Guild Wars 2

slamb.4781:

SO let me get this straight you would like a Global 24/7 MMO to cater to you and your time zone only?

Not sure if ignorant or arrogant?

Well NA servers are not supposed to be global. They are supposed to be for NA, and possible SA too.

Grimezy.5679:

I disagree with OP, as a squishy Zerk Ele I really rely on my party. I know straight away depending on what classes we have whether I can use my Zerk armour or whether I need to add in some tank.

With some practice zerker gear is almost always going to be your best choice.

TheMaskedGamer.5708:

Map exploration is a fun activity to do to see wonderful sites, different challenges and of course gives us interesting information or its history and meaning behind its existence.

Unfortunately, the part of gaining certain information and history is not currently present within Guild Wars 2.

Main problem I have is the Points of Interests.

They bring up questions every time I find them like: What makes these points interesting? What significance does it have? How is this place important enough to be a PoI? What history does this place have?

Unfortunately, we can’t find the answers we are looking for. (And yes , I am well aware that some players may recognize certain places if they played the original Guild Wars. But there are just as many players like myself that may have never played the previous game, won’t be able to understand the significance or reference of the place in question)

But I do have a remedy for this problem. The Points of Interest should have an update similar to the Renown Hearts, where as you find the Point, you get an icon on top of your map. If you click on it, it will open a window that looks similar to the Story Journal entries in its design, with a concept art style picture of the place at the top and a page or 2’s worth of historical information of the place. The information can then be reviewed at anytime as many times as a player would like within the Journal itself.

This could be a great opportunity to add some lore that the game really needs to further add some definition and character to the world we play in.

I hope that ArenaNet can consider this idea for future updates, patches and such for later development of the game. Thank you.

Normally I would agree, but keep in mind the quality of the GW2 writers. I don’t think they have what it takes to write a good journal.

Sunshine.4680:

Belenwyn.8674:

Sunshine.4680:

DaShi.1368:

Really disappointed that any of the Chinese changes are coming into our game. The leveling, the story, the ugly backpeices. They all made me feel sorry for the Chinese. Thankfully we won’t get the VIP system. I’m out, if that is ever implemented.

What’s funny is didn’t Anet come and tell us we wouldn’t get the China stuff? Now here we are.

Arenanet announced the future implementation of the Chinese tutorial and leveling system already in July last year. There was enough time to prepare yourself for it.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

When the announcement of GW going to China happened and the whole pay for monthly service thing came up Anet said that NA/EU wouldn’t get a lot of the same stuff China did.

Obviously they said that. People don’t want to think they are playing second fiddle to Chinese players, but it should be obvious with Arenanets stance that they want to focus on attracting new players that they are going to put more focus on new markets.

My guess is that the initial purchase accounts for a very big percentage of the average players lifetime investment in the game and they find new players are more likely to buy gems. So the current community takes the backburner.

mtpelion.4562:

It was to be expected. Keys are a source of revenue for ArenaNet, so it makes perfect sense that they would want to find a way to prevent you from getting too many of them “for free” as that means less of them are being bought with cash.

Except keys are still a terrible purchase.

Fernling.1729:

They probably have their own personal account. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of them don’t want to spend more time on the game after putting in 40+ hours a week into it as well.

The personal account bit is probably true.

Not spending more time is not good. You want devs who love the game, not just treat it as a paycheck. And playing is very different from working on the game.

Windsagio.1340:

Map stuffing seems a bit, well ‘unintended’ if it’s actually happening.

If it’s happening and necessary, they probably blew their tuning on the event.

Its not strictly necessary, but it makes worm a lot easier. You can succeed on worm with fewer people and some pugs, but you have a much higher chance of failure.

Its definitely something that Arenanet did not intend. I would like for a better system, but its difficult to solve. I don’t think making it easier would necessarily be an improvement. Any fight that is hard enough it can’t be zerged will benefit from map stacking. If you want hard rewarding open world events in the game, then this will happen under the current system.

knives.6132:

Duke Nukem.6783:

knives.6132:

Labjax.2465:

knives.6132:

In short, you want people to carry you

If we’re going to go there, then I will say that you can easily be carried, even with making the commitment to get on a third party voice chat and listen to someone call out instructions in your ear.

Don’t act like it takes any great amount of personal skill to listen to a voice in your ear and follow the herd.

As far as I can tell, wurm requires a handful of skilled players, strong coordination to kill the heads at the right time, and a bunch of zerglings with good gear and the ability to follow instructions. Go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, but I seriously doubt I am.

All I’m saying is that if you are “joining” in an organized raid and you’re not the one organizing the raid, at least put an effort to follow the rules they set.

People who act like “I wanna do this but I don’t like going to TS but TS is required wa wa wa” annoys me. Show some respect to the organizers by following their instructions. Not like they are getting paid.

It’s like posting for lfg – “zerk only” and some cleric dude joins, got kicked and QQ’s that the party is elitist. Duh.

big guilds making rules like that is a dangerous trend to get into, today its voice chat maybe tomorrow its a malicious website, its an exploitable thing to have so much power in an outside organization

You’re over thinking it.

It’s not like TTS requires 100% rep. They are not some kind of Illuminati, you know.

So, if you don’t want to join TS, don’t. No one can make you use it by force anyways. But please, don’t QQ if TTS leaves map and leaves you behind. Their raid, their requirements.

TTS is pretty cool and I have nothing against them. My main issue is that map jumping games are not fun. You show up 30+ minutes early in order to get on comms and jump maps just to have a chance to get into a tts raid. Certainly not TTS’s fault, but its boring.

This is an issue that Arenanet should deal with.

Xillllix.3485:

One thing is certain, the numbers aren’t going up.
They would have to release an expansion for that.

Vayne.8563:

EotM is not really serving the function it was made to serve.

That is obvious, EotM is a disaster in comparison of what it was meant to be; but what is worrying is: why doesn’t Anet fix it? All the content is there, they just have to make defending and battles meaningful.

Because its super popular and they don’t want to change something super popular without a good plan.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ArenaNet has a habit of not improving things which are not popular.

For example, when asked if they’re going to fix all the armor clippings with charr, they responded with ‘charr aren’t popular so it’s not high on our priority list.’ Funny thing is, the armor (and its clipping) is one of the major reasons charr aren’t popular.

Same thing is likely the case with underwater combat. It has issues so people don’t like it. Because people don’t like it, it’s low on their priority list.

The charr bit isn’t necessarily true. Arenanet could look at which races people pick for their first character and see which they go for. At that point people wouldn’t know about the armor clipping issues or how horrible high level gear looks on those characters.

Based on the popularity of races in other games, I am betting that human gets picked most frequently, followed by Asura, then Charr and norn well below those two.

Am I going crazy or did they delete the Spvp map that used to have an underwater area? I know its not inn arena queue any more. I really liked that map and don’t understand why.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Well, yes.

I think you’re making a mistake by conflating roles with interaction, though. It is one of the ways, and it’s so prevalent in RPGs it’s gorram near genre defining. But, there are plenty of role-less action games and platformers that don’t skimp on the player interactivity, too.

Truthfully, I’ve always thought the combo system could’ve been doing alot more to create that sense of interaction. But it just doesn’t have enough impact, and leans too far on boons and conditions and all the limitations that entails.

Interaction takes place through roles even if they aren’t WoW style roles. If a character can do everything himself he doesn’t need to interact with others. If other players bring things to the fight that he does not, well thats a role. There are plenty of examples beyond the holy trinity. League of Legends for instance has roles, even if those roles will get greyed sometimes. Characters each bring different things to the table even if they have multiple roles and sometimes overlap.

For GW2, “Ice field guy” and “heavy blast attack guy” could both be roles if the system decided to focus on fields. They would not be all a character can do, but they could be a defining aspect.

Whats make this weird is it completely contradicts the original game design philosophy. The idea was you could progress doing pretty much anything. WvW, PvP, exploration, dungeons, crafting or questing are all viable ways to level.

The trait changes however force people to do certain types of content. I can’t just go around exploring and doing what I feel like. I have to do these specific 72 quests in order to unlock all my abilities. Or farm and spend a bunch of gold.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

tofumon.5924:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Jagdfygar.1394:

I didn’t play before that patch. Many players in this thread didn’t play before that patch. There have been 2 sales since then, and a lot of new players leveling for the first time. Your theory is unfounded.

You are telling me that, you are complaining that something was changed, and you would rather have it be the way it used to be…. when you had no idea how boring and dull it was before? Usually people make a choice after they have experienced both options. Sounds like you have a typical case of “the grass always being greener,” imho.

Old players want the old system back . New players want the old system back. Pretty good hint that nobody likes this new system.

The thing is….. if the whole notion of “the old system” didn’t exist….. nobody would even be complaining.

Imagine…..
Filling your car at the station was completely free for the longest time….
Then someone comes along and says….
From this moment onward, you need to pay for your gasoline.
Imagine the uproar.

back to reality…. if you did the same thing…. asked the same question in the world today….. nobody would be complaining about having to pay, since it has always been this way… and nobody knows what it is like to get free gas. Of course everyone is going to want to get it for free….. but they aren’t going to think that paying for it is so absolutely horrible that they need to complain about it (and sure people will complain about the price…. but they never knew a world where it would be free…. so the notion of paying is already normal)

Same exact thing here.

The only reason anyone is complaining about this is the notion that it used to be given away before.

So lets set aside that traits used to be free for a moment then.

Many of the current trait unlock quests themselves are bad. Several of them are on hidden timers, a big obstacles for new players. A newbie who wants to make his dagger attacks better sees that he needs to kill champion boss X. He goes to the location and can’t find said boss. That boss is on a three hour timer. Newbie has no clue and gets frustrated.

Or newbie has to kill the Overgrown Grub, but that takes a group and nobody is willing to help him. Instead he gets angry messages that he is hurting the WvW effort(which he might very well be, because killing the grub does nothing for the war effort).

Ice.5162:

Costing computation power? Excuse me but we already have flabby, clothy, capey physics in the game. Draconic leggings, Arah heavy leggings, various other tassets and kilts, some focuses and even the winter dress. Obviously a cape would take more effort seeing as it goes from the very back of the neck, but not entire back has to have the free-ragdoll physics, there are many clever approaches and solutions to things that I’m sure given enough time and resources they’d come up with something decent.

And all of those objects will clip quite a lot. Check out where your characters hands are with those poofy dresses. Lots of this:

http://i.imgur.com/N2KMo.jpg

The problem with capes is that you spend 90% of the game looking at your characters back. So these clipping effects become very glaring.

IMO, the big challenge for GW2 in developing difficult interesting dungeons is how little interaction between players there is through basic combat mechanics. Other than the downed mechanic(which I really like), fighting with 5 players is essentially the same as fighting a boss with 1 guy.

This seriously limits how you can design the fight, because of how simplistic it makes fights. In a holy trinity game, you could mess with the DPS, healers or tank. Force the other two groups to pick up slack for the third. In GW2, you can only mess with the DPS, and you can rarely rely on players using their abilities to work together. Dungeons do a very poor job of challenging teamwork outside of a few gimmicky mechanics. I am not saying we should go to the holy trinity, but there needs to be something to replace it.

I suspect that if GW2 really did release difficult rewarding dungeons as it is right now, we wouldn’t like the result. Because of the solo nature,any minor difference in class efficiency will be amplified(we already see that on speed runs, but it would be much worse). So the core gameplay needs to be fixed first if we really want have fun difficult dungeons.

Sorean.5379:

I just can’t be okay with the idea of a Zephyr Rucksack being less complex than a Cape.

Seriously,it even has a bird with movement and all,if we can play the game with everyone using a Zephyr Rucksack,I can’t see how a cape would make people lag.

Thats because you don’t do graphical modeling and humans are not very good at estimating computational complexity. For physics purposes, the Rucksack can be treated as one big object. The object changes its position and orientation to match the character. Sure it does all these pretty animations, but those don’t care about the rest of the world. They are premade self contained animations. Thats cheap to render.

You could easily make a cape like this. Treat it as one object with a prerendered flowing animation, but it would look terrible because people expect their cape to match character movement. For capes, you would want to model the cape as a bunch of smaller objects that interaction with each other and the world. Thats where the complexity comes in.

Not anytime soon. The feature pack has no changes to traps, just a nerf to fotm thief builds. I have seen nothing to indicate that Arenanet cares about traps either.

Most likely there are no plans to change traps anytime soon.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Since capes cover the entire back, wouldn’t capes render most weapons carried there invisible? Would there be outlines of where the weapon/shield was? Would the cape move out of the way when the weapon was drawn for battle? Or would the weapons/shields just clip through the cape like many hairstyles do?

I’m not sure how great capes would look since we carry many of our weapons on our backs. /shrug

Realistically we would get something like the link below.

http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2008/03/425_back245.jpg?1206601074115

Cardboard capes with the weapon on top or clipping through. If they are good and invest significant resources into it, they could remodel each weapon to have minimal cape clipping. It would look much worse in GW2 than in WoW because GW2 characters move much more naturally and have a wider range of motion(what does the cape do when you roll?).

I expect if Arenanet did make this. We would just see a ton of whining about fixing capes.

Ipan, the problem with that sort of play is that people solve the dungeon, post a guide then everyone just follows the optimal guide to completing the dungeon. So devs put in a lot of work to create this complex challenge that just gets cheesed.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

That capes are costing rendering problems are just speculations. As long as arenanet doesn’t confirmed anything, everything is still possible.

It isn’t just speculation. This isn’t something specific to GW2. Every game with decent graphics has trouble with capes. Capes are not simple.

Its not just a question of rendering the cape, in order for the cape to flow properly and not clip the player, you need to render the characters body movement with the cape. This requires reworking how you render the entire character. Then you have to do it for each race. WoW solves this by using low res graphics and capes made of cardboard, but that won’t work with GW2 higher res graphics.

It would be a major step forward in graphical development if Arenanet found an easy way to render good looking capes.

Substance E.4852:

Viablility is irrelevant in an area filled with uplevels, zerkers, and uplevels in zerker.

Pretty much everything wrecks trainlings who don’t even want to fight you in the first place.

Who bothers buy zerkers pre80? I was runnig around in level 40 gear in my EOTM zergs up til I hit 80.

Donari.5237:

I’m not so sure there is a main map as such any more, but pre-megaserver if you were on Overflow it would say so at the top of your minimap.

The most sure fire way to get to a desired map is to party up with someone who is on it and use the Join feature by right clicking their party portrait. But if the map’s full, it won’t work.

I undnerstand that, but presumable the map stops being full when people leave, so how would I get on that map after a few people have left?

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

I think with the LFG system most people who stick around till 80 will have done a few dungeons.

I have been doing world bosses and wondere d if there is a quick way to tell if I am on the main map.

Also, is there a way to switch to the main map if I am not on it? Will logging out and in give me a chance?

Seera.5916:

sirian.4981:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Morsus.5106:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Morsus.5106:

tigirius.9014:

you’re basically advocating for what happened to Teq to happen a second time elsewhere.

I love the new Tequatl encounter

Tequatl is the only real dragon at the moment.

As detrimental as it would be to the playerbase, I wish every dragon was that hard without prior planning.

That’s selfish though. not everyone has 45 minutes to devote to extensive boss planning “for glory” or “valiance” or some other knight kitten.

Casuals have all the other world bosses (‘cept for Wurm) so I don’t think it’s unfair to ask for one or two more Tequatl like encounters. Claw of Jormag and The Shatterer in particular would be awesome.

And again with assuming casuals want easy content, ugh.

Hello, Casual here. I like Teq. I like Wurm. I don’t think any true world boss should be brainless stand and spam 1. They all need some adjustments. They don’t all need to be super kitten hard, some varying level of coordination and challenge would add some spice imo.

You probably aren’t casual if you can consistently log on 30 minutes before the event timer just to get into the right instance to run Wrum.

Casuals would say “I only have an hour or two to play, I am not spending half of that sitting around waiting for the boss to appear”.

That’s a different kind of casual. Me, I’m a casual. I’ve got plenty of time to get to teq and wurm with thirty minutes left on the timer and I usually have hours of free time.

I don’t have the desire to put forth the time and effort to learn and keep up with meta builds and the rotations needed to play them effectively.

Don’t assume that all casual players are that way due to lack of time. Some of us just don’t have the desire to be hardcore.

I don’t want to get too semantic but tracking timers and sitting around in zones for a boss to spawn isn’t any more casual than reading meta builds.

The defining aspect of a casual is that they aren’t planning their playtime. A casual mindset would be “Nothing good on TV tonight, guess I will hop onto GW2 for an hour or two before dinner”. That person isn’t going to track boss timers and sit around in zone for 30 minutes just to fight 1 boss.

Haishao.6851:

sirian.4981:

The issue here is that “hard” content gets solved by the good players, then they spend months farming that hard content while casuals either can’t or simply don’t want to do it. Which goes back to the upper and lower class problem.

I just want to sit in Queensdale and look at the sky and I think it’s unfair that you get items from killing stuff while I don’t. Please give me your items.

You can definitely farm items doign that. Its just slwo
Find an are with an event that spawns regularly and press 1 every so often. You can definitely farm items doing that.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

More like the runway of lewd.

Tera is famous for its Loli-Race more than the outfits they end up in.

In some ways that’s good, though, I’d not want -every- thing from that game here. .____.;

BRB making a Tera account.

Harper.4173:

Astralporing.1957:

SkiTz.4590:

Who on earth wastes time doing challenging content that has abysmal rewards?

Theoretically, people claiming to be interested in challenging content should. If they were really interested in the challenge, that is.

Harper.4173:

End-game doesn’t just mean mastering hard content – it means mastering hard content for a reason – that reason being rewards for most players.

If rewards weren’t the reason people wouldn’t complain about the lack of hard content since you can make any content hard by imposing your own restrictions such as going naked, with no traits,etc.

The whole point of end-game is playing hard, improving, and being rewarded for it. Feeling that you’ve earned it.

Then we’re back at it separating community into haves small minority and have-nots majority. If this is the kind of endgame we’re talking about, then no, i’d rather not have any more of it in this game.

I’m sorry to say but we already have that.

Legendary weapons.
Very expensive skins.

We already have this situation in the game.
So you propose that everyone should have easy access to everything? What’s’ the point then?
What do you work towards ? What do you strive for?!

If everyone has everything they want and/or can get everything they want easy what’s the point?

Also the " have-nots majority" of today can be the " have majority of tomorrow" – at launch very few players had exotic gear – but right now people are rolling in it.

Same with ascended – most people don’t have it – but still it’s in the game. So why is it they can do this with gear and not skins?

I’m talking about a purely cosmetic reward so the " have nots" won’t be 1 bit less effective than those who do have the rewards.

You want a fair and square playing field ? You got it.

You want to be the shiniest most hardcore looking player?Work for it.

Those things are hard to get but even the worst player in the game can eventually get a legendary(or get a lucky precursor drop). Skilled players complete it faster, but thats it.

ipan.4356:

All it means is that they didn’t design dungeons correctly to begin with.

If the content was fun and engaging, people would be doing it.

I will disagree that the dungeon design itself is poor. Many dungeons are well designed. The problem is the core combat mechanics for running dungeons.

Making dungeons to be fun and engaging would require a drastic overhaul of the core combat mechanics. There are a few fundamental problems. The biggest one being that everyone essentially does the same thing(DPS, with modest support abilities). Another is that dungeons are designed so that pretty much any combination of classes and traits can succeed, so what variance there is between classes further limits your design range.

Sure, you can mitigate this by making fun gimmicks for each fight, but thats just papering over the giant cracks in the system.

Mac.3872:

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Most companies won’t come right out and say, you guys are a minority and we’re not going to cater to you. Why would they? Would you? They’ll do the best they can, but they’ll not usually say it.

But we’ve had comments over the years from devs from different companies, including Anet devs talking about Guild War 1, where they said the bulk of the people never do the challenging content. This isn’t something new, or something I just decided, or something I figured out recently. It’s been talked about in MMO forums for years. The most recent quote that I can find came form a lotro dev. Less than 10% of the game PvPed and did raids, not just at this point, but pretty much all along. 10% isn’t a big number to include both PvP and raids. He was talking about why they’re no longer making the raid instances they used to.

Again, if enough people were playing dungeons in general, Anet would have a dungeon team working full time on dungeons. Can you tell me why you think they wouldn’t?

Because a huge playerbase played SAB, asked them to death about it to rerelease, open old worlds etc. and nothing that even comes close to SAB in mechanics, reward system etc. has come out since what, like 1 year?

That’s why I think they wouldn’t.

A very passionate playerbase certainly but how do you know huge? Where are the stats? Anet knows how many people played it, and they know how many people didn’t. We can only guess at this.

A passionate playerbase isn’t necessarily a large one. In that same lotro dev quote, the dev said that though less than 10% of people ever raided, more than 50% of forum posts were made by raiders.

Kind of makes you think, no?

It really amazes me that former DJ turned community manager (Not Dev) Rick Heaton`s <10% statement gets posted on other forums.

Heres why:

After the ensuing kitten storm, Mr Heaton was sacked retired from his position at Turbine.

LOTROs producer has since posted:

“the 10% thing. Just drop that. I just don’t look at a game that way. I will consider anything if it is good for the game, and good for the players. There are realities like resources and time and money that do come into play. "

I`m sure Mr Heaton regrets his statement that created a nasty divide within the lotro community.

Kind of makes you think, no?

It makes me think “Never admit the truth to your playerbase”. Better to appear incompetent while feeding them pretty lies “We are exploring new ways to create end game content”, than to admit the truth "There is a very small but very vocal minority playing this content.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Morsus.5106:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Morsus.5106:

tigirius.9014:

you’re basically advocating for what happened to Teq to happen a second time elsewhere.

I love the new Tequatl encounter

Tequatl is the only real dragon at the moment.

As detrimental as it would be to the playerbase, I wish every dragon was that hard without prior planning.

That’s selfish though. not everyone has 45 minutes to devote to extensive boss planning “for glory” or “valiance” or some other knight kitten.

Casuals have all the other world bosses (‘cept for Wurm) so I don’t think it’s unfair to ask for one or two more Tequatl like encounters. Claw of Jormag and The Shatterer in particular would be awesome.

And again with assuming casuals want easy content, ugh.

Hello, Casual here. I like Teq. I like Wurm. I don’t think any true world boss should be brainless stand and spam 1. They all need some adjustments. They don’t all need to be super kitten hard, some varying level of coordination and challenge would add some spice imo.

You probably aren’t casual if you can consistently log on 30 minutes before the event timer just to get into the right instance to run Wrum.

Casuals would say “I only have an hour or two to play, I am not spending half of that sitting around waiting for the boss to appear”.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Most companies won’t come right out and say, you guys are a minority and we’re not going to cater to you. Why would they? Would you? They’ll do the best they can, but they’ll not usually say it.

But we’ve had comments over the years from devs from different companies, including Anet devs talking about Guild War 1, where they said the bulk of the people never do the challenging content. This isn’t something new, or something I just decided, or something I figured out recently. It’s been talked about in MMO forums for years. The most recent quote that I can find came form a lotro dev. Less than 10% of the game PvPed and did raids, not just at this point, but pretty much all along. 10% isn’t a big number to include both PvP and raids. He was talking about why they’re no longer making the raid instances they used to.

Again, if enough people were playing dungeons in general, Anet would have a dungeon team working full time on dungeons. Can you tell me why you think they wouldn’t?

Because a huge playerbase played SAB, asked them to death about it to rerelease, open old worlds etc. and nothing that even comes close to SAB in mechanics, reward system etc. has come out since what, like 1 year?

That’s why I think they wouldn’t.

What makes you think a huge playerbase played SAB? We know some vocal forum folks did, but nothing on the % of the player base.

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Vayne.8563:

What you have here is a good start, OP and I agree with your conclusions to a point. In fact, I’ve known all along that some people just want challenging content…like Liadri.

The issue becomes how many people are going to play that challenging content. This is where the rewards factor comes in.

Anet made a challenging dungeon, and it is challenging compared to other dungeons. I mean TA Aetherblade path is probably the hardest dungeon in the game. It’s not often run, because it’s not “rewarding”. And this is where the real problem starts.

In most MMOs, the harder content gives better rewards, which encourages people to do that content. Without the better rewards a lot of people simply won’t.

Which means those people aren’t doing hard content for fun, they’re doing hard content for rewards.

Rewarding hard content provides kitten and them situation. You get an upper class and an underclass in game.

The more you have of it, the more the new people and people who don’t really want to kill themselves to get a reward will feel disenfranchised…whether they’re wrong to feel that way or not.

This game works on a trickle theory. Everything you do trickles in. You get a trickle of rares and exotics, a trickle of tier six mats, a trickle of lodestones. Karma comes a bit faster and you can farm it, but at the end of the day, you’re not really going to be getting the “big” drops, because you can get drops anywhere.

What I’m trying to say is that if you make hard content you have to up the rewards and if you make that hard content rewarding, you run the risk of disenfranchising the casual player base, which I’m assuming is larger than the people who want hard content.

If you don’t make the rewards higher, then you have less people doing it and it becomes what TA Aetherblade Path is. A dungeon that took a long time to make but received only a little bit of use.

Put yourself in Anet’s place. If you make hard content and only a small percentage of the playerbase attempts it, or gets through it, would you keep making more hard content?

Casual playebase already has tones of casual content it is called gw2 pve . This should be normal that people who spend few hours mastering some really hard content should get better rewards instead of 2 blue 1 green

The issue here is that “hard” content gets solved by the good players, then they spend months farming that hard content while casuals either can’t or simply don’t want to do it. Which goes back to the upper and lower class problem.

Illuminati.2431:

Hi there,

I’ve been reading alot of the topics posted on the forum and I notice a lot are about players who complain there is no ‘endgame’ content. Most of the times, I read that ‘we’(the players that want ‘real end-game content’) are seen as 1 group that think about 1 thing when it comes to end-game content: the standard WoW gear treadmill. This is not always the case, and many discussion are useless then, because the persons that shoot down the posters that want end-game content think that they mean they want WoW gear treadmill, which in alot of cases is not what that poster meant by end-game content.

When you read the posts carefully, you can see there are 2 different groups and we want endgame content that is way different from each other.

There is the WoW gear treadmill group. I have to say, I disagree with the players who want that kind of endgame content. It’s not going to happen, since launch that was clear. I too want end-game content, but not that kind of end-game content. These are the people that want to change the game, and I disagree with them.

BUT, there is also a second group that complains there is no real end-game content, but they want something completely different than the pro-wow gear treadmill guys.
What ‘we’ want is: challenging, replayable content that actually makes you feel that you have achieved something. Something you have to work for, practice your skills for, practice the mechanics because if you don’t know the mechanics, you fail. Not just some make-your-legendary-that-is-endgame-but-the-only-thing-it-is-is-farm-mats-and-gold-for-precursor-endgame. Ofcourse, this game aims at casual players, but even casual games need hard and challenging content. And this game is a MMO, even if you say you aim at casuals that play 2 hours in 2 days, you KNOW there are always people that play your game more, more than the standard casual player(but not necessarily as much as no-lifers). That’s just what happens when you create a MMO. And no, you can’t say: but hey, they said it was for casuals, you are a more hardcore player than a casual, so just go play another game. That’s like building a sportscar, but it is aimed to sell to grandma’s and grandpa’s that don’t drive harder than 100km/h. Even if you do so, you KNOW there are people outside that targeted audience that will buy that car, so you have to make that car go harder. Some products just have standardized expactions. Same goes for MMO’s.

So my point here is just to clear up those 2 types of groups. I disagree with the people that want the WoW gear treadmill stuff, but I strongly think this game needs end-game the way group 2 sees it.

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

On a related note I started playing PU mesmer because of all the hate it gets. I find the PMs amusing and love holdig a point and killing anyone who tries to 1v1 me.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

sirian.4981:

As an additional downside, do you know how computationally expensive it would be to render capes in a game like GW2? Its far more than current back items. In large fights everyone wearing a cape could seriously cut framerate.

So not only do you need to create well animated capes, but you have to optimize it so it works well when you have 50+ capes on the screen. Thats a lot of graphic developer time that could be spent on something else.

We already have the fix for that. It’s called not having your character model limit + quality at highest and highest.

Do you see why “Introducing capes means everyone has to lower their graphical settings when capes are on screen” might deter Arenanet from introducing capes?

As an additional downside, do you know how computationally expensive it would be to render capes in a game like GW2? Its far more than current back items. In large fights everyone wearing a cape could seriously cut framerate.

So not only do you need to create well animated capes, but you have to optimize it so it works well when you have 50+ capes on the screen. Thats a lot of graphic developer time that could be spent on something else.

When people say charr can’t wear them, they mean that its not worth the resources to the to design capes that can work on all races.

Look how little effort they put into making armor look good on Charr or even Asura. Lots of clipping issues. Capes would be much harder.

If you are interested in the topic, the team that worked on Batman Arkam Asylum talked about how hard it is to get capes to render properly.

So I have been following this build in spvp and having a lot of success with it, but I don’t really know what I am doing. I kind of just spam all my buttons until the other guy does.

Does anyone have a good guide to how to use the skills? Particularly shattering the illusions. I just press F1 occassionally and it seems to do a lot of damage in it.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7flknpMtFqxRNcrNSpxY6cO6GSGQFlckyB-TFyCABAcBAwR9nU0Ns8+DZp8jinAgEHEgxUCSKAYmGB-w

Just copy what WoW has done. Every few hours you have a big fight over an area. The area has cool quests and a dungeon attached. This forces PvP. You can even give an advantage to the attackers.

Gaia Orunitia.5794:

I want a Dark Knight Quaggan.

I was just thinking, Quaggans really should be a playable race. Its disappointing that they aren’t. Plus, Arenanet is trying to attract new players and what better way than with a cute mascot?

vaalix.4913:

wth is ktraining eotm?

Basically you run around EOTM in a giant group killing NPCs. If all goes well the other team does the same. It nets a lot of karma which will get you geared quickly. Just follow the blue commander tag and you are good.

It can be disrupted if one team decides they want to fight, but that rarely happens.

vaalix.4913:

I have 2 levels 80s.. one is a guard, the other a ranger.. Both seem to get hit like little girls in WvW.. Their gear isn’t horrible per say.. The 80’s have older ear from like a year ago I guess is the last time I played.. Still, I can’t really compete at all in wvw.. I might as well be running around dressed up in papermache. The combat log shows me taking 2k 3k 5k 9k hits..? Im dishing out a measly 800dmg on my 80s, ranger with the odd 1200 dmg spike…. So I thought my classes were perhaps kitten and just tried a low level thief… Wow kitten d.. I think my highest hit was around 180dmg lol…

I thought this game wasn’t all about gear? Now its all about gear? Whats the deal?

It probably isn’t gear, but if you are really worried, spend a day Ktraining EOTM and you will have full ascended armor.

Nerelith.7360:

sirian.4981:

Roybe.5896:

Nerelith.7360:

@Roybe

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post this, I found it most educational.

The only thing I can say about this, is that while entertainment is owned by the money-men, it is created by artists. Unless the creator has completely sold his or her soul to the money-men that is.

And this point is where I am hoping that Arenanet can continue to withstand the pressures from their bosses. Although I agree that this can be a 2 way street, as pressures continue to increase for profitability gains against the develeopers vision, it becomes harder for them to push for their vision (Think of it this way, a chef wants to make a wonderful beef dish, but the manager is only willing to by him Spam, due to profitability). I see this not a selling out to the powers that be (that actually happened when the primary officers sold Arenanet to NCSoft..and worse when NCSoft sold Nexon a pretty large say on the direction of NCSoft(a private 15% sale of stock is nothing to sneeze at) but a daily battle that is being fought in a long and protracted war. The fact that they have been able to hold on to as much of the artistic license AND influence within the Gem Store is a huge nod to their ability to negotiate on their, as well as our, behalf, with profitability being on their side. I am concerned at what profit point NCSoft steps in, drops the hammer and says, ‘this isn’t working, you must do it our way now.’
Evon Gnashblade vs. the Consortium indeed!

Well most of the original GW2 design team has been fired or quit by now, so the game really is controlled by moneymen. They have no issue with firing artists if they don’t perform. I think this is the reason there is such a large disconnected between current content and early content.

It is sad, I remember when the game was released I actually spend HOURS playing. I would Look foreward to logging on. I played the game straight. Not sure if i can even Point to what has actually been changed…. all I know is…Now the game is Not as fun to play.

it seems that a LOT has been moved to the gem store. The biggest complaint I have is traits. Used to be you levelled up..bought a cheap book, and bam..all the traits were there. Now they coupled a GOOD thing… making it so you need to explore content, to unlock traits…. with a Bad thing….they made the content you need to unlock prohibitive, while giving you the option to simply use gold to BUY the traits….

Gold they sell for gems which you buy with cash.

/me sighs…. I can see how this was implemented mostly because they think this is what the chinese audience will like. No idea, since I don’t Know how Chinese players consume their MMO’s, I read somewhere that either Korea, or japan, players pay for MMO’s By the Minute? what?

I agree, the Money-men have won this one. Sad. I Understand the artist needs the businessman, but it is always a shame when the artist is crushed by the business man.

edit:

Guess that they should teach students a fable by Aesop, another artist, “The goose that lays Golden eggs” in Business school?

Well I don’t know enough about the financials of the game to say if it was successful. Certainly a lot of players enjoyed it, but how much is the game spending versus making? Would it still be profitable if they were followign the original plans?

Roybe.5896:

Nerelith.7360:

@Roybe

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post this, I found it most educational.

The only thing I can say about this, is that while entertainment is owned by the money-men, it is created by artists. Unless the creator has completely sold his or her soul to the money-men that is.

And this point is where I am hoping that Arenanet can continue to withstand the pressures from their bosses. Although I agree that this can be a 2 way street, as pressures continue to increase for profitability gains against the develeopers vision, it becomes harder for them to push for their vision (Think of it this way, a chef wants to make a wonderful beef dish, but the manager is only willing to by him Spam, due to profitability). I see this not a selling out to the powers that be (that actually happened when the primary officers sold Arenanet to NCSoft..and worse when NCSoft sold Nexon a pretty large say on the direction of NCSoft(a private 15% sale of stock is nothing to sneeze at) but a daily battle that is being fought in a long and protracted war. The fact that they have been able to hold on to as much of the artistic license AND influence within the Gem Store is a huge nod to their ability to negotiate on their, as well as our, behalf, with profitability being on their side. I am concerned at what profit point NCSoft steps in, drops the hammer and says, ‘this isn’t working, you must do it our way now.’
Evon Gnashblade vs. the Consortium indeed!

Well most of the original GW2 design team has been fired or quit by now, so the game really is controlled by moneymen. They have no issue with firing artists if they don’t perform. I think this is the reason there is such a large disconnected between current content and early content.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

I personally think that a paid expansion would do more harm than good at this point.

People have gotten used to free content every 2 weeks, and if they suddenly had to wait 6+ months without content and then be forced to pay for it they most likely wouldn’t like it too much.

ArenaNet have gotten themselves into this “mess” of the Living Story. Now they either prove that it actually IS like an expansion, or they call defeat and will lose most of their playerbase since people won’t stay with a company that doesn’t know what it is doing.

The thing is, new content is expensive. I am betting the reason we don’t see much big content in the updates is that its not justifiable financially. An expansion would provide enough cash to actually add new dungeons and new zones.

When casting, the elementalist just kinda holds the staff off to the side while casting with his hand. Its really bothering me.

How do I get Mad King’s Banquet?

What is the fastest and most efficient way to gear up? I have done some searching, but it keeps bringing me to outdated methods.