Guild Wars 2

onevstheworld.2419:

Easy points:
8 personal story
8 completing LS 2 story (not the achievements)
2 Tequalt
1 Karka Queen
1 LA exterminator
1 Dry Top skritt queen
1 for first character reaching lvl 80

That’s 22 points without doing fractals, dungeons, JPs, LS achievements, difficult bosses or rare spawns. And that’s easily enough to max out Pact Commander (19 needed).

As for Fractal Attunement, it pays for itself in terms on MP’s…11 needed, 14 available. Most of the time I get these by accident, asking the group if we could work towards it, or creating a LFG stating it was a MP run. But if you don’t do fractals, this line is useless to you and you can ignore it.

Legendary crafting is a funny one… to craft a precursor, you will need to do lots of different content (Fractals, JPs, specific champs/events, specific achievements, mini dungeons, max level crafting) If you think getting the MPs required to max this mastery out is too much, precursor crafting is more of the same but arguably much harder and definitely more expensive. As someone who has crafted Dusk, I can guarantee the MP requirement is only a mild obstacle in the grand scheme of precursor crafting. If this crafting process doesn’t appeal to you, you can ignore this mastery line too.

TLDR:
Core Tyria masteries ARE tuned to your gameplay preferences:
Pact Commander for everyone: enough easy MPs
Fractal Attunement for the fractal runners: enough MPs in fractals
Legendary Crafting: crafting process requires you to do lots of different and sometimes annoying/difficult content, thus reflected in the remaining MPs coming from all sorts of content (some of which are annoying/difficult)

This is a brilliant post. I hadn’t really thought about it this deeply before, but you’re absolutely right.

The core game is free. The price of the expansion is $50. You’re not rebuying anything. That’s the price.

Whether the price is too high is another matter.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

I don’t know about you guys, but if I tried my best and failed, then saw people do this: https:https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48h1fz/evc_vale_guardian_10_man_naked_style/ I would seriously question my intelligence.

Well I’d question my skill set, at any rate. Unfortuately, different people have different skill sets and what’s easy for one person isn’t at all easy for other people. For example everyone who lives in the Oceanic regions, I’m guessing tens of thousands of players, are playing with inordinately high ping lately. That’s a big part of the world. It would be nice if Australia was closer to mainland US, but it’s not, and I don’t think making content that part of the world can’t play easily is great for the game.

But you know, not everyone grew up with a keyboard in their hand either and there are probably more older players than you think, that find it harder. I have many in my guild that simply don’t have the hand-eye coordination, or the vision, or the physical capacity to raid. Some of them are very intelligent people.

On the topic of being bored, I’ve yet to see an MMO expansion that didn’t bore some people after three months. That’s about the time it takes for WoW subscriber numbers to take a dive too, and I have people in my guild who go, play with wow expansions for a couple of months then leave again and come back here.

So yeah, saying an expansion is boring after 3 months is probably not hugely troubling.

kolompi.1287:

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.

Indeed, but surprisingly those bosses are – just like in GW1 – in the same place always and even on a timer. In GW1 at least you don’t have to wait if you want to kill some boss, it is always there.
And no, just because the karka queen can spawn in 4 random locations does not mean it’s a random spawn. Same thing still.

Well sure the bosses are always there. It’s an instance. There’s be zero point in making an instance that doesn’t exist before you enter it not spawn.

With a true MMO, something Guild Wars 1 was not. you run into other problems. In this case people wanting to do content and having to randomly find it. If a boss that dropped a specific item that people wanted spawned randomly in either time, place or both, you’d get complaints.

This happened recently with the Dune Soarer, a rare event that appeared very rarely in Dry Top. No one cared about it, because it didn’t drop anything special. But as soon as it dropped something players wanted/needed, there were a wave of complaints about not being able to get what they need.

It’s very easy to say this game shouldn’t be on a timer, or it should have creatures that drop unique items randomly spawn…but all you’d hear is complaints on the forums. People with a lack of time would be massively disadvantaged by making that stuff more random because they’d be less likely to get it.

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.

Behellagh.1468:

Yes, a lot are tied up in the personal stories, LW2, Dry Top and Silverwaste collections. I’m at a point where every track is waiting for points that will take me months even to get. 2000 gold for all the culture outfits? A near impossible JP? Teq and the TTW?

Yeah, not fun nor easy to obtain. Certainly not as easy as some in HoT.

Which is the near impossible JP?

Cyber-bullying indeed any kind of bullying is a serious issue and needs to be treated with respect. However, there’s a big wide range of anti-social behavoir that isnt’ cyber bullying. I get ganged up on quite frequently but only very rarely has someone tried to actually bully me.

One guy followed me to reddit and posts personal, attacks, including profanity which is usually deleted by moderators pretty fast. This type of bullying doesn’t bother me though. I feel sympathy for anyone who feels the need to stalk someone else and come to personally insult them. It’s their problem not mine.

However there’s also sensitivity to the point where things are referred to as cyber bullying that really aren’t, at least in my opinion.

That’s why I wanted to open a conversation about the threshold that someone would be expected not to cross. The OP has consisted refused to engage in this conversation.

Ally.4382:

The whole 3 pages is just full of trolls it seems, I honestly can’t keep up with it all.
I don’t know what is going on either.
And “rude” is not my word, just forget you ever saw it. Just replace it with whatever word makes you understand what I was trying to convey.

The post should have been done by now but everyone seems to want to come back around for 70th helpings.

It’s done. Support’s good for you guys. Great. I get it.

I find it rude that you keep calling people trolls. That’s offensive to some people.

And I can’t just know what you mean by replacing your word with my word, because the threshold has to be set My threshold is quite irrelevant since I’m not the one who sees the problem. I wonder why you’re so reluctant to discuss your threshold. It might help others understand what you mean.

laokoko.7403:

I think the problem is best way to farm in GW2 is to grind the same thing over and over again. In fact once you find the most efficient farm, you stay there forever, for example silver waste.

In other mmorpg you at least change what you are grinding once in a while. For example grind 100 hours in one area, and once you get stronger you grind in another area.

To me this is the very difference between playing hard core and playing casual. Why would a casual player optimize their gold per hour? Why is that even the agenda of a casual player.

I want to make the bat shoulder piece from Halloween. I got the Halloween stuff to make it that I needed, mostly bought from the TP pretty cheaply. But I’m nowhere near making it. I’m saving up to make linseed oil. I don’t want to buy it, so I’m farming flax. That means sometimes, I get over to the flax farm when I think about it. Maybe it’ll take me another six months to make it, but so what. I’m casual. I’m not running any races.

If you think farming the Silverwastes over and over to make gold is a casual activity, you and I have VERY different ideas about the nature of casual game play.

Ally.4382:

Vayne.8563:

Well your first problem is taking terms of service as law. It’s not. It’s there to protect Anet from the law, to some degree. That is to say, they have the option to ban, not that they have to ban and saying that putting something in the TOS is a guarantee of behavior is not realistic.

For example, they put in the TOS that they can pretty much do anything they want, but then they don’t do anything they want. It’s just protection.

Most recently we’ve heard a change in the way names are vetted and what names will be allowed to stay or leave. Originally they were much stricter, but they’ve relaxed the rules.

So looking at the TOS and saying those are the lines is not of any real use to anyone.

I’ve asked you for what your lines are, I’d expect if you want changes, you’d lay out where that line is.

I guess a pretty worldly view on what is not acceptable, in THIS day and age, I don’t know. I don’t have some crazy expectancy grossly different from anybody here. What I do know, is that I’d rather not have my game be a giant free-for-all where people do what the hell they like. At least, that’s not what I signed up for at Beta. So things have changed, I guess that sucks for me.

And after 3 pages, I still have no idea what you’re talking about. I mean the rudest I’ve seen to this day is back in the Marionette fight when we failed it one day and some guy went ballistic and starting yelling at people. I reported him.

By the same token, I was commanding in TD and I completely screwed up in my lane and we didn’t get the chak gerent to come out and map chat was relatively understanding. They took it in stride, some people were even supportive.

So we’re back to the specifics. If you want customer service to change, you have to be specific about what you want them to do.

Hint: Repeating the word rude over and over again won’t help anyone determine what you mean, not even customer service.

Ally.4382:

I don’t care for the most part what you do with your friends in map chat, it’s very easy to tell whether people are joking around with each other or not. But I reckon about 80% of people come on for some R&R. I don’t count or appreciate personal attacks or ganging up on someone, whoever they are, as R&R. I think whatever guidelines Anet have set out (maybe they’ve changed, I haven’t checked in a super long time) they should stick to them. Whatever threshold they’ve set in their own policies, I think they should follow that.
I’m questioning whether they actually do that, and follow their own rules they set out.

It’s pretty simple really for me, personally…
If the game policy says, don’t be a butt, you’ll get banned.
And then you go around being a butt.
I fully expect them to follow through on their word, and ban you.

However I think the whole cyber-abuse thing needs to not be taken so lightly, and shrugged off because for some reason they can’t determine who is in the wrong. I think a simple read of the chatlog would suffice, as it’s very easy to determine imho who started what with most report tickets.

Well your first problem is taking terms of service as law. It’s not. It’s there to protect Anet from the law, to some degree. That is to say, they have the option to ban, not that they have to ban and saying that putting something in the TOS is a guarantee of behavior is not realistic.

For example, they put in the TOS that they can pretty much do anything they want, but then they don’t do anything they want. It’s just protection.

Most recently we’ve heard a change in the way names are vetted and what names will be allowed to stay or leave. Originally they were much stricter, but they’ve relaxed the rules.

So looking at the TOS and saying those are the lines is not of any real use to anyone.

I’ve asked you for what your lines are, I’d expect if you want changes, you’d lay out where that line is.

The question is always what is the threshold for offense that should be punishable bannable. It differs with each person so there has to be a lot of leeway.

You’re seeing this level of insult everywhere you go to the point where your block list is not big enough. I’m not seeing this at all and I’ve not had this experience. I actively participate in map chat, I don’t have my swear filter on, and I’ve put like a dozen people in my block list in 3.5 years. Obviously I’m not seeing this level of offense.

But I’ve also played well over 10,000 hours and spent a good portion of that time in the open world. If things were nearly as bad as you’re suggesting, I should have seen a lot more of it.

My conclusion is that there are things you find offensive that I don’t find offensive. If that’s the case, there are likely things you find offensive that support doesn’t find offensive.

The question becomes where is the bar.

If someone threatens to harm you, I agree that’s a line you shouldn’t cross. But that said, how can anyone find you to do this, or know you’re address.

I’ve said to friends in map chat keep it up, I’m going to kick your kitten and you, as a third party might think, that’s reportable behavior. The person I said it to, however, is laughing with me on mumble, or giving me the proverbial finger in guild chat.

So as a starting point, what are the lines you draw for a bannable offense…besides death threats, which we agree on.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

I won’t address most of what you have to say, OP, but the bags in containers thing has upsides and downsides. First of all, salvaging for mats is the way a lot of people make money. If you got every blue and green in your inventory directly, you’d have no inventory space at all. The whole bags in boxes things means when I’m playing in something like DS I can salvage and deposit as I go for the few things I get, and everything else is a box in a stack. You remove those boxes and you end up with nothing. If you only reward gold there are people who won’t feel rewarded at all. There are probably psychological reasons for that, but there are still people who like open bags for a chance at an exotic, even if they hardly ever get one..particularly if they hardly ever get one.

There’s really no perfect answer for #2, but this is a game of trickles. Thinking that only the big drops matter means you’ve sort of missed how loot works in this game.

I agree bags in bags are annoying. Full inventory is more annoying.

I prefer to play like that, grow the stacks of containers you get from playing in one region for a while and only open them when I feel like it.

Toward that purpose, I would love to have a special inventory bag that containers will go into as long as there’s room, like the craftsman’s bags and equipment boxes and whatnot.

Yep, I’d like this type of bag too.

Ally.4382:

I’ll just say I think you’re all proving my point very valid within the thread itself alone. I come on to throw out some ideas and to seriously talk about help and support within the game and how we could possibly make some improvements to the environment for everybody. YET all I am met with is this, my point of the post; people in general being rather “nasty” (yes) towards me with no real reason for it.

Actually this post proves the point of the majority of people posting in this thread. You have an idea, people don’t agree with you that problem is serious and suddenly we’re a bad community. I didn’t bad mouth you. I didn’t threaten you. I disagree that the problem is as serious as you’re making it out to be.

You see that’s the problem with overstating your case or hyperbole. It’s harder to take seriously.

When my kid use to run in from outside like he’d amputated his arm, when in fact all he did was get a little scrape, I wouldn’t empower him by making him think he’s right. I’d tell him, look it’s just a little scrape it’ll feel better in a bit. You don’t have to let this get you down and most of the time they’d run back outside and play. They were exaagerating, perhaps for attention, or perhaps because they were a bit scared. Not because the scrape was that bad.

By admitting you used metaphors, if the metaphors don’t fit, it’ll be harder for people to take you seriously.

Which doesn’t mean you’re being attacked, and it doesn’t prove your point that the community is bad.

Ally.4382:

Talyn.3295:

Ally.4382:

The block list is only so long… We’re talking about hundreds, thousands of these horrible horrible people. But essentially you’re saying, let them get away with it still?

Excuse my examples, but:
If I were to say, murder your family. Would you accept “ignoring” me as a good form of justice for my crimes?

I understand people still do not want to take cyber bullying (for lack of a better phrase) seriously. But it IS real.

Been playing this game since launch. Can’t say I have ever had to block anyone for being a jerkism or for crimes against justice. And hundreds or thousands of horrible people?

I am sorry but I tend to side with occam’s razor. Is you are running into horrible people morning, noon and night maybe start by looking at your self first

I hate that it had to come to someone essentially saying I am the problem… That it’s me…
So if I go outside and get kitten d tonight somewhere… Is that my fault too?

These things are real, and should not be ignored, nor should the victim be victimised further, as is starting to happen in this case already.

I wouldn’t say that you’re the problem, I won’t even say there’s not some problem, but yes, I do believe you’re exaagerating the problem.

I doubt you play this game more hours than I do. I’ve had to block maybe a dozen people in over 3 years. That’s a person a quarter for those counting at home.

It is possible you’re more sensitive, though. But everyone comes from different cultures, has different levels of tolerance.

Maybe you take things said as a joke seriously or you don’t find those jokes funny. Maybe you take everything said at face value.

It’s just not as bad as you’re making it out to be.

You just be playing a different game. Or you’re squirreled away in PvP maybe. I almost never see threats and I’ve only come across a handful of people that deserve to be on my block list with the notable exception of gold sellers.

While I agree the quality of the playerbase has declined, when compared to other MMOs I’ve played with the exception of Lotro, this is the best playerbase I’ve come across, period end of story. It’s not the guys that are annoying in map chat that make the playerbase great, it’s the people willing to go out of their way to help that is. You’re always going to have bad apples.

Any game will a smaller population btw, is always going to be friendlier because that’s how it works. You have fewer people everyone gets to know each other, and it’s harder to remain anonymous.

When Vanguard was dying, they had the nicest population because anyone who came to the game was like a celebrity. Holy crap we got a new player, better be nice to him. I’ve found the Wildstar population to be like that now, because they want people to stay.

But then when the game went free to play we had a huge party in multiple zones of DR, with people welcoming people to the game and using birthday blasters and stuff that lasted three days.

This community is still the best of any triple A MMO. If you don’t think so, you should go spend some time in some of the others.

If you’re on a US server, I can help you get through some fractals. Just message me in game.

I won’t address most of what you have to say, OP, but the bags in containers thing has upsides and downsides. First of all, salvaging for mats is the way a lot of people make money. If you got every blue and green in your inventory directly, you’d have no inventory space at all. The whole bags in boxes things means when I’m playing in something like DS I can salvage and deposit as I go for the few things I get, and everything else is a box in a stack. You remove those boxes and you end up with nothing. If you only reward gold there are people who won’t feel rewarded at all. There are probably psychological reasons for that, but there are still people who like open bags for a chance at an exotic, even if they hardly ever get one..particularly if they hardly ever get one.

There’s really no perfect answer for #2, but this is a game of trickles. Thinking that only the big drops matter means you’ve sort of missed how loot works in this game.

I agree bags in bags are annoying. Full inventory is more annoying.

Surbrus.6942:

The term “casual” has been co-opted as a nicer way of saying “lazy” or “low skill”. Funny enough, the word is often used with the opposite meaning here. Much of the time , “casual” means that it will just take a long time, but it will be easy for anyone no matter of skill/attention but simply possessing the patience to devote the time to get whatever they want.

Unfortunate for those of us using the old version of the term, as we by far prefer to play the game on our schedule, not having to play the game on the game’s schedule (looking at you, every open world map in HoT, and the incredible amount of map currencies that are required for the rewards).

Also people should really stop using the excuse “there are other games that exist that are worse than GW2’s grind”. Just because there exists something terrible, is not a reason why another thing should be given a free pass. If you make these sorts of comparisons, then compare GW1 and GW2.

Yes Guild Wars 1 had no grind. There was no luxon or kurzick track. There was no lightbringer track. There was no deldrimar track. There was no drinking title. There was no need to farm at all, because everyone has a mini polar bear, right?

You’re right about not giving Guild Wars 2 a free pass, but that has nothing to do with there being plenty of grind in GW 1.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Dragonax.6487:

It’s the most grindy game I’ ever played. Almost everything top level in this game take either massive luck, lot of money or massive amount of time to get. And the most terrible thing is almost none of those require any amount of skill.

Legendary probably takes like 2 years to get unless you are either extremely lucky, play > 10 hours a day , or pay $500. Even Ascended would take like 1-2 months for casual players , 3-4 months for the armor sets. And now with HoT out, even more grind are needed just to unlock the new specializations (which should be unlocked freely after purchase ).

When I compared it with a truly casual game like Warframe for ex: It took me 3 weeks to obtain top level gears. After 5 weeks, with a bit of luck and trading skills, I was able to get Frost Prime, which was by far the rarest, most valuable piece of gear in the game at that time, matched only by some of the (really good ) stuffs that no longer drop for several years.That’s what I would call Casual/

you misunderstand what a casual game is, its a game where there are not gates preventing casual player from playing, casual players can quite happily spend years developing their characters. A Casual game is not casual because you can max something in 3 weeks.

mmorpgs are all about having the opportunity to spend years developing your avatar, something people coming from a purely single player/non rpg background fail to understand.

This. What makes this game casual is you can get to level 80 without ever leaving the 1-15 zone.

Raid is coming in less than a week.

Because

1. you don’t need ascended to do content, it’s not gated by armor, you can do quite nicely with exotics and

2. there’s no new tier of gear next week, or next month, or next year. Sure it might take you 2 months to get your gear. But that’s it.

You may find that grindy…but I don’t.

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

So would you pay $15 a month, each and every month to play Guild Wars 2, if you could get the expansion for $15 less? lol

The comparison between the two games is way off.

Nah. He’d rather non-HOT people pay $19.99 before they’re allowed to buy HOT for $49.99.

Frankly, I think they could have sold the base game for $30 and HOT and all future expacs for $20, while not requiring previous Xpacs to play the new one, and instead gating Xpac maps, Elite Specializations, and crafting recipes (Including legendaries) behind owning that Xpac.

Hopefully Anet learned some lessons in the process and they won’t suffer the same type of negative publicity for the next expansion.

Zenith.6403:

You should try these things before hastily making judgments.

In an ideal world, before anyone judges the quality of a game based on their understanding of bugs, they should have to work in a professional development environment, especially in the gaming industry.

I’ve played literally thousands of games over the years. I don’t need to play that one to know what you mean. It simply has no bearing on what we’re talking about.

Zenith.6403:

Have you played a Nintendo DS game called The World Ends With You? Credits list 7 creators and 14 voice actors for a game localized to Japan and western audience. The game isn’t too big, GameFAQs list the length as 43.6 hours. During that time you’ll be constantly immersed in the game world. There’s no unnecessary waiting and I feel that all the systems the game has are very well done – actually innovating the genre of story-focused RPG. That game is a great example of small team project that is perfectly scaled. Before you say it, no, it has nothing to do with MMOs.

Right, easy to program game, doesn’t constantly require new content, that’s like saying my skate board has less maintainance issues than my car.

It’s a pointless comparison.

Zenith.6403:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure anything you listed is even a bug. Sometimes it’s a measure of cost effectiveness. It’s far more cost effective to create a single animation for mining. You think it’s a bug because a real person would stop.

Well it doesn’t seem to be taking any artistic liberties so therefore I consider it a simple bug. It’s coded in a way that mining animation plays for 3 swings, because before there was any extra gathering strikes most nodes would be 3 units. Now when you get extra gathering strikes you have to pause after 3 swings and then animation plays for 3 swings even if you got only 1 extra gathering strike.

Optimal, common sense behavior would be this: once the player presses button the character mines for minerals until there is no more left to mine or player interrupts the action.

If I had to choose between having one swing animation repeating as many times as necessary versus a custom animation of slightly different 3 swings, I’d choose the former. I guess that’s just my personal preference to put functionality above aethetics.

Vayne.8563:

Having worked on creative projects that have deadlines in the past, something far less intricate than coding, I can tell you that time and budget constraints will always produce a product that has some flaws. But the only other real option is to never publish.

Another option is to scale the project so that whatever you put out is quality stuff. Some of the best games I’ve played have actually been small team projects that had correct idea what they can and cannot do with the resources they have.

Yes, put out one perfect map. Rift had a nearly perfect launch, but it was a tiny tiny game. That didn’t go over any better than Guild Wars 2 did.

Zenith.6403:

Most of the bugs I encounter could have been figured out by simply playing the game as it’s supposed to be played:

• Why does my character keep mining for minerals when there’s no more to mine?
• Why does my character spend 6, 4 supplies for wall repairs when I have ability that allows me to spend 10 supplies per tick?
• Why is the orange progress bar that appears on your character narrow in the beginning and wide at middle towards end?
• Why does Mesmer greatsword autoattack animation appear to hit targets way beyond its range?
• Why does captured shrine veteran monster appear hostile for split second after capturing and after that turn friendly?
• Why does another player’s pet appear charmable after that player has teleported to your location?

These are just the bugs off the top of my head. I shudder to think how bad the non-obvious bugs are.

I’m not sure anything you listed is even a bug. Sometimes it’s a measure of cost effectiveness. It’s far more cost effective to create a single animation for mining. You think it’s a bug because a real person would stop. A real person doesn’t need to be programmed. Programmers work under extreme time limits and under budgets as well. Making one animation for it is hardly game breaking and no game can afford to pay that kind of attention to detail or it would take ten years to make it.

The last two are probably signs of latency. All creatures probably spawn in one state, and then the server adjusts their state. So when a pet spawns it, and it appears, it’s tamable for a second before the owner appears taking that property away. It’s not a bug, it’s again, a detail not worth paying attention too. It’s not game breaking. Fixing that means not fixing something else and at any rate, if that’s how the game is programmed, there may be no easy fix for it at all.

Same with the appearance of veteran monsters. They likely spawn in one state and then the server provides the properties. The more latency, the more time it will take and the more likely you are to notice. Devs might never notice something like this on their own servers anyway, because the update is likely faster.

Having worked on creative projects that have deadlines in the past, something far less intricate than coding, I can tell you that time and budget constraints will always produce a product that has some flaws. But the only other real option is to never publish.

choovanski.5462:

I’m enjoying BDO more. this game is getting old, and PvP and wvw are just getting worse.

the lustre has gone. pve is awful. combat is fun when playing PvP some of the time, but really is just AOE spam most of the time. pve combat and adventuring are terrible.

BDO is grand. in look and feel. combat is excellent.
here, have a photo of my giant showing his grin

But will you be enjoying it more in 3 years. It’s that blush of first love. It always fades. Sometimes faster than others.

When we started this game, people loved it. It was the best thing ever. And then, a few months later, they introduced ascended gear, and the love affair was over.

All new relationships are great, because in that first experience we tend to overlook the bad points, but they’ll be there.

If you play games like that you’ll move from game to game forever. At the end of the day, you can’t compare a game that’s not released yet to one that’s been out for years. Well you can, but you’d be fooling yourself.

mauried.5608:

This isnt what anyone wants to hear, but by simple definition the best MMO is the one that has the most players, and makes the most money for its creator.
You can guess which one that is.

Best doesn’t mean the most popular. More people eat at McDonalds than Peter Luger’s Steak House. I’m pretty sure most people would agree Peter Luger’s is the better restaurant though.

So would you pay $15 a month, each and every month to play Guild Wars 2, if you could get the expansion for $15 less? lol

The comparison between the two games is way off.

qbalrog.8017:

Vayne.8563:

Actually I think you’re right. There are less people in cities now, because there are more places to go to sell and get to your bank, including Guild Halls and the PvP Lobby. I’m often at the PvP lobby even though I never PvP, because it’s convenient.

Prices being low is often a sign of more supply, which could very well mean more people farming.

My own personal experience is that my guild is busier now than it was a year ago.

Perception is great. Interpreting that perception is just as difficult as trying to interpret numbers. There are all sorts of things that change how things are perceived.

In my mind the only thing that can really be judged is WvW, because there are three zones with no overflows. But even then some WvW players could be playing Edge of the Mists because they don’t like the new borderlands.

Your alternate conclusion may be correct, which is why I’m not certain of my analysis but, as my personal opinion based on my personal observations, I think pop is lower. I’m sure we’ll get a better sense in the months ahead. Useful data points will include NCSoft earnings announcements and whether they force more changes.

On a somewhat related note, one of my TP data points is the price on dyes. They are much lower than I recall. This could be more dyes (not necessarily more of a given type, maybe more different types). Could be partially related to 3 year anniversary gifts. Could be a drop in demand. I see a similar thing on skins. Could be result of multiple 2-ticket skins on sale or recent events or could be fewer purchasers. I’m happy enough- got several things I’ve had my eyes on for some time but it does make me wonder.

Could be GH but I’m not sure GH would really drive the prices down although I suppose that could be it. Just not sure money going to GHs would have gone to skins and dyes- not something guilds usually by and most individuals probably donate mats not gold- I did anyway.

What’s your take on it? I’ve been dying to ask (pun intended :P )

There’s an influx of free to play players who can’t fully use the trading post. And I’m pretty sure they can’t buy dyes off the trading post. I have no doubt some who played the game have left. I also have no doubt that not everyone who started playing has access to buying and selling the same things, just as they don’t have access to this forum thus skewing post counts.

I strongly believe free to play has brought in a large number of players some of whom are converting to HOT but not fast enough. Possibly because some of them take far longer to level to 80. No real point in buying HoT until you have an 80, unless you want to play a revenant.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

If you’re not talking about weapons or especially armor, what you said makes even less sense than it did when I thought you were talking about ascended gear more generally.

…
Seriously, the post i was answering to was about players that started at HoT. Not about people with your playtime, Vayne.

There are plenty of people who started with HOT who have full ascended jewelry already. Don’t kid yourself. Some of them are in my guild.

No point in incentivizing it until the issues with WvW are fixed. Anet knows about them. They’re working on fixing them.

I’m guessing the reason we haven’t had a new season in WvW is because there’s no point with it being in the state it is now.

Incentivizing WvW now would give a very mixed message.

qbalrog.8017:

Vayne.8563:

This entire thread is a question that has no definition proof. There’s no way to know if there are more people playing or less people.

That mentality will send statisticians screaming

In lieu of hard stats, which Anet could provide but then again, what game company does, you can still infer activity from the presence of people in various places. Many of us put in enough hours over the years to have a sense for what typical populations are.

I took a break, have come back to dabble on dailies and a little pvp. My sense: population is lower.

Cities seem to have less than half the folks around at my usual times. Trading post prices are surprisingly low for a number of things I’m interested in. Whenever I pop into SW or a HoT zone or really anywhere in the world, I see fewer people.

Now, my one world recent event did end up with a good number of folks. The TP money could be going to things I don’t track. Folks could be in mysterious, taxi-full zone instances that I haven’t blundered into. All my former guildies could have been too busy to carry on their previous fairly noisy chatting.

In short, all the data points I look at to gauge population could be misleading… but I kinda doubt it. From what data I have available, the population clearly seems lower. I am 100% certain? No, but I’m fairly certain it is substantially lower.

Actually I think you’re right. There are less people in cities now, because there are more places to go to sell and get to your bank, including Guild Halls and the PvP Lobby. I’m often at the PvP lobby even though I never PvP, because it’s convenient.

Prices being low is often a sign of more supply, which could very well mean more people farming.

My own personal experience is that my guild is busier now than it was a year ago.

Perception is great. Interpreting that perception is just as difficult as trying to interpret numbers. There are all sorts of things that change how things are perceived.

In my mind the only thing that can really be judged is WvW, because there are three zones with no overflows. But even then some WvW players could be playing Edge of the Mists because they don’t like the new borderlands.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I just find it very hard to swallow your absolute statement that no one who arrives early will ever get lost in the shuffle. I just can’t see how that works.

Let’s consider “at the right time” to be a window of opportunity starting some x minutes before the reset and ending some y minutes after the reset. Let’s consider that a full map holds Nf players, and that the minimum number of players needed to make a map viable equals Nv.

What you’re claiming is that the total number of players arriving “at the right time” minus the number of full maps multiplied by Nf is always a greater number than Nv.

Mathematically and logically, that just doesn’t make any sense. There will be times when the numbers fall in such a way that people who arrive “at the right time” will not be able to get a viable map.

You claim you always get into a viable map. I believe you, but that’s just lucky. I find it just as likely that someone has the opposite kind of luck, and falls by the wayside quite often.

He can’t say that, but I can say when my guilds and I do this, and we’ve done it often, none of us have been left out of a server that at least attempts to finish the meta.

Sometimes things fall apart if people don’t know what to do, but that’s not a getting into the map issue. We’ve all gotten into the map every time we’ve tried it.

Will someone, somewhere eventually miss out. Maybe. But you know, anyone can lose internet at any time and they’d miss out too.

You can’t build games around outliers.

Astralporing.1957:

Sird.4536:

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

That whole ‘Ascended grind’ argument is getting old, given how long it has been out.

Even back when HoT came out, if you started saving up your laurels since then you would have a full trinket set easily by now. If you made 1g, yes just 1g, a day, you would have an ascended weapon right now.

And by that time metas (and thus builds) for many classes changed at least once. So you’d need to start again.

You are aware that ascended stat swapping is a thing now? it is far cheaper to stat swap and re-rune your gear then make a completely new set.

Sykper was talking about trinkets. Those cannot be stat-changed, as far as i know.

By the way, while stat changing armor and weapons is indeed cheaper that crafting new ones, it is by no means cheap.

Anyone who runs fractals regularly (and they’re much easier to run now than they’ve ever been) will have enough ascended rings to choke an arrowhead.

Anyone who runs guild missions (and they’re also easy enough to do) can get ascended accessories for 12 commendations and 5 gold each. So for 10 gold and 24 guild commendations you can change your build. Anyone choosing not to that content is silly because some of it is really easy, and it’s very profitable. I have over 300 guild commendations right now.

Ascended amulets can be bought with 30 laurels. If you don’t spend all your laurels on T6 mats or something, it’s quite easy to get 30 of them (or 20 laurels and 250 badges of honor) to get an amulet.

Plenty of people sitting on a couple of hundred laurels.

If you’re not talking about weapons or especially armor, what you said makes even less sense than it did when I thought you were talking about ascended gear more generally.

TPMN.1483:

And you would honestly pay for 4 maps?

Yes I would honestly pay for 4 maps.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

That whole ‘Ascended grind’ argument is getting old, given how long it has been out.

Even back when HoT came out, if you started saving up your laurels since then you would have a full trinket set easily by now. If you made 1g, yes just 1g, a day, you would have an ascended weapon right now.

And by that time metas (and thus builds) for many classes changed at least once. So you’d need to start again.

I didn’t start again though. I converted my ascended armor to ascended viper. It wasn’t particularly costly and didn’t take a huge amount of gold. It’s true I don’t have multiple sets of ascended armor for my characters that use it, but then I don’t feel I need multiple sets.

Anet said they’re release living story 3 later this year.

My guess is HoT received such a bad reaction they’ve had to go back to the drawing board to get it to where more people accept it. I mean Colin did say they were going to do something to make it more playable for people who have less time to devote at one sitting, or something to that affect and also that they were going to look at the grind aspect as well.

My guess is whatever work they’re doing as set the release of the story back. Obviously when they do release the story they want to make sure there are players here to enjoy it.

Sealer.1937:

The grinding required for Guild Wars 2 after reaching lvl 80 and ranking up your specialization is just insane. I played a lot of Jrpg’s and Asian mmo’s to have some understanding about grind but this is just hell. If your someone like me and dont have a lot of cash lying around for games this is gonna be a big problem at the end game. Ascended gear costs an arm and a leg, to even be able to craft them youll need to grind yourself to death leveling your crafting specialization and the time gated crafting materials that you can make once per day is not helping. When i started playing GW2 at launch day it was the best thing ever but now i feel like iam working just to play a kitten game

Asian grinders come out with new tiers of gear all the time. I’ve had ascended gear on my characters for well over a year now without having to upgrade those characters. Ascended gear is even account bound so you can move sets around and it get be relatively cheaply converted to other stat sets in the mystic forge.

You might have a point if ascended gear wasn’t going to be the top tier of gear this year and next year and the year after, but as it stands, it’s a bad comparison. Here you get your bis gear and it ends.

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Vayne.8563:

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Vayne.8563:

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Vayne.8563:

MadRabbit.3179:

Vayne.8563:

Amineo.8951:

Vayne.8563:

Amineo.8951:

Even then, 15 minutes to explore the sections full of the worst ennemies in the expansion is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen, this needs to be changed aswell.

Just get on a dead map and explore first. You only need a few things at the end then.

Not if I wanna farm the Ore, and you forget the stupid rolling devils…

Exploring is exploring, farming is farming. You don’t have to do them at the same time. If you’re complaining you don’t have enough time to explore that’s one thing. 15 minutes is enough to open a boatload of pods.

Just curious, like what is the point of your post?

Like this players finds the 15 minute window to be unacceptable; you don’t. Are you trying to bring them to your side and convince them that your purely subjective opinion is better than their purely subjective opinion?

Or do you think that your purely subjective opinion trumps all and because 15 minutes is enough for you, it’s good enough for every single player who plays the game?

Or maybe you are part of that percentage of people on the forums who just seem determined to railroad any discussion involving criticism of the game, even if that criticism could help to make a better over all experience for everyone?

And, if we extended the time from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, what detriment would that cause the game? Like what awful, game ending thing would happen that warrants you telling everyone on the forums to essentially shut up, because “15 minutes is enough time, because you think it is”

The point of my post is that you only have 15 minutes if you’re doing the meta first and then exploring. But you don’t have to do the meta to unlock and explore most of the zone, because that’s what I did. And that gives you a lot more than 15 minutes.

I just go on a map where the meta isn’t being done and I run past stuff and explore. Most of the stuff comes in waves of three you can easy side step. Sometimes you have t to fight if you don’t time it right.

So my point is there is an alternative to the 15 minute thing. I always look for solutions to problems that already exist before I start asking for things to to be changed.

Now once you have the zone done, it’s quite easy to get the remaining hero points and the vista in 15 minutes.

I was suggesting a solution to the problem that OP had.

How is that a solution to the original poster? He/she was commenting in regards to being in a full blown meta and the server kicking them out while they were killing the final boss?

Because if he did it my way in the first place, he’d never have gotten kicked,, that’s how it’s a solution.

In other words, if you’re on a new map (which is what happens my way) and it’s nearly full already and the population never dips, then the map doesn’t close.

Obviously I can’t go back in time and fix what happened to the OP, but surely giving him a way to start the meta so that doesn’t happen again is a solution.

I don’t even understand your question.

So in other words its your way or they are wrong.

As has been stated even by ArenaNet they have issues with their servers.

If a map fills it should not close but it does, and just because you agree to switch servers doesn’t mean everyone gets on the same server.

Also that is not a solution it is your opinion.

As far as understanding my question I apologize for using words that you can’t understand. I’ll try to do better next time.

Okay the OP stated the problem and it’s been theorized that the reason it happens is because the map closes anyway even though it’s populated after it’s unpopulated. My way works because the new map never gets unpopulated, never gets the closing message and so you never get kicked. I’ve already said in this very thread that Anet needs to fix this, so clearly this is not a long term solution but a temporary work around.

I’m not quite sure what your issue with me suggesting something that can help people is, but you’ve definitely got the wrong end of the stick. I’m not saying people have to do this. I’m saying this is something that worked for me that avoids some of the pitfalls of not doing it. Surely that has more value than just yelling at the company to fix something. Even if they do fix it it’ll take time. In the mean time, this has worked for me.

I’m not sure what your issue is with someone suggesting a temporary measure to work around a bug.

Because from my “personal” experience your way does not always work. I have seen maps split even when they accept moving to a new server.

Some are placed into the next server with more players while others are placed in another dead server and they miss the event.

I have been grouped in a squad with Guildies and random players from the map and we have gotten seperated and are unable to join others on the map, even when they tried to click join on whatever server to join.

This is not the fix all, the issue is ArenaNet needs to do something but either haven’t or can’t. After all this time we should not still be using a “workaround” that in itself is not 100%….

I never claimed it was a fix all. I did say it’s never failed me, and I did say that it’s a work around. I feel like you’re being unreasonable.

Someone has a problem, I suggested a possible solution after saying it sucks and Anet should fix it.

Whether or not it works 100% of the time for you or not, it’s work 100% of the times that I’ve done it. I’ve not been in a single map that closed from lack of population when I’ve done this.

Basically you’re saying no one should ever share their experience to try to help other people. I disagree.

Most of my interaction is with my guild, not map chat. However, Divinity’s Reach always has people, Rata Sum and very often Lion’s Arch. If you own HOT, there’s often chatter in the new maps. Also try the Silverwastes.

You’re best off in maps if your’e doing a meta, looking for a full map with the looking for group tool. If you randomly pop onto map, you might be mostly empty. But it’s easy enough to get on full maps as well.

Not sure why anyone things running a meta 9 times is a lot to make a legendary. Surely the other requirements are much harder.

You have to run dungeons 9 times to get the old legendaries (at least you did before the PvP reward tracks were out).

Asumita.2174:

Last time I went to AB for the meta event, the octovine phase was started, but no one was at the gates. Do people just do the pylon events and just leave? Seen this several times. I want to move on with things on HoT, but the population is so scarce that I can’t get anything done. Would be nice if things were a bit more soloable.

Using lfg. I was on a T4 hot map just yesterday. People do it all the time. But they don’t do it on every map, in the same way some Silverwastes maps are chest farm maps and some are doing the meta.

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Vayne.8563:

MadRabbit.3179:

Vayne.8563:

Amineo.8951:

Vayne.8563:

Amineo.8951:

Even then, 15 minutes to explore the sections full of the worst ennemies in the expansion is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen, this needs to be changed aswell.

Just get on a dead map and explore first. You only need a few things at the end then.

Not if I wanna farm the Ore, and you forget the stupid rolling devils…

Exploring is exploring, farming is farming. You don’t have to do them at the same time. If you’re complaining you don’t have enough time to explore that’s one thing. 15 minutes is enough to open a boatload of pods.

Just curious, like what is the point of your post?

Like this players finds the 15 minute window to be unacceptable; you don’t. Are you trying to bring them to your side and convince them that your purely subjective opinion is better than their purely subjective opinion?

Or do you think that your purely subjective opinion trumps all and because 15 minutes is enough for you, it’s good enough for every single player who plays the game?

Or maybe you are part of that percentage of people on the forums who just seem determined to railroad any discussion involving criticism of the game, even if that criticism could help to make a better over all experience for everyone?

And, if we extended the time from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, what detriment would that cause the game? Like what awful, game ending thing would happen that warrants you telling everyone on the forums to essentially shut up, because “15 minutes is enough time, because you think it is”

The point of my post is that you only have 15 minutes if you’re doing the meta first and then exploring. But you don’t have to do the meta to unlock and explore most of the zone, because that’s what I did. And that gives you a lot more than 15 minutes.

I just go on a map where the meta isn’t being done and I run past stuff and explore. Most of the stuff comes in waves of three you can easy side step. Sometimes you have t to fight if you don’t time it right.

So my point is there is an alternative to the 15 minute thing. I always look for solutions to problems that already exist before I start asking for things to to be changed.

Now once you have the zone done, it’s quite easy to get the remaining hero points and the vista in 15 minutes.

I was suggesting a solution to the problem that OP had.

How is that a solution to the original poster? He/she was commenting in regards to being in a full blown meta and the server kicking them out while they were killing the final boss?

Because if he did it my way in the first place, he’d never have gotten kicked,, that’s how it’s a solution.

In other words, if you’re on a new map (which is what happens my way) and it’s nearly full already and the population never dips, then the map doesn’t close.

Obviously I can’t go back in time and fix what happened to the OP, but surely giving him a way to start the meta so that doesn’t happen again is a solution.

I don’t even understand your question.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Well my experience is different. Whenever i’ve soloed a champ, regardless of where, i’ve always received an exotic bag. The only time i rarely get one, is when anyone else participates and this has happened too many times to be a random coincidence.

But other people have had experiences that negate yours.

The truth is, and it was in patch notes a long time ago, is that you have a specific chance of getting loot at 80th level on an 80th level character in lower zones. They changed the percentage so that if you’re in a zone 55 or higher that chance goes up slightly.

The bag you get has nothing to do with participation period. It’s not a guess. It’s a fact.

I’m not surprised there’s a downturn on the forums. Some long time players have left the game, and the new free to play players who replaced those players can’t post here. Reddit, on the other hand, has about the same number of people viewing reddit as it always did.

Blue champ bags have zero to do with zerker or participation. The bag you get isn’t a sign that you did more or less damage. It’s simply random. You could have soloed the entire champ and gotten a blue champ bag. I have.

Mirta.5029:

maddoctor.2738:

You are wrong about being good, there is a reason the double terragriff boss still fails from time to time because there are not enough “good players” there, there is a reason even some defend events fail, particularly at purple when the Legendary spawn, because there aren’t enough “good players” there. And to bring Dry Top to T6 you actually need some people to do some events on their own, outside the main blob, sometimes even solo.

You might haven’t noticed it because you like hiding in a big blob of people. But there ARE some people actually knowing what they are doing and how to play the game that allow the events to succeed. Without those “good players” even the simplest events would fail.

What you call “fun” is hiding in a huge blob of people and let them do anything that requires skill while you just auto attack and afk. I wouldn’t call that “fun”.

that’s nice. Why were you here before HoT then?
And where are those mass filled maps of HoT if the majority finds it fun, huh?

There’s a reason why Wildstar is on the deaths door and why every MMO that comes out now has fully accessible casual content. Because otherwise they would really suffer. Without F2P GW2 would be in a much worse place now. But thank goodness people are populating outside of HoT maps and buying those gems and trinkets so that those of you that love the hard content soooo much, can stand there and complain how broken the megaservers are, but just in the HoT areas. What an odd break.

If you think Wildstar is on death’s door because it was hard core, you’re guessing. There was enough wrong with Wildstar to make it unappealing even to hard core players, including terrible lag, and terrible grind to get to the hard core stuff. Wildstar very likely didn’t fail because it was hard core.