Henry.5713

Not sure whether I should congratulate you on your commitment or tell you to get laid...

It depends on what you are looking for in solo farming. ArenaNet made sure that there are a very few reasons why anyone would want to solo group content. The loot system pretty much puts you at a loot disadvantage from the get go as you are much slower than a fast group would be while each of them still receives the same amount of loot you do. Thus you are usually better of going with a full group or squad.The exceptions to that rule are Open World bosses with their upscaling on the number of players present. Some of them are far easier with a small group of competent players over a map blob of people who do very little. But again, you'd rather do them with a small group but not solo. In short, solo dungeons and Fractals are okey if you are seeking solitude and especially if you are a looking for a personal challenge but you will not get rich doing so like in other games.

Shows how much requirements may differ between differerent types of content. Condi Heralds are nowhere near the Top 3 of classes for raids or Fractals for that matter. It is simply a build that is good at solo'ing PvE encounters.

MMORPGs are like drugs in that sense, you are always chasing your first big high. But trying to return to the old drug with the expectation to experience anything equally mindblowing simply doesn't work. They need to be outstandingly intense and entirely new for you to be able to feel like that again. I don't doubt the games in question were decent, even great games, but we will never be able to approach new games with the same open minds we had when we tried our first MMORPGs. Not to mention the the fact that most of us were much younger with far lower expectations and fewer demands. That's why you have to take reminiscing about old games with a grain of salt. Nostalgia combined with the great feelings we associate with our first games are strong forces but they can be misleading. There is a reason why most of the vanilla private versions and even official versions of old games do not last. It is the reason why quite a few of the these Kickstarter games, which were supposed to channel the spirit of our beloved classics by changing very little about old and often quite outdated mechanics, didn't end up being well received (developer incompetence aside). There are exceptions to that rule but they are very rare.

Get as much as possible (rings, accessories, the backpack and even aquabreathers) through Fresh Winterberries. They are far easier to acquire than any other currency. You'd much rather want to spend 400 Winterberries than 200 Bloodstones on your backpiece, trust me. Simply park a bunch of alts there to reek them in. An item per day (especially for rings) isn't too far fetched if you do it that way. Takes a while to set up some alts but it is certainly worth it.

Isn't there an aquabreather that is literally just a low level helmet? I doubt they are a priority.

This issue almost always comes down to you having no infusions on your second weapon set or at least different ones like +7s instead of +9s. Only use +7s on your multiple weapons like Cyninja said. Place any required +8/+9s onto your gear and trinkets only. This will save you a lot of money in the long run once you realize that you'd have to invest that extra 5g (the difference between +7 and +9 infusions) multiple times with quite a few weapons, depending on your build and once you start swapping weapons due to sigil bonuses.

You pick PvE titles in PvP and WvW to gain a strategic combat advantage by having some people not take you seriously.

I have felt things are porposely done this way for quite a while, and especially after most of the basic mechanics were removed from all of the low level areas. They most likely assume anyone willing to to learn and improve will be able to do so by themselves with all of the sources avaible outside of the game and by talking to people in the game. This allows them to keep any actual gameplay complexity far away from all of those who might be discouraged by it. A constant wave of tutorials and guides would make them feel like they can't just "pick up and play how they want". As much as some of us enjoy the combat system with all of it's nuances, others couldn't care less about that part of the game.

And then there is the unique case of Eternity which always did and still does cost twice as much as any other first gen legendary.

Given how restricted I am on time these days - Guild Wars 2 is the perfect MMORPG for me, kinda. My playing hours seem to come down to a raid fullclear on mondays and occasional ventures into WvW to solo roam or to team up with old friends. There is a lot of stuff I still like about the game but it is also a game I have been playing for ages and with people I enjoy being around.All of this makes it rather hard to get into new games by myself and kinda of impossible to move there with friends who might easily spend more than twice or thrice the amount of hours I am able to invest. Meaning they are going to be far ahead and I am not much for holding people back. Not to mention the fact that I have become rather picky with these kinda games after almost two decades of playing MMORPGs when you end up feeling like everything is just a rehash of something you have seen a million times already and that there is hardly ever anything "new".So, I am in the same boat as the others here who said they might not play another MMORPG after Guild Wars 2 (or at least for a long while). There are a bunch of old RTS being brought lately and those are the games I might stick to if I ever decide to fully quit. While replaying old MMORPGs really isn't my thing various reasons. The content I usually enjoy doesn't allow me to pick it up and play after years, the people I knew are gone, things changed to the worse (even if only subjectively), etc.

Did I make an argument about this possibly happening in Guild Wars 2? I talked about another game and how sad things became there because their devs certainly missed the bigger picture I was talking about. I never said the competitive part of the statement specifically applied to Guild Wars 2 and I clearly stated nothing even remotely that bad happens here. Which is a good thing.However, if you want to go there and talk about something that would happen in Guild Wars 2... Let's talk infusions and legendaries (and some of the expensive skins) as "Fashion Wars" is considered the true endgame by many. Those items could easily go to 5-10x their current price if botting was allowed to go that rampant. Any item considered rare would require you to outspend the TP limit of 10k gold multiple times. That's another thing I have seen. With people getting "scammed" all over the place as they would have to pay before receiving an item. Not to mention the fact that there are many who already struggle to ever acquire any of these items at their current price, let alone would never be able to afford something like a Chak Egg Sac at multiple times it's current price.

Interesting question. I do not remember people ever being too "social" during small events and while doing their own Hearts. I know there may be more and sometimes there is less of it but it has always been on a low level. Everyone always did their own thing on their own as there was no need to group or and everyone had their individual rewards. I took a while to get used to this coming from an MMORPG where everyone always talked on allchat and about pretty much everything. Thus I noticed this difference from the start. You get a bit more "talk" during event chains but that mostly comes down to a few people doing what they think is coordinating tjhe masses and most likely some others complaining.Anyways, the majority of socializing happens outside of the public space. Groups, squads, guilds and these days guild discords.

Didn't you receive an Ascended Weapon of your choice from the HoT story? Trinkets are easy enough if you spend a few hours farming map currencies. That't something you will end up doing no matter if you are going to raid or not. Meaning all you should require at first is a set of exotic gear and a second weapon or two which is/are dirt cheap. Gold is sooo much easier to come by plus exotic Berserker's costing somewhere between 1/5 to 1/10 of what we used to pay for it back when we only had exotics and anyone only ever used Berserker.

Have no horses in your game but introduce a pegasus. It's a genius move.

Shattered Obserevatory is one of the easier Fractals to do without a healer. The combination of instabilities you mentioned aren't that bad at all. We Bleed Fire can be reflected as it usually comes from a single target. The other stuff doesn't matter that as you are to skip quite a few phases by burst and avoid even more damage if you know how to posiiton yourself.Skorvald hardly touches you if your group knows how to prestack, insta CC and insta burst. Use raid portals to return instantly to have more time to burst.Viirastra is all about mechanics. People run various items to CC the clones quickly. Use reflects (guadians, soulbeasts, etc.) to return her orb attack for insane damage, usually leads to intant phasings. Don't step into red fields.Ark is all about doing mechanics and skipping phases through burst. Split properly to push the orbs, pull the adds in as they can be annoying. Avoid the bombs by jumping up last second. Use FB reflects to avoid even more stuff. So yeah, that Fractal is quite doable without a dedicated healer unless the normal version is different. I only know the CM.

It is simple: Do not play the content you don't enjoy.We have been telling people to stay out of raids for years if they can not abide by the rules and requirements or aren't part of the target audience.Going by that logic: Don't join public Strike Missions (or any Strike Missions) if you do not enjoy them. That's what I do. Couldn't care less about them but I am happy for anyone who enjoys them as part of their target audience.

You need to look at the bigger picture with these kinda issues. A few hundred people AFK farming won't change anything major. They might slightly influence material prices but that is about it. No need to panic, let those poor people farm...However, leaving them entirely unchecked might cause something far worse. There are games (such as Silkroad Online which I am quoting from here) where the majority of players ends up botting multiple characters or heavily buying from the RMT sites as they are pretty much "forced" to do so by ridiculously inflated prices. Any item that keeps you even remotely competitive would take a very long time to acquire by anyone who legitimately plays the game. Who and how this issue started or grew doesn't matter in the end. Everyone simply find themselves in this shitty spot where they are a part of the issue but can't stop unless they wish to sacrafice their own enjoyment.There were other systems in play such as a very P2W cash shop and having their version of legendary items (only) drop from world mobs at a very low rare. You would run your bot(s) 24/7 for a year without getting more than a drop or two or more often none. None of the items were accountbound on acquire or even use. Making the game a haven for the cash shop / RMT whales. I am mentioning all of this because it puts things into perspective. Guild Wars 2 is a light year away from being that bad and all but it also shows where things could ago in the end if these issues are ignored as they are deemed to not affect the playerbase at large. Thus we need to talk about the bigger picture and why this needs to be considered or at least talked about.

I have seen the bare minimum with other games. Guild Wars 2 has not hit that low (yet) but I won't deny the fact that one may feel that way depending on the content you like, especially if you are looking for any even remotely competitive new (group) content.

Not going to bring up the outfits over armor issue or the slow rate of certain content releases here, let's just talk about the shop itself.Come on, the game is Buy2Play rather than subscription-based after all. One could even argue that we are far closer to Free2Play these days. Expansions are rare and rather sparse. The last one got released more than two years ago while they keep adding and always have been adding content for free.Don't see how they would support themselves without a cash shop. Not to mention the fact that they still refrain from going into the P2W territory for such a long time which is rather uncommon these days.I take this over a subscription MMORPG or any completely F2P game with a P2W cash shop any day.

Currency sink, sure.Give us something to do or work on if we can't have new content at a decent rate. However, not sure about a Raid God title that required a ton of LI as a band-aid for the veterans. I mean, how much would they ask for? A thousand or two? That certainly takes a while to acquire but then people have been raiding for years with nothing to spend their LI on. Meaning most of us could instantly drop that 1000+ LI if they added anything "useful".We also need to be careful not to go too crazy with boosts and bonuses unless were to buff the current encounters to make up for the crazy powercreep if we were to add anything even half as strong as the Fractal boosts. But then this would in turn punish anyone who is just starting out or at least not a frequent raider as others already pointed out. We would get even more complaining about how hard it is to get into raids.

Talking about fairness... There could and maybe should be a second round of PvE specific legendary armors which excluded raids as needed content, now that we have one armor set per gamemode. But let's have that after PvP and WvW get their first round of weapons and trinkets which are not mostly or completely PvE exclusive.

The amount of active raiders is dropping so fast we already reached numbers below zero, soon to be -1.000.000 active players. However that works.

Just wait... until you decide to go for the Fractal God title.

Next people will ask for ways to increase or protect their own HP pools because they keep taking damage until they die.