Guild Wars 2

I don’t think zerker needs nerfed, but I do think AI needs buffed and defiant needs removed. Give the AI the same ability to remove conditions and break stuns as a player, and just get rid of defiant all together. Intelligent AI that dodged, avoided AoE, and used boons while attempting to remove conditions would go a long way towards making berserker gear just one option among many.

In my opinion, intelligent boon use and condition removal by AI would be far more engaging. Having high rank NPCs take shorter condition duration would be fine, but just making them invulnerable creates a discrepancy where players actions don’t have the stated, intended result. Defiant is just lazy and should be removed. Anyone else agree?

Personally, I as someone who paid cash for the skill, I’d have no problem with making it available to everyone. Just make it cost a ridiculous number of skill points. 300 seems about right to me. That way they get to choose between a legendary weapon or unlocking a skill they’ll never use.

Subdue.5479:

It’s an MMO dude, that’s the expectation.

It’s not the expectation of anyone who played the first game in the series. Just because it’s expected of MMOs doesn’t mean it’s not awful and that they couldn’t have made a new, better MMO without it. In fact, they even said that’s what they were doing.

Saturn.6591:

Lol; I just imagined characters in GW2 talking like japanese anime-characters do. That’d somehow be funny and cute at the same time xD. Then again, I wouldn’t get to see it outside of the occasional youtube-video I guess. ^^

You’d get to hear it. I usually run around with the spoken language set to german or french, if they recorded japanese voices I’m sure you’d be able to select it and then after around 3 gigs of downloading you’d be able to hear them any time you wanted.

I’ve gotten three that I can remember. Never got anything from opening the chests to get excited about. Honestly, from the number I’ve opened, I wouldn’t spend gems for them, ever.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You know, I don’t really care about Ascended Gear one way or the other. I hear lots of complaints about it being uber-expensive. I haven’t spent any money on Ascended Gear. I have a few items from laurels and such. My crafting is moving along steadily, it’s in the upper 400s. It may take me 6 months or a year to craft the Armor, should I decide to do so. Wasn’t that the idea? To introduce something that took some time to achieve? What’s the big rush? Maybe all those in a hurry are Fractal players, I just don’t know. But, if you don’t buy your materials, it’s not very expensive…at least, not for me. =)

The problem is that they put a stat increase on it. Honestly, if they’d left it with exotic stats with the addition of agony resistance then I’d be perfectly happy. I’d feel like I had reached a fully geared position, and I’d be relaxed and playing the game, enjoying myself. Instead I don’t feel fully geared, I’m not relaxed, and as a result I’m not enjoying myself nearly as much as I would be. I feel the constant compulsion to work towards ascended gear so I can be “done” and start really playing the game. This is a problem for me in most MMORPGs, and RPGs in general, but the one game that avoided it and as a result gained my loyalty and love for years was Guild Wars. I just wanted the same thing from its sequel and I’m incredibly disappointed that the developers decided to head in a different direction.

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

Um, just out of curiosity, have you asked on /map for people to join up and go map exploring? I haven’t been there, but I’ve found that a lot of people tend to be helpful if you just try the chat. I was kind of lonely and discouraged until I started speaking up in chat. People seem to be really relieved when someone does, like everyone was waiting for someone to start up a conversation. That’s how I’ve gotten to a lot of skill points I couldn’t get to myself. I just asked around.

Honestly, I’m a pretty good WvW player, as far as Roaming goes, I knock out the skill points solo with no real problems. The possession gated castles and towers are what really annoy me, because I either have to follow a zerg that it is taking them, or wait for the color on my server to change.

The other huge annoyance for me is that I enjoy exploring new areas and scenery, that’s why I started working on the achievement to begin with, and three of the stupid WvW maps are IDENTICAL! Having to complete the same map three times for one character is just tedious and goes against the very idea of map exploration, which is what got me started on the whole achievement to begin with. I’d still feel forced to be there, but I think I’d be far less disgusted if there were actually four different WvW maps to explore.

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

Shadey Dancer.2907:

From a purely personal perspective, Sure, I was not a happy bunny when I realized I had to do WvW map completion before getting 100% world map completion (over a year ago? something like that). However on the upside, I am kind of grateful it was there, as I would not have even thought of going into WvW beforehand, thinking it was for elite players only. No idea where I got that notion from, but there we go lol.

It’s not for elite players only?

It’s for elite roaming players, AND mindless zerg fest players. The mindless zerg fest players follow little blue commander tags around and basically feels the same as doing a Queensdale/Frost Gorge champ train, occassionally enemy zergs collide, and everyone in the smaller one dies. The elite roamers go around solo or in small groups and kill each other, as well as amusing themselves by ganking all the poor sucker PvE players who got tired of the zerg not leading them to the places they need for completion and tried to head out on their own.

^That’s the microcosm of crap that I’ve been forced into just so I can get the title I wanted. Keep in mind, I just wanted the title and achievement, didn’t even realize it was a requirement for a Legendary until I completed the entire world map and was sitting at 95%. How did I make it that far with out knowing? I was having fun doing map exploration solo so I didn’t bother joining a guild, and had been in a total of 3 parties the entire time I was playing up to that point. It never occured to me that the 100% completion ticker on the world map wasn’t referencing, you know, the world map…

I discovered this wonderful fact when I hit 95% completion, and I’m still mad about it. I also feel it ruined WvW for me permanently, as feeling forced to be there makes me hate it. Not annoyance or dislike, but cold, black hearted hatred for a game mode that I might have tried out and enjoyed on my own if it had been my choice.

Subdue.5479:

imsoenthused.1634:

lordkrall.7241:

imsoenthused.1634:

Oh, that. You got enough of those points just exploring the areas and doing quests that I never felt like I was grinding to meet those requirements. Even later when I went back to get 10000 Luxon points, just to finish up the protector title, it was a negligible grind compared to the nightmare of ascended gear. Something you could knock out in an afternoon.

And yet it is REQUIRED, while in GW2 you are not mechanically blocked form anything for not having Ascended gear.

And no, just doing quests in GW1 (without doing repeating stuff) you would get about 8500 points (for Luxon), which is 1500 points less than you would need in order to progress. Sunspear also required quite a bit of going out of your way in order to get enough.
At least back when I did it around release.

Sure it was not really that hard or annoying to do it, but the point remains that it was actually REQUIRED, and yet people don’t seem to have any issue with it, while they have major issues with the non-required Ascended gear in GW2.

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.

So what you’re saying is, people who enjoy working to towards a largely insignificant stat increase should not be able to do so because you are not willing to put forth that effort, even though if you opt NOT to work towards it, the game is pretty much exactly the same for you now as it has always been?

Just sounds like greed to me.

Wow, you need to work on reading comprehension. As I explained, I am working towards it. I feel forced to work towards it because they decided to put a completely unnecessary stat increase on it. I just hate it and by extension them for making me feel forced to do so. I also feel they betrayed the entire spirit of what made Guild Wars such a great game by pandering to people who like bad games.

lordkrall.7241:

imsoenthused.1634:

Oh, that. You got enough of those points just exploring the areas and doing quests that I never felt like I was grinding to meet those requirements. Even later when I went back to get 10000 Luxon points, just to finish up the protector title, it was a negligible grind compared to the nightmare of ascended gear. Something you could knock out in an afternoon.

And yet it is REQUIRED, while in GW2 you are not mechanically blocked form anything for not having Ascended gear.

And no, just doing quests in GW1 (without doing repeating stuff) you would get about 8500 points (for Luxon), which is 1500 points less than you would need in order to progress. Sunspear also required quite a bit of going out of your way in order to get enough.
At least back when I did it around release.

Sure it was not really that hard or annoying to do it, but the point remains that it was actually REQUIRED, and yet people don’t seem to have any issue with it, while they have major issues with the non-required Ascended gear in GW2.

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.

lordkrall.7241:

You required 10 000 Kurzick/Luxon points in order to get past a certain point in the Faction Storyline.
You also required certain ranks of Sunspear in order to get past several points in Nightfall.

Oh, that. You got enough of those points just exploring the areas and doing quests that I never felt like I was grinding to meet those requirements. Even later when I went back to get 10000 Luxon points, just to finish up the protector title, it was a negligible grind compared to the nightmare of ascended gear. Something you could knock out in an afternoon.

lordkrall.7241:

imsoenthused.1634:

No, I’m talking about the game that had a very short vertical progression period due to its low level cap, with easily attainable BiS gear, that I experienced years of unadulterated joy playing, and still load up and enjoy occasionally to this day. You know, the one that Guild Wars 2 makes me want to play all over again every time I load it up.

And yet you are ignoring the part about it being REQUIRED in order to even experience the MAIN STORY of the game, whilst in GW2 you can do every single thing in the whole game without doing any vertical progression other than leveling.

I guess I am, but it’s out of ignorance. I really can’t think of what in the world you are talking about. Once you had maxed armor and maxed weapons, which were very easily aquired, anything else was cosmetic. So why don’t you speak up and tell me what I’m missing?

It really depends on the psychology of the gamer in question. What people who don’t fall into the achiever category from the Bartle Test for Gamer Psychology fail to realize is that for those of us who do, the difference being negligible doesn’t offset the fact that it is there. It may be optional, but there’s an entire group of gamers who think it feels required. I can totally respect the people who can look at ascended gear and say “Nope, that grind isn’t for me, and I’m not going to do it.” I just can’t do it. That’s why I loved Guild Wars, and why I hoped the dedication to horizontal progression would be maintained in its sequel. It takes so much psychological pressure off of me when I can say “Alright, I’m done gearing up. Time to have fun.” I don’t enjoy vertical progression, but I can’t stop doing it either. It’s part of my personality. You put that grind in front of me and I’ll keep hammering away at it, and hating you for it.

lordkrall.7241:

imsoenthused.1634:

The vocal minority complaining about vertical progression… Oh, you mean Guild Wars 1 fans. How silly of us.

Oh you mean the game that had vertical progression that was REQUIRED to even continue the story?

No, I’m talking about the game that had a very short vertical progression period due to its low level cap, with easily attainable BiS gear, that I experienced years of unadulterated joy playing, and still load up and enjoy occasionally to this day. You know, the one that Guild Wars 2 makes me want to play all over again every time I load it up.

Splitting PvP and PvE balance, yet another great idea from Guild Wars that they decided to replace in the sequel with a jumping puzzle. Little know fact, one jumping puzzle for every phenomenal idea/mechanic that was killed off between the two.

The vocal minority complaining about vertical progression… Oh, you mean Guild Wars 1 fans. How silly of us.

Ascended goes against ever thing great that Guild Wars once stood for, and should never have had better stats. Seriously, in the sequel to one of the games that proved pure horizontal progression and prestige skins work great, how do you get this wrong?

Hate – pretty much every single thing they did different than Guild Wars.

Love – the graphics.

I remember that annoyance. I did that entire stupid thing by repeating the first few flags, and waiting on them to reset, over and over again.

“I don’t have any complaints, so anybody else’s complaints are false or have no relevance, and you all are bad people/spoiled children for voicing them.”

^I made a TLDR for you OP

Lord Kuru.3685:

GW2’s like real life where you have a job (grinding) to support your actual interests (whatever you do with what you buy from grinding)?

Imagine a game in which we just did stuff because we thought it was fun, and got rewarded for whatever that might be in cool and interesting ways. It would be like having a job doing what you love, instead of work.

But that’s ridiculous, right? Anyway, no time to hang out here at the water cooler, I have to get back to grinding for ascended armor…

I almost feel like the enjoyment I get from this game has more to do with my nostalgia for Guild Wars 1 than anything about it. I’ve seen any of the reasons I could point out listed plenty of times on these forums, so I won’t rehash them here. I guess I’m playing Guild Wars 2, and in my head I’m kind of playing what Guild Wars 2 could have been, if that makes any sense. I’ve got this fantastic mental image of a game, and the one I’m actually playing at least has the right setting, lore, and graphics, even if it gets so very much more of it completely wrong.

The Elder Dragons don’t ever really die, they just go dormant and wait to rise again. They’re the Guild Wars version of Cthulhu. At least that’s the way I read the lore. You knock them down and nobody worries about them for a few dozen generations, then they come roaring back again. My guess would be that they either get forced back in to hibernation, or they fall dormant naturally once they’ve consumed all of the magic on the planet. Over the years the magic builds back up again, until it hits a high enough threshold to awaken them again.

One of the greatest, most awesome parts of Guild Wars was the fact that they did away with open PvP completely. So, why not, they’ve already thrown out lots of other great stuff that they got right in the first one. Might as well put a cherry on top.

I’d say calling GW2 a skill based game is a bit of an exaggeration. It’s the sequel to a skill based game, with all those icky skill requiring parts dumbed down or removed to increase it’s popularity with the WoW crowd. Oh, and they added dodging, jumping and swimming. You know, the necessary stuff.

If only I could get to any of those alternative locations for free from anywhere like I can to LA. I’m a cheapskate. >_>

I would heartily support that idea

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Once Hall of Monument Rewards got announced, I heard a lot in chatter about how it was now “required”. Just saying, it was prestige titles ONLY which those things were giving you in GW2 and there were people saying it was now being forced on them.

I would disagree with those people, although the rewards I got in GW2 from my Hall of Monuments are exactly the type of rewards I think we should have seen from end game achievements/grinding in this game, instead of ascended armor.

I suppose I don’t play it for the same reason it took me so long to get in to playing the game at all, I keep making comparisons to its predecessor and finding it wanting. Add in the fact that it has a seperate economy and I just can’t see the point.

I guess my biggest problem is the huge deviation from what worked in Guild Wars 1. End game, BiS gear was easily aquired, after that it was all just prestige skins. The game was fun enough that people put in lots of time for those prestige items, but because they had no stat difference they were in no way required. Your reward for getting them was having them. The manifesto led many of us to believe that that philosophy was going to be continued in Guild Wars 2, and it hasn’t.

If you didn’t invest years playing GW1, and if that wasn’t one of the things that really stood out about it for you, then it probably doesn’t have the same impact.

I apologize for the stupid comment. I just don’t see what the argument is about. If it’s better then it’s required to my mind set. They already had a great system in Guild Wars 1, where prestige items were just skins with no stat differences. You can make acquiring something like that as grind intensive as you want and not violate the spirit of their original manifesto. When you make it have a game play difference, the entire subset of achiever gamers, as defined by the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, feel that they have to work towards them. Arguing that the tier underneath them is still viable doesn’t have any impact on that psychology.

I guess it depends on why you all play games. Achiever style gamers play to be/have the best. If it has higher level stats, it’s required. If you don’t play that way, fine, but it doesn’t make it any less “required” for all the people who are.

I want my character screen to tell me what my crafting abilities and their ranks are. Trying to remember which one of my characters has which crafting ability is kind of annoying.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mmm, no.

Ascended weapons aren’t required for me to fight the Shatterer. I am not wrong on this.

If they make a single bit of difference in how much damage you do, they are no longer prestige items, they are required. Failure to accept the truth doesn’t make it any less true.

Saying you aren’t required to have the highest tier item in the game is like arguing that you don’t have to bother leveling to the cap. The word that sums that up is “stupid”.

Thedenofsin.7340:

The operative word here is ‘force’. There is no content in this game where you are forced to get on that grind treadmill. You can hit level 80, buy some rare/exotic gear, and tackle any content in the game. That’s the point.

If you want to get that really cool skin, or be the best in Fractals or dominate WvW, then you’re going to have to grind for it. However, that’s not what the manifesto is saying. The manifesto is saying that you don’t have to grind to have fun; you don’t have to grind to experience any of the game content.

This is different than, say, World of Warcraft where you have to grind out your Tier 314,230,118 level Warrior armor and weapons in order to be able to go raid Bahamut’s Belly Button (25 man).

The skin rewards and backpacks and minipets and ascended gear – none of that is necessary to enjoy the game content.

However, if you want those cool things or those rare things or the best items or to be the best in WvW, then, yes, they are available, but they come at a cost. That cost is a grind. However, that is palpably different than content that is simply unavailable to you unless you grind.

The moment you put a stat difference on it, it becomes required. You can argue about that all you want, but you will be wrong.

If I’m doing the Queensdale zerg it’s because I want Karma, fast. There are better ways to level and better ways to aquire items. Nerfing the drops wouldn’t stop me from doing it. I also do it fairly regularly to knock out my daily event requirement. Once again, nerfing the drops wouldn’t change that.

Not going to argue morality of the zerg. Some people hate it, some people love it, some people are indifferent to it. Nobody gets to claim their opinion is “right”.

Inimicus.7162:

imsoenthused.1634:

yet another example of a problem that would just go away for everyone if every instance of soul binding was replaced with account binding.

actually account binding isn’t going to help me here… these materials are already account bound, and need to be unbound entirely for what i think is my “best shot” idea to work lol

I was referring to the end product(ie the ascended item), not the materials. I’d have no problem with the materials being completely unbound, but I’m sure someone can probably tell us why that’s a bad idea.

yet another example of a problem that would just go away for everyone if every instance of soul binding was replaced with account binding.

I find the whole soulbinding mechanic incredibly tedious. We should be encouraged to have multiple characters and swap around gear at will inside your own account. In my opinion, all soul binding in the game should just be replaced with account binding. It would be a serious improvement in quality of life for every player with more than one character.

It would make a whole lot of sense to me if it showed your crafting trees and their rank on the character select screen. I specialize crafting on different characters, and sometimes can’t remember which character has which crafting type.

I just wish my server would be something other than blue, I could see it being less of a problem on a server that changes often.

Imperatora.7654:

World completion is needed for one and only one thing: legendary weapons… and those are meant to show at least a somewhat global understanding of the game, including WvW.

Honestly, I’m more than a little shocked they all but removed the badge of honour requirement by way of achievement chests.

TL;DR: no.

Then maybe they should come up with a different requirement for legendary weapons? I don’t care if world completion is only “needed” for that. I care that I, a player who enjoys PvE, played their entire game, and got 100% completion in every area, and watched my achievement climb all the way up to the very tippy top almost done percentage, and then when I went to research what I’d done wrong, since to the best of my knowledge I was done, I got dropped in the horrible zerg around the roses nightmare of wvw. It’s like doing a Queensdale champion train, only with more repair costs and less chance of getting anything I want. Oh, and just for fun, I have to do it three times on the same map, just to rub salt in to the wounds I got when I cut myself while slicing lemons. Some of us just like achievements for their own sake.

You think having a legendary weapon should require some type of global understanding, then that’s fine, make it it’s own achievement with other PvE, SPvP, and WvW titles as requirements, and I’ll never worry about getting it. But the way World Completion is set up, it feels like they tricked me into thinking I was working on a PvE achievement, and then at the end yelled out “surprise! Just kidding.”

Turamarth.3248:

imsoenthused.1634:

I don’t see any achievements that go the opposite way. Not a single one that can be almost 95% completed doing nothing but PvP and then requires an enormous grueling amount of PvE to grind out the last 5%,

Map completion

Nope, because the PvP player won’t spend anywhere near the amount of time doing PvE map completion as it takes waiting on server spawn rotations to finish getting the wvw maps completed. It’s not even close. Maybe, if it required full poi and story completion for every dungeon it would start getting closer, but it doesn’t.

Why is there no exploration mode for these wvw maps? This has been an issue since launch. Who thought this was a good idea? Making players like me, who have no interest in playing wvw, take away a slot from people who want to be there just so I can try to finish map completion is ridiculous. I suffer because of content locked by things completely beyond my control, they suffer because I’m not trying hard. I’m just following the zerg around in a half hearted meandering way hoping it goes to one of the poi or vistas that I don’t have yet. I might click auto attack occasionally if I can be bothered, maybe. Not often, because I’m doing something else, like watching a movie to distract myself from how much fun I’m not having. I don’t care who’s brain child this was. It needs to go. This feels like blatant discrimination against players who prefer PvE. I don’t see any achievements that go the opposite way. Not a single one that can be almost 95% completed doing nothing but PvP and then requires an enormous grueling amount of PvE to grind out the last 5%, maybe, if they get lucky and wait for perfect conditions for months while doing something they don’t enjoy.

Seriously, how has this not been fixed already?