Guild Wars 2

Chickenshoes.6250:

People don’t see a large immediate difference and they assume it doesn’t work or it’s useless. If that’s the way you feel just slap on combat stats and let the rest of us get the loot.

- Actually OP’s question is fine. How do we even define what “magic find” means? It’s not explained in the game. Wiki says this:

“Magic find is an attribute that increases a player’s chance to receive uncommon loot from dead foes.¹ Magic find is applied when a foe dies; it does not apply to loot from chests, items created in the Mystic Forge,² or random drops from gathering. "

Increase chance for uncommon loot? What is uncommon loot? Loot other than “common” class items? So without magic find you could get 2 common items, but with magic find you could get 2 common and 1 uncommon item?

It works like this:

1) If you get an item drop that is not exotic, it fill fill up the next available space in inventory.

2) If you get an item drop that is exotic, if will not fill up the next available space but instead go to that 20 slot Fractal Exotic Equipment Box.

3) If you have 20 slot Fractal Exotic Equipment Box at the top of your inventory, it makes no difference; all item pickups will fill the next available space.

I wonder what kind of brainstorming session they had when they decided to include this kind of item to the game.

Crespus.7405:

Interesting, but what if they hadn’t done these things that you’re objecting to. If they didn’t have ways to remove gold from the economy, price inflation would go insane. If there weren’t so many currencies, then we’d all have run out of things to do long ago, which means we lose out the fun we have with the game. Not all aspects of game design are as romanticized as you seem to think they are. These are important to an MMORPG. Even if some mechanics don’t make sense, they’re essential to the health of a game. What about Guild Wars specifically bothers you?

- It’s not possible to deviate much as genre sets the standards. The fundamental differences. Why do people keep playing the same few Counter-Strike maps for years without idea of permanence or progress? I think it has to do with the fact that it’s a very skill-driven game. Maps that give clear advantage to one team aren’t popular. Compare to GW2: the damage you deal is pre-defined by the stats of your gear and the only thing that really matters is if you choose to attack (continuously…!) or not. No matter if you’re alone against 5 players at the end of the CS round, you still have the feeling you have slight chance to win. If you’re playing GW2 in WvW map, the 5-man team will beat you down without question.

If the actions you do lack meaning, they are omitted. Achievements make it so that you can give meaning to your meaningless repetition of same content: you’re gaining something outside of it. It’s not surprise those players who are not into grinding come to forums ask what there is to do in the game. My view of gaming is closer to childlike playing than work where you “achieve” things. Do you ever get the feeling when you log in and everything you could do in the game feels like big chore?

Crafting – need to buy/gather materials first, craft useless items until you can get what you’d like.
Dungeon – need to assemble team first and pay money to get into the place
Achievements – who is going to see these? If I beat the hardest boss challenge it only gives same points as doing daily quests. Grinders are the kings here and there is no e-fame to be had.
WvW – have to find a good zerg to get anything done. It’s impossible to tell what your personal contribution is in the big fights.

I didn’t mention sPvP. It’s quite accessible. There’s really a question of Why. Out of all the possible ways I could spend my time, is playing this after-planned side dish in MMO game the most fun I could have? Why not dedicated PvP game instead?

Crespus.7405:

Every game has an/a few goals. Mario games your goal is to get to the last level and beat the last boss. Is it ‘grinding’ to beat all the levels before that? In fighting games, your goal is to become better at the game. Is it ‘grinding’ when you practice your combos? In shooting games, your goal is to be able to beat other players consistently. Is it ‘grinding’ to play those matches before you can do that?

- I’m glad you brought up other games. The way I think about those games that you mentioned, they are fundamentally different from the MMO paradigm. In the olden times games were made because someone thought of fun idea, like plumber running around collecting mushrooms, and made it into game. There was no expectation. Fighting games is another similar idea. Surely the bureau of concerned parents didn’t approve such violence, but they were made because fighting is cool when you’re young.

Then you have the MMO genre which is basically a collection of strict rules. You must have numeric stats on characters. You must have levels. You must have item collection and progression. People were playing Warcraft III and thought “what if I could play this game and level up my heroes past the level 10?”. The game that never ends was a popular demand back in the days of limited computing resources. Thus World of Warcraft was made and became insanely popular. The gring was wanted and desired. People wanted goals to work for and bling to show for it.

Thus the new genre was born. MMO had guaranteed longevity, because the endless progression was one of the ideas that was taken for granted. At the same time development resources were wasted on making this possible. It’s not possible for artists to draw infinite number of original art or coders to code infinite number of original events and encounters. The genre is very much different of the hand-crafted experience of Mario series or the old console Final Fantasies. It’s watered down and the appeal is in the floating numbers and red bars going down.

Games are not restricted by nature. They are made so by deliberate choice. The choice of having to unlock maps and waypoints. The choice of making armor cost great number of dungeon relics and the choice of separating currencies and making things bound to character. Restrictions aren’t only in MMOs. The little Mario can’t break brick blocks but the Super Mario can. The crucial difference is this: restriction that makes sense is a fun game element, and the restriction that doesn’t make sense is anti-fun obstructionism.

You can see the explanations for many design choices be like this: We didn’t want players to be done with the content so soon, so we added a new currency and scaled the prices so that the content must be repeated around 50-70 times. We added waypoint fees because gold must be taken away from economy. Those are bull**** explanations for restrictions. Here’s some that make sense for good measure: The little Mario can’t break brick blocks because he is small (and has no power). The shotgun has lower effective shooting range because the ammunition spreads thin. The fire bolt spell is ineffective against sand monster, because sand doesn’t burn.

Guild Wars 2 has a great deal of anti-fun obstructionism, because the choices make no sense. The game developers have to have idea what he wants to present to the player, but the art of that is presenting it in a manner that makes sense. That’s one of the marks of good game.

Orion.7264:

The additional stats are a huge increase, between 12-15% per ring and 15-18% per amulet.

- Ruby Orichalcum Amulet of the Berserker with Exquisite Ruby Jewel gives
90 + 25 = 115 Power
64 + 15 = 79 Precision
5%+3% = 8% Critical damage

Mark of Tethyos Houses gives
94 + 32 = 126 Power (9.6% more)
67 + 18 = 85 Precision (7.6% more)
5%+4% = 9% Critical Damage (13% more)
Also has infusion slot which gives +5 stat of choice

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ruby_Orichalcum_Amulet_of_the_Berserker
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mark_of_the_Tethyos_Houses

You’re exaggerating.

Fractal level isn’t bound to account?!

For me WvW blueprints.

Pandeh.5248:

I just wanted to tell you, look back to the week you started playing. How awesome woudn’t it be to have these laurels and such then? By the time causual players level to 80 they can get a Ascended item for simply just having fun with the game.

- Awesome? Just what about them is awesome? Here, you can have this candy once a day, but only if you complete this list of tasks that I’ve presented for you. Kill 50 monsters. Go see the laurel merchant. Go gather 30 items of harvest. Go and wait until 10 NPCs die and then resurrect them. Good boy, here’s your one laurel. Gather thirty of these laurels and then I will give you the max stat item that you’re after.

I’m not sure what about it is ‘awesome’. I do have daily job that pays me actual money. I can spend that money to buy fantastic stuff and services. I don’t need a second job on my free time.

Berelious.3290:

Considering that IGN, Time, and G4 nominated and or voted it Game of the Year, somehow I don’t think the game is dieing. Leveled off, maybe, but far far from dead.

- Such sites will give high scores to any big budget release. It’s another way to market a game.

Scoring changes in WvW won’t change the fact that defending objectives is boring. You’re literally standing and waiting for enemies to come. Dolyaks move slowly and a single enemy player can kill them. Moving as a huge zerg is the consequence of having strong keep doors and walls. Be glad WvW even has players, because it won’t have in 1 year.

Mackdose.6504:

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

- It’s never the player issue. Players are static. Game is what molds the behavior of players. What is easy to do, what is hard to do? What sort of visibility and access constraints there are? What kind of playing is encouraged and what is punished? These are questions of design.

Squirrelbane.2510:

So it has come to this…….

It’s sad that that’s honestly what you believe an MMO has to be.

- Given the drastic constraints persistent world sets on game design, where can it compete with other games? What does persistent world give that instanced content doesn’t provide? Why are there dozens of games that are nothing but “like WoW, but we did this one thing differently”?

I don’t give two peanuts what’s on WoW, but some developers treat it like holy bible of game design and are scared to omit whatever features are on WoW in their own games. Crafting, resource nodes, daily achievements, events and fetch quests, persistent world, races and professions. Guild Wars 2 is imitating WoW so much that it’s embarrassing. Even in the manifesto video there’s constant references like how they don’t want players to compete over resource nodes. (that there must be resource nodes is taken for granted!)

All these complaints about vertical progression. I understand you guys don’t like it, but what seriously puzzles me is what did you expect to find on MMO game? MMO is a genre that is made to replace your life. There are different different professions, different crafts, two genders like in real life. Everything happens real time and your job is that of a monster slayer. Everything is made in “realistic” style. As politicians in real world strive for endlessly higher standard of living and better economy, so do the developers of MMO games strive to introduce new items to go after.

I thought everybody understood what MMO is about. This isn’t a Mario platformer. This isn’t a tactical combat simulator. This is MMO and MMO = work, grind, day-to-day events.

Ualtar.5047:

I am confused…

What about when you go out to a restaurant? Are you also thinking about the guy that owns the restaurant? What about the company that makes your car, or your clothes, or your toothpaste? Everything is made by somebody, and somebody gets rich off of it. Even in purely socialistic countries there is a wealthy elite that has the power and controls everything.

- OP probably grew up under socialist influence, thinking the only reason for companies to get money is their owners’ greed.

What’s wrong with people on these forums? If you don’t want to do the dungeon or play the game then be on your merry way. This topic was created for discussing dungeon group format. It could be less restrictive, for example playing 5 games on levels 1 to 5 before trying out levels 6 to 10. Same amount of practice, but players would be grouped to bigger categories for easier team finding.

From the perspective of looking for group, this is frustrating. I’ve now done fractals 1 to 6 and the next one is 7. In Lion’s Arch there are basically individual players looking for groups for each numbered fractal dungeon. Someone wants to do level 2, someone level 14, one guy is going for level 9. I don’t want to join lower number group because I can’t progress. I can’t join higher number group because game puts hard restriction on this. Why can’t we just choose our difficulty at will? From my experiences, they’re all the same at least for these early levels.

I prefer to play the game. Not to play the metagame.

I’d like to see two changes to waypoint costs:
- Make them free for maps that are completely explored (as perk for completing all the content inside)
- Make waypoint travel to nearest point free after dying

Why are they so punishing? I’m trying to progress on the new content Southsun Cove on my level 80 Mesmer. I don’t have the best gear, but every time I have to deal with 2 young karka I will die. I’ve died 3 times now and each time I have to use nearest waypoint, which is about 1s40c for each transfer. In addition to this I suffer equipment repair costs. At this point I’m losing way more money than I’m gaining from doing this area. Mobs drop trash that has value below 1 silver on merchant.

Waypoint cost has to change.

Cirroq.2531:

The question I have is this: why do people care whether someone else in the game has better gear than they do when the game scales levels automatically? Are they jealous? Are they just “haters”? Do these people really want everyone to have exactly the same stats on gear so they don’t feel inadequate in some way?

- It’s not often a question whether somebody has better gear than others, but the implications of not having better gear:
1) Being excluded from groups because you have inadequate gear.
2) Having worse performance in PvP because you have inadequate gear.
3) In general taking more time and effort to finish tasks that were designed to be completed with better gear.
4a) Long and arduous content repetition (grind) to get into point where you’re sufficiently equipped.
4b) This grind is restricted to a certain dungeon instance in form of tokens and soulbound items.

If you look into this from point of view of game design, this kind of vertical progression is not very “fun”. The dungeon in itself could be fun, but being forced to do it in order to be competitive is not. Vertical progression is often used in games that are short on content. It saves a great deal of development resources to make players repeat content. I for one would like to see a well-developed system that players would want to play regardless of any external rewards.

RamataKahn.4283:

lol GW2 & lol are not comparable at all, they aren’t the same type of games.

- No, one game has player involvement, meaningful decisions and rewarding gameplay, and the other one is called Guild Wars 2.

The game is a sandbox MMO. Quest lines are cycles that repeat regardless of player actions. The biggest problem in the game is lack of involvement. Achievements and gear tiers are just secondary goals, but what makes the player want those? Kill 15 skritt with that longbow of yours, each skritt taking 10 hits to kill. No more, no less. If you got those extra runes or the new tier gear the game is different: kill 15 skritt, each skritt taking 9 hits to kill. If you press any of the 1-5 buttons you’re doing damage and that’s fine. Enemy drops dull claw you can sell to merchant for 9 copper.

Where is the appeal?

Compare this game to League of Legends. The game has over 100 champions, each with distinct model, lore, role and gameplay. The game consists of active decision making where outplaying opponent gives tangible rewards. Gaining levels makes your champion more powerful, but there’s no power creep because at the start of match every champion is at level 1. Items don’t just drop from creeps either. You must select what you want in the shop. You must want it, you must buy it. There are no achievements. The game doesn’t say “kill 1000 creeps and you’re creep slayer”, because the game doesn’t insunuate that slaying creeps is what the player is after. There’s clear objective that requires teamwork to accomplish.

Back to Guild Wars 2. Log in, see that there’s event in Caledon Forest. Spent 3 silver to get there. Oh, the event is over. I wonder what’s the timer for cycle rotation. Lion’s Arch is crowded with people and my FPS is 10. I guess I’ll go WvW, but it takes 10 minutes running around to see anybody. I could stay for the war effort or I could come back 5 hours later and see the situation not changed at all. See the achievement tab, I need to find 60 monsters to slay. Well, I guess I could, but somehow my hand presses F12 and finds the log-out button. I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.

aliksyian.7642:

I’m opposed to the whole concept of new, higher-stat gear. I want to win or lose based on skill, not the numbers on my equipment.

- What on earth made you think you’d get this kind of gameplay on MMO? The whole genre is antithesis of limited numbers game.

So it’s exactly a game like Diablo III then. New ad hoc difficulty – new ad hoc loot. What developers said on manifesto was just some ideas they had in their minds at that moment. It probably should not be taken very seriously.

They want to make a free-to-play WoW and that’s the driving force before their decisions. I may be old-fashioned gamer, but I’ve no interest in games that make me feel like I have second job.

castlemanic.3198:

ArenaNet, these are quotes from YOUR manifesto. And now, you’ve gone completely against them by adding in a new tier that has increased stats and affects all of the game.

- What new tier of items?

Yeah, what’s with these moderations?

This is an automated message. Your post in Prove the sun shines through you! Face me as anoth was infracted.

Your original post in Prove the sun shines through you! Face me as anoth:

Sevens the lucky.2913:

/bug report it and move on

- Bug reporting is like reporting petty crime. You spend your own time filing a report. The report becomes a statistic (gee, we currently have 5600 bugs) and it’s only used when some threshold is exceeded. When that happens, the party responsible might hire some new staff.

Moderator Notes:

Please refrain from making posts that do not provide any meaningful contribution to the topic at hand.

The message was deleted.

If you believe you have received this infraction in error or wish to make an appeal, please send an e-mail to forums@arena.net.

I’m going insane in Caledon Forest. It seems I can hear this line of meta-event boss (Xoloth or the witch) throughout the whole east side of the lake. Not only is the voice not localized to reasonable earshot range of the boss, the line is repeated about every 30 seconds.

I started hearing it on the marked heart (lower red arrow). At my location (green circle) I can still hear it but the witch group event is no longer in range. I think the source of the voice is where the upper red arrow is.

Duelist’s Discipline reduces recharge of pitol skills.
Hamburger gives experiance.
Moment of Clarity gains attack of opportunty.
Talking with Lexi Price: Seems you have a rat problem, too

Sure sign of amateurish work is text full of typos. It seems that no proof-reading was done, but how can these crude misspellings persist for months?

Indeed. Last time I killed Shatterer I saw one prison during whole match and I was a bit too far away to hit it. This achievement is poorly made.

Chili peppers are used in lots of different food:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chili_Pepper

Arilin.8716:

Guild karma boost, karma banners and karma boosters work. WvW outmanned effect doesn’t work.

- Don’t you just hate it when something says it gives bonus to something and then it doesn’t work or works on some way you didn’t expect?

There is Jalis’ set with vitality major stat available at level 80 and Knight’s set with Toughness major. Given how counter-productive equipping defensive main gear is, lack of defensive sets is no surprise.

Every borderland map has separate points, have you checked them all?

samrogan.9132:

I find it ironic that you’re making a post about uninteresting or irrelevant threads that no one cares about (ie. motives on playing the game) isn’t this the same kind I irrelevant topic? I mean, at least motives for playing has to do with the game, this is pretty left field.

- How come? I’m curious to know is someone thinking they can re-create a game that is already designed, created, shipped and now on maintenance phase in software’s life cycle.

In general discussions subforum there’s always one of these threads of subjects like “endgame”. Opening posts in these threads are grandiose-seeking treatises from some strange point of view, complete with jargon and comparisons to other games. Not once have I seen the author attempt to step “outside the box” of spoon-fed concepts of genre. I don’t see why someone would want to waste their time with these threads. Who cares what some nickname on Internet forum thinks about good motives for playing some game?

It’s a great thing you’re doing this kind of testing. So headgear stats are replaced by breather. Could you add this finding to appropriate article in official wiki site?

Is that 10 slot bag unique skin?

I feel sympathy for OP. I did watch the manifest video, but I considered it just marketing talk. The whole premise of the game is to kill stuff. There’s a saying “when you only have hammer, everything look like a nail”. This applies very well to these sorts of games. Unfortunately there’s only so many ways to contextualize the need to kill and only so many in-game models to apply this killing. Thus you’re in one quest aiding the skritt and another you’re killing them. Painting on the wall is “worship icon” in one quest and “graffiti” on another. Objective is to remove them both.

Persistent world with multiple players puts serious constraints to how the story can be presented. There might be players who haven’t completed the event and those who have already done it. It’s not possible to cater immersive experience to both.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_all_you_have_is_a_hammer,_everything_looks_like_a_nail

Build:
20 Domination (Empowered Illusions, Greatsword Training)
10 Chaos (Descent into Madness)
5 Illusions (Illusionists Celerity)

The problem: enemies take long time to kill with single player, even when making itemization choices that favor maximizing damage potential.

I was in Dredgehaunt Cliffs with level 44 Mesmer, trying to get a skill point at Theign Spiritwalk. The area is full of Jotun, but my character was appropriate level for that content. My equipment levels were 26m/35m/39f/32m/40m/43f for armor (m stands for masterword, f for fine). Accessories, rings and amulets were all level 35 masterwork. My weapon was level 35 masterwork greatsword with minor rune of bloodlust.

I was killing these Jotun so slowly that when I had killed three of them, the first one that I killed had already respawned. This leads me to believe that the PvE is really meant to be played with a small group. Small group has enough damage to kill enemies, but alone it’s slow and tedious. The problem is obviously that the size of the world doesn’t match size of player base on most servers.

Peakitten is a bird with large colorful feathers.

Server transfers have nothing to do with it. Most populated servers always win, because they can field players in larger numbers and thorough day.

Only way to prevent uneven mobs would be to restrict amount of players based on server with lowest number of players. Make it a factor like 120% of lowest. Example: three servers have blue (20), green (22), red (21) players. Maximum players any server could have is 20*1.2=24. If 5 players from blue server now disconnect, then no other server could have more players.

Agreed. Level system in this game has little reason to exist. What if you had same system as in GW1, where max level is 20 and getting there is like doing tutorial. Then you could enjoy having your full potential and play the “endgame”. I think that system was just ingenious, it made Guild Wars stand out from all the stupid gear grinders of the time.

Eveningstar: I think all equipment at Masterwork-grade and above are soulbound on use. I haven’t seen any account-bound gear. Most things like collections and bank are rightfully account-bound. What if you had 5 stacks of onions on your bank with each bound to a single character? Wouldn’t that be silly? Soulboundness of gathering tools has little impact on anything, other than having bank slot occupied by item that only benefits one of my many characters. I complete a low level zone and I’m left with some uses of copper tools. I could put them on bank to have my other low level characters use them.

Event items like those Quaggan pearls from WvW borderlands are also soulbound. It feels silly that I could hoard massive stacks of these on your bank, but then have only one character use them.

Economy argument falls apart very fast. How can there be economy where items and money appear from thin air infinitely (as you slay monsters, complete quests) and nothing decays? Economy is only a facade on single player games, where merchants agree to buy whatever stuff you have for fixed prices and sell you items for convenient sum. It’s meant to feel realistic for that short period of time you’re playing an area. Immersion is broken soon should you begin to “grind” millions of gold pieces. Same happens with game difficulty in games that have character levels.

Is MMO some genre of games where players are so conditioned to poor design that silliness like this doesn’t even spark a reaction?

Who designed this mechanic? Why is it so widespread in the game? It makes no sense why Anet would want you to commit so much into playing one single character. Do they not get money from character slot sales? It’s unnecessarily restrictive and counter-productive.

If the idea is to prevent selling items to other players, then account-bound restriction is much better.

Currently there are things like Siege Weapon Blueprints that are bound to character. Even Harvesting Tools are bound to character that happened to buy them. Seriously? Any character can buy any tool from merchants in Lion’s Arch, a place every character can access right from the beginning of game.

Accessibility is what makes games fun. Take a look at how some great games handle accessibility. If something is inaccessible, it’s inaccessible by logic. You can’t cross a bridge because it’s not built yet. You swing large hammer clumsily because the hammer is heavy and you’re weak. Super Mario (not tiny Mario) breaks brick blocks with his head because of his size. Red text “soulbound to other character” is a creation of poor mind. It makes no sense intuitively and it’s not explained in any way in game. It’s just one bull**** restriction.

Downed state is one of those ideas that enthusiastic creative employees bring up in brainstorming session when the game is in alpha stage. Breath of freshness. Not many games has this one. We could be different.

At some point of critical analysis this idea is usually dropped. There comes a realization that the idea is not used in other games because it’s not a very good idea. Is this what people find enjoyable past the initial novelty? For attacker: do you feel rewarded when your target gets a second healthbar after you’ve depleted it once? Does stopping attack for lengthy finisher move with high chance of failure bring satisfaction? For defender: do you think becoming immobile mud-flinger is more satisfying than dying fair and square?

This is sketchboard stuff, not something that should make it into final game.

Arrow carts on the wall? No problem – just firestorm them.
Defenders repairing the door? No problem – just firestorm the door and it will damage everything inside too.

I don’t think this is reasonable. Investments should reflect each other. If there’s a fort full of supplies, why shouldn’t defenders be able to spend them on repairs? If defenders have spent money on defensive siege, why should it be killed by simple AoE damage? Defending targets is already boring as heck, but it should be just as valid tactic as zerging.

I got this message on game launcher. On what basis does Anet suggests that I should change my password? Has there been queries with similar password to mine, or is this some routine where they suggest everyone to change their passwords in turn?

Exquisite Ruby Jewels can only be used in rings, amulets and accessories.
Ruby Orbs can be used in any equipment and have lower stats than jewels.
Runes can be used on armor only.
Sigils can be used on weapons only.