which applies to the mastery system.

Mastery points are different than Mastery XP. The XP is only gated by region. The points, like trait unlocks, are gated behind specific content. Arguably, point unlocks are worse because a significant number of them are lengthy, expensive to get or tied to mini-games that have little to nothing to do with with GW2 lore, story or normal gameplay. The only things in point unlocks’ favor is that the unlocks are not tied to specific Masteries and there is a very small surplus.

Were the surplus greater, thus affording more choice, I’d have less of an issue with the point unlock system. Perhaps this will change over time, perhaps not.

The anti Trait 1.5 thread was long enough that perhaps you don’t remember all of the issues brought up. I remember complaints about tying unlocks to specific content. Some of them were from WvW-centric players. Yes, character-based was a specific complaint, but that ANet took only that from that ponderous thread is — I find — amazing.

I remember most of the issues brought up, but issues brought up is not the same thing at all as issues that people felt strongly about. or issues that are strongly supported by the community. I dare say mounts are brought up all the time. Probably more people bring up mounts that lesser complaints about the skill system.

I don’t like many of the adventures and in Australia, can NOT get gold on them. I’ve said in several threads I didn’t think mastery points should be in adventures. That said, I’ve gotten 161 mastery points spent (I didn’t do the raid ones), and out of those masteries, I did very very few of the adventures, for the most part only the easy ones.

I agree there could be more options. I disagree that the options that are there are so long and tedious that they can’t be done particularly if they were meant as a long term goal, which apparently they were. Is there such a huge downside to not having the top tiers of Nuhoch or any of the 12 point ones really?

I don’t think so. This isn’t like a trait where it’s necessary to play the game, and it isn’t like a trait in that you don’t need to do it on every character. It’s a account wide progression meant to be long term that people can slowly work towards.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

As I recall the biggest problem/complaint about traits wasn’t doing the content. It was about having to do it on every alt. Most people didn’t have a problem doing it once. That and bugged events it was gated behind, which doesn’t seem to happen here.

There were plenty of other complaints.

Content levels not matching up with the level of the traits they rewarded was another big one, and plenty of people didn’t like how just playing naturally, levelling and going through the story, didn’t bring you anywhere near the places you needed to be to unlock traits.

It was quite terrible for more reasons I care to remember.

You’ve just supported my point. Masteries are all level 80, so the content you need to play will always be level appropriate. Again another complaint that has nothing to do with the mastery system.

And you know there are complaints about everything but the main complaints are pretty much the ones I listed and maybe the one about not level appropriate, none of which applies to the mastery system.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Khisanth.2948:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Jahroots.6791:

Noa.7490:

Even if the majority here don’t exactly like the Mastery points, let’s be honest; it’s not like ANet will take notice, realize their error and do something about it.

I feel like we should have kicked up a bigger fuss about them, like the hero point requirement for elite specs, and gotten them nerfed to be more accessible.

For me, any problems with mastery points didn’t show up till later.

1) people who have done particular content, like me, have lots of Tyrian mastery points. If you were a predominantly WvW player, you might well be scrambling for both hero points and Tyrian mastery points both and not playing WvW if you’re trying to get, for example, JP or map completion mastery points or going back to do old story lines.
2) putting the mastery points behind glitchy, time gated content wasn’t an obvious problem until you tried to do it. Have high ping and want to do an adventure? Maybe, maybe not. Or maybe you would like to do an adventure now, but it’s not available and you don’t know when it will be until you research it (bad design).

Neither of these were an obvious problem beforehand, at least not to me.

Actually that should have been an obvious problem for the devs at least considering it is a repeat of the problem with trait unlocks.

Well, yeah. You would think that wouldn’t you. I have no idea why the Devs don’t anticipate problems that should be obvious to them, seeing as it’s their job and they’ve encountered complaints about similar situations.

Putting account/character progression behind specific content turned out to be bad for traits and by extension they should have seen that it could be a problem for Masteries also.

As I recall the biggest problem/complaint about traits wasn’t doing the content. It was about having to do it on every alt. Most people didn’t have a problem doing it once. That and bugged events it was gated behind, which doesn’t seem to happen here.

Because you only unlock accounts once, it’s a completely different situation and not all the complaints that were levied against the trait system even apply to masteries.

echo.2053:

Vayne.8563:

echo.2053:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I didn’t say it was the same boss in that spot. Just that there will always be a boss standing there, without fail, when you get on the map.

Lol you do realize that is still the case within GW2……. The cave troll ALWAYS spawns in the cave at Altar’s Windings in queensdale, Modniir Ulgoth ALWAYS spawns at Modniir Gorge. etc for the rest of them.

The only differences is that they respawn in gw2 without having to reload map ( not really that big of a deal) and in gw2 they don’t drop unqiue items ( a big deal)

Easy there on they don’t drop unique items, because some bosses do. Look up Spirit Links in the wiki. The only place I’ve ever seen it drop is SB. And stuff like crustacea only drops from the karka queen and that’s part of a collection. In fact, most stuff in the exotics and treasure hunter collection only drops from certain events/bosses.

Lulz nice try guy- do your research.

spirit links from mf – 1 Eldritch Scroll 70 Mystic Coin 10Orichalcum Ingot 250 Glob of Ectoplasm

Crustacea is obtained from specfic type champ bags, karka queen is just convient because you get 3 chances for killing her. You can possible get it from a champ bag from the champion reef shark etc.

GW2 unqiues – So unique you can obtain them from multiple places or or ez mode craft them.

Do your own research. It can be crafted or bought off the TP. But the ONLY place spirit links DROPS in game is SB. Says so on the wiki page.

We were talking about drops. Now you might argue in Guild Wars 1, there was no way to craft it, and that’s true. That’s because you couldn’t craft in Guild Wars 1.

You can also look up items like Sam, All Seeing, Chalice of Rendak, Ulgoth’s Tail, Pendent of Arah, all of which only drop from specific chests, after specific bosses.

Yeah I wouldn’t waste laurels on boosters either. You’re better off saving laurels because they really are a lmited currency. But I agree at a lower level there’s not much reason to buy HoT, unless you KNOW you’re going to want to buy it.

Nonoka.7028:

And even if you’d turn level 80 now, you’d still have loads of stuff to do in central tyria, before entering HoT. It’s of course a nice distraction but I still mainly hang out in central tyria and go for HoT stuff every once in a while.

I wouldn’t want to waste the experience though. If you turn level 80 now, when you play that character without HoT, you’re not getting any mastery experience. That alone would drive me to buy.