[Did someone request beach wear?]

On 5/31/2024 at 9:05 AM, frazazel.7501 said:

Ah! It's the thing that we've been asking for for the last 5 years!

Only 5 years?

There's probably a post from 2005 in a GW1 community asking for this. 🤨

For me it's not just the swim wear - it's the hope that I will finally NOT have to have a buttflap on my rear for light and heavy without it being a bulky armor suit instead. I'd prefer normalish form fitting pants or shorts without forced side panels, but a bikini will do.

 

[This game needs to rely less on players using third party websites for information.]

On 5/1/2022 at 3:04 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

What I would be in favour of is better connections between the game and the out-of-game information. 

 

It'd be really nice if there was just a command. Maybe a chat command, that could bring up one of those websites with helpful curated info on what was going on.

Hmmm...

I wonder how they might be able to do such a chat command? 😏

 

And to the people who say the game "needs to rely on them less" - nothing is forcing you to type that command. GW2 is actually a LOT of fun as an exploration of mystery type game. I usually play somewhere in between. Doing some things blind and that command for other things, as my whims strike me.

 

[What is the average player?]

On 4/23/2022 at 8:54 PM, Aridon.8362 said:

To me the average player is someone who is sitting on 500ish gold in their wallet all made from selling stuff on the TP that theyve farmed or acquired in game, and pays for gems to get skins/utilities.

 

Been here since 2012 I've never hit 500g. Most I ever hit was just around 400 when I sold several hundred mystic coins at once.

 

I farm T3 Fractals all the time and am usually #1 or #2 in the DPS when I'm on DPS, have the least downtime (unless I get on my guardian which has an advanced degree in Floor Inspection...), constantly tweak my builds, have Ascended gear on about 5 or 6 characters - 2 of which are geared out all the way through T4 of Fractals, have completed ALL of the story, all the dungeons so many times it's absurd, do guild missions often, have multiple characters with builds dedicated to specific game modes like 'WvW roamer, Fractal DPS, Strike Mission, etc, can do almost any jumping puzzle with ease, keep a 13th character slot open for 'lion key farming', and regularly solo various Champion event bosses around the game as if they were normal casual mobs.

 

But without that 500g, I guess most 'casuals' are more advanced than me. 😛

Then again... what separates me from a lot of 'average players' is that I am constantly SPENDING my gold on tweaking my characters... So maybe you're actually on to something there.

...

 

If you can look at the skills and talent points of a character and make a build yourself - then you are NOT an average player.

If you know how to judge what ascended gear you want, and how to upgrade it with infusions - you are NOT an average player. If you know every ring can actually hold 3 infusion slots you're NOT average.

- Those are metrics I know of. There are a LOT of other things that distinguish an average player from someone who's a bit more invested or informed. A lot of it just comes down to experience with things or awareness that goes beyond a beginner guide.

 

 

[Why I'm most excited for Steam]

I've always felt Steam becomes an avenue for critics to attack.

 

I expect Steam numbers for GW2 won't be high, because most of us will have predated it. But this also means a whole army of YouTubers will make clickbait ad revenue by showing charts of GW2 Steam numbers side by side with the MMO of the week in titles like "Is Guild Wars Dead?"... All while we'll actually be in the #3 or #4 spot for MMOs outside of China. Maybe even #2 if the next WoW expansion tanks hard enough.

 

We've seen this pattern repeatedly were people use Steam Charts to claim a game is doing better or worse than it actually is by simply not showing how many players are still connecting to that game or to the compared against games outside of Steam.

 

I'm actually dubious about whether or not Steam will add enough new players to justify the costs and burdens of keeping that contract going.

 

[That one NPC that we love too much.]

Koss.

He was my favorite in GW1, and so yeah... anyone who's completed Path of Fire knows why I fell legit listing him here also, even if they're not fans of him themselves.

 

 

 

[The Skyscale Quest Line Is WAY Too Grindy, And Insulting [Merged]]

I've yet to get my Skyscale but I like that the long path is there.

 

This is a horizontal progression game.

 

I've been here since launch day. Actually since beta. And I was in GW1 as of 2005.

 

And yet there is still a lot of things I've not finished. I've never suffered for not having the Skyscale.

 

But a horizontal progression game needs things for people to set themselves on the path for that will not come overnight. So appreciate that this long path to reach a goal is there. It gives people something to do.

 

[Content Should Never Be Gated Behind Jumping Puzzles]

double post...

[Content Should Never Be Gated Behind Jumping Puzzles]

On 4/27/2022 at 4:32 PM, Bronze Centipede.5230 said:

As a casual player to HATES jumping puzzles, my free time is limited and valuable and the last thing I want to do is spend long periods of my leisure time having a bad time.

 

Being given choices is NOT the same thing as being forced.

What content are you referring to? I can't think of anything 'gated' behind a jumping puzzle other than the jumping puzzle reward itself...

As a new player you may not realize this - but jumping puzzles were one of the main selling points of this MMO. Go back and play GW1 and try to jump.

It was a very big concern of the Guild Wars community that characters be able to jump and to sell that this was changed - Arena Net made it into a huge new feature with puzzles hidden all over the game.

As many other people have already pointed out - almost every one of these puzzles can be cheated (skipped) if there is a mesmer around willing to do it for you. And every time a jumping puzzle pops up as a daily so many mesmers show up giving free skips that actually doing it normally gets a little complicated because if you click anywhere on your screen half the time you get portaled to the end... O.o

Furthermore, the daily is always to do any 3 of a huge list of things, at least 4 of which are PvE. But any 3 done and you get the full daily reward. So even if you're a 100% PvE ONLY player you can always ignore Jumping Puzzles and still get the daily completion reward.

Being given choices is NOT the same thing as being forced.

So even though it's a major feature that a huge number of fans wanted; there is nothing vital locked behind it. It's so often mesmer skippable that the experience almost feels cheapened by those of us that want to do them. I was horrible at this things back around launch, but over time I've gotten good at almost all of them, and often can handle a new one pretty quickly. Now I look forward to them.

 

Being given choices is NOT the same thing as being forced.

 

[Let's talk Exotic weapons and New Player future]

1 hour ago, Legend of Rogue.5394 said:

Yes I hear what you are saying the old ways of acquiring it are still the same, what if a player doesnt want to play condi or just this or that but feels obligated to?

If they don't want to play condition, then they don't. They play something else.

Seems easy.

What exactly is the problem?

 

Every single bit of content that can be handled by someone with the PLAYER SKILL of a new player can be run on any random gear. Even non-exotic gear.

So I am completely confused about why this topic even exists.

 

[Can we make this UI moveable?]

Why can you not move the 'Advertise Your Group' popup, or at least the Fractals popup, so that I can easily see which ones I want to list...

 

https://i.imgur.com/YSnvBIC.png

 

[img]https://i.imgur.com/YSnvBIC.png[/img]

 

Also... What gives with not being able to attach a screenshot?

 

[How Does EoD Story Compare?]

My opinion is that the story for GW2 has been progressively getting better and better over time.

 

These days when describing it to people I am trying to convince to try the game I compare it to FFXIV - the early game has a rough plot, and it gets better. A LOT better.

 

And in EoD I think the writers are in full stride.

 

I do feel the plot of the third zone, the forest, was 'skipped' - It seems like I went from the city to the hideout to the last zone after only one tiny plotline in the forest. That's the only weakpoint for me. The overall larger narrative though was great.

 

[I feel excluded from EoD because Soo Won meta event is too hard]

GW2 is an extremely skill based game.

 

Your results in identical gear with a new player and a skilled player can be a difference of 5x or more effectiveness. This is the natural result of a 'mostly' action combat based game design.

 

But one critical problem it creates is that content for 'casual' players will cause skilled players to leave out of boredom, and content for skilled players is not completable by casual players.

 

I have yet to do the EoD final meta (I've been sidetracked from finishing the story). but my guess is this content tries to split the difference - and be for players of moderate skill. They are expecting that by the time you do it you did most of the story before hand. A player has to purposefully TRY TO NOT LEARN to not have some level of skill after doing all of that content. So I don't think this is the wrong decision to make.

That said, if we're talking about a Map meta that is NOT REQUIRED to finish the story - then the skill required to do it can justifiably be made even higher.

New players are one thing, but old players that have been loyal for nearly 10 years now also need something to play. New players shouldn't be doing this meta anyway.

 

[Let's talk Exotic weapons and New Player future]

In OW PvE and in 'casual solo roaming and sometimes follow those guys up ahead' WvW you can wear anything.

Even pre-exotic gear.

 

You don't need exotic at all until you start doing explorable dungeons and even that is debatable. One experienced player in the group can carry everyone even on bad gear because the Dungeons only needed exotic back at launch because none of us as yet knew the secrets to GW2 gameplay.

 

I've added 4 or 5 more characters to my fractal roster since EoD came out. I think I now have 6 that can do through tier 3, and 3 more can do through tier 2. 2 can do through tier 4.

- This was very easy to do.

 

Berserker or Viper weapons. Berserker or Rampager rings and accessories. Attune and Infuse the rings. And 1 piece of body armor in the right type. The rest exotic. That can get you to 99 AR. That plus a potion runs you through even Sunqua 75 (the last tier 3).

 

- The biggest gate on this is that Dragonite Ore is account bound, and used to craft an account bound only item, and has a pretty slow drop rate. I had to make all but one character on my account run around with a Jade Bot that had the Dragonite salvager to be able to do this. Everything else can be sped up with gold... which a new player can get with PayPal... (shock and horror yeah - but even I did that for a bit - tossed unused gems from after the March sale back into gold).

 

But Dragonite Ore means your first Ascended and ready for Tier 3 fractals character is probably going to be 1-2 months in.

 

YOU SHOULD NOT BE PLAYING TIER 3 AS A NEW PLAYER WITH ONLY 1-2 MONTHS OF GAME EXPERIENCE !!!

 

Even if you can get the gear for it, you are basically trolling the other players with your in-experience.

 

EVERYTHING that a new player is likely to have the player skill to be ready for, they can get the gear for, within the first week of playing the game.

- which is a basic berserker exotic set with maybe 102 'Knights' pieces because they're not yet good enough at dodging to survive otherwise.

 

In OW and casual WvW you can put on a full set of Berseerker gear and play a 'condition damage based boon healer' build and... it won't matter. It's that forgiving.

You only need stats relevant to your build once you hit higher end organized play - which is gameplay you should have PLAYER SKILL before joining anyway.

Frankly I farm T2 and T3 fractals all the time and everytime someone says "let me bring a healer" I just see that as "can I get a carry?" because all we really need in that content is full DPS - power or condition.

It only starts to matter at Tier 4, raids, organized PvP, and organized WvW. Everything else is just 'roll a cat's butt over the keyboard and collect your loot'.

 

[Lost Race - The Sylvari]

Well...

 

The entire EoD plot lacks all of the core races other than humans. There are individuals from Tyria of a few other races - but no plots specific to them or even locals of those races. Granted Cantha never had them even back in GW1, something I always thought was strange as Humans are from another dimension while the others are all native to the planet we're on.

 

But at the moment everyone is getting passed over in favor of a human / dragon storyline. This is kind of par for the course for a lot of fantasy games - the humans get a lot of plot and the others get passed over.

[Is there a dungeon finder yet?]

10 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

There is a lfg tool with a dungeon tab.
I sometimes see people running dungeons (including stories for new players).
You can also create your own groups. From my experience it takes a few minutes to form a party.

 

The LFG tool works well.

 

People are too shy about starting a group in it, self included. But when someone lists something in there it tends to fill pretty fast. There are a few exceptions for a couple of things people tend to avoid, but even this will fill in short order as if you need it, there's a high chance a lot of others do as well (Honor of the Waves story for example).

 

With EoD launch I made 4 new characters - 2 were remakes of old characters on new races. One was to swap having 2 mesmers for instead having 2 warriors, and the last was just because.

 

I like to have every character on my account able to 'open the door' for any explorable dungeon - even my WvW dedicated character (which was one of my remakes). So I ran all the story modes on 4 new characters and managed to do it very quickly. Finding groups was trivially easy.

 

 

I also do fractals all the time, and one of the re-made characters is intended to eventually become my fractal main. So I've run a lot of those recently and again the LFG tool works to make finding groups very easy. Even more so than Dungeons in Fractals there's almost always a crowd of people waiting for someone else to list a group first... so if you list, you tend to find people that didn't seem to be around suddenly joining you.

 

 

[Already seeing reapers/firebrands/renegades/Pof specs and nothing else OW]

8 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

In the case of Willbender, I think people's views of it are still a bit coloured by the reputation it had during the betas, and its performance in competitive modes, and as a result people think it's too fragile. In PvE... it's actually pretty good. Go full glass and it has the highest DPS of guardian builds, and if you don't go absolute full glass and invest some traits or stats into sustain, it can survive quite a bit (it's probably been my smoothest EoD completion thus far, although I think with Virtuoso I spent most of the story running the wrong traits and it improved markedly when I adjusted my build).

 

Untamed is... honestly, it's probably the most fun I've had with ranger in a while. Bouncing Unleashed between the ranger and pet, in addition to being able to swap pets, gives you a lot of opportunity to adjust to circumstances, but you actually do feel like you're doing this in response to the ebb and flow of the battle (unlike elementalist which was advertised as doing this in prerelease, but in practice just has to switch through attunements because it's balanced so that it HAS to in order to do much).

 

Catalyst... well, let's be blunt here. Catalyst is still in beta. If it's not my last through, it's because I view mechanist the way Mukluk views mesmers.

 

 

Your experiences with Untamed and Willbender match my own much briefer ones (I've only dabbled with Willbender, and just a little bit more dabbling with Untamed).

 

Untamed is a LOT of fun to play, and if you play it well it performs not too badly. But it is super easy to be bad at and that will cause many people to undervalue it.

 

Willbender is a blast and seems extremely potent if... again... used right.

 

Catalyst, yes - Elementalist has always wanted people to cycle through their attunements. And this time it's weird because 2 of them are melee and two of them are ranged, and that means you should be picking them based on circumstance but the class design says you pick them based on "it's time to cycle". I find I am spending most of my time in Fire and Air, using Water just to 'hit 4' and heal, and then Earth just to get it's special shift-8 out.

 

Somewhere back in Season 3 my Elementalist became my 'story main' - so it's now what I'm still doing the expansion content story with. That's actually improved my gameplay a lot because the class is so fragile. But if I were to go back I'd probably pick something else. Still it means I've got a LOT of time on Catalyst right now and while I love having a hammer I also don't feel 'the special gimmick' for the spec. If I wasn't using Hammer with it it wouldn't feel distinct from a core Elementalist.

 

I really need to toss my Revenant a set of Power gear, even if it's not even exotic, and just run around the open world for a bit and see what I think.

 

[Leather prices are ridiculous]

On 3/20/2022 at 4:36 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

 

Or you know ... or use the jade bot salvager ...    

 

This would be my 'vote' - if you really need leather, rapidly toss the right jade bot salvager to all your active characters. The stuff isn't even either soulbound or account bound so you can pass it around then sell it once you've moved on.

 

I've been doing that with Dragonite Ore - which I ran out of. I need to craft up a set of medium ascended armor. I'm also constantly out of leather for the same - but I can buy or farm that easily but the dragonite ore - from start to finish the entire craft path there is account bound so I can only farm it.

 

So I jus gave myself some jade bot salvagers and now I can get about 100 ore a day with 'medium activity' - not purposefully farming for it, just letting it flow it from doing my normal stuff.

 

And once done, I will set those salvagers aside and swap in something else. Probably the leather - if it sells for so much. 😉

 

[Why every corner of Tyria has to be an epic battle? (A New Player Perspective)]

2 hours ago, RazielTheUnborn.2189 said:

Can I ask, what is with the rose-tinted glasses regarding Guild Wars 1? Just like in Guild Wars 2 you had to find spots tucked away to not get smacked by patrolling enemies with the difference being between the two games, Guld Wars 1 didn't respawn enemies without re-loading the map.

 

I found GW1 notably HARDER than GW2.

 

Of course I was also there from it's near beginning (joined right around Factions - not sure if I joined just before or after) and I remember one point they had an 'A.I.' update where mobs would try to learn from your behavior that quickly made things insanely hard until the next patch hit.

 

But even absent that patch, GW1 was much more punishing.

 

GW2 is relatively easy for a typical player (obviously a player with disabilities that limit reaction-response time would have a different experience) once they get used to how mobs are placed, how to control pull sizes, and how to recognize gathering spots that are easy to use apart from the ones meant to test you.

 

There are maps in even core Tyria of GW1 that to this day I have never cleared without the help of a 'runner'. If I recall right there was one around Lornar's Pass or something that I just got stomped everytime I left the gate back then.

 

I'm a lot older and a lot slower now, but I can do any GW2 map with ease. Granted I am also more adapt at knowing what to look for now... but it's also just easier content.

 

[GW2 is not Ready for Steam]

10 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

I won't comment on PSO I know little about it.
Bless Unleashed though...?

I'm pretty surprised anyone would attempt to position this game's failure as the result of a fickle player base ready to jump ship on games due to the perception issues.
Let's forget the dumpster fire that was Bless Online... sure. Should we fault the tens of thousands of players who felt burned by calling it a expectation issue?

 

Yes, the first few Bless games were absolute disasters. Bless Unleashed came out and did shockingly well and got "good press" from fans of the playstyle. It looked to be the "they finally did it right" game for that franchise. For a very brief moment of about a month and a half it had very strong player concurrency, and a pile of reviewers expressing shock that the Bless team finally did it right.

Then people got to max level and there was no content drop, so they review bombed and left.

Given more time to get to their patch cycle going, things could have been different. Games that used to get a half year or more time to get to that first patch now get a month or less.

 

 

[Bladesworn is painful (PvE)]

6 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Shadiversity might be the YouTube channel in question.

 

Yep, I watch him a lot. He's corrected my misconceptions a number of times.

 

Of note is that none of the historical 'gun + melee weapon' concepts match the 'gunblade' of Anime - which is to put a rifle and a sword together and then swing it around.

At least the Bladesworn keeps the rifle part short and not built into the blade itself. Likewise FFXIV said 'no' to the 'gunsword' of older Final Fantasy and merely had a sword that you load a charge of magic into and when the magic 'booms' the sword gets a 'burst' of magic - even in an 'Anime MMO' they took away the 'it fires bullets' part of Anime 'rifle-swords'...

 

[Should daily dungeons become its own separate category]

Let dungeon tokens be used to buy things like T6 crafting mats, Obsidian Shards, and the three 'unrefined' mats of Obsidian Refinement. That would make them very popular.

 

 

Back around launch I was in a small camp of players that felt dungeons shouldn't need a reward - people should just play content because it's fun. I'm still that kind of player, but we're an extreme minority and... Dungeons turned out to be so easy once you know them that they're not even good content for 'my type of player'.

 

So... to make them more popular they need a LOT of work on two fronts:

1. They need worthwhile rewards because players like me are very few in number.
2. The fights need a re-design to be more engaging for modern styles of play. Not so much harder, but more dynamic. The strat - easy or hard - should never be "stand in one spot and smack it until you win". There are even a few dungeon bosses that actually are very hard - but still not engaging as the strat is not interesting enough.

 

 

 

On 3/23/2022 at 9:06 AM, Eldar.1839 said:

Not  sure what effect this change would have, but I want to say  this: from my experience (new player lvl.65 max char) if a dungeon group has more than 1x lvl 80 member (having 0 would be best imo) the run is just no fun, just a quick faceroll through, so any lvl 80 groups I'd clasify as farm, thus I don't see a point in endorsing those.... 😕

 

For this, let the LFG tool have an option to select for 'completed' and 'uncompleted' and give some special reward for groups that are all 'uncompleted'. Alternatively split it by level - because I could spin up a new 80 and give it a stack of ascended gear in minutes and then go do an 'uncompleted' run.

 

This would however, further dwindle the population for each side of the split - so unless you first do something to make Dungeons more popular in general, it would be a bad idea.

 

 

 

[Anyone else kinda miss these cutscenes?]

This was considered a very innovative design at the time. It was even one of the things people pointed out as being a great difference between GW2 and other games.

 

However it's aged poorly.

 

Other MMOs now have dialogue going while you keep playing (more modern GW2) or even animated cutscenes that feature your character (FFXIV for example).

 

I'd agree with those who say this would be a nice thing to go back and redo. Not sure how high of a priority it should be though. Do we lose new players or gain them because of it?

 

[GW2 is not Ready for Steam]

1 hour ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

The fall from grace of both titles you mentioned have very little to do with rats abandoning ship, and more to do with a single company releasing substandard and exploitative games and laughing all the way to the bank as they did it.

 

Yeah I get that. The problem I see is that Steam shortens the time you have to address issues by dramatic amounts.

 

Phantasy Star Online - New Genesis is probably the ideal example for this, as is Bless Unleashed.

Both of these games launched in 'great shape' for fans of their style of game and gameplay (not so much me). They took off quickly with a lot of people playing them - a lot by the standards for smaller MMOs.

 

Their core issue was a lack of a content update. The 'next drop of stuff' patch cycle was about as far out as is typical for many an MMO... but on Steam you've got no time. As soon as the 30-day mark hit for both of these there were people review bombing them for not having the next update out yet.

 

That's an issue GW2 has some history with - slow content updates. And on Steam you're expected to have faster than normal updates.

 

As long as the Steam community remains the noted minority, they won't have much major impact - but you can sure streamers and YouTubers will make click bait out of it.

 

[Bladesworn is painful (PvE)]

14 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I believe the Polish Calvary used the gun axe as a standard issue weapon for quite awhile btw, it was all the sword variants that failed to deliver, much like the gunsaber.

 

My concern was that after you've swung the weapon, the barrel for the bullet is likely to be bent somewhat. Over time it would bend more and more - and that would increase the chances of an injury from misfire or simply give the gun side of things poor aim.

 

And yeah, you're reminding me of a video I saw on the polish gun-axe which I think was actually in use for some time - and if so makes the case that my concern can be gotten around with the right design.

[Recommend me a Mouse to Buy]

On 3/27/2022 at 12:12 PM, DearestLioness.7385 said:

The stylized ones feel awkward in my hand, kind of like what Doggie mentioned.

 

This is what I miss most from the days of in-person PC shops. Sure there's still Best Buy here in the USA - but when you look at the mice on sale they always just seem to only have a couple generic wireless ones 'out for sample' and never something that would actually need to be on display to get a feel for.

 

I've currently got a Steel Series Sensei Ten. Oddly enough I bought this because when GW2 launched Steel Series put out a special GW2 branded mouse. Mine broke years ago and I went through a series of Logitech, Microsoft, and HP Mice... even trying an Apple mouse or two... but every brand has it's own unique hand shape and they will fit different people better.

 

You either need to find a place where can sample one, or watch dozens of YouTube reviews until you find one where the reviewer seems to have the same size hands as you...

 

That noted, my mouse has 2 buttons on each side, and then the usual 2 main buttons, clickable scroll wheel, and a middle button behind the scroll wheel that is not easy to reach...

 

I put my focus instead on having a razor tartarus keypad for my other hand. I use the D-Pad of that to move, and have all the keys bound for gameplay.