Guild Wars 2

If someone harrasses you or your friend, just report them for verbal abuse and put them on ignore list. This sounds like a personal problem.

Vayne.8563:

We want to change the way people view combat. Nothing about grinding for achievements. Nothing about grinding for gear. Nothing about vertical progression.

- I see it now. They wanted to make combat and heart quests non-grindy by design. It has worked too. I wonder if I was the only one who was confused by this statement thinking there would not be grind in the game (as there wasn’t in Guild Wars).

Still it’s undeniable that having to complete content repeatedly for dozens of times is grind by design and fractal relics are good example of this. Players are also locked out of content (Guild missions) unless their guild has earned required large number of influence points. Going through the hoops to earn laurels every day is another questionable way. They are really pressing the border of grind with these decisions. I’m afraid of what future may hold.

Vayne.8563:

Anet hasn’t broken any promises, because they didn’t promise anything. Look up promise in the dictionary and see what it means, then use the word.

- What about this video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s

I thought it was pretty clear vision statement that they don’t want grind in their game. Yet they have added grind to their game, more with every patch. And from reading interviews they sound “very excited” about it too. What are fractal relics (quantities starting at 5) for? Why does the back item cost 1,350 fractal relics in a game that is not supposed to have grind?

What about half the achievements? Kill 1,000 centaurs. Get 1,000 sword kills. The whole WvW tab in achievements is about massive grind. Kill a million players in WvW to get your title.

Guild missions: get 5th level unlock and grind 50,000 influence points before you even get a chance to try them out.

Based on these observations, I say that Colin Johanson has mislead the players.

Unspecified.9142:

1) Buy Silver.
2) Buy Nuggets
3) Make 40 Intricate Jewels (filigree + nugget)
4) Move on.

Total Cost = ~40 silver

- Is it only 40 items?
Edit: LOL it really is! I thought I’d have to make those ridiculously expensive 8x rare material crafts on huntsman. Easiest monthly ever.

Good change! Equipment that is affordable. Reward that fits the task. Ectos that are affordable so that more players actually get those ascended accessories. I’m satisfied with this change.

It’s a gamble. So far they’re added new currency for every advancement in progression.

Rin.1046:

They did say in their blog that legendaries will scale up to be best in slot, so I am guessing that once you have all legendaries you will no longer need to grind for better gear.

- They also said that they don’t want players to grind in their game. Look how the game turned out to be. Grind in every possible direction. Grind to laurels, grind to achievements, grind to fractal relics and now they’re super excited to bring another grind to WvW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s

Let’s see how it’s like first. Only 10,000 kills to get the title! Past kills don’t count!

Supply cap increase? I wish they at least fixed the bug of stopping repair after 10 supplies have been spent and allowed 1 supply to be used.

This is how it’s like currently:
You have 10 supply. Keep upgrade allows you to carry 15 supply.
You can’t take any more because you’re “full” with 10 supply.
Spend 2 supply to build/repair something.
Get supplies to 15.
Start repairing damaged gate – repairing stops when you spent 10 and have 5 supply left.
Continue repairing – repairing stops when you have 1 supply left.
Refill 14 supply to get back to 15.

VOLKON.1290:

10% more effective… what the cat does that even mean? Effective at what? Where did that 10% come from? So far with full ascended jewelry the best damage increase I’ve been able to tweak out is about 7.6%, but that’s purely Damage (taking into account precision as a secondary stat).

- Effectiveness here means you kill enemies faster. Faster dungeon runs and less likely to fail. Better 1v1 capability in WvW maps. You may not see the difference anymore once you’ve accustomed to it, but it’s there. For comparison’s sake, create an alt character, use it in WvW and see how slow your killing speed is when trying to kill those neutral critters.

I would like to play WvW. Because I like WvW, I want to play a character that is especially good there. I can’t play WvW on the bulk of my time, because I need to gear up my character. This is done exclusively in PvE. I know about the upcoming WvW patch which adds separate path to grind, so in order to have the ultimate WvW character, you need to play both WvW and PvE. It’s not helping at all!

God forbid if you ever have doubts about the profession you chose. Creating a second character means it’s the same grind all over again from start.

Does Anet care about player experience at all? Like they just picked a number for these ascended accessories that was higher than all existing numbers and added some expensive currency like ectos there to boot. Locked guild missions behind the most expensive upgrades. What, I ask, is the message they are trying to send us here? “This content was designed for big guilds only”? “This content was meant for the players who play a single character for 60 days” / “…who run this dungeon for 200 times”?

I for one don’t mind culling at all on big towns. Previously I couldn’t visit Lion’s Arch without my graphics cards going nuts at all the rendering it has to do.

More players rendered → more work for GPU → more heat generated → faster speed for GPU fans → louder noise → unenjoyable experience for computer user

They can eliminate culling if they want with just flick of a switch. The problem is that our computers can’t handle the load either, because of how the netcode is made up. There has to be significant performance improvements first.

In these types of situations, you shouldn’t care much about what they say. Instead you should care about results of their doing. No chain is stronger than its weakest link. Same applies to gameplay too.

Peetee.9406:

The insignificance of stats comes from skillful play, you’re ability to dodge an attack or your opponents ability to dodge an attack more than makes up for any statistical difference.

- It doesn’t have to be perfect world. We can just make the assumption that player skill has normal distribution. No matter what your player skill is, you’re still 10% more effective by having full ascended equipment. I think the idea you’re having here is that increasing your skill as a player will have more impact on your performance than having / not having ascended equipment. I agree with this idea.

Edge.4180:

I don’t really agree with change for the sake of change. And constantly chasing the carrot is what has ultimately made me abandon other MMOs.

The other night after finishing the Daily, a friend of mine asked me what I wanted to do next. My response was “I don’t know.. I don’t really feel like doing anything now, we spent an hour on the Daily and yet I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything”. I just felt logging off. That’s not a fun gameplay design that’s going to keep me around for long.

- You quit because the next step either wasn’t presented or was too far away to reach. Watch closely how these games are made: when you run around the world there’s always something to do. Quests, reward boxes, achievement pop ups, gathering points all give you a momentary goal to do. It’s that fleeting moment when you see that the next step is too far away that you lose the motivation and hit the log out button.

You don’t have to like it, but you have to be motivated to do it. The most frequent complaint on these forums is that something is not fun. The simple question to ask here is: “Why do you play it if you don’t like it?” They don’t like it, yet they spend considerable time playing it and complaining on forums on their off-hours. Seriously, read about B.F. Skinner’s experiment. These MMO makers have hit behavioral gold vein here.

It’s about the way to manage the playerbase. If nothing changed and everything was stagnant, players would just play through the game and then leave for other games. Daily tasks and rewards associated with them are basically incentive for large community to log in every day and do these tasks.

You want the next bigger carrot (currently ascended items) -> you play every day to get it -> community full of players -> successful MMO

It’s part of behavioral psychology. Phenomenon called operant conditioning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

Songsrock.1035:

Which race should I go with or does it not matter?

- It doesn’t really matter as long as you adjust the nose size to maximum.

Warrior is easy class to play and very effective too. Can’t go wrong with Warrior. Warrior’s profession mechanic is simply a stronger hit.

I have occasionally played WvW. I’m not too hardcore player there, but I’ve gotten the idea what’s it like. So I wanted to track my progress towards those “ultimate” titles. Results are a bit discouraging. Here’s some of them:

2,887 kills (almost tier 4 of 6) – 1% from max
13,570 supply used for repairs (Tier 4 of 5 achievement, I’ve repaired a ton) – 1% from max
201 supply camps captured – 0%
195 stonemist castle defended – 0%
339 total objectives captured – 0%
482 total objectives defended – 0%

So my most frequent activities are now only beginning to get into the percentage scale. The “ultimate” titles are really true to their name. What’s it like to spend over one million supply to repairing walls or capture hundred thousand supply camps while waiting those indignation buffs to run out? I’m afraid the game will be long past its prime before we start to see WvW players with these titles.

It’s nice to get recognition, but at this rate it just won’t happen. Maybe Anet should think their numbers over.

What’s wrong with Ranger? Ranger is my most played character and I’ve never felt like it’s “weak” by any standards. One combo with longbow takes out half of opponent’s health in WvW match. It’s not a 1-hit KO like Thief, but the feel of 1500 range is so satisfying.

If you want broken class, take a look at Engineer.

What you people are playing here is a WoW clone with a twist. Anet has very clearly been comparing their game to WoW during development. This talk about “not being like WoW” is the kind of talk where they want to gain their own leverage – their model is WoW, but they are doing it better! During the first Guild Wars game they thought that the main problems were lack of persistent world, lack of progression and lack of jumping (which were, by the way, features of WoW).

It’s a whole different point of view to start designing games without preconceptions how it should be like. This is not the game for unique hipsters, it’s meant to be a contender among big names. Their dream is to show the world there can be successful MMO without monthly fee. Don’t take this message as offense, because I don’t mean it that way. I for one listened what the developers were saying and understood exactly what kind of game I was buying into. They wanted to move away from Magic the Gathering style that the first Guild Wars was about into world simulator.

Edit:
Adding to this post, I fully expect to see level cap increases, item power increases, new playable races and professions. Colin being coy around community doesn’t change the direction, but it may confuse some players into wishful thinking towards their own ideals.

I haven’t found out what useful purpose turning your character around does. Even if you start to run/jump when your character is facing the camera, it still executes the movement just as well. Isn’t the default behavior of holding down right mouse button to turn the camera around?

tigirius.9014:

As you can see from my signature,

- You think someone cares to figure out your own abbreviations and jargon in you miniscule signature?

Deano.7913:

It makes me nervous that the class I invested time in is going to be something it wasn’t when I put all my time into building it up. I see things about nerfing in this game so much it makes me uneasy. ANet please don’t make the classes I play not fun, as in I don’t really feel like beating on monsters with a wet noodle (challenging: yes, fun: no).

- Anet had the reputation of destroying skills and builds in the first Guild Wars as they became dominant in competitive PvP. It’s a long way to go from here. First I think they want to make sure every skill and trait is working as intended.

The idea of using achievement points as a measure of worth is based on the belief that having great number of points supposedly means you’ve played the game a lot. Having played a lot, the player knows mechanics of the game and the dungeon run is going to progress smoother.

There are several reasons why this idea doesn’t work. Firstly the person who has high number of points is likely making and playing alternative characters. The player may not be any better at playing that character than someone with fewer points and only one character.

Secondly achievement points are given for very trivial tasks. Most of the points come from daily quests, which you can complete by running around in beginner areas of the game. Dungeon content is probably the most difficult in the game and here too experience of that particular dungeon is worth much more than the meager 40 achievement points it gives.

I have completed some of the hardest dungeons while wearing level 80 masterwork gear bought cheaply from trading post and with character class (Ranger) that is supposedly useless from what I read from threads on this forum. The game really isn’t hard enough to warrant excluding players from groups.

What is getting nerf now?

Missywink.7162:

Be that as it may, but to stick it at lvl5 !!!. That is insane. Do you know how much influence is needed to get to lvl5.

Hell I have managed to save up 3.7k influence on my small guild in preperation for this update. Alot of that is basically just from me. Just to get to lvl3 you need 6500.

- You may think level 5 costs much, but we haven’t seen the prices of those missions yet
inb4 ****storm xD

Toxyn.9608:

I do not think it was a wise move to gate the first batch of missions so strongly. The first batch should have required Level 1 of something, the second batch of missions require Level 2 of something, and so on.

- They have to place the new content in a way that pushes the playerbase forward, because none of these updates were present at launch. Same thing with new currencies, new item tiers, new achievements etc. The new has to compete with the old. None of what we have now is relevant when the game is 3 years old.

What would it be like otherwise? “Hello guys, here’s some level 30-40 missions in case your character is not level 80 yet, reward is level 35 rare.”

- The way map is explored
- Skill system with meaningful and interesting skills
- 20 levels and after that success is about your ability
- Guild battles, ladders and general recognition for successful players and groups

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Autoattacks are worthless if they barely do any damage… and vulnerability is limited to 25 stacks which is reached regardless of a ranger stacking it 20 times or not.

- Not even WvW zergs stack vulnerability that high, because everyone seems to run some crit / condition build these days. Every class receives same stats from items and only skill damage and traits make the difference. Ranger Longbow deals more damage than Mesmer Greatsword for example because of better traits.

Ranger has

• First hit always critical
• +10% damage when endurance full, +5% damage longbow, +10% damage flank, 5% of vitality to power (min. +45.8)

Mesmer has

• +50 power, +5% damage to inactive foes, +4% for each readied mantra (max 4)

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Rangers and Engineers especially are worthless.

- Ranger is the only class that can deal autoattacks from 1500 range and stack 20 vulnerability quickly.

Some professions are inherently more useful than others. The Warrior is the master of PvE. Why? Because the class offers everything from group support to fantastic damage output, AoE abilities, range and the widest section of weapons available.

Take a look at a couple of slot skills that Warriors have:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22For_Great_Justice!%22
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22On_My_Mark!%22

First one is party-wide 3 stacks of Might (+105 power, +105 condition damage) that lasts 25 seconds and party-wide +20% critical chance. Now compare this to the Engineer skill “Toss Elixir B”:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toss_Elixir_B

Notice how it says one of the 4 and how it gives benefit to only those party members who are grouped up. Necromancer can’t give might to anyone but himself.

On My Mark is another fantastic party skill, because having Vulnerability on foe increases damage dealt by whole party. Engineer has a comparable skill called Analyze, but it lasts 2 seconds less and has 10 seconds longer cooldown.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Analyze

You’d think that Necromancers are experts at debuffing their targets. Spectral wall matches On My Mark, but its effects require opponent to pass through the wall and has 10 seconds longer cooldown. On My Mark is instant cast.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Wall

You can clearly see why playing Warrior is playing PvE in easymode. They stack damage, buffs and debuffs not only on themselves like every other class, but party members too. Their traits are further damage amplifiers. Everything stacks multiplicatively
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker%27s_Power
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attack_of_Opportunity
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword

In the same sense you can see why the Engineer class design is terrible. You spend slot skills to replace your weapon skills where Elementalists can just change attunement F1-F4. Engineers have no signets and the whole class is about either-or decisions. As you play Engineer you naturally converge into some optimal way of dealing damage. At this point you take a look at other classes and realize that your sacrifices were not worth it.

Legendary weapon is just a vanity item to show off, similar to obsidian armor in the first Guild Wars. It has no better stats than exotic weapons.

You can change your crafting profession by talking to master crafter.

Winning server is relative to matchup and there’s new matchmaking every weekend. Because of this it’s unlikely that one server will get dramatic advantage over others. The number of points needed to unlock further tiers is also scaled upwards so while there might be difference in points there might not be so big difference in rewards.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Power_of_the_Mists

Your argument doesn’t make sense. There’s always a total of 695 points to be shared between servers in every matchup every 15 minutes. This is the static rate at which WvW-induced inflation occurs and how the points are divided between servers doesn’t matter.

For those of you who are saying “wait until level 80 to see boring” I have two level 80 characters already and neither of them are boring to play. You can go back to the fun pre-80 content and finish it without the restraints I listed in the opening post. These restraints are the focus of my criticism here.

Power difference between 80 and pre-80 characters is massive. Why does it need to even exist? Exotic vs. ascended difference is small compared to this. The level system is effectively locking away content that was supposed to be made equal with level scaling system (including WvW battles) and the difference is only getting bigger as new stronger items are introduced. This means that the time commitment between level 1 and full powered character is only getting longer. Of course this is not a problem for the guys who are content to playing only a single profession out of the 8 that this game offers.

From design point of view, it’s a huge waste to have all these pre-80 crafting materials, foods and other items that everyone wants to get off their inventory once they are no longer relevant. I can imagine future content updates will follow either level 80 zone format or possibly even raise the level cap. Pre-80 is to be declared extended tutorial and left at that.

I just did a test how much worse off my level 4 Thief is compared to my level 80 Ranger in WvW. Both classes have underwater spear weapon. My Thief took 47 hits to kill a marsh drake, while my Ranger took only 17 to kill the same marsh drake (without pet support). I just had the basic traits and did simple autoattacks.

So much for having level playing field.

roachsrealm.9284:

wow. don’t play ele or engineer, you’ll never unlock weapon swapping!

its a game! if you find it boring, go play something else.

- What if I want to play WvW? Is it reasonable to first having to play PvE for weeks to months before being able to compete?

Pre level 80 you’re basically playing a tutorial that never seems to end. I decided to make a list of every single drawback that not being level 80 has.

• You’re inferior to every level 80 character in the game, regardless of level scaling.
• You won’t have weapon swapping
• You won’t have slot skills and you won’t be able to equip them
• You won’t have weapon skills unlocked
• You won’t have elite skill
• You won’t have traits and trait points that level 80’s have
• You will have reduced income. What you make in lower levels is significantly less than what fully geared 80’s are making
• Your daily quest rewards are scaled lower because you’re lower level
• You won’t be able to go and experience the higher regions in the world because you die there
• You won’t be a welcome guest to dungeon groups, because you’re inferior
• You will be a low-damage dealing noob that dies in two hits in WvW, good for staying behind repairing walls basically. Take your level 10 character and see how long it takes to even kill those wasps at the start of WvW map.
• Every piece of equipment you get is going to be obsolete in a few levels
• You will have to buy pieces of equipment because the pieces you have will become obsolete

Now for constructive question: what is the best way to level up a new character?

• Black Lion Trading Company icon – giving the amount of coins and items that are available for pickup.

• WvW repairing walls – don’t stop repair after 10 supplies are spent, but instead stop when all supplies are spent.

There are tons of quality-of-life improvements to the user interface that could be made.

Right clicking on trading post takes you back to previous selection. There is no such feature as equipment preview.

Astral Projections.7320:

Personal guilds, get them. You can buy influence and get bank slots that way to store all your junk. Or you could sell the stuff you will never need/use for money and open up slots that way.

I think it’s cheaper to have multiple banks with 50 slots each than one bank with 250 slots. One bank with 50 slots is about 8 gold so you can get 5 banks with 250 slots total for about 40 gold.

- This idea is genious! That’s a perfect way to get free space to store loot.

See the other tabs too. There’s ascended equipment available, which is even more powerful than exotics. Most notable is the ascended amulets, which currently can’t be gotten in any other way.

That guide is so wishy washy as guides usually are. What if everyone really did as you said “fill the gaps” and got Condition Damage weapon, Power traits and survival stats armor? What a run-of-the-mill fighter would that be?

Better guide:
Defense isn’t interesting in this game
If you’re dying, you’re doing something wrong. Most likely this is the case of not using dodge roll properly or not understanding some dungeon boss attack pattern. You have to understand that no amount of defensive stats will cover up lousy playing. Defense isn’t interesting because there’s no benefit other than staying alive and that’s a binary thing. Attack stats on the other hand are providing their benefits each and every time you attack. Besides dodge roll and experience, defensive abilities are the biggest contributors to defense.

Find your damage type and stick to it
Every weapon skill is better at either Power-based attacks or Condition Damage based attacks. Power-based attacks synergize with Power, Critical Chance and Critical Damage. Condition Damage-based attacks synergize with Condition Damage and Condition duration. When itemizing for Condition Duration keep in mind that only full seconds are effective.

Cazio.2137:

Never said I have done everything. Getting better gear is what I want to do but I have no idea where to start. There is no way I have the gold to buy the stuff on trader.

- If you’ve just reached level 80 you still have lots of improvement to make to your character:

• Full exotic armor and weapons with optimal sigils and runes
• Ascended amulets and rings; exotic backpack and accessories
• Maximizing crafter professions and learning the weapon skills if you skipped any

You can still gain levels by farming experience and get skill points, if that is what you enjoy doing.

What were you doing before you hit level 80?

Wolfheart.1938:

P.s. Unless you are top 100 Qualifying Points I don’t think you can claim about how easy the game is to master. Otherwise, if it’s so easy, why are you not up there?

- This argument is poor. Tetris has very little depth in it, but some players are faster (better) at playing Tetris than others. Abbehemoth asked what depth is. Depth is how far in the decision making you can go. Chess is a good example of game that is very deep.

Typically in cases where one choice is undeniably superior to other choices in every situation, depth is shallow. If skill 2 does bigger damage than skill 1 and applies vulnerability too, the strategy of playing skill 2 whenever it comes off cooldown is the correct one. Since skills have high cooldowns, you can basically just play whichever is currently not on cooldown to maximize your damage output.

Spiky.8403:

There is an exotic backpack at Orr temple merchant. And you are one of those people that never have enough and simply must complain. I got my fractal backpack by playing, guess what, I cannot see any difference, if you would give me 2 same characters, one with exotic backpack and othe one with ascended and dont let me look at numbers, I wouldnt have idea which one is it. Sorry I never understood you problem and prabably never will. Since you are obviously not “farmer,” I guess you wont be missing that 10 agony resistance.

- I will be missing the extra stats it gives. You could say that the stats increases are minimal and I agree. However, my point is that acquiring these items has very little to do with skill. Once you’ve completed all the fractals successfully, you’re good enough (skillwise) to get the item you’re after. There is no going around the fact that you’re going to repeat this dungeon for months to get a single item out of it.

I don’t know if this is meant to be a game for unemployed people living on welfare cheques who have 10 hours a day to grind dungeons for tokens. Perhaps I understand your attitude of having completed grueling task and now you don’t want anyone else to get the same goodies you have for less effort.

I feel insulted by developers of this game, who are making me waste time on pointless repetitive tasks.

Spiky.8403:

Everything that requires player’s attention multiple times is treadmill.
Everything that is not obtained without effort is grind.

- Can you tell me how many times do I need to complete Fractals of the Mists dungeon to get Prototype Fractal Capacitor, the only exotic back item in the game? Once you’ve got the number, could you please think for yourself how much content repetition is acceptable before familiarity breeds contempt?

Besides having better rewards at certain tiers e.g. (1-5), (6-10)… and bosses getting agony damage from level 10 onwards, what is the difference between, say, Fractal difficulty 7 and Fractal difficulty 9?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists