Guild Wars 2

I only play staff ele and I destroyed packs and have no problems with vets, the trick is the ol
d basics, crowd control, dodge and healing (this is counter balanced with my zerk build)

could actually have a couple experience mastery lines, 1 awards a writ, 1 awards a random luck and 1 awards a shard.

Nos Deserdi Veritas.4632:

Hi,

I’m sure I’m not the only one when I say that crafting a precursor is expensive.
Let me give one example:
- You need 250 Crystalline Ingot
- Each of those need 1 Amalgamated Gemstone
- Each of those need 9 Beryl Orb (for example)
- Those cost right now 27s, you need 2250!
- Total costs for only the Orbs is around 585 gold!
You can also buy Amalgamated Gemstone, that’s around 750g right now.

That’s just 1 item for the precursor, not to forget the 15 Deldrimor Steel Ingots, 10 Elonian Leather Squares, 10 Spiritwood Planks etc etc…

So it’s cheaper to buy a complete legendary rather than to craft a precursor!
I just realized this now when I’m in the middle of crafting The Device… I’m not sure if I’m going to continue this…

as has been said before, crafting precursors is not for those that simply want to buy the way to a legendary, its a long term goal for those looking for long term goals.

I like many love wandering about tyria doing a little farming/gathering/events but feel now that its not very rewarding and poor design that I gain XP, but it disappears into the void now that my masteries are maxed. A good example is resurrecting npc and players, you now do not get rewarded for this at all in effect.

What I would like to see is a simple ‘Experience Mastery’ line that we can switch to that reenables our xp bar, and gives a spirit shard each time we fill the bar. Thoughts?

You could take this a stage further and show how many Experience Mastery points a player has gained to add more value without impacting elsewhere.

OP you got bored of GW2 years ago with its easy zones that can be solo’d, so now you want more solo play, but you don’t want to solo in HOT because its slightly more challenging? Then you don’t like crafting, and you dont like jumping puzzles. Not quite sure how you will like raiding, that’s not solo either. I think your in the wrong game/genre.

exactly, GW2 had large instances that were at the very least as difficult as the solitary raid in GW2, GW2 elite zones were also very difficult if you did not have the right hero’s and gear and skills.

GW2 is as casual friendly as GW1 was, and in fact due to deliberate design decisions and philosophy is far more casual friendly, so this melodramatic nonsense that changing GW2 to be more ‘hardcore’ is actually about players feeling entitled to complain about it, masked behind ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ conspiracy theories.

A personal dps meter where you can only see your own stats is ok imo, but monitoring stats from other people is bad. Look at the toxic behaviours it has generated in games like wow – to such a degree it impacts on how people interact with each other.

No what? I was referring to network issues in wvw and cities you just repeated what I said.. On your local pc if your not cpu or gfx capped or running out of memory then that’s not the problem (which is what the OP was referring to)

I agree, for me Orr is still the most beautiful zone I have seen in any mmo.

This thread is moot since its evident that a huge amount of players can quite happily play solo and enjoy it. Go to Tyria for some slaughter, go to the new zones for more challenging mobs. win win.

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

DeceiverX.8361:

vesica tempestas.1563:

SRoode.7318:

You edited as I replied. Yes, that’s my point again, are we limited at the client server end?

I believe so, and ultimately the limit is hardware at this time.

Not true at all. The problem is solely the way the engine runs, and the CPU-bounded nature of MMO games. There is room for optimization, but not to anything extreme.

Depending on how the code is written, the speed of the machine is completely irrelevant. I can write a simple recursive program that performs a very basic task which takes hours to complete versus picoseconds in other implementations. Some algorithms can’t be re-written accordingly without major complexity increases (harder to debug and much costlier to implement correctly).

As for the OP; more cores will not achieve anything in terms of performance. GW2 could run at almost identical speeds on an OC’ed pentium 4/core 2 machine given the rest of the hardware would be configured properly. DX9 doesn’t support multi-threading, so five of those cores are not being taken advantage of, and even then, multi-threaded process development can cause slowdowns depending on how the code is written, which is a relatively new and very complex task.

Performance issues are usually related to network code, IO, Messaging, queries. I don’t really think CPU and GFX card is the answer because the real bottlenecks are in cities and in wvw, and we can see that people can get 60+ fps with no issues. When I refer to hardware I’m talking about these factors and server side processing where lots of players are interacting.

SRoode.7318:

You edited as I replied. Yes, that’s my point again, are we limited at the client server end?

I believe so, and ultimately the limit is hardware at this time.

there’s no mystery here or conspiracies’ by the oh so evil developers, they realised players wanted expansions more than Living story so they changed strategy. In development you do not simply stop as soon as you identify a new strategy , it takes time between that initial decision and the point where you can confirm that you can safely implement the new products, what’s the reuse like, what’s the regression impact, whats the cost etc etc so you may very well spend months developing a product but will say nothing in case it does not work out.

Sicarius.4639:

It’s limited by the game, it has a horrible performance regardless of how beastly you make your machine.

in what way has it terrible performance? the gfx are beautiful, I personally get 40-60 full setting s on a 3 year old rig. The only perf issue is wvw, and even then that’s still smooth. Try playing ESO and you will see what an average engine performance is like.

Re the problem, imagine the calculations involved when you have even 50 people grouped together spamming AOE that is hitting each other and interacting through fields, then add player movement, that’s a kitten ton of processing that has to be on the server to prevent exploitation.

Bear in mind ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ are artificial labels used by people in forums to generalise and blame. In reality GW2 is extremely friendly to players who play casually, e.g whenever they want and not on regular long scheduled events. Guild wars 2 has 1 thing that is highly tuned to a specific group size and that’s raids. There is 1 raid amongst 3 years of content which is for players who want to play this style of content, and it would be fair to say there is space for more as long a Anet continue to produce other content – which they have made perfectly clear that they will.

If you find yourself being mean spirited about other players simply because they do something you don’t do, its time to look in the mirror.

Coulter.2315:

Torolan.5816:

*There was very few exclusive gear in GW2 until HoT. I think nobody denies that.

I deny it A LOT, want Heroic Weapons go WvW, want Dungeon Armour go PvP or Dungeon, want Tequatl weapons do Tequatl, want Crafted Armour do Crafting, want Fractal Weapons do Fractals, want Living Story items do Living Story..

I hope thats enough to prove you’re wrong beyond belief..

+1

And then there is festival events
And then there is early access rewards
And lets not forget our roots, hall of monuments, a deserved exclusive reward to those dedicated to GW1.

all of these things could easily be added to GW2 OP, you don’t need a total rewrite of an entire game for those. Re sub, just treat yourself with gems once a month, thats my strategy

This is a great idea imo, and totally buys into the spirit we want in a game. Sure griefers may use it and skitten to themselves, but in this case ultimately they would be showing themselves up for what they are.

the ‘the game is failing’, Hot is a failure, the game will fail, I’m never playing again, its a scam etc etc etc nonsense is not debate by people who are passionate about the game, its something else, you see it in lots of gaming forums. Years ago if you don’t like a game you just moved on and picked a game you enjoyed, nowadays some feel they need to post on forums and blame the ‘devs’, ‘casuals’, ‘hardcore’ anyone else for why they don’t enjoy a game through bought as if they have no responsibility for their own selections.

Worse than this, they don’t seem to comprehend in mmorpg the genre is all about a shared virtual world – they want the game to magically match everyone’s desires at all times with no compromise – they are entitled to it and can prove it with personal anecdotes that prove the game is bad.

no this is about your personal taste, hundreds of thousands play GW2, many love HOT, many casual players love HOT (99% of GW2 is casual play). You don’t, but that’s doesn’t mean HOT is a poor design or ‘suddenly changed’ it just means you bought a game you don’t enjoy it seems. Now if GW2 was poor quality and shoddy that deceived people that would be a different story, but there was a TON of material prior to HOT release, I used it myself to decide if I wanted to but it and return from ESO.

Nobody is making anyone farm anything, its just a game.

A Personal PS meter would be fun as long as that data could never be shared, games get crushed under the weight of ‘meter kitten’ and people expressing negative opinions about how other people play.

for me I would like to come to a forum to chat about things that we do in the game, things that can be improved with people that love the game – after all why else would you be posting on a gaming forum. However this and other forums are plagued with the ‘I dont like something so its fail’ noise by those who just cant recognize when that the internet and mmorpgs do not revolve around their personal tastes.

Its the equivalent of myself walking into a party filled with people chatting, singing, doing stuff and generally being entertained and me standing in a box in the middle and shouting ‘that music is rubbish, oh i don’t like the carpet, oh the food is same as it was last year, THIS IS FAIL!’

looking at that report, sales for HOT were slightly disappointing , however its showing that GW2 remains at a stable £6 million or so revenue a month and will continue to do so. That’s people continuing to invest in the game month on month, that means GW2 including HOT is not a failure.

Vayne.8563:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

So, in the end, one or both of those groups will be unhappy and there’s no way around that.

The point still stands. Even if they add something that casuals want behind hardcore content, how is that making the game (as a whole) not casual friendly?

Well, it depends. Adding a specific single thing doesn’t. But that’s not where it ends. There will be more raid wings and more rewards.

If I go to an amusement park, and I don’t like roller coasters, but I do like shows, then I want enough shows to make it worth my admission to the park, or I’m going to feel ripped off. Not everyone wants roller coasters.

This is the same situation. It’s not just raids. It’s raids and a lot of other stuff that some casuals feel locked out of, and it’s a percentage of the expansion.

So raids is advertised as the next big thing, and you’re not doing that, and maybe the new zones are too hard and you’re not doing those, or you don’t have enough time for the metas, so you’re not doing that, and then maybe you can’t spend the time to grind out legendaries, and suddenly, you’re in an amusement park full of roller coasters looking for the ocassional show.

The problem is, you paid the same admission price as the people who love roller coasters, but a percentage of the content isn’t yours anymore. So you get fewer and fewer of the rewards.

But now add to this, the entire amusepark existed before and it was 90% shows, so you want and spent your money when they opened an extension to that park and suddenly it’s 90% roller coasters. That’s the real problem.

You think it’s not a problem because you like roller coasters. You think there are still a couple of shows. But people who bought the expansion paid the same price you did and the offering percentage has changed drastically.

That’s what all the complaining is about. It’s about the fact that people who could do most things before, are now locked out of most things. Small guilds can’t access guild halls without bankrupting themselves. People can’t farm legendaries, because the price of everything has gone up, but the quick dungeons they ran don’t give gold anymore. Not as much anyway.

You can say I like all this stuff so what? But it doesn’t solve the problem and for some people, possibly a lot of people, there is a problem. Because essentially the product has escalated too suddenly and it’s leaving too many people behind.

That’s my take on it.

your analogies are incorrect, your amusement park started off as 98% ‘casual’ rides and perhaps 2% ‘hardcore’ cutting edge in the shape of high end fractals, then Anet added a new rollercoaster in the shape of raids and 99% other stuff. its still the same shape of data with the vast majority of content being casual. We know Hot is casual friendly because the vast majority can happily play it solo in glass gear (while also offering a step up from the overpowered tyia, which is still there)

Variety is good and there’s nothing to fear from new content appearing that is specialised .

as for ‘Small guilds can’t access guild halls without bankrupting themselves. this is entitlement nonsense, Guild halls are designed for guilds not small parties (why would you design it for small parties?) however, as with the rest of Anet strategies, if small parties want to form mini guilds they can, but obviously its balanced for larger groups of people, that’s common sense.

Zaph Treybourne.2194:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Zaph Treybourne.2194:

Hi, I am just wondering if there is a way to get just the Heart of Thorns expansion without it being bundled with the core game than I have already purchased. I really wanna check it out, but don’t wanna pay $50 for an expansion that includes content I have already purchased. This is why I didn’t pre-order the expansion, but I was just curious as if they made a way to buy just the expansion alone.

what your saying is that you want to play the latest expansion for free (the one the devs just spent x millions on and are building a return on it) no game is going to survive do that.

I would do what you do with any other game, research using videos and unbiased reviews, or wait for discount offers.

Not at all what I was saying. I was saying I want to buy the expansion, not the expansion + core game. If the expansion was $20-30 I would pick it up. But from all the things I have read it isn’t worth the $50 price tag. I will just wait till they put it on sale or drop the price, till then I shall play the core game or another game.

Ah i see. As other have mentioned, your not paying for Core when you pay for HOT. the going rate for an AAA expansion is $40-50, so for example WOD " $50, or even Rift Storm legion years ago at $40. Existing players like myself are buying an expansion at the normal expansion price, and newcomers are getting core for free as it makes little sense (and technically hugely expensive) to have them restricted to the 4 new zones. Same would apply to any other game, e.g a player buying WOD and being restricted to those zones makes little sense either.

Its a modern issue, some players don’t take responsibility for their own action and blame the game developers when they don’t like a game they bought. You do your research, you decide if you will like a game, you buy it or not. You don’t need to document every subjective dislike in a forum.

Palador.2170:

Ah, Heart of Thorns. Some people say it’s too easy. Some say it’s too hard. A few say it’s just right. And what does ANet say? ANet says that HoT was made to bring in new systems to be used to make future content.

So, this leads me to the title question. Why didn’t HoT come with a difficulty adjuster? Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

No single difficulty will make everyone happy, that is and has always been obvious. And yet, we’ve still not seen any signs of the common sense solution to the problem. Why?

because its a virtual world in a mmorpg not a single player game. The alternative is an instance per skill level, if that’s the case you would be as well doing away with the virtual world and having a diablo 3 style interface – different game altogether ensues.

EATtheDEAD.4768:

I didn’t really keep up with GW2 since a few months after launch. I came back a few days ago because I saw the xpac trailer, very late, and was excited at the thought of getting to use new weapons on certain classes.

Mostly being excited about using a Greatsword or Greathammer on my elementalist! I thought it would be so cool to wield fire and ice with a big kitten sword! Hot kitten !

I didn’t realize, though, with the expansion you only get to unlock a predetermined extra weapon for each subclass or specialization whatever they are calling it.

And Ele’s is a warhorn… a horn? Necro’s got the kitten giant sword, and I get a horn. Needless to say I am pretty freakin disappointed. I’m sure they made it clear to people who follow the game that there were still restrictions.

But from a pure outsider view it made it seem like all weapons were finally open to all classes.

:(

ele’s also got tempest, we got storms and shouts, all pretty cool stuff, we have 7 weapons, plus we can summon 3 weapons (including a fiery greatsword) and a shield. That’s a lot, considering you can combine them for different skill sets

If every class had every weapon you would start to use the flavour of each profession, its nice to have an alt that does something different imo.

Zaph Treybourne.2194:

Hi, I am just wondering if there is a way to get just the Heart of Thorns expansion without it being bundled with the core game than I have already purchased. I really wanna check it out, but don’t wanna pay $50 for an expansion that includes content I have already purchased. This is why I didn’t pre-order the expansion, but I was just curious as if they made a way to buy just the expansion alone.

what your saying is that you want to play the latest expansion for free (the one the devs just spent x millions on and are building a return on it) no game is going to survive do that.

I would do what you do with any other game, research using videos and unbiased reviews, or wait for discount offers.

Salonikios.3154:

You know, when i first played this game 3 years ago,it was so friendly and peopel could just whisper you by themselves just to give you tips for what to do next in your adventures,now,people tend to hide from you just so you dont happen to discover a glitch that they discovered to make gold!!!

Gold is what is driving this game apart,gold and the gem store.

I agree totally to the fact that gold sellers are driven away by the gem to gold exchange system……yeah thats why i get 10000 whispers from gold selling websites every month!

I remember when the crafting system actually meant something like make something new,discover a new recipe by accident and give you the trhill of something different,now all i see is people racing to get Nightfury throwing a ton of material down the mystic forge trying to make it first and make the most gold out of it.

Gold,gold,gold,gold i am sick of gold in this game….

I need gold to make ascended,otherwise i dont get into raids,i need gold to get agony infusions(or grind em,YAY!)or armor in which case i need ascended armor again so this on top of the previous and so on and so forth, AND if i ever decide i would like a legendary weapon for my character……well…..i need tons of gold,but, the content that gives gold is locked behind a gold wall…..so….i think that anet is driving me away slowly?

And to think they said this game was a grindless game! Worst lie in gaming history of mmo games.

your have made a rod for your own back I’m afraid. You do not need gold for anything – unless you want to take short cuts. The answer is to stop watching what other people are doing and just enjoy the game at your own pace. As for raids, I also need full ascended to enter raids, and i’ve got a fair bit to go yet, but I’m crafting all my own stuff with my own materials and bought when I feel like it, just like I did 3 years ago.

As for Grinding, ‘grinding’ actually means doing something you don’t want to do over and over – so don’t do it.

I have Aspergers, and raided in some seriously good guilds where leaders got paid, you do need TS for raiding, typing is far far far too slow, but you only need to listen as a raider.

Ashadow.6874:

Unwilling to refund players after the new introduction of?

Account Bound bag slots

Simple solution:

Remove the “Account Bound” and “Soulbound” tags of all of the following items so they can be sold on the Black Lion Trading post. Stop ripping your players off:

Harvesting Tools
Copper Fed Salvage’o’matic.
Silver Fed Salvage’o’matic.

jeezus grow up son. I remember buying cd’s but now I can buy albums online for a fraction of the price, omg I’m entitled to a refund!

It gets worse, 30 years ago I bought a game for £10 and now I get the rom for free, omg I’m entitled to a refund as well!

Your not forced to pug with strangers , your meant to group with people you know and play with. raids are not designed for pugs at the moment, they are designed for communities of people who can communicate and play together as a team.

The pugs will also be filled with ‘min-max’ raiders from other games that can only think in terms of ‘min-maxing’ and trying to micro manage fights because they learn from videos and ‘swapping people in’ aka booting people because winning is more important than playing together. things will relax a bit in 6 months.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Hopefully they’ll add mounts. The imbecile non-arguments of the anti-mount opposition can go to hell.

They wont add mounts because Guild wars players and developers, and designers have been quite happy without Mounts for over 10 years, there are plenty games with mounts, we don’t need another clone., especially in a game with less open zones.

thats the point of the gem store, if your happy with the game you have the option to contribute, if you are not you dont. Much better than a Sub.

Re the invetory slot, I live the idea of giving instant access to my bank for all characters with 1 slot, decent QOL upgrade imo.

Aidenwolf.5964:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mortifer.2946:

Xillllix.3485:

Aidenwolf.5964:

At the moment I wouldn’t consider it at all, and I will never pre purchase from them again. The fact they even mention another xpac at this point makes me ill.

Yeah I know, my first thought was “well aren’t you gonna finish hoT first?” I mean they haven’t even released 25% of the new legendaries, WvW is a mess, only 1 Stronghold map released… Not even gonna mention raids…

Creating expansion takes years. They started working on HoT right after the main game release. You know, company like ArenaNet has many teams and each works on something else. From what I have read about the balance between regular updates and expansions, I understand that we should expect new story update every 4-6 weeks and that way we can go kill another dragon in 2 years instead of 3. I think that is nice….

On launch they clearly had the story for HoT done (see COE) and I believe they planned on a GW1 model of expansions but they tried living story since gem sales took off after launch. They did not start building this expansion until a year ago, believe what you will. The super secret WvW plan that’s been in development for over a year? Is a smoke screen to cover their failure with HoT where WvW is concerned.

They want to return to a GW1 style of expansion? Fine, but they need to kill the gem store model first because I won’t buy xpacs for a Free To Play cash shop game.

Peace.

1 We know fine well that Anet planned for living story instead of expansions and the reason for HOT is they realised there was huge demand for an expansion and that people were unhappy with living story in the main.

2 Its Gems instead of paying $15 a month for a sub, and expansions instead of living story. Its really not that difficult to understand is it?

I don’t know when you bought the game but when I and many others did the gem shop wasn’t supposed to intrude into the game, in fact it was promised that it wouldn’t. If you’re new here welcome but don’t revise history for someone who was here for it.

Gems were defended when LS was the model but they’ve gone with the expansion model again so yes I expect them to change. I hated how gem store driven Anet went post launch, I’ve disliked it all along. I hate that they turned my B2P game into a Free To Play game. I am disappointed with the expansion as it’s meta event not open world content. I hate the state of WvW and PvP balance.

I understand you disagree but I own a BTP expansion of a now FTP game and if they want my money again things will have to change, understand?

I’ve played since GW1 and the gem shop does not intrude, certainly less that a subscription does. I getthat Servers cost a lot of money to maintain and happily pay for my persistent avatar online. Aside from this the GW2 model is well regarded for being fair and generous.

Work out how much you pay each year,- and what you lose when not paying a reasonable amount and compare to any other mmorpg out there, GW2 is best in industry by a country mile.

typical example : wow – compulsary $120 a year + expansion costs just to be allowed to logon to the server, if you dont pay, you fall behind the power curve.

GW2 $0-anything you want + expansion cost.

sounds about right, GW1 was 10 years, no reason why GW2 wont be the same. Aside from that what would GW3 give, gfx are already gorgeous and extra fidelity is not going to add to that, map size is limited to the 32 bit memory register and it will be a few years at least before the majority are 64 bit. GW2 has a lot of story and map to give and that gives more value for us that throwing away everything and investing hundreds of millions to start again with different pixels

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mortifer.2946:

Xillllix.3485:

Aidenwolf.5964:

At the moment I wouldn’t consider it at all, and I will never pre purchase from them again. The fact they even mention another xpac at this point makes me ill.

Yeah I know, my first thought was “well aren’t you gonna finish hoT first?” I mean they haven’t even released 25% of the new legendaries, WvW is a mess, only 1 Stronghold map released… Not even gonna mention raids…

Creating expansion takes years. They started working on HoT right after the main game release. You know, company like ArenaNet has many teams and each works on something else. From what I have read about the balance between regular updates and expansions, I understand that we should expect new story update every 4-6 weeks and that way we can go kill another dragon in 2 years instead of 3. I think that is nice….

On launch they clearly had the story for HoT done (see COE) and I believe they planned on a GW1 model of expansions but they tried living story since gem sales took off after launch. They did not start building this expansion until a year ago, believe what you will. The super secret WvW plan that’s been in development for over a year? Is a smoke screen to cover their failure with HoT where WvW is concerned.

They want to return to a GW1 style of expansion? Fine, but they need to kill the gem store model first because I won’t buy xpacs for a Free To Play cash shop game.

Peace.

1 We know fine well that Anet planned for living story instead of expansions and the reason for HOT is they realised there was huge demand for an expansion and that people were unhappy with living story in the main.

2 Its Gems instead of paying $15 a month for a sub, and expansions instead of living story. Its really not that difficult to understand is it?

that ^^ and also look at tech to consider making zones more open and take advantage of 64 bit memory at some point.

it’s..a..tongue..in..cheek..thread…
…
.
…..

we shall see then The game has some issues as does every online game in today’s culture, but at its roots there’s quality and a pretty smart dev team, so those loyal to the Guild wars IP and idealogy will play on.

Those with no emotional connection to the game will continue to play and leave etc etc and in some cases complain endlessly on forums (not referring to yourself here, you know the type of player I mean)

Sondergaard.8469:

In any RPG you look at you will find multiple layers of progression. Be it through character stats, gear, or other enhancements. All of these typically are broken up into short-term progression, and long-term progression tiers. What I mean by this is, you have a long term goal (reaching level 80), but every level along the way offers a short-term reward (bump to character stats, new skills, etc).

With Mastery, it’s an all or nothing reward system it feels like. I can spend weeks, or months in some cases, grinding for a single objective. I view these all as long-term goals.

It would help with the sense of ‘grind’ and be less daunting, if along the journey towards the long-term goal, there were more sprinkled gap-fill rewards for short-term.

Examples where this exists in the game beyond leveling… PvP reward tracks. To complete a full PvP reward track and achieve the end goal, it’s a long journey (long being relative here, but it’s not something you get for a handful of matches). Along the way though, there are several other rewards sprinkled throughout that make the grind a little less painful because you’re getting smaller incentives as you progress.

I don’t know what kind of things could be sprinkled along the journey for a Mastery track, but I do know it would be a nice middle-ground solution for those who feel Mastery grind burnout and those who enjoy the long-term goal aspect. Think of it as milestones.

If you think about it the game is FULL of short term rewards, and really the masteries should be considered within this context – we really don’t need yet another stream of rewards/chests/drops. The trick is take to the holistic view, so for example for me I will sprinkle my day with a bit of progression towards long term goals (no short term rewards appart from the satisfaction of slowly progressing) – mastery points in my cases, and then switch to dailies/wvw/factals/wandering zones for short term fixes.

Azure Prower.8701:

GW2 is a full genocide run.

Make sure no dragons are left alive!

lol on one hand you have dragons whose natural state is to consume magic to survive, then you have us heroes plowing through the innocent with magic to feed our insatiable lust for xp and loot :P

I like killing rabbits, they give nice big dmg numbers!

oh wheesht with the melodramatic nonsense, you do know hardly any AAA mmo have folder over the last 10 years, and that GW2 is unlikely to ever folds before GW2 comes along in about 7-10 years. There are a tom of mmorpg that offer the same old crap quest/power curve raid model, GW2 offers something different, and while not perfect, its still great quality and something different for us. As for Hot, compare it to its peers, say the WOD expansion for WOW and you will see what stale and old means.

lol lets play a game, lets see how long the thread can go before some misery gut pops in with a negative or passive aggressive comment

So what do I appreciate about GW2:

It gives me choice in the MMORPG world, its different.
It offers a home for my ‘main’ that I know will be here in a decade.
Its beautiful
Sound is amazing
Gameplay is diverse
No Gear and meter kitten
Very very slow power curve.
Hardly any drama (see above 2 points)

“They can plan another xpac all they like. I wish them luck but they won’t get a sale from my household. I don’t even go into HoT maps.”

So if the xpac turns out to be right down your street your not going to buy it? over dramatic nonsense.

I hope its locked behind an epic journey of adventures and puzzles, nothing is fun if you just get it handed to you like your a 5 year old self entitled child. Long term goals with a real reward that is not +x power is a rare and good thing.

Not everything needs to be ‘optimal’ for example re the fractals use case given above, sure its optimal to have separate sets of armor, but often its more fun to go with impulse buys, you see something you want and you go for it without analyzing the pros and cons to death.

Its about getting pleasure from your actions. If you spend all your time trying to pick out the perfect most cost efficient path then unless this is the path that gives you most pleasure its ultimately a false economy.

the problem with some people today is they obsess over the details in isolation ‘omg feature x doesn’t suit my personal needs i need to complain online’’ they don’t look at the game as a complete product because they don’t get it about large cohesive gameworlds. The roots of this issue comes from a generation used to playing single player or selfish mmo style shooters etc here instant gratification is > all. In reality they are playing a mmorpg when that game genre has always been niche and they are probably not a natural customer of that niche. Tied with a self entitled mentality we all know well and you get poison.

Put it another way, some people play in a virtual world and appreciate diversity and quality with an open mind even though they don’t enjoy and avoid the content they don’t like, others well thy don’t do they.