Guild Wars 2

TheDaiBish.9735:

But…but…Hearts are boring, and doing that would force people to do it, making it a grind, and ANet promised there wouldn’t be a grind.

I know you were being sarcastic, but to be fair, it would be a grind.

It’d just be a grind that is a hell of a lot more varied and fun than the grinds that already exist in the game.

So honestly I like the idea. Gives me more motivation to play with my high level characters when playing with friends, too.

Alipius.4783:

Same as OP.
I loved Gw1.
And I got bored really fast on Gw2.
I know many people from Gw1 that like Gw2, but definitely less than people that don’t play anymore.
You can say whatever you want about Gw1, that it was only grind, but to me it was not.
I don’t know what you did on Gw1, but probably not the same things.
Farming, making our own builds was not “grinding”. Because yes, Farming is not grinding.
Trying new teams in Deep, Urgoz, FoW, UW, DoA… wasn’t grind.
Playing in a real PvP wasn’t grind, and was interesting.
Skills updates were keeping the game “alive”, in constant change, and made us try new things.

And believe me, I want probably as much as you to see the game become better.

This incorrect strain of thinking is precisely the problem here.

The definition of “grind” in the context of video games is “to engage in the same repetitive tasks over and over”. “Farming” is a synonym in this context, it simply means “grinding for the sake of obtaining specific items”. By that definition, GW1 had grinding in it. As do all MMOs, and many games in general.

You can window dress it all you like, say that “it didn’t feel like a grind to me”, but it was a grind. You are drawing a false line in the sand, claiming that a grind which is fun is not a grind. This is akin to painting a horse with stripes and claiming it’s now a zebra because you like zebras better than horses. It’s still a zebra, you’re just creating a different mentality for yourself in order to convince yourself that it isn’t.

GW1 was still a grind according to the definition of the term. You just don’t care that it was a grind because you’re having fun in it. And that’s fine, actually, because grinding itself isn’t necessary a bad thing and can even make a game fun to play if implemented correctly. It’s the amount and type of grinding which determines how much of a chore it is.

That said, all of the things you’ve named are already in GW2. Skill updates are happening all the time, you can create your own build just fine in this game, and there’s lots of areas where teamwork is required (in a variety of group sizes).

You might disagree with how they’re implemented, but the vague statements you’ve made about GW1 can be easily applied to GW2 as well. You’re gonna have to be a lot more specific about your complaints if you want them fixed, because right now you just come across as whining about nothing.

Kurakura.7281:

I did play 6000+ hours of GW1 though, which is why I bought GW2. Only 100 hours into GW2 I was bored and just stopped playing.

I don’t think people should focus much on the fact that he logged 100 hours on GW2 (which is honestly not very much).

What we should be asking this guy is “what the hell did you do for 6000 hours in GW1 that was so amazingly different than any other MMO out there?”, because I guarantee he was mindlessly grinding the same endgame quests over and over and over. Guess what, you do that in every other MMO, too. GW1 was only “innovative” in that it had a low level cap and no vertical progression, and that really isn’t as much innovation as people want to pretend it is.

Honestly, someone with your attitude is best staying out of the game. I’d rather play with friendly people who may or may not be totally satisfied but are at least interested in seeing the game improve.

Glad to hear you are having a great experience.

When I was playing in the beta, I was having a decent time, but wasn’t feeling hooked quite yet. I remember stepping away from the computer for a bit to take a break, thinking “this monastery looks like a safe place to relax”. When I came back, suddenly I’m surrounded by creatures from the Underworld and in a battle for my life. Yes, I had accidentally stumbled right into the middle of the biggest event chain in Queensdale. So I played through each of the small events and went deep into the swamp….and was absolutely blown away when all of a sudden, this giant shadowy beast emerges from the center of the swamp and starts dropping AoE everywhere. It was probably one of the most epic battles I had in the early stages of the game, and I remember rescuing several people from certain death as well. But that event is what finally sold me on the concept of this game and convinced me that this was going to be my new favorite time sink. The notion of a world that literally changes around me and because of me was something that absolutely blew my mind, a feeling I’d never felt in other MMOs before.

700 hours later, still love this game. I just think they have some work to do to improve the core game experience before they go adding a bunch of extra new shinies.

Guru.1582:

This is it, exactly.

How difficult would this be to do? Well, certainly more difficult than programming in the recipes, setting the (enormously high) gold sink requirements and calling it a day. Certainly more difficult than that.

Imagine that, after playing for a certain amount of time, helping people out, experiencing the game, you unlocked these skins. Imagine if they truly reflected a dedication to playing the game, rather than just a dedication to prescribed gold farming and exploiting?

Anet knows better. Or they should know better. And we should demand better.

I can think of several occasions where my presence in the battle was the difference between survival and defeat. Playing a variety of content in the game has made me a much better player, and making legendaries into a lore-based item with a massive quest behind it would only further improve upon the skills that the rest of the game has taught me. There is no doubt in my mind that if legendaries were made into a skill challenge, I could rise to the challenge and make the grade.

As it is? I can get a legendary, it’s certainly not difficult. But I’ll only get it if I’m willing to grind the game, and ANet said they didn’t want players to feel like they’re being obligated to grind.

You’re absolutely right. ANet should know better, and they can do so much better.

I’m not sure I see the point, honestly.

Who’s going to monitor and regulate the RPing to make sure people RP? WoW and SWTOR sure as hell don’t.

Wow….that’s really bright. Like, possibly TOO bright.

The screenie was taken at nighttime in-game so far as I can tell, so for colors to be popping out that vividly would really throw off my sense of time in the game, and might even make the game too bright for me to play.

If that sort of thing appeals to you, I suppose there’s no harm in using it, though.

JaironKalach.4938:

Thanks for choosing to take the issue head on. I don’t believe that I willfully misterpret it, but I see why you believe that I do. I interpret it in the light of what I know now and what I know about their past history. Certainly Obi armor in GW1 was also a meaningless grind. So when I read that paragraph, I interpret it as a whole.

They didn’t state “If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone” and then put in an item that is differentiated by appearance alone which requires a thousand hours to get, by coincidence….

I certainly don’t think that they said “If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone” just to fill space.

And if they meant: “There should be no reason for someone to play for a thousand hours because an item is too rare to be acquired otherwise, even if it’s just differentiated by its visual apperance and rarity alone,” I image they would have said that, instead of what they said.

So, yeah, that’s why I interpret it that way. I think it’s reasonable to interpret it that way. I also don’t see any benefit in interpreting it another way, other than being able to feel betrayed and hurt.

I interpreted it the way I did because when they said “no grind”, I assumed they would stick to that philosophy.

What bothers me is that not only are there multiple forms of grinding in GW2, but that people are perfectly okay with it and even defend it.

For example, the original design for dungeons (as I recall) was that completing the dungeon one time would yield a token which you could trade in for one piece of dungeon equipment. Most players interpreted this as the way that GW1 handled these tokens: you complete a campaign, you get one token that you trade in for one fancy weapon skin. This would mean that you’d need to run a dungeon only six times to obtain the full set of gear. They also made a point of saying they didn’t want their players grinding dungeons at endgame, which seemed to support this notion.

Yet upon the game’s release (and in future content additions), we see that instead, players must play the dungeon to earn a small handful of tokens which are then traded in like a secondary currency. This isn’t quite what we were picturing, and honestly it’s a huge problem because it creates exactly the sort of grind mentality they said they were against.

Compare these two models and it’s easy to see why players are a bit peeved. To obtain a full set of Lvl 80 exotics from a given dungeon takes 1380 tokens. Assuming you only run the dungeon once a day (to maximize your efficiency and get 60 tokens per run), that’s still 23 runs for a full set of gear. And hopefully you’re not going for a legendary, or else you’re likely looking at another 500 tokens needed (that’s 9 more runs).

When you say that you don’t want players grinding dungeons at endgame, why on earth would you design your dungeon reward system this way? And like I said, this is just one example of the surprisingly amount of grind there is in this game made by guys who said “we don’t make grindy games”. It’s not hard to realize that there’s a reason why people are upset.

JaironKalach.4938:

Sorry… Didn’t mean to make you ask for it. I’ve posted it often enough that I’m starting to lose track of who’s likely to have seen it and who isn’t.

Vertical Progression Promise
Vertical Progression Promise 2
(Search for Expansion)

I’m….not seeing it. Not for lack of trying, mind you.

I genuinely don’t see any quote in either of those links in which the developers directly state “there will be new tiers of equipment above exotic” or even imply such a thing, really.

I see them promising to raise the level cap, which I knew about. And I knew that when they did that, there would naturally be new gear released to cover those levels. But there’s nothing in there which promises new tiers of equipment above exotic that would need to be grinded for, which is the “vertical progression” that people have been complaining about.

JaironKalach.4938:

When we talk about vertical progression, we can point to posts from 2011 where they indicated they would have vertical progression.

Okay. Do it.

This isn’t me disbelieving you, mind, this is me saying “provide proof of your argument”.

JaironKalach.4938:

critickitten.1498:

Guess that the developers should not have promised “no grind” to their customers, then, eh?

That’s THEIR fault, not the purchaser’s fault.

Since we’re talking about legendaries… Developer’s didn’t promise any such thing. In fact, they hinted the opposite. See the full quote in context in the article in my sig, if you actually care to change your preconceptions.

I read that quote of yours and I see this:

Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.

Could you point out the part where it says “we believe in making our most rare items into a massive grind”? I’m pretty sure that quote states rather directly that their intention was to create a grind-less game.

You’re willfully choosing to misinterpret the first portion as “grind is okay so long as it’s just a skin”, which is directly contradicted by the second part of his statement. No grind means no grind. That’s why a lot of players are positively shocked that legendaries aren’t a skill-based rare, but rather a heavily grind-based one.

You’re the one misinterpreting things here.

Mackdose.6504:

If you’re not going to substantiate your opinion while posting on a forum, why bother to post?

What I think are flaws and what you think are flaws might be different, hence the question. No need to be such an indignant sod about it.

Because me posting what I feel are flaws is off-topic.

If you really want a thread, fine, I’ll make one some time today. And then I’ll laugh as tons of people proceed to claim that I’m “attacking the game” simply for pointing out the flaws that everyone knows it has. I love this game, but it’s not perfect and I’m tired of people pretending it is.

Vol.5241:

You’re playing the wrong genre if you don’t like ‘grind’. You want a game that needs ‘skill’, go play FPS game. Or RTS. Not an MMO.

There is ‘grind’ in every MMO. Not sure how you are only finding this out now.

Guess that the developers should not have promised “no grind” to their customers, then, eh?

That’s THEIR fault, not the purchaser’s fault.

What do you suggest, anyways? Let’s make it very easy to get legendary weapons, so that everyone is running around with them? At that point you wouldn’t want it, right?

Hardly. I want them to be challenging to obtain, and MORE rare than they are right now, if anything. But I want it to be a skill-based thing, not just something you can make by grinding or playing the TP for freebie gold.

There’s nothing difficult about getting a legendary right now, and there’s certainly nothing ‘legendary’ about it. They are rare only because of how much grinding is involved, not because of any difficulty associated with it.

LHound.8964:

I lol’d.

Necromancer – Meh?
Mesmer – Too girly?

Have fun in GW
bb

Pretty much this.

Ordinarily I’d help, but some of your complaints are so petty that it’s hard to tell if you actually WANT to like this game or just want to complain about it.

Mackdose.6504:

You didn’t even answer my question.

Nor do I intend to. I don’t have to prove anything to you.

Again, it’s a great game, but it has flaws. If you don’t already know what they are, you haven’t been playing the game enough.

Avitarus.1865:

And to the guy who says dye drops “regularly” in PvE: Your definition of “regularly” is certainly different from mine. I regularly get Porous Bones. I rarely get dye. Hell, I get yellows more often than I get dyes, and I hardly ever get yellows!

I’ve had some decent luck with dyes, myself.

Just today I got five drops in a starter zone, two of which turned out to be rares.

Avitarus.1865:

Weren’t dyes supposed to be craftable by cooks? I thought I heard that once.

They are.

The recipes are downright obnoxious, though.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chef#Dyes

Mackdose.6504:

critickitten.1498:

and I do feel as though the dev team lost their way at some point because several of the game’s primary flaws are things they themselves said don’t belong in an MMO.

Such as? Don’t say “grind” because the grind in GW2 is faaaar less than other MMOs of late.

I’ll say “grind” all I like, considering that having “less grind” still doesn’t fulfill their promise of a game with NO grinding.

And no, actually, that’s only one of the flaws on my list.

Nice try, though.

Depends on your server.

Ehmry Bay’s starter zones are flooded with people. I was just running Queensdale on my necro and it would’ve been tough for me to avoid running into people, frankly.

New Character Yo.6487:

Seriously? People are complaining that monthlies force them to do specific tasks that they don’t want to do? So the monthly should just be a daily… just more kills, gathers, etc… Monthlies don’t give you super loot anyways, it’s optional…

Already dismissed the whole “optional” argument about a thousand times so I won’t do it again.

As for the “it doesn’t give very good loot” bit:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Monthly

Completing all tiers of all monthly achievements awards extra 3% experience, coins, 20 Mystic Coins, and 10 Jugs of Liquid Karma.

For those who do a lot of crafting or are seeking to obtain their legendaries, those rewards may not be essential but they can be helpful.

Hickeroar.9734:

It’s not like the idea of Agony is new anyway. GW1 had agony and you used infusions to counteract it. They didn’t just “invent” the stuff and throw it into the game.

Yes, and it was unpopular in GW1, too.

Mainly because when it was implemented in Prophecies, originally you had to infuse each piece of armor separately. This made it rather obnoxious to get an entire set of armor infused, which convinced them to change infusion’s function. The end result is that they changed the mechanic from individual armor pieces into a one-time thing, mere months after the game’s release.

Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s right. They took the broken version of Agony from GW1 and applied it to GW2. Except they made it even harder to obtain Agony resistance in this game than in the previous game.

This is like accidentally putting your finger on a hot stove and burning it, and responding to this by putting your entire hand on the stove just to see if you get burned again. And guess what? Bad word of mouth throughout the month of November likely burned them pretty bad, bad enough that they’ve admitted publicly that the implementation of this content was extremely poor and that they’re going to work on it.

If they want to implement Agony again, that’s okay. I don’t like the mechanic myself, but I’ll live with it. However, the way in which they implemented it is even worse than it was in GW1. They have some serious work to do here.

Hickeroar.9734:

The fractals change and tactics have to change as you progress. If it was the same thing every day, it’d be one thing, but it’s not. At lvl 19, several of the fractals have gone through 3-4 transformations of how the levels have to be played. Mobs and bosses get different abilities, Agony is added into the mix, etc.

Raiding in WoW is a grind. This is far from it.

Agony is a broken mechanic that honestly shouldn’t exist. It’s part of that same flawed mentality that spawned the “difficulty” in the original dungeons of GW2: to make more difficult, just add more OHKOs and cheap shots. And Agony only encourages you to grind the Fractals even further to obtain Agony resistance so that you can grind the Fractals even further. It’s a self-repeating cycle of bad design.

I don’t disagree with the rest, though. Having monsters gain new abilities with higher levels does make things more interesting and fun.

And no, it’s still a grind. You’re still repeating the same content over and over, even if it’s in a different order. I’d agree that it’s less of a grind than WoW raiding in concept, but it’s still a grind.

Fun, but also a grind.

Bloody Zac.8960:

Criticism is fine, as long as it’s constructive.

What I’ve seen many gamers do, however, is rant and rave, insult devs, etc.

In my opinion, that is what is wrong with the gaming fanbase. Too many rabid attacks, too few constructive criticisms.

The problem here is that GW2 has a lot of problems that all deserve criticism.

If I were to list off every single flaw in the design of this game, small or large, you’d consider that an “attack” because of its excess negativity and because of just how large the list really is.

And yet, I maintain that this is a great game. And I’ve talked several friends into buying it despite these flaws.

I just don’t for even one second believe that this game is perfect, and I do feel as though the dev team lost their way at some point because several of the game’s primary flaws are things they themselves said don’t belong in an MMO.

Hickeroar.9734:

1) Fractals are not a grind. They’re probably the most fun game content I’ve seen across the whole game thusfar. Very balanced, require real strategy instead of just stupidly huge healthpools, etc.
2) The loot from fractals is substantial. You’d have been better off just finishing the lvl1 run and getting more gold out of the deal.

I agree with most of this post, save one thing. The very first sentence.

“Fractals are not a grind.”

Yes, they are. Being obligated to repeat the same content over and over in the hopes of obtaining specific rewards is the textbook definition of MMO grind. And Fractals is a grind in two respects:
1) You are grinding it daily for the chance at free Ascended drops
2) You are grinding it to obtain Fractal Relics, which you then trade in for Ascended drops.

In both cases, you are grinding Fractals repeatedly for the sake of obtaining Ascended gear. That is a grind.

I agree with you that it’s fun, but being fun and being a grind are two different things and they are perfectly capable of co-existing.

In fact it’s fair to argue that every dungeon in GW2 is a grind. I seem to recall that the original design plan for dungeons was “run dungeon once, get a token that you trade in for one piece of equipment”, yet for some reason they decided to turn this into “run dungeon once, get a handful of tokens that don’t buy you anything unless you run the dungeon 20 more times to get enough for one piece of gear”.

Exterminans.9723:

That was more of “one-eyed among the blinds”. 2012 didn’t had any big AAA titles except for Guildwars 2.

False statement is blatantly false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_in_video_gaming#Game_releases

Take your pick. There were dozens of AAA titles released this year. Just because you personally weren’t interested in very many games doesn’t mean that nothing came out this year. >_>

Hell, I can name a few AAA titles released this year that are at least worthy of discussion in a top games list with very little effort. Here I go:
Dishonored
Spec Ops: The Line
Far Cry 3
X-COM: Enemy Unknown

There, I just rounded out the top five with several very good AAA games. And the fact that you name CoD as one of the games that would have “smashed” GW2 while casually ignoring the fact that Black Ops 2 was released in 2012 only compounds your failure here. Your argument is invalid.

And it’s not like everyone is picking just AAA titles for their top list of games, either. Yahtzee and Jim Sterling both selected indie titles among their top 5. And there are plenty of indie titles which honestly deserve a bit of recognition for how good they are at what they do. The Walking Dead and Journey come to mind, and some folks have taken a fancy to The Lone Survivor as well.

So yeah….you’re wrong. Wrong enough that I’m tempted to link that video clip of Dr Cox singing the “Wrong” song.

ColinJohanson.2394:

To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond.

Not to be picky, but that doesn’t match up with the time table promised originally.

Mind, I understand that sometimes you need more time for content, and I’m fine with waiting for all of the huge fixes this game needs. My point is more that you shouldn’t promise a time table that you can’t meet.

Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases.

I didn’t really expect the first two, but the last one is a bit of a surprise. You released a new map for Lost Shores….

One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided.

….oh.

Then GOOD.

There’s a ton of things that this game needs fixed. Looking forward to the updates even more than before now, because honestly, I don’t want a lot of new content right now. I want the existing content to be fixed and made more fun.

More details and specifics to come in the next couple of weeks, but I hope that helps provide some more insight into what to expect at a very high level.

Hope to see those notes soon. I’m intrigued now about what sort of updates we’ll be seeing.

raptorak.8250:

Actually, this is exactly what happens.

If the president of a company is falsifying tax documents and such for a business and gets closed down by the federal government as a result, do you seriously think the government sits down and says “well, since we’re closing the company, we need to hire every one of the employees?”

Do you really think when a company goes bankrupt the employees are able to keep working at the (now closed) company?

Apparently you don’t live in the US.

Because otherwise you would never claim that this is how companies are dealt with in real life. All I have to do is point out the fact that several major US banks, several retail store chains (like K-Mart), as well as the entire US auto industry, would be bankrupt and closed right now if what you say is true.

But I guess you’ve never heard of the concept of reorganizing under bankruptcy.

A company is not automatically closed if the company president is jailed for wrongdoing. In fact, nowadays, typically the board of that company just picks a new president, the company goes through bankruptcy filings, and the company keeps running.

GW2’s guilds have no way to do that, and that is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

If 7 fractals is a grind for you, then the problem lies between keyboard and chair.

It’s not a problem for me. I enjoy Fractals, actually.

But that doesn’t mean I want to see Fractals every single month in the monthly achievements. Some of us want some variety in the monthly achievements, thanks, and don’t appreciate being told that we’re just whining when in fact you have absolutely no clue what we’re even complaining about.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

It’s a good thing you aren’t forced to do monthly achievements then.

I’ve grown rather tired of this excuse.

“X is optional, therefore it’s totally okay for it to go against the developer’s expressed policies towards MMO design.”

No, it’s not.

ANet came forward with a bold new approach to MMOs, almost judgmentally telling everyone else how MMOs are supposed to be made. And that’s fine if you put your money where your mouth is. But ANet didn’t do that.

If they don’t want players grinding the dungeons at endgame, maybe they shouldn’t make players feel like they’re forced to grind dungeons at endgame by putting Fractals everywhere they look.

Yes, you’re right. It’s optional. But it’s still against the policies they laid out for how MMOs are supposed to be designed. So they made a bunch of claims about how their MMO would be different, but then didn’t really fulfill those promises. It’s time for them to put up or shut up. Take Fractals out of monthly achievements and introduce Ascended gear elsewhere. Don’t make players feel like they’re obligated to run Fractals. I’m fine with running Fractals, but other people have already decided they hate it, and it makes no sense to keep trying to talk them into doing something they know they don’t like.

Sky.7610:

Well, the message sent by ANet is “You made profit from salvaging a crafting item, therefore it is a exploit.” Do you not understand how much destructive power this interpretation of “exploit” is? While extreme, a person could be banned RIGHT NOW for salvaging a rare(yellow) peice of gear that dropped and selling the ecto because profit was generated, or using a valid mystic forge recipe programmed in by ANet.

You’re right, that does sound extreme….ly implausible. The exploiters in question were not banned for taking advantage of this exploit ONE time, they were banned because they did it hundreds of times and proceeded to deflate the in-game economy with a flood of exploit-earned ectos. Forgive me if I don’t feel all that sorry for them.

And perm bans have been the ongoing policy for any major exploit since the game released back in August. This isn’t a new thing.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z44ml/karma_weapons_exploit/

If people haven’t learned their lesson by now, I can’t really sympathize with them all that much.

I’m still confused how people honestly thought:
a) that the exploit in question wasn’t an obviously unintended effect
b) that they could perform this exploit hundreds of times and then claim they did nothing wrong
c) that they wouldn’t be punished with permanent bans, even though previous exploits were treated the exact same way

Seriously. There’s all this fuss about how it’s a “surprise” and how no one saw it coming, which is a blatant lie. The last time there was a large-scale exploit in the game, the top offenders (those who performed the exploit hundreds of times) were permanently banned.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z44ml/karma_weapons_exploit/

Seriously. This isn’t new. Stop pretending that you didn’t know the rules of the game or the consequences for exploits.

moiraine.2753:

Nobody is forcing you to do any higher level fractal mate.It’s not hard to find a group for level one and two.They are very easy speed runs.

This has been beaten to death about a thousand times.

No one cares about the difficulty, that is not the crux of the complaint. The jumping puzzles one is easy too, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good achievement either.

The complaint is that the ANet devs have been saying that they did not want to make players feel forced into doing content they don’t enjoy. They have been directly quoted as saying that they don’t want us to “just grind dungeons at endgame”.

Yet Fractals has been obligatory to obtain monthly achievements since its release back in November. And it’s still the only place in the game to obtain the items necessary for Ascended gear. So we’re still being forced to grind dungeons at endgame, precisely what they promised would not be the case.

It’s time for them to pick a new achievement, implement Ascended gear in other places, and move on. Fractals is never going to be popular with some people and there’s no sense continuing to try and talk people into doing it.

Why is it still a requirement to run Fractals for the monthly?

I don’t doubt that they’ve learned their lesson from Fractals, but that’s only step 1. Now they need to take the next step and, ya know, do something about it.

Their given excuse was that obtaining dye in-game was “part of the progression of your character” or something like that.

Yeah, it’s a terrible reason and everyone knows it, including the devs. But I’m betting they make a lot of money on how expensive dyes are right now, so don’t expect a change here.

Erasculio.2914:

morrolan.9608:

So why provide any rewards at all then? Why have exotic armor which is better than what you get in the course of doing the game etc etc

To give people a feeling of progression and of change as they play through the game. Not to pretend players are donkeys chasing carrots dangling in front of their faces.

Please explain how giving players item rewards that they can’t even use for their given profession (like giving an elementalist two pieces of heavy armor for completing a particular map) helps to contribute to the “progression” of that character. Ah, that’s right, it doesn’t.

This is one of many areas that the ANet team needs to work on. Please don’t make excuses for the devs and let’s be honest in admitting that this is something they need to fix.

Grizledorf.5290:

I just want to say any of you who die to the toys more than once,

you are total noobs.

Do what your human brain was designed to do and adapt yourself to new situations.

This game is so easy that people don’t ever try new ideas. They complain that things are too hard instead of trying new strategies. While they continue to use the same exact traits, same exact utilities, same weapons for every encounter they approach. Posting here that the game is a failure when the truth is it’s their methods that really failed them.

It’s nice that you’re such a super uberleet player, brah.

But the rest of us don’t think that monsters with the ability to stun-lock you are very well balanced and would like to have a discussion about that without being called “total noobs”.

So you can go away and leave this discussion to us, thanks.

DandySlayer.7019:

Rangers not being able to use rifles is what turned me off to them. After all they are RANGErs…….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_%28character_class%29

Ranger != guy who uses ranged weapons only.

In any traditional fantasy setting, a Ranger is a character who is attuned to nature in some fashion, and they are commonly skilled with bows, axes, and swords. Aragorn from LOTR, for example, is a classic fantasy example of a Ranger in action.

Rangers don’t use guns.

I don’t understand how there is still confusion on this. It’s really not that obscure. “Ranger” as a class has existed in classical fantasy for decades now.

Erasculio.2914:

Incidentally, it’s ironic that some GW1 players complain about the lack of skills in GW2. It’s far better to have 100 somewhat balanced skills than 1.000 thousand skills, of which only 50 are somewhat balanced and the other 950 are kept underpowered so the game balancers don’t have to worry about them.

I agreed with you up until this point.

The problem is that the “100 balanced skills” in GW2 are most certainly anything but balanced, and it’s fairly clear that they’re never going to get there.

I don’t disagree with the notion that too many skills can make the game too hard to follow, but right now, GW2 is nowhere near having too many skills. Right now, it suffers from having far too few.

Vasham.2408:

GW2’s content is very casual, almost insultingly so. It’s less casual and more “we assume our players are idiots.” There is no real challenge so much as there is extreme tedium. High HP pools on mobs to burn through, instant kill moves with no telegraph for when to dodge, Lengendaries where the only thing legendary is the grind to aquire them.

While I agree with some of your points, there’s one thing I don’t agree with.

And that’s this notion that easy content = casual content. These terms are not interchangeable. Just because content is easy does not mean it is designed for casual players. This is something that has always bothered me, ever since its inception with the rise of mobile gaming and the idea of the “casual” gamer. People don’t understand what “casual” means any more, they just think it refers to anything which is mind-numbingly easy to do.

There is nothing challenging about obtaining a Legendary, for example, but it’s definitely not something a casual player is going to be capable of doing. Nothing tough about farming up all of the materials, but it’s not a task that a casual player can perform in any reasonable span of time.

We need to get this illusion out of people’s heads before this discussion can be productive.

“Casual” content refers to the amount of time that must be committed, whereas “easy” content refers to the level of skill required. Easy and casual are not the same thing. GW2’s “endgame” is most certainly not casual-friendly, but I would certainly agree with you that it is pretty easy.

Danikat.8537:

I think they’ll add the Tengu as a playable race and the Domain of Winds as their new starting area. Which will also open it up to other races.

Simply because I think this is why it’s sealed off at the moment and if I’m right it’d make sense to add that before adding other races.

I agree.

I think adding Tengu as a playable race would be extremely easy for them to do (since the Dominion of Winds is right next to a starting zone already), and is by far the most sensible thing to do….but I don’t know if that will be their first expansion or not.

What races they pick will depend on which dragon we hunt next, I think. If we go after Jormag, either the Kodan or Largos (or both) are pretty viable options. Both come from the northern oceans, so they’d be right at home fighting the ice dragon of the north.

Kacigarka.5176:

For you maybe they arent, for many they are.

So ye, this is only YOUR oppinion and you cant just call your personal oppinion FACT.

Just as yours is also an opinion. Funny how that works.

The problem for you is that my opinion is one that the devs share. They’ve already said they’re working on the implementation of Legendary items.

The devs intended for Legendaries to actually mean something beyond “expensive crafting items”. They have said as much. Now it’s up to them to make them into something more.

Vasham.2408:

That’s why the successful MMOs have learned to make multiple versions of content that everyone can experience, but can still be skin rippingly difficult based on the setting. It appeals to everyone without leaving one group unsatisfied. The problem here is what can you do to make GW2’s content more challenging?

More HP on mobs? It’s already too high

Mobs hitting harder? With only two dodge rolls before needing to recharge that’s not viable.

I already covered how Agony is bullcrap, so no more needs to be said.

See what I mean? Without a solid foundation to design encounters around, without something more than “dodge and kite” there is no way Arenanet can appeal to anyone but the most ubercasual players. That’s fine, but even casual players want more at some point. I may be into hardcore content but I never underestimate a casual player’s desire to challenge themselves, a mistake Arenanet is making right now. They assume casuals will be content with this boring, ultra easy PVE for all time. The truth is they won’t be.

I dunno about this notion that they’re only appealing to casual players. I would most definitely argue that notion, considering just how much of the game is rendered too difficult or time-consuming for truly casual players….but that’s besides the point.

I actually thought that Fractals was a step in the right direction: bosses that have some sort of “trick” to them, in the vein of classic Zelda bosses. Okay, they’re not “difficult” in the modern sense, but they’re still a heck of a lot more fun than the previous bosses. I think if they rebuild all dungeons to be more like Fractals, that’ll be a positive step for the game.

Kacigarka.5176:

Sure Gimme back my 1000-1200 gold + 2M karma and around 500 skill points, etc back and everything will be okey !

I’m going to save this quote for future reference.

Mind, not saying it’s a bad thing to be frustrated about. Honestly I do sympathize. I would be pretty mad too.

But Legendaries are not “legendary” right now. This is something they do need to work on fixing. In fact I’d go so far as to say that they never should have implemented Legendary equipment unless they were willing to make a commitment to making it truly legendary.

It’s such a shame that this aspect of the game was so rushed. I’d love to be sent on a journey throughout the land of Tyria, acquiring various artifacts so as to craft a truly legendary item. It would make that item feel so much more special to me. Instead, I’m asked to just gather a bunch of crafting mats together and throw them into the glowing cup at the center of town. It’s just not what the devs made it sound like it’d be.

Vasham.2408:

It’s not about masochism, it’s the desire to be challenged and to overcome those challenges. There’s a reason WoW, even with it’s pug friendly Looking for Raid has a market for Heroic Mode raids and why Rift with it’s audience releases PVE content that’s a challenge to overcome. You can argue that we’re the minority among PVE players and I wouldn’t say you are wrong, but other developers have shown their ability to release not only content for the masses but also content for those who crave difficult endgame. Hell Rift’s entire niche in the market is due to it’s sole focus on a singular endgame difficulty.

See, that’s the thing. I do enjoy challenges and overcoming them, but I’ve never understood why people put such a tremendous emphasis on them to the point where the game becomes TOO difficult for most players to digest. That sort of design doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t disagree that GW2’s challenges aren’t at that same level of difficulty, but I’m not actually sure that’s a bad thing, either.

As for Agony, I think it shouldn’t exist at all, to be honest.

Yes, please. This is one of the major features that some of my friends have left the game to return to GW1 for. GW1 allowed for dynamic build changing and the saving of favorite builds, and they hated how rigid and inflexible GW2’s build system feels to them.

I’m actually amazed that GW2’s devs didn’t think to implement this right out of the gate. It should have been a priority.

I expect a cap raise to 90, actually. 85 doesn’t seem like enough of an increase.

Hopefully any future expansions will involve a great deal of thought. Many players have Lvl 80 characters with a lot of maxed-out gear, possibly a Legendary, and 100% map completion.

Which means that adding to the map could ruin some people’s 100% world completion. And adding new tiers of equipment could ruin people’s inventories, and the concept of Legendary equipment as a whole.

I’m looking forward to the new content they will inevitably add, but also dreading the complications that will emerge.

Kacigarka.5176:

Thing is … System is already up and running, thousands of players already spend all their golds to craft a Legendary weapons. You change system this radicaly you will see 1000x bigger rage than now.

I would request refund for 2 legendaries and I wouldnt be alone

So if they were to replace the existing system and then take your Legendary item from you (refunding all of the stuff you created it with), you’d be okay with it?

Take notes, ANet devs.