Guild Wars 2

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

snip

Anyway, the biggest difference in my point of view is that I play the game for the sake of playing the game, not to have bigger shinies than everyone else. So I don’t look at the rewards as something I deserve for giving Anet money, but rather as a bonus for playing the game. So when a rare pops up, I say “hey, cool!” instead of “it’s about time!”

The purpose of people needing loot isn’t to have bigger shinies, there’s a cost of living in this game like there is in every other game but only 1 currency for it, thus the need for drops to be sold or items from drops to be sold to earn enough currency to survive.

When the loot isn’t equal there’s an issue.

It’s not different then pay. If the pay isn’t equal for the same job, same amount of money, same equipment being used, with no discernable reason other then one person is mysteriously different then the other (somewhere in the aether) then there’s a problem.

Vayne.8563:

Galtrix.7369:

People forget what the definition of casual actually is. Relaxed and unconcerned. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel obligated to participate in dungeons to earn as much money as people that play for 10 hours a day and I DO NOT get the “relaxed” feeling when I have to play for 3 hours or more to actually accomplish something. I have not seen Anet implement a single casual activity to do since the game was released. FoTM, Guild Missions, Ascended gear, all of those things are for hardcore players. And, if you disagree, think about the ways to get ascended gear. 30 laurels, which is 30 days of playing. 30 days is a ridiculous amount of time for a “casual” player. Guild Missions, which require massive amounts of time to organize, again, not a casual activity. Fractals, is the longest dungeon in GW2 and requires the most time. Tell me again how GW2 is made for casual players.

Dailies are for casuals, they take 20 minutes. Most of the living story was for casuals too. Did you even do the instances that happened in the month before the end dungeon was released. Each instance takes less than half an hour and can be soloed. SAB could certainly be enjoyed by casuals. The christmas jumping puzzle and music game, enjoyed by casuals too. The halloween minidungeon, easy to enjoy for casuals.

I’m not sure why you think nothing has been released for casuals, when so much of it has been.

He’s most likely talking about what I’m talking about permanent new open world content. all of that other stuff is not permanent. the living story is not permanent, the holidays are not permanent.

What the world is wrong with folks, can’t see the forest…

Galtrix you’re right. but don’t expect people to understand. All play styles leading to the same end game results equally.

Was wondering this myself at launch. It seems they still haven’t solved the (you must do X amount of DPS to said mob for credit) thing they started at launch.

Many of us were against that too because that made it so that you would have to either be grouped with the people you were around or healing, (which often turned into more then five) or you would have to be all DPS.

We’re seeing the effects of that design flaw now, everyone wants everyone to be zerker all the time now in dungeons. Can’t have toughness or healing gear, can’t be specced for anything other then burst DPS, and if your class just happens to be one of the nerfed classes in PVE tough luck, go find some other group.

Pretty much sums up the problem.

Welcome back. DR FotM and PVE imbalance happened.

Indoles.1467:

Rng is rng. Everyone will get their bad and good streaks, you just remember the bad ones more. I once combined 104 masterwork items into the forge (26 attempts) without getting a single rare. Currently on a streak of 14 failed attempts to upgrade. Then I remember a period where I got 3 upgrades in a row. Sometimes I farm and get a lodestone on second kill, other times I farmed for 10 hours on separate days and never got one. We all hate rng because it doesn’t reward effort equally and when you do get a reward, you don’t appreciate it (unless it is a precursor) because you feel like you deserved it.

was that before or after the nerfed what rares you could get in the mystic toilet? because originally you could throw greens in there ad nauseum and get rares back 80% of the time. I remember doing that clearly.

He also asked for something a bit more substantial than RNG is RNG.

Curo.2483:

ajm.2931:

I have a guild mate, we’ve both been playing since release. We’ve consistently pretty much farmed Orr the same about the whole time. He regularly gets 3-4 yellows for every one I get, and I have gotten 1 exotic in the past 5 months while he has gotten 20+.

Same Magic find, same overall time in Orr, same DEs, only difference is I play a staff ele and he’s on a ranger. The same difference with world boss chests, he consistently gets yellows form them, and I very very rarely get them

This is the perfect example of what I mean, thank you! 2 people doing the same things over a long period of time, yet getting different results. We have a large sample size and no other variables.

So what’s happening? Is the code flawed? Is his friend doing something differently but not telling him? Or is this guy lying?

Happened to me too, tho my friend left the game months ago due to other issues with the devs.

We did everything together and after the november patch with DR addition, suddenly he was getting everything I was getting nothing, even in five mans. I left because I thought maybe it was DR and I wanted it to bleed away. Started playing last week had a couple of rares from unlikely sources in multiple locations no less (prelevel 30) and now nothing for days. It’s the same old story with this game.

they really need to do something about the other builds too. Right now healing is terrible. AOE fields that one puts down for the boss to put his own AOE damage field within immediately and 90% of the time just after you did is just trolling. LFG is a definite must if in fact this game has turned into a dungeon only thing (which it’s starting to look like) and I would imagine that people are tired of FotM by now. They need to make the game what they claimed it would be, mostly open world focused with permanent new DE/metas every week and a serious look into the side activities because they understood the plight of the gamers who didn’t want to run dungeons ad nauseum as I recall.

Glad you like it, most of that I had a blast with too for the leveling experience. All in all you will notice tho that most of the negative threads you’ll read (including mine) are about post max level max gear expectations and loot issues. Let’s hope you are one of the ones that’s not affected by DR or the loot drop one sided-ness that the end game has become for many of us.

Drew.1865:

tigirius.9014:

Drew.1865:

Vayne.8563:

Drew.1865:

Vayne.8563:

Drew.1865:

Ok let’s think logically here. If the loot was not an issue for MANY players then why would they give guaranteed yellow drops from a chest. Also if it’s really all RNG then how can they control just that one drop? Basically ALL the drops in this game are tweaked just like slot machines in a casino. The spamming of yellows or exotic drops in chat are just like the lights that flash and the alarms that go off when someone hits the jackpot on a slot machine.

This is no more a game than a slot machine but with each mob kill it’s a pull on the lever.
If you want to play a game where you aren’t on a hamster wheel then play a game with a sub. Sub games are a lot more honest as far as what the games real rewards are. You might have to grind a lot in a sub game but you know what’s at the end of the grind.

Ummm because they’re supposed to be meta events and people were complaining they weren’t worth doing. And because by putting those rewards into those meta events they managed to get people out of Orr (one of their goals) and into the world. Because a lot of people while waiting for meta events to spawn in a zone go and do other events and it makes the world busier.

I can think of a host of reasons that have nothing to do with loot bugs as a reason why Anet would change loot distribution.

Yeah even the meta events had bad drops so they literally had to guarantee you would get a drop just so they could get people to do those events. When you have to do something like that you’re admitting there’s a problem. It didn’t help when they conviently deleted the post about loot drops lol. Notice the dev response is posted so people can’t respond or continue the discussion ;-)

But they fixed the problem, because at least I get yellows from the big chests relatively often, in addition to the yellows I get from the daily chest. You’re saying they didn’t fix the problem, when in fact, for most people anyway, they did. I don’t know if there really is something to some people or characters being unlucky but I will say that my drop rate from the big chests, not the daily chests, have signficantly improved.

Ergo, from my point of view this problem is fixed.

The problem of meta events was fixed but none of the other areas of the game had rewards adjusted. If anything they were nerfed into the ground to try and balance the meta event rare loot to keep the pressure up for players to use the gem store as much as possible.

I’ll be seeing if they give me the usual flack about it being my imagination, sorry 8 months of the same loot experience, a different experience mind you than what I experienced when the game was without loot nerfs and DR prior to DR being implemented, says otherwise. Will they still claim it’s all in our heads a year from now?

It’s true, the rest were not adjusted. I firmly recall getting rares and exotics from level 75-80 zone chests with or without a champion defending them and I firmly recall getting rares, and T6 mats from farming in those zones.

I’m playing a sub game now and I can farm until I’m blue in the face and never hit DR. The economy in that game is just as good if not better too.

There’s nothing free about F2P or B2P. Check out neverwinters forums. The cash shop in that game is so bad it’s funny.

I’m actually a founder in NW and while bags and the completely option T3 mounts are a little much, there’s a 4 currency system for their economy. It’s the best economy out there in mmo’s because you can farm all day never hit DR and never see the Devs adjusting the loot to require you to buy gems to keep your character’s armor repaired, your enchantments (on here runes/sigils) current or updated based on balance issues they created, and never do you have to worry about suddenly getting nothing in drops and it persisting for 7-8 months without a fix.

I seriously thought that laurels and karma boxes would fix these issues for me but more RNG in this game doesn’t do anything but get more frustrating. Just went thru on two toons in GW2 and opened about 20 boxes from Orr got nothing but karma bottles. Did that with laurel bags to, you think I actually got a single lodestone? Nope.

Let’s see, RNG + RNG carry the RNG = 0. So nope not the solution.

Meanwhile I log into LOTRO, I log into NWO and bam, got loot all the time, think the economy is hurting? nope.

Drew.1865 "I feel sorry for a new player just starting to play this game. I can’t imagine how hard it is for them.:

Me too, the last time I said something like that my thread was flooded with naysayers all scrambling to tell me there was nothing absolutely nothing wrong with their drops so it must just be me.

I do consider prestige items that require a bit of work, however some items are cut off from people actually achieving them simply due to their not having a circle of friends in game to complete them with, ie the requirement to have a well made/premade group to complete certain tasks.

I would also argue that Legendaries and any other item that the mystic toilet is used to make (rather then REAL crafting, the thing people worked hard on at launch to reach 400 especially in the case for jewelry with globs of ecto as the final ingredients for the final points) is in fact NOT crafting so should not hold so much prestige. There’s also the matter of RNG/DR being involved with the farming of loot for the legendary items usually requiring people to buy the rest of their mats because they are so rare they are like water in the desert.

actually it would, slightly larger versions of the dailies would be in order especially for us filthy casuals.

I’d like to see them do this and we actually suggested it to them when they started making the change from fixed to randomized to chosen dailies but it fell on deaf ears again.

Mirta.5029:

tigirius.9014:

I’m thinking it’s only the open world content so they won’t worry about it honestly. If it were a dungeon or something they’d actually fix it. It’s been happening to me off and on since launch. It’s just like DR they didn’t look to see if there was an actual code problem (the killcredit bug) until it started to affect the dungeon runners, then they had a serious issue, if it’s a casual open world player, it’s not worth it apparently.

Sorry to sound so jaded but here we are almost a year after launch and there’s just too much ignored that should have been handled more professionally.

dungeon runners get ignored plenty as well
“Because we took out the ability to revive during combat we’ll add more waypoints!”
Months later no extra waypoints in most (if not all) dungeons.

Thanks for that as I’m not a dungeon fan in this title I had no idea. WoW even better huh. Got told we would get retro’d for our achievements in the form of laurels too, still haven’t seen that drop. It’s starting to pile up in here, can’t all be those of us who are noticing the large number of promises missed over the past 8 months or so.

Curo.2483:

Before you post saying “random is random, people get different drops”, please re-read my post, especially the part about consistency. I just don’t understand how one camp says “I could make 1000g in a week if I wanted”, and another says “I play my butt off, but get crappy drops every single time, after being in a zone for 5 min”. People have described reliable, consistent results which they can reproduce at will. This is NOT an issue of randomness.

Here’s to hoping they don’t derail your post. I’m in the “I play my butt off, but get crappy drops every single time, after being in a zone for 5 min” camp. They’ve told me I need to teleport but not after 6-8 kills I don’t think so that’s simply ridiculous. I suspect there’s some foul play but any mention of such against the precious brings out the crazies that want to derail threads and keep honest open conversations about the problems those of us on the down side face completely quiet so they can go back to their “everything’s perfectly fine here” fantasy in the forums.

I do hope some good explanations come up tho because it’s definitely not random.

Just waiting for them to close it now, not like they read this stuff anyways unless it’s got some derailing going on like it has here all over the place. But somehow I’m the bad guy I know for saying anything at all negative about the precious.

Kichwas.7152:

Son Of Suns.6593:

What do you do when
. . .
you have no need for dungeon running because everyone’s geared, and there just isn’t anything you really want to do but you still want to play.?

The point of dungeons is not for gearing.

The point is to play them to enjoy them. If you don’t enjoy them, might not be the MMO for you.

Oh the irony, about a game that was launched as the “open world only focus” game of the year no less. If this were World of Warcraft you could get away with saying something like that, but it’s not, it was marketed as the alternative to the World of Warcraft mmo’s that plagued all of mmo existence by people who claimed they were gamers who understood the plights of the average mmo gamer and our needs.

OP as it happens I completely agree with you. You and I should stick together because these guys who are the continuous naysayer bunch think they can just make blankeyed observations and that it’s somehow true. Claiming that farming exists in a game with DR is like saying that driving exists in a road full of GAINT potholes where you never know how long the tow truck will arrive or how long it will take to get your car out of the hole. And they know it, these (ahem people) definitely know it.

oh and to those who keep saying this game isn’t about open world events and it’s not about farming, then explain to us the reason they made it such for the first month and a half after telling us it was all about choices for 7 years prior to launch, all choices leading to the same end game rewards, go ahead (looks at watch), we’re waiting, no really take your time

I’m thinking it’s only the open world content so they won’t worry about it honestly. If it were a dungeon or something they’d actually fix it. It’s been happening to me off and on since launch. It’s just like DR they didn’t look to see if there was an actual code problem (the killcredit bug) until it started to affect the dungeon runners, then they had a serious issue, if it’s a casual open world player, it’s not worth it apparently.

Sorry to sound so jaded but here we are almost a year after launch and there’s just too much ignored that should have been handled more professionally.

Drew.1865:

Vayne.8563:

Drew.1865:

Vayne.8563:

Drew.1865:

Ok let’s think logically here. If the loot was not an issue for MANY players then why would they give guaranteed yellow drops from a chest. Also if it’s really all RNG then how can they control just that one drop? Basically ALL the drops in this game are tweaked just like slot machines in a casino. The spamming of yellows or exotic drops in chat are just like the lights that flash and the alarms that go off when someone hits the jackpot on a slot machine.

This is no more a game than a slot machine but with each mob kill it’s a pull on the lever.
If you want to play a game where you aren’t on a hamster wheel then play a game with a sub. Sub games are a lot more honest as far as what the games real rewards are. You might have to grind a lot in a sub game but you know what’s at the end of the grind.

Ummm because they’re supposed to be meta events and people were complaining they weren’t worth doing. And because by putting those rewards into those meta events they managed to get people out of Orr (one of their goals) and into the world. Because a lot of people while waiting for meta events to spawn in a zone go and do other events and it makes the world busier.

I can think of a host of reasons that have nothing to do with loot bugs as a reason why Anet would change loot distribution.

Yeah even the meta events had bad drops so they literally had to guarantee you would get a drop just so they could get people to do those events. When you have to do something like that you’re admitting there’s a problem. It didn’t help when they conviently deleted the post about loot drops lol. Notice the dev response is posted so people can’t respond or continue the discussion ;-)

But they fixed the problem, because at least I get yellows from the big chests relatively often, in addition to the yellows I get from the daily chest. You’re saying they didn’t fix the problem, when in fact, for most people anyway, they did. I don’t know if there really is something to some people or characters being unlucky but I will say that my drop rate from the big chests, not the daily chests, have signficantly improved.

Ergo, from my point of view this problem is fixed.

The problem of meta events was fixed but none of the other areas of the game had rewards adjusted. If anything they were nerfed into the ground to try and balance the meta event rare loot to keep the pressure up for players to use the gem store as much as possible.

I’ll be seeing if they give me the usual flack about it being my imagination, sorry 8 months of the same loot experience, a different experience mind you than what I experienced when the game was without loot nerfs and DR prior to DR being implemented, says otherwise. Will they still claim it’s all in our heads a year from now?

It’s true, the rest were not adjusted. I firmly recall getting rares and exotics from level 75-80 zone chests with or without a champion defending them and I firmly recall getting rares, and T6 mats from farming in those zones.

DR still alive and well my friend, some of us, despite their claims that everything is fine and fixed, are still being affected by DR dramatically. 6-8 kills in any zone on any of my toons drops me into DR immediately and apparently not only is loot RNG but so is the timer for DR I suspect.

Zenith.7301:

Vayne.8563:

Zenith.7301:

I’ve been doing MF runs and the occasional fractal with some world bosses for an entire month, and at best I ended up with 98 ectos. At that rate, it takes 2.5 months to get the backpiece.

That’s 2.5 times what it takes you to get an ascended amulet or an ascended accessory.

It takes ten minutes to run CoF path 1. Ten minutes. If you’re really not good at it, 15 minutes. During that time you get a minium of 2 yellows, which on the average yield two ectos.

I don’t know how often you’re playing but there are well over a dozen places you can get guaranteed golds every single day.

Since the average of about (more or less) 1 ecto per yellow, well that’s quite a bit of ectos.

More to the point, if you sell the mats and other stuff you get from in world and fractal runs, you can make money and buy ectos. Right now you can get 3 ectos for 1 gold or basically 50ish gold will get your all the ectos you need.

You might think 50 gold is a lot of money…but it’s really not in this game.

I don’t farm CoF. And it’s certainly not an average of 2 ectos per yellow. I wish that was my average, just like I wish I had gotten the jetpack after the 70 MF runs I did.

But this is a garbage casino-style gaming experience, where to mitigate that you must tediously repeat the one remotely profitable activity (cof farming or TP) because the alternatives or playing other more entertaining formats do not yield reasonable rewards (30 minutes of boredom killing Claw od Jormag for a single yellow and a couple of blues and greens is not my idea of time investment).

It is and people suggesting that you run dungeons to get what you need in a game that was supposed to be all about choice just don’t seem to get it. If it’s a choice then why are there only two means of getting any drops, and that’s precluding any problems with DR/magic find you might have? If it’s how Colin says it is, then why are there only two choices to follow to the end game? Hmm?

Jski.6180:

There was a big push by these forums to keep content open world even end game level of content. We have raids but they are open world raids we may see big dungeons in time.

I have to agree with this, open world is lacking and needs much more permanent love by the devs we’ve still not received what we were promised as far as full on DE and meta focuses development for PVE and rewards to match. There’s been some minor things thrown in here and there as afterthoughts but nothing concrete.

Vayne.8563:

Drew.1865:

Ok let’s think logically here. If the loot was not an issue for MANY players then why would they give guaranteed yellow drops from a chest. Also if it’s really all RNG then how can they control just that one drop? Basically ALL the drops in this game are tweaked just like slot machines in a casino. The spamming of yellows or exotic drops in chat are just like the lights that flash and the alarms that go off when someone hits the jackpot on a slot machine.

This is no more a game than a slot machine but with each mob kill it’s a pull on the lever.
If you want to play a game where you aren’t on a hamster wheel then play a game with a sub. Sub games are a lot more honest as far as what the games real rewards are. You might have to grind a lot in a sub game but you know what’s at the end of the grind.

Ummm because they’re supposed to be meta events and people were complaining they weren’t worth doing. And because by putting those rewards into those meta events they managed to get people out of Orr (one of their goals) and into the world. Because a lot of people while waiting for meta events to spawn in a zone go and do other events and it makes the world busier.

I can think of a host of reasons that have nothing to do with loot bugs as a reason why Anet would change loot distribution.

don’t forget the large numbers only running dungeons because that’s the only other place that loot was dropping at the time that is until the chests started globally disappearing no matter what you were doing.

tolunart.2095:

Essence Snow.3194:

I remember each of the 3…yeah 3, open world exotic drops I have gotten in my 2,772 hours of play. I highly expect my ratio to be 1:1000 hrs and yeah I do expect better b/c that is pathetic at best.

Thanx for proving my point… if you expect to see a pattern come out of random events, then I can almost guarantee disappointment.

Shortly after I began following the dragon timer and getting those bonus chests, I got two exotics. One from a chest, the other from the Mystic Forge, on two consecutive days. It’s been about two weeks since then and I haven’t seen another. I never got an exotic before, and I may never get another exotic drop, or I could get one tomorrow. I have no expectations.

I think it’s more then that for me because even after they put DR in it was still bearable to a degree, I was still getting loot, not it’s just not acceptable because one needs gold to do things and the copper and tiny bits of silver I sometimes get from finishing dailies just won’t cut it, the costs for teleports are higher then that!

We’ll see what they say, but I have a feeling this is going to be handled just like last time, where they will sweep it under the rug.

posts a thread about all the ways that GW2 is not casual….

gets this reaction.

I agree Navi they need to tell us but Jon told us he likes Legit Farmers and my answer to him is this, if you like us so much then give us the choice to farm, your game is supposed to be all about choices and all playstyles are supposed to lead to the same end game, well let us farm freely. Other games do and use other more tried and true and non-customer harming techniques to deal with the bots than DR. In fact most games that have used DR have either lost 60% of their playerbase (D3) or they’ve completely crashed because they lost almost all of their playerbase when they put it into use (in subscription based games) which closed those games permanently.

The only reason it’s still going strong on this game is that it’s not happening to everyone which leads me to believe like you that there is a bug involved.

Colin recent post talking about the months ahead told us “It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

At any rate I’ve reported my problems to support and asked them for a real solution or at the very least someone to look into my account to see if there’s some flag or bug with just me. We’ll see what happens next.

Navi.7142:

I believe you, tigirius. And I am so sad that the fix they introduced after they claimed for so long NOTHING would be wrong with the loot didn’t help you. :-(
I think it is okay now for me, not perfect, but it improved compared to before… but as I am doing now only rarely the orr farming thing (I switched to “farm” the world boss chests and the bonus chests) I do not know how lucky I would be in Orr..
The chests are a good distraction…
I was farming in Orr (for only a few minutes and definitely under < 1 hour) and it seemed to be worse than directly after they “repaired and fixed” it, but who knows, maybe I was unlucky as I tried it the last times..
AND on top of that the drop rate of the new mini chests that contain the rare/ exotic loot has decreased.. that is how it feels, I have no data to support this, but however, I – for myself -don’t need data.
We don’t know if they raised the loot/ drop rate a little bit and then made the boss chest farming popular to secretly decrease the loot again. However, maybe they didn’t and the tin foil hat is going strong. But you can never know, as we now know we were (NOT!) all just perceiving and x-filing those times the loot issue was really big!

Did you try to do the world bosses? Do the regular chests from them contain decent loot for you? Do you get DR from them quickly? (There are some existing issues that one may not receive the chest although one will receive the golden medal; sometimes its combined with DR.. there is something messed up.. for example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/World-Boss-Bonus-Chests-Not-Always-Appearing/first)

Thanks for your sincere concern.

The thing for me is that the boss loot was fixed when i have done metas but only for the guaranteed rares we’re all given. the loot from boxes remains the same. I’m almost never getting a rare or exotic from boxes from bosses just the guaranteed one that pops up after a daily boss kill. I don’t fight multiple world bosses often enough to see the loot change. I will have to check this out tho because I’ve only recently discovered an iPhone app with the boss timers on it, all of them, for my server.

So it’s largely and obviously NOT fixed, whatever the purpose of this is I dunno but I do know the severe lack of loot at the end of any kind of session whether it be a simple run through for a daily to be completed in multiple zones like it was today as well as another failed attempt at a farming session.

I’m not sure also that it only cuts off loot for 24 hours because I’ve come back after days of not playing only to be on any character cutoff from the loot again. It doesn’t seem to care if I’m days gone or that I’m on a completely different toon.

I spent a whole month away from the game and played other games (in which this is never an issue) so I know it couldn’t have a timer like this. I plan on contacting support next because something has to be done. Despite people’s claims that they get gold all the time getting pennies and the occasional silver doesn’t pay for repairs nor does it help with travel costs.

The majority of the time I get nothing. I every 2 weeks on average get a weird rare drop from a strange location. A pre-level 30 zone creature like a doe or a fawn or a mosquito. Nothing to count on definitely tho.

I have the need to gear my ranger with the appropriate runes and must purchase them from the TP since there’s absolutely no way of getting the runes i need for him thru crafting since the availability of the T6 mats are cut off from me with this problem as well as with my play style (can’t get the lodestones unless I run a dungeon it seems sigh so much for playstyle choice).

Isslair.4908:

Well, our mostly static group experiences such things constantly. There is always like 1 guy who never gets anything, 1 who gets rares\exotics all the time and the rest have medicore results. All with the same amount of mf.

One thing I am sure of is that the longer you farm some place (cs or dungeons) the better your loot will become over time. I don’t know why it happens but it does. And by “longer” I mean weeks and months. If you just started farming some place you probably won’t get much.

yep this happens to me the most. one guy in my team would get everything (4 times as much rares) then anyone every single time we’d go anywhere and do anything. someone else owuld get like 2-3 good drops, and then the rest of us would be heartbroken/not-surprised-in-the-least because we got greens. Didn’t matter the content either. I usually don’t but on occasion I’ve run a couple of dungeons and it would happen there too.

RNG can’t possibly have a 100% fail rate in a group setting there’s something wrong seriously. And I don’t particularly like more RNG as the solution. To modify a statement of one of my favorite characters on one of my favorite (yet cancelled) shows.

“I got a share in this job. Ten percent of nothing is—let me do the math here. Nothing into nothin’. Carry the nothin’…” — Jayne Cobb

When is it safe again to farm? When will the bots actually be taken care of once and for all so that we can once again actually receive reward for time spent and why is that so difficult a problem for people to see? Why do people think that just because they are having good luck that there aren’t people out here who get nothing on a regular basis? Baffles the mind…

Also, If I had not received great rewards pre-November and then suddenly started getting nothing slowly more and more into today, then I would have nothing to complain about the pennies are pennies folks and they don’t exactly make it fun when everything costs.

Finally I’ve tried those boxes with and without magic find, and all I get are more karma bottles. Anyone else get those all the time from the RNG laurel/karma boxes they put into the game? Talk about frustrating!

Jrunyon.3012:

Tigirius, I’m not bashing you or anything, but the amount of times you bring up your loot issues is really becoming ridiculous. You say it in almost every post you write and it’s just got to the point that I don’t believe you. RNG is RNG, and whether you believe it or not, you aren’t being targeted by the dev’s to have no drops. I can’t see that happening. You have the exact same loot tables as the rest of us and I think you’re blowing it way out of proportion on the forums, looking for confirmation bias from other people who like to complain that they can’t make bank in game.

This is all my opinion, and I won’t post again in this thread.

Well that’s the great thing about freedom is I don’t have to believe you either.

tolunart.2095:

Galtrix.7369:

I have not seen Anet implement a single casual activity to do since the game was released. FoTM, Guild Missions, Ascended gear, all of those things are for hardcore players. And, if you disagree, think about the ways to get ascended gear. 30 laurels, which is 30 days of playing. 30 days is a ridiculous amount of time for a “casual” player. Guild Missions, which require massive amounts of time to organize, again, not a casual activity. Fractals, is the longest dungeon in GW2 and requires the most time. Tell me again how GW2 is made for casual players.

These activities were designed specifically for the million or so (out of 3-4 million) people who bought the game and demanded “hardcore” content. They are not casual because they are not intended to be casual.

Anet is doing what good companies do – listening to their customers and giving them what they want.

Hardly. These things you mention in the list of your casual-like benevolent offerings to the casual crowd are at worst broken for many of us which they still haven’t fixed yet or at best afterthoughts thrown in there or changed because people were actually earning gold and we know you can’t have that in the economy, characters with gold.

Casual players do not dungeon run, do not pvp/wvw, and expect side choices to advance the same way other players advance without a hitch just like what is promised HERE

Open world exploration is cutoff from casual players because it includes a PVP zone.

Rewards for open world are very lacking right now and the only people to say otherwise are those who have a stranglehold on the economy or who have been very lucky, with drops. Drops should never be limited anywhere. And the solution to RNG should never be more RNG.

While I agree that it has a huge amount of beauty in the world, that’s not what this is about and surely you can agree that adding to that beauty activities that don’t require combat or hardcore gear/traits would add to the enjoyment of that beauty.

I was under the impression they took out leveling to 80 thru crafting alone because they didn’t want people to use that as the sole means of leveling, if they didn’t nerf that the I agree that is a casual activity.

I guess I should have been more specific but the leveling process isn’t in question here because their system of leveling is the best in any game I’ve ever played with DE’s and hearts. However, once you reach max level and have completed the explorations of the world what’s next. The living story is hardly enough casual content to actually be useful, their final temporary content patch (chapter 3) they just released was the most I’d seen, the first two patches were gone in a day and they weren’t stretched out in any meaningful way. When we want casual content we want a permanent solution not temporary content this is no different then what they gave casual players just after launch with the holidays being the only DE’s metas etc to do and even those actually lasted longer then the living story did. (I’m not one to rush through things either I take my time).

The other prospects that were left for casual players are broken open world. We can’t farm for goods because that’s nerfed or lopsided with their RNG system and DR, we can’t find any meaningful rewards in chests across the world those are nerfed, any kind of new cosmetics requires either the store or running a dungeon for some kind of currency. (unless I’m mistaken that’s all I’ve found on guildhead) so what’s left?

So I guess what I’m trying to say is this. Is Arenanet really listening to their customers? Because many of my kind left this game months ago never to return because they didn’t listen to us then, and despite people’s tendencies to spread hate on these forums instead of helping us find solutions to the problems the community faces (and instead of some people trying to discredit every negative thing someone has to say about their favorite game) how about let’s be mature about it and come to an understanding. (not necessarily directed at you Tolunart)

Semi-casual is one thing. Casual is another entirely, GW2 has yet to reach casual.

When rezzing people we should have the option for a bandage drops, a magnetic shield bubble, a cloak field, or some other mechanism that prevents damage from bosses and random aggro changes.

When throwing mines or grenades from the toolbelt or kit refinement + grenade kit they should be in a 90 degree cone in front of the engineer not everywhere but the enemy.

Kit refinements changed:

Medkit to get a AOE heal or condition removal or at the very least drop about 6-8 bandages.

Toolkit to get the magnetic bubble

EG to get the AOE heal zone restored to it or at least a persistant AOE acid zone as big as our enhanced smoke cloud from bombs.

Smoke vent on Flame Thrower to be more like black powder pistol ability on thieves.

Rocket Boots/ Rubber Boots allowing for a 25% signet run speed boost.

Rocket boots changed to a targetable forward jump shot style attack instead of a self CC.

Seraki.2753:

Magic find definitely is not functioning all the time. I’m calling it “magic” find cause it magically vanishes in function most of the time then gives me a day every now and then where it works.

Been my experience too, every one in a while like 1 time a month I’d get good drops for like five minutes and then poof stops entirely.

for some of us it doesn’t help anyways, it’s like some are cut off from getting any loot at all even with it on our gear. Maybe they’ll limit it to accessories.

Biohazard.4196:

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

Also other games have tons of dailies. The dailies in Guild Wars 2 are severally casual. To do all the dailies in Rift would take you a whole lot longer than to do all the dailies in Guild Wars 2. And in Guild Wars 2, most of them you can get just by playing normally.

Dailies in GW2 aren’t the same thing, because they aren’t quests and with the requirements that some on the list they have they do sometimes require an entire day to finish due to the requirements they impose. We were supposed to have more of a choice now randomly not being able to finish dailies because suddenly the game decides to have all dungeons/FotM/WvW/150 invaders suddenly. Still not casual and others have attested to this when they first allowed us to choose, it wasn’t enough of a choice/should never have been randomized.

Did you misspeak or are you implying that daily quests include running all dungeons, every fractal, and killing 150 invaders in WvW? Each of those is completely false.

No there are some days tho that objectives that one must wait hours on (like meta bosses) and dungeon/WvW focused content are the only things that popup (ie there aren’t 5 open world items one can do in at most an hour and a half to complete the daily). Which means the daily takes about 8 hours to complete on those days and the “choice” of not doing them is unacceptable as a possible solution.

I agree just came back because minor improvements to the engineer class in PVE and found that loot is still a huge issue. I think their RNG is WAY too random. There’s still the issue of people without magic find getting 4 times the loot of everyone else every single week, there’s definitely something wrong.

This keeps coming up in another thread of mine so I thought I might move it here.

Are there still people out there that experience the lopsided loot issues? The kind I’m talking about are where you’re in a group of friends doing an event and that one guy that gets everything every week walks away with 4 times as much loot as anyone else?

How about, where you’re in a group doing an event and not only do you get all greys 100% of the time it stops after about the 8th kill because DR still kicks in for mobs that appear only for events.

Or how about this one. You try to farm materials (T5 because you can’t ever get a T6 to drop even when mars is in retro) and you kill 6 mobs only to start getting bones? (and it’s no exaggeration when I say 6 mobs total)?

Keep in mind this is with or without magic find with the same results for both.

Because I’m quite sure it’s not just me, it’s not my imagination, and I had tons more coming in the first month of the game launching prior to the new dungeon focus in Nov.

I’ve tried those boxes with and without magic find, and all I get are more karma bottles. Anyone else get those all the time from the RNG laurel/karma boxes they put into the game? Talk about frustrating!

I’d like to hear from the people who are affected by this, please no derailing or flaming

maddoctor.2738:

tigirius.9014:

Actually that’s not entirely true there are many things you are leaving out like the farming of T6 materials which is the sole way of making any kind of meaningful money in this game. They are forcing people to play dungeons or WvW in order to make any money. The only other method is to buy gems and convert them.

Not true at all. You don’t need dungeons to earn money, you need to limit your expenses, I don’t get how anyone can have money problems in this game, I’ve never, ever done cof p1 farming, never gone t6 mat farming, never did anything that people “do” to make money. I have more than enough for all my alts, I can get anything I want, except for a precursor, that’s the absolutely only thing anyone might need money for. I fail to see how making a legendary is a process for casuals, you don’t need money for anything else.

It is true, just because you don’t have troubles doesn’t mean other people don’t and it has nothing to do with expenses. If we are truly to believe you make so much gold a day without doing dungeons then that means you are one of the few who don’t have the loot issue that still exists to this day. No wooden boxes, no T6 mats even from higher quality salvages etc.

That’s not the point of this thread however, the point of it is to show that even games who have a monthly sub are more casual friendly then GW2 is especially with their new Nov 2012 FotM dungeon focus including the unspoken requirement to run dungeons for a better chance at drops. (or WvW) because since then that’s been the only reported way of making gold in this game, unless you are the luck few who leave any event with about 4 times as much loot as anyone else does.

Galtrix.7369:

People forget what the definition of casual actually is. Relaxed and unconcerned. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel obligated to participate in dungeons to earn as much money as people that play for 10 hours a day and I DO NOT get the “relaxed” feeling when I have to play for 3 hours or more to actually accomplish something. I have not seen Anet implement a single casual activity to do since the game was released. FoTM, Guild Missions, Ascended gear, all of those things are for hardcore players. And, if you disagree, think about the ways to get ascended gear. 30 laurels, which is 30 days of playing. 30 days is a ridiculous amount of time for a “casual” player. Guild Missions, which require massive amounts of time to organize, again, not a casual activity. Fractals, is the longest dungeon in GW2 and requires the most time. Tell me again how GW2 is made for casual players.

Part of the problem with Laurels is we still have yet to see the backpay so to speak for the achievements we’ve already been rewarded with. I have a long memory when it comes to promises made and that was a big one we still have yet to see.

I agree I am in the same boat as you as far as loot. there is still something uneven about their RNG loot system where some players get everything all the time and others get nothing even without using magic find bonuses that they still have yet to look into. It started in November 2012 because prior to that I would earn about 4-5 rares every 2-3 days. T6 mats could easily be farmed no problem in the open world without a care about a dungeon and that’s one of the things that made this game great.

I just think that if they gave us the above activities it would improve the loot situation as well as make the game casual friendly.

I agree with this completely! It would certainly be better then posting things they will never read. I would support this 100% if they put it into the game with a short comment section to express just what is wrong with it.

I also have a problem with MMO devs that make the basic functions of classes impossible to use in dungeons just because.

Want to dodge a boss’s attack? Forget it it holds you in place. Want to DoT a boss because you like to play a condition damage type DPS? Forget it they put a cap on that so most of your DoTs are not on the boss. Want to CC the boss in place? Forget it, the hold lasts 2 seconds. Want to heal? Forget it the AOE heal zone you just put down is covered completely by the bosses AOE attack and no one can stand in it.

Why give players abilities if you’re going to make them completely useless in dungeons.

This is part of the reason why we see only zerker build dungeon groups.

People come onto these forums and blame the players by telling anyone who complains that it’s their choice, but it’s not, it’s not the player’s choice to not be able to use the basic functions of their class, it’s not the player’s choice to be pigeonholed into a single build to run dungeons because of poor design choices by the devs themselves.

Seraki.2753:

GW2 has a modest amount of casual things to do but the game tries to push people together, not a bad thing but not always done is the best way IMO. A nice group finder interface not just for dungeons but everything a person can do with others would have made a big difference. I know its in the works but its very late IMO. I’m an old school MMO player from way back and have played a LOT of these games. What usually happens when an interface like this is late is players have already adopted a habit of using other means and just don’t use the interface. I hope this time will be different but honestly Anet your team is crawling at a snails pace on this one. Other than that casual endeavors are rather few but are involved enough to be time consuming so if looking for time syncs I guess they are there. Another problem though is the hardness factor in increasing level zones, people are just simply blown off by the frustrations . Zones are popular only by the highest for rewards or the lowest for getting out from under threats. The middle just seems to suffer from a lack of players IMO for just those reasons.

I often get the feeling the dev team thinks its in a contest with players and are just trying to kick tail more than offer enjoyable content. Just a feeling I know but it kind of hangs over everything like a dark cloud.

Thanks for your post, I agree they could do better with grouping, it would make a big difference if the lfg tool handled everything including events and locations of players on the same server doing certain DE’s/metas.

Forcing people to group for better loot for example is not my idea of a good idea either.

If they added these casual games I listed it would certainly make this game casual friendly and people could enjoy the game more when friends or guildies aren’t online as well as allow for an alternate means to acquire goods and mats. (I for one don’t always have the same schedule as people.)

John Kemp.2736:

I have logged close to 2k hours in this game 1k of which are on one character. I have maybe 100g and a decent amount of mats saved up. I have a good amount of junk laying around and am no where near getting a legendary still. The game is no longer fun to play. In GW1 by now id be in top tier gear and Id be playing all end game junk while acquiring skins or actually outfitting alts. In Guild Wars 2 I sit around and look at gated content and the grind necessary to attain best in slot gear. I think I am beginning to hate the game. I know the responses probably wont be positive but I was just checking if anyone else was annoyed with the direction the sequel is heading. Honestly thinking of quitting and cutting my loses with this game.

Mine is most definitely positive because I feel your pain. Certain people will (and have) come on your thread to spread their usual nonsense that everything is perfectly fine and that it’s somehow only you and your choices, but sadly that’s not true considering you aren’t directly responsible for content or patches in this game (no player is).

There are a large number of problems. I’m glad tho that you aren’t affected by the loot issues that many of us still suffer from and you managed to make some gold. Some of us can’t seem to get anything to drop so we’re stuck with coppers every day.

Just wanted to express my support because yes it’s got some seriously large issues, and no the devs don’t seem to be doing anything about these issues or communicating with their playerbase and the fanboys will continue attacking those of us who point out the truth of the matter.

Love how they always claim they are making loads of money when they don’t report to the public. Amazing. Remember when EA did that continuously for months post launch of SWTOR? And the 1.7 million active accounts statement?

Yeah not going to trust it until I see it. Especially the number of players thing. Now that they have questing it’s very much impossible to tell.

I agree explorations is hardly rewarding. It was the first month, you could go out and find treasure chests in places and get a rare or exotic because they had a champion protecting it. (do you really think Champions would be defending a box full of copper, some blues and maybe a green item? spssh not!)

Diva.4706:

So I already did Molten Weapon Facility with my guild, and to be honest it was fun till the end fight, where I was dead for about 80% of the time.

But I digress. Tonight I asked a few friends, who have not finished it, if they wanted to go run it and the response was unanimous : no its too hard, and not fun. This got me thinking, because these same people would run dungeons in our previous MMO all the time, and sometimes even raid. That was an MMO with trinity.

So my question is, are dungeons not for casual “fun” play in Guild Wars 2, and is it because of the no trinity system.

I think that’s definitely a part of it, but it’s also the mechanics of the game.

See the healing in this game is nowhere near where it should be. We have AOE heals that don’t take away the AOE’s of bosses in the same area when they are placed so we have bosses throwing AOE’s that do tons of damage and the tiny regens of the AOE heals don’t compensate or prevent conditions. (like the flying boss in the living story dungeon). Which causes players to dodge out of our healing zones.Then the rest of the abilities only heal hundreds at a time instead of thousands. And when I say hundreds I mean hundreds. The highest heal from a bomb explosions on engineers I’ve seen was about 300 per tick. That’s tiny. serisously and this was in all exotic gear with all healing bonuses. There’s something seriously wrong with this.

So the chance for misses on essential heals is way too high, the chance for heals to be nowhere near what the bosses do is way to high and the desire of the hard core gamers who run dungeons constantly to want nothing but zerker builds in their party is high, which makes for a very poor dungeon experience.

I also noticed that maneuvers that bosses would do in this dungeon kept you stuck in place as well as unable to dodge.

It amazes me that more people aren’t outraged by that. They give us a utility to reduce damage tell us it’s absolutely essential and then keep us from using it.

Neverwinter is a great example of how this is done properly. we can dodge boss attacks, we can CC bosses, we can DoT bosses to death without wasting DoTs exactly opposite of what GW2 does in their dungeons. And it’s not using a trinity it’s trinity lite which means you don’t have to have a trinity to run dungeons, but it helps slightly.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Gee, I don’t do dungeons much (lol, I have two story modes done, and two explorer modes), I don’t do WvW and I don’t farm T6 materials. I am not even sure which ones are T6. And I make money – halfway to Golden, not that that is a LOT of money. I don’t understand why so many people make statements like ‘everyone must do X, or ArenaNet is forcing everyone to do X’, etc. It sure doesn’t apply to me, or those in my guild or my friends.

So, although your statement stands, it is not entirely true.

It actually is true, you see the there’s a heavily RNG system here with a mysterious MF system that they’ve yet to explain to anyone how it works, when you have those two things, all things are not equal in the world of loot. There are plenty of us who are not receiving what some receive without a hitch in massive numbers compared to others and who usually come onto these forums as you have and spout the “i’ve got mine so you’re wrong” statements.

here is it is 7 months later and they still haven’t fixed loot.

But that’s not what this is about please stop derailing my post.

Olba.5376:

tigirius.9014:

1. fishing – WoW/torchlight II – complete with nets, spears, poles, chairs, umbrellas, with the ability to fish up valuable vendorfish, gear, hard to find crafting materials (lodestones is an idea ahem cough), minipets, and mounts (if this game had mounts), crafting recipes in all crafts (they even had oils for engineering/alchemy not just cooking).
2. hunting games – The Hunter MMO – in other mmo’s it might be that you need to capture or kill an animal for a hunting contest which would bring prizes and gear. A real hunting contest for the Norn perhaps?
3. farming – farmville/lotro – self explanatory. Might bring in the chance to find the materials usually difficult to get to like vanilla beans.
4. lotteries – RIFT/LOTRO – LOTRO had a daily lottery to get prizes and currency from similar to the dungeon badges, laurels, and karma we see in GW2. Rift had an hourly or bihourly scratchoff which allowed for the winning of rare crafting materials and currencies too (altho it was in a mobile app that they still have to this day).
5. housing – LOTRO/RIFT – Rift is hands down the best example of housing I can think of. The decorations and ability to customize are the best I’ve seen anywhere, however they both had the ability to pickup items from the experiences of the players (quests) where they’ve been what they were doing, and who they’ve defeated to place in the homes of the players.
6. collecting artifacts – RIFT/AoC – filled with lore that can combine to make items or for prizes. Items were usually end game gear or special items that created rare materials or were valuable to be sold for gold.
7. collecting mini pets – WoW – minipets has always been fun in any game but WoW to me had the best ways of doing such, buying them from dungeon only vendors, finding them in rare exotic places. They have a good start in this game, I’m just not seeing the taming of level 1 critters tho.
8. taming/care and feeding of pet companions – WoW/ AoC – In AoC and WoW they had certain animals that were babies when tamed and had special quests to help them grow up turning them into mounts. (now I know they don’t want to add mounts but what if this were used for Rangers instead of the instatame system it would be miles more fun). There was also an unspoken competition amongst hunters in WoW where players sought out and tamed rare pets with rare pet skins. That was the fun part of being a hunter in WoW! For a time there were pet buff foods that cooks could make to help give pets boons during combat, I miss pet food.
9. gambling – Star Trek Online – Dabo is a great time waster, and you can buy things with the gold pressed latinum you get from gambling on the table in Quark’s.

1. Fishing doesn’t really fit with the game, considering that we have underwater combat. Why would you go fish for that Barracuda when you can just jump in and kill it?
2. There is certainly basis in the game for making some hunting things
3. Farming wouldn’t really work and Queensdale is why. You go there and you’ll see that all the farmers have issues with monsters and bandits. And to quote the guy in Lion’s Arch, “If I get one more farmer selling me rotten vegetables…”
4. Lottery are a legal mess, especially since you can buy the in-game currency with money. You already get people complaining when they don’t get the rare skins from Black Lion Chests, can you imagine what would happen if they had lotteries like that?
5. Housing is something the developer team has said that they’re interested in, but not currently building, I believe.
6. You got legendaries and cultural gear, we even got achievements for those
7. But you can collect mini pets?
8. There’s only one profession in the game where that would make sense, so that’s probably not too high on anyone’s priority list.
9. Gambling is the same as lotteries: It’s a mess when it can involve real money.

I’m not really against any of these, since they would add to the realism of the world. But do I think it’s something the developer team should prioritize? Nope.

While your argument is a tad lopsided you actually did take the time to read what I posted. Thanks for that.

The problem with cosmetics is they didn’t add enough, I’m certainly not the first one to mention that it’s been a big discussion on multiple forums recently across the web. (all of the new ones seemingly being only from dungeon tokens and from the store doesn’t make it casual either).

Farzo.8410:

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

There are a lot of things that make the game casual friendly. Most game push players into doing dungeons. There’s one single epic quest line in Rift and it ends in a raid. That, to me, is not casual. I guess it’s sort of the same in the personal story in Guild Wars 1 ending in a dungeon, but even worse.

Most of the people who like challenging content find there isn’t enough of it in Guild Wars 2. Most of the game can be played by a single player without grouping, and that indeed makes it casual.

Actually that’s not entirely true there are many things you are leaving out like the farming of T6 materials which is the sole way of making any kind of meaningful money in this game. They are forcing people to play dungeons or WvW in order to make any money. The only other method is to buy gems and convert them.

And saying “most” is your opinion that the thousands (i suspect due to the pre-guesting patch emptyness of the servers) who left in November wouldn’t agree with, because of their new dungeon only focus.

I did do the experimental living world, and was highly disappointed that it’s still yet to be the focus on the open world they promised they would have prelaunch.

Also, Rift didn’t force people into dungeons, they had solo dungeons and the lotteries gave plenty of currency that was needed to buy the gear one needed so your argument about that game is nul.

My statement stands.

ArenaNet is not forcing anything on you, or the players. It’s your, or the other players choice.

Stop trying to blame the game, or ArenaNet for your own choices.

Not, deflation of loot in November led to this, look up all of the complaints when they did this.

This isn’t what this thread is about I’ll thank you for not derailing it.

Vayne.8563:

Also other games have tons of dailies. The dailies in Guild Wars 2 are severally casual. To do all the dailies in Rift would take you a whole lot longer than to do all the dailies in Guild Wars 2. And in Guild Wars 2, most of them you can get just by playing normally.

Dailies in GW2 aren’t the same thing, because they aren’t quests and with the requirements that some on the list they have they do sometimes require an entire day to finish due to the requirements they impose. We were supposed to have more of a choice now randomly not being able to finish dailies because suddenly the game decides to have all dungeons/FotM/WvW/150 invaders suddenly. Still not casual and others have attested to this when they first allowed us to choose, it wasn’t enough of a choice/should never have been randomized.

Vayne.8563:

There are a lot of things that make the game casual friendly. Most game push players into doing dungeons. There’s one single epic quest line in Rift and it ends in a raid. That, to me, is not casual. I guess it’s sort of the same in the personal story in Guild Wars 1 ending in a dungeon, but even worse.

Most of the people who like challenging content find there isn’t enough of it in Guild Wars 2. Most of the game can be played by a single player without grouping, and that indeed makes it casual.

Actually that’s not entirely true there are many things you are leaving out like the farming of T6 materials which is the sole way of making any kind of meaningful money in this game. They are forcing people to play dungeons or WvW in order to make any money. The only other method is to buy gems and convert them.

And saying “most” is your opinion that the thousands (i suspect due to the pre-guesting patch emptyness of the servers) who left in November wouldn’t agree with, because of their new dungeon only focus.

I did do the experimental living world, and was highly disappointed that it’s still yet to be the focus on the open world they promised they would have prelaunch.

Also, Rift didn’t force people into dungeons, they had solo dungeons and the lotteries gave plenty of currency that was needed to buy the gear one needed so your argument about that game is nul.

My statement stands.

Recently people have made the false claim that GW2 is casual. This is a post to show just how wrong they are about that. My purpose for this is not only to inform the players of this game what casual means, it’s also to give the devs some pointers on what makes a game casual so that they might in the future consider adding these things to improve the game.

before I begin let me just say that I’m not naming these other games as an insult to the devs, I’m pointing out what specific types of activities (rules/prizes) came from which games, no offense intended.

Things I miss from other games that made them casual friendly:

1. fishing – WoW/torchlight II – complete with nets, spears, poles, chairs, umbrellas, with the ability to fish up valuable vendorfish, gear, hard to find crafting materials (lodestones is an idea ahem cough), minipets, and mounts (if this game had mounts), crafting recipes in all crafts (they even had oils for engineering/alchemy not just cooking).
2. hunting games – The Hunter MMO – in other mmo’s it might be that you need to capture or kill an animal for a hunting contest which would bring prizes and gear. A real hunting contest for the Norn perhaps?
3. farming – farmville/lotro – self explanatory. Might bring in the chance to find the materials usually difficult to get to like vanilla beans.
4. lotteries – RIFT/LOTRO – LOTRO had a daily lottery to get prizes and currency from similar to the dungeon badges, laurels, and karma we see in GW2. Rift had an hourly or bihourly scratchoff which allowed for the winning of rare crafting materials and currencies too (altho it was in a mobile app that they still have to this day).
5. housing – LOTRO/RIFT – Rift is hands down the best example of housing I can think of. The decorations and ability to customize are the best I’ve seen anywhere, however they both had the ability to pickup items from the experiences of the players (quests) where they’ve been what they were doing, and who they’ve defeated to place in the homes of the players.
6. collecting artifacts – RIFT/AoC – filled with lore that can combine to make items or for prizes. Items were usually end game gear or special items that created rare materials or were valuable to be sold for gold.
7. collecting mini pets – WoW – minipets has always been fun in any game but WoW to me had the best ways of doing such, buying them from dungeon only vendors, finding them in rare exotic places. They have a good start in this game, I’m just not seeing the taming of level 1 critters tho.
8. taming/care and feeding of pet companions – WoW/ AoC – In AoC and WoW they had certain animals that were babies when tamed and had special quests to help them grow up turning them into mounts. (now I know they don’t want to add mounts but what if this were used for Rangers instead of the instatame system it would be miles more fun). There was also an unspoken competition amongst hunters in WoW where players sought out and tamed rare pets with rare pet skins. That was the fun part of being a hunter in WoW! For a time there were pet buff foods that cooks could make to help give pets boons during combat, I miss pet food.
9. gambling – Star Trek Online – Dabo is a great time waster, and you can buy things with the gold pressed latinum you get from gambling on the table in Quark’s.

Things that are casual but that I didn’t participate in:

1. mini pet battles – WoW – never really played this since Cata but it looks like pokemon.
2. guild halls – Age of Conan – I was in guilds who had them but never made things or gathered resources to make the guild halls because they already had it and didn’t ask anything of me. Occasionally we had to defend the keeps from enemy guilds in a WvW style setting.

These are things that make a game casual friendly, it’s not simply the aspect of being able to put down a game and come back without having to regrind gear to continue playing where you left off, it’s the activities the fill the spaces between playing PVE PVP WVW or major evens like in the living story or meta boss fights.

Feel free to add anything I missed.

While I agree it was meant to be something to put down and return to, it’s hardly casual.

As a “hardcore” casual player I and many others can attest to the casual play being stripped from the game entirely in November and the few months since.

Here’s how it’s not casual:

1. Hardly any minigames
2. maybe a new meta and very few new DE’s (almost none since launch says ALOT, no one should have to stand around in Queensdale or other places and wait for an event)
3. they still have not restored farming in the open world to this day despite Jon’s post about not wishing for DR or the loot nerfs to harm the legit farmer players.
4. Living story was simply an experiment so basically they made live something that most games would put (and make adjustments to) in a PTR, that’s not right and it’s most likely why people found it to be so little to do. I finished the first two parts in a single day and was left standing there jaw open wondering who the world came up with this living story and why they made it so little to do or experience.
5. no alternative activities like fishing (full on with props cosmetics minis prizes), hunting games, farming (see LOTRO), lotteries (scratch offs or daily drawings see RIFT), housing (LOTRO or RIFT), collecting artifacts filled with lore that can combine to make items (RIFT)

The last one on my list is a very very big indicator of what’s casual, if you don’t have a single thing on that list in your game, that means you’re not catering to the RP/casual crowd at all! Being able to leave a game and come back isn’t casual it’s just the B2P model of business.