Guild Wars 2

Not interested in 10man...

... And?

Aren't most buffs/aoe right now capped to 5 people at once or do I remember it wrong ?

Zaphid_sl said:

Aren't most buffs/aoe right now capped to 5 people at once or do I remember it wrong ?

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You remember right.

Maybe I am living in the past. I enjoy this game or rather I did for about a year straight, but a couple of months after maxing out I lost all desire to log in for some reason. Maybe it was the grind or more likely the lack of feeling as if I was becoming powerful, not sure really. I do know I never really had a ton of fun in dungeons because they were too chaotic. I missed having a trinity type set up. Heck, that's the only thing that personally makes this game miss in perfection (well close enough to be addicted to for a while). I may drop money on this to see how I like the new classes and try a raid, but still undecided.

Edit: About the grind. I have paid my dues since Eq1 and I can typically grind with no complaints. But in GW2 I was grinding a ton of mats for a cool look (legendary) and that was about it. There was no real power gain to make me feel rewarded and I know that's probably dumb, but its what kept my neanderthal mind chasing the carrot in past games. The chaotic dance in dungeons is what killed them for me. I just like structure. I like jobs and while some will love GW2 dungeons, it was not for me.

I can say that I LOVED the jumping puzzles. They provided content that actually made me proud of myself for completing it (not all) and really the only content I ever found challenging in GW2. I remember how hard Mad Kings Tower was when it first came out. It took me 60 tries to get to the top the first time. My palms were sweaty, I was pissed off, my eyes were blurry, and I was all jittery. Then I finally made it. I went from saying please this time over and over to OMFG I did it. I literally jumped out of my seat and did a squeal I am not very proud of. Now I can do it the first try or after a few warm up runs, but I loved the challenge. Things like these puzzles are why I hate that the game fails for me in the trinity/progression game play aspect, because otherwise I really do like the game.

Fubarbox_sl said:

Maybe I am living in the past. I enjoy this game or rather I did for about a year straight, but a couple of months after maxing out I lost all desire to log in for some reason. Maybe it was the grind or more likely the lack of feeling as if I was becoming powerful, not sure really. I do know I never really had a ton of fun in dungeons because they were too chaotic. I missed having a trinity type set up. Heck, that's the only thing that personally makes this game miss in perfection (well close enough to be addicted to for a while). I may drop money on this to see how I like the new classes and try a raid, but still undecided.

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That pretty much sums up what is shitty about GW2. no progress and dungeons were weird dances.

Dungeons had absolutely zero point outside of story progression. No trinity sounds nice and new but it just turned fights into a garbled mess where most of your time was spent rezzing the other party members and running away from the boss because fuck you, melee. I remember one fight in one of the sylvari dungeons (not sure which boss, the one who summoned a ton of spiders) we're every other person kept eating shit every 30 seconds so I just kited the boss around the room for 10 minutes. Hopefully they have an actual plan for 10 mans and not just double up the HP and mechanics.

The dungeons seem to be much better now that everyone has figured out how the bosses work. I remember them being almost impossible at launch.

One of the most important points of GW1 and GW2 is that the gear progression (grind) is trivial. Been there, done that, and don't want to it again. The focus is on gameplay.

Once you get max level and get the basic equipment available then you can deal with all content. If they change that then they will lose a huge portion of their playerbase. GW2 does have a progression of sorts with ascended, but it's stat increase is really minor and for 99.9 percent of the playerbase, unimportant.

One of the reasons I still play GW is because I can log in months later and not have to grind for new gear. I hate that (so do most GW players) and generally refuse to do it, which is why I stopped logging in to most of my old mmo haunts. When you log into GW you can just jump into the world and play, without having to grind for gear first. GW is built for people like me and there are a lot of us. GW1 was arguably one of the most successful mmos other than WoW in it's day, and GW2 also makes a shipload of cash for ANET. A big reason for that success is the lack of gear grind. GW1 and GW2 are far from perfect, but over time I play them more than any other modern mmo.


tldr: Most games have meaningful gear progression. If that is what you like, then that is where you should be.

I think the major point of why I enjoyed GW1 is because you could solo 99,9% of the game with heroes, not having to deal with the stupid in the process. The few times I grouped up I remeber it being a major clusterfuck. Lacking a clearly defined roles for PvE is interesting, but to this day I have no clue how good my dps is and all the strategy is encounter-specific. I know that after running CoF 100+ times, I can dodge through everything the effigy throws at me and that Baelfire can be killed in like 2 phases, but it doesn't help me in any other encounter. Not to mention that some of the more efficient PvE runs are clearly not intended, like one person escorting the NPC while the rest TP out so the AI doesn't spaz out.

Base game in now free to play, incidentally:Play For Free Today | GuildWars2.com

Expansions are the one place where the buy-to-play model gets a little tricky. When you?re coming in as a new player to a game that has a bunch of expansions, what exactly should you buy in order to play with your friends? The base game and also every single expansion? We?ve seen examples in the industry where that kind of thing has gotten out of control. It doesn?t seem right, and we want to do better. As we get ready to ship our first expansion for Guild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep the business model friendly and simple. So let?s be clear that when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we?re only asking you to buy one thing: the current release, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

To accomplish that, we?ve already included the core game as a free bundle for anyone who buys Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. And today we?ll go a step further: we?re making the core game free for everyone. For anyone who?s been curious about Guild Wars 2, now you can just go to guildwars2.com, download the game, and start playing.
If anyone can play Guild Wars 2 for free now, does that mean we?re switching business models to free-to-play? Are we going to be one of those games that aggressively monetizes free players through microtransactions? Absolutely not. Guild Wars 2 remains the same game it always has been. We?re making the core game experience free because we?re confident that anyone who loves Guild Wars 2 will buy Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

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Zaphid_sl said:

I think the major point of why I enjoyed GW1 is because you could solo 99,9% of the game with heroes, not having to deal with the stupid in the process. The few times I grouped up I remeber it being a major clusterfuck. Lacking a clearly defined roles for PvE is interesting, but to this day I have no clue how good my dps is and all the strategy is encounter-specific. I know that after running CoF 100+ times, I can dodge through everything the effigy throws at me and that Baelfire can be killed in like 2 phases, but it doesn't help me in any other encounter. Not to mention that some of the more efficient PvE runs are clearly not intended, like one person escorting the NPC while the rest TP out so the AI doesn't spaz out.

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Heroes were great. Even henchmen were fun, although they were pretty useless at times.

Not a huge fan of GW2's dungeons. The lack of trinity makes them very strange to play imo. Haven't done a lot of them though, so perhaps those that do them a lot have a different view.

In WvW the lack of a trinity is a plus, but for PvE I think it needs work. Hopefully the upcoming expansion will improve the roles a bit. As others have said, the lack of a trinity sounds great but so far it's a bit of a mess.

Grim1_sl said:

Heroes were great. Even henchmen were fun, although they were pretty useless at times.

Not a huge fan of GW2's dungeons. The lack of trinity makes them very strange to play imo. Haven't done a lot of them though, so perhaps those that do them a lot have a different view.

In WvW the lack of a trinity is a plus, but for PvE I think it needs work. Hopefully the upcoming expansion will improve the roles a bit. As others have said, the lack of a trinity sounds great but so far it's a bit of a mess.

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I think the PvE has 2 problems: There is no standard framework to how you should treat any encounter besides "everybody for themselves" and that due to high amount of repetition, speed is encouraged and that involves skipping any non-essential mobs. This creates a massive amount of variables that are not a problem for content people run regularly, but anything outside the norm is a horrible clusterfuck. Because you are skipping content, any mistakes are punished even harder because you rarely have space to ress somebody and unlike WoW, it's really hard to pinpoint what went wrong, besides "you ded".

On the other hand, you can see how their design has progressed to some rather unusual encounters, especially in the fractals, with the Jade Maw, Chained colossus, the swamp fractal or the aetherblade hideout. Sad thing is, many of those encounters are really hard to pug, the boss with the turning barriers killed several of my groups. Even the world bosses got some variety, Tripple trouble and Tequatl destroy people.

If they decide to do another underwater dungeon or encounter, fuck them though.

Ukerric_sl said:

And that is why the game fails for me.

It's a game that has only one defined framework: dps. Anything else is ad-hoc glued to it. You have zero indicators on how you're supposed to play, the non-trinity means you can't draw on your game experience to figure it out. So, a lucky few figure out how the game works, the rest becomes "bad dps".

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I don't think this is a fair description for the content at this point in the game. It felt that to me on launch, but I went in expecting something similar to WoW and was overwhelmed by the lack of a tank. Being responsible for my own survival! *gasp* I'm not really sure what you mean by "lucky" -- it sounds like the implication is that game knowledge is distributed by RNG and everyone else is condemned to ignorance... but that's absurd. What you ought to have said is: "good players understand how the game works, and the rest are bad players." A truism across games!

Sites like these help bad players become good players.

Path 1 - Ascalonian Catacombs - GW2 Dungeon Guide

*EDIT* incase I wasn't clear, I agreed with you on launch but since then my opinion has changed. I'm so fucking tired of the stale "tank carries the team" meta in other MMOs. And this is coming from a guy that has played tank since vanilla WoW. Doing GW2 group content felt like a breath of fresh-air -- it felt like doing something with four other heroes instead of 1 hero and four bots that helped speed up the run. Granted, GW2 dungeons are old and the playerbase is beyond burnt out... but I'm hoping HoT revitalizes the interest in group content. Or at the very least, an influx of new players from the core game going free ought to.

@Eidal: Forgive me, but GW2 group content is definitely subpar from many points of view. As much as I love the game for its amazing world and exploration possibilities (and jumping puzzles), I always found the dungeons and the open raid quite boring and uninspiring, even if the first time in story mode and the first time in exploration mode, they are okay for the novelty factor (never great).

I ran all of them in story mode and at least once in exploration mode (some more than once, CoF1 *cough*), all that mattered was more dps, because that meant less time on bosses and thus less chances to wipe.
Without going for proper speedruns, a group with the right combo of classes, buffs, debuffs and familiarity with the zone was better than others of course, but the interaction between players was limited to who's stacking enough might/vuln and keeping up fury.

Fractals were definitely better, so not all hopes are lost. For what I've seen so far about the expansion, it's not a "must buy now", but more a "I'll check it out maybe".

Trinity may suck, But what gw2 replaced it with, is not better in any way.
Class balance and design is a mess.

some of the issues were touched out. But, really the complete lack of good and fun class interactions are the problem. Combos are the main interactions and again. its a mess. then a few others have warrior banners, ice bows. Its all very limited.

99% of the time, "more dps" is the key as noted. aoe stealth, sometimes.
Feedback complaint is valid as well.

I agree with you guys, generally. I think I'm reluctant to encourage any model that is decidedly non-WoW to move closer to WoW. I already have two AAA games (WoW/FFXIV) and a bunch of others that offer me "conventional" dungeon smashing. I'd rather see a game try to do something else even if it ultimately turns out to be un-fun. At least some sort of R&D is being conducted.

If the truth is that we can't have entertaining dungeons without a tank and a healer carrying a few button-mashing DPS through a 10-20 minute straight corridor, then so be it.