Guild Wars 2

As much as I am loathing the direction arenanet is taking, here are my positives and negatives of this patch as I feel both are justified and warranted:

Positives:
-I like the new dailys
-I like the ability to select dailys I want to do(although the choices last night were kind of poo)
-The preview in Trading Post is a fantastic-must have addition. Good job!
-Guild Missions sound great on paper to immerse people in a zone, give guilds something to do together and to work for. However, my guild won’t be seeing it for a little while.
-Unsure about the mob loot drop changes(if there were any) but it seemed improved.
-I like that the dragon chests and world boss chests FINALLY drop stuff worthwhile.
-Haven’t really focused on class changes because changes are going to happen regardless, but I saw something for the necro that I liked that I think benefits my build.

Negatives:
-Not sure how I like the fact that I can only do each boss once a day. As it was, I only did a boss maybe twice a day anyways. Do people really farm the same dragon 10x a day?
-Including 50 globs of ecto along with 40 laurels for ascended accessories is way too much and I wish this would be changed before even one person is able to purchase. (probably too late). Why you place a crafting material for the cost of an item is beyond me.
-Adding yet MORE currencies to the game is watering down the game, much like SWTOR. Merits and commendations? I really do not like having to keep track of nearly a dozen currencies(gold,karma,dungeon tokens,laurels,commendations,merits,fractal relics, pristine fractal relics, skill points). You need a currency page in the character sheet if you are going to continue to water down your game.
-Guild missions, eventually, will impact smaller guilds. Forcing us to rely on the community is lazy and terrible design. Eventually we might not be able to do all the missions(unlockability aside) just because we chose to be in a smaller guild.
-Gating the guild missions via an insane amount of influence gives insight into your design direction, yet again. Eventually my guild of 30 members will have enough influence to unlock whats needed to do all. But not for a long time.
-Introducing another ascended item one month after the previous is a direct contradiction to what Chris Whiteside said in his AMA, that new items will not be available month after month. Did everyone forget about this little tidbit? A lot of us just finished getting our ascended amulet. No time to rest, we must GRIND for the ascended accessories.

Overall, a lot of good changes, a lot of iffy ones for me. The biggest negative I see, is the design direction.

I bought the game and bought into the hype that a developer was finally not going make the game into an item grind. Play the way you want to, max stat items(exotics at the time) will be all you need and eventually you’ll just grind for cosmetics. There will be no grind. Everything arenanet has done since November 15th has been completely, 110% against what I thought I was getting into…what I bought into, what I thought that Colin and Mike and all those guys were saying in their interviews and webcasts.

This game is a grind. This game has a bigger grind than WoW, than Rift, than SWTOR. In my opinion, this is the grindiest game on the market. This is funny because avoiding grind is exactly what arenanet set out to do and they have given us the most grindiest MMO to date.

This game teeters on item/gear progression. We all thought this to be a cosmetic game.

This game is exactly like every other MMO out there now. Get to max level, game changes. Grind for dungeon set, grind for ascended, grind out WvW progression(soon), grind for legendary, grind out influence for Guild Missions. Other than features, the core of this game is exactly like WoW and every other game. Grind for max stats. This is not the game I wanted to buy and play. But I have a lot of time invested, so I’ll cautiously see where it goes. I’ll say it again, this game is exactly like every other game out there now. Theres no difference. I thought I was playing a unique and special game.

To everyone that says “But noone is forcing you to grind for a legendary, or grind out ascended pieces”. Are you that naieve? In WoW, no one forced me to raid. But I did because what else was there to do besides acquire best in slot gear? Sure, I could have just gotten to 80, run some dungeons and get some mediocre lower ilvl epics that way withing the raid grind. But is that any different than GW2? Get to max level, grind out a dungeon set and be done? Same thing. GW2 is no different, its no special snowflake(not anymore).

I agree. Southsun is one of the better looking zones in the game.

Sardonia.8196:

I would just like to be able to obtain the gear on my terms and the timeframe that I set up. Nnot be forced to do stuff I really do not want to do. I wish they would just release all aspect to acquire this gear like exotics through crafting , karma, laurels etc. But have all the gear be available through everyone of those methods instead of some this way and some that way.
I would like to play the game the way I want to play it and acquire the gear the way I want to acquire it instead of being told that you can only get it this way.

Thats how the game was initially touted by the devs. Play the way…YOU want to play.

-I want to craft. But i cant craft ascended items.
-I want to run dynamic events in Orr and map complete. Well, hopefully along the way you complete your dailys, otherwise you wont get your ascended gear.
-I want to dungeon farm. Again, hopefully you complete the dailys for the laurels if you want that ascended gear.
-All I want to do is WvW…same thing.

If you want BiS gear because thats how you want to play, but you only want to do WvW, well then youre screwed with getting BiS gear.

Fletch.3572:

I kittening hate not being able to actually run events/dungeons/wvw or what ever to get my kittening gear. This god kitten daily kitten is for subs to keep subbing get it the kitten out and let me go on a weekend grind fest and let me get my kittening gear so the following weekend I don’t have to worry about it f f s

kitten off I’m an addict and I’m kinda kitten =D

You have a kitten litter there dude.
What?

VOLKON.1290:

In this thread: People complaining about access to ectos and overlooking the part where you’re guaranteed at least two rares completing the missions. (Helpful Hint: Up to six free ectos right there per chest.)

By the way… those complaining about the gear curve, grind etc. need to slow down, take a breath and actually do the math before you freak out. For example, the ascended amulet (berserker equivalent) gives you an increase in damage (not DPS, damage) of 0.55% over the exotic. That’s it… 0.55%. This is hardly required, game breaking, forced grind, yada yada.

Dude, Ive been salvaging rares for the last week. On average, I get 2 silk scrap and the rune back. I might get lucky and get 1 ecto.

My luck has been crap with ectos lately.

ThiBash.5634:

I’m starting to wonder how much more it will take for me to quit the game. I mean, at the moment, I’ve just been informed that my options will be as follows:

a) Spend a bucketload of gold on guild influence to unlock the guild missions for my guild.
b)Spend a bucketload of gold on ectos to get the ascended gear that way.
c)Quit my guild and join a large farming guild.
d) Wait 4 weeks till my medium sized guild has gathered enough influence on their own.

Ascended Gear is like the EU: on paper it sounds like a good idea, but more and more nasty things keep popping up at increasingly faster rates. And those in charge purposefully ignore us.

e) Take a several month from the game, come back with prices die down. Only to realize, that you are now several more slots behind the ascended gear curve. Wait, I thought that this wasnt supposed to happen. People kept telling me I could quit and come back whenever I want and I wont be behind!

Im with you dude. Love my guild. Love some of these changes. But the negatives are weighing heavier than positives. And since the very beginning(even in beta), Ive noticed that anet walks the fine line between what they say and do, and fall whichever the way the wind blows. Wondering what else needs to happen for me to leave the game. If I left, my choices are:

-Diablo 3(just got a CM wizard to max with kickin gear)
-Mass Effect 3 multiplayer…I have the itch again
-Wait to try out firefall
-Wait to try out defiant
-Stop MMOs all together. Ive always said GW2 is my last straw with MMOs…I didnt think it would be a time sink so I said OK. Now, Its as much of a time sink as any raiding gear treadmil game out there, so long as you want to stay current with your gear and current with the content. This is NOT the game that was advertised to me.

Folk.2093:

I dont see why fractals keep getting left out since the rings became abailable; I’d like to get the amulet and accessories by doing fractals sometime soon.

Dude, that makes too much sense. And we are in the business of making absolutely no sense here.

This game just took a crap in my toilet. and didnt bother to flush.

What the heck is this? Why are you putting a crafting material along side a currency? As if the price of ectos isnt high enough.

This lovely addition will increase demand for ectos, which drives the price up, which drives the possibility of me getting ectos via the TP down. I must rely on RnG via salvaging, or run dungeons till I die to salvage from token gear. Apparently you do not listen to the community when they are telling you the price of a legendary(notice the intentional use of the word PRICE) is skyrocketing, and all you can do is push that further down the road.

And you pay a legit economist for this game?

I dont know whos being ripped off more…me or arenanet.
(expecting this to be deleted and infracted for speaking my mind, which happens to be negative of the game right now. And we can’t have bad press can we? No worries, I have doubts if I’ll be playing this game much longer with questionable design decisions like this)

Wait,
Can someone answer me this: Do the new ascended accesories cost 40 laurels and 50 ectos?
Is this BS true?

So…theres another ascended piece coming? The accessory slot? Thats…pretty quick. Only a month after amulets.

Im hoping in a few weeks, so that my guild has enough time to catch up with training AoW5 and garner 30k influence to unlock the first bounty mission.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Why is so many people upset that their is content that is designed for guilds or groups of people larger than 3 friends? If you only have 3 people active in your guild, this content might be realistically out of your reach. If you want to participate in ‘guild’ content, you will need to have a little larger/active guild.

I’m not going to get mad when they release PVP stuff or WvW stuff just because I don’t like to do it. If the ‘guild’ content is not within your reach because you don’t like to play in a guild with more than 3 people, don’t get mad. Continue playing the game and the rest of it’s content the way you like to play.

And 10G a day is not ridiculous. If you are specifically farming for gold, 3G an hour is fairly realistic estimate for the average person.

Just remember, this content is designed for ‘guilds’ and not just a small group of friends. You don’t need a mega guild to be able to do the content, just more than 3-4!

People are upset because one of the main one-liner arenanet fed us for months prior to release was “Play the game you want to play!”.

Keeping with that ideal, if people wanted to create a 5 man guild with close-knit friends who run some dungeons, thats how they want to play! Now, guild content is out, yey! But unless this guild ran 20 dungeons a day, I doubt they have all guild trait lines unlocked, let alone an additional 30k influence to train Bounty missions. Now this guild needs to recruit or join another guild, which is not how they wanted to play!

This whole idea of play the way you want to play gets thrown around all of the time. But to a guild of 5-10 people, even my guild of 30 folks, 30k influence is a lot. My guild has 33 members I believe. At peak, we have 10-15 people on. We are almost done training AoW 4,we paid our way to purchase another 20k for AoW (1 week of training). Are we supposed to sit around and farm events to get 30k influence to experience the content we want to?

green plum.7514:

Brutal Arts.6307:

So why is everything so bugged/poorly thought out on release? There must be a disconnect in this process.

Bots cannot make the decisions and move like we can..move like McJagger!

Seriously, bots cant test things.

Robert laid out what goes on, and while thats good, it unfortunately isnt enough sometimes and thats not arenanets fault. I do not get upset with a developer, in this case Anet, when a boss bugs out and resets because I moved too far in one direction or whatever the case may be. I do get upset with the developer when they are, seemingly, narrowminded with a development direction. Im sure they have their reasons and from time to time enlighten us. But lately I’ve been getting the feeling their reasons for doing things/design direction/vision is greater than or supercedes what thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of players feel is in the games best interest.

I was thinking about that last point this morning, to be honest, while putting on my pretty shoes and trecked onto work. We might not always be right, but kitten the customer is always right! Isnt that the saying? Take ascended gear: Apparently it was always meant to be in game. Game released without it. One day, 3 months in, we get walloped with ascended gear in Nov 15 patch with a reason that does not even make sense to me, still. The reason chris whiteside gave to us is contradictory of itself: Meant to bridge the TIME gap between acquiring exotic and legendary(assuming everyone is going after a legendary, when probably less than 1% of people will) because they realized that people got exotics and legendaries way too quickly. Yet, ascended was always meant to be in game. Doesnt make sense to me, but OK. Anyways, I digress. There was a thread with something around 40,000 posts, mostly against ascended gear. Now the forum community is but a fraction of the overall community, but most of your enthusiastic and passionate player base did not want ascended gear in the game, or implimented the way it was. Yet, we were heard and ignored. They could have simply created new gear(not a new tier) with an infusion slot to progress through fractals. No stat increase. Yet, we were ignored. There were a ton of great ideas, but ignored.

Thats where my frustration comes with developers.

Wow I went off on a tangent. I hope it still is relevant to the topic!

Because thousands of players (=dozen thousands of runs) are much more likely to find a problem than a few dozen runs with devs. To truly test something the system must be automated; e.g. use bots to run dungeons.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Expecting the first half of the so called amount of content of an expansion.

But in the end, there is no way that ANet could ever deliver what they have promised. To be more realistic, I expect some PvE fixes, together with some fluff stuff like most of the guild content. After one month of living story (not much living in this story though), we hopefully get some more stuff to do than 45min worth of clicking things…

I agree. First night it was fun to see what was going on with the living story. Clickity click, an hour later Im done. And I haven’t cared to check in on whats going on. This dragged out a bit too long for the next phase. I really hope the next phase lasts longer than an hour.

emikochan.8504:

Expect nothing, never be disappointed

that said i really hope for some bug fixes, I’m not bored of the current content yet so the main issue for me is bugs.

@cesmode, jps can give you rares and exotics, just very low chance (like dragon chests hah)

Yes I know. I’ve gotten a few. But still its a huge waste of time. I dont want to see blues and greens..those medallions that take up space that I end up vendoring anyways.

Id guess pay, but you could probably trade gold for gems and buy if you had enough gold.

@OP: Its OK, you dont need to worry about that shortbow because you’ll never get it. Not without 100 tries in the mystic toilet, or dropping 600 gold on a precursor alone. Because spending ingame currency and BUYING your way to epicness is a step toward being legendary and unique.

@topic: I would much rather grind for skins than stats(ahem fractals). Why ascended needs to have an increase in stats? I dont know.
I want a reason to go to low level zones I’ve already completed and participate in DEs.
I want to be able to get that legendary after 3 or 4 months of farming. No, farming 600 gold for 6 months and THEN farming for the rest of the mats doesn’t make it legendary.

Well, we know that they are gating guild missions slightly by placing the first mission in art of war 5. Forcing my guild to quickly buy 30k influence and train it up, waiting another week for it all.

However, my expectations are:
-More interesting dailys/selectable dailys
-AC bosses revamped
-Vets,Champ loots fixed
-jumping puzzles actually rewarding(kind of just hoping…fun to do, but pointless. No reward).

We’ll see how these guild missions are. Kind of make or break for me at this point

Yeah my guild just blew a lot of gold and 30k influence to get to art of war 5, and we still need to wait a week to train it up.

Not happy.

Sky.7610:

If this game was subscription based, would you be willing to pay to play this game monthly? Why or why not?

Do you think GW2 would have flopped if it was launched as a subscription game?

Before November 15th patch, definately. And I would have spent some money in the cash shop. I had THAT much fun. After November 15th, no.

Good updates last patch, good ones coming today..although again I just question some of their design direction. Why make art of war 5 the requirement for the first guild mission? Why not tell us at release that our exotics will be replaced by ascended if ascended was always intended(rhymes). Just a lot of grey areas with this dev team, a lot of questions, a lot of concerns. When I start to question a developer’s direction, I tend to leave the game. So no, I wouldn’t pay for a sub right now.

tsfs.4527:

Don’t know if this has been discussed before or not (search suggests no). Anyway, wouldn’t a taunt mechanic be useful in this game, even with no trinity? How often do you see a downed player being chewed up by a mob, where the allies have nothing to do other than try to rez faster than the damage?

You could have interesting strategies, like kiting mobs into traps, bouncing the mobs around, etc. To me, it feels like it would add a bit more order to the chaos, without having to resort to the trinity model (as no profession can stand being the sole target indefinitely).

What do you think?

No, there are no tanks in Guild Wars 2. Taunting is a tanking ability.

And I think the downed player’s “aggro” or in this game it is called “hate” is halved, but I could be mistaken.

Ill put my fist weapon warrior against your double pistol warrior!

Bump. Could use a few more people.

Oreoz.2573:

bluewanders.5297:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I hate to personally say it, but this might be the time to start a petition to attempt to block this patch.

No… you don’t petition to block new content from dropping. I don’t want big guilds to be excluded from the content too just because small guilds have been… the answer is make our position known, and understood, be willing to discuss it at length until it is… and then act like adults once the “final” decision has been made and deal with it’s consequences on an adult level.

We aren’t 5 year olds… we can certainly deal with an unfavorable turn of events without trying to screw over everyone else for whom it is favorable. At the same time… when decisions have been made, the decision makers need to be given feedback and alerted to dissident opinions… that is the very basis and strength of freedom of speech. “Good” decision makers take this feedback into consideration in the future and incorporate it into more accurate decision making models… even if their decisions continue to press disfavor on a portion of the population affected by them… not all decisions can be favorable to everyone… but everyone should be heard and acknowledged… and their feedback should have weight.

I agree with you completely.

And then i remember back when Anet said they didn’t want to make a grindy game.

Truthfully, they haven’t. It’s all optional.

So people quit playing because they don’t want to grind.

Ironic.

Jeez for the last time everything in this game is as optional as everytng in any game. Yet we do it because what else is there to do. The argument that its all optional is mute. Raiding is optional in wow but we do it because theres nothing else to do. Much like missionswillbe done here.

Literally everything you do in this game is a grind. Guild missions are going to be a grind for smaller guids. Its optional but again so is raiding in wow yet we did all of that…so we are going to do guild missns and grind them out…in a game where this is no grInd

Concerns:
1. Small Guilds: You are relying on the community to chip in and help, giving small guilds a chance to complete any and all guild missions. I think you saw this idea fall on its face once people stopped running around Orr and temples remained unchallenged. Allowing random people to participate dynamically is great. Relying on those people to help out smaller guilds is terrible design.
2. Rewards: So far I like the rewards announced(reduced waypoint costs, yay!). There has been no information on whether or not there will be personal rewards that increase individual power. I.E. Will there be a chest at the end with ascended items in it? Or a new form of currency(barf..there are too many as it is) to purchase high end gear? Basically, I would love for these guild missions to stay away from anything resembling a raid where only if you participate in these will you be rewarded with the most powerful items. I don’t want to feel like I need to run the guild missions, much like I am feeling the need to run fractals just to have BiS gear that I thought I already had with exotics.
3. If a guild mission becomes bugged, does the guild get refunded that influence? Probably not, but this is different that dynamic events getting bugged/stalled. We are spending guild influence on these missions and if they bug out, we don’t get to complete and do not get reward, but just blew a bunch of influence. I hope these missions were severely tested and this possible issue was examined.

Was there any mention as to the rewards you receive for participating in guild missions? I know guilds unlock more missions and guild-specific rewards. Are there rewards that boost individual power?

Hoping these missions stay away from the raid-style reward system where if you participate in this endgame/high end group functions you get rewarded with some BiS gear that can only be onbtained through raiding. I hope guild missions do not provide individual stat boosts where I would yet again feel compelled to participate in them every time I log into the game in order to keep up with the masses..

Leveling 1-80 was my best experience in this game so far. World vs World was the next best experience. Running dungeons and gearing up was the next best experience. The Haloween even was the next best.

I don’t think this game is what was advertised, not by a long shot. The big liner was “we don’t want you to suddenly play a different game than you have 1-80”. Well, at 80 its been a dungeon grind(OK this is fine for me.), and then a fractal grind. I can choose not to do fractals sure. But if I don’t, that leaves me with map completion, orr farming, or dungeons. Not much else.

Sadly I am only logging in to complete the daily and logging out, and Ive been a bug supporter and still am despite some flaws(in my opinion) concerning development direction. I am taking a small break from the game other than dailys, to play diablo 3 again. Hopefully the next patch(the 25th?) will spark some life into the game for me. Otherwise my hiatus will continue for a while longer. Which is OK. It doesn’t mean I dislike GW2 or that I do not plan to come back and play 3+ hours a night. Just for me, right now, I’ve stalled in my desire to do anything because everything is literally tied to accumulating better gear and/or legendary completion(map completion, farming mats, etc…everything can be bubbled up to the legendary) which sadly is unattainable at the moment for me due to precursors requiring me to put a second mortgage on the house.

Link didnt work for me.

I vote no. Game doesnt need to reset gear every year or so to keep the masses happy.

Do everything else you have planned, just do not increase level cap. New zones, content, world story arcs, personal story arcs.

I vote no to level cap increase, and a hell no to new gear stat increase.

While I agree, they did a good job investigating this issue. Give credit where credit is due.

But this thread needs to be locked. Mods need to be consistant. If I made a thread with Arenanet or an Arenanet employee in the title, and the thread had a negative tone(even if it wasnt derogatory or insulting), it would be locked and the reason would be that arenanet or employee callouts are against ToS.

But this is a happy thread about arenanet. So it stays open(and my post will be infracted). Blizzard forum mods treated its community in a similar way. Add this behavior on top of my ever-growing gripes about WoW, at the time, and it lead me to quit the game and not look back. When I ever think about returning, honestly the dark cloud I see over Blizzard’s head was their crappy forum moderation and the filtering of all negative things about their game. Can’t have bad press!

But, to stay on topic, yes good job on finding the bug. Looking forward to a fix.

Safari.3021:

There is nothing wrong with the forge.
Personally I’ve received Dawn, Leaf of kudzu and bard from random rares, 2 dusks from exotic greatswords, legend from exotic staffs, lover from exotic shortbows and chosen from random exotics. Finally I got spark, from exotic daggers, that one was the hardest and most expensive to “forge”

Ignore the tradepost, looking at those prices just depresses you and stops you enjoying the game.

I must call BS on this. Noone is this lucky Unless you can show a screen shot of some sort.
Even if you did receive all of this, how many tries for each until you received what you wanted? Or did you get them all within a few tries too? ;p

eisberg.2379:

Valento.9852:

Because making a gold grind is much much easier than creating a decent challenge envolving tactics and complex strategies, some simply don’t have the brainpower for such.

It is also is the best way to keep legendaries rare. Make it a boring grind, and most people will not go for it just because it is a boring grind. Make it the way you just said, and most people will go for it and succeed all the while having fun playing the game and practicing those challenges.

Grinding for the rest of the materials is a enough of a grind.

Making someone farm 450-500+ gold is a bit too much, nor does it make the end result any more special. It simply means that I blew all of my in game money on one skin. Rather than chopping down trees for 2 months, farming mobs baracuudas for armored scales..etc.

Keep the material list, give us some long and difficult chain of quests…that can be completed completely solo if needed. But make it difficult.
Keep it legendary, without moving into the financial world of the game. Why they tied the best looking skins to the “financial sector” of the game is beyond me.
Terrible terrible design. Very lazy.

Lets say it takes me 6 months to get 500 gold for the precursor. I would rather spend those 6 months doing other things to get my legendary, like a quest chain, or find some rare boss and kill him a few times for a few semi-rare pieces of something. Regardless of how long it takes me to collect the other gifts, I would rather spend the time it takes to farm the gold doing something else. Its just bad design, theres no getting around it. And like I said, Ive been thinking twice this past week..why am I logging in, other than dailys? The february patch was a good step, and I hope March is as good. If I decide not to go for my legendary, I hope the march patch keeps me busy enough to keep logging in.

Otherwise…Id rather farm in diablo 3

lLobo.7960:

They do go for a legendary price on TP…

Jokes aside, I don’t mind people using coin to buy legendaries. If you want to spend that much on some skin, go for it. If you want to buy gems and make it into coin and spend more than 1k usd on a weapon skin, well… you should think of better ways to spend your money, but anyway…

Nothing against adding some epic quest to get the legendary or precursors also, maybe they will even do it in the future… But it will take a few days to have videos on youtube showing a easy(er) way to kill that mob, or do that encounter, or w/e. And then people will complain. Or its going to be really hard, and people will complain. Or it will be too grindy and people will complain…

I really dont plan going for one of those weapons. Just playing the game for now and having some fun with it… If I ever come around the amount of coin to get one and have nothing else to do with it… Maybe. But other than that, I’m just happy that I can still do any content without people demanding me to bring a legendary weapon or 2.

Its not a carrot on that stick, its just a cookie. Its tasty, for sure, but its no carrot.

See, thats the mindset that I have lost. I want to play the game for what it is. Not chasing that carrot(ascended gear) or grinding (unfun) when I am grinding only for gold for the legendary.

I entered this game with these aspirations/goals:
-Explore, see the world, find hidden things. Rushing to max level does not matter. Stats do not matter. Everyone will be on equal playing field shortly after level cap..just grinding for skins.
-Endgame is season the rest of the world, WvW, a few dungeons, and ultimately when I am ready…grinding for a legendary.

With the Nov 15 patch, my focus sadly has shifted to trying to get the new max stat gear as it comes out, and trying to make money to get a precursor for a legendary…which is very difficult. But difficult <> legendary. To the person that said if it wasnt difficult, it wouldnt be legendary. I say this: The rest of the materials list is a grind enough. Requiring us to have LUCK or an obscene amount of gold is not legendary.

I know am preaching to the choir for most, but the prices of pre cursors are way too insanely high and the drop rate from chests and the mystic toilet is way too low. This is not legendary or epic. It is a money grind.

I would spend the next year grinding out specific materials for a legendary rather than spending the gold that i have made along the way on the legendary. Even the 100 gold for the runestones is rediculous. I started to grind for the dreamer, but quickly realized all my efforts are folly if i have literally no chance at at seeing pre cursor. So all i have been doing is logging in for dailys and logging out. To me, the grind for the legendary was the endgame and now, despite loving this game, im finding little reason to log in. 500 gold for the precursor on top of the mats is a bit out of my reach.

“but ces you said you would spend a year grinding the mats. Just grind out gold too.” true, but again any gold i make should be my own. And then 6months down the road arenanet announces scavenger hunts…after i just spent 500gold or more on the precursor. What an epic feeling that wouold be. Why is gold, or rng, huge factor in something that should be epic?

Give us some long, very long, epic story line for each legendary.

/end rant

Guys guys, has anyone checked the gem store? Come on!! use your noggins!

Just kidding.

My thought is if you view the world map you can view multiple layers of the world…multiple surfaces. What if..some how..you get to another layer. Or if that is content to be released.

Another thought: What about those random portals you find in the world that port you to, seemingly, zones you cannot visit using normal methods of travel? There are events within these secluded areas. Wondering if its there.

Hearte.6852:

Hope everyone has a great day!

We’ll see if it is a happy valentine’s day when I get home tonight.

Junkpile.7439:

10 badge of honor/ring is fair

No way. I can get 10 badges in WvW in 30 minutes some nights.
One fractal takes 1-1.5 hrs. You get one pristine per fractal, with the CHANCE of a ring from a daily chest.

Bump it to 30 or 40 badges. Lets be realistic…

Thanks for the link, thanks to MMORPG.com for hosting the interview and thanks to Colin for entertaining it.

Very interesting. I am still left with the question: "Will Guild Missions increase individual player’s “power level”, similar to obtaining the highest level loot from raids in other games?" I.E. If I want to stay at the top of my game stat wise and power wise, will I absolutely need to do guild missions?

I think he touched on some rewards like cheaper waypoint costs(so awsome by the way). But did not touch on individual player rewards.

From a technical standpoint, I seriously hope they are QA’ing the hell out of these events that guild missions create, so that they do not interfere or mess up already existing dynamic events. Thats the big elephant in the room that people are missing when analyzing this idea of guild missions. Im the one to call it out now that this might go overlooked.

John Smith.4610:

You’re saying you prefer market failures because it adds a sense of opportunity?

“I have to make the argument that your deals are coming at the expense of another player. You are arguing against market efficiency because you want to exploit other people easier, I don’t agree that’s a positive goal for the game overall (though I make no judgement about personal goals).”

Edited for brevity. @ John Smith: I agree with you in this case. Realistic economy is more “fair” and user friendly to the population. What this individual is referring to is “exploiting”, for lack of better words. I don’t even think its exploiting. Buy low sell high? FA’s do this all day. And I agree with him, that having the ability to play the market in a certain way is what draws people in as well. There are two camps, those that prefer a realistic economy, and those that prefer to play the market.

I guess what I am getting at is: Do you think the current economy is where it should be? Because a lot of folks around here do not think so. Especially when it relates to precursors. Now, I know you are not in charge of game design, so I’ll leave out my griping concerning the acquisition of a legendary. But being cornered to save up 400+ gold for a precursor, on top of all of the other expenses that you MUST use gold for(ahem 100 rune stones, 100 gold), it gets pricey. Why must a legendary = obsurd amount of gold? That is not legendary. So I do not think that, in regards to legendaries, the economy is in a good place for that reason. And it is for that reason alone that I am not actively trying to go after my legendary. And it is for that reason alone that I have slowed my GW2 playing.

We can see that the economy issues compound down(or up) through the game, reverberating.

I agree with you, and I agree with the individual that prefers an uneven market.
Hard to pick a side

[quote=1427510;John Smith.4610:]

Vorch.2985:

I would just like to reiterate that I have no problem with agony resistance. I take issue with additional stat increases to a game that appears to be initially balanced around exotics.

I am under no illusion that GW1 had vertical progression. This was in the form of title tiers. As a title was increased, it often added strength to associated PvE skills. Some titles even offered resistances to certain enemies and increased power when attacking those enemies.

I’m just wondering why we would attach these buffs to gear tiers (which is contentious) as opposed to title tiers. You would still be able to add the vertical progression without additional gear tiers OR additional levels (another topic for another time).

You could also avoid a lot of the controversy.

They first said ascended gear was meant to be in the game at release. Then in their blog they mentioned it was to bridge the gap between exotic and legendary(what gap? Time gap? Legendaries are SUPPOSED to take a LONGGGGGGG time).

Ok, now that we have that staight..a simple solution:

Introduce a new dungeon with an agony mechanic that is only mitigated via a specific resistance.
Introduce “enchantment” type of scrolls that enchant your already existing exotic gear. Make these enchantments available via the same method that ascended gear is now. Basically swap out ascended gear for this enchantment, only the enchantments do not have stats. They only have agony resist. Make the enchantment craftable via artificing as well?

Problem solved, for nearly everyone. Even those elitist PVE players. Heres your endless dungeon. Go grind out these fractal enchantments if you want to keep PROGRESSING.

Ofcourse, I have no idea how they would do this now… Arenanet should really take a look at this post.

Dante.1508:

Conner.4702:

Halandir.3609:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

It basically boils down to this.

People from the traditional mindset of other MMOs complained enough that GW2 wasn’t like other MMOs, so Anet caved in to them and gave them what other MMOs already offer them instead of staying true to themselves.

So basically Anet gave a vocal minority a gear treadmill and will continue to add more tiers in the future to appease those who don’t like GW2 for what it was.

No need to blame those people.
The only ones to blame here are Anet: Ascended gear and FotM was planned/designed before launch but I am guessing that Anet just kept quiet about it because they knew a lot of their old fans would stay away if we had known the facts about ascended gear.

At least they were decent enough to introduce it early on – Saves me money that I can spend on other games. With the introduction of ascended gear and the promise of future extra levels and more gear progression I am no longer spending anything on Anet products.
I am just one customer and many seem to really enjoy FotM and gear progression. In the end Anet’s decision may have been the best from a business perspective.

I am not complaining. I got my moneys worth – I just refrain from funding the future of statprogression in GW2 because to me it is/was totally unnecessary.

And that is what I very much doubt. If ascended gear had been planned from the start they would have added a lot more venues to obtain it from by now. Ascended gear was a last minute addition to the karka/fotm update. Everything reeks of it never have been given any proper thought.

Exactly how i feel, Ascended felt very tacked on, hard to believe it was intended to be honest..
I really hope FotM and Ascended just get pushed to the background and the rest of the game continue on/get revamped accordingly following pre Nov 15th manifesto, we can then all look at FoTM and Ascended as a failed experiment and strive for a better Guildwars 2 with horizontal progression as per Guildwars 1..

+1 to this. I very much hope this happens. Even though I did not play GW1, I am a WoW transplant…I dont want verti progression in this game.

With that said, all of this “ascended” talk…I feel like I am playing Rift! Is Trion the developer here?! Regulos?! Seriously, the name for this tier is silly.

All of your “what it boils down to” is incorrect people.

Here is what it really boils down to :
-In all manifestos, videos, interviews, and impressions that we had of GW2 it was to be a cosmetic grind. No where ever did they mention verticle progression. Colin and(I think Mike) are sitting on stools talking about Legendaries. Mike says something to the effect of “Legendaries have no statistical advantage over a exotic”. Yet, when they release ascended weapons, legendaries will be higher than exotics. Check out the video. Its around the web somewhere.
-According to Chris Whiteside, ascended gear was always meant to be in the game. It was just not ready for whatever reason, possibly because FoTM was not ready. So it wasn’t put in the game at release.
-Three months later, we have ascended. We feel ‘gear treadmilled’. People say the increases is nothing…but you do not understand. We wanted to have our BiS gear and simply transmute skins. Thats it! We didnt want to have to worry that another piece of gear out there was even slightly better. Its not how the human mind works. Sorry. We are not perfect.
-Two months after Ascended back/rings, we get amulets. We buy this with laurels. We can buy rings with laurels. Yet we cannot buy amulets with fractal relics. Unbelievably STUPID oversight. The gear has an infusion slot SPECIFIC to Fractals. Yet you cannot buy this gear with tokens you get from the dungeon. What..the..heck?
-They have said they are not shy from increasing level cap. Which means new level cap gear. FOREWARING: INTRODUCE ASCENDED GEAR WITH THE NEW EXPANSION ALL AT ONCE OR YOUR TRUE COLORS WILL BE REVEALED. Do not make us grind for new gear every few months. If Ascended gear was intentional, just not ready for release, it sure as heck will be ready for a new expansion. Put it all in there all at once, obtainable from any portion of the game. Only then will we believe the notion that it was intended gear and not just to appease the verti-progressive people.

Im done with my 2 cents. Honest 2 cents.

Great game still, by the way. Just don’t mess with the core of it.

I’d agree, that trying other games or revisiting other games, and then coming back to GW2 makes you realize how good of a game GW2 is.

Me personally, I went back to WoW for a month after the Nov 15 patch. Honestly, WoW is in a decent spot with all of its updates and new features/systems. Unfortunately they all came one expansion too late and I am just burnt on the game and on raiding…and on verticle progression.

So I came back to Gw2. While the verticle progression has been minimal, Arenanet loves to walk that fine line between cosmetic only upgrades and verticle. I was listening to the Jon Peters/Jon Sharp webcast, and the term progression was thrown around in that interview. Man, I feel so baited and switched. I really bought into the idea that EVERYTHING, once you get the max stat set, would be cosmetic. Thats it. Then, out of the blue, we have ascended items that were always intended. Pro tip to arenanet: Next time, announce that exotics are not the end all sets….that you plan to introduce another set of items slowly over time. Otherwise it comes out like you lied to us all, which a lot of us feel that way.

In the past week I have slowed down my GW2 playing and now split my time between diablo 3 and GW2. I actually love D3. Very good art designers and they’ve made some decent improvements to the game. Not sure how much I like the fact that everything is trivial now, unless you are playing single player on MP10 or something.

With that said, I enjoy Gw2. I will continue to play it. I think it has fantastic potential. I think Arenanet is a very capable developer, a very unique developer. I think they DEFINATELY have their flaws in communication and goals. Another step or two over the line of what we were fed months prior to release, and I’ll be gone. If I get my full ascended set sometime this year, and 3-5 months after that we have a new expansion with increased level cap…that might do it. If at the start of that expansion, we have to level up a few more levels, grind out exotics…and then they slowly release ascended into the game. Im gone. Make that available from the start of a new expansion.

Otherwise, you become Blizzard and every other developer that hops on the vert-progression train.

But…keep pumping out ways to keep me in different zones of Tyria, like dailys, and I will continue spending money in the gem store.

Just my two honest cents. I dont think they are inflammatory at all so I hope I dont receive backlash from…people that would break out the whip :p

UnderdogSMO.9428:

cesmode.4257:

Nice looking update.

One thing is a major, MAJOR concern to me: Guild missions. While guild content is needed, I sincerely hope that these missions do not increase your individual power. If completing a guild mission unlocks the ability to increase all representing guild member Power, Crit, etc by X amount, that is probably the last line I draw with the game.

With all of the “progression” that is being pumped into the game with ascended, laurels, wvw progression, etc…I think some clarification as to how Guild Missions would benefit a guild is needed. Are there raw power increases? Speed increases? Traveling benefits? While I am in a guild that is active, I do not want to feel obligated to complete guild missions every week, just to stay on par with other guilds.

Very worried.

not that any of this will happen ((as it seems it will only be gear skins and such,)) WHO CARES and frankly if a guild is willing to work hard why shouldnt they get reworded for it

Just like ascended gear, im willing to work for it. just because your not dosnt brake the game for you, you can still do EVERYTHING

True. I can do everything. Look down the road, 1 year from now. Full ascended sets. If I chose not to partake in fractals. If I chose not to complete all the dailys and monthlys I can…I have no way to get a full ascended set. I now try to hop into WvW where everyone has full ascended at this point in time. Trust me, those +2%, +5% power increases on each item…ADD UP.

Im not calling this patch the next doomsday or anything. I just don’t think this game needs any more power creep. And power creep/treadmills were not what this game was based on in all of the interviews and advertising.

Cosmetics only.

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Hold on a minute here…

Guild missions could be a massive amount of content. Ill try and find a source that mentions that there will be 5 mission types for guilds to interact with and setup (bear with me on that one). From the same anet quote it goes on to say something about other guilds and people being able to interact with the content at the same time aswell. This could potentially be huge missions that mimic say, world dragon champions, or a massive new shared jumping puzzle or zone wide scavenger hunt (NO, dont get your hopes up for precursors yet).
If this is the case then were talking about hitting several problems with one stone from Anets perspective – Incentive to revisit areas, guild PVE activities and generally exciting stuff for pve players.

Brand new PVP map is something you would see within a major content update or paid xpac.

Achievements still being revamped – Would hope to see hero points and general achievements being addressed this patch, but prolly have to wait till march.

ALSO, january brought alot of fixes and tweaks that Anet never hyped us about OR we even expected. As that was stated to be a small patch in comparison to feb and marchs, i really dont think hope is lost and doomsday prophecies to be applicable yet.

Well I do hope at least the guild missions system is really kittening expansive, otherwise i will eating my words and coming closer to a negative mind state about this game and developer…. some might say finally.

Guild missions is probably the most unique and interesting feature on the list. Andit sounds VERY innovative. It sounds like your guild can start a mission in…Sparkfly Fen, for instance. Random low level players can join that mission as if it were a DE, without you inviting them in. Thats how I see this playing out. If it works out like that, WOW!!

Just concerned, obviously and again, about the rewards. Same concern with the WvW progression. I do not want certain aspects of this game to make you individually more powerful. They started down this slope with fractals and ascended gear and what a reaction that was. I hope that ascended gear is the end of it. I dont want any more power creeps or power boosts in any way in this game. Cosmetic only. Skins only. Marginal passive buffs(like magic find) only.

@Colin or anyone:
Has there been any discussion or statement concerning the WvW progression abilities/reward? Will they be stat increasing in nature? Or mostly cosmetic?

You can understand that a lot of people do not like the direction of feeling cornered to do an activity for endless amounts of time(grinding?) just to stay on par with the latest gear(and it sounds like the latest skills as well). I like WvW. I am in it several times a week, probably for a total of 5-10 hours at themoment. I dont want to feel obligated to increase that to 20, effectively maxing out my time, to get those WvW abilities that may tip a 1v1 or 2v1 battle in my favor. You’ll be taking me out of PvE content that I enjoy, just to keep up with the next guy.

I dont want to log in some night and suddenly everyone has the first or second round of new skills…I jump down from a cliff, and I see some guardian run up to me and C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!!!! Im dead

Thoughts? Confirmations?

Nuka Cola.8520:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Nuka Cola.8520:

where is the new dungeons? Why are they torturing with garbage we have? this is so disappointing…

Whoever said about new dungeons? o.o

at this point anything for me to do in pve for longer than an hour would be a welcome… Like seriously i don’t know if im the only one here but in the past 1 month and a half i have absolutely nothing to do but two fotm dailies which i only do because there’s nothing to do (if that makes any sense…). What anet is releasing is complete crap. Pve needs things to occupy players for weeks/months and it has nothing. I thought they would be adding 1-3 new fractals every month to expand their new dungeons and they doing ****. Disappointment after disappointment.

Your posts are largely negative. If you had a few positive things to say about the game every once in a while, you might carry more merit.

Here are the facts:
-WoW is a subscription game. WoW is obligated to keep you logging in each day, playing with your friends, and keep that subscription going. Shareholders look at sub numbers to see where the profit is coming from.
-GW2 is not a subscription game. Its revenue is generated via the gem store. If I dont log into Gw2 in January, but log in during February and spend 20$ in the gem store, Arenanet is OK with that. Thats their revenue. They are not relying on any of us to log in every day, for hours on end. They have stated this in interviews and should be commonly known and accepted.

I am really tired of hearing this same old rhetoric: They need to keep me busy every day. Im getting bored.

They do not need to do anything other than hold your interest enough to have you log in every once in a while and spend some money in the gem store. Whether that be on a quaggan backpack, or if you want to level crafting professions you buy boosters. And then..you disappear for a few weeks. Come back and say, yeah..I want to leve an alt. I need some xp boosters. Gem store! While they look at user concurrancy, it is probably not the central KPI for them. Gem store purchases is and that is what THEIR stockholders are looking at when judging the health of this game.
The stockholders (if you know anything about ecnomics, these people hold the company’s number one priority) do not care if you are bored. They care about the gem purchases.

Edit: With all of that said, arenanet will do everything it can to keep people logging in as frequently as possible. Of course, that goes without saying. What MMO dev worth their spit would not try to keep you interested as much as possible. But their profits are not dependant on user concurancy per month, nor the average time players spend logged in each month.

Nice looking update.

One thing is a major, MAJOR concern to me: Guild missions. While guild content is needed, I sincerely hope that these missions do not increase your individual power. If completing a guild mission unlocks the ability to increase all representing guild member Power, Crit, etc by X amount, that is probably the last line I draw with the game.

With all of the “progression” that is being pumped into the game with ascended, laurels, wvw progression, etc…I think some clarification as to how Guild Missions would benefit a guild is needed. Are there raw power increases? Speed increases? Traveling benefits? While I am in a guild that is active, I do not want to feel obligated to complete guild missions every week, just to stay on par with other guilds.

Very worried.

Well, I was thinking… I might be holding off on mystic clovers for a while. Maybe until the scavenger hunt is released or the prices of pre cursors ever drop… I just dont think I will ever afford 400+ gold for a precursor. Not after I need 100g for runestones alone, plus if I ever want to buy some of the mats. Too much. We’ll see.

I’ll have to say, that I agree with the OP in this thread…the price of pre-cursors is out of control. Within the first few days of release, we saw dusk around 100-150 gold. What is it now? 500+? The lover, the one I am after, is 400+.

I once thought that getting the materials for making the gifts would be too much of a task for me. However, lately I am finding that I am slowly doing so by playing the game. In a few months time, I’ll be close enough to consider the legendary. But then theres one big hurdle in my way: the precursor. I can dump countless rares or exotics into the mystic toilet, or spend 400+ gold on the precursor. Thats after hundreds of hours of grinding, at least 100 gold spend on the runestones(or more if I buy some of the other mats), etc.

The scavenger hunt will help, but the economist of this game needs to realize that this is not healthy. Please take action.

Welcome.

Tips:
-Dont expect this to be WoW. Dont expect the same features, experience, etc from other MMOs. Buy into what the game is…
-Level a few characters. Each class is REALLY REALLY different than anything else.
-level a crafting profession at the start.