Guild Wars 2

Red Falcon.8257:

nethykins.7986:

Let’s be completely honest.

Colin says/has said a lot of stuff. It’s part of selling the game – talking about what you want to do is a whole lot different from what you actually end up doing (a la Manifesto)

On that note, I don’t think a bait-and-switch behavior should be passively accepted as “part of selling a game” as if it is normal behavior.
In some civilized nations promising your product does X but then it does Y is a fraud.
I remember when a company sold a cellphone saying it wouldn’t contain commercial bloatware, but it did contain it – the judge forced to stop the production of the item and refund all buyers or find a way to remove the bloatware on all items.
A game is just a market product like anything else so this applies to the games too (and before you say it, EULA is toilet paper in courts).
You cannot promise a certain feature (or lack thereof) and then do exactly the opposite; it’s baiting your customers to buy one product and then deliver a different one.

I still have enough trust in Anet to believe that they will ultimately end up meeting all their promises.
Mostly because these changes of direction are to appeal to a different audience (aka traditional MMO players), but that audience won’t last long in GW2 – they will either move to a proper traditional MMO or jump ship when a new hyped MMO comes out.
It will be then that Anet will realize the importance of having loyal customers and being faithful to them, because a reliable income is better than being too hungry and riskying to lose everyone.

I’m pretty sure the 0/20 fetch quests are just temporary placeholders.
Considering the quality of GW2 this feature is like a stain of puke on a fine dress.

Actually I agree, but won’t harp on too much about the legality of false advertising, because it’ll lead to a lot of deleted posts and locked threads. And as far as it goes, the devs has only broken the “gamers trust” and not anything which can be bound in law. Statements made were not as clear cut as something like the “WarZ’s” false advertising.

I think the devs were so wrapped up in trying not to make it like WoW or any other standard MMO, they ended up losing the core functionality of MMO’s. It was trying not to be WoW for sake of sake of not being WoW. It’s only achieved a lot of grief from players that are disappointed.

Anyhow, I’m going off topic.

There was a statement from Colin Johanson given in an interview recently

Let’s be completely honest.

Colin says/has said a lot of stuff. It’s part of selling the game – talking about what you want to do is a whole lot different from what you actually end up doing (a la Manifesto)

After the daily/monthly stuff was added, with no viable way of hiding it, I found myself looking at the right side of my screen more often. Mainly to see if the daily was counting stuff I was doing.

It would be good if even after all is said and done, even if they flooded our screen with UI elements, giving the player a choice at what he/she wants to see is always a step forward. (or in some cases walking on the spot – for how long have we had modifiable UI’s?)

As patch notes show:

Story: Some enemy group compositions have been altered

I recently did AC story and saw no difference when taking on my normal run.
Same first set of mobs in tomb area. Same elem+monk combo, then set of 3 (elem-warr-monk), then warr and 2 archers, 3 archers at Nente, etc etc.

Where have you seen the group compositions changed?

Are shouts for guardians bugged as they can’t be set on auto-attack, or is this intended?

Warrior shouts apparently can be set for auto-attack., but so far my “Stand your ground” and “Hold the line” don’t work. Haven’t tested it on others.

Weekend, mid day, Whiteside lower levels seemed pretty sparse. Hopefully this picks up soon.

I agree. Its guess work at a point, but at least it doesn’t force you a list of arbitrary tasks that in your own time you’d not be doing anyway.

I’m saying this as someone who when going into dailies thought, “WHY am I being given an underwater task. I absolutely despise underwater combat.” But if this was in dyanmic fashion, I wouldn’t care, because I could at least go and do what I wanted and still gain progression without having to conform against my playstyle which would eventually put me off spending what little time I have in the game.

Wild question, (and possibly going to get ripped to shreds)…but since there are so many dynamic elements in game, why aren’t dailies/monthlies being created that way?

I noticed a lot of people complaining about being forced to do stuff that is out of the way of player’s normal play-style. (eg: while dodge, and heal are acceptable, crafting/complete dailies for a monthly is questionable) and of course there are those that think it’s better now.

Why hasn’t there just been a sort of dynamic built in system, or even looked into to get away from the “tick box” mentality, and more towards not being an integral part of the gameplay rather than a list that can be intrusive for some?
Anyone else think that having a bunch of dailies that are ticked off as you do whatever you’re doing.
No Tickboxes. Just a bunch of dailies that can be triggered naturally while playing.

Some examples:
– You’re a guardian. You like to run dungeons, and provide a lof of support benefits to your group. You’ve now done 5 dungeons today. BAM! you get a daily achievement. It was not listed. Your tally were done behind the scenes and upon reaching 5, you got a surprise achievement.
You run a few more dungeons, and on doing your 50th time giving stability to someone that day, you get a surprise daily called something like “Standing Tall”

What I’m getting at here, is non obstructive game elements embedded into the very fabric of the game itself.

Plus, it gives the devs a chance to make some cool daily names and do be creative on making a broader amount of dailies that will cater for specific classes too. While Shouts are guardian and Warrior based and could give a “Megaphone!” achievement, an Ele could get “Bathing in Blessings” for healing up xxk HP using water attunement, or Necro’s getting “Owch” for stacking bleeds for xx seconds in total

Also, obviously, after you complete 5 of them (or in this case, i’d probably say 6/7 of them) you get your token. and the others will no longer count towards daily completion.

Your thoughts?

Now that the Flame and Frost over-arching “living” story has been given a tiny bit more depth, with some info on seeing old characters you’d “Love (or hate)”…Reading that little tid-bit, I envision Trahearne coming in parts of the living story and saying “Well done me!…Oh you’re here too hero? Stop being so lazy and do something useful! Chop Chop!”.

That leaves me with one question:
What would you like to see them do to take caution to avoid the pitfalls as seen in the personal story?

Sigh

as long as someone doesn’t forget to make an EU one too.

Akame.1073:

Dont care about player lvl, he has a heal , he can dps, ha can dodge = ha can run dungeons. The clue is its a skill based game —>Skill based<-- we arent in azeroth anymore.

Your post didn’t contribute any ideas at all.

Try harder.

I’d be allowing people to join me, but I’m just one person, not a whole party.

Well I feel sorry for those people coming into the game now, or any alts that get made. They’ll never see that Lvl 35 dungeon until hitting 80.

Dungeon Design ftw.

Your first suggestion is a little far-fetched, but sometimes, crazy ideas work well as opposed to simple ideas that solve nothing.

Your second idea is cool, in terms of a difference in your first death to your second and varying it, but giving a death/respawn cooldown will virtually kill any essence of anyone doing a dungeon if you’re below lvl 80.

There has to be a way to treat the rez-rushing problem that encourages players to work together and play smart, while ALSO allowing them to spend their time doing what we’re all here to do—play the game.
Just remember, we’re not trying to punish people for rez rushing. If someone dies (which is a negative element) why add an added section of frustration by punishing them with a cooldown or increased repair costs? It’s like fighting fire with fire.

I’ve noted ideas before in another post:

• Increase the healing on dead players while in combat

• Allow rez orbs to drop regularly, or for a the person outside of each dungeon to sell them. (this is probably a lame idea actually, but meh)

• Change agro to take threat off downed players, so people will co-ordinate kiting and healing together.

At this current stage, the req level for all dungeons mean nothing. You’ll have to be 80. If you’re 35-40 in AC expl, don’t expect to get into a group willing to see how you do, because they’ll have to piggy-back you so you learn the mechanics of the different paths. And with this wishy-washy “anti rez rushing” idea added, the barrier for entry on lower levelled characters will be raised.

I can only imagine this was the same kind of thinking that lead to fractals originally being individual tiers. Sounds good on paper, works terribly in practice.

got a chest, it had 2 whites/greys

I think its bugged.

No increase in my opinion. I really dont want them to have more trouble balancing the game and the auto-scaling.

The cost for server transfers….

Are too kitten high.

Jareth.4813:

nethykins.7986:

Jareth.4813:

nethykins.7986:

Jareth.4813:

Kromica.2831:

Haven’t seen anything that was worth the hype the patch was getting.

Complete opposite for me, but to each his own.

Funny because I feel the same as Krom.

It was labelled as the patch that would “make or break” people returning to GW2. But tbh, the patch didn’t contain anything at the level of which it would make or break the game for anyone.

It’s just very, middle of the road.

It was labelled as a small patch to lay the ground work for the patches coming in February and March.

Anet never claimed it to be more than that. They were also very clear in what was to be expected in this patch.

Any further hype or expectations are the fault of the player blindly hoping for more than what was promised.

Everything Anet said would be in this patch was delivered. As such the patch, in my eyes, easily lived up to the hype.

Sorry. What i meant “it was labelled the patch that would make or break”, i meant by players, bloggers, MMO outlets, youtube vid creators and GW2 oriented podcasts.
Soz. Should have been clearer on that.

Both Tales of Tyria on the livestream, and Massively on podcast have both said generally, that the update is something to look forward to, but if they don’t start changing some things urgently, then it’s heading to a dark place.

Though, we both may be speaking out of turn here.
The patch cant yet justify the hype factor because, as you said, it’s only some of the changes…not all.
The rest we’ll have to wait for in Feb.

Indeed.

Though it would appear that those blogs were at fault for setting players expectations higher than what Anet had said was coming.

Feb/March will be the core content. Those are the real meat of this update after all.

Makes me wonder though. Colin said Jan was a “small” patch. I’m looking forward to seeing what Anet’s idea of “big” is. :p

“January and February will be our biggest updates to date. They’re even bigger than all the stuff we did in October, November and December. And, I think that when people see how much stuff they’re gonna get for no monthly fee in January and February, they’re probably going to be blown away. These two months combined are basically an expansion’s worth of content for free.”

Under that, my assumption is that this Jan patch was the first part of the “meaty stuff” then Feb is the second stage, and the rest of the year will be smaller additions. But even by dev’s the hype factor is WAYYYYY up there. You can’t blame this completely on player expectation.

Jareth.4813:

nethykins.7986:

Jareth.4813:

Kromica.2831:

Haven’t seen anything that was worth the hype the patch was getting.

Complete opposite for me, but to each his own.

Funny because I feel the same as Krom.

It was labelled as the patch that would “make or break” people returning to GW2. But tbh, the patch didn’t contain anything at the level of which it would make or break the game for anyone.

It’s just very, middle of the road.

It was labelled as a small patch to lay the ground work for the patches coming in February and March.

Anet never claimed it to be more than that. They were also very clear in what was to be expected in this patch.

Any further hype or expectations are the fault of the player blindly hoping for more than what was promised.

Everything Anet said would be in this patch was delivered. As such the patch, in my eyes, easily lived up to the hype.

Sorry. What i meant “it was labelled the patch that would make or break”, i meant by players, bloggers, MMO outlets, youtube vid creators and GW2 oriented podcasts.
Soz. Should have been clearer on that.

Both Tales of Tyria on the livestream, and Massively on podcast have both said generally, that the update is something to look forward to, but if they don’t start changing some things urgently, then it’s heading to a dark place.

Though, we both may be speaking out of turn here.
The patch cant yet justify the hype factor because, as you said, it’s only some of the changes…not all.
The rest we’ll have to wait for in Feb.

Jareth.4813:

Kromica.2831:

Haven’t seen anything that was worth the hype the patch was getting.

Complete opposite for me, but to each his own.

Funny because I feel the same as Krom.

It was labelled as the patch that would “make or break” people returning to GW2. But tbh, the patch didn’t contain anything at the level of which it would make or break the game for anyone.

It’s just very, middle of the road.

and so…the personal/social gating rears it’s ugly head.

Why can’t you just take a newbie along and teach them the ropes? Be a good Samaritan.

I’m a little confused on what the intention of stopping res-rushing is.

Capping waypoints during combat was only curing the symptom, not the illness.

• If it was to improve cohesion in a group – it only puts a noose on new players and gets them into a tight corner. They begin to hold up the group, there’s a possibility of frustration and an ultimate kick from the party to find someone more competent Or worse the player decides they’ll never be good enough and so opts out and never runs a dungeon again.

• If it was to improve people healing dead players – then an overall, but slight, buff to the speed at which you “combat-res” or res downed players in dungeons, would have sufficed.

• If it was to increase the need to learn mechanics – I don’t think this will work. It’s only going to encourage a whole new wave of people to “glitch” bosses because, well, it’s less of a hassle for everyone in the group to do so.

Basically, I’m unsure of what angle at which this choice was taken. Anyone have a better understanding of it that would care to explain to me?

“Polished dungeons and removed the ability to use waypoints while any player is in combat.”

Meh, It’s only going to encourage more glitching.

Glitch more = Die less = faster run, with minimal deaths and everyone’s happy.

…When we were making this change, we looked at the events and encounters where our data showed players being encouraged to res-rush and re-balanced them to allow for the safe removal of res-rushing.

I guess I was right… What happened to the part where you asked the community why they rez rushed?
:(

I’m thinking the rest will be the same way. Obviously, the rest of the stages are pre-planned, so any feedback from the forums will most likely be placed aside.

I’m look forward to the next stage announcements with worry and excitement.

whether it improves playstyle is questionable. I’m not saying it won’t but I won’t say it’s definitely going to.

After all, people have been glitching dungeons bosses and mobs for a while now. More people are just going to take the exploit/glitch methods when/if they are found because there’s less reason to take on a boss head on.

Its’a tough balance, I’ll admit, but I don’t think anyone’s quite sure what implications these changes will have had until a month in or so.

…no-one really bothers doing story-mode dungeons. And there’s still no real need to do so.

Perhaps this is in coordination with the Waypoint removals, that people will be so frustrated with Expl, that they’ll just run Story-modes for the exp and karma…and coin (as Bullfrog states)

Also, in relation to level-ranged gear being dropped from mobs – as per the patch notes:
Even as a lvl 20 in a lvl 11 zone, I was getting lvl 6 gear.
So if this is still evident in those dungeons (AC mobs giving lvl 1 gear) then err… either the patch is not working as intended, or it only works for lvl 80’s being scaled down (which then excludes everyone else above 30 and below 80..so i’m not too sure baout that), or there’s something I’m completely missing in the grand scheme of things.

I guess that’s another way to get rid of the need for a LFG tool or dungeon finder tool…

make it unbearable for PuGs

On my ele, I can’t get kill cred, though I’d be putting up pretty much all my combo fields. I don’t get any unless I kill a boss with lots of conditions stacked on him.

Can’t get it any other way.

Also, please for the love of god, STATE YOUR PROFESSION when talking about completing it in a jiffy. I can imagine necro’s and ele’s will have the most problems.

Lancaeron.1524:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We generally don’t release patch information beforehand for the simple reason that things don’t always make it. Sometimes, we have to hold off on a feature at the last minute, and it’s better not to over-promise.

I support your statement, Mr. Vaughn! If Guild Wars 2 were like all the other MMOs out there, and had “Public Test Servers”, then that would be appropriate to post the patch notes of that particular aspect of the game. And, as with every other Test Server, things are subject to change. Entire changes in the patch might be reverted, removed, or even added on to. However, Guild Wars 2 does NOT have a Public Test Server. We have to rely on patience, and intuition, above all things, here in the GW universe, for things to pass. All in good time, my fellow gamers; the patch, as any of the Dev’s would say, will come out when it is ready.

Sure, they’d have to write some element of patches down the line, but for an instance such as this the patch notes are pretty much:
“PTS is now at the most current build”

When they say they’re testing something on the server (which will be at random times across the game’s livespan) they’d have notes up, in the PTS forum. It requires the same effort to post the notes as it does to tell the testing team, “hey, we’re testing this now”

AcidicVision.5498:

A PTR would be useless in GW. Anything that could be tested can be tested internally.

For example, how are you going to test overflows? WvW? The trading post? Guesting? PvE or social crossrealm features?

Not to mention framework changes to allow more than one character to have an independent server, making sure a character from ptr cannot guest, make account bound progress, share storage, or mail anything. Those are large changes to core systems in the game to allow public testing in an extremely limited capacity?

1 – it’s questionable at this current state that they test anything rigorously. not too long ago, I found a bug in one of the first game crafting recipes (yup, one of the first 3 you discover) where the recipe was incorrect. That would be easily found by someone on a PTS/PTR or enough testing to see it in the first instance.

2 – What was the last PTS you tried. They don’t have connection to the live servers. I’m not super technical on this, but from what i’ve read from other MMO’s on how they do their PTS, is they throw an image, unconnected to your original character, onto the PTS.
By the sole fact that it’s not connected directly with the original servers (it’s it’s onwn isolated server) means that you can’t trade, mail, party or whatever, with the real servers. In fact, having a PTS for a EU and US side would allow them to continually try to see how guesting works in real time with different hosts as opposed to simulating it on a local server, which doesn’t get the same results all the time.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We generally don’t release patch information beforehand for the simple reason that things don’t always make it. Sometimes, we have to hold off on a feature at the last minute, and it’s better not to over-promise.

Err…

Regardless, its not stopped you from pushing a new build a few hours later, and adding those fixes to the patch notes afterwards…like you did before.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-3-2012

Releasing notes before and adding ones you eventually fix won’t be any different…right?

Personally, it seems like an “oh kitten” addition when they realised people were getting to legendaries too fast.

Fractals are cool, but did they need to have an added gear tier to emphasise that? I don’t think so.
I’m not going for ascended because I don’t really want to churn my way through endless fractals, diminishing personal fun factor to increase the “gear factor”.
Even when it gets added to the rest of the game, I have a strong feeling it’ll aslo be through somewhat lesser fun-factors.

The rest of the game is fine by me.

Chuo.4238:

slash.5428:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“When it’s done.”

:D

Let’s all report this user for trolling

Yus! I agree…

Oh…were we not supposed to?

:P

I’m hoping for less nerfs, and more balance

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Hakkero.7120:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Hakkero.7120:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Karizee.8076:

It is currently 7am PST on the 28th which means the patch will launch sometime in the next 17 hours.

I will post periodic updates for people that do not understand time zones

Listen, stop being conceited.

It’s not about people not understanding timezones, it’s about announcing to a global (please understand this includes places outside of the USA) audience than an update will happen on the 28th when it in fact won’t.

The problem is that people need to understand that Anet’s times are based on PST which is the server’s time. But people assume that the time they say is according to the time zone they live. So the moment it hits 12 am on the 28th wherever they live they expect the patch out at that moment.

Meaning that for the patch to hit exactly the instant it hits the 28th on the planet earth, Anet would have to be in their office working at 10am on sunday.

I understand that fine.

What I don’t understand is what’s so hard about typing “28th Jan USA, 29th everywhere else”

Rather than “28th of Jan”.

Understand?

Just knowing how timezones work would immediately tell you when to expect it. I don’t think there’s a need to put EXPECT IT ON THE 28th Western Hemisphere/29th Eastern Hemisphere when announcing the date.

Good grief, it’s argue with the moron brigade time again.

Look, it’s a global game. If they have a release advertised at 28th January with no qualifying arguments, then that kinda infers that it will be released at some point on the 28th of January for everyone that can read the announcement.

If it is not going to reach live status by the time the 28th ends outside of the US, they should tell people, because, once again, it’s a global game and not just for the USA. Global = places all around the world.

Understanding time zones doesn’t matter – if a company says “released on the 28th”, only has one site for the whole world, then that would mean it releases on the 28th, for the whole world.

I don’t even mind if they say “it might be the 29th for EU / AUS / ASIA”, at least they’re acknowledging the other 50/60% of their playerbase.

Agreed.
I guess some people just want to say “hey, you should know”. They’re probably also in the US and rarely have to deal with a lack of info on timings.

But they’ve probably never ever looked at film release dates(which always state the release dates of each area of the world they’ve distributed to), game release dates (which do the same), and games that apply patches for NA servers up to 2 days before throwing it on the EU servers.

Xavion.6580:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

thay dont want us to all log in at the same time and crash everything, thats why thay dont give us a time

…Um, that’s STILL going to happen regardless when they just give a date and no time- possibly even more likely by doing it this way because people are avidly trying to get information. This is a silly way to do business. I love some aspects of ANET (great dev team, so-so live team, bleh PR team), but this is just pointless.

What this REALLY is, if people haven’t figured it out, is an excuse clause. Basically, they don’t want to have any griping about not delivering what was promised on time, so they just give a date. This opinion is easily backed up by the subtle back-stepping and vague update announcements void of great detail in the past months. They are simply becoming afraid to come even close to promising anything.

Actually, I’d go so far as to say, the lack of patch notes until well after the patch is released is the excuse clause. Meaning that they can literally count all the changes that they actually got compared to the ones they wanted to get

lets be honest, it’ll be released for most of us on late 29th.

I’m fine with that, but I’d prefer that a company with a global audience actually state the official dates for the update. Other companies with MMO’s like to at the very least state the developers time-zone, as to avoid confusion.

DiogoSilva.7089:

DreamOfACure.4382:

People dislike nerfs because it not only hurts the things they’re attached to, it reflects as mistakes on the Devs part.

People claiming nerfs are under the impression that the base-line for where ANet wants the classes is already set, whereas the repeated nerfs show ANet disagrees.

Disagreement between Developers and Players = Conflict -> Players rage when there’s conflict, because that’s all they can do.

And if nerfs aren’t done, the overpowered stuff annoys the playerbase, especially in pvp, making the game less fun; and a few broken builds will become untopped and trivialize everything; and there will be disagreement between devs and players for that. And if you buff everything in that context, instead of nerfing everything, then you’ll also have to buff the mobs to make the game difficult again, and in the end, it ends up doing exactly the same thing as nerf would do, but require a lot more work, meaning balancing would be far slower than it is, without any gain.

A game as big and complx as a MMO is nearly impossible to balance perfectly, so the only thing it reflects is that devs are human.

Still not seen any evidence of any significant buffs in their previous patches though. Just a whole lot of nerfing. Some classes just get it a lot more than others.

Dradiin.8935:

Run AC story mode once every 2 hours while doing map completions until you hit level 35.

Doing AC Story I’d avoid….I Rarely find a group for this, unless you’re looking out for the dungeon master title people. They are few and far-between otherwise. No-one really does story-modes anymore.

Khyber.2693:

nethykins.7986:

Craft for great Justice!…and err speed leveling

Key thing to do here is Make your Main do all the legwork and get some ecto’s, sell them on TP and do dragon events+dungeons for the lame green/blue loot. Sell those to vendors, and after a while you should have enough gold to at least start on the crafting one. (around 4g to max crafting level IIRC)

Power-craft your wait to at least 35 so you can start running AC.

My main Guardian took ages to level to 80 because of the range>melee issue. Then I made a ranger and that took me all of 3 weeks playing on and off after work and on weekends. However, since then a few patches later and it’s taking me a bit longer that previously to level up.

Forgive me for being a huge noob. What are the real benefits of dungeons such as AC? I have one other account that is close to 80 that I never ran dungeons on so… I don’t know. Just how will they benefit me in the long run?

The benefits of dungeons are:

- Your 80 gets ~lvl80 gear in AC explore mode. In your case, at least you can sell that to vendors, or break them down for mats for your alt to craft when it gets to the right crafting level.

- Playing Exploration mode, gets you dungeon tokens after successfully completing it, which can be traded in, once you have enough, to get some rare gears. Some can be broken down for ecto’s which you can sell. (Helping further increase gold for speed-crafting with your alt)

- Playing with your lvl 35 will get them leveled up relatively fast. you’ll fill up near 70% of your bar alone from the final exp reward when you complete the dungeon.

Hope that helped

Craft for great Justice!…and err speed leveling

Key thing to do here is Make your Main do all the legwork and get some ecto’s, sell them on TP and do dragon events+dungeons for the lame green/blue loot. Sell those to vendors, and after a while you should have enough gold to at least start on the crafting one. (around 4g to max crafting level IIRC)

Power-craft your wait to at least 35 so you can start running AC.

My main Guardian took ages to level to 80 because of the range>melee issue. Then I made a ranger and that took me all of 3 weeks playing on and off after work and on weekends. However, since then a few patches later and it’s taking me a bit longer that previously to level up.

Narkosys.5173:

credibility and competency is at the heart of it for me. I remember when they said there was 5 pages of fixes/nerfs for the ranger alone. Didnt happen.
Or how they force into cheese builds by removing some of the more fun builds and your stuck with what they want you to play. Think thief backstab issue.

Every new round of nerfs seems to break more things than they fix and most of the time leave you saying eh?
It limits your options and combine that with how much it costs resource wise for ascend gear you are stuck at 1 build.
Stuck with a monotonous build leads to stagnation. So so called balance and VP cause a significant loss in variation of play.
Sad Panda.

I’ve known since the manifesto 180-turn fiasco that you should ALWAYS take Anet talk with a hefty, pile of salt.
They’re really good at the hyping/PR of parts but not so strong on execution. Like the company’s PR and the development team aren’t fully interacting with each other. (this isn’t uncommon…look at SONY’s internal infrastructure).

They can talk the talk, but they hobble and trip alot when they’re trying to walk the walk.

very simple question. This talk of AOE, mesmers, theives, this and that. I am very astonished how out raged a group of people become over a virtual game that costs a small price.

/Sigh
Everytime people state something like “hey! it’s a pay to play, so stop complaining!” I just think they know nothing about customer service or longevity of that product they bought.

Put it in context: You get given lifetime membership to a Gym. One fee, for the rest of your life. You go in, and it’s awesome. Everyone’s there, and all happy at the prospect of the lifetime membership and availability to use the equipment.
Then you arrive a week later…they have a notice on the main door saying they’ve made some “adjustments” because too many people were using the dumbbells and rowing machines…

you go in and see that they’ve taken half the dumbbells and half the rowing machines away, but added more treadmills (pun intended). As a customer who’s paid for the access to that gym, you’ve still got a right to complain or get annoyed when those features are lacking, or are changed to a level that isn’t really benefiting anyone besides the owners’ ideals.

Sorry if that was a bad analogy. It’s the best I had.

But there are two main points on this:

1. Because continual Nerfing (without balancing PvE areas, mobs, dungeon encounters, bosses, other classes in relation to the initial nerf) will eventually lead to a never ending spiral of nerf, after nerf.
I rarely hear they’ve buffed something, unless its a boss, general mobs, or warrior changes.

2. Because the game is coming close to being called NerfWars2. Cant farm or speed-run dungons and gain decent rewards the because of nerfs to the reward system, can’t farm karma at the old karma-train of Dynamic events because of nerfs. Now there’s going to be a so-called AoE nerf, and even waypoint removal from dungeons….so instead of finding useful or inventive ways of dealing with issues they’ve just decided to Remove instead of Improve

I like the system, but nothing about it makes me feel that it’s going to drive players to older areas again at a consistent rate.

They’ll pound out their chosen dailies (as they’ve been doing for ages) and then run fractals till their fingers bleed.

Hey Jeff – I don’t know if you actually remember, have already taken note, lost the thread (though you should have been keeping an eye on it) or whatever, but please look here too. From what I can see, you posted once. Also requesting info on any difficulty spikes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/event-difficulties/first

Also note that lots of replies directed at your request but no response on whether you looked into it or not.

Can a mod also please merge these threads.

Goodness…I didn’t think I’d have to play Mr. Mod today.

Are there any anti-bot but player-friendly methods being looked at for the future?

It’s good and all to say “play as you want to play” but speed-runners (Still don’t get why they get DR?) and farmers are always feeling effects of DR for simply playing the game. We all know this doesn’t have an effect on bots. They farm until their code roasts itself alive, but us players are normal.

Will new methods be looked into on anti-bot measures that won’t encroach on enjoyment or differing play-styles for a portion of playerbase? Or does anyone have any good ideas they’d wanna toss out there?

Shiren.9532:

ArenaNet is really stretching it when they say “January Update”. Sure, the 28th is January, but geese, you are cutting it so close it may as well be called the February update. Every time I read “this month”, I cringed.

Yeah, this reminds me of my workplace. We send out an invoice to be paid within 30 days…and every time…these big-shot clients do it on the evening of the 29th day.

I guess Anet just wanted to stick with their promise of monthly content. Though we’ve seen The Secret World try this, and it instantly became unfeasible as soon as the content got delayed by a week or two. That being said, I’m sure this will launch on the 28th, but perhaps there’ll be connectivity issues, or patching problems (since guesting will be active, anything could get messy) ad people will play it in earnest at the start of Feb – Which isn’t bad at all. I just wish they’d have said 1st Feb, and taken as much time as they need to fix up anything and everything.

“Hey, look, I swung a sword. Hey, look! I swung a sword again!”

Sound familiar?

That…is what it feels like taking down trash mobs. It’s just a mundane task, and mundane tasks get tired, very fast.

mrstealth.6701:

nethykins.7986:

I always find Kholer’s pre-pull effect (where he winds his hand back and it glows) a little hard to read when you’ve got lots of effects hitting him, as well as melee classes, and the same aura colour for most of guardian’s attacks.

For me, this is really the only thing making many of the dungeon bosses hard. I think Kholer is one of the easier to dodge because of his size. Bosses that are human-sized, or smaller, are a lot more of a problem. Add in the fact that dungeons tend to be dark areas that highlight the effects even more, and they can easily leave you completely blind to what the target is doing. It’s a shame that the dodging mechanic is completely trashed so often because of the insanely overstated effects.

It would be nice to have a graphics option that greatly tones down the skill effects without effecting other graphic quality. Disabling post-processing and lowering the shader settings help, but reducing the overall image quality of the game isn’t really an acceptable solution.

After having a little stint on TERA, the options to tone down effects when in a party and manually determine your draw distance were something I was litterally like “WTF. COME ON ARENANET! WAKE UP!” at my screen. It’s like when they port over a game from console to PC, and don’t give any option tweaks because it’s not needed on console versions. Very Frustrating.

Anyhow, back on topic:
Actually, seeing what your wrote about Kholer also makes me think about the general colour pallet of AC dungeons when dealing with ghosts. Mainly storymode, taking on the mobs in the centre area, and the king too. It’s like, Light blue, on light blue. And his flame attack is also light blue….light blue! light blue! light blue! light blue!

I’m nitpicking now though.

wauwi.9162:

GW2 is probably the most populated mmorpg atm.
so if GW2 is “dead”, how would you describe other fairly populated mmorpg’s?

Err… Got any statistics to back that up?

It’s not dead, but we have no idea how many people are playing this compared to…well…compared to the big-shot WoW.

Mars.6319:

cargan.5689:

And if they do will we have people spaming LFG AC lvl 15?

They are suppose to be fixing this by allowing people to join a group of any fractal level but only advancing one level per completion. The same would work for dungeons.

I’d rather good gear come from more difficult content than RNG. If I can get the best gear killing Dolyak or Risen then I’m going to spend my time killing Dolyak because it’s easier.

Regardless of that, it’s making people just run fractals because it’s free reign. Start an alt, go into fractals. Grind. Get decent loot. Don’t even touch any other dungeons again. It’s not worth the effort and the loot will not compare to fractals loot (unless they make chest loot tables the same in dungeons as in fractals)

SneakyErvin.3056:

Nope, things will be obtainable in all different ways, fractals will just be one of them. If dungeons get revamped they will have better loot too most likely.

New dailies will surely make sure that we revisit old zones and so on.

I get you…But what I mean is, the whole idea with fractals is, the higher you go, the better loot you get. That won’t be viable in normal dungeons. The difficulty is capped per path on explorable modes. Perhaps each path is a different difficulty, but it doesn’t range anywhere near the amount of fractal’s incremental types.

Or am I wrong?