Guild Wars 2

The main problem is that she isn’t a threat, or at least she doesn’t seem like one. She doesn’t have a purpose, she isn’t doing anything which feels like it actually needs anyone other than the local crime fighters to bother with. We’re here to save the world from the all powerful Elder Dragons, not act Batman to her Joker.

Speaking of which, that’s another reason, because she took the entire plot if the game away from its main focus, the dragons. In other words, we want dragons, not a pesky 15 yo brat bent on making everyone shake their fists at her.

^ I think your mistaking the playerbase and the forums.

There’s a few things I want to touch on:

1. Plot progression. The LS feels extremely disjointed and generally leaves the player without a single clue in what’s happening or where the story is going.

2. The structure of the LS. Also, I don’t believe the Living Story as a whole is glove to work as it us now. Good plots and lore need buildup. Viewing the last episode of any TV series straightaway will not be good as watching the whole thing. And that’s what the LS is at the moment. If a new player joins, he/she will not have ‘watched’ the previous episodes of the story and thus will not appreciate what’s happening no matter how good it is.

3. Not every update needs a story. Looking at RuneScape, they’ve been doing regular weekly updates much like GW2 for a decade and their model has clearly proven to be successful. They don’t give a story for each update, done updates are just huge QoL additions, balance changes or adding new features like skills into the game.

It works because one, it lets them focus on what the meat if the update is. If that update is to revamp a boss fight, they get to focus on the revamp without having to be distracted by a story to fit it around. Two, those updates are very targeted: they can just spend the entire update doing balancing, and that provides much higher quality.

4. Time. Are you sure the devs aren’t sacrificing quality for quantity?

I don’t quite see the point of this thread. You may as well title it ‘What do you hate about GW2’ because the people who are quite happy with the game obviously won’t be imagining what GW3 would be like and all this thread does is attract complaints.

As for the stat grind, I got a maxed out Guardian and a maxed out Mesmer (stat-wise, not WvW ranks ofc), they’re fully geared in full Ascended. Compared to full exotics, I cannot for the life of me see the difference in PvE and WvW.

Why did I get them? Because I’m one of those progressionists who just want to see all my equipment maxed out, for basically no reason other than I just have to.

We really don’t need that. What that is is a massive system to cause frustration and heartbreak and make people quit.

He’s certainly an interesting character, but he suffers the same flaws as Scarlet.

You don’t have a clue why he’s like that. Oswald was just positively insane, but Edrick isn’t, he just malicious because…. well, err, because he is.

If its going to be a dungeon, I would like a dungeon designed purely around fun instead of challenge. TA Aetherpath is probably my favorite dungeon in the game, but it does get rather frustrating and definitely not something I would play if I’m tired from work.

I like how it shows just how balanced some of the leagues are. cough Underworld cough

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

DevonCarver.5370:

We have some thing that will be in the tests for the new map that will help WvW be more alt-friendly. We will talk more about it as we get closer to the test actually beginning.

Arenanet, why not tell us the design now before you are over committed?

What happened to Arenanet’s new policy of Collaborative Development with the player community?

Is the WvW team not a part of the new Collaborative Development initiative?

What are you doing for EB and Borderlands alt-friendliness?

We’re going to just keep creating these threads every week for the next few years until you make wXP account bound – so why not just do what we all know is right.

Because if they told you right now without actually having the maps to test it out, how would you know if it works or not?

Asmodeus.5782:

Eh, about the dynamic events system gathering dust – even if they introduce some new materials as rewards from DE, people will just stay on the trains anyway, unless some kind of severe diminishing returns for grinding a single zone is implemented.

They could just make champion events give no Ascended materials, or make the mats purchasable using Karma, and cut the karma rewards from all champion events or Scarlet’s invasions. Keep the karma on Fractals, they deserve some love.

My biggest annoyance at the moment is boss music. Raven Speaks, Scales of Issomir, and that other boss fight OST are wonderful and all but hearing them over and over and over and over kinda made them lose their charm.

Also, they’re often used totally in the wrong places. Raven Speaks was clearly composed for the Jormag fight, yet its used for everything from the Legendary Effigy to… Scarlet.

Protoavis.9107:

Xae Isareth.1364:

At the moment, I have absolutely no clue what the heck is happeinign inside Anet’s development team. They seem to have writers but…what are those writers actually doing.

I do not wish to offend anyone but I can’t see the current story being the work of a professional writer. Its disjointed, it lacks character progression, and the worst part of it: it gives the ‘reader’ zero-interest to find out more. I know that the best storytellers masterfully always gives the reader just enough information to intrigue them but never let you know everything even at the very end, but the story in this case seems to be going nowhere at all. You don’t have a clue why anything is happening.

I don’t think professional writers have ever really been involved with guild wars in general, nothing has really been above fan fic quality.

I can’t find the source but I think they’ve said that they got writers on each LS team.

I do have to agree that GW in general has pretty terrible writing and lore, I could barely hold a straight face during a lot of the ‘serious’ cutscenes in GW1.

Knote.2904:

Babychoochoo.5690:

From one passenger to another, I hope you will accept the fact they’ve eventually going to find a way to nerf the train. I don’t know or when, but it’s going to happen. It’s popular, probably not intended, and there some people actively against it.

They’ll nerf it into oblivion, tell us why we should be thankful, give us an “alternative,” and no one will farm champions anymore.

Yes, this is how Anet has done things, really stupid.

They just REPLACE the single farm options with another and repeat…..

It often isn’t ‘replaced’ by Anet intentionally, but its players either finding an exploit in the system (champ trains) so that the content functions in a whole different way than intended and gives them unintentional amounts of cash, or its simply the most efficient way to make money (like CoF P1) which will always exist in any game because you cannot perfectly balance rewards.

Durzlla.6295:

Walhalla.5473:

Durzlla.6295:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Walhalla.5473:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I’m not sure why, but I’m still secretly hoping that green glow on the Krait is from dragon corruption by Mordremoth. Looking at the Aether weapons they’re using though …..

Aether Weapons? I don’t see Aether weapons carried by Krait.

Glowing blue light dagger, it looks just like the glow in Aetherised nightmare weapons.

They’re not nightmare weapons, it’s Sylvari Cultural weapons.

Look again. These are not cultural weapons.

Uh, they are, they’re just glowing blue… They’re Warden weapons

Warden weapons aren’t made of light/electricity/Aether(?) and they have organic hilts.

But then again, what do we actually get for doing this content. It looks like its going to be perm, because otherwise we got a skill which is only temporarily available..which would be silly to say the least.

In a MMO, you don’t design content outside of quests which is only worthwhile doing once.

lordkrall.7241:

Derom.1205:

Yeah true but it has a lot of sci-fi elements don’t you think? (Asura)

True, but the Asura stuff is mainly magic based.

It’s an interesting debate if what we call ‘science’ can be described as just magic natural to our world and understanding.

They should have a day of compulsory open world PvP. Queensdale would be hilarious.

To me, this skill is like an emergency panic button which you oh use if you’re completely out of cleanses and absolutely need to cleanse.

Popping your healing skill to clean some random conditions is practical suicide.

A Massive Headache.1879:

I very much doubt there will be a new dungeon. Maybe an instance with a chance for those skins as drops, but tokens just seem very unlikely, as that would also mean a desire for new armor. I don’t think anet really likes designing new armor anymore, as we’ve been given lots of shoulders/gloves/helmets but not really sets, other than the new ascended armor set that’s been linked around.

I think we havn’t got any new armour because designing them takes longer than the release schedule allows. They did say they’re also working on bigger projects in the background, it’s unlikely, but this could be one of those bigger projects. The setup to it was more elaborate than other LS updates in the past.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

If they want to get away from the trinity, why did they give warriors the highest HP and armor class? This is making that class the most tanky class by base stats.

And yeah, they dish out damage like berserkers, which would fit too.

I has the highest HP but Guardians still excell them in terms of pure defensive abilities.

If I recall right, Warriors started as basically a pretty one sided class focusing purely on DPS, then they went and balanced the class do that it can hold its own in PvP, eventually making it into the OP monster it is today.

The Grove is probably the most beautiful city in the game for me. My mouth literally hanged open for a few seconds the first time I sat foot in there, it just has this amazing sense of tranquility and calmness which is perfectly complimented by the BGM. Too bad a lot of players will never see that city unless they want map comp.

I’m actually hoping that whenever the deep sea dragon awakes, we’ll have a repeat of the Battle of Claw island but with the dragon winning in the end and sinking LA into the ocean.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Teege.4623:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Champ trains are fine. Stop telling others how to play. Stop worring about what others are doing. If you don’t want to farm, there are plenty of champs on all the maps, I’m sure you’ll be able to find plenty of champs that have not even seen or heard a player in quite a while.

And if the train people want to farm champs, they too can hit other maps. They’re not anymore entitled to one map than the next person. You’re part of the problem.

You are the problem.

I’m not griefing other players.

I’m not running to the forums telling others that they have to play differently.

I’m not calling other players names.

I’m farming and socializing with the others farming.

I’m also on one map. You have a huge selection of maps to choose from. You can just as easily go to a different map to get your one champ.

You are the problem.

I just do whatever I feel like. I don’t go killing champions with the specific goal to anger others, I went and killed Oakheart/Boar/Wasp because I felt like it. Why should I move to another map? Is there a rule that says Queensdale is solely the private hunting ground of the train?

^ they use different materials as shown in your bank slot. Thy presumably come from different activities, like the DE system that’s gathering dust.

The major problem I think is occurring is that Anet seems to obsessively stay away from having a trinity-esque system. They seem to want every class to be able to do everything and not have say, Guardians to be the best defensive/healing support class in the game period.

A lot of balancing issues would be solved if each class just massively differs from others and has its own role in a party which no other class can come close to offering. It doesn’t need to be a trinity.

cesmode.4257:

I haven’t played Gw2 in about 2+ months, slightly before ascended weapons were released.

Is this stuff more of a grind?

Yes and no.

It depends on what you do in the game. If you’re a heavy PvEr, then you’ll get materials given to you for in ample quantities for doing anything other than AFKing. By ample I mean not like Exotics ample, where it basically gets stuffed in your face, I mean it takes time but you certainly won’t feel like your grinding.

If you prefer to WvW….. Let’s say you won’t get Ascended stuff anytime soon.

The real obstacle however is reaching 500 crafting to actually make a weapon. That either takes a long, long, time by refining the Ascended materials you get or it takes no time at all but takes a lot of money through just discovering Exotics:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

MMOBPG

The “B” stands for “Berserker” as that is the only gear and therefore playstyle you will ever need.

That seems to be changing. I’ve never had a pleasant experience in TA Aetherpath with anyone in full zerk gear. They’re always the first to drop dead in the party and we had to kick a few of them because simply they can’t do the dungeon in that gear.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Path of least resistance. Players want gold, and the quickest way to do it (currently and argumentatively) is to join a champ train and run around in circles till your eyes bleed. It is not going to stop until ANet designs another way of making good gold in another fashion. Scarlet was the king for a while, but the loot has been tweaked and has become much less lucrative, same goes for Orr and even this years labyrinth pales in comparison to last years loot fest.

If you are in an area and want/need to kill a champ, do so, if you get treated with vitriol for doing so report those that are abusive. Other than that, you/we are all hooped till the “next big thing” comes along.

It would be quite easy to stop it if Anet wants to. They don’t need to nerf the loot, they can just randomise the spawn timers.

haviz.1340:

Astralporing.1957:

In PvE staff is less useful (except for zerg farming, where it is the primary choice). My personal preference is scepter+focus/hammer, but sword+focus and GS are also solid melee choices.
Generally (especially in dungeons) you should always have a range set, and melee set.

Especially in dungeons you should never use ranged weapons. Ranged weapons are for world bosses to go afk because even if you try to make an effort it ultimately doesn’t matter because of more than 50 bads “contributing” on the same level (read: prologing fight because reading and watching the field is not in the fashion).

In 5 men instance you should actually care about your own contribution and self-improvement.

It really depends on how good you are. When I try to melee Lupi or Foreman Spurr, I end up dead on the floor. Being dead means no contribution and zero DPS.

Brutaxia.5098:

There’s nothing cosmetic to ANY true MMO player about being 5% better than opponents. Ask anyone! So legendaries will be 5% more than ascended…. so 10 percent more than exotics….

Super legendaries or whatever they will call them will be 15% more… feel free to qoute me on it! How is this new and different????

We don’t know if there will be more tiers, but they have said that they don’t plan to add a new tier of rarity but to evolve the current tiers (which I assume means some sort of a weapon proficiency levelling system).

In most other MMOs, not having a certain tier of equipment will restrict you from content or put you at a huge disadvantage in PvP. In GW2 no PvE content requires Ascended and having Ascended won’t tge difference between kill or wipe in places like Arah or TA Aether and really only cuts about a minuite maybe off a faceroll dungeon run, even comparing with accessories included.

WvW has so much imbalances by design that the stats difference between Exotics and Ascended hardly matters. Thus you can’t compare GW2 to traditional MMOs.

I said bind, not blind. I think it’s called Immobilised in this game but it’s called by other names like bind/root in other games.

I don’t really see the point in removing blind with a cleanse anyways, because you just autoattack once and it’s gone. On a side note, personally I think they should make Blind give the target a 50% chance to miss attacks for its duration in PvP and WvW because just like Aegis, it’s so easy to counter that the condition is rather pointless.

If they’re a reward for doing the content, then why are they not listed as rewards on the release page?

On the other hand, what ARE the rewards for doing the content anyways? It surely can’t be just a healing skill because, assuming this is permenant content (and it seems to be because they seemed to have put a ton of effort into the design), if you just simply get the skill for completing the ‘dungeon’, there’s no incentive to repeat it.

Walhalla.5473:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I’m not sure why, but I’m still secretly hoping that green glow on the Krait is from dragon corruption by Mordremoth. Looking at the Aether weapons they’re using though …..

Aether Weapons? I don’t see Aether weapons carried by Krait.

Glowing blue light dagger, it looks just like the glow in Aetherised nightmare weapons.

^ it needs to go on the front page, by which I mean either in game or on the front long-in page, because otherwise there is potential for sample bias.

I don’t think you were supposed to get full decked out in Ascended weapons. They’re like the ultra-rare gear you get in some other games, without the massive stats increase. You’re supposed to feel proud you got a piece.

This is quite evidenced by the fact that they provide roughly 5% more damage over exotics (not accounting for accessories before someone bashes me on this), indicating they’re supposed to be more of a ‘cosmetic’ stats item for people who just want to see their stats go up ever so slightly.

Molch.2078:

Exploit? Which exploit?

And it doesn’t take a hour. Try it yourself.

For exploits, just look at AC P3. I don’t think the devs intended players to beat the spider queen and the end boss by stacking in a corner and face rolling to stop their. Able damage mechanics from working.

morrolan.9608:

Isha.4278:

What upsets me the most about it all is that it seems to be the same persons that get the precursors! I know for a fact that she has had at least 7 precursor drops in the last MONTH.

Which does lead one to the quite reasonable conclusion that drop rates are different for some accounts.

I know for a fact on another game that RNG in that game (ie it came from a dev on that game) was deliberately done so that some accounts were lucky, this was obviously done to show others that it was possible to get the ultra rare drop so they would keep working on them whilst still keeping the rarity intact. I would hate to think that anet are doing the same thing.

Which game is this? I can’t imagine any dev would actually admit to that. It would be absolutely suicidal.

It turns out you were Scarlet all along.

What I am talking about is letting the player set the order in which conditions are purged when using a cleansing skill.

The reason for this is that, for example, if we look at say, the first boss in Arah P3, his minion cant constantly inflict poison and bleed, as well as bind. Obviously you want to get rid of bind first because the boss has a 1HKO attack but it ends up cleansing poison and bleed before bind so you get killed without anything you can do about it.

Astralporing.1957:

In WvW staff is practically obligatory, unless you plan to always roam in small groups/alone. Second weapon may vary depending on your preferences (gs is quite popular, but practically all guardian weapons work well if yu know how to use them).

In PvE staff is less useful (except for zerg farming, where it is the primary choice). My personal preference is scepter+focus/hammer, but sword+focus and GS are also solid melee choices.
Generally (especially in dungeons) you should always have a range set, and melee set.

I’d say the staff is also very useful in PvE, simply because if Empower. With AH, it both significantly boosts the damage if the party (even more if a Mesmer doubles the boon) and act as a second healing skill. No2 is also not a bad heal and No3 is a good group swift and does OK damage on enemies.

It kinda reminds me of the godforged Flame Legion.

I’m not sure why, but I’m still secretly hoping that green glow on the Krait is from dragon corruption by Mordremoth. Looking at the Aether weapons they’re using though …..

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Thobek.1730:

Azure Prower.8701:

Why is she so popular?

she is not popular at all… the are a couple of people that try desperately to defend her but they are minority on these forums, and most the reasons they think she is great is the same reasons others don’t like her. “But she’s good at everything!!” – “that’s why we don’t like her”

You know who else was a minority on the forums? Kiel supporters.

I wasn’t ready to dismiss scarlet after her first appearance, you guys could atleast wait to see what anet would do with her, instead of crying after she appeared the first time “So when is she going to be gone?” Do you also read the title of a book and then say you read the entire book?

No, we read the first chapter. It was awful.
Then we read the second chapter. It was also awful.

Do they expect the user to keep torturing themselves?

Also, looking on the back if the box of the game, it says ‘The Elder Dragons have awoken’ not ‘Silly Sylvari brat did spontaneous stuff’. Im sorry if I’m being impatient, but it’s been an entite year already and I still do t see where the LS plot is connected to the dragons.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

ozma.3498:

darkace.8925:

“wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn.”_ Between the Living Story and the time-gating of things like ascended weapons, we’re pretty much exactly where we would have been with a subscription fee.

Exactly, but MINUS the epic, competitive PvE multiplayer content offered by games with subscription fees, i.e. raids. Instead, we have soloable-on-the-first-try (90% of the time) fluff “content” that is nothing more than a tedious to-do list so you can get that limited time only reward.

You see, one thing I’ve noticed over and over again is that people who have never played a game like WoW draw a lot of conclusions about what raiding really is, and completely miss the mark again and again. Usually people say “one raid per six months, or content every two weeks… I rest my case” or something to that effect. The problem is that they assume the quality of the content is equal. It’s not. GW2 living story content is some of the worst quality, mundane, boring, grindy, bug-riddled content I’ve ever seen in an MMO. Raiding content done right trumps any other type of gaming I’ve ever played.

Exactly this. Many people who mock WoW on these forums, have either never played, or played like 6 years ago when it was much worse than it is today. Frankly, I’d rather pay a sub and get guaranteed quality content that will last me for several months AND that I could fully experience on a lower difficulty level if I can’t find a group to complete it at my preferred difficulty level.

Each to their own, I guess. I still feel that WoW was ripping me off with a plethora of fun-less slow-downs meant to keep me subbed longer. Raids (while time-gated) were at least fun while being learned, but once on farm became boring, which led (at least in my experience) to guild drama. I found GW1 elite instances (compared to raids) to provide more fun for more repetitions with a lot less time spent herding cats.

GW2 has not provided any content that offers the same depth, longevity and repetition with the possible exception of FotM. Situating most of endgame in the open world has led to either tedious slogs (if your numbers are at the low end of a scale up), or bore fests (if players over-number the content by a lot), all leavened with a taste of particle blur. Both raids and GW elite instances took time to complete. In GW2, the biggest time commitment seems to be arriving in a spawning window and waiting around.

Different stuff for different tastes. I really like the easy open world bosses, not the huge zergs on a tiny boss, but stuff like Jormag or Golem II, simply because its fun for me to just take down something massive with an army of players.

There are ‘hard’ content in the game which you need to learn as well, and more are coming out. Have you tried the new Aetherpath? No waiting around and it certainly took me a few hours to learn, and a good few more runs to perfect the tactics.

Depends on which fractal. I got both a Guardian and a Mesmer at max level with maxed out gear and I switch to my mesmer whenever the grawl fractal comes up.

I think Reinforced Scale Coat looks actually pretty good.

If we can get a staff which is a huge glowing cross of light. My Guardian will give his left kidney for it.

jkendt.7620:

Solid Gold.9310:

Same here, I’m with you, I was hoping it wasn’t instanced………

I don’t get why they would call it an, “Ever evolving, changing world!” If it will all be instanced….

Because thus far, most non-instanced content revolves around massive zergfests, and there are a lot of stuff you can’t do with a massive zergfest.

The most important of which is ask for co-ordination. Just one look at Tequatl will tell you that.

nikitnq.7143:

The ability to craft precursors would be a good feature. Make them account bound if people are worried about crashing some “markets”. For people worried about their items being “devalued”, make the craftable ones look like white items of the same type without the fancy effects even, I don’t care really.

The ascended stats and the stat switching ability is mainly the reason for me. It would certainly let me play different builds without lugging around too much stuff.

Or perhaps treat all ascended weapons as precursors. Upgrading to legendary status will be through crafting where all the craft materials are account bound.

They should just make new legendaries have craftable precursors and the existing ones have RNG precursors.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Scarlet is such a waste of a supermind character in a game that does not need one.

Everyone wants to fight dragons, and not a girl on dynamite. The LS is comedical content at best. Nothing matters, Queen Jennah or any of the childish members of Destiny’s Edge won’t make a difference.
They act like headless chickens, even though we managed to kill a kitten elder dragon.

Sometimes I think the elder dragons are right to erase this stupidity.

That exactly what happened. The 5 gods left the world cos they got fed up with mortals and sent the 5 Elder Dragons to end us all. Plot.

Shadowsong.4820:

Just.. no.
This is what you want to happen, not what is going to happen. As the Living Story is generally adressed to everyone there probably will never be a hardcore-only content patch. Also they would definitely tell us about ascended armor crafting (which will be the main means to get it) beforehand ATLEAST in the release page.

New Aetherpath was certainly not for everyone.