Guild Wars 2

Psybunny.8906:

It’s a HoM skin transmuted on top of a legendary.
Only explanation I could see for it is that the guy didn’t like the look of bolt and wanted to have a weapon that will always have BiS stats when ascended weapons come out. Incredibly silly nonetheless.

Not silly at all. It was incredibly foolish for ArenaNet to base the value of Legendaries on their appearance – it’s very subjective.

Vayne.8563:

You lost 90% of this forum with the words we need gear progression. That’s all I’ll say on the subject. Good luck, mate. The kittenstorm approaches.

The problem is the game is waning, and the players on the forums don’t represent the players in the game. Who do feel like there’s nothing to do, for a guild, and there isn’t.

Fortus.6175:

For the amount of work, time and money Im putting into them, the least you could ask for is that it is account bound, that way if you later on decide to move on to another profession or a new character, you still have access to it and not have it glued to one character only……

But that wouldn’t play into their cash shop ploys.

I will be everything I own that mounts are coming to Tyria. Take it to the bank

Khyber.2693:

Most pve maps on my server are completely deserted. When all of you are not congregating at The Shatterer, Tequatl the sunless, or the claw of jormag where are you? Seriously almost everywhere i go there is NO ONE. WHERE DO YOU GO?

Because there’s nothing challenging or interesting about them. They don’t drop any items that are sought after.

Open world boss content with no requirement for strategy or grouping was dead on arrival. That much should be clear by now.

Bad MMO design.

I see these posts and all I see is the OP talking himself out of quitting the game.

Side note – The problem is those tasks in GW2 are meaningless and unsatisfying to achieve, as opposed to other games.

Funda.7216:

I’m so glad I don’t have a job where 500 people are telling me I’m doing it wrong. You and the team are doing a great job Bobby, I’m loving the direction we are headed and can’t wait to get to see where the story goes.

It’s going to take more than a few happy players to keep the game going.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ANALYSTS?!

BobbyStein.2315:

Raine.1394:

The key to understanding the understanding issue is in their recent blog on the Living Story. What they have given us so far are ‘teasers’, not actual content. There is also a reference to developers rolling off other projects now available to expand upon the story. The monthly events had to happen as they are a key value proposition for Anet. So, absent the ability to provide actual content, they occurred as ‘teasers’. I would expect the content to be fleshed out more properly over time and this should make the story more understandable. TLDR: You haven’t been able to get it because there has been nothing to get.

Correct.

Then it’s not monthly content patches then, is it?

Stop peddling it that way.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Max Lexandre.6279:

Hello.

I just saw the great news for WvW.

But since January Patch that I started to have Culling in PVE for the first times, mainly in Meta Events where even Mobs are Invisible sometimes!

Then, does the end of Culling affects also PVE? Or do we need to get used to “Invisible Events” in PVE?

I would like only to say, that I know Culling is also also about our Computer… but, the game must think in every kind of PCs, not only with high-end Ones.

The initial release of this system will be for WvW only. There are additional complications we need to solve with PvE due to the number and variety of creatures on screen that WvW doesn’t need to account for. Later this year, we’ll be expanding as much of the changes to the PvE open world as we can as well.

Why was this not a high priority before you took people’s money?

Kaiwen.1520:

Sunflowers, I respect that you find it boring. That’s your call, right?

But the funny thing is, everyone is calling for innovation and blasting other MMO’s for sticking to the Holy Trinity. It’s a lose-lose for game developers.

What could GW2 to break out of the rut besides what they have done?

And it is true that it is still possible to win if your “tank” dies. But when I join a PUG group, I cringe when I don’t see a guardian or a few warriors. I know it will be a lot harder to win without someone durable in the front lines. So, yes, less class definition, but still some synergy. Not as much as the defined roles of other games and I think that is a fair trade-off for the freedom offered.

That said, if it bores you, it bores you.

ArenaNet was on the right path, they creative a great world with decent character progression and combat.

But the problem is they neutered the longevity of the game by not making in team oriented. There was nothing for a guild to strive for. There was no challenge in the open world.

Even if you look past the ridiculous legendary grind which is really a front for the cash shop, the game stopped short of delivering any compelling content.

If all you’re into is “in the moment fun” then grats, GW2 is your game… along with Mario Kart an 99 million other games. But an MMORPG has a responsibility to be more than that. ArenaNet has failed in that regard.

Conncept.7638:

Because playing a game where everybody has to fulfill the exact same three positions in the exact same way (two of which take no skill whatsoever) isn’t shallow at all right? That’s why everybody knows football is so much more deep than chess…

Some people’s kids…

As opposed to one role with no team synergy? Yeah, your parents kids.

Wanderer.3248:

In GW2 the outcome of a fight is not decided on a spreadsheet before you even log in.

And with that, all of the depth of Quake.

Grats.

Leablo.2651:

The other day I joined a Caudecus group on my Engi. The other party members were Ranger, Ele, Necro, and Mesmer. No heavies. Every battle was a struggle and we wiped often. But by the end we had it down – use summons to soak up aggro, and everybody kite like crazy.

You can eventually dig through a cement wall with a soup spoon also. It doesn’t mean it was fun, or the right tool for the job.

Karizee.8076:

Sitting there pewpewpewing through a rotation while a tank takes damage and healers fill health bars is just zzzzzzzz to me now.

So having everyone do the exact same thing is somehow more interesting?

Hmmm.

diabluz.2860:

In the long term the lack of the trinity makes instances and any other group play boring and shallow to say the least.

People aren’t forced to co operate and work together or strategize like in other mmo’s that we’ve all played in the past.

If you want people to continue playing this game for any length of time you need to bring back the trinity Anet.

I think we established this back in October.

GW2 has a very limited audience, but the ones that have found it like it. It will never be WoW success, it’s just a niche.

Vol.5241:

Well, what did you expect? You gambled and lost. Should have expected you had a minute chance of getting a precursor. And now you kitten yourself because you foolishly spent all your gold gambling when you should always leave enough gold on hand to prevent this ‘depressive’ state.

The keyword there is gambled. There should not be a gamble in a game with a cash shop. It’s borderline negligent for them to do it like that.

Here’s a hint for you: the problem isn’t with the player, its with the game.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

joneb.5679:

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

Requiring any class in a party is against the whole ethos of Guild Wars 2 hence no holy trinity.

But if that ain’t workin’ (and it ain’t) then it’s time to put all options onto the table.

Heijincks.9267:

mjharrison.3209:

Ansultares.1567:

Heijincks.9267:

Anyway, increased hours played over the past two months isn’t especially noteworthy; by December, hours played as tracked by Xfire had dropped something like 90% from the release. I know fanboys curse Xfire, but its proven reliable across multiple MMOs I’ve played.

XFire shows it’s been pretty consistent over the past month.
http://www.xfire.com/games/gw2?

google trends also shows the same trend as xfire – a steady loss since release with a gentle plateau in the past month or 2. Certainly not an increase as they claim.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=gw2&date=10%2F2012%206m&cmpt=q

Web searches for GW2 does not reflect a growing/declining player population.

Likewise, here’s a graph for TF2 which is a game that’s definitely still growing with no end in sight:

http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=tf2&cmpt=q

Notice that the line jumps all over the place. I don’t expect that to be different with GW2. If an extrapolated line was drawn for both graphs, they’d both be increasing. For GW2 though, the sample is too small to make any predictions for the long run.

Xfire is actually a great way to predict trends… it has been historically spot-on for this kind of thing. GW2 engagement has declined over 1000% since launch on their reports, which means that “of the people that use Xfire” there has been a 1000% decrease in activity. That’s not insignificant, I would say.

Don’t try and defend against Xfire; there is none. Instead try and support your theory about how there IS an increase in players and a crowded world.

The game doesn’t have players because it has no depth and there are some fundamental design flaws that push people away without them even understanding why.

I can’t believe he’s citing a tech reason (bandwidth) as the driving reason behind a game system as important as conditions. Other games do it, Colin. How?

The condition system is poorly designed and implemented. The buffs/debuffs are too short… they aren’t fun to manage, and lo-and-behold, it as resulted in weird gameplay issues like this.

I just think you haven’t played many other recent MMOs if you think you can’t progress in tiny chunks from 5 minutes to 30 minutes at a time.

But further, I’d argue that being able to do so is a deterioration of the very genre you love so much. People invest in hobbies knowing they can’t get good at it or advance without time commitment.

So by simply going it and feeling like you can progress in 20 minutes, that means they epic stories have been chopped up into literally, chores. Something to keep you busy, having nothing at all with RPG.

Grats!

Yea, if you think pre-80 is boring, you ain’t seen nothin yet.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Technically the tinfoil hat would view your character as a mount, so it’d be an easy way for us to get mounts in game.

We might even have concept art for it….

<-Troll.

Still not a “no mounts”

Wolfheart.1938:

So you are one of those that think that “because I’m social” is not reason enough to group with people, and the game will benefit if we force non-social people into parties?

You may disagree with one of the principles the game is built upon (no forced grouping ) but since the game is already released it’s unrealistic to ask for a U-turn now.

“THIS IS THEIR DESIGN. It would be far, far more terrible to swap out the core group mechanic at this stage of the game’s lifecycle. I’d be concerned for their design aptitude and in fact their very sanity if they changed a core element they’ve established.”

It will either force “non-social” people into parties and make friends, and discover the TRUE potential of MMOs, or it will force them out of the game – which is probably what needs to happen if they are truly non-social.

Wolfheart.1938:

Zeldain.5710:

Wolfheart.1938:

Most veterans are far too easy to drop worthwile loot, but increasing their strenght would make them really difficult to handle when soloing. Champions could use better loot tables and possibly more interesting/challenging fights (I soloed the champion Ooze even in Cursed Shore yesterday).

Maybe they shouldn’t be soloable? It’s an MMO, is it not?

Do you actually play the game? Have you seen how many veterans are there? I’d say they should be soloable (and they currently are) because they are pretty common, and there are many non-group events involving one or more of them. And having most content soloable is pretty okay especially considering how big our world is and how empty some zones are.

MMO =/= forced grouping everywhere.

I disagree.

Especially when this game has zero reason to group already.

Wolfheart.1938:

Most veterans are far too easy to drop worthwile loot, but increasing their strenght would make them really difficult to handle when soloing. Champions could use better loot tables and possibly more interesting/challenging fights (I soloed the champion Ooze even in Cursed Shore yesterday).

Maybe they shouldn’t be soloable? It’s an MMO, is it not?

The designers of this game definitely don’t understand itemization, or beyond that, the simple pleasure of surprise. There is NOTHING more boring than facing an enemy that by its sheer stature is more impposing and deadly than your normal mob, but then have him drop a “Dented Spoon” 12 levels too low for you?

They need loot specific to mobs… Not even getting into bosses (like, we should see "Claw of the Shatterer, that drops ONLY from the shatterer, occasionally, and has a kick kitten near legendary skin) But even from regular vet mobs.

I just don’t get why they don’t realize loot is boring in this game and it has nothing to do with stats.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

You may want to re-read what we have already said on the issue.

Of course, you were very careful to qualify when they weren’t coming, but very much had the feeling that they eventually will.

Which, by the way, is excellent news.

To everyone complaining, remember… this is a f2p game. They have to introduce pain points that squeeze you a bit to direct you to the cash shop, to buy gems, to trade for gold.

That is the rationale for the grind in the game – they have to make money.

Which is precisely why I prefer subscription games.

Pretty much yes, but it’s already been well-established. We’re only playing along side others, not actually with them.

The game desperately needs large-scale coordinated content for guilds and large groups.

You guys are treating these chores as if they are required. Just don’t do them.

It’s the game’s design… it doesn’t foster social situations in any way, shape or form.

Red Falcon.8257:

I still like the game but I feel a bit like I’ve been bait-and-switch’d.
I let the whole gear treadmill thing pass without a word, because they implemented it in a way that you can just do one fractal a day and get the gear, so they ultimately held up to the idea of not enforcing grind.
But I cannot let 0/20 kill ten rats quest go as well, or they will think their playerbase is made of brain-dead traditional MMO players who will accept anythng – please realize that the strength of GW2 was being different than traditional MMOs.

Any chance that this system will be changed to something better Anet?
Like sending us around Tyria to complete different events etc.
In the article previous to this patch I read these quests were supposed to have us adventure around the maps to complete tasks, but this is nothing like that and I somehow feel a bit cheated.

I can stand this system as a placeholder, as long as the fully released system won’t be blizzard questing like this.

I think that “strength” was turning into a weakness, and ArenaNet recognized this… responding with content and progression players prefer.

Faden Pain.4275:

NO NO NO

What is it with all of the people that feel the need to always “raise the cap”? What is the need for a bigger number?

I have to ask… if you’re all high and mighty about not caring about numbers, why do you care if someone has a bigger number than yours?

Aoshi.4785:

More WoW fanboi-ism at it’s finest lol. It just doesn’t stop with this one.

Anyways, OP, the Living Story seems like it will be eeked out over time. I know alot of us killed what there was in a day, and now we wait. It’s ok though, go enjoy the rest of the game, the LS will evolve over time. Don’t be too worried about it, cheers ^__^

Am I wrong? Wow has had progressive events and phasing since the very beginning.

Either way, Anet’s ideas are sound… the execution, as always, is a misfire.

They can only copy WoW so quickly, have patience

Orion.7264:

So your argument is “It’s always been done that way, therefor it must always be done that way?” That’s incredibly weak. The Holy Trinity was established as the de-facto form of MMO combat, do we need that implemented as well? Do we need all the other paradigms of MMO games, or can we get away with making some intelligent new leaps here? As I’ve stated, increasing the level cap is a remnant of skinner box sub games, and ALL it serves to do is slow players down to give the illusion of content being larger than it is. My street isn’t longer because the speed limit gets lowered, it just takes me longer to get to my house. Personal Story can progress just fine without increasing the level cap, as evidenced by the fact that by the time you get to the end of the existing personal story, many players (myself included) are already max level. And yet we still do it! Funny how a story guides itself regardless of reward. Either that, or I only read Lord of the Rings to increase my Literacy stat. As for guiding players through zones, I find the existing mechanics of dynamic events and hearts to be more than sufficient, and boredom with/completion of one zone will naturally lead a player to the next, regardless of being forced there to continue leveling.

Innovation is the key to moving forward, not rehashing ideas that have had their day.

Sure, if they release Guild Wars 3. But this game is already designed, developed and deployed.

THIS IS THEIR DESIGN. It would be far, far more terrible to swap out the core progression mechanic at this stage of the game’s lifecycle. I’d be concerned for their design aptitude and in fact their very sanity if they changed a core element they’ve established.

I don’t expect you to understand, but thems the facts. You just don’t like them.

Thrashbarg.9820:

NO

words, words, words, words……

5 pages of NO’s, someone probably made my points already…..

Basically, bigger numbers don’t make more fun (for me and those like me, anyway).

They should just come out with an app people can stare at all day which flashes increasingly larger numbers the longer you push buttons. That should satisfy whatever part of the rodent brain is satisfied by this illusion of “progression”.

Most MMO players derive enjoyment from things other than “killing monsters”. The progression systems are very important to MMO players. It’s deeper than what most simple players need for enjoyjment.

You’re looking for simple “play” but there are layers in this genre that make that almost secondary, and rightly so.

Orion.7264:

Don’t argue negatives. If the level cap needs to be raised, state why.

I’ve done that from day one and ever since.

The level cap needs to be raised because that has been established as the de-facto form of character progression.

Not only does it take you handily through all of the zones, but it also progresses your personal story. With new zones, and presumably an extension of personal story, the well-established leveling paradigm would be used to continue that progression.

Players would be confused if it happened any other way, and rightly so.

Jeskelech.4152:

Ok it makes sense, a new statue in LA, but why is the new statue the old statue?

I mean a lot has happened, sure it got destroyed by the Mad King, and then there was a Karka attack.

My question is then, why didn’t you rebuild the statue in a new form, for instance the Lion finishing off a Karka?

Lion’s Arch suffered some, and the perseverance of the city might be worth illustrating, rather than just rebuilding the old one.

Looking at the building site for a month was sort of leaving us in suspense, well leaving me in suspense at least for what was going to be there.

I hadn’t imagined that the old statue would just be plugged back in, that was sort of disappointing.

Yeah, they really should have built something new.

There is no question that the level cap will be increased… It wouldn’t make sense NOT to.

What I don’t understand is, if you enjoy playing the game… what’s the difference if there are more levels? You get them naturally through playing the game you supposedly enjoy.

Maybe that’s the core question here…. do players actually enjoy the game?

I don’t believe you’re required to do them in any way.

Astralporing.1957:

Zeldain.5710:

Astralporing.1957:

Zeldain.5710:

To those who don’t like leveling, why do you play MMOs? Why did you play Guild Wars 2 in the first place?

Because i liked GW1, and the devs promised me that everything i liked in GW1 will be in GW2?

Yeah, i know, they didn’t really keep that promise, but i can still hope.

I don’t think they ever said anything of the sort. It should have been clear the moment that there were 80 levels announced that the game was going to be very different in terms of character progression.

Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world that’s got more active combat, a fully-branching, personalized storyline, a new event system to get people playing together, and still no monthly fees.
Mike O’Brian, GW2 manifesto.

I think quoting the manifesto at this point is an exercise in ignorance.

Astralporing.1957:

Zeldain.5710:

To those who don’t like leveling, why do you play MMOs? Why did you play Guild Wars 2 in the first place?

Because i liked GW1, and the devs promised me that everything i liked in GW1 will be in GW2?

Yeah, i know, they didn’t really keep that promise, but i can still hope.

I don’t think they ever said anything of the sort. It should have been clear the moment that there were 80 levels announced that the game was going to be very different in terms of character progression.

guardian.6489:

No!!!

I disliked leveling after 30. There’s no reason point other then a number going up and maybe getting a few traits.

Then why not put a piece of tape over your screen where the level is? If there was no reason or point, then why would you care what your level is?

Yes, of course.

And of course it will be.

To those who don’t like leveling, why do you play MMOs? Why did you play Guild Wars 2 in the first place? The very FIRST TASTE of progression you get is hitting level 2. What makes you think that they will shut off this channel of progression forever? Makes no sense.

I find it funny there are threads discussing chores.

Seriously people, look at what you have been reduced to.

A black mark on the genre.