Guild Wars 2

Stormbluff Isle has always been one of the most full servers, is always top 3 in NA for WvW and i always..repeat, always see players in low level zones. I am leveling my 5th character to 80, and even now I see players in zones. There are a few that people just dont go to because they arent that great, but the vast majority of them are teetering with people.

duhchris.6095:

I got gw2 at launch and loved it, got to 71, then the world of warcraft expansion came out and I got sucked into that. So today I logged on(after being tired of wow), I saw maybe 60% less people in a main city from what I last remembered. The zones are dead.

So my main questions are:
I understand that every game will have a reduction of players after release, but is that reason in this case?
Yes and no. Sure players that didnt like the game left. And then there are those that are taking small breaks because this game isnt a subscription game that requires the developer to keep them entertained 24/7. Although, I think Arenanet has done better than most developers, including Blizzard, with monthly updates of content…monthly dude. Isnt that neat?

Is there dueling yet? I like dueling with my friends, it gives me something to do besides sit in a main city.
No dueling.

How is the pvp, is it more balanced?
I never thought it was very imbalanced and from what I understand Anet has always wanted to keep class balance changes to an absolute minimum, unlike other games that class balance weekly. I think every class has its niché, counters certain classes and specs, and is vulnerable to certain classes/specs. So if you cant counter a glass cannon mesmer, you might be able to counter an elementalist. IMO, no class should be able to handle every situation.

Are the dungeons still a cluster of mess?
Dungeons never were a cluster mess…IMO. People still skip mass portions of it. That I do know why. But the dungeons are OK and they said they have plans to revamp. They have added fractals into the game which are endless dungeons that increase in difficulty as you complete, with now a small ahem gear grind to be able to complete the later levels…

Is there any sort of end game progression that makes you want to keep playing to get better? Or is it still level up to 80 for nothing?
See above..fractals and ascended gear. This caused quite a stir in the community but i think most people made their peace with it, like me. They better not add another tier..they said they wont, but they better hold true to that.

I’d appreciate a constructive response. Thank you for your time.

Adding onto the fight mechanic mini-discussion: If possible arenanet should steer away from scripted fights and more toward randomness. The one thing that got really old in previous games where I have raided, was doing the dance! Dance dance revolution baby! At 100% stack up, at 75% spread out, at 50% stack up, at 25% kite around the room dosey-doe your partner! at 0% loot.

Snooze.

The mechanics need to trigger randomly, so that it isnt a scripted-dance off.

xiv.7136:

cesmode.4257:

I want to also add that while we are talking about “fight mechanics”, arenanet needs to get more creative and not just add tons of HP and one-shot abilities. Taking 5-10 minutes to kill a dungeon boss wouldn’t be all that bad if the mechanics were a bit more interesting than “stay out of red circles, and kite the boss”.

I know that this has been brought up many times in many threads, and I hope they have a team of people working on it.

You must not have done any 80 dungeons.

Fractals are full of crazy and complex mechanics.

Even CoF has a lot of mechanics for several bosses. And don’t get started on Arah.

Actually, Ive done all that you have stated..fractals, cof,arah.

COF: There really isnt anything interesting in any of the fight mechanics for any boss in path 1 or 2(the most commonly traveled paths). Point a few out?
Arah: The only boss that is pretty hard and has some interesting things going on is obviously Lupicus. Other than that, groups find a way to sit up on a rock and avoid any and all damage, or hangout behind a rock and just range down the boss, or whatever.
Fractals: While I agree, the mechancis have gotten somewhat better, I still would not say that these bosses are crazy interesting either. Out of the, 9 i think, fractals, only a handful of boss fights spring to mind that are interesting. The fractals themselves, with jumping puzzles and being knocked off the ledges by those kitten harpies, to being turned into dolphins…all very cool. Fractals are a good step in terms of varying up mechanics, but they still have a lot of bosses with tons of HP, ridiculous amount of damage being dished out, and nothing else to it.

I want to also add that while we are talking about “fight mechanics”, arenanet needs to get more creative and not just add tons of HP and one-shot abilities. Taking 5-10 minutes to kill a dungeon boss wouldn’t be all that bad if the mechanics were a bit more interesting than “stay out of red circles, and kite the boss”.

I know that this has been brought up many times in many threads, and I hope they have a team of people working on it.

Ubung.7423:

Wait why am i seeing several people so much against raiding then say 10 man dungeons would be fine? Is there some confusion here. All a raid is, is a group made up of multiplae parties. So anytrhing above 5 people is a raid.

A raid is not defined by gear grind, locked off content or exclusive gear. All these are added to raids. They do not define the raid.

I am against raiding because of what follows. I am OK with 10 mans because most guilds could form a group to experience the content, even very small ones. If the content was made for 20 or 25 people, this then forces the player to be part of a larger guild if he/she wants to experience the content. Limiting it to 10 is perfectly sound.

I am against raids in general because what follows is a gear treadmill, more powerful items only obtainable via raids, it encourages the elitist progressives which in my opinion is not what this game is about… If arenanet put in a 10 man raid with only unique skins, no stat upgrades at all, I would be OK with it. If the skins were purely skins, no stats at all…

Fastbucks.5073:

A dungeon you open when you own a certain spot in WvW…… Darkness Rising anyone?:D

This would be neat. Sort of like Wintersgrasp or Baradin Hold in that other game. Hell, Id even make a push for a 10 man dungeon here. Just not a raid with superior gear in terms of stats. Just unique skins. Thats it. No progression in terms of stats. None.

Edit: Actually this idea is fantastic. It would be two fold: Give servers real incentive to go into WvW, work together to capture certain points for unique dungeons. It would open up the game for the guilds that want some organized content. The only thing that I can see that arenanet would need to be weary of is that servers might ONLY focus on these specific capture points and ignore the rest of WvW. This would be bad. Maybe have a requirement of controlling X amount of the map, or something like that in addition to these specific points for the dungeon.

But it is a great idea and Im all for it.

Zeldain.5710:

cesmode.4257:

Im curious what all of the pro-raid folks thought the end game would be when they purchased GW2. Or did you think you could eventually influence Arenanet to cater to your needs(the progression-style endgame that most of the MMO community likes)?

Whether or not arenanet always had plans to put in ascended gear(which they did), theres your progression via fractals. This already PO’d so many people. Isnt this enough for you guys?

Point 1: There is no way that I believed ArenaNet wouldn’t have some type of content for guilds, in the form of at least large-scale instances. Or progression. It’s like we’re living in an alternate reality – “COME PLAY GUILD WARS WHERE YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR GUILD!”

Point 2: See point 1. 5 people aren’t a guild. They’re on the right track with fractals but they need a) more progression and b) larger numbers (minimum of 10 players, preferably 20 or above.)

Well, let me show you the door to exit GW2 and the door to enter WoW. Anet has not ruled out 10 mans, but they do not want raids. I dont see why the playerbase feels they could change this.

Im curious what all of the pro-raid folks thought the end game would be when they purchased GW2. Or did you think you could eventually influence Arenanet to cater to your needs(the progression-style endgame that most of the MMO community likes)?

Whether or not arenanet always had plans to put in ascended gear(which they did), theres your progression via fractals. This already PO’d so many people. Isnt this enough for you guys?

domxnik.1453:

Conner.4702:

Erm no, what MMO’s in general need is less people stuffed away in instances. Anet designed a beautifully alive world, which is severely under utilized. Tweak the Big bosses to be more of a challenge and it will already be a lot better. FotM already did a crapload of damage to the world population and raids would only make that worse.

You want people out in the world for the sake of the whole community. A deserted world will only create a dead game in the end.

So no, raids are a very bad idea.

Know what? ArenaNet also makes beautiful instanced places, too. People level to get the endgame, and we need a better endgame to keep people around, or that’s what is going to kill this game. That’s why most people left, because there is no stick to this game when you reach the “end”.

Most people havent left, the world is full of people (and I would know, I am leveling my fifth character to 80 and theres never a shortage of people doing events…never), and if you and everyone else that is pro-raid did you research on the game, you would know that this is NOT a direction that arenanet wants to go. No stick, no raids. Even if they did put in raids, I highly doubt it will be limited to unique cosmetic skins. I firmly believe they will throw ascended gear in there, which puts this game closer to any other MMO.

Travail.7390:

Sylv.5324:

Conwolv.4329:

The only player that doesn’t really have a solid foothold in this game is the Raider.

There is a reason for that. Please stop changing one of the core views of this game. The lack of raiding and catering to raiders, the rejection of that exclusive attitude, is WHY many of us came here.

Unsurprisingly, y’all raiders feel so entitled that you feel the need to demand that ANet go against its own manifesto.

I knew this would happen as soon as they introduced fractals. -.-

Asking for raids is not the same as asking for the game to cater ENTIRELY to raiders. That’s a baseless assertion.

People in this thread need to grow up and start having an intelligent conversation about the prospect of raids.As it is, the people against raids are acting like children, throwing temper tantrums because they’re afraid mommy might love the new baby more.

It’s entirely possible to implement raids without the gear grind that so often accompanies them. They’ve implemented PvP without any sort of gear grind. They implemented end-game dungeons while allowing players to obtain the same loot outside of those dungeons.

They can do the same thing with raids, too, and what’s more, I haven’t seen even a single player ask them to do it differently in this thread. Perhaps if others weren’t so blindly defensive over the issue, they’d see that.

-Travail.

Wow…all of the people against raids are children. Thats pretty arrogant of you. You would fit in with the rest of us that are against raids

domxnik.1453:

cesmode.4257:

Two words: Gear treadmill. If they put in raids, Id imagine they would put some sort of gear treadmill to keep players running through the raid each night and each week for better gear. Itll be just like WoW and any other MMO. I play this game because it isnt like every other MMO. Granted, the recent Item treadmill that was introduced is a step in the wrong direction. But if they put in raids, god help us all. Id probably stop playing and go raid with friends in that other game.

Not true. People just think that because of previous games. If they put in raiding it would be how dungeons are, but more challenging, allow more people and be longer and not so faceroll.

Beating a boss would drop a chest. Inside would be random gear, possibly some mats and tokens to turn in for weapon and armor skins. They could possibly even add harder difficulties and have different looking weapon and armor skins for each one.

Given this company’s recent direction…do you think they will limit reward to just skins and not a new tier of gear?

Snowy.9580:

A GW2 raid would look something like…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cFucXYlw94

Shame I could see one with 25 people all rolling like tumbleweeds!

Hilarious. And the running part is because everyone in this game LOVES to skip stuff. Never have I played an MMO where people skip so much in a dungeon, or have unique work arounds for an encounter. Its obsurd.

Two words: Gear treadmill. If they put in raids, Id imagine they would put some sort of gear treadmill to keep players running through the raid each night and each week for better gear. Itll be just like WoW and any other MMO. I play this game because it isnt like every other MMO. Granted, the recent Item treadmill that was introduced is a step in the wrong direction. But if they put in raids, god help us all. Id probably stop playing and go raid with friends in that other game.

They do need to make melee more viable in dungeons and fractals.

For no reason, Ive been booted from a fractal run once or twice. I think they were from the same guild though. Not sure why ;p. You get bad eggs like that in any game.

I dont WvW heavily yet because I am busy leveling all the characters I want, picking a small few to focus on, grind out dungeon sets and fractals…at that point Ill WvW more.

mavet.3047:

As you shouldn’t. I mean honestly, is there any point? Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind… Might as well make coffee….

I hope you quit the game too, or already have. We dont need your negativity.

@OP, they have had monthly events and content updates that have included new DEs scattered through the world, addition of fractals, holiday events, etc. Its been interesting to see it unfold. While I dont agree with the addition of an item treadmill, the game is getting better.

Cam Ron.4170:

The only thing I HATE about GW2 that I forgot to mention is that there is no click to move option (which was standard in GW1). Idk why this is not included….

Bot programs utilize click to move. This may or may not be a reason for not including it in GW2, however there are bots anyways..I havent seen one in months though.

I agree with OP and from what I understand they, at one point, added some 50 events to the game. I think a few were scattered in low lvl areas, but still. Do more to the existing world to keep people in it, rather than “sitting in stormwind queuing for dungeons”, like we did in cataclysm :p

Welcome aboard. The game is fantastic, the community is fantastic. It has a very loyal fanbase, mostly of those that did not come from WoW or a WoW-clone. I myself came from WoW, amongst many other MMOs, but I am here to stay until Arenanet finally shoots themself in the foot.

Enjoy!

I do not think the trinity should come back. This game is unbelievably refreshing without it, and I think Arenanet did a positive for the entire MMO industry when they went this route. Needs some tweaks like anything to make it even less trinity-like(so that people cannot build “tank” specs and be able to soak all damage… but I think they’ve done great with this.

Hey there,
New mesmer here, level 20. Loving it. I just wanted to share my experiences thus far and say that I really like the class, but it does have some pitfalls so maybe you could give me some pointers. I primarily play pve. This is my fifth toon to 80, and so far it is one of the most fun classes Ive played, and if the “fun” continues and the class gets better as I level, I might contemplate making the mesmer my main over my thief which has all ascended pieces!

I watched Mr Prometheous’ guides, all of them, and he got me curious about staff gameplay. So I am stacking condition damage, running staff & sword/pistol.

I think playing with the staff, the situation changes each time. I love pumping out clones, and if I can I especially love stacking confusion to watch the mob blow itself up, however, this doesnt happen often enough.

I have two gripes, however:
1. Clones die way too easily. This is obvious and by design. Using the staff and pumping out clones that are throwing Winds of Chaos, I wish the mobs would focus on me, not my clones. However, they seem to still smack my clones first, even if I put a few hits on the mob before making the clone. Any advice here?

2. The AOE potential is inexistant it seems. Its terrible. The mobs need to be clumped to smack them all with mind wreck. I dont want the build to be centered aruond shattering… Chaos Storm does crap damage it seems. Any idea to increase my aoe?

3.In general, I feel that my character is a bit weak and it does take a little while to kill some mobs. I know I am stacked full condition, but shouldnt the high condition damage make up for any lack of pwoer/crit?

Hi,
I am starting a mesmer, and was thinking of building it to stack confusion. Would this be viable? If so, what stats should I stack? I guess I am a little lost as to what stats I should stack for which weapons.

Thanks,

Hi, thinking of rolling an engineer. Need some…advice :p

1. I guess stacking condition is pretty useful?
2. What are pretty good leveling builds? Not looking for OP, or “Whats the best”, just something where it will be interesting.
3. What race and sex are you? This is a big question mark for me. I already think carrying a pack of goodies on my back is..goofy. And the only classes I can logically see being engineers are Charr and Asura, however cliché. However, Asura are too small for me, where I wont see their gear. And Im not fond of running on all fours! I dont want to be human, kind of sick of them. Sylvari..just dont go with engineer in my opinion…Norn either.
4. How are engineers leveling? Difficult? Boring? Interesting? More rotational based like an elementalist, or does it completely dynamically change during the fight..from fight to fight. Will I be pulling my hair out from difficulty or frustration? Are there many bugs?
5. How are engineers at max level, in say fractals? I love having engis in dungeons, but I see very few in fractals these days. Why?

I dont know, I still just disagree. This hasnt been my experience at all. @mogar: From a pack of 3 centaurs to the next pack of 3 centaurs, my rotation would be the same. Fire to earth, might stacking and aoe via arcane wave, earthquake, and churning earth.

I havent had much problem leveling. but this has been my gameplay for 40 levels now. Each and every encounter of more than a few mobs.

I guess what Im saying is that the other classes are free to change up their “rotation” a bit depending on changing situation and circumstances. Depending on the badfloor, boss mechanics, environmental mechanics, I change what I do. All the while, maintaining some sort of semi-effectiveness.

Running a D/D elementalist, to even get up to the level of effectiveness that is a thief in terms of damage, I need to stack might. To do that, I need to get into that rotation. If I don’t, my damage is way subpar. Thus, I have less freedom to change to the given situation. If I do, my damage will suffer greatly, moreso than it would on a thief if I broke off of my “rotation”(even though there is less of one).

Leuca.5732:

In general there is a sort of rotation that makes sense for optimal DPS output in PvE and PvP, but being able to switch it up is an important part of playing ele. Your rotation for pure survival and team buffing is going to be different than a pure damage rotation, and PvE often requires less variation than PvP, partially because it’s easier to predict what mob ai will do, with the other part being that good players will catch on to your rotation and beat you up for it.

Please note that other classes do have sequences that they must do to achieve optimal DPS; it is just a tad more complicated for us because we are working with 20 skills that are individually less complex than our counterparts but add up to something that achieves more in the long run, at least conceptually. This is quite obviously the case with D/D setups, but staff/scepter/focus are lacking a bit as is; scepter however is better off than the other two in terms of ease/efficacy most of the time when it comes to damage.

Sure, on my thief Id go in and pop deathblossom two or three times. After that, Its anyones best guess what Id do next. Steal + deathblossom again? Finish via melee? Use Dancing Dagger(which is very under rated in terms of the damage it does)? Dodge out to finish at range?

On my necro: Drop a combo field, Warhorn 4, Warhorn 5. Now do I switch into Deathshroud and life transfer? Or do I simply, life siphon and continue melee attacking? Do I explode a minion in that combo field that I dropped for a finisher?

I suppose the Guardian was the same way a little bit, which is why I stopped playing him at 80, but the utilities you chose almost guided your play a bit more. Spirit weapons, burns, combo fields/finishers?

Hell, I know its early on but on my very low level mesmer, running scepter/focus I was pulling 10 mobs, then dropping the focus field and pulling them all away..meanwhile generating clones. Now do I shatter them via mindwreck of the confusion shatter? Do I drop a phantasmal warden on top of the mobs and shatter that as well? Or let it play its course? Do I go into melee range and pop the blocking ability, to generate another clone? Do I shatter that clone? This is just level 3. More decisions, rather than a “I need to stack might to be effective…so I roll into a rotation”.

Strang.8170:

Mobs are stupid and predictable, therefore every class has one optimal rotation to deal with them.
Play against a human opponent, watch your pretty little chains fall apart magnificently and enjoy the ensuing chaos.

What you describe is fault of lacking ai, not the profession itself. All professions suffer it to some decree, but on elementalist it´s most obvious since there´s such a bug gap between good and bad rotations.

I disagree here. Having leveled 4 professions to 80, I can honestly say that each situation was a little bit different. Even if that difference was that I dodged a bit more, or straffed/kited a bit more, it was different. And I had to decide to either perform A or B. Simply moving around 3 or 4 mobs at a time, dodging, kiting, makes each encounter a tad different. I am not simply mashing 4, F4, 3, 4, 5. Thats my rotation as elementalist to handle a pull with multiple mobs. I can’t tell you what it would be for my thief, or my necromancer, because it would be different each time.

With the elementalist, on every single pack pull, its the same kitten thing. Generate combo field, generate might stacks, and everything dies. Whats worst is while im channeling churning earth to generate that last stack of might and dish out the final “kablooey”, im stationary. Im not dodging, not kiting, nothing. Rotation,. into a stationary ability to continue executing the rotation.

Hi,
So I am sitting here a hair away from lvl 40, with all weapon skills unlocked, most of the utilities unlocked. There are a few utils that I dont have but they aren’t huge dynamic game changers. I am bored of the class already, and this hasn’t happened to me yet. I have four 80s, thief guardian necromancer and warrior.

None were boring while leveling, because there was a sense of decision making in terms of what abilities to use.

For example, on the thief, I DB twice, drop caltrops, and either stay in for another DB or roll out to switch to long bow and finish everything off. I had a choice to make…stay in melee or roll out and finish from afar. OR, I could have started with short bow, drop the poison field on the mobs, steal/shadowstep in, switch to daggers, deathblossom away, drop a few caltrops, roll out drop another poison field, continue firing short bow.

On this elementalist, D/D, here is my unchanging static rotation for a multi mob pull:
Ring of Fire, Arcane Wave, (switch to earth), Magnetic Grasp, Earthquake, Churning Earth. I do this for EVERY multi mob pull. And I almost have to, in order to get up the projectile reflective shield, and might stacking, to burn down the mobs before they kill my squishy butt. Theres almost no room for variety. So now most of my offensive spells are on cooldown. If mobs are still alive, or another wave comes, I either switch to air to “control” them while fire comes off CD, (earth abilities will still be on massive CD), or if need be go to water to regen HP. Still, not much variety, I know exactly what abilities to use in every situation. I feel as if choice is not present. No decision making mid fight.

-Burn through offensive rotation (burn phase)
-Go through control rotation (control phase, awaiting burn phase to come off CD)
OR
-Go through HP regen rotation if HP is low.

For me, this feels boring now. Kind of disappointed. I feel the elementalist is more of a rotation-based class, especially if youre rolling with dagger/dagger, to stack might and auras, rather than on the fly-decision making…reacting to the situation.

Or, more interestingly, consider this which might also shed light into my dilemma: Wouldn’t you agree that naturally the elementalist, while it packs a punch in many of its abilities, must go through similar rotations to stack might or auras to be effective? You MUST utilize your combo fields and multiple attunments in order to merely survive, let alone kill things fast. So rather than simply being on equal survivability/damage output footing as other classes, which frees you up to make decisions based on situation, you are tunneled into a rotation to put yourself on that equal footing. Does this make sense?

Agree? Disagree?

Im not asking if you are having fun with the class or liking it, wondering if you feel the same way that it is very much rotational based, and in its own right is a weak class unless you adhere to the rotations and attunement swapping.

Thoughts?

I have suggested this several times for a kharma sink:

Purchase the ability to use the “skin storage” via kharma. Suggested amount: 5,000
Everytime you want to swap out a skin for one slot, have it cost kharma: Suggested amount: 500

There is your kharma sink.

But this wont happen, and it goes back to my previous pount about in game money and arenanet making money. If people want to keep their skins and gear, they store it in the bank. Bank space is at a premium and purchased with gems via the gem store. Gems are purchased via real life money, and that is what arenanet is after.

I dont think they are quick to take away this avenue for revenue. And if arenanet dares to make a feature like this(able to easily swap out skins) available via gem purchases… I will flip. The. F. Out. And I will look elsewhere for my MMO experience. This will solidify the inkling I am getting about this company just out to make money, rather than a quality game….limiting quality of life changes just to make a buck.

Probably around 50 gold on one character. Combine it with what is in my bank, maybe around 60-65 total. Combine across all 4 max level characters, probably 75.

I really dont know how people get hundreds of gold so easily without gem trading. Farming dungeons is a decent way to make SOME gold but I cant see it as a great source to get 200 gold or more for that legendary pre cursor. Id love to know how people make so much…and I guess Ill save that fun for when I go after my legendary. But that is after:
1. I level all classes(except ranger) to max level
2. Gear out exotics on 3 or 4 of them.
3. Keep up on the latest ascended gear with one or two of them
4. Map completion on all

So, looking at another…2-3 months before I really start caring about how much gold I have.

@OP: I dont know buddy. I actually raised this question with Chris Whiteside during the AMA a month ago, this EXACT question. Are there any plans to overhaul medium armor aesthetics in the game to give more diversity for looks other than a trench coat or mechwarrior(check some of the silly dungeon sets). He said that this is a discussion that is best suited in the office with his peers.

Currently, and I think the majority will agree, nearly all of the heavy armor sets are awesome. The light armor is pretty good for both male and female, and the medium armor sets are just downright ugly, regardless of sex.

Regarding the cost of waypoints:, this is by design and largely wont change. Here is why:

-There is not subscription fee for this game.
-Consider the cost of paying employees, overhead for the building(s) that arenanet occupies, infrastructure, equipment for their employees(laptops, desktops, etc), maintanance, creation of new content, etc. You do need consistant revenue to pay for this game if it is to stick around and continue evolving throughout the years. How do we do this without a subscription?
-Gem store. “Hey you can purchase gems via real life money in the gem store”
-“Once you have your gems, you can trade them for gold to use in game.”

So consider:
-“Man all of this waypointing around, repair costs, high material costs for legendaries, ascended infusions, etc…it requires lots of money! Man this game really revolves on having a boat load of gold. How do I get this quickly”
-“Ah, I know. I’ll trade in some gems for gold”.

Youll have people with the mindset that they will buy 10$ of gems per month to offset the cost of what they would pay in a sub game per month…trade that in for gold. Or the idiots that will spend 200$ a pop on gems for gold. The entire game revolves around gold. It makes everything spin.

So while 3-4 silver a few times a night wont make an enormous visible impact on your gold in the short run, there are a lot of people that will offset this via real money and THAT is what arenanet counts on.

They need that real life money to continue their monthly updates, so any avenue to get it(including keeping travel costs high), they will leave alone.

Or, more interestingly, ever wonder why there are no mounts in the game? Do you really think it is because they want the player experience to remain intimate with the world and community? No, it is so that you waypoint around, spending money, see your in game money start to dwindle the lazier you get, and contemplate trading gems for gold…thus buying more gems to do it all over again once you realize how easy it is.

Arenanetis a company and needs to make money, like any other.

With all of this said, and even my previous post….The game is still better than games like WoW in many areas. I think WoW does dungeon grinding a bit better. Blizzard handles bugs and QA tests their game wayyyyy better, but I do think that Arenanet has the opportunity to continue to make this a fantastic game. it already is, but you can see some direction they are heading and I hope they don’t continue down the path of the wow clones via dungeon grind, small item progression, empty zones, etc.

Sadly, and like many before him, the OP is correct. No amount of “join a guild that focuses on world completion and DEs” negates the fact that the world, for some servers, feels empty. I am leveling my fifth toon to 80 and I am on a server where this is not a problem. I see many players in any zone. But I can see for other servers, this is a problem.

The dynamic event system and group event system is contingent on many players traversing the open world of Tyria. Now, admittedly(sp), arenanet screwed up royally by making ascended gear obtainable via Fractal GRIND, and they are taking measures to fix that. Why so long? Why is there no word on this subject yet after 1.5 months? I dont know.

But unless they want zones to remain empty, they need to increase the incentive for high level players to return to zones. I made a post about this in the first first week or two, that the reward for mylevel 30 character to return to a level 10 zone and complete a DE was disappointing. It is hard to say how much, but I was receiving about 30% of the reward that I normally would as a level 30. This needs to change.

I know, its logical to say “Why would we want max level characters, even down leveled, to gain maximum reward in the easiest areas? Places like Orr will be left vacant”. I agree. But you have to do something. Once people stop leveling alts, and all of their friends are leveled up, even servers like mine that have no issues with population, will see empty 1-70 zones. Look at WoW…I started playing that game right as TBC came out. Going through the zones while leveling, I hardly saw other players. Everyone was at max level waiting for the next raid. Same thing here… Everyone is at max level running dungeons, kharma farming in Orr, or Fractal grinding their faces off. Arenanet has not created anything new here even if they will scream until they are blue in the face that their world is fine.

What they need to do:
-Increase the kharma/gold/xp gained from events throughout the world, no matter what level of the event, to max level reward(relative to the character).
-Introduce a new currency for completing Orr dynamic events, to be used in addition to Kharma when purchasing the kharma sets in Orr. This will make it so that playing in Orr isnt useless, especially if you want to get those kharma sets.
-Create more Kharma sinks. I have a hard time fathoming that they didnt see this coming. Youre a developer, and my simple country mind was able to see that if you have one kharma sink in this game, kharma becomes utterly useless especially for those of us who hate the look of the kharma sets.

I mean, there are just so many things that were overlooked when designing this game, that took 5+ years. The fractal leveling system, “pushing” Fractals out the door when the reward system wasnt in place, not releasing the game with ascended gear in the first place, emptiness of zones, no kharma sinks, DE bugs(if you actually QA your work…just a thought), etcetc. I find it so hard to believe that developers who sole purpose is to create this game, do not see the problems of their systems or ideas. Or if they do, the systems make it to the game anyways.

Its laughable that us simple players see this before it happens, much like a pre-cog, just from reading a blog from arenanet…where arenanet has had months of development behind them and dont realize it. You should be paying US.

Red Falcon.8257:

Very far-far-far-fetched assumptions here.

Anet never said they will increase the level cap, and judging by how the game is structured it wouldn’t make sense to raise the cap.
Anet also said the Ascended tier is bridge from exotic to legendaries which means no other tiers.

And even if they do raise the cap and add new exotics while rolling out ascended piece by piece, then what?
It’s the current direction, accept it or you can play all the other myriads of MMOs around with great graphics, action combat, no trinity… yes, all those.

Read the ama. Chris whiteside said they epect to increase the cap at some point which means new gear grind. Listn to manifesto which says no gear grind

@killul… Jut in time for an xpac nd to do it all over again. Treamill?

I agree with everything atralporing said

Oh I agree it is definately good that it is spread out over a decent period of time. I just think that after you experience the dungeon,puzzle,music event once…it is very mundane and feels like it is lingering in LA. Maybe its that I feel that the event is lacking things to do other than the original events.

When and where was the toypocalypse?
And what reward was given?

This is just my opinion on the wintersday event: It was fun at first, with Tixx visiting each city. The jumping puzzle is fantastic, even though I didnt get credit for it when I completed it the one time…it was teleporting people to LA. The music thing is pretty neat! The dungeon, while it changed a little bit each time, was largely the same. Still, it was fine. Once Tixx visited Lion’s Arch, unless I missed something, there has been absolutely nothing new. Same old stuff. Is there to be a finale? Even if there is a finale, and I hope it doesn’t bug out, the past 1+ weeks has been straight up mundane and boring.

The weapon skins, while “festive” are even kind of lame for being festive. Could have done a little better with those.

I started out really enjoying the event, but a day or two after Tixx was in LA, I kind of wished he’d go away…its been laggy ever since and theres no point in him hanging around longer than a day.

@faramir:
Nah, these guys were charging the crystal and dropping it. Or not even trying to get to teh crystal.

This isnt the first group either. The first time I saw this, I was asking them why they werent throwing..they replied “The boss is dying isnt it? We are killing tenticles” which ..I guess also slowwwly takes the boss down?

Please tell me why groups, since lvl 10+, do not throw crystals at the jade maw?

From what I can see, throwing the crystal takes down the boss much faster. I find that a lot of people are hording the crystals, carrying them most times, leaving the few of us to either bite the bullet when we are targeted or dodge, which isnt that hard either.

Its infuriating to see these people not throw the crystal when doing so kills the kitten boss faster.

Please explain this to me, so I no longer get kitten

Its understandable that we’ll get new gear, obviously. What Im saying is, will we all experience the same thing we did at 80? Get the level “90 exotics”, only to be slowly replaced by ascended gear or higher level infusions?

If this is the case, this game is really no different than any other MMO. Its a definate treadmill, in some fashion. Im not saying it is a bad game, or a bad treadmill model, and I do think that all content except ascended gear(at least for higher fractal levels) is viable with most any gear, but nobody should kid themselves by saying theres no treadmill.

That would require an insane amount of rl money. Even still, my lvl 30 can enter wvw and be nearly as effective. Nearly. Good enough for me and i didnt spend a penny

Uhm, you cant level to 80 in 4 hrs. Assuming youare talking about being bumped ip to 80 for wvw, this is practical as they want people on some what level playing field…and adhere to the “level the way you want”.

Buying gold via the game wont get you kto 80. Explain this please.

Hi,
So briefly, what we know about ascended gear is that Arenanet planned for it to be in the game, but did not include it at launch(why?). In any case, it is meant to bridge the gap between legendary and exotic(I thought they were the same stat wise), and to give people something else to gear for since we were gearing up via exotic faster than anticipated. We also are under the impression, as per the AMA with Chris Whiteside, that they do not intend to release new ascended item slots every 3 months or so.

With those assumptions in mind, after several installments of ascended gear…one or two years down the road where you are able to acquire every slot of ascended, where do we go from there? What happens then? You’ll hear the gear treadmill, excuse me, \item treadmill folks clamor for more treadmill. And it has also been inferred that Arenanet has no quarrels with increasing the level cap for a major expansion.

SO, with all slots being ascended in one to two years time, and a major expansion in that general time frame(good timing?), they increase the level cap.. We get to the new level cap, for arguments sake 90, and farm the highest tier gear possible. For arguements sake, level 90 exotics. Do you think we will be slapped with an ascended gear climb again? What is the reasoning this time? Arenanet cannot throw the “bridge the gap” excuse at us again.

In summary: When the game has no where else to go in terms of item/gear progression, at a new level cap will we see new versions of ascended gear that will replace top level 90 gear? While level 90 gear. say exotics, would be available to you, would we be thrown higher level infusions to the level 80 ascended gear? How will the stats of level 90 exotic match up with those of level 80 ascended via more powerful infusions?

I thought this would be an interesting discussion that no one has really opened yet. People have speculated how far does ascended gear go in the game, when will it stop, but I do not think anyone has discussed what happens at level cap of a new expansion.

Please keep it civil (toward me) and anyone else that responds. You all will have your own differing opinions. I obviously have my own opinion on the subject that you might be able to interpret here, but I am curious what people think is in store for us after level 80 in terms of ascended/infusions.

Thoughts?

Guess I can give staff a shot again.

Maybe I am too low of a level, but I find that anything in water attunment, in terms of healing, is woefully underhwelming. People say it helps and gives you survivability…I switch to water, pop some of the healing abilities and its doing absolutely nothing when I am still getting pounded. A few ticks of +80 HP when I am getting smacked for 200-300 per hit per mob? Kind of useless. I hardly go into water for this reason as I do not find it helpful at all.

Am I doing something wrong?

Hi,
So I just hit 30 on my ele, been running D/D mainly, mixing in stats of Toughness and Power. Since the nature of D/D is being within melee range, I am finding that I only have a few seconds before my health is halfway down. I understand elementalists are the squishiest of all classes, and that we have the greateast aoe burst of most classes, but it is becoming annoying to see my HP drop to half health, and then sometimes much lower, when pulling 3 or more mobs at once.

Typical rotation is as follows:
Ring of Fire
Arcane Wave
(switch to earth)
Magnetic Grasp (if there are ranged around)
Earthquake
Churning earth

By the time I get my Churning Earth going, even with the knockdown from earthquake, my hp is half down. I was contemplating on regearing for completely toughness and vitality. Would this help? Any advice or is this something I need to just deal with? Is Orr going to be a “fun” time as a D/D ele?

I dont want to level with staff because I think I’ll be using that at level cap.

Regarding traits, TBH, Ive seen so many threads and advice to go into different trait lines that in my opinion it hardly matters for D/D, even in later levels. I know it is still early and traits do not weigh much yet, but Ive put 10 into Arcana with a cooldown reduction for arcane abilities(I use arcane wave and arcane shield), and the other 10 went into fire, but respecced and put that into earth I believe. The other utility I use is armor of earth…

Advice is appreciated!