Guild Wars 2

niea.7504:

My wish is for a tldr.

From “How to give good feedback”:

“Avoid abbreviating.
“Short, unexplained opinions are not as useful as detailed responses.”

This post is for ANet, more than anyone else.

Yes, already!

I spent seven years playing Guild Wars. I loved GW. I still do. I’ll never stop loving it. When I look at other games, I hold GW up as the gold standard and say “THIS is what you need to live up to.”

Our guild in GW was made up of a group of real-life friends. We’d all known each other for almost 20 years. Even though by the time GW came out, we were scattered across America, we still came together as friends to go out and have fun in GW. Along the way, we managed to find new friends from all over the world, and we all played together.

When GW2 was announced as a reality, we were all excited for the new adventures that were ahead, and we planned to move to GW2 together.

It was a jarring experience to go from GW to GW2.

First, we knew our characters incredibly well in GW. Sure, we’d all been playing them for years, but it was more than just a “we’ve grown into our characters” situation. There were roles we each had, and enjoyed, and we knew as part of the team what it was we had to do to support each other against our enemies.

ANet wanted to break the “holy trinity,” but in doing so they broke us off into something that required less mutual support and really felt like making each of us the proverbial “I” in “team.”

Now, of course, it was a new game. There were going to be things we had to get used to. But the roles we had worked for us, and it’s what we wanted to do.

One of our members, for example, was a healer, and a fantastic one. It was a role she enjoyed, and she excelled at it. She was very disappointed to find that what she wanted to do had been completely eliminated in GW2, and the closest she could come to an actual healer was to play a Guardian, which she tried and just didn’t like. Eventually, she stopped playing GW2.

Our Mesmer was one of the best ‘rupters I’ve ever seen. Her ability to anticipate enemies and shut them down was a little frightening, and it’s what she was best at. In GW2, there’s really no such thing as a ’rupt mesmer. She eventually moved to WvW.

Our tank who, again, thoroughly enjoyed tanking, found that his role had been diminished, and, since people were going their own way in GW2 or simply going off to play something else, eventually he stopped playing GW2.

Our Ritualist suddenly found that his favorite class didn’t exist at all. He stopped playing GW2.

Then came the other surprise: Our friends in Europe were on the European server. We were on the American server. Now, this is basically because nobody stopped to think that we needed to check who was going where. The reason for that is that in GW, there was no separation of continents. We could all play together.

Our guild started to break up for two basic reasons: 1) It was no longer necessary to be a team. 2) We couldn’t play together as a group the way we had enjoyed in GW.

As our resident Nuker (and degen mesmer in JQ), I found the changes in skills and abilities (which I’ll address later) to be entirely distasteful. I simply didn’t like GW2 or its mechanics, and stopped playing, execpt for occasionally when we get together to try and give it a shot with the old guild, and that’s pretty rare.

In the end, we found that breaking the need for a team with designated roles actually made the Guild Wars universe less social, less fun, and we all went off to find other games to play.

I look back on our Guild Wars days as that final summer before senior year in high school, where everything changes and lifelong friends start to drift apart. The difference is that none of us felt like Guild Wars 2 was a “more grown-up” game. In fact, we saw it as the exact opposite.

Remember when I said I didn’t like the changes in skills and abilities? Right.

In Guild Wars, I had my Elementalist primary and all of the secondaries – over 1,000 skills at my disposal with which to create my own unique builds and change my play style at will. I could use any weapon. What happened to secondary professions? Has their been some kind of biological infection that affected the brains of everyone so that they are only able to learn one professionin the 250 years between GW and GW2?

On top of that, there were my runes, insignia, mods and inscriptions. I could tailor everything the way I wanted it to make the character truly mine. Never, in any game I have ever played, have I felt as connected to my character as I did in Guild Wars. It was truly my creation.

But in Guild Wars 2, it felt like things had been seriously “dumbed down.”

Now, the weapon in my hand chose my first five skills for me. I didn’t really have to think overly much about them. It felt like I was being forced to play the way someone else wanted me to play, and not the way I wanted to play. This left me feeling extremely disconnected from my character. In fact, I’m still not sure exactly what some of the skills do. I just couldn’t be bothered to check because it didn’t really matter that much. I don’t need any skill at all to play. I just hit the 1 key and let it go, only occasionally finding it necessary – even at level 80 – to use any other skill.

It also made me wonder what had happened to the world over 250 years.

The gods have bunked off for a smoke (which in god terms can take a long time), and left the mortal races to fend for themselves. I get that. But does that really mean that people have suddenly lost the ability to learn skills? Were ALL Ritualists strictly Elonian/Vabbian, and when Tyria lost contact with those lands, they all went home and were never heard from again? Nobody passed on their craft? The same for the Paragon. Did they dwindle and die off, leaving none of their skills or teachings behind?

What happened to the intellect of the known world in 250 years that its inhabitants became unable to learn skills for themselves, and yet are able to imbue certain skills into weapons? It’s as if two and a half centuries meant that the people of an entire continent suddenly got stupid.

Why is there no healer class? There are hospitals in GW2. Surely, there are dedicated healers at hospitals, otherwise what’s the point in there being a hospital in the first place? Is there some secret caste of healers who take an oath to ONLY use their skills in a hospital setting?

Looking ahead to Year 4 in Guild Wars 2, I would love to see some of the old things, the great things, the things that made Guild Wars such a fantastic game, make a return in Guild Wars 2.

Don’t force us to play ANet’s way. Let us play the way we want to play. Let us take the roles we had and loved. Let us connect with our characters again. Let us be part of a team again.

Make me want to play once more in the world I loved and enjoyed for six years.

These are my wishes for the 4th anniversary of Guild Wars 2.

Perhaps that’s just a dream that may never happen, but aren’t most wishes?

Look, I get it. ANet is a business. A business exists to make money.

But this is something else again.

First, whether or not it’s true, it feels like “Guild Wars 2: Heart of Desperation.” It makes me wonder if the random rumours that always crop up in any MMO are true for GW2: Players are leaving in droves and numbers are way down.

Frankly, I feel somewhat cheated. I have friends on the European server and on the American server. I can’t play with them together, so I bought the game twice – at full price. Two accounts. Both at $60 a pop.

And now it’s F2P, restrictions or not, and all people who paid full price for the game will get is a new character slot.

What’s done is done, and now that the Pandora’s Box of F2P is open, there’s no going back.

The wiser course of action would have been to drop the price. Take it to $30, or put it in the $20 bargain bin.

I could have taken this a lot easier if that’s what’d happened.

How could ANet not have known there would be backlash over this?

I bought gems today, before I found out about this.

I assure you, it’s the last gem purchase I’ll ever make, and at $49.99, I will certainly pass on HoT.

There are other games to play.

I have never permitted anything – ever – to use authentication via my phone, simply because I hate the idea of all the spam texts that I’ll get.

I will never use SMS authentication for Guild Wars 2, and the nag screen is annoying. Please allow us to check “Don’t show again.”

An answer on whether or not SMS authentication will be required at some point in the future would be appreciated, as it will affect whether or not I purchase HoT.

Thank you.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

ubaid.8213:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

For both of you, I would suggest trying to update your graphics drivers.

@Sammule: I’m not sure what to do with an apple product for graphics drivers, I suggest posting in the Mac sub-forums to hopefully get a better response.

@ubaid: Give this one a whirl, do a clean installation when installing the new graphics driver:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59642

Been there. Done that. Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I even used Driver Sweeper to ensure a clean install and… nothing.

Other support threads suggest changing settings in the “NVIDIA Control Panel,” which I don’t have.

Just kind of ready to uninstall and move on to another game at this point.

Well, that is a problem in itself. The Nvidia Control Panel should be showing up. Have you looked in the windows control panel yet for the Nvidia control panel? Another thing to check is to make sure that windows services didn’t disable the Nvidia Control Panel. I’ve seen that as a problem in the past as well, but that was with Windows 7 x64.

Yes, I’ve checked. Still no luck.

I’m going to guess that this is a change that took place with an update, and that there’s simply no help for it, and give up on GW2 altogether. I can use the drive space for Neverwinter, anyway.

Thanks for trying to help.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

For both of you, I would suggest trying to update your graphics drivers.

@Sammule: I’m not sure what to do with an apple product for graphics drivers, I suggest posting in the Mac sub-forums to hopefully get a better response.

@ubaid: Give this one a whirl, do a clean installation when installing the new graphics driver:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59642

Been there. Done that. Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I even used Driver Sweeper to ensure a clean install and… nothing.

Other support threads suggest changing settings in the “NVIDIA Control Panel,” which I don’t have.

Just kind of ready to uninstall and move on to another game at this point.

I have the exact same issue, but with a variation – and on a PC.

When I start GW2, AFTER I hit the “PLAY” button, I get a black screen and can see the cursor but nothing else. I have let it sit for 2 hours in order to see if anything happens, and it doesn’t.

Alternatively, when starting GW2 the whole computer shuts down when I click “PLAY.”

Everything was fine until about two weeks ago, when this issue started. I’m guessing that something in a recent update is causing this issue, since it started so recently.

Any help?

My system isn’t the best, but it ran GW2 fine until about 2 weeks ago.

Windows XP Pro 32-bit, NVIDIA GEForce 8400GS (512MB), 4GB RAM.

TheDaiBish.9735:

ubaid.8213:

Rainbow projectiles are not contextually valid in the GW universe – and certainly not when nothing else in the game looks anything like the effect of the bow’s ammo.

Why aren’t they?

Where in the lore of the world does it say ‘rainbow projectiles don’t exist’?

Having roamed around the entirety of GW over more than five years, I can safely say that I have never seen anyone – enemy or ally, player or NPC – use a weapon that shoots rainbows. I have never seen any reference in any of the lore to rainbow-shooting weapons. I have never seen anything anywhere in the GW universe that says they DO exist.

Does that mean that they absolutely can’t? No. Does it mean just because they CAN, we need something so Carebear? No.

I have no trouble at all with the bow. It’s simply a bow with some whimsy attached to it. Arrows shot from bows in this game leave a visual trail. I’m even okay with that. I’d even be okay if arrows shot from The Dreamer had their visual trail be a rainbow.

But, as I said before, a fantasy MMO already relies heavily on a suspension of disbelief. There is only so much suspension you can do (and that point is different for each person). For me, a bow that shoots ridiculous unicorn-trailing rainbows is far beyond that point and dives right into the realm of immature stupidity.

That’s especially the case when I came from Guild Wars with the expectation of GW2 being even remotely like the game I’ve been willingly tied to for over half a decade, and that expectation was completely blown out of the water by GW2, which is Guild Wars in name only and doesn’t feel a thing like Guild Wars.

Then add silly things like that unicorn/rainbow effect, and it just pushes things too far for me to say, “Yeah, okay. I can see that fitting into this world.”

As others have said, there’s already a ton of silliness in GW2. To me, that makes GW2 feel like it’s a kiddie game.

Apparently, I was wrong. The Unicorn does exist in the Guild Wars universe. I had simply forgotten it. So I do not object to the bow itself.

I still think the bow’s effects, however, are absolutely stupid.

bpphantom.8243:

That’s the second thing I’d do. The first would be to rename the current version of Guild Wars 2 something else.

Something without “Guild Wars” in the title. I probably would like this game more if I hadn’t had an expectation that GW2 would follow the same spirit as GW…

I…

I love you for this. LOL

But seriously, I feel exactly the same way. They should have just named the places something different, had no mention of Guild Wars or anything to do with it, and named this game something else entirely.

Fay.2735:

I’m a 26 year old female, I like pink, rainbows and cute things as much as I like ‘masculine’ things like beer and games like gears of war 2. I think it’s your perception that anything pink, cute or consisting of rainbows is ‘Angsty Teenager’ stuff personally I think it’s quite a narrow minded attitude.

You seem to think that I object to the bow, the color pink and cute things. That tells me you either didn’t read everything I said or didn’t understand it. This is about in-game context. I never once said that anything pink, cute or consisting of rainbows is “angsty teenager stuff.” Not once.

You probably want to re-read what I said. I said the rainbow effect (NOT the bow itself) seems to be ANet attempting to pander to those angsty teenage types who prefer other games which I consider to be beneath Guild Wars (most of which are filled with silly, stupid, nonsense things that are incredibly immature).

I said that I wear pink. In fact, I’m wearing a pink shirt right now. It has nothing to do with color or masculinity or age. I said that I don’t object to the bow itself. I said that I object to the the silly rainbow effect of the bow and how it doesn’t fit the world it’s in.

That’s not narrow-minded, it’s a simple truth that GW2 is a dark game, with dark themes and dark tones. Are there pretty places in GW2? Yes. Are there children laughing and playing? Yes. Are there pretty weapons? Yes.

Are they in context with the game’s tone? Yes.

In the real world we have death and destruction on a regular basis, but we also have great beauty, charm and elegance. All of that, however, contextually has its place in our world. A bow that shoots rainbows does not have a contextual place in the world of GW2 (to say NOTHING of Guild Wars).

Thanks so much for trying to give me a lesson on mythology and color, but I don’t need it. Further, unicorns have never – ever – appeared in Guild Wars. There are none in GW2 – except for that bow. So, now that you’ve mentioned it, in fact I do object to the unicorn bow, because unicorns are unknown in the GW universe. That means that there is no context for a unicorn bow to exist in the GW universe.

Fay.2735:

Maybe try look beyond first association and appreciate things on their own merits, if you still don’t like it that’s fine that’s your opinion but don’t compare people who do like those kind of things with ‘angsty immature teenagers’. The fact that you feel you are superior to those who do like those things is the immature attitude here if anything.

So I can have my opinion and that’s fine, but if you don’t like what my opinion on things and what they equate to is, it’s not fine? And mine is the immature attitude. ’kay.

Fay.2735:

Also, Not everything needs to be serious within the game. In reality we have wars and awful things but we also have adorable, beautiful things. Nobody complains about those things ruining immersion in reality.

It just needs to be contextually valid in the world I’m supposed to be getting immersed in. Rainbow projectiles are not contextually valid in the GW universe – and certainly not when nothing else in the game looks anything like the effect of the bow’s ammo.

VBMeireles.4951:

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a hater (only a Dreamer effect hater). I love this game deeply. That’s the reason for so much passion.

The funny thing is that I absolutely love Guild Wars. But when it comes to GW2 (which seems to me to have taken everything good about Guild Wars and trashed it to make a WoW-like version of the game), I’m actually pretty much a hater (although as I’d said before, I hate the effect, not the bow).

The only reason I log in is because I’m in a guild that have all known each other in real life for almost 20 years. We’re family, and I wanted to be able to play with them. Otherwise I’d never have bought the game after I tried it in Beta (yeah, I didn’t like GW2 even before launch).

And yet my passion comes from so very much wanting to like this game. I love Guild Wars deeply. It’s been the game I played for more than half a decade.

I really want to NOT hate GW2. Being immersed without ridiculous elements that are simply out of context with the world of the game would help with that.

That’s my reason for so much passion.

And we still come to the same conclusion about rainbows. Heh.

Anyway, good luck out there.

Thank you, Apolyon.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Nemui.6753:

always makes me laugh how people are apparently too manly and/or serious to be able to bear the presence of this bow.

Yup, the same thing happened at release with ppl complaining about mesmer and purple butterflies effects… it just didn’t suit their manly man aesthetics.

I also have a sneaking suspicion ppl complaining about it being “childish”..are probably 15-25 and desperate to prove how adult they are.

You know, it has nothing to do with being too manly or serious, or young.

I’m a 44-year-old man. I’m confident enough in my masculinity to wear pink shirts and ties. I’m old enough to think the idea of a bow that shoots rainbows is sophomoric and unrealistic – even in a fantasy setting. I’m at ease with purple butterflies. Anyone you meet who knows me would tell you that the last descriptor they’d use for me is “serious.” In fact, my girlfriend frequently complains that I don’t take things seriously enough. So you’re wrong on all of those counts.

Now, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I just think that you don’t have to have the fluffy bunny stuff in a game carrying the “Guild Wars” name. I have no objection to the bow itself. I object to it firing rainbow pretties. It is, frankly, stupid and very, very childish.

And the point in my previous post – anyone else’s opinion notwithstanding – is that Guild Wars has always been better than that.

It has never been in the same group as what I view as lesser games like WoW, Aion, Perfect World, Forsaken World, and all the other cookie-cutter MMOs (which GW2 really is – despite how much they want to say it’s different) that pander to the angsty teens who wander around clutching large pink kitten dolls and think it’s cool.

Any fantasy game requires a suspension of disbelief – a very high suspension – to be effectively immersive. For that immersion to work, things in the world have to make sense.

Like it or not, GW2 is actually fairly dark in its tone. Let’s think about that.

• Bandits are everywhere
• Lion’s Arch is an entire city of pirates (you know, CRIMINALS)
• The Cursed Shores are full of dreary and depressing areas (to say nothing of undead Quaggan, for Kormir’s sake)
• Dwarfs have been all but wiped out
• The Black Citadel is quite possibly the most depressing example of reckless industrial abandon you could find. DETROIT would get depressed in the Black Citadel
• Humans are a diminishing race – what’s left of them are in a constant struggle for survival from enemies on all sides
• Norn are REFUGEES, living in a diminished state from 250 years ago – and now with the latest update they’re being driven further into exile from their homeland
• Two giant Elder Dragons have risen so far (Kralkatorrik and Zhaitan). Four more are coming.
• Entire swaths of Charr homelands have been turned into dead zones called the Dragon Brand, and Kralkatorrik’s crystal minions lurk the land – attacking anyone they come across
• A shorbow shoots pretty rainbows
• With the new rumblings in the northern Shiverpeaks driving Norn and other species south, it is likely that a third giant Elder Dragon (Jormag) will rise very soon, indeed
• Evil Asura are running experiments on living and unwilling test subjects
• Ghosts infest Ascalon and attack any living people who enter their domain
• Centaurs – once often friendly toward others – now kill humans in their own homelands on a regular basis
• The Nightmare Court consolidate more power
• The Gods have left the world, and animals drink water from the altars of the holy places

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong. ..

That’s why the ridiculous pretty rainbow kills immersion. This is a dark, dark, DARK game.

It’s got nothing to do with masculinity, seriousness or age. It’s got to do with something that doesn’t fit in the world it’s been shoved into.

As if there isn’t already enough screen clutter – despite ANet’s claim that they’re against screen clutter, now there’s this.

Yeah. Thanks bunches for adding more unnecessary clutter to an already cluttered interface.

(sarcasm)For those of us with vision problems, you’re just making everything SO much easier.(/sarcasm)

First thing? Immediately?

Completely remove anything and everything that looks even REMOTELY like it’s Anime style.

Second thing? Immediately after the first thing?

Completely eliminate the stylized, brushstroke style of the artwork and replace it with the more realistic approach of Guild Wars.

After that? There’s so much I’d do I can’t even begin to think of where to start.

I had absolutely no idea that a unicorn bow that shoots rainbows existed.

That’s so whimsical it’d be right at home in the Weasley house. I cheered when it was blown up.

If I’d known GW2 was going to become Rainbow Brite Online, I’d have just bought either Aion, Forsaken World or perhaps Hello Kitty Online and spent a lot less on ridiculous schlock.

Yes, there have always been fun elements in Guild Wars, but one of the things that attracted me to the original was the fact that they were references to something else (Grabthar’s Hammer, for example, a reference to “Galaxy Quest” or “Ellie Rigby” being a reference to a Beatles song, and so forth). They were never in-your-face, immersion-killing fluffy, nice-nice, BS nonsense.

Suddenly I feel like we’ve come to “Disney Online: Curse of the Cutesey Fecal Matter” and so much further away from Guild Wars than this game has ever been.

More of ANet pandering to the rival game kiddies and turning our beloved Guild Wars into “Guild WoW.” Ugh.

This is likely covered somewhere in a thread, but I honestly don’t have the time to go through thousands of posts to find the answer.

I’ve looked at the official GW2 wiki, and that’s absolutely no help.

So here are the straight-forward questions that will, hopefully, get straight-forward answers:

• Commander: Is it ONLY for PvP/WvW, or does it work in PvE as well?
• If it works in PvE, does it actually give you a chance to have a party size larger than 5? (For example, could you take more than 5 into a story instance or dungeon?)

Just hoping to clear this up, because I get different answers from different people and the official wiki is no help.

Thanks.

uknortherner.2670:

ubaid.8213:

Is your own personal filter broken? You saw the title but didn’t have to read it.

When I see a title about something I’ve either already seen or don’t care about it, I generally don’t read it.

From ANet’s Code of Conduct:

You agree to the following guidelines, which will help cultivate a user-friendly environment in the Guild Wars 2 Forums:

• Read the forum before asking a question. There’s a good chance your question has already been answered.
• Use the search function before posting. This will focus the discussion and facilitate a response.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/rules

The OP and all the other mount-spam thread starters have failed to do either of these.

Hmm… Come to think of it, this one may apply too:

• Avoid frivolous and duplicate postings.

Also relevant:

• Stay on topic and create a new post for tangentially related topics.

:)

NinjaEd.3946:

Alex.9317:

I can’t really understand why arenanet doesn’t want to add mounts. It would make the game more attracive and easy. I don’t ask for mounts inWvW, of course, but during exploring Tyria it would be really helpful.

Is your search bar broken currently? If so, I would send a ticket to the Anet team to see how to fix that issue. If it is not, should try using it, and reply to the other million or so threads about this.

Is your own personal filter broken? You saw the title but didn’t have to read it.

When I see a title about something I’ve either already seen or don’t care about it, I generally don’t read it.

On Topic: I see no need for mounts. Run speeds are good, speed skills are good, getting around isn’t a problem.

Mounts would just clutter up screen real estate that’s already cluttered and, worse, help induce lag on people with lower-powered systems while their computer tries to render everything else plus everybody else’s My Little Pony.

I’d hate to see mounts ever enter this game.

CodeE.4857:

Astral Projections.7320:

How about just increasing party size in the open world. Having only 5 party members can be a little restrictive if a number of guild members want to group up and work in a map together.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Squad
Meh….so you can group up like that, you just have to have someone who spent 100g on the commander thingy. I would be ok with a way to group say…20 people without having to have a commander.
edit Only in open world obviously. 5-man dungeons should stay 5-man dungeons.

Why should it be necessary to pay 100g in order to get the “Commander” title in order to run a 50-man squad when you just want to run an 8-man team?

It’s a money grab. “Spend money on gems so you can convert them to gold – just so you can play with your friends.”

Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d think GW2 was owned by Perfect World.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

They’ve commented on this quite recently I believe. The gist of it was that if you have party sizes larger than 5 the amount of screen space you end up taking up is insane. A lot of people do have smaller screens.

5 people parties allow for easy monitoring of everyone in the party and they work well with the current game mechanics and dungeon setups.

8 people parties only really worked so well in GW1 because we had hero/hench and each profession was designed to have very very specific roles.

The amount of screen space? I’d laugh it that wasn’t so ridiculous. If they were worried about screen space, they could do a few things:

• Take the hideous interface with its enormous icons and wasted screen real estate and make it the simple, elegant interface we have in Guild Wars
• Let us zoom out further so we can actually see around us
• Make things a reasonable size (One of the things I couldn’t stand about my extremely brief stay in another game (which shall remain nameless) is that I couldn’t actually see anything but the bottom half of what I was fighting. It’s the same with things here in Guild WoW. There’s no reason things have to be so big that you can’t really see what’s going on.)

If I’m with a group of guildies (I don’t play the game with anyone else and I don’t do PUGs), I have absolutely no need whatsoever to “monitor” other players. There are no healers in GW2, so I have no need to monitor them and try to keep them alive. And since they’re people I know and trust to do their job, I don’t need to “monitor” them to make sure they’re not “slacking.” If I want to see who’s alive or who’s dead, it takes less than half a second to flit my eyes to the party window and see health bars. So what is this “monitoring” we’re supposed to be concerned with as an excuse for the 5-man group?

Finally, the idea that 8-man parties ONLY worked well because there were heroes and henchmen, with very specific roles, is just not on at all. I’m in a guild that is incredibly small (seven people) but incredibly helpful. We help each other because it’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do in a guild. So if you’re in a guild that won’t help you, find a better one. That’s kind of a no-brainer, there.

In addition, they took healers out of the equation. We’re supposed to be able to heal ourselves now (Self-heal skills are insufficient. It doesn’t work and is one of the things I most hate about GW2). They’ve broken the “holy trinity” in GW2 (much to the detriment of gameplay, I think), so specific roles aren’t necessary.

What that means is that if specific roles aren’t necessary, then there’s no reason an 8-man team wouldn’t work well because people don’t have specific roles, and you don’t need to ensure specific builds for specific circumstances.

And there’s a very good reason to increase the available party: People want to play together.

As I said, we’re a VERY small guild. But we go to do someone’s storyline, a difficult mission, wander around in 80 areas, or a dungeon, two of us have to sit on the sidelines and listen to the fun the others are having. It’s like ANet is saying “We know you want to play with your friends but Eff You. Go play something else.”

So far, I have yet to hear any real reason we can’t have larger teams, but there’s at least one heck of a good reason to raise the party limit. Unless, that is, ANet wants to drive people to play other games where they can enjoy themselves with their friends and not be “benched” by the game they’re playing.

I think that the reality where guilds are concerned is that they tend to mean something different depending on who you ask.

I belong to a very small guild, and most of us have known each other in the real world for almost 20 years. Some of use are actual family through blood or marriage – the rest of us are the kind of friends that are family in every way that doesn’t include blood or marriage. Of course, we’re all in the same guild. And that’s what the role of the Guild is for us – to give us all a chance to work together and play together for the good of each other and to do that easily by being able to stay connected.

So you’ve got your friend guilds, family guilds, PvP guilds, PvE guilds, RP guilds, and so on. Each has its own function, so I don’t think there’s any one specific role.

The problem is that in GUILD Wars 2, there are no guild halls, no real sense of connection to a group due to the 5-man party limitation, no real goals for things like earning a Guild Hall or things to put in a Guild Hall. There’s no Guild Hall to invite your friends to and be social (after all, ANet have said this is a “social” game).

It’s really surprising that in a game with the word “Guild” in the title, you’re right – it feels like guilds (which are so much better in the original Guild Wars) are even less than an afterthought.

But then, the incredibly small amount of GW2 that makes me feel connected to the game feels like an afterthought. It’s really bizarre.

Blacklight.2871:

ubaid.8213:

P.S. For the record, I hate jumping puzzles with the passion of a million burning suns.

That’s how I feel about PvP, yet it’s been part of the monthlies since I started playing during headstart, despite my pleas to the contrary. I want to comiserate, but ANet’s been giving me the high hat for months. So has most of the PvP-swilling community for that matter. Hard really to be sympathetic when you don’t even need to complete the stupid JP’s to get credit. You just need to show up.

That’s just it, though. This isn’t Guild Wars, this is GW2.

We’re being told: You will play the way WE want you to play. You will not pick your own skills, and you certainly won’t have access to over a thousand.

We are being told: You MUST engage in combat OUR way if you want to survive. You may NOT have the same connect with your character in GW2 that you had in Guild Wars because you don’t have the same options for customization.

You WILL need to play PvP – because WE say so. It’s OUR game and YOU will play it OUR way.

That’s how GW2 feels to me. That’s why I’m only here because friends I’ve known for over 20 years in real life migrated to GW2 from Guild Wars.

I absolutely love Guild Wars. I really, truly do.

I absolutely hate Guild Wars 2. I really, truly do. And, were it not for my friends being here, I wouldn’t be here at all.

I went from a major ANet fan to really not liking them at all.

My pleas went unanswered, too.

Orpheal.8263:

As the current system works, you basically are intended to do every day the exact same 4 things …

Which is the worst idea in the long, sad history of MMO bad ideas.

I want to be engaged and entertained. Doing the exact same thing over and over again isn’t fun, it isn’t challenging, it certainly isn’t entertaining, and it feels like an incredible amount of laziness on the part of developers who sat and said, “Eh. They’ll do everything else and we’re either not really ready or can’t be bothered to release new content. But they’re stupid, so they’ll LOVE doing the same thing over and over again and never get bored.”

I despise the idea of dailies. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – more grindy than daily quests and/or missions. We were promised GW2 wouldn’t be a grind.

That’s really all it is once you get to dailies: Grinding and nothing but.

So please. More real content, no more dailies.

P.S. For the record, I hate jumping puzzles with the passion of a million burning suns.

So there. Infinity. Anything you say times zero.

I never used the friends list in Guild Wars. I never used the Guild roster in Guild Wars. I don’t bother with either in GW2.

When I come online, I say hello to my guildies in Guild Chat. When they come online, they say hello in Guild Chat. That’s about all I need.

The GW2 UI feels cluttered to me to begin with, certainly nowhere near the elegant sufficiency that the UI of Guild Wars has. The last thing I need in GW2 is more stuff popping up on my screen to distract me.

If you’re really that concerned, it takes what, half a second to hit the Y or G keys? Do something this simple for yourself. Asking that the game does something for you that’s really a simple as hitting a key seems kind of lazy.

Offline mode, however, that’d be real nice.

Saga.9751:

Why is it that complaints are met with such hostility? People jump to conclusions about OP, ask what is his/her problem is, say he/she is entitled, yet they were polite as hell. Anonymity of the interwebz doesnt change the fact that being an elitist makes you a kitten. Personally I think the presents were immersion breaking and unfair, seeing as some kitten can open the thing and leave the mobs to run amok for innocent bystanders to get slaughtered by. Regardless, the hostility in this thread is disgusting.

It is exactly the anonymity of the internet that lets the Elitists and fanbois rail against anyone who has even the mildest complaint against people.

They like to use the word “entitlement” a lot, as if the money the person spent on the game as a customer means they are not allowed to find fault with it. It’s on every single game forum you’ll ever see.

The internet may have been a great innovation, but it’s sure served to devolve society as much as it’s connected people.

As to the boxes, I didn’t even bother with them. I thought GW2 Wintersday was horrible, and I just couldn’t be bothered to open the box and wade through the extremely overpowered toys inside only to get something that’s useless anyway.

But they’re part of Wintersday, OP. I don’t like they way they were done, either. Since we get the useless junk in drops that come from the boxes anyway, I don’t understand why they even bothered with the boxes at all (and yeah, they can mess with the immersion when they just suddenly drop out of the sky and onto your head).

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The statistics reported on the wiki pages for the Wintersday Mystery Box drop rates are incorrect, due to the method being used for calculating them. Some of our item packages use more than one loot table to determine what you get from opening them. Whenever you open a Wintersday Mystery Box, it randomly drops items selected from 2 tables, each having specific items and their own drop rates.

We’ve seen people mention the low drop rates of Foostivoo from Wintersday Mystery Box and would like to remind people that the primary way to obtain this miniature is from the Mystic Forge, by combining other minis (wiki link).

Thank you.

Translation: The original count was wrong because we use multiple drop tables to make it even more difficult to get the coveted Quaggan minipet; because we want you to spend as much money as possible and hope you won’t realize that we’re actually having you gamble in hopes for a very, very long shot.

Come on, people. ANet went full-on Korean-style “milk the player dry” non-subscription model, here. This isn’t Guild Wars, this is Guild Wars 2: Rise of the Wallet.

I spent 10 bucks to try and get the Quaggan mini for a friend – without realizing that I wouldn’t be able to trade it anyway, and without realizing that I was playing ANet Roulette. I thought the minis I’d need were just going to be in the box – and that’s why you had to pay for it (my fault for not reading more closely – lesson learned there. I expected better from ANet and that’s obviously my own fauilt).

The simple result? I’ll never spend another penny in the gem shop or on any other ANet product. Once bitten, twice shy.

Never again.

daemonrus.4703:

It is a safer bet that parties, concerts, socializing, and alcohol will dominate the attention of most people during this time (including, I imagine, the staff at anet) I highly doubt that most people want hardcore gw2 events to conflict with their new year’s celebration. This is the main consideration behind the laid back and simplified in game event, as has been said many times before. It has nothing to do with rainbows and unicorns – just some very appreciated consideration for the player base on the part of the developers.

There will be plenty of other in game events that are full of shinies, so just try to enjoy the holiday

So with the thought that people will be too busy to deal with events, what makes anyone think it’s a better idea to put in stuff that requires a team (and a GOOD team if you want the extra titles/bonuses like keeping Dolyaks alive and destroying all the model cities) and then have to wait each day before you can do that?

GW2 Wintersday is actually MORE of a problem for people with limited time because you can’t just run out and do missions by yourself with heroes and/or henchmen. I simply don’t see how Wintersday in GW2 was better for people with less time than Wintersday in Guild Wars.

And then, of course there’s the rewards – the account-bound, useless, bits to put together a mini that is then bound as well. Big deal. Big, fat, hairy deal. At least in Guild Wars there were buffs and DP removers – things that would help you in a pinch, or things that were fun and silly like the useless, account-bound hat that weren’t functional but at least were not something you had to grind for. Rewards in GW2 Wintersday require grind. Remember when ANet said we wouldn’t be grinding? Yeah, right.

And then, of course, there’s the ugly wool hats/gloves/socks/sweaters. YAY! I get garbage that, once I build up a big supply, I can trade in and hope to get what? Less garbage than I spent. The whole thing with trading in wool for another present burned a lot of people before they learned after the first time not to trade for presents.

When I traded in a bunch of wool for a giant present, I had no idea that I shouldn’t, because it was the first time I’d done it. When I did that, and traded in all that wool, and then got LESS wool in the present I traded for? Yeah, I felt like ANet had just shown me a great, big middle finger. Happy Wintersday to you.

Grunties.6841:

The fact that it is ending is the best gift of all.

No kidding.

Wintersday in GW2 is a pale, boring, annoying shadow of what it was in Guild Wars.

Of course, Wintersday in GW2 is also geared toward being a gem shop money maker – which just makes it worse.

I don’t know any of my guild (all of whom have played Guild Wars religiously and nearly lived there for between seven and five years) who really made the extreme effort to do every single Wintersday thing – or even wanted to.

And I don’t know anyone – in my guild or not – who enjoyed Guitar Hero…er, I mean, Bell Choir enough to last through one run, let alone went back for a second time.

All in all, GW2 Wintersday was just plain blah at worst, and annoying at best.

mavet.3047:

They’re walking in the footsteps of the EA debacle with SWTOR. So many bugs and problems, I can see them walking across my screen. I guess if the “devs” knew what they were doing, we’d have fewer problems or maybe ppl just need to SPEND MORE MONEY in the cash shop as an incentive for them to fix their crap.

Not only the footsteps of EA. Let’s not forget Cryptic/Atari.

This is the state of the MMO today. Release too soon, then fix later. But that’s not bad enough.

SWTOR and STO both launched in what is possibly the worst state I’ve seen in a recent MMO (especially SWTOR, which had five years to get things right and didn’t).

Then, when bugs by the thousands pop up, they get ignored or take forever to fix.

STO went so far as to open up test servers so that the players could QA and bug report – the idea being that they’ll fix bugs before things go live. And, of course, that never happens. Ever. Every single patch in STO breaks something else.

Why should we expect ANet to be any different when people just accept this as the norm today? This is why on every new MMO forum you’ll see people – people PAYING to play even – saying, “Give it time. It’ll get better.” When I see that, I just shake my head at them and laugh.

“Give it time” isn’t what we should accept or expect. But it’s what we get these days – and the finger of blame for that should point right at the players who say “Give it time,” because if you roll over and take a beating, the companies you pay and are CUSTOMERS of (not “players,” but “customers”) are going to take advantage of that scenario every single time.

I did the first Infinitarium in the Grove. Next came the Queensdale one. By the third day, I just gave up, logged out, and went off to play Guild Wars, where it’s Wintersday every single day of the event, useful things drop from kills, and I can just do silly things.

One of the biggest problems I see between Wintersday in Guild Wars vs GW2 is that in Guild Wars, the quests are the same every single year. In GW2, the quests are essentially the same every day.

It’s boring, the rewards are less than stellar, often useless (really, sweaters I can trade for… sweaters in a lame game of GW2 roulette). Oh, and the Infinitarium – the huge, grand guignol of the event is impossible without a full team.

In Guild Wars? You know the events, you’ve come to love them as part of the holiday season that only comes once a year, and if you want, you can do them on your own with heroes and/or henchmen and don’t need to wait around for a team.

Between the two, I’d say Wintersday in Guild Wars has always been a fun home run, while Wintersday in GW2 is a massive swing-and-a-miss.

The exception? Snowball fight. I laughed hysterically when I used the giant snowball skill. Steamrollering opponents was funny.

KyleQuest.4639:

As someone who likes solo play, I’d rather dungeons have difficulty scaling that allowed between 1-8 or more. I get all the social interaction I need when I’m in WvW and the whole rest of PvE.

I’d appreciate some down time where I can solo. A dungeon is the perfect place to go all Indiana Jones and explore. Already having all the goodies gated in them “forces” me to do them. Forcing me to party with 4 strangers though, isn’t appreciated. Having it moved to 8 even more so. An MMORPG only requires simultaneous game play.

An MMORPG only requires simultaneous game play for you.

For me, an MMORPG is astonishingly boring if I’m not playing with people I know. For me, a game is play time, not solitude time. When I want solitude, I grab a book, a good CD and a cup of tea and go sit in a room by myself; I don’t go into an MMORPG that’s touted (by its developers, no less) as a “social game.”

Scaling dungeons would certainly solve that equation for both of us.

But I’m making a suggestion to raise the party cap (which may not work for you), and if they do, you may find yourself making a suggestion to lower it again.

Maybe I’m the only one in the entire game that thinks the 5-man party of the average, cookie-cutter MMORPG of today is inconsistent with ANet’s manifesto of GW2 being an MMORPG that breaks the mold; and who thinks the limit makes a game I already don’t like that much more unlikable. Playing with my guild would make GW2 palatable to me. For now, I can’t even be bothered to care about the Wintersday stuff (and I was big on Wintersday in Guild Wars).

I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t like the level cap, though. I know at least six other people who also don’t like the level cap but don’t use the forums. They may represent a miniscule and demographically insignificant portion of the game’s population, but I’ve known them for about 20 years. Bet there are more I don’t know.

Ridgeblader.7135:

SWTOR is on a restricted F2P up until level 40, after that you must subscribe to play the end game content.

You are playing something essentially right out of the box with anything like that improvements will be made over time.

Groups are not broken which is your main gripe, it is just that groups are smaller than you like. So you have to wait until Anet decide they want bigger groups in the game or recruit three more family friends and run two groups through dungeons.

I’m well aware of what TOR’s F2P mechanics are. When it went F2P I figured it was finally worth the price, until I saw how heavy-handed they were with the F2P restrictions (although they changed a few).

I never once said that groups are “broken.” You’re trying to put words in my mouth. I’m making a suggestion that they raise the cap. If you don’t like the suggestion, that’s certainly fine; we’re both entitled to our opinions. But don’t try to put words into my mouth. That’s not fine.

I said that I feel the groups are too small after playing Guild Wars for several years and being in higher-level areas with 8 people – because that was ANet’s model for Guild Wars. Since I can’t play with the rest of my guild due to the decreased party size, I often find myself having to go out into the world and Solo – which I find to be absolutely no fun at all.

I’ve heard the “Give it time” argument in two other rather famous MMOs of recent history: “Star Trek Online” (went F2P in 2 years) and “Star Wars The Old Republic” (went F2P before its first anniversary).

Here, I’m also hearing, “It gets better once your at higher levels.”

I don’t understand either mentality, frankly.

I’ve paid my 60 bucks. I’d like to play something I enjoy now, not weeks, months or years down the road. The timing there, of course, could be argued.

I also don’t understand the complacency of the “it gets better when you’re higher level” model. Wouldn’t you want me to like the game out of the gate, and not have to slog through something I think is fairly mundane at best just to get to the good bits?

We could argue that until we’re blue in the face, it won’t matter.

So what’s the word on the “Commander” thing? Is it, as I’ve been told, JUST for PvP, or is it also for PvE? Anyone know?

Like I said, we were essentially taught that, once you got to higher level areas, the 8-man party was standard in Guild Wars.

I know that a 5-man team is standard in other MMOs, but wasn’t it part of ANet’s Manifesto that they weren’t making a “standard” MMO?

From what I’ve been given to understand, the “Commander” thing works for PvP, not PvE. Have I been misinformed on this?

Finally, it’s frankly annoying that you’ve got to grind (didn’t ANet also say this wasn’t going to be a grind?) gold to be able to play with your friends. It just feels punitive to make us grind gold for something like that – especially when gold is needed for just about everything else in the game (waiting for it to be necessary to spend a few copper an hour just so our characters are allowed to breathe the air).

Typical of this kind of thing is in the Wintersday missions. When in with my guild, we’re on TeamSpeak. All of us – every single one – were saying, “Jesus! ANOTHER brain hurricane?! SHUT UP!”

It’s almost amusing once. By the second time, it’s annoying. By the 10th time, you want to hurt someone for putting it in the game.

I understand: ANet wanted to do something different with GW2. I get that. They just couldn’t do the same exact thing as GW and call it GW “2” because it’d have been… the same.

That said, I’m not a fan. I played two of the three GW2 betas, and really didn’t like the game. I felt that things had been dumbed-down (we can’t pick our own skills, no secondary profession, the thinking as to profession/secondary profession/skills/armour/insignia/runes/strategy/situation that let me play the way I want to play have been wiped out and instead I’m bound to playing with skills that are fairly useless or poorly designed and are dictated to me by my weapon instead of letting me choose by myself. I was happy to stay in GW because of this, but the game has really done a quick dive since the release of GW2.

So I bought GW2 so that I could still enjoy gaming with my guild. The problem is that the only reason I bought GW2 was because my GW guild has gone dead since release. The people I’ve played with for years (and have known personally as extended family for almost 20 years) have left GW in favor of GW2.

We have a small guild – which we prefer because it’s a “family guild.” But that is a problem.

We have seven people. Seven.

In Guild Wars, if we wanted to go out as a party, we took each other and one hero, and the whole group could go and play together.

In GW2, if we want to go out as a party, five can go and two have to sit on the sidelines, and there’s no way around it if you’re going into an instance.

I feel like ANet is forcing me to solo the game because I can’t play with my other guildies. It’s supposed to be a “social” game, so they say. But then they limit interaction.

Now, the argument could be made that there has to be a limit, and that’s understandable. But why change that limit from what we’ve been taught is the “right number” for seven years in Guild Wars?

You can add additional spots – in PvP, but that does nothing for those of us who are in a guild that has absolutely no interest whatsoever in PvP. We’re locked in to having to break up the group because of the five-man limit.

What was wrong with 8 people in a party?

Obviously, the suggestion here is to up the limit.