[Awake.]

Seraphy, on Nov 12, 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

There's talk of new Ascended armor gear being available in the new update, armor more powerful than exotics. That does not make me happy, if the stats will be higher. I don't want gear grind.

Maybe ArenaNet feels adding a little more grind here and there will retain more players :D

[Bohvey]

Seems to have worked for WoW... Sort of... I guess. Every Xpac is just more grinding.

[Shinaji]

Well the Ascended gear is weaker that Legendary, and yes lots of people ditched because they had no treadmill, grind/progression. Because everything came easy they were less engaged.

[Tashigi]

There is less sense of "purpose". I think that's the problem.
Give it "purpose" and people will stick to it.

[Bohvey]

I guess I haven't hit that part yet. I'm still enjoying running dungeons for tokens and such.

[Garzel]

They added the gear to give people a defense vs a new Debuff that only happen in dungeons. Meaning that the more your gind the gear the less damage you take from the debuff and damage all together I suspect to where you will fight some "God of Agony" (The debuff is called agony) and then it will be on par with killing Ragneros from World of Warcraft.

You know what this means? I bet they are thinking of WvW gear sooner or later to give the warriors of the mists a leg up on people who don't fight as much. Which means that....ya this is going to turn into a gear grind....This is all speculation btw but it's not unheard of because people crying and whineing about OMG WHAT DO I DO NOW. WHY IS THERE NO GEAR GRIND. Blah Blah Blah.

[Vile Samael]

I don't understand the appeal of extreme gear grind. Yeah, I wanna earn my stuff, but I don't want to spend hours upon hours just to get a shirt or something.

[Bohvey]

I agree with Vile on this one. I'm enjoying the steady play to get dungeon tokens. The grind for all of the Ori ore and junk like that doesn't really appeal to me. I mean, sure I'll save it up and EVENTUALLY I'll get to create or purchase something legendary but that grind mentality robs me of the enjoyment of just being in Tyria. It's the first MMO I've played where I didn't immediately jump into the PvP because the leveling and story became such a tedious grind. Next thing I knew my crafting was all maxed out and I was level 80. I never had that feeling of, "Ugh... just 10 more levels and then I can stop this..."

All in all though, more content is necessary to keep the power players interested. At the same time the game is F2P so if you're bored for a bit, I'm willing to bet you still got your $60 worth and that objectively anyone would agree it was a great game. Ultimately as long as I can still enjoy the content without "HAVING" to grind for that gear, then I'll be happy.

[Awake.]

I'll admit I'm one of those players who goes through content quickly and enjoys "grind". Mind you by grind I don't mean mindlessly killing mobs over and over and mindlessly running the same 2 dungeons over and over like TERA. I mean that I enjoy and lengthy, effort driven grind of lot's of different content to earn items or gear. It's feel more rewarding and ultimately more enjoyable for me when I have to "work" for it. Gear doesn't feel like it has any value to me when it's just handed to you.

This is probably why I only spent a little over a month in GW2, yet managed to log almost a solid 400 hours in the game, and I enjoyed pretty much the whole of my time within it. The addition of the new gear is probably just intended to give people more stuff to aim towards getting and nothing else. Even though the game is B2P, which it is for a reason, they still don't make any money from players who quit playing. It's in their best interest to keep players around as much as possible, to both keep servers and populations going, and to have more people to possibly use the cash shop. A cash shop makes zero dollars from people who no longer play the game.

They will add more and more things to "grind" out. You can be sure of that. If they didn't eventually everyone would run out of things to do.

[Vile Samael]

Awake., on Nov 14, 2012 - 11:36 PM, said:

I'll admit I'm one of those players who goes through content quickly and enjoys "grind". Mind you by grind I don't mean mindlessly killing mobs over and over and mindlessly running the same 2 dungeons over and over like TERA. I mean that I enjoy and lengthy, effort driven grind of lot's of different content to earn items or gear. It's feel more rewarding and ultimately more enjoyable for me when I have to "work" for it. Gear doesn't feel like it has any value to me when it's just handed to you.

This is probably why I only spent a little over a month in GW2, yet managed to log almost a solid 400 hours in the game, and I enjoyed pretty much the whole of my time within it. The addition of the new gear is probably just intended to give people more stuff to aim towards getting and nothing else. Even though the game is B2P, which it is for a reason, they still don't make any money from players who quit playing. It's in their best interest to keep players around as much as possible, to both keep servers and populations going, and to have more people to possibly use the cash shop. A cash shop makes zero dollars from people who no longer play the game.

They will add more and more things to "grind" out. You can be sure of that. If they didn't eventually everyone would run out of things to do.

Yeah, that's the kind of grinding I like as well.

[Bohvey]

Awake, I don't think anyone considers that the typical "grind" that makes us all cringe. I'd agree with you that there's nothing wrong with adding content to play through by which the you ultimately get more rewards. GW2 did one thing very well in my opinion. They rewarded you for continuing forward and I think for me, that eliminated that "grind" feel that I get in so many other MMOs. You are encouraged to explore and keep moving into new areas rather than constantly running back and forth between two areas or quest givers. New dungeon, new area and new PvP map coming this weekend. Halloween events in October, Lost Shores in November and it looks like more content coming in December... they've had some cool events that people can play through for unique gear and such. That seems like a pretty solid effort to me, no?

[Seraphy]

So upset with ANet's change to the Evasive Arcana trait for Elementalists. No more dodge combos. No more support staff. :/

[Awake.]

Seraphy, on Nov 15, 2012 - 7:55 PM, said:

So upset with ANet's change to the Evasive Arcana trait for Elementalists. No more dodge combos. No more support staff. :/

Wow just checked it out myself.

Completely unreal. I have no idea wtf Arenanet is thinking and where they are going with this. That was such a fun and awesome build to play as a support role.

Now excuse me while I find my jaw that fell off and rolled under my desk.

[spencerBAXLEY]

Seraphy, on Nov 15, 2012 - 7:55 PM, said:

So upset with ANet's change to the Evasive Arcana trait for Elementalists. No more dodge combos. No more support staff. :/

You aren't the only one. We feel your pain.

[Garzel]

I have been up and down with Anet and it really does seem like they are just throwing darts at a dart board and seeing what works and what doesn't. I mean I was told that Guild Wars 1 was a great game and that it had alot of players. I used to be in a group with people always talking about it.

The Lost Shore event just ended on my server and it was a lifetime experience....A lifetime experience of 2 FPS and unplayable lag. I mean when the event was over I was going into Lions arch and the whole city wouldn't render. I was floating over just random land masses and stuff. The forums are ABLAZE with complains.

And even here people questioning the actions of Anet with seeming unreal and random changes that they are making. I really do wonder what is going on over at Anet right now.

[Demonare]

I missed the event today because of an appointment. I'm not sure how to feel about this considering how many are complaining about it.

Regarding the patch changes, I only just started playing again a few days ago (see spoiler), so I can't comment on individual changes , but it looks like they adjusted almost every class, probably in an attempt to balance them out, but who knows. At least that's what it seems to be from what I see.

Considering Warrior barely gets any changes (or nerfs, rather) and ANet's stance that Warriors are "where they had wanted them to be", I have a feeling that most of ANet's decisions are based more on an ideal rather than what the playerbase wants, at least most of the time. I'm not sure how well that mindset is working out for them, however.

Spoiler

I bought the game a few weeks after it was out and then started picking classes based on what my guild had (trying to diversify the professions out within it) instead of picking what I would probably enjoy (Ranger). Eventually I got bored and took a break for a while. After having some talks with my friends about it , I realized what the problem was: I put too much effort in trying to pick a lesser-used class in order to better support my friends, usually ending up with me playing a class I don't enjoy and getting horribly bored with it, result in a bunch of alts that go nowhere. So I came back recently and this time just picked Ranger and Necro and so far it's been much more enjoyable for me.

[Shinaji]

Well the First event is over, the proceeding events continue, search for clues, donations, investigations and another attack on Caledon.

There was tons of lag as I expected but I just went down to the docks near the consortium and fought the things that spawned there, pretty much little to no lag down there, I like the super computer people fight the big things, I was there to see two fall, had my fill and killed teh babies.

Still expected the lag so while I wish they'd sort that out I wasn't terribly upset.
What's wrong now is I think this investigation quest might be a bit bugged in terms of where it's pointing you to on the map to gather info.

Demonare, on Nov 16, 2012 - 5:01 PM, said:

Spoiler

I bought the game a few weeks after it was out and then started picking classes based on what my guild had (trying to diversify the professions out within it) instead of picking what I would probably enjoy (Ranger). Eventually I got bored and took a break for a while. After having some talks with my friends about it , I realized what the problem was: I put too much effort in trying to pick a lesser-used class in order to better support my friends, usually ending up with me playing a class I don't enjoy and getting horribly bored with it, result in a bunch of alts that go nowhere. So I came back recently and this time just picked Ranger and Necro and so far it's been much more enjoyable for me.

I loved me some Ranger. So far I can't decide if I like it or the Thief more.

IT's a shame all the events are bugged it would have given the world a great sense of some sort of impending doom, with Karka showing up at random coast lines launching attacks trying to claim land whilst you try to find the root cause of all the sudden attacks. IF it all went off according to plan it would have provided a great feel,instead it's all bugged. :( Makes me sad.


Off topic: Why did sudden creepy music from horror movies start coming from the mountains near my house... wtf.... If you don't see me again, twas an honour.

[Seraphy]

The fractals are pretty fun. At first. I don't think repeating them for relics is gonna be very fun. They simply take too much time for too little reward. I'd rather do multiple dungeons like Ascalonian Catacombs where you pretty much get 50s+ per run.

[Shinaji]

Fractal adventures started badly and ended badly. Started off in what I'll call the troll swamp. Bring three orbs to a specific spot in 30 seconds. But walls kept spawning in the way. So reset the map things went smoothly the rest of the way until the last dungeon. That one though was due to one guy afking at random. So after everyone else's gear broke (mine fully intact cause I'mma boss) They gave up, so I didn't even get to rank up to the next level. So when I enter again I'll have to start at level one. :(

I think it'll get better though, once you pass a level you can restart from the level you were at previously and the rewards get bigger for each level.

One thing I have to say after this my first dungeon run in this game. Devs played too much Zelda and basically all those mechanics from old school games made into dungoen traps. Like Frog Crossing, and that old game with mario and donkey kong and that racing game where you car doesn't move and you have to dodge the cars coming at you.
Yep I just got smacked in the face with nostalgia in that dungeon.

Still fun and I Rofl'd when I had to fight a Champion Rabbit and then a Raving (techno Rave) Asura and his kitty cat golems. Lol.

[Seraphy]

Acquired Spark for 225g. Now just the T6 mats, clovers, globs, runestones, and lodestones to go.

The troll swamp was annoying as hell. Mainly because my party kept triggering traps. I just used swiftness and jumped over everything. You can also jump over some of the barricades, bypassing the closed off paths.

This post has been edited by Seraphy: Nov 17, 2012 - 11:44 AM