Guild Wars 2

Enola B Twenty Nine.2631:

Now, I dislike Jumping Puzzles, so I realise I am biased. I would love to see how many jumping puzzles would be actually completed if there were no Achievement Points attached to them. I think this would proove that most people do not like them.

And super mario isn’t the best selling video game genre of all time?

People like to platform, and given the popularity of SAB, people like to platform in this game. No achievements would still have people out in the game exploring the nooks and crannies. This game is awesome.

Engineer: nukes

Nothing like clearing an entire dungeon with 1 skill.

I absolutely agree with this. People kittened over include but not limited to the following:
- military personnel
- students on Erasmus
- people going on holiday (it’s kitten summer for Melandru’s sake)
- students with exams and the intention to pass with decent grades
- jobs with important deadlines (development, R&D)
- offshore jobs
- any job involving ships
- people with freshly spawned kids
- people building their own home
- you
- me
- …

Basically every single player will be negatively impacted sooner rather than later by this 2 week schedule and I can’t see it end well on the long run. It’s a disaster.

It’s not that I don’t want to like it, and I really like the content as it comes. But why does it have to go away? There’s no excuse.

I’m going on a 3 week holiday soon, which means that I’ll miss one of the two week cycles. I play GW2 because I didn’t want to date a videogame and I’m not starting now.

Fade.7658:

Why anyone spends real life money for gems, I’ll never know. You may be supporting Anet, which in turn, allows them to put out more content, but more often than not, it’s content many people don’t want, poorly implemented (the amount of bugs is astonishing) and Anet still doesn’t seem to listen to it’s customers (the last patch was a step in the right direction, but still too little, too late).

Because I support A.net for putting out content I like, more often than other MMOs and it’s content I actually want and enjoy. The amount of bugs is pretty low, personally never ran into serious issues. A.net really listens to its player’s as proven by the latest blog post. The last patch was another step in the right direction.

Your opinion isn’t the opinion of the people who actually play the game and support Arena.net. Feel free to pay for any other game if you don’t like this one.

Charak.9761:

Why waste time making celestial if they plan to make ascended with the same amount of time time-gating

time-gating is an insult to gamers/customers.

I don’t feel that way. I can get meaningful progression in the single hour I have on a lucky day.

I’ve had a share of rangers in fractal pugs and usually they’re not really a liability. Zerk geared warriors are on the ground far more often and usually bring worse attitude (eg blaming their failures on rangers who rez them)

That said, it can’t be denied that the dps of a ranger is in his pet, which makes him far more suited to open world play. In dungeons, they’ll have to micro more to get on par with the second worst profession (necromancer). But honestly, ranger is so difficult to play well that, on average, rangers are far better players than zerk warriors.

If the new blog post is only implemented half by the end of the year, it’d be a massive improvement over this game, and put it ahead of the competition by a landslide. If they manage to implement all, it’ll be a juggernaut.

It’s to make sure people who play 12 hours a day can’t get a significant advantage over people who work 12 hours a day (and therefor hold the wallet vote).

ArkAngel.7940:

marnick.4305:

ArkAngel.7940:

I feel sarcastic irony coming from this post. If I’m wrong then sorry. But it pretty much says “here are WvW badges for the PvE people!” As a response from a WvW player, “Where are my PvE dungeon tokens?”

Pretty funny. I worked to get my WvW badges for armor and I worked for my dungeon tokens for gear. So why should a PvE player work for their dungeon tokens but not have to work for WvW badges?

I kindly refer to my signature for your answer.

when I said work, I really meant earn. PvE players earn tokens through dungeons, WvW earns badges through WvWorlding.

But you said work. And I’m not working in GW2. Why would I? I’ve already got 10 hours a day covered with work.

Ferguson.2157:

These time based gates were introduced well after the fact that I had such a large collection of alts and with no prior hint that this gating would be implimented. This whole gating on time feels rather arbitrary to me. Why for example are eight hours played on one day treated differently than eight one hour sessions over eight days?

This might sound rude but I presume it’s the following:
- people buying gems, especially in large amounts, usually have a job
- having a job means 10 hours a day are occupied by earning money
- however these people can easily log in once a day to do a few time gates
- it means people buying gems won’t significantly lag behind people who don’t

It’s a very smart business model ensuring continuing payments by those who actually have the financial means to support the game (and at the same time support society, welfare, etc etc).

Jabberwock.9014:

Not good enough Curtis! We need the endless tonic for maximum petrification! I’m sure plenty of people would be willing to pay gems for that.

Would you be willing to make it really endless, neverending, no dismiss, no expire, no change on logoff?

Erasculio.2914:

aophts.9862:

What is this thing called “play the TP”? Seriously, what’s that even means?

It’s basically a way to exploit the game. If you have a lot of gold, you can buy a lot of a given item and sell it for a higher price, creating an artificial increase in price. The more gold you have, the more gold you can make through this process, at the cost of making the game a bit worse for everyone else (since you are artificially making it harder for people to get what they want).

If it’s a rare enough item, you can even buy all of it in the market and set a monopoly, selling at a considerable higher price than you bought. This doesn’t work with items that have a huge turnover like Globs of Ectoplasm, but for truly rare items – like precursors – it can be a gold mine.

And you can prove this happens because precursor prices have been extremely stable since january. Oh wait … that actually disproves the theory.

cesmode.4257:

Gw2 is not GW1. I wish people would stop expecting that. They designed the game so they can do more things with it. With that said, I kind of wish it was like Gw1 a bit more. I never played GW1 but it sounds more up my alley.

The design direction is this:
-Lots of carrots(things to chase after for a reward)
-Lots of rewards
-Lots of things to do
-Poor living story
-Ambitious 2 week content patches.

Will the game actually improve? I dont know. Even with all of the improvements over the last 3-5 months, I still think the game went to the pits. Im slowly checking it out again and interested in Colin’s blog. But I had a thread of mine put in the trash can and deemed a complaint thread when I was seeking help and advice from players…simply asking “how do you have fun in the game”. So moderator behavior is still outrageous and there seems to be no oversight. THAT single handedly put the bitter taste back in my mouth.

So theres pros and cons all around.
Goodluck.

The game is steadily improving, every patch there’s some quality of life. I admit it’s a little bit per patch, but let’s not forget GW2 currently patches every month. It requires quite a bit of double-think to deny this game has vastly improved since launch.

Svetli.4276:

with the new grind fest coming up gw2 will go so far from gw1
oh ye

Don’t be silly. That’s simply not true.

Patch notes:
- all magic find gear is removed from the game. Compensation has been given in the form of additional loot in the past months at the cost of other players. No replacements nor refunds will be given. Arena.net will continue to foster non-selfish behaviour in Guild Wars 2.

/joke note

Svetli.4276:

i don’t want more box oOo fun O_O
i want my money, laurels and guild commendations !

Do you want a cookie too? I can give you a cookie.

Furthermore, because I have the luxury of a well paid job, gems actually haven’t changed a cent in price. Gems still cost the same as they did on launch.

ArkAngel.7940:

I feel sarcastic irony coming from this post. If I’m wrong then sorry. But it pretty much says “here are WvW badges for the PvE people!” As a response from a WvW player, “Where are my PvE dungeon tokens?”

Pretty funny. I worked to get my WvW badges for armor and I worked for my dungeon tokens for gear. So why should a PvE player work for their dungeon tokens but not have to work for WvW badges?

I kindly refer to my signature for your answer.

MF will go into account stats and replaced by major stat healing for back pieces and condition damage on other gear. Fixes two problems at once.

KrisV.5612:

From GW2’s lastest post. Keep your kitten hands off my gear. Its my choice to run the gear, I have no problem surviving in dungeons and other things while using it. Only difference between MF gear and normal gear with similar stats is the % crit dmg stat, which I dont care about. So keep your filthy hands off my MF!

It’s your choice to burden your teammates and have them carry you? No… that should be the choice of your teammates. At this time, there’s no choice for the people who are negatively affected by your selfish use of MF gear.

As such, respect is given when respect is shown. You show a distinct lack of respect towards your teammates. Effectively, they won’t respect you either. You brought this onto yourself.

Tedrunning.1284:

I totally agree, daily rewards is the worst idea ever for a game of this type.

Given that I hardly have the time to run a dungeon once, let alone multiple times, makes me happy for the current daily implementation. Means low-lifers can’t run away from me nearly as fast. Sure they still run away from me, but at the very least it’s more controlled.

To take the less vs more skills argument to it’s logical extreme, we end up in a game with three skills namely rock, paper and scissors. That game is perfectly balanced, but also inherently boring. It’s not possible to balance without adding items and rules.

The other logical extreme would be Warmachine first edition, where everything was balanced because everything was broken. That game got the harshest overhaul imaginable to turn it into a competitive game again. In the same vein, Guild Wars 1 lost any balance in the end due to the amount of skills. This is one of the reasons for the current skill system in GW2.

There’s an optimum somewhere, and it’s not easy to predict where it lies exactly. That’s why we can debate it. My stance is a lack of skills leading to lack of meta, leading to lack of balance. Some believe the current set has to be balanced first.

Give me teamviewer access and 10 gold and I’ll craft your toon to 400 for you.

Although … probably against the terms of service. Sorry mate, can’t help you, might get both of us banned. Would love to help you though.

cesmode.4257:

@marnick: One of my followup posts was grind was a bad choice of words. You need to spend a bit over a month earning Laurels to purchase some acsended gear, or a bit over a month of laurels + a large sum of ectos to get some gear. It takes relatively the same amount of time to gain…Id say 3/4 of a tier of gear at least in a game like WoW. and I have a life. My guild was ultra casual, raided 3 hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. Combined with the things you did on your own, you had a lot of gear in a month or so.

The time spent in both games, GW2 and WoW, would yield someone the same result: The newest ascended gear slot, or most of a tier of gear.

Still dishonest in that you can chop up your playtime in GW2 to accommodate to life, which is not possible in WoW. You’re still stuck with an impossible 3 hour dungeon run, two fixed days a week. Casual isn’t the right word for that. You were not in a casual guild, that’s borderline hardcore.

And OK I understand you have a job. No problemo. I’ve got more than that. If the baby cries, I can’t ask him to wait because I might get kicked. If the girlfriend wants some, I’m not saying no. If friends call, I won’t drop them for anonymous guildies. I simply won’t.

And this:

The difference is you can get those Laurels by doing a variety of activities, including the new achievement chests that have loads of them, while in other MMOs you have to do very very specific tasks to get the best gear, tasks that involve raids usually.

I don’t think it’s hard to see the huge difference here.

Lord Kuru.3685:

marnick.4305:

Imagine for a moment that there’s not enough skills in the game atm for proper balancing to be possible. Imagine that adding skills may be the solution here, whereas in GW1 it was the cause for imbalance. Imagine you might be wrong.

Especially in case of elites. With only 3 elites per profession, achieving balance is not possible, since build diversity is reduced to nothingness. Engineers de facto only have 1 elite. Other professions might as well have none. Adding 5 elites per profession would improve balance instead of reducing it. By adding a good number of utilities too, a real meta could develop which auto-balances as skill use shifts.

Without increase in the amount of skill, balance will not happen in GW2. That’s the current situation and it’s blatantly obvious to those who played GW1.

Interesting! Let’s say Anet adds enough skills so that every profession does have several reasonable builds. What then? They can’t keep adding skills forever or we’ll reach an unbalanceable point, but if they keep things static, players may get bored.

So maybe add enough skills so that the number is high enough that multiple builds are viable for each profession, and then go the MTG way?

I also really like the MTG way because it encourages the devs to be more bold in creating new mechanics. As it is, because skills are more or less “permanent,” I feel the devs are a bit conservative in terms of trying new things.

That’s indeed the point where they should go MTG.

I believe the magic number is in 5 more elites, 10-20 more utilities and 3 more healing skills per profession. Even at 2 skills per month, it’ll take more than a year to get there.

On how to implement the MTG, there’s several options. One would be Codex Arena style, but far slower. The other would be to Smiter Boon anything that’s temporary out of rotation.

Minos.3450:

Or simply revamp some mobs my reducing their health bar and increasing their toughness so they are more vulnerable to condition damage instead of direct damage.

makes sense. And remove defiant.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Latorn.4209:

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s why Anet should follow the Magic: the Gathering model (Type II/Standard) where skills expire as new ones are added. Thus there is always the same number of skills in the game making it easier to balance while the game stays fresh as new skills are routinely added.

Moreover, this system allows Anet to be more bold in introducing new and interesting mechanics since they’ll all expire in time anyway so damage to the game from such experimentation is limited.

As it is, Anet already can’t handle balance with the traits and skills we have now, there’s no way they’ll be able to balance with more traits and more skills. It seems Anet learned absolutely nothing from their experience with GW1.

You want SKILLS to be temporary content now? We’re talking about SKILLSSSSS a core feature of the game? Could it get more controversial than this? Just wait ‘til all the players come whining to the forums about being upset that they couldn’t play when skill “so and so” was active and their class was OP. >.<

LOL… good point. If this had been implemented in game when it first came out there would be less resistance. Nevertheless, despite the inevitable rage, I feel it’s still the way to go; adding more and more skills is just asking for an unbalanceable situation no matter how skilled Anet is at balancing.

Imagine for a moment that there’s not enough skills in the game atm for proper balancing to be possible. Imagine that adding skills may be the solution here, whereas in GW1 it was the cause for imbalance. Imagine you might be wrong.

Especially in case of elites. With only 3 elites per profession, achieving balance is not possible, since build diversity is reduced to nothingness. Engineers de facto only have 1 elite. Other professions might as well have none. Adding 5 elites per profession would improve balance instead of reducing it. By adding a good number of utilities too, a real meta could develop which auto-balances as skill use shifts.

Without increase in the amount of skill, balance will not happen in GW2. That’s the current situation and it’s blatantly obvious to those who played GW1.

Tiger.7506:

The difference between medicine and poison is in the dose.

Gw2 need a little bit of vertical progression.

There’s something to this, and I kinda enjoy the current implementation of ascended gear. I’m very worried though that this might spiral out of control.

I currently have so many laurels and tokens, I can deck a new toon in 6/6 ascended the second he’s 80. The system already works the same as exotic. What sense does it make on the long run?

ArchonWing.9480:

You don’t solve the problem by killing zerker. People just bandwagon to the next fotm.

What you need to do is somehow find a way to make toughness and vit and healing power help. I’m thinking of something endurance related but it could be hard to balance.

Though tbh, if I wanted to be “forced” into anything, zerker isn’t too awful since that makes the pace faster and forces you to dodge more. Problem is when this feels like the only pace.

The solution is a specific monster skill:
- damage must one hit zerker gear players but allow people with toughness or vitality specc to survive.
- cooldown must be slightly longer than untraited endurance recharge
- most bosses should have a skill balanced around those two magic numbers, eg kholer pull, lupicus aoe, norn charge, …

It still allows zerker gear with perfect play, but missing one dodge will have them on the ground doing zero dps. It’ll kill zerker pugs yet won’t impact guild teams (since they know the quality of their team)

Angelus.1042:

A “Next Gen” MMO with no DX11 or 64bit client =/= Next Gen

But then again GW2 has been demoted to the “Dime a Dozen MMO” category anyways now.

Next wave of MMO’s with all the new features and DX11 support out the box will be here soon….lets see if any of those stick.

Years ago a.net claimed GW2 would run on contemporary mid-specc laptops. They actually made true on that promise, it runs just fine on my company laptop without dedicated videocard.

A “next gen” MMO can never be popular, because the masses can’t play it. 64 bit and directX 11 actually hamper the game more than it helps. As it stands, the graphics are already superb. I don’t want “next gen”. Good enough more than suffices.

I travel on a weekly basis, and about 50% of my play time is on my company laptop (other half on my i7 rig). If “improvements” mean it won’t run on my company laptop anymore, I’ll pass. Rather have none.

Krosslite.1950:

After some encounters in game and some posts in the forum I felt it was time again to refresh folks memories about player etiquette.

Several people especially those with a higher level are getting where they wish to rush from one place to the other.

Folks are forgetting that this is a MMO (massive MULTI-player online game). Remember you are not the only person playing.

Online anonymity makes people into kittenpuppies. This is the internet, this is to be expected. Doesn’t mean I’m a puppykitten or you are, some people have manners even with masks on. But some don’t and they ruin it for everyone.

Some people will drop mobs on others because it helps them get someplace faster, not regarding any form of etiquette. The anonymity in a game allows them to do that.

NOTE: Any replies that are post stating “welcome to the internet” will be considered inflammatory and reported as such.
All people should respect each other. Just because you do not personally know them is not an excuse. We are all real people with real feeling.

Report me, I dare you. The correct answer is the one answer you won’t accept. That’s silly.

Rank in heroes’ ascent was one of the most complained about things, it’s very funny you remember it “fondly”. Says alot about the type of player you are.

Half your argument makes no sense either. You’re talking from the perspective of someone with stacks of ecto. I’ve also been playing since day one and guess what … I just bought my precursor and starting the legendary quest. Some people welcome these changes, the kind of people who play this for the long run.

Festina lente.

Vol.5241:

You can’t lump guardian with the mesmer. The mesmer is at the very bottom with no chance of getting out.

The guardian you can have nearly 100% uptime with speed buffs. Staff 3/SaveYourself/Retreat are great.

Try engineer … you’ll have to specc 10 points into a worthless line, are required to bring a kit and then cycle it every 5 seconds to keep it up. It’s annoying.

Doggie.3184:

Pretty nice chest. I didn’t even realize it gave me gems till later. Got a Total Make Over Kit, exp scroll that takes alt to 20 and a pvp molten sword, among other goodies. Also too many badges of honor filling an entire horizontal bank row at this point, lol…

Decked out a fresh lvl 80 alt in full exotics with those badges. What else to do with them :p

There are currently not nearly enough skills, which kills build diversity. More skills will allow better balance at this point because not everything hinges on 1 or 2 key skills anymore.

Guild Wars 2 can’t be compared to Guild Wars 1 when it comes to adding skills. Guild Wars 1 became unbalanced because of too many skills. GW2 is currently unbalanced because of too few.

As for insanity … too keep balancing this far too narrow skillset and expecting to achieve balance … _that_’s insanity.

All builds are viable, one build excels. Case closed.

Put all that effort into real world day trading, make a fortune and buy gems. If you’re going to learn speculation, at the very least do it somewhere where you can really make the big bucks. Flipping ingame is for wannabes.

And for the record, gems are rising in gold price because they’re indeed not correctly priced. I’m not inclined to convert to gold yet. Maybe once they’re at 5gold per 100 gems or something like that. Seems more appropriate at the current age of the game.

cpg.7140:

The difference is that A.net could change the math that determines the ratio without telling anyone, if they so desired. Clearly they have to have the ability to create/destroy gems on the fly for conversions (because it can’t be possible for there to be 0 gems available for purchase at any given time, the way it might be for a normal item on the TP) so they have more power to influence that market compared to other items on the TP. Not saying they do, of course, just saying it’s less transparent.

Creating gems won’t be necessary. People will be more than happy to convert gems to gold at that time because the conversion will be 10000 gold for 100 gems or something like that.

If gems are entirely sold out, I’ll promise you I’ll put some in the system again. I won’t let such an opportunity pass.

The alternative is to add yet another currency. What they do now is to first correct the market before doing something with it. That way, the future items will be correctly valued.

I kinda agree. It’s a good solution to keep a hard boss very hard but have it become a bit less hard after 2 wipes.

As for engi tips: I bring elixir gun for extra aoe heals, and #3 is useful to bring the shield down fast. After that it’s aoe’ing your kitten off. It’s a hard boss. I like that.

You can do several things:
- sell them to vendor
- sell them on tp (which often means they’re useful)
- salvage them depending on the components (eg mithril, ori, runes)
- forge them into higher tiers (eg 4 greens@1s could make a 20s rare)

By giving you junk with several purposes, they stimulate a player driven economy. The more junk you give people, the higher the chance something is useful to someone.

ZinN.6124:

Lol i always thought ppl just used the word “kitten” instead of swering! But there is an acctul filter to change swearwords to kitten is awesome kittening kitten is this kittening kitten? lololol

I often do, because I think the swear filter counts swear words, eventually leading to infractions. I’m just taking the safe route and type kittenly kitten kitten or even puppy (because I hate dogs). When I really hate something I’ll call it a puppykitten. Kinda defeats the whole filter because now kittens have become swear words. Ye.

For the record, I never got half the tier 1 set even after a year of relatively dedicated play in WoW. Same at TBC and WotLK. A month does not suffice to get BiS in that game if you have anything resembling real life.

cesmode.4257:

marnick.4305:

Indeed. He wants to see extreme VP so takes the extremely shallow and optional VP currently in the game and expands that into a flawed argument.

Not even half the gear slots are currently of ascended quality, whereas in other games at the 1 year mark, about 2 full tiers had been released. Furthermore exotic is viable everywhere except fractals.

While there’s a little bit of VP in this game, it is well implemented and I hope it remains at this level for a very long time. After ascended armor comes legendary armor and then nothing.

Yes, in one year you get one, two or even three tiers of gear. Takes about a month or so of grinding raids and rep to gain a near full set of the new tier gear. True.

Takes about a month or so to grind the laurels + ecto to gain an ascended..amulet? Whichever one requires the ecto. Takes about as long to gain that back piece, if you’re not playing 10 hours per day. See where Im going?

Don’t see where you’re going yet. Enlighten me. How can I grind laurels, still haven’t found a way and yet I’m swimming in them. It’s impossible to grind them.

Takes as long to gain one slot of ascended gear than it does to gain a full set of max tier gear in a game like WoW. So tell me, what not grindy and not pure example of verticle progression?

Because you can’t grind them out. Comparing the 20 minutes required for a laurel to a 4 hour raid is simply dishonest.

Cempa.5619:

I’m trying to understand celestial armour, as far as I can tell its stat spread and not stat boost, is that correct? Also can it be crafted? Or must I grind for months and months?

Due to the above questions I am begging to feel the WoW grind let down ‘feeling’ so not sure yet if GW2 has decided to go in the gear progressions-time-sinck route or not?

I’m already noticing posts on all the class forums Celestial > X and it worries me.

Thanks

1/ it’s not a new tier, it’s merely exotic. A new stat combination but that’s all. For many professions it’s actually worse that other combos.

2/ you need 5 charged crystals per piece and a full armor set has 6 pieces, that’s 30 charged crystals.

3/ you can make 1 charged crystal per day, which means you’ll need 30 days. That’s not a grind though … unless you think 1 minute per day is grind.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’m not saying that we can’t make improvements to the living world story telling. I’m saying that we should get as much storytelling into the game as possible, but I see no need to dismiss the lore blog posts just because they’re not in the game.

It’s a matter of false dichotomy. People think stories come at the cost of in-game stuff, but obviously that’s not true. Development companies nowadays ain’t just coders anymore. There’s more than meets the eye.

Lucky.9421:

Zaxares.5419:

The forums seem to favour Evon, but honestly? I suspect the silent majority of GW2 players, who don’t follow the lore and don’t really pay much attention to the Living Story, will look at the two and go “Who’s this Charr? The woman looks prettier/hotter/friendlier. I’ll vote for her.” :P

That’s true. Too bad they gave the less attractive candidate the more epic content.

If they gave Ellen the Abaddon Fractal AND reduced waypoints, there would be no competition. Evan Gnashblade hinges entirely on that one promise, which is not relevant to me. I know the story already.

FearedbytheGods.8617:

ANet seem to be getting themselves organised in more recent times.

There was a thread in the dungeons section (cba looking for link) that highlighted most dungeons are based around DPS, that while some coordination and sense of enemy movements were required, the better your DPS the quicker you would finish the dungeon.

ANET are attempting to mix this up more and so I think future dungeons look promising.

Aetherblade retreat was extremely punishing to zerker geared players. High mobility required coupled with OHKO mechanics barely above zerker health levels. People with a bit of vitality could take all the attacks at least once (laser wall, cannon fire, shadow step) while zerkers were on the ground doing zero dps.

Let’s hope they can keep that up.

A freshly primed cat-trap. Kittens tend to create a crude form of bear trap for their owner servant. Once you touch their soft belly they collapse in a flurry of scratching, bicycle leg movements and biting. Even after repeated injury, people tend to fall for it every single time.

[img]http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/7/7e/Cattrap.jpg[/img]