Guild Wars 2

Sounds like a very immature guild leader.

Think of a time playing GW2 when you got a gear upgrade, and afterwards mobs were dying noticeably faster, like even just a couple of skill uses.

I have ~230 levels in the game on diff characters. Even going to exotic from yellow weapons at 80 didn’t seem dramatic. The only time it stood out to me was back in the starter zone.

It makes a big difference in pvp because all your stats are on the amulet, and it can be a huge swing. But aside from that, I know it matters, but not to the point I one-shot something that used to take a whole skill bar.

In the “Iceberg” post for sPvP, the topic of private arenas was addressed. Coming “soon”

I leave a character parked at the spawn spot, and then log in to them when the timer says it’s about to spawn.

It’s an inevitable win. I don’t think you could lose a dragon fight if you tried. Eat your tarts!

The game plays a LOT better if you turn off map chat anyway.

WvW solo doesn’t get you or your server very much.

What are ya gonna do, go farm centaurs?

You actually can carry supply as a player, you know.

I don’t see that what you’re suggesting would enhance the gameplay in a positive way.

WvW is so different from actual pvp. IMO the worst is whatever profession is running the arrow cart or ballista.

It’s all about numbers, siege, and range for any fight that matters.

Just fixing things that are broken I think should be top priority, then see how it plays.

We don’t really need new features, cuz you have to know whatever they add will be badly bugged and exploitable, too.

They took away all rewards for ‘yak escorting, cuz that’s all that a bunch of people were doing, all the way to 80. Players ranted and screamed about it, so ANet took the rewards away. It wasn’t necessarily bots, just people who were after the easiest xp/karma gain.

Similarly, if you got points for defending an unattacked keep, can you imagine how many people would just hang out afk in the keep, taking up the limited queue spots?

I think it would be interesting if ANet did adjust gem/gold to completely float the exchange rate. It could still work to have the 15% transaction fee.

I really don’t know if it’d go up or down, initially. It does seem like it could be very volatile, as part of the demand for gems will be tied to common events, such as new goodies for sale, for instance, pushing the gold/gem exchange rate up, and push it down on those times when the BLTP is down.

The thing I’d find most interesting would be comparing the “free market” exchange rate of gold/gem/$$ versus the 3rd-party gold sellers exchange rate. It’d give a method of quantifying the perceived cost of cheating.

Generally the xp you get from killing mobs is the slowest for leveling.

Best xp comes from dynamic events.

Personally I find the renown hearts tiresome, but you have to do them to get zone-completion, and they’re not bad, they just are so formulaic and feel like chores.

re: gear appearance -
some of the most distinctive looking gear will come from rewards for your personal story. If the stats on the gear don’t appeal to you, you can use a transmutation stone (which you’ll get for zone-completions) to merge the looks, the stats and the rune/sigil of two items of the same type.

see this week’s Buildcast episode

Last week’s one came late so I was imagining they’d be late again this week, cuz there’s only been a couple business days since last one, right?

I think it’s ok to play a game for a while until you feel done with it. That’s the beauty of no subscription. If there’s nothing in game that you want and you don’t have friendships pulling you into the game, then leave it set for a bit ‘til there’s a reason to play again.

Knote.2904:

Would love to see hardmode style of these meant for duo’s that would be sick. =D

Hardmode for a duo, people would just bring a full group or even more, since it’s all open-world. I think that’s why they’re more puzzley, so the challenge is there regardless of scaling.

In PvE I don’t see it as a limitation. You have 13 or 14 pieces at a time that have stats on them. So combine your pieces to get closest toward what you want. 3 stats on each item, plus the upgrades, 6 accessory items to choose. You may feel “forced” to have an extra stat bit of a stat you don’t love, but you can always get a workable set.

It’s harder in PvP where there’s only 1 piece of gear with stats and the 6 runes you can apply.

By design some stats combinations aren’t in game, to facilitate balance and force players to choose tradeoffs when selecting the amulet.

I thought mini dungeons were the non-instanced dungeons like the underwater one with the puzzles in charr area. Not little ones with just one vet and one chest, those are more like encounters than a mini dungeon.

The average age of N.A. computer gamers goes up every year. The current teen generation is much more likely to buy games for console, iPod/phone, etc.

Odds are if someone’s playing a game like GW2, they’re old enough to have kids who play Xbox games. :p

I don’t think it’d change much of pve or wvw.

In pvp, I think 70 points is better because it forces you to choose against some desirable options for real trade-offs, sort of like you have to with having only one piece of gear with stats on it (the amulet).

Groups and guilds systems are one of the weakest parts of GW2. To borrow a phrase the to-do list in this thread is just the tip of the iceberg.

Of all things that are frustrating about the game, this is not one.

I don’t think elementalist is particularly hard to play.

It does play very differently depending on which weapons you equip. I play dagger/dagger sometimes toss in a scepter or focus. It’s quick and mobile, short range.

My S.O. also plays an elementalist. She goes staff usually, big AoEs at long range, doesn’t move around so much. If you put our two characters together, a casual observer would think we’re different professions.

With mesmer IME they take a while before they really come together for pve. Extremely strong for pvp and wvw. But they do a lot better with a full utility bar and traits.

Only warriors and rangers can equip longbow, and it’s not the #1 weapon of choice for them.

The reality is ANet sets the price.

They like to talk about it as if it’s based on supply and demand from the players, because they do base it on a data-driven formula, based on how many players convert one way or the other.

But ANet is the man behind the curtain who sets and adjusts the parameters.

Nothing beats a warrior’s kill speed.

Sounds like the OP is concerned about wasting the time/gold spent on the existing characters. If they’re not fun to play, convert them into storage and roll a new one. You get 5 character slots for free. Or just delete and do over if you’re short on slots. They’re not even 80 yet – small blip on the years you may be playing GW2.

A suggestion — manage guild communication out of game. Mine has a website and monthly newsletter, email distribution built in.

The level of the story-line quest is the level you should be if you’re going to solo the quests. If the next segment of the story is higher than you are, take a break from the story quest and do something else until you’re the right level.

As far as good ways to level, there’s posts above that talk about it. Here’s the list of what’ll level you up, roughly from best yield to worst.
World V World
Dynamic events
gathering/crafting
exploring
renown hearts (but doing the hearts will help with explore and finding dynamic events)

The story quests keep going one every couple levels all the way to 80. If you do them at the “right” level, you may get quest rewards that are useful to you. But you can wait and start them at 80 if you’d rather… it’s all up to you.

To be fair, for the first weeks after launch, very little of guild functionality was working yet.

There’s a lot of features missing. I think they’re still scrambling to catch up.

When I first heard of GW2, I was imagining that at least the WvW if not the pvp would have been on Tyria instead of on the separate mini-map games. I played another NCSoft game, Lineage 2, where your pvp very much was in the main world (no instances at all) and affected the world.

That’s just not the game they decided to build – keeping pvp and wvw completely separate from the game world.

It’d be more compelling to put a character with undyed armor next to a guard in the same light. The preview tool’s not a great way to see how it looks in world.

This is a game where you can very easily make a character of any profession. It’s not like some other NCSoft games that take 1000+ hours of gameplay to max level.

So if there’s FotM class, it’s not such a big deal here as in other games.

They have plenty of data with 2 million accounts sold. There’s a constant stream of tournaments and regular spvp matches. They can look at dungeons completed (and dungeons failed) by profession also to see how things are going. Is the warrior always top of its group in PvE? Has there ever been a winning tournament team without a mesmer?

There are a lot of ways to define balance, and two relevant aspects of the game (spvp and pve/dungeons) on which to balance. The only people with access to the relevant data are ANet.

IMO we really really need the price for gems to keep going up higher and higher, so that ANet can hope to compete with the 3rd party gold sellers.

Bought mine with karma, I think in Sparkly Fen

I’m betting that lots of heroic real life figures’ names are blocked automatically. Don’t take offense at it, take it as a sign of honor and pride.

I think it’s a great vision that basically every profession can be ranged. Guardians don’t actually range very well, but the other professions all have some legit capabilities at range (900 +).

In other games, I played melee dps. In other games melee players frequently complain (validly) that PvE encounters are not melee friendly. Thankfully here in GW2, we can always equip a range weapon, and we’re not like a weak excuse, but truly useful (except for guardian, perhaps).

It’s a great design approach, particularly for a non-gear-progression type game.

I’ve found it very hard to drag myself out there the last several days. The zones just aren’t very much fun to be in. Gloomy. Annoying. Just let the risen have those lands, I’d say. Serves them right!

Daily quests and monthly quests end at 5 Pacific daylight time. We’ll still be on daylight on 10/31/12.

The yet-to-be-revealed event, let’s wait and see.

I think the complaint about melee being harder is a good one in some games, but not GW2. Everyone except guardians have a viable range weapon. I prefer to play my guardian with 2 melee sets equipped. I keep a scepter just in case.

Playing melee is no where near as hard in GW2 as it is for some raid encounters in raiding games. This is not one of those games.

See if you can get an elementalist to summon you a better weapon.

I’m inclined to say if your staff isn’t working, why not switch to something more responsive?

There are websites you can go to that let you get the item code corresponding to the item you want to see. When you then paste that code in-game chat, you can right click and get the preview option.

GW2Spidy, for example, gives me this code [&AgGsAQAA] for a Rampagers Acolyte Coat. I don’t know how much those databases are supported or tolerated by ANet, cuz it seems like they use reverse-engineering on the game code, or perhaps they receive the code from the developers.

Anywho… tools exist to preview trading post items, just not without going out of game.

See the post above mine, Aelia describes the procedure.

I didn’t say there IS a lack of content, but that the design is something that feels like they’re disguising a lack of content. How much content, how much variety, that’s up to you to judge. Do you feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over?

I came not from WoW, but Rift, where they used a lot less of the maze-map structure. There is a zone that’s like a GW zone with lots of unclimbable walls, but you can skip it, too. I like the GW setting better, but I respect Rift’s designers for being more conscientious about map design — specifically on the principle that map barriers should facilitate enjoyment of the content, not stymie it.

It is unfortunate. For example the nerf to guardian greatsword wasn’t cuz mobs were complaining about retaliation, but spvpers. And retaliation probably is too much for spvp. But in pve it was a big portion of guardian dps with that weapon, which is now much (basically 50%) less effective.

I think more fundamentally, ANet makes poor decisions about adjustments. For example, people complained a lot that when they meant to be grabbing loot, they’d end up stuck reviving a ranger’s pet. What we really need is to be able to separate “Loot” from everything else that the F key does. Rather than fix a poor design, they piled on more bad design by making ranger pets unrevivable. Even that wouldn’t be as big a problem except they’ve added in code to keep you in combat, sometimes stuck in combat til you log out and back in, I guess to prevent some kind of exploit.

Other stuff – like we players suffering lots of problems because of their inability to secure their game against bots, so we get decreased loot to punish them (which just drives up the number of bots and the temptation to buy from their owners).

Mesmers continue to be extremely strong in pvp, and I wager we won’t see winning tournament teams without a mesmer. So they nerfed mesmers a good bit. But, the mesmer post nerf is a pita to level in pve, where they were never all that powerful to begin with.

So I agree there’s a problem tryin to balance pve and pvp. We already don’t share any of the same gear. Why not restrict the modifications to skills as well?

There’s 2 parts of this that are very clunky and old-fashioned.

The instanced zones. Clunky, but something I can live with. I wish there were more areas where you could go between zones — they don’t all have to have a waypoint. But if you imagine that there’s only 2 roads to get from Georgia to Alabama, for example, it’s just stupid.

The part that I find really unfun and very old-fashioned is the clunky block-shaped maps with lots of non-traversable parts. You often have to walk a mile to get to a point that’s only 50 yards away because of arbitrarily unclimbable slopes, invisible walls and maze-like structures. Making travel take a long time in a game doesn’t make it fun, just makes it take longer. It feels like a way of trying to disguise a lack of content.

Map travel was free in GW1. The zones did have a lot of invisible walls and arbitrarily unclimbable slopes that were frustrating. But if you were in a zone like that, you’d never run into anyone, cuz there was no persistent common world.

Here in GW2, waypoints are a money sink, which is essential for economic health. Maybe the costs of waypoints are sufficient to encourage players to walk when they might otherwise map travel. For me, there are zones I enjoy walking through. I will happily walk to CM-ex, for example, because I like the feel of the zone.

But to the accusation pointed toward me above: No, GW1 is no longer the game for me, because it’s old fashioned and clunky. Back in the day it was only a little old-fashioned.

The idea of making travel take a long time to make the world seem large is also old-fashioned.

haha mine had 4c haha!

I read (in the “iceberg” piece) that they’re gonna be adding private pvp arena where you can 1v1 or whatever you like.

Something makes me think any profession you try will be below average performance.

I dunno if that particular situation needs to be changed. What’s happened to me is being in WvW group, player zones out or logs out, and there’s no way to remove them from party.

In the O.P.‘s case, maybe he was griefed (so don’t be friends with them anymore) or maybe he was actually a bad group member (so L2P). The problem there has nothing to do with the group/kick mechanism, but rather the horrible design of dungeons only rewarding after the last kill.

To change the party mechanics to make up for a bad dungeon design, which was only put in place as a kludge to remedy other bad design.. that’s just puttin more poop on the cake.

Sadly, seems to be ANet’s style – to create problems by covering up existing problems.

I’m enjoying sPvP but I’m uncertain if GW2’s system is rich enough to prove satisfying esport. Seems like LoL is richer in potential, variety and whatnot.