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Guild Wars 2 |OT4| The only subscription you need is this thread.
- Thread starter Retro
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theMrCravens
Member
I'm in hyper hype mode, but I know I shouldn't be because Anet.
This sucks, and not suck at same time.
shysaursoft
Member
Then http://www.gw2crafts.net/ is what you want.
We know there was an empty World Boss slot they'd been meaning to fill, so I always suspected the penultimate Mordremoth fight to be a World Boss.
I think a lot of what ails the crafting system can be fixed with a complete UI overhaul for it: better groupings, better ways to see what recipies you do or do not have (group things into like, armour, with subcgroups for shoulders, legs, etc - with empty blocks showing what you've yet to craft once - then you get a bonus for crafting a full set the first time, for filling in the missing holes). The crafting UI also needs to show TP buy and sell prices for *everything* right there, so you can very quickly see what can or cannot make you a profit at that moment.
That was my first naively optimistic thought too, that Season 2 is 'ending' only because they're considering the next update to be the start of Season 3. Maybe their PAX South announcement is that they had a boxed expansion ready to go but decided to give it to us free as bigger Living World updates immediately.
That'd suit me just fine, but I doubt that'll happen. After two years, the game needs a big publicity gra bto remind folks the game is still alive and kicking. MMO players love getting hyped up about what's coming and then quickly switch to whatever is next on the horizon once they have it.
shysaursoft
Member
As for the Season 2 finale, I'm looking forward to it. I doubt it'll be as big an impact as it was to take down Scarlet, but who knows. I'm curious if anything will come of Taimi's research into armour for Scruffy (nothing much came of Hobotron's similar situation at the end of Season 1, which was a pity). I really do want to know what Caithe's deal is, I enjoyed seeing more of her backstory.
Sometimes i wished there was a special safe/ bag option where you can toss all manner of items in especially gold and lock the bag with a timelock that you can set yourself .
Once activated , you can still add more to it but you cannot retrieve it until the timers up .
The urge to go toss gold around is sometimes very hard t o resist
Once activated , you can still add more to it but you cannot retrieve it until the timers up .
The urge to go toss gold around is sometimes very hard t o resist
I know this has already been covered, but I thought it was worth commenting on...
Going to tackle these together, as I feel the latter sort of impacts the former. The fact that you haven't delved deeply into any other MMO allows you to come into GW2 with a fresh perspective. That is, you're not consistently trying to find parallels or have expectations that get shot down the moment you start playing. It also means you're not tremendously vested in the Trinity, which is good as that can prove something people coming into GW2 from other MMOs find off-putting or confusing. [My best friend, on that note, never could get into GW2 because he had been playing WoW for so long and loved being a tank - and he just found the lack of stratification within GW2 to be confusing and unsatisfying.]
So yes, it's a good MMO to start with and it's not particularly difficult outside of very specific circumstances. Once you've learned the basics of combat, you're good to go for the most part - and then it's about figuring out the right build for your character that works for you (don't ever listen to people who tell you there's only one build or that your build is crap) and experiencing as much of the content as possible.
Active, yes. Friendly, for the most part. Depends on the activities you partake in and people's willingness to accept those who are still learning. I would say that attitude tends to appear more on the PvP side of the equation, but I've also seen it with regards to dungeons and such. For the most part, sticking with GAF members will probably go a long way towards avoiding any unnecessary nonsense from other members of the community. That said, I find most people to be very friendly. GW2 actively encourages and rewards cooperation between players, so there's a limited amount of petty drama and a sense of camaraderie. I mean, I'll dive in to try and save a stranger just as hard as I would if I knew them well.
A piece of advice: If no one in the GAF guild is online, or they're doing things you would rather not do, go ahead and temporarily 'Stand Down' from the guild so that others will consider inviting you to theirs. I actually have several guilds I run around with, mostly because the other two tend to be very, very deeply involved in World vs World, which is my favorite part of the game.
At any rate, I hope you enjoy it. It's a good game. It's fun.
Going to tackle these together, as I feel the latter sort of impacts the former. The fact that you haven't delved deeply into any other MMO allows you to come into GW2 with a fresh perspective. That is, you're not consistently trying to find parallels or have expectations that get shot down the moment you start playing. It also means you're not tremendously vested in the Trinity, which is good as that can prove something people coming into GW2 from other MMOs find off-putting or confusing. [My best friend, on that note, never could get into GW2 because he had been playing WoW for so long and loved being a tank - and he just found the lack of stratification within GW2 to be confusing and unsatisfying.]
So yes, it's a good MMO to start with and it's not particularly difficult outside of very specific circumstances. Once you've learned the basics of combat, you're good to go for the most part - and then it's about figuring out the right build for your character that works for you (don't ever listen to people who tell you there's only one build or that your build is crap) and experiencing as much of the content as possible.
Active, yes. Friendly, for the most part. Depends on the activities you partake in and people's willingness to accept those who are still learning. I would say that attitude tends to appear more on the PvP side of the equation, but I've also seen it with regards to dungeons and such. For the most part, sticking with GAF members will probably go a long way towards avoiding any unnecessary nonsense from other members of the community. That said, I find most people to be very friendly. GW2 actively encourages and rewards cooperation between players, so there's a limited amount of petty drama and a sense of camaraderie. I mean, I'll dive in to try and save a stranger just as hard as I would if I knew them well.
A piece of advice: If no one in the GAF guild is online, or they're doing things you would rather not do, go ahead and temporarily 'Stand Down' from the guild so that others will consider inviting you to theirs. I actually have several guilds I run around with, mostly because the other two tend to be very, very deeply involved in World vs World, which is my favorite part of the game.
At any rate, I hope you enjoy it. It's a good game. It's fun.
shysaursoft
Member
If I had to give advice, it would be to approach GW2 without any preconceptions. For better or worse, GW2 is very different from conventional MMOS, and in a way it as more in common with Dungeon Fighter Online than it does with WoW or FFXIV.
Even though games like ArcheAge, WoW, FFXIV and GW2 are all "MMORPGS", they're all very different in terms of how they approach things. I'm still working out my thoughts as to how to properly frame this, so bear with me:
Something I noticed about the the games mentioned above, is that each has a very different level of "player interaction conversion", for the lack of a better term. Player energy goes in, and an output of a certain quantity happens. This can vary depending on the type of interaction the player is putting into, but generally within each game it seems consistent across all types. If I had to put the games on a kind of scale, it would be this:
| High Input Low Output < --------------------|-------------------- > Low Input High Output |
| ArcheAge ------------------- FFXIV -------------------- WoW -------------------------------GW2 |
Basically, ArcheAge and FFXIV take a lot of player energy in, and puts out far less, compared to GW2 that requires very little input for a lot of output.
Using travel as an example, in ArcheAge and FFXIV, to get from A to B is (initially) a lot of work. Base movement speed is slow. You have no mount at the start, you don't have waypoints unlocked to teleport to, when you do get them unlocked they're rather costly for new players (FFXIV has the cheap Chocobo renting system that mitigates that somewhat, but the point stands). By contrast, GW2 has no mounts at all, the base movement speed is fast, and getting from A to B is rather easy at the start and only gets easier as you go. WoW sits kinda in the middle, with airships and mounts being accessible early.
Using crafting as an example, in ArcheAge and FFXIV, crafting is time-consuming, difficult, and very tedious. You have to work hard to get even simple things done. You don't gain multi-item crafting or bulk/batch crafting, until much later. This does have a benefit though: because of High In Low Out, the items produced have a lot of intrinsic value. GW2 on the other hand, its crafting is stupid simple, and you can output a lot very easily. You have multi-item crafting right at the start. However, the ease with which you can craft and output things, means they're cheap and worthless. Only later, with the time-gated crafting items, do you get to a point where it requires a lot of work to get not much out (but what you get out is worthwhile, in some respects).
Using combat as an example, the games to the left of the scale require more time to unlock skills than the games more to the right. FFXIV is a good example of this, where you only get one new skill or trait every few levels (but they tend to have a lot of impact), and you don't get all that many in total. WoW is kind of in the middle, you get a lot of skills, but you end up not using half of them. GW2 shoves everything at you as fast as it can (though it was slowed down a little with the recent New Player Experience changes to the early levelling), but you still level stupid fast compared to the games on the left. Getting from level 1 to 50 in FFXIV, takes probably about fives times as long as getting from 1 to 80 in GW2.
So, the point to all this I'm trying to make, is GW2 sacrifices a lot with its goal of being easy, accessible and fast. Things don't carry as much "weight", as they would in a more slow-tempo'ed MMO. There are some things in GW2 that take time and effort, like Ascended crafting and getting a Legendary, but the overall experience is one of "drop in, play as you will, drop out". It's way more action-centric, and way more focused on the moment-to-moment gameplay. By contrast, more sandboxy games like ArcheAge and FFXIV, have a kind of "minimum time investment" barrier where, if you don't spend enough time doing any one thing, it ends up not yielding much results. This isn't ironclad of course, there are ways to speed things up (FFXIV has an excellent Levequest system that acts like a "Daily To Do" list that rewards a lot of experience - but even there you're putting in quite a bit more work to get things done.
I often refer to GW2 as a kind of online brawler, like a spiritual successor to Golden Axe. Everyone does damage, everyone can heal, everyone can revive each other. It's "Unity" system keeps all the players on a very forward vector, compared to the Trinity system of defined roles (Tank, Healer, Damage). There's been a lot (a looot) of discussion of Unity vs Trinity, but I don't think it's important here. If you like Trinity, there's games for that. GW2 tries something different (with varying degrees of success - but it was always going to be rocky since it's an experiment), and if you enjoy what it's trying, it's a blast. But because GW2 focuses more on forward momentum and ease, it doesn't have that weighty permanence a lot of people expect out of an MMO. Games like FFXIV, even though it's more of a theme-park MMO than sandbox like Ultima Online, can still function as a kind of "live-a-life" simulator. The tedium, high-effort systems of FFXIV give what you do in it weight and meaning, so if you see someone who's a master rank Fisherman, you know they spent months or years getting to that point. In GW2, you reach a kind of "peak" very early (at 80, and perhaps a month after), more like what happens in a game like Team Fortress 2. And from there on out, it's all about taking your character through the content, seeing how you stack up and enjoying new things to try and fight.
Because GW2 is Low Input High Output (since there is no sub, the game doesn't *need* to slow things down to keep people playing, thus paying, every month), it means they need to have a much faster content update cycle to keep players engaged, because people can burn through content really fast. It's kind of like how the oldschool first person shooters needed a fresh influx of map packs for players to test their skills against. That's why I think the Living World is a good idea: smaller but more frequent updates works better with the style of game GW2 is. Waiting three months plus for a content update (like FFXIV), or years for an expansion (like WoW), would be just too long with the pacing of the game.
Anyway, tl;dr; don't think of GW2 as "another world to live in" but more as a "cooperative/competitive game client that logs into cool server that updates often with new content and a variety of activities".
Kos Luftar
Member
Need to start begging colin for another GW2 shirt!
Similarly, I think of GW2 as a successor to Monster Hunter. You can vary how you approach your enemies, but ultimately we're all shouldering some of the ass-kicking burden while watching our teammates' backs.
Previous MMO experience definitely colors your perception of GW2- look at me comparing it to MH.
Kos Luftar
Member
Similarly, I think of GW2 as a successor to Monster Hunter. You can vary how you approach your enemies, but ultimately we're all shouldering some of the ass-kicking burden while watching our teammates' backs.
Previous MMO experience definitely colors your perception of GW2- look at me comparing it to MH.
I don't hate you. I was kidding earlier. You know this but others reading thread might not.
If every person who bought GW2 came back to try it and wanted an invite, plus all the new people we've had over the years? We might need a GAFO2. We were only about 200 people from needing a third guild at launch.
Well said. For what it's worth, my opinion of GW2 was colored by my previous experience in that my first "real" online game was Phantasy Star Online and I spent a lot of time trying to recapture that game's feeling (no trinity, self-reliance, cooperation... yep). I think I got sick of WoW and such a lot faster than the average person because of that.
GW2 is the first game that honestly gives PSO a run for its money in my mind. All we need is a version of challenge mode and I'd be ecstatic.
And for the record, I would be happy if I was wrong about the Pax announcement because it would make you and everyone else happy. But my initial reading of that announcement was, "Listen to us talk about how awesome our Living Story system is and why we therefore don't need expansions."
I see Retro and others speak of a need to spark revitalized interest- but why? GW2 has a low barrier to entry, fiscally and gameplay-wise. Thus it seems that Anet potentially has turned the traditional economic model of customer retention on its head; it may be easier to attract new players than extract cash from old ones. But this is speculation; I'm not a business person.
Hence my Buddhist-like outlook. I don't expect the game to change because change seems unnecessary. Expectations yield disappointment, life is suffering, etc.
Kos Luftar
Member
I don't want a traditional expansion because I don't want to stop playing GW2 until expansion comes out and even though I like the game a lot it is what happened with me when they announced GW1 campaigns.
My episode expectations are 3 lore heavy, mind blowing story instances which will feature:
- PC and Marjory in Durmand Priory library figuring out how to open the gate at end of last episode.
- Getting inside cave for the last memory seed as Caithe where we will find out her "secret" and why she is so interested in Dragons and Dragon crystals/energy
- Rytlock instance where he blows our mind with everything he learned in the mists (possibly something about how we can never really defeat the dragons)
Silverwastes will be updated again with a new meta event or a new step in the meta where we fight whatever is on the west end of that map.
What do you guys expect/would like to see in episode 8?
My episode expectations are 3 lore heavy, mind blowing story instances which will feature:
- PC and Marjory in Durmand Priory library figuring out how to open the gate at end of last episode.
- Getting inside cave for the last memory seed as Caithe where we will find out her "secret" and why she is so interested in Dragons and Dragon crystals/energy
- Rytlock instance where he blows our mind with everything he learned in the mists (possibly something about how we can never really defeat the dragons)
Silverwastes will be updated again with a new meta event or a new step in the meta where we fight whatever is on the west end of that map.
What do you guys expect/would like to see in episode 8?
shysaursoft
Member
I get a similar impression. There's only so much you can do by following existing models, and the monthly sub + two year xpac model is pretty red-ocean by now, it's getting increasingly difficult for companies to build a large playerbase and retain them (the fact that Star Wars wasn't a big enough brand to do it, KOTOR going F2P that fast, is a pretty good sign). And now the ESO going F2P speculation is pretty strong too, in light of them removing six month sub options. FFXIV gets away with it because there simply isn't anything like FFXI other than FFXI. So if you want that specific kind of experience, there's only one place that has it. ArcheAge launched F2P (with a dubious at best model), and most MMOs are basically doing the same thing - free, with "pay for benefits". WildStar tried to fill a niche that ended up not existing, and now they're suffering for it.
GW1, as we know, was rather bold with its buy once, play forever - with additional (and importantly, stand-alone) "chapters". I'm sure internally Anet learned a lot from that (and from the insane amount of microtransactions that GW1 had). If they can avoid competing in red-ocean territory, why wouldn't they? They've had the funds and freedom to experiment with GW2, and I don't think they're quite done with the experiment yet. If/when GW3 ever happens, I think that might be less experimental and more traditional (for a given value of what "traditional" might mean by that point, I doubt it'll be the sub model).
A tiny part of me thinks they might make the GW2 client free - but honestly, even I doubt myself on that one. The "cover charge" phenomena is too valuable in the long term, to risk the "taint" of F2P (I have nothing against F2P, I'm just talking public perceptions). Perhaps they'll announce Season 1 being in the Story Journal, that'd be pretty nice since there has been such a massive influx of people since Season 2 started, who never saw any of Season 1. Of course the veterans would complain, having already experienced it all - understandably so. So one would hope they'd have an additional nice thing to announce that's totally new.
I'm really curious to see what's going to happen this year. They've made it past the two-year-mark that usually reveals if an MMO is sink or swim (and GW2 is a Quaggan in the water, it seems). So from here on out, it's about laying the foundation for the next 4 years.
I dunno, anything is certainly possible and we won't know until 18 days. But when they say things like "what’s next in Guild Wars 2" and "setting up a new framework" I don't get the impression it's to talk about how awesome it is now but how awesome it will be. I also think, given the location (PAX is most definitely for gamers) it's there to drum up excitement and make a public statement. Something like GDC would be more appropriate if they were just going to talk about metrics and development.
New players don't strike me as the target audience for an expansion, though getting the game out there in the press and (hopefully) advertising will certainly bring in new players. It's the lapsed players who haven't been paying attention for the last year or so, and the low barriers to entry are also low barriers for re-entry.
I mean, Massively gave their 2014 MMO of the Year to "Nothing" because they "didn't think any of the major MMOs launched this year truly deserves a GOTY tag." Wildstar imploded, TESO is treading water until the console versions launch and by all accounts Warlords of Draenor was a disappointingly by-the-numbers expansion with a facebook game stapled to its forehead. FFXIV has an expansion in March and EQNext might start beta testing later this year if we're being incredibly optimistic. That's it.
There's a lot of MMO players with little to play and less to look forward to, so it's a good chance to make hay while the sun shines. That's what I'm getting at when I talk about sparking interest in the game; remind people that there's this great MMO out there that deserves another look, and chances are they may already own it. Not everyone follows the game's development and there are still a lot of people who think GW2 is in the same state it was at launch (just look at all the Reddit threads where someone comes back and asks what's changed). An expansion (or "expansion-like thing" as I think is more likely the case) is a great way to do that. Remember how strong the pre-launch GW2 hype was.
Let us know if you just happen to be seeking a low-key, helpful guild to join.
Why thank you good sir, I will keep that in mind. If
Kos Luftar
Member
I feel like w have at some point added every member of GAF to the guild.
Welcome Matt. Beware of Retro he is mean and only congratulates Levyne on his Legendary but not me.
Welcome Matt. Beware of Retro he is mean and only congratulates Levyne on his Legendary but not me.
Retro likes you enough that you got to rock a custom guild tag for a while.
Kos Luftar
Member
What was that custom tag again?
this
"Season 3 + new gem store items"
I still maintain that You don't have the President of Arenanet and Collin up on the Main stage at PAX for 90 minutes to simply announce S3 .
Unless that Season is a continent sized "expansion " either coming through LS in chunks or a seperate download there is no reason why it could not have been announced through an Article or another Trailer video .
It simply does't add up or makes any sense .
Unless that Season is a continent sized "expansion " either coming through LS in chunks or a seperate download there is no reason why it could not have been announced through an Article or another Trailer video .
It simply does't add up or makes any sense .
Kos Luftar
Member
Who is Collins?
Collin's secret twin brother .
shysaursoft
Member
I'd actually recommend rolling an alt, and going through the first few levels again under the New Player Experience until you get your bearings again.
- Trinity. But with three Additional roles: Rock, Paper and Scissors.
- NPE reverted, everyone starts at level 80 even in PvE.
- Tengu for everyone.
- Precursors for all players who were in head-start.
- All of Cantha to explore (zones are empty until you buy Cantha Monster Pack).
- WvW now happens across all PvE zones instead of its own maps.
Yeah, I'm doing this. My "main" is only level 29, so I haven't exactly played a huge amount in the past.
Excellent, welcome to the Guild.
There, I said it all fancy-like.
Yeah, you've missed 41 updates, including two huge feature packs that changed a lot of the game's fundamental systems. There's a big list of 'em here.
Let us know if you want an invite back to the guild, we're at 472 so still some room left.
That's my thinking as well, this is a big deal or at least ArenaNet thinks it's one.
You know what I hate most in mmos.
Lazzinesss...
The stupid Asura shoes crap. Dont give them weird feet if you cant be assed to fix the shoes to fit them.
The fact that engineers all have the same kits (As if an Asura would just some lame Charr kit!) Also, no one can really see a kit to be able to know what sort of kit the engineer has, so let them customise them. Did we need 50 profession back pieces when the back piece class has to suffer with terrible kits of backness?
If theyre too lazy to make stuff properly they shouldnt make it at all. Dont give the Asura 3 big toes if you want them to poke out of 95% of shoes.
Why would an Asura buy shoes that do that? They just cut holes in them?
Im sure charr have problems to but they suck so who cares.
How about one made by Peter Molyneux...... nowwwwwwwwwwww??
Lazzinesss...
The stupid Asura shoes crap. Dont give them weird feet if you cant be assed to fix the shoes to fit them.
The fact that engineers all have the same kits (As if an Asura would just some lame Charr kit!) Also, no one can really see a kit to be able to know what sort of kit the engineer has, so let them customise them. Did we need 50 profession back pieces when the back piece class has to suffer with terrible kits of backness?
If theyre too lazy to make stuff properly they shouldnt make it at all. Dont give the Asura 3 big toes if you want them to poke out of 95% of shoes.
Why would an Asura buy shoes that do that? They just cut holes in them?
Im sure charr have problems to but they suck so who cares.
How about one made by Peter Molyneux...... nowwwwwwwwwwww??
Late Nineties or no deal.
Yes. Our horns get chopped off all the time still, too.
I never actually cared about tails clipping or not having a proper slot for them modeled in the armor. At least the tails are still there.
Seems like a non issue when things like horns being chopped off still happens.
This is going to be Colin's announcement at PAX. They've fixed the footprints.
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