Guild Wars 2

Targren.6073:

theeagleeye.7693:

The fun factor is diminished because you play to get the gear as fast as possible, instead of focusing on just playing the dungeon and coming up with strategies, without thinking of just give me my God kitten token while running it.

Speak for yourself. I find the “fun factor” being diminished because I’m running the same freaking dungeon over and over and over again, rather than getting some variety by running the others.

Then don’t do it.

Dungeon armor is neither best in slot, nor (supposed to be) the easy way to orange gear. Actually, crafted armor is faster and easier to acquire. You don’t have to get dungeon armor.

Dungeon armor is a reward for people who enjoy specific dungeons enough to run them again and again. It’s a way for those players to demonstrate that they did that dungeon quite often, are proficient in it and maybe even enjoy it.

The flipside of this argument is what you’re not going to like:
If you don’t enjoy this dungeon, you don’t deserve the armor thst’s designed for people to show off that they like it. If you like the style, maybe cultural armor will offer something similar for you, maybe not. But that’s not the dungeon’s fault.

Vees.7816:

It’s because it’s the fastest way to get money and exp.

Get money in dungeons? And here I thought that due to their insane difficulty and diminishing returns, running dungeons would actually cost more in repair than you get in return.

True, I never experienced that myself, but reading this forum convinced me thereof.

@lambros
You’re not satisfied? I did CM story quite some time ago “at level” and I found it to be really well tuned (after AC story being hugely overtuned for a first dungeon). From my experience, I can say that the hints and information that were provided to you in this thread alone are to the point, crrect and sufficient to complete the instance and have fun doing so.

If you’re still not satisfied, I don’t know what else you could hope to take home from a forum that would make you satisfied.

Regarding downlevelling: It’s so that I can have fun in the dungeons at level 80, too. It’s so that I can help friends who want to do dungeons at their level (while levelling) even though I don’t have a char in that level range. Think of all the dungeons in WoW. How many are there? It must be dozends. But due to lack of downlevelling, all but a handful are boring, uninteresting, unplayed, dead content most of the time. You really want that?

When I see complaints about dungeons, it’s here, on the forum. In game, all I see is people looking for group in order to do them.

What I truly hate is people who complain about the issues they bring about themselves.

The dungeons are too boring! But for the final boss in TA, if we send one player to that spot over there, he’ll get all the adds but they can’t reach them, so we can stand at the entrance AFK and kill the boss with autoattacks. Boooooring.

The dungeons are too easy! So let’s ignore Magg for the time being run across the room hand have him respawn where we need him. Lol too easy!

The dungeons are too hard. Yes, ArenaNet said that they are for well prepared, well coordinated groups. So why can’t I clear them with a PUG in half an hour? Nerf too hard!

So let’s skip all trash. Let’s waste more time skipping trash than it’d take killing it. Let’s use every exploit we’ve ever heared about. And then let’s complain about it.

That one is great!

Last time I was there, I died just once. I was there when the elemental spawned and I went down when it had a tad under 10% HP left. I got unconcentrated. So, I’d say it’s doable, it’s even survivable. But it’s not easy. That’s what bosses should be like!

kaotiktheory.8942:

Everyone keeps saying that one dungeon will be farmed so that it makes it easier to just do one dungeon and then allow you to get any dungeon set you want. I keep suggesting that all it needs is some diminishing returns so that repeated dungeons that day/or week wield less and less universal tokens.

Oh yes. As we know, the community just loves diminishing returns. Everybody will be so happy.

If you’re implementing such a button, please do so for dungeon-set vendors as well.

I “bought” a medium armor hat from TA on my warrior. Didn’t even preview it. Didn’t preview any medium armor or hat, let alone buy it. But my client was acting up at the time I had the vendor-window open. Lagspikes of >1 second all over the place. Shortly after, I found that I was missing 180 tokens but I had a unwearable, soulbound hat in my inventory.

Oh, and refunds are obviously not possible.

@Raging Bull

In WoW, you had to take part in the everlasting gear-treadmill or be unable to do certain things, namely raiding, namely endgame.

In GW2, you can partake in everything the game has to offer by buying a set of rare (not exotic) equipment. Those can be had for less than 3 gold. I bought my “starter” rares for ~23 silver a piece. I was able to afford this even before I hit 80, so I bought the stuff the moment I did so.

Whatever I’ve done to my equipment since has been, in a sense, voluntary. Not needed in order to do anything in the game. But since playing a few hours after coming home from work nets me ~2 to 3 gold a night, I’ve since been able to buy exotics for every slot. (No, I didn’t farm Orr; I usually worked on map-completion or did an explorable or two.)

I have dungeon tokens but I don’t particularily like the look of most sets. Also, the set I have has exactly the stats and runes I want, so why change it?

Why do you skip mobs in AC by doing the scepter-run?

Do you exploit? Not even the lava-room you have to escort Magg through in CoF? First time I’ve been there was with a PUG, we didn’t know the exploit or the strategy. It’s doable, even under these conditions. But it takes some time. Do you do it legit or do you run onto the rocks on the far side of the room?

Sure, it’s a grind, and that’s just fine!

Sure, getting all the tokens for a full set is a grind. Now imagine you need another 500 tokens from the same dungeon for a legendary!

And that’s OK.

But they promised us no grind!.
Yes, they did. However, they didn’t promise you anything available in game as easily as you happen to desire. You don’t have to grind dungeons. Craftable exotics are just as good and easier to acquire (unless you exploit).

But the tokens take up bag space.
Sure they do. And guess what? For 600 gems you can buy another 30 bank slots. You can buy those 600 gems with the gold you chose to not spend on crafted armor (see above).

Dungeon armor is prestige armor
You farm it for the looks, not the stats. You know what? Personally, I’d prefer dungeon armor to be stat-less armor skins like the optical sets from the gem store. That way, I could apply the looks to the armor with the stats of my choosing without the need to use a fine transmutation stone.

The state of the game is why it’s twilight arbor armor or citadel of flame armor. Universal tokens would mean that there’s just a number of generic sets, loosely styled for certain races (just like cultural armor).

Dungeon armor is probably neither the easiest nor the fastest way to a complete set. If you want a set ,fast, get crafted items. Dungeon armor is a way to show how proficient you are at a certain dungeon. It’s something to work for the look of it. And most of all, it’s something that just happens if you happen to like to run a dungeon.

Funny thing is, after clearing TA 1 & 2 again, yesterday, we descided to try something new. So we went to AC. Noone knew AC explorable, so we had tons of fun learning it. At the end of the night, we descided to only go one TA path a day from now on (people farming TA tokens…) and one new explorable after that. We’ll be having fun and working for a specific set.

If you need a healer, you’re doing it wrong.

The game was designed to be played without a healer. several million play it without a healer. Many thousands run the dungeons without the healer. If you need a healer while all those other’s don’t, you’re doing it wrong.

Why healers ruin MMOs:

If you have a healing class, the damage output of the enemies of a group (bosses…) has to be raised or the group can’t die. Basically, every boss in WoW will deal (Mainhealer-HPS * duration) + Tank HP – X in damage to the tank over the cause of the fight, as well as (Grouphealer-HPS * duration) + combined group HP – X in AoE-damage. “Duration” is an estimate of boss-HP / group-DPS for a adequately geared group (see tiered equipment for what adequately geared means).

GW2 has no tanks, so the part about Mainhealer and Tank-HP is irrelevant.

GW2 also has no healers. However, GW2 has healing abilities. So the formula has to be adjusted:
(Group-HPS * duration) + combined group HP – X in damage.
If a boss deals this amount of damage to a group of y people, eevry one of them will be left with thei HP-(X/y) at the end of the fight.

You see, mathematically, adding healers into the equation will change only a few things:
- Bosses will have to deal more damage; they will deal as much additional DPS as average healers have HPS.
- You’ll introduce a class without wich nothing goes, you’ll introduce “LF1M healer, then go” to map chat.
- You’ll train players to rely on healers and simply soak damage. unless Healer HPS is astronomic, this will fail, Healers will be blamed.
- If healers can rescue players that don’t dodge, they will be expected to and thus the game will be dumbed down immensely; if dodging is no longer required to succeed, it’s one less skill players have to acquire.

TL;DR: If you bring healers to the game, you are automatically dumbing it down, whether you want to or not. Don’t.

Equanox.2081

:Let me ask you this: what else is there after you completed every dungeon step, 100% completion and doing all the meta events except for pvp and leveling an alt?

The lack of progression at level 80 is something that is closely related to gear but not limited to.

Once you’ve done and seen everything often enough that it starts to bore you, why should you log on anymore? You don’t pay a monthly fee. You payed 60 dollars, once.

If you rush through the content oyu like and if you like only parts of the content, you will probably reach this point before ArenaNet releases the first Content Pack (whatever they will call it). You should play something else until then. If you liked the ride, you might choose to come back once thre’s new content.

If you’re playing more slowly, you might not have seen everything before the next content pack. If you keep up that pace, you’ll have endless content to see, as long as you want to.

I’m in the “cap is useless” camp. The cap at 25 is a bad mechanic to reel in the excessive DPS conditions could generate when aplied (stacked) and then spread to many targets.

If you think 10 to 15 necros could wipe out an army, think 10 to 15 greatsword warriors charging your army just as you break through a keep door. Each of them will hit 3 targets with 100b, each of them for over 10k. That’s 30k per warrior or easily half a million of total incoming damage over the space of just a few seconds. Since your army is trying to rush through the gate, the warriors will all find targets for their 100b. 10 to 15 warriors can kill your army.

Why’s there no cap on direct damage again?

If the problem is condition-multiplication by some few abilities, reign those in. Don’t kitten conditions in general.

And it would render a lot of jumping puzzles irrelevant because you can just fall to your destination. It would affect WvW where currently, some cliffs are too tall to jump from. It would create problems at various, unpredictable places throughout the world where you could bypass NPCs, events, barriers by falling.

In other words: While a nice idea for vistas and harmless fun, it has the potential to break a lot of stuff. Won’t happen.

If you could make lots and lots of money, everyone could. The result would simply be inflation. Prizes rise so while you’d have more easy gold, you’d also need more gold. What would you gain? Right, nothing.

Currently, I’m still completing the map. When asked by my guild I help them farm TA. Any of those activities will net me about 1-3 gold a night. I can buy yellow equipment for 2-3 gold for a set. At the same time, I usually make about 2 gold on a char while levelling to 80. Isn’t that great? Inflation is controlled so well that upon hitting 80, I can almost buy a set of rare equipment, just like that.

If there were ways to make easy money at 80, I’d still hit endlevel with 2 gold but those would buy me an omnomberry bar to chew on while contemplating how to find the riches needed for a rare set.

TL;DR: Normal play will net you several gold a night, that’s enough. More would needlessly hurt the economy by fueling inflation.

VakarisJ.5619:

LoreChief.8391:

Warriors are not superior to rangers with ranged combat… max range on longbow I believe is 1200 for warr, and 1500+ (with arc) for ranger.

Ranger melee is more tuned to dueling than warrior imho.

Warrior does 25% more damage at any range with the longbow then the ranger does at max range with his.

I don’t know about this, but why do you compare Ranger Longbow to Warrior Bow? The Warrior ranged weapon that goes foe 1200 is the rifle. For the warrior, bow is 900, IIRC. This also means that if you trait your bow for more range, it’ll still not get anywhere near the range of a traited ranger’s bow.

Apples <→ Oranges.

(Can’t edit my previous post, so here goes another):

Also, chain-knockdowns happen. You can slot stability, though. And if that’s on CD – you get knocked down a couple of times. So?

Either they target you with the knockdown. That probably means you engaged them in close combat. In order to do so, you should spac into survivability enough to not instantly die if knocked down. You might even pop stability and survivability at the beginning of the fight so you keep the knockdown-group entertained for the first 5 to 10 seconds while the rest of the group focus-kills the first NPC, reducing the possible length of the chain of knockdowns.

Or they don’t target you. That means that you’re probably playing ranged. So keep away from them. Especially in TA, the knockdown-NPCs will generally not chase you if some melee is there to keep them entertained. You know, the case described above.

Now, eventually the melee will enter downed state. That’s OK, though. Remember, it’s a group-effort. If I enter downed state, someone will usually res me. Just as I will disengage from melee-fighting to use my survivability to res other downed players.

So, the complaint about chain-knockdowns is, again, a complaint about something that shouldn’t be much of an issue for a coordinated group.

Sorry, but you’re being bad at your game.

Twilight Arbor, especially, isn’t that hard. The flowers in particular, are not hard. What you have to understand, though, is that a dungeon is a group effort. Take me, for example. I play a warrior. I can’t shoot flowers with my rifle since it’s bugged. I can shoot them with the bow, but it’s tedious. So the ranger throws axes that bounce and kill 3 with every shot. The ele does the same, shooting lighning that bounces. Between the two of them, I never ever care about flowers. I have total trust in them taking care of the poison blossoms.

Of course, if everyone in the group just tried to maximise their personal DPS, they’d not clear the flowers for me and I’d be pretty useless most of the time. The perfomance of the group as a whole would suffer. That’s why I said it’s a group effort.

And the beauty of this is that AenaNet said as much when they stressed over and over that explorable mode dungeons are for well-prepared and well-coordinated groups. So if your counter to my argument is, that a PUG won’t play together as well, then that’s not an argument at all. If you can PUG it, good for you. But that’s nothing you can expect from a dungeon. If you require a guild-group, great, too. For that’s what the dungeons are designed for.

This request is one of the oldest ever voiced for GW2. However, it needs to be re-iterated again and again until someone listens.

Still, this might belong to the suggestions-forum.

PLEASE make the new camera setting optional.

Since the patch, the camera seems jittery. It’s jumping all over the place. Instances in tight places when the camera jumps from a few inches behind me to a meter behind me are like a stroposkope now.

I know that many like the new camera but for me, it makes everything that requires exact targeting (read: jumping puzzles) a pain. So, please make it optional so that everyone can play in a suitable mode.

EDIT It’s neither my dual-Xeon 12 core setup not the GTX670 GPU that leads to low FPS. In fact FPS is great but the camera is still jittery.

I know that for many, the new camera-smoothing algorythm is a godsend. For me, though, it’s horrible.

I did a jumping puzzle yesterday and the camera did what it always does in close quarters – it jumped from a distance right behind me to a meter or so and back, in rapid succession. It always does this, I got used to it.

Or so I thought.

But yesterday, with the new camera, that stutter was more pronounced and much harsher. Looking at the screen was straining for me, and I never had any problems with FOV or smoothing.

Suggestion: If you change something that’s clearly an issue of personal preferences, give it a checkbox in the options.

Bel Geode.8129:

By default the armor skins have shininess built into them. The dyes of course change the color, but if you were wearing that suit of armor that you posted a picture of, no matter what color you make it, it will look shiny.

My guardian has a couple pieces of early crafted armor that has that shine on it, though I have colored it an orange color.

If you are not seeing shininess, you may wanna check your graphical settings, since it should be automatic.

Currently I’m wearing a crafted draconic armor set. No matter what colour I apply (I usually stick to the metal set of dyes), it never looks reflective like the one in the picture (I googled).

I found a picture of draconic plate here:
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/9374/gw004.jpg

And as far as I’m concerned, that’s not shiny. Looks like celestial dye, but it’s still not polished.
- Is “looking polished” a graphics setting I’m missing? I usually crank everything up to max, running a GTX670 that’s no problem at all, but maybe some setting was resetted somehow?
- Or is it the armor?
- Or is the polished, reflective look I’m aiming for simply not available for in-game graphic?

What I’m looking for is a way to make my warrior’s armor look… shiny. Like it’s made of metal, not plastic or ceramics.

Shiny as the armor here:
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll197/theslothbear/DifferentColors-600x512.jpg

How do O obtain a shiny look for my armor?

I would support a totakl reset if that triggered the second coming of whatever deity you subscribe to.

And that’s about as realistic as the end of bots and goldsellers.

Yes, stopped me from map completion yesterday.

I mean… come on! There’s tons of bug reports for each of them but unfortunately, the only “gamemaster” who seems to be able to reset bugged NPCs or events is the janitor who’ll unplug the fuse of the server-cabinet for you if you ask him nicely and give him some booze. The short power-outage will trigger the server to reboot. Sadly, the janitor is the only employee who’s able to react to in-world-problems and I’m from europe, so it takes quite some time and money to get to him to hand him the booze.

PS: Of course, this entirely fictional. But honestly ArenaNet, hire some GMs.

Dvious.8126:

When our characters die, we take a hit from armor repair PLUS travel to a waypoint. On death there needs to be an option for auto/FREE travel to the nearest waypoint OR pay to travel to a farther waypoint. Please stop punishing us twice for one screwup.

No, actually you have to see it as “when you die, it’ll cost you a certain amount of money, but in order to encourage players helping players, being revived will reduce your costs while granting the reviver XP.”

The cost is simply split in two and revival can spare you one half (or even both, if revive hits before defeated).

saurus.8290:

other games you mean WoW?

Or Warhammer or Rift or…

saurus.8290:

whats so hard to press F few times?

The fact that while trying to loot, I’ll end up rezzing useless NPCs, picking up broken bottles, talking to NPCs that noone wanted ressed in the pirst place… need I continue?

saurus.8290:

AoE loot will only make bots more efficent

So? Put an ad on craiglist: GM wanted, 100 positions to be filled. They will answer tickets quickly by teleporting to the reported person have a look at what they do and permaban accounts. That and only that will stop bots.

Punishing players to make botting a bit more of a hassle is not a good descision.

Xerical.9472:

On to GW2… almost every group I have joined for Citadel of Fire, mainly route 2, has used some sort of game exploit to beat. Mainly seen in the events of getting Magg across the lava and Magg bombing the door.

The first time I did CoF path 2, it was with a PUG. Yes, we had Teamspeak to coordinate but remember, explorables are supposed to be for well prepared, well coordinated groups. While we were coordinated, we were not prepared.

Noone in the group had ever done it.

The lava crossing took us quite some time. We finally figured out that Magg will stop and “fight” by throwing cotton balls at anything within a certain reach. We cleared the path, walked ahead, rezzed him… and after quite some time, we’d done it.

So yes, the fight is absolutely doable the way it’s meant to be. I don’t know if I want the exploit for that fight fixed. It was a hassle doing it the way it’s supposed to be done. At the moment, I don’t think that many groups do it the hard way. If they take that rock away, I hope they reduce the range at which Maggs engages in throwing cotton balls so you can actually get him ovet there.

Yer so bad.

There’s nothing more mindless than the “holy trinity”. This is coming from someone who started MMOs as a healer and then switched to tank, mostly. However, I tanked and healed through WoW, Rift, Warhammer and SW:TOR at least.

So, some mobs that you got really kittened off by burning, hitting and stabbing them descided to rough you up and you’re afraid to get bruised, so you ran like a chicken? Tough luck. Enjoy the ride. Your group will be dealing damage and you will be enabling them to do so by using your survival skills.

You honestly say it’s more interesting to have the trinity? For whom? For the healer who’s only looking at health-bars playing whack-a-mole? For the tank who’s standing in place (most of the time) and hitting his max-threat rotation? Or for the DPS who are standing in place hitting their max-dps rotation while occasionally walking out of the fire?

In GW2, the mobs can descide to push you into any of those roles at any time. You may be forced to stay alife while having their attentio. In a sense, you’d be the “tank”. You may be forced to help other players by removing conditions or healing them (a bit). In a sense, you’d be the “healer”. You may have a moment to catch your breath because you don’t take damage and everyone’s fine. You’re always asked to do the things I mentioned while doing as much damage as possible.

And now you come and tell me that that’s less intersting than the trinity?

Thankfully, you also state that you have no clue about this game. Thanks for that. Melee is not viable in explorable mode dungeons? Well, too good that you told me and not my melee warrior about that. He might start to wonder what he’d been doing in the past. Which is doing melee damage in explorable mode dungeons. Granted, he’s not a glass-cannon. I may not have the most supportive build. I may not have a max-DPS build either. But I’m often the one who runs to the ranged DPS to res them. I stay in melee range as long as I can and when I lose too much life, I dodge to range and swap to my rifle for a while, until my health is up again. Then I jump in again. That makes fights interseting, too. There’s hardly a boss-fight where I’m not filling three roles at least: melee, ranged, tank and resser.

You obviously don’t know how to play your class or to spec your char. You think the fact that there’s no dedicated tank means that noone has to tank, ever. You think that there’s no dedicated healer means noone has to look out for others, ever. You’re wrong on both accounts.

Evil.9061:

this game obviously wasn’t made for me and my ilk (Progression-based players). Oh well, there are things worse than Pandas.

Yup, you’re right. This game was made for people like me.

When I first put on my orange crafted armor and weapons bought at the trading-post, the feeling I got was not “now that I’m max level and max stat, there’s nothing left to do” it was “now that I’m max level and max stat, I’m free to do whatever I feel like and don’t have to worry about rewards.”

This game was meant for me. I don’t care about rewards, I care about how much fun an activity I engage in is for me. Loot just happens. The only reason I wanted full orange was so I knew that everything the game has to offer, I can partake in. And so I help out friends, do jumping puzzles, farm in Orr or go to dungeons whenever I feel like it. And I know that three months from now, ArenaNet will not bring in stuff that my friends will want to do and that I can’t do myself because of gear. I love this game.

Guen.3180:

Concernign that the famous speed clear in CoF is impossible cause ppl can’t get in the dungeon (everyone finds themselves in other instance than rest of team) I’m not sure what to think.

That’s strange. So far, I’ve been able to get into any dungeon and so was the entire group. In fact, I never ended up in group that was split across various instances.

So, while this may also be a problem in some rare cases, I guess that saying that people “can’t get in the dungeon” or that “everyone finds themselves in other instance than rest of team” is a bit of an exaggeration.

I know that it’s easy to talk one another into a rage, so I’d like to offer a different perspective.

Noone in either of the two guilds I’m a member of has ever been struck with undeserved diminishing returns.

I assume that it’s not entirely random but to a certain degree also triggered by playstyle. I’m a working man, if I’m lucky I to play get 3 or 4 hours a night. Also, being rather old by gaming standarts, I’ve become more of a “casual” player. My days of hardcore prograssion raiding are past. I try to have fun and as such, I do various different things every night. For example a jumping puzzle I havn’t done before, a story quest with my wife and then a dungeon, maybe.

Since I don’t run explorables back to back, I havn’t memorized every boss and every pull and so I’m regularly taking over an hour rather than under 30 minutes to clear an explorable.

As you can see, I’m never coming as much as anywhere near the limits at which diminishing returns kick in. So far, it doesn’t affect me.

None of my guildmates are doing more than two or three runs a night. The best run an explorable in under an hour, not under 30 minutes. They usually don’t go the same path twice a night (mostly because that would be boring). None of them has been struck with undeserved diminishing returns, either.

So, while the system is bugged and does dish out undeserved penalties and I’m not disputing this in any way, I have the feeling that your playstyle also affects your chances of being caught in the bug.

Don’t forget that the hundrets of thousands that enjoy the dungeons without any problem probably won’t come here. Most people I know hit the forum only when they have a problem. I guess that most players don’t even know about the problem with diminishing returns.

Guen.3180:

Will you finally admitt your system is broken or should we stop doing dungeons at all not to hit this so called ‘anti speedclear’ block?

They admitted to that quite some time ago. They stand by their system in general but they admit that it can currently bug out, for which they apologize.

Now, should they switch it off while they fix it? Good question. It would put an end to undeserved reduced rewards. But on the other hand, many players would immediately start speedrunning every free second of their lives so they have at least one – if not more – sets of armor complete when the diminishing returns are fixed and reintroduced. You thought there were lots of CoF-clad 80s in Lion’s Arch, Orr or WvW? Imagine those places two days after they suspend diminishing returns.

Remember – if they lift the DR-system, everyone and their brother will expect diminishing returns to be switched on again, and to be switched on again soon. Thus, everyone would understand that they have to speedfarm now. And every exploit and trick imaginable would be used to maximise the number of tokens farmed in the few precious days before the system’s on again. Don’t tell me it wouldn’t happen.

Also, what many who come here to complain forget is, that the DR-system is cross dungeon. It’s a combination of various parameters that leads to diminished returns. You run that path for the fourth time tonight? Diminishing returns. You speed clear many different paths back-to-back? Diminishing returns.

So, to all who say “I never did that path before and only got 45”: That’s intended, if you cleared many other dungeons recently. To say “I never did this path before” is not giving us the whole picture, because the DR-system is looking at more than just that one path. Again, they’ve admitted that the system is currently bugged.

So, much as I agree that legitimate players are innocently being caught in the crossfire and much as I feel for all of them, I guess I’d do the same as ArenaNet does, I’d keep DR in the game.

Having said all that, I, too, think that it’s taking quite some time to fix this and I wish they had logs showing who cleared what when so they could retroactively calculate how many tokens everyone should have received and to award them accordingly.

EDIT: Also, I’d like to know when the system is supposed to kick in.

…was to fork over the gold for a complete set of crafted exotic weapons and armor yesterday.

To my amazement, I didn’t feel like I had nothing left to do. On the contrary, I feel like I have everything open to me now.

- I don’t have to worry about earning more gold. Since I hit 80, I was a slowly but steadily earning gold.

- I don’t have to run any specific dungeon for the tokens. I can run any dungeon I feel like, just for fun.

- When a friend is online, I can just ask them if I should come along and help them out. Leveling is so much easier if you’re not alone.

- I roam the world. Eventually I will have map completion but even if it takes ages – who cares?

- In WvW, I couldn’t care less about the karma my activities yield.

- I can catch up on the missing jumping puzzles. Yes, I could farm gold / karma / tokens instead, but since I don’t need those anymore… why not jump?

And that’s just the stuff I want to do now, on day one after “finishing” the game. In other words – once you’re done, the real fun begins. This game is great.

kal.4350:

phooka.4295:

I’m 80 and in full exotic. I could farm Orr but why should I? I could farm dungeons but why should I? Guess what? I’m running around, fiddling with world completion, WvW, and all the stuff I enjoyed while levelling like jumpin puzzles. I run dungeons with friends when I feel like it and I go to Orr when I feel like it. Or – simply put – I’m having fun.

Playing an mmo without character progression is like playing a dumbed down adventure/shooter game.

OK, if for You , “MMO” is an abbreviation for “character progression through either levelling or ever-improving equipment” (although I’d say a good abbreviation for that would be “CPTELoEIE”), then GW2 is a bad MMO. I concur.

If you think that levelling a character and roaming the world to reach end-level is a chore, a necessary evil to be dealt with in order to reach “end game”, GW2 is not your MMO. I concur.

And what’s worse, I fear that these shortcommings were advertised (as strengths) very early on. It’s unlikely that GW2 will ever mature or improve until it meets your standart for what a (good) MMO is. And for that, I’m glad. Because I like it just the way it is.

Seems not to be a known issue.

I actually like Spekk’s Lab. When waiting for the last to come to the map for twilight arbor (some guildmates are going for the set), I like to run down and finikitten (EDIT: that was “finish” and then “it” – the kitten-filter really is something ) quickly. fast, easy and still… fun, somehow. It never bugged on me so far.

Sefan.5791:

So let’s start by defining Endgame.
Endgame is anything that you require to be max level for. So you need to be max level to do endgame things. (let me know if you think I’m wrong?)

You’re wrong.

Why should you be forced to change the game you play at some magic point during your involvemant with the game?

In your traditional MMO, there’s actually two games in one box:
- One where you can go around and see stuff. It includes vast maps and endless content. It’s designed to guide you through a virtual world that you can explore and see. You’re free to do so alone or in groups.
- One where you have repeatable content that you do in fixed intervals and that never changes. You can memorize it and almost do it blindfolded after a while. Apart from that, there’s group activities. For those, you don’t move, ever (except between bank and auction house). You are teleported to the spot where they’re at.

GW2 intends to break with this. There’s no two games, there’s just one game. You do the same starting with level 2 and all the way to (and including) 80.

I’m 80 and in full exotic. I could farm Orr but why should I? I could farm dungeons but why should I? Guess what? I’m running around, fiddling with world completion, WvW, and all the stuff I enjoyed while levelling like jumpin puzzles. I run dungeons with friends when I feel like it and I go to Orr when I feel like it. Or – simply put – I’m having fun.

sixfeetunder.6508:

Pre lvl 70 you have the quests and events with everything else. You develope a sense of direction ontop of the super boring of runing to get to those spots needed for leveling. Take away that direction it becomes mindless running around for those who like me are new to the zones.

Hearts were added to the game way after events. Initially, the idea was to send you out into the world to explore and to have you encounter events on the way (as you can do, of course).

It was then found that players like you might need some holding of their hand to guide them around because they wouldn’t move without a destination. They wouldn’t want to just explore the world and see what happens.

Now, Obviously for the last zones in Orr, it was assumed that having levelled through most of their world, players would have come to understand the concept given above. Players would understand that they can in fact just wander off aimlessly and find events. Furthermore, Orr is endgame. You will farm there, a lot. 95% of the time you spend there, any heart that could be added would already be done. So why add them at all?

However, because they anticipated that some players can’t do without a little guidance, they added another 70-80 zone that has hearts. Not enough to make ten levels by just finishing the hearts, but enough to guide you around, show you the areas where events happen and make you stumble upon the recurring dragon that will also yield good XP, IIRC.

If all of that is not enough for you, I don’t feel like ArenaNet’s vision of what to do at 80 will appeal to you. I for one like it a lot.

GaileGray.9587:

[…]
Here’s the problem with macros: Set up something to make your personal screen clearer, to enhance the visuals, or to prevent Carpel Tunnel Syndrome with single-key to single-command programming — and ensure that the program does not give the user an advantage — and there’s no problem with that use.

Hello Gaile,

I come here to ask a question directly related to what you’ve written above. I asked it in a support ticket and in another post already, but didn’t get a definitive answer so far.

I have a macro running on my razer naga that spams “f” every fraction of a second while I hold that button down. I use it for mass-looting and (I admit) for gathering in such a way, that I hold that button down for the last few meters while running towards the node / tree / herb so I start gathering as soon as I’m in range.

The macro replaces me repeatedly and furiously mashing “f”, nothing more. It reduces wear on whatever button or key I assign to “f” and on my hands and fingers. It stops firing “f” as soon as I release the button.

Is such a macro allowed? What you’ve written above seems to cover that macro very well, “single-key to single-command programming”. However, it adds “repetition of command while key is held down”.

GaileGray.9587:

But does that macro allow you to set up a half-dozen commands on a single keystroke or hotkey? Does it allow you to step away from the computer to heat up a pizza, talk on the phone, or sleep, while still gaining benefits? How is that fair, when someone else not using the macro is doing those commands individually or is actively playing the game?

Well, the macro sends a half-dozen commands on a single keystroke if that keystroke lasts for 1.2 seconds, since it fires “f” every 0.2 seconds while the key is held down. It does nothing of the rest, though. As I said, it stops the moment I release the key, it does not fire a sequence of different commands, just the functionally over-loaded “f” over and over.

GaileGray.9587:

Think about it: Does using the macro make playing more pleasant or does it make it intrinsically easier?

A lot more pleasant.

GaileGray.9587:

Does using XX Macro make it possible for you to win over someone of equal skill who does not use it? It is at that point that the macro, the program, the utility, the whatever is not allowed.

No.

So, is my “loot everything NOW” – macro allowed?

Thanks for your time and (hopefully) clarification.

PS: Maybe you should have a sticky-thread where people describe what their macro does and the employee who had the last coffee and failed to make new one answers them, giving their OK or not.

If you demand mounts, pay a visit to SW:TOR – levelling is free to play – and go to Tatooine or Hoth.

Basically, they design a zone to contain a certain amount of things. Mobs, sights, events, quests, nodes. They pick a density for those. As in “a 30 second trip from questgiver to waypoint”. Once mounts are introduced, the area is simply stretched but nothing new is being added.

So, once we get mounts you know what will happen? Streched-out zones that require an equal time to travel from A to B, but on an expensive mount.

Therefore I dearly hope that they will not introduce mounts.

ounkeo.9138:

For the most part, I agree with OP.

A grindy MMORPG theme park by any other name and description is still a grindy MMORPG theme park.

Even the Dynamic events aren’t that much different or far removed from Warhammer’s Public Quests. In fact, they are the exact same thing except in WH you had a UI panel that tells you when the next event starts in case you want to redo it or want to do something else before it starts, rather than waiting around hoping something happens soon. You also got nice gear to help equip your character while leveling. You didn’t have to deal with special coins and such and each public quest was worth doing more than once.

Many public quests had low level set pieces that had unique skins. In many ways, WH achieved what GW does not. Instead, we play this meta with special currency collection. I have found myself rerunning the same Dynamic Events in GW2 more often than I did the WH public Quests despite WH clearly not having anti-farm codes and having clearly superior incentives as well as being just as fun.

They had public quests as well as regular presentation quests.

So clearly, not as innovative here as described while throwing the baby out with the bath water at the same time. They could still make up for it in the end game but instead, designed it around a massive grind where they also artificially cap your gains throughout the game.

Am I having fun? yes, for the time being. I’m working towards getting the 120G T3 skin, one of the most absrudly expensive cosmetic in an MMORPG.

Aw, you shouldn’t have brought up Warhammer. When I joined, endgame sucked because of gear discrepancy in PvP. However, it had the best levelling experience I’ve had in any MMO prior to GW2. And now that you mentioned all the good things about it… I miss some of the lightjhearted fun I had there. Felt less restricted than GW2. Less massive in scale. but.. more free. Strange.

Also, world-pvp in all but the last bracket was better than WvWvW. It was not as much of a zergfest. Groups were smaller. What you did felt like having more of an impact on sieges or defenses.

ASB.4295:

They also disabled the betting games in the charr area, probably for the same reason. Just saying.

Those are still switched off? Geez, for how long now?

Phy.2913:

Maybe set them to have an internal reset. If I activate one but don’t finish it/die/leave for some reason it sits there until someone comes along and kills it. A lot of times the enemy bugs out or glitches into the wall making it impossible to finish it. If the enemy is inactive for 5 minutes despawn it and reset the challenge.

Nice solution, but… sorry, busy implementing some mechanic to punish players for having fun in some way that was not predetermined by ANet. Implementing that mechanic has priority. Please propose the solution again in a few months.

However, maybe we can implement some sort of diminishing returns on skill challenges. After you did 3 in a day, you’re not being rewarded any more skillpoints for 3 hours or so. Do the non-bugged ones, you won’t be able to find more than 3 in a day anyway unless you’re using exploits or you’re a skillpoint-grinder, and noone likes grind, right?

BRB, busy implementing a new idea.

kKagari.6804:

Worse still is, why would there even be an urgency to root out these exploits in future. They have the ultimate safe guard in place already. Exploiters are likely not going to exploit anymore, but the people that happen upon an exploit by accident will be the people who suffer most, the honest gamers.

Oh no, exploiters are always goint to exploit. The mindset is to get the greates possible reward with the least possible effort. If they can use exploits to finish a dungeon in 10 minutes, they’ll do just that and then take a bio, grab a drink, chat with the guild until the timer is resetted. Then, with their energy restored and with their concentration fresh, they’ll… exploit once more.

I on the other hand am not 80 so far. At my current rate of levelling, I will be 80 friday night or saturday, though. I don’t like PvP. I know that map completion will only keep me occupied for o long. I don’t like crafting. However, I love dungeons. What will I be doing? Running dungeons back-to-back is obviously a punishable offense. So, while I’m currently having fun levelling, I’m a bit worried about what I’m going to do at 80.

vicwolf.7862:

It’s not even a witchhunt. The system is so blatantly bugged that there is no denying it. There’s 9 pages of reports of times of runs in the sticky reporting the apparently random allotment of rewards.

This is my sentiment exactly.

And it’s deeply, deeply troubling.

The last MMO I witnessed rolling out patches like there’s no tomorrow was SW:TOR. The problem was, that they were introducing new bugs left and right. In fact, it felt as if they were introducing more bugs than they fixed. It was apparent that there was no real testing going on, that it was more important to get the patch out the door than to get it working properly.

Lately, I see signs of the same patch-mentality in GW2, and that’s deeply troubling. I don’t care if something’s broken for another week if I have confidence that there will be a patch, that the patch will fix the issue and that it will not break much in the process.

Also troubling is the fact that the new systems that are bugging out are not bugfixes themselves. They are mechanics introduced to regulate playstyles. Such mechanics should be very, very low priority.

Oh, you say, they’re anti-bot, anti-exploit! No they aren’t. I’ll tell you what’s anti-bot: A callcenter full of GMs, one at every time of the day for every server answering player-reports about bots and exploiters and sifting through server logs for telltale traces of exploits / botting.

Seraphy.2374:

Im still hoping its bugged and that Red poster had the wrong info. If its intentional then.. i agree with you

Well, but you’re not supposed to agree or disagree. For this, ArenaNet would have to be open about the rules of the game they intend us to play. However, the rules change while we play and we’re not being told what the rules are before or after the change.

We’re told that there are rules and what the intend of the rules is, but never the rules themselves. Any casino operating on these principles would immediately be shut down, I know, but this is an MMO, not a casino, so obviously that’s OK.

Mars Hill.1542:

There seems to be some confusion as to he meaning of exploit. When you are exploiting something, all that is meant is that you are making the best use of what is available to you. Farming Mobs, Dynamic Events, using the Trading Post are all exploits.

I hope this is irony. These days, one can never be sure. Anyway, here goes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_%28online_gaming%29

Farming Grubs is not exploiting anything. Having said that and to my defense, let me add that my currently played character is 65, my highest level character is 72, I’ve never seen those grub-spawning giants ever, so I never farmed them either.

I did get that message, though. It was yesterday, while playing in the open world, looking for not-broken events and doing some story quests. I distinctly remember getting it after killing grubs in the story quest at or around 65, when you meet up with Mary Sue – I mean Traherne – and go rescue some archeologists from a cave near that wooden fort where Traherne addressed the three orders after Claw island. I was deeply disturbed. With most events at that level being broken and dysfunctional, I thought that the story quest was broken as well. Too good is was only some loot. Oh, and no, those grubs spawn normally, it’s not farmable.

spikyblackhair.4951:

As a condition necro, this is a problem I’ve been playing with for weeks since hitting 80.[…]

That’s a good collection of why I shelve my first Main, a necro at level 72, two nights before hitting max level. The Warrior is nor 65, this weekend he’ll be 80. Warrior is obscenely easy to play compared to necro, has way more viable builds, does more damage, has better survivability. I never regretted rerolling.

godmode.1904:

FAIL updates.. dungeons are no more fun!

I absolutely applaud the convergence of the tone of your post and the nature of your username.