Guild Wars 2

I would never do it, but Guardians can stack five sources of health/second regeneration (Virtue of Resolve, Regeneration, Writ of the Merciful, Superior Rune of the Dolyak, and Mango Pies). I’m sure you all knew this, but I found it interesting. Useless…but interesting.

Do any of you run/recommend this skill?

I think this would be a fun skill to run on my PvE conditionmancer, but to do so would mean dropping Blood is Power. And I can’t imagine CPC being anywhere near as good as BiP.

Funky.4861:

people generally prefer warm colours

THAT explains all the black* armor I see everywhere I look.

*yeah, yeah…technically not a color…I get it.

“AnenaNet, will you PLEASE fix the Logas Thackery trait. It’s bugged. The “100% chance to Fear on hit” is actually applying the Fear to my character, not my target. What’s that? It’s working as intended? Oh…"

You just don’t give up, do you?

Revolution.6301:

And by putting in those 1000s of hours you do derserve somthing only a few hundered will have.

The are only two thing you deserve after playing a game for 1000s of hours, and they’re mutually exclusive. You either deserve the know that you got one hell of a bargain if you got 1000s of hours of enjoyment out of a single title, or you deserve to know that you’re a kitten fool for wasting 1000’s of hours on a game you didn’t even enjoy.

foxOXIIIXIII.7140:

Lastly in the wiki you might want to preview the racial armor as you can only get this armor with specific races.

Very good advice. There’s a ton of armor in the game that will look very good on an engineer of any race, but there might be one set of cultural armor that just screams engineer to you.

To me, charr scream combat engineer while asura scream alchemist, and humans make fitting representatives of any class.

Charr Hide Armor.

nethykins.7986:

darkace.8925:

nethykins.7986:

Vorch.2985:

I’m sorry, but as I was crafting an alt to level 80, something horrible caught my eye.

Blue…and yellow. Though he was afk, this player’s armor sparked a conversation about how each person has their own tastes.

I’m gonna go ahead and say his tastes are wrong.

Have you seen a worse color combination?

I guess someone doesn’t like the old wolverine colour pallet

No one ever did. Yellow and blue sucks. Blue and yellow, on the other hand… Cyclops had it going on.

LOL. MAH BAD!!!

Now I remember, it was the whole (good) xmen bunch from the series that had Blue and yellow besides Xavier and Storm. Even lame Jubilee had a Blue and Yellow outfit.

I was just joking.

I’m going to take the lack of responses as a “we haven’t thought much about the future of crafting”, as opposed to “we don’t care about the future of crafting”.

bpphantom.8243:

darkace.8925:

Dante.1508:

thisolderhead.5127:

It is the road, not the destination…
;-)

The road blocks in the road, make the destination unreachable..

Bull[expletive]! There is not one single aspect of this game in which you cannot participate without a full set of Ascended gear. Not. One. Single. Aspect.

Please help me infuse my exotic gear so I can run level 30-50 fractals with my guild and not get obliterated by Agony.

If you’ve cleared 1-29 Fractals without Ascended gear then you’ve proved my point.

And if the only point in doing Fractals is to grind gear, then why are you complaining about having to grind gear? You’re complaining that you have to grind in order to grind. You’re choosing to run a marathon, and then complaining that you’ll have exercise to get into good enough shape to run the marathon.

This is a game, not a job. I play when I want to play. And when I play I play how I want to play. No one is forcing me to log in every day for dailies, and no one is forcing me to grind for Best in Slot gear.

My approach to video games is and will always be: play to enjoy yourself, not to accumulate virtual stuff. The moment you stop worrying about keeping up with the virtual Joneses is the moment you’ll be free to truly enjoy the game.

Revolution.6301:

What you’ve summed up is generally the problem with them. If they were accessable then they’d be no reason to complain but the fact is it takes 100s of hours to properly equip yourself with all the ascended gear.

“Properly equip yourself with all the ascended gear”?

Properly equipped for what? Think carefully about your answer before clicking “Reply”. If your answer is anything other than “nothing”, you’ll be lying. Ascended gear, whether you want to admit this or not, is NOT required to do anything in this game. That is an undeniable fact.

If your answer is “nothing”, then you’ve just defeated the premise of your entire argument. To admit ascended gear isn’t required is to admit that grinding for ascended gear isn’t necessary. Hence, any grind for ascended gear is a self-imposed one. And only a fool would complain about self-inflicted misery.

Now then, you were saying something about logical arguments? Let’s see if you can counter my rock-solid logic with any of your own. I’m guessing not, but you’ve got the chance to surprise me. So go ahead…surprise me.

Alarox.4590:

darkace.8925:

Alarox.4590:

Jrunyon.3012:

Alarox.4590:

At the same time, this doesn’t add anything to the game’s enjoyment (which we’ve already concluded is the priority in playing any game).

Wrong. It doesn’t add anything for you

Stop being selfish.

Finally, someone who can tell me how this makes the game so much more fun (I’m serious). Go on.

He doesn’t need to; I already did. I explained to you that a great many players enjoy chasing carrots. Without carrots, they quickly bore of the game. These carrots, the “maximally efficient but completely optional” carrots, give many players a goal to work towards. And they usually feel a great sense of a satisfaction when they obtain that goal. That you fail to recognize this truth does not make it an untruth.

It really doesn’t make sense to me…

I don’t really understand the point of doing something you don’t enjoy in order to get something… so you can move on in order to do more things you don’t enjoy.

Why does it need to be things you don’t enjoy? Why can’t we have a system where your goal is cosmetic or fun things like the unbreakable choir bell? Why does it have to make you X% better?

It seems entirely illogical to me.

In life, you don’t live to work, you work to live. The only exception is if your work is what you want to spend life doing for enjoyment.

However, when it comes to games, people reverse this and play to work.

In real life when I work to get something, it’s because it makes life easier/more enjoyable.

The only logical reason I can find for this mentality is if you literally can’t find anything fun to do, and all you have is trying to get an arbitrary thing.

I’m sorry, but I’m starting to suspect you are indeed trolling. You’re arguing in circles. We’ve already covered all of this. If you don’t get it by now, then you’re not going to.

Revolution.6301:

You realize that GuildWars 2 was not marketed towards your kind of audience. I can appreciate those that like to grind, but thats why I avoid like the plauge most mmos, heck even the ones I don’t avoid I eventually give up on.

If GuildWars 2 was marketed toward those that enjoying grinding I would not have the right to complaine. You could go as far as to say I knew the game I was buying. But the game was marketed as somthing that did not have grind. I define grind but something I have to spend a min of 100 hours getting. This shows that I do have patience for difficult objectives but what ascended gear gear does is Not acceptable.

One the largest problems with fotm is length. It should be no more then an hour, 30 to 45 if done by an experienced group. A two hour dungeon because of the time it takes to in of itself is gated. But even if the time was cut in half it would still take around 200 to get all the ascended gear I need to keep up stat wise.

If Anet had chosen your audience to market to I would understand that I have no right to complaine but they didn’t. There are so many other MMOs out there that do that and the majority of this community was hoping for an MMO that was different from the masses.

As I explained to you in the thread I linked (an explanation you repeatedly ignored, conveniently enough), you (willfully) took the “no grind” part of the Manifesto out of context. That’s on YOU, not ArenaNet.

Alarox.4590:

I explained the scenario above, which I’m assuming he means. It doesn’t mean unable to play certain parts of the game, but instead being able to play at the maximum efficiency and not having the dilemma of grind vs fun.

To any rational human being, there is no dilemma. If something if fun, do it to your heart’s content. If something is not fun, stop doing it. If you’re doing something you don’t enjoy solely for “maximum efficiency”, then I’d argue your approach to video games is very much out of whack.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

You know what’s better than getting the carrot only to have a slightly bigger carrot suspended in front of you? Finally getting the crap you need to actually play the game how you want to. And then proceeding to do so with the crap you got instead of it becoming outdated.

From what part of the game are you blocked without having to grind? Go on; I’m all ears.

Alarox.4590:

darkace.8925:

Alarox.4590:

He gives you 5 reasons.

No, he doesn’t. He lists five things in this game. He doesn’t give one single reason why he feels those things are grinds. His argument is weak. Hell, his argument doesn’t even exist. An argument is “A reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.” He does none of this.

I’ll help then. Will edit post below.

Revolution.6301:

1. Ascended gear grinding
2. Laundrell grinding
3. Dungeon grinding
4. Gold Grinding
5. World Event grinding

1.) I elaborated on this in my first post.

2.) Same as above.

3.) I don’t really agree with this. You don’t have to run dungeons, and even if you do you get gear relatively fast. It’s mostly for cosmetics. However, FotM did change this (but not as bad as some other things).

4.) I don’t have a problem with this, unless you’re talking about colossal farming for gold for things like Ectos. Problem is that some playstyles have to go completely out of their way while others get gold naturally and at a decent pace.

5.) Ties in to 4.

That’s all well and good, but the fact that YOU, and not TC, had to actually put forth the argument should tell you that TC has no intentions with this thread other than to start an argument of the “heated disagreement” variety (as opposed to the “civil debate” variety).

zuraith.6104:

Heavy/excessive grinding = bad
Fast to moderate grinding = good <- this is where we are
No grinding = bad

If it goes either way too heavily, the game is in trouble. Why do so many people here hate grinding? I could’ve bought me first full set of Exotics with gold, but why? What’s the point if you did nothing to obtain it?

To expand on this, people who want no grind will hate excessive grind and people who want excessive grind will hate no grind. Shooting for that sweet spot in between may not make everyone happy, but neither it shouldn’t make anyone (other than the extremely immature amongst us) upset.

Alarox.4590:

I don’t see what making the objective of the game being gear does for the players.

I gives a certain type of player something to do. Whether you like it or not, there are a lot of players who need carrots dangled in front of them so they have something to keep them playing. ArenaNet decided to give these players carrots. But they didn’t require them to chase the carrots, and thus the only grinds in the game are self-imposed.

Alarox.4590:

He gives you 5 reasons.

No, he doesn’t. He lists five things in this game. He doesn’t give one single reason why he feels those things are grinds. His argument is weak. Hell, his argument doesn’t even exist. An argument is “A reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.” He does none of this.

sostronk.8167:

But there is such a thing as “engaging content”, which is something that removes the grind.

That’s entirely subjective. A game either engages you, or it doesn’t. This is true of all games, regardless of the amount of content. But we’re not talking about subjective grinds…“I enjoy it, so it isn’t a grind” vs “I hate it, so it is a grind.” We’re talking* about objective grinds; treadmills on which players must run if they wish to participate in varying aspect of the game. This game doesn’t have any of those.

• At least we would be talking about required grinds if TC had bothered to actually formulate any kind of an argument…had given actual substantive reasons for his statements… instead of making a vague post created solely to start an argument.

kKagari.6804:

You haven’t answered our original argument, you original deflection. Can you do Fotm 50 without ascended gear?

Unbecoming.

“Our original argument”?

I posted, and I quote, “Bull[expletive]! There is not one single aspect of this game in which you cannot participate without a full set of Ascended gear. Not. One. Single. Aspect.” before you even entered the discussion. If you want to address original arguments, how about starting with that one? Show me why that statement is false, or show my the door hitting you on the derriere on your way out.

kKagari.6804:

Level 50. Read. Take your ascended gear off and do level 50. You can do level 1 without asc gear. Yes. We are talking about level 50.

Stop deflecting. I’m going to ask you this one more time, and I’m going to make it as easy on you as I can by making it multiple choice.

Can I participate in Fractals of the Mist without Ascended gear?
– Yes?
– No?

sostronk.8167:

But there is only so much content in the game because they use this grind to keep people in the game rather than incorporate enough content to keep people engaged.

Newsflash: There’s no such thing as “infinite content”. Whether hidden behind a grind or not, content is ALWAYS finite. ALWAYS.

kKagari.6804:

For starters, OP might really enjoy fractals, but you require ascended gear for that.

False. Absolutely, unequivocally false.

Ascended gear could originally be obtained only in Fractals of the Mist. If one could not run Fractals of the Mist without Ascended gear, then no one would have been able to obtain Ascended in the first place. You’ve fabricated a Catch 22 that doesn’t exist, because players DID obtain Ascended gear. Thus, they MUST have run Fractals of the Mist WITHOUT Ascended gear. Accordingly, Ascended gear is NOT required for Fractals of the Mist.

“Try harder.”

Tachenon.5270:

Cantha is as much a part of Guild Wars as the Tyrian continent and Elona. Guild Wars 2 without Cantha is a far less rich and wonderful place.

“I’m offended by the mix of cultures displayed in that screenshot, and thus I demand it be removed!”

But seriously, I agree with you. I was very much looking forward to visiting that sprawling fire-hazard of a city now that we’ve got an additional axis to play with. Imagine the jumping puzzles they could have stuck in that city.

And I very much wanted to revisit the Eschovald Forest and Jade Sea. The atmosphere of those places were my favorite part of Factions. But alas, it looks like they’ll never be anything more than just fond memory of another game. All because someone was somehow offended because a buildings of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese architecture were too close to one another. Silly. Just silly.

kKagari.6804:

Nice deflection. Issue at hand is if you can do fractal 50 without ascended gear. Answer was no, answer is still no. Try harder.

I don’t need to deflect and I don’t need to “try harder”. I said there was no aspect of this game in which a player could not participate without Ascended gear. So long as that remains a truth, and it IS the truth, I don’t need to deflect and I certainly don’t need to “try harder”.

kKagari.6804:

Oh and, thats totally cool that you want to replace player skill with time played, even though it is completely 180 from the original Arenanet’s design philosophy. Heaven forbid, making games challenging, who would ever dream of that.

ArenaNet never said this game would be challenging. EVERYTHING leading up to release indicated it would be just the opposite. I personally find the game too easy, but since you seem keen to put words in my mouth, I guess I should have checked with you first. For the record, I thought I would have preferred sideways-progression when it came to gear; but I’ll have to check with kKagari to see what my actual thoughts on the subject are.

kKagari.6804:

OP wants BiS gear. BiS gear requires grinding. You tell him not to get BiS gear, does that change the fact that BiS gear requires grinding? NO.

The point of playing video games is to have fun. It’s up to each individual player to determine for themselves what is and is not fun. If having virtual stuff if fun, go for it. If obtaining that virtual stuff isn’t fun, either set new parameters of what is and isn’t fun or go play something else. Again, it’s just that simple, folks. It REALLY is.

kKagari.6804:

Can I do the uber challenging fractal level 50 without ascended gear? nope.

Fractals of the Mist is an infinite dungeon. So what you’re complaining about is having to grind for gear so that you can run a dungeon whose sole purpose, it’s very nature, is nothing but a grind for gear. Did you think about that, even a little, before you clicked “Reply”?

kKagari.6804:

Ascended gear could have been gotten by completing really challenging fun content once, but instead, we have objectives that involve lots of grind.

Sure, it could. But then we’d be trading “this game is too much of a grind” complaints for “this game is too hard” complaints. And then what?

You already thoroughly beat this dead horse in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/In-my-view-gw2-is-geartrademill/first

Do you really need to do it again?

kKagari.6804:

It doesn’t make the content designed any less grindy.

Because a player can competently participate in any aspect of this game without a single piece of Ascended gear, the only grind in this game is a self-imposed one. It really is that simple. It really is.

Dante.1508:

thisolderhead.5127:

It is the road, not the destination…
;-)

The road blocks in the road, make the destination unreachable..

Bull[expletive]! There is not one single aspect of this game in which you cannot participate without a full set of Ascended gear. Not. One. Single. Aspect.

Because I don’t want Queensdale to become Goldshire?

thisolderhead.5127:

Fight Club – these characters are your appartments, burn them.

lol

“It’s got you grinding dungeons you don’t like to buy ascended gear you don’t need.”
“This is your gaming life, and it’s ending one gear-treadmill at a time.”

Hocofaisan.2593:

I just want to share that the current state of the game highly discourages alt play, as I currently estimate it will take the better half of 2013 to finish gearing my main.

Funny, I’ve been considering purchasing another character slot so I can start another alt. I haven’t quite decided if I want it to be a Thief or a Necromancer. Any suggestions?

What you did (if you really did it) amounts to destroying your toys in a tantrum while shouting, “see what you made me do!?” Good game.

Florgknight.1589:

I question the taste of the community as a whole when black and whites are the most expensive dyes.

Amen to that. 90% of the characters I see are clad in either black, white, or a cotton candy-looking pink. Hundreds of dyes in this game, and everyone runs the same three colors. /smh

Lady Vireo.5189:

Josh Foreman explained in an interview that the Canthan district was destroyed only because NCSoft (based on feedback from Asian audiences) said it could not stay as it was—so close to deadline apparently that Anet had no time to make changes, only take it out completely.

So the “driving force” appears to be this negative feedback from Asia about mixing different influences and architectural styles, a “cultural consideration” as Josh called it, but again, this is an issue that could be solved through design changes or might not be a problem in future. It does not mean Cantha has been ruled out.

I’m aware of the reason given for the Collapse, I just don’t understand the reasoning behind it. I don’t understand the “it can’t stay as is” response to complaints about a mixing of differing architectural styles. Why can’t it?

I’m all for cultural sensitivity, but they destroyed something that was aesthetically pleasing and fitting to their own lore because a bunch of (forgive me is this comes across as insensitive) thin-skinned whiners? My response would have been a carefully worded, PR approved “get over it”.

I doubt European players would have complained about a mix architectural styles from Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Medieval France, and Victorian England. And even if they had, I find it hard to believe ArenaNet would have responded with the knee-jerk response of sink-holing 1/7th of Divinity’s Reach.

anathemawhite.6879:

Here is my new look.
White is the new black.

I LOVE it. Well done. With so many “emo” looking necromancers rocking black, seeing your character was very refreshing.

I also dug some of the “fey” looks some of you achieved. A lot of you achieved decent “undead/lich” looks, but there were too many for any to stand out. It quickly became run of the mill. I was hoping to see more “tribal/voodoo” looks, but that doesn’t appear to be vogue.

Edit: I spoke too soon on that last point. VERY nicely done, Summer. Fantastic job.

jheryn.8390:

Some may have already posted this, but I think Cantha would be very easy to do.

It’s not that it’s hard to do, it’s that they don’t want to do it (for whatever reason). They destroyed a finished, functional Canthan district in Divinity’s Reach; I’m guessing the same driving force behind that decision is the same driving the decision to abandon Cantha altogether.

I don’t have a problem with it. But I did lol tonight when some guy popped in Queensdale on my server tonight and asked if Shadow Behemoth had spawned? When informed it had just died, the guy replied, “[expletive]! Oh well, on to the next server.”

I don’t know how you define “tank”, but in a game without aggro I define it as being able to survive while fighting toe-to-toe with one or more enemies (i.e. not relying on fleeing, crowd control, or stealth to stay alive). Given that definition, along with my personal experience with the class, I don’t think your tank score for the thief is at all accurate. It’s your chart, based off of your personal experiences, but I just wanted to throw my two cents in on that subject.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Awe.1096:

If this would be true I will be rather sad tbh. I loved expansions to original GW and the speed with which they were released.

I thought they came out far too quickly. I was ready for Factions when it came out, but Nightfall I wasn’t ready for.

I didn’t play Guild Wars until well after the EotN, so I can’t speak to that. I will, however, remind you that the expansions in this game aren’t going to be stand-alone campaigns as they were in the first game (unfortunately). But whether or not that means anything to you is entirely subjective.

That, to me, is ArenaNet’s greatest failing. These are supposed to be the penultimate PvE events, and they wound up being the least interesting aspect of the game. Very early in the game’s development I started to fear these types of events were going to be woefully boring.

In my opinion, they’d be better served having NPC-crewed artillery do all of the damage against the world bosses while having the players defend the artillery from waves of summons (hordes of trash mobs with veterans and champions thrown in as the event scales upward based on player participation). As more players showed up, the waves would come from several directions to put pressure on players, forcing them to defend multiple fronts at once (and to break giant zergs into several smaller zergs).

I’m sure the lag would at times get pretty bad, but at least then we’d be engaging foes that actually move and attack frequently enough to pose a threat.

Pick one:
1) They’re too lazy to type “thief’s”.
2) They’re too ignorant to type “thieves”
3) They’re too immature to care that “their”, “they’re”, and “there” all mean something different.

Does this mean I’m not going to be able to play a tengu thief any time soon? /sad

You can’t go anywhere in this game without tripping over four dozen greatsword-wielding warriors and guardians. They’re by far the two most popular classes.

So, we’ve all capped our crafting disciplines. We’ve flooded the market with finished goods. We’ve made those supplying raw materials a fair bit of coin. We’ve discovered every recipe there is to discover. We’ve made ourselves more consumables than we’ll ever need. We’ve done just about everything we can possibly do at a crafting station. That leaves one question…where do we go from here?

Scenario 1
ArenaNet can keep the cap of 400 in place and just add more recipes. This could give more options to players leveling alts. And it could give sideways progression for players already donning exotic armor. But with more and more ascended items coming into play, would anyone really even care? This could work with cooking if fishing and corresponding seafood recipes are added, but I’m not sure about anything else.

Scenario 2
ArenaNet could keep the cap of 400 in place and add Legendary cosmetic skins only available through crafting. But with so many people sitting on capped crafting disciplines, this would be old news after about a day unless the required materials are made to be very difficult to obtain. And difficult to obtain crafting materials will no doubt lead to anti-grind complaints.

Scenario 3
ArenaNet could raise the cap beyond 400 and add new tiers of crafting materials and equipment. But what would this mean for materials like orichilium and ancient lumber? And it also means almost all existing equipment for which people have invested time and money becomes more or less obsolete in the blink of an eye.

Scenario 4
ArenaNet could implement some kind of crafting specialization system. This system would reward players for choosing to specialize in one (or a few) crafting discipline. This would (theorhetically) reduce supply while increasing demand for high-end equipment. But I’m not sure how, or even if, such a system could be implemented without punishing players who have invested a great deal of time and/or money capping more than one crafting disciplines?

Scenario 5
ArenaNet could implement entirely new crafting disciplines. We’ve already got everything (weapons, armor, trinkets, and consumables) covered, so outside of furniture for player and guild housing, I don’t know what they could add without doing so for the sake of doing so.

So what direction do you guys think crafting will take going forward? Which of the above scenarios sound most plausible? Or did I miss an obvious one?

Lightsbane.9012:

3.) wvw benefits your dungeon runs, do you not agree that helping us get the buffs you benefit from is the right thing to do?

Warning: Bad Analogy Incoming…

My local police department benefits me too, but that doesn’t quit my job and enroll in police academy.

For open-world PvE, is a full-blown Retaliation build at all effective? Or does the slow attack speed of most mobs pretty well relegate such a build to “meh”? If anyone cares to share their experiences with such a build, I’d be happy to listen. Thanks.