Minion

I think the video to video response should be the main way to discuss this (like earlier in the thread).  So far, from the guardian video and then strife's video response, I have to say Strife is doing more damage in that particular fight.

IF there is another boss or situation or ANYTHING that is gonna be discussed, it should probably follow some guidelines.  I think having these guidelines will both: 1) Make the discussion more relaxed (hard to argue with a video), 2) Make the comparisons more accurate

Here's my proposition:

- Include a video as evidence when you are arguing about numbers.

This will help prevent theory-crafting or "delusional insanity" that some have been claiming.

- IF *YOU* ARE MAKING THE VIDEO.... always run with an ORGANIZED GROUP that you feel is skillful enough to represent a near-optimal run.

This will help prevent "Well, I was in a PUG, so...---" excuses when someone is losing an argument.  This will also help balance the comparison and aid in finding more accurate results.

- Base video results on certain FACTS.  For example, the time it takes to kill a boss (or a complete a run, for that matter) can represent "efficiency."  

This will help prevent "outside evidence" that focuses on obscure or unreliable factors in a video.  If something is faster, it's faster.  That's it.  You can't argue with time.

-  Let the video evidence do most of the talking.  Unless someone has a question or there is something significant to note, a good source of video evidence should be self-explanatory.

This will help prevent a paragraph about "why the video doesn't exactly prove a certain point."  If you are going to use a video as evidence of something, it damn-well should prove the point.  Otherwise it isn't evidence of anything other than the fact that you have a weak argument.

- Keep it relaxed, try and lay off the insults.  Even if someone says the dumbest thing you ever heard in history, you can easily just say the two words that will make your point clear.  "Show me."

I get that sometimes people get really into the argument.  But, sometimes you gotta remember; the guy you're arguing with (though he may be wrong), can honestly be misunderstanding something.  No one [usually] is "stupid," they [usually] misunderstand how something works.  Also, when insults get thrown into the mix, it's hard for the losing person in the argument to back down and save face.  No one wants to feel like they're dumb or crazy.  You don't have to lie and say they're a genius, or be a politician and find a nice way of calling them an idiot-- just avoid it altogether.  If they really are wrong, and really are "stupid" (though I dislike using the word), then say the magic words: "Show me."

If you're right, some excuse will always pop in there, and they won't be able to "show you."  When that happens there is no need to respond anymore.  Until they can "show you" that they are right with some sort of video evidence, and you have already provided evidence that supports your stance on something-- you won.  At least, you won for now.




PS:  an optimal group with 3 wars/1 guard / 1 engineer?  c'mon, you know you need that pro-mesmer instead

Quote

Sure, give us some GW1 content ass hat since you just confirmed nothing GW1 will ever make it into GW2. You'd be competing with your own game? Lolwut?

May as well uninstall this piece of crap.  Again, it's unfair to tell us to go play GW when there is zero content coming out since... forever. Where is elona beyond? Where is skill balance? Where are the class revamps for paragon, ranger, etc. that people have been waiting years for?

Clearly you have no clue what you're talking about.

Arewn, on 19 February 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

The levels system is one of constant, rewarding feedback. Basically whatever you do in the game you will get a pat on the head and grow a bit stronger (until you hit 80). Of course that is attractive. In fact your brain is wired to seek out things that reward you with low effort.

But tell me this, are you playing the game because the gameplay is fun, or because it is fun to level up and grow stronger? Well you already answered that one.

And if the gameplay isn't that fun, then why should the game exist?

Craywulf, on 20 February 2013 - 06:57 AM, said:

I would disagree with the hand eye coordination point. In PvE you would be absolutely right. In PvP it's a much more different matter, as a monk I never looked at my keyboard in a match, not once, ever! I had to memorize every single key. I weaponswapped every cast whenever applicable, used cancel-casts when I was being camped, I had to stop kiting for a second when a warrior was about to hit me with bulls strike, I had to swap to my shield set to hammer bash an assasin. When I played ranger/mesmer I had to have good hand eye coordination to interrupt skills, as a ranger I had to position myself well so that I could interrupt targets taking into account flight time of the arrow but without making it obvious that I was camping them, mesmer interrupts had shorter activations and were instant but I still had to be wary because I was much squishier than a ranger. Rangers also were often on poison detail, using savage shot/magebane to spread quick poison throughout the team for pressure. Warriors? Quarterknocking and quarterstepping were essential to applying pressure on their part, you had to be good at predicting enemy movements and landing bulls strikes as that is what got kills. Even assasins, as faceroll as shadow prism and sinsplit was, at least you had to learn positioning. They would get torn to pieces in seconds if they were caught out or made a bad engage. That's basic stuff for players in even top 200-300 guilds. You don't even need positioning in GW2, there is no midline, backline or anything, you just dodge roll out of trouble(or if you're a thief you abuse perma invisibility).

There were so much depth to GW1 it's almost impossible to explain it to someone that hasn't played high level pvp, someone missing an interrupt or infusion could lose you the game. I'll grant you that interrupts are harder to pull off in this game but that's about it. Guild Wars 2 tries to make combat more action orientated yet it has all these passive boons/conditions like retaliation and confusion that are just plain lazy!

I admit that after the power creep of nightfall and addition of heroes you could literally go through pve with an empty skillbar c-spacing everything and have your heroes do the work for 90% of the game but for the elite areas and pvp (except for RA) you needed to play well. This is the difference between guild wars 1 and guild wars 2, getting better as a player (and becoming more creative/innovative with your builds) vs a vertical progression grind.

Just gonna leave this here:

The combat in this game is so shallow its almost unbelievable that it came from the same company.

Edit: Go to 14:40 if you want to see a good example of bodyblocking.

My questions to Colin.

Why don't Ecto drop off elite mobs?

Why are you nazi's with GW2? Why are you so against good loot, but instead add these massive, boring grinds. I wouldn't even mind, if the grind was at least semi-interesting. The combat is what most makes everything dull. You couldn't pay me to get a legendary.

Why are you so against more skills (GW1) the current model is boring as shit.

Why not design bosses to be fun and engaging instead of the current frustration that is instagibs?

Why doesn't healing power scale for anyone except for Elementalist? With the supposed removal of trinity, why are they a must if you want any decent healing done?

Why do you hate healers?

Why was the decision made to make this game pure-DPS

Do you hate GW1? Was the total design of it a complete and utter fluke?

When will we get GvG? Conquest SUCKS. NO ONE LIKES IT. E-sports doesn't mean anything if you have boring game modes.

Why hasn't DR been swiftly and justly removed? Why do you still pretend DR was put in for bots?

It's my understanding that Cantha won't be added because you guys are NCsofts lapdogs and design to their every command, is this true or will we get Cantha in the future? For those of you interested - https://forum-en.gui...ion-of-humanity

Why do major game breaking bugs like dodge not working with autoattack and the immobilize glitch still exist? Are these not on the priority list? You know, it's tough to play against your instagib bosses while remaining mentally stable when I go to dodge your instagib mechanic and it doesn't work because I'm expected to mash 1 a trillion times, I mean christ autoattack is horrible in this game.

Since I have no clue where else to ask about GW1, will there be more content added later down the line? There are still unfinished stories in the game, add more costumes etc, people will still buy them. Stop ignoring the only decent game you have, because this one will clearly need multiple years to get fixed.

Well, I know many people (And I am myself one of them) who hate GW2's combat. To be correct, I would enjoy GW2 IF the combat was strategical in any way.

*Removal of monks and healers, which led to one and flawed way of playing PvP(Capture the point), as well as unorganized and split up battles(1vs1, 2vs2. Also, PvE and WvW is a complete mess, but thats another story) which led to
*Removal of proper roles of professions(Dps, control, heal) replaced with new roles that are completely umbalanced and/or dont work(You go dps or you go tank or you go nothing, support does not even exist, control is non-existent in the sense that it is included in Dps builds) which led to
*Removal of skills with a proper soul(We can even say soul, because who doesnt remember Diversion in GW1? While in GW2 I completely forgot it even existed) which means
*Removal of interrupts, CCs and conditions that are meaningful on the battlefield which, with the previous point, means
*Removal of build customization, build wars and consequent varied team builds with meta-shifts and stuff, which leads to
*Boring, stale and unstrategical combat. Couple it with the
*Removal of energy replaced by dodging, which provides a sense of action but in reality destroys the tactical sense of skills.
And you have one the most dumbed down experiences ever.

Dirame, on 19 February 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

Um, did you play GW1 at all? The weapon swapping in GW1 is nothing like GW2 and vise versa.

GW1 weapon swapping was all about skill and taking advantage of situations.

GW2 weapon swapping is nothing more than 5 new skills to spam. They are nothing alike in any way shape or form.

*twirls mustache*

...But how would we monetize it?

Hello all, I’m Nikephoros of Death and Taxes [DnT].  There has been some spirited debate on the forums lately 0ver some of the builds that have been posted.  We don’t (thankfully) have DPS meters, and the various calculators and spreadsheets I’ve seen all fall short of adequately describing real-world, in-game conditions.  The unfortunate result is a lot of low-DPS builds are posted by authors who describe them as “high DPS” with “excellent survivability.”  My goal here is to describe why these sort of builds are not optimal for instanced content, organized OR pug.

There is no difference between boon stacking and signet stacking

A lot of builds I’ve seen lately rely on a lot of points into Tactics to enable some kind of boon stacking strategy.  This is merely a marginal improvement over the mockable 5 signet build.  The 5 signet build sacrifices all team utility and party-wide buffs for a small increase in personal DPS.  We all (I hope) recognize this is very bad.  But what, really, are the boon stacking/shout builds doing?  They are sacrificing personal DPS for a small increase in team utility.  This only a slight improvement over the signets.

The Tactics builds utilize very good utility skills, but normal DPS builds ALSO use those same skills.  So what do the Tactics builds get for their huge investment into Tactics that the DPS builds don’t get?  Slightly longer boon duration and some marginal party-wide healing.  The lesson here is that the team-wide utility is generated by the Utility Skills themselves, and the Tactics-related bonuses are more or less meaningless.  More specifically, Shake it Off, For Great Justice and On My Mark are skills that provide huge team utility in ANY warrior build.  Adding a small amount of healing does NOT add significantly more utility than the skill itself already does.  A real world example would buying an add-on for a product you purchased: would you pay double the price for a supplement to a product you own that will only make it 5% better?  Ofcourse not, that is a poor investment.  Putting 20 or 30 points into Tactics or Defense in order to gain a very tiny benefit is an extremely poor investment of your trait points.

You’re not going to be Superman, and you don’t have to be

A second failing of these builds is that they try to be Superman.  They want to fulfill every team role, and excel at every role.  They want to provide party heals.  They want to provide direct DPS.  They want to tank.  They want to CC.  Even the creators of these builds will admit that they are sacrificing a lot to achieve “balance.”  The defense they cite is, “in pugs I cannot count on ______ to do _____.”  This is flawed thinking.  If everyone went into pugs with this mentality, you would have 5 flawed builds floundering to accomplish the tasks at hand.  If you were playing a build designed to fulfill a single focused role, you might still have 4 flawed builds, but you would have at least 1 good build you could count on, and your pug would be better for it.
Specialization is the key to efficiency.  Some classes are quite simply better than others at fulfilling particular roles in PvE.  If everyone builds towards their class’s strengths, the team prospers.  Let me be perfectly clear: the Warrior is capable of providing the most DPS in instanced content.  This is the role they do better than anyone else, and this is the reason why you would bring a Warrior to your team rather than another Guardian.

Not only do Warriors have the best potential personal DPS, their best utility skills are force multipliers.  FGJ, On My Mark, Banner of Discipline require no trait investment to be excellent and each increases the DPS of your team significantly.  Once you have the proper skills on your utility bar, your job of providing utility is, by and large, over.  From that point your consideration should be maximizing your own DPS, not being an inferior Guardian.

Is a Warrior with 30 Tactics for shout heals, or for maximizing Rune of Lyssa, providing significantly more team utility with their FGJ and OMM than a generic 25/25/0/0/20 DPS build?  I would argue not.  They are giving away between 25-30% DPS (my estimate) for an immeasurably small amount of team utility in case of the shout build, and in the case of boon stacking, for a minor amount of Vitality.  This is not a worthy trade off, in either case.

In summary, orienting all your traits in order to stack boons on yourself is just as selfish in a team build as stacking signets is.  Dungeons and Fractals are a team game, and specialization and defined roles is how you complete them most quickly and most painlessly.  You don’t need to be a better Guardian than your Guardian and you certainly don’t need to be a better Mesmer than your Mesmer.

Trait Points are for hitting desired traits, not for stat numbers

Simply put, your trait points are best utilized hitting the particular major and minor traits that you want your build to have.  Your personal survivability should be decided by your gear, not your traits.  If you are not comfortable running a glass cannon that is entirely understandable.  I would rather have an inexperienced player running full Knights and stay up than full Zerker and going down constantly.  In short: I’m not opposed to people adding Knights pieces until they have the survivability they are seeking.

What I am opposed to is dumping 30 points into Defense or Tactics in order to get the survivability they are seeking.  The traits that most positively increase a warrior’s DPS potential are in Arms, Strength and to a lesser extent, Discipline.  Failing to hit the key traits in these lines will drastically lower your DPS.  Trading away these key traits for Vitality or Toughness is a horrible maneuver, especially considering that you can get the desired Vitality or Toughness from gear without missing out on your key offensive traits.  For example, a 25/25/0/0/20 warrior in an optimal mix of Knights and Berserkers will significantly out DPS a 0/20/30/10/10 warrior in full Berserkers AND do so without being significantly squishier.

The game mechanics encourage crit based stacked melee

This should go without saying, but the game mechanics as they exist today encourage instance groups to play crit builds with stacked melee.  Melee DPS in general is higher than ranged thanks to increased attack speed and cleave damage, and once you know how to dodge properly it carries no significant increase in risk.  More specifically, crit based melee builds have better DPS than straight power stacking builds or condition builds.  And when Blackberry/Mixedberry/Omnomberry Pies are considered, the crit builds have better defense as well.

What does this mean for warriors?  It means that your most optimal build for instanced content is a crit based melee build (with utility skills to force multiply crit based melee) utilizing weapons that encourage this playstyle.  To be precise, Greatsword and Axe.  Swords are close, but too reliant on condition damage.  Hammers and Maces provide a lot of CC that is useless on any difficult fight and have lower DPS than Sword.  If your build wastes any traits to maximize Hammers, maces or swords you are suboptimal.  If your build uses Axes or Greatsword but isn’t focused on crit based melee potential, it is suboptimal.

Easy content is no excuse to slack off, difficult content is no excuse to water down your build

I hear a version of these fallacies all the time in defense of bad builds.

“CoF is easy, so who cares what build I run?”  

Just because something is easy, does not mean you should gimp yourself by playing a suboptimal build.  In an organized group, that means you are slowing down your friends.  In a pug, you are wasting peoples’ time because you’re too selfish to put in an honest effort.

Easy content, rather than an excuse to slack off, is an encouragement to go faster.  Sure, any crappy build can do CoF1 in 10 minutes.  But only efficient builds can do it in 6.  Why are you satisfied with mediocrity?  Why is “good enough” good enough?  You shouldn’t be, and it isn’t.  This is a loser mentality.  Winner mentality is pushing yourself to excel even when you don’t have to.

“This build is also good for open world pve and WvW.”

In open world PvE, when you play a joke build, you are wasting your own time.  When you play a joke build in instanced content you are wasting 4 other peoples’ time.  The former is fine because you’re entitled to waste your own time killing trash mobs in Orr or fighting Jormag events.  Wasting a pug group’s time with your bad build is pretty disrespectful.

As far as WvW goes, I’m glad you enjoy it.  I enjoy it a lot too.  But my enjoyment of it does not entitle me to gimp pugs with a bad build, and it definitely would not be acceptable to foist a bad build on my guildmates in an organized run because I’m preserving a WvW spec that is suboptimal for PvE content.

“Being a glass cannon stops working in hard content.”

This fallacy is painfully wrong.  Your 30 Tactics or Defense will not save you from a failure to dodge an agony attack at level 40+.  Those same wasted trait points will not make you an uber tank who can steamroll the difficult sections of the dredge or grawl fractal.  No amount of Tactics or Defense traits will allow you to tank Subject Alpha or Lupicus without dodging.

Once you start difficult content, you will rapidly become aware that your survivability is contingent solely upon your ability to dodge, and how often you can proc your Omnomberry Pie food and how good your Guardian is at minimizing how much splash damage you take.  The most difficult dungeon fights (Lupicus, Alpha, Simin) are either DPS checks and/or dodge checks.  The best possible builds for any of those encounters are DPS glass cannons designed to end the encounter as fast as possible.

No matter how badly you want the game mechanics to encourage a balanced build that is more effective than a DPS glass cannon while specced into defensive trait, the game mechanics do not.  The faster you acclimate to the actual game you’re playing rather than building for the game you want to be playing, the better your results will be.

Unique for the sake of uniqueness is not a redeeming quality

I understand that a lot of people hate build conformity.  They want to be unique, and not be told what they “have” to run.  Contrarians are a necessary part of the game and society in general.  Challenging the status quo is how new discoveries are made and how progress happens.  I encourage everyone to theory-craft and buildcraft to their heart’s content.

Unfortunately, there is a difference between being unique because you’re an innovator, and being unique for the sake of being unique.  Most of the trash builds people post are authored by the later.  They would rather gimp themselves and their party than lose their uniqueness.   This is selfish, as I described.  On the other hand, there are people that simply want e-fame from creating a popular build.  They will invent ridiculous ad hoc rationalizations to defend their poor choices and ignore any and all valid criticisms.  Without getting into specific examples, this is detestable.

Lastly, the concept of crowdsourcing in an MMO means that the chances a lone innovator’s conclusions are better than the crowd’s are miniscule.  In the rare event that an innovator invents a build concept superior to the meta, the crowd will embrace it, and refine it in the crucible of thousands of runs.  The chances your Tactics or Defense oriented Warrior build is more optimal for instanced PvE than the meta DPS builds is infinitesimally small.  Thus, everyone should be skeptical of such builds until proven otherwise, preferably with indisputable video evidence.  When a person claims, “My build does more DPS than glass cannons AND is way more survivable!” that person is likely either honestly mistaken, self-deluded or a liar.  Or any of the several possible combinations.  What are likely not is more clever or insightful than the collective crowd of extremely skilled and intelligent people playing the game.

GuanglaiKangyi, on 06 February 2013 - 10:40 PM, said:

Yup, I always use Omnom Pie and Master Maint Oil, but that's in addition to AH/EM in my regular build.

I'm at 27 in fractals now and the trash I'm talking about is stuff like the dredges when you're standing  on the 2 buttons (assumign you dont ash legion spy kit) or by the door if we get too many bombs/shots on the door and they over spawned or the cultists on the arm seals in cliffside or some of the bigger groups in the streets and especially the courtyard in the ascalon fractal, or the svanir at the big campfire in snowblind.  Sometimes they go fine, other times it's a little more hairy and there can be so many mobs both on your screen and off that are attacking you or using aoe or applying conditions that dodging them all seems unlikely and I worry losing ~1,050 toughness, 265 vit, AH and party wide condition removal on shouts will cause loss in dps through wither being downed/defeated or spending less time attacking and more time trying to avoid being hit and/or healing up.

I agree with OP - paying attention to those small details should be mandatory unless you are a masochist and like to spend 50% of your playtime dead in dungeon with this new patch. Also, timing dodges is important as much as dodging attacks itself, not all professions have improved endurance refresh rate (and additional evade skills).

/stickythisthread

Lordkrall, on 23 January 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

If nothing else, here's a simple answer that requires no cross-server communication at all:

Give people a second account on the opposite datacentre tied to the first, possibly as an account upgrade that is paid for with gems (like extra character slots or the Digital Deluxe upgrade). From the character select screen, players can choose to switch to their NA account or their EU account, each of which has its own selection of characters, its own bank, and is, well, completely independent from the other apart from login details and HoM linking. It'd mean people would have to level characters on both datacentres, but it'd mean they can play with people in both regions and hey, it's better than having to pay four thousand gems each time you want to switch regions.

Blizzard does it with Diablo 3, after all. If they figure out a way to make it work, then they can merge the accounts, but having a stopgap in place is still quite a bit better than nothing at all.

Shiren, on 25 December 2012 - 12:08 PM, said:

You're absolutely right. The Thief description, about Thieves, was intentionally and purposefully written and designed to make Rangers inadequate, clearly.

If only the rest of GW2's player base was as un-biased, wise and knowledgeable about the pesky Rogue class as you.

Except for the fact that every assumption you made about Thieves is wholly wrong.

Condition removal upon entering Stealth? Very few Thieves opt for that trait tree, let alone that trait. Not really worth it. Most Thieves will remove conditions via Shadow Step, but then you're left with a long ass cool down and no Stun-breaker or condition removal. Immune to projectiles? What are you smoking dude? How does a Thief achieve immunity to projectiles? We have one skill that blocks projectiles that most often isn't even equipped.. We have no retaliation/ reflection.. But you complain about Thieves? As opposed to Guardians, Engineers and Warriors? I'm sorry what?! You complain about Thief regeneration, again, umadbro?! Look at Elementalist or Engineer, they have waaaaaaaaay more access to regeneration/ healing than we do. We have 2 main forms of regeneration, a short regen after Hide in Shadows, otherwise we have to trait 30 points into Shadow Arts. As for Assassin's Reward/ Leeching venoms, they aren't really worth taking simply because there are better traits and leeching venoms forces you to change your utility as well as invest in Deadly Arts.

And we get to position ourselves perfectly before initiating combat? Sure, against bad players. The good players who know anything about Thieves know how to predict our positioning which forces us to be more un-predictable and less capable of dealing damage. I mean it's not this hard.

"Omggg... Dermn Thievf used dem shadox refugle... It hars a big rerd circle... Thievf couldernt be iernside it courd heee?!?!"

What I find to be an issue is this;

"they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters."

I find this highly debatable.

Repost of a repost - OP was lost in the shuffle. I apologize.


This thread has been deleted from the official forums without any reason. Banns have been issued to the people posting. Please spread this information.
I did not get banned, i am merely reporting this to the various gaming press outlets. I know friends in game that have been banned for as little as quoting an ANet developer.

=== Snip ===
*1. “The game will be released when it’s done”. Yet at release date several of the things that were promised and were sometimes even indicated as being ‘top priority’, weren’t “done” (and several of those still aren’t available):*


• account security measures (these were only implemented after launch, when the damage was already done)

Eric Flannum
security is a big, big priority for us.

Martin Kerstein
We are taking account security very serious and there will definitely be ways to protect your account.

• measures against botting (still being implemented)

Eric Flannum
Discouraging the use of third party programs that exploit the game and negatively impact the experience of others is a top priority for us.

• no guesting (still not available)… which is becoming more and more of a concern now that world transfers are limited to once a week:

Martin Kerstein
When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature.

• no rollback functionality for accounts (still not available)

And I won’t even mention spectator mode or ladders for pvp, as ArenaNet has been evasive about when those would be made available from the very start (and I’m not much of a pvp person anyway).

*2. Dyes are character bound, not account bound.*
In short: a lot more grinding is required (or cash shop purchases) to get all the dyes you want on all characters.

Eric Flannum
And what we do is, as you find sets of dye, you unlock them for your account. So as you unlock dyes for your account, your characters just have them available for them.

Kristen Perry
Once you unlock the color, it will be available across your entire account, not just the individual character.

3. No dedicated healers, every profession was supposed to be equally viable in all roles, and every profession would be equally welcome in a party.

Yet (for example) the guardian (with most of its stills being support/healing based) is so close to a healer that he is always welcome in a party, 90% of his skills are support oriented, whereas a thief or ranger (with much less support options) are often refused from parties and are much harder to spec for support (with far less options). In short: ArenaNet’s implementation of professions failed to make them all truely equal.

*4. No need for “LFG” for hours to get into a group.* Yet the cities and the lower level zones are filled with people just looking for a group who wants them so that they can play through a dungeon in explorable mode. This is actually a follow-up to the previous point… if all professions would be equally effective at all roles, then nobody would have a reason to refuse people from their party because they are a ranger and not a guardian.

Also, there isn’t enough motivation to play through story mode dungeons with lower level players. A level 35 player wanting to do Ascalonian Catacombs will have to spend a long time looking for a group, because very few groups actually want a level 35 stranger in their party when they do dungeons. There isn’t any kind of reward for the party for playing with lower level players.

*5. Ever branching story:* with only 1 ending and several knots where branches come together again, these story branches are extremely disappointing.
I would at least have expected different endings if you choose The Vigil, the Durmand Priory or the Order of Whispers.

Colin Johanson
Every race has three branching dynamic stories right off the bat where they can pick from. So, for example, the humans you can pick to be from the city streets, the city nobility, or a commoner, and based on that choice you get a completely different personal story than somebody else. And then within that story, there are more branches that you can make decisions that further branch the story in other directions. So, I can be from the commoner class and you can be from the commoner class and we might experience a different story because of that. And then if you take that and say, all those options are available just for humans, then the other four races all have all these other completely different branching stories you can do as well.

This is just plain misleading. Very few of the branches are only available to one race, most of the branches actually are identical and not race dependent at all.
It’s not a branching story, it’s a ‘merging’ storyline… it starts off with a couple of different branches per race, but it quickly merges into one main storyline, with a few very small branches (paths) along the way that quickly merge back into the main story. After the first few levels, what race you took and what options you chose at character creation quickly become irrelevant, and you are all merged back into the one story thread.

*6. No grinding dungeons for tokens. Earlier on in the development, PC Gamer spoke to Eric Flannum, and he confirmed:*

Eric Flannum
“It’s more of a badge system, so this is something that we did in Guild Wars 1 as well. Our basic philosophy is that you should never complete a piece of content and get something you don’t want. So it’s going to be the case where you go through and are guaranteed to get a piece of gear that you didn’t have before, and that you’re going to want.” So, you’re guaranteed to get a piece of gear every time you do a dungeon? “Yes.” Sweet.

By now we all know how much grinding is required to get the dungeon pieces.
In fact, there wasn’t supposed to be any need for grinding at all.
On top of that, there is a severe lack of personal goals once your have reached max level and you have explored all the zones. There aren’t any long-term goals worth going for, other than the dungeon gear (or the legendary gear). So if you don’t want to pvp, all that’s left to do at max level, is the repetitive grind.

Colin Johanson
Most MMOs these days make you grind and do really repetitive, boring content over and over again. There are moments of fun, but then you’re back swinging your sword over and over again, chasing around a moth or an ogre that’s standing around in the world doing nothing. That’s the part of the genre we think players are done with. We want to make something that’s better than that.

Eric Flannum
I think MMOs have two primary stigmas attached to them that non-MMO gamers hear and drives them away. The first one is the ‘grind’, the idea that you’re going to have to do a repetitive task over and over again… we wanted to eliminate that.

We don’t want the player to ever have to grind and do something they don’t want to do to progress in the game.

Isaiah Cartwright
We expect content—not long, grindy progression—to be the deciding factor that keeps people playing our game. We want everyone to stick with Guild Wars 2 because our content is fun and enjoyable, not out of some dogged determination to slowly, slowly advance.

*7. No gear treadmill...* yet after we reached max stat gear (exotics), ArenaNet first introduced Legendary weapons, now Ascended armor, and in the future Legendary armor… all with better stats. The rare gear (legendaries) was supposed to differ only in skin, not in stats:

Colin Johanson
The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Mike O’Brien
Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games – we leave the grind to other MMOs.

*8. Zones remaining “relevant”:* although the level scaling is a great idea, as it is right now, the game encourages grinding in only 1 zone: Orr. If you’re playing in Orr, you can easily make 6+ gold per hour and you can work on gathering resources that can be used to craft legendary gear. If you’re playing in any other zone in the game, then you can count yourself lucky if your “scaled up” rewards net you 2 gold per day, and you can forget about those legendaries.

Which is the main reason why Orr is still full, and most of the other zones are almost empty. There is nothing in those zones to entice players to keep coming back and do the events there again. Meaning that in many zones (even on full servers), a player playing through those zones will never be able to do the group events or take on the champions… because there’s simply no one else around to help out.
So please up the rewards in all other zones in the game and give every single zone something unique and worthwhile, to make it more interesting for max level players to return to every single zone and replay them over and over again.

On top of that, the scaling still doesn’t work too well, making lower level content far too easy if you’re scaled down from level 80 in full gear… even more so if you’re in a group. It doesn’t “remain challenging” as was the intention.

Right now, instead of addressing this problem of replayability, ArenaNet is spending most of its time into making new and higher level content to give players something new to grind for… and if that works, then Orr could soon see a significant drop in population as well.

*9. No crafting of throwaway items.* As it is, the tradingpost is a joke. Some higher level items are in huge This thread has been deleted from the official forums without any reason. Banns have been issued to the people posting. Please spread this information.
I did not get banned, i am merely reporting this to the various gaming press outlets. I know friends in game that have been banned for as little as quoting an ANet developer.

Eric Flannum
Our goal with our crafting philosophically is that you’ll never make an item that is a throwaway item. You’ll always be making something that is going to be valuable to someone. Whether it’s for yourself, whether it’s to put on the auction house, whether it’s a consumable that people want, there’s never a time when you’re just making something to increase your skill and then you’re just going to vendor it or chuck it or whatever else you’d do with it afterwards.

And finally, a few more of my concerns:
• The rates on the trading post and the currency exchange (gems) are ridiculous (15%/36%). Have a look at the rates on auction sites like ebay, as they are much more reasonable.

• Inflation on gem prices is ridiculous. On release date you could buy 100 gems for around 25 silver. Right now you’ll need closer to 90 silver for those same 100 gems. And still very few people actually consider it worthwhile to pay real money for gems to transfer them to gold.

so who want to level up their crafting skills are forced to make a fair amount of throwaway items.