Guild Wars 2

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Itzena_sl

shitlord
4,609
6
Makes anet sense that they would put all that effort into developing raids, design a new healing elite spec to go with it, for a small section of players, grab the 5 million pie that left WoW in the last year I suppose. Meanwhile wvw has been dying for decent development time for 3 years.
The people who quit WoW weren't the raiding guilds - that's about the only level cap content thereisin WoD
 

Bruman

Golden Squire
1,154
0
Makes anet sense that they would put all that effort into developing raids, design a new healing elite spec to go with it, for a small section of players, grab the 5 million pie that left WoW in the last year I suppose. Meanwhile wvw has been dying for decent development time for 3 years.
Just like dungeons, that they're actually killing now, while they claim Fractals are the dungeon replacements. Then they don't make any new Fractals either.

I'm done with this expansion already (I basically fucking hated it - it goes against everything that made the base game great IMO), but introducing features/systems and abandoning them is par-the-course at ANet. And lots of other MMOs too, for what it's worth.
 

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,385
277
I agree, I can't say I like the expansion. There are some nice parts, like their solution for adding classes. I think that has alot of room to build on. I like the idea of masteries but there should have been tons more to pick from and an unlimited supply of points, imo.

I did not like the new maps, they are less for exploring (though there is some) and mostly just build to support their big meta chain. SW and Dry Top took that direction too and I was not thrilled by those either. I think it's beyond lame that they declare fractals as their big pillar for group content without actually adding any new fractals. I know I should not compare it directly to WoW because Blizzard gets sub money, but it feels like in the last year+ Anet/GW2 has actually delivered less content and features then Blizzard with WoW (looking at both expansions and game updates). Being slower then Blizzard - that's a pretty sad state of affairs. Especially so since frequent additions were a hallmark of early GW2.
 

Caeden

Golden Baronet of the Realm
7,581
12,534
I agree, I can't say I like the expansion. There are some nice parts, like their solution for adding classes. I think that has alot of room to build on. I like the idea of masteries but there should have been tons more to pick from and an unlimited supply of points, imo.

I did not like the new maps, they are less for exploring (though there is some) and mostly just build to support their big meta chain. SW and Dry Top took that direction too and I was not thrilled by those either. I think it's beyond lame that they declare fractals as their big pillar for group content without actually adding any new fractals. I know I should not compare it directly to WoW because Blizzard gets sub money, but it feels like in the last year+ Anet/GW2 has actually delivered less content and features then Blizzard with WoW (looking at both expansions and game updates). Being slower then Blizzard - that's a pretty sad state of affairs. Especially so since frequent additions were a hallmark of early GW2.
Yeah. I'm enjoying the game but it doesn't grab me like WoW does even after all these years. I'm about to complete season 2 and move into HoT.

To me, the writing or tone just feels very juvenile at times. Maybe it's the delivery of the voice acting, but coming from Swtor or even wow's minimal voice work is jarring.

Trade skills feel like a fucking grind though. I just don't enjoy them here.
 

Faltigoth

Bronze Knight of the Realm
1,380
212
I will be happy when they nerf the shit out of the tangled depths event chain / end boss. That zone is painful as hell, you got 15-20 minutes of doing the initial events for each lane, then an hour of sitting on your ass scrabbling to do shit events to keep your participation up, and then a quick 2 minute blitz for the end event that, unless you won the map lottery, is going to almost immediately fail.

It has to stick out like a sore thumb that 3 of their 4 new zones are hopping and one is getting totally ignored.
 

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
857
1,227
I'm loving the new expansion so I guess I'm in the minority, but TD is probably the worst designed and by far the least fun zone I have ever played in an mmo in...probably ever. I would love to read an AMA by the devs who did that zone to see what the fuck it was that they were thinking some day.

I killed CG twice with the guild I'm in and we had to go to the map 2 hours early and afk with hidden tags so the pugs would all leave and we could exclusively fill it up with all guild to even have a chance. Straight up nightmare and by far the biggest waste of time in the game that I can think of.
 

bytes

Molten Core Raider
957
638
I don't think I ever want to play a non sub mmo ever again. The raidbosses can drop minis (which I personally don't care too much about) so you can show off how badass you are for beating them. Well, except for the final boss. They're selling that one in the fucking gemstore.
 

Xenrauk

Trakanon Raider
1,246
914
The people who quit WoW weren't the raiding guilds - that's about the only level cap content thereisin WoD
Yes but it was the only thing still missing from the game to attract any left over players from wow, can't imagine all raiders would stick around long in wow while there's no new content for the next year. In any case I think focusing on raids was a bad idea, they officially abandoned dungeons, didn't bother with any new fractals but increased the levels, pretty much abandoned wvw as well even though they keep saying there some great master plan in the works for it. They want to make this push for esports at the cost of everything else in the game.

What they delivered in content for this expansion is certainly way less than you would get from a typical WoW expansion for the same price. WoW expansions usually have like 6-10 dungeons, 2-4 raids, 6-10 new zones. Anet only did 4 world zones, auric basin I actually like the most, verdant brink and dragonstand is right behind it, although dragonstand is basically just a 2 hour loop event map, tangled depths is a mess and never been able to complete the meta there. They provided more class wise though, elite spec that gives a new line of traits, new weapon with 2-6 skills, 4 utility and 1 new heal and elite skills. Just saw everquest going to release their 22nd expansion for $35, that's what this gw2 expansion feels like it should have been worth $35-40.
 

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,385
277
Current WvW is 400v400v400, is it not? Performance issues are real though, I bet many people play with everything turned to minimum in WvW. I know I do, although I rarely bother with it anyway.
 

bayr_sl

shitlord
715
0
Makes anet sense that they would put all that effort into developing raids, design a new healing elite spec to go with it, for a small section of players, grab the 5 million pie that left WoW in the last year I suppose. Meanwhile wvw has been dying for decent development time for 3 years.
There's no logic in anything anet does. There must be some talented people there because the game is at least technically very impressive, but everyone in charge is absolutely retarded
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
There's no logic in anything anet does. There must be some talented people there because the game is at least technically very impressive, but everyone in charge is absolutely retarded
To a certain extent, yes, however there is nothing quite like GW2 (or GW1) so they have to do all the stupid decisions themselves instead of checking out other games to see what works. On one hand, they built features to last years at a time, on the other hand, they smothered dungeons in favor of fractals despite not adding any in HoT.
 

Caeden

Golden Baronet of the Realm
7,581
12,534
I play this, WoW, Swtor, and sometimes TSW. The first three have grinds galore, but for some reason gw2 just feels the grindiest.

I am about 6 chapters into HoT on my guardian, but I fucking hate the class. I hate how melee is just beyond fucked in this game. I'm leveling a revenant and necro, but I just can't seem to dump the level of time into this game I did wow or swtor. The writing is juvenile compared to Swtor and even wow. The content feels so shallow at times.

I feel like an amoeba. Moving and sucking up xp. The combat just misses the visceral feedback from wow.

Crafting feels like the worst possible grind imaginable. God. Fuck it. But, the game is pretty and some of the new cutscenes are gorgeous. Again, the best shit seems to be stuck in single player instances.

How fucking good would this game be if they focuses on the trinity, the same renown point overland, and put effort into gorgeous and hard dungeons as progression and cleaned up some of the grind?
 

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
857
1,227
Considering people still can't beat Arah three years later making hard group dungeons and tying it to progression would be awful. The thing with Gw2 is that it's a jack of all trades game created to cater to all groups and types of players without really mastering anything. The closest we'll probably ever get to the trinity is with raids and currently the difference between a tank and regular dps is a single toughness trinket to maintain agro.

I'm not really sure where people are getting the grind complaints from though, with the exception of Legendary/Ascended gear and some of the more rare skins (which has always been considered the endgame). Crafting is pretty awful imo but crafting in just about every mmo I have ever played has been dogshit and similar to the other crafting systems.

When I came back from my 3 year break I was a 400 Artificer (max level apparently raised to 500) and I needed a 400-450 Weaponsmith to make Crystals and a 500 Tailor to craft Ascended. It took me 30ish min each to get Tailoring and Weaponsmithing to 400 from 0. All three were later brought to 475+ under a week by just using them to refine shitty higher end mats into more higher end mats each night before I logged off that I mostly only did to save storage space. If you don't have the mats already from playing the game it costs something like 35-70 gold to bring most professions to 400.

Where else is the grind?
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Considering people still can't beat Arah three years later making hard group dungeons and tying it to progression would be awful. The thing with Gw2 is that it's a jack of all trades game created to cater to all groups and types of players without really mastering anything. The closest we'll probably ever get to the trinity is with raids and currently the difference between a tank and regular dps is a single toughness trinket to maintain agro.

I'm not really sure where people are getting the grind complaints from though, with the exception of Legendary/Ascended gear and some of the more rare skins (which has always been considered the endgame). Crafting is pretty awful imo but crafting in just about every mmo I have ever played has been dogshit and similar to the other crafting systems.

When I came back from my 3 year break I was a 400 Artificer (max level apparently raised to 500) and I needed a 400-450 Weaponsmith to make Crystals and a 500 Tailor to craft Ascended. It took me 30ish min each to get Tailoring and Weaponsmithing to 400 from 0. All three were later brought to 475+ under a week by just using them to refine shitty higher end mats into more higher end mats each night before I logged off that I mostly only did to save storage space. If you don't have the mats already from playing the game it costs something like 35-70 gold to bring most professions to 400.

Where else is the grind?
You are confusing people not being able to beat Arah and not being forced to beat Arah. There is very little that forces you to learn how to play, outside competitive pvp. Any public event you can get by with just randomly smashing keys for gold contribution. There is nothing that tells you whether you did well or not, the reward is the same or you all fail together, so nobody outside people who actually look up builds and gear optimization has any real idea how to be good at the game. When it's pugs, you just bail since "the group sucked"

The grind complaints come from the fact that the game makes it really hard to go for very specific rewards. Trying to get lodestones or T6 crafting mats ? Congratulations, there are like 2 zones where lodestones drop, so you might as well be better off grinding money and to get T6 as fast as possible, you either need to grind endgame maps and pray for lucky salvages or run around and scan any hard to reach spot day after day to mine them directly. Or, you are back to doing whatever gives the most money and just buy it from the AH, which, as D3 taught us, is a terrible reward system. On top, any of these problems can be alleviated by buying diamonds and trading them for gold ...
 

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
857
1,227
I'm not confusing people at all, I just realize that most of the community not only doesn't have that ability (to get better), but that they don't want to be forced to get better and they don't play Gw2 for hard challenging content - which is fine. Everything in HoT right now that has an exclusive reward or collection tied to that event, that is hard (such as raids and Garent), has a multi page complaint thread by people on the official forums demanding that the event be nerfed and/or collection rewards moved to more obtainable means. ANet even caved and nerfed how difficult some mastery points were in HoT during the first few days and removed the mastery restrictions on others and on the Story because people were losing their shit.

If ANet one day come out and locked the story or any kind of meaningful progression behind hard group dungeons that were at least Arah difficult, you'd see a riot rather than people trying to get better and work to defeat it (or they will try a few times before branding it impossible and then riot).


As for the second part, what very specific rewards are generating these grind complaints outside of legendary/Ascended gear and some rare skins I previously alluded to?
 

Caeden

Golden Baronet of the Realm
7,581
12,534
I'd say chill.

I never complained of difficulty. I simply feel like, for whatever reason, I "see" the grind more obviously in gw2. I'm a returning player that hadn't farmed gold in silverwastes for a year. Started a new character and realized my paltry gold amount wasn't about to be able to fund my tradeskill leveling. Went to go farm the mats and it just felt way more mats per skill up were needed. Ergo I said it felt grindier than other games.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

It's a personal feeling. I had the same issue with the current swtor companion system.

I did agree on the mastery nerf given how most classes seemed to balanced with the new elite spec or whatever being critical to performance. What happens if that plays like shit or is just unfun? It reminds me of how some classes in wow didn't play "right" until the 50's or 60's. By then you used to have a lot sunk time you didn't get back.