Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Warcraft?

@Kecal.3964 – Completing TD Meta events to push the map to T4 take 30 minutes. It’s also best way to maximize the accumulation of ley crystals. It’s stupid but, it’s how it is. If you actually played the content, you’d know. Then again, forum PvP based on ignorance is more fun than game.

The problem now is not as big as it will be in next one year.

1. Attrition
2. Less creation of alts and lesser inflow of new players because of perceived grind
2. Total chaos as there won’t be enough supply to meet demands for items from low level maps

The problem is that when collections added, people said.. “whoa, we likes!” ANET had like a couple of them. Then ANET thought why not give ’em what they want and a boatload of them. People saw Silverwastes and sexy glowy armors. People again exclaimed, “Yeah, moar!”

Then ANET decided to give the people COLLECTIONS. I mean let’s make every kitten freaking kitten in the game is a collection. People gotta like that..they liked it before!.

But, that did not exactly go as planned. So, what’s the lessons learned here?

For people, be careful what you wish for.
For ANET, too much of something is not desirable.

Time to go back to try to get silver on some bullkitten so I can craft something totally unrelated.

You have to repeat adventures, several of them, if you want to craft a legendary. Yep. It’s like “Dudes, do you know how much time it took us to make this feature? You better play it and play it kitten multiple times. Oh yea? You don’t want to? I will make you. You’ll see!” Well, now we are seeing, painfully.

But, to ANET’s s credit, this is indeed a nice feature but, I don’t think it fits where it is right now. It should be part of Heart of the Mists type of zone where one can select which adventure to play from a drop down list any time of the day and night. and should be removed from PvE content. Otherwise, it’s like buying “Need for Speed” game only to realize I need to park my car near a lake in between racing to catch a fish first to unlock an upgrade to the dope car that I wanna drive. And that fish better be BIG! ANET, do you not agree?

The Tooltip is wrong. You need to defeat Goemm and double click the Synergetic Generator where he died and not not where the chest is.

The JP is long, tedious and bugged. You can bypass it if needed. Hope this helps someone.

**Mods: Please move it to bugs forum if you deem fit.

Vet mosquito from that very event near the spiral in Caledon forest.

My main gripe with HoT is that ANET totally screwed semi casual players without warning. They made optional content as mandatory. Jumping puzzles used to be side games but, now they are mandatory for crafting. Seriously, of all things, crafting. Who needs to be a proficient jumper to craft? What kind of thought process was used to design something like this? All new legendary weapons will require you do achieve silver or better rank in adventures. Adventures are also mandatory for specializations collections for new elite specs. Now, they have hidden ascended trinkets and other ascended gear with new stats behind raid. Not everyone can do raids – some people are limited by skills, some are limited by time and other commitments. If ANET’s new motto is to go hardcore, I have to find something different. HoT looks like guild wars but, plays like a Korean grinder.

Playing HOT solo is not really a huge problem for most class but, getting things done is impossible unless you are on organized map. And the layoffs were designed with a zerg army in mind.

Simple question – Why are you forcing your entire player base to play a content that many of us simply can’t or chose not to?

Right now, all ascended trinkets with new stats (eg, viper, crusader etc.) are only available from raid drops.

What are you trying to turn this franchise into?

I’d give HOT 9.5/10 if they did not totally mess up the maps and meta. Its impossible to enjoy the content when the maps are essentially empty. Nowadays, many ppl look for finished DS or AB. Why? For one, how long can you keep doing the same kitten over and over again? Second, for legendary collections. Most people who are diving into the money sink are looking for specific events and those events generally require some of the main events to fail. Talk about kittenty game design.

Killing dungeons in favor of raids is THE stupidest of all ideas one can come up with. Not everyone likes or can raid. I, for one, can’t join a group of 9 unknowns and deal with rage, syncing, performing up to the mark needed for this type of content. I’d rather do a few dungeons, run a fractal or two, get some event chains done and call it a day. But, no, I now gotta be hardcore.. back to become 14 years old again. Wish I could though. Adult life is a problem.

Awesome skin. Must get. Maybe gemstore? But, looks like Tarir inspired.

Rewards are just not enough to justify the effort and long cooldown of meta does not help.

There won’t be any in-game free skins in this game forevermore.

Adventures are excellent mini games. But, they are implemented in an absurd way in this game. I’d not mind seeing them in a menu that I can port in like sPvP. But, keeping them inside the maps and closing them for events is really counterproductive as many of these adventures need countless number of consecutive tries to get silver/gold or maybe even to finish. And then forcing them on to every single player as a mandatory content goes beyond stupidity; it’s insane. It’s like mother forcing her lactose intolerant child to drink milk. Yea, that kinda stupid.

EDIT: You will need to do multiple adventures and secure silver or better rank to complete legendary collection. HOPE needs 1 at first stage and 3 at third stage. I do not know how many needed for the fourth stage. So, for adventure hating people but, legendary loving people this is definitely sad news.

@OP – No one other than ANET can answer your question with certainty. And they probably never will. Why? My guess is that it’s probably for time gating and to provide a false impression of giving customers due attention. It’s also widely used tactics in Korean MMO where you need something to happen that’s generally against the norm. It’s a hook to exploit people’s obsession for completion. I’d be surprised if ANET did not expect a lot of complaints on this issues. But, they did it because this would throttle acquisition of the weapons while ANET gets the players to stick around. After 3 or 4 months ANET would make a nice BLOG post talking about how they listen to the player base and amended the issues. If I were you, I’d look at legendaries after December patch. If it’s still not taken care of, we, the players, need to make a concerted effort to force ANET via social media or simply find another game to play. Somewhat of a similar approach needs to be taken that forced ANET to modify elite spec requirements and update stupid hero points. It will upset some elite kittenbags but, most players will be content. Game is for having fun and not to complete chores.

Nerf raids, un-nerf dungeons. I am not geek enough to commit hours of my adult life at a stretch to kill a mob. HoT from the get-go looked like grind wars 2. It’s now just plain boring w/ raids pulling a lot of geared people out of open world to closed instances. So, what was the point of nerfing dungeons if you wanted to get people doing meta event chains in the open world. Raiding is not for everyone. It makes no sense.

SkyShroud.2865:

velmeister.4187:

HoT is suffering because of long meta chains with disproportionate account bound rewards. ANET took notes from Korean grinders and tried to implement it in a game that is an anti thesis of grinding. They killed dungeons to favor raids; killed boss trains to favor long event chains where loot is driven by how long the player is on the map, another philosophy from pay by hour Korean MMOs.

I don’t remember korea mmo has such long map events chain with lots of waiting time. They do have world boss that spawn at random hours. Korea MMO grindy-ness is based on NA early days MMO. Other than that, everything are decided by anet to kill off the economy.

Actually NCSoft’s AION does. It needed certain forts to be controlledby a faction to open portal to boss instances, dungeons etc. Long hour long zerging to gain entry to raids. Whateveryou see in HOT today from grinding perspective, including mastery, gliding, time gating copied and pasted from NCSoft’s. AION.
That said I do thank them for introducing gliding. It’s implemented in a better way than AION.

ANET is monetizing on the skin fetish. What’s wrong?

373 gold or 35 greenbacks. Your call. This is ANET’s carefully crafted master plan.

TD has exactly what you want. They also award you with mastery and AP.

Silverwastes work because it’s a steady supply of blues and greens for salvage and still the best map to make money other than direct gathering and selling woods to exploit present condition of wood log market on TP. On the other hand, Dry top needs more focused effort because it’s on a timer, current events killing future events, and does not reward as well as silverwastes. Also, navigating dry top for a new player can be daunting.

HoT is suffering because of long meta chains with disproportionate account bound rewards. ANET took notes from Korean grinders and tried to implement it in a game that is an anti thesis of grinding. They killed dungeons to favor raids; killed boss trains to favor long event chains where loot is driven by how long the player is on the map, another philosophy from pay by hour Korean MMOs.

@Bandit – I had somewhat of the same view of DS when I started playing and was gaining Masteries and completing map. I completed it on 2 toons and my perception changed. I think killing dungeons in favor of hardcore raids was an extremely poor decision. I simplycan’t bring myself to raids just thinking about how long it might take and if I have to bail halfway to attend to my life. Also, on the other hand, taking a kitten break makes me disconnected from the participation of map events. I am hoping in December balance patch ANET addresses these issues.

Very frustrating. Legendary crafting is totally depressing. It’d designed just to sink time and money.

Q. What has happened to your manifesto!?
A. Goat ate it.

It will be a problem soon. No one can possibly keep doing these 2 hours long metas over and over and over again for rewards. Maybe over the weekends people may try but, man everyday?

Dragon stand is nothing but, noxious pod farm. TD is for leyline sparks. VB is for oil and AB is for auric dust? But, how long can we be farming?

Ok here is my take on TD and it’s state of current affairs.

TD is actually a very intelligently designed map; one of the best maps I have ever come across in any game. And I will tell you why.

1. It gives you a real feel of being in the jungle – It’s dangerous, it’s confusing, momentary lapse of attention can get you in big mess and it’s disorienting. On the other hand, it’s great for adventurers and the explorers who want to delve into the unknown to find a way out.

2. Map is living and breathing – Literally, it is. You can see that in Ley line confluence waypoint. Every single view of the landscape is just a work of art.

3. Easy navigation – Over time as you explore the map, you will appreciate the simplicity of the concept and the intricacies of the design. It actually gives you the hint how inhabitants (nuhochs for example) live there and and how easy it is to navigate the map once you get accustomed.

I know many of you will disagree w/ me on #3 at least. But, this map needs you to know basic gliding, updraft usage and nuhoch wallows. Once you have these masteries, you will be able to appreciate this map which is nothing but 4 lanes converging at Ley-Line Confluence.

Meta, however, is a huge problem. It’s on a LONG cooldown. The boss fight makes little to no sense. It gets over quickly either way. AB, on the other hand, has a more meaningful culmination of events in the meta. The rewards are meaningless. On the other hand, AB gives a lot of rewards for successful completion. Also, raids killed the HoT maps. It also exposed a dangerous vulnerability of HoT design. These maps, over time, may not be sustainable just by meta chains.

To fix some of the issues, ANET needs to reduce the cooldown of the meta; increase rewards drastically; buff drop-rates of ley sparks or w/e its called after successful meta completion. Additionally, add a failsafe option for the meta failure where players participated still get decent rewards for trying.

Toughness and vitality should contribute in part as a damage modifier. How can a sickly, thin warrior swing a sword and hit harder than a well fed one? Along with precision, toughness and vitality should have contributed towards ferocity. Lack of trinity forced anet to use toughness for agro management. bad bad.

Absolutely not.

Legendary precursor journey is extremely poorly thought out.

ANET’s thought process started with “how to keep people stuck/hooked onto something so that they log on everyday” instead of “how to give people an experience of making a weapon that will have legends associated with it”.

I made two of the first stage items that resulted in exotic items. But, to make them I used ascended mats and another slap on the face is that I had to use an exorbitent quantity of those mats to create something I will never use. How stupid is that? The dev who put together the process and the team that QA’d it are totally incompetent or just got into the job because of Peter principle.

First, Anyone who is shelling out 10, 15 or 25 ascended mats like spiritwood or damask or elonian leather to craft an item probably does not need an exotic grade of the product. Isn’t that common sense? Second, what’s the purpose of this product or the tier other than time-gating? ANET’s game design is now revolving around time gating (daily crafting, account bound craft materials) and keeping people online (map meta rewards tied to how long are you on).

It seems more like a Korean grinder than an American made intelligent product. To make things even more laughable is that Guild Wars 2 does not follow Korean MMO’s revenue generation model of pay by hour. What benefit does ANET gain from keeping people logged onto a map for 1 or 2 hours at a stretch? All these issues combined with ill-designed legendary crafting process really tells a sordid tale even when the new maps are really well designed from artistic perspective.

Aomine.5012:

The 100 Spirit Woods is the only part that’s 100% unreasonable because it fores you to either spend excessive money on TP, or make you play like a robot, a slave for hundred of hours, doing mindless logging.

Actually no. 100 or 200 spirit woods or any number of mats would not have been of any problem if those numbers were based on some logic and common sense.

Nowhere in the game you need spiritwood planks/ascended material to craft exotic. But, in “legendary journey” you do. And you do that using an exorbitant number of ascended crafting material that I described in the OP. And the product that you receive is an exotic ugly looking item that you MUST salvage to proceed to next step. That’s what is unreasonable about it.

@Celtic Lady – No these mats are not for pre-cursor but to unlock next step towards making the precursor.

I strongly believe ANET lied in their blogpost about legendary journey and tried to appeal to a customer base who were already upset at the process of obtaining vanilla precursors. Map completion does not help anyone in procuring these material. Completion just gives you the gift to create gift of maguuma, which arguably is nothing but a gating material that you need to make the legendary. Map completion, otherwise, has no real purpose.

As you can see, I already made the first part. It’s mainly because I wanted to troll myself. I have 9 toons. All my toons have every single ascended weapon and some multiple variants of most used ones. I am not poor and I don’t have a single legendary. I did not make vanilla legendary because I did not like the looks of them and also the idea of dumping thousands of gold to obtain a skin that almost everyone else has. However, I have not much left to do in the game. So, I thought I wanted to check out this ridiculous “journey” to see how poorly thought out the whole thing is. It’s a pity that after taking notes from 3 years of complaints ANET devs came up with this.

Personally, I’d not recommend anyone to spend anything in this “legendary crafting” nonsense as it has practically no reasonable value. You can deck out your entire account with every usable variants of all the ascended gear that you may ever need for the cost of one legendary item in HOT.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Every day that I play I get ~60 elder wood planks just from salvaging stuff.

How long do you play to make 60 elder wood planks a day? And how many mithril ingots do you make at the same time while playing? Just curious.

Pre HoT – RNG Driven Money Sink
Post HoT – Still RNG Driven Money Sink but, now it also needs crazy amount of scavenger hunt all over the place. Scavenger hunt is cool, however, money requirement just quadrupled.

Snapshot of Wood price on TP at the time of posting:
Ancient Wood Log 7s 57c
Elder Wood Log 2s 6c
Hard Wood Log 5s 68c
Seasoned Wood Log 2s 79c
Soft Wood Log 7s 8c

Step 1 of Legendary Nevermore: Ravenswood Branch
What it needs —
2100x Hard Wood Log
2800x Soft Wood Log
1050x Seasoned Wood Log
5250x Elder Wood Log
55x Glob of Ectoplasm
450x Thermocatalytic Reagent
200x Shard of Glory
200x Memory of Battle
6x Orichalcum Ore
6x Ancient Wood Log
5x Pile of Crystalline Dust
400x Thin Leather Section
200x Coarse Leather Section
400x Rugged Leather Section
2000x Thick Leather Section

Source: http://db.dulfy.net/recipe/11232

Are you seriously asking semi-casual players to GTFO of your game?

EDIT: I did not want to go in detail of RNG involved in legendary crafting as many of those have already been well publicized in social media. I noticed someone was arguing about RNG vs. logging, so I felt compelled to edit the OP. For example of RNG in Legendary crafting look at Bifrost. Bifrost crafting Tier III requires a character to get encased in Shatterer’s crystal attack. Good Luck w/ that RNG; you will need it.

I also got PMs claiming that I made this post because I did not want to work hard to get such an “exclusive” item. I think attached screenie should tell a different story. It’s shameful that people would like to troll and beat around the bushes when a serious problem exists in this game and devs are apparently clueless about how to fix them.

So, here is my question to the designer:

What is legendary about this weapon that a player is trying to build?

IMHO, you should have started storyboarding from there and not from the idea of making a skin that would be “expensive and time consuming”.

What’s the connection?

Some of the adventures require serious effort in getting attuned with multiple tryouts back to back. In the middle of getting attuned, BAM!, I have to go back join the zerg to help clear the area of terror.

It makes solid sense on paper. Commander of the Pact can’t be performing at a flying circus while kitten truly hits the fan. Then again, in reality, when everyone is in fact commander of the pact, may be simple me can be away trying to get gold in flying circus or scrambling sanctum?

So, one of two things really need to happen..

1. Disconnect Adventures availability from meta events.
2. Move Adventures to Heart of the Mists as a special type of gameplay.

It is extremely annoying for people with limited amount of time to follow a game clock to see if an adventure is available to play. And it’s also impractical for anyone to be forced out of the adventure mode when that person just perfected a run.

Think about it. Right now, it’s really hit or miss for working folks like me.

Icdan Sevaen.4628:

That’s no bug. Same with the Kryta, Shiverpeaks reward tracks.

I can reactivate both Kryta and Shiverpeaks reward tracks – for that matter all the reward tracks can be reactivated except the ones mentioned in my OP.
Any word ANET?

EDIT: Looks like these tracks are time gated. can unlock one weapon every month or something.

Use of LFG tool will help you. Just join groups that are taxing people to organized maps and you will be able to have fun.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

That’s nothing. Over two or three years now and still stuck at 2/5 for freeing prisoners in those crystals. . . .

Haha you did better than me. I am at 1 after 3+ years.

ANET remove RNG from crafting. This game is not called AION.

My tinkerbell elementalist seconds this OP. I WANTS FLUTTERING BUTTERFLY WINGS!

The following reward tracks, once complete, looks like can’t be reactivated now.

Verdant Brink Reward Track
Auric Basin Reward Track
Tangled Depths Reward Track

Only reward track for the new 4 zones that can be reactivated is Magus Falls Reward Track.

Is this a bug or is it intended to work this way? Or am I doing something wrong?

One of the most ambitious map designs I have ever seen in a game.

To the people who conceptualized this map, hats off to you.

And to the people who brought the concept to life thru multiple sleepless nights of coding, testing, rewriting modules while throwing coffee on monitor out of frustration, pulling own hair off just ’cause chak swagger was just not upto the expectation and doing other crazy things so that we the players can explore this living and breathing map of your creation, thank you.

This map, arguably, the best map I have ever explored in any MMO. Period.

Many thanks!

Getting a group to take down some of these HPs like one in Auric Basin that requires Ley Line gliding mastery is a total nuisance. Looks like making mastery gated hero points commune only was a goal of first iteration changes and somehow some of these got missed.

Thanks ANET.

They need to add some type of reward for doing hero points more than once. The issue is that many people will simply farm those hero points non-stop unless ANET somehow limits this. Not sure really what can be done other than reducing all champs to vets. Kinda bummer for ANET as they wanted the experience to be epic.

Removing RNG was the goal. Since when adding new RNG became a viable alternative?

Unusually for an MMO expansion, Heart of Thorns doesn’t raise the level cap. It doesn’t add any new tiers of gear, either. If you were level 80 before the expansion, you’re still at the maximum level now. If you were fully kitted out in ascended armour before the expansion, you’ve still got the best equipment now.

, i.e., best thing about Guild Wars 2. Right now game is just one thing – Perfect – with right amount of hard and solo content. To make things better, ANET gives you the opportunity to come together to make maps more challenging to reap better rewards from your efforts. This is not science, it’s art. It takes time, iterations and a lot of passion to make it good. I had expected the xpac would lead to an enormous grind and posted here after reading about masteries, hero points and legendary weapon related stuff. ANET made good on almost everything within a week. For me this game gets 10/10 right now.

It was somewhat expected. Most people, who already have legendary stuff, spent thousands to get theirs. So, ANET probably tried to find some middle ground and ended up with this. Problem is that they killed the main source that funded these weapons – dungeons. Without a steady stream of funds, it’d be impossible to do. So, grind gold in silverwastes or convert gems to gold.

Reduce Hero points to 60 for maxing elite specs. You will be forced to do it anyway – the same way you did with sPvP ranks. All you are now gathering in these merged thread is feedback about how poorly implemented concept it is.

I have a serious question though. Why ANET feels it is cool to design a game that simply revolves around the idea of a “train” – be it karma train or xp train? On top of that now one can’t even explore the map in peace and enjoy the scenery that you took a lot of time to draw up and implement. Mobs respawn faster than troll threads. Gotta keep moving with the train or get screwed, kitten scenery.

In summary, reduce hero points requirement to 60 (max), reduce mob respawn rate, do away with stupid mastery levels, let people enjoy the game that you kittening built for people to play and enjoy instead of running circles in a choo choo train.

And Orr was a ghost land as soon as karma farm died.

Make sure you grind these maps hard ASAP. These zones will be empty, some already are, in a few weeks. Get your stuff done now.

It’s ridiculous not to name those points w/ unique names as they need team effort to do mostly. Communicating which Hero Point to do in team is somewhat of a challenge before the real challenge.

Very poor, ill thought out design.

move the game directory from program files to the root.

Instead of c:\Program Files (x86) move it to C:\

Or, create a directory under C:\ called “Games” ( C:\Games\) and move the “Guild Wars 2” directory and all its content to “Games”. It will then look like C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\

This should help. Make sure autologin is disabled while you test.

Slaptjip.4895:

The new maps look fantastic, but yes, I wanted a fun journey, this, this is so far very difficult to like.

The whole “train” to use mushrooms and updrafts etc, hard to believe the team accepted the concept at the design table.

This XPAC looks like a photocopy of NCSoft’s AION. I suspected the game would be grindy because of the whole mastery concept being bulldozed in. Grinding is ok to some extent as the player is working towards a goal. But, this game design has a fundamental flaw. It does not take into consideration that most of these maps will become empty as majority of the players will drift towards “easier” grindy content within a few weeks. Good luck finding people to do challenging content that will hold up a significant portion of the map.

The secondary flaws are in the assumption that majority of the people who play this game like jumping puzzles. Combining them in regular gameplay is plain blunder. Out of 5 people in a group, 1 will surely fail at it. For example, COE Laser corridor — and that was a simple one.

Reworking the content will be impossible right now. So, advice to the wise, try to get things done now when maps are full.