Guild Wars 2

I’ve not really played a ranger much in this game so take this with a pinch of salt. But did ANet perhaps want to make the pet a majorly significant source of the ranger’s overall damage in order to make it more viable in pvp, where traditionally in 1v1 people entirely disregard a pet and go straight for you?

Given that other classes while not defined by their ranged ability per se, do have bows feature significantly in their arsenal. The one single thing that really sets the ranger apart is pet synergy, very much a defining characteristic of what would otherwise be just one of 3 ranged/melee classes.

I get why you guys want to go sans pet as my brief experience with them is that they’re a bit shonky currently. But it does seem obvious to me why ANet concentrated so much on trying to heavily emphasise the advantage of keeping your pet out. Surely if they were to beef up the AI routines and give the player a more reliable control over what they do, plus make them potentially far more durable in ground targeted AoE, then that puts paid to any major objections to them?

More fire and forget for those who want it, more potential to fine tune and manage for those who really dig the beastmaster role, and a pet that lives up to the devs intent. That seems the way forward, no?

I’m not missing the zergs one tiny bit….the bot armies have picked up the slack.

To be honest I’d like to see just a few more players milling around some of those zones. But it really does depend what time you’re there, or so I’ve found. During peak time I have no problems mustering for group events and the towns always seem to have 4 or 5 people in them milling around.

Weekly incentives to be in zones for events would be good. What I wouldn’t want to see when I’m on my alt is lvl80s bedecked in exotics making DES entirely trivial for everyone else involved.

Presents mainly. A skimpy Ms Santa outfit and some flashing deely boppers, something like that would be nice.

Oh look, a guild drama spilling onto the forum. That’s novel.

What this boils down to is you thought he was being a jerk, so you acted like a jerk right back at him (no res for you!), he’s a jerk with the power of grayskull and he kicked you for being a jerk. Now you’re doing the only honourable thing, by airing your dirty laundry in public….

I’d say you all had a lucky escape.

With this game’s lack of sub, I don’t feel anything’s snapping at my heels. My time with it is highly erratic as a result; sometimes it’s a 5 or 6hr sesh, sometimes it’s a quick dip.

Because there’s no raiding pressure either, I find that any time I do spend with the game is selfish “me” time.

Walking Dead S3 starts tonight and I’ve had a few brews. I’m not going to be playing GW2 tonight – no sweat, it’ll be just as fun tomorrow.

Selo.1250:

Its funny how many of these rose tinted mantra posts are beeing made every day.
“its good becouse i say so”

It might be good for you, but people are leaving in droves becouse of lack of things to do. My guild of 75 people logging in at start have dropped to 10.
So many have their char at lvl 80 and full exotic and max stats, so they stoped playing becouse they cant progress their character anymore.

Theres no queues to WvW even on the more populated servers, and theres almost more bots then players in Orr

You’re not happy, you’re guild weren’t happy, so you don’t see why anyone else should be? Isn’t that just an elaborate way of calling anyone who says anything positive that doesn’t accord with your view a “fanboy”?

Ironically the forum is absolutely rammed with negative topics covering a multitude of issues, both valid and downright petty (just like most MMO forums are these days), and you’re taking issue in this one.

I’m really not a fan of video guides. I like a big old chunk of heavy wordage.

I’m not concerned about people using shorthand ways to communicate, it’s probably a natural inclination of any socially inclined species to cut to the chase, especially when it’s to apply a solution to a problem. As long as our schools are covering the inevitable gaps that modern life and communication creates, that’s cool. I do worry about the possibility of shrinking attention spans though. More and more people I meet on the internet seem positively aspergian in their reluctance to absorb anything heavier than a meme these days.

But yeah, I’m old school.

It’s been explained very well elsewhere in the thread what motivates some of us to go into silent running mode. It’s not that good friends won’t understand, it’s that you just don’t want to go through the whole process of explaining yourself:

“look mate, I’m going to be on my alt, and actually would you mind awfully just not speaking to me for the next 4 hours while I go zerging with my new and blessedly silent friends who make no social demands of me? It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I can’t be bothered…”

I’m going to make some recommendations to all MMO developers daring to to contemplate insulting us with their…their….STUFF :-

- Don’t bother giving us details, we’ll pick holes in them, even after we’ve tested it and enthused about it all over the net like giddy schoolgirls with Bieber fever for months on end. We’re allowed to be capricious; pushovers one moment, impossible to please the next cos that’s how we roll in the MMO fan business, like a rowing boat in a force 10 gale.

-Don’t tell us you’re ready to launch, we’ll test your game every beta weekend, badger you for release dates even when you tell us you’re not ready and then when you finally do release it, we’ll kick your butts for releasing too early and not being ready.

- Don’t release at all actually, just keep the game in perpetual beta. We have absolutely no tolerance for bugs, we cannot conceive that this enormous and complex thing you’ve made may spring the odd leak here and there. Who are you kidding anyway, world building….it’s ruined!

- Don’t bother having forums either. It’s like a red rag to a bull, a distillation of every woe, every conceivable little thing we can think of that DOESN’T WORK RIGHT. You were thinking it’d be a place for people to swap tips, discuss builds and mechanics, offer constructive suggestions? Think again pea brains. This is your house and we are not going to wipe our feet, we’re gonna take a dump on your shag pile rug and then comment in the guestbook that “this house stinks of s***!”

And we wonder why MMOs are rapidly degenerating into horribly staid, risk averse, generic, narrowly conceived, hand holding, dumbed down, short term, shallow experiences intended to make a fast buck off box sales before the whole thing inevitably melts away as soon as the “the next big THING!”? looms on the horizon.

Anagna.8376:

If you hate people, why are you even in a guild?
“Massive Multiplayer Online” does not imply it is a single player experience. If social interaction isn’t your forte, play CoD or something.

I’m going to throw this out there – maybe he enjoys playing games with lots of people around him but doesn’t always want the added layer of social demand that tending valued friendships generally have a tendency to require? Hear that WHOOSH sound? That’s context, perspective, nuance and a few other concepts flying way, way over your head.

papryk.6273:

and you call that a friendship? oO

No, I call that ^ sanctimony.

I’m gonna get shot down in flames for this, but bear with me when I say that Tera’s armor models rock. Just in terms of little details, layers, the mixing of fabric with metals, fur with leather etc. There’s very little to beat the effort that went into their details. That most toons end up looking like LA hookers is a shame, but the details were gorgeous regardless.

Thanks OP, enjoyed the tale of the grump who thought he was invisibly cloaked but wasn’t at all, highly amusing.

I’m with you Nerien – the first time that happened to me I kitten near dropped a hot cup of coffee in my lap – “oh so this is where you’ve been”, like I’d been caught getting it on with someone in the photocopy room.

Thing is, while I’m prone to going stealth in MMOs, I’ve also been on the receiving end of it too, and I’m not gonna lie, my delicate ego has taken a minor dent a few times….yeah I know, what a hypocrite!

Ambrosiaa.6054:

Erhnam.5732:

To all the people that NEED a gear carrot:
There are lots of games with a gear focus carrot as end game. Yet instead of playing one of those games, yo cry because gw doesnt have it.

Then people complains that all the games are the same :rolleyes:

The thing is, i love everything about GW2 except the boring PvE end game. I love the WvW, the PvP, the mechanics and just the world in general. I would hate to leave the game because to me it could have been so much more. Right now i’m bored as hell while waiting for the WvW to reset since theres nth left for me to do in pve.

GW2 really doesn’t have to be your only fix, it’ll sit quite happily alongside any other MMO you feel gives you what it doesn’t. It doesn’t demand that you juggle subs if you want to dip in and out of it. Even if you can literally find no reason beyond wvw to log on (I can think of a lot, but that’s me), do you like GW2 enough to keep a hand in, knowing it doesn’t cost you a dime to do that? If so that’s good because it’s not going to remain this way, things will develop over time.

In the meantime, there’s literally nothing stopping you from playing WoW, or Eve, or Tera or whatever p2p game is out there that you feel gives you what GW2 lacks…..right?

Agree with you OP. I played MMOs for about 9 years, I raided most of those as a healer of some sort or other. I did that grind, that tortuous inch by inch gear progression routine for far, far longer than it was fun, but I felt if I wanted to be involved in a genre I felt was my thing, I had to do it. Then a couple of years ago I said to myself “I’m not running this hamster wheel anymore, and I’m certainly not paying a sub to run it”.

It’s my motivation for being here. People see the experience as front loaded, it is if you consider 1-79 the beginning and 80 as the end. I don’t anymore, I appreciate this game sets out to deliver everything in one long smooth run of experiences. It doesn’t screech to a halt at the end, it turns into GW1 essentially, but with bells.

The MMO scene is eating itself. If more games take a leaf out of ANet’s book, then I can keep up with it and enjoy myself. But if they largely continue on the trajectory that WoW firmly established as mainstream? I’m out.

Suits me fine tbh. I don’t spvp and I’m not an e-sports fan but seems like there’s a lot of potential to open up a solid revenue stream through people who do play that way. I’m struggling to see how it would impact people like me tbh.

If we get more constructive topics like this cropping up, I might start liking this forum again.

I’m constantly intrigued by this whole longevity argument. It obviously is meaningful to a lot of people or they wouldn’t go on and on about it.

The thing is, GW1 really was no great shakes in that area either, and I do not give two hoots how many old school fans come out to shoot me down about that. I played GW1 for as long as I wanted to, then realised I just didn’t want to anymore. Ffor me it ran out of compelling reasons to persist with it once the e-sports shine rubbed off – I’m not a big pvp fan tbh. Didn’t matter, no sub involved, I approached it as I would a normal PC game and moved on.

So then ANet decide to go the big full on MMO route, and suddenly everyone’s up in arms about not getting their value for money? If I never log on again, I’ve had a good 120 hours of fun time out of my first toon, I’m very pleased with that personally.

It’s a no sub game – it’s okay to leave it a while and come back later, the sky will not have fallen. Stop holding your breath, relax, swing by later when you get an itch again….sheesh!

I enjoy it, but somewhat class dependent. I dig the environments and atmosphere too much not to want to be in them fighting stuff, it’s as simple as that really. I still get a bit of a thrill when I see a big open stretch of water, knowing there’s a ton of stuff to see down in the depths.

It’s a fair complaint. A lot of the armor is underwhelming, especially medium stuff. But then I’ve never owned a complete set of anything, I just mix and match and transmute stuff until I like what I have, then dye it and roll with it until I get bored. Then do it all again. Works for me, glad I have that flexibility, a lot of games don’t.

But yeah, medium armor….an endless parade of trenchcoats and pirate boots…bleh!

I agree with you OP. And some of the comments you attracted prove your point . I didn’t really get a proper handle on them until I’d seen a full DE from beginning to end, and even then I’d been through it partially on another toon.

And even when many of us do, it’s not having an impact for a lot of people, there’s just too much resistance to what is ostensibly a looped event that repeats and doesn’t phase. Personally I have no issue with that because I do appreciate it. It’s a nice halfway house. I was never fully sold on WoW’s phasing either, it was a good attempt at trying to configure the world around you, but still felt very artificial to me, you could still see the strings.

So I’ll more than settle for GW2s DEs, especially if they shift them about a bit now and again to keep them fresh.

You’re spot on with how I tend to see this Azoetia . I play MMOs primarily because I’m aware of being surrounded by real people, I don’t have to be friends with them to enjoy their company, just knowing they’re there is enough. The necessity of interacting socially in order to get things done in a traditional MMO is essentially artifice. That’s why Dungeon Finder groups in those games are often cold and clinical in my experience

GW2 does away with all the barriers associated with getting open world stuff done. Last night, I and about 20 other people did all the DEs in the volcano zone, it was a quiet affair but in that 45 minutes or so I’d revived others at least a dozen times, broken off into small hunting sub groups to get several objectives done simultaenously, then re-grouped to take on the boss, I got revived myself at least 4 or 5 times, then again I found myself in a small sub-group that went on to do some other DEs that the zerg had missed.

And we did all of that instinctively, without once having to convey a convoluted plan, or one person setting themselves up as defacto leader barking obvious information out like commands. It was an organic, fluid experience, and a very enjoyable one.

I could have reached out to the others in that group, but in the end I didn’t need, or actually want to. But then later, I established a friendship with someone when i was trying to get to a vista and they asked how I got to a ledge. We connected and now they’re on my friends list.

Let me guess – youv’e started this thread because you genuinely want to express some valid and rational concerns, and given that your title is a question, you are open minded to having your preconceived notions challenged by those among your peers who have an alternate perspective? Why of course!

Kimbald.2697:

lagrangeify.5641

Let’s recap – the OP came on here and had positive things to say. He then gets beat down by people evidently intent on telling him he knows nothing because he’s not got to Orr.

There are plenty of topics on this forum that reflect negative opinion, yet people with that frame of mind immediately flock to this one. Now you’re defending the nay sayers right to say “nay!” and it’s those who back the OP’s right to be positive that are the aggressors? Please, pull the other one it’s got bells on it.

The opposite is also true: many posts with critisism are floaded by people saying the game is perfect as it is, and that the critical OP should go back to whatever other game…

I dislike both.

As I clearly stated in the post you quoted I am happy for the OP.
But this whole bickering back and forth is getting on my nerfs.
Both sides can be seen as aggressors if they’re unreasonable.

If you don’t see that critical posts get flocked by white knights as well, very often not bringing anything relevant to the post except their own love for the game in general, than you’re wearing shades.
I agree posts like this don’t need the negativity, but why write a post on a forum meant for feedback if you only expect the positive reactions?
Not saying the OP is saying that, I’m saying you are hinting that there shouldn’t be negative reactions…

My post was rather diplomatic in the sense that I understood both sides, and yet again you feel the need to come and tell me I’m biased.

Oh no, I’m not hinting at anything. I’m saying that it’s very revealing if a little tiresomely routine, how people basically castigate the OP for daring to say that he’s enjoyed his time with the game. He basically gets told “you know nothing”, as though a huge proportion of the game has to be ignored because a few malcontents don’t like Orr.

And then you come along with a diatribe essentially about how those poor nay sayers don’t get a fair crack at the whip. And I’m saying that’s BS.

It’s a rum old world we live in when people who are content are essentially told they know nothing, and people who seem to find fault in so many places are considered experts. Rum indeed.

Well perhaps on some very vague level, but I think it’s more just a matter of personal preference, though of course that’s shaped by our real lives. I like cloth wearer classes so I’m generally drawn to the scholar archetype. I’m quite bookish in real life and not very impressed by big acts of machismo lol, so maybe you’re onto something. Put it this way, I’ve never played a warrior to level cap in any MMO, I’ve just never enjoyed the class.

But then again, the reason I play MMOs and RPGs is escapism – to get away from being me for a while. So I’m never looking for something that somehow reflects me in some way. I’m a roleplayer at heart, so that’s really not the objective. The opposite actually.

Very much so. GW2 is an uncommonly good game, better than most MMOs entirely depending on the arbitrary way in which we individually judge these things . Of course that entirely depends on whether you believed it was going to be the shaker of worlds, or merely a very well made game.

But then, there’s always been this apparent need to over-analyse the MMO, more so than any other genre it seems. No game type seems to provoke as much buyer regret as the MMO does. What’s really quite amusing to me is that even when a very well made game that doesn’t charge a subscription comes out, people still apply the same old tired arguments and make the same old tired predictions.

Here’s a prediction for you – when MoP has long since gone the way of Cataclysm, people will still be logging in to play a bit of GW2, they’ll have a few wvw or spvpmatches, maybe start an alt and get it to 30 so they can see the changes that ANet have made to the order and scale of dynamic events in lowbie areas. They’ll maybe take an 80 through some low level dungeons – because they can do that without it seeming entirely redundant.

In other words, when the dust has settled, there is plenty of scope for GW2 to improve, to be tweaked and rounded out. Then there are the expansions and little ways in which ANet will entice us into sticking with their game.

Because contrary to current abiding opinion, I believe ANet are in this for the long haul, they have every intention of keeping us engaged beyond initial box sales. They certainly won’t be interested in spending all those years producing this game, only to let it slide into oblivion. No more so than they did GW1.

But don’t let any of this get in the way of a good bit of buyer regret doom saying. Carry on being a wet weekend. Good luck OP, finding peace….somewhere.

Kimbald.2697:

The OP is free to say he loves the game, wonderfull by itself.

Others are entitled to say they got disapointed at 80, or because of any reason they would feel that.
It’s all feedback, and feedback should never be one sided only.

This doesn’t mean the OP will be disapointed too, and no one is saying he is bound to be. Most just say that they were indeed.
Nothing offensive about that.

These forums are often very aggressive towards people saying negative things, which by itself gives me a bad feeling about the game.

And about Orr: it wouldn’t half as bad if downscaling worked as it should, and respawn rates everywhere were fixed.
This game wasn’t advertised with having only 1 real map to go to at 80, it was advertised with giving you the world…

Let’s recap – the OP came on here and had positive things to say. He then gets beat down by people evidently intent on telling him he knows nothing because he’s not got to Orr.

There are plenty of topics on this forum that reflect negative opinion, yet people with that frame of mind immediately flock to this one. Now you’re defending the nay sayers right to say “nay!” and it’s those who back the OP’s right to be positive that are the aggressors? Please, pull the other one it’s got bells on it.

So now you say that GW2 is in fact a sort of casual game where numbers doesn’t really matter so much?

On the contrary, I’m saying that I use every single skill I have on my hotbar frequently, that some of them have seconday functions, and that the load out changes quite fundamentally depending on what weapons I have equipped, whether it’s a 2h, a staff or a great sword, two 1h swords, sword/pistol, sword/torch, sword/focus, or sceptor and any of those other combinations.

Then if I factor in different trait builds I have even more functional variety, because it will often change the context of many of those skills. For example, if a trait allows me to summon clones when I dodge, it potentially frees up a utility slot for something new and useful to either me or my team.

I’m saying that the sum total of that is at least the equal of the skill set functionality of most, if not all MMOs I have ever played. There’s just less bloat, less redundance. The emphasis is absolutely on what is useful to the player. What it doesn’t do, is present you with a slew of skills on your hotbar that will be used perhaps once an hour, under very strictly confined and narrow circumstances.

As for my final comment re min/max and rotation heavy game play – I believe I was fairly clear in my opinion. GW2 does not cater for this, it patently was not intended that you play this game that way. If that’s what you want, then you really need to be looking elsewhere.

But then, if you’d done your research, you’d know all this already well before launch. Right?

So the lesson to learn here OP, is that you’re not allowed to express your enjoyment and appreciation of the journey, because level 80s who have reached your destination know better than you o. Allegedly.

Best thing to do is to carry on as you have been, loving your game time and having fun on your journey. And ignore the arrogant killjoys who think they can pull rank on you because they’ve been to Orr and don’t like it.

My first prof was thief and to be honest I found her terribly dull by the time she got to 80.

My second was mesmer and she’s a far more my style. I play her as a hit and run escapologist rather than a clone factory shatterer. So I spend more time in melee when many mesmers prefer to stay at range. I like that I have to be the water dancer, or I’ll get swatted. I also like that I can get 5 or 6 mobs on me and by a process of attrition I’ll always be last woman standing.

I use every single skill on every single fight. And if I swap my weapons out I’ll use every one of those skills too. If I compare that to my WoW mage or priest, I’d say I used maybe 6 skills regularly, the rest very situationally, some were about as much use as a chocolate tea pot and were on my hot bar because well, you never know! The thing is that in this game your skills themselves have different contexts in which they have different uses. For instance, I have a spell that surrounds me in a field that wipes off conditions. But if I then leap out of that field I get chaos shield.

It’s all about approach really. I’m absolutely done with rotation heavy min/max gaming. Some people are not in a mood to give it up, and I don’t blame them – whatever floats your boat. But GW2 is not that game and never will be

We’re all inherently selfish and competitive, and some of us like to kick sand in others faces (some people will reject co-operation if they can, ie getting a skill point done but not helping late comers get theirs, or purposely not resurrecting etc). But when you make the system as egalitarian as GW2’s is, shared resources and goals and an absence of competitive pressure outside of pvp, we revert to the pack animal.

I love the sandbox approach to gaming, it’s fun being one person against an entire world sometimes. But the fact is, we’re adaptable and co-operative when we need to be, it’s why we’re top dog after all.

The problem is, most of us are stuck in halfway house; we’re used to the standard MMO grouping template that forces some level of interaction. GW2 doesn’t force it at all, neither did Rift. So the consequence is that you sometimes feel like you’re one human being in a zerg of bots. I suspect this is also the cause of people not hanging around for the next step in a chain DE – nobody’s communicating, they just want to be away asap.

The solution is to reach out and be more accessible. But because it’s not really forced, many don’t. But it’s the only possible answer – talk more, be approachable.

It’s the best £49 I’ve spent on a game in a very long time. And given how some of it’s fans were being on the various news sites and on forums for games like Tera and Rift, I was almost set on wanting it to massively fail.

But fact is, it’s a cracking little game, absolute dynamite bang for my buck. For all the bugs and faults (and there are plenty) the quality is abundantly evident everywhere you care to look, there’s cleverness and inventiveness and deep thought and high design in all sorts of places.

Put it this way, I’m not a camp follower, I wasn’t much of a fan of GW1 or ArenaNet – admired their chops for doing something different but it just wasn’t up to what Blizzard were doing at the time imo, those guys were still in their prime and kicking kitten with a game that was the Beatles and The Stones.

GW2 isn’t quite as audaciously game changing as it’s creators think it is, or that it’s camp followers thought it might be. But it is game changing in ways that are less loud, but more enduring. No MMO can hope to release in the next 10 years and not emulate at least some significant chunks of what it does, and while a lot of what it does has been attempted before, never with the skill or conviction we find here.

Some people who currently feel disenchanted will definitely be back. This game, unlike virtually all others in it’s field, has the chops and the allure.

And all that good stuff for $60? That’ll do nicely.

Some great posts by Spectacular Yak, who displays a grasp of logic and an erudite turn of phrase that far exceeds what most of the opposition can muster. Not that he’s opposed to anyone – he talks sense and logic from the head, others appear to be channeling raw emotion from their bowels.

My mesmer is now 63 and it’s been a very, very easy ride. But I do remember the first 20 levels being shockingly bad, to the point that I nearly abandoned her. She had literally nothing to recommend her at that point, aside from a somewhat novel mechanic that kept me at it. Once I got past 25 or so things changed up a gear, and continued to improve dramatically as the trait points built up.

What others have said is spot on,yeah it might be stating the obvious but mobility is absolutely crucial to this class and it has a whole deck of ways to kite mobs really effectively, to the point that in some fights, even if I’m playing hit and run with big hitting mobs, I hardly ever take damage. When I do though, it’s because I had a lapse and when that happens I can get swatted like a bug. But again, I have so many ways to avoid it that it’s purely down to not watching what I’m doing.

I’ve been running a domination/dueling build at 30/20 and just started putting points into inspiration. I’ve been mostly stacking power and precision with some crit here and there which averages around 48 to 50%, higher depending on runes and gems. I’ve been alternating between staff and great sword quite a lot with slight bias for the latter due to it seeming to be more effective in DEs, but sword/sword has been where the fun is for me, sword/pistol if I fancy having a little more control, and now and again I’ll run with sword/focus purely for some additional utility.

I’ve found with this build and load out that I pretty much rule most general encounters. In fact, I can easily take on 5 or 6 mobs including a veteran among them and as long as my weapons are up to date, I’ll often come out of it with barely a scratch. In fact, of the classes I’ve played, the mesmer is the one I’m least likely to worry about taking on any veteran in any situation, they just aren’t any trouble when you so hard to hit that it feels like you’re taking the pee.

At your level I’d expect you to have a similar experience. Mesmers are just tremendously effective hit and run kite specialists that might take a little time to warm up their dps, but when they do it’s pretty awesome to behold.

Stick with it, try different load outs and builds, and just practice, it will click and then you’ll wonder how people can stand other classes that are either face roll dull or total paper tigers. Mesmers rock.

ANet are very clever guys. They know who their core audience is, but they’re not going to turn away suckers who buy any AAA MMO that comes along in the mistaken belief that it has that magical formula that actually does not exist and never will.

I think they know there is a huge percentage of initial sales to people who will never, ever be satisfied. They know those people will be there for launch and they know they won’t stick around because they’re voracious content piranhas who have appetites that can never be sated, certainly not by a game designed to be played the way GW2 has been.

I think I’m ANet’s core audience. All the things you cite as lacking in this game, I consider positive design choices intended to appeal to me and my ilk. I’ve done my fair share of monthly sub endgame dungeon grind for inch by inch gain – too much like a job these days, and mine’s demanding enough as it is.

I’m extremely happy with GW2. And I’ll be buying future expansions. That’s all I know.

Too many of you came to GW2 with too lofty an expectation of what it would deliver, an over-awed anticipation that could never be reasonably satisfied. But then you know that, you’ve done it before right?

It’s not been designed to be stuck to like glue and if you approach it in the same way you do a subscription based game that is intent on having you wriggling on a hook forever you will inevitably hit some inherent limitations. But then GW1 was the same in that regard, and those of you who played that game from it’s beginning and aren’t looking with rose-tinted goggles will recall many of the complaints being aimed at this game were also said of it’s predecessor.

Didn’t do GW1 any harm, it co-existed quite happily with the overwhelming market leader while nearly all other attempts to introduce a AAA subbed MMO fell flat. And when all you doom and gloomers have moved on, GW2 will still be doing fine. Because the people who made it know what they’re doing and who they’re appealing to.

They sold a lot of boxes to the serial MMO boxcar jumpers and why not, it’s easy money, you guys will buy anything as long as it looks like it might be the next big thing. But you’re not their core audience, you’re just the suckers it roped in with some well paced hype – you’re collateral.

I’ve been reporting bots virtually since the game went live. Always the same sort of hacks in evidence, the toon warps around the map like a fly, not responding to tells or named prompting via /map chat. To be honest I initially thought they might be rubber banding, but if you take the time to observe them for long enough it becomes fairly obvious what the difference is between latency and a scripted routine employing an obvious hack.

Initially i seemed to have some success, two bots that had been operating for 24hrs in a zone I have never seen again. But one in particular has been operating in the same zone for 3 days, 24/7 and he’s still going strong.

I urge people to just persist with the report function, both the gold spammers, the mail spammers and the bots. Stick to doing that like glue, its the only direct power we as fans of this game have and it’s our responsibility to each other to actively play our part.

On a whole other issue, I’m a bit slow on the trading post hacks claim. I’ve noticed often that entire lists of materials that I was about to buy have seemingly instantly been purchased then placed back on the TP with sometimes a mere 1 or 2% rise in their cost per piece. Initially I thought this was just individuals playing the market since it’s very easy to buy entire lists of items grouped by their asking price. But I’ve noticed that I can be on at 3am and it happens very often, or 8am, it doesn’t seem to matter when, the trade in raw mats like blood or bone seems much brisker than any I’ve seen in any game before.

All very unsettling really. Hope there’s a good solution that ANet can come up with because it’s really messing things up for us all.

I use runes of the pack for increased swiftness duration on temporal curtain, and when it’s on cooldown I blink. And when I’m doing awkward vistas I often use portal to avoid those annoying mis-timed jumps and paired with blink to get around certain trap rooms. I’m very happy with my explore options.

Mesmers are a swiss army knife class with so many nifty toys that are the envy of other professions. We just have to work a little more proactively than they do. Reasons to be cheerful.

Here’s my girl, I’m very fond of her:

Yeah this happened to me too:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Overnight-loss-of-character-s-progress/first#post303106

Ah ok sorry, should have checked more. I’ll link to that to stop people carping on about it being isolated to individuals, clearly it wasn’t. That sucks btw, losing tokens.

I played into the small hours last night, it was way past normal time for me to be playing but I decided I wanted to get my toon to 57 before I logged off. In doing so, I grabbed a bunch of waypoints, did a couple of quite tricky vistas that involved fighting my way through a bunch of caves and gaining a skillpoint from a veteran along the way. I finished off with a couple of relatively easy DEs that I soloed. So not an inconsiderable amount of activity, exp, loot, salvage etc.

Today I log on, only to find that I’m back at the start of 56 again, none of those hearts, waypoints or vistas had been discovered, and presumably none of the loot I attained or the money I gained from selling whites and blues though can’t be certain.

That’s not cool. It might only amount to an hour or so of gameplay, but it’s not the time spent, it’s that this sort of thing can even happen. I’m now not at all confident that all is as it appears to be day to day – I’ve no way to tell if this has happened before since I haven’t been looking for it. But it’s a worry.

And just to clear this up, I didn’t lose my connection to the server at any time, no errors, no lag or any kinds of problems during that time, in fact at that hour with so few people online things were silky smooth.

Anyone else had this happen to them? Be aware guys, keep tab on your progress and if you’ve encountered this, or know of another post on it that I’ve missed, please let me know.

I played into the small hours last night, it was way past normal time for me to be playing but I decided I wanted to get my toon to 57 before I logged off. In doing so, I grabbed a bunch of waypoints, did a couple of quite tricky vistas that involved fighting my way through a bunch of caves and gaining a skillpoint from a veteran along the way. I finished off with a couple of relatively easy DEs that I soloed. So not an inconsiderable amount of activity, exp, loot, salvage etc.

Today I log on, only to find that I’m back at the start of 56 again, none of those hearts, waypoints or vistas had been discovered, and presumably none of the loot I attained or the money I gained from selling whites and blues though can’t be certain.

That’s not cool. It might only amount to an hour or so of gameplay, but it’s not the time spent, it’s that this sort of thing can even happen. I’m now not at all confident that all is as it appears to be day to day – I’ve no way to tell if this has happened before since I haven’t been looking for it. But it’s a worry.

And just to clear this up, I didn’t lose my connection to the server at any time, no errors, no lag or any kinds of problems during that time, in fact at that hour with so few people online things were silky smooth.

Anyone else had this happen to them? Be aware guys, keep tab on your progress and if you’ve encountered this, or know of another post on it that I’ve missed, please let me know.

Vorch.2985:

This is my theory, but I could be entirely wrong:

GW2 has no sub.

When people get tired of sub games, they have to stop playing. If they don’t, they will be charged for the next 30 days.

If GW2 is on the computer of someone who gets tired of a sub-based game, they are, imo, going to log in for a little bit. It is between the release of a competitor and the rejoining of a member of the community that ANet needs to put out new content or new patches. That keeps people who come back feeling like there is something fresh.

GW2 will do swimmingly with it’s model. IMO, the only two MMOs that can justify a sub anymore are WoW (idk why people still play it) and Rift (hate or love the game, mad props to Trion for actually giving a crap about their players).

That’s the best rational guess of the thread and probably the most likely to be accurate.

People will continue to buy GW2 simply because it most resembles their general game buying habit of a one off purchase with no strings. Many of you seem to be almost discounting just how powerful an inducement that is – a game that offers much of what encompasses the MMO genre for nothing more than the initial cost.

And many of them are going to be more than happy with what they find. GW1 did extremely well against all expectations with (imo) much less to offer besides an initially weak instanced pve campaign that served as little more than a front end for the pvp. I’d be extremely surprised if GW2 did not achieve at least comparable success with the added improvements in both pve and pvp. It’s a no brainer.

Meanwhile, the same old listless crowd of MMO gypsies will continue to wander aimlessly from one launch to the next, haunting forums with their woes. They’re not a breed of player that was around when I first started playing these games, but we get to hear from them constantly. Frankly, if they all go somewhere else I won’t miss them. And GW2 will still be fine.

TransparentlyOpaque.1824:

This is a pretty accurate top 3. If any of those classes, Thief Warrior or Mesmer know what their class can do, it only takes a button presses and the other player is dead.

I do agree with that top 2, but leave mesmers out of it. When played well they’re like swans, all glide on the surface and furious paddling under it. They’re definitely not a 2 button win class.

The topic is about most return for the least skill brought to bear, not best return for effective use of a skill set.

Apos.5184:

lagrangeify.5641:

“Trust me on this once the damage has been done and a player quits 99% of the time they are not coming back!”

Oh I don’t know, WoW’s chock full of resolute quitters, I’ve met plenty of them.

Seriously though, why does it matter to you that people out there don’t agree with your sentiment that the mechanic is horrible? I’ve always been curious about that, it’s a very odd way of looking at things. So they don’t care about it as much as you do. Why pull out that old, tattered, terribly tired pejorative “fan boy”?

Oh yeah, tribalism.

Your question goes both ways: Why do you defend a mechanism that doesn’t affect you in any way?

If you enjoy doing various things and the diminishing returns do not affect you, then what is your problem against someone who actually wants to do that? And why do you have to go as far as assuming they are wow fanboys as well and calling them “wowtards”?

Oh yea, elitism…

We don’t dictate your play, why do you feel the urge of dictating ours?

Nope, not guilty as charged, I’m probably a lowest common denominator gamer, someone who just gets on with it, and if I dislike something enough I just move on.

What gets on my wick is every single counter-argument on both sides of an argument being reduced to name calling. But that’s MMO forums for you, why have a debate when you can just pull at the hair of your opponent instead?

Maybe it’s just my age and a little wisdom that’s gathered on this old rolling stone, but I realised a while ago that when MMOs are run like a democracy it becomes an exercise in polishing a kitten I choose instead to work with what I’m given. Some things are worth having a debate about, ANet’s decision to employ DR in an effort to combat bots that literally sit in a single area for hours on end seems reasonable to me, especially considering that it’s so easy for a non-bot like me to entirely circumvent with some good old fashioned circulating around the maps.

Far be it for me to suggest some of you try a different approach when you’d evidently prefer to keep chucking fuel on the fire and cause a conflagration. Carry on.

Ronin.8095:

@Mickey and Lagrangeify.

a) I genuinely did not understand what he said. I was sitting there thinking “What’s this work-time” then. I am really not trying to be facaetious about this.

b) It’s a forum on the internet.

c) People should be told if what they say can’t be understood by other people. Grammar Nazi-ism is relevant if people’s poor grammar renders themselves unintelligible, which was exactly the case here.

d) Potatoes.

a) the OP should have surrounded his hyphen with a space and all this would have blown over.

b) it most definitely is, thank goodness it’s not something serious like the final draft of his novel

c) well okay then.

d) rhubarb

No need to make such a big drama about every conceivable thing. Just report it then delete it and move on, that’s what the rest of us do.

“Trust me on this once the damage has been done and a player quits 99% of the time they are not coming back!”

Oh I don’t know, WoW’s chock full of resolute quitters, I’ve met plenty of them.

Seriously though, why does it matter to you that people out there don’t agree with your sentiment that the mechanic is horrible? I’ve always been curious about that, it’s a very odd way of looking at things. So they don’t care about it as much as you do. Why pull out that old, tattered, terribly tired pejorative “fan boy”?

Oh yeah, tribalism.

Well that’s one formerly jubilant poster who probably won’t be sharing his anticipation with you lot again. Hooray for good grammar, down with joy!

While they’ve made big strides in this area and should definitely be applauded for their vision and intent, the scaling still needs some serious spit and polish tweaking before the lofty claims they’ve been making can be realised. They could start by addressing the loot table and waypoint costs which are inhibitive.

Right now, my level 80 will absolutely trounce most average low level content and I’ve had tells from the odd understandably irritated player who felt I was romping all over their content – these are perfectly reasonable players who enjoy the game for what it is and have little interest in being taken through DEs at warp speed. In any case, I get very little in the way of tangible reward for being there. Why would I want to go back to old content, knowing it rubs people up the wrong way, that it costs me quite a chunk of change just to get there and the rewards pretty much stink anyway?

It needs working on, but I’m as certain as I can reasonably be that ANet know this, that they’re getting valuable ongoing information and will act upon it in time. Despite being able to play GW2 in short bursts and not feel guilt about it, I do still think it’s a keeper and they’re playing the long game, so stands to reason.