Guild Wars 2

It’s not hard once you learn some stuff. The problem is learning it. There’s a vista and you can get to the Itzel scout by gliding from there, if that helps.

mauried.5608:

Well, after 3 1/2 hours on this stupid quest, and having tried all the above suggestions, none of which helped, Im abandoning this part of the game .
Worst designed quest ever.

If you want to get through it I can help you.

morrolan.9608:

Andraus.3874:

The whole system is pretty bad. But unfortunately there’s no real way to cater to smaller guilds because that would be easily taken advantage of by all guilds.

Other than that, even for larger guilds, this is a a pretty big wall of grind to jump over for chairs you can’t sit on.

Other games manage to do it successsfully but of course anet think they know best.

I’ve played some of those other games. The gold spam in some games is ridiculous. Far worse than this one. I personally don’t consent to give free players more freedom at the expense of paying players.

I’m sort of on the borderline with this one. While I agree many world bosses need a revamp, I’m not sure adding difficulty to bosses in starter zones is necessarily the way to go. I don’t think there’s anything they can do in starter zones to make these bosses acceptable to long term players, and yet leave them beatable by new players.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Lord Kuru.3685:

People bought the game because it was B2P. Now you have to pay for the expansion, no option for gem purchase. Bait-and-switch.

Nothing bate and switch about it. The game just like GW1 buy to play, you had to pay for everything separate then if you where playing from day one. For new players it’s an amazing deal, I do think HoT is over priced for what we got. In the end HoT is nothing more than DLC/season pass. Untill the next xpac comes out, we can not say if it’s worth the price.
But one thing it is not is a bate and switch.

At OP, no. If you want HoT you will have to pay with real money. The price of HoT is already falling. In the UK the price on average is down £10. Hell I got HoT for £5 cheaper a few days before launch of amazon.

Aside from that, bait and switch is the wrong term anyway. Bait and switch refers to advertising a specific item and substituting a different item. Like advertising a Sony TV and when you get to the shop, all they have is Samsung. That’s the definition of bait and switch.

luzt.7692:

Ayrilana.1396:

Except I often get into full maps so there are a lot of people who do find them enjoyable.

Just because they are full doesn’t mean people are enjoying them.
There is XP to grind and Map specific currency for collections.
Most players play for rewards, not for gameplay.

Wintersday puzzle must be the most fun content atm, since its full all the time.

Now lets do a 180, people might join organized maps because they don’t wanna waste more time on those maps due to events failing.

Doesn’t mean they’re not enjoying the either.

Happy New Year Aussies! The fireworks in Sydney this year were amazing. (No I watched on the ABC, I wasn’t there lol).

Werdx.2059:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Kranodor – There are an awful lot of people playing Guild Wars 2 and I hope you will take the chance to reach out to some of them. You may find your soulmate after all!

I wish you well in the future.

Not many as u think

From 8 mil subs,(at least what ANet said) to 3.1 mil,and 3 mil is nothing.

Where do you get 3 million is nothing? Based on what? Do you know a whole lot of MMORPGs that have more than 3 million people playing? How about 3 million western MMOs.

The only one I know that has more than that is WoW. So that means only WoW is successful and all other MMOs aren’t, which is silly because if there were the case, people wouldn’t keep investing more money in making them.

Torolan.5816:

And as we write here, ls2 and HoT is as if it never happened. You can still visit a certain person in Hoelbrak like nothing has happened despite stuff happening in HoT. The world is as frozen and comatose as every MMO. That is really sad, I had high hope for GW2 and it´s concept of LS1 that changed boring Kessex Hills and also put a momumentum ehere Marionette danced.

Farewell, living world.

I liked it too. But it’s a fact that a lot of people, an awful lot of people really didn’t. People have jobs, familys, they go away on vacation. I have a couple of my guild in the military. One of them left the service now, but he missed most of the living story and he’ll never get to see it.

There’s an upside and downside to most things.

For me, it was perfect. Not so much for other people.

Lord Kuru.3685:

People bought the game because it was B2P. Now you have to pay for the expansion, no option for gem purchase. Bait-and-switch.

Guild Wars 1 was buy to play too. They still released an expansion for pay.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Ayrilana.1396:

BrotherBelial.3094:

The fact you have to use the LFG tool just to play a map in HoT at any time, if you want to get on with anything other than story, it’s a failure in design.

You can complete the majority of the events in HoT unless there’s a champion. With DS, you do need a map of people but that is by intentional design.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Having to remember to go check a 3rd party site before I start playing to see if the TD meta will be anytime soon when I’m about to start playing is also bad design. All these timers should be in game. If we can set achievements to be tracked we should be able to set event or map meta start times too. If these web sites can do it, then the game should be able to do it also.

All maps are on set timers. If you look at the timer websites, you’ll see what those are.

Wow, I said that in my post. It is still bad design having to look out side of the game. L2r.

But if you don’t want to leave the game, you can make a note of when things come up and you’ll know for next time., Saying it’s a bad design to leave a game to find out when things happen is almost like saying it’s bad design to have to read a TV guide to find out what’s on TV.

You either read the guide, or you flip around and figure it out. If you’re in a zone, and you see the meta start, it’s easy enough to write it down. Eventually you can figure out when everything starts just by playing the game.

Or you can go to a site and look it up, the choice is yours.

Dawdler.8521:

Lately? Lately?!?!?!

They released HoT, completely broke WvW, made everyone angry and went dead silent. Not a single word. Of course they posted in every other forum – including pointless troll threads – arranged sPvP tournaments and released tons of patches. It was only some weeks ago that they finally said something about WvW, a vague promise that sometime in the future they might do stuff. WvW is still broken btw, theres more bugs than ever that essentially brings the game back to beta stage. They admit none of these bugs. Well except the walls thats been fixed multiple times (they are still bugged).

So Anet being “quiet” here on the general forum is just lol.

A sneak peak at four changes coming to WvW early next year was well received by the community. I can only assume you missed it.

I guess you guys better start giving up MMOs then, because all the big MMOs are doing this for good reason.

The more expansions the comes out, the harder it is for new players to start playing and without new players, there is no MMO.

All MMOs suffer from natural attrition. People stop playing for all sorts of reasons. They have to be replaced.

So you remove barriers to entry for people by letting them get in for just the price of the expansion.

What to veteran players get? Three years of game time, that’s what?

You spent $60 three years ago, probably played for more than 100 hours and you’re saying what do I get for playing the game? You go the game. Content that’s no longer in the game that new people can’t play. Items no longer in the game.

Hell if you logged in when LS 2 was live you got that content free, new players have to pay

Veterans have a huge head start in accumulating wealth and achievement points. What makes someone want to buy a game, particularly if they have to buy several to catch up?

Nothing at all. It’s okay if people don’t want to pay. But it doesn’t make them reasonable.

Stuff that was included in the Season 1 story line is now included in the game as meta events. Escape from Lion’s Arch and the Marionette were essentially just big metas. We have other metas in game now. And they tie into the story too. They’re just not labeled as living story.

For example, the instances that make up the beginning of Season 2, take us to Dry Top. The sand storm is the meta for Dry Top. The equivalent of the bigger events in Season 1.

The same for the Silverwastes and the rest of Season 2. We have giant metas now that parallel the story.

I liked Season 1 better the Season 2 also…if you just count the instances in Season 2 as all that was released.

But I think it’s all part of a bigger picture and you have to pull your view out to see how it all ties in together.

Bekkr.6192:

Sheobix.8796:

The metas for the maps drive the population in the maps. For the most part, if there is no current meta chain active on the map, it will be dead. ghost town. Once the chain is active, or close to completion, masses of people will “taxi” in via the LFG tool and the meta gets completed for the rewards, rinse and repeat ghost town etc.

Its truly bad game design for a dynamic game world that relies on spontaneity and scaling to be successful. You have people having to abuse an interface feature to put themselves into an experience that feels epic, yet still breaking immersion and making maps feel insignificant save for the paltry rewards at the end. They’re like open-world WoW raids that are 40-man autoattack festivals. It’s not fun, not rewarding (both tangibly and satisfactorily) and plain dumb.

QFE
The Anet white knights in here are funny.

Except of course, for the hero point chains that run, the people doing map completion who don’t care about the meta, the people just farming achievements…they’re on those “dead” maps too. They don’t all cluster in one place…well except for the hero point chains, but yeah, even dead maps aren’t dead.

And being a white knight doesn’t make you automatically wrong as some people would imply.

A lot of the black knights on these forums don’t even play the zones enough to comment.

Nexterror.7180:

2-3 active maps per meta during prime time is dead content to me. That’s just me though.

It’s not dead content if it can fill 1 map. 2-3 maps would be fine. The thing is, I beat there aren’t tons of raids going on all the time, so that must be dead content too.

This game offers a wide variety of experiences for a wide variety of players. The more experiences added, the thinner the population spreads. That’s simple logic.

But the real bottom line is, you don’t really know how many servers are active anyway.

Valid complaint is valid.

The only thing that saves me sometimes is that I tend to use LFG less and guildies more. They get into maps, post something in guild chat and away I go. That’s how I got into the successful VB meta run just now.

A guildie posted in guild chat that it was going on and I taxied on them.

It’s another overlooked value to guilds.

If it’s dead the VB meta we just beat, I must have soloed. lol

Alteros.3019:

Ayrilana.1396:

Alteros.3019:

Ayrilana.1396:

Do you have a source showing that Anet changed to megaservers to keep the game alive? Do you have a source indicating that the game was at a risk of dying?

It was obvious to anyone who had more than 5 friends, either fellow guildmates or server friends, who played or still play the game. But, if it’s quantifiable proof you want, just ask anyone in a very large guild who hasn’t gotten around to purging the rolls of inactive players. I’ve been in two guilds on two different servers, each well over 200 people, where less than a third of the guild players log on on a regular basis. My previous guild had over a hundred players who haven’t logged in in over 6 months and only 10% of players playing with any frequency. So yes, large swaths of players are leaving. The favored destination is Archage for reasons I will never comprehend.

Yes people do leave the game or take extended breaks. You also forget that people also start playing the game who happen to be new. You also cannot base the game population on what you see from guild memberships that you personally see. What you’re seeing there is hardly anywhere close to counting as quantifiable.

So I ask again:

Do you have a source showing that Anet changed to megaservers to keep the game alive? Do you have a source indicating that the game was at a risk of dying?

At the risk of having my comment deleted and this thread closed (or outright deleted) as I’m sure Anet doesn’t like too detailed an answer regarding declining player populations, I’ll answer your question.

I absolutely can base player population based on an n>200 assuming a random distribution of players. I have been playing this game since the Betas (and I even played GW1 a lot before this game). At launch, I was on ET. Within a year and a half, I could go to Cursed Shore and not run into another player for HOURS. If I wanted to do anything group oriented in PvE, I would have to guest either on Blackgate or JQ. At that time though, lions arch still had a very large presence, but they were all WvW players. All this was pre mega server. Today, ET can’t even muster more than 20 people on EB on a rally night. Look at the official leaderboards (it’s so dead it doesn’t even have a score).

Mega servers were nice in that it largely solved the PvE guesting problem, but it nicely hid the declining participation of PvE maps. Now, the only way to gauge a server’s population, albeit indirectly, is to look at WvW. It of course doesn’t attest to the PvE only crowd if there is such a thing. Once they do a mega server style fix on WvW, as the rumor mill says, you’ll have absolutely no way of knowing just how populated the game is. You could literally be playing with the last 1,000 people and you’d never know.

So no, I don’t have access to the data logs showing me shifts in player populations. I have only about 2.5 years of near constant observation and educated guesses that have been more right than wrong. I suspect though that nothing I say and nothing you see in game I will change your stance. But to agree with you on one point, the game isn’t going to financially die anytime soon. HoT infused them with much needed cash and if they were smart, they’d begin working on the next expansion yesterday and then release one every year until you run out of dragons. At that point they would have had a 7-8 year run, which is a pretty good lifespan for an MMO. Then they can sweep this whole thing under the rug and make GW3.

You can absolutely tell that the WvW population has descended on your server and probably most servers, I’d say including T1 and T2 servers.

I’d say the WvW population has decreased. But if the PvE playerbase has increased and the PvP playerbase has increased (even with all the complaining that’s probably true due to free to play) then it means nothing. Absolutely nothing, except one game mode isn’t popular right now.

Coulter.2315:

Cameron.6450:

Vayne.8563:

I’d raid, but I don’t want to be carried, and due to my connection in Australia, it’s going to be very hard for me to be a productive member of the team. I’m at least a half second to a second later than everyone else. I don’t always appear on the screen where I actually am. That makes staying out of circles a hardship and that’s without my color blindness.

I’d simply be a burden to all you pro players. lol

I know a few people who have had their ping spike up to ~500 since a few patches ago, not sure if that’s your case as well, but I’m able to get a stable 250-260 ping from Melbourne, and that’s completely fine to raid with. So if you can get yours to around that, don’t let the connection speed stop you from playing content you might enjoy.

Colour blindness is a completely separate issue, and I do hope anet adds some form of colourblind option, but if you play a dps revenant or something that sticks in melee most of the fight, and just leave green circles to other people, you might be able to find a way around that. But I’m not sure. Hard to tell just how badly it effects play without being colourblind myself.

I would add colourblindness doesn’t really change the raid; VG has different effects for each coloured animation and the splits are aways the same at NW, NE and S, Gorse has nothing colour related and Sabetha has different animations and an extra action button appear for the different bombs. I’m fine with them adding a colourblind mode of course but it really won’t stop you Raiding atm.

No red circles to stay out of? Because that’s my main issue. When we do guild races, the circles on the ground indicating traps are often invisible to me.

misterman.1530:

Vayne.8563:

It is a learn to play thing. Open up gw2timer.com and see what events are active when you’re looking. You have to start looking before those events come up. That’s how people get onto those maps. You can’t do an event that’s in the middle on full maps, because you weren’t there for the start of it.

Problem # 1: At no point should people be forced to look outside the game for answers.

Vayne.8563:

There’s no reason to advertise a dragon stand map late, because it won’t fill up and you need the time to finish the event anyway.

The meta events are all on timers. Randomly looking at LFG shows a need to learn to understand the game better. It’s like going to a movie and hoping you get there at the beginning, instead of looking up online when it starts.

Problem #2: No, it’s like getting home from a long day of work and plopping in a DVD to watch your favorite movie only to find out that, for some godawful reason, you can only start the movie in the middle at that specific time and you need to have 17 people over to hold in various buttons on your DVD player at the same time or you can’t watch the movie.

Vayne.8563:

Now, for some people having that schedule is problematic, which is a valid complaint. Randomly trying to find groups instead of getting into the zone early and setting up though is very much not understanding how the system works.

If you don’t like that system, that’s fair enough however.

First fair thing you’ve said, and it shows the beginnings of understanding that people can’t schedule their game playing. Juggling work, familial commitments, and every other aspect of regular life leaves many of us on a tight time constraint. I was fortunate that, finally, I was able to get onto an organized DS map – totally by accident and totally within the time I had scheduled to play the game. It was like winning the lottery. Other than that one time, all I ever see is a bunch of people standing around at the Pact WP.

At no time we should be forced to look outside the game for answers is an opinion, not a fact. However, you can ask people inside the game, or even make your own observations about when stuff starts and write it down if you want. It’s simply easier to go outside the game. That’s why a /wiki command in the game exists.

And yes, people can’t schedule their lives around a game and it’s one of the major issues with doing the hardest content in HoT.

Fortunately I do a lot of stuff with my guild who’s on at all sorts of hours.

It’s not actually including a copy of the base game. When you go to install hot you have two options. Upgrade an account, or start a completely new account.

So you get your hot code, you go to accounts.guildwars2.com and you add the key code to your account. It’s under the content tab.

Then that’s it. You have HoT.

But you cant’ give the account away, you can upgrade, or you can start over. I’d recommend upgrading to most people.

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

You’re confusing casual with bad. They’re not the same thing.

There is bad, and then there is intentionally bad. The first one is bad for reasons beyond their power that they can’t fix. The second type can fix their problems easily but don’t want to because of “role playing” reasons or “play how I want”. There is a huge difference between the two of them.

Casual doesn’t mean getting carried, That you think so is pretty disturbing.

When you don’t want to change your build to fill the important spots of a given content, and wait for someone else to do it for you then hide inside the blob, yes you are being carried.

And really if you are doing all content in the game, including high level fractals then I’m willing to bet for a LOT of players that post on this very thread will say that you are NOT a casual by their standards.

As already stated, I don’t raid. I don’t even pug. I play dungeons with my guild who ALL play this way. Just about all of us anyway.

Since we’re all doing it, who exactly is doing the carrying?

Nobody, you all agree to play in some way and not care about being efficient or fast or whatever. When you are in your own group and play with similar minded players you might want to CC when it’s “meta” not to, you might want to overwrite fire fields with water fields or use full nomad gear instead of something with more DPS (condi or power). It’s your choice.

But when you are with a group of players that might want to view an event in a different way, either when you pug (if you pug) or when in big open world events, then there is a problem if you hinder the other people’s gameplay by doing things you shouldn’t. And in that mixed situation, yes the “play how I want” are indeed being carried by the others. There is no carrying if you use only one of the groups, it’s when they mix up that it happens.

As Harper said

And I agree with you – to each his own and really PHIWs and hardcores shouldn’t mix much -it’s a recipe for frustration.

But how to achieve this in open world events? Probably you can’t ever do that, and maybe that’s why Anet decided to add raids to the game, so the two don’t mix much but have different content to do.

Btw you should try the raid.

I’d raid, but I don’t want to be carried, and due to my connection in Australia, it’s going to be very hard for me to be a productive member of the team. I’m at least a half second to a second later than everyone else. I don’t always appear on the screen where I actually am. That makes staying out of circles a hardship and that’s without my color blindness.

I’d simply be a burden to all you pro players. lol

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

You’re confusing casual with bad. They’re not the same thing.

There is bad, and then there is intentionally bad. The first one is bad for reasons beyond their power that they can’t fix. The second type can fix their problems easily but don’t want to because of “role playing” reasons or “play how I want”. There is a huge difference between the two of them.

Casual doesn’t mean getting carried, That you think so is pretty disturbing.

When you don’t want to change your build to fill the important spots of a given content, and wait for someone else to do it for you then hide inside the blob, yes you are being carried.

And really if you are doing all content in the game, including high level fractals then I’m willing to bet for a LOT of players that post on this very thread will say that you are NOT a casual by their standards.

As already stated, I don’t raid. I don’t even pug. I play dungeons with my guild who ALL play this way. Just about all of us anyway.

Since we’re all doing it, who exactly is doing the carrying?

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

But it’s still useable. Anyone who can’t do the content will switch things around until the can…which doesn’t mean they want to worry about the most efficient.

That’s not always possible though. If a few players are using something completely wrong/unusable, the content might still succeed because of the work of others (getting carried is what it is called) and in that situation they might not even realize it, or they do and don’t care. There is no such thing as “I can’t do content” for an individual player, content might still be completed by the work of others.

I guess that’s why many players don’t like instanced content, because there your build/skills matter way more and you can’t hide behind blobs to succeed. And on the other hand, that’s why many other players like instanced content, because their effort is more rewarded there (and events can’t fail due to trolls or bad players).

Which leads us to the original point. “Casual” = “getting carried”?

Terrible analogy is terrible. Most casual players end up in situations where they end up having to sink or swim. They’re alone in the world and they come on a champ or a group event with no one around and they learn fast that they can’t or can do certain things. You’re confusing casual with bad. They’re not the same thing.

I’ve been through every dungeon in this game, and some high level fractals as well, at least when the cap was 50. We don’t have problem clearly any of that content in my guild, and we’re all casual.

We don’t do it as fast as speed run groups, but we clear content.

Now there are people in my guild who might be a bit older, or have disabilies or have internet connections that aren’t always good. Or sometimes the net from Australia is just crap and I have to deal with it.

By your logic, I’m just some blight on society because I live in Australia and I get lag and can’t always dodge.

Casual doesn’t mean getting carried, That you think so is pretty disturbing.

Most efficient doesn’t mean the only way to do something. People who think like you are the reason some people don’t want raids in this game at all. It encourages elitist thinking.

darkace.8925:

Coulter.2315:

I’m not sure you could find me a single business in existance that doesn’t aim for “cost efficiency.”

SquareEnix once threw an Final Fantasy XI event in my college town. Admission was free. Pizza and drinks served all day long was free. Entry to the Q&A panel was free. Mingling with the models they’d paid to dress up like Mithra was free. Entry into the tournament was free. Entry into the level 1 race through an endgame zone was free. Entry into the costume contest was free. They gave away all kinds prizes, up to and including a PC in a tower with a custom FFXI graphics design. And great fun was had by all.

Given that all of this cost SE a lot of money, and they recouped none at all from admission, how was that event “cost efficient”? I’ll tell you; because though “good will” isn’t listed on earnings reports, it can greatly contribute to profitability.

By my estimate, ArenaNet burned all of their good will some time ago and now they’re just milking whatever loyal customers they’ve got left while the milk’s still flowing. You can disagree with me if you want, but one look at the cash shop offerings over the last year contrasted to those added in-game will tell you quite clearly that I’m right.

I’ve looked at what was added in game compared to what was added in the cash shop and I don’t agree with you. I don’t think you’re quite clearly right.

Anet didn’t burn all their good will. They have definitely burned some of their good will. Of course, other games have also burned their good will. It seems almost every MMO I’ve played has pretty consistently burned all their good will. It’s almost universal.

You see WoW players talking about how bad WoW got. You see what Blizzard did with DS 3 and the backlash of that. SWToR burned a lot of good will before it went “free to play”. Final Fantasy released an almost unplayable game and had to put it on hold while they complete redid it and released it. TSW saw an CEO resign and had to fire a third of their staff and now they’re looking for a buyer, because you know, there’s issues there.

Everyone who has a gripe with a company thinks that the company burned all their good will. Well if now all they’re doing is milking the public, then surely they won’t be coming out with anything new, because you know, they’re milking their public.

Newsflash. There are people out there, more than just a few people, who are enjoying the expansion. I see them playing every day. I also hear complaints too.

Most of the complain threads on these forums are about 50/50 when you look at the responses, particularly if you take out the white knights and those with an axe to grind.

No, I don’t think Anet has burned all it’s good will, though that may be true with the WvW crowd, or the PvP crowd. But as I’ve said many times, lots of people in my guild and a couple of them are dissatisfied, but they represent a pretty small minority.

I would guess that the most annoyed people go to forums. The people who aren’t annoyed just play the game.

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

So much this. I had to be efficient for so many years, I don’t need to do it on my down time. I play things I enjoy playing. Sometimes I get characters who like certain things. One of my rangers refuses to use a long bow. It’s just them. Short bow, no problem.

This is how most of my guild plays.

There are 3 different kinds of players:
Player A: this one has knowledge of the encounter, uses the appropriate skills/builds and makes the encounter go much smoother, faster, easier and in general helps everyone around them. They lower the difficulty of the given encounter based on how much they help.
Player B: this one plays what they want. For whatever reasons they don’t use what is the best for every encounter but they still help and contribute enough. This is the “normal” setting.
Player C: this one is just like Player B, only this time their skills and playstyle actively hinder everyone else. Although most of the time they don’t mean it, unless they are trolls, they do make events take longer, be much harder and even fail. In the end, they increase the difficulty of the encounter by a LOT.

Examples of Player A:
Playing an egg-blocker at Triple Trouble can make the whole event really easy. Having enough Guardians to create a “box” of WoRs at Tequatl can allow everyone to go in melee range and burn him in a couple of minutes. The always wanted Fire Fields, Blast Finishers, might stacking etc can make any encounter go faster.

Examples of Player C:
The Ranger Sword is “meta” because it deals high DPS, yet you’d be surprised at how many Rangers use it at events they shouldn’t be, for example the Chak Gerent. Because the Sword has a cripple on the Auto Attack, which means it will eat the Gerent break bar and make the event harder. Similar with Dragonhunter traps when you have the Daze trait, random Chill applications etc
Overwriting Fire Fields is another common “problem”, or not stacking, or using a Condition based Weapon with Berserker gear (or the opposite), I’ve seen my fair share of Warriors using Sword with zerker.

You want to play how you want? Fine. But keep in mind that some times that playstyle might ruin the events for others and even cause failures. Ever thought of that?

This is an oversimplification. Most players who want to play how they want also realize when something is completely ineffective. Is a ranger shortbow less useful over all than a ranger lowbow? Most likely.

But it’s still useable. Anyone who can’t do the content will switch things around until the can…which doesn’t mean they want to worry about the most efficient.

People who love efficiency think that’s really helpful. But if people aren’t having fun doing it, they’re certainly not helping me.

There are people who are adaptable and can play anything and have fun. There are people who aren’t as adapatable and can’t. I don’t play an elementalist well and probably never will. If it were meta for a dungeon and I got on it because it was meta I’d be hindering my team, not helping them.

If you are saying fractals and raids are all of PvE, you’ve sort of missed the point of the game. Fractals and raids are instanced PvE, but most of this game’s PvE is focused on the open world.

If you don’t think people had fun with Dry Top, Silverwastes and the new maps, I don’t know what to tell you.

Torolan.5816:

I don´t use the builds people appreciate because I am not a lemming and don´t jump through hoops when the majority does. If I want to use the runes of the sunless for example, I´ll do it and don´t ask anyone´s permission. When pew pew rangers got more popular again, I stayed with my Wolf and Shortbow condition ranger. Why? Cause I can. I can only speak for myself here, but I don´t like min maxing in a game where I am looking for fun. If I want to be efficient, I go to work. If I want my character to work for me, I look for things I like and use them, not for things a youtube math geek gamer finds apropriate for my class.

So people like to play it safe, how disgusting. Let´s instantly call for a prison sentence for them?

Okay, thinking about that:
So that 30+ Zerk people that rallied to build the melee troop with their identical to my damage output(Tequatl structure) and died with every wave knew better and were better prepared than me and were the reason Tequatl succeeded instead of the people who fired guns or killed fingers so that neither melee or distance damage groups perished under a frontload of conditions? Or those people that defended but did not stomp?
Ok.

Luckily for the both of us, we´re not forced to play together. You would maybe be surprised that I can hold myself pretty well in the open world and can also live with losses or needing 7 seconds for an orr mob to beat instead of 5.

So much this. I had to be efficient for so many years, I don’t need to do it on my down time. I play things I enjoy playing. Sometimes I get characters who like certain things. One of my rangers refuses to use a long bow. It’s just them. Short bow, no problem.

This is how most of my guild plays.

I don’t know if you’re soloing or not, but if you’re soloing you have to be more careful. If you end up in the middle of 800 guys yes, you’ll probably die.

circuitnerd.5863:

Soon.5240:

Vayne.8563:

Soon.5240:

circuitnerd.5863:

Every map I go into there’s never anyone around. I look on the LFG and it’s filled with all raid requests and a couple SW. Is it me or is no one ever doing the metas anymore in the HoT maps? I never see VB, AB, TD etc anymore.

It’s not you. The maps are empty because they are not fun.

Yes I’ll be sure to take some screen shots of the empty maps and post them here.; Honestly why say something like this? We get full DS and full Tarir constantly. There are always people in VB and even the hardest meta, TD, is done many times a day but a whole lot of people.

Not sure why you can’t find a full map. I get them all the time.

Then Anet must have been wrong also, when they said that the reason the Maps are empty is because Megaserver is not working correctly.

OP: I stand corrected. It is you after all. L2P. Don’t expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter.

It’s not a “L2P” thing. Silver platter? What? I said there’s never any LFGs for Maguuma. Did you even read my original statement? I’ve looked many times during different times all throughout the day and I see maybe 1 listing among 20 others for raids, fractals, some other random pve content

It is a learn to play thing. Open up gw2timer.com and see what events are active when you’re looking. You have to start looking before those events come up. That’s how people get onto those maps. You can’t do an event that’s in the middle on full maps, because you weren’t there for the start of it.

There’s no reason to advertise a dragon stand map late, because it won’t fill up and you need the time to finish the event anyway.

The meta events are all on timers. Randomly looking at LFG shows a need to learn to understand the game better. It’s like going to a movie and hoping you get there at the beginning, instead of looking up online when it starts.

Now, for some people having that schedule is problematic, which is a valid complaint. Randomly trying to find groups instead of getting into the zone early and setting up though is very much not understanding how the system works.

If you don’t like that system, that’s fair enough however.

Torolan.5816:

Well, ok. If you go into the map of HoT to collect mats or masks, you can basically do nothing wrong. If you are not willing to do the job of the megaserver or Anet as a whole, you can be easily swept on an empty map?

Of course you can be swept into an empty map. Logically speaking, maps fill up fast. So as they fill up and new ones start, it’s logical some maps will be empty.

As for doing the job of the megaserver, if there’s dozens of people in a map, it only takes one or two to do that and a lot of people dont’ seem to mind, which is why maps I’m on often end up filling up.

You’re a glass is half empty kind of guy aren’t you?

Torolan.5816:

So with all the information given, can we resume that the casual entering of a HoT map yields subpar results most of the time?^^

Actually I wouldn’t say most of the time. See, that’s the misnomer. Anyone who wants to organize a map and ferry people in can. I’m not one of the people who enjoy doing that but about half the time I end up on those maps anyway.

So yeah, I wouldn’t say most of the time you get subpar results. Of course, it also depends on WHY you are there.

They aren’t sub par results for me, because I’m sometimes interested in stuff other than the meta. For example when I do map completion or hunt for fallen masks, or I’m farming mats, I don’t care if the meta is going on. So no, I wouldn’t say this at all.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

There are plenty of fun achievements in this game with fun names, so I’m not really sure what you’re on about.

If you light all the fires in one of the fractals you get an achievement called If Only We Had Marshmellows. If you kill at the chickens in the city in the Charr fractal you get an achievement called Out of Cluck.

Implying the game isn’t fun because you liked some titles in the original game is sort of strange to me.

Tonight in the news, Vayne is unable to connect the dots. More at 11.

I can connect the dots just fine. I connected them and found a picture of people looking at the past through rose colored glasses.

Many of the original Guild Wars 1 devs are still here…but yes, the industry has changed. It’s more competitive. There’s more at stake.

But it’s nice that you think highly enough of me to take pot shots like you used to. I’d thought you’d forgotten all about me.

aji.7456:

Vayne.8563:

I think it’s more fun to have hero points that require more people, because the old hero points were so stupidly easy they were no fun. I LIKE having something that requires a bit of effort. That’s fun for me.

That said, not every hero point is fun for me. A couple are stupid hard. That’s the problem though. Everyone has a difficulty threshold that people find fun. So I find the new zones very fun and I enjoy playing in them. I find them more fun than most of the core zones. Because the core zones are kitten easy.

So now where to we go. If we make those points for you, they become less fun for me.

I really don’t know what to say. You don’t seem interested in reading other people’s points of view. I addressed this type of response directly in my first post, so I’m not sure if there’s any point in responding to it again.

But this attitude of thinking that making something more fun for someone else will make it less fun for you is selfish and unproductive. Hero points are a perfect example. Rather than a myopic view of thinking about what is lost for you if it is changed, think about what you like about that and how it can be kept or improved in a such a way that pleases more people. Hero points are gating content. For some, it is not easy to get a group to do them, so an important part of game content is blocked for them. If you like having something that requires effort, then there are other ways to incorporate it that doesn’t stomp on other people’s play. For example, there could be other events that require similar effort but instead you get a reward like a suitable amount of gold. Now those who want to unlock their elite classes can do so more freely and you still have content that rewards effort. There’s no reason to be so resistant to trying to find ways to make the game better for more people.

Let’s all try to add some helpful suggestions to improve the game for as many different preferences and play styles as possible.

There are hundreds of skill points in the game you can solo. There is very little content in the game, specifically open world content for unorganized groups. I mean Triple Trouble requires organization to beat.

So instead of being myopic and saying this needs to change because I don’t like it, maybe you should be happy for people who didn’t have content like this and finally do. In fact, I find this entire conversation hypocritical.

You talk about fun but what you really mean is fun for you. Because you know, it’s not that hard to get a group together to do those points if you really want to. In fact, it’s probably not fun either way, it’s just easier.

I don’t know anyone in the game that finds hero points fun in the first place. You do them to get the points. You don’t say, wow, I think hero points are so fun I’m just going to run those and nothing else.

Soon.5240:

Vayne.8563:

Soon.5240:

circuitnerd.5863:

Every map I go into there’s never anyone around. I look on the LFG and it’s filled with all raid requests and a couple SW. Is it me or is no one ever doing the metas anymore in the HoT maps? I never see VB, AB, TD etc anymore.

It’s not you. The maps are empty because they are not fun.

Yes I’ll be sure to take some screen shots of the empty maps and post them here.; Honestly why say something like this? We get full DS and full Tarir constantly. There are always people in VB and even the hardest meta, TD, is done many times a day but a whole lot of people.

Not sure why you can’t find a full map. I get them all the time.

Then Anet must have been wrong also, when they said that the reason the Maps are empty is because Megaserver is not working correctly.

OP: I stand corrected. It is you after all. L2P. Don’t expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter.

See when you lead a statement saying the maps are empty followed by the words “they are empty because they’re not fun”, you’re not saying there’s a problem with the megaserver. You’re saying no one is playing them.

But the FACT is, there are full maps, even multiple full maps for every meta event. Yes, you sometimes have to use the LFG tool to get to those maps, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

So your implication is that no one is playing the content because it’s not fun. That doesn’t mean someone doesn’t occassioanally end up in maps where the meta isn’t being done. But even those maps aren’t empty.

I was with a guy in VB a few weeks ago, and he said to me, I can’t believe this map is so dead. So I popped a commander tag, and in literally 5 minutes we had a fair sized group of people running around.

It’s not about the maps being dead even when the mega server wasn’t working. It’s just about them not being full.

I’d like to see a quote from Anet saying the maps are empty. I’ll wait here.

Soon.5240:

circuitnerd.5863:

Every map I go into there’s never anyone around. I look on the LFG and it’s filled with all raid requests and a couple SW. Is it me or is no one ever doing the metas anymore in the HoT maps? I never see VB, AB, TD etc anymore.

It’s not you. The maps are empty because they are not fun.

Yes I’ll be sure to take some screen shots of the empty maps and post them here.; Honestly why say something like this? We get full DS and full Tarir constantly. There are always people in VB and even the hardest meta, TD, is done many times a day but a whole lot of people.

Not sure why you can’t find a full map. I get them all the time.

There are plenty of fun achievements in this game with fun names, so I’m not really sure what you’re on about.

If you light all the fires in one of the fractals you get an achievement called If Only We Had Marshmellows. If you kill at the chickens in the city in the Charr fractal you get an achievement called Out of Cluck.

Implying the game isn’t fun because you liked some titles in the original game is sort of strange to me.

GreyWolf.8670:

cranos.5913:

I don’t really understand the issue tbh. Fractals is made casual friendly and 90% of the content is still relaxed open world. The only thing that isn’t casual atm is a single raid instance. A SINGLE instance, is it really worth crying about so much? 0_o

How are fractals casual friendly? Can I queue for them and get put in a group automatically now? If I have to look for people or join a guild with lots of players online at any given time then they didn’t make them casual-friendly.

The first few levels of fractals are now casual friendly. You can open the looking for group tool, advertise a casual run or a fun run, people will join your group. You can even say you’re a newbie looking for a casual run.

Using the looking for group tool to find a party doesn’t make Fractals less casual. Is there a learning curve. Well sure there is.

But there’s a learning curve with everything.

Unfortunately for some people, casual means solo, but that’s really not the definition of the word.

The reason why later zones have to be more dense, or should be more dense, is because there are no hearts. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to level a mastery and not finding any events at all. Events have to be everywhere, or you’re going to feel like you can’t play.

The HoT maps offer an experience which is like the Silverwastes on steroids. They take longer to understand and get into. By the same token, the more time you spend on them, the more they begin to make some kind of sense.

Just about everyone is disoriented on HoT maps, but I believe the amount of content and the difficulty of the content is very much intentional. But yes, there’s quite a bit of culture shock if you’re not ready for it.

Dawdler.8521:

rager.4963:

Dawdler.8521:

rager.4963:

I can’t support balance like that.

What do you mean? You are already supporting it.

Do you play sPvP? Well elites are meta (the only meta) so the community has spoken – get HoT, we all love it.

Do you play PvE? Elites are pretty much superior in every single way and everyone play them, so get HoT, we all love it.

Do you play WvW? Well you’re actually really into PvE, see point above.

I am not funding them more? I can play without paying them a single cent. As a consumer, They are offering nothing for me to want to get the expansion, and the fact they limited players choices on play style when they clearly said they did not want to do that. Is enough of a reason for me to take a wait and see stance on what is going on.

The fact Elites are superior is enough for me to not want give them money. I don’t mind others who enjoy it and happy for them. It does not make me upset.. I just can’t lower my standards expectations to support the game at the moment. When I feel the company could do much better.

But you dont matter to Anet. If you have 2 players next to each other and ask them, do you like HoT?

One says “Oh its ok I guess. I like the new PvE maps and stuffs.”
The other says “Oh hell no, classes are imbalanced, WvW is broken, sPvP is a travesty, everything is kitten!”

Then Anet will look at both, consider their respective sides and say “HoT has been overwhelmingly well recieved by our players! Look at these quotes: ‘I like the new PvE maps’. HoT is clearly the best version of GW2 ever!”.

If you really think Anet isn’t aware of the dissatisfaction of some people, I’m not sure what to tell you. I’m pretty sure they’re aware, since Gaile has talked about some of it, and some of the other devs have too.

People see what they want to see.

Okay it’s not a treadmill, I agree with that, but I don’t like stat sets being locked behind a form of content that most players of the game will never do. It’s not like locking a skin, or a mini. You’re locking a play option.

I’m okay with lots of stuff other people complain about. I’m not okay with this.

Aidenwolf.5964:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Aidenwolf.5964:

ProtoGunner.4953:

The biggest problem with all those whiners is that they interpret their own opinion into the minds of everyone.

Many people like to have skill challenges hard/group content, just be cause you don’t think it’s fun you don’t have to come here like 10’000 others and whine about it for the 10’000th time and tell that it is not fun.

Ironically your post sounds whiney.

The 10,000 number you used twice to emphasize your point is also very ironic. Talking about what you don’t like is actually better than leaving the game as many have done over the last 3 years. Whichever of us is in the minority we’ll soon know. Whining about whining is the new meta.

Whining about whining isn’t whining. But I understand that you hate the game.

Worst expansion I’ve ever purchased.

PVP – Worse (unbalanced, kitten pips)
WvW – Worse (dead)
New Maps – Bad (All Zerg Fest)
Dungeons – Dead (No Loot)
Core – Given Away (Theft)

GW2 is in a very bad place imo.

Won’t comment on PvP. WvW changes that were supposed to be in the expansion were delayed, so yeah that sucks. New maps are mostly not zerg fests and in fact, zerging some of that stuff makes it a lot harder. It’s a lot easier with less people. In fact, the maps are designed to break the zerg into sections frequently. Anyone who plays those maps can see it.

Even in something like DS which is a huge zerg in each of the three lanes, there are still multiple side quests along the way further splitting up the zerg, somtimes into 3 parts. So on a full map if you actually have 150 people that’s 50 per lane. Today our “zerg” of 50 had to be divided into smaller groups to actually do what we needed to do, about 15 people in each group. Not a zerg by any definition I’ve heard. The final battle takes place on floating islands and you certainly can’t zerg that.

The core being given away free isn’t theft by anyone’s definition. All it is is a paid demo till you pay for HoT or the core game if you can find it. It’s not the full original game without restrictions. You can’t talk in map chat, you can’t trade gems for gold, you can’t use the trading post fully…I’m not sure how that qualifies as theft. Yeah we get it, you’re not satisfied with the game, but inventing stuff to try to prove a point doesn’t prove anything.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Vayne.8563:

The instance isn’t always full. That’s not really what’s happening. What’s happening is a bug.

The servers like the JP servers, as far as we know, spawn more copies as they’re needed. This doesn’t have anything to do with how many people are doing it. I’m in Australia and in the middle of the US night, the servers are still always full and then they start?

It’s just a bug. That’s all.

If it’s a bug then it would be nice if they fixed it, rather than me getting world full messages or having it simply send me back to DR every time. I’ve been trying to do the JP for a while now and join at different times and it still doesn’t work.

No argument here. It’s a crappy bug. The problem is, by the time they fix it, considering they’re probably closed for the holidays, it’ll be over.

Swagger.1459:

Vayne.8563:

ProtoGunner.4953:

I am here with Vayne and Wanze.

Also lol City of Heroes, had not even half a million subscribers during the shutdown, it was niche and old. I had to look up a video and omg this looks so horrible… I don’t know one single person who played this game.

In many ways CoH was ahead of it’s time. Sure it’s bad compared to today’s games graphically, it’s an old game. But it’s definitely one of the better MMOs out there. Character generation in that game had more options than any other game I’ve ever seen. And those fans that were there at the end were die hard fans. I know a few people who played it regularly and I dabbled. Don’t judge an old MMO by watching a video. You’ll often get the wrong idea.

I am here with vayne

Bet you never thought you’d say those words in that order. lol

Ragnarox.9601:

Gw2 sales dropping? They lie! Everything is perfect here, community is great, game is great, expansion is great, everything is great and there are endless rivers of honey and milk in game too.

/turned off sarcasm

As I said before, this expansion is not worth 45€ atm (feel bad for those that spent 100€). They hyped us with so much content and everything and we got gem shop expansion with nerfed core game rewards. Esports failed, balance failed, wvw borders are dead except EB. Only few armors that are obtainable through game. PVP is crap now, should I continue?…

Graphics of the expansion is one thing that is positive to me, praise to the graphic dev team. And some elite specs….

Very unhappy customer.

Your personal unhappiness doesn’t actually mean that sales are dropping though, just as me enjoying the product doesn’t mean it’s selling off the shelves. No one but Anet knows how we’ll it’s doing, for a least six months. I say that because the first month will be buoyed up by preorders and launch. But if the profits are high six months down the road, that means either people are buying it, or spending money in the cash shop.

I’m relatively sure the game isn’t in bad shape even if the expansion didn’t get the reception Anet wanted, but we’ll see.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I am here with Vayne and Wanze.

Also lol City of Heroes, had not even half a million subscribers during the shutdown, it was niche and old. I had to look up a video and omg this looks so horrible… I don’t know one single person who played this game.

In many ways CoH was ahead of it’s time. Sure it’s bad compared to today’s games graphically, it’s an old game. But it’s definitely one of the better MMOs out there. Character generation in that game had more options than any other game I’ve ever seen. And those fans that were there at the end were die hard fans. I know a few people who played it regularly and I dabbled. Don’t judge an old MMO by watching a video. You’ll often get the wrong idea.

The instance isn’t always full. That’s not really what’s happening. What’s happening is a bug.

The servers like the JP servers, as far as we know, spawn more copies as they’re needed. This doesn’t have anything to do with how many people are doing it. I’m in Australia and in the middle of the US night, the servers are still always full and then they start?

It’s just a bug. That’s all.

Zaxares.5419:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I guess it’s nice to see that someone who cares about maxing performance finds some value in stat switch. Certainly to me the switch is not something I’d care about — not if it cost me a new rune set every time I wanted to change builds.

Out of curiosity, do the existing L. Weapons allow stat switch to the new stat choices?

I’ll admit that I tend to be less finicky about rune choices than most min-maxers. I tend to have favoured builds and thus I’ll stick the runes I use the most often on my Legendary/Ascended armor.

And yeah, they do allow switching to the new stat choices. I double-checked with a guildie earlier. Viper’s, Marauder’s and Commander’s were all there. It seems safe to say all the new stats are.

I swapped a celestial ascended set for vipers, it was relatively cheap.

I think it’s more fun to have hero points that require more people, because the old hero points were so stupidly easy they were no fun. I LIKE having something that requires a bit of effort. That’s fun for me.

That said, not every hero point is fun for me. A couple are stupid hard. That’s the problem though. Everyone has a difficulty threshold that people find fun. So I find the new zones very fun and I enjoy playing in them. I find them more fun than most of the core zones. Because the core zones are kitten easy.

So now where to we go. If we make those points for you, they become less fun for me.