Guild Wars 2

Faux.1937:

It doesnt make it harder, or make it feel larger, its just annoying.

yes, terribly annoying, like a lot of other things in this map.

Trying to use some WvW-mechanics seems nice but it´s completely overdone, you have to hurry up to get even walls repaired, while doors stay broken and tons of Mordrems pure in, very seldom to get to some siege-weapons – and then you end up for example with Mortars in north of Indigo-cave which can´t shoot even at half of their full range because they will hit kind of a rock-bridge over the northern door.

Anet at it´s best, some nice ideas, bad execution.

Malediktus.9250:

I dont see this even as remotely fair.

It wasn´t fair last year, this year it is though.

My personal point of view is rather the opposite as I don´t care for that lore, story and awfully bad instanced singleplayer-content (also known as personal story or LS2). I also consider the Black Lion-weapons which will be removed as childish, fugly, tasteless, . . . so not really a loss for me.

I love farming the labyrinth though which gives me either good gold or cheap 20-slot bags and a ton of essences of luck for my magic find. Also the new buff-food (on reviving) is a better addition than it seems on first glance because it goes into the slot for oils/sharpening stones/chrystals and therefore gives new options we didn´t have so far.

To me the balance and structure of loot and rewards is an essential improvement compared to 2013.

Chrispy.5641:

There’s things that Anet still needs to add that would complete this tier of items before they even think about releasing a stronger set of items in the gear treadmill.

• Ascended Food
• Ascended slaying potions and utility nourishments
• Ascended Runes
• Ascended Sigils
• Finish adding Ascended Trinkets so every lv80 gear stat has an ascended version.

Though this is sort of a gear treadmill in a way, the introduction of ascended tier wouldn’t really be complete without those 5 things as a minimum. They could go a little faster than they are now though…

you forgot:

• ascended infusions
• legendary armor (and maybe even trinkets)

Mesket.5728:

another fashion crime… so many artists out there are wondering how someone at Anet has this job and they don’t.

Not only artists . . .

Most of the added weapon-skins look to me like created by a Southkorean teenie-girl (and most of the armor too, btw.). Chaos weapons where the first BLTC-skins of which I found at least a few attracting.

Vayne.8563:

It’s not quite roleplaying…but it’s not not roleplaying if you see what I mean. My characters exist in my head as individuals with individual tastes.

I would say, that´s immersion, created through identification with your character(s), probably one of the most important “hooks” of a MMO.

While character-building is a driving force to play, it´s also kind of an investment in the game: whoever abandoned another MMO might remember a certain point when interest dwindled and immersion broke up, leaving characters behind as useless now.

That´s one of the points why I find that policy about “we won´t talk about future plans” rather harmful.

I´m not sure if I want raids but there are certainly a few things to overcome:

- rewards: must be worth it but should not introduce any more power creep. Would skins be sufficient?

- no trinity: I probably wouldn´t want one, though this will make raid-design a lot harder (or limiting?)

- class-balance: every class should be equally wanted – which is already not the case in dungeons

- condition-cap

- GW2 graphic engine: graphical effects currently are a TON to much and downtuning options much to limited; a raid won´t work if you can´t even see the boss

There are a ton of things which can go wrong, so be careful what you wish because in the end it might go like the trait-hunt: sounds nice in advance but some untold details could turn it into a bad thing (testservers anyone?).

OMG, GW2´s engine is simply not ready for raids, only kitten to see with all these graphical effects which can´t be switched off.

And what about classbalance, condition caps, rewards? Am I supposed to bring my warrior to ascended level now?

Vayne.8563:

But personally I think it’s enough reward for getting through the starter instance. It does what it needs to do.

And this is where you and Anet terribly fail and where their disconnect comes from: they don´t see it through the eyes of the player.

A new player won´t say: “Hey, great, Anet want´s me to teach how to change weapons”, he will see that he receives a reward which is practically the same weapon he already has.

Let´s foresee the conversation we´ll have in a few months:

Forum: “No wonder the free trial wasn´t a success if Anet doesn´t listen to feedback”.

You: “It would have been if the game would not have been talked down”.

There´s always a way out, isn´t it?

The difference in stats is so small, that all Anet teaches new players is: “expect to get crap-rewards”

Vayne.8563:

It’s a mace, slightly better than the one you have when you start, to teach you to change weapons, just like I said.

Wouldn´t it be even a better motivation for changing weapons if it was a different one? Well, probably considered as to overwhelming . . .

Seriously, some rewards could need tweaking: on one reward you can choose between 3 different identified dyes – which were always the same on all 5 guards I leveled up to 12.

And once I had a blue level 1 focus as a normal drop – the usability for that is quite limited around that level.

MikaHR.1978:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/03/turbine-raiders-make-up-the-smallest-player-group-in-lotro/#comments

Forums are as skewed sample as it gets.

And where does the article say that LOTRO-raiders have the same opinion or are a not representative group on topics even outside of raids? (as it´s also bad, we won´t have much GW2-raiders here on the forum . . .)

The article says only the same I said: the forum represents the more engaged and informed players (who raiders usually should be).

MikaHR.1978:

Forums represent tiny group which isnt in same category as 95%+ of playerbase.

Probably a waste, but I bet you might once have heard that statistics on opinions and votes use only tiny groups and not 95% of a full group?

And I would say that a game-forum is almost as representative as can be as people come here for information first (and not only complainers).

So if the forum is a non-representative group than it´s because the average forum-user is more engaged and informed compared to an average player.

Whatever the tests were, Anet based this changes on, Anet has lately shown a history of reading things wrong or not finding a good middle-ground for their solutions.

I´ve leveled 5 toons to level 12 since patch (yes, keyfarming may not be efficient currently but it´s still doable) and there are some things I would enjoy as a new player like the faster levels, the rewards popping up, the dodging-tutorial, to unlock new weapon skills just by changing to a new weapon (where btw. their argument for avoiding to overwhelm new players doesn´t hold truth as I can get to level 10 easily with only one weapon-type – and on changing to a new weapon-type I get 5 new skills instantly).

But some things are clearly overdone and in my opinion a no-go:

I simply run through the starting area without touching an enemy (as far as possible), a new player will need more time to figure out what´s going on or may even try to spend time there, looking around to find some new things, killing enemies (as he´s supposed to) – and he receives NOTHING, no loot, practically no XP on kills, no new weapons, no new weapon skills, nothing to harvest. This zone feels dead now, fighting is useless and absolutely boring! Welcome to GW2!!!

After that, I start doing low level hearts and levels come in fast, but gameplay stays stall to long. There should be at least a full new weapon-set in every level reward to be able to try new things out (bad luck though for engineers . . .), traits, F1-F4 skills and utilities should be available earlier on.

So I voted for “could be ok with some adjustments”, which means: without adjustments it´s not ok, nothing else.

This is how a ranger looks in Age of Conan (T3-Raid armor-set, ingame screenshot):

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110702132253/aoc/images/2/28/Ranger_tier3_revealpyhx.jpg

The set in GW 2 which looks almost like real leather armor is the Ascalonian (though the pvp-set from above is also not bad):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Ascalonian_Sentry_armor_human_male_front.jpg

Vayne.8563:

Once you’re used to events and stuff like that, you won’t likely need the arrow as much because you’ll have some idea of what the game is about. In fact, you might even see the arrow when trying to make decisions about what to do. Me, I’ll just turn it off.

That´s not really the point. The point is, that you have to find your own “endgame” in GW 2 which will be very different from leveling up to 80. And if he even doesn´t have the iniative to find out how to level up, how can he be expected to change his gameplay at 80 and find himself something to do?

There won´t be ingame-links popping up for an event-timer or for Dulfy when he stands in Lion Arch, wondering what he could do.

In the end there will be another ex-player saying “there´s no endgame in GW2” – while the forced changes have a good chance to disgust old players and new more engaged players.

To mention something positive: I find the new dodging-“tutorials” in the starting areas well done, a good example how to do it.

They are optional, give a little reward and are good to spot – if you are in the right place (their placement is bad, they should be near the area-entrance or spawn-point next to it).

Vayne.8563:

He wanted to know what he was supposed to be doing and the game doesn’t tell him.

The first important question here is:

if the new system would have been already in place and would have held his hand till 80 – what would he have done after that?

If the leveling process has to be dumbed down so much (which I even doubt) how shall those players be kept ingame at 80? Is the next step dumbing down “endgame”-experience for level 80?

The second important question:

why is there no option to turn the “newb-mode” off for older or more experienced new players?

Another question is how unattracting this system could be for the main-target group. I for example was almost disgusted how simple ESO was, barely a vanilla-UI, no real weapon-skills, pressing 1 ftw.

This:

Vikkela.7261:

Have patience

Most of the rewards I´ve seen so far are not something one would need immediately or at all cost, so that the achievements can be done on the way.

It gives more meaning and depth to some rare but also a lot of ordinary drops, to karma-vendors and a lot of other stuff. This makes the game more interesting, richer in some aspects for which many didn´t care before and a great task for explorers.

Tradeable stuff is better for those who want it for their collection and for those who are lucky to get a more valueable drop but don´t need or want it.

What I don´t like so far is, that many things are dungeon-related – WvW-players should also have dungeon-paths available, just like in spvp.

jonoth.2308:

Where I used to have a couple skills to already experiment with and enjoy when I reached the opening “boss”, I now had one button. Press that button, watch. Watch. Watch. Watch. Maybe heal. Watch. Watch.

That´s exactly what Anet wants to teach you as a new player: autoattack for the win

Not only:

klax.5947:

. . . and everytime i go to another city, it disappears! It’s really annoying to activate it everytime!

(omg, what a big temptation )

ilginsara.8752:

. . . I think those bosses should be more rewarding, not just a champion box.

They can be now, which is a major point of the thread imo:

siljo.3168:

Considering that 2 of these bosses drop items for the new collections which are currently 300g+ on tp . .

This is the one which can drop from the Foulbear-chest:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sam_

According to Wooden Potatoes vid today´s patch should fix the disappearing on zoning.

I farmed and used more than 70 keys over the last week and still I´m sitting at 8 blue scraps (and a ton of crap).

If it would have taken to get to level 10 to receive the keys, I probably would have blown up my PC . . .

Can´t imagine that it would be worth the time and gold.

Svarty.8019:

This:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/02/flameseeker-chronicles-whats-next-for-guild-wars-2/

Funny thing though, I expect barely any significant changes to my favourite game-type (WvW). Even if Anet implement the mother of all expansions.

Very good article, except his conclusion about all the work for new players could easily be wrong (due to China-release and not because of a coming expansion).

Also interesting to read comments of former players who obviously don´t even care about the official forums anymore.

Vayne.8563:

All things considered, the real problem was people getting hyped for it.

I’m sure this update represents a tremendous amount of work.

I was already hyped for the last feature patch: all sigils and runes will become usefull, they said. Must have been a tremendous amount of work and brainstorming to bring a sigil from +10% vulnerability duration up to +20% duration . .

So in the end I found myself demoralized – of course if I hadn´t been hyped I probably could gladly enjoy this great sigil now.

I don´t think overhyped PR is the core-problem.

They simply didn´t deliver much this year, even more for players who don´t care about “living” story.

This may be due to China-release, but also due to the things they work on behind closed doors (hopefully!).

Many are starving for new content and Anet´s PR should be about the bigger things coming, about meaningfull projects they are working on for the next half year or even longer.

The business-decision to not talk about that is the problem, forcing them to overhype the little they can reveal (whoever “higher up in the chain” was stupid enough to make such a decision – NCSoft?).

After 2 years an expansion seems essentiell for me and additions like rare lvl-35 weapons won´t do anything to keep me interested and running over the same old mid-level maps. Also Living World is nothing more than Personal Story to me, as long as it´s instanced atleast.

I spend most of my little ingame-time in DryTop nowadays which I really like and which looks like a good model for expansion-content to me – except it´s a little to much split up, due to that – in my opinion – lacking Living Word concept (release in small parts).

It´s about time to shift their business a little away from that shady gem-shop and that carrot-on-a-string Living World. Give us real fullscale honest content and I gladly pay fullprice for it.

mtpelion.4562:

This is a good change people… it will allow people to SPECIFICALLY TARGET CLOTH as a drop now.

Being able to SPECIFICALLY TARGET CLOTH will cause overall supply to INCREASE.

An overall INCREASE in supply will result in LOWER PRICES.

LOWER PRICES means that even though the number of silk scraps you get on your Guardian is less, you are now able to afford to BUY LOTS MORE SILK than before (or play on an ALT).

I don’t think it is possible to explain this any more clearly.

You may continue complaining after this point, just be aware that it only makes you look silly.

As already stated, only 3 out of 8 classes are cloth-wearers which would result in less cloth from players who simply play the game and don´t farm it. So farmers would at first have to overcome that loss from ordinary players before we would see an increase in supply – and that doesn´t look like an easy challenge to me.

And there´s atleast one part of the game where switching to an Alt might not be a valid option – or good luck running a WvW-hammertrain without guards and warriors.

xev.9476:

Unnecessarily personal, perhaps, but your posts are some of the most obnoxious on the forums, and they exemplify the absurd “white knight” syndrome going around. It’s predictable and pointless. Someone chimes in to voice a concern or request new content and cue obnoxious WK to butt in and accuse everyone of “not understanding”, being “entitled”, and senselessly defend ANet’s “right” to do what it wants. The last is especially bizarre because forum requests/complaints aren’t legal challenges to ANet’s right to do anything – they’re requests, feedback, attempts to dialogue and engage ANet and to hopefully change the game for the better.

If we really want to talk about a sense of entitlement let’s talk about the WKs self-appointed authority to tell everyone to “love it or leave it”, and call frustrated players who voice concerns “toxic” and “negative”.

I´m almost daily looking over the forums, probably spending more time here reading than still playing the game. While I would say “White Knights” were not even a thing here half a year ago, in the meantime I know those 4 – 5 names almost by heart . . .

Chris Cleary.8017:

A fix is currently being prepared for this issue.

While the behavior (design) of this event was acceptable in the past, changes in the game over time have created an environment around this event that has become increasingly toxic (for the community) due to unintended use/change of mechanics.

Players should not feel that they are in the wrong for completing an event (or event chain), and that is what is happening with this event. The respawn timer for this event will be significantly increased.

Orr is a terrible endgame-zone, a big desert of a graveyard with awful atmosphere and stacked with highly annoying, fast respawning mobs and I hate it with passion since release (how great would an Ascalonian-zone have been instead, with large ruins of towns and castles and remainings of ancient battlefields?).

The only time I had some fun in Orr was with cycle-farming events before the nerfs killed that (and to some extend with temple-events as long as there were enough people) – not only because of the farming, fighting wave upon wave of risen attackers with a lot of other players is the only thing that fits in there.

You should try to revive that deserted zone instead of killing it even more (and Mega-servers are not a real and everlasting solution here).

Someone complaining to get open multiplayer content in a MMO instead of instanced singleplayer crap which seems to be designed for kids and teenagers?

I always thought it would be very ironical to address what is mostly instanced content as “living world”-stuff in a MMO but this OP clearly beats it.

leng jai.2961:

Anet has amazing environmental artists but their designs for weapons and armour are really lacking. I’m picky and prefer minimalist looks but to me 80% of the weapons/armour in GW2 looks pretty terrible for my tastes.

Pretty much my opinion – though I would have said 90% of the weapons/armor look terrible to me (also with Krytan weapons as one of a few exceptions).

Oversized weapons with childish or stupid design (made out of Swiss cheese from stoneage for example) are the biggest immersion-breakers for me. I can live with others carrying such crap but couldn´t stand it if I also would have to use such a skin (running out of options though a little).

New weapons? Anet probably would give Engi something like that:

Traveling with waypoints is an important convenience. If I end on another waypoint without expecting that and may even miss a melting world boss while running I´m fed up.

Why can´t I choose to go to a waypoint even it´s “contested”?

Swoo.5079:

If it keeps being season 1 type of content either they will release an expansion soon or there is something pretty wrong going at Anet.

They just released the game in China and they want to keep both versions of the game as much the same as possible.

As it wouldn´t make sense to release an expansion in China short after launch, a soon coming (= 2014) expansion seems unlikely to me.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

2 years is not just getting started. We all see the pattern and that is that all they want is to milk it as much as they can. The only new stuff that is coming is more holiday events because that is all that the living story is.

Yes, they are running it the cheap way. Why take the cost to make an expansion if they can sell the old stuff to the Chinese without taking much risk? Are there even any devs left at all? How much meaningfull balancing did we see this year so far?

The game urgently needs an expansion, new areas full of life to explore, new weapons, new free sets of armor, new dungeons, new skills, new usefull traits (not that over-cautious and widely useless additions from “feature patch” where they slapped +10% duration to a rune or sigill and called it “competitive”) – and new players brought to the game with it.

And don´t be blueeyed, LS 2 will be not much different than LS 1, only with a permanent Personal Story 2.0 on top of it – we wouldn´t get the permanent Marionette-fight, we would only receive the permanent solo-instance with that red-haired Sylvari.

They don´t take the effort to make the game richer, they just want to lure people to log in daily to see their adds for the new shiny gem-shop items.

Why are jewel-crafting and cooking 500 not in the game already although we have Xunlai in the crafting-bank since September? Because they keep it back until they see a hole to fill in summer?

Stark.1350:

This argument has become really moot now – devs have confirmed in their interview on reddit that you can “guest” friends into the content for free, if you have it unlocked. They just can’t earn the achievements or specific rewards.

Same mechanics as in the Personal Story it seems, what a funny coincidence . . .

Zok.4956:

But in the end, paying with micro-transacations (here a dollar, there a dollar,…) tend to become more expensive then a “normal” add-on for say 30-60 bucks.

I share your opinion, in the long run Anet will probably gain more money with less risk and effort than with an expansion (which would also cost them a lot more money).

This follows a common trend, somewhat similar to map-packs in Battlefield 4: no more expansions, only small packs – and in the end players pay more than they would with buying a full expansion while not receiving the full value of one.

Also important: the community gets divided with players who don´t have access to all content, which is a terrible side-effect, especially for a MMO.

Of course that system would be much better than BF4 because logging in during that special time should be enough to get the access – though we would also receive less, no new maps, maybe even not much more than Personal Story 2.0.

But in the end, all of you supporting this system should be aware that this is their replacement for a real expansion.

BobbyStein.2315:

We’re also trying to put a little more info in the Story Journal once you’ve completed a Living World story instance, like a slightly more detailed recap that not only includes the plot and action details, but also touches upon the character moments.

Living World story instance – these are the keywords and can only mean we receive more instanced content just like Personal story.

I hate the PS because it´s mostly very bad singleplayer content in a game that´s supposed to be a MMO-game (though I also don´t like the instanced group content at the end of the PS).

If the permanent LW-content brings mostly instanced content Anet is bound for their next big fail. Personal Story 2.0 b2p incoming?

Buttercup.5871:

The only problem with runes is that they’re not balanced. Rune of strength is so out of whack with the rest that it must skyrocket. It’s an underlying design issue, not a creation issue.

They did an awfully bad job with rebalancing runes and sigils in the long awaited feature patch – such a waste of dev-time and even more of our expectations and lost options for more builds and playstyles.

I wouldn´t call Rune of strength overpowered though, it´s more that most runes and sigils are still useless, as TP-prices are in most cases a good indication for that.

But in the end i agree, mystic forging of Superior Runes can´t fix the real issue.

Incomingray.8075:

Huge letdown on rune and sigil changes, feels like the devs erred on the side of caution big time here, most of the irrelevant ones just got a tiny bit less irrelevant but it’s mostly the same exotic vendor trash.

The only reason I can imagine that these changes could haven taken more than 1 or 2 working days:
“How can we buff useless or borderline useless runes and sigills in a way that they still keep being useless even after the buff?”

Yes, it looks like they don´t trust their own balancing and programming skills and therefore kept almost everything underwhelming and simple, just to be on the save side.

This thread comes to my mind: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/first

The changes are utter disappointment, even more given the time it took to bring them into the game and given the fact that it was probably the last “major” change we´ll see in this field.

veldrenor.1469:

PvE condition necro here, I’m a little curious about the changes to the Superior Rune of Perplexity. I see that the cooldowns have been made drastically longer and the #4 confusion ability has been somewhat nerfed (25% when struck instead of 20% chance when you hit), but have the Confusion Duration boosts at least been fixed to compensate?

I´ve read in the patch-notes that fear now counts as an interrupt – did you try if fear triggers the confusion on interrupt (or was this already the case before?)?

A late release is uncommon and it´s more dangerous to patch at the end of their working hours.

Therefore I would say, they overstretched, either with the size of the patch or with chinese release or both.

Xyonon.3987:

. . . for the april 15th patch . . .

There was no word about feature patch or april 15th, only “in a couple weeks”

This was the OP on reddit (from a player on Fort Aspenwood):

“I’ve JUST noticed that the weapon-damage does not carry over to Bomb, Grenade, Tool, Flamethrower, or Elixir Kits for Engineers. Rather kits have a forced “Exotic” weapon-stats for every kit.

While I get this makes sense to keep the damage in-check (arguably), what’s the point of me working toward any ascended/legendary weapon as an main Engineer player? Just for a cute looks and effects? To make it and then proceed to make other classes and send made weapons to the ones that actually benefit from it? To benefit from the very miniscule stat boost?

I thought I could get at least a +69 damage boost to my kit builds…but instead I’m just going to get potential +9 damage (from the stats). :C"

Answer from a guy with Anet-tag:

ArenaNetRyanD
“Ask this question again in a couple weeks.”

Great news so far, had no more hope to see something like that

Adamantium.3682:

The rest of us fools who find success in all game modes are just that; fools. We must be delusional.

I don´t know how you measure success but this (for example) doesn´t look like it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Top-5-useful-profession-in-WvW-Bottom-3

Neither does, that my former wvw-guild excluded all Rangers and Engineers from organized guild-zergs (EU rank 3-server currently).

Also in PvE it would be news to me that people are seeking Engineers for their groups, I only heard of Engineers beeing kicked from PvE-groups.

Does that look like a successfull class to you?

I would rather say besides some niche-specs in spvp and wvw-roaming we´re not even middle of the road and the hyperbole is (more) on your side (and arguments not so much).

insanemaniac.2456:

so basically you want a free damage buff on a class that already has great damage

ok

It´s more the opposite, investing in an ascended weapon don´t give the earned damage buff on kits.

Quote from 28th January 2013 patch-notes:

“•Bundles from player skills (engineer kits, elementalist conjured weapons, warrior banners) now have base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player.”

This was even the case when ascended weapons where patched in but “hotfixed” only a few hours later back down to old exotic base damage-values (which are the average of an exotic pistol and an exotic shield btw.)

Bombsaway.7198:

Now imagine 2 engineers or more coordinating turret bubbles (only takes 15 seconds to redeploy it). IF it resists siege shots, that could be extremely powerful IF you can stand under it and ESPECIALLY IF others can too. It has real potential.

I even sent Roy a PM suggesting something like this – because I´m sure that´s not the current design. It would give Engis a place in organized zergs while not hurting that precious spvp-balance.

Anyway, with the bubble only lasting as long as the turret it wouldn´t be of much use as ordinary AoE would destroy the turrets to fast.

This fact also makes this trait not a good option for healing turret in WvW which I want to overload and blow up instead of loosing it to AoE within a second or two.

Karl mentioned Rifle as an example for triggering Synaptic Overload on twitch.