Guild Wars 2

The design flaw is mistaking hassle for challenge, using complicated travel to make the world seem bigger than it is. It feels like a design from a decade ago.

What do you need the jumping puzzle for? Is it a need or a want?

I like centaurs because they pose a good diversity of tactics, with some that charge, some that range, knock-downs and cripples. I feel like they have some personality.

For style, I like the nightmare court.

I don’t care for the risen. Zombies are sooo derivative and overdone. For a game that strove to avoid elves and dwarves, they really failed to exercise any imagination there, just applied the same formula from every other game.

Always dreaming of a Mord Sith (Legends of the Seeker) outfit.

I’d roll a female for that.

I really think the answer is re-rolling, not purchasing a potion of profession change.

They’re big on replayability. I think they’d rather sell a cheapo extra character slot to keep consistent with the message.

I think there are some parts of open-world that do require strategy for small groups. For example, today my son and I played lowbies in Brisban. We 2-manned some events that were higher level than we, took on a champ, and I felt the challenge was comparable to what we find in dungeons.

The difference is, in open world if you add one or two more players, bring in an auto-scaled 80, and the encounter isn’t a challenge anymore. It’s only because lowbie zones like Brisban are almost empty that we kept these events for 2-manning.

With a big group, it doesn’t matter how it’s programmed, enough attackers means the boss is permanently blinded, weakened, crippled, confused, etc., so a win is inevitable.

I think the problem with Orr is just crummy zone design. They left out the “fun” and replaced it with PITA.

I generally find decent people. Actually, aside from the bots, I don’t recall ever finding a not-decent person there. More than an hour there, I admit I’m often wanting to just quit.

I tried to give a hint.

I’ve never seen a mob go thru me to get to someone behind me. If you want a break from aggro, step behind that ranger’s pet. Or behind that party member. This isn’t a strict collision-model type game, but it’s like it’s soft-coded that you’re not supposed to go thru your target. So pretend like you’re using them as a pick, just like in basketball.

And I’d suggest going to the warrior forum. There you can get some tips from more expert players how they manage things. The problem really isn’t that you need an ideal group. We’ve all done dungeons with 4 light and 1 medium or other seemingly-poorly composed groups and found success. So the problem has to be approach/strategy/tactics.

I don’t have a warrior. Well, I do, but he’s sub-20 still. My heavy armor guy is guardian. There’s some hits we take just fine. There’s some hits we can manage if we’re active/proactive. And there’s some hits we just can’t afford to take at all.

You’re not going to tank in any traditional sense of the word. If you’re doing great damage and not able to live or shake aggro, prob’ly that means your gear and/or spec isn’t working for you. Go more defensive. Then you’ll survive better and prob’ly take aggro less.

I think a big portion of who gets the most attention is who hits it first and definitely proximity. Basically never will a mob run thru/over me to get to someone else who’s doing damage.

For me a big part of not taking damage is applying blinds, blocks, and whatnot at appropriate times, in addition to positioning/dodging.

Are you talking in dungeons, or out in the world for DEs or what?

@teviko (cuz ANet can’t even make forum software that doesn’t bug out if you try to quote)

Definitely story-mode and explorable-mode is a misnamed distinction. It should be “quest-reward instead of loot” and “dungeon tokens instead of loot.”

Whether you like the GW2 fighting style or not, if you compare to first dungeons in WoW or Rift, there’s a lot more going on in AC than there is in Realm of the Fae or Deadmines. And GW2 isn’t a dungeon-oriented game. So I give them credit for trying. Again, I think they have to get the basics working before they get too fancy. I hope they do.

teviko.6049:

mulch.2586:

I think a big difference between open-world zergable targets and instanced encounters which can be tuned to 5-member groups.

The open-world bosses tend to be especially simplistic, and I can give ANet a pass on that, because if they required skill, timing, or strategy, the player base would complain.

And yet the player base IS complaining, because they are too easy, have too many Hps and are woefully boring.

It didn’t take long for people to figure the mechanics of the dragon fights, or for fighting any ‘certain’ type of challenging encounter out there. People will figure it out, EN MASSE and once figured out, at least it would be interesting, instead of a 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 fight.

I can think of teh champion risen abomination as a prime example, of where one person in a sea of dozens gets aggro and spends the next 15 minutes uselessly kiting in a circle, hopefully skillfully enough NOT to reset the mob while the other dozen or so wail on it for 15 minutes. No skill, no need to move, I don’t worry if someone else has aggro, BECAUSE HE GETS IT FOR THE WHILE FIGHT!!!!!!! I just stand there and hit it with 1 until its HPs finally swindle away and I claim my (oh goodie) gold medal and 2s15c reward. The excitement just sizzles through my body.

And were supposed to swallow this as ‘fun’???

I dunno what you consider fun.

I was just saying that the outside mobs are zergable, so if you gave them fewer hp and tried to make something of it, you may end up with a disappointing result, regardless.

I get the feeling ANet is still figuring out what it can and can’t do with encounters to make them hopefully fun, and robust enough that they don’t bug out, aren’t exploitable, etc.

There is some variety in dungeon boss-event-fights. Consider just AC, the starter dungeon — you have king-of-the-mountain, use-traps, telegraphed 1-shot moves, bosses with challenging adds, protect the flunky — a bunch of different types of fights, not nearly as tank-n-spank as you get in other mmos starter dungeons.

But by the same token, they’re still struggling to get what they have to work right. In the last couple weeks I’ve had 2 runs completely wasted by getting to the end with no payoff because of some bug. Not to mention that I can be standing on a graveling mound and still unable to hit it with a hammer.

You’ll definitely find more creativity in environment and fight scripts in the instanced parts of the game. I imagine that it’ll be better in years to come, once they get their tools working.

I think a big difference between open-world zergable targets and instanced encounters which can be tuned to 5-member groups.

The open-world bosses tend to be especially simplistic, and I can give ANet a pass on that, because if they required skill, timing, or strategy, the player base would complain.

So much of this thread is totally missing the fact that male characters outnumber females 2 to 1.

This long post-launch, you should have this “problem” licked already.

Take some control of your life, don’t willingly suffer pug trials. I can understand if your guild(s) doesn’t emphasize dungeon runs, but even pve-averse guilds will prob’ly be running them this week and next, for the monthly. And use your friend’s list to keep track of the people you’ve partied and enjoyed…

I keep map chat turned off almost all the time I’m playing seriously. It’s really only for trolling. /whisper and /g is where it’s at.

My guild tracks dungeon runs, as we gain guild rank by participating.

Since November’s monthlies came out, there’s been a noticable INCREASE in # of dungeon runs happening.

That doesn’t help the O.P. because we don’t typically go looking for puggers. But the problem isn’t the # of people looking for dungeons, but rather the player not having a guild/friend-list to call upon.

I think it is related to “auto-target.”

The trouble is this is not an attack at all. It’s really an additional utility, more like “rampage as one” than an actual attack. So it shouldn’t invoke or start auto-attack.

I don’t think this has ever actually worked in-game.

Kaiho.8095:

I was so happy to hear that it’d be fixed 5th of November.
But now it’s 15th of November. :l

Now I think I’ll just start all over again… * Sighs *

If only you could just backtrack and say “you know, I’d rather help the Hyleks”…

If only…

My son got caught by this bug. He’s extremely frustrated because he has very limited playtime and was committed to keeping pace with the story-line as his character leveled.

The worst part of it is, it was all so preventable. There ARE choices a player could have made to avoid this bug, yet week after week Arena Net is permitted players to get trapped into this deadend. All it would take is to remove the choice, or to flash up a warning that “hey, this quest isn’t ready for release yet.”

The story-line part of GW2 has so many bugs, and they are very discouraging for the players. I can understand and accept that the story-quest team doesn’t have the talent or tools to make it work in a timely manner. But they DO have the tools to keep it from being such a disappointment to the players.

For example, my son would have been just as happy doing the Hyleks or Quaggan instead of Skritt. He did Skritt just because he’d already seen the others while in party with my story-lines.

We do have the downed penalty, 25% less health each time you’re downed. It lasts just a minute or so.

I think they really have good intentions, that “when it’s ready” was something they really wanted. Yes, we’re suffering a lot of bugs, including progress-stopping ones in a few lines of the story-quests. I don’t think they’re deliberately leaving the bugs there to irritate, however.

They’ve nerfed pretty hard 2 of the 3 most-OP-complained-about professions (mesmer and thief, watch out warriors, you’re next).

They’ve stopped permitting players to go to other servers at will, after hordes of complaints re WvW.

Mostly I think they really want to have the best game on the market, and to please the customers.

Some of the folks who sniff thru the database found items for changing all that sort of thing, not in the live game, but in the code.

Truthfully, the very basics of social utilities in the game continue to be primitive and buggy. It seems to be the weakest link at ANet. Party, guild, squad, it’s all difficult. We don’t even have extra chat channels. So it could be a while before they figure out how to do guesting.

Yes, world transfers are free still, just once per week.

I can’t even tell if the fancy sickles actually have any higher chance of finding rare components than regular harvesting tools.

I got some dyes today, seemed about normal. For a while I wondered if badges of honor were dropping at a higher rate.

Some of the chatter during the story quests suggested that dwarves are “all but” gone. Of course the story quests also showed a ghost of someone’s mount.

That made me wonder if we might uncover a previously isolated settlement of dwarves. On the other hand, it seems ArenaNet wants to make their game unique in the swords-n-sorcery rpg genre as the one that doesn’t have elves and dwarves. (which I totally support).

200k karma is approx what you get for doing all the dailies and the monthly for a month.

500k would be over 1300 dynamic events.

In contrast 119g is ~3 hours at an average wage job for a typical mmo player.

I’d think 100k karma and an eldritch scroll per piece, so 600k karma and 300 skill points for a set. something like that makes it an actual in-game accomplishment, rather than a paypal exchange.

It’s a compromise that works for me, because you can earn gems in-game via gold, and in pvp. Gems is a proxy that lets you acquire those BL items from either direction.

You can buy exactly how many ever gems you want. You just have to keep adjusting the amount of gold until it rounds to the number you’re looking for.

I’m not sure why they don’t have smaller units than 800 gems (or is it 400?) for sale in the cash shop.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

mulch.2586:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Complaining to get the price reduced simply to make it easy simply devalues the armor set which ruins it for others.

Being able to paypal it, imo, devalues it more than the price.

You see someone in a full dungeon set, you know they did some stuff for it.
You join a pvp match with someone who doesn’t look like a newbie clown, you know they’ve earned some glory.

You see someone with T3, I dunno about you, but I assume they have a credit card. It’s just a couple hours RL wages sent to your favorite goldseller… That’s what devalues it most.

I don’t disagree with you on that but reducing the price simply devalues it more. I will prefer working for it. So for me it’s still an accomplishment.

Gold has a limited amount of meaning in this game anyway. You get a suit of armor you like, how many more do you want/need? Same with weapons. A couple here or there but after a while you character has limited needs for massive amounts of cash.

Right, I’m with you on that. I truly like the idea that T3 is some sense of “difficult.” I just wish it were based on in-game actions, like karma +/or finishing your story quest +/or something heroic other than paypal. Heck, buy it with those scrolls you get for skill-points — that makes more sense than gold for armor skins that are emblematic of being a hero of your race.

In terms of needs for massive amounts of cash, I suspect most players are past the “needs” part at this point, and cultural armor is totally optional, just cosmetic. I agree it shouldn’t be cheap.

@Voqar Guesting is a feature that was heavily promoted in the advertising, was supposed to be in at launch, but of course isn’t working yet. Play with your friends anywhere was as much a catch-phrase as When it’s ready™ It’s a big component into why names are unique to the player across the whole world, for example.

Guesting IS fundamental to the pick-one-server philosophy for WvW. It’s what will let us play with your friends anywhere while not server-hopping to do it.

Drunken Mad King.8193:

Complaining to get the price reduced simply to make it easy simply devalues the armor set which ruins it for others.

Being able to paypal it, imo, devalues it more than the price.

You see someone in a full dungeon set, you know they did some stuff for it.
You join a pvp match with someone who doesn’t look like a newbie clown, you know they’ve earned some glory.

You see someone with T3, I dunno about you, but I assume they have a credit card. It’s just a couple hours RL wages sent to your favorite goldseller… That’s what devalues it most.

Fortunately it doesn’t clutter up your vault the way dungeon tokens and badges of honor do.

I’m hoping they’ll add more cosmetic stuff that’s karma based. I’m not sure that they’d ever add karma exotic accessories. But the recent addition of karma for achieves and dungeons makes me think there’s gonna be some more things to buy with karma, perhaps as early as the 16 Nov weekend.

Acme Tux Serum Six.8520:

They need to implement the pay-for model and just be done with it.

They need guesting to be working and just be done with it.

Voqar.2349:

As stated this was announced ages ago. And…do you REALLY need 15 names reserved? Isn’t that a wee bit excessive and maybe even greedy?

Someone I know has 9 fully geared-out GW1 characters. Guildwars is a game that encourages alts because of limited advancement, so you make alts for replay-ability.

She doesn’t want to play all of them anew in GW2 at this time, and likely never will cuz she’s not loving GW2 as much as the first. But, she’d rather not have the mistaken identity of someone else playing an echo of what is her GW1 identity.

Once again, just yesterday, in a live interview, Colin Johanson reiterated their commitment to the principle that you should be able to play with your friends wherever you want.

It’s important people know that the actual deadline has been announced.

Before it was the every-ambiguous “Soon™” (or actually I think it was “shortly after launch.”)

How much is a character slot running these days? 6-7 gold? I know that’s not cheap, but it is the 3rd month post release.

Was a curious thing that in the Nov 1 live interview with Colin J, he reiterated the same line from pre-launch, that “being able to play with your friends wherever you want”

GW2 isn’t a real pvp game, but it is trying to get into the esport world. We’ll see if it can pull it off. I think that’s why spvp and wvw are portrayed as little mini-games not attached to Tyria, to keep it more sport-like. For me, on the one hand, I have fond memories of true pvp in the world. On the other hand, I know those types of games don’t have broad appeal to the US gamer market (related to the not-so-fond memories I also have re true pvp)

The irony of buggy forums code…

I’ve not yet been able to pin down what makes the tool-icons show vs. not show.

The quote one looks a lot like the icon for reply on gmail.

To me, conceptually, cultural armor should be karma items.

I’m the hero of shaemoor. I’m the champion of orr. I’ve defended our towers and keeps in the mists. After all that, you’re gonna charge me money to wear the Seraph’s uniform?

Just annoying, unpleasant, not even pretense of believable, unfun.

i do understand that fixing this bugged quest, especially with the multitude of bugs in the story-line quests, will take some time.

Coulda/shoulda ya made it so selecting this line isn’t possible? That’d be a nice quick work-around til the team can get their kittens in a row.

meh… my server has 4 maps to spawn-camp on, and no one can legitimately kvetch about it.

Thou shalln’t holdeth thine breath, er verily thine visage turns deepest indigo b’fore thine nuptials are upon us.

I think it’s only skill-based in spvp. The rest is button-mashing.

E.g., today I came upon 2 mesmers in WvW, on my pve-specced ranger. I killed them both. I know from spvp that I should have lost that fight, prob’ly without even killing one. Which makes me think they’re not 80s yet, and lost cuz of the stats difference.

I camped that zone for a week tryin to catch it not bugged (and harvestng tequatl chests)

An ANet poster has said they are as intended, including the fact that +karma boons work on them, at least for the time being.

I think a #1 priority for ArenaNet/NCSoft was to set up this game to have the least possible customer support.

Leaving out trade is one very good money saver on their part. They never have to adjudicate accusations of scamming, cuz the default response is it’s your own fault.

Kinda like their policy of never reimbursing anyone for anything even if it’s ANet’s fault. No, it doesn’t lead to the best experience for players, but it saves them a boat-load of labor.

When this topic came up in pvp (where there aren’t even any stats on armor, so you can’t mix/match) the response was that there’s some stats combinations that would be too good to pass-up. They want you to make compromises and adjustments.

Gibbel.5734:

it’s sad though for ppl not running a i5/i7 sandy/ivy

We are forced to endure 15 fps while button smashing trying to hit some invisble enemies …

Those of us with i7 endure the same button smashing trying to hit some invisible enemies … just with 40+ fps

DarkWasp.7291:

mulch.2586:

Except for story mode, there’s no reason* not to run a dungeon on one of your 80s. Tokens are account-bound.

(the one reason I can think of is doing CM on a low-level alt cuz you’re hoping for runes of Noble)

You do gain a full level almost every path though.

Oh I see, hadn’t thought of urgency in leveling up at this stage of the game. Sure.

I haven’t pugged in GW2, altho a couple times we’ve picked up a 5th outside of guild. MMOs are always better with friends and guildmates. In my guild I haven’t noticed any stipulations, but of course you prefer to team with geared/speced/experienced.

Except for story mode, there’s no reason* not to run a dungeon on one of your 80s. Tokens are account-bound.

(the one reason I can think of is doing CM on a low-level alt cuz you’re hoping for runes of Noble)