Guild Wars 2

Personally, I don’t think GW2 does have the broadly understoon “content” to keep a large player base.

Main reason for me is that desperately lacks goals for non-hardcore players to achieve.
After you’re done with leveling (which includes personal story) and world completion (which is entertaining on itself once, but on alts – not so much), the premise of non-grindy fun game is suddently gone.

What else is ANet offering to players and advertising in their blog posts and other press releases?
Recently dungeons and legendary weapons, neither of which is really within the hand’s reach of non-hardcore players.

Legendary weapons are self explanatory, but the dungeons part is actually pretty sad.
It’s not even about difficulty/challenge, but the grind required to achieve a goal related with dungeons (armour / weapon sets).
Boring/frustrating dungeons mechanics aside, no content design will be “fun” anymore if run 100x times. It simply gets annoying.

Many players acquired this game because they were promised fun content, engaging dungeons and grind known from competitors’ games limited.
But the “fine print” is that fun content and no grind ends very quickly, and dungeons are for “selected few” who find outdated mechanics punishing experimentation and ridiculous reward system enjoyful. And the legendary items, pinnacle of latest PR, is something most of the players base will never hold in their hands, that’s how much grind it requires.

Personally, I can’t find a goal worth working for anymore, or one I can complete within 6 months (and no partial rewards worth mentioning in between either). And without a goal, I don’t see a reason to keep on playing, It’s actually sad since I’ve waited for this game for 6 years. And annoying as I’ve spent around 200EUR on it (copy for me and my boyfriend plus some gems), not mentioning new RAM blocks since GW2 is designed in a way that will absolutely not run on 12GB RAm with 2 damaged sectors (just ranting here, ignore this last part ).

I understand where you’re coming from, however I just wanted to point out that they never said “when it’s completly ready”, just “when it’s ready for release”.

NPCs, items, mobs, players, enemy players… Can’t click on anything.
Only closing the game helped.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’m trying to offer a possible workaround for a bug that I cannot reproduce after playing through the story step a dozen times. Since I can only test solo myself, it might be an issue with multiplayer.

I mean no offence Jeffrey, but you’re developing an MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) and you can only test stuff solo? Seriously? This must be the weirderst thing I’ve read on these forums so far…
I remember reading a blog post about all the amazing tools you guys made in-house and this… this just does not compute.

I agree – not saying half naked, but I’d like to see some variation at least.
I think the Charr are hit by the same thing, unfortunately, but somehow it bothers me less on a Charr.

emtwo, not constructive and borderline trolling.

Bots don’t necessary use the best weapon.
They use the best scriptable weapon.

I would really like to see my female Asura dressed in a way that would distinguish her from a guy.
For example, in medium Heritage Armour, “humanoid” females have a lovely necklace.
My little Asura doesn’t.
It’s just one of a dozen examples… Please, let female Asuras better express themselves.

Hello,

I’ve been running with this build for quite a while.
By no means is it perfect, but I like it and I’m having no troubles in PvE (that’s what I do mostly). Still, advices are welcome.

However, I think it’s time for me to improve my gear, but I have no idea what to focus on. I was thinking a squishy +power + precision +crit, but honestly I just don’t know.

Domination 25 (II, X)
Chaos 10 (V)
Inspiration 10 (IV)
Illusions 25 (III, VII)
I run with Staff and Greatsword mainly because it seems the most comfortable way for me to spawn illusions and shatter them frequently, I also try to combo with GS #2 and #5 in Staff field when I have the opportunity.

Your feedback is welcome!

CriSPeH.8512:

I am just happy to see tht WvW is so exciting and action packed tht ppl will camp the jumping puzzle in the corner of the map.

I don’t think it has anything to do with WvWvW itself.
It’s just the path of least resistance and people are taking it, because it’s easy and brings profit. And maybe because you’re annoying others, some people llike it (and that’s why I generally don’t like PvP, because people like that).

cherrie.8907:

I have a screenshot at home that shows the ridiculous range of the arrow cart when placed on the top of the puzzle, I’ll post it if I don’t forget.

I went through my screenshots and apparently I only made one and it doesn’t show arrow cart range as I though – I must have attached it to the in-game bug report that I made at the time.

To make it more clear, as some people already pointed out I want to know when you complete the initiation and get the banner, not just join the order.
Thanks for your replies so far

Thank you very much!

At what point of your personal story do you complete the initiation to one of the three orders?

Yes Knasher I meant the purple crystal.
Naming it orb wasn’t very precise I guess.

Of course one can come up with strategies to counter these (if you’re lucky you can pull them off with Mesmer focus, but I’m not sure if that’s a bug in mechanics, you also have to be lucky, plus if they’re at the crystal, they are way beyond range) but I believe that in principle iege weapons there give unfair advantage and boil down to simple griefing and I hold strong belief they should be removed form puzzles.

I have a screenshot at home that shows the ridiculous range of the arrow cart when placed on the top of the puzzle, I’ll post it if I don’t forget.

…add a separate WvWvW access cooldown after transferring.

I understand that the main reason behind adding a 24h hour cooldown to free server transfer was to limit WvWvW exploits.
However, due to the fact that there still is no real guest feature, players with friends on different servers are having a hard time playing together.

Guesting was a feature long advertised and many group of friends didn’t bother about servers too much since “they could play together anyway”.
In my example, numerous groups of friends from different games / alliances I’ve been part of over the year chose different servers. While there was no cooldown on the timers, we cpould always switch and have some fun.
Now only fun we can reliably count on without 24h-in-advance planning are dungeons.

Please, add a cooldown after transfer to WvWvW access rather than the transfers so we could use them as a “guesting” feature until you are done!
If the amounts of transfers was impacting your servers, leave a short cooldown (15 mins? 30 min? 1h?) on them.

What I encountered was arrow cart at the orb in Eternal Battlegrounds.
One above the beast arena is almost as bad, but it covers much less area.

Arrow cart on the orb basically prevents anyone from going up, and by placing siege weapon so far up and above, they had insane advantage. Range of that thing up there bascially covers the whole level.

Sure, if we gathered enough numbers, we’d zerg it but that’s not my point.
My point is, siege weapons create unfair advantage in the puzzle quest and allow few people to grief huge numbers of players.
Again, I am not against PvP in there, just the siege weapons.

I know it’s PvP area, I don’t mind some combat, I don’t even mind zerg, much. It comes with the format.

But siege weapons in there?
They have insane range, especially if placed on a higher ground. They shoot through walls, behind pillars. If a team builds a siege weapon above a bottle neck, one-two person group can grief opposing team indefinietly. There is absolutely no way to get to them and defeat them. In many cases, because of the range and because damage puts you in combat, it’s impossible to make required jumps as you’re constantly in combat.

Please remove siege weapons from jumping puzzles in WvWvW.

I agree that from WvWvW point of view free transfers are bad – that’s basically why ANet has limited them to one every 24h.
But they can’t be removed until ANet manages to implement guesting system.

They have promised that system since they announced different servers and it would be unacceptable to bring fees up without making it able for friends from different servers to play together.
As a matter of fact, i already disagree with the 24h cooldown on transfer – I would much prefer the cooldown to apply to WvWvW enterance (so, you can transfer more often, but you can only access WvWvW 24h after you ytransferred).
I have friends on multiple servers that I want to play with. They are mostly my guildies fom different games I’ve played recently.
We were not fussed much about server choices because of the promised guest feature.
The 24h cooldown already complicates our lives, we can only really do dungeons freely together. It’s the WvWvW access that’s the biggest problem, not transfers.

This one is annoying the hell out of me and I’d really like to see the feature added.

After login, the user should be redirected to the page he/she clicked the log-in button in, not the main forum.
You can store the url in session pass it in a hidden field or even as a parameter in url (though probably not advised as it would make the URL excessively long), but please do it. It’s a basinc feature with high usability value.

vjek, aye you’re right.
243 karma is what I get for events in lower level zones before DR.
I’m not paying much attention to exp though.

Irishbrewed.6537:

Ossus.9231:

Irishbrewed.6537:

Can someone clarify EXACTLY what the problem is? I just see people saying they get DR and how they hate it. Yet didn’t Anet say it was implemented to stop players from abusing game mechanics? I guess I just have yet to see anyone clarify exactly what they are dong to get DRs. I’ve yet to see DRs once and I’ve been playing since early access. If the system is to stop abusing game mechanics, then why is this so bad? From a rationale standpoint I just do not understand the outcry.

If someone could clarify what exactly they are doing when they get DRs it would be greatly appreciated.

Irish, if you look back at some of my posts / threads, you can see a good chunk of information on this.

The issue I have with the DR is that, even though I am not farming, I am getting hit by diminished drops. I don’t farm DEs, don’t grind the same mobs over and over again, yet whenever I play Orr, I get severely reduced drops (either nothing or porous bones). This is the result of playing the game exactly as is intended. It is incredibly frustrating and really hampers me from playing in any meaningful way.

So how do you even know its DR? Do you get a debuff or something? Or do you guys all know that if you do “X” you get “X”? I thought a lot of players were just mob tagging and “gaming” the system. Does it not work like that?

Well… at level 80 standard reward for an event is ~3k exp, 243 karma, 1.xx silver.
When you’re getting hit by DR, the karma and silver reward and silver keep decreasing down to 12 karma I think (not sure about the other rewards).
As for mob drops, I would suspect it’s pretty obvious for anyone who has played the game even a tiny bit that if from 30+ mobs you get no drop whatsoever, apart from additional trophy, something is happening to your drops.

The main problem, as others explained to you already, is that while it was meant to be an ani-bot measure, players are hitting the DR during completely normal play.
Some zones are more more susceptible than others, especially Orr due to its design: it mostly has one type of mobs, the Risen, so you keep on killing same type again.
It also, by design, as Devs shared in one of their blog posts, has no hearts but more events: more frequent and in longer chains. So if you play in Orr, simply roaming them map and joining the meta-events, you can hit the DR extremely fast. And it’s painful, as you’re getting around 5% of usual reward.

But it is not just Orr.
Every zone has at least one meta event chain and – depending on how long it is, how fast events proceed and how long have you played before joining / how many events you have done, you can hit DR too.
Events also have a tendency to spawn the same mob type, also across chains, which may lead to you hitting the “drop”: DR, too.

And this is all by simply playing the game, exactly as it was meant to be played.

It was the last revealed, but definietly not the last added to the game
Mesmer is a signature GW1 profession.

Cookies can have an explicitly set expiry date (that’s actually the only way to make them “indefinite”: you set them very far into the future), but they can also be set to “session”, which means that you will be logged out when you close your browser.
That is historically default behaviour of cookies.

From what I can see, guildwars2.com domain uses numerous cookies (which can be expected). A bunch of them are cookies with around 1 year of life, however there are several I can see are set to expire today, and several with “session” expiry date, so his behaviour you describe is by design. Setting like that are usually for safety reasons.

I totally agree this should be the priority of any Mesmer changes right now.
It has been pointed out and detailed too long ago to be ignored like that.
This also influences multiple Mesmer abilities, not just one like other issues that have already been addressed.

If it’s not an easy fix, at least communicate with us!

Why is there no official response on this yet?
Seriously, this implementation (the system altogether) is completly ridiculous since it goes AGAINST the rest of game mechanics.

I’d like to quote Gaile from another thread – of course I can’t really quote because forum buttons are gone for me AGAIN:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/I-bought-a-wrong-item-from-the-token-vendor/first#post329129

Your comments are accurate. A “buy back” feature needs to be carefully and thoughtfully designed. If the team wanted to implement this feature, they would not want to rush it out as a stop-gap measure, only to find that it wasn’t designed as well as it could be. Any feature that is implemented into a game should be well-thought and carefully designed, which is something that the team is fully capable of… and somewhat well-known for doing.

Then why are you releasing such important feature that concerns every single player of yours without making sure “it is designed as well as it could be”, but was clearly “rushed out as a stop-gap measure” (to counter bots…): DR on events and mob killing have more far reaching consequences than a buy-back feature because every minute any of your players is playing your game, they come in touch with your code by doing events and killing mobs.

And it clearly has not been “well-thought and carefully designed”, because – example that has been brough in many times on this subject – in Orr or in WvWvW you kill one type of mob and you get hit with DR immediately. Or if you follow any of your event chains, you’re doing events – different events!- in quick succession, also usually killing same type of mob (I find it impossible to actually list an event where different mob types spawn or required to be killed!).

Your DR code is actually preventing from playing the game as you clearly intended it to be played – otherwise you wouldn’t put as many events in the same area spawning as fast, or had much slower chains. You wouldn’t have most end-game zones full of one type of mob only either (all Orr maps, but also most dungeons which are ALWAYS filled mostly with one mob type).
This update is thus gamebreaking and your silence on this matter insulting.

Gaile, I do not mean this as a personal attack because your post I quoted described precisely how it should be. However what has been done stands in direct opposition to these principles.

Notoriously your forum shows more pages on a thread that there actualyl are posts to show.

I was trying to re-view and link this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Patch-made-DR-worse-Explanation

It would insist on redirecting me to page 2, specific comment
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Patch-made-DR-worse-Explanation/page/2#post329618

However the page wuld be EMPTY
I had to manually edit the URL to access the post to
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Patch-made-DR-worse-Explanation/page/1

Very often, if you click on a thread link, you end up on an empty last page just with pagination showing on top, too.

Please fix this it’s just so sloppy and annoying.

This is due to the new Diminishing Returns mechanics ANet has implemented to combat botting.

Read more complains about it here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Patch-made-DR-worse-Explanation/page/1

Of course ANet ahs not officially responded to the complains.

Same applies for Staff or Scepter (on Mesmer).

I’m pretty sure it’s related to a general bug when you’re not getting awarded for dungeon completion.

A very impressive, in-depth, informational post.
It’s not often that I leave forums learning quite a lot.
Thanks a lot for this post. I agree with every single point you made.

Edit: I was about to write how I shouldn’t bash your programming skills and instead focus on the real problem, which is DR on Events and Mob types in general, but hey here I am to edit my post instead of double posting and the post buttons are gone AGAIN. So I’ll uphold the “bad programmers” part.

Anyway, it’s not even that DR is bugged: it shouldn’t even exist on events and mob types.
As I said in my previous post, events ARE your end game. Once a player completed the world (and is not coordinated, experienced enough or simply doesn;t like dungeons), roaming map and doing events is the ONLY thing left.
Who in their right mind puts a DR on them?
This is NOT a way to solve your botting problem. DR anywhere outside of dungeons is a TERRIBLE idea simpyl because doing events is how youp lay your game.
And even outside of orr, if you decide to join an event chain, then :
a) you get into DR because “you do events to fast” (as fast as you designed the chain to run….)
b) you might run into DR because most events require you to kill the same enemy type, sometimes across the whole chain

Don’t try to fix it. This solution is flawed in it’s root because of how you designed your game. Why is it that your players have to explain this to you?

I’ve decided to drop by to share my thought.

First of all, using “arguments” like this bit “ALL STORYMODE DUNGEONS MUST HAVE AVERAGE COMPLETION TIMES SO THAT LITTLE BILLY CAN BE DONE BY DINNERTIME” makes your whole post loose around 60% of argument strength.
This is called argumentum ad hominem and generally points out that you have no leverage and you’re trying to gain some by logical fallacy.

Secondly, you call devs out on “defending their design philosophy”.
If you would follow GW2 development closely, you’d know they gave up their oroginal design philosophy that they proudly shared 2 years ago closely before release (f.e. related to dungeon rewards).

Thirdly, if you call ANet on “their design philosophy”, it would be nice if you were actually aware of what they have stated in the past and recently. Story Mode is meant for everyone. Explorable Modes are meant for organised, experienced, coordinated groups of players.

And lastly, it seems that your idea of challenging encounter is mobs having 10xhp and 10xattributes. However, this is artificial difficulty of lazy / unimaginative developers (which I am surprised made it’s way to GW2 with it’s otherwise extremely entertaining and diverse world).
A design like that serves only as a speed bump and is completely unnecessary, especially in a game that does not have a subscription fee where it serves no purpose for the owning company either.

I can’t complete a single zone for a week now because of broken skill challenges.
Can’t swicth servers eithger anymore.
Do look into that.

Happened on my Mesmer a few times, no idea how to reproduce it.
The weapon switch button would stay grayed out, keyboard nor clicking would not switch weapomns.
Workaround I found was to switch them once using the arrows on [H]ero panel.

VERY annoying bug…

I’ve run TA over a week ago for the first time, got 30 Blooms out of it.

Got 105 today and… the two stacks won;t stack together!
Can you please fix this.

PS For more than one person (me included) this run also didn’t count towards the achievement.
I’ve never run that path before, but it didn’t count.

I’d edit my post but your forum code is of similar brilliant quality and all the buttons are gone.

Twilight Arbor Explorable, we’ve run 2 paths with the same group.

On 1st path, everyone got 60.
On the 2nd path, 3 people got 60, 2 people (including me) got 45.

I have NOT run that dungeon (or any other, thanks to your BRILLIANT coding: fun? really? lol) for over a week.

Server: Fissure of Woe
Map: Metrica Province

What: Skill Point in Inquest Outer Complex, NPC missing
What 2: Skill Point in Durotl Grounds

klavshc, I can’t share your sentiment.
If you want, you can repeat the fight 3 times (you know, die when the eye is almost dead, or exit) and you’ll have the same thing.

The length doesn’t give it meaning nor gravity because the mechanics are trivial and boring. Once you figure them out (after you’ve done each phase once), they’re absolutely anticlimactic. The boss won’t even hit you once (unless you’re yawning).

I must say I am a bit distressed here.
Every personal story step that gets complained about, gets nerfed very fast.
But the dungeons are not touched.

Now, I don’t mind them being difficult.
I’ve said it many times: challenge is good.
I have some issues with what ANet understands as challenge (buff all attributes by 100, and then HP bar a bit more) but I do appreciate challenge, in general.

My problem is, however, that there is no learning curve in this game that can prepare more casual players for the dungeons.
There is NO place for them to learn about what they need to complete them nowhere in game apart from structured PvP, and I know many people simply don’t like PvP and will never go there.

I see this lack of learning curve as a huge problem.
Probably one of the biggest issues with dungeons for me right now (well, apart for the HP bars… shave the HP bars… I have nightmares about red bars that don’t go down…).
I understand ANet doesn’t want to make dungeons trivial and is basically politely telling people “learn to play”, the problem is: where exactly?

Everywhere else in the game you can use one weapon set and never change your traits not utility skills and complete EVERYTHING.
I was shocked the first time I’ve heard from a friend of mine that “he doesn’t need to unlock all utility skills because he’ll never use them”. He was the first person in my guild to complete the world map, btw. I thought: maybe Thiefs are different than Mesmers: my Mes has all her skills unlocked and I really used them all, albeit some rarely (never used Moa in PvE).
But really?

One thing that really got on my nerves is that if you come across a really deep, “solid” character, they die. You learn very fast that – unfortunately – most of the characters in PS are very plain and uninteresting, single-dimension and that interesting characters are rare and far between.

And they die. Because the whole extra effort of the team to create that depth was focused ONLY to have a bigger effect when they die.

Spoilers ahead!
I don’t want to hide half my post or every second sentence so please stop reading now.

Arda was in only 2 of my PS quests and the first time I spoke to her, I knew she will die.
It’s like giving her a red shirt! She was amazing, but the only reason she was made amazing is because the team wanted to “kill her off”. It’s actually quite sad. And lazy.
Orr is actually full of that, this story arch (cauldron) actually has it 2 or 3 times: the scared Asura and the so high held Norn hunter you get to hear about? Guess.

On a side note, I also find the human story line the most generic.
Norn is, at times, also pretty bad.
I wanted to play a “noble” Norm, much like I imagined Jora was. Getting drunk wasn’t an option, brawl also wasn’t an option, so I chose the heirloom. Only to learn this means my Norn is a stupid gambler who would gamble this – very important, apparently! – family heirloom.
Later you have to choose whether to destroy that heirloom (as it’s dangerous) or to keep it. And Eir insists on keeping it, because “it’s so important to your family and a legend and a legacy bla bla”. Well, if I agreed to keep it, the character would fall apart: if it was so important, I wouldn’t gamble it! Of and my ancestor is apparently a Norn hero, too. Makes no sense.

I also agree with whoever wrote that the “world” writing team done a much better job.
You get deeper, more defined and more interesting characters in the small event chains, seriously… and they don’t always die, which is nice, too.

Thanks Jeffrey, good to know I won’t have to kill him again like that and that others won’t have to go through the same thing. Much appreciated.

Can you clarify the AoE indicators being invisible under water (“cripple” phase)? Is that by design?
Missiles also disappear in the middle circle, under water (they seem to be following the curvature of the floor).
Also, what’s your take on the respawning mobs on the way from entrance to the room? Are they really necessary?

Can’t reach dungeon, can’t finish PS…

Dear Devs, what is with you and mobs HPs?
Seriously?

This fight was so far the most annoying fight in GW2.
Not because of how difficult it was, but because of how long it took.
If you are not creative enough / don’t have enough time to implement engaging mechanics, shave the HP. Repeating the same 3 phases and running across that big room endlessly from one side to another is BORING. NOT FUN.
I actually went for an extended afk with cooking dinner / watching series in the middle of the fight, this is how boring it is.

Are the aoe indicators in the phase with Mesmer’s skill effect on the ground invisible under water for a reason?
I do get why, it’s be totally trivial if they weren’t…

Also, are the respawn of the mobs on the way really necessary?
When the phases are still engaging (like, the first time you do them…) and you die trying to figure them out, wth must one kill the stupid mobs on the way again.
And where exactly do they come from if the cave entrance is guarded by the “pact’s finest”.

I am sorry for the aggressive post but I really have no compliments to give about this boss. Tedious, not engaging and takes forever.

I love Staff / GS personally.
Try putting down Staff #5 in a group of mobs, and then switch to GS and do #4 in there and watch the beautiful numbers!

When the field is done you should easily have 3 illusions up no matter what build you’re running, so shatter themin there too.

I’ve noticed this problem some time ago but I didn’t think much of it until the reports of bugged dungeon rewards started pouring in: dear ANet, check how you’re storing and comparing your time stamps.

I’ve noticed that bug on TP and I am aware that they might as well not be connected at all, still I’ll point it out just in case:
When I put stuff up for sale, the “x time ago” text is almost never right. I haven’t tested it extensively but I recall playing whole Saturday once, putting stuff for sale in the morning and in the evening still having it marked as “few seconds ago”.

If other stuff in game that was done hours before (like, running a dungeon, or starting it) is affected in similar way, it could explain at least some of the bizzare dungeon penalties people are running into.

In case it’s time zone related, I play in EU, GMT+1.

Norn lost heirloom arch, if you choose to follow kodan advice:
the amount of enemies spawning during the ritual is ridiculous. At least you have kodans to help you during the first parts (though they hjelp little, as usual with NPCs in PS)… But at the end, when it’s only you, Eir and one bear and kitty-loads of enemies, it’s not funny any more. I had to kite like a headless chicken and the fact that I was a guardian, defensive and over the target level didn’t really seem to help.

I freakin’ hate kiting, it’s the most anti-climatic mechanic ever, and GW2 seems to be full of it. Not fun, but boring and annoying.

I’ve been doing this personal story step tonight.
When you’re to killed grubs, the message “That content has been temporarily disabled. Please try again later.” was popping up continuously.

I believe “Deceptive Evasion” dodgning will not produce a clone unless you have attacked or were attacked by the enemy, but summoning illussion doesn;t seem to count as attack (at least not for all skills).
What I find peculiar here is that you actually “are” in combat since weapon swap cooldown goes into “combat” mode.

rhodoc.2381:

cherrie.8907:

Feel lucky.
I just got 1cpopper

You get 1 copper from chest not the real reward. Well that’s another problem, 1c seriously

Might have been the chest, not sure, but as you said… 1c… for a dungeon… You get more from mobs on lvl 2.