Guild Wars 2

+1 I really do think Anet has great vision and are neither greedy or short term thinkers, and sometimes i get overly defensive myself with people i perceive to be pointlessly negative which is self defeating sigh.

One of the primary benefits of mmorpg is that it gives a long term virtual world that we really do get attached to – its funny how we react at times online and how it is a million miles away from how you are in real life.

i quite enjoy wvw as well because of the mix of pvp i get from it, for example 1v1 roaming, situations where you are under siege by a massive force and somehow survive, big running battles going to and fro and small skirmishes between a few players etc. Even the occasional bow to the duelers is nice to see and gives a bit of life to the server.
I do struggle however to get a feel for a real sense of overlying objective or goal and server purpose which i personally think is one of the big issues.

I think a good middle ground could be an end of week reward for 1st/2nd/3rd -
some kind of proc that pops up a nice reward screen with a few statistics that incorporates your contribution and a choice of reward perhaps.

oh not sure about a greatsword for the ele, i’m thinking single mage-sword would be more in keeping myself, really hard to cast a spell when you have your two hands wrapped around a big ugly hunk of metal

its not a valuation, it was the cost spread over 2 years to demonstrate the cost. I done an approximate very loose amortization of the cost to do this, nothing more.

edit, see the following, but really what I was getting at then is that GW2 expansions are relatively cheap in the market, poorly demonstrated with my 5p comment maybe.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.playtimePerDay

If I really wanted to spend time calculating the typical cost per person on average per day taking into account the average play time of a GW2 regular player i could (and it may well be less than 5p) your argument(?) is based on someone buying it and not playing it, which was not the context here.

It is more than reasonable to say that if a GW2 mmorpg fan bought the expansion and had it for 2 years then the cost would average out at 5p a day. its not rocket science, you can even amortise (hint).

no my 5p was simply the price divided by average shelf life (2 years)

have you tried eso out of curiosity? the pve is great and the pvp is good if you can handle the perf issues (perf issues killed it for me unfortunately).

Stand The Wall.6987:

guard: scepter/scepter for double the faerie wand action.
mes: shield/shield cuz this point is mine and I aint ever giving it up.

sceptre sceptre would look awesome on a spell caster, I already have the look with primordus focus/ wayward wand sceptre

Aeolus.3615:

vesica tempestas.1563, actually after gw1 hard to find a decent pvp mmo :\

There are many decent pvp mmo, the problem for you is that none of them suit your taste. People enjoy ESO, people enjoy GW2, people enjoy WOW etc. GW1 is in the past (I loved PVP in GW1 too) If there’s nothing in the market you like then accept that or experiment, its much less painful for you, complaining in a forum will change nothing really, the world has moved on and will continue to do so.

[/quote]

You’ve quit PvE, WvW and sPvP. So why are you still here posting warning other people off? Is your hatred of the game THAT strong? I don’t really understand this mentality of lingering on a forum simply to warn others from playing. I’m annoyed because by doing what you are doing, you will shorten this game’s lifespan, I game I enjoy, simply because you don’t.[/quote]

misery loves company – unhappy players who have run out of games to play and have become addicted to complaining in modern life perhaps, a mixture of older people who cant accept they have grown out of games and the millennials that have been brought up in a greedy demanding self centered culture – who knows!

It would be a bit like me complaining endlessly on a pink floyd forum because i didn’t like their last album, or a tv forum because i don’t like the direction doctor who took 5 years ago etc etc etc lol.

Ayrilana.1396:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Ayrilana.1396:

There are some issues with waiting. We don’t know when the next expansion will released or even be announced for that matter. There are people struggling to get their HO’s without trains and even to successfully to complete some map metas. Imagine the difficulty once the player population shifts to the new expansion’s content.

You either think a thing is worth it and buy it or you don’t and buy it at a price you do think is value. If you want to get an expansion for free then wait until its free. These are not issues they are choices. If you get a full expansion for free that a very generous offer.

There seems to be a 3rd option this decade – declare to the world you don’t want a thing because you think you deserve x and y and hate W and Z. Also, declare to the world you want that same thing if its cheap/free. So it would appear people miraculously enjoy content if its cheap enough. The reality is some people cant take ownership for their own thoughts and tastes and want to blame the world because GW2 doesn’t automatically match their tastes exactly.

Umm.. I wasn’t telling them they should buy it or not. I was just bringing up a couple drawbacks to waiting. They are potential issues because the map metas (mainly the final ones), and a lot of hero points, require more than just yourself. There are people that may not find this struggle to be worth waiting.

what i was getting at is that they don’t think the HOT content looks entertaining as it is, so it doesn’t really matter when they get it for free, they are unlikely to enjoy these zones anyway.

edit, and agree this is along the lines of what you are saying, it will be even less likely they will enjoy HOT later when the population has moved on.

Aeolus.3615:

vesica tempestas.1563 i would prefer player controlled :\ not as an npc

Even better

love the idea of some behemoth tank/boss that is triggered by some kind of map wide resource collection (perhaps only available to the server in last place?) that results in a huge lumbering tank/boss that trundles slowly towards the a given garrison. Encourages pve players to dabble in pvp and could create a great focus content/melee fights.

Ayrilana.1396:

There are some issues with waiting. We don’t know when the next expansion will released or even be announced for that matter. There are people struggling to get their HO’s without trains and even to successfully to complete some map metas. Imagine the difficulty once the player population shifts to the new expansion’s content.

You either think a thing is worth it and buy it or you don’t and buy it at a price you do think is value. If you want to get an expansion for free then wait until its free. These are not issues they are choices. If you get a full expansion for free that a very generous offer.

There seems to be a 3rd option this decade – declare to the world you don’t want a thing because you think you deserve x and y and hate W and Z. Also, declare to the world you want that same thing if its cheap/free. So it would appear people miraculously enjoy content if its cheap enough. The reality is some people cant take ownership for their own thoughts and tastes and want to blame the world because GW2 doesn’t automatically match their tastes exactly.

+1 to this, commanders have given me a lot of content over the years.

Xyrus.6037:

I played GW2 for a while and enjoyed it immensely. I liked it so much that I abandoned one of my cardinal rules of gaming: NEVER PRE-ORDER.

That was a mistake.

After that came the 5 stages of grief. Or what would have been the 5 stages of grief if the decisions and direction in regards to the game didn’t keep me at stage 2.

It’s their game, so they can do what they want with it. And I’m sure there are people who like the way things have gone. But I just found myself logging in less and less, asking “why are they doing that?” a lot more, and finally just stopped playing altogether.

Lesson re-learned. No matter how great you think a game or a game company is, they can still totally wreck a game for you. Maybe just you, but that doesn’t really matter.

I still check the forums and such from time to time to see how things are going. I still see that they’re on the same path. If it keeps raking in the money I see scant reason for them to stop, but I certainly haven’t come across any incentive to get me playing again.

self awareness is a powerful thing, have you wondered why you didn’t return to the content you used to play prior to HOT if you didn’t like the HOT content?

Silverlance.2190:

Ayrilana.1396:

Normally 50% off.

Thanks. I wonder if I can get it in Game for less. although they might be sold by now. No way can I justify full retail for small add-on with a base game I already have.

you cant justify 5p a day for 24 hour access giving new zones, new skills, new mechanics like mastery & gliding, new class etc etc?

the issue with ele dps isnt aoe/large hit boxes.

Menyus.4610:

Sartharina.3542:

People seem to have the idea that Conditions aren’t supposed to be lethal.

They supposed to be but bot in seconds, condi burst is a dead idea and should have been never implemented.

4k a second is not ‘burst’ because you are SUPPOSED to cleanse it. a power build that hits you with huge spikes of damage is however not ‘normalised’

^^ this is what raiding is all about for dps classes, reach the optimal rotation and avoid all form of movement that disrupts the cycle. Movement, lag and human reaction times is the dps killer at a high level.

changing a spec to fix a feature (raiding) that is a tiny proportion of the whole game is foolish and smacks of raid dev/designer (is there such a thing here?) having an unbalanced influence and poor awareness. This is what tuned raiding can do to a game if you are not careful. Tail is wagging dog.

Menyus.4610:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Menyus.4610:

The title says it all, if we cant which im 100% sure cos evry thing in this game takes half a year, anyone can recommend me a non Asian good mmo focuses on pvp?(so no big melons plíz)

Also Eso population, talking about cyrodil, any of you playing it, opinions?

Condition burn is already spread evenly over the range of the burn duration (as apposed to spikey dmg from power dmg) so what do you mean by normalization?

Not dealing 4k / second

yup should have cleansed that. You think that’s worse than someone bursting you for 15k+ from a normalisation perspective?

the question you need to ask yourself OP is would you get satisfaction and pleasure from whatever build you are aiming for. In good old fashioned mmorpg terms, setting your own goals is a big part of the rpg journey, and if the gut feeling is yes i want set x, then go for it – even if 6 months down the line you realise theres something else thats even better. Its the pleasure and journey that counts, not picking the perfect solution without mistake!

hey OP, in working life i am a lead dev, considered to be a good person, kind and strong – i’m also an introvert and more than certainly high on the Asperger scale, and i play very very similar to you. I solo a lot, but on there other hand enjoy grouping casually often. I actual suspect that the prevalence of gaming from the 80’s may very well have contributed or at the very least gave an avenue for certain behavior to develop over time – so you are most certainly not alone There is however a big difference between being introverted and being anti social and that’s really what matters imo.

Tom.8029:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Chasind.3128:

I find it annoying when people do this. Noone actually cares except the person trying to show off.

since many people have already said in this thread that they do like seeing other people celebrate success you are incorrect when you say ‘no-one’. Ever heard of the term generosity of spirit? its the soul food of friendly mmorpg.

Yeah when people just completed their first legendary and ping it in map chat being like, “Look what I just made!” I am totally happy for them. What’s more annoying, though, is when people ping things to brag or to put down the achievements of others.

You ever sit in Lion’s Arch when someone says how they just completed a legendary and then you have another person who pings 4 of theirs? That’s super annoying. haha. And possibly even discouraging to the player, or a challenge, maybe, depending on how you look at it.

ye that’s not generosity of spirit is it, quite the opposite.

Chasind.3128:

I find it annoying when people do this. Noone actually cares except the person trying to show off.

since many people have already said in this thread that they do like seeing other people celebrate success you are incorrect when you say ‘no-one’. Ever heard of the term generosity of spirit? its the soul food of friendly mmorpg. As for showing off, ofc they are showing off, that’s the point of getting shiny things, and you can either be miserable about it or share the pleasure.

Menyus.4610:

The title says it all, if we cant which im 100% sure cos evry thing in this game takes half a year, anyone can recommend me a non Asian good mmo focuses on pvp?(so no big melons plíz)

Also Eso population, talking about cyrodil, any of you playing it, opinions?

Condition burn is already spread evenly over the range of the burn duration (as apposed to spikey dmg from power dmg) so what do you mean by normalization?

OriOri.8724:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

" I know friends irl that refuse to try GW2 because of how kittened up leather is."

How in the world would people who haven’t even tried gw2 know the ins and outs of level 80 crafting? The only thing I can think of is if you talk their ears off about it when they ask a question about the game. If that’s it, maybe point them to level 80 temple armor or cheap TP exotics for their first armor. That may be all they need. Not everyone carries around multiple sets of armor.

They ask me how crafting in this game is. And I tell them that leather is simultaneously that mat needed in the highest quantities for most crafting, and is also the slowest to acquire through gameplay. Turns them off from the game, because that just isn’t a good design for a crafting system.

now there’s a conversation you don’t see every day.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

vesica tempestas.1563:

The main reason to create a guild is if your goal is to develop a stable community that will last, and that takes commitment and effort, not rewards or enticements. Furthermore, guilds need numbers to be sustainable otherwise its just a glorified party, and the guild crafting is aimed towards larger groups to offer content for that community.

In other words:

It doesn’t matter that your small group of close knit players has been together for 5, 10, 15 years across potentially multiple games. If you aren’t “x” size, you aren’t a guild.

That’s what this argument is boiling down to again.

call yourself what you like, its all about intent.

Ithilwen.1529:

No, even matches do not guarantee wins. Still, logic suggests that you ought to win an even match roughly half the time.

When that doesn’t happen, it suggests that the matches are not even.

imagine a day when you played amazingly well, now imagine one of your off days. Now times that by 10 people. Algorithms can monitor statistics but they are not magic.

Raiding is a small fraction of gw2 and no dps rotations is not what pve is all about (rotations!) a lot of the most interesting pve play is reactive not prescriptive, ie not trying to cast 1 then 2 then 5 then 2 then 4 then 2 then 1 then 2 then 5 etc etc etc. Do you think having rotations rote bound into your muscle memory is interesting dynamic gameplay?

Ye i agree, you should have both, RNG and farmable stuff. you do stuff and get rewarded, and at the same time RNG is applied, its not mutually exclusive. Looking at an RNG item and saying i want to guarantee that i will get it is not the point, that’s what farming is for.

Put it another way, if you are looking at a random drop and aiming for it, your missing the point, you cannot do that, probability will beat you down.

and matchmaking is doing that, no system can accurately measure a humans performance fight to fight, its the long term normalization that matters. long lose streaks mean you will eventually reach your natural skill level at which it will start to level out at 50/50, or if you have been unlucky, will be followed by a win streak. at the end of the day even if you settle at 50% you will still have win and lose streaks.

FullMetalToast.4918:

Hi guys! I’m creating this post because I leveled an elementalist to lvl 80 and geared her but I have some questions about my damage, because I feel that I don’t deal any.

I’m using Berserker’s exotic gear wirh ascended trinkets, scholar runes and sigil of force/air. My favourite weapon loadout is D/Wh and I learned qt’s build rotation. So I went to the training golem with Seaweed Salad and Toxic Sharpening Tool but I don’t know if my results are normal, I get ~7’5k DPS without buffs and ~25k DPS with all buffs. Are those great numbers?
I’ve done some fractals and it seems that I don’t do anything, I can die and the boss dies as fast as if I was dealing damage. I feel like I make no difference, and that makes me question about continuing playing ele because I may be bad at it

I know I should practise a lot more, and I really love D/Wh rotation, so, am I doing something wrong?

the problem is your are worrying too much about damage meters, outside of raids it dps just doesn’t matter, what matters is that you enjoy playing the style in that you play. Also if you were to wvw/spvp you would be slaughtered each and every time if you tried to do ‘rotations’. Man i hate the influence raids has on this game.

^^ You hear lots of people blaming devs for design decisions here and there, or difficulty, or not being casual friendly, but the reality is this is the best answer you can get – it doesnt appeal to someones personal taste. If everyone was honest enough to simply admit this there would be no arguments about HOT +1

Djinn.9245:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Djinn.9245:

It is unfortunate that MMOs have so much RNG. This allows brand new players or someone who does something the first time to get the rare item while people who have been playing since start or have been doing something many times still do not get that item. Its a very unfair system. It would be much more fair to give some kind of token so that everyone has an equal chance.

But a large foundation of MMOs is the idea of “lottery”. They prey on peoples’ desire to get something for no work, or to get something great for a small investment. That’s why we have Black Lion Chests, the Mystic Toilet, Ecto gambling, etc. as well. As long as the majority of players fall for this type of thing, we won’t see a fair system in games.

that’s not unfortunate, its fun as we all have a fair chance of getting something

I disagree. Everyone having a fair chance would be everyone getting a guaranteed token for each completion, then turn in X tokens for the prize.

As I said, RNG means I can do something over and over and never get the item while a new person can get the item the first try. That is not fair.

no that would mean theres no joy in getting anything, everything is farmed, nothing is unexpected, dull dull dull. Everyone has an equal change of getting something, and we all benefit from the pleasure of getting the unexpected loot – even if you don’t care about it, you still get pleasure from it.

Lets bear in mind there are a million different types of token already on GW2 and almost everything can be bought already. Some misunderstand the purpose of RNG and dont think this way, they see it as some kind of denial, and the root of that problem comes from games where loot = keeping up with the joneses, games where envious eyes look bitterly on the loot of others.

As above, i’ve never had any loot drop that was worth more than maybe 20 gold, but it doesn’t matter because im not disadvantaged, and i know any drop could mean something nice. Gratz to those who got that precurser drop i say, 1 day i hope it will be me.

^^ at current HOT price at £34.99 and assuming a 2 year window for each expansion, hot costs 5 PENCE a day, and you could play for 24 hours a day for that 5 pence if you so desired. Compared to any other game in any other genre that’s a snip, not sure why people think this is a lot.

to put this into perspective, its costs about 6 pence an hour to simply have your pc switched on or 5 pence to boil your kettle twice.

The main reason to create a guild is if your goal is to develop a stable community that will last, and that takes commitment and effort, not rewards or enticements. Furthermore, guilds need numbers to be sustainable otherwise its just a glorified party, and the guild crafting is aimed towards larger groups to offer content for that community.

Djinn.9245:

It is unfortunate that MMOs have so much RNG. This allows brand new players or someone who does something the first time to get the rare item while people who have been playing since start or have been doing something many times still do not get that item. Its a very unfair system. It would be much more fair to give some kind of token so that everyone has an equal chance.

But a large foundation of MMOs is the idea of “lottery”. They prey on peoples’ desire to get something for no work, or to get something great for a small investment. That’s why we have Black Lion Chests, the Mystic Toilet, Ecto gambling, etc. as well. As long as the majority of players fall for this type of thing, we won’t see a fair system in games.

that’s not unfortunate, its fun as we all have a fair chance of getting something, which in turn makes every drop just a little bit more interesting and as long as its in a game where gear power is not everything then all is well. As for GW2 obviously this applies, aside from which almost everything is already tokenised.

Personally I like seeing someone celebrate a random drop or finally getting their legendary, its nice to see it matters to people

The alternative is no-one celebrates anything in chat – sounds miserable!

what is it that you are crafting that your guild will die if it does not craft quickly?

power builds also benefit from crits, condy does not.

same actually, i go sceptre/focus burn with a mix of trailblazer, viper and celestial and do fine. Staff is only really good for siege.

leather prices have spiked due to demand, other things have dropped, this is normal. Whats changed is that people think this warrants a complaint thread. If you want to kitten prices you need to evaluate all products, not just the item at the top of the demand tree at any particular time.

the actual real calculation is % of cost of an ascended item earned per hour all sources considered, then look at the player base and evaluate the ascended gear progression. That means looking at all sources of income and cost, not just items spiking.

Sartharina.3542:

vesica tempestas.1563:

no, people need to do what they enjoy. if you dislike something, take responsibility for your own tastes and do something you do enjoy. Mmorpg are not single player games where the game world rotates around you and a long term goal cant be a short term goal at the same time. a short term goal in crafting is simply a fast progress bar.

Reaching 400 in crafting should not be any longer-term goal than reaching level 80.

then its not a long term goal in a mmorpg is it (ignoring the fact you can get to max level in a crafting discipline in less than an hour)

put it this way, if a player spends thousands of hours in a game, what should a long term goal be? (clue – not instant gratification)

no, people need to do what they enjoy. if you dislike something, take responsibility for your own tastes and do something you do enjoy. Mmorpg are not single player games where the game world rotates around you and a long term goal cant be a short term goal at the same time. a short term goal in crafting is simply a fast progress bar.

Bridget Morrigan.1752:

ArchonWing.9480:

Proof? Why should new players craft to get exotic gear when they can buy the named exotic armors? Don’t forget crafting itself costs a lot, and I would never recommend new players to craft.

Even when I was new running around Cursed Shore in green, I avoided crafting like the plague due the complexity and potential to waste money and materials. If we weren’t forced to craft with ascended gear, I would never do it at all.

I never tell new players to craft, because I feel they are wasting their time. And I’ve helped people plan how to get up. You know, I actually help newer players that you claim to want to help, so I know this is nonsense. .

I think this is the crux of the issue, though—should crafting be only an obligation for high level gear, not a reasonable (or even enjoyable) part of the game itself? Should new players be effectively barred from this part of the MMO experience, due to the cost? Is it good for the game that one major aspect of it is something that players generally avoid like the plague?

I don’t really have an answer to what role crafting should play in the game, but I’d say that the advice that you give new players to stay away from it and the fact that experienced players hate it enough to never want to do it except when they have to—well, these things are indicative that something is out of whack, that this is an aspect of the game that has a negative effect on players, and the leather price situation is the most egregious offender.

mmorpg’s raison d’être is an offer of long term goals and the possibility of developing a character that will last for years, that is the genre. Crafting is part of this, you are offered long term crafting goals that you can aim for, aspire to and progress towards. The only thing out of whack is players who don’t understand this and want everything they can see when they think they are entitled to it, they demand it! Ultimately they try to bite their own noses of to spite they face – for short term exclusionary gain (pixels and numbers).

Feanor.2358:

I’m not on youtube and I’ve played Fresh Air back in vanilla, so I know how it used to play. However, OA is just that strong. In PvE. You seem to be talking only about the PvP aspect of the game. That’s fine. But please indicate it in the title or somehow. Otherwise, to a PvE player (and these are the majority of players btw) it seems like you’re debating some changes which are utterly irrelevant. Cleansing Wave? S/F? Final Shielding? Bah, nobody cares about this.

its because in PVE you can play any build, everything is viable. sPVP/WVW is where balance and competitiveness impacts gameplay.

The average age of a gamer is over 30 so they are perfectly capable of reading/watching you tube/critical thinking etc. most can take responsibility for their own tastes and actions and will buy a game because they have worked out whether they will enjoy it or not.

it wasnt supposed to persuade you to play the game, i was simply stating that the game is casual friendly. You dislike HOT for reason X, no-one is going to change that. Im sure you would expect your friends to make judgement’s based on their own tastes, i,.e some people like GW2 some don’t – not everthing has to be complained to death about.