Guild Wars 2

Not to jump to any conclusions or w/e, but what i noticed recently. For the past ~month, maybe more, LA chat is practically dead, no matter what time of day, no conversations at all, that’s the first time i see this in GW2 and i’am playing since beta. Now with Halloween there are some, but can’t be even nearly compared to how it used to be during past Halloweens. ~20 ppl doing Mad King says… used to be crowded. If it’s any indicator of decline in playerbase, then it could be because of:

1. General discontent after 9/9 patch and long break between LS seasons.
2. Archeage release. I know for a fact that many big guilds left for AA, as guilds.
3. Pre WoD patch release in WoW.

People who left were practically ready to leave for some time now and were just waiting for a good reason. Let’s see what happens on episode 2 release with Wintersday following up.

Phenn.5167:

_
What ANet Did: Chastises the playerbase and demands suggestions for possible changes. Despite the near-universal outrage across all forums of communication (FB, Twitter, in game, Forums here, etc.), the only response from ANet was, “We may consider changing it, but only if you stop ranting and start suggesting changes.”

Yeah, this is the best part, or rather worst. I went to that official feedback thread, saw this kind of attitude from that Gaile or something knight of theirs and thought, yea okay, let’s see where you’ll end up with that kind of attitude. It’s like they think they walk on water or something.

Looks especially gorgeous on norn fems.

It’s just people who use Xfire and play GW2.

Repeating holiday events is fine, especially considering that they’re way and much better in GW2 than such events in any other MMO. However, why we see those threads poping up and why many ppl in general feel meh about it and feel like complaining is, i believe, because of suffocating LACK of satisfying new content in GW2 over the past ~year and a half. People been waiting for the expansion and new about it for a veeeeeeeeery long time and nothing’s been given to them, disappointment and frustration stacks up, even the smallest things start to kitten them off. And all this, while AN repeatedly on several occasions showed lack of respect for parts of it’s playerbase. Unwanted changes, ignoring for a long time of the various issues, general lack of communication untill recently, especially meaningful communication and not just damage control etc. So, no wonder. xP

Same here.

^ Same story. What gives?

First they kitten with our toons running animation without asking anyone, without telling anyone, fixing what was just FINE and then playing their usual silence game, no comments, no nothing. full on IGNORE mode. Now idle animation are gone and they seem to be unable to fix it. What’s next. And then you look at how Blizzard handled the implementation of new character models and animation for them. There’s an actual option to turn them off and bring the old ones back. Guess who cares about their players. xP

Signed.

It’s kittening kittened, who even thought of this.

I like the jp itself, so even if it’s godkitten gloves, gonna run it anyways.

Life in Hoelbrak must be tough on him. Used to be good looking cheerful fella.

I remember GW2 used to drift somewhere between no.3 and 5 on Xfire, right after WoW back in a day. More than a year ago now. Both games used to have times more players back then (on xfire that is), WoW having twice as much as GW2.

Re-used holiday events are to be expected really. It’s how it was in GW1 and it’s what AN was saying all along when they were talking about making a portfolio of events to re-use them later. I only wish they would bring back more of the good ol’ 2012 Halloween, that one was great.

Distaste.4801:

Long fights require more skilled play for longer periods of time, you have to constantly be making good decisions for the duration or you’re going to lose.

I can’t agree with that. Most of bukerish specs merely follow their patterns, rotations, as soon as you mastered those the “good decision making” boils down to the very general aspects such as duking out, use of terrain and sometimes cd management. I don’t believe there’s a lot of room for “good decision making” for specs like d/d ele or hambow, or maybe we understand “good decision making” differently. All this do not apply to squshier specs, that’s where “good decision making” matters for various reasons, like because the mechanics of classes themselves, such as mesmer or thief, allow for good plays in general and because bad decisions on those specs are usually (should be) punished very hard and quiet fast. High risk, high reward.

Distaste.4801:

Unless you bunker up, run cheese, or are super skilled, you die in seconds; it isn’t fun.

? I honestly hnc what you’re talking about. It’s mostly about positioning and choosing fights correctly.

There are tons of reasons why sPvP isn’t success.

xDudisx.5914:

Long fights with combo field, finishers, group support and class sinergy are much for fun than watch enemys that drop in less than 10s to a thief or shatter mesmer.

Imo, it’s more like opposite. Long fights = stale match. It just drags on and on, no big plays, no big moves, nothing changes. Plus it’s in general more primitive and easier to execute tactic, to bunker up here and there and get your long, stale fights, doesn’t require that much coordination as (i.e.) mesmer and thief do.

Trees looked abysmal on release as well, they always looked rather bad. I always thought wtf, did they took them straight from GW1? Yes, difference is quiet striking, the game itself is rather good looking and quality of art is above average across the board, except for the foliage, hnc what’s the deal there, the only idea i have is, as i mentioned above, it came straight from GW1.

Tbh, the first game they lost, on temple, Tage was playing some whatever build, with hammer etc., and Rom still was on ranga, but then again, Oe was lagging etc., so whatever, i guess. Turn around happened when Rom rolled back to his War, i guess at this point TCG were forced to start playing srsly and not run all kinds of crap for funz. Those were very good games, very close ones as well, GG indeed, nothing like NA ToG roflstomp finals, and better than EU ToG finals as well, imo.

PS. Dunno what’s the deal there, but unlike Phanta who was very solid on d/d ele, Denshee was going down like nobody’s business, and basically became a priority target.

Probably next Tuesday, Halloween.

11/10

The break is more or less the same as last time, so expect more or less the same. Likely another Dry Top sized new map etc.

Yes, que casting is horrible. Sometimes skills do not work right away, either you’re lagging or previous animation didn’t finish yet, or maybe you’re cc’ed, so you just press it again and again, and then second later end up performing this skill 3 times in a row. This can be especially frustrating on thief, often makes class feel very clunky, it shouldn’t be there.

I think the most reasonable thing to do is to extend on what’s already in the game. Dungeons and FotM, make them challenging and fun, world boss events like Teq. and Tri Wurm, add more of such events, add to all of those unique skin drops etc. (decent ones, not couple of super rare fugly ones, like now), implement Dry Top tier and unique skins mechanic to other maps. I think that would be a decent end game in PvE.

With WvW it’s harder imo. Basically the way i see it, to make WvW exciting you need to promote small/medium scale gameplay more (i.e. via redistributing rewards), implement a map rotation, something like how it was in AB in GW1, to give it a sense of progression, that you advance in enemy territory etc., and make maps looks unique. But judging from what devs said in WvW forums all of this is sort of unreal atm and won’t become real even in distant future.

Let’s say not spectate maybe, but watch replays, just like it was in GW1.

For me turning off High-rez character textures seems to help, stuttering goes away. It’s a work around of course, not a solution, because it used to be fine with this option ON before the patch.

Maybe, you should not mistake the quantity of what can be considered an end game with quality of it. Perhaps many people who complain about lack of end game, mean that there’s no challenge in it for them, meaning there’s no entertainment there, as soon as you’re done with leveling, dungeons etc. once, you’re sorta through with all of it. Content is not worth repeating due to lack of challenge/rewards or both, nothing to achieve. It’s just an example, i’am not trying to state something here, not yet, but just as a possible pov of those people.

Because. I never thought that GW2 necessarily lacked, so called, end game activities. There were plenty of them. However, what i repeatedly experienced during my GW2 experience is:
- What shall i do? Dungeons? Sorta meh, because it’s boring stacking faceroll, it’s not even rewards or whatever, it’s just a faceroll, indistinguishable experience of it, of every run. It’s not entirely bad, because it’s ok that you can sometimes go and faceroll through some stuff for whatever, be it tokens, gold, time killing, or just puny bit of fun with couple of friends. But it’s not exactly good either, no matter how you look at it.
- Then what? FotM? Well, same, more or less. And i’am lazy to go deeper.
- Okay, maybe WvW then? Yea well, stick with the zerg, try to turn off your brain, spam 1 and collect loot buttons, enjoy 5-25 fps, woo much fun. No. You see, it’s the quality of it, that’s what i meant. It’s POOR. Doesn’t really matter how often tournaments you will make and how long they will be, they all gonna suck. Just because problem lies elsewhere.
- Fine! PvP then. Yea… There’s a hot join, which, if properly, should be named “Hot Mess” where all of the new souls can be corrupted and given all the wrong ideas about what the PvP is actually about. There’s a SoloQ, which is often frustrating for many people and also semi dead for … well, way too often. Then, there’s also TeamQ, cool, also semi dead though. Then, suddenly, there’s also the fact, which become obvious and apparent especially in PvP, that this game is still horribly bug infested. Yea, you missed your “input your something/skill”, okay — who cares. If yo’re in PvE. Try to tell that to yourself in PvP. #Esports! There’s also lack of game modes, balance, variety in builds. #Esports! #2

kittening QUALITY!?

It should, although depends on for how much you can OC it. The settings you should play with are Model Quality and Models Limit, lowering these 2 should give you the most notable FPS difference, rest shouldn’t matter that much with your GPU, with the exception of animation and shadows in some rare cases.

What topic is 1 year old? Stop duplicating threads, there’re few already existing on this sub-forum and couple in general discussion, try checking forums before posting.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-Issue-with-the-latest-patch/first#post4397627

No, you’re not the only one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-Issue-with-the-latest-patch/first#post4397627

It’s not your rig. Recent patch messed something up for a lot of ppl and you’re one of them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-Issue-with-the-latest-patch/first#post4397627

Yes, same for me, stuttering all the time, very annoying, wasn’t like that before patch.

Couple of other topics where people complaining about this.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-patch-game-running-slow/first#post4395432
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/FPS-gains-since-latest-patch-GJ-Anet/first#post4395993

Sigh. Unfortunately quiet opposite here as well, just finished Teq. In less populated or empty areas performance might have gone up, hard to tell, but in more populated, or in problem ones like Southsun and during large scale events like Karka and Teq performance is much worse for me now, not only due to overall lower FPS but also due to insane amount of stuttering, like 24/7. I can only hope this is fixable and they will fix it, otherwise it makes the experience very unpleasant, nigh unplayable.

Metrics, i thought this could be the case. Their kittening metrics is also the reason why Skyhammer, the most despised and hated map by PvP community, is still in the game and in soloQ. They recently, finally, acknowledged the problem and promised to work on it. Metrics can be pretty important thing, but it won’t make up for the lack of common sense and of general experience with your own game. Because what the situation with NPE shows, is lack of common sense, some things they did there are just bizarre, and what situation with Skyhammer shows is how disconnected they are from their own game, you don’t need metrics to see why this map is cancer, all you need to play your own game, like at least few hours every couple of days.

Khristophoros.7194:

So my suggestion to Anet is go back to the standalone expansion pack model.

Look at gem price. 4000 gems will cost you 50$, 10 bucks short of expansion price. Now consider what you can buy with those 4k gems in gem store. Now just compare how much effort it takes to make those few outfits, armor sets etc. you can buy with 4k gems and how much effort it takes to make a decent expansion. That’s increasing profits by cutting expenses. I believe is to be the part of their business strategy and the reason we haven’t seen an expansion for 2 years now and prolly won’t see one for another ~year. Eventually they prolly will have to make one, just to try and restart the cycle.

More bad news, great.

Jesus Christ. I haven’t checked this NPE myself, because, frankly, i couldn’t care less, however after watching this video… Time for Anet to change their name. Something like Mad House maybe.

Hey. “They tested it”.

This is good.

Good post, good points. I believe problem lies somewhere in upper management of Anet, because priorities and directions in development post release in this game were mostly kittened up. I think they lack vision for their own game, they lost it at some point close to release or right after it. They try and start bunch of things, they can’t properly finish anything, it seems even random sometimes. Southsun — started out of nothing and ended nowhere. Now we have this island where horrible Karka event takes place, first implementation was bad, they did a revamp this event and it’s still so bad. What was it all about? Early after release they announced a dungeon team and a goal to revamp dungeons, all this silently vanished somewhere in dark depths of Anet. Same with precursor scavenger hunt, just silently disappeared into nowhere. SAB, again, had nothing to do with anything in the game, just another random project of theirs, people happen to love it, at least some quiet vocal part, again, vanished somewhere. We now have tutorials revamps and all kinds of fixes for newer players as they say, yet 2 years later build and gear manager is nowhere to be found in this game, . What you think new players think about it? When you look at it, it looks like Anet is a bunch of random freelancers and they just start whatever each of them wants then they get bored with it midway and drop it to start something else. While we have underdeveloped parts of the game, WvW and PvP, and PvE with no sense of direction. The only area where they were persistent, more or less, is Gem Store.

Well, tbh Teq is already too easy especially with the recent bug/nerf to poison fields from fingers. It would only make sense if other dragon lieutenants would be as powerful as Teq. Some people, no doubt, would complain at start about loosing one of their easy events where they could autopilot, but eventually they will get over it just same as it happened with Teq, no one whines about it anymore. I feel like GW2 somewhat lack events like Teq, Wurm pretty much requires TS and in that matter truly hardcore while Teq is not at all. I guess if AN would decide to buff CoJ and kitten is same fashion as Teq they could even separate their spawns through out week, like one day we fight Shatterer, another Teq, next CoJ etc. there might be even some sort of a story for that, like heralds making announcements, trying to recruit ppl in major cities etc.

PS. Dunno why Shatterer gets kittened by censor. oO

The gun with cakes is fun, tho. Better than another mini. Only fugly as hell.

Come on lads, gem store is flashier than ever, don’t you feel the feast?

Nice watch, thanks. Kinda sad, most of those features are decent ones, especially attribute one, the fact that you needed to explore to unlock skills and lore ones, like manual books and loading screens. Too bad all this was scrapped.

Funny thing, to some degree the previous feature pack was also a bunch of more or less fixes rather than features. And this one, so far, yes, pure Fix Pack. Not a single meaningful feature so far, all are fixes to, at best, recently introduced systems/features like megaserver, or just to the core ones, like to pvp and party system, 2 years later, better than never, gee thanks.

Still it’s frustrating how they scramble for every tiny little bit of anything they do, for every crumb, to present it with galore, FEATURE kittening pack. BIG kittening CHANGES coming to commander SYSTEM. Now they’re 4 different colours and all this half kittening kitten d so called system is accound bound now instead of character. Wow, i’am overkitteningwhelmed, can’t help but to wonder, what’s coming in 2 more years.

nearlight.3064:

My favorite thing about the tournament was seeing unorthodox stuff like the power necro and S/F ele

The S/F ele was a kittening joke. Did he ran a cele amulet as well? Why the kitten your typical d/d ele would need a focus on top of all? For more defence? Really? Against bunker-ish comp? And the best part, running traveller runes to fight on the point 90% of the game, are you kittening serious? Ppl lack common sense, and this is high tier GW2 pvp…

Week 1: Competitive Week
Week 2: A Fresh Start
Our second week of September 2014 Feature Pack reveals is focused on improving the Guild Wars 2 experience for new and veteran players alike!
Week 3: Collecting and Trading
In the September 2014 Feature Pack, we’re rethinking the way you collect and trade items!

Yes, that is it.

It’s worth mention that ppl usually also check ranks of players on each team before joining in and then choose teams with more high ranked players on it, this is why many matches go off the rails from the start and then we have all this “rage quit/forcing autobalancing” kittenbaggery going on full scale. You often can see how spectators are waiting in the background and spamming join button for the team with more high ranked players on it, waiting for some clueless soul to join the “losers” team and thus open up the joining option for the desired team. It happens all the time, if you go in hot join and start just pressing Play Now it most likely will take you a couple of minutes before you find more or less balanced match, while the majority of them displaying scores like 400-30 etc. This is as gayest as it gets, the current iteration of hot join is bad for the game and unhealthy for the community, it should not exist in it’s current form. As i see it, perfect solution would be an unranked soloq.

What would be the point behind limiting this to TeamQ etc.? At the very least SoloQ should get this as well.

Axelwarrior.9084:

I was honestly not expecting another feature pack this early, so I’m having my doubts about the amount content it’ll bring. It probably won’t be as exciting as the previous one

It’s gonna be 4 months since the previous one, it’s not “this early”. I think that’s what they said anyway, about 4 moths between each feature pack.

I think having high toughness only pays off in large WvW battles, where you have numerous sources of incoming damage, and only to some point due to diminishing returns. In PvP imo toughness way less viable and if you need extra survivability you’re better off going after vitality. And in PvE it actually will do more bad for you than good, as mob’s aggro works that way that they tend to attack targets with higher armour level.