Guild Wars 2

There’s a considerable difference between memorizing where to stand, and learning the telegraphs and tricks of a fight.

You know why people consider Demon/Dark Souls not only difficult, but enjoyable too? Because you could learn be observation, and your survival relied heavily on reaction. And regardless of how difficult some fights and parts were- when you do get through it, it can look entirely different from when your friend gets through it.

That’s not what GW2 is doing for difficulty- it’s very much ‘do this, stand here, go here, rinse and repeat’. In Dark Souls, if I want to go through NG++ with a int caster, or a faith caster, or an archer, or a sword and board, or a 2hder- a burst dpser, a tough character, a buffer- I can not only do that, but I will be able to find different ways for each one to shine.

Compare to the Gauntlet. Yes, we’ve had people say you can do it on every class, with every spec, with any item combination. Yet- youtube vids, every single vid is of; single target, high dps build classes. Why? Because the Gauntlet vastly favoured single target burst- survival, support, even balanced class/builds were all at a significant disadvantage for a significant majority of the fights, since there’s no room for balance/support/survival/aoe classes when everything is single enemies and the majority of the danger is in OHKOs. (even the fight with multiple mobs, the four pirates- they restore health, so AoE don’t even get that one)

I love difficulty, Dark Souls is one of my favourite games, and going through NG++, etc… with low SL builds is a great deal of fun for me. GW2 however forces you to play a certain way to get through the top content, to a degree that even WoW with its FOM builds didn’t. And it’s not just the difficulty; it’s how pigeon holed it has become, and how they’ve made it considerably more profitable to be a single role in this game.

Bringing up old Tomb Raider difficulty being in the bad camera angles, controls and being unable to see what’s next… why not just point out how games like Silver Surfer were insanely hard because they filled your screen with deadly junk? Why don’t we try to get unresponsive jumping controls, because in the old days poor controls and responsiveness made a lot of games way more challenging.

At least SAB won’t have class disparity- but, you say ‘outsmart the developer’. Reality is- you’re going to be getting through SAB on the exact path in the exact way the developer intended. Outsmart indeed.

The Gauntlet though proved that the only way Anet can make things challenging is; trying to hide deadly red circles, making poor telegraphs which are blocked by the excessive animations of your attacks, purposefully screwing with your camera to make it harder for you to see things that will kill you, and filling the area with OHKOs, plus making specific class/build/gear almost needed to hit the enrage timer.

When they can make something difficult without having to attempt to hide the telegraphs- which is one of the biggest issues- I might have a bit more respect, because trying to hide the information we need to react accordingly is a bullkitten way to increase difficulty.

And that’s why I’m expecting SAB trib to be nothing more than invisible traps and one hit kills without warning.

Well, they had to screw someone over with the patch who spent lots of time and money on something, or it wouldn’t be Anet.

If you had 100s of gold to waste on completion back then, it probably won’t be hard to make enough gold to fill it up again. This change benefits 99% of players- you can’t place a group of super elite, super wealthy OCDers above them.

And as you’ve all said- it cost you hundreds of gold, but clearly that’s no issue if you have enough cash to be a completionist (it’d have cost you tens of thousands after all to collect all the legendaries). Frankly- you could get all these discoveries again in what it’ll cost to discover one or two ascendeds.

/first world problems

How long should we have empathy and be forgiving exactly?

This isn’t a new company, and this game’s not only a year old- but openly bragging about how amazing their game is.

Yet- we’re seeing overly lazy design, heavy grind based content, lack of interesting story- and even the difficulty is lazy. Yes, gauntlet was hard- but what was the answer to every fight? Stack up dps gear- why? Because every fight relied entirely on OHKO mechanics, burst damage to beat the timer, and single target. You’re telling me you can’t think of any way to make a challenging encounter other than total reliance on being killed instantly?

Nevermind poor camera angles and a floor choice that makes it more difficult than it should be to see red circles, plus poor telegraphs that are often covered over by the excessively explosive effects of your attacks.

All in all- this isn’t the same company that gave us GW1. This is a company that has realized that simple, repetitive tasks are both cost effective to produce, and keep people chugging at the slot machine longer. In all fairness, they are a company, and that’s the logical path to take.

Unfortunately for us- that means we won’t be seeing anything that doesn’t fit that criteria anymore.

This game’s becoming a korean grindfest. First we get mindless endless monster killing to get loot, then we get fights which are purely artificial difficulty based and revolve entirely around one hit kills.

What’s next, trying to get us to speak the language by subtly putting it into common items in the ga- wait a second.

Knowing Anet, the challenge will be in invisible things that instant kill you. I’ll be very surprised if the challenge they put in is anything other than one shot kills and memorization.

So when do we get raiding? I mean, Anet’s lied about everything else they promised, would make sense that making this a raid game is the next step.

ITT- people saying that the set sucks… and that’s why it shouldn’t be buffed at all.

In other news, berserkers gets a big stat boost.

You might make likely half a gold for an hour’s invasion from vendoring stuff- anything you put on the AH doesn’t add to inflation (actually, technically it would reduce it), and these bags add more items than they do gold.

Inflation is caused by a pure gold influx- such as Deadeye farming, which is now fixed. If there was going to be massive inflation, it would have happened week one of the gauntlet, when people were making half a gold a MINUTE, not an hour.

They’ve got people by the balls with their constant ‘limited time’ grindfests- why on earth would they risk ruining their cash cow by putting a considerable amount of time, money and effort into an expansion that will likely be less profitable than mindless loot pinata content and the sense of urgency they’ve instilled in farming fast before they nerf it (see Deadeye).

No, we’ll never see an expansion, not until they reach a time where people say ‘hey, zerging and grinding’s boring, we want something new!‘. Unfortunately- people will have to say it with their wallets, and that’s not happening.

If zerging wasn’t the game’s intent, this might be a legit request. However, as the game revolves entirely around zerging and grinding mobs for loot- the OP’s request is obviously something nobody wants.

Maybe learn to touch type?

I can’t think of a single thing in Orr that requires you to be so careful you can’t even send off a tell or two.

So at the moment, I notice for 100 gems I can get 3g66s72c, or for 5g11s0c I can get 100gems.

I have to admit- they must be making a killing and a half on what they’re taxing.

That said- the prices don’t seem all that different from the past few months.

Let’s see.

-Poorly telegraphed one shot attacks- check
-Adds that don’t despawn if you wipe forcing you to redo the dungeon- check
-A sea of adds up at all times which endlessly spawn no matter what you do- check
-Enough direct and condition damage to kill your party thrice over flying around constantly- check
-Highly unintuitive fight- check
-Massive ramp up in the difficulty of the fight that makes every single guide and video up completely useless since they don’t show how the fight actually looks- check
-A mechanic, reflection, which should logically deflect the spider’s ranged attacks being completely ineffective- check

And all of this makes for a fight that simply is poorly designed. Particularly the last note- why is there fourty spiders using ranged attacks on me, if my ability meant only to reflect ranged attacks does not do so?

Overall- extremely unintuitive fight, buggy, and broken if you wipe on it. Game’s been out for a year, how long are you fanbois going to defend broken content? Guess they’re too busy with living story to devote a team to bug fixes.

If it was ‘intended’ for us to finish the event as people seem to think, why would Anet put in unrelated champ packs of aethers and moltens?

Obviously because what’s really intended is for us to choose between Scarlet, and gold.

Oh, and gold wins again? Surprise surprise. Aren’t you glad though we voted in Ellen Kiel? I’ve been portal hopping like a mofo.

lol, the game is nothing but farming- Anet has pulled the wool over your eyes good, and all they had to do was promise no stat bonuses from gear (which of course is slowly becoming a lie too with ascended gear). This game is one of the grindiest mmos out there, it’s why almost the entire playerbase is caught up in farming whatever is the new gold maker at the time, and ignoring everything else.

ITT, people complain about something everyone’s been asking for all year, when they have the option to disable it.

Oh internet, never change.

It’s clearly not well thought out- when every fight has the same strategy- pick up a warrior, get full zerkers, and burst away.

Anet, if you’re really going to go this path of making utility, healing, bunkers, balanced specs, etc… being utterly useless and making burst builds the suggested way to deal with all content- maybe it’s time to take away everything else and admit you never intended for us to ‘play our way’.

I’m sure on the eve of several highly anticipated mmos coming out, taking the route of alienating most of your playerbase by not only making the living story content- which people DO expect to be able to reasonably do- nearly impossible AS WELL as being very costly and time consuming is going to reward Anet in the end.

How is being able to load up on gambits, fight a t3 boss, and kill him in 10 seconds over and over again not considered ‘exploit’ level? I counted a guardian I was watching, and that’s literally how long it was taking him- it probably took longer for him to walk over to the ringmaster and get back in a fight than it did to kill the boss, and it was clearly effortless work because his strategy was simply charging the boss and swinging for a few seconds- and you could see thiefs/warriors do the same.

Point is- people with certain classes are farming gold at easily ten times the speed anyone else can, and without needing to do anything remotely challenging.

But- surely Anet planned that.

They’ve given up on the unique game- and decided it’s time to become WoW and just have nothing but boring but lucrative grinds for everything.

My prediction- next we’ll have lengthy dungeon grinding in order to get vastly superior gear to everyone else, so we can kiss the last thing that was different- the lack of gear advantage- goodbye too.

-Camera confined to small room making controlling the camera part of the difficulty- sorry, but I don’t want ‘being able to see what I want to see’ to be part of what I have to manage, and as this issue has come up multiple times before, this is just proof of the disgusting lack of attention Anet is giving feedback in this game

-a floor that hides many of the effect circles- this is a huge issue when the circles are coming fast, and all OHKO you- we get it, you can’t think of any way to make a fight hard other than ‘lol let’s throw in a bunch of instant kill abilities’, that’s fine, nobody expects creativity from you by now- but at the least, don’t make seeing the visual cues part of the problem. How could you not know that floor was going to make this a big issue?

-speaking of visual cues- if you’re going to have OHKOs, they need to be well telegraphed- most of the telegraphing is kitten poor in the Gauntlet, or, it’s so minor, you can’t see it over the effects of the spells you’re casting. Unfortunately, even missing it by a little bit can mean death. Or, telegraphs that often don’t show at all- mines that don’t show up, yet still kill you, or a sniper shot that you sometimes get the full animation for it, sometimes it’s near instant, and sometimes he shoots you before he’s even appeared from his teleport.

When you base the difficulty widely around making things hard to see- which is the case with the poor floor choice, the camera, and the lack of telegraphing- yes, you make it difficult, naturally it’s going to be difficult when you’re being one shot by something you can’t see. But that’s the kind of difficulty that is FRUSTRATING, not enjoyable to overcome.

When I die in DaS, I can always look back and say ‘well, here’s where I messed up’ because it’s generally due to getting kitteny, parrying a bit too early/late, having bad positioning, etc… and when I get past something, it’s satisfying.

When I die because of random BS or due to poor visual choices- it’s just frustrating, and when I do get past a boss after many tries; yes, I’m relieved, but it really feels like nothing more than luck. And it’s even less satisfying to then watch someone playing one of Anet’s ‘chosen classes’ do the same boss in ten seconds without having to try.

Most of the difficulty is the camera angles and the deliberate use of the floor to make red circles harder to see than they normally are- and the thing is, these are things that people have complained about hundreds of times over the past year, so obviously they either are intentionally giving us kittenty camera angles because they think that’s a legitimate way to increase difficulty, or they’ve been ignoring everything we’ve said.

Take your pick.

This event pretty much proves everything Anet said when they made the game has been a lie.

Nothing but grinding, gross imbalance allowing some classes to get a free pass while for others it’s extremely difficult- and even then, needing a very specific comp/gear/playstyle in order to even have a slight chance.

This event has gone away from ‘play as you want to’ as far as it can. That several classes in their testing group didn’t even manage to finish several of these bosses told them nothing should be enough to know where this game’s headed.

There’s always gotta be that one person who tries to turn it into a weird racial thing.

… trying to kill a boss, only to watch someone of a certain other class fight that same boss, and without needing to do anything fancy beyond simply wailing away and teleporting to him- kill him in fifteen seconds effortlessly.

I don’t mind difficult- but why is it so challenging to fight these bosses on some characters, while some classes are able to breeze through without even trying? Every single fight caters to single target glass canon- there’s no place for bunkers, healing, or aoe when every fight is one target at a time, and the gimmick is always OHKOs. Even the pirates, the one fight where it looked like aoe might help- nope, they restore health when one dies.

Again- difficulty isn’t a bad thing. But as is, you have some classes struggling to merely beat bosses, much less get achievements, while others are filling up gambits and managing to crush effortlessly third tier bosses. If anything- this event has proven beyond any doubt how grossly unbalanced this game is.

“Unfortunately, after putting millions of gold worth of destroyer lodestones, exotics, rares you’ve all been looting- not to mention, hundreds of millions spent on making a dangerdome full of watchknights you people have spent the last two weeks destroying… Divinity’s Reach is in debt, and will be sold to Gnashblade. Thank you for your time, and sorry that the renovated part of the city now stinks of the mound of corpses piled up beneath Liadri’s cage.”

“If you aren’t a warrior in zerkers, need not apply”

The only problem is, Anet marketted this game telling us we could play how we wanted to- and then ended up making a game with harsher expectations on how you gear up/spec/class than even WoW.

Queen’s Gauntlet is just another example- clearly aimed at heavy dps specs and nobody else- why else would it be nothing but OHKO (eliminating any chance for someone focused on healing or survival to have a chance) and even putting it on a short enrage timer.

There’s nothing about this game that is play as you want at all.

Dark Souls, it also feels more satisfying when you kill a hard boss because it feels like it was all you.

This- when I do manage to get by a gauntlet fight, it feels like dumb luck and nothing more.

Any fight, scratch that- entire living world event- which is ‘possible’ to do, but extremely difficult to do… unless you’re a zerker is stupid as all kitten and there’s really no way to deny that.

This is a world event- that nearly everyone is complaining about the difficulty about it EXCEPT for one class should say something- and things like the camera and high volume effecting latency are no brainers- these aren’t ‘well Anet are a bunch of newbies’ no, they’ve years of experience, and these sorts of complaints have come up before.

People are continually trying to bring up Dark Souls when they compare it with this difficulty- but there’s an extremely big difference. When I die in Dark Souls, it’s because of something I didn’t do/did; the enemies clearly show you what they’re doing, and it is always in your hands how to respond- there aren’t a plethora of special effects firing off everywhere and cluttering the screen, blocking out the very poorly designed OHKO tells.

Add to that enrage timer instant kills- enrage timers, and OHKOs should be used as an enemy mechanic for a specific reason; that they are just dispersed throughout this is pathetic and lazy planning. And, it even further solidifies that this event is made specifically for zerkers.

They wanted to make an event that was meant for only warriors to enjoy- they succeeded. Great listening to all my warrior friends brag about how they breezed through the event and can’t understand why anyone else would have any difficulty.

If anyone would have cheated it would have been Evon, let’s face it.

Amazing how much people hate democracy when it doesn’t go their way.

Kiel- she doesn’t care about the 48% who didn’t vote for her.

Evon lost the actual election, even though he won more of the popular vote.

Guess he’ll have to go on to make a documentary about how the flame legion’s gross fossil fuel consumption is going to put Orr under the water and cause the Shiverpeaks to melt.

Is it too early to start talking about next year’s election?

It’s like watching a real election- the same complaints, the same rage when you lose.

Congrats Anet- I think you got people to care more about these candidates than they did about the real world election they probably didn’t vote for.

I hear Kiel isn’t even a human, I hear she’s a norn- and her parents are sons of svanir at that. Until I see the birth certificate, I advise everyone against voting for this socialist dragon worshipper.

#Evon4PrezDealWithIt

If levelling is going to be so pointless in the end, why even have it? And 80 levels of it too, way more than most mmos.

If you’re going to have the decrease- should have an increase when you go into higher level areas too.

The problem with level scaling is it actually makes the game MORE grindy, not less. There is never a point where I feel any stronger/weaker in the game after level 15ish- from then on it’s just the same thing, everywhere, over and over and over.

In another mmo, I could break up my of level grinding by going back and doing some low level quests I missed and simply destroying them- but, due to scaling, I go back to an old zone and it is going to be monotonous and slow because they have the same health as what I was killing at level.

It’s the lack of variety that makes this game feel so grindy- I feel like I’m doing the exact same quests I did at level 10 at level 50 at level 70 even if I am in of level zones- and while the blandness wouldn’t be entirely fixed by no scaling, at least I’d have the option when doing map completion in particular to breeze through easy part- it feels downright stupid that I’m off fighting huge monsters and dragons- only to go fight little woodland creatures that for some reason are just as powerful.

I don’t mind there being something like this for pvp- it keeps pvp competitive. I don’t mind there being no huge gear reliance- but there’s really no feeling at any point in the level grind that you’re getting stronger or more experienced than you were back when you first picked up a sword and figured out which end you stick into the enemy, and as a result it feels like you’re doing the exact same thing all game- until you hit Orr and do the exact same thing every day there.

Anet- you can’t simply remove gear/rewards from the game, but keep every single other aspect of grindiness in your game and call it a game with no grind- no, GW2 isn’t a game with no grind, it’s a game with no REWARDS for that grind, but it is still as grindy feeling as anything else.

It’s just a grind that you never feel lessen because you never, ever, outlevel/gear what you just spent that last two weeks doing.

Downed state is one of the worst decisions for an mmo I’ve ever seen. Oh sure, it works in Borderlands, so what. As the OP said- everything around downed state is tedious, and honestly this mechanic alone ruins pvp entirely. That dungeons are built around it and GY zerging means this terrible mechanic has ruined pvp and pve.

However- as people have said, it’s too late. The game is literally built around it, removing it would be like removing gear from WoW or hacks from Counterstrike.

“Every class is well balanced and the game is doing great because if you disagree you are a whiner”

I agree OP, people who say bad things about a game are always wrong. Heck, SWTOR saw almost all the exact same threads in the months after it released, and look at how amazing it is doing now because rather than fixing problems it decided to go with the people saying “there’s nothing wrong with this game, lalalalala”.

It’s pretty impressive how the two most anticipated mmos of the year end up with the exact same forum threads, and end up going rapidly in the exact same direction.

Too bad GW2 can’t go double f2p to save the game.

There’s a reason why every mmo company out there makes events last several days when limited- so that people who don’t happen to have that 2 hour window off work can still get to enjoy it.

Good job spending all that time making events that are not only one time only, but so limited most people won’t even get that one chance due simple to real life constraints. I guess casuals and people with actual lives are at the bottom of Anet’s ‘want to retain subs’ list.

This game doesn’t encourage socialization- it encourages mindless zerg. You briefly group up with people to take out an event boss, then scatter to the four winds. The biggest thing here is the lack of trinity and ability to target allies.

In other games, even in something like a Rift or PQ- you have people step up to tank, and people step up to heal- you recognize when someone does something good and both interact in combat and perhaps out of it with compliments and getting to know someone.

This game- I don’t remember a single person on my server because there’s zero interaction. The combat makes you think only of yourself, so that’s what people are encouraged to do. For a game with so much grouping in it- its design is so backwards when it comes to forming relationships.

We’re playing a game- the first thing you notice in a game is how others play. This game removes that- you don’t know how people tank or heal or even the one thing that actually happens- dps, because there’s no indicator, and most abilities don’t even indicate who used them anyway.

You end up with a world where ‘server x invader’ may as well be used for everyone, not just enemies- because that’s what everyone looks like. A big old blah.

Ya, this game has fun endgame content. Who needs challenging dungeons tuned for teamwork when you can zerg Orr mobs endlessly.

This game has the most boring endgame imaginable- it’s a typical Korean mmo, with the same old dull philosophy that’s always been used.

Anet- people don’t hate the GEAR of other mmos, they hate the GRIND you needed to do for gear. By keeping everything awful about grinding and making it even worse, while removing almost all that’s fun about new gear- you kept the worst parts and got rid of the good parts.

To add- if their motto truly was ‘play as you want’, they would have several tasks to complete for the monthly- 8-10 ranging from events, kills, salvaging, crafting, wvw, spvp to dungeons. Whichever 4-6 you complete first get you the monthly. You still have to do several tasks to get it- but you can skip the ones you hate most for those that perhaps loathe wvw or spvp or dungeons or crafting, etc….

It’s simple. They know most people loathe dungeons, but, they spent a lot of time making them. If people won’t do dungeons because they want to- the next step is to make it necessary to do them.

Every change this game looks less like a second GW and more like a second WoW.

This isn’t new to mmos- this is pretty common. Rather than spending the time on trying to make dungeons enjoyable so people want to do them; make them part of a valuable achievement so people have to do them.

Not only is it the best downed state, but it’s easier to put an ele into downed state than any other class. Elementalists are now speccing downed state- you see them running into 1k blades laughing just so they can use this OP junk.

Anet, either remove mist form, or make it harder for us to down ele so they can’t use it so much. Seriously, this game.

Support skills are on high CDs versus low CD debuffs that stack atrociously against you and are often not telegraphed. Abilities that hit you before the red circle even appears. Needlessly high unavoidable damage in a game without healing.

Response- pick the right specs. Too bad you can’t switch specs on the fly, or even know what the right specs are. Bye bye to play it your way. To top it off- everything has absurd amounts of health. Chipping away at health was fun at what period of time in gaming history?

It’s not a challenge, it’s a slog- I love a challenge, some of my favourite dungeons I’ve died dozens of times on, and honestly GW2 dungeons are probably killing me less than normal- the problem is most of my time is spent cycling attacks on enemies that don’t die. It’s not hard- it’s boring and one dimensional gameplay.

Hate to say it- but it feels like they threw in downed and dodge- said ‘this is as good as creating a tanking/healing mechanic’, then put in a streamlined dps system where there’s pretty much nothing unique.

Damage, dodge, heal- debuff if the mobs aren’t immune- every class plays almost the exact same way.

This is what a game looks like without the trinity it seems.

Yes, it was released over two months ago- a pvp game that was released with one pvp style map, and has a tourney system that doesn’t promote competition. People were saying that it ‘was only two months’ for TOR too, a PVE game where pvp was an add on yet still had more map styles. The only advantage this game has is the lack of gear in pvp- what happens though when another AAA mmo smartens up and does the same, but with real pvp brackets and a variety of pvp instances?

GW2 creates a massive pve map despite being hailed as a pvp game- and makes ONE pvp instance game style despite that type of play being the most famous thing about GW1… oh, and it is not even the same pvp map style GW1 had!!

If Anet made Halo 4 it’d release without deathmatch and capture the flag.

The problem isn’t the number of skills- it’s the ineffectiveness of switching it up in pve. In pvp yes, the system works perfectly and every skill counts. In pve though they decided to make every skill viable not by making them powerful and unique like GW1 did- but by making them streamlined or less useful. GW2 in pve is simply put excessively bland- you’re a nobody doing nobody tasks with meh abilities you gain most of by level 5 in an 80 level game- and the ones you don’t are epic only in CD. Other than a few ‘must have’ or ‘must never take’ abilities (or the bajillion bugged necro abilities) in pve you can switch out almost anything and see almost no change in how you play the game.

Also- you don’t have 5 weapon abilities on your bar, you have 4 and an auto attack.