Guild Wars 2

I’m still confused about NCsoft’s reasoning for this. They could potentially make lots of money off of a Cantha expansion. People in the west like asian-themed fantasy games with western gaming mechanics. Guild Wars already has rich lore to draw from, think of the possibilities! How can NCsoft say no to greater profits?

I’d also like to know if they’re going to be implementing this creature at some point in the future, or if it’s just become “vapor”. I agree that it is suspicious of them to show so many finished creatures only for them to be absent from the final product. I heard they had run out of time and couldn’t develop everything they wanted to but this is a little ridiculous. This game is solid, but they could have done so much more with it given the amount of attention it has received up until 2012.

Also what happened to the giant dragon corpse?

Please no more loot nerfs. Killing incentives is the last thing they need to be doing right now. Buffing the Dragons isn’t a bad idea though.

Refugee Malia is adorable.

I’m trying to enjoy the game again, and so far it’s been ok. I started logging in for dailies to collect coin, karma and laurels. I’m also slowly leveling up my guardian, elementalist, necro and ranger. I’m still deciding which races I want for which professions though. I’ve been busy lately but I’m trying to explore more content before the update at the end of the month. Events are generally still fun to get in on.

I still log in from time to time. It’s just as fun as it was before, though it’s a bit less crowded. Working on my drunkard title since I already have Party animal and Sweet tooth.

I didn’t hate Trahaerne, but I didn’t particularly like him either. He didn’t strike me as as being much of a leader. I liked him as a supporting character but even he didn’t have the authority that Kormir had. At least I could respect her as a leader at that point in the story. Though I’m sure there are many who would disagree with that.

I liked that he was involved with the cleansing of Orr, but he just wasn’t all that strong a character in general. I’m glad they picked a Sylvari though. They seem to be the most neutral and diplomatic race since they don’t have a long history of bad blood between them.

Just when I wanted to give this game another chance….though I wouldn’t put it past NCsoft to make a strange decision like that.

I also became obsessed with GW shortly after working through the Factions Campaign. A GW2 version of Cantha would be a dream come true for many people here, I think. They’ve introduced the Tengu already, why not use them as a gateway back to Cantha?

I’m hoping this is some misunderstanding or rumor. Perhaps they meant that Anet should stick to westernized gameplay models, not purely western aesthetic themes, which would be two different things, you know?

Part of what I loved so much about factions was that it was a game that was a western interpretation of an asian themed fantasy world. Asian games are riddled with appropriated european etc. characters and places. They make asian games with western themes, why can’t Anet make an asian themed continent within their western game?

If there are any legal or cultural concerns why can’t they just use the disclaimer that movies have? “This is a work of fantasy/fiction. Any resemblance to living or dead individuals is purely coincidental…” That sort of thing.

Hantu.2815:

Well, how about the asians who live on the west side of the planet?

I am sure that they would be pleased to have their culture represented in this massive and beautiful game, while the non asians clearly welcome diversity into Tyria.

I am personally offended on behalf of the Asians to have their culture thrown out from the game in scare of offending the few who do not support cultural diversity all across the land.

Completely agree.

This update sounds like it has some potential. I really hope this one works out. The flexibility of the dailies could make more people happy than unhappy, and the pvp additions look like they might be fun.

It wasn’t hard for players to balance, it was tough for the devs to balance every month. They told us that years ago. Still think it was a mistake to limit skills so drastically, but I can understand their reasoning for doing what they did.

@Red Falcon: GW1 may have had only 8 skill slots, but you got much more utility and a far greater variety of choice in skill sets than GW2 will ever have. GW2 skills are ok, but apparently some people weren’t satisfied with how this has been implemented and stopped playing because of it. Unfortunately it’s something they won’t ever modify and have never planned on changing.

Chuo.4238:

OP,

We’ve gone round and round and round with ANet on this issue. They’re not gonna budge. For the record, however, I personally agree with you. It was way more fun to have all those skills to chose from and experiment with and create teambuilds with.

GW1 is far superior to this…in so many ways…not just this one…

Also agreed, though the new rewards are a step in the right direction. They should have done this months ago, instead of focusing on one dungeon that made the vast majority of PvE irrelevant.

No Walking.6349:

So as far as I can tell, you have kept dailies the same, but have only made them harder, and require more boring stuff like crafting.

What happened to the new and exciting things every day, encouraging us to go back to old areas?

Still waiting for this to happen, but the laurels are a slight improvement. The rewards look decent too.

The new daily requirements aren’t that bad, you can make 10 items very quickly. Reviving 10 allies would have been hard except that they included NPCs which simplifies the task.

Story mode/Explorable mode dungeons still need a little love though.

Guesting is fine, but they really should have had it no later than one month into release. Too little, too late.

Hundreds of skills to choose from to create your own unique build.
Max. Level 20
Farming for goodies during festivals. Farming in general.
8-man pugs: the good, the bad and the ugly.
I miss being able to watch GvG tournament finals. I think you would hit ‘B’ and you could pick any of the recent matches.
Better dungeons.
Great missions and likable characters.
FREE MAP TRAVEL T__T
Free minipets.
Great boss fights.
I do love heroes, but it kinda defeats the purpose of having a persistant world if you only need henchies.
Didn’t think first person view was such a big deal until I was without.
Non-gimicky elite skills.

Did they really kill off good Ranger trap builds? Haven’t gotten leveled up a Ranger far enough to know, but that would be a shame if it’s true.

Well said!

WoW gear progression doesn’t go over well either. Every wow player I know leaves that game after they get burnt out to go and find a, and I quote: ‘WoW replacement’. They try it and immediately go back to what they are most familiar with. That’s why Tera, TSW and SWTOR are all free to play now. For that exact reason. Horizontal progression was the way to go, I don’t know what made them think they could compete when there are so many good examples of successful games having to alter their business model. It isn’t just the fact that free-to-play is the way of the future. The significance is in WHY they’ve been forced to change. Horizontal progression should have been the priority.

I logged in recently after a few weeks hiatus but I just didn’t have the motivation to play for very long. Leveling up is fine, though it isn’t the same as GW1. But the fact that it’s so hard to get groups for dungeons except for CoF, CE, and possibly AC depresses me too much to keep playing for long. Hopefully these new updates will bring something fruitful but who knows. Since they’ve already promised to improve Fractals and continue to work on ascended gear I doubt the situation with dungeons will get much better unless they actually come through and make the rest of the game content relevant for players. I love exploring as much as the next person, but it’s irritating when you can’t find anyone to group with or have to wait so long hoping you might find people. What’s sad about that is this defeats the purpose of getting rid of the trinity in the first place. It was supposed to be easier to find groups, but because they decided to funnel all their care into vertical progression, the rest of the dungeons are so dead that only a scant few players care to run the other dungeons anymore.

A dungeon group finder may be an effective solution but we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully these updates over the next two months will be fruitful somehow.

The only GW related item I’m interested in at the moment is the upcoming GW1 Canthan New Year celebration. I wish they’d make a reward system like the dailies in GW1 that provided incentive for players to run old content again.

My thoughts are similar to yours OP.

In some respects I think it has made some good improvements. Crafting, trading post, adding races, large explorable persistent world and getting rid of the holy trinity are a few of them. Lore and easter egg wise, I cannot complain. There are many tidbits of information given that old GW1 vets will appreciate from both the books and the old game, but I feel like there’s a lot of information they’ve left out. What happened to Livia, for example? We see traces of her travels but not much else other than that. That is a minor complaint though. The professions are ok, you have enough variety to please many different people. DE’s are in their infancy I think and will take time to develop and refine into richer and more varied outcomes. For the most part they are enjoyable though I have to admit the kill x several times over becomes stale quickly, but other events aren’t quite so bad. Leveling is ok…..but I still think 20 levels or more levels are better than 80. It would make players feel as though there is more ‘endgame’ so to speak, like they did with Factions. level 20 and the rest of the game you were left to explore and complete. It gave the illusion that there was more to do once you reached max level. Maybe they can do this for future expansions.

It was easier finding groups for dungeons but now fractals has laughably made it more difficult to find groups.

Generally though, the more I’ve played GW2 the more and more disappointed I’ve been. I hadn’t realized how important farming had been to me in GW1 and how it kept me interested in the game over a long period of time after I stopped running missions regularly. The storyline is a mixed bag of successes and failures. It isn’t as interesting as the story was in factions and nightfall or even eye of the north. Not all, but many of the characters are wooden and unlikable, or just bland. I don’t really care what happens to them. In GW you were the hero because you happened to be involved with certain characters, it was kind of annoying to hear them constantly praising you. It broke the illusion for me, for some reason. Like they were trying too hard to please.

I do sorely miss the original mechanics for GW1. I don’t hate the combat in GW2 it is fun in it’s own way, but GW1 was much more interesting. There are too many gimmicks in GW2 skills and not enough utility. I remember the devs talked about longer lasting, sustained combat that would have been aided by potions, several years ago. But perhaps making fights longer and monotonous was a mistake. (I am so glad they didn’t include potions though!) Other than that I can’t really put my finger on it, but the battles for instances in GW1 were much more challenging. There needs to be more incentive to do dungeons, in GW1 they eventually added the coin and mission dailies which helped draw people to those missions for a while, but this happened like, five years after GW1 had been released! It’s a shame that they felt like fractals would improve the game because really I’ve yet to see it. All it did was siphon players away from all other areas into this one isolated dungeon that has little to no relevance to the rest of the game’s objectives.

The battle with Zhaitan was not as bad as I had imagined, it was quite fun in it’s own way and was appropriate for a final boss fight. Though the endless button mashing as kind of anti-climactic.

I enjoyed the halloween and Wintersday event but for some reason I have less incentive to log in for these than I did for GW1 events. I guess collecting novelty items to complete my sweet tooth and party animal titles had me logging in for a good while, and the quests felt rewarding. Wintersday is somewhat weaker than Halloween was.

I agree with many of the posters in this thread though. GW2 is fun in it’s own way, but it is rather shallow. Normally I would attribute this to nostalgia, but it would seem that GW2 tried too hard to be like conventional MMO’s and lost sight of it’s original identity. Or maybe it just tried hard to do too much too quickly, trying to please everyone and pleasing no one in the process.

I still feel like Fractals divided the community in the most detrimental way, since it broke away from Anet’s original and unique vision of an MMO that stood apart from others, not just one that tried to haphazardly please gear grinders.

Incentives and rewards for ALL aspects of the game must be reworked! We need a reason to want to log in.

Roargathor.2743:

Fractals killed WvW on many servers because so many players feel compelled to grind for Ascended gear. Huge mistake. This game was the go to for PvP. Now it’s a joke.

Agreed. They need to either reduce the rewards in fractals or SIGNIFICANTLY boost rewards/incentives for doing PvP, exploring the world, and all the other PvE dungeons. Not to mention there will be more people to do dynamic events. That will make servers more lively and give people something to log in for. I miss farming around in zones for Festival items. Higher drop rates made it worthwhile since you constantly had glittering seasonal items to farm for and use toward your sweet tooth, drunkard, party animal etc, titles. I guess the ugly wool clothes work well, but somehow I feel like i don’t get very many drops. They seem so rare, so I ended up just using gold to get what I needed for skins off of the TP. Granted, there is a great variety of items to acquire, just the process of getting them isn’t as fun for some reason.

The cities as they are now are lovely, although I do like the old versions of Rata Sum and The Grove better since they’re actually larger and more spacious.

I liked the old palette better reminds me more of GW1 and it was less colorful, but the new versions look good regardless.

The trinity argument is flawed and subjective. Clearly the author just misses rigid roles because it gives him a sense of purpose. If he had used traits properly he would have been able to create his own combination of support + damage or control + support if he wanted too.

In fact in most of his points, he just makes broad sweeping generalizations that don’t even apply to every single DE or craft. Crafting is NOT THAT HARD. Come on. It’s pretty kitten simple once you identify the tool system for combining items. Cooking is the only craft that requires a lot more experimentation. Granted there are still issues with drop rates and what not, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they don’t work. They’re actually great Quest replacements, though whether or not you agree that they are totally fresh and dynamic remains to be seen. Some are more mundane than others, true, but I actually like searching for them for my dailies.

It sounds like he played through the human storyline which is a shame because I heard that’s the weakest one out of the bunch. I will agree that the storylines have been inconsistent which is a shame, because the story was one of the things I enjoyed most about GW1. Having said that I wouldn’t say it’s terrible. Again it would depend upon which race you started with.

I will say that I was kinda disappointed with the Destiny’s Edge Dungeon storyline. Almost all of the members were irritating to listen to. They sounded like disgruntled adolescents rather than seasoned warriors or tactical geniuses. As mediocre as the novel was, it was much more fun than the actual story in the game. I found as I completed each dungeon that I cared less and less about all of them, even Rytlock. It made them all sound egotistical and petty.

The author didn’t mention this, but one minor point of criticism is that anet didn’t really explain cross-profession combos. I never ever see anyone calling out combos in groups, they just sort of happen randomly. A nice indicator is when your character shouts, but aside from that, I think a lot of people don’t even know combos exist. Yes it’s on the website, but it hasn’t been used much in tactical play because there has been little incentive or necessity to do so, which is a shame, because it is a great idea. This was supposed to add complexity to combat, but I’m almost certain most people don’t try to use even simple field + projectile combos. Arguably, one could say that this was a bit half-heartedly promoted by Anet and one has to wonder why they didn’t try to make it more crucial to combat. It’s almost more of a fun bonus nobody notices because they’re too busy trying to dps the boss. Maybe if a combo provided a powerful interrupt and they mentioned in dialogue that this would help expediate the event or dungeon boss encounter.

I also agree with those saying that this game does have other problems, but the ones mentioned in the article are minor or non-existent.

Option 1 sounds like the best compromise to the situation. NCsoft and Anet are trying to maximize their cash shop profits, so why not make pets unbound? The players will continue to increase their spending on the hope of getting a mini and other players can buy the mini with gold off of the trade broker.

The mini pack was an excellent idea. No deception, no chance, just straight up purchase. Buy another pack of three to get the rare mini. I don’t get a boost from having to waste time and money collecting minis I just like them because they are fun and cute.

But now that they’ve implemented RNG to mini pet acquisition, their motives are fairly transparent. It would be nice if they could compromise with us on this.

I miss the GW1 minis. Free pets on your character’s birthday AND they were tradeable in a buy to play game. :/ Even the collector’s edition mini could be traded. I mention this only because there are a lot of people who haven’t played the first game so they don’t know what it was like before GW2 came out.

It can be a little difficult for people to identify the female charr, but usually it’s easier just to look at the fluff on their tails. Males have lion like tails and Females have fur running from the base to the tip.

It’s true though, most of the time I see male charr more than female, but that’s to be expected.

For people who don’t have a lot of time to play, doing dailies is a great way to earn karma and gold for yourself. All you have to do is zone into two maps and run around killing things and participating in events. You can go back to the low level areas if you want and it’ll be faster since your gear will be superior. It’s a fairly pain free way to solo content and be active without eating up a lot of your time grinding. Plus you have the entire map to explore so it doesn’t force you into doing just one task.

Oreoz you are right about Orr, there were many bugs with DE’s this weekend and they need to fix that. I also hear that people love Frostgorge sound and The Southsun cove much more than Orr so this is something they’re probably looking into. Fractals arguably draws the most people, I can guarantee it. Large boss events like the dragons draw many people because of the rewards you could get. The same is true for fractals. Fractals doesn’t ruin guilds, but it does make it harder to find groups for every other dungeon out there. People are no longer interested in running certain explorable instances and even some in story mode.

I don’t think this game is in trouble. The population is still steady, but people are becoming discouraged by the direction this game is going in. Honestly, I probably would be quitting too if it weren’t for the fact that I love this game so much. But I am biased in that respect, as I know of many others who are getting frustrated and are not returning at all because they are bored or don’t care anymore. Will this pessimism kill GW2? Not likely. However that doesn’t mean there is no affect on the community as a whole.

OP: You do realize that if they did this waypoint costs would double or triple and drop rates would be reduced even more. We’d get more game breaking items in the cash shop and the price of gems would go up. There’s no way they’d ‘refund’ everyone who bought the game prior to a f2p launch. They need that money to sustain their company and make up for 5 + years of development costs as well as additional content updates.

So our feedback means nothing if we say Anet or Arenanet? I’m not sure if I understand this. I suppose they are referring to direct demands for a reply and not general complaints.

However, I intend to continue making complaints where necessary, whether they read it or not. :p

I still see a lot of people participating in events, though groups are harder to come by for anything besides fractals. Generally though the moral is a bit low as I still hear grumbling about bugs and a smaller active population on all the maps.

Well whether they listen to our complaints regardless of how we word it won’t matter, if people are that upset they’ll just continue to see a drop in population like in every other game. When a company fails to respond accordingly to the demands of their player base, people leave for greener pastures that’s just the way it is.

I also agree that there needs to be more of an incentive to go here. The difficulty is fine, but maybe you can include more special rewards or higher mat drops.

I’ve been enjoying the content updates so far. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them ‘expansions’ but they do add a lot of great stuff to the game. Bug fixes also need some attention too, like others have already said. DE’s in Orr are stuck at the moment.

My server isn’t empty. It’s just a pain in the kitten to get a group for anything other than fractals, which is why I’m boycotting that dungeon for now. The game is fine other than that. A few bugs here and there but not too bad.

I finally hit 80 and have partially geared my Rit….I mean Charr Mesmer up!

The one on the right is my current set. ^^

Does anyone know if either of these armors are available either through crafting, karma, gold etc? They’d make great Mesmer skins, but I’ve yet to see them anywhere.

Has anyone seen these beside on NPC’s?

Whoo thank you for adding the Makeover kit!

I’m totally excited for this. Though it is somewhat interesting to note that they are going to utilize technological advances in Tyria to develop events for Wintersday…as far as lore is concerned.

I’m actually most excited about the Wintersday changes in Lion’s Arch. I hope they play the old soundtrack that old Lion’s arch had for the holiday season.

Drops for black lion keys are so difficult to acquire without purchasing them for gems, but I hope I can get a few before the event starts.

I’ve yet to touch Fractals due to the Ascended gear issue and the fact that I’ve been having more fun exploring the map in PvE, but I’m glad they said they’re looking over this again. If they added ascended gear (and no additional tiers of gear in the future!!!!) to the other dungeons, then I’d be ok. Why can’t they have certain pieces of ascended gear drop in each dungeon across the map? That way people can still enjoy Fractals and there will also be motivation to run the other dungeons as well. I can get groups for story mode in most dungeons, but I noticed it’s been a little slower lately.

Just the fact that they added ascended gear and are moving further away from implementing horizontal progression would imply that they had a change in philosophy and a different group of designers is in charge of implementing such ideas since this would never have happened in GW1. It is rather deceitful since they have been taking advantage of the old Arenanet reputation to promote this game and to try and soothe the old players concerns over new changes for the last few years.

I am however, glad that they continue to tell us where they are in the reiteration process and I can’t fault them for saying things like, “we will be addressing blah blah blah.” At least they talk about it, most companies don’t even bother to respond to players until they’ve lost a significant portion of their player base and even then communication can be sketchy at best.

After having played Guardian and a little bit of the Warrior, I would really love to see a third heavy armor profession. I don’t have any really good ideas for how they would implement this, beyond adding one more flavor to what is currently available. Something like a dark lancer with mid – long range melee attacks that utilizes spells to enhance attacks and add condition damage. Heavy armor professions have been so much fun! It was unexpected since I usually stick with caster classes.

The return of the Monk would be awkward at best, but perhaps if they made a ‘Brawler’ type that used heavy armor and employed speed enhancing tactics and short range weapons like daggers or knuckles. The monk sounds too much like a Thief so I don’t know how they’d make it feel unique.

However I would also love to see the return of either the Dervish or the Ritualist. I am also eagerly anticipating Cantha, though I doubt we will get there any time soon since half of the Tyrian Map has yet to be opened up to us. :sigh: Cantha….

As for a Bard profession….does no one remember the Minstrel? lol

Many of my guildies are upset because they got kicked out thanks to a new build being uploaded. I just wanted to mention that because they are not happy with not receiving any loot for all their hard work. They also were not clear on where to go or how often the event was supposed to occur.

My own experience with the second day event:

I really loved this escort DE as well where we had to run around the island creating new paths and clearing out karkas! The bridge building was fun to watch, Tyria has the most kitten carpenters around.

The permanent content was supposed to be through the new fractals dungeon and the special one-time events are meant to give players a sense of a changing dynamic world. Many people were complaining that none of their actions made any difference in tyria, so that is the reason why some of the events only occur once, or at least for the duration of one day. I missed the first event on friday and the Mad King’s entrance through the lion’s arch water fountain, but that’s because i had other obligations. I think they tried to make it more fair by making this event on the weekend instead of during the week.

I think there are definitely things the team needs to rethink for future events much of which involve lag and loot distribution, but I wanted to talk about the things that really went well for me and my particular overflow server on Borlis Pass:

When we went out there it wasn’t exactly clear what we were supposed to do until the last minute, but once the escort quest started everything sort of fell into place.

We ran to the Nest area following the NPC’s up and then back down the ramp. When the first wave 2 – 3 Champion and Veteran Karkas attacked it was a bit chaotic due to lag. The things that hit us hardest were the poison and the rolling attacks. But after the first two major death waves, when we lost about half the group, people started to get wise and learned to watch for the red circles and avoid the poison. Keeping your distance from the Karka was pretty crucial. As a cloth wearer I was worried about survivability but I learned to time my dodge rolls and minimized much of the damage I sustained. Reducing the death penalties and expensive armor repairs for such events in the future is a great idea! That would encourage people to come out to these events and worry less about the cost. With all the hazards being thrown out from the Karkas and their spawn there was enough of a sense of danger to warrant the use of a more forgiving death penalty.

There were also some strategies developed by our little army that helped us be somewhat successful. One thing that was really impressive about our group during theses massive waves of combat where the Guardians. Staff guardians were throwing out Lines of Warding consistently as the fights progressed to help protect the middle line from being taken out too early by the Karkas air attacks. (those poison things they kept spewing out?) I also saw a bunch of people throwing out Shields of Absorption too. There were a lot of warrior banners out as well throwing out buffs. The Necros and Ele’s were also consistently using their water aoe heals and necro wells of blood, which helped a lot. The Mesmer’s time warp was useful in helping people take out the Champions faster. I think I saw a few Ranger buffs from spirits and Engineer packs too, but I’m not as familiar with those profession’s skills so I’m not too sure. The ones I listed are based off of what I could take note of.

Generally though we had a great mix of people fighting and reviving while we were on the ramp and also back near the camp where the mortars were stationed. I think because we had a good mix of people rez’ing and fighting that we were able to somewhat hold our own. Yes I realize there was a way point right next to it, but many people just waited to be revived. We fought the small mobs first before targeting the larger ones.

There was a lot of joking around, some complaining but for the most part I think the people who were able to stick around (not counting disconnects) had fun.

Again, uncovering the steam vents was a great way to control the Ancient Karka’s movements without relying on those big lasor cannons, so we were still in the midst of combat. The part where the Ancient Karkas tried to flee by rolling down the ramp was hilarious. The final fight (again, minus any d/c’s and other technical mishaps) was excellent and the ending cinematic was satisfying. The loot given was great as there was much speculation throughout the whole fight as to what we would finally get since there were only small rewards given at the end of each segment of the event.

Edit: I also wanted to mention that there was one guy in our group who after we had beaten the Ancient Karkas, remarked “This was the most epic event I’ve experienced in twenty years of gaming.” So for the parts that did go well I wanted to say grats.

I think a lot of people had a great time and I wanted to thank you Anet for making this on a Sunday. Friday is a bit tough for people to participate in since most people have work or school, but this worked out well for a lot of people, I think. I am definitely going to participate in these one-time events when I am able to and I hope we’ll continue to see more improvements in the future.

Brace yourselves, Wintersday is coming.

Ahhhhhrrrrrgh it’s huge! Get it off me! Get it off me!!!

Great ending! I loved how it tried to crawl out of the lava.

I have to admit…I like the tuna morph.

“Illusionary Duelist, Phantasmal Swordsman, Phantasmal Mage, Phantasmal Defender, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Rogue, Phantasmal Warlock, Illusionary Mariner, Illusionary Whaler, Phantasmal Berserker, and Phantasmal Warden: These skills must now be cast in line-of-sight of the target. These skills now behave as normal attacks that the mesmer must connect in order to summon the phantasm, and they will fail if the mesmer is blind or the ability is cast on an invulnerable target.

I suspect most of us saw this coming, but still, it removes one unique utility feature we had. IMO this wasn’t needed due to the relative ease of destroying any of our illusions. Definitely a severe nerf. I wonder if this means summons can also be dodged, etc. if they are going to take out the utility and require these skills to behave like all other weapon attacks, then I think we should get sigil bonuses on them as well."

That’s fairly harsh, but I guess i can see the reasoning behind it.

When you just shoot at Zhaitan from a distance, you don’t really get a sense of how huge and powerful he is. Closer encounters would give players a stronger feeling of danger and awe. I get that firin’-my-lazor-cannons seems more plausible to the GW2 world, but from what a lot of people have said, it wasn’t really all that fun. That’s why we like games where we can pick up a digital dagger, axe or sword. Because you can fight mythic monsters face to face, honestly it’s kind of like the make-believe games you play as a kid.

The build up to the Elder Dragon’s has been great, so you can’t half-kitten their fights.

lol, they aren’t going to pick up wow players. Those people are too busy with MOP and gearing for raids, if they haven’t finished doing that already. A friend of mine is waiting for her next paycheck so she can renew her subscription. :p

Even if Anet revamped their game and made it another boring wow-clone it wouldn’t draw wow players because it isn’t wow. End of story. None of the other so called wow-killers have been successful by doing this.

Chris Whiteside’s post on ascended gear is somewhat reassuring, but I don’t trust that Anet will deliver on their promise until after they’ve added all these ascended pieces.

I’m probably going to skip acquiring any ascended armor for as long as I am able too, though with PUG’s that’ll probably be difficult.

I’m not interested in this new dungeon, since there isn’t much lore available except that it takes place in the Mists.

Also: The people who want yet another armor tier are just going to start whining again once they’ve gotten this one. I wish Anet would stick to their promise of more horizontal progression and less junk we need to collect in order to be viable.

The few people I know who quit were all WOW junkies and were looking for a WOW-replacement. This is Guild Wars. It should stay that way. GW2 may be a different game but it’s no kittening, blasted World of Warcraft. It used to be a better game, hopefully it will continue to have it’s own unique identity and not just because of aesthetics. They should be working on more areas to explore and more complex and diverse Dynamic Events. This gear is just a small fix to silence the few complainers that love gaining an edge over people and don’t really enjoy Guild Wars (2) as it should be.

No thank you. I don’t want gear tiers. Dressing it up with the word ‘ascended’ is kind of insulting too. Like ‘oh that will surely placate the old fans!’ :wink:

MrLee.6892:

Scryar.2954:

I’m playing 90% of the time WvsWvsW and 10% spvp in Guild Wars 2. If the new gear is better then the exotics gear and i will be forced to go zo dungeons to stay competive in wvswvsw i will just quit this game. This is so unbelievable stupid. Make it buyable with karma/badges/gold or not usable in wvswvsw or you will loose many pvp players.

They are adding 200 crafting recipes also… who says you just have to run dungeons?

See this type of knee jerk reaction is why we have a 50 page thread…..

That’s not the point. What if every major update they’re adding 200 more crafting recipes for the next highest level of gear to grind for? I don’t want to keep having to make new crafts just to be able to play in the newest dungeons. I want to make crafts because it’s fun, not because it makes me more powerful. It’s still a tiered, gear treadmill…IF this is indeed what they plan on doing.

At the moment we still need more information, but this doesn’t bode well.

Mada.5319:

Naoko.7096:

MMO needs progression. If not, it’ll die as a limited game with no growth.

GW1 had ZERO gear progression and it’s still going on after 7 years. Your argument is invalid.

If gear progression is the only thing anet can do to keep people playing, then this game deserves to die.

If this turns out to be true, I’d have to agree unfortunately.

Just look at other recent mmo’s. Anything that tried to be like wow has had their player base shrink dramatically. It cannot be done better than Blizzard, they already have the gold standard winning formula those types of players crave. Trying to copy them for a shot at snagging a piece of their pie is only going to lead to smaller server pops. It’s really foolish, business-wise.

Veldan.4637:

Korrigan.4837:

IonicBlaze.7948:

In my eyes A-net will lose more than win with this bullkitten

It’s pretty obvious when you look at the reactions. Only a tiny minority like the change, the vast majority dislikes it.

Not really. The amount of QQers on the forums is always higher than the amount of people who are happy with everything. That’s because people who are happy, and like the new changes, have no real reason to post on the forums, while the negative people make huge QQ threads like this one to show how unhappy they are.

A thread like this one doesn’t say a thing about the people who like it / people who don’t like it ratio.

Sorry bro, this is kind of a big deal for people who decided they loved this game after two months of playing it, despite the bugs, gold spamming etc. All the haters went back to their MMO of choice already.

Sorry I didn’t read through the whole thread, but I’m a bit confused about Ascended gear.

Will it only give you an advantage in the new dungeon? Or are the infusions something we’re supposed to shoot for to be efficient in any PvE setting? Also how is this going to effect PvP, if at all?

If it’s only for the new dungeon I’m partially ok with that. But what’s supremely troubling about this is that Arenanet wants to cater to the WOW/traditional MMO crowd over their new community. They might be telling us now that this is the only gear upgrade we’re getting, but it sounds like they want to leave some wiggle room for future ‘tiers’.

If this is all that MMO’s today have to offer I think I may just stick to single-player games.

Maybe they’re just testing the waters with this announcement. If not, it’ll be clear that the old vision of GW is gone and we’ll be left with something much more mediocre. That’s too bad, because the Halloween event and updates were smashing.

I am excited for this. Underwater areas have so much potential!

From a PvE perspective, GW2 will definitely get more level 80 content that is non-grindy does not require raiding and a gear treadmill. There are many patches of the Tryian map that have yet to be opened up and that will come with time. Adding depth to DE’s and Meta DE’s will be up to Anet to determine. Adding DE’s with multiple outcomes and multiple event chains as well as more permanent world effects will give more meaning to fighting for those events. There will also be more achievements to shoot for over time.

Addressing the issue with “Equality”:

Aside from that, the reasons I have heard for why people leave GW2 is because they love the gear tread-mill and the simplicity of knowing your ‘role’. It has nothing to do with being a no-lifer or not. But your sense of progression is still tied to how much time you invest in the game itself, which is what keeps people paying subscription fees. In traditional MMO’s, people gear up for raiding and raid maybe 2-3 times a week on average at night after they’re done with work. They like this because it is convenient and predictable. You do your part, study up on raids ahead of time, and press the same buttons over and over again. You are rewarded for your repetitive work by getting better gear and stats thereby increasing your illusion of ‘progression’ as a character. It really has nothing to do with skill at all. Your sense of accomplishment comes from having the satisfaction that you are much more powerful than players who have invested less time. You haven’t gotten ‘better’ you’ve just played more than other people.

As for actual distinctions in skill, I think you can get a better sense of this in PvP then in PvE as it currently stands in GW2. One could argue that jumping puzzles require a certain amount of skill to complete in PvE, but I notice many people don’t even mention them in these types of arguments, possibly because it is more typically associated with platformers and not MMO’s. I think if Anet sticks to their original goal of adding more depth to a dynamically changing world with more permanent changes, this will give players a greater sense of accomplishment, though I doubt anything other than a gear-treadmill will satisfy those who are used to this way of playing. However there are people who are satisfied with playing both GW2 and other tread-mill games to get their progression fix and that seems to work fine for them.