[Legendary Spike]

They drop from kills. Zerg battles should net you the most kills. 

Keep a stack of each material or check what is needed for before selling. Yes I sell them but have a stack of them in bank.

[Inner Nayos meta boss fight]

I find it pretty boring. Didnt vote because its digestable but not really to my liking. Its basically hp sponge pinata with one  mechanic.

I guess this is just part 1 of the meta. Its fine for part 1. Just hope its not like Gyala where part 1 was a bit uninspired at the end and part 2 was just horrible.

[Gear Treadmill and how to fight it?]

8 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

I think people seem to misunderstand what the original meaning of the "Gear Treadmill" is:
Most MMO's use vertical progession, so every patch or expansion, the new content will require higher and higher gear scores, with the old gear becoming useless; the 'Treadmill' is the effort needed to get that new gear, "How many tomestones do i need to farm to gear up for this new Trail" says the FFXiV player, "what dungeon do i need to grind" says the WoW player.

GW2 doesn't have that design philosophy, once you have the gear you need it doesn't depreciate.
now thats not to say that you never need to change the stats on your gear, or get new gear for a new toon, but thats not what the Gear treadmill is, and not what the 'selling point' was.

There is one distinction players don't mention about gw2. When you play wow and a new patch hits, you will get new gear as drops in new content. Yeah you need to repeat the content a few times to get to a decent level and grind if you want full bis. But generally it's a very natural process of acquisition and you get it while playing, progressing through new content.

In gw2 its actually not much different game loop. A new expansion hits, instead of gear you need to get new masteries to progress the expansion maps. In the past you needed HP for new specs. And unless you are full legendary getting new stats is not much different to acquiring best gear in vertical game. It's probably even more grindy. Me personally, I prefer if gear comes from drops and I dont need to grind a bunch of new currencies and do some boring new collection that involves listening to 15 npc talking...

Don't get me wrong gw2 is waaaay more friendly if you take a pause and especially for alts. I never had so much alts and no mmorpg offered me so much variety of different characters and builds to play. But the issue the author has is not much different to vertical progression game, only packaged a bit differently. Getting new relics is a total pain. Whoever thought it's a good idea to lock these behind story and meta collections (or wvw/pvp tracks). I would rather grind bosses (if we ever get more interesting bosses in gw2) for relics than do story achievements. Luckily I have a few stacks of wvw and pvp potions just for this reason.

[No reason to log in anymore. Daily log in rewards are gone.]

4 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

I am still unsure where people are coming of with that battlepass comparision. Wizards Vault is fairly generic token shop with tokens awarded for randomized daily/weekly tasks. There is not progress bar, rewards are not locked to some stages of said nonexistent progress bar, and there is no enforced order of obtaining those awards.

The "geniuses" at Anet marketing department called it like that. Probably the only marketing department in the world that would market a player friendly system under a name that many players associate it with scummy, money grabbing mechanics. 

They would probably call a vegan restaurant "Bloody burger place", "freshly killed". 

[Daily/lengedary mats are a bad decision]

5 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

The one takeaway from this thread for me is that apparently, there are still people out there, whom thinks that there is a prestige in owning a gen 1 legendary 🤔 and such people find the starter packs interfering ith that perceived "prestige".

I dont think legendaries are prestige. At the end most are just pure grind. It just seems strange to me that Anet is bypassing established systems for getting ascended and legendary gear like crafting, collections, drops and puts these in the most design lazy, monotonous, least effort system they have - dailies. 

Its also an excuse for them. Instead of bringin us new content to keep us engaged with that, they give wild rewards for these lazy quests to prolongue the game and squeeze the most from rehashed content.

And my intention is not to gate the legendary QOL from anyone. It would be probably better for the game if legendary armory and free stat selection would be just baseline for all gear. This would also avoid some issues like introduction of relics. And just embrace fashion wars completely and keep skins as the only carrot. Because the current gear progression and loot tables just dont make sense anymore. And putting bis into dailies was the last drop that broke all sense.

[Gyala Delve is a dead map [Merged]]

1 hour ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Anytime a guild does a meta/map it ruins it for everyone else because then people only do it when that guild does it. Probably why it's dead on EU.

Its not dead. Im on at least 2 Discords that organise them regurarly, several times per week. And the groups are mostly pugs.

Why would guilds that organise them ruin anything? You are free to organise it yourself. These girls will even help you with commander training if you need it.

[Are we really comfortable paying for unfinished expansions?]

9 minutes ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

reading over the comments, i am surprised at the many ways people try to justify and defend the lower quality expansion model. Does GW2 Efficiency reflect that SoTo is so successful as people are presenting? 

Depends what succesful means. For Anet its mostly about sales. We'll see about that. Or was there already financial report?

For players its probably player retention. You can check steam numbers. Doesnt seem there was much of an increase in player numbers. Those seem pretty stable in general. Allthough those numbers are not close to full population they are a decent sample size.

[Are we really comfortable paying for unfinished expansions?]

6 hours ago, Puck.3697 said:

But its not moving gear progression. 

It's a flat line. There's no curve at all to the power, because you get it you wear it, the end of any increase. 

There's no progression to this system. It's just a jump in power. 

There's no difference between that jade bot and anet just buffing the base hp of every class by the same amount litterally at all. It eas just a way to make a expansion requiring buying to have it. 

For a system to be a verticle progression. It has to have a curve to progress, and the jade bot as a system is basically just a flat buff. 

Systems in gw2 end the same day they begin, because theres no progression to anything in the game. Nothing grows beyond its base implementation. So its not verticle its a flat line plateau from launch to now. 

You start the story you get jade bot tier 1. You can upgrade it to tier 10. Each tier gives more stats. How is that not vertical gear progression?

This has nothing to do with power creep. A player without jade bot will be weaker than a player with tier 3 bot and further weaker than a player with tier 10 bot. You can replace "jade bot tier" with "equipment ilvl" and it is the same system.

Yes you can straight buy it from TP and have a flat increase. But that doesn't mean it suddenly horizontal. Many (mostly older) mmorpgs do not have bound gear, so if you have the gold you can straight buy the best gear in game. These are still vertical games.

Every game plateaus at the point "now". And gw2 is definitely not a flat power line from launch until now. 

[Don't really understand why...]

There is no TTL if you don't get killed.

Also TTL doesn't really matter as long as TTK <TTL.

And I am not even going into active defences and also passive traits because we have some crazy builds out there that can run full glass and be just fine, maybe some Marauder or Ritualist and youre safe fine for pretty much anything. It's quite sensical to avoid most dmg anyway so that impacts TTL in a huge way. Avoid the big attacks (because most of the dangerous dmg comes in bursts) and your TTL is non existent.

[Flying mounts = Parkour]

12 hours ago, Nazlokless.3789 said:

The whole game has turned into Parkour.

Exactly, thats the point. I prefer a parkour game compared to afk make sammich while auto flying over map.

[Beacon's Flame event –the absurdity of Guild Wars 2's event system]

Never had a problem, did the event like 3 times. And I just waited it out once the bar was almost full and I felt another run wont matter.

Maybe I killed some mobs meanwhile and that count for participation.

[Convergences??]

I did a full private squad one. We had very good squad (alac, quick in every group) so we just burned through it really fast. But it was quite fun, Ill do more. Like every 50 man squad activity it devolves into a big flash of blinding light so I appreciate the need to split

Its better than DS and not as fun as Twisted Marionette. But the later one is rarely played as private squad due to low rewards and being quite hard for such content.

[Wvw is freeze in time... Devs make smtg]

I fully agree and +5 for the dragon.

[Daily/lengedary mats are a bad decision]

I just dont like that they're handing bis gear for dailies as a participation reward. 

I dont know, it just goes against principles of what a game is. Kill the toughest boss, get the best gear. Might aswell completely remove gear as it is, use spvp like amulets for stats and just keep skins as rewards.

Would make more sense than getting acended for daily while strike boss drops 2 rares.

[Annoying Pop Ups [Merged]]

1 hour ago, ProbabilityMoon.5796 said:

The UX getting worse every patch, every new map starting to feel like a generic starter zone on a fresh level 1 character. Maybe next patch will popup tutorial on how to use movement keys every 30 seconds.

The UI is for me the worst aspect of this game. Since forever. Barely discernible boon/condi/effect icons all mushed together, bare minimum squad frames, little to no customization...

And pop ups yeah. it looks like the designers are trolling us. We cry for less they just give us more and more. Make intuitive and readable UX and you won't need to have pop up for everything. Also every game in existence has an option to disable subtitles and chat bubbles. 

[upcoming relic... no golemancer... Starting to really dislike this relic system...]

I'm not one for summoning effects but they for sure need to add them back and add more fun relics on the top. They can go quite crazy now that they don't need to design a full rune set for it. Never nerf fun.

And there is no excuse that they clutter the screen (they do, don't get me wrong) because this game is already max clutter possible and they just recently added the Mechanist which was just plain tasteless. 

I think relics will be good in the future. The new ones look very promising and they even added some fun effects to them. But they are kinda slow with design and implementation. 

[Lack of Vault reward creativity is disappointing]

1 hour ago, SatyricL.2784 said:

I was kind of hoping for some equipment templates along side the build templates this time around.

I don't think they will do it at least not a generous amount. Build templates were the most criticised implementation they made and a step back for some that used mods. I think many were assuming these will be either free or more abundant. And they are remedying it. But equipment templates are additional storage slots and compete with other gem store items. These we will not see plenty if any. 

[Heart of thorns is like a dream]

One of the best maps/worlds in all gaming imo. I wish they would go back and rebalance, rescale metas for todays powers. Its just the cherry on the top, the culmination of everything going on on the maps and it feels a bit underwhelming when all the bosses die in the first push/phase. Who doesnt like a nice picnic.

Oh and disable mounts during the Mouth of mordy fight.

[1 v 1, solo queue only]

6 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

Learning how to not fold as easily against a spec that counters yours is one thing, calling 1v1 an even playing field is another 😜

We are all playing the same game (under the assumption you bought all expansions). So yeah its an even playing field.

Anyway I would preffer it to the current mini seasons.

[The double standards of balancing]

While only anet really knows, I think pmech wasnt nerfed because of its performance at top lvl in cms for example.

Pmech was dominant everywhere, at all lvls. Yes also in OW. And it was dominant with literary a press of 1 button. And on top it packed more utility compared to cvirt.

Edit: oh and its freaking ugly. Noone wanted to see engies with machine guns and big ugly green bots everywhere. And this is not a joke.

[Relics: limited control on activation]

On 11/3/2023 at 11:18 PM, Ashantara.8731 said:

was talking about nonsense like Relic of the Fireworks, which should be +3 or +5% damage permanently, because not only does it interrupt skill rotations

Fireworks is a burstier effect triggered by certain skills compared to Thief which is a steady dmg effect. No reason to homogenise them, each do their job.

It doesnt interrupt rotations, it might alter them. Which is good, means it has a purpose.

[where are the GUILD wars?]

17 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I remember Archeage (had free subscription for like 6 months because they forgot to disable it after the first month lol). Was in a large guild that looked forward to getting to that endgame zone when you could claim a castle and fight other guilds for it.

I think we had like 1 proper raid, after that the “pro” guilds had already dominated everything and no one bothered to do any war anymore because it was too much work to organize and took way too long.

Yeah that was the problem in games I've played. Only the top guilds got to see that content. I was lucky and hardcore enough to be in such guild, most never saw a glimpse of it.

Wvw is way better in that regard. Doesnt mean the game couldnt reward top performing guilds in some way.

[where are the GUILD wars?]

On 11/1/2023 at 2:29 AM, Vepa.6073 said:

Coming from BDO (Black Desert Online) here,  and while can say that GW2 is miles better in many aspects, I'd love to find something resembling Node Wars and Siege.

Node Wars=daily mass pvp fight over territory (like say Queensdale) by multiple guilds in at a set time, with some politics involved between guilds with 1 winner guild which gets rewards and holdings allowing it to participate in siege.

Siege=once a week mass pvp fight over region event (like Ascalon) by guilds that have secured territory, ofc politics and 1 winner per region with pve buffs/other rewards.

Is WvW pretty much it, or is there more depending which guild you join (GvG drama is always good for the story 😄) , or would this be even feasible to pull off in gw2? 

...sorry still reading up on what gw2 is planning (was planning?) for WvW restructuring. 

 

I love these Korean type mmo territory wars. Many of those games have some kind of iteration of it.

WvW in Gw2 is much better in terms of balance, accessibility to all players, having a constant battleground, not just a narrow window of time per week.

But it completely lacks the politics and drama that comes with these territory wars. There is no incentive to actually win anything in wvw. That is why most guilds just do open field skirmishes between them and that is content. Flipping a keep or a tower for the 10 000 times against dubious opposition is not really fun. 

And alliances or world restructuring won't solve that. It might solve the balancing of population but thats about it. Learn from Korean mmos, if you want community to care about these type of wins, they should reflect in the world. Even more drops won't help. It's not about gold or drops, its about bragging rights of being the best guild/alliance on the server and controlling a high value territory and having an army of jealous haters against you.

[Bandits need a new mega avenger.]

16 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

So you think starter zones should have more high-end content in them?
...why?

I love high end content in lvling zones. It's definitely something that attracts me. I remember very well my first few lvls in Queensdale when I encountered my first bandit Executioner. It was definitely a cool experience when in the first hour of gameplay you actually participate in a big boss battle with a bunch of shiny high level players. I died probably like 15 times but it was fun. Definitely more exciting than escorting a Dolyak, killing 7 lvl 6 bandits on the way.

[Please stop giving undiscoverd daily/weekly tasks.]

I think this could be "fixed", its a valid complaint. On the other hand it took me probably half a year or more before I even started looking at dailies, achievements, min maxing (I started with pof). A new player has so much new interesting content to go through, the wv meanial tasks are kinda waste of quality game time.

The rewards are good but most are just more of the same.  And you should scrap together the aa for the ones really useful to new players like easy ascended.

Also wvw and spvp are an easy solution and often the fastest one if you dont mind some pvp. Both game modes offer some nice gearing options. Easy stat selectable exotics and a decent path for ascended and legendary gear towards which you work on all the time youre in those modes.