Guild Wars 2

Absolutely agree that guild cohesion is the number 1 problem. There is nothing to accomplish with a guild and no group feeling as a result.

They make massive events but
- they have no guild halls
- no guild wars
- no fortresses to own for an extended time
- no epic bosses to do as a guild
- no guild overview
- no guild capes
- no guild icon if you don’t wear 1 specific armor and no guild ranking.
- no alliance chat

On top of it all in the beginning guild chat didn’t even work like they haven’t even tested this core mmo functionality.

They did many things very well, but guilds is not 1 of it

in general all medium armor all long coat and all female rangers and thieves look like tomboys. The only feminine medium armors are T2 Silvari, T3 Human and the duelist set. The whisperer is reasonable, but also longcoat.

Katai.6240:

But the vertical progression only affects one part of the game, FotM. Those who care about getting to deeper areas of FotM can have their vertical progression to get armor with higher agony resistance. Everyone else couldn’t care less. How does ascended gear affect anyone doing anything outside of FotM in a meaningful way? All you’re doing is upgrading your armor to get more agony resistance.

I am neutral on this, but the ascend gear has much better stats in general and these are useable everywhere. So what I say, but there is more to it than just agony protection.

No, vertical progression or horizontal progression is not the reason for me chosing gw2. PvP separation (gank free gaming) and gw quality stories is what I was looking for.

If I quit I would just stop playing because I am bored. But you don’t really quit gw2, you just stop playing.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

The simple solution would be not to go afk.

You ll have to logout completely each time you go AFK. Its a bug, it needs to be fixed. But, yes, it probably doesn’t have the highest priority.

Like what you say about WvW. Guild have nothing to own (for more than a day). It makes the whole thing pointless.

Kain Francois.4328:

It’s the presentation of Trahearne that bothers me more than anything else. Tyblt dies, and suddenly Trahearne is my best friend?

He had virtually no character development….

People playing whisperer fall the hardest, you go from a super charismatic funny character like Tybalt dropping down to the empty character, with the charisma of a tree, called Trahearne. The voice actor is not necessarly bad, but his lines are too long and he would more be at his place playing a bad guy priory NPC who knows everything better or to sing children to sleep.

I have had it when you leave your account AFK overnight. It needs more than a few hours (for me). Happens even when I go character screen. Only relogging the client will fix it. I have reported many times, but the problem remains.

If you want it as bot protection, I don’t know how cos these guys will show active, then you ll have to make it such that you ll have to relog. Or just fix it, not something half in the middle.

was jumping just fine yesterday late

Desolation is supposed to be 1 of the most crowded servers. Though, Orr is pretty much empty. The problem is that Orr needs more than a party. It needs a zerg to do most temples and people are stuck in fractals.

Solid Gold.9310:

Lots of people will say their server is busy, heaving with people, no trouble getting a party or doing events and DE’s.

I don’t see any of that, pretty much dead.

Desolation is really empty in the open areas, wouldn’t say death. This is clearly because of the fractals, before that Orr was fine. The drops are out proportion. Even in Orr you mostly drop greens, in the fractals you drop exotics. It is all very predictable.

Peetee.9406:

I see a pretty steady increase in population. No, I am not trolling you.

I think since the Tier 1 servers are full, players are starting to migrate into Tier 2. I see new faces everyday on Sanctum of Rall. Yesterday all 4 borderlands were full and queued, and its stemming into the PvE world as well. There’s people in every zone to DEs with.

Reading your post I was thinking, can’t it be that the old servers like desolation are “Full” with inactive accounts? That would seriously damage the influx of new players.

Ruby Red.4019:

Desolation (EU) – which often says Very High or Full on the World Selection screen theres usually an overflow for LA and lots of LFG Fractals spam hardly any other dungeon spam getting story runs is nigh impossible. Outside of LA I don’t see many ppl I’m levelling an alt without doing any of the big events just because I’m usually alone at them

Desolation has a pretty high population in comparison. I just believe that people are mostly doing dungeons, mostly fractals. If they make the drops in Karka areas half of what you drop in fractals then I think the area will fill up just fine. Right now the drops are low and the mobs are hard. Orr has better drop rates and the population is slightly higher there.

Dunno what it is, everything bores me. Guess it is normal after the rush of the first months. But some things, e.g., guilds have no goals or meaning, are making it all more boring faster. And ofc, being alone in a MMO is not helping either.

Perhaps they can make drop rate variate. The less people in an area the more epic the drops. People will search the map for the best spots and spread out.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Please do not take the unstickying of this thread as an indication that your feedback is being ignored. We are paying attention and we are taking your feedback here, and in the recent survey into account.

However, the teams here are unable to respond individually to every concern presented here, as they have their normal responsibilities to take care of, as well as parsing through said feedback.

As I’ve stated before, your feedback is important to us, and this thread will remain open, for the time being, to future feedback on this subject.

Can you also post the final videos online. Mist the cutscenes and I really would like to see it.

Also, I am sure I didn’t receive any survey invitation. You took a sample of the population?

I used to play many years a game that went from p2p to f2p, a few months later the lure of selling power became too big and eventually it was the only thing they where selling. Weapons that used to be extremely rare and powerful where sold to people paying 1000 euro or more to obtain them. f2p quickly becomes p2w because the hats and fashion items don’t sell enough to cover the development and operational cost. I prefer the system of some fashion items and paid expansions where I pay for content and not for power.

MithranArkanere.8957:

…..All dungeons should have had a leveling system like the fractals. Shared between all dungeons, so you don’t have to unlock the difficulty levels on each one. They should even share the levels with the fractals themselves….

Then you just move the problem. Not the characters level will be an issue, but his dungeon level will be the issue. Instead of telling you, “no sorry your not level 80” they ll tell you “no sorry your not Dungeon level 20”

tigirius.9014:

The majority of us who don’t care about dungeons, who play the game to see the world and play with our friends in open events where people aren’t worried about your level or gear to participate are patiently waiting for what they will do next in their upcoming patches.

It’s not just the gear treadmill that we were all complaining about when the Nov 16th patch was released, many of us knew this was coming.

Unrelated to this quote: earlier I explained the way of thinking why someone wants a level 80 random / pug howeva you call it. Personally I don’t run so much dungeons and I would not care if someone is 60 in greens or 80 in exotic.

Now, on this quote, unfortunately I don’t agree. On desolation I see people only doing fractals. Peoples behavior seems to show they want dungeons, lots of dungeons. The open events? Most of them are too hard to do solo and there is nobody around most of the times. People prefer to do fractals with all the exotic dropping like never before and the dungeons are taking away the open world population. This open world is so massive that it already seemed empty, but at least Orr use to have a couple of groups.

Rukia.4802:

Everyone assumes elitism, etc. “but let me play my way, ugh.” to which I will reply “but, you’re hindering the party…”

It’s even worse when I tell people to dodge certain abilities “shut up kid some of us have lives” etc. the typical reply from baddies, so now I just hop from group to group hoping to find a good one, and this includes guilds.

Sure, play your way when you are alone, but in a group, why not work towards a unified goal together efficiently? It makes zero sense to join a group and play solo imo.

Yes, it all depends how tolerant you are for them forgetting to press T once in a while. If you say they never do, or they go without armor or they die all the time even when you tell them where the traps are etc. thats something else. However a player commenting on every single action made by his party can be just as damaging as a newbie. It makes people annoyed and they ll start making mistakes because they rush to finish with this annoyance and it ends with the elitist stating that you are all noobs, quits the party and you all loose repair cost for no reason.

And so, on the subject, thats why I don’t do dungeons during the week and I prefer solo most of the time.

Don’t know if the drop rate went down. But karkas are pretty hard, but the drops in Orr are 5 times better and more. And you can’t even compare with the fractal dungeons. Its hardly worth the effort to go and farm karkas if you like that instead of dungeon runs.

The lack of the trinity freed the people from being forced into parties and they can now do as they want. And personally, if someone is too much about correctly targeting and if they get all worked up about the way I play I get tired really fast. It is the major reason to solo unless some one is a friend or guild member I know. Many times these players also quit in the middle of a dungeon and are the worst pugs who put the whole party on edge (and quit)

Aerwyna.2541:

Oh well if its just to be able to do Fractals, then it wont matter if you dont care to see that correct? And if you do, you will spend the time doing what is needed.

Guess so It must be said that I seen the stats and they are a lot better. The problem starts if they start demanding ascend gear when you go AC or other dungeons. Or if other future content requires infusion. Also, maybe you want to do fractals but you go slow or you are new. Already it will be hard to find a level 2 group.

I mostly enjoy relaxing behind the tv walking around in GW2 world exploring. I party friends but we spread out a lot usually, its more for the chat. If I would party with a random in this after-work-tired-state I would feel obligated to do real stuff instead of chilling, and so only in the weekends I would go and make real parties and usually to do dungeons or story. Think parties are no necessesity in this game and people prefer to be free

Level 80 characters have full traits and, e.g., 200 power matters, even when they scale it down. Also, level 80s drop lots of rare and usually are fully equiped rare, if not exotic. Also, I believe explorable modes are made for 80 players to go back to the dungeon and replay it, hence they all give 80+ gear as a reward.

Aerwyna.2541:

So maybe I am just crazy but, I find nothing wrong with the game >.> Like, I dont even care about legendary stuff or ascended gear. I have the option to not care about it and I think thats great. I dont hold anyone back when its me running with my exotics and others running with legends/ascended. And I dont get steam rolled. This game is about skill man, skill. How you play your character and how fast you can think in a situation. In my travels I have found it didnt matter your opponents gear. If you were faster/more skilled than them when it came to decisions, then it didnt matter. But thats just me.

Yes and no, its clearly stated that at some point you will need ascend gear else the fractal dungeon gets too hard because you lack the necessary infusion. Most of the time it probably is no problem, since you ll drop the gear once you reach the level. But in the future parties maybe start asking for ascend gear just to have a smoother run. Gear they can see, you skill they don’t know.

Had problems somewhere around the end and missed the final video. Can’t Anet put the videos and screens somewhere online? As a kinda photobook.

A website you have to alt-tab to is hardly a good solution. A good lfg tool is a top priority must have in any game.

Kindread.9481:

I recently switched to a glass canon build Sword/Pistol Thief build. The dungeons I have run with no control (tank) players I would say my damage was about halved due to mechanics that kept me out of melee range. With a control (tank) class I can easily double my melee uptime. In essence a tanky type player can not only add their damage to the mix, but add a LOT more for the other players.

This is true for boss encounters, but not necessarily true for trash pulls, that can be easily burned down by 5 DPS Glass Canons in seconds most of the time.

I have yet to group with a designated Elementalist healer, but due to the nature of the game if you can not control where a mob is and you have 4 DPS classes flying all over the place, chances are 50-70% of the time they will be out of range of said Elementalists heals.

A guardian with a staff can do a nice 2000hp heal with a small cooldown without needing to target. Next to the virtue that you can extend with regen (via traits). People often call guardian a tank, but he is not. His HP is one of the lowest in the game. Guardians are more healer / buffers.

AcidicVision.5498:

yurtshone.7325:

“we don’t make grindy games”

Which part of the game is unavailable to you or how is your progress blocked by not having an amulet with an unpopular set of stats?

This. If it is only exotic then make one of the more easy to make exotic jewelry.

Top gear is always expensive. Many people also don’t know that it gives (I didn’t know either) passion flower and so no one goes and farm them. Also, many people are stuck in the fractals reducing even more the farmer population. The area was pretty much empty yesterday.

marianojc.2965:

Well, I would say yes GW2 is a big minigame, for other reasons: Vistas, Jumping Puzzles, Points of Interest, Skill Points and Hearts all off them become objectives in themselves and break inmersion in the game that is Dynamic Events and the World itself.

Better than the minigame called Vistas I think it would have been to have Treasure Chests as were the hidden treasures of GW’s NightFall. Vistas are spoilers that make me lose all the awe that watching the landscape might have -actually I have been looking for my own landscape views and I have fund some awesome ones -that I am not going to tell you. ………

Yes, if the Vistas are the mini games then mini games are not bad at all. GW2 has much more different stuff to do than the traditional kill 10 of this kill 50 of that quests. It has these quest also, but not only and many times it involves other things like freeing prisoners or putting out fire. Which you can all see as a mini game and that is not bad at all.

There are treasure chest. I find them once in a while. The MK jumping puzzle had a treasure chest.

Primal.9513:

if they left because of this, they didnt want pure horizontal progression. They wanted to have the best gear without working for it!

People left because they where bored, other people left because PvP was not satisfying them and other people left because guilds had more meaning in other games and their guild had more power there. People leave for different reasons. I have no statistical information for any of it, but neither do people who say “all people wanted…horizontal progression”. I came for the new content, the in-depth story GW usually provides and pvp / pve separation. People are insanely playing the fractals, their behavior seems to show they love them, but again that is no proof. It could be that they feel like they have to.

pewblinkpew.5031:

My last point for the night, my guild of 460 memembers is down to 42

memebers a week who log in.
log in .

Sure, but GW2 is different, it is primarily content based. People play the new content, get bored and then when new content comes they play again. Its not, right now, like traditional MMOs, that you login every day and play every day because you pay subscription. You pay an amount, get contents worth, pay expansion, get contents worth, etc. etc.

Imo I got insane amount of content for my money, I can still keep contact with MMO friends and play more if there is more content.

Well people start to play only dungeons. It slowly is becoming more an instance game like GW1. Even the new lost shore area had only a couple of people running around, not enough for a lot of the DEs, veterans and champions. The drops in the dungeons are so much better in comparison with even Orr and especially in comparison with the new areas, that people spend their whole play day in dungeons (which you could call mini games). Resulting in full server showing empty.

Galen Grey.4709:

LOCO.1785:

The damage is done.

The people expecting/wanting pure horizontal progression have left.

if they left because of this, they didnt want pure horizontal progression. They wanted to have the best gear without working for it!

pure horizontal progression means you dont care about the gear and Gw2 certainly allows you to do that safely! Wanting the best gear isnt horizintal progression its vertical progression and thats the problem! people seem to want easy vertical progression which is entirely differnet from wanting horizontal progression.

This. But I add that people don’t know what they want. When they have easy vertical progression then they ll be bored within a day or 2 and stop playing anyway.

They can make it only 1 level as long as it takes an average MMO players a couple of months to reach it. Level 80 went way to fast, too fast to fully enjoy some of the midlevel areas. Right now you can run through levels and reach level 80 in less than a month and then you seen 30% of the map. You should be able to reach max level if you reach 80%+ of the map.

People don’t know what they want. They complain about content taking a lot of effort and in the same sentence I seen them complain about being bored because they have nothing to do.

Rack.4930:

I already have, and was forced to rescind those recommendations. Fortunately everyone realised I made them in good faith. I’d originally called it an MMO without the grind but I just can’t hold on to that without a wishy-washy “doesn’t really have too bad a grind at the moment and the devs insist it won’t get one but then they claimed all gear would be even and they went back on that 3 months in. It comes down to trust and I can’t see any reason to do so. Maybe give it a go but don’t get your hopes up”

Personally I believe people stop because they got bored because they had nothing to do they felt worth doing. Imho I believe more people stopped because of easy obtained goals. I remember being level 40ish in the first 2 weeks and people where already 80.

Would I recommend? Sure I would, it is still nicely casual and it is worth its money.

Galen Grey.4709:

The story converages around the same theme true, I mean its all about zaithan but there are many different paths you can go through and only a few mission are the same across all different choices.

This really nice map some one did should clear things up a bit
beware of possible spoilers
http://gw.zweistein.cz/gw2storyline.svg

The map seems impressive, but I played many stories with friends. It felt pretty much the same. I don’t see the levels in this map and perhaps somethings are like doing the same thing in different ways. I had fun never the less (except when I had to listen to trahearne) and a branching story is new for an MMO (correct me if I m wrong).

Also, what about charm, dignity etc. it doesn’t have any effect on how you are approached or what happens. They made the system, but they didn’t do anything with it. And a person has to defeat the dragon, you can’t choose to be evil, you have to be good.

Think they took some short cuts to finish up stuff. The personal story for example converges all to the same stuff. After you completed around level 25 story it is more or less all the same. For new races like silvari this seems even sooner, thats why I believe they started out with fully branching personal stories and ended up with trahearns personal story.
The gear grind I think he means that you don’t kill the same mobs over and over again. Which means that dungeons must be different all the time, such that you have to do a task to get gear, not kill 1 mob over and over. Still if you do 1 dungeon to earn 1 armor you grind the dungeon and so you also grind the mob.

At first I was like oO not again manifesto talk. But thank you for posting the “manifesto” that everyone speaks about. At least now we can all discuss the facts. Guess it is the last time they will give a blog post such a pretentious title.

Anymras.5729:

I have a similar issue. The only difference is that, while I do have the box, I have yet to click it because I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of issue with the IP displayed – after all, I don’t live in the town it says I live in, as far as I know (it sure doesn’t agree with my postage). Not sure what to make of it.

Anybody know if ticking the box in my situation would open me up to issues down the line?

The location they put is sometimes inaccurate, I guess that is because your ISP is located in that town. Anyway, there are sites that tell you “My IP”, search on google to find such a site. Check if the IP they say there matches with the IP given by GW2.

Most people have a dynamic IP, this means your IP chances once in while. Especially when your modem needs a restart. Your ISP may chance your IP many times, especially when you DC because your internet went down.

Ditton.3149:

….

He said in a post that class changes, balances, bugs, PvP and WvW were all handled by a different department and he didnt want to give answers he was not sure of, but would try to get separate AMA’s for all of those parts of the game as well.

Hopefully then they ll still answer the most important question E7, I would really dislike it if the new story also contains Trahearne.

Stock of an entertainment company going down in times of crisis is not strange at all. Look for example at dreamworks: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:DWA

And here I see an upwards trend: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=036570.KS

NC Soft makes many other games and how can you know? Perhaps Lineage 2 or Aion is bringing down the stocks.

People cut on entertainment to buy essentials, e.g., food and clothing. Why making such an analysis if things go bad or good? Why care so much if Anet goes bad?

Belteshazzar.6307:

beren.6048:

cegorach.5624:

zargnath.9524:

IRL I would actualy say work hard to get rewarded. But the problem is I play this game for fun. I have already payed 60$ to have fun and I would prefer not having to grind to have fun when it would be possible to create an option that wouldn’t force me to grind before having fun.

So you would have a problem in real life about an option that would allow you to be rewarded without working hard?

I am curious why you think an online game should have easy access to fun while real life shouldn’t.

Would you have a problem, in real life, if you first have to carry 1000 stones of 1kg just such that you can play a friendly game of chess with friends?

Would you have a problem (in rl) if you first have to eat 100 big macs before you can watch the movie you like?

I like a little collecting, sure, but you compare a job with entertainment. For entertainment you pay a ticket (50 euro) and you can experience it and to not want real life principles creeping into it is a reasonable demand.

I think why some people like vertical progression is the means of getting to the “end” although for some its a grind.. for some its actually fun and they enjoy it, it’s pretty psychological.

By itself collecting something for a long time is fun, you feel like you achieved something or like you have something to do. However, too much grind and it will become unplayable for people who are not prepared to play a game as a job or who are new to the game because they don’t have what is necessary to play the latest content and finding a party for the old content will become harder and harder. The optimal way lays in the middle I guess.

neoquicksilver.7109:

beren.6048:

cegorach.5624:

zargnath.9524:

IRL I would actualy say work hard to get rewarded. But the problem is I play this game for fun. I have already payed 60$ to have fun and I would prefer not having to grind to have fun when it would be possible to create an option that wouldn’t force me to grind before having fun.

So you would have a problem in real life about an option that would allow you to be rewarded without working hard?

I am curious why you think an online game should have easy access to fun while real life shouldn’t.

Would you have a problem, in real life, if you first have to carry 1000 stones of 1kg just such that you can play a friendly game of chess with friends?

Would you have a problem (in rl) if you first have to eat 100 big macs before you can watch the movie you like?

I like a little collecting, sure, but you compare a job with entertainment. For entertainment you pay a ticket (50 euro) and you can experience it and to not want real life principles creeping into it is a reasonable demand.

How did you acquire the chess board? Did you have to make money (a job) to get the necessary funds to enjoy having “fun”? How did you get the money to buy the ticket to enjoy the movies too? Did you have to work for it?

This is the same wrong comparison, work is work, a game is entertainment. You worked or somebody worked to buy you GW2. You paid.

cegorach.5624:

zargnath.9524:

IRL I would actualy say work hard to get rewarded. But the problem is I play this game for fun. I have already payed 60$ to have fun and I would prefer not having to grind to have fun when it would be possible to create an option that wouldn’t force me to grind before having fun.

So you would have a problem in real life about an option that would allow you to be rewarded without working hard?

I am curious why you think an online game should have easy access to fun while real life shouldn’t.

Would you have a problem, in real life, if you first have to carry 1000 stones of 1kg just such that you can play a friendly game of chess with friends?

Would you have a problem (in rl) if you first have to eat 100 big macs before you can watch the movie you like?

I like a little collecting, sure, but you compare a job with entertainment. For entertainment you pay a ticket (50 euro) and you can experience it and to not want real life principles creeping into it is a reasonable demand.

KWman.3012:

I’d love to do your survey regarding The Lost Shores. However the link given by the email from guildwars2@ncsoft.com is broken.

Funny, have not received any survey. I would like to give feedback.

The event was great. I had great fun. Though I had 3 main concerns that I suggest you to change next time:
1. I fell in the lava pit which I didn’t see because of the camera zooming in auto and because of the boss being so big. I had to choose, stay death or quickly return from waypoint (nobody could reach me to res me). I choose the waypoint and missed the end movie.
- Primary: show a popup asking: “You participated in the epic one time event, you want to see the movie?” When you say yes then you show the movie as long as you are in the area. The complete area, just like you can pull people of your party into the story.
- Secondary: Please add a waypoint more close to the even location
2. When you do an epic event please announce the waypoint. We had to know from the gossip circuit where the event would happen. Put a point of interest or waypoint on your website next time.
3. Like a mad man I was reviving and healing, but still in some parts I got silver because I probably didnt hit the boss enough or I was hold back from the event circle by the boss or his minions. Maybe give also participation points if you revive in the area and make the event area around the boss or make it reset to his event area spot (the orange circle).

xiv.7136:

Type 7:

“I do WvW, PVE, dungeons and sPVP; I am a competent player and I can do maths, so I realise the new gear with 3% total extra stats has literally no impact on the outcome of any of those activities.”

I am Type 7 also, maybe more Type 8: I do mostly PVE and I don’t care if someone has better gear than me because I don’t WvW If someone has good gear in PVE then I like that, because it will make our dungeon run more easy. I just want to be able to do everything there is to do in PvE.

The OPs player types are biased towards negativity and leaves no option for us who enjoy the game.

@Southern Lord totaly agree. There was always a stats difference between masterwork, rare, exotic etc. What Anet doesn’t want is a situation where a bad player can always beat a pro player given the highest gear. A MMO without any kind of improvement of gear is like sim city without sims.

People act like it is the end of the world and like Anet did something really evil. Chill, relax, take it easy. Its all a game, not RL.

Also, still a big difference is that there is no subscription and still you get additional content. And ofc some principles of WoW are followed, it is after all 1 of the biggest successes in the MMO history. Any designer will take what is good and improve what is bad.

Andovar Edoras.2143:

2) the worst part, people care SO MUCH about your level ‘’are you 80? no? well ok, bye then’’
i mean, you get SCALED up… (the character i wanted to do it with, was 65, and yet people werent ok with me being scaled up 15 levels)…

3) So once i got a group, at some point, we seemed to be dying a lot, so i unequipped my clothes, and when i explained that i dont wanna spend that much money on that overpriced repair system, they kicked me from the party and i had to do it all over again..

I welcome you to the world of gear & level progression: you get scaled yes, but you don’t have full traits and also you go and do it naked. This means that they ll have to spend extra hours to gain the next dungeon level because your character is substandard.

I don’t say I agree with this! But I say that is how it is if level and gear is important and you have to see it from their view point. Would you like to spend 4h in a dungeon instead of 2h because you invited the wrong person.

I suggest to you to first get 80 or find a group of guild members who are all not 80.