Guild Wars 2

Blackgate does ALL the content, why would anyone transfer to some unpopulated server and never get to kill Teq or clear a temple again, instead of every day?

Not saying there aren’t other servers that do those, but I’ve seen plenty of complaints in the forums from people who’s servers don’t. So maybe you all should stop acting like a well populated server is a bad thing.

Dwarves became one with the Great Dwarf and are locked in eternal combat with the minions of Primordus beneath the earth, as living stone statue embodiments of their god. I’m amazed they allowed even one of them, Ogden, to remain on the surface, much less letting enough of them abandon their sworn, holy duty to run around as player characters. I’d say that ship has sailed.

Keiel.7489:

Skrit. They can just downsize Charr’s armor and use Asura’s animation.

Ya, I can see it now.

Trahearne: The choice is yours hero, what do we do next?

Skritt Player Character: Mine! My Shinies! Get away!

Trahearne: …

Kodan, Tengu, Quaggan, Hylek, Ogre, Centaurs, and Grawl. All options for new races with out having to create something out of whole cloth.

Jotun are probably too tribal and degenerate to be an option, and Skritt are too stupid as individuals to make good player characters.

I don’t want some stupid cash shop item. It’s a basic QoL change and it should never cost anyone a cent. It was a lesson that they should have learned from the first game and we shouldn’t be having to ask for now.

They could scrap that horrible Skyhammer map(like completely gone, and all records burned), and add more of the game modes from Guild Wars. That would make me more likely to at least give it a try again.

CC = unneeded because AI is stupid and predictable
healing = you have enough even if you spec for DPS
DPS = the classes with more life and armor can still do as much DPS as medium and light armor classes, even when built equally for DPS.

PvE is a mess because slow stupid AI and easy access to damage mitigation and “enough” healing make it pretty pointless to be anything but a warrior in berserker gear.

Light armor classes should always do more damage than medium armor classes, who should in turn always do more damage than heavy armor classes, assuming they’re all built for DPS. Smarter AI would go a long way towards making CC actually useful in PvE, and I’d love to see the attack speed for enemies doubled, both the interval and and the rate, while the damage was halved. More pressure and making dodging more difficult would go a long way towards making support more needful. Condition builds should really be a slightly slower but more reliable, lower risk option than DPS builds, but that would require making direct combat actually risky enough for the lower risk to look appealing.

Judge Banks.9018:

Some of the most terrifying words are “Appealing to wider audience”.

I think the far more terrifying thing is that you could use the words “good jumping puzzle” with out realizing that it was an oxymoron.

The real issue is stupid and predictable AI with dead slow attack rates, and the fact that classes with higher base armor and life can do the same or more damage than classes with lower base armor and life.

Basically, arenanet ripped out the trinity, even the weakened abstract form of it they had in GW1, and then didn’t bother with coming up with anything to replace it. It’s just this sort of bland mess where everybody heals themselves and mitigates damage, and in PvE heavy armor users do the same or more damage than medium and light users, making it basically a chosen disadvantage to use anything but heavy armor professions in PvE. Nobody really needs tanking in a game with no aggro management, but you might as well take the extra vitality and toughness since you don’t even get an offset to DPS for doing it. In PvP it’s a little more complex, but still a kind of bland mess with more condition spamming and removal thrown in.

I’m not saying I really want classic Trinity back, but I could see it potentially being more enjoyable than what we have now. But what do I know, I’m just a GW1 fanboy who misses my front and back lines, dedicated healers, and aggro.

Well, it’s basically a problem with core mechanics. In PvE pure DPS wins out, because a skilled character can mitigate enough damage and heal enough even when not specialized for it that using anything else is just needlessly prolonging a fight, and the AI is stupid and predictable enough that CC is really just a waste of time you could be putting out damage. Combine that with classes with higher base armor being able to do as much or more damage than casters, and you end up with the pure zerker warrior meta in PVE, with possibly a guardian or two thrown in if you want. Now you take that to PVP, and damage isn’t as reliable, so building for health and toughness becomes more reliable, since building for it doesn’t nerf your damage enough, and you can do enough damage while outlasting berserkers to kill them. The the counter arises of condition bursts, which are way too slow for PvE, where non condition damage can be relied on, but great for PvP because the damage is reliable while pure non condition damage isn’t. It also has the benefit of being pretty effective at killing everything regardless of build. So we get this new meta where the class that can stack the most conditions on the enemy while shedding/surviving the most conditions on themselves wins out in the long run. So basically we’ve got this situation where in PvE all classes can do DPS and should push for as much DPS as possible and recieve pretty much no benefit for choosing a class with low base health or armor. In PvP, building for conditions means more reliable damage than any other build so you’ll kill glass cannons fast, and classes built for survivability a little slower, but your only real fights are going to be with classes that remove conditions from themselves faster or put conditions on you faster.

So it’s not a “cheese build”, it’s just a matter of being able to look at how combat in this game is actually done. Sure there’s room for human error. The meta kind of assumes that everyone is mitigating damage reliably and often, ie that all players have a certain minimum skill level. A great player using a berserker build against a player that doesn’t dodge and evade is going to do so much damage so fast that condi being more reliable or them having more health isn’t going to save them. A good bunker build, with intelligent healing/mitigation may very well just straight up out last a condi burst while grinding them down slowly with their less reliable more sporadic damage. In PvE, berserker may be faster, but not if you can’t read boss tells and don’t step out of red circles. If you’re down all the time it won’t matter what your theoretical max DPS is.

TL,DR Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Using what works better than anything else isn’t cheesy. It’s just smart. When people say they don’t like your cheesy build, what they really mean is they wish there were a better build balance and more options, which I think we all can agree with.

I, personally, would do find wvw less tedious, and be more likely to play it for fun instead of just mapping for completion occassionally if it wasn’t such a hassle to switch builds. GW1 had a similar horrible setup in the beginning with having to farm refund points to change attributes, and they got rid of it greatly improving the game, then they added the ability to save, load, and SHARE builds and made it even better. This needs to happen.

Yet more evidence for the type A and type B account conspiracy theorists.

Pretty phenomenal suggestions. +1 for you sir. I’d love to have that choice, being able to play my way, wherever I want in the game, and get awesome unique rewards for which ever area I’ve picked.

I don’t like that heart. I don’t like any of them that don’t involve direct combat, but that one was especially silly and lighthearted. The whole time I was doing it I kept wondering why they put a quest for a five year old in to the game. Do yourself a favor and just kill minotaurs instead, tell the bunny man and his dumb bunny to take a walk off the near by cliff.

As someone who made a character of each profession at launch, my biggest complaint about playing multiple characters is still the soul bound thing. I really don’t understand why they don’t replace it all with account binding, or at the very least, soul binding only for level 80 items. It would sure be nice to be able to pass items down to lower level characters. I might actually use items of higher quality than fine instead of selling them all on the tp while leveling if it didn’t turn them immediately in to future salvage trash.

To avoid power creep. Buff only policies just lead to out of control power creep.

Well, it has done something for conditions and cc in pve, the ratio of how bad they are compared to DPS builds has gone down slightly. But it doesn’t fix the real core issues that have caused Berzerker to be the meta. It’s really a problem with AI and core combat mechanics, but I doubt we see much movement on that front.

siralius.9517:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

siralius.9517:

“Right, so flip that on the other side. If I go to a map I wouldn’t go to and expect to be alone . . . and wind up ganked by the three people who are in the other guild? Why wouldn’t I be kittened off about it?”

Why would you buy an MMOrpg if you want to play alone?

Why would I play an MMOrpg where I would expect to be attacked anywhere at any time?

Probably because its part of the game. Having pvp an almost seperate game within the game, which is what Anet has done (or at least has tried to do), has given Anet way more work than they can handle. Hence the fail of pvp and wvw.

No, they proved with Guild Wars that the PvP and PvE split works just fine. Awesome even. What they need to to do is get back to their roots, throw up a big middle finger to people asking for more mainstream MMO features, and turn this in to the great game it could be.

Dunno, Teq goes down on Blackgate regularly enough that I never really thought about it.

I can picture it now, somebody who’s guild leader accepts a guild war invitation and they don’t noticed. They’re busy killing some world boss, say Shaman, and don’t notice the red tag of an enemy guild coming up behind them. That enemy guild player picks up god knows how many stacks of might from the zerg of non warring players killing the Shaman, and then one shots the other player in the back, and proceeds to tea bag them and tell them to “git gud”.

Sounds like a blast… not.

They came across like frat boys talking about a school project. Apparently, we are being balanced by bros. That’s the impression they gave me.

Ferocity is going to be about 10% less damage than the crit damage stat it is replacing, according to what they said on the stream. It’s most definitely not a buff.

Subdue.5479:

This sounds to me like you’re admitting it’s a personal issue, not a flaw in game design. That’s something we can agree on.

Nope, it’s a personal preference, not an issue. I have an issue with stupid grinds, that causes me to prefer games that don’t have them. My issue doesn’t make the stupid grind less stupid. You keep acting like the people who don’t want vertical progression like ascended in the game are wrong. We’re not. Nor does the fact that you think it’s not needed and can be ignored mean that it’s that way for everyone. I chose this game because it didn’t have this atrocious game flaw, and based on it’s predecessor I didn’t think it ever would. Then they changed it, proving my expectations wrong, and in my opinion ruining the game, just so it could be the same as bunch of other horrible MMOs and keep people who like horrible games happy.

Ya, didn’t event think about this impact when they talked about it. It’s probably time to give celestial an over all buff to every stat, to make up for losing crit damage and magic find. That said, no, it doesn’t need a comparable crit damage stat to something that has that as a secondary stat, that wasn’t very good design to begin with.

Every time I think about the fact that they abandoned developing another expansion for GW to make GW2 I cry a little bit on the inside. The lore is still here, and the graphics are very nice, but the deck building, the team oriented play(which I admit was dumbed down in GW with the addition of heroes) and the awesome pvp are all gone. It has more grind than its predecessor, even if it is light compared to other MMOs. I didn’t need stats, 80 levels, or gear tiers either, but what we have is what we have.

Not that GW was all roses, as I mentioned, the addition of heroes hurt the entire game by eliminating the need for teamwork and socialization. The abundance of skills that made deck building so interesting also made balance a nightmare, and until they made attribute points free to redistribute(oh god give us this for traits already) changing builds was tedious. Not having an auction house made buying and selling pretty obnoxious. That’s just to name the most glaring things off the top of my head.

I’d still be playing GW to this day if the community hadn’t gone other places, and if people were still playing together in PvE instead of running around with all NPC groups. New content would have been nice too, but I’d have lived without it. I played the game for seven years. I just can’t see that happening with GW2, not at this point in time.

kntz.1420:

imsoenthused.1634:

The idea of kittening this game up with mounts and open pvp made me throw up a little bit in my mouth.

“Keep the present game exactly as it is…”

You don’t need to buy the expansion : )

If it includes stupid stuff like that, my vote is nobody gets to buy it.

The idea of kittening this game up with mounts and open pvp made me throw up a little bit in my mouth.

Subdue.5479:

imsoenthused.1634:

So for you, you don’t feel disenfranchised because the stat change was small. I and many other players, on the other hand, feel completely disenfranchised by the fact that they put ANY stat increase on it. So we’re going to keep complaining, to try and keep the game from making a further slide in that direction. You can feel free to keep popping up in our threads and chanting “you don’t need ascended gear”, okay?

The difference between the disenfranchisement that players who want some kind of vertical progression would have in comparison to the sort that you claim to experience is that there is no choice left for those who want the vertical progression. If there’s none in the game, all they can do is leave. And whether you like it or not, those people leaving hurts not only A.Net’s pockets, but your gaming experience as well. In contrast, those in your camp do have an option. You can simple not work towards the items. That’s right, don’t work towards them, don’t think about them, and continue playing the game exactly how you were playing it 6 months ago. If you don’t make it an issue, it won’t be one.

Right on cue. Now, psychologically, I can’t “not work towards the items.” It’s just not something I can do. I don’t like doing it, but I can’t make myself stop. So why do you keep telling that I don’t have to do something I have to do? Is it just because you don’t have to do it? Now, I recognize this in myself, and avoid games that hit that hot button. It works pretty well. Unless I start playing a game with no obsession causing vertical progression grind, and then the developers go and add such a grind for no good reason. Then it becomes kind of hard to avoid. But, once again, keep telling me that exotics work fine and I don’t have to work on ascended in spite of what my brain keeps telling me. Your ideas intrigue me, and I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world that’s got more active combat

Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world

everything you love about Guild Wars 1

everything you love

That was a hell of a vague statement, and the problem arises from every individuals interpretation of what that meant. I took it to mean that the vast majority of the game would be end game level and that the run up to that level would be relatively short compared to the majority of MMOs on the market. That it would have diverse and engaging PvP options, the pinnacle of the market. That BiS if visually plain gear would be abundant and easily attained. That character builds would require choices and be diverse and engaging. When they didn’t deliver on these, it disappointed me, as they were things I loved about GW1. For other people I’m sure it was the same disappointment for different reasons.

Vayne.8563:

But what are the alternatives? No stat increase and an entire segment is disenfranchised. Big stat increase and another entire segment is disenfranchised.

That’s why they compromised and I don’t believe that the biggest percentage of people are disappointed with it. I’d have been far more disappointed if the stat difference was huge. As it is, I’m quite happy, because I know I don’t need that armor.

It’s all a question of percentages. There’s got to be some threshold. Anet certainly annoyed a percentage of each camp, but what size percent and how annoyed they are will tell the real story. If they chose right, most people will stay and play. If they chose wrong…well that would be unfortunate.

So for you, you don’t feel disenfranchised because the stat change was small. I and many other players, on the other hand, feel completely disenfranchised by the fact that they put ANY stat increase on it. So we’re going to keep complaining, to try and keep the game from making a further slide in that direction. You can feel free to keep popping up in our threads and chanting “you don’t need ascended gear”, okay?

No, because then it gets seriously skewed towards no lifers and fanboys. Somebody with 10K AP is very likely to have a rose tinted view of the state of the game, don’t you think? They get to add their opinions same as anybody else, they don’t need those opinions weighted by how much they love the game and how much time they’ve spent in it.

Sylv.5324:

They’ve already stated that the past year was for polish, with no new massive content releases. They haven’t lied.

Then shouldn’t more of the long standing bugs and issues be gone? And what’s the chance of those things getting fixed now if they are shifting from a polish to content focused development?

Zeldain.5710:

imsoenthused.1634:

And what you are ignoring is that for many gamers, myself included, ascended armor is required by the the simple virtue of being BiS. So, again for me and gamers like me, the ony difference between ascended gear and grinding out those kurzick and luxon points is that getting the the points was something that didn’t take too long and that I enjoyed doing, while ascended gear takes way too long and I don’t enjoy doing it at all.

That really is your own personal play style choice though… what it comes to though, and why you’re frustrated – if you don’t like the game in the first place, then playing more of it to get your perceived “required” gear is going to feel even worse.

If you enjoy the game, and are simply playing more of it, then there should be no issue.

Yes, I admit that the frustration has a lot to with my psychology, but that’s why I had such high hopes for this game. I find it incredibly difficult to relax and just have fun without having BiS gear. No matter how viable my character might be, I don’t feel like they are “ready” until they do. Many Achiever style gamers feel this way. Some of them enjoy that progression, some of us don’t. I don’t, so I loved Guild Wars. I liked the fact that levels stopped at 20 and never went up with expansions. I liked the fact that BiS gear was ubiquitous.

There are lots of things I enjoy about GW2, but some of the changes since the first one, like increased level cap, the majority of the world map being low level areas, and BiS gear being extremely tedious and time consuming to attain just feel like a huge divergence from some of the things I loved the most about GW1.

I don’t state my complaints thinking that what we have now is going to get changed. I do it to let the devs know what I came in to this game expecting, and in the hopes that them know that somehow keeps it from sliding in to what I see as the wrong direction. I want to preserve what fun I am having(while madly scrambling to grind out ascended gear) from future changes.

If you aren’t adding a new profession and/or I can’t make a Tengu or Kodan character, I just kind of don’t care. We already have a worm world boss. This will just be a revamped worm with some annoying mechanic to make failure possible I suspect. I’ll wait and see, but that video doesn’t exactly show me anything I want to /dance about.

Subdue.5479:

Actually, I’d argue that a liking for ascended is an inherently superior position, because it does not take choices away from others. From those who like ascended item’s point of view, if you don’t want to work/grind/etc for them, you don’t have to, that’s your call. But those of you arguing against ascended aren’t just unwilling to work/grind/etc for them, you want to remove the option for others. That makes that side inherently selfish and inferior.

I’d say the people who complained and got a gear grind added to a game that didn’t need it and that many of us didn’t want are inherently selfish. I’m not unwilling to work for them, I feel compelled to work towards them, constantly. I recognize that compulsion in myself, I just don’t enjoy it. That’s why I look for games that don’t cause that feeling, like this one was before they added ascended.

1. 80 level cap, extended leveling grind, and more of the world map being low level areas than max level areas.

2. Stats on gear. Stats in generally.

3. Weapon locked skills and tiny variety of skills.

4. Ascended Armor

5. Defiant stacks on bosses.

Basically, almost anything they changed from Guild Wars 1 I think is pretty terrible, with the exception of new graphics and open world exploration. I’ll never understand why they decided to throw out a good formula and replace it with this mediocre one.

I feel like it’s an ok game, but an unfortunate sequel to a much better game.

To be honest? I’d leave it on the one, while removing the WvW requirement, and then add it to some WvW meta achievement that I don’t know or care about, to make everyone happy.

^not to mention that LA has the longest load times of any city/area. Are you really going to add another load time on top of it?

I usually run from the portal out of the mists to the bank/tp in LA, just to avoid the load time of trying to port to the merchants wp.

lordkrall.7241:

You mean just like how people in GW2 earn enough stuff to get Ascended by playing the way they want? What is the difference?
None of them are required.
Some people like them, some don’t.
I really don’t see any difference at all.

Maybe there isn’t one? But I didn’t notice/mind one, while I hate the other enough to want punch somebody in the face. All I can do is offer them feedback, and let them know what I liked and what I don’t. After that it’s all up to them.

Ceridwen.6703:

imsoenthused.1634:

Those two I originally mentioned, Diessa’s Wall Breach Blitz and Dedgehaunt’s Tribulation Scaffold? Both vistas and jumping puzzles. The wall is also a skill point. Both needed for 100% completion.

Edits!: Also, WvW is maps. Included likely because they are maps, and all maps are needed for 100% map completion. Question should really be, why we don’t have to go to the PvP lobby as well? It has PoIs on it.

Again, the achievement isn’t solely PvE.

No, it isn’t, but it should be. And just remove the stupid legendary reward and add it to something else.

I would like to see a teleport item that took you to your home instance, especially if they made sure every home instance had a merchant, TP, bank, and crafting instances in the home instance, close to that teleport location. Otherwise I don’t care, and they’ll never do that because it would cut down on cash shop sales.

Ceridwen.6703:

Hm, I believe I brought up certain JPs and Dive Master because for me, personally, those are things I’ll never get (solo). I made myself get those required for map completion, and personally, that was much harder for me than WvW completion, in terms of getting my head around them and certain medical inconsistancies. I was alluding to the fact that Been There, Done That may not be for everyone on a similar basis – being able to walk away from something incomplete whilst being unashamed of it is what I’m suggesting, not a like-for-like comparison. Who cares if you have an achievement or not? What does it really matter?

As I’ve just said this particular achievement is neither solely PvE or solely WvW. It’s a combination. If someone doesn’t like that, it’s not worth fretting on it or get angry about it. Like other achievements, it’s just not going to happen. That’s all. Why is this an issue? What’s really the problem? I’d suggest anyone who has any issues with things like this should step back and evaluate what is truly important to them. I only say this with kind intentions, and as someone who has done just that and spoken extensively with my poor husband about it (I may also have ranted too, but it pretty much got me nowhere).

I don’t spend my time in WvW as a rule but when I do step in there? I get things done when I get things done. I’m just patiently stubborn like that.

I hate jumping puzzles with a passion. The thing is, I’d hate them, and be annoyed by the requirement, but if they made them necessary for the 100% completion title I would understand it. It would fit in with the the theme. Requiring WvW doesn’t. I’m not saying I didn’t deal with it, just that I think it was a bad design decision.

lordkrall.7241:

Please don’t talk for all GW1 players, and if you are going to talk about GW1 at least make sure to take the whole game into account. Or are you simply unfamiliar with the skills added with Factions and forward that required quite a bit of grinding to level up and make powerful?

You’re right, I apologize, I’m sure some GW1 players didn’t love the same things I did. I was never bothered by the faction requirements for skills because I earned enough to make them plenty effective just by playing the game the way I wanted to.

Remove dedicated healers and make your bosses immune to CC and you remove the need for anything but DPS in PvE. The decision to remove monks was the first mistake, the decision to add defiant was the second.

Having stuff to do and stuff to grind is fine. All we GW1 purists are saying is that the stat increase is not needed. Stat progression isn’t needed, give us what we really love, skill diversity and more of your game being aimed at max level characters. Seriously, compare how much of GW1 was focused on level 20 players to how many GW2 zones are for level 80s. Compare the build diversity. People complaining about wanting more to do does not equate to wanting new BiS gear to grind out that is enormously expensive and time gated.

Horizontal progression works, copying WoW isn’t necessary to make a great game. Lower the ascended gears stat level to be the same as exotic, or raise exotic to its tier and we’ll be done arguing. Having the grind as an option is fine, but making it the highest tier BiS gear means that for many of us it doesn’t feel like an “option” at all.

Yes, yes. Make my Dhuum Fire necro even more effective. I wait. >_>

lol

What’s really funny is I picked Blackgate randomly during the beta preview weekends, and just never changed. I feel so lucky.

When they first released microwave ovens, they neglected to include a warning about not putting pets in them. Guess what happened? There’s always “that guy”.

I have seriously cleared Balth so many times, just from running around in that zone and joining in when it’s available. Don’t guest to Blackgate, move to Blackgate. We’re just better than anyone else.