Gecko

I supposed you get the idea that it's either those "pseudo trinity" or nothing else from here.  While many serious players gather here, keep in mind, however, that the people on these forums are only a very minority of the GW2 player population.

Even the general level 48 Fractals groups don't ask for a perfect 2 wars, 2 guards, 1 mez team.  (They do generally ask for at least one guardian in the party though.)

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Many of us play the game for the enjoyment.  We don't farm Orr; we don't farm CoF.  We don't care which class other members of our party play; we don't care about speed runs.  

As long as everyone in the party capable of carrying his/her own weight, it's a happy run, even with a few wipes.  

Actually, the ones that spoil the fun are usually the elitists that want the entire party to accommodate their playstyle; the elitists that refuse to adapt and want things their way or the highway.

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Currently, the only place in the entire game where I've observer frequent requirement of party composition is CoF path 1 . . . and only CoF path 1.  That's it!  Most high-level fractal teams generally ask for at least one guardian, but the other 4 members could be any class.

Let's put it this way:  Able to carry your weight and not being a jerk . . . these are much more important qualities than which class you play.  As long as you are a competent player, you can play any class with any build you prefer.  Most of the general GW2 populace won't mind.

Criticize GW2, but in reallity they did alot of content in the past 5 months. People say "should have been there at launch." Sure, but it wasnt. They still did ít all, could have bailed out with the money from 3+ million copies sold.

Anyway, price drop is not a bad thing, let more people play with us.

El Duderino, on 17 May 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

You're probably right that they had other options, but its just as likely that no other publisher would have stuck with them during the 5 year lull of GW2 development.  Say what you want about NCSoft interfering and wanting to see a profit, but they also paid for the GW1 servers from 2005 til the present, despite the fact that the game stopped bringing in a profit back in 2007 for the most part. You can't really blame NCSoft for wanting to milk the cash cow they waited on for so long.  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if GW2 launched when it did at NCSoft's order, rather than Anet feeling it was ready.  

Still, even if NCSoft is being pushy, it doesn't excuse anet for bad design decisions, poor communication and not being able to manage their own game very well.  Those are all developer side issues more than they are publisher side.  My bet is that most publishers don't really look at the games they publish that closely as long as they seem to bring in a decent profit/some gaming awards/etc.  We can blame NCSoft for no Cantha, but they published Cantha in the first place, even to gamers in the East.

After spending a few hours in Southsun Cove, I noticed random things:

I actually like zerging, as long as I get to zerg different things.

The optimization is not as good as I thought it was last night.

This update has really put some enthusiasm back into Southsun, working as intended.

If we can get updates like this 2-4 weeks in between all the other stuff we get, I'll be a happy camper.

You can stack a bunch of MF in there.

I like how they tied achievements and specific loot together.

Dragon Bash

I dont hate the cash shop.

I hate RNG.

If you have decent jumping skills and a mesmer, you can make alot of friends.

Goggles do nothing.

Jairyn, on 15 May 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

So you would rather be forced to pay every month in order to even play the game than having the CHOICE of paying but able to play as much as you want without every paying anything other than the box-cost?

I'm looking forward to the dragon festival, but I'm not getting my hopes up that it'll be Canthan themed.  After all, July 4th is an American holiday and there are plenty of dragons in Tyria now, that plus the fact that the word "Bash" is in the middle, makes me think it will focus on dragon slaying rather than dragon hats.

I'm just happy they are still working on optimization, polish and bug fixing.
I'm looking forward to having an excuse to return to southsun cove, I love fighting th Kraka there.

Bloodtau, on 12 May 2013 - 05:27 PM, said:

For me it's partially the aesthetic. I love that we get tossed around like rag dolls with our rifles, kits, and gadgets. I love the trenchcoats and hobo sacks on our back. I love the goggles starter item. And I mean the real ones. Not the crappy eye patches.

I may not top the charts with my Flamethrower or Elixir Gun, but I never feel useless and always feel like I bring that one extra projectile wall, that one extra Water field, that little bit more Fury that fills whatever gap the group needs most.

Beyond the aesthetic, I love playing the Engineer because it's the small things that we do so easily.

The things like how we can natively aim our Light field without traits, dropping it between the Ranger and the Warrior so that the Ranger's projectiles fly through Super Elixir and cure the Warrior's conditions.

The things like how versatile our elixirs are. That Elixir U gives us a projectile wall, a stunbreaker, and haste all in one slot. That Toss Elixir R revives down allies and isn't even the main utility skill, which breaks stuns, refilled my endurance, and can additionally remove a condition with Cleansing Formula.

I love that the Engineer is a class that I feel I am constantly messing around with and finding new combinations. I got my Guardian to 80, slotted Valor and Honor with 30 trait points, and pretty much left it at that. My Warrior ended up similarly, settling with the Axe/Mace + Greatsword build.

For my Engineer, I'm always having fun. I'm always wanting to try something new---not because what I'm doing is ineffective, boring, or underperforming, but because I've theorycrafted a new and unique way to play a class that after nine months continues to surprise me.

Anet's content generation seems to be hit or miss lately especially with this living story stuff. I suspect it's the fact that they're experimenting a lot more. Most of the holiday events were based on what Anet already knew how to do and didn't try much. Lost shore was Anet's attempt at one-time event and well... we all know how that went. But Super adventure box was also an experiment and most people seemed to like that... I did, I thought it was awesome.

Flame and Frost is their first attempt at temporary content and it's a mixed bag. That new dungeon was awesome, the personal instanced stuff was alright but the rest was pretty boring. The main problem was that the new events didn't change anything in the zone because Anet didn't want old content to not be accessible while F&F was running. This meant that the events had no impact and were just monster boxes. If Anet wanted the events to have a bigger impact they should have had the molton alliance shutting down waypoints, halting collection events and cancelling meatoberfest but because they were gun-shy they fell flat on their face. I also got the impression that Anet bite off more then they could chew in the sense that they had bigger ambitions than what the event they could come up with.

Hopefully that's not a problem in this next event. I mean Southson has absolutely nothing to do at the moment so this living story stuff can do whatever it wants and nobody will get upset. Maybe some of the events will stick around after we have something to do at that zone. F&F has probably taught Anet what doesn't work in the liviing story so hopefully they apply those lessons here.

I hope I get to put up signs in Southsun for a month warning the refugees that there are Karka about.

El Duderino, on 05 May 2013 - 04:37 PM, said:

Absolutely not, you should speak, but do so with rational logic and common sense to be taken serious. Just saying that the "numbers", wherever these are, clearly show that players are stop playing is ridiculous, in my opinion anyway.

How does the leaderboards that, and correct if I'm wrong on this one, don't show all players, and the number of achievement points show how many players are playing? There are so many factors like frequency of playing and hours put into the game and if doing activities or just chating in gchat that to claim that is crazy to me.

Desild, on 05 May 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

They do mean something. It means how many hours you've put into the game and how efficiently you've done so. Pure and simple. Trying to see anything other than that is a desperate attempt at finding validation for your own disillusion with the game.

Desild, on 05 May 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

1) Sub-par compared to what? An expansion? A content patch? A single-player game? I agree though that it took a long time to present the whole thing.

2) Doubtful, different priorities maybe, on what should be fixed or worked on first.

3) Your opinion not the same opinion of every one of those 3 million obviously.

4) First they need to make the cash shop appealing and be their focus as well if the game is to survive, I'm ok with this if it's not P2W, which it isn't, it's all cosmetic or utility. As for the content, the game doesn't even have a year and we saw new content every month apart from the last 4 months where content has been stretched out. I didn't play GW1 so I don't know how it was.

5) You know what? I'm having a lot fun playing Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, apparently there are other games out there. Also it seems like you're comparing an mmo to a single-player/co-op, not the same thing. I enjoyed far more Kotor story than I did any of the mmo's story apart from swtor, despite of its flaws that game has some great story.




It's becoming more obvious to me that the ones dissatisfied with GW2 are GW1 players which makes sense. Two different games/genre which causes disappointment with the fact that the supposed sequel is radically different than the predecessor and the emotional attachment to the latter that makes them bitter and resentful of that fact. I can emphatise with that though but it's two different games and GW2 is also very different from typical MMO's which in return makes even more people also resentful that is not more like WOW.

El Duderino, on 05 May 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

Care to provide a quote or link? Last I recall was Colin mentioning in December or January that concurrency had dropped a month or so after launch which was expected and that they had consecutive weekly increases for several weeks before that interview. Haven't seen anywhere that someone from ArenaNet said that "majority of people don't play it anymore". Haven't seen any sales figures since the 3 million announcement either. Would be nice getting an update on the numbers.

Edit: found the article. It was a bit later than I thought, from 1 Feb 2013. http://www.pcgamesn....-living-stories

GuanglaiKangyi, on 18 April 2013 - 12:27 AM, said:

Not everybody cares about your damn speedrun calculations and the 2 seconds difference they make..
Alot of people want to play a profession they like, gameplay wise, lore wise or w/e..

I for one love having a mark/well necro in my team, I found them to be very helpfull in alot of situations.
And certainly more usefull than just another standard GS warrior.

I try to avoid pain killers. Actually I try to avoid pain. That is usually the best route.

Daesu, on 29 April 2013 - 05:28 PM, said:

ive never heard of alttabme.  i mean, they seem like a group that only really hardcore mmo gamers would hear of. . . that is a very minor minority.

Wildstar looks really good i will admit but dont jump for joy just yet.  idk why people havent learned by now, every mmorpg is going to not meet your expectations, best stay away from the hype.  i like wildstar and what its trying to do, so we'll see but i bought GW2 three months after it came out and look at me? 5 months strong and still loving every bit of it.

i had realistic expectations going into GW2 based off of POST RELEASE REVIEWS.  i am the smart one here.

when i was playing SWTOR - all anyone could talk about was GW2. . . now look at you.  all of you, LOOK AT YOU.
disillusioned, disenfranchised, disappointed.

you think Wildstar or TESO will be any different?  MMO crowd = ever the naive.

Soki, on 30 April 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

thats funny because people PRAISED the Fractals to the high heavens when that came out for its dynamic boss encounters. . .

and really? less than a year? and its been "long enough"?  hmm. . . ok. . . interesting