The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[roll-a-die]

The gist is that in GW2 you just don't feel like you've got anything going for you, or any kind of sense of speciality. Their method of ditching the Holy Trinity was just by making every class bland. Another effect is that you stop feeling like you're increasing in power at the half-way point.

And of course, there's the fact the combat is nothing new to MMOs, and doesn't do anything better than the ones with same style that came before.

GW2 was a steaming turd with glitter sprinkled on it. It might look pretty at times, but it still smells and tastes like shit.

Hey Vaarna, we get it you like Cryptic enough you'd personally suck the cock and lick the boot of every dev on staff. As much as I hate to say this, they've managed to make around 3 semidecent MMO's, if by semidecent I mean tedious, boring cashgrabs with no real value, no real adherence to the systems they allege to be based upon, unless you've invested 200 dollars base into each of them. Champions, sells power(You have archetype and non-archetype pvp), and beyond that gates you from the most interesting features, the ones intrinsic to the whole "Freeform Superhero" concept, unless you have a sub. It takes eons to level, unless you do repeatable events, that are so ungodly boring and repetitive they make me want to tear my eyes out.

Star Trek, awesome combat, if by awesome I meant to say swirly repetitive combat, with no real sense of balance, individuality, or weight behind your ship. Beyond a certain level(2nd ship upgrade) require you to grind for absurd amounts of time, or just pay outright to progress. A duty officer system that explicitly requires grinding, and logging in at certain times of the day to maximize your use.

Neverwinter, a half complete game that still manages to be better than the other two, even as it completely betrays it's own setting, has equally bastardly class balance issues to the other two. However I will admit it's combat is alright, if it didn't amount to, spam attacks, drink potions, and mindless dps races in dungeons.

I could honestly go on, however, it's boring doing this, because the Cryptic games are entirely easy to tear apart, they are grindy, half complete, and utterly worthless in comparison to the things they were supposed to be competing with. NCSoft had to shut down CoV for champions to have a chance, and even then, when I log on, I still see mostly, bots, and furrys having ERP. Star Trek, good playerbase, if by good you mean stagnant and ultimately growing in disinterest, but ultimately has a substandard quality of everything(Even the stagnancy and growing disinterest portion, at least EVE gets new players on occasion though, you know ones that stay around) when compared to EVE. Neverwinter I haven't played in months, but I'm fairly certain it's probably just as bad with it being mostly abandoned outside of the capital city.

Also the fact that i had to click through 3 adverts to get to any of the sites, is not too strong of a message to me. "Hey this is STAR TREK ONLINE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY OUR SHIP, HEY THIS IS OUR XPAK, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP, HEY, HERE'S THE MAIN PAGE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP?"

 

[RK47]

So much

 

[Angthoron]

I found the idea that there'd be a game without gear treadmill attractive but the fact is, gw2 isn't only treadmill-free, it's content-free. It doesn't have content worth doing.

Welp, I dunno about that. I'm missing endgame content myself, but they seem to actually be working on adding it.

On the other hand, instead of having a treadmill, I made myself a set of goals. You know, explore the world, get Cultural Tier 3, Commander tag/access, a proper-sized WvW-capable guild of people I actually LIKE, and, hm, as a final bit, Eternity for a weapon. Sure, it's not the same as what I'd do in WoW, where I get to lead 2-3 raids a week with clear content to cut through, but that's what I have WoW for.

P.S: I'm currently accepting members to the guild, so if anyone's bored of running around alone or whatevs, feel free to give me a poke via mail or so. Name's Angthoron. Mind you, it's not a Codex guild, so basic human communication skills are required and enforced.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh, they are adding endgame content after a year?

Now ain't that swell!

BRB, back to farming Underworld/Fissure of Woe/Tombs of the Primeval Kings

 

[Angthoron]

Eh, if you think how long it took WoW to add proper endgame, it's a bit more in perspective. It took about a year as well to move on from MC to BWL, and the current content gaps aren't tiny either. But yeah, they seem to actually be moving to endgame content - world bosses are currently in process of being buffed and remodelled, and some of the recent update events had fights that seemed like endgame fight tests to me.

But don't cite me on this, it's just a "Looks like" on my part.

 

[Rahdulan]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the majority of their Year One plan was to put into place repeatable events like seasonal celebrations, etc.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Eternity for a weapon

Was that the sword that was like weaponized homosexuality?

 

[Kane]

The gist is that in GW2 you just don't feel like you've got anything going for you, or any kind of sense of speciality. Their method of ditching the Holy Trinity was just by making every class bland. Another effect is that you stop feeling like you're increasing in power at the half-way point.

And of course, there's the fact the combat is nothing new to MMOs, and doesn't do anything better than the ones with same style that came before.

GW2 was a steaming turd with glitter sprinkled on it. It might look pretty at times, but it still smells and tastes like shit.

Hey Vaarna, we get it you like Cryptic enough you'd personally suck the cock and lick the boot of every dev on staff. As much as I hate to say this, they've managed to make around 3 semidecent MMO's, if by semidecent I mean tedious, boring cashgrabs with no real value, no real adherence to the systems they allege to be based upon, unless you've invested 200 dollars base into each of them. Champions, sells power(You have archetype and non-archetype pvp), and beyond that gates you from the most interesting features, the ones intrinsic to the whole "Freeform Superhero" concept, unless you have a sub. It takes eons to level, unless you do repeatable events, that are so ungodly boring and repetitive they make me want to tear my eyes out.

Star Trek, awesome combat, if by awesome I meant to say swirly repetitive combat, with no real sense of balance, individuality, or weight behind your ship. Beyond a certain level(2nd ship upgrade) require you to grind for absurd amounts of time, or just pay outright to progress. A duty officer system that explicitly requires grinding, and logging in at certain times of the day to maximize your use.

Neverwinter, a half complete game that still manages to be better than the other two, even as it completely betrays it's own setting, has equally bastardly class balance issues to the other two. However I will admit it's combat is alright, if it didn't amount to, spam attacks, drink potions, and mindless dps races in dungeons.

I could honestly go on, however, it's boring doing this, because the Cryptic games are entirely easy to tear apart, they are grindy, half complete, and utterly worthless in comparison to the things they were supposed to be competing with. NCSoft had to shut down CoV for champions to have a chance, and even then, when I log on, I still see mostly, bots, and furrys having ERP. Star Trek, good playerbase, if by good you mean stagnant and ultimately growing in disinterest, but ultimately has a substandard quality of everything(Even the stagnancy and growing disinterest portion, at least EVE gets new players on occasion though, you know ones that stay around) when compared to EVE. Neverwinter I haven't played in months, but I'm fairly certain it's probably just as bad with it being mostly abandoned outside of the capital city.

Also the fact that i had to click through 3 adverts to get to any of the sites, is not too strong of a message to me. "Hey this is STAR TREK ONLINE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY OUR SHIP, HEY THIS IS OUR XPAK, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP, HEY, HERE'S THE MAIN PAGE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP?"

in short, cryptic develops wow expansion packs

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The gist is that in GW2 you just don't feel like you've got anything going for you, or any kind of sense of speciality. Their method of ditching the Holy Trinity was just by making every class bland. Another effect is that you stop feeling like you're increasing in power at the half-way point.

And of course, there's the fact the combat is nothing new to MMOs, and doesn't do anything better than the ones with same style that came before.

GW2 was a steaming turd with glitter sprinkled on it. It might look pretty at times, but it still smells and tastes like shit.

Hey Vaarna, we get it you like Cryptic enough you'd personally suck the cock and lick the boot of every dev on staff. As much as I hate to say this, they've managed to make around 3 semidecent MMO's, if by semidecent I mean tedious, boring cashgrabs with no real value, no real adherence to the systems they allege to be based upon, unless you've invested 200 dollars base into each of them. Champions, sells power(You have archetype and non-archetype pvp), and beyond that gates you from the most interesting features, the ones intrinsic to the whole "Freeform Superhero" concept, unless you have a sub. It takes eons to level, unless you do repeatable events, that are so ungodly boring and repetitive they make me want to tear my eyes out.

Star Trek, awesome combat, if by awesome I meant to say swirly repetitive combat, with no real sense of balance, individuality, or weight behind your ship. Beyond a certain level(2nd ship upgrade) require you to grind for absurd amounts of time, or just pay outright to progress. A duty officer system that explicitly requires grinding, and logging in at certain times of the day to maximize your use.

Neverwinter, a half complete game that still manages to be better than the other two, even as it completely betrays it's own setting, has equally bastardly class balance issues to the other two. However I will admit it's combat is alright, if it didn't amount to, spam attacks, drink potions, and mindless dps races in dungeons.

I could honestly go on, however, it's boring doing this, because the Cryptic games are entirely easy to tear apart, they are grindy, half complete, and utterly worthless in comparison to the things they were supposed to be competing with. NCSoft had to shut down CoV for champions to have a chance, and even then, when I log on, I still see mostly, bots, and furrys having ERP. Star Trek, good playerbase, if by good you mean stagnant and ultimately growing in disinterest, but ultimately has a substandard quality of everything(Even the stagnancy and growing disinterest portion, at least EVE gets new players on occasion though, you know ones that stay around) when compared to EVE. Neverwinter I haven't played in months, but I'm fairly certain it's probably just as bad with it being mostly abandoned outside of the capital city.

Also the fact that i had to click through 3 adverts to get to any of the sites, is not too strong of a message to me. "Hey this is STAR TREK ONLINE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY OUR SHIP, HEY THIS IS OUR XPAK, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP, HEY, HERE'S THE MAIN PAGE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP?"

in short, cryptic develops wow expansion packs

I dunno if WoW can match the sheer amount of jew inside each lockbox.

(also I haven't bothered to answer because I'm feeling lazy and I'd need to correct several blatant lies and inaccuracies while addressing legit points; besides this is a topic about GW2 and I wasn't looking to derail and unlike TOR I've generally tried to avoid making drive-bys)

 

[Angthoron]

Eternity for a weapon

Was that the sword that was like weaponized homosexuality?

No, it's the one that's only gay by day. At night it's emo. But hey, by the time I get 3100g, I'll probably have something else to dump it into. Even though even casually playing the game has gotten me to 310g so far, when a lot of people apparently have like 10g max. What the hell is their problem? I haven't even played the AH properly.

 

[Eyeball]

GW2 is alright. It's casual enough for non-losers to play,

The gist is that in GW2 you just don't feel like you've got anything going for you, or any kind of sense of speciality. Their method of ditching the Holy Trinity was just by making every class bland. Another effect is that you stop feeling like you're increasing in power at the half-way point.

And of course, there's the fact the combat is nothing new to MMOs, and doesn't do anything better than the ones with same style that came before.

GW2 was a steaming turd with glitter sprinkled on it. It might look pretty at times, but it still smells and tastes like shit.

Hey Vaarna, we get it you like Cryptic enough you'd personally suck the cock and lick the boot of every dev on staff. As much as I hate to say this, they've managed to make around 3 semidecent MMO's, if by semidecent I mean tedious, boring cashgrabs with no real value, no real adherence to the systems they allege to be based upon, unless you've invested 200 dollars base into each of them. Champions, sells power(You have archetype and non-archetype pvp), and beyond that gates you from the most interesting features, the ones intrinsic to the whole "Freeform Superhero" concept, unless you have a sub. It takes eons to level, unless you do repeatable events, that are so ungodly boring and repetitive they make me want to tear my eyes out.

Star Trek, awesome combat, if by awesome I meant to say swirly repetitive combat, with no real sense of balance, individuality, or weight behind your ship. Beyond a certain level(2nd ship upgrade) require you to grind for absurd amounts of time, or just pay outright to progress. A duty officer system that explicitly requires grinding, and logging in at certain times of the day to maximize your use.

Neverwinter, a half complete game that still manages to be better than the other two, even as it completely betrays it's own setting, has equally bastardly class balance issues to the other two. However I will admit it's combat is alright, if it didn't amount to, spam attacks, drink potions, and mindless dps races in dungeons.

I could honestly go on, however, it's boring doing this, because the Cryptic games are entirely easy to tear apart, they are grindy, half complete, and utterly worthless in comparison to the things they were supposed to be competing with. NCSoft had to shut down CoV for champions to have a chance, and even then, when I log on, I still see mostly, bots, and furrys having ERP. Star Trek, good playerbase, if by good you mean stagnant and ultimately growing in disinterest, but ultimately has a substandard quality of everything(Even the stagnancy and growing disinterest portion, at least EVE gets new players on occasion though, you know ones that stay around) when compared to EVE. Neverwinter I haven't played in months, but I'm fairly certain it's probably just as bad with it being mostly abandoned outside of the capital city.

Also the fact that i had to click through 3 adverts to get to any of the sites, is not too strong of a message to me. "Hey this is STAR TREK ONLINE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY OUR SHIP, HEY THIS IS OUR XPAK, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP, HEY, HERE'S THE MAIN PAGE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A SHIP?"

Please excuse me while I make a few dozen dummy accounts to extend to this post the brofists it deserves. Vaarna is bizarrely infatuated with Cryptic's MMOs despite them being vastly inferior to even GW2 in just about every department ESPECIALLY with regards to combat. At least you can't potion-spam your way to Victory in GW2, you don't need to pay 10 dollars to actually customise your character and there are more than 4 usable skills per class.

God I miss CoH.

 

[Zewp]

If you play wvw like this then have fun dying or l2p.

Then how are you supposed to play it? Do random PvE events? How are those different from PvE events outside WvW? Should I run around and gank random players? Because if I wanted to do that, I'd play PvP.

WvW simply sucks, just like the rest of GW2.

 

[Shannow]

At least you can't potion-spam your way to Victory in GW2, you don't need to pay 10 dollars to actually customise your character and there are more than 4 usable skills per class.

No, you got to pay 60$... (Ok, less now, but still a stupid comment.)

 

[Eyeball]

I find that a lot less reprehensible than having to pay to customise your setup in any way. That 40 dollars or whatever is all you gotta pay from then on.

(GW2 still manages to piss me the fuck off by making it necessary to buy more character slots in-game so you don't even get to play with all 8 classes. I bought 2 using only in-game gold I got from regular playing, but due to scumhole farmfags causing inflation, the account shop currency is now so fucking expensive it costs 40 fucking gold to get another slot and I can't be motherfucked to grind that.)

 

[Angthoron]

Eh, I dunno. 40G now is actually not that hard to get without extensive farming, what with invasion events and dungeon gold rewards. The fact that gold is made that much more easy to get is what's screwing up the economy, in my opinion.

 

[Angthoron]

So a new patch went live yesterday, still with Scarlet storyline. That'd not be anything worth posting on, if not for one little detail... Namely, a temporary world encounter that I would personally want to see as an instanced, 30/40-man raid.

Yep, that's right - it seems that ANet is finally creating group content interesting enough to fulfil the criteria of at least a raid boss (Lair-type) encounter.

The idea is pretty simple: The fight is a 2-step affair, 1st step being people defending 5 lanes from lots and lots of mobs, building up a basic set of barricades and maintaining them as they become worn down. The stream is endless, and if any mobs pass through, they end up in...

Step 2: Once in about a minute, a force field at the end of one of the lanes will permit people to enter a different zone, where people are randomly split into 5 groups, and need to defeat a miniboss, dodge various special attacks, and, should mobs get through, extra mobs from lanes. The time in the subzone is limited, and should the 5 groups fail to kill the minibosses and destroy the power generators, the stage fails and the boss' power supply grows. Fail 6 times, or run out of time, and it's a total zone wipe. Succeed, and you break off one chain - total of 5 needed to "win" the encounter.

So, it's fairly basic as an encounter goes, but it's well-balanced and fairly well thought out and executed, plus, it's not too heavy on scripting, which kind of makes it pleasantly random. Basically, it's fun. Unfortunately, as a world event, it's extremely disorganized. Ah, if only ANet would start making instanced raids.

 

[RK47]

So a new patch went live yesterday, still with Scarlet storyline. That'd not be anything worth posting on, if not for one little detail... Namely, a temporary world encounter that I would personally want to see as an instanced, 30/40-man raid.

Yep, that's right - it seems that ANet is finally creating group content interesting enough to fulfil the criteria of at least a raid boss (Lair-type) encounter.

The idea is pretty simple: The fight is a 2-step affair, 1st step being people defending-- ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Angthoron]

So a new patch went live yesterday, still with Scarlet storyline. That'd not be anything worth posting on, if not for one little detail... Namely, a temporary world encounter that I would personally want to see as an instanced, 30/40-man raid.

Yep, that's right - it seems that ANet is finally creating group content interesting enough to fulfil the criteria of at least a raid boss (Lair-type) encounter.

The idea is pretty simple: The fight is a 2-step affair, 1st step being people defending-- ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So Blizzard added this raid called Onyxia's Lair, it's a pretty basic affair, in first phase, you defend against waves of adds and hit the boss, and in phase 2 she's flying.

 

[Zed]

Onyxia had three phases. She lands after flying :D

I haven't played GW2 for a long, long time. I will probably never play it again too. Feels like such a waste to implement raid stuff at this point.

 

[Angthoron]

Onyxia had three phases. She lands after flying :D

If she does that, you didn't throw enough dots!

I haven't played GW2 for a long, long time. I will probably never play it again too. Feels like such a waste to implement raid stuff at this point.

I dunno, to me personally it would significantly improve the game. However, they'd first need to revamp the whole dungeon system (so the raid doesn't crash out as soon as the raid starter DCs...). Granted, there's WAY better games for raiding, but it's a wasted opportunity to make fairly good TEMPORARY world raids and then just remove them, while they could be worthwhile permanent additions to the game for larger guilds.

 

[Zed]

But dungeons and raids don't matter in GW2 because gear doesn't matter. At least that's the reason why I quit. There's no real carrot.
Just doing PvE shit can be fun in itself, be the effect of having something to take away from it (this also works if it's something "intangible" like an achievement) is what makes you come back for more. It makes it feels like proper progression.

 

[Angthoron]

But dungeons and raids don't matter in GW2 because gear doesn't matter. At least that's the reason why I quit. There's no real carrot.
Just doing PvE shit can be fun in itself, be the effect of having something to take away from it (this also works if it's something "intangible" like an achievement) is what makes you come back for more. It makes it feels like proper progression.

True. However, another funny thing about this event is, it drops unique ascended armor recipes, so basically, it does exactly the thing you're talking about - dangling a very careful carrot. I still doubt they'll introduce a proper, non-crafting progression, but it's things like this, and like FotM "revamps" that make me kind of hopeful for an eventual endgame. Maybe the devs might get the memo that they forgot to include something to do for the more, hm, dedicated no-lifers out there. Maybe they'll figure that it can be a good gold dump, if done a-la Vanilla WoW content. Maybe.

And hey, they don't even need to do much to reward the player. Add a shitton of achievements for raids, add a new pointless resistance stat that affects fuck-all in PvE/WvW (see FotM for reference), make new armor/weapon designs/reskins, add +1 or +2 points of stat per each tier point (still 5 tiers to catch up to Ascended, and more til Legendary), add a couple of new raid-only Legendary items, voila, tons of people praising ANet wisdom and sinking in countless hours of wiping on Giant Quaggan Drag Queen. Don't see what's so hard with this, and why it isn't done already.

 

[Blaine]

I still grow uneasy when I think about this game.

Last I heard, some of the big guilds left because, as a whole, they were paying out of pocket (i.e. purchasing gems) to fully support their WvW habit; and the average player is still lucky to have 10-20 gold to his name at any given time. That about right?

 

[Zewp]

I dunno. I started playing tentatively last week and I've been playing every night ever since. Something about it just feels different. I can't quite put my finger on it.

It also feels like I'm making money a lot faster now. My elementalist is now level 26. My account had 2 gold when I started (wallet is now shared) and now I'm already sitting on 11 gold. I also barely notice the DR kicking in now. I can spend ages in a zone and still get decent drops, where last year I would notice the DR kicking in about half an hour into playing in a new zone.

It just really needs a fucking expansion that brings a ton of new content. The living story is completely shit and the content that is currently in the game is banal, shit boring generic fantasy garbage.

 

[Angthoron]

I still grow uneasy when I think about this game.

Last I heard, some of the big guilds left because, as a whole, they were paying out of pocket (i.e. purchasing gems) to fully support their WvW habit; and the average player is still lucky to have 10-20 gold to his name at any given time. That about right?

I've 900g at the moment, none of which was made with gems, and haven't done any grinding beyond what I genuinely felt like. A friend has been trying to teach me the fine art of AH-flipping as well, a hobby that brings him up to 100g a day, but I've been a bit slow on the uptake. Still, it does net me ~25g when I actually bother, per flip round.

Some people still cry at low funds, but honestly, I don't know how they manage. One full World Tour on my server brings ~30 yellows, which, either sold or sharded and sold, will result in at the very least 10g. WTs are slow though, you can sometimes end up with one "boss murder" window that nets you all world bosses killed in 1,5 hours, with that same result. For greater farming feats, there are champion trains. For further enrichment, everyday Orr Temple runs, mining runs; guild challenges with large rewards per completion. Hell, do dailies 5 days in a row (takes 30 minutes?), get 5 dailythingies, buy a pack of 10 dyes, sell for ~2-30g depending on luck. Do a monthly (takes a little longer) and get 4 packs' worth. High-level crafting can also bring in some coin, if you pay attention. A dungeon run is 1g26 + loot + coins per kill/boss, too, at the very least, with some dungeons taking a whopping 10 minutes to complete (Hello, CoF 1). So, money's easy enough.

And yeah, DRs are way more reasonable now.

It just really needs a fucking expansion that brings a ton of new content.

Yeah, definitely. Also, next expansion NEEDS to introduce a new levelling path. Or/and endgame zones without mob density of Orr/Southsun. Fucking Karka.

The living story is completely shit

Yeah, it really took a dive for the derp since Kessex bit. I was looking forward to it but all they accomplished was fuck up an otherwise pretty chill area around the lake. Meh. New installment is actually quite okay, though, BUT I'd way rather see some new (even if temp) dungeons rather than token gathering shenanigans. O WELL, STILL BETTER THAN TOXIC AFTERMATH.

Also, feel free to give a shout in-game, same name as here.