Guild Wars 2

Mkalafut.1273:

Holy crap the patch just dropped and so many people complaining. The laurel system is fine. You’re gonna really complain about something they DIDN’T HAVE TO ADD? They are fine as account-bound items. That means you can still do the daily on any character you want and still get the laurel.

Yes, we’re going to complain about something they didn’t have to add, especially if it’s not at the quality level we expect.

You seem to be confusing “free content” with “no right to complain about it”. These two things do not coincide, as the devs promised free content throughout the life of the game, so this is part of the product we bought: a game with a vast amount of content and the promise of future updates.

1 laurel per day across an entire account’s worth of characters really isn’t a well-thought-out implementation of this system. And the fix is relatively easy: completion of your daily grants all of your characters 1 laurel, not just the one who completes said daily. This means you don’t have to grind each character separately to obtain 5+ dailies per day.

Alternatively, the daily can be re-completed up to X times per day, where X is the number of characters the player has. So a person like me can obtain 6 laurels per day on my ranger if I’m willing to grind them out, or I can get 1 on each character individually. This may be even better as it allows players to choose how to distribute their laurels freely amongst their characters.

tigirius.9014:

Their entire direction since Nov 15th has been alt unfriendly.

Oh dear me, no. It didn’t start Nov 15th, my friend, it started way before that.

Remember this quote?

http://www.arena.net/blog/live-and-let-dye-kristen-perry-on-the-gw2-dye-system

Storage was always a factor when it came to dye colors in Guild Wars. The new system would cripple most inventories if we required characters to lug all the dyes around. Fear not! The dye hues themselves will be unlockable through various means, both in-game and out. Once you unlock the color, it will be available across your entire account, not just the individual character.

Guess that selling dye kits in the Gem Store was more important than keeping their word. :P

So, no less than 24 hours ago I made a post:

critickitten.1498:

What’s bothering me is that you people are acting like the concept of a unicorn, or the idea of a rainbow….like those things didn’t even exist before 2010. And they’ve certainly never showed up together before! Nope, obviously MLP invented them both.

I’m beginning to wonder if the internet has just completely lost its collective sanity and has decided that anything with rainbows or horse-shaped animals is automatically a brony shout-out.

The idea of rainbows and unicorns have often been used throughout the decades as a way to depict the idea of living in a fantasy, a sort of “dream world” that doesn’t at all resemble reality. Even today, it’s a term sometimes used by politicians to paint their opponent’s stance as living in a “dream world” that can’t possibly come to pass as a result of the policies they want to enact. Ergo, “The Dreamer” is a bow with a unicorn on it that shoots rainbows.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to comprehend, but trust me, unicorns and rainbows existed before MLP.

Yep. This is me happily eating my crow. I guess now I know better than to defend the staff.

Speaking as a brony, the new bow animation looks positively stupid and I am ashamed of whichever staff member was responsible for changing it. The bow was already disliked for being “girly” and a “brony reference”, and I came out here in these forums and defended the art….defended you. In its original state, I argued, it could be simply panned as a clever reference to the concept of “dream worlds” that has existed for decades. I thought it wasn’t at all “girly” and I actually liked the appeal and aesthetics of it.

But now you’ve gone and removed all doubt that this is just shameless pandering, and made the weapon look incredibly dumb in the process. A bow that shoots unicorns? What the hell? I’m not going to get one now simply because of this art change, it looks ludicrous.

Something I prized about this game is that despite its fantasy setting, it at least attempted to cling to something resembling good sense and sanity….this, to me, represents a departure from that. It’s not like it ruins the patch for me, but I’ll tell you what it does do….it decimates the very last scraps of “epicness” that legendaries might have had. They’re no longer these highly-sought-after items with unknown but potentially rich backstories full of adventure and excitement….they’re flashy graphics and shameless pandering. This is no Foehammer, no Sword of Shannara, it’s a bloody bow that shoots cutie-mark-wearing unicorns.

I now officially refuse to call them “legendaries” unless I’m using quotes around them, because it’s obvious now that you never intended to make them “epic” or have them “show off what you’ve accomplished”. You just wanted to make things that looked really shiny, so that your fans wouldn’t be able to resist pouring countless hours into your game just to have one of their own.

Yeah, I know, “QQ moar lawlz”. Save it. I’m genuinely disappointed here and I’m hoping I’m not the only one.

Alarox.4590:

Kitten. Plateau means to eventually become stable. Flat = stable.

They said the Time/Level will eventually plateau. This is true. At low levels you level quickly. At higher levels it takes longer, but level-to-level the average time is about the same.

Er, no it doesn’t.

A plateau is a geological construct that gradually increases until some fixed point, where it levels off. In other words, it’s representative of a curve that rises, slows down, and eventually levels off and stays hovering around a particular value.

That does not represent the leveling curve, which (as others have stated) has an accelerated rate of leveling at the early levels due to how easy it is to stumble onto content above your level, and a much slower rate of leveling after that (because you’ll often be clearing maps that are below your level after Lvl 15 or so).

That doesn’t form a plateau, it forms a hill. >_>

marnick.4305:

Experience gains are all percentage based on the appropriate level for the activity. Eg mining copper gives XP based on a lvl 1 character, regardless of your actual level, while ori does so based on a lvl 80 character. Percentages remain the same if you do level appropriate content. Even though the XP needed is quadratic, since XP gained is equally quadratic. This leads to a flat levelling time needed, about 1 hour per level which is a constant until 80.

However … levels 1 to 15 are based on a theoretical XP needed that’s higher than the actual XP needed which leads to slightly accelerated levelling on levels 1 to 15.

I’m aware of this and even pointed that fact out in my other posts….which I’m guessing you didn’t read.

My point is that in neither case does the curve represent the idea of “plateauing”. In theory, the leveling curve is flat from 1 to 80. In practice, it’s increasing at the low levels (because your level will often be less than the map/event level) and decreases soon thereafter (because your level will often be greater than the map/event level). Neither of those is the “plateau” the devs stated the game would be.

All of which is irrelevant anyways, because leveling in this game is just fine as it is.

Kakeru.2873:

FYI TESO is being made by Zenimax not Bethesda so before you even begin to say anything negative about TESO do some research your clearly just spouting nonsense.

Yes, Zenimax Game Studios is making it. However, Zenimax is the owner of Bethesda (sort of like how NCSoft owns ANet), and instead of allowing Bethesda create the game, they put together an entirely separate studio of people for the sole purpose of creating TESO.

It’d be like if NCSoft had made a brand new studio full of people from games other than GW1 to create the new ga….oh. Right.

Mind, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be bad, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be good, either. It’s a new team that has never made a game together before. They’re an untested and unproven entity. It remains to be seen if they will create a good product or not.

However, judging from what game footage they’ve shown us, I’m not all that impressed. It sounds like they ripped off GW2 for a lot of their design, too, which isn’t a good first step.

Leamas.5803:

Southsun Cove is not solo-able, especially by an AOE user, you end up doing a lot of ninja’ing around mobs.

Er, yes it is. I run through Southsun Cove by myself for Passiflora and Ori nodes all the time.

In fact there are YT videos of people who have been able to farm them solo, who are making quite a lot of money off of it.

pdboddy.4162:

Just do a search for mlp guilds on gw2 and you’ll find that they’re not exactly a small audience. And they don’t necessarily be pandering to a specific audience by putting pop culture references into the game. I mean, the new show appears to be hugely popular, and it has been so for a few years, so why is the bow not a reference to mlp?

I did, and there’s a total of nine such guilds in the whole game. That’s not even one per server. Hate to say it, but yeah, that’s what I would call a small audience.

http://www.equestriagaming.com/p/pony-guilds. html#GuildWars2 (edit: censor hates this because it thinks it’s foul language….censor fail)

What’s bothering me is that you people are acting like the concept of a unicorn, or the idea of a rainbow….like those things didn’t even exist before 2010. And they’ve certainly never showed up together before! Nope, obviously MLP invented them both.

I’m beginning to wonder if the internet has just completely lost its collective sanity and has decided that anything with rainbows or horse-shaped animals is automatically a brony shout-out.

The idea of rainbows and unicorns have often been used throughout the decades as a way to depict the idea of living in a fantasy, a sort of “dream world” that doesn’t at all resemble reality. Even today, it’s a term sometimes used by politicians to paint their opponent’s stance as living in a “dream world” that can’t possibly come to pass as a result of the policies they want to enact. Ergo, “The Dreamer” is a bow with a unicorn on it that shoots rainbows.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to comprehend, but trust me, unicorns and rainbows existed before MLP.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Kintari.4172:

Saying that players use too much AoE on certain weapon sets in GW2 is like opening a hamburger joint, and then saying that people eat too much fatty foods. Just doesn’t make sense.

I love the analogy. Oh well, just a few more hours. I can’t wait to see what chaos the upcoming AOE changes bring.

Probably more than that. I’m not entirely confident they’ll roll the patch overnight. More likely they roll it early morning or in the afternoon, around the time that dailies typically reset anyways.

Engels.8537:

As far as I know, the Ultimate Dominator title requires 50,000 kills not 250,000
wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Title -> Ultimate Dominator -> Get 50000 total kills in WvW.

The wiki has conflicting information, then.

Because according to this link, it’s 250k.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs_World_%28achievements%29

Mungrul.9358:

Pony bow?
Seriously?
There’s no other longbow legendary except a pop culture reference pandering to bronies?
Golf Clap

Okay, now I’m obligated to ask because people keep insisting that this bow was made for bronies.

What evidence do you have to back that up, beyond the fact that it has a unicorn on it and shoots rainbows? I mean specific evidence to prove that the developers made this bow for the sole purpose of pandering to a relatively small audience?

Because seriously, rainbows and unicorns were a pretty common “dream”/fantasy construct way before MLP even existed.

To those insisting that The Dreamer was made for bronies….I’ll have you know that my appreciation of The Dreamer’s aesthetics has nothing to do with me being a brony. I’d still think it was gorgeous even if I wasn’t one (which may just end up being the case one of these days). >_>

I also love Kudzu even though people give it a lot of sass too. I think it’s gorgeous and would be perfect for my sylvari ranger.

But I don’t disagree that there needs to be more selection as far as legendaries go. And frankly, I think that if you obtain a legendary, you should be able to change its stats at will to suit your preferred build. They’re already a grind for power, so might as well make their stats mutable so that players of all builds can enjoy them.

I’d love to be able to adjust Kudzu to a Pwr/Pre/Crit setup for my glass cannon ranger.

Vorch.2985:

I love how we are talking about about the grind for ascended gear the day before they release a patch to minimize the grind for ascended gear.

Well….we’ll see about that, won’t we?

I sure hope you’re right, but I won’t start holding my breath just yet.

maddoctor.2738:

Sky.9347:

Actually, he’s basing his argument on the current game.
You’re basing yours on the possible game tomorrow.

So if Anet has already identified the issue of having Ascended only in Fractals, and repeatedly said (and announced) that it will be fixed, not in the future, but tomorrow, yet we still get complains? How about just waiting for less than 24h (it’s not much) and then taking out the tomahawk of war.

Funny….

I seem to recall this exact same argument being used by this forum’s white knights back on November 15th. How’d that work out for y’all?

Oh, right, massively broken event chain, massive culling issues leading to hundred-man-groups being wiped and thousands of players being denied an event reward for over a month, a grossly undesirable map full of somewhat overpowered mobs, tons of extra “optional” farming for gear that is nearly 10% stronger than the gear that came before it….and all culminating in so many complaints and quitters that the devs have 180’d on their original policy and vowed to fix all the mistakes in these upcoming patches. The ones that you’re now heralding as the patches that will put all of these complaints to rest.

You’d think at some point people would learn to have just a bit more skepticism of releases before they came out. I’m excited about the release, certainly, but at no point am I allowing myself to have blind faith in it, either.

Maybe it’ll be the best release ever, or maybe it’ll be the worst. I’m waiting and seeing, myself, rather than just assuming that it will fix everything.

Mesiphidon.8324:

Stop please stop making this an argument of semantics.

But that’s what it is.

You’re trying to redefine a word based on your own subjective point of view and are ignoring the dictionary definition of the word because it doesn’t suit your conclusion of what constitutes a “grind”.

Fact of the matter is that no one will ever 100% agree with someone else. This is the nature of subjectivity: it boils down to the personal biases of the individual in question. That is why I’m using an objective definition of the term (the dictionary) to assess whether or not the term “grind” applies to GW2, because the flipside means relying on one person’s opinion and ignoring all opinions contrary to it.

Again, I am not arguing that grind is bad, as you seem to think I am. I think grind is perfectly fine in acceptable amounts. This discussion is on whether or not GW2 currently contains an “acceptable” amount of grinding. And that, again, is subjective and differs based on the individual. Given how many people are complaining about grind, it stands to reason that perhaps there is too much grind presently and we should try to look at ways that we might decrease that grind to improve the game.

Marxo.3829:

I didn’t accuse you of whining. I did accuse you of twisting logic. So we have both got out of our systems that WvW gear is overly expensive. If there was no alternatives to the WvW set I would agree your argument supports that this game is grindy.

But the game provides a lot of alternatives, better ones too, thus your case doesn’t support your conclusion.

Which is irrelevant. This particular aspect, the one you argued with me, was that WvW skins were acceptable in their present form. Thankfully you seem to have come back down here with the rest of us as you realized that their prices really aren’t as perfect as they seem, so we have no reason to contend this point further.

I maintain that this is an easily solved issue, simply up the drop rates on BoH in combat. This solves the problem well, and also cuts down on the protests that the JPs provide a more reliable BoH return rate than actual WvW play.

If this thread was titled " WvW skins are too expensive!" I’d totally agree (and of course since we are talking about skins, even that argument is subjective). One thing does not imply the other. Your argument doesn’t support that the game is grindy as a whole.

My argument that the game has grind in it has nothing to do with WvW specifically. My argument that the game contains grind is simply the fact that there are numerous aspects of the game which require significant repetition to “complete”, especially in the endgame.

Thought I’d throw in, perhaps being a WvW player where there has been less updates than the rest of the world, you are feeling the grind more than the average player which is understandable. They did say additions for WvW are underway.

I’m not a huge WvW player, actually, I’m mostly playing it as a way to escape the grind of obtaining all the kitten mats for my legendary. I’m procrastinating. >_<

nawrasz.6219:

Because everyone wants to look like a sparkling princess RIGHT NOW!
whips out princess wand and flips hair

Technically I want to look like a Nightmare princess RIGHT NOW, but dungeon runs feel less than appealing right now.

And just think, dungeons are actually one of the SMALLER grinds in the game to date. After all, they “only” take about 23 runs to finish (slap on another 9 if you want a legendary that requires the same dungeon).

Tolmos.8395:

A better fix would be changing what they consider a kill. I remember doing my first monthly, killing 5 or 6 guys during a zerg and finding out that, for whatever reason, they did NOT constitute being kills and I got 0 experience for them.

What should have been an hour long endeavor turned into a 6 hour long bout of frustration :-P

If they tweaked what constitutes a kill in WvW this would suddenly become achievable in a more realistic time frame…

Any time you gain experience, it should have been counted as a kill. Generally I’ve found that I need to hit for ~1.5-2k damage for a target to be tagged as a kill when it dies.

I’m not sure how they set it up exactly, but it’s relatively easy to tag the things you’re killing as actual kills with smartly placed AoE….which is probably why the devs want to nerf AoE. Can’t have us obtaining kills at anything resembling a rapid rate, no sir!

XP

Can’t help but agree with the OP. WvW titles feel so far away that they’re effectively unattainable to just about everyone.

inb4 “but it’s optional so it doesn’t need fixing lawlz”

Thing is, I understood that from the beginning. The problem is that “leveling curve” to me (and apparently to my friends, as I went around asking them what they thought it meant just to make sure I wasn’t crazy) always referred to the experience to level, whereas time investment was something entirely separate.

It’s just that the existing claims of the curve becoming a “plateau” aren’t accurate, and I (apparently) was having trouble getting this concept across to the other posters in this thread. Experience-to-level is a quadratic, and time-to-level is (in theory) a dead flat curve since all experience gains are percentage-based.

In practice, though, it’s not actually flat. You’ll often be running maps that you’re above in level just to clear out the map completion. That happened to my ranger.

I’d wager that it’s faster to level at low levels as it’s easier to run into events above your level, whereas it’s much slower at high levels where you’re running events below your own level most of the time. But that sort of data is harder to measure.

Regardless, I am still standing by my original point: the curve doesn’t “plateau” at Lvl 30. Depending on what you mean, it’s either a quadratic all the way up to 80, or it’s flatter than sea level. There’s no plateau. :P

BioFringe.7945:

@Crit

You’re confusing level experience with level curve. The graph that you linked shows the level experience but doesn’t take into other factors that effect the overall level curve. They are two different things that you’re trying to combine into one.

No, it’s a misunderstanding of terms.

That’s my own fault, as I have always used “leveling curve” to refer to the amount of experience required to obtain a level. And many other places use that term in the same way.

In that context, the curve is not “flat” by any stretch of the imagination.

I consider time investment something else entirely, and I believe that is what the devs meant when they said that the game’s leveling curve would be “flat”.

Hopefully that clarifies things for the people who were quickly jumping to the devs’ defense without even realizing that I wasn’t attacking them. >_>

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Wait, did you just say that the developers, the people who made and designed this game, don’t know what they are talking about? And they don’t know how their own system, the one they designed and created, works?

Not at all, and I’ll thank you not to twist my words.

I’m saying that you’re misinterpreting what the devs meant, mainly because they did not accurately state how the game was going to work.

They did not create a game where the leveling curve “flattens out”. What they created is a game where everything provides the same percentage of XP across all levels of the game, creating the illusion that the leveling curve is “flattening out”.

Or, to put it simply: The amount of XP needed to level from 1 to 2 is much greater than the XP needed at 79 to 80. However, because all of the game features that provide XP do it as a percentage of the player’s level rather than a static amount (as other MMOs do), and because they provide the same percentage of a player’s level at ALL levels, the amount of time invested at 1-to-2 is about the same as the time investment at 79-to-80 assuming both players follow the same activities.

Also, that data you’re shrugging off is pulled directly from the game by players who actually wrote down the experience to level at all 80 levels of the game. It came directly from the game. I’m going to trust data that can be pulled directly from the game more than I trust the word of any person, and I would recommend you do the same.

Tolmos.8395:

critickitten.1498:

I know what the devs said. I’m telling you that’s not the reality.

Er… if you’re gonna go out a limb and say that the devs are less knowledgeable of their own game design than you are, it would behoove you to at least drop a link or two as a source >_>

I am not saying the devs don’t know about their own game design, I’m saying they may have had the intention of creating a level plateau but that isn’t what actually got implemented in their game.

As to the notion of proof, I did give proof, in that same post.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience#Mechanics

There’s a table of the amount of experience required at every level to attain the next level, from 1 to 80, and a chart was made of that data. It does not create a plateau effect at all, as you can see from that graph. It’s much closer to a standard quadratic curve.

Ergo claiming that “the curve flattens out” is false. It does not, as you can plainly see. However, they did manage to create a game whereby you gain experience at approximately the same rate across all levels of the game. This is most likely what they meant to say when they suggested that the game’s leveling will “plateau” at some point.

Trey.2135:

It “flattens” out in the time it takes to level. The experience points required to level increase, but so does the amount of experience gained per hour (generally speaking).

If that’s what you and he means, then that’s still wrong.

Events are exactly the same in starter zones as they are in Orr: 7% of a level based on the level of the event. Same with resource mining, exploration , and all other forms of leveling. Observe the following table of data for more info:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience#Mechanics

Leveling with a Lvl 1 player in a Lvl 1 zone is exactly the same as leveling a Lvl 79 in a Lvl 79 zone. You gain experience at an equal rate. So in theory, a player can gain his first 10 levels from one craft, or his last 10 levels from that same craft, because the experience gain is constant across all 80 levels of the game.

The only way to gain XP at an accelerated rate is to compete in events that are above your level on a regular basis, which happens far more often at low levels, not at high levels.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Sorry, but you’re incorrect.

http://www.arena.net/blog/progression-and-leveling-in-guild-wars-2

Our goal with Guild Wars 2 is to flatten out the leveling curve, keeping progression simple and straightforward.

Update: We got a number of questions regarding our graph, so we’re updating it to make it a little more clear. It was not our intention to imply that the early levels of the game require the exact same time investment as later levels, but to show that the curve plateaus.

I know what the devs said. I’m telling you that’s not the reality.

That chart is an accurate representation of the experience required at every level of the game. It was taken directly from the GW2 wiki, using data taken from players who took note of the experience required at every single level of the game. The curve most certainly does NOT plateau at any stage of a character’s development.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Or alternatively, they can just remove the level curve and make it even for all levels.

Right now, there is a level curve from 1-30. Once you hit 30, it flattens out. I have no idea why they did it that way, as it doesn’t make a lot of sense in my opinion.

They just need to flatten out all leveling and remove the curve completely. Then 1-30 will be the same as 30-80. Then it won’t seem as tedious.

Er, that’s incorrect.

The leveling curve is actually closer to a quadratic curve than anything else, it does not “flatten out” at Lvl 30.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/8/8f/GW2_ExpPerLevel.png/800px-GW2_ExpPerLevel.png

TWMagimay.9057:

Eviscera.9703:

The game is losing players drastically

And you know that because…you are part of their marketing team?

It’s really easy to tell if you look hard enough.

For one, their sales figures are significantly down, as they recently admitted to hitting the 3 million mark. For the record, they were at 1 million sold before the game was even released, and had passed 2 million a mere two weeks after release.

Furthermore, there are generally less players in many areas and servers. Some have been filtered into LA, but many others have quit entirely, as indicated by the number of players on this forum who no longer play.

And then there’s the dozens of other resources and sites on the internet full of players who have admitted they no longer play for one reason or another. Xfire’s recorded player counts are down significantly as well.

And of course, there’s the sudden 180 shift with regards to releases. The developers were eagerly flooding the game with new content for the first few months. Then in Nov, we see them sending out a formal poll asking players if they enjoyed Lost Shores (due to the massive forum backlash against it). And that led into this Jan/Feb/March patching, in which all of a sudden it’s less about “new new new” and more about “strengthening the core game” and fixing old content all of a sudden (almost like it’s in response to the large number of forum complaints or something).

“But that stuff is all subjective”, I can hear you saying. And I agree, it is. On the other hand, it’s an awful lot of subjective evidence that seems to suggest that the game isn’t going quite as well as ANet intended, and that they’re scrambling to repair the bridges that have been burned.

True, we don’t have numbers, mainly because GW2 doesn’t want us knowing how they’re doing. But it’s not hard to tell, based on what we’ve seen everywhere and the sudden policy shift, that the game isn’t as successful as they’d hoped it would be, and that they’re changing strategies to try and boost player retention.

Good thing too, because now that other rival games are moving to F2P models (TOR and TERA), along with the announcement of upcoming games that may directly rival their own (TESO), they pretty much have to adjust their strategy to stay competitive, or they risk falling even further.

Marxo.3829:

It maybe that WvW skins are overly expensive.

I’m glad you admit that their prices are outrageous by comparison to similar articles in the game, and I accept your apology for accusing me of whining about something that is actually a legitimate issue.

So now we have some overly expensive skins with bad stats, to which there are plenty of cheaper, better statted and likely better looking alternatives that you are free to pursue. Does that make the game grindy?

No. As I established earlier, all that is required to create a “grind” is repetition.

However, the fact that there is a grind is an indication that the game has room to improve. And an easy way to fix this particular problem would be to increase the drop rate of badges such that you obtain them much more frequently. This would also solve the problem of people feeling as though the JPs are the only “viable” way of obtaining the badges with any degree of regularity, and would encourage players to participate in the actual fighting more.

Mesiphidon.8324:

Not ONCE did I ‘grind’ for anything. Everything in life is repetitive. EVERYTHING. Things done in repetition only become a ‘grind’ when you stop enjoying them or do them because you feel the need too. By most of the ’it’s a grind’ definitions being thrown out, sleeping every day would be considered a grind. Yet I never see anyone complain about having to sleep at night.

The definition of “grind” is repetition of a task. This has been one of the accepted definitions of the word since before video games existed. There’s a reason that some workers refer to their jobs as “the daily grind”.

The way you are using the word is subjective, adding negative connotation to it. The dictionary definition does not inherently imply negativity, only the core concept of repetition.

Which is why I said in this and every other grind thread that the question isn’t “is GW2 grindy?” (because indeed there is repetition to be found), it’s “when do I start to feel the grind and get annoyed by it?”. And that boils down to the individual.

So yeah, it’s fair enough if you haven’t felt a grind. On the other hand, given the number of threads like this that have started up, it’s obvious not everyone agrees with you. So it would be nice if you showed those individuals some respect even if you disagree with their views.

Marxo.3829:

Aaaand we have someone now complaining that exotic gear is too hard to get.

Not saying they are hard to get. I’m saying it’s a grind.

But by all means, please try to defend the cost of the exotic gear in the WvW shops. Gear that is absolutely subpar for anyone trying build themselves as anything other than a tank (and it doesn’t even do that ideally), and requires a bare minimum of 2k kills to obtain over the course of playing WvW.

I’m going to enjoy reading this defense. I just know it.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Dante.1508:

What do you do in this game that doesn’t require grind? So if its optional point me to a part of the game that doesn’t require grind in some form or another?

please.

Dungeons

Fractals

WvW

PvP

Map completion

Jumping puzzles

Running around the map looking at the scenery

Whatever the hell you want. There is nothing, NOTHING in this game for you to do that requires a grind.

What a riot.

Dungeons and Fractals are both run for the sole purpose of acquiring tokens to trade in for items. That’s a grind.

WvW utilizes a (broken) reward system with the Badges of Honor (better known as Badges of Jumping), a key component in legendary items and for buying any of the best gear. We were originally told that you could level from 1 to 80 and get all the gear you needed in WvW, yet to obtain this max exotic gear through WvW play alone requires 1889 Badges of Honor. That’s a minimum of almost 2k kills,though likely more if you’re unlucky like me (I have under 250 badges despite 1.1k kills to my name). Guess what that is? A grind.

Map completion requires clearing the three WvW maps individually, meaning you’re literally repeating the same map three times. And then if you want legendaries on any other character at some point, you’re going to be redoing every map again. That’s a grind. And “running around to look at the scenery” is precisely what map completion is making you do.

Jumping puzzles reset daily, implying that the devs expected players to run them regularly. And many people do run the Mistwrought chest daily because it’s more efficient for badges than actual WvW combat unless you’ve stumbled upon a guild raid. That’s a grind.

Even PvP is a grind of sorts, in that you’re grinding for Glory. A rank 80 glory vendor demands 7.5 million glory before you can even access his shop. Good luck earning all that without any form of repetition whatsoever!

And when these things are all pointed out, and the blatant repetition of each is laid bare, the white knights promptly go “but all those things you said are optional!”, which is precisely the point that Dante is trying to make. They’re apparently only “optional” when someone points out that they’re meant to be grinded, and yet they’re the only suggestions you have available to you when someone asks for a location in the game with no grind.

Mind, I’m not saying grind is always evil. It can work just fine if it’s tempered properly. The main reason many people in this forum don’t perceive a grind is because they’ve done a halfway decent job balancing the amount of repetition. But it’s clear, given the complaints, that there is still far too much repetition.

Avatar.1923:

until there is a precise definition to grind… its hard to judge.

There is a definition to grinding. The dictionary definition simply refers to repetition of any task, which GW2 does in spades.

The question should not be “is GW2 grindy?” (because it is), the real question is “how long can I grind GW2 before it feels like a grind to me?”, and that question depends on the person. For me, I’ve certainly played more grindy games than GW2, but I’m also not about to fool myself into thinking there’s no grind at all in this supposedly “zero grind” game.

Time Glitch.2460:

I’m a casual player who hit level 80 a week ago.

I’d like to know how many hours you’ve logged, please.

I ask because people have a tendency to call themselves “casual” players for the sake of making a point about how the game is totally casual-friendly, and yet these people still manage 4-5 hours a day….which is not actually “casual” play of a game. That’s a part-time job.

Time Glitch.2460:

You know, these are LEGENDARY weapons. If you were meant to farm them up in 6 months, they wouldn’t exactly be LEGENDARY, now would they?

They certainly aren’t very legendary right now.

I do love the implication that they can’t be farmed up in six months though, when some players had them almost within a month of the game’s release. Reality shows us that these so-called “legendaries” can absolutely be farmed up if you have the time.

The poster in question is pointing out that the existing model doesn’t make any such promises to casual players. In fact, said casuals don’t really have much of anything to do once they hit Lvl 80, and there’s certainly more of them than there are “hardcore” players, so….what’s the draw for those people to keep playing?

killcannon.2576:

Seriously, gonna cite wikipedia? Did you even see how many citations that entry needs to be taken seriously? As it is, it’s an opinion piece.

No, I’m sorry, you can’t dismiss Wikipedia as a source when your only evidence to the contrary is your own opinion.

I have defined my terms quoting several sources directly, and you’re saying you don’t agree with the definition. Fair enough. I’d tell you to argue with the writers of most modern dictionaries, then, as the definition I quoted appears in many of them as well. But the fact of the matter is this: I have evidence that the term means “engaging in repetitive tasks”. If you can’t prove my definition is wrong (and believe me, you can’t, because that is what the word means, and that has been part of its definition for longer than video games have even existed) then you have no argument.

Either provide contrary evidence, or your objection will be summarily ignored. That is how a proper debate works. Either way, this off-topic line of discussion ends now. I won’t humor you further if all you can contribute to the discussion is “I don’t agree that it’s grinding” (even though by the definition of the term, it clearly is).

Dante.1508:

So to the players that say grinding isn’t needed and everything above is optional, whats left to do if you choose not to fall into these grinds, Play the trading post? Stand in LA talking trash?

With the list above being optional what isn’t actually a grind in this game that you can do?

I hoped someone would figure this out!

To answer your query? The only answer that those players could give you is “nothing”, because supposedly everything else is optional. The fact of the matter is, people use this “it’s optional” defense as an excuse for the game not needing to fix its flaws. After all, if you don’t HAVE to do it, it’s clearly just fine as is, right?

What they don’t understand is that if you label everything in the game as “optional” and thus not requiring a fix, you leave nothing left for players to do, and they will move on to the next game. That’s why “it’s optional” isn’t a valid excuse.

killcannon.2576:

Grinding is repetition….by this definition anything and everything you do is grinding. Games, watching tv, showering, sex (lol), brushing your teeth, spending time with friends, Christmas. Grinding is subjective, and to be able to apply the term to an activity, that activity needs to have negative connotations to the person doing the activity. Otherwise, it’s just playing, or relaxing.

No, it doesn’t. The definition of grind is not implicitly negative. It is simply a term to refer to the repetition of activity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_%28video_gaming%29

Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive tasks during video games. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Tibia, or Lineage in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content. MUDs, generally sharing much of the same gameplay as MMORPGs, encounter the same problem. Grinding may be required by some games to unlock additional features.

Grinding is a controversial subject among players. Many do not enjoy it, and disparage it as a symptom of poor or uninspired game design. Others embrace it, claiming that all games feature grinding to some extent, or claim to enjoy the practice of regular grinding.

As to your other point….actually, people DO call regular repetitive activites a “grind”. I’m assuming you’ve never heard a worker refer to their job as “the daily grind”? Was a common way for some folks to refer to factory or office work, in fact, because of its repetitive nature. Teachers (especially in math where learning techniques often revolve around repetition) sometimes have referred to their teaching method as “grinding”. And people were calling it that long before video games, much less MMOs, were invented, much less before they became as big as they are today. In fact, because of this, dictionaries have included this definition for years:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/grind

Informal. to work or study laboriously (often followed by away ): He was grinding away at his algebra.

laborious, usually uninteresting work: Copying all the footnotes was a grind.

You’re basically trying to redefine a term as something negative to suit your own narrative. Unfortunately, words do not work that way. They have definitions, words (by their nature) cannot be implicitly “bad” as they have no sense of positive or negative, it’s the person using the word who assigns that connotation to it. And I’m telling you, the word “grind” has been used to refer to repetition since long before video games.

So, now that we’ve laid out what grinding actually is, can we stop denying that GW2 contains grinding and start thinking more like this bright individual?

Revolution.6301:

Your right, there is grind now matter what but as you said “at what point is my grinding no longer fun?” is the point. Grinding can be made fun and enjoyable not boring and painful.

Yes someone mentioned their take on “zero grind”!! Anet needs to accept that the way they built this game that their is grind and trying to “force” people to not grind will not solve the issue.

The fact is what could have been done is money caps on how much items can be sold for could’ve been put in place (for example a pre no more then 300 gold). Then that is somewhat a step towards fixing the problem but even then 300 gold takes a while to get. Heck even getting 100 without investing in something and making 20X the profit takes a while (and I have full MF gear). (PS: I know this suggestion is far fetched but really that is the only way to “control” ingame grind, since their is no trade system (if you don’t count mail that this)).

We need ways to make the grind more fun. Anet should create an area or revamp and areas event that splash us with exciting events that have drops equivalent to tunnel but events that are so much more exciting.

I can tell you precisely why they didn’t have price caps on items: because they hired a real world economist to manage their Trading Post. And it is a common belief amongst real world economists that price capping does not work (even though, within a game environment, it’s probably the best possible solution to items that are exceedingly rare and prices skyrocketing out of control). Don’t expect them to change this policy, as they vehemently believe real world economics apply to their fantasy game.

It’s because they consider WvW to be “part” of the PvE world. Which it really shouldn’t be.

I definitely agree with you here.

I was going to read this thread in depth, but then noticed that within two posts, we were referring to Anika Sarkeesian as some sort of “leading expert” on the problems with video games and….I stopped reading after that.

This thread is full of two types of people, ranting at each other and not listening to the other side.

1) People who believe that any objectification of women in video games is wrong, that no skimpy outfits should exist, and that any woman who thinks these outfits are okay are obviously just brainwashed by the mass media.

2) People who believe that there is nothing wrong with these outfits but take personal offense at the very implication that skimpy outfits for just one gender and not the other might be a tad bit sexist.

And I’m one of the people who actually sits in the middle here. Yeah, sure, there are sexist elements in games….and not many gamers are actually fond of them. See the Tomb Raider debacle as a prime example of a time when a clearly sexist trope was used as part of the “character”, and gamers revolted against it because it significantly demeaned the character and the gender as a whole.

It’s when we take the feminist argument too far that we start running into problems. Demanding skimpy outfits be removed is hardly a solution, it’s creating a problem that doesn’t need to exist. Some people like seeing their characters in skimpy dresses. I’ve got a female friend who is happily married with kids who RPs characters with very skimpy outfits, and dresses some of her female characters in such outfits because she loves the aesthetics of it.

Instead of removing options from people, just introduce some options for skimpy male outfits, too. Then both genders are being equally represented. I’m not sure why everyone has to make such a big deal out of such an easily resolved issue. Skimpy outfits are not “the devil” and they’re not the issue here. The presence of skimpy outfits does not make a game sexist. Stop attacking the wrong issue.

The point is to encourage players to be in multiple communities at once. And in that regard, guilds are working perfectly.

That said, I think they need to set the game up so that players can have separate chat windows for each guild they’re in. Not being able to engage in the discussion when you’re not representing does drag things down a lot.

Celtic Lady.3729:

-snip-

This poster nailed it.

This is why I scoff when people claim that there’s no grinding in GW2, because there most certainly is. Leveling a craft is grinding. Getting money at any rate beyond a snail’s pace is grinding. Getting materials is grinding. Running dailies is grinding. Doing JPs is grinding. Doing anything beyond Lvl 80 is a grind of some sort.

Grinding doesn’t mean “activity that you do over and over even though it’s not fun”, it means “any repetitive task, usually performed for the sake of rewards”. There are plenty of grinds in GW2.

And the common response to this is always “but all those things are optional”.

• JPs are optional.
• Legendaries and Ascended items are optional.
• Fractals and all dungeons are optional.
• WvW is optional.
• sPvP is optional.
• Crafting is optional.
• Achievements are optional.

And so on. To which I say….well, yes, all of those things are optional in the broadest sense of the term, in that no one is forcing you to do them.

However, in order to “play the game you want to” and “have fun”, many of these tasks are most certainly not optional. If going after max crafting is something you enjoy doing, you’ll be grinding to get there. If you have fun killing Orrians, you’re grinding. If you enjoy dungeon runs on a regular basis, you’re grinding. If you like Southsun Cove and go there regularly, you’re grinding. Avid WvW players are grinding, and so are sPvP players. Are you an Achievement hog? Then you’re grinding. There is no activity in the entire game that does not demand some form of repetition in order to continue “enjoying it” and “playing the game the way you want to”.

Grinding is merely defined as repetition. And there is plenty of repetition in GW2, no matter what activities you enjoy doing. The question you should be asking is not if there is grind in GW2 or not (because there is), the real question is “at what point is my grinding no longer fun?”, and that depends on the person. But for a game that proclaimed itself a “zero grind” game, it’s nowhere near being devoid of grind. And things like the weaker loot tables and in-game penalties applied to anyone who tries to farm an event only make the situation even worse.

It will always be a thing, because everyone’s either standing in LA idling, or they’re running Fractals.

Which is a shame. The devs made this big beautiful world….and then funneled everyone into LA to run their big new dungeon. Even if they do make improvements to the PvE world, I’m not sure it’ll convince people to leave the Fractals.

Naekuh.7925:

OH really?

It sounds like a typical day for me.

1. Bring your gaurdian.. we need a heavy + support.
2. I want to bring my warrior… i want to do dps.
3. No bring your gaurdian….
4. What about my Necro? she can heal and has pets, we can just pug a gaurdian.
5. No i dont trust pug gaurdians who dont heal nor share virtues.. can u please bring out your gaurdian.
5. But but but im tired of gaurdian.
6. Please~ We are gonna fail without your AH Hammer guardian.
7. logging onto gaurdian

So how does your example differ from mine?

Your example doesn’t exist, for starters.

At least not in the normal world. Very few people actually demand a specific class in their group for their dungeon runs. And the only sorts of groups that demand a warrior or guardian are the sorts of players you don’t want to run with anyways, because they have little-to-no actual skill of their own and are depending on the Guardian to save them from their own poor performance.

I was just running Fractals earlier this morning with a three Ranger group and no Guardians, which is supposedly impossible by your logic because everyone’s always demanding a Guardian. We bashed through the entire run with no problem, because all of our players were skilled and had run the dungeon multiple times before. They knew what to expect and it took very little spoken coordination to run, because we knew what to do and how to support each other.

If your group demands a Guardian and Warrior for healing and DPS, then that’s a red flag that some members of your group are not very skilled, and it’s time to bail before you waste a few hours on a failed run.

This suggestion is completely unnecessary.

Minipets are a carryover from GW1 and they were entirely cosmetic there, too. And that was a good thing because it meant that folks like myself who don’t care about cosmetics are not negatively affected by not actively pursuing these rare items.

Giving them any sort of special quests or features in GW2 would be turning them into items that have intrinsic combat value. I don’t think it at all wise for the Gem Store to be selling them if they provide any sort of in-game benefit beyond looking cute, as that basically amounts to selling power/features instead of selling aesthetics.

Eyelusion.8205:

I killed one of these “employees” twice in EB last night while fighting to hold SBI out of their SBI keep. Needless to say, I took him down with a lava font and some well placed AOE. Oh noooo……more nerf bats?!?

So it’s YOUR fault they want to nerf our AoE!

:p

It’s not just the camera. It’s the jumping mechanic itself that is faulty. Every toon jumps the same distance, but the jumps look radically different on a charr or norn vs an asura, so it’s hard to gauge your jumping distance and height until you get used to the character’s unique jumping “form”. Then there’s the issue of the jumps themselves being somewhat finnicky, since your distance/height also depends on how much you’re depressing the “forward” key at the time of jumping. And then there’s the locations where the only way to make the jump is to stand on the one solitary pixel that allows you to reach, as any other pixel on that platform is just a pixel too short and you get to fall to your death….and so on.

Simply put, this game isn’t well-built for jumping puzzles at all. I’ve managed to complete most of the JPs in the game (so save your “maybe you just suck lawlz” posts for someone else), but it’s nothing shy of repeated trial and error in many cases. Just raw determination. I can’t tell you how many times I had to give up on a puzzle and come back later due to frustration. How many times I’ve missed a jump I clearly should have made because I didn’t pick the right pixel to stand on, even though I’m following a guide and standing right where they did. How many times other players have got in the way of my jumping, making it harder for me to complete the puzzle because between their giant Norn toons and my camera, it’s nigh impossible to see the next jump. JPs and I have a love-hate relationship: I want to love them, but they refuse to give me any love.

I know some people in this forum will defend GW2 and its JPs to the death, but seriously, the game’s just not designed for precision platforming. It’s really not. Play any highly-rated AAA game which revolves around precision platforming, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about and see the huge difference. Platforming games tend to have much tighter controls so your jumps are precise to a tee….GW2’s jumps are anything but.

Red Falcon.8257:

You don’t “come back” to GW2… it’s free so you simply turn up the client and login.

Yes, you do.

Any time you stop playing a game, resuming play of that game is “coming back” to it. The lack of a subscription is irrelevant in the context that the OP is using the term.

To answer your question, no, there’s still no in-game dungeon finder. New patches in Jan/Feb/March will hopefully be addressing the problems with dungeons as they are right now, but we’ll see. The devs haven’t really specified how much dungeons will change.

Jaqalope.6175:

I also ran into a few sieging our keep.
Not so nice.

I would’ve aimed for them atop the wall, just for the chance at a bit of bragging rights.

Sort of like how I like to aim for players wielding legendary weapons first: it’s nice to know that as bad as I am, I can still beat these “elite” guys. :P

Cloud.7613:

Thief+Mesmer portal is over powered only due to culling. Even then, maybe they could be toned down a bit, but culling is the issue.

No, that’s only half the problem.

The fact that people have to sweep the keep looking for ONE specific class so that they don’t have a 50-man army dropped into their brand new keep is indicative of a clear problem. The mechanic itself is a great one, but it’s got some issues. No one player should be able to turn the tide of a battle that radically unless everyone has a way to provide their own massive, unique dangers in WvW combat.

emikochan.8504:

Because they aren’t problems with the game.

I actually laughed out loud at this post. There are always problems in every game. There is no such thing as perfection.

Even the devs have admitted that things aren’t going as well as they’d hoped and that they’re working on it. You can’t possibly believe that the game is absolutely perfect as is, that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Because even the devs don’t think that.

Lil Green Dragn.8049:

2) When did they say WvW was PvE over PvP? It’s both, and with a greater influence of PvP.

It’s designed to function like PvE.

It’s considered part of the PvE world for map completion, provides kills and resource hubs and loot drops just like PvE, and kills/activities there contribute towards PvE achievements. Also, all of the PvE events thus far have altered the WvW maps as well….such as the Wintersday gifts, which appeared not only in normal PvE maps but also WvW.

It’s a PvE world in which PvP exists. I don’t disagree that PvP is the bulk of it, as it should be, but it’s clearly considered a PvE zone by the developers. So if they want to consider it a PvE zone, it would make sense for the zone to follow the PvE philosophy of “players helping players”.

Oh, and I completely disagree with your statement about speeding not being the drivers fault? :/ I hope that’s not what you meant by this and I’m just not understanding your point.

No, that’s not it at all. I’m saying that the car’s manufacturers can’t exactly come out and say “hey, stop using our barely-street-legal car to race” if they built it that way.

They built WvW as a PvE zone. Ergo it should follow their PvE philosophy. Honestly I don’t think the puzzles should exist in there at all. But since they do and they aren’t going away, it only makes sense to design them with the notion that rival servers will be naturally inclined to troll each others’ jumping puzzles. I believe strongly in their philosophy of creating a cooperative game environment, and to that end, I think killing in JPs should be off-limits.

3) I suppose some people might feel this should be implemented, but then again after, as you said you learn the hard way, you’re not going to do it again are you?

Ah, but herein lies the core question you must ask yourself, then:

Do you want to design your game around learning via helpful tool tips, experience, and friendly advice from fellow players, things which all promote healthy interaction and make the game easier to learn and get engaged in?

Or do you want to design your game around trial-and-error and/or insta-death mechanics that are intended to frustrate you with their difficulty so that you feel some sense of achievement by surpassing these things?

I think the devs intend to make the former, but in several areas I see a lot of the latter elements. And that’s not very good design mostly because it’s inconsistent. The game’s learning curve isn’t necessarily easy for someone used to traditional MMOs or RPGs. You may not win them over by frustrating them in early portions of the game with things like this, and you certainly don’t win many fans over to your new model by encouraging the use of such frustration mechanics more and more as you get further in the game (which GW2 most certainly does).

My suggestion is not intended to “baby down” the game as some would claim, but rather to add a useful feature that all levels could benefit from, one that helps avoid errors that might frustrate a newer player not used to this sort of game.

1) The irony is that when they proclaimed they didn’t want “dungeon finder tools”, people came along and created sites like GW2LFG.com because of the huge demand for functional tools to form dungeon groups. In other words, the community had to step up to create a fix for a problem with the game. I absolutely agree, the game feels surprisingly anti-social considering how much it relies on zergs, especially in WvW.

2) Dynamic events do trigger much too often for my tastes, which spoils the experience a bit. That said, I don’t feel that the quests themselves are necessarily any more repetitive than other MMOs.

3) Agreed with the map. My map felt like a checklist, and considering it’s required to get a Legendary, it basically WAS a giant checklist. However, picking up events dynamically is WAY superior to standard questing and I would fight to the death with anyone claiming otherwise. :p

4) Totally disagree here. Level scaling is the best thing about this game, it keeps content relevant at all levels.

5) I’ve never felt obligated to replace my gear every few levels. In fact my ranger still doesn’t have a full set of exotics. So not seeing your point here at all.

6) The personal story is built around choice, for the most part. You can only work on two crafts at once, and only represent and contribute to one guild at a time. Honestly, there’s plenty of “choice”, just not the kind you want. And frankly, I don’t think greater restrictions provide more choice, I think greater freedom provides more choice.

7) Nope, their endgame concept fell flat on its face, and this was something that many of us expected when they first said they had no endgame. There’s lots to do, sure. Dungeons, WvW, Legendaries, etc. But it’s all grinding of a sort (yes, it is, don’t try to claim otherwise), which goes against their expression of a no-grind game. Frankly I think they need to revisit this promise, this may be the one promise they actually should break. Some endgame content would be appreciated.

8) WvW is honestly brilliant in this regard, because its chaotic nature allows for battles of various sizes and everyone gets to clash on an epic scale. It’s not always fair, no, but it is genuinely one of the most fun things I’ve seen in this game.

Some good points, some bad ones. Appreciate your thoughts and willingness to provide your opinion.

felivear.1536:

Anyway, thanks for the read and I hope this doesn’t come off as a QQ because it’s more of a constructive feedback post.

Sorry to break it to you, but some of the people in these forums will rip you apart if you raise so much as a velvet-gloved hand against the game they love. They can’t accept that the game isn’t perfect and they refuse to acknowledge its flaws.

Be prepared to have a lot of people tell you to go away and “stop trying to ruin their game” and to “go play other MMOs ’cuz GW2 is totes different lawlz”. Unfortunately, reality is starting to set in: GW2 isn’t in the position of power everyone claimed it would be (and despite competing against the Panda Pack, WoW is anything but dead), it’s got flaws and has made judgment errors that have convinced many people to give up on it, and now it’s having to dedicate multiple months of its release schedule towards fixing the game they have instead of adding lots of new content as intended. And yet, people still deny that there’s any problems, continuing to think WoW is just mere moments away from being toppled and that GW2 has already won the MMO arms race. It’s getting a bit depressing, following some of the posters here. It’s one thing to love a game, but the zealotry here isn’t going to help this game get better, it’s going to make it stagnate much earlier than it should.

I do think a lot of the issues you’ve described sound like GW2 wasn’t really your deal, but you’ve made some good points that the devs should give serious thought towards.

I love how people are taking personal offense to me pointing out problems with the game and are going so far as to insult me over it rather than provide genuine feedback. That really builds a productive discussion. Oh wait, no it doesn’t.

Rebuttal to those dissing point 1: A direct Peer-To-Peer trading system is something commonly requested by many players in the game, and a common feature of virtually every MMO on the market, including GW1. ANet currently either expects players to risk scamming via the mail system, or else always put items up on the trading post (where you risk them not selling immediately). What if you’re right next to someone who would happily buy the item from you after a little haggling, something that many players do in every other MMO out there? Tough luck I guess. I can’t actually believe people are trying to argue that P2P trading is somehow less safe than the mail system they replaced it with, it’s the most ridiculous assertion I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing wrong with P2P trading and it is extremely safe and effective so long as you check what you’re trading BEFORE you hit “accept”. This argument of “your fault if you trust someone with mail” can be easily reversed: it’s your own fault if you trade via P2P and don’t check the contents of the sale before accepting it.

Rebuttal to those dissing point 2: The problem is that the devs stated that WvW is considered a “PvE” zone, and they put jumping puzzles in there with that thought in mind and didn’t consider the fact that players would naturally abuse the PvP nature of WvW to keep people from completing the puzzles. I absolutely agree that the puzzles shouldn’t even be there, and that it’s not really fair to say that people PvPing in a PvP zone is bad….but again, that’s not the player’s fault, it’s the devs’ faults for declaring that WvW is officially a PvE zone and then placing these features inside of it. This is like complaining that people will inevitably use cars to stage races in the streets. Yes, it’s an unintended side effect of having cars, but when you create cars that go far beyond the speed limit and then design parts for the purposes of modifying those cars to have nearly-illegal performance levels, you don’t really get to complain about how the customers use those cars. WvW is considered PvE by the devs, ergo it needs to be designed so that players are not able to disrupt each other’s experiences as the puzzles are supposed to be the real challenge. This is why a lot of people have expressed hatred over the shared jumping puzzles: having other people there disrupts their own experience. The WvW puzzles are that, except magnified because now those other players can also shoot you off a cliff.

Rebuttal to those dissing point 3: As I already stated in my original post, yes, it is the player’s own fault for AFKing outside of a city. On the other hand, there is NO in-game tutorial that warns them about this. None. The player generally gets to find out the hard way. And in a game where the learning curve is steep as is, it’s best not to design your game lacking things that a new player would expect. It’s not “babying the game down” to allow players to AFK, it’s not “appealing to the casual market”, it’s nothing except a simple function that would allow players to keep the game running. GW1 dealt with AFKing better than GW2 does (and mind, GW1 still allows AFKers to die quite horribly but at least it lets those players stay online), that’s not a positive step forward for the genre. The game clearly knows when you’re not playing because it kicks you eventually, but in the mean time, that opens up avenues for new players to possibly get trolled, and after you get an AFK boot you have to re-login. I don’t see why the idea of a player-enabled AFK mode (which you can disable for WvW to prevent any issues there) is so offensive to people that they have to get outraged and have rustled jimmies at the very thought of it.

magicthighs.5372:

Nothing personal, but you’re not contributing to your server. You’re a waste of a spot in the wvw queue. I wish they’d just remove these JPs from wvw.

General rule of thumb: if you have to start off a post with “nothing personal”, you’re about to insult the poster, which is making it personal. It’s like saying “no offense” because the next words you say are guaranteed to be something offensive.

As for the expressed opinion itself: my server isn’t very good in WvW to begin with, and doesn’t have enough players to fill the queue most of the time, so I’m not “wasting a spot in the queue” as there isn’t one to begin with. Also, I’m an active contributor to WvW almost daily. I just also run the puzzle because it’s more efficient for getting badges than killing players due to terrible loot drops (another thing they need to fix).

Short answer: no, we don’t.

Culling still makes thieves generally much more lethal than they should be, and mesmer portal bombs make that particular class far too much of an individual game-changer. And there are other elements as well.

But you’ve highlighted rather well why I think people are rather mistaken in their perceptions of both necro and ranger (though both could use some buffs to their minion/pet systems to make them more viable in real PvP fights). Engineer, though, is generally lackluster to be perfectly fair to the people posting complaints about them. Their niche at the moment seems to be “do everything with technology but in a less efficient fashion than raw magic”, which isn’t a good niche.

Inkubus.7529:

Scroll down to Q: Elaborate your plans for changing AoEs
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/16rsh9/jan_17_dev_livestream_summary/

ARGH, THAT LINK!

One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.

“Gaming the system”? How? What are you talking about?

The people “gaming the system” are the ones abusing culling and stealth in tandem to create a system whereby you can’t SEE the targets you’re trying to shoot. Mesmers are “gaming the system” with portal bombs of 30+ players. People using AoE against a zerg (which is what the skills are supposed to be used for) is NOT gaming the system.

Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.

They don’t need reduced effectiveness, and making them weaker only encourages zerging.

Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

….so you’re going to nerf AoE and buff classes that deal single target damage well (like the Thief)?

….I have no words.

Knox.3748:

How can 3% be that much ? In spvp they dont scale. In Pve, who cares anyway ? Its Pve… And WvW is open world, you wont be 1vs1 unless you are dumb. So really, whats that 3% higher? No more drama please, i agree that anet has sold out and thier model of the game just made us all wrong but you guys are making too much drama.

But it’s not 3%.

The devs have directly stated that the intent is to make these items 5-10% stronger than their Exotic counterparts.

Assuming all future Ascended gear comes out at the 10% figure they quoted, that means a full set of Ascended Berserker armor, weapons, and trinkets deals 23% more damage than Exotic Berserker loadouts in the long run.

The claim that Ascended gear won’t affect the game that much is a fantasy created by people who don’t want to do the math for themselves. There is a lot of “drama” because some of us have done the math that ANet apparently has not, and concluded that the “slight” progression they promised isn’t all that slight and isn’t beneficial to the game as a whole, even if they add Ascended gear to more places. It was a mistake to introduce it at all.

Lasss.8169:

Please explain horizontal progression, I am un aware of what that is exactly :-)

Okay.

Whereas vertical progression is a model whose purpose is to keep players playing by introducing new tiers and levels, and stronger sets of gear with each release, horizontal progression is a model whereby, upon reaching the game’s “max level”, the character’s progression is generally cosmetic or effect-based.

Players seek out gear not because it’s got the best stats but because they like the appearance of it. Players can obtain new powers that give them abilities they didn’t have before without making them statistically stronger.

Legendary gear was supposed to work in this fashion, giving players gear that LOOKS impressive but doesn’t make them stronger. However, with the promise of future vertical progression, this purpose has been somewhat lost in favor of another purpose: protection against future grind. In GW1, this effect was achieved with “elite” armor skins that were much more expensive than regular armors but not at all stronger, just visually appealing vanity items. Players loved going after these kinds of items because it gave them more of a unique appearance. More skins, as opposed to more tiers and levels, provides greater customization.

The mesmer portal example is one example of how this already works in the game, and it works to GREAT effect (perhaps even too great to be honest). Mesmers have used these portals in a variety of ways to enhance the game’s cooperative play and added a new dimension to the game’s combat that has to be accounted for (which is why often when a WvW team takes a keep, they immediately do a “mesmer sweep” to make sure there aren’t mesmers sitting in the base waiting to portal bomb the keep when they aren’t looking).

Another that I think would be a good addition to the game is to allow engineers to use “Jump Shot” to scale keep walls in a single leap by extending the range. This would give them an added dimension in WvW that wouldn’t make them more powerful, yet would give them very useful functionality that can create more havok for enemy keep defenders, giving them more of a unique role and adding extra dimension to the game.

It’s this sort of intangible, non-numerical functionality that makes the game far more fun than a simple chase-the-best-gear sort of game can hope to be.