Guild Wars 2

and yet you know about it ^^ and its caught your interest. think about it

There’s a couple ways to play a game when you find it going tough :

1. you can keep trying different things and learn thorough experience, and be rewards for your genuine progress (this is what games are meant to offer)
2. you can research how other people do it and learn from that
3. You can procrastinate and look for excuses rather than either of the 2 above (because we know deep down 10 – 100s of thousands of other people with the exact same class can do the content with no issues right)

The game is not a hardcore examination of your memory and motor skills, its simply a little challenging at the high end of its content spectrum.

option 1 : get a hint of a quest which tantalizes and spikes your curiosity, through mouth of word, forums and general chat we realise something is afoot, you go explore and are rewarded with a little snipped of content.

Option 2, you get an email that tells you to jump onto quest rails at plocation x.

The former is much more interesting, and it a subtle difference, but its the different something dull witted that has seeped into the modern mmorpg design from WOW and co and something more traditional where the player engages rather than being fed a quest rail.

um actually Anet offered Hot, and people bought it because they thought it was value for money for them – well that’s what people with half a brain did., the rest appear to have bought a game expansion before researching if it suited their needs – and then complained to the world when it did not.

Ap hunting, working on nevermore, spvp and dungeons/fractals/wvw when I fancy a change.

now i think of it, an even better example, I was in a full zerker group, and 3/5 wiped on a trash group, and they demanded and swore and threateentd to leave because the other 2 fought to survive and eventually got there. 1 it was bloody rude, 2 If they had not been zerker that wouldn’t have happened and the run would have been quicker. – what you have is a group with no flexibility with a single strategy – stack and spam your face off.

the problem never was or is about the actual zerker builds, its people with no imagination or plain bullies who read something on a forum and don’t like change and try to force the build onto other people – something that is not part of the GW2 philosophy.

il give a real example, i play a mix of zerker and auromancing ele in PVE because i like the idea of healing the group out of trouble – its not ‘min-max’ but its a good build and it is fun and it is useful for the group. On one occasion 1 person was pretty obnoxious because he found this out, and ‘complained’ because the instance would take much longer – when in reality it may have been a minute or so slower at best. Not everything has to be a loot race, its often a lot more fun when its not.

i would agree with this ^^ GW2 overally offers the best package for long term play for mmorpg players that goes beyond racing everyone else to have the most powerful numbers.

WOW – try it now, its an abomination of a game, its empty and insipid and has simply ran out of steam – there’s only so many times you will repeat an instance over and over 40 times a week, and the garrison/class halls is such a fundamental design flaw in a game that is trying to represent a living virtual world its hard.

ESO, for me, this is a close second, the big problem however is that it has bigger balancing issues in PVP and max level gameplay and the Engine is utterly broken with regards to WVW and has been now for 2 years, the devs acknowledge it, but can do nothing about it.

DeceiverX.8361:

Josh XT.6053:

If people spent even a 10th of the time they spent complaining about having to spend $50 on the expansion, they could make $50 IRL to just do it lol…

Jobs typically don’t let you decide to take paid overtime. In some nations, currency is very weak to the U.S. dollar. Not to mention that a large number of players are in their teenage/college years.

For example, if I said that you needed to spend $250 for the expansion because your nation’s economy was weaker than the one selling the expansion, would you conclude that a reasonable price? Would you have concluded that a reasonable price when you were in high school/college?

irrelevant, it would be the same decision they made when they bought the original, or any other comparable mmorpg. Lets compare with another market leader – wow; for the same expansion price you got a couple extra skills, a few zones that you consumed in a week never to return, and a few other bits and pieces, while at the same time, all older content become redundant rather than evolved to maintain its relevance. The point is HOT is at the normal price point for an AAA mmorpg, plus there is no sub., plus old content is maintained.

there’s a simple answer to this, if you see value in the new skills then support the game and buy the expansion, you are obviously going to use the skills. Asking developers to waste resource trying to balance everything against everything including players who play in the game with partial content is going to detract for everybody. 2nd, this ‘Pay to Win’ thing is dramatic nonsense, if you don’t have the expansion then you are playing the old version of the game in reality, your paying to get the new version of the game, not to get a power boost.

its called buying an expansion for an ongoing persistant mmorpg.

It was considered ‘pay to buy an expansion’ and not ‘pay to win’ and no one really minded, You made an adult choice, you either saw value in buying the expansion for e.g the greater range on skills you could have, or you decide not to and played with the content you enjoyed. this ‘Pay to win’ complaining is part of the new age moan on a forum culture.

this thread is headed unplayable solo, however the fact is that the game is playable solo, some will find this difficult, that’s always going to be the case. The thread is built on a falsehood.

Anet have a couple options:

1. Make zones trivial for all including the least skilled. Everything is trivial, that’s fun as long as you only ever want trivial.

2. Make some zones harder than others, this gives everyone choice. For the hardest zons, some will be able to solo, some will need help, some will grow into the zone.

its obvious what the correct option is, so those complaining please think on this.

HARDOFREADING.7298:

The sad amount of advantages that HoT has over Core makes the game virtually unplayable. Now there are going to be people from all over this forum trying to troll but yet they’re all more than likely running HoT builds or they’ll say there are still some Core Guardian builds in spvp.
Doesn’t change the fact that a vast majority of HoT skills/architecture are simply much better than Core. Now there are too many advantages to list…Ill leave those for the people that know the game well enough to know what they’re talking about…But had I been told that any expansions would be far superior & in fact designed to make you uncompetitive so you would be forced to buy them, I never would have invested any time/effort/money in a business model that is clearly “Pay to Win” now. In fact, we were told the opposite.

you have been banging on about this for months, either buy or don’kittens your choice., be a man.

Compare this to GW1, GW1 you get extra skills sets the more expansions you had. Compare to WOW, well if you don’t buy the expansion you cannot even enter the new zones and you cannot even play with max level players.

Chicot.3865:

Lord of the Rings Online which is from 2007 got a dx11, how come this game from 2012 doesnt have it…

yup and compare the graphic in GW2 and LOTR side by side and you will exactly why the latest API != the best looking game. GW2 is already a gorgeous looking game with great performance. Try ESO and you will see how badly wvw can go wrong with a poor engine.

So, been playing auramancer for a week now and enjoying it, only issue i’m finding is that bunkering is viable and its a lot of fun buffing the team, but trying to kill anyone 1v1 is very very difficult – anyone have tips on this aspect (staff/auramancer water/tempest/earth)

solo is very viable in PVE, just switch to earth when things get tight and use your cc and heals to control the fight – a lot of fun.

power creep just as raids appeared, mm :P

game is dying!

ok maybe not

if you have infinite everything then 1) things get pretty boring with no interesting rewards and 2) it makes it harder for Anet to make money, so they are forced down other avenues. -

indeed, dungeons are a lot more fun now, there is no more must be xerk/stack on boss mentality and the dungeons and still get cleared with a lot less negativity. Interesting when you think of it that way, maybe raids should stay just as they are.

try using eventviewer to understand what the actual problem is.

omgplatypus.5381:

I don’t know if admins read this but I just wanted to vocalize something here on the forums where maybe they would. I bounce between games, including MMO games, and haven’t played GW 2 in a while, although I did always enjoy the game. I was recently thinking about purchasing HoT and playing again, until I logged in today and found out I would have to pay for season 2 story content, or do a large mount of farming to trade gold for gems. I respect that the game is free to play, and is a quality game. I understand that some elements of game, cosmetic and item wise will have a cost associated with them. However the cost of experiencing major story content that other players got to experience for free certainly deterred me from returning to your game in any meaningful way. It seems to me that if someone purchases a game, any significant story content associated with that base version of the game should not have an extra price on it that only applies to some players. A similar thing happened with the extra character slot for preorders of HoT. Its greedy, and disloyal to your original customer base. And it certainly is not inclusive of any new players that might wish to join.

in any other game you would pay a $15 a month sub, thats $180 a year. + expansions. You pay a fraction of this for the story content, and in fact can get it for free by simply farming gold if you don’t want to contribute to the games upkeep.

if anets writers are top notch then they will write top notch content that evolves the lore of the game.

i like the new auras they are well drawn, whats the problem?

“What better way to teach acceptance and tolerance than to put a transgender character front and center in a main story? The story could detail the struggles that a transgender person in the world of Tyria”

I play GW2 to escape the real world, I do not need a lesson on acceptance and tolerance, im quite happy with my acceptance and tolerance levels, I want a storyline to be about GW lore not sexual orientation.

‘we run an Auramancer for Matthias’

forcing ‘high’ dps can force people to use dps skills and less mechanics, you are pressured to pick a skill based on how much increase to dps it gives, not how much utility it gives. Obviously you get as much dps as you can, its all about opportunity cost. Theres nothnig wrong with a balanced approach, but when some people force max dps at the cost of everything that’s where the problem of dps races arise -especially when the dps race comes from a tunneled perception.

what does ‘a little too late’ mean in a rpg with no sub?

‘I’ll log to make my dailies and maybe I’ll get interested somewhere’

says it all really

indeed ^^ many many solo player’s have ‘advanced’ to all content, so the assertions are absolutely inaccurate. A mushroom is not a brick wall lol :P

pugs will always be inferior to organised groups that learn to play together, thats why the dps race is such a poor mechanism, skill is skill, not how many numbers you can pump out per second. Il give a concrete example, i enjoy playing auras, an entirely selfless build thats all about boosting others – is this meta? no! if a raid encounter was not focused on a dps race would it be viable assuming the player had skill.

some people embrace complexity and relish when they encounter a massive new world and community – they embrace and enjoy change and being the new player that has a mountain of knowledge and experience to climb, thats what playing a new mmorpg is all about – otherwise it is utterly the same old same old. This from an old timer that has been playing heavily since the early 80’s.

his squalid negative viewpoint in life isnt getting the reaction he expects, im guessing he will move on to some other home to seek out misery.

impressive and repulsive in equal measure indeed, and what was the purpose of your post?

Bhaalspawn.3546:

Hi all

Done my time here now and wondering where the game is?

Tried PVE, here’s a level, like it and we might give you another pile for free, if you cap before finishing the 40 level areas let us know and we’ll make it easier.

Tried PVP, Min/Max obsessed people but still get through on a noob condi/turret Engineer, enjoyable listening to them cry but that wears thin quickly.

Tried WvW, actually it’s ok during quiet times when it might be 1on1, 1on5 or just blobbed, then is follow the leader, around and around and around and oh god this is the umpteenth time I’ve captured this place today.

Dungeons are just kiddies screaming that everyone else is rubbish.

Raids, who knows? Joined a guild that advertised raid training and then won’t take anyone with gear that hasn’t taken as long as they have been in the game to get, got kicked from the guild for asking them to stop complaining everyone else in the game is useless.

So, that has taken less than a month, (as well as playing EVE, WoT and DDO) I don’t play console games but have younger relatives that do and that is the maximum any game lasts for them. Is that what this game, which has been praised to me for years, has become?

ps, before anyone starts, EVE is anything imaginable as soon as you have a few toons, WoT is just random PVP fun and DDO is, well, DDO.

all that and you just joined 5 days ago. impressive and repulsive in equal measure eh.

Simple this – make the raid fight highly demanding and require a high level of skill, but take out the DPS race. Dps races are tied with the power race that goes along with them in other mmorpg – a dated design concept, and oddly placed in a game that has effectively solved the power curve dilemma.

Advantages:

-Players are free to experiment with builds – its no longer about a meta.

-disenfranchise the dps > than everything ‘omg why are you not meta’ tunneled viewpoint. Boons, auras, healing, dodging, dps, tanking all should be able to feed into an encounter.

take dps races out of raids and I would have no issues with them, you can have difficulty without forcing dps as a premium – that’s poor design that comes from the dated power race based MMORPG that is slowly dying.

Its worth adding its an mmoRPG not a mmo, and good Role Playing Games allow solo and group play.

Envy.1679:

coso.9173:

why do people assume that if they include a lgbt character it will be just a token character with awful background just to show how progressive anet is?
would you react the same to a straight character?
its is not about being a sjw, or microaggresion bs, but including a trans npc should not create such trouble in the first place. it is just a npc in a mmo story, why would people be in arms about such a simple thing?

The problem is that you want to include a trans NPC, instead of an NPC who just happens to be trans.

it might be hard for you to understand but those are two different things.

hit the nail on the head. +1

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:

vesica tempestas.1563:

lol its hardly ‘insane’ my advise is simply use the final fight as motivation to experiment with builds. Ive solo’d it on a zerker ele and an aura ele, its not hard it just needs thought. If you can work out why it is the vast majority of players can happily solo this place and you cant you will learn to love the game all the more – beating challenges is satisfying and fun too and dying is fine. There are also 28 or so zons that can be facerolled when you fancy an easier run. The alternative is that everything is easy – and no-one wants a lack of diversity right? Put it this way, in a year your experience will have grown by a years worth but the content will stay the same, so content to be played long term.

But this content is not being played! I have swapped maps several times in a small space of time and still lost events, because the maps are empty!
Do I feel like this expansion should be able to be played solo? Yes, I do!
Do we not remember that Anet changed Zhaitan so it could be done solo?! If your argument is ‘This is end game content, you’re supposed to be grouped up’ why did they change it? Because MANY of us would at least like that option to be able to do it alone. Why didn’t Anet learn that some people don’t have guilds or want to use LFG tool.
And as for ‘many of us have soloed HoT and didn’t have a problem’ honestly, I’m happy for you, but this post was about the many of us who don’t feel the same way, and that’s not balanced.

Well since Anet has the metrics they have balanced the game to target the average player, so yes its balanced, and you are incorrect. The reality is players solo the place all the time, so the argument that it cannot be solo’d is patently incorrect.

you have to look at the big picture, there are 32 or so zones, 90% of zones you can literally roll your face over the keyboard and destroy everything in sight. HOT is for where you want more of a challenge. Its being rather selfish to want every zone to match 1 gamestyle, it is RIGHT that the zones have different difficulty levels, so obviously for some the top end may be difficult – this is healthy and fun for those that get tired of rolling the face on said keyboard.

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:

I’m actually genuinely heartbroken. I preordered the deluxe version of HoT months before a release date, and couldn’t wait to explore the jungle!
I have been waiting for a friend to help me with my final story since october… Tonight we spent 2 and a half hours trying to kill Mordremoth, beating him down to a third of his health, [/spoiler even reuniting me with tybalt,] which, had me choking back a tear… only for the game to not let us jump into the air during his ‘ultimate floor of death’ move or suddenly having our wings disappear during mid glide, then being sent back to the very beginning?! What? WHY?? Fighting Zhaitan was tough, but if I died fighting the mouth, I came back fighting the mouth! Why are there no checkpoints in this fight at all?!
I am not here trying to slag the game off, I truly love this game! I have even defended HoT many times to my friends, even going as far as to say maybe the chaotic feeling in the jungle is to reflect the chaos of the situation. And the story is amazing as always!
But it’s too difficult to just go exploring solo. And so many people I know people who love guild wars 2 who have literally stopped playing because of this expansion. And others who promise if the next expansion isn’t ‘better’ they’ll stop playing too…
And if you are one of the people that aced this all first time, then I am happy for you, but you are not in the majority here.
I have played this whole game solo, only joining groups to do the odd dungeon or fractal. I’m not saying the people on the map now aren’t friendly, but the map is sparse most of the time, and i have been party to more failed missions than successful ones recently. Doesn’t it say something when I’m happier redoing old content rather than exploring the new areas?
Please ArenaNet listen to your players! I understand that some players want a ‘Real Challenge’ you have provided raids to people who want to push themselves to the max, but it’s unfair to us who play because we love the story, our characters, and your universe, to now have us play on insane mode to experience new content is ridiculous.
Now i’m not sure when, or if, I even want to try the last part of my story again, I will probably stay in central tyria just having fun instead.

lol its hardly ‘insane’ my advise is simply use the final fight as motivation to experiment with builds. Ive solo’d it on a zerker ele and an aura ele, its not hard it just needs thought. If you can work out why it is the vast majority of players can happily solo this place and you cant you will learn to love the game all the more – beating challenges is satisfying and fun too and dying is fine. There are also 28 or so zons that can be facerolled when you fancy an easier run. The alternative is that everything is easy – and no-one wants a lack of diversity right? Put it this way, in a year your experience will have grown by a years worth but the content will stay the same, so content to be played long term.

2 Hot out of how many? if we had to play the victim i would say HOT players are being picked on because they are only given a choice of 2 across all achievements available. However in reality picking things out of context will always give something to argue about.

Zenith.7301:

flog.3485:

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:

I’m actually genuinely heartbroken. I preordered the deluxe version of HoT months before a release date, and couldn’t wait to explore the jungle!
I have been waiting for a friend to help me with my final story since october… Tonight we spent 2 and a half hours trying to kill Mordremoth, beating him down to a third of his health, [/spoiler even reuniting me with tybalt,] which, had me choking back a tear… only for the game to not let us jump into the air during his ‘ultimate floor of death’ move or suddenly having our wings disappear during mid glide, then being sent back to the very beginning?! What? WHY?? Fighting Zhaitan was tough, but if I died fighting the mouth, I came back fighting the mouth! Why are there no checkpoints in this fight at all?!
I am not here trying to slag the game off, I truly love this game! I have even defended HoT many times to my friends, even going as far as to say maybe the chaotic feeling in the jungle is to reflect the chaos of the situation. And the story is amazing as always!
But it’s too difficult to just go exploring solo. And so many people I know people who love guild wars 2 who have literally stopped playing because of this expansion. And others who promise if the next expansion isn’t ‘better’ they’ll stop playing too…
And if you are one of the people that aced this all first time, then I am happy for you, but you are not in the majority here.
I have played this whole game solo, only joining groups to do the odd dungeon or fractal. I’m not saying the people on the map now aren’t friendly, but the map is sparse most of the time, and i have been party to more failed missions than successful ones recently. Doesn’t it say something when I’m happier redoing old content rather than exploring the new areas?
Please ArenaNet listen to your players! I understand that some players want a ‘Real Challenge’ you have provided raids to people who want to push themselves to the max, but it’s unfair to us who play because we love the story, our characters, and your universe, to now have us play on insane mode to experience new content is ridiculous.
Now i’m not sure when, or if, I even want to try the last part of my story again, I will probably stay in central tyria just having fun instead.

Honestly, it boggles me….Why do you want to solo a map that was advertised as being an end-game content? You know it is not because some players are obviously better skilled than others that they aced it in the first try….They also had to fail and then they adapted their gameplay to the content hot contains because it is different than core GW2. I am casual player, I play the class with the lowest personal DPS (mesmer), I have no intention in raiding and yet I find hot maps a lot more interesting, valuable and fun that core maps…How do you explain that? If the map is sparse I suggest you to look at the LFG if you are struggling too hard to do the events. As for the personal story, I sympathize because it was so buggy before that you couldn’t do it but now it is possible. To jump into the air you just need to follow your group with bram, you don’t even need to press the jump bar, only do it when your are thrown into the air to activate your glider

No content that is beat by a brainless zerg is “end-game content”. Orr was not end-game content, and neither are these maps.

A Zerg will zerg content, ‘end’ or not, and with GW2 content is applicable to Zergs, groups and solo players. Orr was not end-content, there is no End-content in GW2 it was simply a zone that had level 80 mobs etc.

Gays, transgenders..whatever – they should not be discriminated against, but neither should their be an agenda to promote based on sexual orientation – this has NOTHING to do with a game. That doesn’t mean you should not see these types of NPC, just dont use them as a ‘statement’ or disproportional represent. In Real life im sure these people want to be treated normally and with respect – not stuck on a pedestal with everyone pointing and saying look we respect them!

Nickr.1298:

Hello Everyone;
I have played many MMOs in my time, and Guild Wars 2 is hands down my NUMBER 1 favorite. But the one thing I have been longing for is the opportunity to PVP people with mutual desire in a PVE internment. Some games including SWTOR and Borderlands, have a simple way of having 1v1 small group battles; without deviating from the core gameplay. I love PVP, and never want to take anything away from it but it would be really amazing if you had the ability to like wispier; send a challenge request for a duel or a party battle, if they are in your party. Please GW this would be an amazing feature to allow friends to Battle it out across all of Tyria.

I would recommend for simplicity you just add one more “player option” to the drop down on a person that mentions sending mail and wispier; but have it say something like “Challenge” or “Duel.” The two players could battle, and then upon being downed it breaks you out of combat so that they could rez you. And if you were to be Attacked by a MOB in any map it automatically pulls both parties out of the “Challenge.”

If anyone likes this idea share this thread with people you know to let Anet know!

Thanks so much – Nickoris

1v1 is already organised in WVW, im not a 1v1er but I regularly come across areas where there is organised 1v1 and the etiquette is for other people to not attack them which most people respect.

Obtena.7952:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

Vayne.8563:

Banchou.5628:

Rinn.2375:

Vayne.8563:

Anyone who said this hasn’t changed too much, simply isn’t paying attention.

It’s true. I am a casual player. Casual of the casuals as a matter of fact. I lost interest quickly in HoT because I died so many times. Now, I can manage in HoT with my guardian and easily finished Verdant Brinks map. Achievements and all. Even unlocking the masteries is a lot easier now (from 22 to 33 within a day with casual, not HC play), so I don’t know what is the problem with the difficulty level of the HoT content.
I think it’s good now. A bit harder than the “Prophecies” and a lot easier than the old HoT

In terms of dificult barely changed, the damage is pretty much the same aside the mushrooms, the hostile npcs continues with the same attack patterns.

The whole diference is that now you can unlock faster the HoT masteries and is worth stay playing on HoT maps reward wise…

Aside having new unlocked masteries that really make travel around the jungle easier, you simple adapted to the HoT gameplay style lol

This isn’t actually true. Many of the random champ events around the map have turned into veteran events, like the champ troll that used to spawn in VB. There are changes to adventures which give you more time/make them easier. There are changes to the way certain events scale. In addition, there are some areas along the main pathways where the amount of mobs have been reduced.

I have an older woman in my guild, who couldn’t get through the zones before and now she can. She told me it was much easier for her to survive. She used to be frustrated and now she’s not.

It IS easier.

No they really haven’t, i’ve had to stand around asking in chat for help on champions as much now as i ever did before the patch..

Very little changed on difficulty in hot, what looks great in patch notes doesn’t equate to the actual game play value..

The other thing is the huge imbalance between classes that while some classes can face roll HoT the others cannot.. All classes should be able to face roll hot, the whole map not just some.

I can play HoT on all 9 professions. Some ARE harder than others. That’s how MMOs should be. The should provide options for people who want to play faceroll and people who want an actual skill ceiling. That’s part of good MMO design.

no, that is horrible design
the options should be in the variety of the content , not in unbalanced classes

That’s not horrible design … that’s standard design. That’s how it works for every MMO I’ve ever played.

look at wow, it has spent its life desperately trying to ‘balance’ and gradually over the years they have realized that large amount of variance of npc skills + human player is impossible to balance (who would have guessed!) Unfortunately for WOW players blizzard were too amateur and greedy to recognize that players want diversity and focused on the power chase at the expense of diversity., the rest is history. GW2 however split pvp and pve and largely negated the balancing issues, giving players freedom to pick builds outside of PVP that is fun to them personally, with a large diversity of power. They balanced for groups of 5 with normalized gear not skills and talents.

The only people that have problems with this are ex mmo players coming from games like WOW – they want to feel as ‘powerful’ as possible and are stuck in a mental ‘optimise everything’ rut. Others enjoy the diversity and do not worry that they are x% off ‘optimal’. This is how MMO should be, diversity and a paper/stone/scissor/x mentality, not a everyone needs to have exactly 9999 dps that is 65.234566 % easy to play for everybody.

such is the benefit of a game that doesn’t force you to pay a sub every month ^^

Alekt.5803:

You could try this one. Though, it’s crippled by a bug Anet refuses to acknowledge; arcane traits will not reduce the cooldown of your overload recharge. You asked for a support or bunker build. You can swap to the regular Rune of the Soldier instead of Leadership if you prefer, but the boon duration is generally well-received from leadership, and the condition convertion on elite acts in a similar way to Soldier runes too.

You also have Vigor-Giving traits from Arcana, which synergizes with Latent Stamina, which itself synergizes with Evasive Arcana. Blast you icefields for area wide: 10 energy, 1200 heal, 1 condi clear, 1 vigor (7s), 1 regen (7s), and the 4 seconds frost aura (is used to be 4, but got buffed to 4 when every aura got nerfed)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XC9XiVYCGOAcYiFWAjIBcACAuX1uaZtYDk/qAA-TJxHABA8AAq9CAgUZAx3fAA

thanks, il have a look

Evilgamer.3964:

I stopped playing a few years ago, after all my friends quit playing. I picked it up again this week after reading about the giant patch and the change in game directors, so I’ve been puttering around. I’ve convinced a few friends to come check it out again as well, so we’ll see if the next few weeks gets us back in again or not.

In the meantime, some questions, mostly relating to reasons I stopped.

1) Why no new dungeons in HoT? Why a raid?

2) Is there challenging open world pve content in HoT areas?

3) World bosses all still seem to be a giant zerg where you can push 1 and collect chests of loot (they are really cool looking bosses at least!). I saw that they made a big deal of their Shatterer revamp, but I barely noticed a change to the fight – zerg familiarity in the same way as Teq, or HoT power inflation, or both? Dungeons are a slight step up from that. I’m assuming higher level fractals and then raids are the next step from there. Have the devs commented at any length (or shown through previous action) about how they plan to develop challenging PvE content going forward? Are raids it, or are they looking at other avenues?

4) From my limited experience with LFG, dungeon groups are every bit as toxic as when I stopped. New player and/or not running approved build/class? Immediate kick or complain loudly. Part of this seems to be related to the way dungeons are run – the same as they were when I stopped, which is speed running them and skipping as much as possible. Have the devs given any indication they plan to revisit or revamp dungeon content, or are they being mothballed in favor of new open world content and raids?

5) New content. Have the devs indicated if they’re moving to a ‘proper’ expansion pack model, or is there going to be some mix of living world story content and expansions? I didn’t like LW1 much, but as it was temporary content, my friends will never experience it now. Getting them to pay for LW2 is likely a non-starter. End result, they’ll be transitioning from vanilla to HoT with little connective tissue story-wise. That may harm the experience for some of them significantly, I don’t know yet, we’ll find out soon enough. Coming back to any mmo late you can expect to have some disorientation, but GW2’s… odd… method of content delivery is exacerbating that issue.

6) Real money market content. I have an uneasy relationship with f2p style content and microtransactions in general, as do my group of friends. The feeling that content is being developed for a paywall or that free content design decisions are being affected by market considerations (ie, rate of xp gain/item acquisition when boosters are in the mix), none of that produces feelgoods. Inventory slots and bank space tied to the gem store produced a pretty strongly negative reaction in my group. For long time veterans, how do you feel the gem store content has been handled over the last few years?

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That’s all, just looking for some more clarity on issues that were important to me or my group of friends. There are (were?) a lot, lot of things I love about GW2, but there were unfortunately also a lot of frustrating or baffling decisions that whittled down my guild and then my friends and then ultimately me as well.

1 is rhetorical so cannot really provide an answer.

2 Hot is challenging throughout, thers a lot of people complaining its difficult, its not really but it demands attention.

3 No idea, theres not a lot of demand.

4 There isn’t much toxicity in comparison to any other mmo out there, the meta people have learned a bit now so its not quite as prevalent apart from raids which is more tightly tuned.

5 rhetorical

6 rhetorical