Guild Wars 2

My sister is trying to come back to the game, but hasn’t played in over a year. We have the email, the serial code, etc but we can’t remember any character names and our mother put an authenticator on it (seemingly on a phone she doesn’t even have anymore) so we tried just resetting it, but we’re having an impossible time remembering any names she may have used. Either that or the account recovery page is simply not working since all it says is “There was an Error”, which isn’t helpful at ALL. x.X I’d make a typical post but responses are terrible on length. Please help us quickly. >_>:

Also with (centaur?) the runes that give swiftness when you heal, using mantra heal you can have perma swiftness on a Mesmer pretty easily. You can’t not include runes. They’re part of the overall building process of a character and is simply a shift in where the burden for mobility comes from. For mesmers its a lack of rune freedom, for necromancers its a lack of a utility in addition to no forms of teleports and leaps. For other classes it’s a lack of utility spot or lack of trait freedom. Everyone feels a burden.

Runes of the traveler gives you 25% speed increase no matter who you’re on. There’s another one too.

Tricare.2946:

ronpierce.2760:

Tricare.2946:

Easy way with most weapons to tell if you’re hitting a stealthed player is to watch and see if your #1 switches to the next attack in the chain.

Not everyone has this. Showing damage done would be just fine, and in fact would be more fair BECAUSE not everyone has this ability. Examples:
Warrior longbow
Guardian Scepter, Staff
Ranger Shortbow, longbow, axe
Engineer anything.
Thief Pistol
Necromancer Scepter, axe (neither can even hit because they aren’t projectiles) staff.
Mesmer staff
Elementalist… Pretty sure all #1’abilities for all weapons and atunements.

Most of those rely on blindly attacking or spamming woes and never knowing if they’re even close.

awww poor baby

… Are you mental? “QQ Needs game balance” → “Hey, there’s some inconsistencies that messes with balance.” → “WAAAH QQ MOAR BABY.”

Grow up, kiddo.

While we’re at it. Make condy ticks show too! Makes sense! A burning man doesn’t hide and you can follow the blood trail! :}
(I’m kidding)

Tricare.2946:

Easy way with most weapons to tell if you’re hitting a stealthed player is to watch and see if your #1 switches to the next attack in the chain.

Not everyone has this. Showing damage done would be just fine, and in fact would be more fair BECAUSE not everyone has this ability. Examples:
Warrior longbow
Guardian Scepter, Staff
Ranger Shortbow, longbow, axe
Engineer anything.
Thief Pistol
Necromancer Scepter, axe (neither can even hit because they aren’t projectiles) staff.
Mesmer staff
Elementalist… Pretty sure all #1’abilities for all weapons and atunements.

Most of those rely on blindly attacking or spamming woes and never knowing if they’re even close.

Farzo.8410:

I think I managed to data mine new Sylvari cultural armor.

Aw… You took your time, yours looks better than mine.

Yaj.5973:

RNG in guild wars 2 is actually not bad. it’s passable. Other than the Mystic Forge, rng isn’t a big issue.

Compare it to the last MMO i was invested in, AION.
OO that RNG was really something. It was so bad a good chunk of players ragequit.

The crafting was so painful. and what sucked was armor get getting outdated within 6 months cause new gear would come out or level cap would increase requiring more RNG grinding. :/ (can go into details but this is guild wars not aion :p)

This goes back to just because B is worse than A, doesn’t mean A is okay.

I wanted to simply thank everyone for their support and now, open the floor to others. If anyone would like to showcase their own armor+particle ideas, feel free! You can use this link to get pictures of most of the armor in the game (all of the basics obtainable in Pvp minus gem store sets and ascended) already on models. Does anyone else have some wicked rehashing ideas?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward

If I may, the balance issue in GW2 is a design issue. It was built too sloppy to even become balanced properly. Couple examples:
- Some classes are built to sustain a fight, others are build to out last and dwindle down. This can never be balanced. Each class needs to be built similarly with an equal chance to survive burst and survive in a long fight. This difference is okay between ROLES (support versus glass versus soldiers) but not class designs.
- there are too many passive benefits that aren’t controlled. Traits that give random procs on “events” make the game unpredictable.
- Similarly there are too many internal cool downs across the board. There is too much to try to remember before it turns to mush and becomes “random events” within a fight.
- there are too many instant attacks. Instant attacks should be brought back a bit in the first place, and additionally there should be a global cool down of at least .5 seconds to prevent unexpected unavoidable and unpredictable bursts or chains of events.
- the game is too evade heavy and prominent. Classes with the best access to avoid damage entirely innately do better than those that simply try to reduce damage taken or out heal it. Weapon evades need to go away, vigor needs to be a 50% increase versus 100%. Of course this would require some rebalancing, I’m just saying why it can’t currently balanced.
- there’s too much clutter.
- burst is too high and glass dies too fast. Bunkers do no damage and can survive practically forever. The defenses and damage output should be closER together, so no fights last forever, and fights never end in under 4 seconds.
- there’s too much AI spawning.
- too much damage on many weapons are placed on the auto attack versus the abilities (Ie warriors axe/axe. There’s no reason axe 2 shouldn’t be hitting substantially harder than auto attacks.)
- resource systems aren’t consistent. You can’t balance thieves with other classes because 7 classes are cool down based, 1 class is entirely resource based. You can get close but these will never feel balanced to anyone.

Stuff like that. Too many inconsistencies, too sloppy. This game will never be balanced, though they may get a “good enough” pseudo balance.

zMajc.4659:

I have never ever played or seen a MMO where people were satisfied with class ballance. It’s a battle with Windmills from start onwards.

The more you try to ballance them they more messed up it gets in the end.

Bloodline champions (pvp only game) was incredibly balanced. Wonderful game. Unfortunately it was pvp only and didn’t get much advertisement as it was done by an Indy group under FunCom, but the pvp in it was amazing! It still exists but the population is too small.

chemiclord.3978:

I really don’t think the % of legendaries is as high as people think. They just tend to stand out more and therefore SEEM more prevalent than they really are.

Also, people with them are people who tend to play a lot more, so you know. People who play a lot, you tend to bump into more often.

But also, while I may not believe they are quite AS blood-sucking as portrayed, I do firmly believe that the DR on loot, the low drop rates and huge focus on the economy has everything to do with their way of making money. It’s pretty cut and dry, people will realize it’s more time efficient to buy gems and convert to gold (based on a normal hourly wage) than to farm gold/other objects, thus once they realize that they’ll open their wallet to try to speed up the process. It’s an easy trap to fall into. It’s not sinister, per se, but it certainly is a bit greedy with the extent of it, and it does hurt the game’s epic feeling and overall gameplay.

Pandemoniac.4739:

ronpierce.2760:

I’m not getting stomped by kitten. However I did pay for a game based on being able to play casually (as in not 24/7, not casual as in a baddie) and be able to fight in all parts of the game on an equal foot in a non-grindy environment with VERTICAL progression. These were selling points of the entire kitten game, the main reason GW2 got hype in the first place… What’s so hard about this to understand? It’s not that I’m getting wrecked, I can assure you, I’m not. But I didn’t buy this game to try to outgear others nor be outgeared by mouthbreathers who spend too much time on the game…

I’m guessing you meant horizontal and not vertical?

I’m just trying to understand why you think you have to grind for gear to play casually. I play casually, I’ve done all aspects of the game except sPvP, which doesn’t appeal to me, and I haven’t ever felt that I had no fighting chance because I was out-geared. So what you’re claiming doesn’t match my actual experience and I’m trying to figure out why. No need to start calling people names.

If you aren’t getting wrecked what does it matter if their gear is slightly better? For me, it would make my victories taste a little sweeter. It’s unrealistic to expect to play any game with gear in it casually and be able to have all the same things in the same time frame that someone who plays 10x as much. There’s nothing preventing you from getting ascended gear – it will just take a really long time, or it will take converting a whole bunch of gems into gold.

Yes, I meant horizontally, I’m having a similar debate in another thread, I’m getting tired and made a mistake. But the reason is; the same as if I were hardcore. You’re misunderstanding my use of casual. Casual to me is playing for just a few hours each day, if at all one day. I still want to be able to hang with the top-of-the-line because skill-wise I’m able to. (Hence my early gravitation to sPvP, since it was always equal and still is beyond balance) It shouldn’t take forever to grind gear in a horizontal-based progression system. I want my few hours per day or less to be spent doing awesome kitten having epic yet fair fights in WvW with my friends, NOT having thieves who are literally able to 1 shot certain people (I do run a necro, no mobility, no evades/protection etc) so I feel those ascended hits more than most people. I don’t want to spend my time continuing a grind to get gear to hang with the people who have tons of time on their plate to go through a terrible boring grind AND player for actual “fun”. If it was that my friends and others had better LOOKING gear, sure, whatever. But being in a decently competitive WvW guild who likes to be on top of their game, it does suck that these grinds that were advertised to not exist, now exists… Ascended armor could have just as easily been no stat increase but incredibly unique-special snowflake medal, that would have been fine, but because to “max out” my character (and the difference is pretty big from full exotic to full ascended), through a cruddy kitten grind, it’s a problem to me. I’m not alone neither.

Like I said, read the other thread. There are many saying the same thing.

Well, alternatively, people were frustrated about the armors being reskins. This was more aimed to Sunkissed 2.0 and the other 2 sets. They both got a bit of lash-back for being the first gem-store re-hashed armor sets. Of course the uproar wasn’t as big as the T3 havers who didn’t like other people having their T3 cultural armor on other races, WITH flames. :P Hence some of the jokes of people saying it wouldn’t be fair other people could buy these sets with gems, since they had to earn them via the story (aka armor you start your story out with or earn very early).

Nike.2631:

Ahhh… And here I was thinking “Why are they all slammin’ on low tier armor? There are some great pieces in those sets!” And honestly, I could do with some ’Holy McSmite-Smite" FX after all the “hur, hur, flamez is kewl!”

Sure, I’m with ya that re-skins can be done in a way the comes of as feeling rushed or cheap. But I think it’s probably enough to vote with our wallets than to try and make fun of artists who are just trying to figure out how to make us happy within a limited amount of working hours. ((shrug))

I’m not making fun of the artists. They did fine. And I don’t believe the artists decide to rehash old gear. But anyways, this isn’t “making fun of” anyone. It’s just saying a majority of people don’t want to spend a lot of gems on gear already in the game with a few particle effects. (Most, not all, mind you. Most would much PREFER if the fancy fiery skin was also unique.) So it’s light hearted fun.

Plus, I gotta say. Not to pat myself on the back but, if they did want to reskin… I think I’m on to something.

chemiclord.3978:

Neural.1824:

/snipped for brevity

Let me ask you a question. And this is a perfectly serious one, there is no intent to sound condescending here at all. It’s simply that this sort of sentiment is one I see often, but you’re the first one that sound eloquent enough to put an answer to words:

Why are you still playing?

Seriously, if you HONESTLY think these things; that Arena.net is actively trying to cheat you, ruin your fun, make your experience terrible all for the hope that they can bleed cash dollars from you… why in the name of GOD are you still here?

Because personally, if I feel that way about ANYONE (be it a company or an individual), I completely divorce myself from that entity. I would have nothing to do with a company that I felt was trying to strong-arm me for money.

Again, completely serious question… because I do not understand why someone who would feel so strongly about a company actively pursuing such despicable behavior that you would still sign in every day. I literally cannot follow the logic.

I can help answer this in my POV, while, of course I’d love to see his as well. My reason is that ANet had a wonderful IDEA and pitch that they gave. It sounded great, but they failed on execution. Being one of the bigger MMO creators, it gives room for hope that things can be changed with enough feedback. Especially feedback with substance/direction. I love GW2 combat because it loosens up the tab target MMO standard, weapon swings cleave like you’d expect a two handed sword to do, etc. There are ways to fix the issues in the game to make it a great game. It ultimately comes down to “will they do it?” I’d say none of the other current MMOs would do me better because either they have similar issues, worse issues or in the case of WoW, I’ve just played it out over the last 8 years. I needed a change in scenery, plus a break for the traditional tab targeting. GW2 has hope, the developers just need to act on it if they want to salvage it.

Nike.2631:

I’d still buy it. It looks like the FX would be particularly wll-matched with my Infinite Light…

Don’t say that out loud Nike. >.< While yes, in your very unusual occurrence of rarely-used armor (which looks great, not saying it doesn’t!) it would work, this was supposed to be a message to stop reskinning, you silly goose!

I’m not getting stomped by kitten. However I did pay for a game based on being able to play casually (as in not 24/7, not casual as in a baddie) and be able to fight in all parts of the game on an equal foot in a non-grindy environment with VERTICAL progression. These were selling points of the entire kitten game, the main reason GW2 got hype in the first place… What’s so hard about this to understand? It’s not that I’m getting wrecked, I can assure you, I’m not. But I didn’t buy this game to try to outgear others nor be outgeared by mouthbreathers who spend too much time on the game…

Shelter can be stopped by unblockable effects, withdrawl cannot and has a shorter cooldown and removes immobilizes. oh and it evades… Aegis is easy, you pop it once with a junk attack, it’s usually pretty easy to tell when a guardian has it, and they do NOT spam aegis as much as a thief can apply blind. x.X

Pandemoniac.4739:

ronpierce.2760:

Casual, in those scanarios mean… bad players. A “casual” can’t do inferno in Diablo, not because of lack of time, it’s too hard. I’m fine with HARD content, just not long drawn out grinds. Yes, people with lives who are GOOD players, should be able to do the top level play.

This was before the difficulty nerf, so it had nothing to do with being skilled and everything to do with grinding out the proper gear, which comes down to how much time do you have to play to either get the drops you need or enough gold to buy them. The hardcore AH wasn’t tied to the RMAH, so you couldn’t just throw cash at the problem. You had to be a good player and have tons of time and energy to do it in that timeframe.

But let’s not get bogged down in details. What is the “top level of play” that you can’t do in GW2 even though you’re a good player because you don’t have enough time? I haven’t run into anything yet that I wasn’t able to do and I’m extremely casual. I’ve finished my personal story (including Arah), done some fractals, done some dungeons, done some WvW, participated in some of the temporary content, done world bosses – what exactly am I missing out on?

It’s not PVE, I want to not be out-geared in WvW due to ridiculous grinds. ANet advertised the game as a non-grindy vertical progression game, and that’s what I expected going in. I commended GW2 for making on the first truly fair PvP MMOs. And they ruined that.

Casual, in those scanarios mean… bad players. A “casual” can’t do inferno in Diablo, not because of lack of time, it’s too hard. I’m fine with HARD content, just not long drawn out grinds. Yes, people with lives who are GOOD players, should be able to do the top level play.

Why in the world do these have to be soulbound anyways versus account bound? That’s just stupid and begging for problems…

Casual (at least to me) means not spending my life to play at the top level of play. Some people have busy lives and don’t want to chase grinds forever to do the most fun stuff (best gear equal grounds pvp, wvw, some pve tossed in there). Casual doesn’t mean “I want to play poorly”, it means I don’t want to live in the game more than real life.

Seras.5702:

All UI stuff should disappear from the top-right in PvP and WvW, except for achievements specifically tracked.

Or simply a ui options to “turn off achievement tracker” + “Turn off objective tracker.”. Also make the target UI hp bar/profile a ghost so you can left click to use ground target skills through them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RNG-and-Grind-in-GW2-is-not-that-bad/page/6#post3604313

And if you want to read the responses to someone who said the grind in this game is fine, just go ahead and click here. Enjoy yourselves.

Notice the lack of agreement (including 1s) with the OP, and the *1 from me first response and the several that follow. There are a minority that have made it big and obviously don’t want their grasp of the market to change. That’s called greed. But it’s not a good state for the game.

This game was advertised as a VERTICAL progression game, meaning with minimal effort each player should be able to play the game COMPETITIVELY, meaning the grind for Ascended/(Or Legendary, though since we have Ascended weapons, Legendary isn’t necessary) is against the game’s initial advertisement. I’m fine with unrealistic grinds for cosmetics, but not extremely long grinds to have equal gear-standards than people who can play more often than me. That’s what brought me into this game in the first place. It was meant to be a competitive game, and you can’t have competitive when time available is on of your biggest assets. It’s for this reason that most good games (IE WoW) has a time-gate on gear per week, such as dungeon lock outs, and Honor points per week, its so that people with loads of time on their hands don’t make the game neigh unplayable for others.

Vol.7601:

ronpierce.2760:

Vol.7601:

ronpierce.2760:

It IS a problem, actually, because they CAN do this not due to “laws of economics” but because you can’t farm anything in this game realistically, so we’re forced to buy it. Jacking up the prices 10-fold is still better than trying to farm most mats.

If they jack prices up 10 fold and the market is still willing to pay for it, then that’s not a problem. They’re just helping the market for that item reach equilibrium.

It’s a problem because these are basic mats for the game, but the game becomes an economy simulator. You’re better off playing the economic game because you can’t realistically PLAY the real game to earn these things. Yes, this is a problem…

Well you are obviously playing the game wrong if you can’t make any financial progress in GW2. I’m not even a flipper and I have more than enough wealth.

It isn’t about wealth. It’s that the economy runs this game. Gold IS what you farm, when you should be farming and watching progress of your ascended items/legendaries by playing, not based on how much gold you’ve acquired or how well you can play the trade post.

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/12/gw2-ascended-armor-crafting-guide/#a0
Let me explain why I say you can’t farm.
Beyond the grind for the auto-Soulbound items you need 1000 wool scraps, 500 cotton scraps, 1000 linen scraps, 7500 silk scraps, 70 gossamer scraps, 960 iron ore, 480 iron ore, 650 platinum ore, 1600 mithril ore, 71 globs of ectoplasm, 30 glob of dark matter, 120 pile of Crystalline dust. These aren’t realistic numbers to go out and “farm” for just a set of armor, especially given drop rates. Hence why the market has the upper hand. It’s more efficient to buy these items than to farm them by playing the game itself. The time to farm gold and buy these things rather than play the game and earn them directly is fractional. This is turning the game from a game… into an economic simulator of sorts. It’s not fun for people who want to play the game and unlock things at a reasonable rate all because the game’s economy is so important to the handful of rich people who abuse it. Of course those people don’t want things to change.

Also whoever said how does it get there if it isn’t farmable… Don’t be stupid. This is a game where you should be able to embark on your own journey and get results. These materials build up on the TP because there are MANY people who don’t care about the vertical grind in the game so they just dump their extra stuff on the trader. Say you have 1 person who cares about having full ascended armor to every say 500 who either doesn’t care, is just casual, or gave up because of how ridiculous it is, it’s not a big “mystery” as to how these items end up being plentiful on the trader. It’s a limited crowd who wants them versus the many who just simply doesn’t bother with the grind and sells off extra materials. Additionally, there are those who have FINISHED what they wanted, thus they sell any left overs. This isn’t a hard concept. Just because there are quite a bit on the TP doesn’t mean it’s farmable for the general public as a single unit.

All I’m saying is the trader is a playground for people who enjoy taking advantage of the economic boost they can get by playing the trader KNOWING people really don’t have a better alternative. And it’s a money grab for ANet knowing that drop rates and material lists are unrealistic enough that people will frequently buy gems, convert them to gold to buy what they need.

Let me remind you this is also supposed to be a “casual” game without vertical progression. A casual game means a casual player can play for a little bit every now and then and not have to feel left behind. And at this point it’s hard to call it a casual game, more like a casual gold-grind to buy materials for unrealistic recipes from greedy people jacking up prices.

Oh, I was referring to dungeon armors, stuff with basic farms. Stuff like minis and rare exotics like Anomaly, Essence of Foefire etc, these are all absolutely ridiculous.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

Thank you…..

I’m just going to say this. I think it’s too late for this game to become a good “game” as far as collecting and crafting by playing the GAME (not the market). They make too much money from it, they won’t risk hurting the community’s precious economy, and they release big-change patches so rarely… I hate to say it, but honestly, I feel like the game has a foot in the grave and is stepping on a rock with the other.

Hi.

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

The grind most people are upset about aren’t the visual grinds. I’m pretty sure you know that by now… In fact most of the “visual” grinds aren’t very bad at all. Dungeon sets, T3 cultural, etc all of these are fairly easy to grind out. But when you need 250 each of several t6 mats, this and that, AND your best route is to buy them, and it’s to progress VERTICALLY (not horizontally for looks) and in no realistic way could you do it without either buying gold or (less efficiently) farm the gold… That’s the problem. Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing. But these kind of farms to be competitive/on the same playing field as others, it starts to push the boundary of pay to win.

Why would it be worse for vertically then for horizontal? Like if a gold-grind suddenly becomes more fun when it’s horizontal.

The only reason YOU personally don’t mind that is because you don’t care about those items.

“Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing.”

So when complaining about your game-play please also don’t forget about others people game-play.

It’s just as bad horizontal as vertical it just depends on the persons game-play if it hurts him.

I agree the grinding is bad, really across the board. But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play (ie making you less of a competitive player). But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad… It’s almost entirely Ascended armor/Legendary that takes grinding to a whole new level, which IS (I’m agreeing with you) waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long even for just visual grinds… But also, incredibly too long for the sake of a vertical progression specifically. I won’t take back that grinding for visuals taking a bit longer than vertical isn’t bad nor uncommon. That’s one of the many ways to increase the “value” of horizontal progression armor, by making it more exclusive/harder to get. But in the case of GW2, yes, it’s WAY too much. At this point, 1.5 years into the game, pretty much everyone should have been able to gotten a legendary weapon without ever spending a single dime or gold, just by playing the game. And in turn, new stuff should have come out, for more NEW things to grind for (albeit much much SMALLER grinds/farms/goals, what ever you want to call it). The time it takes to get ascended items and legendary items is beyond decent design, but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.

The grind most people are upset about aren’t the visual grinds. I’m pretty sure you know that by now… In fact most of the “visual” grinds aren’t very bad at all. Dungeon sets, T3 cultural, etc all of these are fairly easy to grind out. But when you need 250 each of several t6 mats, this and that, AND your best route is to buy them, and it’s to progress VERTICALLY (not horizontally for looks) and in no realistic way could you do it without either buying gold or (less efficiently) farm the gold… That’s the problem. Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing. But these kind of farms to be competitive/on the same playing field as others, it starts to push the boundary of pay to win.

Vol.7601:

ronpierce.2760:

It IS a problem, actually, because they CAN do this not due to “laws of economics” but because you can’t farm anything in this game realistically, so we’re forced to buy it. Jacking up the prices 10-fold is still better than trying to farm most mats.

If they jack prices up 10 fold and the market is still willing to pay for it, then that’s not a problem. They’re just helping the market for that item reach equilibrium.

It’s a problem because these are basic mats for the game, but the game becomes an economy simulator. You’re better off playing the economic game because you can’t realistically PLAY the real game to earn these things. Yes, this is a problem…

I agree with Sorrychief, though. I mean… Have any of you mesmers tried playing a Necromancer? Sure it’s spammy and can win if never hit, but holy kitten, it lacks in the defense region. There’s a reason they say ‘hit the necro first’. Because there usually isn’t kitten they can do about it.

(Before you say it, condi necros have terrible life force generation, they don’t have 2 life bars, its hell to fill up and doesn’t fill out of combat, and at least of it is required to store incase you later need an emergency doom cast. Most wvw builds have either 0 or 1 stun break, on average condi necro have 19k-22k hp and NO vigor, evades, hardly ANY mobility including keeping people from fleeing you, no blocks, we lose out on friendly healing when using death shroud and specifically condi, the most common necromancer doesn’t do much damage when in death shroud, they’re just waiting out their death sentence. They can’t even stomp while in DS while an ele can in mist form and a Mesmer can with distortion…)

It IS a problem, actually, because they CAN do this not due to “laws of economics” but because you can’t farm anything in this game realistically, so we’re forced to buy it. Jacking up the prices 10-fold is still better than trying to farm most mats.

WRay.2391:

This is where GW2 is going currently with all grind, time gating etc (warning: some filthy language present):
http://youtu.be/GpdoBwezFVA

Wow… and yeah, pretty much this. Also if you think they’re being generous letting you buy gems with gold, you’re fooling yourself. It takes 8.5 gold to buy 100 gems. You GET 6g for your 100 gems, and they much prefer you to buy gems to get gold because they know at the rate it takes to gear up naturally, people will VERY quickly spend 10-20 dollars and convert the gems into gold so that they can purchase what is basically the requirements to do decently in the game (at least exotic armor). The very rich (gold wise) few in the game can buy gems because they’re rich, but not many people have that kind of gold to just fork over for “whatever they want” in the gem store via gold. I’d venture many people, however decide one day “man I don’t have much gold, but I’d like to buy a condi set for WvW, since only power is viable for pve, I’ll need to purchase a new set, let me buy some gems and convert to gold because it’s not worth farming for.”

Let me put it this way. In GW2 it is faster to farm gold than for farm materials. But check this. You can work in real life and gain money to buy gold far more efficient than “working” in gws (aka running in circles in Frost Gorge Sound). You make on average 7 gold per hour farming in frost gorge sound. For 800 gems (10 dollars worth, which is a pretty normal mid-low hourly wage) you can buy 6×8, something like 48-50 depending on flux, gold. Not that isn’t not okay for a game to be a time sink, but when people realize this very basic math, it lures them into giving up on even FARMING (playing the game) and just buying their way through the game because it is about 8 times more efficient to just buy gems for gold than even farming gold. Let alone farming the raw materials and never using the TP which is probably hundreds, if not thousands of times less efficient.

This is, of course for people who just want to quickly swap some gear or gear up to feel decently competitive and doesn’t want to play in all greens/yellows forever and “play the game right”. This system wasn’t designed for people to “play the game right”. It wasn’t. They did this on purpose because they know how the mind works. It’s a mindplay, and yes it’s a HUGE grind. So like I said, just think about it.

1 hour of real life work = 8 hours of farming gold in this game = 1000’s of hours farming raw mats. You tell me they didn’t do this on purpose….

Remember, this game doesn’t have a sub. There IS a grind in this game, and it’s not by accident. In fact, I must retract an earlier statement. This isn’t poor design. It’s a brilliant design. But it sucks.

Suddenflame.2601:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Suddenflame.2601:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Suddenflame.2601:

maddoctor.2738:

ronpierce.2760:

You know whats better than skill OR gear? Skill AND gear. Also yes, it’s a team effort but you do know when 1 TEAM outgears another TEAM, the difference REALLY starts to add up… In a team environment the gear differences can make a BIGGER difference than 1v1, not smaller. A team of full ascended gear consisting of 2 support guardian, a condi necro, hammer/longbow warrior, staff ele, and say an engineer could kill probably 20 people in full exotics… (This isn’t an exaggeration)

Skill AND Gear > Skill of course
Your example works both ways, a team of 2 support guardians, a condi necro, hammer/longbow warrior, staff ele, and say an engineer all geared in greens, could kill 20 people in exotics. It’s the team strategy, combination of skills etc that will give them the extra edge. I know what you are saying, if both sides are equal in terms of skill, obviously the side with the most Ascended will win, but skill can’t be measured so easily.

A bad player is a bad player, even if he wears ascended. A good player is a good player even he wears greens (or maybe rares). The good player will always win.

very true argument. There is nothing more I can add to this one.

If the good player always wins and gear matters little, why are you grinding out the mats for ascended? Why not sell them and make a lot of money? Since you know, ascended doesn’t matter?

I already have enough money. Also like I said I am not grinding the materials. I am gathering them through normal gameplay.

Why?

For a person who doesn’t play you wouldn’t understand the reasoning. I don’t want the armour for cosmetic looks or for the stats. Lets see if you can piece together what kind of player I am using the information I have presented across all my posts. I do not play for loot.

Which still makes me wonder why you thought you were the right person to discuss the fairness/design of loot distribution in the first place… >_>:

Erwin.5603:

Another garbage thread. Here, have some trash.

You’re garbage but they haven’t put you in the trash yet. I think there’s still hope.

I feel like the few of you defending the grind know you’re wrong. You’ve stopped arguing over how bad the grind is and now you’re just saying it’s not needed to do “okay”… That’s not the point and having to deal with year i differences does negatively effect the competitive goal Anet set. So… There’s that.

Ok yes that can happen, but that isn’t the point. The people in lower gear but better skill would have to most undoubtedly play well to beat those odds, if they are to win at all. The statistical advantage of a small team in full ascended versus a large team of less than ascended is huge. They’d likely have to out forth very minimal effort in breaking waves of players down.

glaphen.5230:

jportell.2197:

Just wanna say I counted about 16-17 evades (there were so many) in the 15 seconds that countless was in the video….
Yeah mesmer vigor is so broken.

Professional counting right there. Video was 10 seconds long with 11 evades total and he needed 4 seconds before he could use one more evade.

A thief can technically build to gain initiative on swap, endurance on heal via runes, 2x energy sigils on 2x shortbow etc lol. I mean sure… It’s not the best killer but c’mon.. That kitten doesn’t belong in a 3A mmorpg… That’s to be embarassed about.

You know whats better than skill OR gear? Skill AND gear. Also yes, it’s a team effort but you do know when 1 TEAM outgears another TEAM, the difference REALLY starts to add up… In a team environment the gear differences can make a BIGGER difference than 1v1, not smaller. A team of full ascended gear consisting of 2 support guardian, a condi necro, hammer/longbow warrior, staff ele, and say an engineer could kill probably 20 people in full exotics… (This isn’t an exaggeration)

laokoko.7403:

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

chemiclord.3978:

RNG and grind are two of those necessary evils in MMO games… they’re an easy way to make content repeatable, and content in an MMO pretty much has to be repeatable because there is no way a company can make content as fast as players can consume it.

I think players know that and understand that; the issue tends to be the degree and scale of RNG and grind.

I love farming and grinding. But you have to be able to OBTAIN these items, not farm gold to buy them because RNG is soooooo bad that there’s no other way… If I could go out and say have a 50% chance to get 1 (ONE) of the 250 (TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY) of a single PART of… ugh, you get the idea… If I could realistically farm these fragments, sure… But kitten buying them all… zzzz.

If you love farming and grinding I am going to wonder about you for a bit. Repeating the same process over and over is repetitive and boring no matter the rewards involved. If that is your fun is repeating the process just to obtain a reward I just got to wonder.

I am wondering so much I don’t know what to say but that is some carrot chasing. The only time I repeat the process is when I am trying to increase my skill at that task, such as jumping puzzles.

If I remember correctly there was a psychological test done on animals for this.

Farming can be relaxing but ONLY if it feels rewarding. How in the world are you going to “wonder about me” feeling okay with SOME level of grinding/farming, when you’re the one defending the grind in GW2, the same grind that I (someone who even CAN get behind grinding) feels is too much. Sounds like you need to be worrying about yourself… This ascended armor very much is a carrot chase. Once Legendary armor comes out, you’ll have another long run for the carrot. And guess what, it’ll be just as if not more grindy than this one. The problem isn’t that there Is a grind, its that it’s so much based on gold grinding and not farming the actual materials you need. They can’t up the drop rates because it would hurt the economy, thus yes. This game IS economy driven, and it is a very-very bad thing.

As I said before I don’t grind in this game cause there isn’t a need to grind. Your creating your own grind. Your trying to change the game to match your grinding gameplay which in the long run would hurt the core of the game. If you stop trying to force a grind into a game that does not want or need it than the game becomes fun. Why are you even trying to grind? Legendaries are a long term PvE goal as stated by Anet. The issue is that people are trying to force Long term goals into short-term time frames.

That’s incorrect. Getting ascended armor IS a grind. Just because you chose to not partake in it or care enough to shoot for it until it falls upon you doesn’t make it not a grind. For example you could play a Korean MMO that requires you to kill mobs for 3 years to go from level 1 to max level. You don’t care if you ever hit max, so you just play every once in a while and kill stuff. It’s still a grind, you just don’t so much CARE about reaching the goal. A grind is a grind, whether you are hardcore about it or not.

Like I said earlier my goal is to have full ascended on all 10 of my characters. I have a goal. Where your incorrect is the grind aspect. I do many different things and hardly ever repeat content. At this moment of time I can afford to make 1 set of full ascended armour for my warrior. I choose not to at this time cause I want to gain most of the materials myself without relying on the TP and not farming for them.

Hell the only thing I grind is map completion on my characters but that is wide grind as it encompasses the entire game.

I thought my goal of 40 map completion on 40 character is ridiculous.

But after seeing how high standard you set for yourself(acquiring 250,000 silk without using the TP). It makes me believe my goal is possible. Your my idol!

Yeah, exactly. These numbers are ridiculous. And that’s just one of the materials needed overall..

This slow process IS the grind. Taking it slow and doing various content doesn’t make it not a grind. Say in a game you had to complete 200 totally unique areas for the best stuff in the game, again in a game with competitive secondary objectives such as wvw and fractals, this would be a grind. They are gating you from being competitive by making you do a long (very long) process OF ANY SORT. That is a grind to have the best armor to be competitive in.

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

chemiclord.3978:

RNG and grind are two of those necessary evils in MMO games… they’re an easy way to make content repeatable, and content in an MMO pretty much has to be repeatable because there is no way a company can make content as fast as players can consume it.

I think players know that and understand that; the issue tends to be the degree and scale of RNG and grind.

I love farming and grinding. But you have to be able to OBTAIN these items, not farm gold to buy them because RNG is soooooo bad that there’s no other way… If I could go out and say have a 50% chance to get 1 (ONE) of the 250 (TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY) of a single PART of… ugh, you get the idea… If I could realistically farm these fragments, sure… But kitten buying them all… zzzz.

If you love farming and grinding I am going to wonder about you for a bit. Repeating the same process over and over is repetitive and boring no matter the rewards involved. If that is your fun is repeating the process just to obtain a reward I just got to wonder.

I am wondering so much I don’t know what to say but that is some carrot chasing. The only time I repeat the process is when I am trying to increase my skill at that task, such as jumping puzzles.

If I remember correctly there was a psychological test done on animals for this.

Farming can be relaxing but ONLY if it feels rewarding. How in the world are you going to “wonder about me” feeling okay with SOME level of grinding/farming, when you’re the one defending the grind in GW2, the same grind that I (someone who even CAN get behind grinding) feels is too much. Sounds like you need to be worrying about yourself… This ascended armor very much is a carrot chase. Once Legendary armor comes out, you’ll have another long run for the carrot. And guess what, it’ll be just as if not more grindy than this one. The problem isn’t that there Is a grind, its that it’s so much based on gold grinding and not farming the actual materials you need. They can’t up the drop rates because it would hurt the economy, thus yes. This game IS economy driven, and it is a very-very bad thing.

As I said before I don’t grind in this game cause there isn’t a need to grind. Your creating your own grind. Your trying to change the game to match your grinding gameplay which in the long run would hurt the core of the game. If you stop trying to force a grind into a game that does not want or need it than the game becomes fun. Why are you even trying to grind? Legendaries are a long term PvE goal as stated by Anet. The issue is that people are trying to force Long term goals into short-term time frames.

That’s incorrect. Getting ascended armor IS a grind. Just because you chose to not partake in it or care enough to shoot for it until it falls upon you doesn’t make it not a grind. For example you could play a Korean MMO that requires you to kill mobs for 3 years to go from level 1 to max level. You don’t care if you ever hit max, so you just play every once in a while and kill stuff. It’s still a grind, you just don’t so much CARE about reaching the goal. A grind is a grind, whether you are hardcore about it or not.

@Zeefa, Ugliest? I specifically took the time to pick out the best skin that I felt most players would enjoy. For all of them. My conclusion was that players wanted items they could relate to, so why not armor everyone has had since level 1-10.

You’re insulting my genius analysis. Good DAY sir.

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

chemiclord.3978:

RNG and grind are two of those necessary evils in MMO games… they’re an easy way to make content repeatable, and content in an MMO pretty much has to be repeatable because there is no way a company can make content as fast as players can consume it.

I think players know that and understand that; the issue tends to be the degree and scale of RNG and grind.

I love farming and grinding. But you have to be able to OBTAIN these items, not farm gold to buy them because RNG is soooooo bad that there’s no other way… If I could go out and say have a 50% chance to get 1 (ONE) of the 250 (TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY) of a single PART of… ugh, you get the idea… If I could realistically farm these fragments, sure… But kitten buying them all… zzzz.

If you love farming and grinding I am going to wonder about you for a bit. Repeating the same process over and over is repetitive and boring no matter the rewards involved. If that is your fun is repeating the process just to obtain a reward I just got to wonder.

I am wondering so much I don’t know what to say but that is some carrot chasing. The only time I repeat the process is when I am trying to increase my skill at that task, such as jumping puzzles.

If I remember correctly there was a psychological test done on animals for this.

Farming can be relaxing but ONLY if it feels rewarding. How in the world are you going to “wonder about me” feeling okay with SOME level of grinding/farming, when you’re the one defending the grind in GW2, the same grind that I (someone who even CAN get behind grinding) feels is too much. Sounds like you need to be worrying about yourself… This ascended armor very much is a carrot chase. Once Legendary armor comes out, you’ll have another long run for the carrot. And guess what, it’ll be just as if not more grindy than this one. The problem isn’t that there Is a grind, its that it’s so much based on gold grinding and not farming the actual materials you need. They can’t up the drop rates because it would hurt the economy, thus yes. This game IS economy driven, and it is a very-very bad thing.

I just wanted to come back and say… Ladies and gentlemen. We did it.

Lmfao, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. xD