Guild Wars 2

I have to agree. Its pretty evident that in the last couple of days the influx of inexperienced players in sPvP has reached a level where its almost impossible to have a reasonably good match. Its especially frustrating in ranked matches.

There really should be some kind of barrier which prevents that like a rank 10+ requirement to enter ranked or something similar. To be honest I miss the old tournament ticket system where you actually had to earn the right to enter ranked arenas

Bellamy.9860:

Hotjoin and custom arenas are no learning place, all people learn in there is how to zerg. Now you want to have a barrier of entry so people have to zerg longer?

That is only correct to an extent. You still learn some of the very important basics like special map features (orbs, buffs etc.) Not to mention that the removal of ANet’s custom 8vs8 arenas actually almost completely removes zerging as an option if you want to win.

There is something really odd going on with sPvP. I got frozen on Skyhammer multiple times, a couple of times on gun gate and two or three times even in mid air on jumping platforms. People in lobby also report a ton of disconnects and other bugs that are related to queuing etc.

Pawstruck.9708:

Warriors are also quite strong in PVP (and have been since launch), so I’m not sure I believe any of the sky-is-falling-we’re-unplayable type comments.

That’s absolutely not true. Until the introduction of Cleansing Ire warriors had a bulls eye painted on their back with a note saying “Easy kill”. It was incredibly easy to kill them with conditions, especially blinds, because they were not able to cleanse them. The whole situation felt almost identical to GW1 where warriors were considered inferior for any hard mode content, especially stuff as DoA etc.

The situation greatly changed after Cleansing Ire and a couple of following patches making warriors a really good choice for both PvE and sPvP. Longbow became standard but not because of its damage, rather because of condition removal, the only thing that warriors really lacked before that. Then came everything that nobody actually asked. Healing signet buffs etc. suddenly became the reason why every time a warrior enters hot-join or ranked he has to be marked as “playing the easy class”, “meta noob” etc.

I’ve said it multiple times before I’ll repeat it again – PvP and PvE need to get separate skill sets. It is impossible to balance all the “OP” classes with one skill set which is supposed to unite so many different game modes. GW1 had separate PvP/PvE skill sets. What was so bad about it that GW2 simply refuses to use them again?

Solstice.1097:

what you really need to worry about are warriors that have double endure pain, greatsword and sword, berserker stance, and stability. you cannot stop them from getting to point and they can get back to orb before you pick it up – but if you make them use CD’s running orb then they are vulnerable to kill when they get back to it.

As someone who mains a warrior I can say with great confidence that even with all my stances (Endure pain, Berserker’s stance etc.) I would never be able to solo an orb with four people attacking me. Not against four people.

Simple question – how do you prevent a tank guardian from taking the orb and single-handedly escorting it to a cap point on Spirit watch? I just had a match in which four of us were trying to KB, condition and DPS him but he was still able to carry the orb by himself all the way to Wolf!? Multiple times! Even worse, there was no way to interrupt him while he was taking the orb because of the protective bubble which would protect him long enough to take the orb. Once he did that we could only watch him escort the orb to a cap point.

This is not the first time I witnessed something like that. Has sPvP become a game mode which favors profession specific maps where the outcome of the match is solely based on RNG? I don’t mind being outmatched, its natural for the better team to win. But, seeing stuff like inability to kill a single person with four teammates is really really depressing and calls for much frustration.

P.S. It is always a ranked solo match, not hot-join, where this happens.

Liewec.2896:

of all my characters the one i seem to find best when facing decap is my full glass axe warrior,
you can deal colossal damage with reckless dodge+whirling axe (you can dodge while channelling it) and follow it up with an eviscerate.

in short the only way to beat a decap is to bury them in damage.

You won’t bury anything if you can’t hit it because a proper decap engi will have access to so many cripples, blocks, pulls and knockbacks that you won’t even get the chance to get in range with your axe.

My way of dealing with decap engis – mace/sword + longbow on a condi warrior build. I keep spamming with conditions (mainly longbow) and when his health reaches 30-40% (ideally 30%) I use offhand #4 on sword for Torment because whatever conditions he takes before AR kicks in they will stay on him (AR only insta-removes new conditions once health reaches 25%). Just don’t use the chained attack (Rip) on him because it will stop Torment build-up. It usually is enough to bring him down to 10-15% after which I either switch to ranged longbow or if in melee range just Skullcrack him (3s of stun on full adrenaline). Yes it can be a pretty cheap combination against other professions but hey… So is a decap engi

However, this doesn’t always work because so many things can go wrong against a decap engi, especially on Skyhammer. If he proves to be to problematic then I have to agree that its perhaps best to simply avoid him because there are other ways to make points.

In my opinion hard mode would be extremely easy to implement to current game. All that would be required is a switch that would allow players to individually select which mode they want to play (selection should be possible at all times).

Selecting hard mode would immediately impose higher multipliers for received damage, reduced or perhaps completely removed access to certain boons (i.e. folks with hard mode would receive no regeneration or only half of the regular duration etc.) and potentially some other restrictions which would make open world content more challenging.

On the other side playing in hard mode would increase the chance of getting rares (just like in the original game) and more valuable stuff. This could be perhaps achieved by adding 50% to magic find stat every time a player chooses hard mode.

The only problem I see with implementing hard mode is the current zerging mentality that would promote zerg even more after the potential introduction of hard mode. This means that in order to even think about introducing hard mode there needs to be something done about zerging and that’s another topic.

The only problem with warriors is when there is more than one attacking you. In that case its usually impossible to counter unless you have a ton of stun breakers like stances. However in 1 vs 1 fights its extremely easy to avoid hammer stuns because Earthshaker is a very slow attack. Once you see a warrior switch to hammer its safe to assume he/she gathered enough adrenaline to use Earthshaker so you should do whatever it takes to either cripple him or get out of his range.

Basically the most important rule against hammer warriors is keep your distance, if required run, because once he is out of his bursts you can pluck him alive, feather by feather.

1) Ability to manually select districts (Megaserver is still automated).
2) Hard/normal mode selection (ability for players in open-world to select how much damage they receive, hard mode would give a higher chance for rares).
3) Bringing back unique weapons (“greens”) which have a chance to drop only from specific bosses/events.
4) Return of mesmer hex mechanic
5) Return of mandatory full cooldowns on failed skill usage
6) Return of channeled pet charming mechanics from the original.
7) Return of support roles to necromancers especially wellomancers.
8) Separate skill sets for PvP and PvE.
9) Return of objective based PvP (similar to Fort Aspenwood, HA etc.)
10) I miss dwarfs.
11) Guild capes.
12) Capturing elite skills from bosses.

I am not sure that would be possible since Polymock is highly dependent on the core game mechanics of GW1.

Its obvious from the description of the Megaserver technology that its a revised district system from the original game, GW1.

However, what I am curious about is if there is going to be an option to manually select in which “instance” of the Megaserver we are going to be or is the whole system completely automated?

XApocalypse.8739:

I am so sick of whiners all you guys do is whine.

Easy there, you just caused a stack overflow by entering a recursion!

The interesting part is they always PM me, often in the middle of a sPvP ranked match where I find myself checking player names just to be sure someone from the opponent team is not trolling me. But no, its just some random “abcdefg” sending PMs.

Welcome to the club. A couple of minutes ago I had a solo queue match against two engineers and a guardian (the rest of the team is not important). One of the engineers was camping on A, the other engineer and guardian were literally kitten us on the gun platform because if engi wasn’t able to throw us of the platform guardian made sure of that. The rest of the enemy team was simply camping on B. And we weren’t even that badly coordinated. There is simply no way to win a match in that situation on Skyhammer.

BTW, I don’t think that AR is the sole reason for engis being OP on Skyhammer. Take a look at Magnet. Its so easy to abuse it on Skyhammer and pull people down through platforms.

The more I read these topics the more I miss the GW1 skill system which had separate skills for PvP and PvE.

But in all honesty I approve the change. Its ridiculous how much engineers can be annoying and impossible to kill on Skyhammer, even with condi builds.

Dalanor.5387:

holodoc.5748:

Do you know how hard is it for warriors to repel kiters if they go full melee?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Melandru
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Lemongrass_Poultry_Soup

Nope.

Now bring that to sPvP where Lyssa actually matters, consumables can’t be used, Dogged March is absolutely useless and reduced condition duration on Melandru isn’t enough to counter ranged condition spam. PvE is fine, its sPvP where you’ll notice the difference.

nibblesalil.3561:

warriors are that buffed have that many things protecting them they shouldnt need to go ranged at all

And what should they do once they get kited by other ranged classes? Do you know how hard is it for warriors to repel kiters if they go full melee?

Simon.3794:

Engi is so much better then ranger, invis pull+immo and hes done.

That still doesn’t change the fact that rangers have access to such a powerful ranged KB every 15s which basically allows them to sit in a safe sport (i.e. on the platforms above cap points on Skyhammer) and score a guaranteed kill the moment you run out of stability (the shot is even more powerful because of a very small range between platforms and cap point).

When I play as ranger, even on ranked, all I have to do is put down some traps on the cap point, go up on the platforms and wait for the guy decapping to run out of his stability (if he even has some). Then I use PBS… Owned. Its such a poor way of getting kills. Its even worse that outside trolling with spirits and occasional smart usage of traps rangers are imho such a badly designed class for sPvP. The only thing that makes them viable is Barrage and the “oh i am so skilled” PBS.

Yuogtar.4892:

You can’t choose map at ranked solo arena. so it is imposible to abuse Skyhammer. It is totally random. it can be any map. if you are new in pvp. if you can’t counter that situation like you have wroten – it is your problem. You are low not other is OP. If you are noob you will always lose. Your post seems like you are asking good player start play worse against you. You ask another player start afk at arena if they see you at enemy team?
L2P. Learn to counter.

No offense but I won’t even bother commenting on your post since the only other post you’ve made on these forums is about defending decap engineers.

Are there going to be any changes to Skyhammer and ranked solo arenas? Its ridiculous how much KB is abused on that map and while, lets say, engineers do have to expose themselves by actually being in the fight rangers can sit back in their safe spot, spam auto-attack while sending their whole zoo at you and just wait for their “Point Blank Shot” to go off cooldown. You can bring all the stability you want but when you have three rangers on the enemy team with access to a very powerful KB every 15s it quickly becomes impossible to counter that much KB.

How exactly would the sPvP community suffer from sending “I don’t really care” leavers to an extended vacation?

As for DCs I really do feel sorry for them (especially since I have a friend which experiences that problem) but it still doesn’t change the fact that your team will suffer heavily because of you if you DC. My take on the problem is that if you experience frequent DCs the only fair solution to you and all the other players would be to avoid ranked matches until the problems are resolved.

And yes AFK is also a major problem for sPvP which is imho heavily tied to sPvP dailies (which in my opinion should be completely removed from sPvP or changed so that people can’t abuse them).

Please consider increasing the penalty for leaving ranked matches to seven days instead of only three. Today I lost eight out of ten ranked matches because every single one of them had at least one or two leavers in my team. I don’t want to be gank material just because someone in my team decided to rage quit. Ranked matches should be fair, at least in numbers, at all cost.

No offense to whoever came up with this idea but in my honest opinion its very bad and not very thoroughly thought through. The winners should not be awarded with general stuff like legendary weapons or precursors but uniquely designed weapons which will be obtainable only through this tournament. What unique recognition does a legendary weapon have when every fifth person encountered on more populated servers already has a legendary. Make the winners distinguishable by awarding them with weapons which are not already in the game – even if its a Wintersday wooden sword skin glowing with a unique color indicating which place the player won. Or even better a special finisher which will display a distinctive animation for every place won (its not like you don’t already have a ton of finishers in the gem shop). Make the people want to participate just for the sole purpose of making them distinguishable from the crowd.

As for the rest of the prize, give them a fair amount of gold or gems with which people can actually choose what they want to buy. I.e. 1000g for every player that won the first place, 800g for second etc.

Most of the eles I’ve encountered in sPvP are simply to nervous or inpatient to time their skills well. I can almost instantly tell when an ele is going to chain all of his offensive skills and try to “burst” me down. With Endure Pain, stability and some decent offhand blocking (shield, sword) all I need to do is block during that phase and reduce him to dust when he is finished.

However, I’ve also encountered extremely skilled eles which were a real challenge even for my warrior condi builds.

Stop moving players that contribute the most to the losing team!

I don’t care about your match making system, it sucks and it has been proven to be completely broken on numerous times. Do you know how annoying it is to be moved five times in a day to the losing team after you insured the victory for your current team?

Honestly people I don’t have a clue how anybody could come up with such a lousy idea but it seems whatever you did to sPvP until now is driven towards kittening people off.

And no, don’t tell me to use solo and team arenas because I don’t want to wait 20 minutes to half an hour just to have a quick sPvP game.

Unlike magic find stuff which mostly required people to invest their gold in order to get it I completely fail to understand why should ANet compensate players for something that was given away for free as a bonus o.O

Currently if players want to quickly select a skill for their healing/utility/elite slot they have to left click on the small area with an arrow above them which often results in mistakenly activating a skill instead of opening a skill selection menu. Even worse the slot goes on cooldown which has to wear off before trying to make a skill selection again.

What I would like to propose is to simply use right click while hovering above the slot to open the skill selection menu. The arrow indicator above the slots can still be used to indicate if skill selection is allowed/possible for that slot (the player is out of combat etc.)

Draknar.5748:

It’s not a bad argument, it’s a good argument, because it means that multiple companies, over years of doing MMOs, have realized this is the best option to prevent people from exploiting big bosses by kiting them WAY too far from their spawn points, possibly into towns, or to to get them bugged into a weird spot.

No it just means that nobody probably bothered to come up with a better solution which won’t involve cheating on players. As a matter of fact a “better” solution is already part of the game, its just not applied to champions. In WvWvW sentry veterans have a clearly visible healing skill which they will use once their health becomes low. So how do you solve the leash problem?

1) Once the champion leaves the designated “leash” area it will NOT receive a health reset which can’t be interrupted.
2) Instead, the champ will just return to it’s original spawn location…
3) …and if required use a healing skill which will restore A FIXED AMOUNT of health, followed by a cooldown, just as every other player does
4) The champ could also use the healing skill if required during combat, given that its not on cooldown

Now tell me please, how would such a system be worse from seeing a champ restore health from 1% to 100% in a matter of seconds simply because of a bad leash handling system?

Draknar.5748:

I’m curious how you figured 10 meters is the distance before it resets. Is there a metric for measuring distance I’m unaware of?

I used an approximation in meters because its a length unit native to me. If you understand inches (equivalent to units in GW2) then you will also understand meters (1m = 39.37 inches).

Draknar.5748:

This also means, that you can attack from anywhere inside that 1500 range circle with the the enemy spawn point as the center. If you cannot kill a champion with all of that space to move around, then you cannot kill that champion 1v1. With chill, cripple, immobilize, dodges, aegis, or whatever it is you have at your disposal, you should be able to kill a melee Champion within a 1500 diameter circle. If you cannot, then you simply don’t have the skill to.

According to your “1500 units” rule I should be able to prevent resetting if I stay within 40 meters. That’s almost the radius of the entire encampment. Yet the champ gets a reset after only 10-15 meters at most when it spawns on the exit platform of his cave, or whatever that thing is.

BTW, I use melee exclusively when fighting champs. And I fight them whenever I can because it helps me stay in shape with dodging, blocking etc. If you don’t solo champs then you can’t possibly get an idea how it feels to bring a champion to 1-2% health just to witness a complete reset which can’t even be interrupted. It’s horrible and it really, I mean really, kittenes me off. That’s why I am in favor of completely ditching the health reset and simply providing fairness to people that want a bit of challenge, not just “group event” zerging. Zergs and champ trains will either way trash the champ in a matter of seconds no matter which system is used.

Draknar.5748:

It honestly sounds like you find it too hard to solo champions and want it to be easier.

They are considered Group content for a reason..

Soloing group content is a challenge, not something that is impossible to do. I’ve beaten almost 90% of champs in the game alone and I don’t have a single complaint when I get defeated because of my mistakes or bad play. But I do get kittened off when the game decides to put the champ into god mod and show me the middle finger for the past ten minutes I’ve spent trying to kill the champ.

Draknar.5748:

Stop kiting them so far from their spawn point?

Every MMO I’ve ever played had monster reset if you pull too far. That’s par for the course.

How exactly is 10 meters from spawn point “too far”? Not to mention that the “other MMOs do it too” is a pretty bad argument to me.

Please remove the champ health reset. Its unfair and discouraging to people willing to test themselves against the hardest opponents in the game.

I don’t mind the loot, its after all a bunch of “blues and greens”. However what I do mind is fighting the champ and his mobs in Stonecrag Krall for ten whole minutes just to witness a complete health regeneration once the champ reached the pillar in the center of the encampment. He didn’t even leave it! If you can’t or don’t want to remove the reset at least add some kind of marker that indicates which zone must the champ stay in because resetting is highly inconsistent across the game.

And please don’t tell me that champs were not meant to be soloed. Your very own statement before the release of this game was that players will get a chance to choose how tough they want their content to be. Well here I am, I am a player and I want to fight champs but your game needs to cheat in order to convince me not to do it. The game already has enough content that clearly encourages mindless zerging. Leave something for us that like soloing stuff from time to time.

Gates of Kryta did her.

…it kept me wondering… “Where did I already see this giant robot chick boss from today’s Guild Wars 2 patch?” It had to be somewhere because I have a pretty good memory when it comes to remembering useless stuff.

Then I figured it out after finishing a regular GW1 evening with my friends and visiting my Hall of Monuments. It is the exact same thing which can be seen on one of the tapestries hanging above the Hall of Devotion.

I have nothing against reusing stuff (well technically that robot was never used in the actual game except on the HoM tapestry) but it clearly shows that the current living story was made seven years ago when “Eye of the North” came out. So are we actually just hallucinating content from 250 years ago and the Sorrow’s furnace (the original usage intention for this…thing…)?

Domain of Anguish, Echovald forest, Urgoz’s Warren, Underworld, Ring of Fire islands, Realm of Torment… Just to name a few.

Guild Wars 2 really has nothing event remotely comparable to those zones as far as the “dark” factor is concerned. Orr simply looks like a Left4Dead kindergarten for inexperienced zombies.

Just ban her account.

Ok there has been a lot of confusion lately regarding the question if this new arena is going to be some kind of a separate instance or part of the WvWvW map (borderland) itself. And will the players that enter the map actually take up place into the regular WvWvW queue?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Did you guys kill both Krait that guard each Obelisk? Or were they already dead from a previous player, and you communed with an unguarded Obelisk?

An interesting idea since if I recall correctly one of the obelisks in Sparkfly Fan wasn’t guarded when I reached it. But why would engaging the enemy be a requirement for communing with the stone?

Same here, 23/24. All 24 obelisks are actually there but one of them obviously failed to update the counter. Not that I am actually worried or something because I am really not interested in achievements however five skill points really sound good.

a t s e.9614:

I know it has been nerfed, that why my post says MORE nerf. I’m forced to do this to keep up with the economy. Because people are getting gold for free. Even if I do dungeons , I don’t make more than 15g a day from it. While at champions is pretty easy to get 100g+. It does inflate the economy too much.

Its actually not gold for free – they still spend their time to earn it. Same would happen if they decided to earn their money by doing dungeons – that would still require the common denominator, time.

In WvWvW professions and builds are actually not meant to be universal rather an important part in a cohesive group that does well as a group, not as an individual. The point of the rally system is to offer more diversity to the fight and every profession (at least as far as I know) has a way to make unblockable stomps. Warriors have stability which is unblockable for any profession that uses KB (guardian), fear (necros), stun (ranger) in their downed state. However warriors can’t immediately finish some other classes which have blinks or transformations during that phase i.e. mesmers, thieves and eles. Thieves have mass stealth which makes them untargetable (no target no way to counter with skills that require a target in downed state) but AoE, fear and CC still have effect on them. If a thief is trying to finish you and you are out of any of those skills you depend completely on others to save you – that is a fact that can’t be changed and an important rule of the gameplay.

The only thing that I would change about downed state is the fact that downed enemy players can actually rally if someone kills a target they were attacking. I.e. if two players get downed and one of them starts attacking a nearby moa which gets killed by another enemy player that player gets a rally. That is something that really needs to be looked at the downed mechanics.

Vayne.8563:

holodoc.5748:

Vayne.8563:

It’s not just about technology though. It’s about time/energy/money too. Simply put, this game launched with more quests (dynamic events) than all the quests from all Guild Wars games put together. They came out with Guild Wars Prophecies and it had well under 300 quests. This game has 300 hearts, and 1500 dynamic events.

Even if the numbers are correct (which I personally doubt after spending so much time in PvE) it doesn’t change the fact that all the dynamic events and renown hearts are nothing else than simply baby-sitting the locals. There is nothing “renown” about GW2 hearts because Joe will forget about you feeding his cows the moment you receive your reward. In GW1 quests actually felt like you are making a difference because instances offered a way of changing your environment according to your progression (i.e. if you complete the battle for Lion’s Arch you’ll immediately see a reduced number of White Mantle patrols etc.) You were not stuck in one zone until you reach 100% completion unlike GW1 where constant rezoning actually prevented people from getting bored.

In the end going all philosophical about GW1 vs GW2 is pointless. Why? Well, I spent countless hours discussing about that with my friends which I know from GW1. Most of them have stopped playing GW2 a long time ago but it was interesting to see that our discussion led us to a very interesting conclusion – GW1 and GW2 are simply not aimed for the same audience.

GW1 was essentially a heavy RPG story-driven experience which offered people a unique chance to experience all the fine aspects of the game together. It didn’t bother too much to incorporate any of the MMO “features” and “standards” which made it even more immersive for the RPG fans. A mature, dark and well written game which you can experience with your friends all over again in so many different ways. What’s not to like about that?

GW2 eventually became something that a lot of GW1 fans, myself included, didn’t want it to become – an MMO. Switching focus from a “multiplayer RPG game” to an MMO also meant a lot of compromises. Too much as far as some people are concerned. Content quality and quantity suddenly had to switch places because unlike RPG folks which don’t mind waiting for new quality content an MMO requires of you to keep people occupied with stuff to do or they’ll simply leave the game (a bad idea if your business model depends on micro-transactions). That doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing simply not something that doesn’t fit well with some of the GW1 folks.

The numbers are taken from Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars 1 press releases.

This is the wiki page for Guild Wars: Prophecies…you’ll note it had 205 quests…most of which weren’t repeatable at all. And we know it had 25 missions

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_Prophecies

We know there are 301 hearts in Guild Wars 2, because it says so on the map screen. It was said by Anet numerous times that there are over 1500 dynamic events in the game. I can find a quote if you insist.

Hearts were not supposed to replace quests and aren’t really there to be compared to quests. Hearts were placed in the game very late in the piece, in order to get people to stay for a bit in areas where dynamic events spawn. The term “renown”, well yes, you get known to the heart person you helped, which is why you can then use them as merchants and get things from them.

There are 130 people in my guild and more than half of them played Guild Wars 1. Most of them enjoy Guild Wars 2. In fact most of them are here since launch.

Press releases are usually just PR stunts with the sole purpose of impressing people so excuse me for saying that I don’t trust them. I will be convinced only if someone makes a comprehensive list of all the dynamic events in the game and counts them. Until then from my personal experience while playing PvE in GW2 it feels like there are no more than 400-500 dynamic events accross the whole map.

But even so if I had to choose between 250 thoughtfully written and executed quests and 1500 “rinse and repeat” baby sitting events with no deeper meaning than just filling in time I’ll choose the first option anytime. In GW1 every quest had a backstory, every quest giver cared to explain in details his/her motivations and expand the lore. In GW2 everything is “on sight” and hardly enough to make you wonder why are you doing whatever you are doing.

Vayne.8563:

It’s not just about technology though. It’s about time/energy/money too. Simply put, this game launched with more quests (dynamic events) than all the quests from all Guild Wars games put together. They came out with Guild Wars Prophecies and it had well under 300 quests. This game has 300 hearts, and 1500 dynamic events.

Even if the numbers are correct (which I personally doubt after spending so much time in PvE) it doesn’t change the fact that all the dynamic events and renown hearts are nothing else than simply baby-sitting the locals. There is nothing “renown” about GW2 hearts because Joe will forget about you feeding his cows the moment you receive your reward. In GW1 quests actually felt like you are making a difference because instances offered a way of changing your environment according to your progression (i.e. if you complete the battle for Lion’s Arch you’ll immediately see a reduced number of White Mantle patrols etc.) You were not stuck in one zone until you reach 100% completion unlike GW1 where constant rezoning actually prevented people from getting bored.

In the end going all philosophical about GW1 vs GW2 is pointless. Why? Well, I spent countless hours discussing about that with my friends which I know from GW1. Most of them have stopped playing GW2 a long time ago but it was interesting to see that our discussion led us to a very interesting conclusion – GW1 and GW2 are simply not aimed for the same audience.

GW1 was essentially a heavy RPG story-driven experience which offered people a unique chance to experience all the fine aspects of the game together. It didn’t bother too much to incorporate any of the MMO “features” and “standards” which made it even more immersive for the RPG fans. A mature, dark and well written game which you can experience with your friends all over again in so many different ways. What’s not to like about that?

GW2 eventually became something that a lot of GW1 fans, myself included, didn’t want it to become – an MMO. Switching focus from a “multiplayer RPG game” to an MMO also meant a lot of compromises. Too much as far as some people are concerned. Content quality and quantity suddenly had to switch places because unlike RPG folks which don’t mind waiting for new quality content an MMO requires of you to keep people occupied with stuff to do or they’ll simply leave the game (a bad idea if your business model depends on micro-transactions). That doesn’t necessarily needs to be a bad thing simply something that doesn’t fit well with some of the GW1 folks.

Arimahn.3568:

Yes, let’s remove the only profitable thing in the game (outside of CoF). What a splendid idea.

Dude, CoF is history. There are now way more profitable ways to earn gold – running AC for Soldiers inscriptions (7-8g each at least + 4,5g daily for full tour + all the loot), turning skill points to superior arrow carts and selling them on TP (17-18s earned per skill point), doing ore runs for 4-5g per character/per day etc.

Then do so. I personally always liked 1 vs 1 against champs and the introduction of champ trains certainly didn’t stop me from doing them solo (though it much harder now to find a champ that isn’t overrun by the train before you even get half done). They are demanding, require a lot of skill and offer a great deal of satisfaction when you kill them (unlike doing it as part of some Hiroshima champ zerg).

But choose your fights carefully, some of the low level zone champs can be deceiving. For example “Larry” (troll near “Vale Waypoint” in “Queensdale”) can be very hard to solo because he has lots of KDs which will get you killed unless you don’t counter them.

As for the champ crybabies and their complaints, just ignore them. Most of the time their comments are just rude of even worthy of reporting but remember, they can’t do (nor should they) anything about that. They are just a bunch of selfish people that got used too much to a very unnatural thing that is currently happening in the game. Not their fault though, its a system that the game itself promotes by having such high champ respawn rate.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

holodoc.5748:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

holodoc.5748:

Spooky Mulder.1524:

I have no problem with them restricting certain mini, my problem is there is nothing telling me which cannot be forged.

This, 1000+!

Imagine my surprise when I tried using minis from Orrian boxes in the MF just to find out I can’t. And I spent over a million karma on that. So you can’t use account bound exotic minis in the MF but you can use other account bound exotic stuff.

This needs to be sorted out. Stuff that can’t be used in the MF needs to be clearly labeled.

Not really the same issue. The Mini Risen Priest of Balthazar are clearly documented on the wiki.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mini_Risen_Priest_of_Balthazar

It IS exactly the same issue because that info is not part of the game itself! Not to mention that the linked wiki page was updated only recently to include the “slight” detail about not being able to use the mini in MF. Even worse, where is the logic in being able to use not just account bound but also solulbound exotic armor/weapon pieces in MF but not the minis?

Such details must be clearly presented in the game. Remember all the problems with transmuting equipment which created binding issues with some folks (precursor binding on transmutation anyone?)? ANet changed ingame descriptions for transmutation stones to include this important info. The same change needs to be done for other stuff that behaves odd and different from the “usual” rules.

Your right, it was updated with that information in January! the day after the entry was created. Don’t know how I could have missed that “recent” update.

Even if I am wrong about the Mini Risen wiki entry it doesn’t change the fact that the game itself should not rely on external resources for such important information, especially if there is a rule consistency problem like in this case. Community driven resources can be unreliable. The fact that some of the minis can be bough on TP yet they can’t be used in MF makes it even worse! Mini Reef Rider comes to my mind – I spent around 10g on them just to realize they can’t be used in MF.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

holodoc.5748:

Spooky Mulder.1524:

I have no problem with them restricting certain mini, my problem is there is nothing telling me which cannot be forged.

This, 1000+!

Imagine my surprise when I tried using minis from Orrian boxes in the MF just to find out I can’t. And I spent over a million karma on that. So you can’t use account bound exotic minis in the MF but you can use other account bound exotic stuff.

This needs to be sorted out. Stuff that can’t be used in the MF needs to be clearly labeled.

Not really the same issue. The Mini Risen Priest of Balthazar are clearly documented on the wiki.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mini_Risen_Priest_of_Balthazar

It IS exactly the same issue because that info is not part of the game itself! Not to mention that the linked wiki page was updated only recently to include the “slight” detail about not being able to use the mini in MF. Even worse, where is the logic in being able to use not just account bound but also solulbound exotic armor/weapon pieces in MF but not the minis?

Such details must be clearly presented in the game. Remember all the problems with transmuting equipment which created binding issues with some folks (precursor binding on transmutation anyone?)? ANet changed ingame descriptions for transmutation stones to include this important info. The same change needs to be done for other stuff that behaves odd and different from the “usual” rules.

Spooky Mulder.1524:

I have no problem with them restricting certain mini, my problem is there is nothing telling me which cannot be forged.

This, 1000+!

Imagine my surprise when I tried using minis from Orrian boxes in the MF just to find out I can’t. And I spent over a million karma on that. So you can’t use account bound exotic minis in the MF but you can use other account bound exotic stuff.

This needs to be sorted out. Stuff that can’t be used in the MF needs to be clearly labeled.

Phoenixfudge.5290:

If a warrior traits for ALL OUT OFFENSE then he will get incredible offensive abilities including a massive amount of stuns. However, he doesn’t need anything defensive. He only needs Signet of Healing.

And all that firepower won’t prevent you from going down before you can even use it in WvWvW. Low vitality means you are target practice for condition spammers, low toughness (armor) means two-three melee/ranged hits are enough to kill you. Healing Signet won’t help you much because if you spec for power you’ll also be missing vital traits like Adrenal Health and stuff that actually keeps your adrenaline high enough for it to work. Going zerk leaves you with low Healing Power which means Healing Signet will probably only heal for its base Healing which is around 400 vitality/s. That’s 4000 vitality per 10 seconds during which you are more than likely to get hit once-twice and that’s all that is required to nullify the Healing Signet completely. And if you activate the signet you loose all passive benefits for a pretty low healing which means until the cooldown has run out you have to find a good way to keep conditions off you. That actually sounds a lot easier than it is because if you specced for zerk you will probably also miss the warhorn condition removal, Cleansing Ire (which then again requires adrenaline and a way to spend it without a blocking condition like blind when you do it) etc.

Healing Signet has received a lot of hate lately but the truth is it only made warrior a viable profession in sPvP by offering at least some fair chance against condition spammers which were literally burning down warriors. In WvWvW I can’t think of a good reason to use it unless you are a solo roamer which expects only to run in 1 vs 1 situations, which is not going to happen a lot.

I’ve played warrior in Guild Wars PvP for more than eight years (GW1 and GW2 combined of course) and I never felt so helpless as I did in GW2 sPvP when it was almost impossible for me to counter conditions. Introduction of Cleansing Ire was a way in a good direction but still that trait was almost useless with other classes being able to prevent adrenaline usage (blind etc.)

Now for the first time I feel my warrior has actual sustainability in the game because at least I can counter some of the condition spammers with stuns, KBs and KDs. Hammer is still very easy to counter, has very limited melee range (aside from Earthshaker of course) and low damage even with full zerk setups. The problem other professions now have is that they got used to fighting close range despite their classes being actually designed to fight ranged. If you don’t know how to stay out of my hammer’s range and you play as a ranged profession then it’s clearly not warrior’s fault for you getting killed.

The best way to feel all up and downsides of warriors in sPvP is to play one. In the end it always comes down to how good you play your own class. Yes I can almost easily win against any hammer warrior in sPvP now but it doesn’t mean I still don’t get pwned by good engineers, necros and rangers when they start spamming conditions.

Waypoints are imho a very poor design choice which only encourages some of the worst behaviors found in this game. Currently they serve only two purposes – being a very successful gold sink and as a convenient way to encourage waypoint zerg invasions. Distance should matter. If I have a somewhat older computer and require more time to load a specific map (sometimes the difference can go up to 20 seconds and more) I should not be punished because folks with better computers managed to reach and complete the event in the meantime (champ trains anyone?). How exactly would “playing together with friends” be fun if you wouldn’t even be able to reach the event in time?

ANet stated on multiple occasions that they refuse to implement mounts in order to preserve the feeling of the sheer size of the map. Waypoints defeat that very intention. Now don’t get me wrong I am not necessarily against a fast travel system but in the end, once again, distance should matter.

Considering this was also an issue for me in GW1 I had time to think about a system that I would like to see in GW2 (that never happened of course). My idea was to simply implement only one central hub on every map which would be connected to adjacent central hubs through Asuran gates. That means you would not be able to get from Larry in Queensdale to the Mega Destroyer in just a couple of seconds. You would be required to walk from Larry to the central Queensdale hub and then use Asuran gates to travel through adjacent maps in the following order Queensdale→Gendarran Fields→Lornar’s Pass→Timberline Falls → Mount Maelstrom. You want a gold sink with that? Charge every gate use with 1s fixed price. That would make location an important factor for players because currently its completely irrelevant where you are, its all the same aside from the decor which can be changed in just a couple of seconds.

I am not unrealistic by thinking that anything even remotely similar to my idea will ever be implemented in GW2. Waypoints are simply too much integrated in the existing gameplay. However that doesn’t change my opinion that the current convenience which fast travel waypoints provide simply destroys a huge part of the game immersion.