Guild Wars 2

Hekotat said:

There is a shitload to do, however, teh last few times I tried to play the maps were very empty. It wasn't that way a few years ago but it seems like most people lost the desire to play.

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Uh are we playing the same game? Players are everywhere.

If you're playing during primetime, and especially if you're playing in a zone with a major meta-event, you'll be seeing really solid population numbers. When you're not, players can sometimes be a little sparse; but even then, I don't think I've seen a zone that was completely dead since I came back to the game.

I sometimes kill some time in the middle of the day and there's enough people to easily take down meta events like Tequatl, the Shatterer, Claw of Jormag, etc. Those take a reasonably healthy player count participation.

My original account had all my toons on Tarnished Coast....that server (and about 5 others) were Full and I couldnt even make a toon there. There were a lot of "very high" and "High" population servers too. Seems like the game is thriving. How is the WvWvW doing? Not a big PvP player but that game mode was pretty fun.

Servers only determine the team you're on in WvW now and the server population indicator is to show the average WvW population of that server. Everything else outside of WvW shares a singular giant mega server (with the exception of NA/EU regions which are split server wise but still share the same trading post).

WvW is by far the least profitable of all the game modes and the rewards it does offer have the worst grinds, so most people tend to avoid it now unless they need something for a legendary that's gated behind WvW. Compared to launch, the overall population of WvW is a minuscule fraction and just about all NA servers are paired up now on a rotation. You'll still hit queues on reset night and for some servers throughout the weekend, but by the time Monday rolls around most servers are dead outside of select specific time zones that a handful of WvW guilds/Commanders operate at and when they log on it's often Queue'd Zerg vs. Outmanned vs. Outmanned for the lower tier servers.

Balance has been a particular touchy subject as until recently (within the last two years) the entire game never separated skills and abilities between game modes which royally fucked up a lot of things. They've been slowly trying to unfuck everything and to their credit it is better now Meta wise than it has been in years, but the game mode still needs some serious love and attention. They've mentioned removing the WvW server system entirely and going to a type of alliance/guild vs. alliance/guild vs. alliance/guild system, but that was 3 or so years ago and we haven't heard anything from them about that since.

If you enjoyed WvW before though, chances are you'll probably still like it now once you adjust to whatever the Meta is and find a time zone with a Commander that you like. They also added a WvW mount to WvW which imo is straight up retarded and requires Path of Fire to unlock which makes keeping up with the zerg tedious at times unless you have a way to generate swiftness to keep up or can stay close enough to an allied Warclaw to share in it's speed boost.

So I was finally able to get my original account back (its a launch account)
Got an Engineer up to 80 and having some fun...2 things are really bugging me
1) OMFG I am so fucking sick of your god damn stupid jumping puzzles, if I could just pass this shit by I would but NOOOO you have to do this stupid ass shit to complete a zone! Fuck you
2) The personal story is just god awful, badly written tripe. Also its not even my story, Im just a nobody in Traeherns (spelling) story, who the fuck is this worthless little girly man anyways? I have never hated an NPC more in my life than this piece of shit
Anyways got to 80 in my Engineer and was told that turrets are not really wanted in End game shit. SO basically if I want to do endgame I have to change up the way I want to play my toon? that really kind of sucks, I love nothing more than just dropping a shit load of turrets and then just blasing shit...oh well

Sevens said:

2) The personal story is just god awful, badly written tripe. Also its not even my story, Im just a nobody in Traeherns (spelling) story, who the fuck is this worthless little girly man anyways? I have never hated an NPC more in my life than this piece of shit
Anyways got to 80 in my Engineer and was told that turrets are not really wanted in End game shit. SO basically if I want to do endgame I have to change up the way I want to play my toon? that really kind of sucks, I love nothing more than just dropping a shit load of turrets and then just blasing shit...oh well

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Personally, and I know many people disagree (looking at you FF14 players), I wish MMO's would just forget about this personal story BS. That simply isn't the strength of the genre. Make a world, let the world have a story that we can interact with. I don't need to the "the" hero of light or whatever. Especially when you pile 1000's of other heroes of light on my server.

That being said I've been dicking around with GW2 a little bit recently and I forgot how fun the combat could be. Bummer that everything seems to die so fast though.

Sevens said:

So I was finally able to get my original account back (its a launch account)
Got an Engineer up to 80 and having some fun...2 things are really bugging me
1) OMFG I am so fucking sick of your god damn stupid jumping puzzles, if I could just pass this shit by I would but NOOOO you have to do this stupid ass shit to complete a zone! Fuck you
2) The personal story is just god awful, badly written tripe. Also its not even my story, Im just a nobody in Traeherns (spelling) story, who the fuck is this worthless little girly man anyways? I have never hated an NPC more in my life than this piece of shit
Anyways got to 80 in my Engineer and was told that turrets are not really wanted in End game shit. SO basically if I want to do endgame I have to change up the way I want to play my toon? that really kind of sucks, I love nothing more than just dropping a shit load of turrets and then just blasing shit...oh well

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Yeah, the personal story in the base game is really bad. Can't click through it fast enough. Disappointing too, since the story was pretty good in GW1. The story and presentation does get better in the xpacs and other episodes.

Jumping puzzles are one of the things I really like about GW2. But I know a lot of people who hate them. Think you can bypass some of them with port to friend and still get the achievement. Some of the tougher jumping puzzles have people hanging out with ports for donations. Or use to.

Flobee said:

Personally, and I know many people disagree (looking at you FF14 players), I wish MMO's would just forget about this personal story BS. That simply isn't the strength of the genre. Make a world, let the world have a story that we can interact with. I don't need to the "the" hero of light or whatever. Especially when you pile 1000's of other heroes of light on my server.

That being said I've been dicking around with GW2 a little bit recently and I forgot how fun the combat could be. Bummer that everything seems to die so fast though.

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Thats the problem, Im NOT the hero, this leaf boy trahearne is. Its his story...but yeah just drop the personal story shit. The thing that really irked me is that I have no real choices in the story, they ALL lead to the same place with the same outcome. Its just total bleh

Grim1 said:

Yeah, the personal story in the base game is really bad. Can't click through it fast enough. Disappointing too, since the story was pretty good in GW1. The story and presentation does get better in the xpacs and other episodes.

Jumping puzzles are one of the things I really like about GW2. But I know a lot of people who hate them. Think you can bypass some of them with port to friend and still get the achievement. Some of the tougher jumping puzzles have people hanging out with ports for donations. Or use to.

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See, if It was just an achievement I could by pass that...its the god damn vistas that piss me off. Some are real easy and others make me want to rage quit, but you just cant by pass them because they are required for the zone completion.

Personal Story gets way better past the OG game. HoT is great, Living Season 3 after that is great too and PoF also. Haven't played through the recent ones though.

Starting with HoT, it does feel like it's about you and your crew, which definitely have some nice characters.

Icebrood Saga so far is largely just about the char civil war and Jormag, with a little bit of Norn lore and Tengu (via achievements) thrown in. The commander and one of your crews prior actions are the catalyst but outside of that the commanders role feels minuscule. PoF for sure sounds like the story you're looking for.

That said, ANets selling the complete Living World seasons ( 2, 3, 4 ) in the Gem Store for 30% off right now until Aug 31st. Any unlocked episodes you have will be credited too so you won't be charged for an episode you already have unlocked. Season 2 leads up to HoT, Season 3 deals with the aftermath of HoT and is the prologue to PoF (requires HoT for most/all), and Season 4 is the epilogue to PoF and deals with loose ends.

ANet just told us what the 8th birthday rewards are, too. Accounts that have a character that turns 8 will receive:

Account Rewards

• Celebratory Birthday Enrichment: Apply this enrichment infusion to any ascended amulet for a 15% boost to karma gain and a dazzling celebratory aura.
• Amulet of Celebration: An ascended amulet with selectable attributes to commemorate your deeds.
• Title: Dedicated
• Anniversary Armor Pack: Choose a set of exclusive armor skins.
• Two Anniversary Weapon Packs: Choose exclusive weapon skins.
• Anniversary Backpack Pack: Choose an exclusive backpack skin.
• Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock: Unlocks a random wardrobe option.

Hopefully the infusion is nice but subtle because I can't take anymore sparkly bullshit flying around everywhere that everyone seems to have.

Sevens said:

See, if It was just an achievement I could by pass that...its the god damn vistas that piss me off. Some are real easy and others make me want to rage quit, but you just cant by pass them because they are required for the zone completion.

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Vistas aren't technically "jumping puzzles", although some require a bit of skillful jumping. Actual jumping puzzles exist (usually hidden within a map) and give some kind of reward or achievement. But for zone completion you can ignore them.

I recommend binding a mouse button or keypress to "dodge jump". It's where you press the dodge key + space in quick succession. This will give you an extra bit of height and distance. It's super useful for getting out of shit on the ground or when jumping to platforms.

Lastly, if and when you get the PoF expansion you'll get the springer mount which makes reaching Core Tyria vistas trivial.

I play an engineer too. I mostly run around as a Scrapper with flamethrower and find it a hell of a lot of fun. BUT, would I be joining a strike mission as that? Hell no, I'd be laughed at. The thing is, I can simply switch to another build that's useful for that game play. You're not locked into anything. Your character has build tabs (you get 3 tabs by default) and can freely switch between them when out of combat.

For builds, check out MetaBattle Wiki - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds

Great resource to show which builds excel at which game modes for a particular profession.

ShakyJake said:

Vistas aren't technically "jumping puzzles", although some require a bit of skillful jumping. Actual jumping puzzles exist (usually hidden within a map) and give some kind of reward or achievement. But for zone completion you can ignore them.

I recommend binding a mouse button or keypress to "dodge jump". It's where you press the dodge key + space in quick succession. This will give you an extra bit of height and distance. It's super useful for getting out of shit on the ground or when jumping to platforms.

Lastly, if and when you get the PoF expansion you'll get the springer mount which makes reaching Core Tyria vistas trivial.

I play an engineer too. I mostly run around as a Scrapper with flamethrower and find it a hell of a lot of fun. BUT, would I be joining a strike mission as that? Hell no, I'd be laughed at. The thing is, I can simply switch to another build that's useful for that game play. You're not locked into anything. Your character has build tabs (you get 3 tabs by default) and can freely switch between them when out of combat.

For builds, check out MetaBattle Wiki - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds

Great resource to show which builds excel at which game modes for a particular profession.

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Thanks for the link and info!
Yeah, I know vistas arent "jumping puzzles" but they can be oh so bad and you cant skip them like you can the actual jumping puzzles. I know its just minor annoyance but eh, it is what it is. I just learned about the build tabs...seems you can even put gear for your builds on those tabs without them being in your pack? Not sure I havent messed with them really. Figured I would finish all the core game zones then see if I really want to put in the money for the xpacs...am having a lot of fun but I can see where it would get old pretty fast. Maybe some of the group content would help with that?

Sevens said:

Thanks for the link and info!
Yeah, I know vistas arent "jumping puzzles" but they can be oh so bad and you cant skip them like you can the actual jumping puzzles. I know its just minor annoyance but eh, it is what it is. I just learned about the build tabs...seems you can even put gear for your builds on those tabs without them being in your pack? Not sure I havent messed with them really. Figured I would finish all the core game zones then see if I really want to put in the money for the xpacs...am having a lot of fun but I can see where it would get old pretty fast. Maybe some of the group content would help with that?

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Maybe its just me, but I've found the elite professions (provided by the expansions) significantly more fun to play. Core professions feel kind of basic and repetitive.

ShakyJake said:

Maybe its just me, but I've found the elite professions (provided by the expansions) significantly more fun to play. Core professions feel kind of basic and repetitive.

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They're definitely better from the classes I've played.