Silmar Alech.4305

While cleaning up my hard disk, I found 80 Gig/almost 9 hours of unprocessed raw video from 2013-2016 I took from various open world stuff and story I played at that time. No dungeons, no fractals, no raids.Some is from LS1 and not in the game any more. There is the original Lion's Arch, there is some of the Battle for Lion's Arch, there is some of the old Lion's Arch in ruins that lasted only a few months playtime, there is Scarlet's end.Does anyone have any interest in it? May be of historical value, if you value the old times.As far as I see it, it's been recorded with OBS Studio, resolution 1920x1200, language german (sorry, it's how I played GW2).I will take it down and delete everything in 3 months (June 2021), so don't hesitate to download whatever you want NOW.If you intend to publish some of it in processed form, please make sure the chat window is censored just in case.If it happens my mic is recorded along with some of the videos (I checked but didn't found any mic track with actual voice), please remove it on published works.Other than that: feel free to do with it whatever you want. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnK8VhuDpaxxgq0hYt829o_jlE63LQ?e=u68GoY

It's not the time your drops are dependent on, it's the kind of activity you do. Some ingame activity yields more loot, some other less. And every player is on some kind of schedule that tells when he plays what. For example, someone might perhaps be a night active gamer who usually logs on late at 21:00, do his dailies until 22:00, then do some activity with your gild until 23:00, then stand in Lion's Arch for nothing until 00:00, then do some random open world stuff or world bosses until daily reset, and before you're going to bed you're doing the new daily T4 fractals with the initial crowd. Your actual daily schedule varies, but it may be roughly similar every day. In such a scenario, you would of course make your best loot with the T4 fractals somewhere between 00:00-04:00, because it's the activity that yields the best loot if compared with all the other stuff you're doing. The second best might be the world boss events with its boss chests. Random open world roaming isn't yielding much loot, and standing still somewhere of course none. Random activity with guild friends usually also yield not much, because this usually involves much waiting, and waiting yields no loot. On the other hand, T4 fractals via LFG at reset time is almost no waiting time, so it's pure action the whole time.

GW2 made me leave the MMO-type games completely. It's all about stretching the play time as long as possible by grind and balancing everything to the min-maxing players. So I have to copy the min-max play style to get an acceptable combat experience instead of my own play style. Playing with others is cool, but the contents in MMOs is totally repetitive in the long run. Content is stretched by grind and time-gated mechanics, so you need to waste time if you want to experience everything the game has built in with things you don't really like to do. In addition you are pestered by advertisements and asked to throw money to shop or micro-transactions. It's all different with single player games. No grind, adjustable difficulty level, new interesting different content with every new game I buy. After GW2, the only type of game I bought were single player games, and I intend to keep it this way. They are more fun, their stories have more depth, and the only thing they lack is playing stuff together with other people instead of NPCs. On the other hand, NPCs don't cheat me, don't grief me, don't leave mid-mission, and I don't have to wait for hours for them to show up.

And I didn't tell about the time spent on watching Youtube videos for tactics or about the time getting gear and build - that's all extra time. It's just the PREPARING time of getting a group full and ready and actually starting one boss fight compared to the actual combat time that is a 6:1 ratio.

My favorite part was Path of Fire. It was a combination of good storytelling, great story instances, very low grind, nice maps, good game mechanics, good difficulty level, only few grieving aspects. It was pleasant in every aspect. The other periods had more grieving aspects. Base game had bad game mechanics, many grieving and frustrating (the early years).LS1 was one-shot only and bad storytelling (you learned much too late what this was all about, got not even a hint early)LS2 is my 2nd favorite. It is topped by PoF due to PoF being larger in every aspect.Heart of Thorns destroyed the game for me with the introduction of excessive grind and raids. The start of me becoming alienated by the game.LS3 introduced completely overengineered fractals I didn't like at all.Path of Fire: Great! Never had that much fun in whole GW2 before!LS4: grind x10 again and maps with always the same grind mechanics. Another horribly overengineered fractal. I stopped playing GW2 halfway through the Palawa Joko story line.

There are many beautiful places, you just have to actually stop and see it. Divinity's Reach: Vigil Keep: Lion's Arch: Divinity's Reach: Divinity's Reach: Ember Bay (I think): These are actually 5k resolution screenshots, if you want them as full, see https://imgur.com/a/5qKAhxn

In my opinion, the game is at the same time too easy and too hard. The combat system makes the difference between good and not so good players extremely big. So the hard content is balanced to the absolutely best power gaming people, and the easy content is balanced to the people who are not good in fighting. This makes the hard content out of reach of all people except the power gaming types, and the easy content out of reach for most as well, because it appears uninteresting for most except the weakest. If the combat and equipment system were not making the power spread so big, more content would be available to more people, because the difficulty spread between the hardest and the easiest content doesn't need to be so extremely big.

I studied the official promotion picture and detected a chimera instead of a pegasus. According to Wikipedia, a chimera is a lion's body with a goat head and a snake tail, but I guess they somehow mixed this description up and confused this with the description of a pegasus as a winged horse.Our mount has got: a unicorn horna horse headchicken legs in frontgoat hoofs in backwhite colored raven wingstail of a pigeondressed with a carpet as saddle and a curtain around his neckIf you look up the Pegasus article in Wikipedia, this skin is a strange mixture of the pictures within this article, composed from existing graphics assets in the game.It's really weird. It's not really ugly, it's weird. My proposal: If you are out of ideas, make a really ugly mount. Ugly to the bone. Arenanet already did uglies, such as Failed Attempt and the weapons this is material for. This would be an interesting mount, not a weird one.

GW2 has the same monetization mechanics as pay2win games. It's called convenience or cosmetic by GW2, but actually it drives the same motivation to buy stuff as in pay2win games. The motivation in both is to make (in development) the game inconvenient or unpleasant to play, unless you buy stuff to make it more pleasant to play. In pay2win games you buy equipment to make your combat convenient and less time intensive, in GW2 you buy convenience stuff to make it as convenient to play as possible from an ergonomic point of view and spend less time with tedious tasks like constant inventory management or farming stuff (buyable harvesting tools with extra drops). And of course the cosmetics drive players to buy stuff, because the loot items were made less beautiful than the buyable skins, and you want your avatar look as beautiful as other players. It's the same hidden cost monetization model to disguise the real costs of the game, so players spend more money than it is reasonable. Was one of the causes I quit the game 2 years ago, where this aspect became more and more apparent and was more and more worked into the game, so I realized it was there from the start. If I realized this from the start, I would never have bought the game in the first place, because hidden costs are unfair, and I don't like being treated unfairly.

I missed templates since the very release of GW2. I valued them in GW1 very much and I used them often. I was very happy to see them implemented in GW2 - finally a strong argument to come back to GW2 after a long pause.Due to the utterly overpriced template system, I feel I am overcharged, might even call it ripped off, for a thing I consider absolutely basic. This alienated me and made me abstain from even considering to come back. At release, I might even bought it, since I had years to use it. But buying now? For only a few months to use until I pause again? No. It has a price that is not justified, not even a little.

Obviously, motion sickness is a very individual experience, and it is perceived very differently. For example, I don't get nauseous, I get the most terrible headache instead, similar to migraine. Things that influence my sickness:Perhaps there is some new thing you didn't thing about yet. if the camera doesn't focus what I want it to focus. If the camera does something unexpected. If the game "hijacks" the camera. Thus all kind of shaking the screen, rotating camera on its own. Especially bad are jumping puzzles in narrow passages with low ceilings, where the camera jumps and jumps ->turn of camera shake, camera roll, and set camera collision detection to maxlow fps/visible choppiness -> lower graphics settings so at least 50-60 fps are achievedscreen tearing due to no vsync -> enable vsync or buy a gsync/freesync monitor and a GPU that is capable of using itmouse input lag -> don't overload your computerwrong camera rotating speed -> adjust mouse rotation speed (need to get it right: too slow and too fast are both bad)don't see enough, so the need to constantly look around -> increase FOV; zoom out as much as possiblecamera jumping on dismounting -> close eyes for half a second while dismountinghijacked camera while mounted -> there is some mount-related setting to disable hijacking the camera while mountedthe higher the camera, the less sickness I get -> increase camera height. But not to max, since it jumps too much if it crashes against some ceilingWhat doesn't influence my sickness at all: motion blur settingsskill animation messpost processing; distortion effectsSince release the game improved very much for me. At release, it was not playable for me. After 20-30 minutes I got so bad migraine I had to switch off and rest for the rest of the day. In the current state, with the settings I mentioned, I feel nothing of motion sickness.

TE, I don't quite understand what you mean with "cost". Is it hesitation to leave behind what you gathered on your game account? As long as you enjoy playing, this is your precious wealth. But as soon as you don't enjoy the game any more, it becomes meaningless. I left the game more than a year ago after I realized I only logged in to do some meaningless repetitive daily tasks and reorder my inventory. I left behind quite a wealth with many top achievements, legendary weapons and a huge sum of gold. As long as I played, this was precious. But now it's meaningless. I left a pile of nothing.There was no cost at all. I simply didn't login any more. Being alienated bye the course the game went (more shop, more grind, more unplayable content such as raids or cm) helped tremendously. Instead, I gained freedom to do something new. The only thing that would have kept me playing was my long-time guild friends, but since we found other games to still play together (most notably D&D tabletop games), this also didn't made me stay. It's interesting to see that my GW1 accounts still mean more to me than my GW2 account. The GW2 account is littered with stuff, meaningless in its vastness. The GW1 accounts have items that have a meaning and a use. Every single item. I even found me returning to GW1 occasionally and enjoy doing some random mission, dungeon or vanquish more than similar encounters in GW2.

I'm one of the people who tried to get into raids and failed. I failed, because the ratio between time spent with the whole work required to actually get in front of a raid boss and the time actually being in combat is too much to non-combat for me. The major time investment is waiting for other people. Waiting for groups constituting (if joining raiding guilds for training), waiting for groups to fill via lfg (if you start out with a not already full group). Then waiting for everybody joining, then waiting for everybody getting ready. Waiting for someone to explain the mechanics to someone who failed to watch a video. Every other failed attempt, someone leaves and we restart with waiting for the group to fill again. Promising and successful groups dissolve after the first successful kill, although just then you could go on to the next boss or try again for training purposes.This waiting is vastly longer than for any other content. The ratio between actual time in combat and waiting is about 1/5, i. e. for every minute in combat you spend 5 minutes doing nothing. That's boring and not what I play games for. This waiting is not what I expect from gaming. It's not fun.Also not fun is that you almost always fail and don't have the feeling of success during training. That's frustrating, and I don't games for frustration.The third thing not being fun is that you have to learn a major part of the raids by not playing the game. You need to study youtube videos, you need to study raid builds, you need to grind at the raid golem for your perfect rotation you cannot use at any real boss anyway, since there are quite many distractions. If you don't study youtube videos, you fail mechanics, and since the mechanics are instant-fail, you make your group fail, which is not fun. In the end I left raiding, because I don't want to spend so much time with waiting. And because I feel bad if I am responsible for the group failing if I fail some mechanics. This responsibility would not feel so hard, if the impact of failing would not be so bad. But every fail gives a huge waiting-time penalty. I am all in favor of an easier mode for raids. It would show you around, so you are able to observe the surroundings and the combat. In the real raid, you are not able to observe anything. In the real raid, you fight for survival, for not failing any mechanics, and for your rotation. Only one fail by one of the team members and it's interrupted and you have to start over. If mechanics were more forgiving in an easy mode, the experience would not be interrupted and could continue. Not waiting again. Currently, you do the observation with youtube videos, but that's vastly inferior to doing it yourself. It would also give you the feeling of success, since in an easier mode you would probably be able to actually kill something in combat. Is an easier mode wasted development time? No. Regular raid players are a very small part of the gamers. For these, an easier mode would be of no use, accepted. But for the large part of the players who aren't able to set foot into a raid area, or specialized only to the 2-3 easiest raid bosses, it would open a whole new world of instanced combat. For these, it would be a 20, 30? (I don't know the actual number of encounters) new combat situations instantly. Everything is already in place, you "only" need to nerf the actual combat (and the rewards, of course). Which is much less development time I suppose than to create whole new contents for the LS, which has probably less replay value than instanced content.

It's not my habit to make a quote-reply chain, but in this case, a direct answer to each of your assumptions is meaningful:

An easier mode for raids would bring me back into the game and hold me for all the raid-related achievements and collections. The current difficulty level makes it impossible to get into raids with a reasonable amount of time. Ok, you can try and fail every boss 100 times before you succeed once with the current difficulty level, but that's not fun, so it's no content for me. I've done the other pve-contents over and over enough, so that's about the last thing that's still open for me.

I left 1.5 years ago. I lurk in the forums to see if something has changed since. My last login was half a year ago I think, for a few minutes. I didn't return, because the things I left for were unchanged or got even worse. I quit in the middle of the Palawa Joko story. I mainly left because of the increasing grind. More and more repetitive play. Things introduced especially as time wasters. The original game was mostly ok, with HoT grind was installed as game mechanic, and the living story after PoF was too much. With every new episode it got worse. PoF itself was ok, to my surprise.The ridiculously expensive shop with its increasingly unfair and unethical RNG mechanics for skins in addition to the lootboxes.The huge cost of some later game items. You give your whole inventory to get some small convenience item that is not worth spending the whole inventory for.The difficulty level and time investment for some endgame content, especially raids. I am absolutely fan of organized instanced content, but I was unable to get into raids. Getting into raids was not fun, only a huge waste of precious time, so I wasn't able to get into it. The closed raids made me angry: there was content I very much wanted to do, but it was closed for me.The fractals that were added sporadically that time were not fun, either. They were too mechanics-loaded, too much raid-like. The established fractals were fun, since they were simple but still challenging (I played up to level 100). For the new fractals, you had to learn the mechanics by heart, then replay the mechanics and dance in the rhythm of the mechanics. This feels forced and is not fun.But the main reason was the grind. I think the final tiny push to leave the game was the newly introduced items and achievements you were able to buy for a ridiculously high amount of fractal relics.

Going as monk is not the worst choice for GW1 in general, since monk is one of the essential classes. This depends on the company, though. Playing a healing monk in a group of fellow human friends is terrific. Playing solo with henchmen or heroes, monk is not the best choice, since as healing monk you generally don't attack and will not call enemies, while your henchmen are not the best in choosing their enemies on their own. And as smiting monk you attack and call enemies, but smiting monk isn't the best damage output.For solo play, an offensive class is more fun - in my humble opinion only, of course. My personal favorites are necromancer (best AoE damage dealer of all classes with curses - mass destruction), ritualist (carries his own blocking walls and army as spirit spammer) and mesmer (interrupting and shutting down enemies is real fun in GW1 and not rivaled by GW2).

Please don't do the Defender of Ascalon if you just got GW1. It's the stupidest (sorry) title in whole GW1 and probably only something for someone who plays GW1 as his only game, did all in GW1 that exists and is really, really totally bored. Honestly, I made 50 points in the HOM and 46 titles on display in the Hall of Monuments where only 40 are required for full points, but I never bothered to even start that title. It's in no way a requirement for anything. On the other hand, party animal is much more easy to obtain. There is still something like trading in Kamadan. Why don't you just start out of the tutorial and play GW1 as it is meant to play? It's really fun this way. You always have the choice to create a new character some time in the future and do the title later. By the way, in case you or anyone else needs or wants some minipets for the Hall of Monuments, just ask - so many of them accumulated in the past years, I would be glad to give them away (for free of course).

The Hall of Monuments is independent of the GWAMM title. You can have GWAMM without any of the monuments even started. Although you need the Eye of the North expansion where the HOM is located, otherwise you don't have enough titles available for GWAMM.In addition to that, for GWAMM only maxed titles count. But for filling the HOM, it is enough for some titles to reach some lower rank in between to be able to put them on the honor monument. There are also some achievements you can put onto the honor monument but never count for GWAMM, for example all of the one-shot achievements without ingame title for beating sorrows's funace, underworld etc. Many people going for the honor monument are ignoring these, although these are the most quickest, obtainable in 1 or 2 evenings only, while most of the others are weeks and months of gameplay.

It's not a must to put a Tormented Weapon for display. You only forfeit 1 point if you don't do it. It's required only if you go for all 50 points in the hall of monuments. And for the GWAMM title itself, it's not required at all. On the other hand, it's one of the easiest things to do to get an additional point for the hall of monuments if done with the mentioned quests. Only very few other points can be acquired in one evening's time.

If I compare this to GW2 with its achievement system, I only see grind and repetitive play in GW2. Much less fun, if at all. I quit GW2 for that a year ago. In contrast to that, I start GW1 from time to time to see it again, and I have to hold myself back from just finishing another GWAMM. I played GW1 about as long as GW2 (both about 5 years). I stopped playing GW1 with good feelings because I've seen it all, and I stopped playing GW2 with bad feelings because I was exhausted.

There will be no GW3 - not with Arenanet. The big thing today is mobile games, at least what is being heard from Ncsoft, the owner of Arenanet. The canceled projects Arenanet was working on were probably of such mobile games, and apparently they didn't work out. What's remaining of Arenanet after the layoffs is a skeleton crew that is just able to sustain the operation of the current GW2. Development of a whole new game cannot be expected from them. There don't seem to be designers and people with future visions left, only the engineer type that is good in keeping existing things in good working order. If there were someone designing a new MMO on the market today, it would probably be from a bigger development studio with larger funding. Or a new studio founded for just this. But I doubt this is the case - currently, big RPG MMO's are not mainstream. You would not be able to attract a larger audience, currently. The young crowd is flooding all the PvP/MOBA-games (whose current hype started with LoL, I think). It will take some years till this hype will pass, only then perhaps MMOs will return anew. When more of the older MMOs currently in existence have vanished. MMOs may return if the technical and engine development will enable developers to put much less time into designing worlds and systems within such a game. A newly created MMOs would be too big to be able to satisfy today's demands for time-to-market. A new MMO has to be bigger and more sophisticated than GW2, but with less development effort.

At the time where you had to do the WvW maps for map completion, I was exploring a WvW map alone, trying to avoid all enemies. There was no thing in GW2 I hated more than WvW exploration. A single enemy appeared and blocked the way, and I halfheartely engaged in a fight, since I didn't want to run away again. It showed we were both really bad in 1vs1 fights, but we matched in our inability, so the fight lasted quite long, and actually it was quite fun - despite my PvP hate. Suddenly the enemy zerg appeared, stomped over us, and I went out like a light. When the zerg was gone, I saw to my surprise that my opponent was still there and alive - it was his zerg. He made the /bow animation in front my dead body and I was really touched by that. Before that event, such encounters never ended with someone showing respect. Usually it is disrespect and humiliation what you get in fights against human players.Unfortunately, I was unable to return the compliment, since there was no possibility to communicate with the player of a different server on a WvW map.

I don't PvP, because I don't win often enough. A fair matchmaking makes PvP players win 50% of their matches. That's a too low success rate. Too frustrating for me. I want to always win, and this is (almost) possible with PvE.I don't feel a challenge playing PvP. I don't feel a challenge to combat other players. I feel no different when I win against a human than when I win against the computer. It's always avatar against avatar. And there is something special I don't like about being defeated in PvP: Usually, it's not only that you are simply defeated, you are humiliated in addition. A human winner often dances over your dead body or shows some kind of victory animation - this is humiliating. This is not sportsmanlike. You don't do such a thing in real life. There would be an outcry if you humiliate the losing party this way in real life. That game developers ignore this and even integrate finishing moves into their games actually makes me despise this game mode.