Guild Wars 2

There’s a difference between “abandoned” and “destroyed”.

Anet abandoned dungeons really years ago after realizing fixing them would cost just way too much.

Now they destroyed them. They could have just as easily just removed them how they reward gold and items atm. Which is, according to their blogpost, exactly what they intended anyway.

And I wouldnt even be that angry about it, BUT they have NOT, absolutely HAVE NOT, made fractals as worthy as dungeons were before. Not even closely.

Currently Im financing my fractal runs with lab farming. After halloween closes, Im probably gonna get stuck farming stupid mats. Which is the point Im just gonna leave, because if I had wanted that, I could have played WoW.

Badly done Anet, badly done indeed.

Lets sum up:
PvE → useless because focus/staff way better
PvP → somewhat useful, but wouldnt be my first weapon choice

Not only that, but the fire field from warhorn is so kitten sluggish, having to wait until it is build up completely to start blasting

From what I can see, warhorn just sucks.

9/19 wardrobe, 3/19 in collection And those three I only got because I bought them.

The rip off is:
Do the journey, gather all materials, SELL THOSE MATERIALS on the tp, and buy precursor.
-> Cheaper.

What anet is trying to do is INFLATE the price of dropped precursors to what THEY think is the worth.

Without obviously taking in account that they are currently seriously breaking the inflation rate of gold with killing dungeon runs. Making gold more and more valuable, thereby inflating precursor prices not just to a set amount in worth, but also inflating that amount of worth itself.

This kind of things happen A LOT with anet, since their matching process of several projects and departments just honestly sucks.

And I totally forgot to mention it:
Taking the time you would spent on that journey to precursor, and instead just farming SW or whatever for that amount of time, will roughly wield you enough for 1.5 to 2 precursors.

Have fun on your legendary journey. I personally will absolutely NOT rush it, or even especially look for it, instead just playing the game normally and being happy about everything that gets unlocked while I have fun.

17 skins unlocked in wardrobe
0 skins unlocked in achievement

Guess anet thought I had too many skins and distributed them across all players logged in at the same time as me

Gee and here I thought I was imagining things or having strange memory issues not remembering putting my copper fed salvage kit in bank.

Im really never quite sure if people are in earnest about that disenchanter or not. Coming from playing boonrip necro for years, it is kinda a joke to me :/

Thing about PU (and thief dp) is, instead of giving other professions tools to disrupt stealth and punishing that kind of “passive gameplay”, anet just tries to nerf stealth skills in general, making the whole unbalanced thing going from one extreme (totally OP) to the other (absolutely useless).

But, tbh, PU never was for me essential to Condi mesmer anyway. I mean, if you need PU to disengage/engage properly in WvW as a mesmer, you might want to re-think your positioning.

Anyway, what I really wanted to post:
Pure condi might not be “the thing” anymore, at least not in sPvP, but Carrion shatter/condi is still quite nice when solo queueing. Against organized groups it faces the same problems as any other condi reliant build: not enough insta gib, too much condi cleanse available to enemies. So its not really limited to mesmer imo.

Lets be perfectly honest, the only condition that REALLY does dmg is burning, and mesmers access to burning is rather…. indirect And bleed stacking is limited as well.
The only condition mesmer can stack passably well is confusion, but that condition was nerfed to the bottom of damaging conditions and most of the time doesnt even provoke a cleanse anymore.

Mesmer however is very good at one thing: cover condis. Access to so many condis in one build means good attrition (only really nice in 1v1) and, “works well with other condi builds”.

Mesmer and thief team, mesmer as carrion/shatter and thief with venoms really hurts. Same for burn guard + mesmer etc.

This is kinda really annoying me now.

I get randomly disconnected as soon as I click on bonus chest above minimap. It happens during worldboss encounters, dungeon runs, achievement chests etc.

Doesnt always happen, but when it does, I have a 50/50 chance to loose that chest on top of getting disconnected.

Started happening last week after patch. First I thought it was some kind of error during patching, but re-installing client doesnt change anything.

I really have trouble understanding this community.

I remember distinctly people complaining about not enough challenging content to be solved for small to mid sized groups and how boring lvl80 PvE in general is.

Anet adds raids à 2 grps which need a fair amount of coordination and equipment – kinda exactly what was “missing” according to a not really small part of gw2 community.

And now people are complaining about how raids take away time and space from open-world-solo-button-smashing farm content.

Not only that complaining about how instanced areas take away “space” on open-world-maps is really rather pointless in a video game, it also smacks of childish selfishness.

Personally Im probably not really gonna do much of raiding anyway since its not my cup of tea, but still, I think its really admirable how Anet tries to provide diverse content for its playerbase and all within the confines of their designed lore.
After all, they could have just as easily slapped on a new zone, divided it in a handful of maps and put Pandas wearing straw hats on it to be done with it.

IF anet added bl ticket sales to store they would have to make public their pricing model for those tickets, which is ridiculous to begin with…

Im just happy I kept my tickets from last few months… gonna wait some more and buy a precursor with them in a few weeks.

Please stop working on it, the frequency of disconnects increased to every 2 min, started with 10 min

In one sentence:

The event feels rushed.

In detail:
Reward to vendor cost are felt as unbalanced, resulting in people feeling to have to max event rewards to get those items they want.
Better way to organize rewards would have been to split it the following way:
- daily reward per map (as is)
- personal reward for helping 10-15 events (20 is too much, it leads to people only tagging and running, making only economy happy because of gold decrease)
- map achievement reward (a counter seems to be implemented already, so using that counter you could give the amount of events done as blossoms at the end)
This would be in my eyes a perfect mix of personal and collective reward, aiming towards finishing events instead of just tagging them. To keep people from just afk-ing on a map, you could just set the minimum of personal events to 10, which is easily done.

Time in relation to possible rewards: while it is a nice idea for a weekend event, not saying up front if this event and the currency earned during this event is a one time thing or not, makes people frantic. You dont want to have frantic people posting all over the internet how unfair it is that they cant get all they want because rewards are bad.

Mechanics: Scaling of events doesnt work properly in some areas. I noticed there are some generator events that you can finish solo in one go, and in other areas you barely make a dent. This feels like lack of testing beforehand, which of course doesnt really help the general “rushed” feeling at all.

Aury.1367:

Seriously. The increase of Rampages CD from 150s to 180s is just terrible. And then 25% less duration of the skill? They made up a nice and new build with recent changes and now destroy it again. CD or duration nerf, ok. But both. Thanks for ruining another build.

If you are dependent on this one warrior skill, then… Im sorry to say… you are doing something seriously wrong with your warrior.

Asked many times, answer always: no, live with it, use centaur rune set for perma swiftness on mesmer.

StickerHappy.8052:

…
IMO, you need a lot of playtime in order to have a deep understanding of the class, and incorporate it in your OWN playstyle. Not Just watching a video and imitating it.

Im not quite sure if I should cry or laugh about this statement.

Coming from a lot more complicated mmo’s and mobas, what you think is “deep understanding” is for me just a bit time spent theorycrafting and writing down rotations and counters.

Also, might I remind you guys of the old PU mesmer build? Or the old shatter build? It wasnt really that difficult to play, at all.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

I’ve hit some of these compiled issues (like the 150 pet stats, some offhand range items and some pet traits not working while downed) and those should be getting addressed soon-ish.

We are working heavily on HoT and trying to get to these issues whenever time allows.

Dont get me wrong… but… why the kitten did you make changes to skills and balancing at all if you now dont have time to fix those changes?

Zalladi.4652:

For what reason?

Because:
a) gw2 could use more annual special events
b) waiting for hot for over one year gets boring, got boring a few months after announcement
c) wintersday is already designed, so I imagine starting it now wouldnt tax anet’s ressources too much
d) I could use some cooling here, with over 30°C outside

Can we have one?

Or maybe, since its gw2… Wintersday in August?

Doesnt upset me, since you cant actually do tripple or crit dmg on his hitbox alone and its only 5 seconds or so.

What upsets me however is how forum engine thinks Tequatl’s _hit_box is Tequatl’kittenbox ^^

Legal blabla aside… what we have seen so far from HoT is simply not worth $50. Not without some extra… like at least, as absolute minium, a free character slot.

Or a free gw2 key. But only those NOT having spent time and money on this game already get.

Which is just plain weird if you think about it.

Dedicated fans get: overpriced expansion.
Newbies get: overpriced expansion + core game + 2 year worth of bug fixing.

GeekDavid.2786:

ShelBlackblood.7826:

Almost a week later and there’s still no official response. Or should we consider this one as legit? https://youtu.be/KZspKoupWAY

A week and 100 forum pages later…

ANet, you’re not doing yourself any favors stretching this out. Quite the opposite, in fact.

We’ve got bugged events that have to be forcibly reset for over 2 years without any kind of response to bug reports.

And you expect Anet to answer as fast as 7 days after they kittened up? Good luck.

The reason, why people keep on thinking the core game has to have some value is
a) because to them it had and
b) the expansion is too small for $50.

Its actually really that simple.

Now, the door is shut, the horse is gone. The only things left for Anet to do are:
a) Either reduce price on purchase of expansion or
b) pad the release with character slot etc. or
c) increase content by at least 20%.

It will be interesting to see what Anet will do.

edit:
Oh I forgot d) make pre-purchase / early purchase unresistable to most by adding huge amounts of ap only available to those buying expansion before they have to drop price.

Wanna bet its gonna be a mix of all four?

Whats minimum wage? And Im sorry your currency got inflation going on, but mine actually… doesnt At least not more than the “usual” rate to keep currency “healthy”.
So 50 bucks is 50 bucks to me, back then the same as now.

Comparing outpost with map and calling both zones

Lions Arch in GW2 -> map
Lions Arch in GW1 -> outpost

Rather go compare Lornar’s Pass (GW2) with Snake Dance (GW1). Both are “maps”.

I have to say, Im faster done completing Lornar’s Pass than vanquishing Snake Dance. But thats not really something speaking against GW2, it just means it’s two different systems. Open World vs Instanced Content. Map Completion vs Vanquishing. Etc.

After going over that list I still maintain that 50 bucks is too steep a price for what we know so far.

Funny thing is, seeing how literally thousands of people are reacting to that price, if they had set it to 40 bucks + characterslot, they probably would have sold the expansion already about several thousand times. But that would also mean all those people trying to play during beta weekends. Making each beta weekend rather a stresstest than about content beta.

Just keep that in mind and lets compare purchase prices when release date is fix

webtoehobbit.4201:

Spent all day yesterday making this up, to compare what we received content wise from ArenaNet in the past with their other expansions to what has been officially announced so far with Heart of Thorns.

I will continue to update this as more info is revealed with Heart of Thorns, but here is what we have so far, enjoy!

Edit: This comparison is based off of features that were DAY 1 features and not added at a later date.

Thank you so much for this I didnt have time to follow all tidbits being posted/said about expansion and anets website is very VERY vague about actual content.

Such a list is exactly what Ive been looking for for the last few days. Wiki is more detailed than anet website about expansion, but it is also very vague and using a lot of what I call “hype vocabulary”.

So again, thank you Your chart actually brought this expansion INTO context for me

After re-thinking this whole thing for a bit Ive come to the conclusion that Anet sold beta access for 50 bucks, since thats the only reasonable explanation.

They wont be able to sell 2 mio copies of HoT at current financial situations all around the world at this price, not without a lot more content (like twice as much as they currently offer).

We have, however, seen beta access getting more and more valued over the last few years, so charging for the “privilege” of beta testing and getting a perceived headstart might be what’s making pre-purchase price 50 bucks.

Keep in mind, no release date, no finished in-depth content list, usually means it will take at least a few months until release of expansion. Makes about one or two months of beta testing, so it does make a sad kind of sense to price pre-purchase with beta access higher than release. Sad, because I remember a time when beta testing was more than just sneak peeking.

Ill just keep on waiting and see what will happen when release date is drawing near. I dont have time for beta access anyway, and not really interested in a title ^^

It all comes down to one question:

Is the expansion, the access to beta and the title worth it to you to pre-purchase? If so, then by all means, buy it.

It isnt? Then do what I do and wait for:
a) more information on content and
b) a better deal.

The world will not crash if you dont get immediate access to expansion.

With mmo’s and the ongoing hype’ing technique a lot of companys use since WoW, its always smart to wait until last possible moment to pre-purchase – or not pre-purchase at all.

No use getting angry about it, just keep this incident in mind when next time you are tempted to spend real money on gems
My experience at least.

Duka.5864:

I cant believe that ppl can actually believe that there is company that gives something for free!!! In kittening AMERICA mother of capitalism!

Capitalism means you can buy it, or not. It also means market regulates price, and it means I can complain about price and not buy it until Anet caves or I find a suitable alternative to gw2.

So far I have several Im willing to spend my future monthly funds for online gaming on.

All in all, this just drives home how de-valued anet views their loyal customers, even when they spend hundreds in gemstore or on server transfers. Just looking at my money transfers back one year, I invested more than 25 Euros per month on this game, even though I had a 3 month break in it, so it probably is more like about 35 Euros per month I played. For 35 Euros a month I get two subscriptions with most mmos without a cash shop.

And what do I get for the support I showed to Anet? A slap in the face. Im treated EXACTLY OR EVEN WORSE than someone new to the game that hasnt spend hundreds of euros on this game already.

Do I feel entitled because of that? Sorry, but someone really has to look up the meaning of entitlement again. No, this is no entitlement. This is a matter of being a valued customer – or not. And Anet made it more than clear, that us are just a pimple on their kitten not worth any consideration. Well, this pimple has had it

Xar.1387:

Biggyboy.7105:

I would have no issue with buying it on its own for $50. I just would expect new players to do what I did: buy BOTH the core game and the expansion.

But what you did was buy the game and played it for perhaps hundreds of hours. You’ve gotten your money’s worth since that initial purchase. Do new players get a better deal? Kind of. Keep in mind the game has been on sale many times, occasionally for only $10. No one seemed angry about that. People would pay $10 when you’ve paid at least $60 if you got it at launch, and you haven’t cared. This is also incentive for a larger player base, anyone that doesn’t have the game can get it bundled with the expansion now, which would ultimately liven up the game and make it a better experience.

+1
It looks like people dont see, that they paid for being able login faster, than others.
——
No offence, but the conclusion of this situation is simple: most people are dumb :|

So if I now buy expansion + base game again… do I get to experience everything in the base game as new again too?

I dont think so. So what you guys do is comparing apples to …. eggs. They are both round after all !

So explain to me again, why I should fork over money for something I already have, just because I was “stupid” enough from a financial view to buy it 2 years ago instead of getting it for free now.

This whole thing stinks, just admit it. It’s a “we ignore our playerbase” and “de-value our base game to nada” deal.

Congratulations Anet, you managed to win the golden raspberry for worst marketing move in mmo genre 2015 with that one ^^

$40 → expansion + beta access
$50 → expansion + beta access + 1 characterslot / 800 gems + title
$60 → game + expansion + beta access
$80 → ultimate + title + extras + beta access
$100 → ultimate + 4000 gems + title + extras + beta access

And that takes into account that Anet delivers the content they have promised but until now NOT SHOWN. What we have seen so far is about half of what was promised on HoT’s first announcement.

I think that was his point

Im just so happy right now my summer is busy and I probably miss HoT release. Before I was slightly mad at my fate… but now Im gonna not miss a thing and probably get HoT on sale after summer when I have time again

$50 Im expecting a new game.

HoT is not a new game. Its an expansion with max. 1 year developement time. Which makes it max 50% of the content gw2 or any new mmo has. And Im being generous. Probably its just 30%.

Not gonna pre-purchase, even though I scrimped for it already.

Probably not gonna buy it until its for sale in gemstore.

Nothing is worth getting scammed. Think about it guys.

Pistol precursor from trash mob in Maw… he annoyed me so much that I killed him, even though I was supposed to skip.
Scepter precursor from 2nd chest in CoF, way back when
Spear precursor from Nightmare chest. Nearly salvaged that one, because I hadnt unlocked skin yet ^^

Some bugs posted here sound really really funny… I only get lag spikes now and then

I want random voices !

And Rose Solane… just imagine what patch would have been like without delay ^^

Well… you having no lag and server having no lag are sure luck based

My advice… make him log in himself… and walk through maps, events, wvw with him together. If he’s not interested in discovering the game himself… leveling him a toon wont make him stay for long. My experience

http://youtu.be/OlcXE7aUYwA

Primetime EU, from EU country (Germany) with a great internet connection and computer setup.
Pingtest showed: 15-120ms, every lagspike coincides with ~900 ms
Tracert showed: connection perfect (~13ms) until it reaches anet servers

Anyone want to explain to me how to get 100 interrupts under those circumstances? Id prefer the guy that thought that up in the first place, but actually any non-american player or anet dev will do.

Granted, usually I play during late night/early morning. But even then with a latency of about 12 to 120 skill 4 misses most of the time because:
a) skill delays activation for 3-4 seconds
b) skills 2nd animation part (the kick) has a second delay (fitting…) of about half a second, after rushing, character stands still for that long and after pause finally kicks

This results in enemy being somewhere else entirely in worst case, and most of the time skill player used already way done → only daze effect, timing interrupt is impossible.

Making this whole achievement 70% latency dependent and 30% luck dependent. 0% skill, 100% grinding. Also thanks to this achievement, anet once again treats at least 70% of its customer as 2nd class citizens.

I’ll remember this frustration next time Im tempted to fork money over for gems.

I really dont know of anyone getting banned because letting someone else log in with his account, BUT:

9. (b) Each Account may only be used by one person. (…)

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/

Germans get the caveat that people living in the same household are allowed to get access to same account. Dunno about other countries.

Actually, I get a delay of 3-4 seconds, which makes landing any kind of interrupt extremely difficult.

If I used skill1 first, then using daze, after seeing fireball leave hands I can count to 3 or 4 and THEN skill 4 gets executed.

Im actually happy if target didnt get out or range during that time.

How I know it has to be aftercast or some kind of queue kitten up? Well, all my recent interrupts I got by stupidly running around doing nothing, waiting for perfect timing and then using daze. Even then, thanks to lags, it sometimes doesnt hit. But after that Im actually “allowed” to use other casts and contribute.
Atm Im trying to get 1 interrupt per game, so as to not cause my team to loose.

This is soooooooo ridiculous.

Dragon ball itself is already latency sensitive, but this achievement even more so. Change it already to 100 dazes or reduce amount by 50% at least.

Not to mention: those dragon ball skills? They are on beta level in developement, right? Because they are just plain horrible with HUGE aftercasts, and that only so they can look fancy. Tbh, they dont even look fancy, they just look badly designed.

huge aftercast btw = 3-4 seconds

Or just simply: 100 dazes landed.

Because thanks to lag, dodge and bad skill behaviour, thats a feat in itself already

Issue is:
someone WILL rezz those dead people, that someone WILL NOT do dmg during that time and worst case, will get downed in the process due to not being able to stop rezzing or just bad judgement call.

In most cases its more than one.

Also, for most players its difficult to tell the difference between downed and dead on the ground, so banners getting wasted, wrong players getting rezzed, resulting in a downed dieing etc.

Your laziness in not waypointing during big events – and lets face it, in 90% of the cases its just that – is resulting in numerous problems, making the event just unnecessarily difficult for those not lazying around.

How about you dont get contribution for an event if you lie continuously dead on the ground for most of the time? Wouldnt that be rather fair? I mean… its called contribution for a reason… lieing dead on the ground is not contributing in my book.

Carry would mean winning against all odds, even though your teammates are bait and die as soon as they leave base.

Which in itself is impossible in this minigame.

I usually score 10+ (win or loose), most of the time Im top scorer. And still I wouldnt say Im carrying my team to victory.
If they are total noobs at this, the game is lost. You can play oh so brilliant, if your teammates get farmed endlessly, you just loose.
If they stay alive for a bit, then my contribution might make enough of a difference. But still, its a team effort. Staying alive and getting points.

Im really good at both, and as long as my teammates are not totally bad at staying alive, its a win. However, thats not carrying, thats teamplay.

Its not only about Treasure Hunter, though collections sure have made a flawed system even more obvious.

You should never get less reward for defending something than attacking something.
The incentive to partake in a defense event should be the same as in the attacking event.
Ergo → same bosses, chests, rewards.

But because of the way most defense events are designed, and the limited personnel anet has, thats not gonna happen.

So… starting “attack” temple events on a timer would be the easiest solution. Making it more predictable for achievement hunters and still giving those that enjoy defense events, or just plain all events, the opportunity to finish those events without getting yelled at.

I mean… if you think about it… its rather funny.

Anet designs a fast paced minigame. But then is unable to make skills that can keep up with it.

Typical sunday lags → not a single interrupt thanks to skill being just way too latancy sensitive.

Congrats anet, to again highlighting your own incompetency.

My five dailys today were: camp both sides kick buff and brainlessly farm any that run straight there. Needless to say, I won every game because of that.

Range 2500 plus enough jumping → players make it with about 30% health left to buff and then die after getting it. Kinda funny. Its like farming lemmings.

So my guess is… THIS was how anet wanted that game to be played? I have to say, its way easier this way.

Necro actually can get some nice dmg, on par with ranger. Saying necro only relies on conditions to do dmg is rather stupid, sorry.
But, the point is mood, as raw dps isnt everything. Its about group utility and resulting grp dynamics and grp dmg.

I agree with:
Ele
Thief
Engineer
Warrior
DPS Guard
Necro/Ranger

Cant really place mesmer… maybe between warrior and guard? Not as high as warrior, but never really tested mesmer dps against dps of a dps guard.

Its really funny how Ive been playing the same amount of games each day, pretty much the same way (not actively hunting interrupt achievement, but still trying to get as many as possible) and…
my EU account has about 30 times as much interrupts as my US account….

I dont even want to know how oceanic players are gonna feel about that. Its like telling them "oh, hm… we forgot about you guys… again… "

@ Ze Dos Cavalos
But its starting to affect dragon ball games in general, with teammates that just camp that one spot getting farmed there over and over and over and over again, just to maybe grab ONE interrupt.

Just as the 5 win daily achievement results in game hopping. Achievements shouldnt have that big of a negative influence on a minigame

Get on a map about the time world boss spawns there, stay on that map after world boss is dead.

Have fun porting through a chain of maps to the last few “remaining” ones ^^

To avoid this, just stay on that map you are currently on and volunteer about 20 minutes after it first asked you to volunteer. Of course that results in playing on a virtually empty map for 20 minutes first. Not flawed at all that system.