Guild Wars 2

In addition to evading, you can often simply move out of an attack. A really obvious example of this is drakes and their breath abilities. They just stand there, gathering energy for an attack. You have all the time in the world to simply walk behind them without using up your endurance on an evade.

Some of your profession’s weapon skills and trait skills may actually include an evade/reflect/absorb component. Know what abilities do this and know how to use them (Sorry I can’t be more specific because it’s so different for each profession).\

You will likely have signets or other trait-related abilities that affect your endurance. Check them out and try them to see how you like them.

Sigils, which are used to upgrade your weapons, can be bought very cheaply on the trading post. Some of them give you an endurance boost upon swapping to the weapon you put it on. Some of them give you endurance upon killing an enemy.

You can stack power, precision and/or condition damage (depending on how you want to play) and hope to kill mobs way faster than they can kill you, but then you’re squishy and will die easily if they catch you (even if you wear heavy armor). You can stack vitality and toughness and be more survivable, but it will take you longer to kill foes (and it will also take allies longer to revive you and healing will seem less effective unless you also build up healing).

Your healing abilities affect health regeneration and many professions have a healing skill which includes regeneration, plus abilities which grant regeneration for a period of time. So bumping up your healing stat might be a good thing. Condition management is your friend. If you find yourself dying because you’ve been crippled, stunned, poisoned, or bled first, then you need more than just healing: you need condition removal/mitigation. Your profession’s abilities and your gear can help with this.

Overall, knowing how you want to play (survivability, glass cannon, support) is key because all your trait, gear, and weapon choices need to synergize with each other for maximum effectiveness. You then play in way that caters to your advantages while minimizing your disadvantages, and you should die far less often.

Hope you find this helpful.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Focksbot: They knew. Oh, they knew.

Stability is your friend when facing the Dredge.

This.

Look, folks, every mob ability in this game can be mitigated. If you choose not to try and figure out how, that’s not bad game design on ArenaNet’s part. It may also mean you have to learn to play your profession in ways which are not your favorite but which are necessary to get the job done: use weapons and skills which are not your preferred style to more easily achieve your goals. Just as an example, I’ve had to become proficient in using a shield on my warrior because with the proper traits it’s the only thing I have that gives me the ability to reflect projectiles back at foes. Normally I would prefer to run with hammer, which is my favorite weapon. But for fighting, say, young karka and their powerful ranged attack, having a shield with reflect is awesome: they practically kill themselves.

If you’re a D/D thief you can’t go spamming LDB on those dredge catwalks, you have adapt and improvise: use different moves or a different weapon set.

You get the idea, my point is that all abilities (reflect, stability, condition removal, etc.) are available to all professions. A good player knows when to use what.

Good luck to you and I hope this helps. For what it’s worth, having just one other person with you helps immensely with those caverns. I soloed it on my warrior at 3am one night and was completely alone in there. The event where you have to kill the elite generals happened and I had to solo all three in order to even try and get the vistas and POIs. After killing the generals, a champion spawns. Him, I left alone. When I did it on another character with a friend, it was much easier.

Crafting, personal story quests, and events. Buy and use religiously food and “tech” consumables (potions and oils) which each give you 10% experience bonus and are dirt cheap.

Payadopa.4706:

I mostly find PvE too easy to be honest. Except for group events, that is (of you’re soloing). The moment I duo with a frined of mine we basically just kill with little to no challenge. It’s sad, really. Same goes for group events with more then 4 people. In the end it’s just mindless zerging.

I really hope the difficulty gets increased or the scaling becomes better.

Same goes for the story sections. They are way too easy (playing as elementalist). Especially once a friend joins me I have the feeling that there is no scaling, making the encounters even more easy.

I agree, that respawn rates can be a bit too fast sometimes, but the overall difficulty is too low for my taste.

I would actually like to see the mobs be harder to fight as long as they stayed dead longer.

kraziefox.5697:

I would just like to add my tuppence worth here …

… I know there are some people who absolutely HATE “solo’ers”, but if I had known in advance that many of those haters were now working at ArenaNet I’d have not bothered buying the game.

Guild Wars 2 has to be THE most Un-Solo’able MMO on the market today.

At level 30 I may be scaled down to level 12 & have to face not one, not two but four (4x) Level 14’s (conning Red). Needless to say I don’t survive more than a few seconds.

I have played Guild Wars for 7 years, I have been playing since June 2005. I know for a FACT I will not be playing Guild Wars 2 that long, I already dread logging in & currently only do so because a couple of my friends are playing it. But when they leave, & they will soon, I doubt I’ll be a regular player. I’m just NOT having Fun …

‘FUN’ (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Fun?s=t)
? ?[fuhn]
noun
1.
something that provides mirth or amusement: A picnic would be fun.
2.
enjoyment or playfulness: She’s full of fun.
3.
a concept ArenaNet are attempting to remove from their games.

Seems to me you looked at how players are able to enjoy soloing in every other mmo & tried your best to prevent that.

I’ve written numerous /bug reports about the horribly poor ‘scaling’ system … a great idea but poorly implemented & players not even given the choice.

I dread going into caves, I’ll kill the first two mobs, but the first one has now respawned right on top of me whilst fighting the third, & when the third is down & I turn to fight the first again the second mob respawns … & then, from nowhere a Veteran appears …

Saying nothing of the Ascalon Ghosts … doing an event to protect a Charr whilst he set up some machines … & 7 Ghosts suddenly sprang up! How the heck am I supposed to fight 7 mobs all focused on killing me?! I was on my own, no one else was within miles of me & there was absolutely no way I could take down 7, I was ‘scaled’ to level 16 & the 7 mobs were a mix of 16 & 17’s … there was also a Veteran too, not sure if he ‘popped up’ or if he is near that area & was aggro’d.

After being a 7 year fan of Guild Wars I can honestly say I am starting to Hate Guild Wars 2, it’s just not Fun. :-(

You have voiced my exact thoughts on this matter: there is a difference between “fun” and “difficult.” There is also a relationship between the two, but it seems ArenaNet believes that the causality is direct and linear: more difficulty automatically equals more fun. Obviously, this is not the case at all. And if someone from ArenaNet were to reply with “that’s not what we believe,” then my reply to that would be: “could’ve fooled me!”

One of the things which originally attracted me to this game was the idea that dynamic events would change the world, that we as players would affect the environment. I had no idea it would only last a few moments until everything reverted back again. There isn’t even the illusion or hope of progress to be snatched away: we never feel that hope AT ALL. I dislike immensely slogging through a river of risen only to see it respawn and close ranks in my wake. It’s disheartening because it feels like nothing I do matters.

I would dearly like to feel like what I went through has a lasting effect in my immediate vicinity beyond just a few minutes.

Difficulty level does not equate into the level of fun a player experiences. And by difficulty I don’t mean that risen should be easier to fight, skill-wise. I’m not suggesting they do less damage or have longer cooldowns on their abilities (if they even have cooldowns). They just need to stay “re-dead” a little bit longer.

That’s all I want.

There are and will always be plenty of people who need every level of Fractals because of alts and new players. Not everyone is a complete jerk and is unwilling to run a lower level to help a friend or guildmate. In addition, new fractals will be added and in general of course there will be plenty of new content of various kinds in the future. Plenty of people still run story and explorable modes for older dungeons, too.

You really don’t have a point, here, sorry.

mulch.2586:

The moral of the story is good players don’t condition-build.

Was the same way before launch.

Go ahead and make one. Play a Mantra Mesmer. Play a Signet Ranger. For most of the game, you’ll be fine, cuz the game’s just not that dependent on dps. Your choice.

But it’s absurd to complain about your choice. Cuz you’re the one wot made it.

If the game designers say “this is a viable option” then it had better be. “Just play a different class” or “just play a different style” is a non-answer because it ignores the problem, which stems from game design.

The problem I see from many of these replies is assumed skill: you think you’re a good enough player, but the proof you are not is that you get killed. Some of the story quests are indeed difficult, but nothing which cannot be overcome.

All mobs have animations which play before an ability is cast, but you may not see it because you weren’t paying attention. The biggest one is what some people have called “dusting” where the mob appears to gather energy to itself before unleashing the attack (which, I guess, kinda looks like gathering dust, hence the term). This dusting can be very short but often it’s plenty long enough to see… if you’re watching.

As for the risen hylek (well, any hylek, for that matter) and their rapid-fire dart abilities: every profession has abilities that reflect projectiles. If you’re not smart enough to use them, I don’t know what else to tell you other than dodge, which of course you should be doing, anyway. Often the biggest source of damage when fighting multiple mobs is ranged attacks from the other mobs you’re currently not trying to damage. You have to use block/reflect/absorb/dodge abilities or you’re toast.

I find it insane how cheap potions are on the trading post: for goodness’ sake, use them. Eat them like candy. You can’t laugh off an additional 10% damage dealt to a class of mobs plus -10% incoming damage from mobs (hello Potent Potion of Undead Slaying… oh, how I love you!).

What I used to do:

— Level my main to 80

— Work on world map completion

— Level up crafting skills to 400

— Run dungeons I haven’t yet

— Jumping puzzles

What I do now:

— Get alts to 80 and enjoy new professions, new perspectives on the lore in the story quests of other races (or picking different choices/orders in story quests)

— Make gold by crafting and selling rares and exotics

— Make gold by selling mats

— Run dungeons (Fractals are fun! and there are still older ones I haven’t yet run or want to run for tokens)

— Work on world completion (yes, still… just have the WvW areas to finish)

— More jumping puzzles

— New content when it comes out

— Experimenting with builds

But if you have a crappy attitude, nothing anyone else says is going to help you. I suggest a strong dose of “get over yourself.”

Fractals is easily the most fun dungeon in the game. It also has decent rewards. However, on Tarnished Coast I still see plenty of people running story and explorable modes for previous dungeons because they want those gear tokens. Same for events in Orr to unlock karma vendors: yes, it’s happening. Could just be your server.

I actually love to use D/D in PvE, so most of these tips are based around that.

Dancing dagger is your friend.

Roll for Initiative is great in PvE (watch your proximity to ledges)

Make liberal use of stealth abilities to stop taking damage and set up a backstab (basic heal, dagger 5, and blinding powder).

Trait for extra damage from rear and flank and for extra dagger damage and circle-strafe around mobs (not so great when soloing but good in groups where another player has mob aggro). You can increase damage without using skills which cost initiative, thereby allowing your initiative to regenerate to where you can use something other than spamming Heartseeker.

Use Steal. A lot.

Use the Power of Inertia trait (Acrobatics line) to gain might upon dodging. Dodging at least once before engaging mobs gives you a free stack of might.

Hope these help a bit.

Think about it from the opposite perspective: I don’t hear PvP-only players complaining about having to do PvE content to get their achievements. World completion means all of the world, and the PvP maps are part of that world.

This is a purely cosmetic concern, but it bugs me to no end. And before anyone says “lol roll another race/gender” my preemptive response to that is: in a well-designed game I shouldn’t have to.

Dagger Storm on human female: spinning crucifix ROFLCOPTER. It’s just… stupid. When charr or asura perform this ability, it actually looks somewhat like they’re whipping daggers from out of their clothes, spinning around and throwing them. Human female animation for Dagger Storm is just embarrassingly bad.

Please do something about this.

Jack of Tears.9458:

ledzep.9504:

This doesn’t look good at all.(for thieves)

Okay, let’s see … So you know, all this input is about PvE, I don’t do PvP:

Pistol/Pistol suffers for lack of many good abilities, most of the time ya end up falling back on Black Powder and Unload for almost every situation … and BP is a little expensive for a very short blind.

Stealth is Awesome, I love the way stealth works in the game. I wasn’t sure I would, because I like classes with permastealth for exploring, but it compliments the class so well I wouldn’t change anything; though there’s some problem with rendering in PvP apparently, what is causing allota problems and bickering. (this isn’t a problem with Thieves being too powerful)

Steal; I love Steal, it traits up very nice if you want to spend yer points that way and is literally that ace up yer sleeve.

Initiative; I don’t think the class would work without initiative – you’d need ta do an entire rework. Init lets us be the bouncy, slippery, always moving class that we are. The only way you could do away with it an’ keep the class would be to give every single weapon skill a movement secondary.

Traps; Ambush Trap is great, so is that cripple trap – that’s about it. We need more traps; better traps; larger AoE maybe, longer effects, longer duration … even that cripple trap is pretty useless compared to caltrops.

Elites; Dagger Storm is very nice, love me some Dagger Storm; Thieves Guild, same thing. Most of the other elites … worthless. The avatars don’t last long enough ta be useful, the poison might be okay for PvP (I dunno) but is pretty much pointless in PvE. Why don’t we have a Stealth Elite? I was noticing this when running medic this weekend for Lost Shores.

The change to Dancing Dagger was crazy bad. Please, if yer gonna nerf a skill, please lower the cost on it so it’s still worth using.

Downed State; I’m sure ya know that our “drop aggro” skill is pointless, you use it, then the second you start healing the monsters target you again.

And that’s all I can think of right now … prolly more later.

Also agree very much with these points.

Pragmatist.1349:

Hey there. My post/s will only concern Thief PVE issues.

Secondly, dual pistols could use a PVE damage buff, or perhaps some kindof buff to Ricochet in the Trickery traitline so the bullets bounce much more often. The recent change to the Body Shot cast timer was nice, but in PVE at the moment P/P is only really usable on ranged single target fights, which does not apply to many situations.

Thirdly, I feel that the 15% nerf to Pistol Whip was unjustified in PVE terms. As far as I can tell, its damage was only nerfed due to burst issues in pvp when stacked with Quickness/Haste against glass cannon players who do not take stunbreaks and do not learn to dodge perhaps the most predictable skill ingame (Pistol Whip). The damage should be refunded in PVE because at the moment you can do almost as much DPS autoattacking with the S/P combo. Pistol Whip is a dual skill that should out DPS autoattack by a decent margin. Black Powder on the pistol offhand is a great dungeon tool and should not be nerfed in any way.

Fourthly, I feel that Traps are very lacklustre at the moment. I have used each Trap maybe five times in PVE and overall I find that the Traps are not worth the utility slots.

Next, I would say that the Sword/Dagger combo is very poor for PVE, I only use it on the Mesmer boss in TA to remove her buffs.

I am glad you only implemented the Backstab nerfs in PVP, if they had been implemented in PVE also it would have destroyed crit daggers. However, I do not see why Dancing Dagger had its damage nerfed in both PVE and PVP, it was only an issue in PVP. The damage should be refunded in PVE.

I also feel that Sword should be available for use in the Offhand slot giving us another few weapon combos. Dual swords would be nice if designed well.

This poster expressed everything I wanted to say (and more, so I only quoted the points which I also wanted to make), so like many others who want to have a voice on these concerns, I’m posting if only to echo my agreement.

Seras.5702:

As a sad owner of a former Ranger main, I am thinking about rolling a ranged warrior. But I’ve heard that warriors get boring. Is this true? Big damage numbers and lotsa hp is nice, but are they fun/exciting to play or just mindless-beat-on-stuff-machines?

Warriors can provide tremendous support and crowd control capabilities and playing these roles in my opinion is more challenging than a straight-up damage role. Depending on what you like, it may be more fun for you, too.

What’s funny is my knee-jerk instant snarky mental reply to the question, “Are warriors boring?” was: “No, rangers are!” And then I saw you were already playing a ranger. To each their own… but I think warrior is more fun (or less boring) than ranger. For those of you who play ranger and love it: don’t take this personally. It’s just my opinion and you’re welcome to disregard it.

No doubt there are some empty areas in the game. But Cursed Shores on Tarnished Coast is still fairly active.

The real reason everyone is running Fractals is because it’s fun. Seriously, in my opinion it’s some of the best content in the game. I would prefer it over existing dungeons even if ascended gear did not exist.

My game time lately has been:

1) Fractals, for fun (and yes, for tokens)
2) Orr for loot and mats (get magic find out the rear > loot > sell and salvage > profit)
3) Southsun cove for karka shells

Sylosi.6503:

Mackdose.6504:

The manifesto hasn’t been violated by Anet, it’s been violated by a player-base that twisted it into whatever they thought it should have meant, rather than what it actually meant.

No twisting invloved, some of us simply followed the Q&A sessions, interviews, blogs, etc and therefore don’t come from a position of ignorance, so we see the manifesto in the context of what they repeated time and time again.

For instance in their blog their lead dev wrote this:

“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

With ascended gear they have broken that statement in two ways, firstly it is no longer optional if you want to be “just as powerful” and secondly it is no longer optional if you wish to do all the content as they have introduced a gating mechanism with “agony”, so bascially repeating the mistake other games made years ago and have since worked out is a dumb idea, ‘agony’ is just ‘radiance’ from LOTRO all over again.

What’s tricky about this is we don’t know what the future holds. As of now, the agony mechanic only exists in deeper fractal levels. ArenaNet have also said that the stats of legendaries were going to be brought in line with ascended items. Players are afraid that we’ve taken the first steps down a slippery slope. We don’t yet know if that fear is justified or not.

I agree that there’s nothing mandatory about this. Player expectations are not mandates. I can run a dungeon in whites, if I want to. That might be a little extreme, but if you know the mechanics and teamwork required, you could probably do it (it would just take longer). Having said that, I would much rather run them in exotics. But plenty of people successfully complete dungeons in mixed everything from blues to yellows.

lesteel.7314:

Yep, OP’s on point. I just poured my heart out making a thread with my complaints and wishes and it was deleted pretty much instantly, makes me feel warm and fuzzy and valued as a customer who’s given this company almost $400. Branding, you’re doing it really really wrong.

Oh, I’m sure your heartfelt post was deemed “unconstructive.”

There are plenty of good unofficial GW2 forums out there (guildwars2guru.com is my favorite). ArenaNet is probably paying attention to other forums so there’s a chance your words could be seen by them.

Holiday-related stuff would be cool. So would a discount on extra character slots. A man can dream, can’t he?

I’m fine with how tough the mobs are. I always thought there was too much of a difference between quest mobs and dungeon mobs. And if you’re gonna close that gap, it’s better to make normal mobs tougher instead of dungeon mobs easier.

This always happens with ArenaNet: people complain about difficulty at first.

Windwalker.2047:

My only problem with the area is that EVERY SINGLE MOB has 3X more HP than any of the other area’s 80’s.It makes combat frustrating and unnecessary long.Its bloody obvious that Anet intended the area to be for people with full ascended armor.

The only different about Ascended pieces (there are only ring and back pieces for now, I believe), other than slightly better stats over exotics, is the infusion slot to help you combat the agony mechanic, which only exists in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon for now (that I know of… someone please correct me if I’m wrong).

Considering how many karka shells are probably going to be required to craft anything, I don’t know we’re expected to collected enough with such a low drop rate. I spent over an hour doing nothing but killing young karka and got less than 5 shells.

Kerithlan.1659:

People have been complaining that they hit too hard with their spit attack. It might just be because I’m a guardian and have easy access to projectile reflect attacks, but I have no trouble with them at all. (I’m not a bunker build, I’m in junk gear with 11k hp and 2.2k armor.)

They usually open the fight with their ranged spit attack thing (which is what eats your health), so as soon as you see them charge that up (takes about 0.5 to 1 seconds) hit any sort of shield or reflect ability. You’ll take very little/no damage, and if you can reflect projectiles you’ll damage them instead.

After that attack is gone they won’t use it again for another 15-20 seconds, by which time they’ll probably be dead. They deal very manageable damage once that’s out of the way.

I personally thought that a lot more people would be doing that than there apparently are. When I hear stories about engineers and warriors eating pavement four seconds into karka fights it makes me worried. If anyone else has any tips (regardless of how common sense they might be) then please post them here so that others have an easier time.

As long as you’re fighting only one of ’em.

I play a thief and between regular dodging and attacks which include an evade element (Leaping Death Blossom, for example) I’m usually good but often it’s still close. And so far I don’t think I’ve managed to take on a veteran young karka alone without getting killed. Which sucks because until now veteran mobs have been solo-able for me.

I hadn’t really dealt with these new drakes at all. I came upon a group of downed event NPCs surrounded by reef drakes. “Meh… they’re just a bunch of drakes,” I thought, “I’ll kill ’em, rez the NPCs and continue the event.”

Well, you can guess what happened.

They were close to a waypoint, however, and I was so mad from getting killed so quickly and so easily that I death-zerged ’em, then rezzed the NPCs.

Only to run into a pack of young karka as the only player on the event.

By the time I was done with them I had no armor left, but I managed to take them all right before I got booted from the game for a new build.

Skykiller.3160:

The new zone is HARD! I just logged on after missing the main event and decided to check out the new zone. So I got to the new zone saw a Karka and said “Hey! Lets kill that to see what kind of loot I get!”. Needless to say one volley from that young Karka took off half my health and I have like 26k health. Mind you I didn’t die but it caught me off guard lol.

Also the most basic mobs seem to have ALOT of health. In Orr I can take on 3-4 mobs by myself with no issues but in the new zone I get destroyed by trying to take on 2 mobs by myself. I’m finding myself running away from everything in Southsun Cove unless I’m I’m doing an event with a decent amount of people.

Now, I’m not trying to sound negative but I’ve been seeing people everywhere in the zone dying like crazy. Also, I understand that this is only the 2nd level 80 only zone to be added to the game but it just seems like a very large jump to go from Orr difficulty to Southsun Cove difficulty which is a very large increase of difficulty. Some people may disagree with my take on the new zone but please understand this is just my opinion/ feedback on the zone.

On a side note, I LOVE the artwork in the new zone! Looks awesome in every way!

ArenaNet got tired of listening to people complain about Risen, that’s why.

KIDDING!

Hey thieves: Leaping Death Blossom and Roll for Initiative are also evades. Stealthing and then backstabbing helps a lot, too: Blinding powder, standard heal, or dagger #5. I find Thieve’s Guild a better elite skill for dealing karka than Dagger Storm. Your mileage may vary.

I have a bag full of things I seem not be able to turn in or do anything with. Thank goodness you can still progress to Southsun Cove island.

stoffe.1920:

Had the same problem on our server, the Ancient Karka would go instantly fully heal at 70% health, and all conditions on it expired immediately. Gave up seeing the event ever finish after 1 hour.

Moving on to the new island, first event I get into I promptly get my face stomped into the ground without even getting a chance to fight for more than 5 seconds. That’s as long as my Stability buff lasts. After that I spend the remaining 20 seconds being permanently pulled back and forth between 5 different enemies (4 of which spawned right on top of me while fighting the first one) being unable to fight back, heal, flee or do anything at all but die. Not fun. At all.

Armor has seemingly been made totally obsolete in this place. In Orr I could stand my ground against 1 veteran or 3-4 regular foes most of the time (Guardian with 3250 armor and regen about 170 health/second). Here I’m near death after a 1 on 1 with one regular enemy. Trying to melee a veteran is out of the question. (I hate dying. I build my characters defensively and play cautiously. In 250 hours of playing I’ve died 4 times. In 10 minutes on the new island I died twice.)

Massive anticlimax across the board for day 2 of this event. Lost all motivation to play any more GW2 today.

I’m enjoying it but I was starting to wonder if I just sucked or what because as a level 80 thief with mixed rares/exotics/greens I had trouble killing just one veteran young karka. Sorry you’re experiencing frustration, but at least I know it’s not just me.

Those sigils with extra damage against karka are looking mighty good, right about now.

I have a map fragment nobody wants. I have an alchemical potion I can’t turn in. I have a soggy bag no one wants. I fought Canach and got absolutely nothing: no item, no conversation, NOTHING. Talking to Levvi and/or Kiel goes nowhere.

What am I missing?

I just ran my first few fractals and I have to say I absolutely loved it. The artistic design, the mechanics, the difficulty was all great.

It’s interesting that in previous discussions of normal dungeons, people were concerned about “death zerging” with waypoints, and how that didn’t constitute learning how to play correctly. Well, now fractals don’t have waypoints (and due to how the technology works I can understand that) and people are complaining.

Personally, I think it’s better this way. I feel more accountable to the group to do my best. And once everyone in the group does die going back to a checkpoint is hardly any different from a waypoint. You’re just together as a group instead trying not to let the mobs de-aggro and reset.

All in all, I think Fractals of the Mists is the best thing so far about the Lost Shores: the initial invasion was a frustrating lagfest and I’m currently not sure how to complete these quests.

So… great job on the dungeon!

If I had a criticism it would be that the dialogue box to go to the next part comes up before everyone has looted the chest (and also been revived, in some cases, heh…). I have to drag it out of the way. I don’t know if this is initiated by players or automatic.

Skapocalypse.5236:

If your buying things to toss into forge to get commendations then yeah it’s a huge waste. However if you just got back from farming and don’t need to break down or sell blues/greens then you can get some nice items by junking them in the donation boxs. In otherwords the commendations are a good alternative to salvaging/selling junk items.

I don’t believe they are a good alternative, when you consider the gear you get with commendations is nothing special at all. I’d rather just vendor or salvage and have the money/mats. This whole commendations thing is a head-scratcher. I just don’t see the point.

I got a clue from a barrel. Then I talked to one of the event NPCs in LA and they led me to the next step.

I’m very glad to see this because there is definitely a bit of disappointment in other aspects of the event so far.

Dishonored is crazy fun.

Ha ha, that’s awesome.

Yeah even so they still don’t seem worth it. I bought some cheap food from the BLTC to get commendations but when I saw what you could buy with them I wondered what the point was, because it’s the same stuff you can already get for less effort than making commendations. So how is that even remotely worth my time and effort as a player? It’s like… I dunno… a negative reward, or something. If the items were unique or special in some way, that would be different, but they’re not. It’s just regular gear.

Yeah I realized this as soon as I saw what the items were you could get. None of them are unique or special, so what’s the point? I am sorry to say I’m really disappointed by this.

I was able to figure out some of the questing with the beach items and the Consortium, which was kind of cool and I felt good about that. It’s funny how people want to be told every little step and not figure things out. Following directions isn’t exactly fun or a game.

The live invasion lag was pretty bad and I’m disappointed about that.

The commendations you can make seem completely worthless. Not sure how anyone thought that was a good idea. None of the items you can get with them are unique or special, so why bother? There are much easier ways to get these items.

Skye Marin.3250:

All the following MF combinations require 1 Donation Packaging (DP) purchased at Miyani for 1s04c:
1 DP + 3 x (10 level 40 and under food) = 1 token
1 DP + 3 x (10 level 60 food) = 2 tokens
1 DP + 3 x (10 level 80 food) = 3 tokens
1 DP + 3 x (level 80 fine weapon) = 8 tokens
1 DP + 3 x (level 80 mastercraft weapon) = 12 tokens
1 DP + 3 x (level 80 rare weapon) = 140 tokens (roughly 50c each)
1 DP + 3 x (level 71 exotic armor pieces) = 550 tokens (roughly 40c each)

At that rate, the Exotic Liongaurd weapons are about 5g each.
Remember you can get the skins for karma north of Lion’s Arch.

Yeah I don’t see how this is even remotely worth it. Am I missing something? They’re just exotics. Their skins aren’t all that impressive and as far as I can tell they’re not even unique (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). Why would anyone want to do this? How is this considered rewarding or fun?

You guys need to remember 3 things:

1) ArenaNet has access to data you will never see and your opinion means nothing compared this data (not in a mean way but because facts > opinion).

2) ArenaNet is way smarter than you are. And they’ve proven this time and again. This is compounded by the attempt at doing something different which people just aren’t getting (or worse, think they get it but really don’t). When it comes to these philosophical outlook points, ArenaNet is going to stick to their guns (such as with dungeon difficulty). In other areas they’ve proven they listen (more back slot items in game and FOV changes are just two quick examples). But for any point where they seem to not be listening, see point number one above.

3) You’re not a game designer, and what you want to see in a game only speaks for your own desires and not the rest of the player base. You never speak for anyone but yourself. And in case you think you know more about game design than ArenaNet, please refer back to point two above.

To those of you saying “I thought this game was about skill not gear,” why don’t you try sucking in your new Ascended gear and see how well that works? For a game to be about gear, not skill, would mean bad players (no skill) could still do well because gear makes up for their lack of skill.

Do you really think this is the case with Ascended gear? And due to down-leveling, would it ever be the case?

So for the sake of the community please spare us the overblown soundbites. They do not help this conversation at all.

This discussion has already happened a thousand times.

People keep talking about ArenaNet “learning their lesson.”

What “lesson” was that? That they raked in the cash from the gem shop?

Yup, lesson learned.

ArenaNet has access to data you’ll never see. And they’re way, way smarter than you.

Drew.1865:

SomeoneSimple.7064:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The mention of Magic Find for the sub bosses, is to say that we have given them unique loot drops, and that Magic Find is a factor in what you get from them. That is no different in the past as it has been in the future. The more Magic Find you have, the better chances of obtaining a rarer item.

Wow, this is a horrible, horrible change, and completely goes against what I thought that was ArenaNet’s vision of cooperating with other players and fair rewards.

By implementing this in dungeons, you are actively punishing people who are properly equipped with survivability gear (Toughness, Vitality, proper Runes) in dungeons, and promoting lesser-equipped “leechers” to stack MF and give them even better rewards then they already where given.

Changes like this certainly ruin my willingness to run Dungeons. I knew ArenaNet didn’t really like dungeons to be pugged (the ‘LFG’ tool is plain embarrassing), but as someone who mostly relies on PUG’s to do dungeons, this feels like a kick to the teeth.

If they are dying in the dungeon it probably has to do with them being a player that doesn’t know the dungeon.
They aren’t going to give players everything so I guess people who don’t like the changes can always choose not to run the dungeons.

Agreed. The only people who are getting punished are bad players. I’ve run dungeons with other players loaded with MF and they were better players than me. If anyone was dragging down the group, it was me. The difference from having/not having MF is not enough to significantly affect the outcome. You could run a dozen dungeons, not knowing how much MF people had, and you wouldn’t notice a difference between one run and the next that you cold attribute to MF. Try it. I dare you. And then come back here and make the same argument with a straight face.

SomeoneSimple.7064:

Drew.1865:

If they are dying in the dungeon it probably has to do with them being a player that doesn’t know the dungeon.

My problem with this change isn’t about players dying in dungeons, this is about ArenaNet introducing griefing to dungeons.

ArenaNet did a good thing; removing traditional “ninja-looting” by implementing personalized loot-rolls, however with this change they are allowing players to grief their party members yet again, by promoting them to trade-in 40% of their combat/survivability-stats for + ~150% chance for better personalized loot, while the other party members who have to deal with that loss of damage/survivability, do not gain anything from it.

When you realize that people have and can complete dungeons in nothing but blues and greens, you realize how untrue this statement is.

Hey folks, it’s called “balance.” You don’t have to go all-out with MF on your gear. And if you’re such a terrible player that you can’t handle a bit of MF on your gear, that’s not ArenaNet’s fault, nor is it bad game design. Don’t forget that a decent amount of MF can come from food.

If you weren’t using MF in dungeons before, nothing has changed.

The increased rewards are great news. There is nothing to cry about here.

MikeTsa.7396:

Colin Johanson wrote:
“The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than
other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items
have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of
accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to
make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those
who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who
don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

Less than 3 months after launch :“In November we’ll unveil the first Ascended items. This new rarity type
falls between Exotic and Legendary on the spectrum of rarity and has
slightly higher stats than Exotics.”

I guess anet just proved they’re just like every other company out there, tend to the whiners follow the money ^^

Oh and Ascended items are not just “slightly better” than exotics. From the picture of the rings they posted you can see an extra +10 stat and a +3% magic find wich is 67 stat points on exotics right now if you put some other stat there.
Pretty sure they posted the item with the magic find % on purpose so the difference doesn’t show that much wich is probably +77 stat points from just a ring.
Imagine a full set when or if they implement it…

They also said that legendary items were going to be retooled to be exactly in line with ascended items and that new legendaries going forward would also be equal to ascended gear.

Knote.2904:

I had to laugh when I first saw they were doing this before the halloween event.

Sure scummy f2p MMO’s do them, but they were 100% free. I payed $60+ bucks for this game. Just give us good quality skins and fluff and we’ll buy them, it’s really that simple. If they truly did this to have the items be “rare” then they should only be attainable in game through something like a dungeon or w/e, not on the cash shop.

Unfortunately even if alot of people have learned their lesson and don’t buy into it this time around there are still stupid rich people that will spend stupid amounts of money on these things, there are people that do that in all the past F2P mmo’s i’ve played, I’m talking thousands.

And while I don’t normally mind this, as it basically gets these super rich people to blow their money on a game to support the developer, it’s making these cool skins completely exclusive to them which isn’t very fair.

Buy this new super awesome mega epic legendary sword for only 10,000 Gems! As a reward to only the super rich that support our game! You other lowly peasants can enjoy this hat you can wear in town.

I played TERA for a while and I liked what they did. They had a beach event where you could loot (drop rate was reasonable) swimsuit costumes for your character that were temporary (30 days if I remember right—also reasonable). If you wanted a permanent swimsuit costume for your character you could buy one in the cash shop.

GW2 kinda had something similar with the Halloween weapon skins you either bought temporarily for candy corn or that you crafted and were permanent. The big difference was that the GW2 temporary skins were too temporary: 4 hours? Really? And the crafting recipes seemed a bit excessive regarding mats.

There are things that only those with money can get, but at least in GW2 they give you no real advantage over players other than leveling faster. That’s just life. Game currency can be converted to gems so no real money is required, only effort if you have the time. If a player has neither time or money, I don’t see how there’s any valid complaint to be had. Some things should be rare, and only achievable through great effort or expense: that’s a big part of why they’re valuable to players.

ArenaNet is in this to make money and I don’t mind that one bit if they come up with ways that convince to willingly part with my cash. They’re very careful to control the game economy so that gold is scarce enough and valuable enough to make buying gems a tempting prospect. Nothing wrong with that. When I heard that there were to be new craftables and gatherables, my first thought was: I bet there won’t be storage slots added to the bank for these items. Like the Halloween gatherables, you’ll have to use normal bank storage space, which means a lot more players will feel compelled to spend gems on extra bank space.

I’m not particularly thrilled about that if it turns out to be true. I understand it, but I’m not happy about it. I want to be happy about spending money. I don’t want to do it begrudgingly. That just saps my enjoyment of the game a little bit. I’ve already spent a good amount of money for gems to expand bank and bag space.

I see a few people in this thread talking about ArenaNet “learning their lesson” from the chest keys.

I’m not so sure the lesson they learned is the one these folks are wishing for. There was backlash, yes, but if that backlash wasn’t louder than the sound of the cash register ringing and people still play the game…

Guess what the “lesson” really is?