GUILD WARS 2 THREAD OF GENERAL GUILD WARRING TWO

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Synk, I must thank you.

I had a momentary lapse in sanity where I considered playing again.

[Ryong]

Yeah man, it's not like they just fixed the trait unlock system last patch, right? Oh wait they totally fucking did.

It's not like megaservers have made the game not be a empty wasteland outside of a train or the first two waves of world bosses, no, definitely not.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

A few boos from the gallery, I see.

Those are minor concessions in the overall picture of A-Net not knowing what the fuck they're doing in the long run. This is further compounded with the key points that Synk listed. I'm normally laid back when it comes to a lot of games but Guildwars 2 struck a nerve of extreme agitation and disappointment at the same time.

The biggest beef I have with Anet and GW2 is they're seemingly content with mediocrity. Most updates are either fixes from previous fuckups, unnecessary alterations, and are just plain stupid.

Anet has a long history of ignoring problems pointed out that could desperately use fixing. Out of sight and out of mind. For me, it started when following a relatively minor patch players noticed and pointed out to Anet that loot tables were broken across the board and champions weren't dropping anything even remotely valuable compared to the effort put forth. Anet flat out said Nope, you're all dumb. We have tables to look at and you don't. We're right, you're wrong, nothing to see here. Move along. This is referred to as the Final Rest debacle of 2012. So the only real way to get loot for shit was to buy gems or do the dragon trains. Anet then put a daily cap on dragons. This fueled massive lagspikes on the dragon hotspots at all times. So what do they do? Put in server guesting! CLEARLY THIS DIDN'T COMPOUND THE ISSUE! Well after a year of refusing that loot tables were broken? Oh, guess they were. We'll fix that now lolololololol. Not to mention the myriad of problems that have existed from launch, as Synk pointed out.

Enter the luck grind. A grind on top of a grind on top of a grind. Korean mmos have nothing against that shit.

Oh hey, absofuckinglutely no endgame? FRACTALS! Introducing another stupidass useless mechanic requirng another stupidass item grind to get any further because of the stupidass torment mechanic. After a certain point group and spec composition becomes key for survival. That useless fuck of a joke healer shout warrior that Chris Whiteside splooged about? Nope. Deadass liability, dead weight, wasted team slot in any content.

PVP is little more than flavor of the month builds designed around mitigating the latest update's 'balance' pass. WvWvW have interesting mechanics but are ultimately of little use compared to straight up zerging from point to point.

So yeah, I speak harshly of GW2 because it deserves it. I know the game could, and would, be better if the folk running it weren't so occupied with eating paste and give the game some actual direction instead of being an over glorified dress-up simulator. At this point I'm inclined to say the only valid reason GW2 hasn't gone titsup is because it is free to play after the initial purchase.

I want to enjoy the game. I want to play the game. It's simply not enjoyable in every aspect and so far everything Anet does simply turns me off from the game that much more.

[synkr0nized]

I just wanted to complain about how my preferred profession is being coded/creatively directed by people who don't even understand how it works (or, more correctly, doesn't work). Key skills to us mesmers have been broken and re-broken consistently, whereas warriors come out more polished, guardians are strong, rangers even got their pets updated, etc. I'll admit to some bias, mesmer being my pride and joy, but it's a bit ridiculous how long our list of bugs has gotten.


I definitely agree that it's a bit silly that folks involved in making the game run awful specs that would be terrible for high-end content. Like, holy shit. I would expect a team of ANet staffers to be able to handle high-level fractals, but that shout-heal spec probably wouldn't go very far without the other four party members doing heavy lifting.

I guess having started my "MMO" experience with GW1, which wasn't even really an MMO, the grinding for skin drops and shit like that and the meta-build-of-the-month style to PvP doesn't seem abnormal to me. I certainly don't see GW2 as being any worse than other MMOs out currently. Hell, I mostly whine because I like the game.


edit: Like
You're thanking me for getting you to not come back to the game or whatever and pointing to my post in your discussion of your lack of faith in ANet and all that, and I just was focusing on the shittiness of the game's staff not understanding mesmers. After praising the return of the jubilee/gauntlet. So uhm I guess don't thank me for calling the game shit 'cause that's not really what I was doing?

[Ryong]

You've seriously, seriously, forgotten what an actual grind is.

Let's go with Flyff, an actual korean MMO: you level from 1 to 120 then get thrown at 60 and then level back to 120 with more things. From 63 onwards, you have a single quest to do every level that requires at least 30 drops from an enemy your level and that gives you 5~10% towards the next level. These drops have a 40% or so drop chance and each monster you kill gives you around 0.1%. You take anywhere from 30 to a minute to kill a monster and then get to the next one, or maybe if you're fighting several at a time you may do it slighty faster with getting five to follow you and then kill all of them in a minute.

So assuming you don't have to buy any sort of health or mana restoration item at any point and you take an average of 45 seconds to fight off a single enemy, you're getting 7,98% experience PER GODDAMN HOUR. You're going to do that for more than a hundred levels. You get to see new monsters to kill and every 30 levels there's a new dungeon where the only mechanic is that maybe a boss has some sort of instant death move, otherwise anything you're doing is the exact same game but with higher numbers but you're wearing progressively sharper armor and wielding progressively complicated weapons.

That's grind. That's one korean MMO amongst thousands.

Back in GW2, getting a full exotic set at 80 means you can do literally anything in the game but the hardest fractals, which give you ridiculous rewards and eventually you're not supposed to keep going because they don't have a upper limit on difficulty, but you have a upper limit on stats.

Getting a legendary is a huge grind, but that's because that's meant to be a goddamn ridiculous achievement. That's also why luck grinding exists, so you can get materials by selling shit and the more luck you have, the easier it is to get that gold.

But...if you think the game is supposed to be nothing but getting gold and stock up on legendaries then of course you're going to think it's a fucking grindfest.

WvWvW is a mess of zergs with several interesting concepts thrown in which become less important the more people there are.

I'm not going to defend that they've ignored some classes or that they should've introduced new skills by now, or the new weapon types or old weapon types avaliable for more classes.

I'm not going to defend that some of their events were outright broken.

I'm not going to defend that they dealt with world bosses being too easy by making the numbers higher and requiring a gigantic crowd to know exactly what they're doing.

I'm not going to defend that they've made an optimal build for every class that focuses on DPS and nothing else and it works against everything perfectly - except for the part it's much easier for wipes to happen because no one can fucking tank anything or deal condition damage to save their asses if necessary.

I'm not saying GW2 has done everything perfectly.

I'm saying GW2 has a lot of goddamn issues and yet it has done so many things right and so well that I can ignore a lot of the shit they should've fixed already.

[Ryong]

UPCOMING UPDATE:

LIVING STORY IS NO LONGER TEMPORARY CONTENT
IF YOU LOGIN DURING LIVING STORY, YOU CAN ACCESS IT WHENEVER ( on any character I believe )
IF YOU MISS LIVING STORY, YOU CAN PAY 200 GEMS FOR EACH "EPISODE"

and now there's different rewards and achievement shit for completing living story content

[Steel Shadow]

Oh hey, they finally listened about that. Maybe I'll actually start playing again at some point then.

[synkr0nized]

Season 2 of the Living Story is amazing, at least so far, as a story. They appear to have listened to some of the complaints about the story and actually put in effort into making the player feel involved and the main NPCs relevant.

I'm pretty undecided about Dry Top as a zone, though. Hasn't really held my interest, and I haven't done any of its achievements -- I just blazed through story bits and participated in a few events while exploring. Some of the vet/champ spawns have been fun, though. That said, I am in the middle of moving, so I haven't been on much.



In any case if you haven't been in the game please get in and at least unlock the episodes to play when you have more time.

[shiney]

Hey is Logan relevant yet or is he still a dickbag?

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by shiney

Hey is Logan relevant yet or is he still a dickbag?

DE remains largely irrelevant, which is one of my complaints. It is still practically launch for Season 2, so I am willing to wait to see if they get woven into it more. However, some of it is bothersome. Caithe had involvement before, yet despite Zojja's insistence in being involved with player character asura (play an asura, it's a good chance to interact with her to learn more about her) she all but seems to ignore Tiami. And Logan continues to not get involved despite Seraph involvement in Dry Top.

Similarly, while I feel like this is the perfect situation in which we could benefit from Trahearne's knowledge and experience so far there's no evidence to suggest he, or the Pact, are making movements to get involved.


I worry that they weren't able to get the voice actors to come record new lines or something, and we won't see DE interact much with the player character and DE 2.0. The latter are pretty great, though -- they have some more character growth, relationship growth, and are really falling in with the player-character. You get the spotlight, too, and they share it with you. I don't want to spoil anything, so when/if you do play the episodes be sure not to skip through their interactions and make sure to talk to them all when possible.



Regardless

Remember all the fuss made about Ceara having seen the Eternal Alchemy and coming out as Scarlet? You know, the driving force behind most of what she did in life and, thus, the living story?

You should play this story even if it's just for the fact that you stop Tiami's rush into Omadd's machine and instead get to see what Scarlet saw .