[Research Notes aren't to my liking]

At least you don't have to recycle items one at a time now lol

*painful memories of 120k bread day2 of eod, before t1 nerf*

[New TOS?! We no longer allowed to make awesome wallpapers/re-gen our chars with AI?]

16 minutes ago, Lucy.3728 said:

So we can alter everything ourselves but not use an AI?

and we can feed the world's personal data to AIs but god forbid we use copyrighted material 

Irony aside, this means nothing. The law hasn't caught up with AI and unless its blatant copyright infrigement, its all a giant grey area. Seems like an attempt at futureproofing their tos - since that problem will only get worse as AI improves 

[Legendary Relics are Coming Soon]

Changing the definition of how legendary items works is an even worse news than the (lack of) compensation for 7 runes. 
Now I'm willing to bet they're considering the same changes to armor & weapons for next expansion.

[What Keeps You Playing?]

3 hours ago, funkychikin.2659 said:

So, I came back to GW2, primarily because I watched a few streamers who made many of the same points you did. I wanted a game that respected my time, that I could find community in, and that I could get enjoyment out of without treating it like a second job.

then you should be fine. Most of the (bigger) streamers you mention do play this game for a living, for years now. Their experience - and frustration with the state of endgame shouldn't influence your discovery when you still have so much to explore, experience and learn over time. 

[What Keeps You Playing?]

It really depends on whats your goals / what type of player are you. You can't play gw2 like it's wow mythic raid tier level of "keeping you busy everyday" or you'll run out of content in months unless you like farming achievements.
Endgame pve difficulty is also overstated, but perceived harder than it is because few have the raiding mindset and/or skillset of said other raid heavy MMOs ask for (or you're locked out of gear progression).
If you can do your rotation properly after practicing it, and see circles on the ground, you're doing better than the average. That being said, I also think the whining , loud minority complaining "nothing is hard" is a circlejerk. Anet won't do it often but they're still perfectly able to release new, harder content that barely 0.1% of the playerbase even try.to do, see harvest temple cm

GW2 is enjoyable as a theme park to me nowadays now I did everything I consider worth doing. Casual fun every now and then, or inbetween other games.
It's also good at being a collect-a-thon if you like accumulating skins

Farming decoration & tracks parts for my personal race track in a guild hall + testing its design is also about 15-20% of my playtime lol. I can't get enough of this game's mounts, they're such great toys.

[Abuse through the "Mail"]

Ah yes, the main character syndrome : Refuse / ignore all form of communication and tips, then complain when your willful ignorance comes back to bite you.
That's barely less toxic than sending hatemails in the first place as far as I'm concerned : They chose toxic words, you chose toxic attitude. It's a group setting, strangers care more about their collective success than your experience and that's normal.

I gotta wonder tho, why even play a MMO rather than a RPG at this point? You'd have your difficulty settings and lack of communication as you wanted. 
 

[Grouch's New Q&A Interview]

8 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

A lot of people seem to have forgotten how "slow" season 4 was release wise

Its not even about forgetting, like I mentionned it was already completely out when I started. And to be fair, that info is buried under each episode specific wiki page. The page for lws4 only mentions it dropped on nov 2017.
I was first gonna say to astralporing "why mention 2018 layoffs for a release that didnt affected it" but I'm glad I looked up the details before making a fool of myself 😛

[Grouch's New Q&A Interview]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's a... weird way to look at things.

idk man. I'm not saying its the only factor to define value, but time and amount of (new) content per $ is a fairly common one, especially for mmos. Their sandbox approach helps adding to the value of gw2 in that aspect, it's easy to make your own fun for a while.

So after googling some more, I noticed lws4 started in late 2017, ending early 2019. I didn't realized it was that slow, which might explain why you're tying that period to a memory of content drought. As someone who simply bought it once it was fully finished, I just experienced it as the most memorable (and lucrative) part of the game
 

[Grouch's New Q&A Interview]

20 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Like i have already mentioned, LS4 was not a peak of gw2. Remember, that it was a time when they shuffled many of the company resources

Peak in terms of content per $ (assuming you didn't get it for free on release), in terms of value to the player. 
If you wanna talk revenue / financial viability, then the "peak" doesn't matter anyway. The real lifeblood of the game is the gemstore. Content drops only serves to have more eyes (back) on the game and said store. 

47 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

and, eventually, layoffs

 But hey, that's inspiring me to look up what those layed off devs became. Surely that talent exodus must have ended up somewhere, and some of them made other gems since, so thanks for that 🙂

[Grouch's New Q&A Interview]

"Our current team size is roughly what it was during the development of Living World Season 4"

At this point I hope that's a straight up lie, because that's just sad if it isn't. You're comparing the peak of gw2 with its current, early access like state.
 

 

[I have found this interesting topic on Reddit...I wonder what is GW2 staying power for you and if it's enough?]

That mostly depends on your daily average playtime and the type of player you are (I'd guess completionist since you mention interest in all game modes?).
Imo the more you go at it everyday, the more you might run out of tasks down the line, and the harder it'll be to come back after a break - because fairly fast in your journey, the only thing the game can reward you with are titles, skins and gold (or materials, but if you have everything you need, thats just another form of gold).
You can experience every map, the entire story and every boss in about 600 hours. Which is more than enough to keep you entertained perpetually if you play for a few hours per week ; but fairly low compared to your average MMO, especially after 15 years of updates backlog.

Leveling isn't a problem imo, in the sense the mastery system (paragons level after 80, with upgrades you unlock for all of your characters, including future rerolls) are the "real, slower levels" where you'll have the more usual xp grind. I didn't check, but I wouldn't be surprised if 0 to max mastery took more xp than leveling 9 characters from 1 to 80. 
In fact, the short leveling and mastery systems helped me create rerolls - when I'm usually a mono-character guy in every MMO , because its not the usual "play forever at a sub optimal pace before you get to the good stuff"

As for "what it does to keep us engaged", the answer is mostly "discovery" (new places, new mechanics & systems, ...) until you experience it all, then the answer become "not much, that's on you at this point". There's plenty of achievements and other long term goals (like legendary gear) you can grind in your prefered modes,  to flex or for the sake of its convenience, but that's entirely self imposed, and in no way needed.  

In fact , that's probably gw2 biggest problem as far as I'm concerned. When virtually everything feels optional, when the skill floor is so low it's been confirmed the average player has a dps 10-15x lower than the players minmaxing, when many still don't understand core systems like crowd control spells (blue bars below some mobs), and so on, I ended up asking myself "Do I really want to try to master a game where barely engaging in it is enough to succeed", being too focused on challenges rather than the social aspect of the game.

Nowadays, I only log in once or twice per month to chat with guildmates and toy with the mounts, and that's ironically been a better experience than my more active years. That also spare me from investing myself in topics like balance & powercreep.

[Petition for Specific Player/Community Content Patch Updates and Developer Tools]

Pick up Mario Maker, you'll see how "fun" community levels are over properly designed stuff by a team who's job it is to make level.

(95% are either extremely boring, guess a door garbage, or filled with deathtraps like its cat-mario)

[Players are being given 72 hours bans for unlocking waypoints for another player/account with turtle.]

While there's no reason to believe its true, I can't pretend I'm not amused imagining a turtle dev got really butt hurt most of us use turtle as a taxi rather than its intended (lowkey useless) functions

[Are we really comfortable paying for unfinished expansions?]

4 hours ago, Tanuki.4603 said:

The same people that keep yapping about WoW sub fee now defend GW2 gemstore because you can "gem to gold"

the irony of that being "micro"transactions make now significantly more revenue for every studio, especially in MMOs where it outranks game sales and even monthly sub fees. But to be fair to Anet, Blizz also gets a lot more done because of the sheer quantity of overtime / passion squeezed out the devs despite a below industry standard pay, whereas anet seems a lot more respectful of decent working conditions. 

As far as features go tho, I doubt its a funds issue, but a focus issue. For the last year, Anet listed a few jobs position every now and then for their new unannounced title, but few if any for gw2. Feels hard to believe gw2 isn't near maintenance mode nor currently running with a skeleton crew, but it'd feel even worse if they said their entire studio did work on it and it was the best they could do

[Option to share or sell the 3D Models of our characters]

On 10/28/2023 at 4:50 PM, Chichimec.9364 said:

If the price were reasonable, say in the $20-$30 U.S. range, I'd buy one or two myself. If it were in the  $100+ range though, forget it.

thats not how production scale / pricing works
You want a mass produced figurine of some well known character (or using the exemple cited above,of star trek ships), yeah 20$ is more or less the expected price.
For a custom, single print of your character, even 100$ may be cheap if the figurine isnt too small, and that's not adressing packaging & shipping (which must also be customised since the weight and shapes of different armors & gear would alter the figurine's balance & sturdiness)

Economics aside, if you truely want one, just ask your local artists / 3d modelers what are their fees for that sort of commission, they'll deliver way faster - and possibly at a cheaper price depending on where you live.

[I just realised... (buying SotO)]

theres no post episodes / "season X episodes" release anymore.
Soto released with 2 third of its story, and the last third should be added within the next few months. Then it'll probably move to the next expension, since they said they'd aim for 1 every year

[Esports in gw2]

GW2 discussion and the arguable size of its pvp/wvw playerbase increase aside , not everything needs to be esports

Hell, esport's financial bubble has popped recently and isnt going anywhere soon. Stuff like the post pandemic recession; shady sponsors; blizzard stealing hundreds of mils from VC while failing to make an overwatch league (edit : or sequel lol); and the lack of a sustainable economic model (since everything is expected to be free to spectate) have caused / is still causing a big part of the scene to shut down. eg : Faze was evaluated at 1bil just a year ago, and sold for a mere 17mil this month.

From what you can see in the industry, esports rhymes with financial suicide unless it comes with a skin casino

[Can you just let me whisper myself as much as I want please?]

11 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

I just keep a pad of paper nearby.  Old school, perhaps, but it serves the purpose.  /shrug

please share your old school secrets 🙏 I also want to open links using paper 

[anyone else take long brakes?]

I'd say your attitude is the opposite of crazy. A "crazy" (or stubborn) person would find some copium reasons to stick to a game they don't enjoy anymore.
You recognize when you're going to burn out and need a break before it ruins your enjoyment for good. That makes for a way saner approach to gaming as far as I'm concerned. Also lets you experience other products and thus have more perspective as to whether or not you wanna return / buy more of Anet's recent releases

[Fishing in SoTo - What a disaster (my experience) [merged]]

56 minutes ago, Evil Darkness.3061 said:

What I expected: cast lure, after X amount of time you get a fish, in the meantime you get to chat with people/friends/enjoy the view/chill

56 minutes ago, Evil Darkness.3061 said:

I was obsessed with the idea of fishing

So you were obsessed with the idea of booting a game to not play it? (in a game that already has some trouble dealing with afk farmers).
Man I wonder why devs didnt made fishing this way 

[So what happened to Guild Wars 2? This SOTA seems very ominous...]

8 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

And here I thought it was collections, open world and achievements.

thats like 90% of the game content, how did you last until now lol

[Just delete the turtle mount & the Jade Bot from the game]

21 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Nr1. Breakbar dmg. [...] Nr1. Siege dmg. [...]

Both are outclassed by table as far as I'm concerned. More control over your movements, more flexibility if everyone uses it. And you actually DPS instead of keeping 2 players busy with that kitten
I guess I can accept its more of a casual answer when you can't afford emp / siege bombs tho

EDIT : No wonder people still fail DE if you're confused enough to think you need turtle for either lol.

[Just delete the turtle mount & the Jade Bot from the game]

If you're gonna be a contrarian, make a point, whats a "smart user" doing with it?
Carry noobs that don't have rabbit/skyscale yet over a gap? lol

[Just delete the turtle mount & the Jade Bot from the game]

I was gonna agree with the title premise given one is useless and the other part of powercreep , but then I read "... because its too hard" and now I just wonder how people still fail with this 40k dps per class patch

[Good griffon practice maps?]

Just for flight practice with no leyline : 
Either Bloodstone fen, under the map (go the the lowest cave > fly up and check inside the "tube shapes" on that cave ceiling > congrats you're oob)
Or Verdant brink which has (I think?) the most verticality of all maps

In you wanna try something more ellaborate, races like others said are a nice starter. I find it teaches you what to look for as you fly, so you can re-apply those reflexes anywhere