Guild Wars 2

While I am a huge fan of this game, a lot of my interest is hope that they will expand game play like they did with the GW1 expansion packs. Vanilla GW1 didn’t even have heroes.

As far as the current state, I agree it is too shallow. Part of this may be class balance problems. Mesmer combat is much deeper than Ranger combat for example.

1. The combat attempts to achieve a balance between traditional MMO combat and FPS mechanics, but the FPS mechanics are watered down as a result and there are too few skills to be interesting from a MMO combat mechanic perspective.

2. The cool downs on many abilities are too long, heals are obviously only used when you have to heal, and for most builds just autoattacking with ability ‘1’ is as effective as trying to use it manually, leaving you with very few abilities you actually control.

3. On many classes you could auto attack almost every ability (if the game let you) and not notice any real difference in your combat effectiveness.

4. The short term CD abilities that are available for most of the time you are in combat are “fire when ever they are up” type abilities. This leaves you mostly just mashing what ever ability comes of CD and results in no real decision making or game play.

5. For many classes, F2 abilities are useless if not counter productive in many situations. In PVP for example, Ranger F2 abilities are mostly useless because of long cast times. In PVP who has 5 seconds to sit still for a minor AOE regen? AOE attacks on most pets are so slow they can’t hit opposing players. You could opt for a DPS ability but then its just another “mash when available” button with no strategic options. Even the Owl’s abilities are mostly “mash when available”.

They most definitely left room here for future expansion content. There would be absolutely no reason to extend the terrain out that far if they didn’t plan on using it in the future IMHO.

I have no idea if it would happen, and it would be difficult to resolve the lore aspect, but I would like some deeper tie in with the HOM activities of my hero from the previous game, or the ability to some how restore the HOM.

I agree with most of these posts (maybe not the Nude Norn Woman button) but I don’t understand the complaints about the person to person trading.

How is right clicking on an item and selecting “mail to person” any different than right clicking on the person and selecting “trade”?

As I see it, the mail option is a more convenient way to trade in that you don’t have to be next to them. In my experience it has always been received by the person I send it to instantly.

I read that complaint that sometimes the mail gets lost. This has never happened to me, but that doesn’t mean we need an additional trading option. If that is happening they just need to fix the mail to be more reliable.

Maybe some one can explain to me how the mail item option is not sufficient?

My Hall of Monument Black Widow Spider is named “Fluffy”.

If you stick to a limited number of viable builds I think they are ok. There are still some bugs that need to be addressed even in the viable builds.

The main problem is the large number of useless skills and the relative worthlessness of pets and spirits that limits the number of possible viable builds.

If you plan to focus on PvE then a Ranger is an ok choice as long as you stick to one of the proven builds and avoid pet and spirit builds. If you are interested in PvP choose another class like a Thief or Mesmer. You might be good enough to be effective with a Ranger in PvP and WvW, but you are always going to be more effective given your skill level with one of those two.

My PVE Build:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/ranger#8|0|1242|463|1156|352|4461|30|2344|826|2342|20|1307|1301|0|10|kitten0|0|10|2392|0|0|0|0|0|0|11|15|5|28032|28032|49964|49964|49964|49964|49964|25790|21080|21080|21080|21080|21080|

I was using a condition damage build for a very long time, then switched over to a power oriented build. I am much happier with the power oriented build. Condition damage in this game seems to have lots of problems.

Malyck is either the single most important element in GW2 lore or needs to be retconed immediately. Discuss…

http://www.guildhead.com/npc/282/malyck

Still seems to be stuck on Kaening. He stays in one place and nothing happens.

There is no box to pick up, but I found an item that had been placed in my inventory without me realizing it. If you double click on the item you will get a new box.

I dropped the box that Gukamatz gave me to collect ingredients because I was attacked and now he will not give me another. Anyone know a way to reset the quest?

Please confirm this for me…

The Lost Shores kick off event (an ‘epic’ world changing occurrence) is only going to occur once, will not repeat, and is scheduled for the middle of the day in America when almost the entire United States is at work and will not get to participate.

Am I misunderstanding something? This seems too dumb to be true?

Satans Chosen.1024:

That would be like suggesting all the players opposed to flying mounts are a minority.

I very much WANT flying mounts. So which of us is the minority? Got any proof?

The number of people that post in these forums is a small percentage of the total that play the game. If the opinions expressed by those posting in the forum represent the majority of players is unknown.

And I completely support the new Gear Tier.

Yeah, Caithe sends me letters all the time as it is. Unless she is seriously bipolar I doubt it is her.

attonita.6327:

This is an issue I have with GW2. While I recognize that yes, it would be pretty much impossible to call out your GW1 character by name or gender,

Actually this would not be that hard.

You already specify an account that you are linked to, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to let you specify the ancestor character and then sub his/ her name and gender in various text through out the game.

Obviously the spoken parts would not mention your character’s name, and it might be a bit much to expect them to mention your gender in actual speech, but this would have been pretty trivial to have tombs and such reference you.

Ba air.1372:

It’s been stated by Ree that only the Pale Tree can give birth to more Sylvari.

We know this isn’t true. Malyck did not come from the Pale Tree.

It is highly possible, given the conflicting evidence, that ANet didn’t decide this ahead of time and as a result the game is inconsistent in this regards.

It’s also possible that the lore says one thing, such as Sylvari being cold blooded, but the game mechanics were not developed to reflect that (it would be pretty unfair if Sylvari suffered some kind of movement penalty in cold regions).

As a result, we probably don’t know one way or the other.

I still think it is going to be fine. Even if GW1 players didn’t realize it, there was still ‘grind’ in that game. You just did so for skill points and access to heroes rather than gear. A player that just turned level 20 in GW1 was NO WHERE NEAR as powerful as one that grinded a bunch of skill points and had access to all the additional skills, heroes, and skill points.

In GW2 they have decided that continued progression will take the form of gear (in addition to what ever else they add for progression). If ALL they were adding was additional gear this would be a problem, but they seem committed to adding new and interesting content on a monthly basis even. There will be plenty of stuff to do in addition or in place of gear progression.

That said, I don’t see why anyone has a problem with this. I had a problem when they said that legendaries were getting augmentation slots, but I don’t if there is a way for casual players to also obtain items with augmentation slots. As far as I am concerned this new gear tier solves problems and doesn’t cause them.

I am guessing for lore reasons we wouldn’t see this until Cantha opens up, and possible not even then due to the overlap with existing class abilities. There would also be problems with lore and the existing races. How would you explain a Charr Ritualist?

Just a guess though…

Yes, add fishing, but please make it an actual mini-game and give us some gameplay value for it. Single click fishing implementations are boring.

In case someone is using a text parser to total the sentiment in this thread, I want to add that..

I AM COMPLETELY FOR THE ADDED GEAR TIER.

It will give me something else to work for. If the game’s difficulty and rewards don’t increase over time what point is there to continuing to play?

Honestly, yes, it will. I have another little virtual task to try to achieve. Right now I am getting bored because my character has maxed gear, but legendaries are completely out of the question for a casual player such as myself.

It’s like playing Tetris that never increases in speed and doesn’t keep score. If the difficult and the rewards don’t increase over time I have nothing left to play for.

The voice actor assigned to Trehearne took the director’s advice that “You’re a tree…” WAY too far.

Yeah, just the fact that it takes a group of 20 players spamming AOE’s to counter the actions of 1 thief is absolute proof that the situation is utterly imbalanced. Both Mesmers and Thieves need some serious adjustments (and yes, I play a Thief).

Siphaed.9235:

… it should do a commercial around Thanksgiving to get more public awareness. Do it! Please and thank you!

They are running ads in many Game Magazines for the November issues. You and ANet think alike

As far as populations go, no one has any real stats so anyone complaining about dropping populations are either trolls or don’t realize that their own tiny slice of game play is only anecdotal evidence. There are as many people that say there are lots of players as those that say there are none. Right now we just don’t know.

I am also against this.

Legendaries are a vanity item. It has been clearly known that they were a vanity item. As such it is perfectly justifiable that they are very difficult to get and not viable for the average or casual player.

By adding abilities they become a new tier that gives advantages to those who can afford to spend the money or time sink to get them. We don’t need another MMO that is an endless gear grinding time sink.

So which dragon is this? I know it’s concept art, but it has to be a concept of something and it looks like this would be an earth dragon?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Dragon_13_concept_art_(Defeated_Dragon).jpg

Spoilers below, be wary…

Anyone ever find any more lore about the second Pale Tree? The one that Malyck comes from?

That story seems to have been dropped like a hot potato, but it’s extremely relevant to the Pale Tree’s role as the possible 6th dragon or 6th dragon champion.

Necromancers seem to also summon spirits from the realm of death, not necessarily always living beings that died.

The force of death is not always associated with ‘Evil’. In many real world cultures, Death has been seen as a natural part of the cycle of life. It is possible that in Tyria Death is viewed as a perfectly natural force, and those associated with it would not be seen as any different than other magic users.

While Death may not necessarily be evil, Zhaitan is. He wants the destruction of all life. It is no different than Primordus, who uses the elemental power of Fire like Elementalist do, but is definitely not associated with the Elementalists of Tyria.

Since ANYTHING is this game is only worth the personal amount of fun you derive from it, you just have to judge if it will be fun for you to go for it or if it will just be irritating.

They are a massive, massive undertaking. Does that sound like a challenge or a chore to you?

Little known fact: Risen are actually quite emotionally sensitive and will go home and sulk in a corner when their toys are broken.

I think I went to the Sylvari home instance once around level 4 and I never went back. There is absolutely nothing in there. The human home instance is several city blocks. The Sylvari home instance is basically an apartment.

I figured they just gave up on them entirely since its been months since release and we have heard nothing about them. I guess this is what you can expect from a Free To Play game. The monthly world events are still fun and WvW is pretty good so I believe I got my $60 worth out of the game either way.

It is likely they were preloading content for the next event.

In addition, there are many changes that are not worth telling us about. If they clean up a texture used for rendering ground foliage it would be ridiculous to post patch notes about it but that would definitely require a client patch.

To assume they used a client side drop table just because they are patching files is beyond over thinking things.

This is a bad time for any MMO, more so for one that is free to play so there is no reason not to quit for a while.

We are in the Holiday release time frame, and MAJOR triple A titles are coming out every week. XCOM, Dishonored, Assassin’s Creed 3, Darksider, MOH, etc…

This is on top of the fact that WOW just had a major expansion and RIFT has one incoming.

ON TOP OF THAT the Halloween event pretty much meant everyone was in the Mad King’s Labyrinth and even Orr was dead.

MMO’s are cyclical. When everyone finishes MoP and the game releases slow down people are more likely to come back to GW2 since its free and they can pick it up at any time. And ANet seems committed to a constant release of fresh content so I don’t think we will get bored with this game any time soon.

And I take it as a good sign that on the server I am on Queensdale is still frequently in overflow mode.

Although I agree ANet needs to make some progress on the balance issues and the bots will eventually kill this game if they don’t address it pretty soon.

It gets worse.

Not only are you not the main character in the entire story line (I am looking at you Trehearne) since you have to group to finish the last mission in your PERSONAL story line, you most likely will not even be the character that shows up in the cut scenes.

In entire last mission of my personal story line I didn’t even show up once until the entire thing was over and I went to pick up my reward. Not that it really mattered who showed up since there was ‘0’ interaction and the entire thing was linear.

I am not trashing the entire game, but when it comes to personal stories…

As bad as the personal stories were in this game, Anet should just avoid the whole Romance Arc idea. They couldn’t pull of a simple War story arc, and when romance plots are done badly they tend to become objectifying and insulting.

IMHO they should stick to the stuff they do well, like more dynamic zone and world events. Halloween was a blast and might be the best Holiday event in any MMO ever. The fact that the November event might allow us to have some real impact on the game only a few months after launch has me really excited.

In the beginning of my character’s progression there was some kind of personality meter that determined — in some way I can’t quite figure out — the effects of my dialog choices. I am referring to the Charming / Noble / Ferocious meter.

But after about level 20 a two things happened:

1. There seems to have been NO MORE dialog choices. They just disappeared.

2. The personality meter seems to have no affect what so ever on the game.

Did I miss something?

It has nothing to do with age. The story in this game is terrible. The story in most MMO’s is lackluster, but GW2’s story line is much much worse.

There are games that have deep and interesting storylines. Even some surprising games that you wouldn’t think would have deep storylines do, like Spec Ops: The Line. Games like Mass Effect, Braid, LA Noire, Half Life, all have pretty decent storylines.

Knights of the Old Republic is a stellar example — One of only a few games that had a plot twist so unexpected I didn’t see it coming until it happened.

A couple of notes from my experiences:

1. The storyline missions seem to get a lot easier after about 65. In fact, some of the missions in the 70’s range are ridiculously easy.

2. The biggest problem I see is that the storyline missions don’t take into account class or character builds. Some missions I found incredibly difficult as one class but walked through it with another.

3. There are still TONS of bugs, particularly in the 60+ missions. Some of them are down right funny (a big death and mourning scene for a character THAT DIDN’T DIE, and was sitting there fighting right along with us as he was being mourned). Part of the problem is that the storyline missions are just not finished. If many of them just don’t work I would guess that most of them have not been balanced.

4. I agree that during most of my missions the NPC’s all took dirt naps while I had to do all of the work. Oddly enough this was either fixed recently or the NPC’s in the level 60+ missions are much better than lower level missions, because the problem mostly went away after level 60 or so.

Yes.

Rather it is worth anything more than that I am not sure yet.

Who thought of this? The guy has a 6000hp/sec non-interruptable, un-dodgeable DOT that he can use every 5 seconds. He can’t be knocked back, he is immune to stuns, slows are irrelevant because of his jump attack that can hit for 9000hp at times. If he targets you, you die. I managed to dodge two attacks and use invulnerability two times. 4 defeated attacks in a row and then an immediate third Bird of Doom (within 15 seconds of the first attack and targeting) that killed me through 2 overlapping heal fields.

There is no strategy to this fight. Its a death zerg.

This is about the most incompetent design I have seen in a triple A title. There is a reason the majority of the player base will not even try these exercises in frustration.

ituhata.6830:

I just like kiting on the shortbow, I know that’s mostly autoattack (especially me since I corner kite pretty well so I rarely have to use my dodges). It’s like a simple game of tag with every mob you meet, I’m not ‘it’ much. =)

As far as long cooldowns on abilities, I think most people haven’t learned to manage weapon swapping yet. When I burn my cooldowns in large fights I automatically switch to a new weapon and burn those cooldowns. Then all I have to do is wait until weapon swap cooldown is up before repeating. Along with the elite skills (I run signet builds so I don’t really use my utility skills).

Anyway, I’m getting to a point where I use abilities that match the situation, so I’m not just spamming whats up and I’m swapping weapons for the might buff and then back again, sadly, in time I will have a rotation for big fights, but I’m sure that will make alot of Rangers happy once they learn it. =P

At level 70 that is pretty much what I am finding. It is the exact same rotation, then I have to watch my character auto attack while I wait for my swap, pet ability, and ability cool downs then the same rotation again. I even picked the lowest cool down elite and got the 20% cool down reduction trait.

I am not sure what Anet could do about it though. If they lowered the cd they would have to weaken the abilities too. Rangers don’t need a dps increase. If the abilities were more situational so that you had to think to apply them it might help.

I think the reason for the strange results with Rangers is that the class is quite powerful but boring because of long cool downs on abilities, limited number of viable builds, and a significant bug in our class ability.

Rangers can pump out tons of dps but you spend way too much time auto attacking.

As a result lots of people play it for the dps but the satisfaction is low.

Just a theory.

He was up on Kaening two days ago and he had not been prior to that. I was able to get the point and map complete.

70 Ranger, overall score of 7

Since everyone else is using subscores…

World Design: 9 (travel costs too high, and spawn density way too high in many areas)

Graphics / Character Designs: 10

Voice Acting: 2 (Except for a very few bright spots this is just bad)

Lore: 5 (This took GW 1’s excellent lore and added enough silly plot holes to drive a truck through)

Music: 10

Crafting: 4 (Would be 2 except for the discovery system, other than that there is no ‘game’ to crafting and crafted goods are almost useless for a number of reasons)

Economy: 3 (Deflated mess, there is no player to player economy, only food is even useful to your own characters)

WvW: 8 (a few technical issues need to be resolved)

sPvP: 7 (Character Imbalances)

Profession Design: 7 (Character and build Imbalances, too many useless skills, overly long skill cool downs and too much reliance on auto attack or too few skills slots depending on how you look at it)

PvE: 8 (Spawn density way too high in many areas, after around 60 or 70 areas become boring, redundant, and tedious to travel)

Dynamic Events: 9 (Too many are zergable, but fun nonetheless)

Post 50 content: 4 (Just not finished)

Personal Story: 2 (OMG hire a writer)

Dungeons 3: (Short, too many boring boss fights, frustratingly hard, poor rewards, and no ‘tutorial’ on mechanics. Throwing untrained players into AC is just mean).

Exploration: 9 (Waypoints and vistas are an awsome idea. Some of the higher level zones get redundant. I think Sparkfly is an unfinished copy of most of Timberline down to the Krait tower in the middle of the lake)

My WvW focused guild had an epiphany several days ago that I wanted to share with everyone.

The real problem with WvW is that every one wants to be the largest server with the biggest population and then zerg around the map controlling territory. Right now, this is the only definition of “win” anyone understands.

The problem is that this definition of “win” only makes sense if you can ensure that there are two balanced fighting forces — which is impossible. ANet has no control over server population sizes nor can they control how many people want to play WvW.

Population imbalances are the NORM, not the exception in WvW. I think ANet realized this and as a result:

— The maps are designed for a smaller force to do well against a larger force by forcing the larger force to spread out. The smaller force can not control as much territory as the larger force, but they can control enough to get some server bonuses.

— The unmanned buff does not buff stats, it buffs rewards. You can compare this to WOW’s WvW area, Wintergrasp, which is designed to require equal forces and that has a unmanned type buff that buffs stats.

— You can make a fortune taking points even if you don’t hold them for very long.

So our guild has decided to accept the fact that our server, being one of the newest and having few organized WvW guilds, will never be able to compete on a territory holding basis, that is where the fun begins.

We fight using hit and run tactics. When an opposing zerg comes to take a fort in our borderlands, we leave one or two resisters to delay them then attack another points. By the time they have taken that fort we have taken a different one and usually a camp. When they zerg the newly taken fort we circle back and take back the original.

If we have enough people to do at least this much well, we send strike teams into their border lands and start taking camps. We don’t usually even attempt to hold them. Just take and then run to the next point. Sometimes we grab a tower if they haven’t left enough troops in their borderlands because they are too busy zerging ours. They chase us all around the map as we take camps, making a fortune with almost no repair bills. Chasing us around tends to cause their defending troops to get scattered then we swoop in and kill the stragglers.

Admittedly, they still -win- the overall territory battle and have larger server bonuses, though they are usually too busy chasing us around now to take Godsword and our orb.

This is the first time I have been in WvW where the group I was with used these kinds of tactics and we are having a blast.

No way to say for certain, but Guild Wars 1 kept the initial level 20 cap through 3 expansions and 7 years. That might give some idea as to their design philosophy. GW 2 seems to use the same skill point after level cap progression mechanism.

Yeah, no need to hate on WoW. I plan to go play Panderia for a month and then start back with GW2. They are both games so I don’t know why people get religious about them. Play what entertains you and let everyone else do the same.

Can’t wait to see how GW2 progresses in two months. Its already a great game but the post 50 content isn’t finished and there is some badly needed balancing to do. Still, comparing GW1 from its start to its finish inspires me with a lot of confidence in Anets ability to grow a game over time.

70 Ranger, score of 7

He might be on one of the low pop servers. I am on one and most of the zones 50+ are empty. It is just a temporary problem.

Runes of the Undead can help with condition bonus, but with its fairly weak PVE performance and the ease of condition removal in PVP it is not really worth it. I have condition damage bonus buffs in every slot and trait option plus maxxing out my condition damage bonus trait and the damage is still sup par compared to my other options.